The Cruise of the Jasper B. ................................................................................................................................1

Don Marquis............................................................................................................................................1

On an evening in April, 191, Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately into the news room of the New York

Enterprise with a drabcolored walkingstick in his hand. He stood the cane in a corner, changed his sober

street coat for a more sober office jacket, adjusted a green eyeshade below his primly brushed grayish hair,

From the drawer he took a can of tobacco, a pipe, a pair of scissors, a pastepot and brush, a pile of copy

The can of tobacco was not remarkable. The pipe was not picturesque. The scissors were the most ordinary of

scissors. The copy paper was quite undistinguished in appearance. The lead pencils had the most

Cleggett himself, as he filled and lighted the pipe, did it in the most matteroffact sort of way. Then he

"H'lo, Clegg," said Jim, without looking up. "Might as well begin on this bunch of early copy, I guess."

For more than ten years Cleggett had done the same thing at the same time in the same manner, six nights of

What he did on the seventh night no one ever thought to inquire. If any member of the Enterprise staff had

speculated about it at all he would have assumed that Cleggett spent that seventh evening in some way

essentially commonplace, sober, unemotional, quiet, colorless, dull and Brooklynitish.

Cleggett lived in Brooklyn. The superficial observer might have said that Cleggett and Brooklyn were made

The superficial observer! How many there are of him! And how much he misses! He misses, in fact,

At two o'clock in the morning a telegraph operator approached the copy desk and handed Cleggett a sheet of

It was a night letter, and glancing at the signature Cleggett saw that it was from his brother who lived in

Uncle Tom died yesterday. Don't faint now. He splits bulk fortune between you and me. Lawyers figure

nearly $500,000 each. Mostly easily negotiable securities. New will made month ago while sore at president

Despite Edward's thoughtful warning, Cleggett did nearly faint. Nothing could have been less expected.

Uncle Tom was an irascible prohibitionist, and one of the most deliberately disobliging men on earth.

Cleggett and his brother had long ceased to expect anything from him. For twenty years it had been

thoroughly understood that Uncle Tom would leave his entire estate to a temperance society. Cleggett had

ceased to think of Uncle Tom as a possible factor in his life. He did not doubt that Uncle Tom had changed

the will to gain some point with the officials of the temperance society, intending to change it once again

after he had been deferred to, cajoled, and flattered enough to placate his vanity. But death had stepped in just

Cleggett read the wire through twice, and then folded it and put it into his pocket. He rose and walked toward

the managing editor's room. As he stepped across the floor there was a little dancing light in his eyes, there

was a faint smile upon his lips, that were quite foreign to the staid and sober Cleggett that the world knew. He

was quiet, but he was almost jaunty, too; he felt a little drunk, and enjoyed the feeling.

He opened the managing editor's door with more assurance than he had ever displayed before. The managing

editor, a pompous, tall, thin man with a drooping frosty mustache, and cold gray eyes in a cold gray face that

He was a man for whom Cleggett had long felt a secret antipathy. The man was, in short, the petty tyrant of

"Can you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr. Wharton?" said Cleggett. But he did not say it with the air of a

"Yes, yesgo on." Mr. Wharton, who had risen from his chair, sat down again. He was distinctly annoyed.

He was ungracious. He was usually ungracious with Cleggett. His face set itself in the expression it always

took when he declined to consider raising a man's salary. Cleggett, who had been refused a raise regularly

"Go on, go onwhat is it?" asked Mr. Wharton unpleasantly, frowning and stroking the frosty mustache,

"I just stepped in to tell you," said Cleggett quietly, "that I don't think much of the way you are running the

Wharton stopped stroking his mustache so quickly and so amazedly that one might have thought he had run

into a thorn amongst the hirsute growth and pricked a finger. He glared. He opened his mouth. But before he

"Three years ago I made a number of suggestions to you. You treated me contemptuouslyvery

Cleggett paused and drew a long breath, and his face became quite red. It was as if the anger in which he

could not afford to indulge himself three years before was now working in him with cumulative effect.

Wharton, only partially recovered from the shock of Cleggett's sudden arraignment, began to stammer and

"Just a moment," Cleggett interrupted, growing visibly angrier, and seeming to enjoy his anger more and

I had intended to conclude my remarks by telling you that my contempt for YOU, personally, is unbounded.

It is boundless, sir! But since you have sworn at me, I am forced to conclude this interview in another

And with a gesture which was not devoid of dignity Cleggett drew from an upper waistcoat pocket a card and

Cleggett folded his arms and regarded the managing editor with a touch of the supercilious in his manner.

"If you were a gentleman," he said, "you would have no difficulty in understanding these things. I have just

Mr. Wharton's mouth opened as if he were about to explode in a roar of incredulous laughter. But meeting

Cleggett's eyes, which were, indeed, sparkling with a most remarkable light, his jaw dropped, and he turned

slightly pale. He rose from his chair and put the desk between himself and Cleggett, picking up as he did so a

"Put down the scissors," said Cleggett, with a wave of his hand. "I do not propose to attack you now."

And he turned and left the managing editor's little office, closing the door behind him.

The managing editor tiptoed over to the door and, with the scissors still grasped in one hand, opened it about

a quarter of an inch. Through this crack Wharton saw Cleggett walk jauntily towards the corner where his hat

and coat were hanging. Cleggett took off his worn office jacket, rolled it into a ball, and flung it into a waste

paper basket. He put on his street coat and hat and picked up the drabcolored cane. Swinging the stick he

moved towards the door into the hall. In the doorway he paused, cocked his hat a trifle, turned towards the

managing editor's door, raised his hand with his pipe in it with the manner of one who points a dueling pistol,

took careful aim at the second button of the managing editor's waistcoat, and clucked. At the cluck the

managing editor drew back hastily, as if Cleggett had actually presented a firearm; Cleggett's manner was so

rapt and fatal that it carried conviction. Then Cleggett laughed, cocked his hat on the other side of his head

and went out into the corridor whistling. Whistling, and, since faults as well as virtues must be told,

When the managing editor had heard the elevator come up, pause, and go down again, he went out of his

"Mr. Herbert, don't ever let that man Cleggett into this office again. He is offoff mentally. He's a

dangerous man. He's a homicidal maniac. More'n likely he's been a quiet, steady drinker for years, and now

But nothing was further from Cleggett than the wish ever to go into the Enterprise office again. As he left the

elevator on the ground floor he stabbed the astonished elevator boy under the left arm with his cane as a

bayonet, cut him harmlessly over the head with his cane as a saber, tossed him a dollar, and left the building

It is thus, with a single twitch of her playful fingers, that Fate will sometimes pluck from a man the mask that

has obscured his real identity for many years. It is thus that Destiny will suddenly draw a bright blade from a

That part of Brooklyn in which Cleggett lived overlooks a wide sweep of water where the East River merges

with New York Bay. From his windows he could gaze out upon the bustling harbor craft and see the ships

He walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, and as he walked he still hummed tunes. Occasionally, still

with the rapt and fatal manner which had daunted the managing editor, he would pause and flex his wrist, and

The fifth of these lunges had an unexpected result. Cleggett directed it toward the door of an unpainted

toolhouse, a temporary structure near one of the immense stone pillars from which the bridge is swung. But,

as he lunged, the toolhouse door opened, and a policeman, who was coming out wiping his mouth on the

The officer grunted and stepped backward; then he came on, raising his nightstick.

"Why, it'sit's McCarthy!" exclaimed Cleggett, who had also sprung back, as the light fell on the other's

"Mr. Cleggett, by the powers!" said the officer, pausing and lowering his lifted club. "Are ye soused, man? Or

Cleggett smiled. He had first known McCarthy years before when he was a reporter, and more recently had

"'Tis a quare thing to do," persisted McCarthy, albeit goodhumoredly. "And now I mind I've seen ye do the

same before, Mr. Cleggett. You're foriver grinnin' to yersilf an' makin' thim funny jabs at nothin' as ye cross

"Perhaps it's writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant humor that was on him. He was really

thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of copy,

"Writer's cramp? Is it so?" mused McCarthy. "Newspapers is great things, ain't they now? And so's writin'

and readin'. Grrreat things! But if ye'll take my advise, Mr. Cleggett, ye'll kape that writin' and readin'

"I'll remember that," said Cleggett. And he playfully jabbed the officer again as he turned away.

"G'wan wid ye!" protested McCarthy. "Ye're soused! The scent av it's in the air. If I'm compilled to run yez in

f'r assaultin' an officer ye'll get the cramps out av thim wrists breakin' stone, maybe. Crrramps, indade!"

Cramps, indeed! Oh, Clement J. Cleggett, you liar! And yet, who does not lie in order to veil his inmost,

That was not an ordinary jab with an ordinary cane which Cleggett had directed towards the toolhouse door.

It was a thrust en carte; the thrust of a brilliant swordsman; the thrust of a master; a terrible thrust. It was

meant for as pernicious a bravo as ever infested the pages of romantic fiction. Cleggett had been slaying these

gentry a dozen times a day for years. He had pinked four of them on the way across the bridge, before

McCarthy, with his stomach and his realism, stopped the lunge intended for the fifth. But this is not exactly

the sort of thing one finds it easy to confide to a policeman, be he ever so friendly a policeman.

CleggettOld Clegg, the copyreaderClegg, the commonplaceC. J. Cleggett, the Brooklynitethis

person whom young reporters conceived of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty Factwas secretly a mighty

reservoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance. He ate it, he drank it, he breathed it, he dreamed

it. The usual copyreader, when he closes his eyes and smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thinking of

starting a chickenfarm in New Jersey. But Cleggettwith gray sprinkled in his hair, sober of face and

precise of manner, as the world knew himlived a hidden life which was one long, wild adventure.

Nobody had ever suspected it. But his room might have given to the discerning a clue to the real man behind

the mask which he assumedwhich he had been forced to assume in order to earn a living. When he reached

the apartment, a few minutes after his encounter on the bridge, and switched the electric light on, the gleams

Stevenson, cavalry sabers, W. Clark Russell, pistols, and Dumas; Jack London, poignards, bowie knives,

Stanley Weyman, Captain Marryat, and Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban machetes, Conan

Doyle, Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting knives, Fenimore Cooper,

G. P. R. James, broadswords, Dumas; Gustave Aimard, Rudyard Kipling, dueling swords, Dumas; F. Du

Boisgobey, Malay krises, Walter Scott, stick pistols, scimitars, Anthony Hope, single sticks, foils, Dumas;

jungles of arms, jumbles of books; arms of all makes and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the

fireplace, leaning against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under the bed, peeping out of the wardrobe,

propping the windows open, serving as paper weights; pictures, warlike and romantic prints and engravings,

pinned to the walls with daggers; in the wardrobe, coats and hats hanging from poignards and stilettos thrust

into the wood instead of from nails or hooks. But of all the weapons it was the rapiers, of all the books it was

Dumas, that he loved. There was Dumas in French, Dumas in English, Dumas with pictures, Dumas

unillustrated, Dumas in cloth, Dumas in leather, Dumas in boards, Dumas in paper covers. Cleggett had been

twenty years getting these arms and books together; often he had gone without a dinner in order to make a

payment on some blade he fancied. And each weapon was also a book to him; he sensed their stories as he

handled them; he felt the personalities of their former owners stirring in him when he picked them up. It was

in that room that he dreamed; which is to say, it was in that room that he lived his real life.

Cleggett walked over to his writing desk and pulled out a bulky manuscript. It was his own work. Is it

He flung it into the grate and set fire to it. It represented the labor of two years, but as he watched it burn,

stirring the sheets now and then so the flames would catch them more readily, he smiled, unvisited by even

For why the deuce should a man with $500,000 in his pocket write romances? Why should anyone write

anything who is free to live? For the first time in his existence Cleggett was free.

He picked up a sword. It was one of his favorite rapiers. Sometimes people came out of the

bookssometimes shadowy forms came back to claim the weapons that had been theirsand Cleggett

fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in the place. He bent the flexible blade in his

hands, tried the point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade, dallied with his imaginary

It seemed as if one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with which that room was so familiar, was about to

be enacted. . . . But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century. Cleggett,

for the first time, felt a little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to DREAM with a rapier. But now,

he was free; reality was before him; the world of actual adventure called. He had but to choose!

He considered. He tried to look into that bright, adventurous future. Presently he went to the window, and

gazed out. Tides of night and mystery, flooding in from the farther, dark, mysterious ocean, all but

submerged lower Manhattan; high and beautiful above these waves of shadow, triumphing over them and

accentuating them, shone a star from the top of the Woolworth building; flecks of light indicated the noble

curve of that great bridge which soars like a song in stone and steel above the shifting waters; the river itself

was dotted here and there with moving lights; it was a nocturne waiting for its Whistler; here sea and city met

A breeze blew in from the bay and stirred his window curtains; it was salt in his nostrils. . . .And, staring out

Stripped to a pair of cotton trousers, with a dripping cutlass in one hand and a Colt's revolver in the other, an

adventurer at the head of a bunch of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way across the reeking decks of a

Chinese junk, to close in single combat with a gigantic oneeyed pirate who stood by the helm with a ring of

dead men about him and a great twohanded sword upheaved. . . . This adventurer wasClement J.

Through the phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of cruising sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his

teeth, glided noiselessly a strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner yacht from which rose the wild

cries of beauty in distress, swarmed aboard with a muttered prayer that was half a curse, swept the water from

his eyes, and with pale, stern face went about the bloody business of a hero. . . . Again, this adventurer was

"Pirates!" he cried, swinging it about his head. "That's the thingpirates and the China Seas!"

And with one frightful sweep of his blade he disemboweled a sofa cushion; the second blow clove his

typewriting machine clean to the tattoo marks upon its breast; the third decapitated a sectional bookcase.

But what is a sectional bookcase to a man with $500,000 in his pocket and the Seven Seas before him?

It was a few days later, when a goodly number of the late Uncle Tom's easily negotiable securities had been

converted into cash, and the cash deposited in the bank, that Cleggett bought the Jasper B.

He discovered her near the town of Fairport, Long Island, one afternoon. The vessel lay in one of the canals

which reach inward from the Great South Bay. She looked as if she might have been there for some time.

Evidently, at one period, the Jasper B. had played a part in some catchcoin scheme of summer

entertainment; a scheme that had failed. Little trace of it remained except a rotting wooden platform, roofless

and built close to the canal, and a gangway arrangement from this platform to the deck of the vessel.

The Jasper B. had seen better days; even a landsman could tell that. But from the blunt bows to the

weatherscarred stern, on which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about it, the air of

And, to complete the picture, there sat on her deck a gnarled and brown old man. He smoked a short pipe

which was partially hidden in a tangle of beard that had once been yellowish red but was now streaked with

dirty white; he fished earnestly without apparent result, and from time to time he spat into the water.

Cleggett's nimble fancy at once put rings into his ears and dowered him with a history.

Cleggett noticed, as he walked aboard the vessel, that she seemed to be jammed not merely against, but into

the bank of the canal. She was nearer the shore than he had ever seen a vessel of any sort. Some weeds grew

in soil that had lodged upon the deck; in a couple of places they sprang as high as the rail. Weeds grew on

shore; in fact, it would have taken a better nautical authority than Cleggett to tell offhand just exactly where

the land ended and the Jasper B. began. She seemed to be possessed of an odd stability; although the tide was

receding the Jasper B. was not perceptibly agitated by the motion of the water. Of anchor, or mooring chains

The brown old manhe was brown not only as to the portions of his skin visible through his hair and

whiskers, but also as to coat and trousers and worn boots and cap and pipe and flannel shirtturned around

as Cleggett stepped aboard, and stared at the invader with a shaggybrowed intensity that was embarrassing.

It occurred to Cleggett that the old man might own the vessel and make a home of her.

"I beg your pardon if I am intruding," ventured Cleggett, politely, "but do you live here?"

The brown old man made an indeterminate motion of his head, without otherwise replying at once. Then he

took a cake of dark, hardlooking tobacco from the starboard pocket of his trousers and a clasp knife from

the port side. He shaved off a fresh pipeful, rolled it in his palms, knocked the old ash from his pipe, refilled

and relighted it, all with the utmost deliberation. Then he cut another small piece of tobacco from the "plug"

and popped it into his mouth. Cleggett perceived with surprise that he smoked and chewed tobacco at the

same time. As he thus refreshed himself he glanced from time to time at Cleggett as if unfavorably

impressed. Finally he closed his knife with a click and suddenly piped out in a high, shrill voice:

"Ierdo I what?" It had taken the old man so long to answer that Cleggett had forgotten his own question,

He regarded Cleggett contemptuously, spat on the deck, and then demanded truculently:

"Humph!" said the brown one, with the air of meaning that it was only to be expected of an idiot like Cleggett

that he would NOT want to buy any seed potatoes. But after a further embarrassing silence he relented

He turned his back on Cleggett, as if he had lost interest, and began to wind up his fishing line on a squeaky

The old man, who had finished with the rusty reel, deigned to look at Cleggett again.

"I see you know a lot about ships," said Cleggett, deferentially, giving up the attempt to find out who owned

her. "I picked you out for an old sailor the minute I saw you." He thought he detected a kindlier gleam in the

"The' ain't a stick in her," said the ancient fisherman. "She's got no wheel and she's got no nothin'. She used to

be used as a kind of a barroom and dancin' platform till the fellow that used her for such went out o'

"Tell me," said Cleggett, "was she a deepwater ship? Could a ship like her sail around the world, for

Something like a grin of gratified vanity began to show on the brown one's features. He leaned back against

"My name's Abernethy," he suddenly volunteered. "Isaiah Abernethy. The fellow that owns her is Goldberg.

"Cleggett began to get an insight into Mr. Abernethy's peculiar ideas concerning conversation. A native spirit

of independence prevented Mr. Abernethy from dealing with an interlocutor's remarks in the sequence that

seemed to be desired by the interlocutor. He took a selection of utterances into his mind, rolled them over

"You've come to the proper party to get set right about ships," said Mr. Abernethy, complacently. "Either you

was sent to me by someone that knows I'm the proper party to set you right about ships, or else you got an

eye in your own head that can recognize a man that comes of a seafarin' fambly."

"You ARE an old sailor, then? Maybe you are an old skipper? Perhaps you're one of the retired Long Island

"So fur as sailin' her around the world is concerned," said Mr. Abernethy, glancing over the hulk, "if she was

"This here Goldberg," said Mr. Abernethy, "has his office over town right accost from the railroad depot."

And with that he put his fishing pole over his shoulder and prepared to leavea tall, stronglooking old man

with long legs and knotty wrists, who moved across the deck with surprising spryness. At the gangplank he

"As far as my bein' a skipper's concerned, they's no law agin' callin' me Cap'n Abernethy if you want to. I

He crossed the platform; when he had gone thirty yards further he stopped, turned around, and shouted:

"Is she a schooner, hey? You want to know is she a schooner? If you was askin' me, she ain't NOTHIN' now.

But if you was to ask me again I might say she COULD be schoonerrigged. Lots of boats IS

There are affinities between atom and atom, between man and woman, between man and man. There are also

affinities between men and thingsif you choose to call a ship, which has a spirit of its own, merely a thing.

There must have been this affinity between Cleggett and the Jasper B. Only an unusual person would have

Within an hour after he had first seen her he was in Mr. Abraham Goldberg's office.

As he was concluding his purchaseMr. Goldberg having phoned Cleggett's bankershe was surprised to

discover that he was buying about half an acre of Long Island real estate along with her. For that matter he

had thought it a little odd in the first place when he had been directed to a real estate agent as the owner of the

craft. But as he knew very little about business, and nothing at all about ships, he assumed that perhaps it was

quite the usual thing for real estate dealers to buy and sell ships abutting on the coast of Long Island.

"I had only intended to buy the vessel," said Cleggett. "I don't know that I'll be able to use the land."

Mr. Goldberg looked at Cleggett with a slight start, as if he were not sure that he had heard aright, and

opened his mouth as if to say something. But nothing came of itnot just then, at least. When the last

signature had been written, and Clegget's check had been folded by Mr. Goldberg's plump, bejeweled fingers

"Why, it doesn't," said Mr. Goldberg. "It's the ship that goes with the land. She was on the land when I

bought the plot, and I just left her there. Nobody's paid any attention to her for years."

"I suppose if she was decorated up with sails and things she'd sail. Figuring on sailing her anywhere in

"You could turn her into a house boat easy enough. I had a friend who turned an old barge like that into a

"Barge?" Cleggett rose and buttoned his coat; the conversation was somehow growing more and more

"Perhaps not," admitted Cleggett, "perhaps not. She's more like a bark than a yacht."

"A bark? I dunno. Always thought a bark was bigger. A scow's more her size, ain't it?"

"Scow?" Cleggett frowned. The Jasper B. a scow! "You mean a schooner, don't you?"

"Schooner?" Mr. Goldberg grinned goodnaturedly at his departing customer. "A kind of a schoonerscow,

"No, sir, a schooner!" said Cleggett, reddening, and turning in the doorway. "Understand me, Mr. Goldberg, a

And standing with a frown on his face until every vestige of the smile had died from Mr. Goldberg's lips,

"Yes, sirthere's no doubt of ita schooner, Mr. Cleggett," said Mr. Goldberg, turning pale and backing

The ordinary man inspects a house or a horse first and buys it, or fails to buy it, afterward; but genius scorns

conventions; Cleggett was not an ordinary man; he often moved straight towards his object by inspiration;

great poets and great adventurers share this faculty; Cleggett paid for the Jasper B. first and went back to

The vessel lay about two miles from the center of Fairport. He could get within half a mile of it by trolley.

Nevertheless, when he reached the Jasper B. again after leaving Mr. Goldberg it was getting along towards

He first entered the cabin. It was of a good size and divided into several compartments. But it was in a state

of dilapidation and littered with a jumble of odds and ends which looked like the ruins of a barroom. As he

turned to ascend to the deck again, after possibly five minutes, intending to take a look at the forecastle next,

Looking out of the cabin he saw a taxicab approaching the boat from the direction of Fairport. It was a large

machine, but it was overloaded with seven or eight men. It stopped within twenty yards of the vessel, and two

men got out, one of them evidently a person who imposed some sort of leadership on the rest of the party.

This was a tall fellow, with a slouching gait and round shoulders. And yet, to judge from his movements, he

was both quick and powerful. The other was a short, stout man with a commonplace, broad red face and

flaxen hair. The two stood for a moment in colloquy in the road that led from Fairport proper to the bayside,

"It was old man Abernethy; he's harmless," said the tall fellow. "He's the only person that's been aboard her in

"There was someone else," persisted Heinrich. "Someone who was talking to Abernethy."

The tall man mumbled something about having been a fool not to buy her before this; Cleggett did not catch

With that they advanced towards the vessel. Cleggett stepped on deck from the cabin companionway, and

both men stopped short at the sight of him, Heinrich obviously a trifle confused, but the other one in no wise

abashed. He made no attempt, this tall fellow, to give the situation a casual turn. What he did was to stand

and stare at Cleggett, candidly, and with more than a touch of insolence, as if trying to beat down Cleggett's

Cleggett, staring in his turn, perceived that the tall man, ungainly as he was, affected a bizarre individualism

in the matter of dress. His clothing cried out, rather than suggested, that it was expensive. His feet were cased

in button shoes with fancy tops; his waistcoat, cut in the extreme of style, revealed that little strip of white

which falsely advertises a second waistcoat beneath, but in his case the strip was too broad. There were

diamonds on the fingers of both powerful hands. But the thing that grated particularly upon Cleggett was the

character of the man's scarfpin. It was by far the largest ornament of the sort that Cleggett had ever seen; he

was near enough to the fellow to make out that it had been carved from a piece of solid ivory in the likeness

of a skull. In the eyeholes of the skull two opals flamed with an evil levin. The man suggested to Cleggett, at

first glance, a bartender who had come into money, or a drayman who had been promoted to an important

office in a labor union and was spending the most of a considerable salary on his person. And yet his face,

more closely observed, somehow gave the lie to his clothes, for it was not lacking in the signs of intelligence.

In spite of his taste, or rather lack of taste, there was no hint of weakness in his physiognomy. His features

were harsh, bold, predatory; a slightly yellowish tinge about the temples and cheek bones, suggestive of the

Cleggett, both puzzled and nettled by the man's persistent gaze, advanced towards him across the deck of the

The tall man turned without a word and walked back to the taxicab, the occupants of which had watched this

singular duel of looks in silence. In the act of getting into the machine he face about again and said, with a lift

of the lip that showed two long, protruding canine teeth of an almost saffron hue:

He spoke with a kind of cold hostility that gave his words all the effect of a threat. Cleggett felt the blood leap

faster through his veins; he tingled with a fierce, illogical desire to strike the fellow on the mouth; his soul

stirred with a premonition of conflict, and the desire for it. And yet, on the surface of things at least, the man

had been nothing more than rude; as Cleggett watched the machine make off towards an isolated road house

on the bayside he wondered at the quick intensity of his own antipathy. Unconsciously he flexed his wrist in

That man was destined to do something more than get on Cleggett's nerves before the adventures of the

The isolated road house on the bay was a nondescript, jumbled, dilapidatedlooking assemblage of

structures, rather than one house. It was known simply as Morris's. It stood a few hundred yards west of the

end of the canal which opened into the bay and was about a quarter of a mile from the Jasper B.

The canal itself was broad, straight, lowbanked, and about threequarters of a mile in length. The town had

thrown out a few ranks of cottages in the direction of the canal. But these were all summer bungalows,

occupied only from June until the middle of September. The solider and more permanent part of Fairport was

At the north and inland terminus of the quiet strip of water in which the Jasper B. reposed was a collection of

buildings including bathhouses, a boathouse, and a sort of shed where "soft drinks" and sea food were served

during the bathing season. This place was known as Parker's Beach and was open only during the summer.

Morris's was of quite a different character from Parker's Beach. One could bathe at Morris's, but the beach

near by was not particularly good. One could hire boats there and buy bait for a fishing trip. In one of its

phases it made some pretensions to being a summer hotel. It had an extensive barroom. There was a dancing

floor, none too smooth. There were long verandahs on three sides. That on the south side was built on piles'

people ate and drank there in the summer; beneath it the water swished and gurgled when the tide was in.

The townspeople of Fairport, or the more respectable ones, kept away from Morris's, summer and winter.

Summer transients, inhabitants of the bungalows during the bathing season, patronized the place. But most of

the patronage at all seasons seemed to consist of automobile parties from the city; people apparently drawn

from all classes, or eluding definite classification entirely. In the bleakest season there was always a little stir

of dubious activity about Morris's. In the summer it impressed you with its look of cheapness. In the winter,

squatted by the cold water amidst its huddle of unpainted outhouses, at the end of a stretch of desolate beach,

Cleggett was anxious to get the Jasper B. into seaworthy condition as soon as possible. It occurred to him that

the employment of expert advice should be his first step, and early the next morning he hired Captain

Abernethy. That descendant of a seafaring family, though he felt it incumbent upon him to offer objections

that had to be overcome with a great show of respect, was really overjoyed at the commission. He left his

own cottage a mile or so away and took up his abode in the forecastle at once. By nine o'clock that morning

Cleggett had a force of workmen renovating both cabin and forecastle, putting the cook's galley into working

order, and cleansing the decks of soil and sand. That night Cleggett spent on the vessel, with Captain

By Saturday of the same weekCleggett had bought the vessel on Wednesdayhe was able to take up his

abode in the cabin with his books and arms about him. To his library he had added a treatise on navigation.

And, reflecting that his firearms were worthless, considered as modern weapons, he also purchased a score of

.44 caliber Colt's revolvers and automatic pistols of the latest pattern, and a dozen magazine rifles.

He brought on board at the same time, for cook and cabin boy, a Japanese lad, who said he was a sailor, and

The latter was a handsome, rather burly fellow of about thirty, a man with a kindling eye and a habit of

Among them, he declared, was Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. George admitted he was not a sailor, but

professed a willingness to learn, and looked so capable, as he squared his bulky shoulders and twisted his fine

black mustache, that Cleggett engaged him, taking him immediately from the dairy lunch room in which he

had been employed. George's idea was to work his way back to Greece, he said, on the Jasper B. If she did

not sail for Greece for some time, George was willing to wait; he was patient; sometime, no doubt, she would

The hold of the Jasper B. Cleggett and Captain Abernethy found to be in a chaotic state. Casks, barrels,

empty bottles by the hundred, ruins of benches, tables, chairs, old nondescript pieces of planking, broken

crates and boxes, were flung together there in moldering confusion. It was evident that after the scheme of

using the Jasper B.'s hulk as one of the attractions of a pleasure resort had failed, all the debris of the failure

had simply been thrown pellmell into the hold. Cleggett and Captain Abernethy decided that the vessel,

which was stepped for two masts, should be rigged as a schooner. The Captain was soon busy securing

estimates on the amount of work that would have to be done, and the cost of it. The pile of rubbish in the

hold, which filled it to such an extent that Cleggett gave up the attempt to examine it, was to be removed by

All the activity on board and about the Jasper B. had not gone on without attracting the attention of Morris's.

Cleggett noticed that there was usually someone in the neighborhood of that dubious resort cocking an eye in

the direction of the vessel. Indeed, the interest became so pronounced, and seemed of a quality so different

from ordinary frank rustic curiosity, that it looked very like espionage. It had struck Cleggett that Morris's

seemed at all times to have more than its share of idlers and hangerson; men who appeared to make the

place their headquarters and were not to be confused with the occasional offseason parties from the city.

"She's a house boat, if you was to ask me," said the brown old manin a new brown suit and with his

whiskers newly trimmed he gave the impression of having been overhauled and freshly painted.

"She must 'a' sneaked up an' anchored mighty early this mornin'," pursued Cap'n Abernethy, true to his

"She looks like a mighty toney kind o' vessel," said Cap'n Abernethy. "If I was to make a guess I'd say she

was one of them craft that sails herself along when she wants to with one of these newfangled gasoline

"She wasn't towed here then?" Cleggett gave up the attempt to learn from the Captain just where the house

"She lies in the canal," said the Cap'n. Having established the point that he could not be FORCED to tell

where she lay, he volunteered the information as a personal favor from one gentleman to another. "She lies

ahead of us in the canal, a p'int or so off our port bow, I should say. And if you was to ask me I'd say she

"No, sir, she wasn't towed in," said Cap'n Abernethy, "or I'd 'a' heard a tug towin' her. Comin' of a seafarin'

Cleggett finished dressing and went on deck. Sure enough, towards the south end of the canal, three or four

hundred yards south of the Jasper B., and about the same distance east of Morris's, was anchored a house

boat. She was painted a slaty gray color. As Cleggett looked at her a man stepped up on the deck, and, putting

a binocular glass to his eye, began to study the Jasper B. After a few minutes of steady scrutiny this person

Looking towards Morris's himself Cleggett saw a man standing on the east verandah of that resort intently

scanning the house boat through a glass. Cleggett went into the cabin and got his own glass.

Presently the man on Morris's verandah and the man of the house boat ceased to scrutinize each other and

both turned their glasses upon the Jasper B. But the moment they perceived that Cleggett was provided with a

glass each turned hastily and entered, the one Morris's place, and the other the cabin of the house boat. But

Cleggett had already recognized the man at Morris's as the stoopshouldered man of tall stature and fanciful

As for the man on the house boat (which, as Cleggett had made out, was named the Annabel Lee), there was

something vaguely familiar about his general appearance which puzzled and tantalized our hero.

As the morning wore on Cleggett became certain that the Jasper B. was closely watched by both the Annabel

Lee and Morris's, although the watchers avoided showing themselves plainly. A slightly agitated blind at a

second story window over the verandah showed him where the tall man or one of his associates gazed out

from Morris's; and from a porthole of the Annabel Lee he could see a glass thrust forth from time to time. It

was evident to him that the Annabel Lee and Morris's were suspicious of each other, and that both suspected

the Jasper B. But of what did they suspect Cleggett? What intention did they impute to him? He could only

Through the entire morning he was conscious of the continuance of this watch. He thought it ceased about

luncheon time; but at two in the afternoon he was certain that, if so, it had been resumed.

Cleggett, innocent and honorable, began to get impatient of this persistent scrutiny. And in spite of his

courage a vague uneasiness began to possess him. Towards the end of the afternoon he called his little

"My men," he said, "I do not like the attitude of our neighbors. To put it briefly, there may be squalls ahead

of the Jasper B. This is a wild and desolate coast, comparatively speaking. Strange things have happened to

innocent people before this along the shores of Long Island. It is well to be prepared. I intend to serve out to

each of you two hundred cartridges and a .44 caliber Colt's. In case of an attempt to board, you may find

"Cap'n Abernethy, in all nautical matters you will still be in command of the ship, but in case of a military

demonstration, all of you will look to me for leadership. You may go now and rig up a jury mast and bend the

American colors to the peakand in case of blows, may God defend the right! I know I do not need to

As Cleggett spoke the spirit which animated him seemed to communicate itself to his listeners. Their eyes

kindled and the keen joy that gallant men always feel in the anticipation of conflict flushed their faces.

"I am a son of Leonidas," said George Stefanopolous, proudly. And he secreted not merely one, but two, of

Cleggett's daggers about his body, in addition to the revolver given him. As George had already possessed a

dagger or two and an automatic pistol, it was now almost impossible for him to lay his hand casually on any

part of his person without its coming into contact with a deadly weapon ready for instant use. Cap'n

Abernethy picked up a cutlass, "hefted" it thoughtfully, rolled his sleeve back upon a lean and sinewy old arm

that was tanned until it looked like a piece of weathered oak, spat upon his hand and whirled the weapon till it

whistled in the air. "I come of a seafarin' fambly," said the Cap'n, sententiously.

As for Kuroki, he said nothing. He was not given to speech at any time. But he picked up a Malay kris and

ran his thumb along the edge of it critically like a man to whom such a weapon is not altogether unfamiliar. A

pleased smile stole over his face; he handled the wicked knife almost affectionately; he put it down with a

"Brave boys," murmured Cleggett, as he watched them. He smiled, but at the same time something like a tear

blurred his eloquent and magnetic eye for a moment. "Brave boys," he murmured, "we were made for each

The display of the American flag by the Jasper B. had an effect that could not have been foreseen.

Almost immediately the Annabel Lee herself flung an exactly similar American flag to the breeze. But a

strange thing happened at Morris's. An American flag was first hung from an upper window over the east

verandah. Then, after a moment, it was withdrawn. Then a red flag was put out. But almost immediately

Cleggett saw a man rip the red flag from its fastenings and fling it to the ground.

Cleggett, resorting to his glass, perceived that it was the tall man with the stoop shoulders and incongruous

clothing who had torn down the red flag. He was now in violent altercation with the man who had hung it

As Cleggett watched, the two men came to blows; then they clinched and struggled, swaying back and forth

within the open window, like a moving picture in a frame. Suddenly the tall fellow seemed to get the upper

hand; exerting all his strength, he bent the other backward over the window sill. The two contending figures

writhed desperately a moment and then the tall man shifted one powerful, sinewy hand to Heinrich's throat.

The binoculars brought the thing so near to Cleggett that it seemed as if he could touch the contorted faces;

he could see the tall man's neck muscles work as if that person were panting; he could see the signs of

suffocation in Heinrich's countenance. The fact that he saw so plainly and yet could hear no sound of the

All at once the tall man put his knee upon the other's chest, and flung his weight upon Heinrich with a

vehement spring. Then he tumbled Heinrich out of the window onto the roof of the verandah.

He stepped out of the window himself, picked Heinrich up with an ease that testified to his immense strength,

and flung him over the edge of the verandah onto the ground. A few moments later a couple of men ran out

from Morris's, busied themselves about reviving the fellow, and helped him into the house. If Heinrich was

not badly injured, certainly all the fight had been taken out of him for one day.

With Heinrich thus disposed of, the tall man turned composedly to the task of putting out the American flag

again. Through the glass Cleggett perceived that his face was twisted by a peculiar smile; a smile of joyous

"A bad man to cross, that tall man," said Cleggett, musingly. And indeed, his violence with Heinrich had

seemed out of all proportion to the apparent grounds of the quarrel; for it was evident to Cleggett that

Heinrich and the tall man had differed merely about the policy of displaying the red flag. "A man determined

to have his way," mused Cleggett. "If he and I should meet" Cleggett did not finish the sentence in

His musing was interrupted by the noise of an approaching automobile. Turning, he saw a vehicle, the rather

long body of which was covered so that it resembled a merchant's delivery wagon, coming along the road

It stopped opposite the Jasper B., and from the seat beside the driver leaped lightly the most beautiful woman

She was agitated. She was, in fact, sobbing; and a Pomeranian dog which she carried in her arms was

whimpering excitedly as if in sympathy with its mistress. Cleggett, soul of chivalry that he was, born cavalier

"Can you tell me where I can get some ice? Can you sell me some ice?" cried the lady excitedly, when she

"Ice?" The request was so unusual that Cleggett was not certain that he had understood.

"Yes, ice! Ice!" There was no mistaking the genuine character of her eagerness; if she had been begging for

her life she could not have been more in earnest. "Don't tell me that you have none on your boat. Don't tell

And suddenly, like a woman who has borne all that she can bear, she burst undisguisedly into a paroxysm of

weeping. Cleggett, stirred by her beauty and her trouble, stepped nearer to her, for she swayed with her

emotion as if she were about to fall. Impulsively she put a hand on his arm, and the Pomeranian, dropped

unceremoniously to the ground, sprang at Cleggett snarling and snapping as if sure he were the author of the

"You will think I am mad," said the lady, endeavoring to control her tears, "but I MUST have ice. Don't tell

"My dear lady," said Cleggett, unconsciously clasping, in his anxiety to reassure her, the hand that she had

But the rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The

reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at

the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted. Highstrung natures, intrepid in the face of danger, are apt to

such collapses in the moment of deliverance; and, whatever the nature of the lady's trouble, Cleggett gained

Cleggett was not used to having beautiful women faint and fall into his arms, and he was too much of a

gentleman to hold one there a single moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He turned his head rather

helplessly towards the vehicle in which the lady had arrived. To his consternation and surprise it had turned

around and the chauffeur was in the act of starting back towards Fairport. But he had left behind him a large

zinc bucket with a cover on it, a long unpainted, oblong box, and two steamer trunks; on the oblong box sat a

"Hi there! Stop!" cried Cleggett to the chauffeur. That person stopped his machine. He did more. He arose in

the seat, applied his thumb to his nose, and vigorously and vivaciously waggled his outspread fingers at

Cleggett in a gesture, derisive and inelegant, that is older than the pyramids. Then he started his machine

"I say, you, come here!" Cleggett called to the squat young man. "Can't you see that the lady's fainted?"

"Skoits often does," said the squat young man, looking over the situation in a detached, judicial manner. He

spoke out of the left corner of his mouth in a hoarse voice, without moving the right side of his face at all, and

The squat young man appeared to debate some moral issue inwardly for a moment. And then, speaking this

time out of the right corner of his mouth, which was now nearer Cleggett, without disturbing the left half of

his face, he pointed towards the oblong box and murmured huskily: "That's my job." He went and sat down

Without more ado Cleggett lifted the lady and bore her onto the Jasper B. She was a heavy burden, but

Cleggett declined the assistance of Cap'n Abernethy and George the Greek, who had come tardily out of the

"Get a bottle of wine," he told Yosh, as he passed the Japanese on the deck, "and then make some tea."

Cleggett laid the lady on a couch in the cabin, and then lighted a lamp, as it got dark early in these quarters.

While he waited for Yoshahira Kuroki and the wine, he looked at her. In her appealing helplessness she

looked even more beautiful than she had at first. She was a blonde, with eyebrows and lashes darker than her

hair; and, even in her swoon, Cleggett could see that she was of the thinskinned, highcolored type. Her

eyes, as he had seen before she swooned, were of a deep, dark violet color. She was no chit of a girl, but a

mature woman, tall and splendid in the noble fullness of her contours. The high nose spoke of love of activity

and energy of character. The full mouth indicated warmth of heart; the chin was of that sort which we have

The Japanese brought the wine, and Cleggett poured a few spoonfuls down the lady's throat. Presently she

The Pomeranian, which had followed them into the cabin, and which now lay whimpering at her feet, also

seemed to feel that she was awakening, and, crawling higher, began to lick one of her hands.

This last was addressed to the lady herself. Her eyes had opened for a fleeting instant as Cleggett spoke to the

Japanese, and her lips had moved. Cleggett bent his head nearer, while Yosh picked up the dog, which

And then she sat up with a start, struggled to recover herself, and looked about her wildly.

"Where am I?" she cried. "What has happened?" She passed her hand across her brow, frowning.

"Oh!" Suddenly recollection came to her, and her anxieties rushed upon her once more. "The ice! The ice!"

She sprang to her feet, and grasped Cleggett by both shoulders, searching his face with eager eyes. "You did

"Elmer? Oh, the short man! On shore. I believe that he and your chauffeur had some sort of an altercation, for

"Yes," she said, simply, as they passed up the companionway to the deck together, "that man, the driver,

Cleggett must have looked a little blank at that, for she suddenly threw back her head and laughed at him.

"Elmer! Oh, Elmer! You may bring the boxes on board!" She turned to Cleggett: "He may, mayn't he? Thank

youI was sure you would say he might. And if one of your men could just give him a lift? Andthe ice?"

"George," called Cleggett, "help the man get the boxes aboard. Kuroki, bring fifty pounds of ice on deck."

She sighed as she heard him give these orders, but it was a sigh of satisfaction, and she smiled at Cleggett as

she signed. Sometimes a great deal can happen in a very short space of time. Ten minutes before, Cleggett

had never seen this lady, and now he was giving orders at her merest suggestion. But in those ten minutes he

had seen her weep, he had seen her faint, he had seen her recover herself; he had seen her emerge from the

depths of despair into something more like selfcontrol; he had carried her in his arms, she had laughed at

him, she had twice impulsively grasped him by the arm, she had smiled at him three times, she had sighed

twice, she had frowned once; she had swept upon him bringing with her an impression of the mysterious.

Many men are married to women for years without seeing their wives display so many and such varied

phases; to Cleggett it seemed not so much that he was making a new acquaintance as renewing one that had

been broken off suddenly at some distant date. Cleggett, like the truehearted gentleman and born romanticist

that he was, resolved to serve her without question until such time as she chose to make known to him her

"Do you know," she said, softly and gravely to Cleggett as George and Elmer deposited the oblong box upon

a spot which she indicated near the cabin, "I have met very few men in my life who are capable of what you

"You have found a woman in a strange positionan unusual position, indeed!and you have helped her

"Would you think me too impulsive," she said, with a rare smile, "if I told you that you are the sort of man

Cleggett did not permit himself to speak for fear that the thrill which her words imparted to him would carry

"But I think you mentioned tea?" she said. "Did I hear you say it was orange pekoe, or did I dream that? And

While Kuroki was bringing a table and chairs on deck and busying himself about that preparation of tea,

Cleggett watched Elmer, the squat young man, with a growing curiosity. George and Cap'n Abernethy were

also watching Elmer from a discreet distance. Even Kuroki, silent, swift, and welltrained Kuroki, could not

but steal occasional glances at Elmer. Had Cleggett been of a less lofty and controlled spirit he would

For Elmer, having uncovered the zinc can and taken from it a hammer and a large tin funnel, proceeded to

break the big chunk of ice which Kuroki had brought him, into half a dozen smaller pieces. These smaller

lumps, with the exception of two, he put into the zinc bucket, wrapped around with pieces of coffee sacking.

Taking one of the lumps of ice which he had left out of the zinc bucket for immediate use, Elmer carefully

and methodically broke it into still smaller piecespieces about the size of an English walnut, but irregular

in shape. Then he inserted the tin funnel into a small hole in the uppermost surface of the unpainted, oblong

box and dropped in twenty or more of the little pieces of ice. When a piece proved to be too big to go through

Cleggett noticed that there were five of these small holes in the box, and that Elmer was slowly working his

From the way in which he worked, and the care with which he conserved every smallest particle of ice,

Elmer's motto seemed to be: "Haste not, waste not." But he did not appear to derive any great satisfaction

from his task, let alone joy. In fact, Elmer seemed to be a joyless individual; one who habitually looked

forward to the worst. On his broad face, of the complexion described in police reports as "pasty," melancholy

sat enthroned. His nose was flat and broad, and flat and broad were his cheek bones, too. His hair was cut

very short everywhere except in front; in front it hung down to his eyebrows in a straggling black fringe or

"bang." Not that the fringe would have covered the average person's forehead; this "bang" was not long; but

the truth is that Elmer's forehead was lower than the average person's and therefore easily covered. He had

But melancholy as he looked, Elmer had evidently had his moments of struggle against dejection. One of

these moments had been when he bought the clothes he was wearing. His hat had a bright, red and black band

around it; his tweed suit was of a startling light gray, marked off into checks with stripes of green; his

waistcoat was of lavender, and his hose were likewise of lavender, but red predominated in both his shirt and

his necktie. His collar was too high for his short neck, and seemed to cause him discomfort. But this attempt

at gayety of dress was of no avail; one felt at once that it was a surface thing and had no connection with

Elmer's soul; it stood out in front of the background of his sorrowful personality, accentuating the gloom, as a

blossom may grow upon a bleak rock. As Elmer carefully dropped ice, piece by piece, into the oblong box,

progressing slowly from hole to hole, Cleggett thought he had never seen a more depressed young man.

Captain Abernethy approached Cleggett. There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt

upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there was

The blonde lady laughed softly as the sailingmaster of the Jasper B. saluted the owner of the vessel.

"He is going to tell you," she said to Cleggett, including the Captain himself in her flashing look and her

remark, "he is going to tell you that you really should get rid of me and my boxes at onceI can see it in his

Captain Abernethy stopped short at this, and stared. It was precisely what he HAD planned to say after

drawing Cleggett discreetly aside. But it is rather startling to have one's thoughts read in this manner.

He frowned at the lady. She smiled at him. The smile seemed to say to the Cap'n: "You ridiculous old dear,

you! You KNOW that's what you were going to advise, so why deny it? I've found you out, but we both

"Ma'am," said the Cap'n, evidently struggling between a suddenly born desire to quit frowning and a sense

that he had a perfect right to frown as much as he wished, "Ma'am, if you was to ask me, I'd say ridin' on

"Cap'n Abernethy," said Cleggett, attempting to indicate that his sailing master's advice was not absolutely

required, "if you have something to say to me, perhaps later will do just as well."

"As fur as the Jasper B. is concerned," said the Cap'n, ignoring Cleggett's remark, and still addressing the

lady, "I dunno as you could call her EITHER a sailin' vessel, OR a steamship, as at present constituted."

"You want to get me off your boat at once," said the lady. "You know you do." And her manner added:

The Cap'n became embarrassed. He began to fuss with his necktie, as if tying it tighter would assist him to

hold on to his frown. He felt the frown slipping, but it was a point of honor with him to retain it.

"She WILL be a sailin' vessel when she gets her sticks into her," said the Cap'n, fumbling with his neckwear.

"Let me fix that for you," said the lady. And before the Cap'n could protest she was arranging his tie for him.

"You old sea captains!" she said, untying the scarf and making the ends even. "As if anyone could

possibly be afraid to sail in anything one of YOU had charge of!" She gave the necktie a little final pat.

The Captain's frown was gone past replacement. But he still felt that he owed something to himself.

"If you was to ask me," he said, turning to Cleggett, "whether what I'd got to say to you would do later, or

whether it wouldn't do later, I'd answer you it would, or it wouldn't, all accordin' to whether you wanted to

hear it now, or whether you wanted to hear it later. And as far as SAILIN' her is concerned, Mr. Cleggett, I'll

SAIL her, whether you turn her into a battleship or into one of these here yachts. I come of a seafarin'

And then he said to the lady, indicating the tie and bobbing his head forward with a prim little bow: "Thank

"Isn't he a duck!" said the lady, following him with her eyes, as he went behind the cabin. There the Cap'n

Indeed, the blonde lady, from the moment when Elmer began to put ice into the box, seemed to have regained

her spirits. The little dog, which was an indicator of her moods, had likewise lost its nervousness. When

"I have named him," she said, "after a great American. To my mind, the greatestTheodore Roosevelt. His

championship of the cause of votes for women at a time when mere politicians were afraid to commit

She spoke with a kindling eye, and Cleggett had no doubt that there was before him one of those remarkable

women who make the early part of the twentieth century so different from any other historical period. And he

was one with her in her admiration for Roosevelta man whose facility in finding adventures and whose

behavior when he had found them had always made a strong appeal to Cleggett. If he could not have been

Cleggett he would have liked to have been either the Chevalier d'Artagnan or Theodore Roosevelt.

But the lady, with her second cup of tea in her hand, was evidently thinking of something else. Leaning back

"It is no good for you to deny that you think I'm a horridly unconventional sort of person!"

"Yes, yes, you do," she said, decidedly. "And, really, I am! I am impulsive! I am TOO impulsive!" She raised

the cup to her lips, drank, and looked off towards the western horizon, which the sun was beginning to paint

ruddily; she mused, murmuring as if to herself: "Sir Archibald always thought I was too impulsive, dear

After a meditative pause she said, leaning her elbows on the table and gazing searchingly into Cleggett's eyes:

"I am going to trust you. I am going to reward your kindness by telling you a portion of my strange story. I

"With my life. I could trust you with my life," finished the lady, gravely. "I know that. I believe that. I feel it,

somehow. It is because I do feel it that I tell you" She paused, as if, after all, she lacked the courage.

Cleggett said nothing. He was too fine in grain to force a confidence. After a moment she continued: "I can

tell you this," she said, with a catch in her voice that was almost a sob, "that I am practically friendless. When

you call a taxicab for me in a few moments, and I leave you, with Elmer and my boxes, I shall have no place

"Do not call me madam. Call me Lady Agatha. I am Lady Agatha Fairhaven. What is your name?"

Cleggett was obliged to confess that he had not. He thought that a shade of disappointment passed over the

"How relative a thing is fame! You have never heard of me! And yet I can assure you that I am well enough

known in England. I was one of the very first militant suffragettes to break a windowif not the very first.

And were it not for my devotion to the cause I would not now be in my present terrible plightdoomed to

wander from pillar to post with that thing" (she pointed with a shudder to the box into which Elmer was still

gloomily poking ice)"chained to me like alike a" She hesitated for a word, and Cleggett, tactlessly

enough, with some vague recollection of a classical tale in his mind, suggested:

Lady Agatha turned pale. She gazed at Cleggett with terrorstricken eyes, her beautiful face became almost

haggard in an instant; he thought she was about to faint again, but she did not. As he looked upon the change

his words had wrought, filled with wonder and compunction, Cleggett suddenly divined that her occasional

flashes of gayety had been, all along, merely the forced vivacity of a brave and clever woman who was

"Mr. Cleggett," she said, in a voice that was scarcely louder than a whisper, "I am going to confide everything

to youthe whole truth. I will spare myself nothing; I will throw myself upon your mercy.

"I firmly believe, Mr. CleggettI am practically certainthat the box there, upon which Elmer is sitting,

contains the body of Reginald Maltravers, natural son of the tenth Earl of Claiborne, and the cousin of my

It was with the greatest difficulty that Cleggett repressed a start. Another man might have shown the shock he

felt. But Cleggett had the iron nerve of a Bismarck and the fine manner of a Richelieu. He did not even

permit his eyes to wander towards the box in question. He merely sat and waited.

Lady Agatha, having brought herself to the point of revelation, seemed to find a difficulty in proceeding.

"Ohif you will!" said Lady Agatha, extending her hand towards the case. He passed it over, and when she

"I wish you knew England." She watched the curling smoke from her tobacco as it drifted across the table. "If

you knew England you would comprehend so much more readily some parts of my story.

"But, being an American, you can have no adequate conception of the conservatism that still prevails in

certain quarters. I refer to the really old families among the landed aristocracy. Some of them have not

changed essentially, in their attitude towards the world in general, since the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

They make of family a fetish. They are ready to sacrifice everything upon the altar of family. They may

exhibit this pride of race less obviously than some of the French or Germans or Italians; but they have a

deeper sense of their own dignity, and of what is due to it, than any of your more flighty and picturesque

continentals. There are certain things that are done. Certain things are not done. One must conform or"

"Conform, or be jolly well damned," she finished, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in her

chair. "This, by the way, is the only decent cigarette I have found in America. I hate to smoke perfumeI

like tobaccoand most of your shops seem to keep nothing but the highly scented Turkish and Egyptian

"Ah! But where was I? Oh, yesone must conform. Especially if one belongs to, or has married into, the

Claiborne family. Of all the men in England the Earl of Claiborne is the most conservative, the most

reactionary, the most deeply encrusted with prejudice. He would stop at little where the question concerned

the prestige of the aristocracy in general; he would stop at nothing where the Claiborne family is concerned.

"I am telling you all this so that you may get an inkling of the blow it was to him when I became a militant

suffragist. It was blow enough to his nephew, Sir Archibald, my late husband. The Earl maintains that it

hastened poor Archibald's death. But that is ridiculous. Archibald had undermined his constitution with

dissipation, and died following an operation for gravel. He was to have succeeded to the title, as both of the

Earl's legitimate sons were dead without issueone of them perished in the Boer War, and the other was

"Upon Archibald's death the old Earl publicly acknowledged Reginald Maltravers, his natural son, and took

steps to have him legitimatized. For all of the bend sinister upon his escutcheon, Reginald Maltravers was as

fanatical concerning the family as his father. Perhaps more fanatical, because he secretly suffered for the

"At any rate, supported at first by the old Earl, he began a series of persecutions designed to make me

renounce my suffragist principles, or at least to make me cease playing a conspicuous public part in the

militant propaganda. As my husband was dead and there were no children, I could not see that I was

accountable to the Claiborne family for my actions. But the Claibornes took a different view of it. In their

philosophy, once a Claiborne, always a Claiborne. I was bringing disgrace and humiliation upon the family,

in their opinion. Knowing the old Earl as I do, I am aware that his suffering was genuine and intense. But

what was I to do? One cannot desert one's principles merely because they cause suffering; otherwise there

"Reginald Maltravers had another reason for his persecution. After the death of Sir Archibald he himself

sought my hand in marriage. I shall always remember the form of his proposal; it concluded with these

words: 'Had Archibald lived you would have been a countess. You may still be a countessbut you must

drop this suffragist show, you know. It is all bally rot, Agatha, all bally rot.' I would not have married him

without the condition, for I despised the man himself; but the condition made me furious and I drove him

from my sight with words that turned him white and made him my enemy forever. 'You will not be my

countess, then,' he said. 'Very wellbut I can promise you that you will cease to be a suffragist.' I can still

see the evil flash of his eye behind his monocle as he uttered these words and turned away."

"It was then," she resumed, "that the real persecution began. I was peculiarly helpless, as I have no near

relations who might have come to my defense. Representing himself always as the agent of his father, but far

exceeding the Earl in the malevolence of his inventions, Reginald Maltravers sought by every means he could

"Three times he succeeded in having me flung into Holloway Jail. I need not tell you of the terrors of that

institution, nor of the degrading horrors of forcible feeding. They are known to a shocked and sympathetic

world. But Reginald Maltravers contrived, in my case, to add to the usual brutalities a peculiar and personal

touch. By bribery, as I believe, he succeeded in getting himself into the prison as a turnkey. It was his custom,

when I lay weak and helpless in the semistupor of starvation, to glide into my cell and, standing by my couch,

to recite to me the list of tempting viands that might appear daily upon the board of a Countess of Claiborne.

After my release from jail the last time, he began to follow me everywhere. Turn where I would, there was

Reginald Maltravers. At suffrage meetings he took his station directly before the speaker's stand, stroked his

long blond mustache with his long white fingers, and stared at me steadfastly through his monocle, with an

evil smile upon his face. Formerly he had, in several instances, prevented me from attending suffrage

meetings; once he had me spirited away and imprisoned for a week when it fell to my lot to burn a railroad

station for the good of the cause. He strove to ruin me with my leaders in this despicable manner.

"But in the end he took to showing himself; he stood and stared. Merely that. He was subtle enough to shift

the persecution from the province of the physical to the realm of the psychological. It was like being haunted.

Even when I did not see him, I began to THINK that I saw him. He deliberately planted that hallucination in

"I finally determined to flee to America. I made all my arrangements with care andas I thoughtwith

secrecy. I imagined that I had given him the slip. But he was too clever for me. The third day out, as one of

the ship's officers was showing me about the vessel, I detected Reginald Maltravers in the hold. It is not usual

to allow women so far below decks; but I had insisted on seeing everything. Perspiring, begrimed, and

mopping the moisture from his brow with a piece of cotton waste, there he stood in the guise of aofa

"Stoker. Thank you. He turned away in confusion when he saw that he was discovered. I perceived that,

designing to cross on the same ship with me, he had thought himself hidden there. He was not wearing his

monocle, but I would know that sloping forehead, that blond mustache, and that long, high, bony nose

Lady Agatha broke off for a moment. She was extremely agitated. But presently she continued: "I endeavored

to evade him. The attempt was useless. He found me out at once. The persecution went on. It was more

terrible here than it had been in England. There I had friends. I had hours, sometimes even whole days, to

"But this was not the worst. A new phase developed. From his appearance it suddenly became apparent to me

"COULD not," said Lady Agatha. "The hunt had become a monomania with him. It had become an

obsession. He had given his whole mentality to it and it had absorbed all his faculties. He was now the victim

of it. He had grown powerless in the grip of the idea; he had lost volition in the matter.

"You can imagine my consternation when I realized this. I began to fear the day when his insanity would take

some violent form and he would endeavor to do me a personal injury. I determined to have a bodyguard. I

wanted a man inured to danger; one capable of meeting violence with violence, if the need arose. It struck me

that if I could get into touch with one of those chivalrous Western outlaws, of whom we read in American

works of fiction, he would be just the sort of man I needed to protect me from Reginald Maltravers.

"I did not consider appealing to the authorities, for I have no confidence in your American laws, Mr.

Cleggett. But I did not know how to go about finding a chivalrous Western outlaw. So finally I put an

advertisement in the personal column of one of your morning papers for a reformed convict."

She went into the stateroom and was back in a moment with a newspaper cutting which she handed to

Convict recently released from Sing Sing, if his reform is really genuine, may secure honest employment by

"Out of the answers," she resumed, "I selected four and had their writers call for a personal interview. But

only two of them seemed to me to be really reformed, and of these two Elmer's reform struck me as being the

more genuine. You may have noticed that Elmer gives the appearance of being done with worldly vanities."

"He does seem depressed," said Cleggett, "but I had imputed it largely to the nature of his present

"It is due to his attempt to lead a better lifeor at least so he tells me," said Lady Agatha. "Morality does not

come easy to Elmer, he says, and I believe him. Elmer's time is largely taken up by inward moral debate as to

the right or wrong of particular hypothetical cases which his imagination insists on presenting to his

"Nor I," replied Lady Agatha. "But to resume: The very fact that I had employed a guard seemed to put

Reginald Maltravers beside himself. He followed me more closely than ever. Regardless of appearances, he

would suddenly plant himself in front of me in restaurants and tramcars, in the streets or parks when I went

for an airing, even in the lifts and corridors of the apartment hotel where I stopped, and stare at me intently

through his monocle, caressing his mustache the while. I did not dare make a scene; the thing was causing

"Finally, goaded beyond endurance, I called Elmer into my apartment one day and put the whole case before

"'I will pay almost any price short of participation in actual crime,' I told him, 'for a fortnight of freedom from

that man's presence. I can stand it no longer; I feel my reason slipping from me. Have I not heard that there

are in New York creatures who are willing, on the payment of a certain stipulated sum, to guarantee to

chastise a person so as to disable him for a definite period, without doing him permanent injury? You must

"Elmer replied that such creatures do, indeed, exist. He called themwhat did he call them?"

She paused. "The names escape me," she said. She called: "Elmer, just step here a moment, please."

Elmer, who was still putting ice into the oblong box, moodily laid away his tools and approached.

"What WERE the odd names of your friends? The ones whowho made the mistake?" asked Lady Agatha,

Elmer rolled a bilious eye at Cleggett and asked Lady Agatha, out of that corner of his mouth nearer to her:

"Mr. Cleggett is a friend of mine and can keep a secret, if that is what you mean," said Lady Agatha. And the

"M' friends w'at makes the mistake," said Elmer, apparently satisfied with the assurance, and offering the

information to Cleggett out of the side of his mouth which had not been involved in his question to Lady

"Picturewhat? Picture not'in!" said Elmer, huskily. "The bulls got not'in' on them boys. Them guys never

The remark seemed to touch a sensitive spot. Elmer flushed and shuffled from one foot to the other, hanging

"I wasn't no boob, Mr. Cleggett. It was a snitch got ME settled. I was a good cracksman, honest I was. But I

"I intended no reflection on your professional ability," said Cleggett, politely.

"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Cleggett," said Elmer, forgivingly. "Nobody's feelin's is hoited. And any friend of th'

little dame here is a friend o' mine." The diminutive, on Elmer's lips, was intended as a compliment; Lady

Oratory was evidently not Elmer's strongest point. But he braced himself for the effort and began:

"When th' skoit here says she wants the big boob punched I says to m'self, foist of all: 'Is it right or is it

wrong?' Oncet youse got that reform high sign put onto youse, youse can't be too careful. Do youse get me?

So when th' skoit here puts it up to me I thinks foist off: 'Is it right or is it wrong?' See? So I thinks it over and

I says to m'self th' big boob's been pullin' rough stuff on th' little dame here. Do youse get me? So I says to

m'self, the big boob ought to get a wallop on the nut. See? What th' big gink needs is someone to bounce a

brick off his bean, f'r th' dame here's a square little dame. Do youse get me? So I says to the little dame: 'I'm

wit' youse, see? W'at th' big gink needs is a mont' in th' hospital.' An' the little dame here says he's not to be

But at that instant Teddy, the Pomeranian, sprang towards the uncovered hatchway that gave into the hold,

barking violently. Lady Agatha, who could see into the opening, arose with a scream.

Cleggett, leaping towards the hatchway, was just in time to see two men jump backward from the bottom of

the ladder into the murk of the hold. They had been listening. Drawing his pistol, and calling to the crew of

the Jasper B. to follow him, Cleggett plunged recklessly downward and into the darkness.

As his feet struck the top of the rubbish heap in the hold of the vessel, Cleggett stumbled and staggered

Perhaps he would not have fallen, but the Pomeranian, which had leaped into the hold after him, yelping like

But the fall probably saved his life, for as he spoke two pistol shots rang out simultaneously from the forward

part of the hold. The bullets passed over his head. Raising himself on his elbow, Cleggett fired rapidly three

A cry answered him, and he knew that at least one of his bullets had taken effect. He rose to his feet and

plunged forward, firing again, and at the same instant another bullet grazed his temple.

The next few seconds were a wild confusion of yelping dog, shouts, curses, shots that roared like the

explosion of big guns in that pentup and restricted place, stinking powder, and streaks of fire that laced

themselves across the darkness. But only a single pistol replied to Cleggett's now and he was confident that

But the other man, blindly or with intention, was stumbling nearer as he fired. A bullet creased Cleggett's

shoulder; it was fired so close to him that he felt the heat of the exploding powder; and in the sudden glow of

light he got a swift and vivid glimpse of a white face framed in long black hair, and of flashing white teeth

beneath a lifted lip that twitched. The face was almost within touching distance; as it vanished Cleggett heard

the sharp, whistling intake of the fellow's breathand then a click that told him the other's last cartridge was

gone. Cleggett clubbed his pistol and leaped forward, striking at the place where the gleaming teeth had been.

His blow missed; he spun around with the force of it. As he steadied himself to shoot again he heard a rush

But he did not finish that sentence. A thousand lights danced before his eyes, Niagara roared in his ears for an

instant, and he knew no more. His adversary had laid him out with the butt of a pistol.

Cleggett was not that inconsiderable sort of a man who is killed in any trivial skirmish: There was a moment

at the bridge of Arcole when Napoleon, wounded and flung into a ditch, appeared to be lost. But when

Nature, often so stupid, really does take stock and become aware that she has created an eagle she does not

permit that eagle to be killed before its wings are fledged. Napoleon was picked out of the ditch. Cleggett was

Both were saved for larger triumphs. The association of names is not accidental. These two men were, in

When Cleggett regained consciousness he was on deck; George, Kuroki and Cap'n Abernethy stood about

him in a little semicircle of anxiety; Lady Agatha was applying a cold compress to the bump upon his head.

(He made nothing of his other scratches.) As for Elmer, who had not stirred from his seat on the oblong box,

he moodily regarded, not Cleggett, but a slight young fellow with long black hair, who lay motionless upon

Cleggett struggled to his feet. "Is he dead?" he asked, pointing to the figure of his recent assailant. Cap'n

Abernethy, for the first time since Cleggett had known him, gave a direct answer to a question.

"Mighty nigh it," he said, staring down at the young man. Then he added: "Kind o' innocent lookin' young

"The other?" George inquired. "But there was no other. When we got down there you and this boy" And

George described the struggle that had taken place after Cleggett had lost consciousness. The whole affair, as

far as it concerned Cleggett, had been a matter of seconds rather than minutes; it was begun and over like a

hundred yard dash on the cinder track. When George and Kuroki and Cap'n Abernethy had tumbled into the

hold they had been afraid to shoot for fear of hitting Cleggett; they had reached him, guided by his voice, just

as he went down under his assailant's pistol. They had not subdued the youth until he had suffered severely

from George's dagger. Later they learned that one of Cleggett's bullets had also found him. Cleggett listened

"But there WERE two men in the hold. And one of them, dead or wounded, must still be down there. Carry

this fellow into the forecastlewe'll look at him later. Then bring some lanterns. We are going down into

With their pistols in their right hands and lanterns in their left they descended, Cleggett first. It was not

impossible that the other intruder might be lying, wounded, but revived enough by now to work a pistol,

But no shots greeted them. The hold of the Jasper B. was not divided into compartments of any sort. If it had

ever had them, they had been torn away. Below deck, except for the rubbish heap and the steps for the masts,

she was empty as a soup tureen. The pile of debris was the highest toward the waist of the vessel. There it

formed a treacherous hill of junk; this hill sloped downward towards the bow and towards the stern; in both

the fore and after parts, under the forecastle and the cabin, there were comparatively clear spaces.

The four men forced their way back towards the stern and then came slowly forward in a line that extended

across the vessel, exploring with their lanterns every inch of the precarious footing, and overturning and

looking behind, under, and into every box, cask, or jumble of planking that might possibly offer a place of

concealment. They found no one. And, until they reached a clearer place, well forward, on the starboard side

Cleggett, who was examining this place, suddenly uttered an exclamation which brought the others to him.

He pointed to stains of blood upon the planking; near these stains were marks left by boots which had been

gaumed with a yellowish clay. A revolver lay on the floor. Cleggett examined it and found that only one

cartridge had been exploded. The stains of blood and the stains of yellow clay made an easily followed trail

for some yards to a point about halfway between the bow and stern on the starboard side.

There, in the waist of the vessel, they ceased; ceased abruptly, mysteriously. Cleggett, not content, made his

men go over the place again, even more thoroughly than before. But there was no one there, dead or

wounded, unless he had succeeded in contracting himself to the dimensions of a rat.

"There is nothing," said Cleggett, standing by the ladder that led up to the deck. "Nothing," echoed George;

and then as if with one impulse, and moved by the same eerie thought, these four men suddenly raised their

A startled look spread from face to face. But no one spoke. There was no need to. All recognized that they

were in the presence of an apparent impossibility. Yet this seemingly impossible thing was the fact. There

had been two men in the hold of the Jasper B. They had entered as mysteriously and silently as disembodied

spirits might have done. One of them, wounded, had made his exit in the same baffling way. Where? How?

"Let us go to the forecastle and have a look at that fellow," he said, and led the way.

No one lagged as they left the hold. These were all brave men, but there are times when the invisible, the

incomprehensible, will send a momentary chill to the heart of the most intrepid.

Cleggett found Lady Agatha, her own troubles for the time forgotten, in the forecastle. She had lighted a lamp

and was bending over the wounded man, whose coat and waistcoat she had removed. His clothing was a sop

of blood. They cut his shirt and undershirt from him. Kuroki brought water and the medicine chest and

surgical outfit with which Cleggett had provided the Jasper B. They examined his wounds, Lady Agatha,

with a fine seriousness and a deft touch which claimed Cleggett's admiration, washing them herself and

"Oh, I am not an altogether useless person," she said, with a momentary smile, as she saw the look in

Cleggett's face. And Cleggett remembered with shame that he had not thanked her for her ministrations to

A pistol bullet had gone quite through the young man's shoulder. There was a deep cut on his head, and there

were half a dozen other stab wounds on his body. George had evidently worked with great rapidity in the

In the inside breast pocket of his coat he had carried a thin and narrow little book. There was a dagger thrust

clear through it; if the book had not been there this terrible blow delivered by the son of Leonidas must

Cleggett opened the book. It was entitled "Songs of Liberty, by Giuseppe Jones." The verse was written in the

manner of Walt Whitman. A glance at one of the sprawling poems showed Cleggett that in sentiment it was

"Oh, really!" Lady Agatha looked up from her work of mercy and spoke with animation, and then gazed upon

the youth's face again with a new interest. "An anarchist! How interesting! I have ALWAYS wanted to meet

"Poor boy, he don't look like nothin' bad," said Cap'n Abernethy, who seemed to have taken a fancy to

"It means" began Cleggett, and then stopped. The book of revolutionary verse, taken in conjunction

with the red flag that had been displayed and then withdrawn, made him wonder if Morris's were the

But, if so, why should this band show such an interest in the Jasper B. ? An interest so hostile to her present

"If you was to ask me what it means," said Captain Abernethy, who had taken the book and was fingering it,

"I'd say it means young Jones here has fell into bad company. That don't explain how he sneaked into the

"He shall have a physician," said Cleggett. "In fact, the Jasper B. needs a ship's doctor."

"It looks to me," said Captain Abernethy, "as if she did. And if you was to go further, Mr. Cleggett, and say

that it looks as if she was liable to need a couple o' trained nurses, too, I'd say to you that if they's goin' to be

many o' these kind o' goin'son aboard of her she DOES need a couple of trained nurses."

"Captain," said Cleggett, "you are a humane man let me shake your hand. You have voiced my very

Long ago Cleggett had resolved that if Chance or Providence should ever gratify his secret wish to participate

in stirring adventures, he would see to it that all his wounded enemies, no matter how many there might be of

them, received adequate medical attention. He had often been shocked at the callousness with which so many

of the heroes of romance dash blithely into the next adventurethough those whom they have seriously

injured lie on all sides of them as thick as autumn leaveswith only the most perfunctory consideration of

"Something tells me," said Cleggett seriously, "that this intrusion of armed men is only a prelude. I have little

doubt of the hostility of Morris's; I am sure that the men who hid in the hold are spies from Morris's. I do not

yet know the motive for this hostility. But the Jasper B. is in the midst of dangers and mysteries. There is

before us an affair of some magnitude. Ere the Jasper B. sets sail for the China Seas, there may be many

And then he began to outline a plan that had flashed, full formed, into his mind. It was to rent, or purchase,

the buildings at Parker's Beach, and fit them up as a field hospital, with three or four nurses in charge. Lady

"Butthe China Seas," she said. "Did I understand you to say that you intend to set sail for the China Seas?"

"I have heardit seems to me that I have heardthat it's a very dangerous place," ventured Lady Agatha.

"I should not be surprised," said Cleggett, folding his arms, and standing with his feet spread just a trifle

wider than usual, "if the Jasper B. had a brush or two with them. A brush or two!"

"But those nurses" she said. "If you're going to the China Seas you can't very well take Parker's Beach

"I was coming to that," said Cleggett, bowing. "I contemplate a hospital shipa vessel supplied with nurses

and lint and medicines, that will accompany the Jasper B., and fly the Red Cross flag."

"But they are frightful people, really, those Chinese pirates, you know," said Lady Agatha. "Do you think

"It is my duty," said Cleggett, simply. "Whether they appreciate it or not, a hospital ship they shall have. This

is the twentieth century. And although the great spirits of other days had much to commend them, it is not to

be denied that they knew little of our modern humanitarianism. It has remained for the twentieth century to

develop that. And one owes a duty to one's epoch as well as to one's individuality."

"But," repeated Lady Agatha, with a meditative frown, "they are really FRIGHTFUL people!"

"There is good in all men," said Cleggett, "even in those whom the stern necessities of idealism sentence to

death. And I have no doubt that many a Chinese pirate would, under other circumstances, have developed

Lady Agatha studied him intently for a moment. "Mr. Cleggett," she said, "if you will permit me to say so, a

He dispatched Georgea person of address as well as a fighter in whom the blood of ancient Greece ran

quick and strongon a humanitarian mission. George was to walk a mile to the trolley line, go to Fairport,

hire a taxicab, and make all possible speed into Manhattan. There he was to communicate with a young

Dr. Farnsworth, as Cleggett knew, was just out of medical school. He had his degree, but no patients. But he

was bold and ready. He was, in short, just the lad to welcome with enthusiasm such a chance for active

It was something of a risk to weaken his little party by sending George away for several hours. But Cleggett

did not hesitate. He was not the man to allow considerations of personal safety to outweigh his devotion to an

"And now," said Cleggett, turning to Lady Agatha, who had hearkened to his orders to George with a bright

smile of approval, "we will dine, and I will hear the rest of your story, which was so rudely interrupted. It is

"Dine!" exclaimed Lady Agatha, eagerly. "Yes, let us dine! It may sound incredible to you, Mr. Cleggett, that

the daughter of an English peer and the widow of a baronet should confess that, except for your tea, she has

Then she said, sadly, with a sign and sidelong glance at the box of Reginald Maltravers which stood near the

cabin companionway dripping coldly: "Until now, Mr. Cleggettuntil your aid had given me fresh hope and

Cleggett followed her gaze, and it must be admitted that he himself experienced a momentary sense of

depression at the sight of the box of Reginald Maltravers. It looked so damp, it looked so chill, it looked so

starkly and patiently and malevolently watchful of himself and Lady Agatha. In a flash his lively fancy

furnished him with a picture of the box of Reginald Maltravers suddenly springing upright and hopping

towards him on one end with a series of stiff jumps that would send drops of moisture flying from the cracks

and seams and make the ice inside of it clink and tinkle. And the mournful Elmer, now drowsing callously

over his charge, was not an invitation to be blithe. If Cleggett himself were so affected (he mused) what must

be the effect of the box of Reginald Maltravers upon sensibilities as fine and delicate as those of a woman

"Could Iif I might" Lady Agatha hesitated, with a glance towards the cabin. Cleggett instantly

divined her thought; for brief as was their acquaintance, there was an almost psychic accord between his

mind and hers, and he felt himself already answering to her unspoken wish as a ship to its rudder.

"The cabin is at your service," said Cleggett, for he understood that she wished to dress for dinner. He

conducted her, with a touch of formality, to his own room in the cabin, which he put at her disposal, ordering

her steamer trunks to be placed in it. Then, taking with him some necessaries of his own, he withdrew to the

It might not have occurred to another man to dress for dinner, but Cleggett's character was an unusual blend

of delicacy and strength; he perceived subtly that Lady Agatha was of the nature to appreciate this

compliment. At a moment when her fortunes were at a low ebb what could more cheer a woman and hearten

her than such a mark of consideration? Already Cleggett found himself asking what would please Lady

Kuroki announced dinner; Cleggett entered the captain's mess room of the cabin, where the cloth was laid,

and a moment later lady Agatha emerged from the stateroom and gave him her hand with a smile.

If he had thought her beautiful before, when she wore her plain traveling suit, he thought her radiant now, in

the true sense of that much abused word. For she flung forth her charm in vital radiations. If Cleggett had

possessed a common mind he might have phrased it to himself that she hit a man squarely in the eyes. Her

beauty had that direct and almost aggressive quality that is like a challenge, and with sophisticated feminine

art she had contrived that the dinner gown she chose for that evening should sound the keynote of her

personality like a leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and

there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among the draperies of the skirt; a

looped girdle of blue velvet was the only other splash of color. But the fullleaved, expanded and matured

rose became the vivid epitome and illustration of the woman herself. A rope of pearls that hung down to her

waist added the touch of soft luster essential to preserve the picture from the reproach of being too obvious an

assault upon the senses; Cleggett reflected that another woman might have gone too far and spoiled it all by

"I have not been so hungry since I was in Holloway Jail," said Lady Agatha. And she ate with a candid gusto

that pleased Cleggett, who loathed in a woman a finical affectation of indifference to food.

When Kuroki brought the coffee she took up her own story again. There was little more to tell.

Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat, it appeared, had mistaken their instructions. Two nights after they had been

"The horrid creatures brought it into my sittingroom and laid it on the floor before I could prevent them,"

"They replied that they had killed Reginald Maltravers ACCORDING TO ORDERS, and had brought him to

"'Orders!' I cried. 'You had no such orders.' Elmer, who lived on the same floor, was absent temporarily,

having taken Teddy out for an airing. I was distracted. I did not know what to do. 'Your orders," I said, 'were

She broke off. "What was it that Elmer told them to do, and what was it that they did?" she mused, perplexed.

"Elmer," she said, "exactly what was it that you told your friends to do to him? And what was it that they did?

"Poke him," said Elmer, addressing Cleggett. "I tells these ginks to poke him. But these ginks tells th' little

dame here they t'inks I has said to croak him. So they goes an' croaks him. D' youse get me?"

"At any rate," continued Lady Agatha, "there was that terrible box upon my sittingroom floor, and there

were those two degraded wretches. The callous beasts stood above the box apparently quite insensible to the

ethical enormity of their crime. But they were keen enough to see that it might be used as a lever with which

to force more money from me. For when I demanded that they take the box away with them and dispose of it,

they only laughed at me. They said that they had had enough of that box. They had delivered the goodsthat

was the phrase they usedand they wanted more money. And they said they would not leave until they got

it. They threatened, unless I gave them the money at once, to leave the place and get word to the police of the

"I was in no mental condition to combat and get the better of them. I felt myself to be entirely in their power.

I saw only the weakness of my own position. I could not, at the moment, see the weak spots in theirs. Elmer

might have advised mebut he was not there. The miserable episode ended with my giving them a thousand

"Alone with that box, my panic increased. When Elmer returned with Teddy, I told him what had happened.

He wished to open the box, having a vague idea that perhaps after all it did not really contain what they had

said was in it. But I could not bear the thought of its being opened. I refused to allow Elmer to look into it.

"I determined that I would ship the box at once to some fictitious personage, and then take the next ship back

"I hastily wrote a card, which I tacked on the box, consigning it to Miss Genevieve Pringle, Newark, N. J.

The name was the first invention that came into my head. Newark I had heard of. I knew vaguely that it was

west of New York, but whether it was twenty miles west or two thousand miles, I did not stop to think. I am

"But no sooner had the box been taken away than I began to be uneasy. I was more frightened with it gone

than I had been with it present. I imagined it being dropped and broken, and revealing everything. And then it

occurred to me that even if I should get out of the country, the secret was bound to be discovered some time. I

do not know why I had not thought of that beforebut I was distracted. Having got rid of the box, I was

"I confided my fears to Elmer, and was surprised to learn from him that Newark is very near New York. We

took a taxicab at once, and were waiting at the freight depot in Newark when the thing arrived. There I

"It became apparent to me that I must manage its final disposition myself. Elmer hired for me the vehicle in

"But the driver, from the first, was suspicious of the box. His suspicions were increased when, upon returning

to my apartment hotel, where I now decided to keep the box until I could think out a coherent plan of action,

the manager of the hotel made inquiries. The manager had seen the box brought in, and taken out again,

before. Its return struck him as odd. He offered to store it for me in the basement. I took alarm at once.

Naturally, he questioned me more closely. I was unready in my answers. His inquiries excited and alarmed

me. I felt that any instant I might do something to betray myself. I cut the manager short, paid my bill, got my

luggage, and ordered the chauffeur to drive to the Grand Central Station. But when we had gone three or four

blocks, I said to him: 'Stop!I do not wish to go to the Grand Central Station. Drive me to Poughkeepsie!' I

wished a chance to think. I knew Poughkeepsie was not far from New York City, but I supposed it was far

enough to give me a chance to determine what to do next by the time we arrived there.

"But I could not think coherently. I could only feel and fear. The drive was longer than I had expected, but

when we arrived at Poughkeepsie and the chauffeur asked me again what disposition to make of the box, I

"I could not choose but pay it. For four days we went from place to place, in and about New York City's

suburbsnow in town and now in the countrycrossing rivers again and again on ferryboatsstopping at

hotels, road houses and all manner of placesdashing through Brooklyn and out among the villages of Long

"Elmer and I were continually on the lookout for some way to dispose of the box, but nothing presented

itself. The driver, who had become more and more impudent in his attitude and outrageous in his charges,

was now practically a spy upon us. The necessity for ice made frequent stops imperative; at the same time the

"Today, at a road house thirty or forty miles from here, I made certain that I was pursued. The very man from

whom I had claimed the box at the railway goods station in Newark confronted me. It appears, from what

Elmer says, that he is taking a holiday and is visiting his brother, who is the proprietor of the road house.

"As fate would have it, there lives in Newark a person who really owns that name which I thought I had

invented. It seems that she had been expecting a shipment, and had called to inquire for it; upon learning that

a box had been delivered to a person in her name she had taken up the trail at once. Having somehow traced

me to Long Island, she had actually made inquiries at this very road house some hours earlier. The railway

employee, I am certain, would have denounced me at oncehe would have accused me of theft, and would

have endeavored to have me held until he could get into communication with Miss Pringle or with the

authoritiesbut I bought from him a promise of silence. It cost me another large sum.

"A few hours ago the chauffeur, divining from a conversation between Elmer and me that I was running short

Her voice trailed off into a tired whisper as she finished, and with her elbows on the table Lady Agatha

wearily supported her head in her hands. Her attitude acknowledged defeat. She was despairingly certain that

she would never see the last of the box which she believed to contain Reginald Maltravers.

Cleggett did not hesitate an instant. "Lady Agatha," he said, "the Jasper B. is at your service as long as you

may require the ship. The cabin is your home until we arrive at a solution of your difficulties."

His glance and manner added what his tongue left unutteredthat the commander of the ship was henceforth

She extended her hand. Her answer was on her lips. But at that instant the jarring roar of an explosion struck

The blast was evidently near, though muffled. The earth shook; a tremor ran through the Jasper B.; the

glasses leaped and rang upon the table. Cleggett, followed by Lady Agatha, darted up the companionway.

As Cleggett reached the deck there was a second shock, and he beheld a flame leap out of the earth itselfa

sudden sword of fire thrust into the night from the midst of the sandy plain before him. The light that stabbed

and was gone in an instant was about halfway between the Jasper B. and Morris's. A second after, a

missilewhich Cleggett later learned was a piece of rock the size of a man's headfell with a splintering

crash upon and through the wooden platform beside the Jasper B., not thirty feet from where Cleggett stood;

another splashed into the canal. The next day Cleggett saw several of these fragments lying about the plain.

Calling to his men to bring lanternsfor the night had fallen dark and cloudyCleggett ran towards the

place. Lady Agatha, refusing to remain behind, went with them. Moving lights and a stir of activity at

Morris's, and the gleam of lanterns on board the Annabel Lee, showed Cleggett that his neighbors likewise

But if Cleggett had expected an easy solution of this astonishing eruption he was disappointed. Arrived at the

scene of the explosion, he found that its nature was such as to tease and balk his faculties of analysis. The

blast had blown a hole into the ground, certainly; but this hole was curiously filled. Two large bowlders that

leaned towards each other had stood on top of the ground. These had been split and shattered into many

fragments. A few pieces, like the one that came so near Cleggett, had been flung to a distance, but for the

most part the shivered crowns and broken bulks had been served otherwise; the force of the blast had

disintegrated them, but had not scattered them; the greater part of this newlyrent stone had toppled into the

fissure in the ground, and lay there mixed with earth, almost filling the hole. It was impossible to determine

just where and how the blast had been set off; the rocks hid the facts. But Cleggett judged that the force must

have come from below the bowlders; mightily smitten from beneath, they had collapsed into the cavern

suddenly opening there, as a building might collapse into and fill a cellar. The pieces that had been thrown

high into the air were insignificant in proportion to the great bulk which had settled into the hole and made its

As Cleggett, bewildered, stood and gazed upon the mass of rock and earth, Cap'n Abernethy gave a cry and

pointed at something with his finger. Cleggett, looking at the spot indicated, saw upon the edge of this

singular fracture in the earth a thing that sent a quick chill of horror and repulsion to his heart. It was a dead

hand, roughly severed between the wrist and the elbow. The back of it was uppermost; the fingers were

clenched. Cleggett set down his lantern beside it and turned it over with his foot.

The dead fingers clutched a scrap of something yellow. On one of them was a large and peculiar ring.

"My God!" murmured Lady Agatha, grasping Cleggett convulsively by the shoulder, "that is the Earl of

But Cleggett scarcely realized what she had said, until she repeated her words. Fighting down his repugnance,

Directing Kuroki to remove the ring and bring it along, Cleggett gave his arm to Lady Agatha and led the

way back to the Jasper B. Neither said anything to the point until, seated in the cabin, with the twentydollar

"Certain," she said. "I could not mistake it. There is no other like it, anywhere."

It was a very heavy gold band, set with a large piece of dark green jade which was deeply graven on its

"It might have been, readily enough," she said, "although I had not known that it was. Still, that does not

"There are a number of things unexplained," answered Cleggett, "and the presence of this ring, and the

manner in which it has come into our possession, are not the most mysterious of them. The explosion itself

"The manner in which people get into and out of the hold of your vessel is also obscure," said Lady Agatha.

He picked up the piece of paper money. Something about the feel of it aroused his suspicions. He called

Elmer took the torn bill, produced a penknife, slit the yellow paper, and cut out of it one of the small

hairlike fibers with which the texture of such notes is sprinkled. After wetting this fiber and mangling it

"But what does that explain?" asked Lady Agatha. "Perhaps the Earl of Claiborne came to this country and

took to making counterfeit money in the hold of the Jasper B., into and out of which he stole like a ghost?

Finally he got tired of it and blew himself up with a bomb out there, leaving his ring with a piece of money

intact? Is that the explanation we get out of our facts? Because, you know," she added, as Cleggett did not

"Yes," said Cleggett, still refusing to be amused, "but out of all this jumble of mystery, just one certain thing

She gave him a swift look, and as suddenly dropped her eyes again. Cleggett could not tell whether she was

"The same people," said Cleggett, after a brief pause, "who are so persistently hostile to me are also in some

manner connected with your own misfortunes. Their possession of this ring shows that."

"Yes," she said, following his thought, "that is truewhoever set off that bomb was also wearing this ring, or

was very near the person who was wearing it. And," with a shudder which conveyed to Cleggett that she was

"Perhaps," said Cleggett, "someone was sneaking over from Morris's with the intention of destroying the

Jasper B., and was himself the victim of a premature explosion as he crouched behind the rocks to await his

"But why," puzzled Lady Agatha, with contracted brows, "should a dynamiter, anarchistic or otherwise, be

"We are in the midst of mysteries," he said finally. "They are multiplying about us."

He was about to say more. He was about to express again his belief that they had been flung together by fate.

The sense that their stories were inextricably intertwined, that they must henceforward march on as one

mystery towards a solution, was exhilarating to him. But how was it possible that she should feel the same

sense of pleasure in the fact that they faced dangers, seen and unseen, together?

On deck, Elmer, before returning to the box of Reginald Maltravers, suddenly and unexpectedly grasped

"Bo," he said, "I'm wit' youse. I'm wit' youse the whole way. Any friend of the little dame is a friend of mine.

"Thank you," said Cleggett, more affected than he would have cared to own. "Thank you, my loyal fellow."

Cleggett established a watch on deck that night, with a relief every two hours. Towards morning George

returned, with Dr. Farnsworth and a nurse. This nurse, Miss Antoinette Medley, was a blackeyed, slender

girl with pretty hands and white teeth; she gestured a great deal and smiled often. She and Dr. Farnsworth

devoted themselves at once to the young anarchist poet, who had come out of his stupor, indeed, but was now

The night was not a cheerful one, and morning came gloomily out of a gray bank of mist. Cleggett, as he

looked about the boat in the first pale light, could not resist a slight feeling of depression, courageous as he

was. The wounded man gibbered in a bunk in the forecastle. The box of Reginald Maltravers stood on one

end, leaning against the port side of the cabin, and dripped steadily. Elmer, wrapped in blankets, lay on the

deck near the box of Reginald Maltravers, looking even more dejected in slumber than when his eyes were

open. Teddy, the Pomeranian, was snuggled against Elmer's feet, but, as if a prey to frightful nightmares, the

little dog twitched and whined in his sleep from time to time. These were the apparent facts, and these facts

were set to a melancholy tune by the longdrawn, dismal snores of Cap'n Abernethy, which rose and fell, and

rose and fell, and rose again like the sad and wailing song of some strange bird bereft of a beloved mate.

They were the music for, and the commentary on, what Cleggett beheld; Cap'n Abernethy seemed to be

saying, with these snores: "If you was to ask me, I'd say it ain't a cheerful ship this mornin', Mr. Cleggett, it

But Cleggett's nature was too lively and vigorous to remain clouded for long. By the time the red disk of the

The sun looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisan of integrity and honor. He drew

strength from it. Cleggett, like all poetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena of

The sun did him another office. It showed him a peculiar tableau vivant on the eastern bank of the canal, near

the house boat Annabel Lee. This consisted of three men, two of them naked except for bathing trunks of the

most abbreviated sort, running swiftly and earnestly up and down the edge of the canal. He saw with

astonishment that the two men in bathing suits were handcuffed together, the left wrist of one to the right

wrist of the other. A rope was tied to the handcuffs, and the other end of it was held by the third man, who

was dressed in ordinary tweeds. The third man had a magazine rifle over one shoulder. He followed about

Cleggett perceived that the man who was doing the driving was the same who had watched the Jasper B. so

persistently the day before from the deck of the Annabel Lee. He was middlesized, and inclined to be stout,

and yet he followed his strange team with no apparent effort. Cleggett saw through the glass that he had a

rather heavy black mustache, and was again struck by something vaguely familiar about him. The two men in

bathing suits were slender and undersized; they did not look at all like athletes, and although they moved as

fast as they could it was apparent that they got no pleasure out of it. They ran with their heads hanging down,

and it seemed to Cleggett that they were quarreling as they ran, for occasionally one of them would give a

vicious jerk to the handcuffs that would almost upset the other, and that must have hurt the wrists of both of

As Cleggett watched, the driver pulled them up short, and waved them towards the canal. They stopped, and

it was apparent that they were balking and expostulating. But the driver was inexorable. He went near to them

and threatened their bare backs with the slack of the rope. Gingerly and shiveringly they stepped into the cold

water, while the driver stood on the bank. The water was up to their waists and he had to threaten them again

When he allowed them on shore again they needed no urging, it was evident, to make them hit up a good rate

of speed, and back and forth along the bank they sprinted. But the cold bath had not improved their temper,

for suddenly one of them leaped and kicked sidewise at the other, with the result that both toppled to the

ground. The stout man was upon them in an instant, hazing them with the rope end. He drove them, still

lashing out at each other with their bare feet, into the water again, and after a more prolonged ducking

whipped them, at a plunging gallop, upon the Annabel Lee, where they disappeared from Cleggett's view.

While Cleggett was still wondering what significance could underlie this unusual form of matutinal exercise,

Dr. Farnsworth came out of the forecastle and beckoned to him. The young Doctor had a red Vandyck beard

sedulously cultivated in the belief that it would make him look older and inspire the confidence of patients,

and a shock of dark red hair which he rumpled vigorously when he was thinking. He was rumpling it now.

"Whoever he is, 'Loge' is very much on the mind of our young friend in there," said Farnsworth, with a

movement of his head towards the forecastle. "And I wouldn't be surprised, to judge from the boy's delirium,

if 'Loge' had something to do with all the hell that's been raised around your ship. Come in and listen to this

Miss Medley, the nurse, was sitting beside the wounded youth's bunk, endeavoring to soothe and restrain

him. The young anarchist, whose eyes were bright with fever, was talking rapidly in a weak but highpitched

"He's off on the poems again," said the Doctor, after listening a moment. "But wait, he'll get back to Loge. It's

"I spit upon your flag," shrilled Giuseppe Jones, feebly declamatory. "'I spitI spitbut, as I spit, I weep.'"

He paused for a moment, and then began at the beginning and repeated all of the lines which Cleggett had

"'I spit upon the whole damned thing!'" he shrilled, and then with a sad shake of his head: "But, as I spit, I

If the poem was Giuseppe's favorite poem, this was evidently his favorite line, for he said it over and over

again"'But, as I spit, I weep'"in a breathless babble that was very wearing on the nerves.

But suddenly he interrupted himself; the poems seemed to pass from his mind. "Loge!" he said, raising

himself on his elbow and staring, with a frown not at, but through, Cleggett: "Loganit isn't square!"

There was suffering and perplexity in his gaze; he was evidently living over again some painful scene.

Watching him, it was impossible not to understand that the struggle, which his delirium made real and

present again, had stamped itself into the texture of his spirit. "You shouldn't ask it, Loge," he said. The crisis

of the conflict which he was living over passed presently, and he murmured, with contracted brows, and as if

But after a moment of this he returned again to a rapid repetition of the phrase: "I'm a revolutionist, not a

crooknot a crooknot a crooka revolutionist, not a crook, Loge, not a crook" Once he varied it,

crying with a quick, hot scorn: "I'll cut their throats and be damned to them, but don't ask me to steal." And

then he was off again to declaiming his poetry: "I spit, but, as I spit, I weep!"

But as Cleggett and the Doctor listened to him the youth's ravings suddenly took a new form. He ceased to

babble; terror expanded the pupils of his eyes and he pointed at vacancy with a shaking finger. "Stop it!" he

cried in a croaking whisper. "Stop it! It's his skullit's Loge's skull come alive. Stop it, I say, it's come alive

and getting bigger." With a violent effort he raised himself before the nurse could prevent him, shrinking

back from the horrid hallucination which pressed towards him, and then fell prone and senseless on the bunk.

"God!his wounds!" cried the Doctor, starting forward. As Farnsworth had feared, they had broken open

and were bleeding again. "It's a ticklish thing," said Farnsworth, rumpling his hair. "If I give him enough

sedative to keep him quiet his heart may stop any time. If I don't, he'll thrash himself to pieces in his delirium

But Cleggett scarcely heeded the Doctor. The reference to "Loge's" skull had flashed a sudden light into his

mind. Whatever else "Loge" was, Cleggett had little doubt that "Loge" was the tall man with the stoop

shoulders and the odd, skullshaped scarfpin, for whom he had conceived at first sight such a tingling

hatredthe same fellow who had so ruthlessly manhandled the flaxenhaired Heinrich on the roof of the

At seven o'clock that morning five bigbodied 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

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 followedin fact, every conceivable

thing necessary to convert the Jasper B. from a hulk into a properly rigged schooner. Cleggett, with a pith and

"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

Cleggett was like the Romanoffs in his ability to go straight to the point, but he had none of the Romanoff

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

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 eighto'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 himthose lyrics which are at once so romantic and so irreproachable

"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

"Barge!" The word "barge" struck Cleggett unexpectedly; he was not aware that he had given a start and

"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"

"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

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 bruteit 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 temperand that, too, after she had repeatedly expressed her

"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 work. 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

"There's going to be a frightful racket around here today," he said presently. "Maybe you'd like to get away

"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.

She ran into the stateroom and was back in an instant with her hat, which she pinned on as she spoke.

"After what you've done for me I insist upon my right to share whatever danger there may be." She spoke

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

"You would scarcely forbid me to go to Morris's today, or anywhere else I may choose," she said hotly, with

"That is exactly what I intend to do," said Cleggett, with an intensity equal to her own, "FORBID you."

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

"You've the temper of a sultan, Mr. Cleggett," she said with a laugh, which was her signal of capitulation.

"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.

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

"Maybe you are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth:

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

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

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 diningroom, 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

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 verandahall 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 respectsalthough Cleggett would never under any

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;

"See what the gentleman wants, Pierre," said the bartender in a voice too elaborately casual to hide his

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

selfappreciation, 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.

"Era 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

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 oathand never stopping to reflect that it was perhaps just the

sort of action which Pierre hoped to provokegrasped his cane with the intention of laying it across the

But at that instant the door from the office opened and the man whom he knew only as Loge entered the

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

"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."

"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?"

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

"On the contrary," said Cleggett, playing the game with a face like a mask, "my nerves are so steady that I

could snip that uglylooking 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 that _I_ couldn'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

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 scarfpinor 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 lefthanded compliments, when

"I have been waiting to hear what you had to say to me," said Cleggett, without being in the least thrown off

"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

"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?"

"To come to the point," said Loge, "I want to buy her from you. What will you take for her?"

"You want to buy her?" he said. "You want to buy the old hulk over yonder in the canal?" He laughed, but

There was a trace of surliness in Loge's voice as he answered: "YOU were enough interested in her to buy

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

"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

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

"You might be willing to pay as much as $5,000 for herfor 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

Cleggett fumbled with his fingers in a waistcoat pocket, drew out the torn piece of counterfeit money which

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

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.

"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

"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

"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,

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

"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 talkand 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

"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

"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.

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.

A sharp metallic click overhead gave point to Loge's words. Looking up, Cleggett saw that a trapdoor 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

"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

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 eyeif you move a hair's breadthI'll put a

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

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

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 midthigh 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

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

"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

"Do you want to go to Palestine?" asked Cleggett of Mr. Calthrop, who stood with downcast eyes and fingers

"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

"She sung in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks

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 thirtyor 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

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

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

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

"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."

"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

postcombining 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

"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

"She is ready to sail," said Cleggett, standing by the new wheel with a swelling heart, and sweeping the

It was a look almost paternal in its pride; Cleggett loved the Jasper B. She was an idea that no one else but

"Oh, nothing," said Mr. Watkins. "It's none of my business. My business was to do the work I was hired to do

"Can't say I thought," said Mr. Watkins. "I took the job, and I done it. Had an idea mebby you were in the

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 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. _I_ never seen him sail anything. I never heard him play the violin, neither, for that matter, and he may

"Meaning I ain't paid to be fresh, eh?" said Mr. Watkins. "And right you are, too. And there's all that junk

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 threequarters 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Story of How he Broke up the Gigantic Smuggling

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

As he swept by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man who has delivered himself of a

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

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 manof worldwide fame, and reputed to possess an almost miraculous instinct in the

unraveling of criminal mysteriesmight 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

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

Loge himself was a puzzle to Cleggett. The man was a counterfeiter. That he knew. The "queer"

twentydollar 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.

Convinced that the unpainted oblong box would furnish a clew to the man's real personality, Cleggett,

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

"Elementary textbooks," said Dr. Farnsworth, glancing at them. On the flyleaf of one of them was written in a

"Logeor Logan Black," said Dr. Farnsworth, "has been giving himself an education in the manufacture of

"But THESE aren't textbooks," said Lady Agatha, who had pulled out three long, narrow volumes from the

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

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

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

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

"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 diaryit had to come out of him! And then, timid and cautious as he was, he

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 selflove, 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

"This man," said Dr. Farnsworth, with a shudder, "actually has the ambition to be the head of nothing less

"It seems to be something more than an ambition," said Cleggett. "It seems to be almost an accomplished

"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

foundand could imagine the grimace of malevolent satisfaction with which it had been writtenthis 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

Cleggett recalled the manhandling Heinrich had received. A little farther along he came upon this entry:

The ItalianAmerican boy is a find. Jones and Giuseppe! Puritan father, Italian motherand 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: "Yeshe 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

"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.

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

"He will go to any length to get this back into his possession," said Cleggett, as he dumped the heap of

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

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

"My friendsfor I hope we stand in the relation of friends as well as that of commander and crewI 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

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.

"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

"Aye, aye, sir," said George the Greek, addressing the nautical commander, and the word went from lip to lip.

And the Reverend Mr. Calthrop remarked with a sigh: "You may have cause to doubt my circumspection,

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

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

"Mr. Cleggett," said Lady Agatha, rising when he had finished, and speaking with animation, "will you

She went on, without waiting for an answer: "It is this: Choose your own ground for this battle! The Jasper B.

is now a fullrigged 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

As the brilliance of this plan flashed upon her hearers, applause ran around the room, and Kuroki, who spoke

"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

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

At the outset a slight difficulty presented itself with regard to the anchorsfor 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

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

"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, lowlying 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 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

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,

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

Thus the booms were held fast and stiff in position, and the crew could get the canvas spread without being

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

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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,

"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

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

"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

"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 oneit's loaded."

Just then the lightning came again and showed her to him plainly. Drenched, barearmed, 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

"Agatha," shouted Cleggett, catching her by the wrist, "go to the cabin at onceyou will get yourself killed!"

"I love you!" cried Cleggett, beside himself with fear for her, and scarcely knowing what his words were. "Do

A bullet ripped its way through the bulwark, perforated the zinc bucket, struck the gun which Lady Agatha

"Go to the cabin yourself!" she shouted in Cleggett's ear. "As for me, I like it!"

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

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

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 next instant all was dark; her arms were around his neck in the rain. "Oh, Clement," she sobbed, "I've

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

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 oncoming 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 snowwhite horsesastounding, 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

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

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 deckhorses 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

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

"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 lightthe storm was now

subsiding, and the lightning was less frequentand 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

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.

"Ah yo' Mistah Cleggett, sah? Mistah Clement J. Cleggett, sah, the ownah of dis hyeah boat?"

The negro fumbled in an inner pocket and produced a card. He gave it to Cleggett with a deferential bow, and

"Miss Genevieve Pringle, sahin de cahage, saha callin' on Mistah Clement J. Cleggett."

He completed the announcement with a dignified and courtly gesture, which seemed to indicate that he was

"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,

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 highpitched feminine voice

"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

"Thank you, Jefferson," she said. "I fear I am very much bruised and shaken, but I have been feeling all my

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.

"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

At that moment Lady Agatha joined the group. As the light fell upon her Miss Pringle stepped forward and

"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

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

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

They were pursued by the man whom Cleggett had seen attempt to escape from Morris's. This man still wore

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

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

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 highpitched, nasal, querulous voice. Cleggett noticed

with astonishment that a singlebarreled 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

"Clement!" Lady Agatha laid her hand upon his arm. "Miss Pringle wants to see you in the cabin."

"Wellimposter!" laughed Cleggett. "Is she able to talk to you yet? And what on earth did she mean by her

"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

"That box," she said, "was shipped to me from Flatbush, and was claimed in my namein the name of

Genevieve Pringleat 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

"Mr. Cleggett," she said, "my birthday occurred a few days ago. It wasI have nothing to conceal, Mr.

Cleggettit was my fortyninth birthday. Every year, for many years past, a niece of mine who lives in

"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

Miss Pringle suddenly broke off; her face twitched; she felt for a handkerchief, and found none; she wiped

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

"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

Lady Agatha impulsively sat down beside the elder woman and put her arm about her. But Miss Pringle

"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

"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.

"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

"The Jasper B.," said Cleggett, with a touch of asperity, "is a schooner, madam."

"I intended no offense, Mr. Cleggett. I am quite willing to believe that the vessel is a schooner, since you say

that it is. I am not informed concerning nautical affairs. But, to concludeI 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

Miss Pringle, during this recital, had not deigned to favor Lady Agatha with a look. Lady Agatha, on her part,

"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

"Miss Pringle," said Lady Agatha, "I will tell you everything. I DID claim a box in your name at the railway

goods station in Newarkand if there had been nothing in it but plum preserves, how happy I should be! I

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

For answer Lady Agatha went to one of her trunks and opened it. She drew therefrom a letter, and passed it

As Miss Pringle read it, her face lighted up. She did not lose her primness, but her suspicion seemed

"A letter from Emmeline Pankhurst!" she said, in a hushed voice, handling the missive as if it were a sacred

"There is nothing to forgive," beamed Lady Agatha. "I am willing to admit, now that you understand me, that

"You have suffered for the cause," said Miss Pringle. "I have suffered for it, too!" And, with a certain

"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,

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,

But even as he turned upon his heel to go on deck and give the order, Dr. Farnsworth and the Rev. Simeon

"The box of Reginald Maltravers," cried the Doctor, who was in Cleggett's confidence, "is gone!"

"Gone!" Lady Agatha, who had emerged from her stateroom, turned pale and caught at her heart.

They rushed on deck. The young Doctor was right; the box, which had stood on the larboard side of the

"It might have been blown into the canal during the storm," suggested the Rev. Mr. Calthrop. All of the crew

of the Jasper B. knew Lady Agatha's story, and were aware of the importance of the box.

"It was on the lee side of the cabin," objected Dr. Farnsworth, "and while it might have been blown flat to the

deck, in spite of its protected position, it would scarcely have been picked up by the wind again and wafted

"If you was to ask me," said Cap'n Abernethy, who had joined in the discussion, "I'd give it as MY opinion

"Rubbish?" said Miss Pringle. "Rubbish, indeed! I am confident that that box contained my plum preserves!"

"It has been stolen!" cried Cleggett, with conviction. "Fool that I was, not to have taken it into the cabin!"

"But, if you had, you know," said Lady Agatha, "one would scarcely have cared to stay in there with it."

"Loge has outgeneraled me," murmured Cleggett, wellnigh frantic with selfreproach. "While he made the

attack in front, he sent some of his men to the rear of the vessel and it was quietly made off with while we

were fighting." Had the disappearance of the box concerned himself alone Cleggett's sense of disaster might

have been less poignant. But the thought that his own carelessness had enabled the enemy to get possession

of a thing likely to involve Lady Agatha in further trouble was nearly insupportable. He gritted his teeth and

"No doubt Loge caught sight of it during the early part of the skirmish, by a flash of lightning," said Dr.

Farnsworth, "and acted as you suggest, Mr. Cleggett. But does he believe it to be the box which contains the

"No matter which," groaned Cleggett, "no matter which! For when he opens it, he will learn what is in it.

Don't you see that he has us now? If he offers to trade it back to us for the other oblong box, how can I

But Dr. Farnsworth was not listening. He had suddenly leaned over the port rail and was staring down the

The house boat Annabel Lee, they perceived, had got under weigh, and was slowly approaching the Jasper B.

in the moonlight. They watched her gradual approach in silence. She stopped within a few yards of the Jasper

B., and a voice which Cleggett recognized as that of Wilton Barnstable, the great detective, sang out:

Cleggett did not answer, and for a moment he did not move. Then, tightening his sword belt, and cocking his

hat a trifle, he climbed over the starboard rail and walked along the bank of the canal a few yards until he was

opposite the Annabel Lee. The great detective, on his part, also stepped ashore. They stood and faced each

other in the moonlight, silently, and their followers, also in silence, gathered in the bows of the respective

Finally, Cleggett, with one hand on his hip, and standing with his feet wide apart, said very incisively:

"The Jasper B.," pursued Cleggett, staring steadily at Wilton Barnstable, "is a schooner."

There was another silence, in which neither man would look aside; they held each other with their eyes; the

nervous strain communicated itself to the crews of the two vessels. At last, however, the detective, although

he did not lower his gaze, and although he strove to give his new attitude an effect of ease and jauntiness by

"None at all," said Cleggett, heartily enough, now that the point had been established. And the tension relaxed

"You have lost an oblong box, Mr. Cleggett." The great detective affirmed it rather than interrogated.

The other laughed. "We know a great many thingsit is our business to know things," he said. Then he

dropped his voice to a whisper, and said rapidly, "Mr. Cleggett, do you know who I am?" Before Cleggett

could reply he continued, "Brace yourselfdo not make an outcry when I tell you who I am. I am Wilton

"I knew you," said Cleggett. The other appeared disappointed for a moment. And then he inquired anxiously,

The detective brightened perceptibly. "Ah, yesthe magazines! Yes, yes, indeed! publicity is unavoidable,

The great detective interrupted himself to laugh again, a trifle complacently, Cleggett thought.

"I will not mystify you, Mr. Cleggett, about the box. Mystification is one of the tricks of the older schools of

detection. I never practice it, Mr. Cleggett. With me, the detection of crime is a businessyes, a business. I

"It IS in your possession?" Cleggett felt a dull pang of the heart. If the box of Reginal Maltravers were in the

hands of Logan Black he could at least trade the other oblong box to Loge for it, and thus save Lady Agatha.

But in the possession of Wilton Barnstable, the great detective! Cleggett pulled himself together; he

thought rapidly; he recognized that the situation called, above all things else, for diplomacy and adroitness.

The other laughed again as if Cleggett had made an excellent jest; there was something urbane and benign in

his manner; it appeared as if he regarded the contents of the box of Reginald Maltravers as anything but

"Suppose I bring the box on board the Jasper B.," suggested the great detective. "It interests me, that box. I

have no doubt it has its story. And perhaps, while you are telling me some things about it, I may be able to

There was no mistaking the fact that the man, whether genuinely friendly or no, wished to appear so.

A few minutes later Wilton Barnstable, Cleggett, Lady Agatha, Miss Pringle, and two of Wilton Barnstable's

men sat in the cabin of the Jasper B., with the two oblong boxes before themthe one which had contained

Loge's incriminating diary, and the one which had caused Lady Agatha so much trouble.

In the light of the cabin the three detectives were revealed as startlingly alike. Barton Ward and Watson Bard,

Barnstable's two assistants, might, indeed, almost have been taken for Barnstable himself, at a casual glance.

In height, in bulk, in dress, in facial expression, they seemed Wilton Barnstable all over again. But, looking

intently at the three men, Cleggett began to perceive a difference between the real Wilton Barnstable and his

two counterfeits. It was the difference between the face which is informed of genius, and the countenance

"Mr. Cleggett," began Wilton Barnstable, "as I said before, I will make no attempt to mystify you. I was a

witness to the attack upon your vessel. Mr. Ward, Mr. Bard, and myself, in fact, had determined to assist you,

had we seen that the combat was going against you. We lay, during the struggle, in the lee of

youryourer, schooner!in the lee of your schooner, armed, and ready to bear a hand. We have our own

little matter to settle with Logan Black. Why Logan Black should desire possession of this particular box, I

am unable to state. Nevertheless, at the moment when he was leading his assault upon your starboard bow,

two of his men, who had made a detour to the stern of your vessel, had clambered stealthily aboard, and were

quietly pushing the box over the side into the canal. They let themselves down into the water, and swam

towards the mouth of the canal, pushing it ahead of them. We followed in our rowboat, Mr. Ward, Mr. Bard,

and myself, at a discreet distance. We let them push the box as far south as the Annabel Lee. And then"

He paused a moment, and smiled reminiscently. Barton Ward and Watson Bard also smiled reminiscently,

"Then, to be brief, we took the box away from them. They were so illadvised as to struggle. They are in

"But what I cannot understand, Mr. Cleggett, is why these men should risk so much to make off with an

And, indeed, except for a few wads of wet excelsior, there was nothing in the box of Reginald Maltravers.

"Where, indeed?" repeated Wilton Barnstable. And Barton Ward and Watson Bard, although they did not

speak aloud, stroked their mustaches and their lips formed the ejaculation, "Where, indeed?"

"We will tell you everything," said Cleggett. And beginning with his purchase of the Jasper B. he recounted

rapidly, but with sufficient detail, all the facts with which the reader is already familiar, weaving into his

story the tale of Lady Agatha and the adventures of Miss Pringle. Wilton Barnstable listened attentively. So

did Barton Ward and Watson Bard. The benign smile which was so characteristic of Wilton Barnstable never

left the three faces, but it was evident to Cleggett that these trained intelligences grasped and weighed and

While Cleggett narrates, and Wilton Barnstable and his men listen, a word to the reader concerning this great

Wilton Barnstable was the inventor of a new school of detection of crime. The system came in with him, and

it may go out with him for lack of a man of his genius to perpetuate it. He insisted that there was nothing

spectacular or romantic in the pursuit of the criminal, or, at least, that there should be nothing of the sort. And

he was especially disgusted when anyone referred to him as "a second Sherlock Holmes."

"I am only a plain business man," he would insist, urbanely, with a wave of his hand. "I have merely brought

order, method, system, business principles, logic, to the detection of crime. I know nothing of romance.

Romance is usually all nonsense in my estimation. The real detective, who gets results in real life, is NOT a

The enemies of Wilton Barnstable sometimes said of him that he was jealous of Sherlock Holmes. When this

was reported to Barnstable he invariably remarked: "How preposterous! The idea of a man being envious of a

Perhaps his denial of the existence of romance was merely one of those poses which geniuses so often permit

themselves. Perhaps he saw it and was thrilled with it even while he denied it. At any rate, he lived in the

midst of it. The realism which was his metier was that sort of realism into which are woven facts and

And, certainly, behind the light blue eyes that could look with such apparent ingenuousness out of his plump,

bland face there was the subtle mind of a psychologist. Barnstable, true to his attitude of the plain business

man, would have been the first to ridicule the idea publicly if anyone had dubbed him "the psychological

detective." That, to his mind, would have savored of charlatanism. He would have said: "I am nothing so

strange and mystifying as thatI am a plain business man." But in reality there was no new discovery of the

investigating psychologists of which he did not avail himself at once. His ability to clothe himself with the

thoughts of the criminal as an actor clothes himself with a role, was marvelous; he knew the criminal soul.

That is to say, he knew the human soul. He refused to see anything extraordinary in this. "It is only my

business to know such things," he would say. "We know many things. It is our business to know them. There

is no miracle about it." This was the public character he had created for himself, and emphasizedthat of the

plain business man. This was his mask. He was so subtle that he hid the vast range of his powers behind an

Wilton Barnstable never disguised himself, in the ordinary sense of the term. That is, he never resorted to

But if Wilton Barnstable were to walk into a convention of blacksmiths, let us say, he would quite escape

attention. For before he had been ten minutes in that gathering he would become, to all appearances, the

typical blacksmith. If he were to enter a gathering of bankers, or barbers, or bakers, or organ grinders, or

stockbrokers, or schoolteachers, a similar thing would happen. He could make himself the composite

photograph of all the individuals of any group. He disguised himself from the inside out.

This art of becoming inconspicuous was one of his greatest assets as a detective. Newspaper and magazine

writers would have liked to dwell upon it. But he requested them not to emphasize it. As he modestly

narrated his triumphs to the young journalists, who hung breathless upon his words, he was careful not to

stress his talent for becoming just like anybody and everybody elsehis peculiar genius for being the

The front which he presented to the world was, in reality, his cleverest creation. The magazine and newspaper

articles which were written about him, the many pictures which were printed every month, presented the

mental and physical portrait of a knowing, bustling, extraordinarily candid personality. A personality with a

touch of smugness in it. This was very generally thought to be the real Wilton Barnstable. It was a fiction

which he had succeeded in establishing. When he addressed meetings, talked with reporters, wrote articles

about himself, or came into touch with the public in any manner, he assumed this personality. When he did

not wish to be known he laid it aside. When he desired to pass incognito, therefore, it was not necessary for

The two men with him, Barton Ward and Watson Bard, were his cleverest agents. They were learning from

the master detective the art of looking like other people, and were at present practicing by looking like the

popular conception of Wilton Barnstable. They were clever men. But Barton Ward and Watson Bard were, as

Cleggett had felt at once, only men of extraordinary talent, while Wilton Barnstable was a genius.

As Cleggett talked he was given a rather startling proof of Wilton Barnstable's gift. He was astonished to find

a change stealing over Wilton Barnstable's features. Subtly the detective began to look like someone else. The

expression of the face, the turn of the eyes, the lines about the mouth, began to suggest someone whom

Cleggett knew. It was rather a suggestion, an impression, than a likeness; it was rather the spirit of a

personality than a definite resemblance. It was a psychic thing. Barnstable was disguising himself from the

Cleggett could not think at first who it was that Wilton Barnstable suggested. But presently he saw that it was

himself. He glanced at Barton Ward and Watson Bard; they still resembled the popular conception of Wilton

Gradually the look of Cleggett faded from Wilton Barnstable's face. It changed, it shifted, that look did;

Cleggett almost cried out as he saw the face of Wilton Barnstable become an impressionistic portrait of the

soul of Logan Black. He looked at Barton Ward. Barton Ward was now looking like Wilton Barnstable's

conception of Cleggett. But Watson Bard, less facile and less creative, still clung stolidly to the popular

But, even as Cleggett looked, this remarkable exhibition ceased; the Wilton Barnstable look dominated the

faces again. Plump, yet dignified, smiling easily and kindly, three plain business men looked at him;

respectable citizens, commonplace citizens, a little smug; faces that spoke of comfort, method, regularity;

eyes that seemed to wink with the pressure of platitudes in the minds behind them; platitudes that desired to

Yes, such was the genius of Wilton Barnstable that he could at will impose himself upon people as the

apotheosis of the commonplace. He did it often. It was almost second nature to him now. His urbane smile

was the only visible sign of his own enjoyment of this habitual feat. He knew his own genius, and smiled to

"I think," said Wilton Barnstable, when Cleggett had finished, "that I may be able to clear up a few points for

"The two men whom you saw me hazing up and down the bank of the canal, and whom you saw again

tonight, followed by the man in the baby blue silk pajamas, were Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat!"

"Wretches indeed," said Wilton Barnstable, Barton Ward, and Watson Bard, in unison, and with conviction.

"And the man in the baby blue silk pajamas, was" the great detective paused, as if to make his

revelation more effective. And while he paused, Miss Genevieve Pringle, with pursed lips and averted face,

signified that the very idea of introducing a man in baby blue silk pajamas into the conversation was intensely

She opened her mouth again as if to say something more, but words failed her, and she only stared at the

Cleggett went to her and touched her on the arm, and with the touch she gave a sob of emotion and found her

She endeavored to control herself, but for a moment or two she trembled. It was evident that it was all she

could do to keep from crying hysterically with relief. The nightmare that had haunted her for days had

And as if quietly satisfied with the sensation they had produced, the three detectives smiled at each other

"Reginald Maltravers came to my agency some days ago and requested a bodyguard. Dopey Eddie and Izzy

the Cat had attacked him, no doubt intending to earn the money which Elmer had promised them. He beat

"Mr. Ward here, who handled the case, soon reported to me that he believed Reginald Maltravers to be

"Insane he was," cried Lady Agatha. "I have seen the light of insanity in his eye, gleaming through his

accursed monocle." She spoke with vehemence. Now that she knew the man to be alive, her hatred of him

"Insane he was," agreed Wilton Barnstable. "And shortly after that discovery was made, he disappeared. The

next day after his disappearance, Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat were liberally supplied with money.

"Of course they got the money, Lady Agatha, through the clever trick they worked upon you."

"A great many people have got money from me since I have been in America," said Lady Agatha.

"Ah! Yes?" The great detective went on with his masterly summing up. "Of course they got the money from

the trick they worked on Lady Agatha. But at the time I thought it possible that they had robbed Reginald

"I took them into custody and determined to hold them until such time as Reginald Maltravers would be

found, or his fate discovered. Eventually I brought them with me on my house boat. I was really holding them

without due legal warrant, but I am forced to do that, sometimes. They complained of lack of exercise, so I

"One of my agents, shortly after this, picked up the trail of Reginald Maltravers again. When I learned that he

was alive my first impulse was to release Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat. But I learned that the two gunmen

could, if they would, give me a tip as to certain of the activities of Logan Black, against whom I have been

"Reginald Maltravers, most of the time that you were riding about the country, Lady Agatha, with the box

that you thought contained him, was really following you. He would lose your trail and find it again, but he

was always some hours behind you. Of course, he knew nothing of the oblong box. He thought that you were

running away from him. And all the time that Reginald Maltravers was following you, agents of mine were

"Lady Agatha," interrupted Cleggett, "was also being pursued by Miss Pringle here."

Wilton Barnstable carefully made a note in a little book which he drew from his waistcoat pocket. Barton

Ward also made a note in a little book, Watson Bard started to make a note, and then paused; in fact, Watson

Bard did not complete his note until he had gotten a peep into the notebook of Barton Ward. The notes made,

the three detectives once more smiled craftily at each other, and Wilton Barnstable resumed:

"We knew, of course, that another lady was also following Lady Agatha. But, until the present moment, we

had not identified her with Miss Pringle. And I should not be at all surprised, not at ALL surprised, if still

"The motive, my dear lady, I must for the present withhold," said Wilton Barnstable. And again the three

"Reginald Maltravers' pursuit of you, Lady Agatha, led him to Fairport," went on the great sleuth. "No doubt

he met the driver of the vehicle which brought you hither, and learned that you and Elmer had been set down

in this neighborhood, just as Miss Pringle learned it. No doubt it was well after dark when he arrived in the

vicinity of the Jasper B. And it is to be supposed that, once out here, he went to Morris's road house, thinking

it quite likely that you and Elmer would stop there, as he had been tracking you from road house to road

house. Logan Black, knowing that the authorities were on his trail, mistook Reginald Maltravers for a

detective, and held him prisoner at Morris's. Logan Black's men took away his clothes in order to minimize

"Of course, Reginald Maltravers was wearing it, and of course they took his valuables from him," said

Barnstable. "One of the ruffians was wearing the ring as he approached your vessel with a bomb. But, Mr.

Cleggett, there are points about that bomb explosion which I do not understand."

"We will clear them up later," said the great detective, smiling benignly at his thumbs, which he was

"Later!" smiled Barton Ward. "Later!" murmured Watson Bard. With their hands clasped over their

"Tonight," pursued Barnstable, "having finally got all the information I wished from Dopey Eddie and Izzy

the Cat with regard to Logan Black, I tossed them the key to their irons and told them to unlock themselves

and clear out. It was just before the storm began, and they were sitting on the bank of the canal at the time. I

"But before they could unlock themselves Reginald Maltravers, who had, we must suppose, escaped from

Morris's through the carelessness of one of Logan Black's subordinates, crawled up the bank of the canal,

which he had swum, and made for the two gunmen, with the water dripping from his eyeglass. He had

recognized them as the men who had dogged and assaulted him, and every other idea was obliterated in his

"They fled. He pursued. He caught them, and they fought. They succeeded in dropping one of the iron balls

As this mention of the bunion, Miss Genevive Pringle arose with dignity, and, flinging a shawl about her

shoulders, left the cabin, chin in air. She did not vouchsafe so much as one backward glance at Cleggett or the

three detectives or lady Agatha as she left, but outraged propriety was expressed in every line of her figure.

"H'm," mused the detective, flushing slightly; and Watson Bard and Barton Ward also colored a little, and

looked hacked. They glanced furtively at Lady Agatha, to see if she too might be offended.

"Proceed, Mr. Barnstable," she said a little impatiently. "Bunions don't bother me, either mentally or

physically. I am familiar with the idea of bunions. There are many bunions in the Claiborne family."

"On his bunion foot, crippling him," resumed the detective, reassured. "The storm came up, and still the

gunmen fled, and still Reginald Maltravers pursued. I suppose, since you saw them on the west side of the

canal, Mr. Cleggett, that they had run around the north end of it. Probably, while you and Logan Black were

fighting, they were running up and down in the neighborhood, in the storm, intent only upon their own feud."

"They certainly seemed exhausted when I saw them," said Cleggett, "all three of them. But if you will permit

me to say so, the astuteness with which you are reconstructing this case compels my admiration."

Wilton Barnstable bowed, and Barton Ward and Watson Bard slightly inclined their heads.

At the name of Sherlock Holmes a shade passed over the face of Wilton Barnstable. He slightly compressed

his lips, and his eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. This shade was reflected on the faces of Barton Ward

and Watson Bard. There was a moment of silence, but presently Wilton Barnstable continued, repressing a

"I thought at first, Mr. Cleggett, that you were an ally of Logan Black's, just as you believed me to be his ally,

and as he believed you and me to be working together. It may interest you to know that smuggling has been

one of his side lines. There is, somewhere hereabouts, a cave in which smuggled goods are stored. These

coasts have a sinister history, Mr. Cleggett. It is possible that your canal boatI beg your pardon, your

schooner, Mr. Cleggettplayed some part in their smuggling operations. At any rate it is evident that Logan

Black transferred to the hold of this vessel the incriminating evidence against him, contained in that oblong

box, when he learned that my agents were watching Morris's. The Jasper B. has been lying in her present

position for a long time. In the event that a sudden getaway from Morris's became necessary, it was an

advantage to Logan Black to be able to leave without being hampered with this matter. No one, for many

years, had paid any attention to the Jasper B., with the exception of the old truck farmer, Abernethy, who

"Why, no, I believe not," said Barnstable. "At least I never heard so. He is well known as a small truck

gardener in this neighborhood. It is true that he comes of a seafaring familyindeed, it is his boast. But, in a

community where nearly everyone knows a little about boats, I believe that Abernethy is remarkable for an

"He does not understand boats," said Barnstable. "That is the reason, I take it, why he has always fished in the

"Abernethy is a gallant man," said Cleggett, rather sternly. "And even although he may have had little actual

seafaring experience, the instinct is in him! The inherited love of a nautical life has been latent in him all

along. And at the first opportunity it has come out. He has shown his mettle aboard the Jasper B. "

"I do not doubt it, if you insist upon it," said Wilton Barnstable, politely. And from revolving his thumbs

benignly towards himself he began to revolve them urbanely from himself. The reversal was imitated at once

by Barton Ward, but Watson Bard was slower in putting this new coup into execution.

"The resemblance between the two oblong boxes evidently fooled Logan Black," continued Barnstable, "and

his men stole the wrong one. but he knows by this time that his plan to get the box has failed."

"From the bank of the canal he witnessed our capture of the box, and of the two men who were making off

with it. After you had beaten off his assault upon the ship, he turned his attention to the canal, to see if the

men whom he had assigned to the job of creeping over the stern of the Jasper B. had by any chance

succeeded in purloining the box. He was alone, but he attempted to come to the assistance of his two

Indeed, his smile became one of amusement as he removed his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and exhibited

"It is only a slight wound," he said, beaming on it as if wounds were quite delightful affairs, "and scarcely

Barton Ward and Watson Bard, with their sleeves rolled up, were also smiling placidly and indulgently at

bandages about their left arms. Whether there were real wounds beneath their bandages also, Cleggett could

not determine. The bandage of Barton Ward was slightly stained with red, but the bandage of Watson Bard

was quite white. All three replaced their coats at the same time, and Wilton Barnstable went on:

"Our course of procedure is plain, Mr. Cleggett. We have the evidence against Logan Black. We must have

the man himself. I depend upon you to cooperate with me. I think," he said, beaming at Barton Ward and

Watson Bard with an air of modest triumph, "that the case of Logan Black is going to prove one of my really

"There is only one point which I have not yet made clear to you, I believeand that is how Logan Black's

men were able to enter and leave the hold of your vessel so mysteriously. But I am shaping up my theory

"For my part, I can make nothing of it, and I should be glad to hear your theory."

"It would," said Wilton Barnstable, soberly, "it would be premature, if I told you my theory at the present

moment. You must pardon mebut it WOULD. In my line of businessand I insist, Mr. Cleggett, that I am

a plain business man, nothing moreI find it absolutely necessary not to communicate all my information to

the layman until the case is quite perfect in all its points. But do not get the notion, Mr. Cleggett, that I

underestimate the part that you have taken in the case of Logan Black. You have helped me, Mr. Cleggett.

When I have my secretary prepare the case of Logan Black for magazine and newspaper publication I shall

have your name mentioned as that of a person who has helped me. Yes, you have helped me."

As he spoke he picked from a reading table a magazine, on the cover of which appeared his own portraitor

rather, the portrait of the popular conception of Wilton Barnstableand began to make motions about it with

his finger. He appeared to be marking off the space beside the portrait into an arrangement of letters and

spaces. His lips moved as he did so; he murmured: "The Case of Logan Blackthe Case of Logan Black!"

He seemed to see, with the eye of a typographical expert, the legend printed there. Barton Ward and Watson

Bard, slightly flushed and a little excited in spite of themselves, seemed also to see it there.

It might have occurred to a person more critical than Cleggett that it was he himself who had furnished nearly

all the real evidence upon which Wilton Barnstable was constructing this Case of Logan Black. But Cleggett

looked for the gold in men, not the dross; the great qualities of Wilton Barnstable appealed to his

imagination; the best in Cleggett responded to the best in Wilton Barnstable; if the detective possessed a

"Decidedly," said Wilton Barnstable, laying down the magazine, and looking at Cleggett kindly and serenely,

"I shall see to it that your name is mentioned in connection with the Case of Logan Black." And Barton Ward

Cleggett was about to thank them, but at that moment there was a commotion of some sort on deck.

Two female voices, one of which they all recognized as that of Miss Genevieve Pringle, were mingling in a

babble of greeting, expostulation, interjection, and explanation, and presently Miss Pringle entered the cabin,

"My niece, Miss Henrietta Pringle, of Flatbush," said Miss Pringle, primly presenting her prim relation. "She

And Captain Abernethy and George the Greek bore into the cabin a third oblong box, exactly similar in

appearance to the box of Reginald Maltravers and the box which contained the evidence against Logan Black,

The three detectives stood and looked at the three boxes with an air of great satisfaction.

"With this addition to our oblong boxes," said Wilton Barnstable, "their number is now complete. Miss

There was little to tell, and Miss Henrietta Pringle told it in a breath. Having received no acknowledgment of

the receipt of the plum preserves from her aunt, an unusual oversight on her aunt's part, she had journeyed to

"Arrived in Newark," she said, "I learned that my aunt, with her two white horses and her family carriage

driven by Jefferson, the negro coachmen, had suddenly left Newark, without giving any explanation to

"The proceeding was very strange; it was very unlike my aunt, and I was frightened. Everyone who had seen

her start testified that she was laboring under a great nervous strain of some sort.

"I called at the freight depot and got the box of plum preserves which I had shipped to her. To tell the truth, I

feared for her reason. I thought that if I could find her, and could show her the familiar plum preserves, which

she loved so well, they would be of material assistance in influencing her to return to her home. So, setting

out to search for her in my Ford auto, I took the box of plum preserves with me.

"I soon got upon her trail. The negro coachman, the family carriage and the white horses had excited remark

everywhere. Briefly, I traced her here, and am happy to discover that my worst fears with regard to her have

"Henrietta," said her aunt, reproachfully, "your fears do you very little credit, or me either."

"I was certain," said Wilton Barnstable, complacently, "that it would develop that Miss Genevieve Pringle

was herself being pursued. I was confident of it, Cleggett. And now that I have cleared up for you the mystery

of Logan Black, the mystery of the box of Reginald Maltravers, and the mystery of the box of plum

preserves, there only remains the capture of Logan Black to hold me in this part of the country and to keep

"We must get together," said Cleggett, "on a plan of campaign. Logan Black will certainly attack again. He

has only been beaten off temporarily. In the meanwhile, it is almost breakfast time."

And, indeed, the lights in the cabin were suddenly growing pale. The sun was rising. Its beams, shining

through the cabin skylight, fell upon the three great detectives, each one of whom, with an air of ineffable

satisfaction, was gloatingbut gloating urbanely and with dignityover an oblong box.

It was decided, at a conference of Lady Agatha, Cleggett, and the three detectives, at the breakfast table, to

throw up a line of entrenchments along the bank of the canal commanding the approach to the Jasper B. and

the Annabel Lee. No one felt the least doubt that Logan Black would renew the attack sooner or later, unless

"And," said Cleggett, "I shall not leave until the Jasper B. has been rigged as a schooner again. Anything else

would have the appearance of a retreat. Nor will I be hurried. I am on my own property, and I purpose to

He set his jaws firmly as he declared this intention, and Lady Agatha's eyes dwelt upon him in admiration.

"When the Jasper B. moves," said Cleggett, with finality, "it will be under her own power."

Accordingly, work was begun at once on the entrenchments. Everyone on board the Jasper B. was sadly in

need of sleep, but Cleggett felt that the earthworks could not wait. He divided his force into two shifts.

Cleggett, the three detectives, Jefferson the genial coachman, and Washington Artillery Lamb, the janitor and

butler of the house boat Annabel Lee, a negro as large and black as Jefferson himself, took a twohour trick

with the spades and then lay down and slept while Abernethy, Kuroki, Elmer, Calthrop, George the Greek,

and Farnsworth dug for an equal length of time. The two prisoners captured by Barnstable the night before,

one of whom was the smirking and sinister Pierre, were compelled to dig all the time. Even Teddy, Lady

Agatha's little Pomeranian, dug. The ladies of the party slept throughout the morning.

During the forenoon Cleggett dispatched Dr. Farnsworth to the city in Miss Henrietta Pringle's Ford car, and

he returned about one o'clock with four more trained nurses. They were installed on board the houseboat

Annabel Lee, instead of at Parker's Beach as Cleggett had originally intended, and the Red Cross flag was

hoisted over that vessel. Cleggett felt confident that the next battle would be sanguinary in character, and,

true to his humanitarian ideals, was resolved to be fully prepared this time to care for as many people as he

might disable. Giuseppe Jones, who was quieter now, although at times still irrationally babbling incendiary

vers libre poems, was removed to the Annabel Lee, where Miss Medley, quite worn out, turned him over to a

By the time the reinforcement of nurses had arrived the earthworks of the good ship Jasper B. were

completed, and, after a double portion of stiff grog all around, Cleggett ordered all hands to lie down on the

deck for an hour's comfortable nap. He stood watch himself. Cleggett had not slept much during the past

fortyeight hours, but he was a man of iron. Like King Henry Fifth of England, Cleggett found a certain

pleasure in watching while his troops slumbered. Cleggett and this lively monarch had other points in

common, although Cleggett, even in his youth, would never have associated with a character so habitually

The construction of the trench was not without its effect upon the gang of villains at Morris's. About nine in

the morning Cleggett noticed that he was under observation from the roof of the east verandah of the road

house. Loge and two of his ruffianly lieutenants were scrutinizing the Cleggett flotilla and fortifications

through their binoculars. Cleggett, through his own glass, returned the compliment.

The three men were conducting an animated discussion. From their gestures they seemed to be completely

nonplussed by the entrenchments. Watching their pantomime closely, Cleggett gathered that Loge was

endeavoring to enforce some point of view with regard to the Jasper B. upon his two followers. Finally Loge,

making a gesture towards Cleggett with one hand, tapped himself several times on the forehead with the

other, his lips moving rapidly the while. The two other men shrugged their shoulders and nodded, as if in

agreement with Loge. The insulting significance of the gesture was only too apparent. As plainly as if he had

heard the accompanying words Cleggett understood that Loge, out of the depths of his perplexity, had said

"Ah, you think so, do you?" said Cleggett aloud, laying down his glass and seizing a rifle. "Well, just to let

you know that I have a certain opinion of you, also, my friend Loge" And he sent a bullet over the heads

of the three men. They hastily ducked into the house. Cleggett might have picked Loge off, but he disdained

But the rifle shot did not end the espionage. All day scouting parties in taxicabs kept appearing on the sandy

plain to reconnoiter the fleet and fortress. They circled, they swooped, they dashed, they zigzagged here and

there, but always at a high rate of speed, and always at a prudent distance from the canal. Beyond sending an

occasional rifle ball whistling towards the wheels of the cabs, or over the heads of the occupants, to remind

them to keep their distance, Cleggett paid but little attention to these parties. If Loge thought him demented,

if he had his enemy guessing, so much the better. The eccentric movements of these cabs was a circumstance

Cleggett had no idea that there would be an attack before nightfall, and at two o'clock in the afternoon he

awakened all the members of his crew who were still sleeping, ordered them into bathing suits, a supply of

which he had been thoughtful enough to have the young doctor bring out along with the nurses, and piped

them into the canal. The water was cold, but they came out refreshed and invigorated by the plunge and

feeling fit for any struggle that might be ahead of them. This maneuver on the part of Cleggett and his

marines and infantrymen seemed still more to excite the curiosity and contribute to the bewilderment of Loge

After the general bath and a substantial lunch, Cleggett called all hands aft and addressed them.

"Ladies and loyal followers and coworkers," he said. "We have passed some nights and days of peril. And

there are, I doubt not, still parlous times ahead of the Jasper B. before our ship sets sail for the China Seas.

But what is sweeter than pleasure snatched from the very presence of danger? Courage and gayety should go

hand in hand! It is a beautiful May afternoon, we have a goodly deck beneath our feet, and, briefly, who is for

A huzza showed the popularity of the suggestion. Washington Artillery Lamb, the janitor and butler of the

Annabel Lee, possessed an accordion on which he was an earnest and artistic performer. Miss Pringle's

Jefferson had with him a harmonica, or mouth organ, which he at once produced. Jefferson was endowed

with the peculiar gift of manipulating this little musical instrument solely with his lips, moving it back and

forth and round about as he played, without touching it with his hands; and this left his hands free to pat the

time. The negro orchestra perched itself on the top of the cabin, and in a moment Lady Agatha, the five

nurses, Cleggett, the three detectives, Dr. Farnsworth, and Captain Abernethy were tangoing on the deck.

And this to the still further perplexity of Logan Black. As the dance started Cleggett saw that person, almost

distracted by his inability to comprehend the mental processes of the commander of the Jasper B., rise to his

feet in an automobile that had stopped a couple of hundred yards away, and beat with both hands upon his

The Rev. Simeon Calthrop turned sadly away from the vessel, and, with a sigh, went and sat in the trench,

where he was soon joined by Elmer. The disgraced preacher and the reformed convict had struck up a fast

friendship. They sat with their backs towards the Jasper B., and Cleggett supposed from their attitude that

"I hope," he said to the Rev. Mr. Calthrop, not unkindly, "that you don't disapprove of us."

"It isn't that, Mr. Cleggett," said the ship's chaplain, with sorrow in his eloquent brown eyes, "it isn't that at

all. In fact, I had a tango class in the basement of my church, every Thursday eveningwhen I had a church."

"Alas!" sighed the young preacher. "I do not trust myself! Women, as I have told you, Mr. Cleggett, are apt to

become fascinated with me. I cannot help it. It is in such gay scenes as this that the danger lies, Mr. Cleggett.

As an honorable man, I feel that I am bound to withdraw myself and my fatal influence."

"But I will not attempt to influence you. Elmer, are you also afraid of inspiring a hopeless passion?"

"Mister Cleggett," said Elmer gloomily and huskily, out of one corner of his mouth, "I ain't takin' a chance. D'

youse get me? Not a chancet. Oncet youse reformed, Mr. Cleggett, youse can't be too careful."

Cleggett returned to the vessel. Miss Pringle the elder was leaving it. Miss Henrietta Pringle was following.

Cleggett gathered that the niece left reluctantly, and under the coercion of the aunt.

Miss Pringle the elder was about to join the Rev. Mr. Calthrop in the trench. Morality, as well as misery,

loves company. But Mr. Calthrop saw the Misses Pringle coming. He swiftly rose, passed them by with his

face averted, and went aboard the Annabel Lee. It was evident that he believed that his fatal gift of

fascination had attracted these ladies towards him in spite of himself. Elmer and the Misses Pringle sat

"If you was to ask me," said Captain Abernethy, pausing winded from the tango, strong old man that he was,

"I'd give it as my opinion that them that gits their enjoyment in an oncheerful way don't git nigh as much of it

as them that gits it in a cheerful way. Mrs. Lady Agatha, ma'am, if you kin foxtrot as well as you kin tango

"My God! Look there!" he shrilled, pointing a long finger towards the plain. Simultaneously the Misses

Pringle, shrieking wildly, leaped from the trench towards the ship and Elmer fired a pistol shot.

Cleggett beheld five taxicabs, filled with Loge's assassins, charging towards the vessel at the rate of thirty

But the enemy, with Logan Black in the lead, had already reached the trenches. They flung themselves to the

ground and swept over the trench towards the bulwarks, twenty strong, with flashing machetes. So confident

had Cleggett been that Loge would not dare to attack in broad daylight that he had scarcely even considered

There was no thought of guns or pistols. There was no time to aim or fire. Loge's rush had lodged him on the

deck. Roaring like a wild animal, he carried the fight to the defenders. He meant to make a finish of it this

As the women scurried into the cabin the two lines met, with a ringing clash of blades, on the deck of the

Jasper B., and the sparks flew from the stricken metal. Cleggett strove to engage Loge hand to hand; and

Loge, on his part, attempted to fight his way to Cleggett; they shouted insults at each other across the press of

battle. But in affairs of this sort a man must give his attention to the person directly in front of him; otherwise

he is lost. As Cleggett cut and thrust and parried, a sudden seizure overtook him; he moved as if in a dream;

he had the eerie feeling that he had done all this before, sometime, perhaps in a previous existence, and would

do it again. The clangor of the meeting swords, the inarticulate shouts and curses, the dance of struggling men

across the deck, the whirling confusion of the whole fantastic scene beneath the quiet skies, struck upon his

consciousness with that strange phantasmagoric quality which makes the hurrying unreality of dreams so

In the center of Cleggett's line stood the three detectives shoulder to shoulder. Their three swords rose and

fell as one. They cut and lunged and guarded with a machinelike regularity, advancing, giving ground,

advancing again, with a rhythmic unanimity which was baffling to their opponents.

On either flank of the detectives fought one of the gigantic negroes. Washington Artillery Lamb, almost at

once, had broken his cutlass, and now he raged in the waist of the Jasper B. with a long iron bar in his hand.

Miss Pringle's Jefferson, with his high cockaded hat still firmly fixed upon his head, laid about him with a

heavy cavalry saber; in his excitement he still held his harmonica in his mouth and blew blasts upon it as he

fought. The Rev. Simeon Calthrop, in a loud agitated voice, sang hymns as he swung his cutlass. And, among

the legs of the combatants, leapt and snapped Teddy the Pomeranian, biting friend and foe indiscriminately

But gradually the weight of superior numbers began to tell. Farnsworth staggered from the fight with a face

covered with blood which blinded him. Cap'n Abernethy likewise was bleeding from a wound in the head;

George the Greek and Watson Bard were hurt, but both fought on. The crew of the Jasper B. and their allies

of the Annabel Lee were being slowly forced back towards the cabin, when there came a sudden and decisive

Cleggett, straining to meet Loge, who hung sword to sword with Wilton Barnstable, saw Giuseppe Jones,

deserted by his nurses, tumbling feebly over the bow of the Jasper B. in the rear of Loge's line. Barelegged, a

red blanket fastened about his throat with a big brass safety pin, a thermometer in one hand and a medicine

bottle in the other, he tottered, crazily and weakly between Loge and Barnstable, chanting a vers libre poem

Loge, who had extended himself in a vigorous lunge, was struck by the weight of the young anarchist's body

at the crook of the knees, and came down on the deck at full length, his machete flying from his hand as he

Cleggett was upon the criminal in an instant, his hand at the outlaw's throat. They grappled and rolled upon

the deck. But in another second Wilton Barnstable and Barton Ward, coming to Cleggett's assistance, had

His overthrow was the signal of his men's defeat. As he went down they hesitated and wavered. The two

great negroes, taking advantage of this hesitation, burst among them with mighty blows and strange

AfroAmerican oaths, Castor and Pollux in bronze. With a shout of "Banzai!" Kuroki rushed forward with

his kris; the other defenders added weight and fury to the rally. Before the irons were on the wrists of Loge

his men were routed. They leaped the rail and made off for their fleet of taxicabs, flinging away their

Loge writhed and twisted and lashed the deck with his legs and body for a moment, striving even against the

bands of steel that bit into his wrists and ankles. And then he lay still with his face against the planks as if in a

It had been Cleggett's earlier thought to take the man alive, if possible, and turn him over to the authorities.

But now that Loge was taken he burned with the wish for personal combat with him. He desired to be the

Cleggett, as he gazed at the fellow lying prone upon the deck, could not repress a murmur of dissatisfaction.

Whether Loge heard him or not, the same thought was evidently running is his mind. He lifted his head. A

slow, malignant grin that showed his yellow canine teeth lifted his upper lip. He fixed his eyes on Cleggett

Outwardly Cleggett remained calm, but inwardly he was shaken with an intensity of passion that matched

"Lucky?" he said quietly. "That is as may be. And if, as I infer, you desire a settlement of a more personal

"Desire!" cried Loge, with a movement of his manacled hands. "I would go to Hell happy if I sent you ahead

"Very well," said Cleggett. "Since you have challenged me I will fight you. I will do you that honor."

"Mr. Cleggett," he said, "I scarcely understand you. Are you consenting to fight this man?"

"But that is impossible. His life is forfeit to the law. I hope, before the year is out, to send him to the electric

"An absurdity?" Cleggett, with his hands on his hips, and a little dancing light in his eyes, faced the great

detective squarely. "You permit yourself very peculiar expressions, Mr. Barnstable!"

"I beg your pardon," said Wilton Barnstable. "I withdraw 'absurdity.' But you must see yourself, Mr.

Cleggett, that a duel is useless, if nothing else. The man is our prisoner. He belongs to the law."

Loge had struggled to a sitting posture, his back against the port bulwark, and was listening with an odd look

"The law?" said Cleggett. "I suppose, in one sense, that is true. But the matter has its personal element as

Cleggett was silent a moment. Then he said firmly: "Mr. Barnstable, it is painful to me to have to remind you

of it, but your attitude forces me to an equal directness. The fact that Logan Black is now a captive is due to

his efforts to recover certain evidence which may be used against him. This evidence I discovered and

Wilton Barnstable was about to retort, perhaps heatedly, but Cleggett, generous even while determined to

have his own way, hastened to add: "Do not think, Mr. Barnstable, that I minimize your work, or your

assistancebut, after all, what am I demanding that is unreasonable? If Logan Black dies by my hand, are

not the ends of justice served as well as if he died in the electric chair? And if I fall, the law may still take its

Loge had listened to this speech attentively. He lifted his head and glanced about the deck, filling his lungs

with a deep draft of air. Something like a gleam of hope was visible in his features.

"It is irregular," said Wilton Barnstable, frowning, and not half convinced. "And, in the name of Heaven, why

imperil your life needlessly? Why expose yourself again to the power of this monstrous criminal?"

"The fellow has challenged me, and I have granted him a meeting," said Cleggett. "I hope there is such a

"Clement!" It was Lady Agatha who spoke. As she did so she laid her hand on Cleggett's arm. She had

hearkened in silence to the colloquy between him and Barnstable, as had the others. She drew him out of

"I must," he said simply. It cut him to the heart to refuse the first request that she had asked of him since his

avowal of his love for her and her tacit acceptance. But, to a man of Cleggett's ideas, there was no choice.

"And you know" she paused, as if she could not continue, but her eyes and manner spoke the rest. In a

moment her lips spoke it too; she was not the sort of woman who is afraid to avow the promptings of her

"Oh, Clement," she said, "if you were killedkilled uselessly!now that I have found you, I could not bear

Cleggett was profoundly moved. He yearned to take her in his arms to comfort her, and to promise anything

she wished. And the thought came to him too that, if he should perish, the one kiss, given and received in the

darkness and danger of fight and storm, would be all the brave sweetness of her that he would know this side

"Agatha!" he said with dry lips. "I have already accepted the fellow's challenge."

"And what of that?" she cried. "Would you cling to a barren point of honor in despite of love?"

"Oh, Clement," she said, "I cannot bear it! I cannot bear to lose you! I always knew you were in the world

somewhereand now that I have found you it is only to give you up! It is too much!"

Cleggett was silent for a moment. When he spoke it was slowly and gently, but earnestly.

"No point of honor is a barren one, dear," he said. "What the man lying there may be matters nothing. It is not

to him that I have given my word, but to myself. In our hurried modern life we are not punctilious enough

about these things. Perhaps, in the old days, the men and women were worse than we in many ways. But they

held to a few traditions, or the best of them did, that make the loose and tawdry manners of this age seem

cheap indeed. All my life I have known that there was something shining and simple and precious concealed

from the common herd of men in this common age, which the brighter spirits of the old days lived by and

served and worshiped. I have always seen it plainly, and always tried to live by it, too. Perhaps it was never,

in any period, more than a dream; but I have dreamed that dream. And anyone who dreams that dream will

have a reverence for his spoken word no matter to whom it is passed. I may be a fool to fight this man; well

then, that is the kind of fool I am! Indeed, I know I am a fool by the judgments of this age. But I have never

truly lived in this age. I have lived in the past; I have held to the dream; I have believed in the bright

adventure; I have walked with the generous, chivalric spirits of the great ages; they have come to me out of

my books and dwelt with me and been my companions, and the realities of time and place have been unreal

in their presence. I see myself so walking always. It may be that I am a vain ass, but I cannot help it. It may

be that I am a little mad; but I would rather be mad with a Don Quixote than sane with an Andrew Carnegie

"And all this foolishness of mine is somehow bound up with the thought that I have engaged to fight that evil

fellow, and must do it; all the bright, sane madness in me cries out that he is to die by this hand of mine.

"I have opened my heart to you, as I have never done to anyone before. And now I put myself into your

hands. But, oh, take carefor it is something in me better than myself that I give you to deal with! And you

can cripple it forever, because I love you and I shall listen to you. Shall I fight him?"

She had listened, mute and immobile, and as he spoke the red sun made a sudden glory of her hair. She

leaned towards him, and it was as if the spirit of all the man's lifelong, foolish, romantic musings were in her

And then her head was on his shoulder, and his arms were about her. "Don't die!" she sobbed. "Don't die!"

She smiled courageously back at him; with her hands upon his shoulders she held him back and looked at

"If you are killed," she said, "it will have been more than most women ever get, to have known and loved you

Cleggett took Wilton Barnstable by the sleeve and drew him towards Loge, who, still seated on the deck with

his long legs stretched out in front of him, was now yawning with a cynical affectation of boredom.

"I wish you to act as my second in this affair," said Cleggett to the detective, "and I suggest that either Mr.

"A second, eh? We seem to be doing a great deal of arranging for a very small amount of fighting."

"I suggest," said Wilton Barnstable, "that a night's rest would be quite in order for both principals."

Loge broke in quickly, with studied insolence: "I object to the delay. Mr. Cleggett might find some excuse for

"Then give us the pistols," cried Loge, with a sudden, grim ferocity in his voice, "and let's make an end of it!"

"Ho! Swords!" cried Loge, with a harsh, jarring laugh. "A bout with the rapiers, man to man, eh? Come, this

is better and better! I may go to the chair, but first I will spit you like a squab on a skewer, my little nut!" And

then he said again, with a shout of gusty mirth, and a clanking of his manacles: "Swords, eh? By God! The

"Name pistols," he said. "For God's sake, Cleggett, name pistols! If I had had any idea that you were going to

Cleggett was amused at the great detective's anxiety. "It appears that the fellow handles the rapier pretty well,

"Cleggett" began Barnstable. And then he paused and groaned and mopped his brow. Presently he

controlled his agitation and continued. "Cleggett," he said, "the man is an expert swordsman. I have been on

his trail; I know his life for years past. He was once a maitre d'armes. He gave lessons in the art."

"Yes?" said Cleggett, laughing and flexing his wrist. "I am glad to hear that! It will be really interesting then."

"Cleggett," said Barnstable, "I beg of youname pistols. This is the man who invented that diabolical thrust

with which Georges Clemenceau laid low so many of his political opponents. If you must go on with this

"Barnstable," said Cleggett, "I know what I am about, believe me. Your anxiety does me little honor, but I am

willing to suppose that you are not deliberately insulting, and I pass it over. I intend to kill this man. It is a

duty which I owe to society. And as for the rapierbelieve me, Barnstable, I am no novice. And my blood

tingles and my soul aches with the desire to expunge that man from life with my own hand. Come, we have

talked enough. There is a case of swords in the cabin. Will you do me the favor to bring them on deck?"

Loge's irons were unlocked. He rose to his feet and stretched himself. He removed his coat and waistcoat.

Then he took off his shirt, revealing the fact that he wore next his skin a longsleeved undershirt of red

Cleggett began to imitate him. But as the commander of the Jasper B. began to pull his shirt over his head he

heard a little scream. Everyone turned in the direction from which it had emanated. They beheld Miss

Genevieve Pringle perched upon the top of the cabin, whither she had mounted by means of a short ladder.

This lady, perhaps not quite aware of the possibly sanguinary character of the spectacle she was about to

witness, had, nevertheless, sensed the fact that a spectacle was toward. Miss Pringle had with her a handsome

"Madam," said Cleggett, hastily pulling his shirt back on again and approaching the cabin, "did you cry out?"

"Mr.erCleggett," said Miss Pringle, pursing her lips, "if you will kindly hold the ladder for me I think I

"As you wish," said Cleggett politely, complying with her wish, but at a loss to comprehend her.

"I beg you to believe, Mr. Cleggett," said Miss Pringle, averting her face and flushing painfully, while she

turned the lorgnette about and about with embarrassed fingers, "I beg you to believe that in electing to

With these words she passed into the cabin, with the air of one who has sustained a mortal insult.

"Ef you was to ask me what she's tryin' to get at," piped up Cap'n Abernethy, "I'd say it's her belief that it ain't

proper for gents to sword each other with their shirts off. She's shocked, Miss Pringle is."

"In great and crucial moments," said Cleggett soberly, pulling off his shirt again and picking up a sword, "we

Loge chose a weapon with the extreme of care and particularity, trying the hang and balance of several of

them. He looked well to the weight, bent the blade in his hands to test the spring and temper, tried the point

upon his thumb. He handled the rapier as if he had found an old friend again after a long absence; he looked

"And now," said Loge, "if this is to be a duel indeed, Mr. Cleggett and I will need plenty of room, I suggest

"And," said Wilton Barnstable, drawing his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the

bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle him

With Cleggett, swordsmanship was both a science and an art. And something more. It was also a passion. A

good swordsman can be made; a superior swordsman may be born; the real masters are both born and made.

It was so with Cleggett. His interest in fencing had been keen from his early boyhood. In his teens he had

acquired unusual practical skill without great theoretical knowledge. Then he had recognized the art for what

it is, the most beautiful game on earth, and had made a profound and thorough study of it; it appealed to his

Cleggett seldom fenced publicly, and then only under an assumed name; he abhorred publicity. But there was

not a teacher in New York City who did not know him for a master. They brought him their half worked out

visions of new combinations, new thrusts; he perfected them, and simplified, or elaborated, and gave back the

They were the workmen, the craftsmen, the men of talent; he was the originator, the genius.

And he was especially lucky in not having been tied down, in his younger years, to one national tradition of

the art. The limitations of the French, the Spanish, the Italian, or the Austrian schools had not enslaved him in

youth and hampered the free development of his individuality. He had studied them all; he chose from them

The Frenchman is an intellectual swordsman; the basis of his art is a thorough knowledge of its mathematics.

Upon this foundation he superimposes a structure of audacity. But he often falls into one error or another, for

all his mental brilliancy. He may become rigidly formal in his practice, or, in a revolt from his own

formalism, be seduced into a display of showy, sensational tricks that are all very well in the studio but

The Italian, looser, freer, less formal, more individual in his style, springing from a line of forbears who have

preferred the thrust to the cut, the point to the edge, for centuries, is a more instinctive and less intellectual

swordsman than the Frenchman. It is in his blood; he uses his rapier with a wild and angry grace that is feline.

The Frenchman, even when he is thoroughly serious in his desire to slay, loves a duel for its own sake; he is

never free from the thought of the picture he is making; the art, the science, the practical cleverness, appeal to

The Italian thinks of but one thing; to kill. He will take a severe wound to give a fatal one. The French are the

Cleggett, as has been said, knew all the schools without being the slave of any of them.

He brought his sword en tierce; Loge's blade met his with strength and delicacy. The strength Cleggett was

prepared for. The delicacy surprised him. But he was too much the master, too confident of his own powers,

to trifle. He delivered one of his favorite thrusts; it was a stroke of his own invention; three times out of five,

in years past, it had carried home the button of his foil to his opponent's jacket. It was executed with the

But Loge parried it with a neatness which made Cleggett open his eyes, replying with a counter so shrewd

and close, and of such a darting ferocity, that Cleggett, although he met it faultlessly, nevertheless gave back

"Ah," cried Loge, showing his yellow teeth in a grin, "so the little man knows that thrust!"

With the word he pressed forward and, making a swift and dazzling feint, followed it with two brilliant

thrusts, either of which would have meant the death of a tyro. The first one Loge parried; the second touched

him; but it gave him nothing more than a scratch. Nevertheless, the smile faded from Loge's face; he gave

ground in his turn before this rapid vigor of attack; he measured Cleggett with a new glance.

"You are touched, I think," said Cleggett, meditating a fresh combination, "and I am glad to see you drop that

ugly pretense at a grin. You have no idea how the sight of those yellow teeth of yours, which you were

evidently never taught to brush when you were a little boy, offends a person of any refinement."

Loge's answer was a sudden attempt to twist his blade around Cleggett's; followed by a direct thrust, as quick

as light, which grazed Cleggett's shoulder; a little smudge of blood appeared on his undershirt.

"Take care, take care, Cleggett!" warned Wilton Barnstable, from his post by the starboard bulwark.

"Make yourself easy," said Cleggett, parrying a counter en carte, "I am only getting warm."

And both of them, stung by the slight scratches which they had received, settled to the business with an intent

To all appearances Loge had an immense advantage over Cleggett; his legs were a good two inches longer; so

were his arms. And he knew how to make these peculiarities count. He fought for a while with a calm and

steady precision that repeatedly baffled the calculated impetuosity of Cleggett's attack. But the air of

bantering certainty with which he had begun the duel had left him. He no longer wasted his breath on

repartee; no doubt he was surprised to find Cleggett's strength so nearly equal to his own, as Cleggett had

been astonished to find in Loge so much finesse. But with a second slight wound Loge began to give ground.

With Cleggett a bout with the foils had always been a duel. It has been indicated, we believe, that he was of a

romantic disposition and much given to daydreaming; his imagination had thus made every setto in the

fencing room a veritable mortal combat to him. Therefore, this was not his first duel; he had fought hundreds

of them. And he fought always on a settled plan, adapting it, of course, to the idiosyncrasies of his adversary.

It was his custom to vary the system of his attack frequently in the most disconcerting manner, at the same

time steadily increasing the pace at which he fought. And when Loge began to give ground and breathe a

little harder, Cleggett, far from taking advantage of his opponent's growing distress to rest himself, as a less

distinguished swordsman might have done, redoubled the vigor of his assault. Cleggett knew that sooner or

later a winded man makes a fault. The lungs labor and fail to give the blood all the oxygen it needs. The

circulation suffers. Nerves and muscles are no longer the perfect servants of the brain; for a fraction of a

It was for this that Cleggett waited, pressing Loge closer and closer, alert for the instant when Loge would

fence wide; waxing as the other waned; menacing eyes, throat, and heart with a point that leaped and dazzled;

and at the same time inclosing himself within a rampart of steel which Loge found it more and more hopeless

to attempt to penetrate. It was as if Cleggett's blade were an extension of his will; he and his sword were not

two things, but one. The metal in his hand was no longer merely a whip of steel; it was a thing that lived with

his own life. His pulse beat in it. It was a part of him. His nervous force permeated it and animated it; it was

his thought turned to tempered metal, and it was with the rapidity, directness and subtlety of thought that his

"Come!" said Cleggett, as Loge broke ground, scarcely aware that he spoke aloud. "At this rate we shall be at

Loge must have thought so too; a shade passed over his face, his upper lip lifted haggardly. Perhaps even that

iron nature was beginning to feel at last something of the dull sickness which is the fear of death. He retreated

continually, and Cleggett was smitten with the fancy to force him backward and nail him, with a final thrust,

to the stump of the foremast, which had been broken off some eight feet above the deck.

But Loge, gathering his power, made a brilliant and desperate rally; twice he grazed Cleggett, whose blade

was too closely engaged; and then suddenly broke ground again. This time Cleggett perceived that he had

been retreating in accordance with a preconceived program. He was certain the man contemplated a trick,

He rushed forward with a terrible thrust. Loge, whose last maneuver had taken him within a yard of the

hatchway opening into the hold, grasped Cleggett's blade in his left hand, and at the same instant flung his

own sword, hilt first, full in Cleggett's face. As Cleggett, struck in the mouth with the pommel, staggered

back, Loge plunged feet foremost into the hold. It was too unexpected, and too quickly done, for a shot from

Cleggett, with the blood streaming from his mouth, recovered himself and leaped through the aperture in the

deck. He landed upon his feet with a jar, and, shortening his sword in his hand, stared about him in the

Barnstable drew from his pocket a small electric lantern and swept the beam in a circle about the hold. Again

and again he raked the darkness until the finger of light had rested upon every foot of the interior.

But Loge had vanished as completely as a snowflake that falls into a tub of water.

"Idiot that I am," cried Cleggett, "not to have covered that hole!" His chagrin was touching to behold.

"There, there, Cleggett," said Wilton Barnstable kindly, "do not reproach yourself too bitterly."

"But to let him escape when I had him" Cleggett finished the sentence with a groan.

"Please have some lights brought down here if you will, Captain," he said to Abernethy, "and ask Mr. Bard

In a few minutes the interior of the hold was illuminated with lanterns; it was as bright as day. But the

detectives did not proceed at once to a minute examination of the hold as Cleggett had supposed they would.

Barton Ward thought. Watson Bard thought. They thought in silence. Cleggett could almost feel these three

master brains pulsating in unison, working in rhythmic accord, there in the silence; the sense of this intense

Finally Wilton Barnstable began to stroke his mustache, and a pleased smile stole over his plump and benign

visage. Barton Ward also began to stroke his mustache and smile. But it was twenty seconds more before

Watson Bard's corrugated brow relaxed and his eyes twinkled with the idea that had come so much more

"Cleggett," said Wilton Barnstable, "you have heard of the deductive method as applied to the work of the

"I have," said Cleggett. "I have read Poe's detective tales and Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories."

"Ah! Sherlock Holmes!" The three detectives looked at each other with glances in which were mingled both

bitterness and amusement; the look seemed to dispose of Sherlock Holmes. Once again Cleggett had a

"Sherlock Holmes," said Barnstable, "never existed. His marvelous feats are not possible in real life,

Cleggett. But the deductive method which he pretended to usemind you, I say PRETENDED,

And then the three detectives gave Cleggett an example of the phenomenal cleverness.

"Only a ghost or an insect could leave this hold otherwise than by the hatchway, to all appearances," said

The three detectives stared at him fixedly for a moment, as if surprised at the interruption. But if they were

"Therefore Logan Black's exit," said Barnstable, "was in accordance with wellknown physical laws. We are

"A ship with a secret tunnel!" cried Cleggett. "Who ever heard of the like? Why, the thing is"

But he broke off. He had been leaning against the starboard side of the hold. Even as he spoke he felt the wall

behind him moving. He turned. A door was opening. It was built into the side of the Jasper B. and the joints

were cleverly concealed. He had inadvertently found, with his elbow, the nailhead which was in reality the

push button that released the spring. The black entrance of a subterranean passage yawned before him.

He stared in astonishment. The three detectives were pointing at the tunnel with plump forefingers and bland,

"Nothing is impossible, my dear Cleggett," said Barnstable. "The tunnel HAD to be there!"

A tunnel is all very well leading from the basement of a house, or extending backward from a cave; but

Cleggett felt that it was scarcely a dignified sort of arrangement, nautically speaking, for a ship to have

It seemed, somehow, to stamp the Jasper B. indelibly as a thing of the land rather than as the gallant creature

of piping winds and following seas. Could the Jasper B., a bone in her teeth and her tackle humming, ever

again sail through Cleggett's dreams? For a moment, if the worst must be known, he was almost disgusted

with the Jasper B., considered as a ship. For a moment he was willing to believe that Cap'n Abernethy was

nothing but a Long Island truck farmer, and NOT of a seafaring family at all. For a moment he felt himself to

But only for a moment! The star of romance, clouded temporarily by fact, rose serene and bright again in the

wide heaven of the unusual spirit, the barber's basin gleamed once more the helmet of Mambrino. Cleggett

"A tunnel!" he cried, brightening, and looking at it with his legs spread a little wide and his hands on his hips.

"A tunnel! Eh, by gad! Who could have prophesied a tunnel? Barnstable, never tell me again there is no

romance in real life! I tell you, Barnstable, she's a good old ship, the Jasper B.! I don't suppose there was ever

another schooner in the world with a secret passageway leading out of her hold!"

"She IS a remarkable vessel," agreed Wilton Barnstable gravely. "But, come, we are wasting time! The other

end of this passage is at Morris's, that is plain. Loge Black has only a few minutes' start of us. Therefore, to

Clambering out of the hold, the three detectives and Cleggett briefly made their followers acquainted with the

extraordinary turn of events. The Rev. Mr. Calthrop, Miss Pringle's Jefferson, and Washington Artillery

Lamb were detailed to guard the Jasper B. end of the tunnel. The others, seizing their rifles, raced across the

In a few moments the place was invested, with riflemen on every side except the south, which fronted on the

bay. The steeljacketed bullets from the highpower guns tore through and through the flimsy walls.

Nevertheless the defenders replied pluckily, and the siege might have dragged on for hours had it not been for

the courage and resource of Kuroki. Gaining the stable, Kuroki found an old pushcart there. He piled three

bales of hay upon it, and then set fire to the hay. Pushing the cart before him, and crouching behind the bales

to protect himself from revolver shots, he worked his way to the east verandah of the building and left the hay

blazing against the planks. Then he ran as if the devil were after him, and was almost out of pistol shot before

The blaze caught the wood and spread. In two minutes the east verandah was in flames. Loge and his men

attempted to pour water on the blaze from above. But Cleggett's party directed so hot a fire upon the windows

The main building caught. The road house was old, and was of very light construction; the fire spread with

But that evil and indomitable spirit refused to yield. Even when his remaining ruffians came out and gave

Reckless of bullets, he leaned from an open window, a figure not without its grandeur against the background

Loge raised his hand and sped a last bullet at the detective, grazing Barnstable's temple.

A moment later a portion of the roof fell; then the east wall crashed in. Morris's was a blazing ruin.

"More like he's blowed his head off," said Cap'n Abernethy. "If you was to ask me, that's what I'd do."

"He has done neither!" cried Cleggett. "He has taken to the tunnel. That man will fight to the last breath."

And without waiting to see whether the others followed him or not Cleggett set off at top speed for the Jasper

With a dagger between his teeth, his pistol in its holster, and his electric, watchman's lantern in his pocket he

entered the tunnel and crawled forward on his hands and knees. If Loge were in there indeed he had the fire at

one end and Cleggett at the other. But even at that, escape was possible, for all Cleggett knew. What

The place was narrow, and in spots so low that it was necessary for a man to crouch almost to the ground.

Cleggett, because he did not wish to reveal his presence, did not flash his lantern; there were stretches where

he might have stood almost erect and made quicker progress, if he had found them with the light. The earth

Cleggett thought possibly that the tunnel had originally led from Morris's basement to the smuggler's cave

which Wilton Barnstable had spoken of, and that it had been extended later to the ship. He learned afterwards

that this was true from the men who had surrendered. The Jasper B. had been abandoned for so long, and was

so completely abandoned except for the visits of Cap'n Abernethy, who fished from it now and then, that

Loge had conceived the idea of making it the backdoor, so to speak, of Morris's. In the event of a raid upon

Morris's his "getaway" through the hulk was provided for. He had intended buying the ship himself; but

From the prisoners Cleggett also learned later that two men had been concerned in the explosion which had

broken the big rocks on the plain. One of them had won the Claiborne signet ring at poker after Reginald

Maltravers had been stripped of his valuables, and had worn it. They had been dispatched with a bomb each,

which they were to introduce into the hold of the Jasper B., retiring through the tunnel after they had started

the clockwork mechanism going. It was known that one of them owed the other money; they had been

quarreling about it as they entered the tunnel from the cellar of Morris's. It was conjectured that the quarrel

had progressed and that the debtor had endeavored, by the light of his pocket lantern in the tunnel, to palm off

a counterfeit bill in settlement of the debt. This may have led to a blow, or more likely only to an argument

during which a bomb was dropped and exploded, followed quickly by the other explosion. Dead hand,

counterfeit bill and ring were flung whimsically to the surface of the earth together, and the leaning rocks had

been astonishingly broken from beneath through this trivial quarrel. Had it not been for this squabble the

Jasper B. and all on board must have been destroyed. Verily, the minds of wicked men compass their own

But Cleggett, as he crawled forward through the darkness and the damp, thought little of these things that had

so mystified him at the time. He was alert for what the immediate future might hold, not doubting that Loge

had retreated to the tunnel. He had too strong a sense of the man's powerful and iniquitous personality to

suppose that Loge would kill himself while one chance remained, however remote, of injuring his enemies.

Suddenly, after pressing forward for several minutes, he ran against an obstruction. The tunnel seemed to

come to an end. He did not dare show his light. But he felt with his hands. It was rock that blocked his way.

Cleggett understood that this barrier was the result of the explosion. Groping and exploring with his hands, he

found that the passage turned sharply to the left. It was more narrow and curving, for the distance of a few

yards, and the earth beneath was fresher. When the tunnel had been blocked by the explosion, Loge and his

Cleggett judged that he must be at about the middle of the tunnel. He felt the more solid earth beneath his

hands again, and knew that he had passed the rock. The passage now descended deeper into the ground,

slanting steeply downward. This incline was twenty feet in length; then the floor became horizontal again on

the lower level. At the same time the passage widened. Cleggett stretched one arm out, then the other; he

could not touch the wall on either hand. He stood erect and held his hand up; the roof was six inches above

his head. He was in a room of some sort. Wishing, if possible, to learn the extent of this subterranean

chamber, which he did not doubt had at one time been used as a cave and storehouse of smugglers, Cleggett

He dislodged a pebble. It rolled to the ground with what was really a slight sound.

But to Cleggett, who had been getting more and more excited, it was loud as an avalanche. He stopped and

held his breath; he fancied that he had heard another noise besides the one which his pebble made. But he

The sensation that he was not alone suddenly gripped him with overwhelming force. His heart began to beat

more quickly; the blood drummed in his ears. Nevertheless, he kept his head. He took his pocket lantern in

his left hand, and his pistol in his right, and leaned with his back against the wall. He listened. He heard

But the eerie feeling that he was watched grew upon him. Presently he fancied that the darkness began to

vibrate, as if an electrical current of some sort were being passed through it, and it might forthwith burst into

light. Cleggett, as we know, was not easily frightened. But now he was possessed of a strange feeling, akin to

terror, but which was at the same time not any terror of physical injury. He did not fear Loge; in dark or

daylight he was ready to grapple with him and fight it out; nevertheless he feared. That he could not say what

Children say they are "afraid of the dark." It is not the dark which they are afraid of. It is the bodiless

presences which they imagine in the dark. It was so with Cleggett now. He was not daunted by anything that

could strike a blow. But the sense of a personality began to encompass him. It pressed in upon him, played

upon him, embraced him; his flesh tingled as if he were being brushed; he felt his hair stir. One recognizes a

flower by its odor. So a soul flings off, in some inexplicable way, the sense of itself. This force that laid itself

upon Cleggett and flowed around him had an individuality without a body. Not through his senses, but

psychically, he recognized it; it was the hateful and sinister individuality of Loge.

With choking throat and dry lips Cleggett stood and suffered beneath the smothering presence of this terror

while the slow seconds mounted to an intolerable minute; then there burst from him an uncontrollable shout.

And with the word he pressed the button of his electric pocket lamp and shot a beam of light straight in front

of him. It fell upon the yellowish brow and the wide, unwinking eyes of Loge. The eyes stared straight at

Cleggett's own from across the cave, thirty feet away. Loge's teeth were bared in his malevolent grimace; he

head was bent forward; he sat upon a rock. Cleggett, unable to withdraw his eyes, waited for Loge's first

But he did not fire. The open, staring eyes, unchanging at the menace of the lifted pistol, told the story. Loge

was dead. Cleggett crossed over and examined him. Clutched on his knees was a bomb. He had been

wounded by Barnstable's last shot, but he had crawled through the tunnel with a bomb for a final attempt on

the Jasper B. His strength had failed; he had rested upon the rock and bled to death.

As for his last thought, Cleggett had felt it. Loge had died hating and lusting for his blood.

There was a wedding next day on the deck of the Jasper B. The Rev. Simeon Calthrop performed the

ceremony, and Wilton Barnstable insisted upon lending his vessel for a bridal cruise. Washington Artillery

Lamb, engineer, janitor, cook and butler of the Annabel Lee, went with the vessel.

As for the Jasper B., although his wife urged him to keep the ship for the sake of old associations, Cleggett

had the hole in its side built in and gave it to the Rev. Simeon Calthrop for a gospel ship. George the Greek,

who married Miss Medley, shipped with the preacher in his cruise around the world, and he and his wife

eventually reached Greece, as he had originally intended. Elmer went with the Rev. Mr. Calthrop to assist

But it was some time before the Jasper B. sailed. Besides the hole which was the entrance to the tunnel it was

discovered that the vessel rested on a brick foundation. The man who had used her for a saloon and dancing

platform in years past had dug away part of the bank of the canal to fit the curve of her starboard side and had

then jammed her tight into the land. Even then she would move a trifle at times, so he had built a dam around

her, pumped the water out of the inclosed space, jacked the hulk up, built the brick foundation, and let her

With the dam removed the water covered this masonry work, and she looked quite like a real ship. Mr.

Goldberg had known about this foundation, but he had forgotten it, he explained to Cleggett.

The Rev. Mr. Calthrop fitted her out as a floating chapel and filled her with Bibles printed in all languages,

which he distributes in many lands. When his fatal attractiveness for women threatens to involve him in

trouble he hastily puts to sea. He has never become a really accomplished sailor, and the Jasper B. is

something of a menace to navigation in the ports and harbors of the world. The suggestion has frequently

been made that she should be set ashore permanently and put on wheels. But she has her features. She is,

possibly, the only ship extant with a memorial skylight to her cabin. Cleggett wished her to carry some sort of

memorial to the faithful Teddy, the Pomeranian dog, who perished of a stray shot in the fight at Morris's. And

as a memorial window did not seem feasible a compromise was made on the memorial skylight. The glass is

Dopey Eddie and Izzy the Cat, still followed by Reginald Maltravers, made their way to Brooklyn, where all

three were arrested and lodged in the observation ward of the Kings County Hospital on the suspicion that

they were insane. The two gunmen were able to get free through political influence, but Maltravers was sent

to England. He was maintained for some time in a private institution through the generosity of the Cleggetts,

Wilton Barnstable smiles and prospers. He gained great additional fame for his clever work in the Case of

Cleggett, in 1925, was the father of four boys named D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis Cleggett; and

He is now immensely wealthy. It never would have occurred to him, perhaps, to attempt to increase his

modest fortune of $500,000 by speculating on the Stock Exchange, had it not been for a fortunate meeting

This barber, whose Christian name was Walter, was, indeed, a mine of suggestion and information of all

sorts. And being a goodnatured fellow, who wished the world well, Walter delighted to impart his original

ideas and the fruits of his observation to his patrons while shaving them. Some of these received his remarks

coldly, it is true, but Walter was so charged with a sense of friendliness towards all mankind that he was

His interests were wide and varied; Walter found no difficulty in talking pleasantly upon any subject; he

could touch it lightly, or deal with it in a more serious vein, as the mood of his customer seemed to require;

and he had the art of making deft and rapid transitions from topic to topic. But there were two things in

particular concerning which Walter had thought deeply: racehorses and the stock market.

It was the settled grief of Walter's life that he had never been able to persuade any person with money to take

his advice concerning the races, or follow any of the dazzling stock market campaigns which he was forever

"They listen to me," said Walter, a little wistfully, but with a brave smile, "or else they do not listenbut no

"What," said Cleggett, carefully concealing from Walter the fact that he spoke of himself, "would be your

"Double it!" cried Walter. "Why, I could show such a person how to multiply it by ten inside of two months."

And he rapidly outlined to Cleggett a scheme so audacious and so brilliant that it fairly took our hero's breath

away. Moreover, it stood the test of reflection; it was sound. Not to descend to the sordid details, in three

weeks Cleggett found himself possessed of a million dollars' gain. Half of this he gave to the excellent

Then he withdrew permanently from business, as Lady Agatha complained that it took too much of his time;

moreover, he shrank from notoriety, which his stock market operations were beginning to bring upon him.

Giuseppe Jones, who recovered of his wounds, forswore anarchy and became a newspaper reporter, and grew

to be a fast friend of Cleggett, who discovered that he was a lad of parts. Cleggett eventually made him

president of a college of journalism which he founded. While he was establishing the institution the man

Wharton, his old managing editor, broken, shattered, out of work, and a hopeless drunkard, came to him and

begged for a position. The man had sunk so low that he was repeatedly arrested for pretending to be blind on

the street corners, and had debauched an innocent dog to assist in this deception. Cleggett forgave him the

slights of many years and made him an assistant janitor in the new college of journalism.

Cap'n Abernethy travels with the Cleggetts a great deal, under the hallucination, which they humor, that he is

of service to them. The children are very fond of him. At Claiborne Castle Cleggett has had a shallow lake

constructed for him. There the Captain, still firm in the belief that he is a sailor, loves to potter about with

Dr. Farnsworth enjoys a lucrative position as physician to the Cleggett family, and Kuroki is their butler.

By 1925 the prejudice against militants had abated in certain exalted circles in England, and Lady Agatha

Cleggett, hating notoriety, had endeavored to conceal the story of his adventures along the dangerous coasts

of Long Island; but concealment was impossible. After the death of the old Earl of Claiborne, and the demise

of Reginald Maltravers, and Cleggett's purchase of the Claiborne estate, the King wished Cleggett to take the

"No, no," said Cleggett affably. "I couldn't think of it. I am quite democratic, you know."

The second time the King sent one of the Royal Dukes to see Cleggett. They were at a house party in Wales,

and Cleggett was a little disturbed that this business affair should be brought up at a gathering so distinctly

social in its nature. He was too tactful to let it be seen, but secretly he felt that in approaching the matter in

"I cannot think of it," said Cleggett. And then, not wishing to hurt the Englishman's feelings, he said kindly:

"But I will promise you this: if I should change my mind and decide to become a member of any aristocracy

The Duke thanked Cleggett for the compliment; and Cleggett thought he had heard the end of it.

He was, therefore, surprised, a few weeks later, as he was conversing with the King at Buckingham Palace,

when His Majesty himself, laying his hand familiarly on Cleggett's shoulder, renewed the petition in person.

It is hard to refuse things continually without seeming unappreciative. In fact, Cleggett felt trapped; if the

"Come, come, Cleggett," said the King, "lay aside your prejudices and oblige me. After all, it is not the sort

"Your Majesty," said Cleggett, politely but with a note of firmness and finality in his voice, "since you

mention the word American you force me to speak plainly. I would not willingly wound your sensibilities in

any particular, butpardon me if I am directyou have been very persistent. I AM an American, your

Majesty, and I consider the honor of being an American citizen far above any that it is within your power to

bestow. If I have not mentioned this before, it was because I did not wish to hurt you. I hope our friendship

will not cease, but I must tell you flatly that I desire to hear no more of this. You will oblige me by not

The King begged Cleggett's pardon with a becoming sincerity, and was about to withdraw. Cleggett, who

liked him immensely, was sudden smitten with a regret that it had been so impossible to oblige him.

"Your Majesty," he cried impulsively, "I BEG of you not to get the idea that there is anything personal in this

"I respect principle," said the King gravely. But he WAS hurt and could not help showing it, and he was a

"I will let you have my second son, Athos Cleggett. You may make him Earl of Claiborne, if you choose.

"That is like your generosity, Cleggett," said the King, smiling, and giving Cleggett his hand.