Wilton Barnstable, the great detective, having witnessed Loge's outburst of wrath, had thought it signified a quarrel between thieves, as his words to Cleggett indicated. He had thought Cleggett a crook, and Loge's ally.
Loge, on the other hand, had thought Cleggett a detective. He had addressed him as "Mr. Detective" that morning at Morris's. Loge believed the Jasper B. and the Annabel Lee to be allied against him.
Whereas Cleggett, until he had recognized Wilton Barnstable in the boat, had thought it likely that the Annabel Lee and Morris's were allied against the Jasper B.
Now that Cleggett knew the commander of the Annabel Lee to be Wilton Barnstable, his first impulse was to go to the Great Detective and invite his cooperation against Loge and the gang at Morris's. But almost instantly he reflected that he could not do this. For there was the box of Reginald Maltravers! Indeed, how did he know that it was not the box of Reginald Maltravers which had brought the Great Detective to that vicinity? This man—of world-wide fame, and reputed to possess an almost miraculous instinct in the unraveling of criminal mysteries—might be even now on the trail of Lady Agatha. If so, he was Cleggett's enemy. When it came to a choice between the championship of Lady Agatha and the defiance of Wilton Barnstable, and all that he represented, Cleggett did not hesitate for an instant.
There were still some aspects of the situation in which he found himself that were as puzzling as ever to Cleggett. It is true that he now knew why Loge's men had been in the hold of the vessel; they had been there, no doubt, in an attempt to get possession of the oblong, unpainted box which had caused Loge's explosion of wrath; the box which was the real thing Loge had tried to buy from Cleggett when he dickered for the purchase of the Jasper B. But why this box should have been in the hold of the vessel, Cleggett could not understand. And how Loge's men had been able to get into and out of the hold without his knowledge still perplexed him.
The motive behind the attempt to dynamite the vessel was clear. Having failed to purchase it, having failed to recover the box from it, Loge had sought to destroy it with all on board. But the strange character of this explosion still defied his powers of analysis. And then there was the tenth Earl of Claiborne's signet ring on the dead hand. Beyond the fact that it was a circumstance which connected his fortunes with those of Lady Agatha, he could make nothing at all of the signet ring. What, he asked himself again and again, was the connection of the criminal gang at Morris's with the proudest Earl in England?
Loge himself was a puzzle to Cleggett. The man was a counterfeiter. That he knew. The "queer" twenty-dollar bill, which he had practically acknowledged, left no doubt of that. But he was more than a counterfeiter. Cleggett believed him to be also an anarchist. At least he was associated with anarchists.
But counterfeiting and anarchy are not ordinarily found together. The anarchist is not a criminal in the more sordid sense. He is the enemy of society as at present organized. He considers society to be built on a thieving basis; he is not himself a thief. He scorns and hates society, wishes to see it overturned, and believes himself superior to it. He will commit the most savage atrocities for the cause and cheerfully die for his principles. The anarchist is not a crook. He is an idealist.
Convinced that the unpainted oblong box would furnish a clew to the man's real personality, Cleggett, assisted by Lady Agatha and Dr. Farnsworth, opened it in the cabin.
They first took out a number of plates, some broken, some intact, for the manufacture of counterfeit notes of various denominations. There was some of the fibrous paper used in this process. There was a quantity of the apparatus essential to engraving the plates. This stuff more than half filled the box. Then there were a number of books.
"Elementary textbooks," said Dr. Farnsworth, glancing at them. On the flyleaf of one of them was written in a bold, firm hand: "Logan Black."
"Loge—or Logan Black," said Dr. Farnsworth, "has been giving himself an education in the manufacture of high explosives."
"But THESE aren't textbooks," said Lady Agatha, who had pulled out three long, narrow volumes from the pile. "They're in manuscript, and they look more like account books."
The first of them, in Loge's handwriting, contained a series of notes, mostly unintelligible to Cleggett, dealing with experiments in two sorts of manufacture: first, the preparation of counterfeit money; second, the production of dynamite bombs.
The second of the manuscript books was in cipher. Cleggett might have deciphered it without assistance, for he was skilled in these matters, but the labor was not necessary. The book was for Loge's own eye. A loose sheet of paper folded between the leaves gave the key.
The book showed that Loge had been employed as an expert operator, in the pay of a certain radical organization, to pull off dynamiting jobs in various parts of the country. This was his account book with the organization. He had done his work and taken his pay as methodically as a plumber might. And he had been paid well. Cleggett guessed that Loge was not particularly interested in the work in its relationship to the revolutionary cause; it was the money to be made in this way, and not any particular sympathy with his employers, which attracted Loge, so Cleggett divined. Cleggett was astonished at the number of jobs which Loge had engineered. The book threw light on mysterious explosions which had occurred throughout a period of five years.
But it was the third manuscript book which displayed the real Logan Black.
This was also in cipher. Dr. Farnsworth and Cleggett had translated but a few lines of it when they perceived that it was a diary. With a vanity almost inconceivable to those who have not reflected upon the criminal nature, Loge had written here the tale of his own life, for his own reading. He had written it in loving detail. It was, in fact, the book in which he looked when he wished to admire himself.
"It is odd," said Cleggett, "that so clever a man should write down his own story in this way."
"This book," said Farnsworth, "would be a boon to a psychologist interested in criminology. You say it is odd. But with a certain type of criminal, it is almost usual. The human soul is full of strange impulses. One of the strangest is towards just this sort of record. Cunning, and the vanity which destroys cunning, often exist side by side. The criminal of a certain type almost worships himself; he is profoundly impressed with his own cleverness. He is a braggart; he swaggers; he defeats himself. A strange idiocy mingles with his cleverness."
"Even people who are not criminals do just that sort of thing," said Lady Agatha. "Look at Samuel Pepys. He was one of the most timid of beings. And he valued his place in the world mightily. But he wrote down the story of his own disgrace in his diary—it had to come out of him! And then, timid and cautious as he was, he did not destroy the book! He let it get out of his possession."
It was an evil, a monstrous personality which leered out of Logan Black's diary. Boastful of his own iniquity, swaggering in his wickedness, fatuous with self-love, he recounted his deeds with gusto and with particularity. They did not read a quarter of this terrible autobiography at the time, but they read enough to see the man in the process of building up a criminal organization of his own, with ramifications of the most surprising nature.
"This man," said Dr. Farnsworth, with a shudder, "actually has the ambition to be the head of nothing less than a crime trust."
"It seems to be something more than an ambition," said Cleggett. "It seems to be almost an accomplished fact."
"Ugh!" said Lady Agatha, with a gesture of disgust, "he's like a great horrid spider spinning webs!"
Interested in anarchy only on its practical side, as the paid dynamiter of the inner circle of radicals, Logan Black in his diary jeered at and mocked the cause he served. And more than that, the man seemed to take a perverted pleasure in attaching to himself young enthusiasts of the radical type, eager to follow him as the disinterested leader of a group of Reds, and then betraying them into the most sordid sort of crime. Cleggett found—and could imagine the grimace of malevolent satisfaction with which it had been written—this note:
Heinrich is about ready to leave off talking his cant of universal brotherhood, and make a little easy money in the way I have shown him. It will be interesting to see what happens in side of Heinrich when he realizes he is not an idealist, but a criminal. Will he stick to me on the new lay? But those Germans are so sentimental—he may commit suicide.
Cleggett recalled the manhandling Heinrich had received. A little farther along he came upon this entry:
The Italian-American boy is a find. Jones and Giuseppe! Puritan father, Italian mother—and he worships me! It will be a test for my personal magnetism, the handling of Gieseppe Jones will. He hates a thief worse than the devil hates holy water. If I could make him steal for me, I would know that I could do anything.
"That's our young poet in the forecastle!" said Cleggett. "I wonder if Loge still held him." And then as the memory of the boy's ravings came to him he mused: "Yes—he held the boy! That is what the fellow meant in his delirium. Do you remember that he kept saying: 'I'm a revolutionist, not a crook!'? And yet he continued to obey Loge!"
"Is it not strange," said Lady Agatha, "that the man should take such pride in working ruin?"
All three were silent for a space. And then they looked at each other with a shiver. The sense of the strong and sinister personality of Logan Black struck on their spirits like a bleak wind.
Cleggett was the first to recover himself.
"God willing," he said solemnly, "I will bring that man to justice personally!"
Just then two bells struck. It had taken them more time than they had realized to make even a partial examination of the contents of the box. Cleggett, when the bell sounded, looked at his watch to see what time it was—he was still a little unfamiliar with the nautical system.
"He will go to any length to get this back into his possession," said Cleggett, as he dumped the heap of incriminating evidence back into the box and began to nail the boards on again.
"Any length," echoed the Doctor.
Pat upon the thought came the sound of taxicabs without. They went on deck and saw a sinister procession rolling by. It consisted of three machines, and there were three men in each cab. Loge and Pierre were in the foremost one. None of the company vouchsafed so much as a glance in the direction of the Jasper B. as the cabs whirled past towards Morris's. It was undoubtedly a reinforcement of gunmen.
"Ah!" said Cleggett, pointing to them. "The real battle is about to begin! They are making ready for the attack!"
Cleggett did not fear (or rather, expect, since there was very little that Cleggett feared) an attack until well after nightfall. Nevertheless, he began to prepare for it at once. He called the entire ship's company aft, with the exception of Miss Medley, who was on duty with Giuseppe Jones.
"My friends—for I hope we stand in the relation of friends as well as that of commander and crew—I have every reason to expect that the enemy will make a demonstration in force sometime during the night," he said. "We have opposed to us the leader of a dangerous and powerful criminal organization. He is, in fact, the president of a crime trust. He will stop at nothing to compass the destruction of the Jasper B. and all on board her. My quarrel with him has become, in a sense, personal. I have no right to ask you to share my risk unless you choose to do so voluntarily. Therefore, if there is anyone of you who wishes to leave the Jasper B., let him do it now."
Cleggett paused. But not a man moved. On the contrary, a little murmur of something like reproach ran around the semicircle. The ship's company looked in each other's eyes; they stood shifting their feet uneasily.
Finally Cap'n Abernethy spoke, clearing his throat with a prefatory hem:
"If you was to ask me, Mr. Cleggett," said the Captain, with less than his usual circumlocution, "I'd say the boys here ain't flattered by what you've just said. The boys here DOES consider themselves friends of yours, and if you was anxious to hear my opinion of it I'd say you've hurt their feelin's by your way of putting it. Speakin' for myself, Mr. Cleggett, as the nautical commander of this here ship to the military commander, I don't mind owning up that MY feelin's is hurt."
"Aye, aye, sir," said George the Greek, addressing the nautical commander, and the word went from lip to lip.
"Aye, aye, sir," said Dr. Farnsworth, "the Captain speaks for us all."
And the Reverend Mr. Calthrop remarked with a sigh: "You may have cause to doubt my circumspection, Mr. Cleggett, but you have no cause to doubt my courage."
Cleggett was not the sort of man who is ashamed to acknowledge an error. "Friends," he cried impulsively, "forgive me! I should have known better than to phrase my remarks as I did. I would not have hurt your feelings for worlds. I know you are devoted to me. I call for volunteers for the perilous adventure which is before us!"
The ship's company stepped forward as one man. As if by magic the atmosphere cleared.
"Now," said Cleggett, smiling back on the enthusiastic faces before him, but inexpressibly touched by the fineness of his crew's devotion, "to get to the point. There are seven of us, but there are at least a dozen of them. We have, however, the advantage in position, for we can find cover on the ship, whereas they must attack from the open. More than that, we will have the advantage in arms; here is a magazine rifle for each of you, while they, if I am not mistaken, will attack with pistols. We must keep them at a distance, if possible. If they should attempt to rush us we will meet them with cutlasses and sabers."
"Mr. Cleggett," said Lady Agatha, rising when he had finished, and speaking with animation, "will you permit me to make a suggestion?"
She went on, without waiting for an answer: "It is this: Choose your own ground for this battle! The Jasper B. is now a full-rigged schooner. Very well, then, sail her! At the moment you are attacked, weigh anchor, fight your way to the mouth of the canal, take up a position in the bay in front of Morris's within easy rifle range and out of pistol shot, and compel the place to surrender on your own terms!"
As the brilliance of this plan flashed upon her hearers, applause ran around the room, and Kuroki, who spoke seldom, cried in admiration:
"The Honorable Miss Englishman have hit her head on the nail! Let there be some naval warfares!"
"You are right," cried Cleggett, catching fire with the idea, "a hundred times right! And why wait to be attacked? Let us carry the war to the enemy's coast. Crack all sail upon her!—Up with the anchors! We will show these gentry that the blood of Drake, Nelson, and Old Dave Farragut still runs red in the veins of their countrymen!"
"Banzai!" cried Kuroki. "Also Honorable Admiral Togo's veins!"
A good breeze had sprung up out of the northwest while the conference in the cabin was in progress.
Cleggett was relieved that it was not from the south. There is not much room to maneuver a schooner in a canal, and a breeze from the south might have sailed the Jasper B. backwards towards Parker's Beach, which would undoubtedly have given the enemy the idea that Cleggett was retreating. The Jasper B.'s bow was pointed south, and Cleggett was naturally anxious that she should sail south.
At the outset a slight difficulty presented itself with regard to the anchors—for although, as has been explained before, the Jasper B. was a remarkably stable vessel, Cleggett had had the new anchors furnished by the contractor let down. Having the anchors down seemed, somehow, to make things more shipshape. It appeared that no one of the adventurers was acquainted with an anchor song, and Cleggett, and, indeed, all on board, felt that these anchors should be hoisted to the accompaniment of some rousing chantey. Lady Agatha was especially insistent on the point.
While they stood about the capstan debating the matter the Reverend Simeon Calthrop hesitatingly offered a suggestion which showed that, while he was a novice as far as the nautical life was concerned, he was also a person of resource.
"How many of those present," inquired the young preacher, "know 'Onward Christian Soldiers'?"
All were acquainted with the hymn; the pastor grasped a capstan bar and struck up the song in an agreeable tenor voice; they put their backs into the work and their hearts into the song, and the anchors of the Jasper B. came out of mud to the stirring notes of "Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war!"
While they were so engaged the breeze strengthened perceptibly. Looking towards the west, Cleggett perceived the sun sinking below the horizon. A long, blue, low-lying bank of clouds seemed to engulf it; for a moment the top of this cloud was shot through with a golden color; then a mass of quicker moving, nearer vapors from the north seemed to leap suddenly nearer still; to extend itself at a bound over almost a third of the sky; in a breath the day was gone; a storm threatened.
The rising wind made the task of getting the canvas on the poles extraordinarily difficult. Cleggett was well aware that the usual method of procedure, in the presence of a storm, is rather to take in sail than to crack on; but, always the original, he decided in this case to reverse the common custom. Ashore or at sea, he never permitted himself to be the slave of conventionalities. The Jasper B. had lain so long in one spot that it would undoubtedly take more than a capful of wind to move her. Cleggett did not know when he would get such a strong wind again, coming from the right direction, and determined to make the most of this one while he had it. Genius partly consists in the acuteness which grasps opportunities.
From the struggles of Cap'n Abernethy and the crew with the canvas, which he saw none too clearly through the increasing dusk from his post at the wheel, Cleggett judged that the wind was indeed strong enough for his purpose. Yards, sheets and sails seemed to be acting in the most singular manner. He could not remember reading of any parallel case in the treatises on navigation which he had perused. Every now and then the Cap'n or one of the crew would be jerked clean off his feet by some quick and unexpected motion of a sail and flung into the water. When this occurred the person who had been ducked crawled out on the bank of the canal again and went on board by way of the gangplank, returning stubbornly to his task.
The booms in particular were possessed of a restless and unstable spirit. They made sudden swoops, sweeps, and dashes in all directions. Sometimes as many as three of the crew of the Jasper B. would be knocked to the deck or into the water by a boom at the same time. But Cleggett noted with satisfaction that they were plucky; they stuck valiantly to the job. A doubt assailed Cleggett as to the competence of Cap'n Abernethy, but he was loyal and fought it down.
Finally Cap'n Abernethy hit upon a novel and ingenious idea. He tied stout lines to the ends of the booms. The other ends of these ropes he ran through the eyes of a couple of spare anchors. Taking the anchors ashore, he made them fast to the wooden platform which was alongside the Jasper B. Then he took up the slack in the lines, pulling them taut and fastening them tightly.
Thus the booms were held fast and stiff in position, and the crew could get the canvas spread without being endangered by their strange and unaccountable actions.
This brilliant idea of anchoring the booms to the land would not have been practicable had it not been for a whimsical cessation of the wind, a lull such as incident to the coming of spring storms in these latitudes. While the wind was in abeyance the men got the sails spread. Then the Captain untied the lines, brought the spare anchors on board, knocked the gangplank loose with a few blows of his ax, and waited for the wind to resume.
When the wind did blow again it came in a gust which was accompanied by a twinkle of lightening over the whole sky and grumble of thunder. A whirl of dust and fine gravel enveloped the Jasper B. For a moment it was like a sandstorm. A few large drops of water fell. The gust was violent; the sails filled with it and struggled like kites to be free; here and there a strand of rope snapped; the masts bent and creaked; the booms jumped and swung round like live things; the whole ship from bowsprit to rudder shook and trembled with the assault.
Cleggett, watchful at the wheel, prepared to turn her nose away from the bank, but he was astonished to perceive that in spite of her quaking and shivering the Jasper B. did not move one inch forward from her position. He was prepared for a certain stability on the part of the Jasper B., but not for quite so much of it.
With the next gust the storm was on them in earnest. This blast came with zigzag flashes of lightning that showed the heavens riotous with battalions of charging clouds; it came with deafening thunder and a torrential discharge of rain. One would have thought the power of the wind sufficient to set a steel battleship scudding before it like a wooden shoe. And yet the extraordinary Jasper B., although she shrieked and groaned and seemed to stagger with the force of the blow, did not move either forward or sidewise.
She flinched, but she stood her ground.
Second by second the storm increased in fury; in a moment it was no longer merely a storm, it was a tempest. Cleggett, alarmed for the safety of his masts, now ordered his men to take in sail.
But even as he gave the order he realized that it could no longer be done. A cloudburst, a hurricane, an electrical bombardment, struck the Jasper B. all at once. One could not hear one's own voice. In the glare of the lightning Cleggett saw the rigging tossing in an indescribable confusion of canvas, spars, and ropes. Both masts and the bowsprit snapped at almost the same instant. The whole chaotic mass was lifted; it writhed in the air a moment, and then it came crashing down, partly on the deck and partly in the seething waters of the canal, where it lay and whipped ship and water with lashing tentacles of wreckage.
But still the unusual Jasper B. had not moved from her position.
Cleggett's men had had warning enough to save themselves. They gathered around him to wait for orders. More than one of them cast anxious glances towards the land. Shouting to them to attack the debris with axes, and setting the example himself, Cleggett soon saw the deck clear again, and the Jasper B., to all intents, the same hulk she had been when he bought her. But such was the fury of the tempest that even with the big kites gone the Jasper B. continued to shake and quiver where she lay. Speech was almost impossible on deck, but Cap'n Abernethy signed to Cleggett that he had something important to say to him.
The whole company adjourned to the cabin, and there, shouting to make himself heard, the Cap'n cried out:
"Her timbers have been strained something terrible, Mr. Cleggett. She ain't what I would call safe and seaworthy any more. The' don't seem to be any danger of her sailin' off, but that's no sign she can't be blowed over onto her beam ends and sunk with all on board. If you was to ask me, Mr. Cleggett, I'd say the time had come to leave the Jasper B."
The anxiety depicted on the faces of the little circle about him might have communicated itself to a less intrepid nature. The old Cap'n himself was no coward. Indeed, in owning to his alarm he had really done a brave thing, since few have the moral courage to proclaim themselves afraid. But Cleggett was a man of iron. Although the tempest smote the hulk with blow after blow, although both earth and water seemed to lie prostrate and trampled beneath its unappeasable fury, Cleggett had no thought of yielding.
Unconsciously he drew himself up. It seemed to his crew that he actually gained in girth and height. The soul, in certain great moments, seems to have power to expand the body and inform it with the quality of immortality; Ajax, in his magnificent gesture of defiance, is all spirit. Cleggett, with his hand on his hip, uttered these words, not without their sublimity:
"Whether the Jasper B. sinks or swims, her commander will share her fate. I stay by my ship!"
And, indeed, if Cleggett had been of a mind to abandon the vessel, he could scarcely have done so now. For his words were no more than uttered when the sharp racket of a volley of pistol shots ripped its way through the low-pitched roaring of the wind.
Loge had chosen the height of the storm to mask his approach. He attacked with the tempest.
Without a word Cleggett put out the light in the cabin. His men grasped their weapons and followed him to the deck. A flash of lightning showed him, through the driving rain, the enemy rushing towards the Jasper B., pistol in hand. They were scarcely sixty yards away, and were firing as they came. Loge, a revolver in one hand, and Cleggett's own sword cane in the other, was leading the rush. Besides their firearms, each of Loge's men carried a wicked-looking machete.
"Fire!" shouted Cleggett. "Let them have it, men!" And the rifles blazed from the deck of the Jasper B. in a crashing volley. Instantly the world was dark again; it was impossible to determine whether the fire of the Jasper B. had taken effect.
"To the starboard bulwark," cried Cleggett, "and give them hell with the next lightning flash!"
It came as he spoke, with its vivid glare showing to Cleggett the enemy magnified to a portentous bigness against a background of chaotic night. Two or three of them stood, leaning keenly forward; several of the others had dropped to one knee; the rifle discharge had checked the rush, and they also were waiting for the lightning. Cleggett and his men threw a second volley at this wavering silhouette of astonishment.
A cartridge jammed in the mechanism of Cleggett's gun. With an oath he flung the weapon to the deck. A hand thrust another one into his grasp, and Lady Agatha's voice said in his ear, "Take this one—it's loaded."
"My God," said Cleggett, "I thought you were in the cabin!"
"Not I!" she cried, "I'm loading!"
Just then the lightning came again and showed her to him plainly. Drenched, bare-armed, bareheaded, her hair down and rolling backward in a rich wet mass, she knelt on the deck behind the bulwark. Her eyes blazed with excitement, and there was a smile upon her lips. Beside her was the zinc bucket half full of cartridges. George tossed a rifle to her. She flung him back a loaded one, and began methodically to fill the empty one with cartridges.
"Agatha," shouted Cleggett, catching her by the wrist, "go to the cabin at once—you will get yourself killed!"
"I'll do nothing of the sort!" she shouted.
"I love you!" cried Cleggett, beside himself with fear for her, and scarcely knowing what his words were. "Do you hear—I love you, and I won't have you killed!"
A bullet ripped its way through the bulwark, perforated the zinc bucket, struck the gun which Lady Agatha was loading and knocked it from her hands.
"Go to the cabin yourself!" she shouted in Cleggett's ear. "As for me, I like it!"
"I tell you," shouted Cleggett, "I won't have you here—I won't have you killed!"
He rose to his feet, and attempted to draw her out of danger. She rose likewise and struggled with him in the dark. She wrenched herself free, and in doing so flung him back against the rail; it lightened again, and she screamed. Cleggett turned, and with the next flash saw that one of the enemy, his face bloody from the graze of a bullet across his forehead, and evidently crazed with excitement of fight and storm, was leaping towards the rail of the vessel.
Cleggett stooped to pick up a gun, but as he stooped the madman vaulted over the bulwark and landed upon him, bearing him to the deck. As he struggled to his feet Lady Agatha, who had grasped a cutlass, cut the fellow down. The man fell back over the rail with a cry.
For a long moment there was one continuous electric flash from horizon to horizon, and Cleggett saw her, with windblown hair and wide eyes and parted lips, standing poised with the red blade in her hand beneath the driving clouds, the figure of an antique goddess.
The next instant all was dark; her arms were around his neck in the rain. "Oh, Clement," she sobbed, "I've killed a man! I've killed a man!"
Cleggett kissed her....
But the rushing onset of events struck them apart. Out of the night leaped danger, enhancing love and forbidding it. From the starboard bow Captain Abernethy shrilled a cry of warning, and the heavy, bellowing voice of Loge shouted an answer of challenge and ferocity. The wind had fallen, but the lightning played from the clouds now almost without intermission. Cleggett saw Loge and his followers, machete in hand, flinging themselves at the rail. They lifted a hoarse cheer as they came. The fire from the Jasper B. had checked the assault temporarily; it had not broken it up; once they found lodgment on the deck the superior numbers of Loge's crowd must inevitably tell.
Loge was a dozen feet in advance of his men. He had cast aside the light sword which belonged to Cleggett, and now swung a grim machete in his hand. Cleggett flung down his gun, grasped a cutlass, and sprang forward, his one idea to come to close quarters with that gigantic figure of rage and power.
But before Loge reached the bulwark on one side, and while Cleggett was bounding toward him on the other, this on-coming group of Cleggett's foes were suddenly smitten in the rear as if by a thunderbolt. Out of the night and storm, mad with terror, screaming like fiends, with distended nostrils and flying manes and flailing hoofs, there plunged into the midst of the assaulting party a pair of snow-white horses—astounding, felling, trampling, scattering, filling them with confusion. A rocking carriage leaped and bounded behind the furious animals, and as the horses struck the bulwark and swerved aside, its weight and bulk, hurled like a missile among Cleggett's staggered and struggling enemies, completed and confirmed their panic.
No troops on earth can stand the shock of a cavalry charge in the rear and flank; few can face surprise; the boarding party, convinced that they had fallen into a trap, melted away. One moment they were sweeping forward, vicious and formidable, confident of victory; the next they were floundering weaponless, scrambling anyhow for safety, multiplying and transforming, with the quick imagination of panic terror, these two horses into a troop of mounted men.
This sudden and almost spectral apparition of galloping steeds and flying carriage, hurled upon the vessel out of the tempest, flung, a piece of whirling chaos, from the chaotic skies, had almost as startling an effect upon the defenders. For a moment they paused, with weapons uplifted, and stared. Where an enemy had been, there was nothing. So doubtful Greeks or Trojans might have paused and stared upon the plains of Ilion when some splenetic and fickle deity burst unannounced and overwhelming into the central clamor of the battle.
But it is in these seconds of pause and doubt that great commanders assert themselves; it is these electric seconds from which the hero gathers his vital lightning and forges his mordant bolt. Genius claims and rules these instants, and the gods are on the side of those who boldly grasp loose wisdom and bind it into sheaves of judgment. Cleggett (whom Homer would have loved) was the first to recover his poise. He came to his decision instantaneously. A lesser man might have lost all by rushing after his retreating enemies; a lesser man, carried away by excitement, would have pursued. Cleggett did not relax his grasp upon the situation, he restrained his ardor.
"Stand firm, men! Do not leave the ship," he shouted. "The day is ours!"
And then, turning to Captain Abernethy, he cried:
"We have routed them!"
"Look at them crazy horses!" screamed the Captain in reply.
The animals were rearing and struggling among the ruins of the broken gangplank. As the Captain spoke, they plunged aboard the ship, and the carriage, bounding after them, overturned on the deck—horses and carriage came down together in a welter of splintering wheels and broken harness and crashing wood.
A negro driver, whom Cleggett now noticed for the first time, shot clear of the mass and landed on the deck in a sitting posture.
For a moment, there he sat, and did nothing more. The pole broke loose from the carriage, the traces parted, and the two big white horses, still kicking and plunging, struggled to their feet and free from the wreckage. Still side by side they leaped the port bulwark, splashed into the canal, and swam straight across it, as if animated with the instinct of going straight ahead in that fashion to the end of the world. Cleggett never saw or heard of them again.
"Bring a lantern," said Cleggett to Abernethy. "Let's see if this man is badly hurt."
But the negro was not injured. He rose to his feet as the Captain brought the light—the storm was now subsiding, and the lightning was less frequent—and stood revealed as a person of surprising size and unusual blackness. He was, in fact, so black that it was no wonder that Cleggett had not seen him on the seat of the carriage, for unless one turned a light full upon him his face could not be seen at all after dark. He was in a blue livery, and his high, cockaded coachman's hat had stayed on his head in spite of everything.
Even sitting down on the deck he had possessed an air of patience. When he arose and the Captain flashed the light upon his face, it revealed a countenance full of dignified good humor.
"Where did you come from?" asked Cleggett.
The negro removed the hat with the cockade before answering. He did it politely. Even ceremoniously. But he did not do it hastily. He had the air of one who was never inclined to do things hastily.
"From Newahk, sah," he said. "Newahk, New Jehsey, sah."
"But who are you?" said Cleggett. "How did you get here?"
The negro was gazing reflectively at the broken carriage.
"Ah yo' Mistah Cleggett, sah? Mistah Clement J. Cleggett, sah, the ownah of dis hyeah boat?"
"Yes."
The negro fumbled in an inner pocket and produced a card. He gave it to Cleggett with a deferential bow, and then announced sonorously:
"Miss Genevieve Pringle, sah—in de cah-age, sah—a callin' on Mistah Clement J. Cleggett."
He completed the announcement with a dignified and courtly gesture, which seemed to indicate that he was presenting the ruined carriage itself to Cleggett.
"You don't mean in that carriage?" cried Cleggett.
"Yes, sah," said the negro. "Leas'ways, she was, sah, some time back. Mah time an' mah 'tention done been so tooken up wif dem incompatible hosses fo' some moments past, sah, dat I cain't say fo' suah ef she adheahed, or ef she didn't adheah."
He glanced speculatively at the carriage again. Cleggett sprang towards the broken vehicle, expecting to find someone seriously injured at the very least. But, from the ruin, a precise and high-pitched feminine voice piped out:
"Jefferson! Kindly assist me to disentangle myself!"
"Yassum," said the negro, moving forward in a leisurely and dignified manner, "comin', ma'am. I hopes an' trusts, Miss Pringle, ma'am, yo' ain't suffered none in yo' anatomy an' phlebotomy from dis hyeah runaway."
With which cheerful wish Jefferson lifted respectfully, and with a certain calm detachment, the figure of a woman from the debris.
"Thank you, Jefferson," she said. "I fear I am very much bruised and shaken, but I have been feeling all my bones while lying there, and I believe that I have sustained no fractures."
Miss Pringle was a woman of about fifty, small and prim. Prim with an unconquerable primness that neither storm nor battle nor accident could shake. If she had been killed in the runaway she would have looked prim in death while awaiting the undertaker. She must have been wet almost to those unfractured bones which she had been feeling; her black silk dress, with its white ruching about the neck, was torn and bedraggled; her black hat, with its jet ornaments, was crushed and hung askew over one ear; nevertheless, Miss Pringle conveyed at once and definitely an impression of unassailable respectability and strong character.
"Which of you is Mr. Cleggett?" she asked, looking about her, in the lantern light, at the crew of the Jasper B., as she leaned upon the arm of Jefferson, her mannerly and deliberate servitor.
"I am Mr. Cleggett."
"Ah!" Miss Pringle inspected him with an eye which gleamed with a hint of latent possibilities of belligerency. "Mr. Cleggett," she continued, pursing her lips, "I have sought an interview to warn you that you are harboring an impostor on your ship."
At that moment Lady Agatha joined the group. As the light fell upon her Miss Pringle stepped forward and thrust an accusing, a denunciatory finger at the Englishwoman.
"You," she said, "call yourself Lady Agatha Fairhaven!"
"I do," said Lady Agatha.
"Woman!" cried Miss Pringle, shaking with the stress of her moral wrath. "Where are my plum preserves?"
And with this cryptic utterance the little lady, having come to the end of her strength, primly fainted.
Jefferson picked her up and carried her, in a serene and stately manner, to the cabin.
The rain had ceased almost as Miss Pringle was removed to the cabin. The storm had passed. Low down on the edges of the world there were still a few dark clouds, there was still an occasional glimmer of lightning; but overhead the mists were fleecy, light and broken. A few stars were visible here and there.
And then in a moment more a full moon rose high and serene above the world. The May moon is often very brilliant in these latitudes, as sailors who are familiar with the coasts of Long Island can testify. This moon was unusually brilliant, even for the season of the year and the quarter of the globe. It lighted up earth and sky so that it was (in the familiar phrase) almost possible to read by it. Only a few moments had elapsed since the rout of Logan Black's ruffians, but in the vicinity of this remarkable island such sudden meteorological changes are anything but rare, geographers and travelers know.
Lady Agatha had gone into the cabin to resuscitate Miss Pringle and, as she said, "have it out with her." Cleggett, gazing from the deck towards Morris's, in the strong moonlight, wondered when the attack would be renewed. He thought, on the whole, that it was improbable that Loge would return to the assault while this brightness continued.
Suddenly three figures appeared within his range of vision. They were running. But running slowly, painfully, lamely. In the lead were the two men whom he had first seen hazed up and down the bank of the canal by Wilton Barnstable, and whom he had seen the second time chained in the great detective's boat.
They were shackled wrist to wrist now. To the left leg of one of them was attached a heavy ball. A similar ball was attached to the right leg of the other. They had picked these balls up and were struggling along under their weight at a gait which was more like a staggering walk than a trot.
They were pursued by the man whom Cleggett had seen attempt to escape from Morris's. This man still wore his suit of baby blue pajamas.
He wore nothing else. He was stiff. He moved as if the ground hurt his bare feet.
He especially favored, as Cleggett noticed, the foot on which there was a bunion. He was lame. He crept rather than ran. But he seemed bitterly intent upon reaching the two men in irons who labored along twenty or thirty feet ahead of him. And they, on their part, casting now and then backward glances over their shoulders at their pursuer.
Cleggett divined that the men in irons had escaped from the Annabel Lee, and that the man in the baby blue pajamas was loose from Morris's. But why the man in the pajamas pursued and the others fled he could not guess.
They passed within fifty yards of the Jasper B. But the men in irons were so intent upon their own troubles, and the pursuer was so keen on vengeance, that none of them noticed the vessel. As they limped along, splashing through the pools the rain had left, the pursuer would occasionally pause to fling stones and sticks and even cakes of mud at the fugitives, who were whimpering as they tottered forward.
The man in the baby blue pajamas was cursing in a high-pitched, nasal, querulous voice. Cleggett noticed with astonishment that a single-barreled eyeglass was screwed into one of his eyes. Occasionally it dropped to the ground, and he would stop and fumble for it and wipe it on his wet sleeve and replace it. Had it not been for these stops he would have overtaken the men in irons.
"Clement!" Lady Agatha laid her hand upon his arm. "Miss Pringle wants to see you in the cabin."
"Well—imposter!" laughed Cleggett. "Is she able to talk to you yet? And what on earth did she mean by her plum preserves?"
"That is what she wants to tell, evidently," said Lady Agatha. And she went aft with him.
Miss Pringle, who had been rubbed dry by Lady Agatha, and was now dressed in some articles of that lady's clothing, which were much too large for her, sat on the edge of the bed in Lady Agatha's stateroom and awaited them. Her appearance was scarcely conventional, and she seemed to feel it; nevertheless, she had a duty to perform, and her innate propriety still triumphed over her situation and habiliments.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, pointing to the box which contained the evidence against Logan Black, which was exactly similar to the box of Reginald Maltravers, and which had been placed in this inner room for safe-keeping, "what does that box contain?"
Cleggett was startled. He and Lady Agatha exchanged glances.
"What do you think it contains?" he asked.
"That box," she said, "was shipped to me from Flatbush, and was claimed in my name—in the name of Genevieve Pringle—at the freight depot at Newark, New Jersey, by this lady here. Deny it if you can!"
"I do deny it, Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, accompanying her words with a winsome smile. But Miss Pringle was not to be won over so easily as all that; she met the smile with a look of steady reprobation. And then she turned to Cleggett again.
"Mr. Cleggett," she said, "my birthday occurred a few days ago. It was—I have nothing to conceal, Mr. Cleggett—it was my forty-ninth birthday. Every year, for many years past, a niece of mine who lives in Flatbush sends me on my birthday a box of plum preserves.
"These preserves have for me, Mr. Cleggett, a value that they would not possess for anyone else; a value far above their intrinsic or, as one might say, culinary value. They have a sentimental value as well. I was born in Flatbush, and lived there, during my youth, on my father's estate. The city has since grown around the old place, which my niece now owns, but the plum trees stand as they have stood for more than fifty years. It was beneath these plum trees...."
Miss Pringle suddenly broke off; her face twitched; she felt for a handkerchief, and found none; she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
In another person this action might have appeared somewhat careless, but Miss Pringle, by the force of her character, managed to invest it with propriety and dignity; looking at her, one felt that to wipe one's eyes on one's sleeve was quite proper when done by the proper person.
"I will conceal nothing, Mr. Cleggett. It was under these plum trees that I once received an offer of marriage from a worthy young man. It was from one of these plum trees that he later fell, injuring himself so that he died. You can understand what these plum trees mean to me, perhaps?"
Lady Agatha impulsively sat down beside the elder woman and put her arm about her. But Miss Pringle stiffly moved away. After a moment she continued:
"The preserved plums, as I have said, are sent me every year on my birthday. This year, when I received from my niece a notification that they had been shipped, I called for the box personally at the freight office.
"What was my astonishment to learn that the box had been claimed in my name, not a quarter of an hour before, and taken away.
"I obtained a description of the person who had represented herself as Miss Genevieve Pringle, and of the vehicle in which she had carried off my box. And I followed her. The paltriness of the theft revolted me, Mr. Cleggett, and I determined to bring this person to justice.
"The fugitive, with my plum preserves in her possession, had left, goodness knows, a broad enough trail. I found but little difficulty in following in my family carriage. In fact, Mr. Cleggett, I discovered the very chauffeur who had deposited her here with the box. Inquiries in Fairport gave me your name as the owner of this lighter."
"Lighter!" interrupted Cleggett. "The Jasper B., madam, is not a lighter."
"I beg your pardon," said Miss Pringle. "But what sort of vessel is it then?"
"The Jasper B.," said Cleggett, with a touch of asperity, "is a schooner, madam."
"I intended no offense, Mr. Cleggett. I am quite willing tobelieve that the vessel is a schooner, since you say that it is. I am not informed concerning nautical affairs. But, to conclude—I discovered from the chauffeur that this lady, calling herself Lady Agatha Fairhaven, had been deposited here, with my box. I learned yesterday, after inquiries in Fairport, that you were the owner of this vessel. The real estate person from whom you purchased it assured me that you were financially responsible. I came to expose this imposter and to recover my box. On my way hither I was caught in the storm. The runaway occurred, and you know the rest."
Miss Pringle, during this recital, had not deigned to favor Lady Agatha with a look. Lady Agatha, on her part, after the rebuff which she had received, had sat in smiling silence.
"Miss Pringle," she said, pleasantly but seriously, when the other woman had finished, "first I must convince you that this box does not contain your plum preserves, and then I will tell you my story."
With Cleggett's assistance Lady Agatha removed the cover from the oblong box, and showed her its contents.
"That explains nothing," said Miss Pringle, dryly. "Of course you would remove the plum preserves to a place of safety."
"Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, "I will tell you everything. I DID claim a box in your name at the railway goods station in Newark—and if there had been nothing in it but plum preserves, how happy I should be! I beg of you, Miss Pringle, to give me your attention."
And Lady Agatha began to relate to Miss Pringle the same story which she had told to Cleggett. At the first word indicative of the fact the Lady Agatha had suffered for the cause of votes for women, a change took place in the expression of Miss Pringle's countenance. Cleggett thought she was about to speak. But she did not. Nevertheless, although she listened intently, some of her rigidity had gone. When Lady Agatha had finished Miss Pringle said:
"I suppose that you can prove that you are really Lady Agatha Fairhaven?"
For answer Lady Agatha went to one of her trunks and opened it. She drew therefrom a letter, and passed it over without a word.
As Miss Pringle read it, her face lighted up. She did not lose her primness, but her suspicion seemed altogether to depart.
"A letter from Emmeline Pankhurst!" she said, in a hushed voice, handling the missive as if it were a sacred relic. "Can you ever forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive," beamed Lady Agatha. "I am willing to admit, now that you understand me, that the thing looked a bit suspicious, on the face of it."
"You have suffered for the cause," said Miss Pringle. "I have suffered for it, too!" And, with a certain shyness, she patted Lady Agatha on the arm. But the next moment she said:
"But what IS in the box you brought here then, Lady Agatha? Two boxes were shipped to Newark, addressed to me. Which one did you get? What is really in the one you have been carrying around? My plum preserves, or——"
She shuddered and left the sentence unfinished.
"Let us open it," said Cleggett.
"No! No!" cried Lady Agatha. "Clement, no! I could not bear to have it opened."
Miss Pringle rose. It was evident that a bit of her earlier suspicion had returned.
"After all," said Miss Pringle, indicating the letter again, "how do I know that——"
"That it is not a forgery?" said Lady Agatha. "I see." She mused a moment, and then said, with a sigh, "Well, then, let us open the box!"
"I think it best, Agatha," said Cleggett. "I shall have it brought down."
But even as he turned upon his heel to go on deck and give the order, Dr. Farnsworth and the Rev. Simeon Calthrop ran excitedly down the cabin companionway.
"The box of Reginald Maltravers," cried the Doctor, who was in Cleggett's confidence, "is gone!"