At seven o'clock that morning five big-bodied automobile trucks rolled up in a thundering procession. As they hove in sight on the starboard quarter and dropped anchor near the Jasper B., Cleggett recalled that this was the day which Cap'n Abernethy had set for getting the sticks and sails into the vessel. In the hurry and excitement of recent events aboard the ship he had almost forgotten it.
A score of men scrambled from the trucks and began to haul out of them all the essentials of a shipyard. Wheel, rudder, masts, spars, bowsprit, quantities of rope and cable followed—in fact, every conceivable thing necessary to convert the Jasper B. from a hulk into a properly rigged schooner. Cleggett, with a pith and brevity characteristic of the man, had given his order in one sentence.
"Make arrangements to get the sails and masts into her in one day," he had told Captain Abernethy.
It was in the same large and simple spirit that a Russian Czar once laid a ruler across the map of his empire and, drawing a straight line from Moscow to Petersburg, commanded his engineers: "Build me a railroad to run like that." Genius has winged conceptions; it sees things as a completed whole from the first; it is only mediocrity which permits itself to be lost in details.
Cleggett was like the Romanoffs in his ability to go straight to the point, but he had none of the Romanoff cruelty.
Captain Abernethy had made his arrangements accordingly. If it pleased Cleggett to have a small manufacturing plant brought to the Jasper B. instead of having the Jasper B. towed to a shipyard, it was Abernethy's business as his chief executive officer to see that this was done. The Captain had let the contract to an enterprising and businesslike fellow, Watkins by name, who had at once looked the vessel over, taken the necessary measurements, and named a good round sum for the job. With several times the usual number of skilled workmen employed at double the usual rate of pay, he guaranteed to do in ten hours what might ordinarily have taken a week.
Under the leadership of this capable Watkins, the workmen rushed at the vessel with the dash and vim of a gang of circus employees engaged in putting up a big tent and making ready for a show. To a casual observer it might have seemed a scene of confusion. But in reality the work jumped forward with order and precision, for the position of every bolt, chain, nail, cord, piece of iron and bit of wood had been calculated beforehand to a nicety; there was not a wasted movement of saw, adze, or hammer. The Jasper B., in short, had been measured accurately for a suit of clothes, the clothes had been made; they were now merely being put on.
Refreshed by the first sound sleep she had been able to obtain for several nights, Lady Agatha joined Cleggett at an eight-o'clock breakfast. It was the first of May, and warm and bright; in a simple morning dress of pink linen Lady Agatha stirred in Cleggett a vague recollection of one of Tennyson's earlier poems. The exact phrases eluded him; perhaps, indeed, it was the underlying sentiment of nearly ALL of Tennyson's earlier poems of which she reminded him—those lyrics which are at once so romantic and so irreproachable morally.
"We must give you Americans credit for imagination at any rate," she said smilingly, making her Pomeranian sit up on his hind legs and beg for a morsel of crisp bacon. "I awake in a boatyard after having gone to sleep in a dismantled barge."
"Barge!" The word "barge" struck Cleggett unexpectedly; he was not aware that he had given a start and frowned.
"Mercy!" exclaimed Lady Agatha, "how the dear man glares! What should I call it? Scow?"
"Scow?" said Cleggett. He had scarcely recovered from the word "barge"; it is not to be denied that "scow" jarred upon him even more than "barge" had done.
"I beg your pardon," said Lady Agatha, "but what IS the Jasper B., Mr. Cleggett?"
"The Jasper B. is a schooner," said Cleggett. He tried to say it casually, but he was conscious as he spoke that there was a trace of hurt surprise in his voice. The most generous and chivalrous soul alive, Cleggett would have gone to the stake for Lady Agatha; and yet so unaccountable is that vain thing, the human soul (especially at breakfast time), that he felt angry at her for misunderstanding the Jasper B.
"You aren't going to be horrid about it, are you?" she said. "Because, you know, I never said I knew anything about ships."
She picked up the little dog and stood it on the table, making the animal extend its paws as if pleading. "Help me to beg Mr. Cleggett's pardon," she said, "he's going to be cross with us about his old boat."
If Lady Agatha had been just an inch taller or just a few pounds heavier the playful mood itself would have jarred upon the fastidious Cleggett; indeed, as she was, if she had been just a thought more playful, it would have jarred. But Lady Agatha, it has been remarked before, never went too far in any direction.
Even as she smiled and held out the dog's paws Cleggett was aware of something in her eyes that was certainly not a tear, but was just as certainly a film of moisture that might be a tear in another minute. Then Cleggett cursed himself inwardly for a brute—it rushed over him how difficult to Lady Agatha her position on board the Jasper B. must seem. She must regard herself as practically a pensioner on his bounty. And he had been churl enough to show a spark of temper—and that, too, after she had repeatedly expressed her gratitude to him.
"I am deeply sorry, Lady Agatha," he began, blushing painfully, "if——"
"Silly!" She interrupted him by reaching across the table and laying a forgiving hand upon his arm. "Don't be so stiff and formal. Eat your egg before it gets cold and don't say another word. Of course I know you're not REALLY going to be cross." And she attacked her breakfast, giving him such a look that he forthwith forgave himself and forgot that he had had anything to forgive in her.
"There's going to be a frightful racket around here today," he said presently. "Maybe you'd like to get away from it for a while. How'd you like to go for a row?"
"I'd love it!" she said.
"George will be glad to take you, I'm sure."
"George? And you?" He thought he detected a note of disappointment in her voice; he had not thought to disappoint her, but when he found her disappointed he got a certain thrill out of it.
"I am going over to Morris's this morning," he said.
"To Morris's? Alone?"
"Why, yes."
"But—but isn't it dangerous?"
Cleggett smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"Promise me that you will not go over there alone," she demanded.
"I am sorry. I cannot."
"But it is rash—it is mad!"
"There is no real danger."
"Then I am going with you."
"I think that would hardly be advisable."
"I'm going with you," she repeated, rising with determination.
"But you're not," said Cleggett. "I couldn't think of allowing it."
"Then there IS danger," she said.
He tried to evade the point. "I shouldn't have mentioned it," he murmured.
She ran into the stateroom and was back in an instant with her hat, which she pinned on as she spoke.
"I'm ready to start," she said.
"But you're not going."
"After what you've done for me I insist upon my right to share whatever danger there may be." She spoke heatedly.
In her heat and impulsiveness and generous bravery Cleggett thought her adorable, although he began to get really angry with her, too. At the same time he was aware that her gratitude to him was such that she was on fire to give him some positive and early proof of it. It had not so much as occurred to her to enjoy immunity on account of her sex; it had not entered her mind, apparently, that her sex was an obstacle in the way of participating in whatever dangerous enterprise he had planned. She was, in fact, behaving like a chivalric but obstinate boy; she had not been a militant suffragette for nothing. And yet, somehow, this attitude only served to enhance her essential femininity. Nevertheless, Cleggett was inflexible.
"You would scarcely forbid me to go to Morris's today, or anywhere else I may choose," she said hotly, with a spot of red on either cheek bone, and a dangerous dilatation of her eyes.
"That is exactly what I intend to do," said Cleggett, with an intensity equal to her own, "FORBID you."
"You are curiously presumptuous," she said.
It was a real quarrel before they were done with it, will opposed to naked will. And oddly enough Cleggett found his admiration grow as his determination to gain his point increased. For she fought fair, disdaining the facile weapon of tears, and when she yielded she did it suddenly and merrily.
"You've the temper of a sultan, Mr. Cleggett," she said with a laugh, which was her signal of capitulation. And then she added maliciously: "You've a devil of a temper—for a little man!"
"Little!" Cleggett felt the blood rush into his face again and was vexed at himself. "I'm taller than you are!" he cried, and the next instant could have bitten his tongue off for the childish vanity of the speech.
"You're not!" she cried, her whole face alive with laughter. "Measure and see!"
And pulling off her hat she caught up a table knife and made him stand with his back to hers. "You're cheating," said Cleggett, laughing now in spite of himself, as she laid the knife across their heads. But his voice broke and trembled on the next words, for he was suddenly thrilled with her delicious nearness. "You're standing on your tiptoes, and your hair's piled on top of your head."
"Maybe you are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am—I give up; I won't go to Morris's."
Cleggett, to tell the truth, was a bit relieved at the measurement. He was of the middle height; she was slightly taller than the average woman; he had really thought she might prove taller than he. He could scarcely have told why he considered the point important.
But after the quarrel she looked at Cleggett with a new and more approving gaze. Neither of them quite realized it, but she had challenged his ability to dominate her, and she had been worsted; he had unconsciously met and satisfied in her that subtle inherent craving for domination which all women possess and so few will admit the possession of.
Cleggett started across the sands toward Morris's with an automatic pistol slung in a shoulder holster under his left arm and a sword cane in his hand. He paused a moment by the scene of the explosion of the night before, but daylight told him nothing that lantern light had failed to reveal. He had no very definite plan, although he thought it possible that he might gain some information. The more he reflected on the attitude of Morris's, the more it irritated him, and he yearned to make this irritation known.
Perhaps there was more than a little of the spirit of bravado in the call he proposed to pay. He planned, the next day, to sail the Jasper B. out into the bay and up and down the coast for a few miles, to give himself and his men a bit of practice in navigation before setting out for the China Seas. And he could not bear to think that the hostile denizens of Morris's should think that he had moved the Jasper B. from her position through any fear of them. He reasoned that the most pointed way of showing his opinion of them would be to walk casually into Morris's barroom and order a drink or two. If Cleggett had a fault as a commander it lay in these occasional foolhardy impulses which he found it difficult to control. Julius Caesar had the same sort of pride, which, in Caesar's case, amounted to positive vanity. In fact, the character of Caesar and the character of Cleggett had many points in common, although Cleggett possessed a nicer sense of honor than Caesar.
The main entrance to Morris's was on the west side. From the west verandah one could enter directly either the main dining-room, at the north side of the building, the office, or the barroom. The barroom, which was large, ran the whole length of the south side of the place. Doors also led into the barroom, from the south verandah, which was built over the water, and from the east verandah, which was visible from the Jasper B.—and onto the roof of which Cleggett had seen Loge tumble the limp body of his victim, Heinrich. That had been only the day before, but so much had happened since that Cleggett could scarcely realize that so little time had elapsed.
Cleggett strolled into the barroom and took a seat at a table in the southeast corner of it, with his back to the angle of the walls. He thus commanded a view of the bar itself; a door which led, as he conjectured, into the kitchen; the door communicating with the office, and a door which gave upon the west verandah—all this easily, and without turning his head. By turning his head ever so slightly to his right, he could command a view of the door leading to the east verandah. Unless the ceiling suddenly opened above him, or the floor beneath, it would be impossible to surprise him. Cleggett took this position less through any positive fear of attack than because he possessed the instinct of the born strategist. Cleggett was like Robert E. Lee in his quick grasp of a situation and, indeed, in other respects—although Cleggett would never under any circumstances have countenanced human slavery.
There were only two men in the place when Cleggett took his seat, the bartender and a fellow who was evidently a waiter. He had entered the west door and walked across the room without looking at them, withholding his gaze purposely. When he looked towards the bar, after seating himself, the waiter, with his back towards Cleggett's corner, was talking in a low tone to the bartender. But they had both seen him; Cleggett perceived they both knew him.
"See what the gentleman wants, Pierre," said the bartender in a voice too elaborately casual to hide his surprise at seeing Cleggett.
The waiter turned and came towards him, and Cleggett saw the man's face for the first time. It was a face that Cleggett never forgot. Cleggett judged the man to be a Frenchman; he was dark and sallow, with nervous, black eyebrows, and a smirk that came and went quickly. But the unforgettable feature was a mole that grew on his upper lip, on the right side, near the base of his flaring nostril. Many moles have hairs in them; Pierre's mole had not merely half a dozen hairs, but a whole crop. They grew thick and long; and, with a perversion of vanity almost inconceivable in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone. He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment. Cleggett, fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre, evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he held his audience, he took from his waistcoat pocket a little piece of cosmetic and, as a final touch of Gallic grotesquerie, waxed the thing. It was all done with that air of quiet histrionicism, and with that sense of self-appreciation, which only the French can achieve in its perfection. "You ordered, M'sieur?" Pierre, having produced his effect, like the artist (though debased) that he was, did not linger over it.
"Er—a Scotch highball," said Cleggett, recovering himself. "And with a piece of lemon peeling in it, please."
Pierre served him deftly. Cleggett stirred his drink and sipped it slowly, gazing at the bartender, who elaborately avoided watching him. But after a moment a little noise at his right attracted his attention. Pierre, with his hand cupped, had dashed it along a window pane and caught a big stupid fly, abroad thus early in the year. With a sense of almost intolerable disgust, Cleggett saw the man, with a rapt smile on his face, tear the insect's legs from it, and turn it loose. If ever a creature rejoiced in wickedness for its own sake, and as if its practice were an art in itself, Pierre was that person, Cleggett concluded. Knowing Pierre, one could almost understand those cafes of Paris where the silly poets of degradation ostentatiously affect the worship of all manner of devils.
An instant later, Pierre, as if he had been doing something quite charming, looked at Cleggett with a grin; a grin that assumed that there was some kind of an understanding between them concerning this delightful pastime. It was too much. Cleggett, with an oath—and never stopping to reflect that it was perhaps just the sort of action which Pierre hoped to provoke—grasped his cane with the intention of laying it across the fellow's shoulders half a dozen times, come what might, and leaving the place.
But at that instant the door from the office opened and the man whom he knew only as Loge entered the room.
Loge paused at the right of Cleggett, and then marched directly across the room and sat down opposite the commander of the Jasper B. at the same table. He was wearing the cutaway frock coat, and as he swung his big frame into the seat one of his coat tails caught in the chair back and was lifted.
Cleggett saw the steel butt of an army revolver. Loge perceived by his face that he had seen it, and laughed.
"I've been wanting to talk to you," he said, leaning across the table and showing his yellow teeth in a smile which he perhaps intended to be ingratiating. Cleggett, looking Loge fixedly in the eye, withdrew his right hand from beneath his coat, and laid his magazine pistol on the table under his hand.
"I am at your service," he said, steadily, giving back unwavering gaze for gaze. "I am looking for some information myself, and I am in exactly the humor for a little comfortable chat."
Loge dropped his gaze to the pistol, and the smile upon his lips slowly turned into a sneer. But when he lifted his eyes to Cleggett's again there was no fear in them.
"Put up your gun," he said, easily enough. "You won't have any use for it here."
"Thank you for the assurance," said Cleggett, "but it occurs to me that it is in a very good place where it is."
"Oh, if it amuses you to play with it——" said Loge.
"It does," said Cleggett dryly.
"It's an odd taste," said Loge.
"It's a taste I've formed during the last few days on board my ship," said Cleggett meaningly.
"Ship?" said Loge. "Oh, I beg your pardon. You mean the old hulk over yonder in the canal?"
"Over yonder in the canal," said Cleggett, without relaxing his vigilance.
"You've been frightened over there?" asked Loge, showing his teeth in a grin.
"No," said Cleggett. "I'm not easily frightened."
Loge looked at the pistol under Cleggett's hand, and from the pistol to Cleggett's face, with ironical gravity, before he spoke. "I should have thought, from the way you cling to that pistol, that perhaps your nerves might be a little weak and shaky."
"On the contrary," said Cleggett, playing the game with a face like a mask, "my nerves are so steady that I could snip that ugly-looking skull off your cravat the length of this barroom away."
"That would be mighty good shooting," said Loge, turning in his chair and measuring the distance with his eye. "I don't believe you could do it. I don't mind telling you thatIcouldn't."
"While we are on the subject of your scarfpin," said Cleggett, in whom the slur on the Jasper B. had been rankling, "I don't mind telling YOU that I think that skull thing is in damned bad taste. In fact, you are dressed generally in damned bad taste.—Who is your tailor?"
Cleggett was gratified to see a dull flush spread over the other's face at the insult. Loge was silent a moment, and then he said, dropping his bantering manner, which indeed sat rather heavily upon him: "I don't know why you should want to shoot at my scarfpin—or at me. I don't know why you should suddenly lay a pistol between us. I don't, in short, know why we should sit here paying each other left-handed compliments, when it was merely my intention to make you a business proposition."
"I have been waiting to hear what you had to say to me," said Cleggett, without being in the least thrown off his guard by the other's change of manner.
"If you had not chanced to drop in here today," said Loge, "I had intended paying you a visit."
"I have had several visitors lately," said Cleggett nonchalantly, "and I think at least two of them can make no claim that they were not warmly received."
"Yes?" said Loge. But if Cleggett's meaning reached him he was too cool a hand to show it. He persisted in his affectation of a businesslike air. "Am I right in thinking that you have bought the boat?"
"You are."
"To come to the point," said Loge, "I want to buy her from you. What will you take for her?"
The proposition was unexpected to Cleggett, but he did not betray his surprise.
"You want to buy her?" he said. "You want to buy the old hulk over yonder in the canal?" He laughed, but continued: "What on earth can your interest be in her?"
There was a trace of surliness in Loge's voice as he answered: "YOU were enough interested in her to buy her, it seems. Why shouldn't I have the same interest?"
Cleggett was silent a moment, and then he leaned across the table and said with emphasis: "I have noticed your interest in the Jasper B. since the day I first set foot on her. And let me warn you that unless you show your curiosity in some other manner henceforth, you will seriously regret it. A couple of your men have repented of your interest already."
"My men? What do you mean by my men? I haven't any men." Loge's imitation of astonishment was a piece of art; but if anything he overdid it a trifle. He frowned in a puzzled fashion, and then said: "You talk about my men; you speak riddles to me; you appear to threaten me, but after all I have only made you a plain business proposition. I ask you again, what will you take for her?"
"She's not for sale," said Cleggett shortly.
Loge did not speak again for a moment. Instead, he picked up the spoon with which Cleggett had stirred his highball and began to draw characters with its wet point upon the table. "If it's a question of price," he said finally, "I'm prepared to allow you a handsome profit."
Cleggett determined to find out how far he would go.
"You might be willing to pay as much as $5,000 for her—for the old hulk over there in the canal?"
Loge stopped playing with the spoon and looked searchingly into Cleggett's face. Then he said:
"I will. Turn her over to me the way she was the day you bought her, and I'll give you $5,000." He paused, and then repeated, stressing the words: "MIND YOU, WITH EVERYTHING IN HER THE WAY IT WAS THE DAY YOU BOUGHT HER."
Cleggett fumbled with his fingers in a waistcoat pocket, drew out the torn piece of counterfeit money which he had taken from the dead hand, and flung it on the table.
"Five thousand dollars," he said, "in THAT kind of money?"
Loge looked at it with eyes that suddenly contracted. Clever dissembler that he was, he could not prevent an involuntary start. He licked his lips, and Cleggett judged that perhaps his mouth felt a little dry. But these were the only signs he made. Indeed, when he spoke it was with something almost like an air of relief.
"Come," he said, "now we're down to brass tacks at last on this proposition. Mr. Detective, name your real price."
Cleggett did not answer immediately. He appeared to consider his real price. But in reality he was thinking that there was no longer any doubt of the origin of the explosion. Since Loge practically acknowledged the counterfeit money, the man who had died with this piece of it in his hand must have been one of Loge's men. But he only said:
"Why do you call me a detective?"
Loge shrugged his shoulders. Then he said again: "Your real price?"
"What," said Cleggett, trying him out, "do you think of $20,000?"
The other gave a long, low whistle.
"Gad!" he cried, "what crooks you bulls are."
"It's not so much," said Cleggett deliberately, "when one takes everything into consideration."
Loge appeared to meditate. Then he said: "That figure is out of the question. I'll give you $10,000 and not a cent more."
"You want her pretty badly," said Cleggett. "Or you want what's on her."
"Why," said Loge, with an assumption of great frankness, "between you and me I don't care a damn about your boat. I think we understand each other. I'm buying her to get what's on her."
"Suppose I sell you what's on her for $10,000 and keep the ship," said Cleggett, wondering what WAS on the Jasper B.
"Agreed," said Loge.
"Since we're being so frank with one another," said Cleggett, "would you mind telling me why you didn't come to me at the start with an offer to buy, instead of making such a nuisance of yourself?"
"Eh?" Loge appeared genuinely surprised. "Why should I pay you any money if I could get it, or destroy it, without that? Besides, how was I to know you could be bought?"
Cleggett wondered more than ever what piece of evidence the hold of the Jasper B. contained. He felt certain that it was not merely counterfeit bills. Cleggett determined upon a minute and thorough search of the hold.
"You'll send for it?" said Cleggett, still trying to get a more definite idea of what "it" was, without revealing that he did not know.
"I'll come myself with a taxicab," said Loge.
Cleggett rose, smiling; he had found out as much as he could expect to learn.
"On the whole," he said, "I think that I prefer to keep the Jasper B. and everything that's in her. But before I leave I must thank you for the pleasure I have derived from our little talk—and the information as well. You can hardly imagine how you have interested me. Will you kindly step back and let me pass?"
Loge got to his feet with a muttered oath; his face went livid and a muscle worked in his throat; his fingers contracted like the claws of some big and powerful cat. But, out of respect for Cleggett's pistol, he stepped backward.
"You have confessed to making counterfeit money," went on Cleggett, enjoying the situation, "and you have as good as told me that there are further evidences of crime on board the Jasper B. You can rest assured that I will find them. You have also betrayed the fact that you planned to blow my ship up, and there are several other little matters which you have shed light upon.
"I am not a detective. Nevertheless, I hope in the near future to see you behind the bars and to help put you there. It may interest you to know that my opinion of your intellect is no higher than my opinion of your character. You seem to me to have a vast conceit of your own cleverness, which is not justified by the facts. You are a very stupid fellow; a—a—what is the slang word? Boob, I believe."
But while Cleggett was finishing his remarks a subtle change stole over Loge's countenance. His attitude, which had been one of baffled rage, relaxed. As Cleggett paused the sneer came back upon Loge's lips.
"Boob," he said quietly, "boob is the word. Look above you."
A sharp metallic click overhead gave point to Loge's words. Looking up, Cleggett saw that a trap-door had opened in the ceiling, and through the aperture Pierre, who had left the room some moments before with the bartender, was pointing a revolver, which he had just cocked, at Cleggett's head. He sighted along the barrel with an eager, anticipatory smile upon his face; Pierre would, no doubt, have preferred to see a man boiled in oil rather than merely shot, but shooting was something, and Pierre evidently intended to get all the delight possible out of the situation.
Cleggett's own pistol was within an inch of Loge's stomach.
"I was willing to pay you real money," said Loge, "for the sake of peace. But you're a damned fool if you think you can throw me down and then walk straight out of here to headquarters." Then he added, showing his yellow teeth: "You WOULD bring pistols into the conversation, you know. That was YOUR idea. And now you're in a devil of a fix."
The man certainly had an iron nerve; he spoke as calmly as if Cleggett's weapon were not in existence; there was nothing but the pressure of a finger wanting to send both him and Cleggett to eternity. Yet he jested; he laid his strong and devilish will across Cleggett's mentality; it was a duel in which the two minds met and tried each other like swords; the first break in intention, and one or the other was a dead man. Cleggett felt the weight of that powerful and evil soul upon his own almost as if it were a physical thing.
"You are not altogether safe yourself," said Cleggett grimly, with his eyes fixed on Pierre's and his pistol touching Loge's waistband. "If Pierre so much as winks an eye—if you move a hair's breadth—I'll put a stream of bullets through YOU. Understand?"
How long this singular psychological combat might have lasted before a nerve quivered somewhere and brought the denouement of a double death, there is no telling. For accident (or fate) intervened to pluck these antagonists back into life and rob the gloating Pierre of the happiness of seeing two men perish without danger to himself. Something of uncertain shape, but of a blue color, loomed vaguely behind Pierre's head; loomed and suddenly descended to the accompaniment of a piercing shriek. Pierre's pistol went off, but he had evidently been stricken between the shoulders; the ball went wild, and the pistol itself dropped from his hand, another cartridge exploding as it hit the floor. The next instant Pierre tumbled headlong through the hole, landing upon Loge, who, not braced for the shock, went down himself.
As the two men struggled to rise a strange figure precipitated itself from the room above, feet first, and hit both of them, knocking them down again. It was a tall man, thin and lank, clad only in a suit of silk pajamas of the color known as baby blue; he was barefoot, and Cleggett, with that lucid grasp of detail which comes to men oftener in nightmares than in real life, noticed that he had a bunion at the large joint of his right great toe.
If the man was startling, he was no less startled himself. Leaping from the struggling forms of Pierre and Loge, who defeated each other's frantic efforts to rise, he was across the barroom in three wild bounds, shrieking shrilly as he leaped; he bolted through the west door and cleared the verandah at a jump.
Loge, gaining his feet, was after the man in blue in an instant, evidently thinking no more of Cleggett than if the latter had been in Madagascar. And as for Cleggett, although he might have shot down Loge a dozen times over, he was so astonished at what he saw that the thought never entered his head. He had, in fact, forgotten that he held a pistol in his hand. Pierre scrambled to his feet and followed Loge.
Cleggett, running after them, saw the man in the blue pajamas sprinting along the sandy margin of the bay. But Loge, his hat gone, his coat tails level in the wind behind him, and his large patent leather shoes flashing in the morning sunlight, was overhauling him with long and powerful strides. Cleggett saw the quarry throw a startled glance over his shoulder; he was no match for the terrible Loge in speed, and he must have realized it with despair, for he turned sharply at right angles and rushed into the sea. Loge unhesitatingly plunged after him, and had caught him by the shoulder and whirled him about before he had reached a swimming depth. They clinched, in water mid-thigh deep, and then Cleggett saw Loge plant his fist, with scientific precision and awful force, upon the point of the other's jaw. The man in the blue pajamas collapsed; he would have dropped into the water, but Loge caught him as he fell, threw his body across a shoulder with little apparent effort, and trotted back into the house with him.
Cleggett had left his sword cane in the barroom, but he judged it would be just as well to allow it to remain there for the present. He turned and walked meditatively across the sands towards the Jasper B.
When Cleggett returned to the ship he found Captain Abernethy in conversation with a young man of deprecating manner whom the Captain introduced as the Rev. Simeon Calthrop.
"I been tellin' him," said the Cap'n, pitching his voice shrilly above the din the workmen made, and not giving the Rev. Mr. Calthrop an opportunity to speak for himself, "I been tellin' him it may be a long time before the Jasper B. gets to the Holy Land."
"Do you want to go to Palestine?" asked Cleggett of Mr. Calthrop, who stood with downcast eyes and fingers that worked nervously at the lapels of his rusty black coat.
"I've knowed him sence he was a boy. He's in disgrace, Simeon Calthrop is," shrieked the Captain, preventing the preacher from answering Cleggett's question, and scorning to answer it directly himself. "Been kicked out of his church fur kissin' a married woman, and can't get another one." (The Cap'n meant another church.)
The preacher merely raised his eyes, which were large and brown and slightly protuberant, and murmured with a kind of brave humility:
"It is true."
"But why do you want to go to Palestine?" said Cleggett.
"She sung in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks say she had a cork foot. Hey, Simeon, DID she have a cork foot?"
Mr. Calthrop flushed painfully, but he forced himself courageously to answer. "Mr. Abernethy, I do not know," he said humbly, and with the look of a stricken animal in his big brown eyes.
He was a handsome young fellow of about thirty—or he would have been handsome, Cleggett thought, had he not been so emaciated. His hair was dark and brown and inclined to curl, his forehead was high and white and broad, and his fingers were long and white and slender; his nose was well modeled, but his lips were a trifle too full. Although he belonged to one of the evangelical denominations, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop affected clothing very like the regulation costume of the Episcopalian clergy; but this clothing was now worn and torn and dusty. Buttons were gone here and there; the knees of the unpressed trousers were baggy and beginning to be ragged, and the sole of one shoe flapped as he walked. He had a three days' growth of beard and no baggage.
When Cap'n Abernethy had delivered himself and walked away, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop confirmed the story of his own disgrace, speaking in a low but clear voice, and with a gentle and wistful smile.
"I am one of the most miserable of sinners, Mr. Cleggett," he said. "I have proved myself to be that most despicable thing, an unworthy minister. I was tempted and I fell."
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop seemed to find the sort of satisfaction in confessing his sins to the world that the medieval flagellants found in scoring themselves with whips; they struck their bodies; he drew forth his soul and beat it publicly.
Cleggett learned that he had set himself as a punishment and a mortification the task of obtaining his daily bread by the work of his hands. It was his intention to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, refusing all assistance except that which he earned by manual labor. After such a term of years as should satisfy all men (and particularly his own spiritual sense) of the genuineness of his penitence, he would apply to his church for reinstatement, and ask for an appointment to some difficult mission in a wild and savage country. The Rev. Mr. Calthrop intimated that if he chose to accept rehabilitation on less arduous terms, he might obtain it; but the poignancy of his own sense of failure drove him to extremes.
"Are you sure," said Cleggett sternly, "that you are not making a luxury of this very penitence itself? Are you sure that it would not be more acceptable to Heaven if you forgave yourself more easily?"
"Alas, yes, I am sure!" said Mr. Calthrop, with a sigh and his calm and wistful smile. "I know myself too well! I know my own soul. I am cursed with a fatal magnetism which women find it impossible to resist. And I am continually tempted to permit it to exert itself. This is the cross that I bear through life."
"You should marry some good woman," said Cleggett.
"I do not feel that I am worthy," said Mr. Calthrop meekly. "And think of the pain my wife would experience in seeing me continually tempted by some woman who believed herself to be my psychic affinity!"
"You are a thought too subtle, Mr. Calthrop," said Cleggett bluntly. "But I suppose you cannot help that. To each of us his destiny. I am prepared, until I see some evidence to the contrary, to believe your repentance to be genuine. In the meantime, we need a ship's chaplain. If your conscience permits, you may have the post—combining it, however, with the vocation of a common sailor before the mast. I am inclined to agree with you that manual labor will do you good. Some time or another, in her progress around the world, the Jasper B. will undoubtedly touch at a coast within walking distance of Jerusalem. There we will put you ashore. Before we sail you can put in your time holystoning the deck.
"The deck of the Jasper B.," said Cleggett, looking at it, "to all appearances, has not been holystoned for some years. You will find in the forecastle several holystones that have never been used, and may begin at once."
Cleggett, if his tastes had not inclined him towards a more active and adventurous life, would have made a good bishop, for he knew how to combine justice and mercy. And yet few bishops have possessed his rapidity of decision, when compelled, upon the spur of the moment, to become the physician of an ailing soul. He had determined in a flash to make the man ship's chaplain, that Calthrop might come into close contact with other spiritual organisms and not think too exclusively of his own.
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop thanked him with becoming gratitude and departed to get the new holystones.
By three o'clock that afternoon, with such celerity had the work gone forward, Mr. Watkins, the contractor, announced to Cleggett that his task was finished, except for the removal of the rubbish in the hold. Cleggett, going carefully over the vessel, and examining the new parts with a brochure on the construction and navigation of schooners in his hand, verified the statement.
"She is ready to sail," said Cleggett, standing by the new wheel with a swelling heart, and sweeping the vessel from bowsprit to rudder with a gradual glance.
It was a look almost paternal in its pride; Cleggett loved the Jasper B. She was an idea that no one else but Cleggett could have had.
"Sail?" said Mr. Watkins.
"Why not?" said Cleggett, puzzled at his tone.
"Oh, nothing," said Mr. Watkins. "It's none of my business. My business was to do the work I was hired to do according to specifications. Further than that, nothing."
"But why did you think I was having the work done?"
"Can't say I thought," said Mr. Watkins. "I took the job, and I done it. Had an idea mebby you were in the movin' picture game."
Mr. Watkins, as he talked, had been regarding Cap'n Abernethy, who in turn was looking at the mainmast. There seemed to be something in the very way Cap'n Abernethy looked at the mainmast which jarred on Mr. Watkins. Mr. Watkins dropped his voice, indicating the Cap'n with a curved, disparaging thumb, as he asked Cleggett:
"Is HE going to sail her?"
"Why not?"
"Oh—nothing; nothing at all," said Mr. Watkins. "It's none o' MY business."
Cleggett began to be a little annoyed. "Have you," he said with dignity, and fixing a rather stern glance upon Mr. Watkins, "have you any reason to doubt Cap'n Abernethy's ability as a sailing master?"
"No, indeed," said Mr. Watkins cheerfully, "not as a sailing master. He may be the best in the world, for all I know.Inever seen him sail anything. I never heard him play the violin, neither, for that matter, and he may be a regular jim-dandy on the violin for all I know."
"You are facetious," said Cleggett stiffly.
"Meaning I ain't paid to be fresh, eh?" said Mr. Watkins. "And right you are, too. And there's all that junk down in the hold to pass out and cart away."
Cleggett personally supervised this removal, standing on the deck by the hatchway and scanning everything that was handed up. The character of this junk has already been described. Every barrel or cask that was placed upon the deck was stove in with an ax before Cleggett's eyes; he satisfied himself that every bottle was empty; he turned over the broken boxes and beer cases with his foot to see that they contained nothing.
But the work was three-quarters done before he found what he was looking for. From under a heap of debris, which had completely hidden it, towards the forward part of the vessel, the workmen unearthed an unpainted oblong box, almost seven feet in length. It was of substantial material and looked newer than any of the other stuff. Cleggett had it placed on one side of the hatchway and sat down on it. It was tightly nailed up; all of its surfaces were sound. Cleggett did not doubt that he would find in it what he wanted, yet in order to be on the safe side he continued to scrutinize everything else that came out of the hold.
But finally the hold was as empty as a drum, and Watkins and his men departed. The oblong box upon which Cleggett sat was the only possible receptacle of any sort in an undamaged condition, which had been in the hold. He determined to have it opened in the cabin.
As he arose from it he was struck by its resemblance to the box in Elmer's charge, the dank box of Reginald Maltravers, which stood on one end near the cabin companionway, leaning against the port side of the cabin so that it was not visible from the road, which ran to the starboard of the Jasper B. But, since all oblong boxes are bound to have a general resemblance, Cleggett, at the time, thought little enough of this likeness.
He called to George and Mr. Calthrop, who, with Dr. Farnsworth, were forward receiving their first lecture on seamanship from Cap'n Abernethy and Kuroki, to carry the box into the cabin.
But as George and the Rev. Mr. Calthrop lifted the box to their shoulders, Cleggett was startled by a loud and violent oath; a veritable bellow of blasphemy that made him shudder. Turning, he saw than an automobile had paused in the road. In the forward part of the machine stood Loge, raving in an almost demoniac fury and pointing at the box. He writhed in the grip of three men who endeavored to restrain him. One of them was the sinister Pierre.
Hoisting himself, as it were, on a mounting billow of his own profanity, Loge cast himself with a wide swimming motion of his arms from the auto. But one of the men clung to him; they came to the ground together like tackler and tackled in a football game. The others cast themselves out of the machine and flung themselves upon their leader; he fought like a lion, but he was finally overpowered and thrown back into the auto, which was immediately started up and which made off towards Fairport at a rattling speed. Three hundred yards away, however, Loge rose again and shook a furious fist at the Jasper B., and though Cleggett could not distinguish the words, the sense of Loge's impotent rage rolled towards him on the wind in a roaring, vibrant bass.
The sight of the box that he had not been able to buy, in Cleggett's possession, had stirred him beyond all caution; he had actually contemplated an attempt to rush the Jasper B. in broad daylight.
But while this queer tableau of baffled rage was enacting itself on the starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less explicable thing was occurring on the port side. The swish of oars and the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction as Loge's booming threats grew fainter. He saw that two oarsmen, near the eastern and farther side of the canal, had allowed the dainty, varnished little craft they were supposed to propel to come to a rest in spite of the evident displeasure of a man who sat in its stern. This third man was the same that Cleggett had seen on the deck of the Annabel Lee with a spy glass, and again that same morning driving the two almost nude figures up and down the canal.
The two oarsmen, Cleggett saw with surprise, rowed with shackled feet; their feet were, indeed, chained to the boat itself. About the wrists of each were steel bands; fixed to these bands were chains, the other ends of which were locked to their oars. They were, in effect, galley slaves.
All this iron somewhat hampered their movements. But the reason of their pause was an engrossing interest in the box of Reginald Maltravers, which stood, as has already been said, on the port side of the cabin, on one end, and so was visible from their boat. They were looking at it with slack oars, dropped jaws and starting eyes; the thing seemed to have fascinated them and bereft them of motion; it was as if they were unable to get past it at all. Elmer, worn out by his many long vigils, lay asleep on the deck at the foot of the box, with an arm flung over his face.
The stout man, after vainly endeavoring to start his oarsmen with words, took up an extra oar and began vigorously prodding them with it. Cleggett had not seen this man look towards the Jasper B., but he nevertheless had the feeling that the man had missed little of what had been going on there. He seemed to be that kind of man.
His crew responding to the stabs of the oar, the little vessel went perhaps fifty yards farther up the canal towards Parker's, and then swung daintily around and came back towards the Jasper B. at almost the speed of a racing shell, the men in chains bending doggedly to their work. Cleggett saw that the boat must pass close to the Jasper B., and leaned over the port rail.
The man in the stern had picked up a magazine and was lolling back reading it. As the boat passed under him Cleggett saw on the cover page of the magazine a picture of the very man who was perusing it. It was a singularly urbane face; both the counterfeit presentment on the cover page and the real face were smiling and calm and benign. Cleggett could read the legend on the magazine cover accompanying the picture. It ran:
Wilton Barnstable Tells In this Issue the Inside Storyof How he Broke up the Gigantic Smuggling Conspiracy.
At that instant the man dropped the magazine and looked Cleggett full in the face. He waved his arm in a meaning gesture in the direction in which Loge had disappeared and said, with a gentle shake of his head at Cleggett, as if he were chiding a naughty child:
"When thieves fall out—! When thieves fall out, my dear sir!"
As he swept by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man who has delivered himself of a brilliant epigram; it showed in his very shoulders.
"And that," murmured Cleggett, "is Wilton Barnstable, the great detective!"