Tish Marches On by Mary Roberts Rinehart

building? Does the janitor have mice, or does he keep a cat?”
    “He keeps a cat,” Tish informed him.
    Charlie Sands then gave a hollow groan and said that this was Friday and they had to have the mouse by Monday. Only there were no mice.
    “It’s a crying evil,” he said. “There must be millions of cats about. When I think of all the poor little Mus musculus —or whatever the plural is—hounded by millions of cats, it seems both cruel and unfair.”
    In the end they asked us if we would undertake the commission, all else having failed, and Tish finally agreed. Only Aggie protested, having a terror of the creatures, but Tish ignored her.
    “It seems a simple matter,” she observed. “We shall need tomorrow to make a few preparations, but that is all.”
    I remember that Charlie Sands looked rather anxious at that.
    “Of course,” he said hastily, “what we want is merely a mouse. Not a camel or a tiger. Not even a rhinoceros. Just bear that in mind, will you? Knowing you as I do—”
    “I think you can trust me,” said Tish coldly, and took up her knitting again.
    They were more cheerful after that, and as they prepared to go he swore us to secrecy on the whole matter; especially to watch out for one man.
    “One of our fellows got fired the other day,” he said. “He disappeared for a week and the old man let him out. He might be dangerous. He knows the plot.”
    I noticed that Paula colored.
    “That idiot!” she said. “What can he do? I wrote him a note asking him to get me a mouse, and he read it moose and went all the way to Canada for it. Was it my fault that it got him into a tree and then tried to butt the tree down?”
    However that might be, Charlie Sands warned us to be careful of this person, whose name appeared to be Bill Lawrence, and who, having failed to secure the mouse himself, had flatly stated that no one else would. He had indeed said that he would either be reinstated on the paper or he would publish the whole story in the rival newspaper, the Gazette .
    “He would do it too,” said Paula. “He is angry and capable of anything. Also he has a terrible disposition, mean and vindictive. I am sorry for any girl who is idiot enough to marry him.”
    She then sighed and said he was no reporter anyhow, and the office was well rid of him; but he had no idea we were going to help them out, and so we were probably safe.
    They finally departed, and we went into executive session at once. As Charlie Sands had said, mice were like athlete’s foot: many are afflicted but few admit it. And although we are opposed to killing any living creature, all of us being members of the S.P.C.A., there was no doubt that mice carried germs and were therefore a menace to the human race.
    It was Tish’s suggestion that we make the capture as painless as possible, and that to this end a butterfly net and a pound or so of cheese would be the only essentials.
    “In this way,” she said, “will the mouse not only be uninjured, but placed at once in a jar with the cheese, its last hours will be happy and its final expression mild and normal.”
    Our preparations the next day were simple. Tish made out a list, including the butterfly net, a flashlight, a pound of cheese, and a small tin of shoe blacking in case we needed to darken our faces. These we secured. But it became evident after certain inquiries that the search was not to be so simple as we had anticipated.
    Hannah, interrogated as to mice in the kitchen, burst into tears and offered to leave at once; and the janitor of Tish’s building was most unpleasant.
    “Mice!” he said. “There’s none there unless you put them there yourself, Miss Carberry. And that wouldn’t surprise me either,” he added darkly.
    I must say that Aggie, too, was most discouraging. As fear always affects her nasal passages, she sneezed constantly, so that in the end Tish suggested that she need not participate. This only offended her, although time was to prove that