The isolated road house on the bay was a nondescript, jumbled, dilapidated-looking assemblage of structures, rather than one house. It was known simply as Morris's. It stood a few hundred yards west of the end of the canal which opened into the bay and was about a quarter of a mile from the Jasper B.
The canal itself was broad, straight, low-banked, and about three-quarters of a mile in length. The town had thrown out a few ranks of cottages in the direction of the canal. But these were all summer bungalows, occupied only from June until the middle of September. The solider and more permanent part of Fairport was well withdrawn from the sandy, sedgy stretches that bordered on tidewater.
At the north and inland terminus of the quiet strip of water in which the Jasper B. reposed was a collection of buildings including bathhouses, a boathouse, and a sort of shed where "soft drinks" and sea food were served during the bathing season. This place was known as Parker's Beach and was open only during the summer.
Morris's was of quite a different character from Parker's Beach. One could bathe at Morris's, but the beach near by was not particularly good. One could hire boats there and buy bait for a fishing trip. In one of its phases it made some pretensions to being a summer hotel. It had an extensive barroom. There was a dancing floor, none too smooth. There were long verandahs on three sides. That on the south side was built on piles, people ate and drank there in the summer; beneath it the water swished and gurgled when the tide was in.
The townspeople of Fairport, or the more respectable ones, kept away from Morris's, summer and winter. Summer transients, inhabitants of the bungalows during the bathing season, patronized the place. But most of the patronage at all seasons seemed to consist of automobile parties from the city; people apparently drawn from all classes, or eluding definite classification entirely. In the bleakest season there was always a little stir of dubious activity about Morris's. In the summer it impressed you with its look of cheapness. In the winter, squatted by the cold water amidst its huddle of unpainted outhouses, at the end of a stretch of desolate beach, the fancy gave Morris's a touch of the sinister.
Cleggett was anxious to get the Jasper B. into seaworthy condition as soon as possible. It occurred to him that the employment of expert advice should be his first step, and early the next morning he hired Captain Abernethy. That descendant of a seafaring family, though he felt it incumbent upon him to offer objections that had to be overcome with a great show of respect, was really overjoyed at the commission. He left his own cottage a mile or so away and took up his abode in the forecastle at once. By nine o'clock that morning Cleggett had a force of workmen renovating both cabin and forecastle, putting the cook's galley into working order, and cleansing the decks of soil and sand. That night Cleggett spent on the vessel, with Captain Abernethy.
By Saturday of the same week—Cleggett had bought the vessel on Wednesday—he was able to take up his abode in the cabin with his books and arms about him. To his library he had added a treatise on navigation. And, reflecting that his firearms were worthless, considered as modern weapons, he also purchased a score of .44 caliber Colt's revolvers and automatic pistols of the latest pattern, and a dozen magazine rifles.
He brought on board at the same time, for cook and cabin boy, a Japanese lad, who said he was a sailor, and who called himself Yoshahira Kuroki, and a Greek, George Stefanopolous.
The latter was a handsome, rather burly fellow of about thirty, a man with a kindling eye and a habit of boasting of his ancestors.
Among them, he declared, was Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. George admitted he was not a sailor, but professed a willingness to learn, and looked so capable, as he squared his bulky shoulders and twisted his fine black mustache, that Cleggett engaged him, taking him immediately from the dairy lunch room in which he had been employed. George's idea was to work his way back to Greece, he said, on the Jasper B. If she did not sail for Greece for some time, George was willing to wait; he was patient; sometime, no doubt, she would touch the shores of Greece.
The hold of the Jasper B. Cleggett and Captain Abernethy found to be in a chaotic state. Casks, barrels, empty bottles by the hundred, ruins of benches, tables, chairs, old nondescript pieces of planking, broken crates and boxes, were flung together there in moldering confusion. It was evident that after the scheme of using the Jasper B.'s hulk as one of the attractions of a pleasure resort had failed, all the debris of the failure had simply been thrown pell-mell into the hold. Cleggett and Captain Abernethy decided that the vessel, which was stepped for two masts, should be rigged as a schooner. The Captain was soon busy securing estimates on the amount of work that would have to be done, and the cost of it. The pile of rubbish in the hold, which filled it to such an extent that Cleggett gave up the attempt to examine it, was to be removed by the same contractor who put in the sticks.
All the activity on board and about the Jasper B. had not gone on without attracting the attention of Morris's. Cleggett noticed that there was usually someone in the neighborhood of that dubious resort cocking an eye in the direction of the vessel. Indeed, the interest became so pronounced, and seemed of a quality so different from ordinary frank rustic curiosity, that it looked very like espionage. It had struck Cleggett that Morris's seemed at all times to have more than its share of idlers and hangers-on; men who appeared to make the place their headquarters and were not to be confused with the occasional off-season parties from the city.
On Sunday morning Cleggett was awakened by Captain Abernethy, who announced:
"Strange craft lookin' us over mighty close, sir."
"A strange craft? Where is she?" Cleggett was instantly alert.
"She's a house boat, if you was to ask me," said the brown old man—in a new brown suit and with his whiskers newly trimmed he gave the impression of having been overhauled and freshly painted.
"Where is she?" repeated Cleggett, beginning to get into his clothes.
"She must 'a' sneaked up an' anchored mighty early this mornin'," pursued Cap'n Abernethy, true to his conversational principles.
"Is she in the bay or in the canal?"
"She looks like a mighty toney kind o' vessel," said Cap'n Abernethy. "If I was to make a guess I'd say she was one of them craft that sails herself along when she wants to with one of these newfangled gasoline engines."
"She wasn't towed here then?" Cleggett gave up the attempt to learn from the Captain just where the house boat was.
"She lies in the canal," said the Cap'n. Having established the point that he could not be FORCED to tell where she lay, he volunteered the information as a personal favor from one gentleman to another. "She lies ahead of us in the canal, a p'int or so off our port bow, I should say. And if you was to ask me I'd say she wasn't layin' there for any good purpose."
"What do you think she's up to? What makes you suspicious of her?"
"No, sir, she wasn't towed in," said Cap'n Abernethy, "or I'd 'a' heard a tug towin' her. Comin' of a seafarin' fambly I'm a light sleeper by nature."
Cleggett finished dressing and went on deck. Sure enough, towards the south end of the canal, three or four hundred yards south of the Jasper B., and about the same distance east of Morris's, was anchored a house boat. She was painted a slaty gray color. As Cleggett looked at her a man stepped up on the deck, and, putting a binocular glass to his eye, began to study the Jasper B. After a few minutes of steady scrutiny this person turned his attention to Morris's.
Looking towards Morris's himself Cleggett saw a man standing on the east verandah of that resort intently scanning the house boat through a glass. Cleggett went into the cabin and got his own glass.
Presently the man on Morris's verandah and the man of the house boat ceased to scrutinize each other and both turned their glasses upon the Jasper B. But the moment they perceived that Cleggett was provided with a glass each turned hastily and entered, the one Morris's place, and the other the cabin of the house boat. But Cleggett had already recognized the man at Morris's as the stoop-shouldered man of tall stature and fanciful dress who had tried to stare him down some days before.
As for the man on the house boat (which, as Cleggett had made out, was named the Annabel Lee), there was something vaguely familiar about his general appearance which puzzled and tantalized our hero.
As the morning wore on Cleggett became certain that the Jasper B. was closely watched by both the Annabel Lee and Morris's, although the watchers avoided showing themselves plainly. A slightly agitated blind at a second story window over the verandah showed him where the tall man or one of his associates gazed out from Morris's; and from a porthole of the Annabel Lee he could see a glass thrust forth from time to time. It was evident to him that the Annabel Lee and Morris's were suspicious of each other, and that both suspected the Jasper B. But of what did they suspect Cleggett? What intention did they impute to him? He could only wonder.
Through the entire morning he was conscious of the continuance of this watch. He thought it ceased about luncheon time; but at two in the afternoon he was certain that, if so, it had been resumed.
Cleggett, innocent and honorable, began to get impatient of this persistent scrutiny. And in spite of his courage a vague uneasiness began to possess him. Towards the end of the afternoon he called his little company aft and spoke to them.
"My men," he said, "I do not like the attitude of our neighbors. To put it briefly, there may be squalls ahead of the Jasper B. This is a wild and desolate coast, comparatively speaking. Strange things have happened to innocent people before this along the shores of Long Island. It is well to be prepared. I intend to serve out to each of you two hundred cartridges and a .44 caliber Colt's. In case of an attempt to board, you may find these cutlasses handy.
"Cap'n Abernethy, in all nautical matters you will still be in command of the ship, but in case of a military demonstration, all of you will look to me for leadership. You may go now and rig up a jury mast and bend the American colors to the peak—and in case of blows, may God defend the right! I know I do not need to exhort you to do your duty!"
As Cleggett spoke the spirit which animated him seemed to communicate itself to his listeners. Their eyes kindled and the keen joy that gallant men always feel in the anticipation of conflict flushed their faces.
"I am a son of Leonidas," said George Stefanopolous, proudly. And he secreted not merely one, but two, of Cleggett's daggers about his body, in addition to the revolver given him. As George had already possessed a dagger or two and an automatic pistol, it was now almost impossible for him to lay his hand casually on any part of his person without its coming into contact with a deadly weapon ready for instant use. Cap'n Abernethy picked up a cutlass, "hefted" it thoughtfully, rolled his sleeve back upon a lean and sinewy old arm that was tanned until it looked like a piece of weathered oak, spat upon his hand and whirled the weapon till it whistled in the air. "I come of a seafarin' fambly," said the Cap'n, sententiously.
As for Kuroki, he said nothing. He was not given to speech at any time. But he picked up a Malay kris and ran his thumb along the edge of it critically like a man to whom such a weapon is not altogether unfamiliar. A pleased smile stole over his face; he handled the wicked knife almost affectionately; he put it down with a little loving pat.
"Brave boys," murmured Cleggett, as he watched them. He smiled, but at the same time something like a tear blurred his eloquent and magnetic eye for a moment. "Brave boys," he murmured, "we were made for each other!"
The display of the American flag by the Jasper B. had an effect that could not have been foreseen.
Almost immediately the Annabel Lee herself flung an exactly similar American flag to the breeze. But a strange thing happened at Morris's. An American flag was first hung from an upper window over the east verandah. Then, after a moment, it was withdrawn. Then a red flag was put out. But almost immediately Cleggett saw a man rip the red flag from its fastenings and fling it to the ground.
Cleggett, resorting to his glass, perceived that it was the tall man with the stoop shoulders and incongruous clothing who had torn down the red flag. He was now in violent altercation with the man who had hung it out—the fellow whom he had called Heinrich some days before.
As Cleggett watched, the two men came to blows; then they clinched and struggled, swaying back and forth within the open window, like a moving picture in a frame. Suddenly the tall fellow seemed to get the upper hand; exerting all his strength, he bent the other backward over the window sill. The two contending figures writhed desperately a moment and then the tall man shifted one powerful, sinewy hand to Heinrich's throat.
The binoculars brought the thing so near to Cleggett that it seemed as if he could touch the contorted faces; he could see the tall man's neck muscles work as if that person were panting; he could see the signs of suffocation in Heinrich's countenance. The fact that he saw so plainly and yet could hear no sound of the struggle somehow added to its horror.
All at once the tall man put his knee upon the other's chest, and flung his weight upon Heinrich with a vehement spring. Then he tumbled Heinrich out of the window onto the roof of the verandah.
He stepped out of the window himself, picked Heinrich up with an ease that testified to his immense strength, and flung him over the edge of the verandah onto the ground. A few moments later a couple of men ran out from Morris's, busied themselves about reviving the fellow, and helped him into the house. If Heinrich was not badly injured, certainly all the fight had been taken out of him for one day.
With Heinrich thus disposed of, the tall man turned composedly to the task of putting out the American flag again. Through the glass Cleggett perceived that his face was twisted by a peculiar smile; a smile of joyous malevolence.
"A bad man to cross, that tall man," said Cleggett, musingly. And indeed, his violence with Heinrich had seemed out of all proportion to the apparent grounds of the quarrel; for it was evident to Cleggett that Heinrich and the tall man had differed merely about the policy of displaying the red flag. "A man determined to have his way," mused Cleggett. "If he and I should meet———" Cleggett did not finish the sentence in words, but his hand closed over the butt of his revolver.
His musing was interrupted by the noise of an approaching automobile. Turning, he saw a vehicle, the rather long body of which was covered so that it resembled a merchant's delivery wagon, coming along the road from Fairport.
It stopped opposite the Jasper B., and from the seat beside the driver leaped lightly the most beautiful woman Cleggett had ever seen, and walked hesitatingly but gracefully towards him.
She was agitated. She was, in fact, sobbing; and a Pomeranian dog which she carried in her arms was whimpering excitedly as if in sympathy with its mistress. Cleggett, soul of chivalry that he was, born cavalier of beauty in distress, removed his hat and advanced to meet her.
"Can you tell me where I can get some ice? Can you sell me some ice?" cried the lady excitedly, when she was still some yards distant from Cleggett.
"Ice?" The request was so unusual that Cleggett was not certain that he had understood.
"Yes, ice! Ice!" There was no mistaking the genuine character of her eagerness; if she had been begging for her life she could not have been more in earnest. "Don't tell me that you have none on your boat. Don't tell me that! Don't tell me that!"
And suddenly, like a woman who has borne all that she can bear, she burst undisguisedly into a paroxysm of weeping. Cleggett, stirred by her beauty and her trouble, stepped nearer to her, for she swayed with her emotion as if she were about to fall. Impulsively she put a hand on his arm, and the Pomeranian, dropped unceremoniously to the ground, sprang at Cleggett snarling and snapping as if sure he were the author of the lady's misfortunes.
"You will think I am mad," said the lady, endeavoring to control her tears, "but I MUST have ice. Don't tell me that you have no ice!"
"My dear lady," said Cleggett, unconsciously clasping, in his anxiety to reassure her, the hand that she had laid upon his arm, "I have ice—you shall have all the ice you want!"
"Oh," she murmured, leaning towards him, "you cannot know——"
But the rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted. High-strung natures, intrepid in the face of danger, are apt to such collapses in the moment of deliverance; and, whatever the nature of the lady's trouble, Cleggett gained from her swoon a sharp sense of its intensity.
Cleggett was not used to having beautiful women faint and fall into his arms, and he was too much of a gentleman to hold one there a single moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He turned his head rather helplessly towards the vehicle in which the lady had arrived. To his consternation and surprise it had turned around and the chauffeur was in the act of starting back towards Fairport. But he had left behind him a large zinc bucket with a cover on it, a long unpainted, oblong box, and two steamer trunks; on the oblong box sat a short, squat young man in an attitude of deep dejection.
"Hi there! Stop!" cried Cleggett to the chauffeur. That person stopped his machine. He did more. He arose in the seat, applied his thumb to his nose, and vigorously and vivaciously waggled his outspread fingers at Cleggett in a gesture, derisive and inelegant, that is older than the pyramids. Then he started his machine again and made all speed in the direction of Fairport.
"I say, you, come here!" Cleggett called to the squat young man. "Can't you see that the lady's fainted?"
The squat young man, thus exhorted, sadly approached.
"Can't you see the lady has fainted?" repeated Cleggett.
"Skoits often does," said the squat young man, looking over the situation in a detached, judicial manner. He spoke out of the left corner of his mouth in a hoarse voice, without moving the right side of his face at all, and he seemed to feel that the responsibility of the situation was Cleggett's.
"But, don't you know her? Didn't you come here with her?"
The squat young man appeared to debate some moral issue inwardly for a moment. And then, speaking this time out of the right corner of his mouth, which was now nearer Cleggett, without disturbing the left half of his face, he pointed towards the oblong box and murmured huskily: "That's my job." He went and sat down on the box again.
Without more ado Cleggett lifted the lady and bore her onto the Jasper B. She was a heavy burden, but Cleggett declined the assistance of Cap'n Abernethy and George the Greek, who had come tardily out of the forecastle and now offered their assistance.
"Get a bottle of wine," he told Yosh, as he passed the Japanese on the deck, "and then make some tea."
Cleggett laid the lady on a couch in the cabin, and then lighted a lamp, as it got dark early in these quarters. While he waited for Yoshahira Kuroki and the wine, he looked at her. In her appealing helplessness she looked even more beautiful than she had at first. She was a blonde, with eyebrows and lashes darker than her hair; and, even in her swoon, Cleggett could see that she was of the thin-skinned, high-colored type. Her eyes, as he had seen before she swooned, were of a deep, dark violet color. She was no chit of a girl, but a mature woman, tall and splendid in the noble fullness of her contours. The high nose spoke of love of activity and energy of character. The full mouth indicated warmth of heart; the chin was of that sort which we have been taught to associate with determination.
The Japanese brought the wine, and Cleggett poured a few spoonfuls down the lady's throat. Presently she sighed and stirred and began to show signs of returning animation.
The Pomeranian, which had followed them into the cabin, and which now lay whimpering at her feet, also seemed to feel that she was awakening, and, crawling higher, began to lick one of her hands.
"Make some tea, Yosh," said Cleggett. "What is it?"
This last was addressed to the lady herself. Her eyes had opened for a fleeting instant as Cleggett spoke to the Japanese, and her lips had moved. Cleggett bent his head nearer, while Yosh picked up the dog, which violently objected, and asked again: "What is it?"
"Orange pekoe, please," the lady murmured, dreamily.
And then she sat up with a start, struggled to recover herself, and looked about her wildly.
"Where am I?" she cried. "What has happened?" She passed her hand across her brow, frowning.
"You fainted, madam," said Cleggett.
"Oh!" Suddenly recollection came to her, and her anxieties rushed upon her once more. "The ice! The ice!" She sprang to her feet, and grasped Cleggett by both shoulders, searching his face with eager eyes. "You did not lie to me, did you? You promised me ice! Where is the ice?"
"You shall have the ice," said Cleggett, "at once."
"Thank God!" she said. And then: "Where are Elmer and the box?"
"Elmer? Oh, the short man! On shore. I believe that he and your chauffeur had some sort of an altercation, for the chauffeur went off and left him."
"Yes," she said, simply, as they passed up the companionway to the deck together, "that man, the driver, refused to bring us any farther."
Cleggett must have looked a little blank at that, for she suddenly threw back her head and laughed at him. And then, sobering instantly, she called to the squat young man:
"Elmer! Oh, Elmer! You may bring the boxes on board!" She turned to Cleggett: "He may, mayn't he? Thank you—I was sure you would say he might. And if one of your men could just give him a lift? And—the ice?"
"George," called Cleggett, "help the man get the boxes aboard. Kuroki, bring fifty pounds of ice on deck."
She sighed as she heard him give these orders, but it was a sigh of satisfaction, and she smiled at Cleggett as she signed. Sometimes a great deal can happen in a very short space of time. Ten minutes before, Cleggett had never seen this lady, and now he was giving orders at her merest suggestion. But in those ten minutes he had seen her weep, he had seen her faint, he had seen her recover herself; he had seen her emerge from the depths of despair into something more like self-control; he had carried her in his arms, she had laughed at him, she had twice impulsively grasped him by the arm, she had smiled at him three times, she had sighed twice, she had frowned once; she had swept upon him bringing with her an impression of the mysterious. Many men are married to women for years without seeing their wives display so many and such varied phases; to Cleggett it seemed not so much that he was making a new acquaintance as renewing one that had been broken off suddenly at some distant date. Cleggett, like the true-hearted gentleman and born romanticist that he was, resolved to serve her without question until such time as she chose to make known to him her motives for her actions.
"Do you know," she said, softly and gravely to Cleggett as George and Elmer deposited the oblong box upon a spot which she indicated near the cabin, "I have met very few men in my life who are capable of what you are doing?"
"I?" said Cleggett, surprised. "I have done nothing."
"You have found a woman in a strange position—an unusual position, indeed!—and you have helped her without persecuting her with questions."
"It is nothing," murmured Cleggett.
"Would you think me too impulsive," she said, with a rare smile, "if I told you that you are the sort of man whom women are ready to trust implicitly almost at first sight?"
Cleggett did not permit himself to speak for fear that the thrill which her words imparted to him would carry him too far. He bowed.
"But I think you mentioned tea?" she said. "Did I hear you say it was orange pekoe, or did I dream that? And couldn't we have it on deck?"
While Kuroki was bringing a table and chairs on deck and busying himself about that preparation of tea, Cleggett watched Elmer, the squat young man, with a growing curiosity. George and Cap'n Abernethy were also watching Elmer from a discreet distance. Even Kuroki, silent, swift, and well-trained Kuroki, could not but steal occasional glances at Elmer. Had Cleggett been of a less lofty and controlled spirit he would certainly have asked questions.
For Elmer, having uncovered the zinc can and taken from it a hammer and a large tin funnel, proceeded to break the big chunk of ice which Kuroki had brought him, into half a dozen smaller pieces. These smaller lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket, wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking. Then he put the cover on the bucket to exclude the air.
The zinc bucket was thus a portable refrigerator, or rather, ice house.
Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket for immediate use, Elmer carefully and methodically broke it into still smaller pieces—pieces about the size of an English walnut, but irregular in shape. Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong box and dropped in twenty or more of the little pieces of ice. When a piece proved to be too big to go through the funnel Elmer broke it again.
Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box, and that Elmer was slowly working his way down the length of it from hole to hole, sitting astride of it the while.
From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved every smallest particle of ice, Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great satisfaction from his task, let alone joy. In fact, Elmer seemed to be a joyless individual; one who habitually looked forward to the worst. On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as "pasty," melancholy sat enthroned. His nose was flat and broad, and flat and broad were his cheek bones, too. His hair was cut very short everywhere except in front; in front it hung down to his eyebrows in a straggling black fringe or "bang." Not that the fringe would have covered the average person's forehead; this "bang" was not long; but the truth is that Elmer's forehead was lower than the average person's and therefore easily covered. He had what is known in certain circles as a cauliflower, or chrysanthemum, ear.
But melancholy as he looked, Elmer had evidently had his moments of struggle against dejection. One of these moments had been when he bought the clothes he was wearing. His hat had a bright, red and black band around it; his tweed suit was of a startling light gray, marked off into checks with stripes of green; his waistcoat was of lavender, and his hose were likewise of lavender, but red predominated in both his shirt and his necktie. His collar was too high for his short neck, and seemed to cause him discomfort. But this attempt at gayety of dress was of no avail; one felt at once that it was a surface thing and had no connection with Elmer's soul; it stood out in front of the background of his sorrowful personality, accentuating the gloom, as a blossom may grow upon a bleak rock. As Elmer carefully dropped ice, piece by piece, into the oblong box, progressing slowly from hole to hole, Cleggett thought he had never seen a more depressed young man.
Captain Abernethy approached Cleggett. There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there was determination in his eyes.
The blonde lady laughed softly as the sailing-master of the Jasper B. saluted the owner of the vessel.
"He is going to tell you," she said to Cleggett, including the Captain himself in her flashing look and her remark, "he is going to tell you that you really should get rid of me and my boxes at once—I can see it in his face!"
Captain Abernethy stopped short at this, and stared. It was precisely what he HAD planned to say after drawing Cleggett discreetly aside. But it is rather startling to have one's thoughts read in this manner.
He frowned at the lady. She smiled at him. The smile seemed to say to the Cap'n: "You ridiculous old dear, you! You KNOW that's what you were going to advise, so why deny it? I've found you out, but we both might just as well be good-humored about it, mightn't we?"
"Ma'am," said the Cap'n, evidently struggling between a suddenly born desire to quit frowning and a sense that he had a perfect right to frown as much as he wished, "Ma'am, if you was to ask me, I'd say ridin' on steamships and ridin' on sailin' vessels is two different matters entirely."
"Cap'n Abernethy," said Cleggett, attempting to indicate that his sailing master's advice was not absolutely required, "if you have something to say to me, perhaps later will do just as well."
"As fur as the Jasper B. is concerned," said the Cap'n, ignoring Cleggett's remark, and still addressing the lady, "I dunno as you could call her EITHER a sailin' vessel, OR a steamship, as at present constituted."
"You want to get me off your boat at once," said the lady. "You know you do." And her manner added: "CAN'T you act like a good-natured old dear? You really are one, you know!"
The Cap'n became embarrassed. He began to fuss with his necktie, as if tying it tighter would assist him to hold on to his frown. He felt the frown slipping, but it was a point of honor with him to retain it.
"She WILL be a sailin' vessel when she gets her sticks into her," said the Cap'n, fumbling with his neckwear.
"Let me fix that for you," said the lady. And before the Cap'n could protest she was arranging his tie for him. "You old sea captains!———" she said, untying the scarf and making the ends even. "As if anyone could possibly be afraid to sail in anything one of YOU had charge of!" She gave the necktie a little final pat. "There, now!"
The Captain's frown was gone past replacement. But he still felt that he owed something to himself.
"If you was to ask me," he said, turning to Cleggett, "whether what I'd got to say to you would do later, or whether it wouldn't do later, I'd answer you it would, or it wouldn't, all accordin' to whether you wanted to hear it now, or whether you wanted to hear it later. And as far as SAILIN' her is concerned, Mr. Cleggett, I'll SAIL her, whether you turn her into a battleship or into one of these here yachts. I come of a seafarin' fambly."
And then he said to the lady, indicating the tie and bobbing his head forward with a prim little bow: "Thank ye, ma'am."
"Isn't he a duck!" said the lady, following him with her eyes, as he went behind the cabin. There the Cap'n chewed, smoked, and fished, earnestly and simultaneously, for ten minutes.
Indeed, the blonde lady, from the moment when Elmer began to put ice into the box, seemed to have regained her spirits. The little dog, which was an indicator of her moods, had likewise lost its nervousness. When Kuroki had tea ready, the dog lay down at his mistress' feet, beside the table.
"Dear little Teddy," said the lady, patting the animal upon the head.
"Teddy?" said Cleggett.
"I have named him," she said, "after a great American. To my mind, the greatest—Theodore Roosevelt. His championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit themselves is enough in itself to gain him a place in history."
She spoke with a kindling eye, and Cleggett had no doubt that there was before him one of those remarkable women who make the early part of the twentieth century so different from any other historical period. And he was one with her in her admiration for Roosevelt—a man whose facility in finding adventures and whose behavior when he had found them had always made a strong appeal to Cleggett. If he could not have been Cleggett he would have liked to have been either the Chevalier d'Artagnan or Theodore Roosevelt.
"He is a great man," said Cleggett.
But the lady, with her second cup of tea in her hand, was evidently thinking of something else. Leaning back in her chair, she said to Cleggett:
"It is no good for you to deny that you think I'm a horridly unconventional sort of person!"
Cleggett made a polite, deprecatory gesture.
"Yes, yes, you do," she said, decidedly. "And, really, I am! I am impulsive! I am TOO impulsive!" She raised the cup to her lips, drank, and looked off towards the western horizon, which the sun was beginning to paint ruddily; she mused, murmuring as if to herself: "Sir Archibald always thought I was too impulsive, dear man."
After a meditative pause she said, leaning her elbows on the table and gazing searchingly into Cleggett's eyes:
"I am going to trust you. I am going to reward your kindness by telling you a portion of my strange story. I am going to depend upon you to understand it."
Cleggett bowed and murmured his gratitude at the compliment. Then he said:
"You could trust me with———" But he stopped. He did not wish to be premature.
"With my life. I could trust you with my life," finished the lady, gravely. "I know that. I believe that. I feel it, somehow. It is because I do feel it that I tell you——" She paused, as if, after all, she lacked the courage. Cleggett said nothing. He was too fine in grain to force a confidence. After a moment she continued: "I can tell you this," she said, with a catch in her voice that was almost a sob, "that I am practically friendless. When you call a taxicab for me in a few moments, and I leave you, with Elmer and my boxes, I shall have no place to go."
"But, surely, madam——"
"Do not call me madam. Call me Lady Agatha. I am Lady Agatha Fairhaven. What is your name?"
Cleggett told her.
"You have heard of me?" asked Lady Agatha.
Cleggett was obliged to confess that he had not. He thought that a shade of disappointment passed over the lady's face, but in a moment she smiled and remarked:
"How relative a thing is fame! You have never heard of me! And yet I can assure you that I am well enough known in England. I was one of the very first militant suffragettes to break a window—if not the very first. The point is, indeed, in dispute. And were it not for my devotion to the cause I would not now be in my present terrible plight—doomed to wander from pillar to post with that thing" (she pointed with a shudder to the box into which Elmer was still gloomily poking ice)-"chained to me like a—like a——" She hesitated for a word, and Cleggett, tactlessly enough, with some vague recollection of a classical tale in his mind, suggested:
"Like a corpse."
Lady Agatha turned pale. She gazed at Cleggett with terror-stricken eyes, her beautiful face became almost haggard in an instant; he thought she was about to faint again, but she did not. As he looked upon the change his words had wrought, filled with wonder and compunction, Cleggett suddenly divined that her occasional flashes of gayety had been, all along, merely the forced vivacity of a brave and clever woman who was making a gallant fight against total collapse.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, in a voice that was scarcely louder than a whisper, "I am going to confide everything to you—the whole truth. I will spare myself nothing; I will throw myself upon your mercy.
"I firmly believe, Mr. Cleggett—I am practically certain—that the box there, upon which Elmer is sitting, contains the body of Reginald Maltravers, natural son of the tenth Earl of Claiborne, and the cousin of my late husband, Sir Archibald Fairhaven."
It was with the greatest difficulty that Cleggett repressed a start. Another man might have shown the shock he felt. But Cleggett had the iron nerve of a Bismarck and the fine manner of a Richelieu. He did not even permit his eyes to wander towards the box in question. He merely sat and waited.
Lady Agatha, having brought herself to the point of revelation, seemed to find a difficulty in proceeding. Cleggett, mutely asking permission, lighted a cigarette.
"Oh—if you will!" said Lady Agatha, extending her hand towards the case. He passed it over, and when she had chosen one of the little rolls and lighted it she said:
"Mr. Cleggett, have you ever lived in England?"
"I have never even visited England."
"I wish you knew England." She watched the curling smoke from her tobacco as it drifted across the table. "If you knew England you would comprehend so much more readily some parts of my story.
"But, being an American, you can have no adequate conception of the conservatism that still prevails in certain quarters. I refer to the really old families among the landed aristocracy. Some of them have not changed essentially, in their attitude towards the world in general, since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They make of family a fetish. They are ready to sacrifice everything upon the altar of family. They may exhibit this pride of race less obviously than some of the French or Germans or Italians; but they have a deeper sense of their own dignity, and of what is due to it, than any of your more flighty and picturesque continentals. There are certain things that are done. Certain things are not done. One must conform or——"
She interrupted herself and delicately flicked the ash from her cigarette.
"Conform, or be jolly well damned," she finished, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in her chair. "This, by the way, is the only decent cigarette I have found in America. I hate to smoke perfume—I like tobacco—and most of your shops seem to keep nothing but the highly scented Turkish and Egyptian varieties."
"They were made in London," said Cleggett, bowing.
"Ah! But where was I? Oh, yes—one must conform. Especially if one belongs to, or has married into, the Claiborne family. Of all the men in England the Earl of Claiborne is the most conservative, the most reactionary, the most deeply encrusted with prejudice. He would stop at little where the question concerned the prestige of the aristocracy in general; he would stop at nothing where the Claiborne family is concerned.
"I am telling you all this so that you may get an inkling of the blow it was to him when I became a militant suffragist. It was blow enough to his nephew, Sir Archibald, my late husband. The Earl maintains that it hastened poor Archibald's death. But that is ridiculous. Archibald had undermined his constitution with dissipation, and died following an operation for gravel. He was to have succeeded to the title, as both of the Earl's legitimate sons were dead without issue—one of them perished in the Boer War, and the other was killed in the hunting field.
"Upon Archibald's death the old Earl publicly acknowledged Reginald Maltravers, his natural son, and took steps to have him legitimatized. For all of the bend sinister upon his escutcheon, Reginald Maltravers was as fanatical concerning the family as his father. Perhaps more fanatical, because he secretly suffered for the irregularity of his own position in the world.
"At any rate, supported at first by the old Earl, he began a series of persecutions designed to make me renounce my suffragist principles, or at least to make me cease playing a conspicuous public part in the militant propaganda. As my husband was dead and there were no children, I could not see that I was accountable to the Claiborne family for my actions. But the Claibornes took a different view of it. In their philosophy, once a Claiborne, always a Claiborne. I was bringing disgrace and humiliation upon the family, in their opinion. Knowing the old Earl as I do, I am aware that his suffering was genuine and intense. But what was I to do? One cannot desert one's principles merely because they cause suffering; otherwise there could be no such thing as revolution.
"Reginald Maltravers had another reason for his persecution. After the death of Sir Archibald he himself sought my hand in marriage. I shall always remember the form of his proposal; it concluded with these words: 'Had Archibald lived you would have been a countess. You may still be a countess—but you must drop this suffragist show, you know. It is all bally rot, Agatha, all bally rot.' I would not have married him without the condition, for I despised the man himself; but the condition made me furious and I drove him from my sight with words that turned him white and made him my enemy forever. 'You will not be my countess, then,' he said. 'Very well—but I can promise you that you will cease to be a suffragist.' I can still see the evil flash of his eye behind his monocle as he uttered these words and turned away."
Lady Agatha shuddered at the recollection, and took a cup of tea.
"It was then," she resumed, "that the real persecution began. I was peculiarly helpless, as I have no near relations who might have come to my defense. Representing himself always as the agent of his father, but far exceeding the Earl in the malevolence of his inventions, Reginald Maltravers sought by every means he could command to drive me from public life in England.
"Three times he succeeded in having me flung into Holloway Jail. I need not tell you of the terrors of that institution, nor of the degrading horrors of forcible feeding. They are known to a shocked and sympathetic world. But Reginald Maltravers contrived, in my case, to add to the usual brutalities a peculiar and personal touch. By bribery, as I believe, he succeeded in getting himself into the prison as a turnkey. It was his custom, when I lay weak and helpless in the semistupor of starvation, to glide into my cell and, standing by my couch, to recite to me the list of tempting viands that might appear daily upon the board of a Countess of Claiborne.
"He soon learned that his very presence itself was a persecution. After my release from jail the last time, he began to follow me everywhere. Turn where I would, there was Reginald Maltravers. At suffrage meetings he took his station directly before the speaker's stand, stroked his long blond mustache with his long white fingers, and stared at me steadfastly through his monocle, with an evil smile upon his face. Formerly he had, in several instances, prevented me from attending suffrage meetings; once he had me spirited away and imprisoned for a week when it fell to my lot to burn a railroad station for the good of the cause. He strove to ruin me with my leaders in this despicable manner.
"But in the end he took to showing himself; he stood and stared. Merely that. He was subtle enough to shift the persecution from the province of the physical to the realm of the psychological. It was like being haunted. Even when I did not see him, I began to THINK that I saw him. He deliberately planted that hallucination in my mind. It is a wonder that I did not go mad.
"I finally determined to flee to America. I made all my arrangements with care and—as I thought—with secrecy. I imagined that I had given him the slip. But he was too clever for me. The third day out, as one of the ship's officers was showing me about the vessel, I detected Reginald Maltravers in the hold. It is not usual to allow women so far below decks; but I had insisted on seeing everything. Perspiring, begrimed, and mopping the moisture from his brow with a piece of cotton waste, there he stood in the guise of a—of—a croaker, is it, Mr. Cleggett?"
"Stoker, I believe," said Cleggett.
"Stoker. Thank you. He turned away in confusion when he saw that he was discovered. I perceived that, designing to cross on the same ship with me, he had thought himself hidden there. He was not wearing his monocle, but I would know that sloping forehead, that blond mustache, and that long, high, bony nose anywhere."
Lady Agatha broke off for a moment. She was extremely agitated. But presently she continued: "I endeavored to evade him. The attempt was useless. He found me out at once. The persecution went on. It was more terrible here than it had been in England. There I had friends. I had hours, sometimes even whole days, to myself.
"But this was not the worst. A new phase developed. From his appearance it suddenly became apparent to me that Reginald Maltravers could not stop haunting me if he wished!"
"COULD not stop?" cried Cleggett.
"COULD not," said Lady Agatha. "The hunt had become a monomania with him. It had become an obsession. He had given his whole mentality to it and it had absorbed all his faculties. He was now the victim of it. He had grown powerless in the grip of the idea; he had lost volition in the matter.
"You can imagine my consternation when I realized this. I began to fear the day when his insanity would take some violent form and he would endeavor to do me a personal injury. I determined to have a bodyguard. I wanted a man inured to danger; one capable of meeting violence with violence, if the need arose. It struck me that if I could get into touch with one of those chivalrous Western outlaws, of whom we read in American works of fiction, he would be just the sort of man I needed to protect me from Reginald Maltravers.
"I did not consider appealing to the authorities, for I have no confidence in your American laws, Mr. Cleggett. But I did not know how to go about finding a chivalrous Western outlaw. So finally I put an advertisement in the personal column of one of your morning papers for a reformed convict."
"A reformed convict!" exclaimed Cleggett. "May I ask how you worded the ad.?"
"Ad.? Oh, advertisement? I will get it for you."
She went into the stateroom and was back in a moment with a newspaper cutting which she handed to Cleggett. It read:
Convict recently released from Sing Sing, if his reform is really genuine, may secure honest employment by writing to A. F., care Morning Dispatch.
"Out of the answers," she resumed, "I selected four and had their writers call for a personal interview. But only two of them seemed to me to be really reformed, and of these two Elmer's reform struck me as being the more genuine. You may have noticed that Elmer gives the appearance of being done with worldly vanities."
"He does seem depressed," said Cleggett, "but I had imputed it largely to the nature of his present occupation."
"It is due to his attempt to lead a better life—or at least so he tells me," said Lady Agatha. "Morality does not come easy to Elmer, he says, and I believe him. Elmer's time is largely taken up by inward moral debate as to the right or wrong of particular hypothetical cases which his imagination insists on presenting to his conscience."
"I can certainly imagine no state of mind less enjoyable," said Cleggett.
"Nor I," replied Lady Agatha. "But to resume: The very fact that I had employed a guard seemed to put Reginald Maltravers beside himself. He followed me more closely than ever. Regardless of appearances, he would suddenly plant himself in front of me in restaurants and tramcars, in the streets or parks when I went for an airing, even in the lifts and corridors of the apartment hotel where I stopped, and stare at me intently through his monocle, caressing his mustache the while. I did not dare make a scene; the thing was causing enough remark without that; I was, in fact, losing my reputation.
"Finally, goaded beyond endurance, I called Elmer into my apartment one day and put the whole case before him.
"'I will pay almost any price short of participation in actual crime,' I told him, 'for a fortnight of freedom from that man's presence. I can stand it no longer; I feel my reason slipping from me. Have I not heard that there are in New York creatures who are willing, on the payment of a certain stipulated sum, to guarantee to chastise a person so as to disable him for a definite period, without doing him permanent injury? You must know some such disreputable characters. Procure me some wretches of this sort!'
"Elmer replied that such creatures do, indeed, exist. He called them—what did he call them?"
"Gunmen?" suggested Cleggett.
"Yes, thank you. He brought two of them to me whom he introduced as——"
She paused. "The names escape me," she said. She called: "Elmer, just step here a moment, please."
Elmer, who was still putting ice into the oblong box, moodily laid away his tools and approached.
"What WERE the odd names of your friends? The ones who—who made the mistake?" asked Lady Agatha, resuming her seat.
Elmer rolled a bilious eye at Cleggett and asked Lady Agatha, out of that corner of his mouth nearer to her:
"Is th' guy right?"
"Mr. Cleggett is a friend of mine and can keep a secret, if that is what you mean," said Lady Agatha. And the words sent a thrill of elation through Cleggett's being.
"M' friends w'at makes the mistake," said Elmer, apparently satisfied with the assurance, and offering the information to Cleggett out of the side of his mouth which had not been involved in his question to Lady Agatha, "goes by th' monakers of Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat."
"Picturesque," murmured Cleggett.
"Picture—what? Picture not'in!" said Elmer, huskily. "The bulls got not'in' on them boys. Them guys never been mugged. Them guys is too foxy t' get mugged."
"I infer that you weren't always so foxy," said Cleggett, eyeing him curiously.
The remark seemed to touch a sensitive spot. Elmer flushed and shuffled from one foot to the other, hanging his head as if in embarrassment. Finally he said, earnestly:
"I wasn't no boob, Mr. Cleggett. It was a snitch got ME settled. I was a good cracksman, honest I was. But I never had no luck."
"I intended no reflection on your professional ability," said Cleggett, politely.
"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Cleggett," said Elmer, forgivingly. "Nobody's feelin's is hoited. And any friend of th' little dame here is a friend o' mine." The diminutive, on Elmer's lips, was intended as a compliment; Lady Agatha was not a small woman.
"Elmer," said Lady Agatha, "tell Mr. Cleggett how the mistake occurred."
Oratory was evidently not Elmer's strongest point. But he braced himself for the effort and began:
"When th' skoit here says she wants the big boob punched I says to m'self, foist of all: 'Is it right or is it wrong?' Oncet youse got that reform high sign put onto youse, youse can't be too careful. Do youse get me? So when th' skoit here puts it up to me I thinks foist off: 'Is it right or is it wrong?' See? So I thinks it over and I says to m'self th' big boob's been pullin' rough stuff on th' little dame here. Do youse get me? So I says to m'self, the big boob ought to get a wallop on the nut. See? What th' big gink needs is someone to bounce a brick off his bean, f'r th' dame here's a square little dame. Do youse get me? So I says to the little dame: 'I'm wit' youse, see? W'at th' big gink needs is a mont' in th' hospital.' An' the little dame here says he's not to be croaked, but——"
But at that instant Teddy, the Pomeranian, sprang towards the uncovered hatchway that gave into the hold, barking violently. Lady Agatha, who could see into the opening, arose with a scream.
Cleggett, leaping towards the hatchway, was just in time to see two men jump backward from the bottom of the ladder into the murk of the hold. They had been listening. Drawing his pistol, and calling to the crew of the Jasper B. to follow him, Cleggett plunged recklessly downward and into the darkness.