Produced by John Gidusko. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.
BY
DON MARQUIS
TO ALL THE COPYREADERS ON ALL THE NEWSPAPERS OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A BRIGHT BLADE LEAPS FROM A RUSTY SCABBARD
II THE ROOM OF ILLUSION
III A SCHOONER, A SKIPPER, AND A SKULL
IV A BAD MAN TO CROSS
V BEAUTY IN DISTRESS
VI LADY AGATHA'S STORY
VII FIRST BLOOD FOR CLEGGETT
VIII A FLAME LEAPS OUT OF THE DARK
IX MYSTERIES MULTIPLY
X IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP
XI REPARTEE AND PISTOLS
XII THE SECOND OBLONG BOX
XIII THE SOUL OF LOGAN BLACK
XIV CLEGGETT STANDS BY HIS SHIP
XV NIGHT, TEMPEST, LOVE AND BATTLE
XVI ROMANCE REGNANT
XVII MISS PRINGLE CALLS ON MR. CLEGGETT
XVIII THE MAN IN THE BLUE PAJAMAS
XIX TWO GREAT MEN MEET
XX THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DETECTIVE
XXI THE THIRD OBLONG BOX ARRIVES
XXII DANCING ON THE DECK
XXIII CUTLASSES
XXIV THE DUEL
XXV THE SECRET OF THE VESSEL'S HOLD
XXVI A DOG DIES GAME
XXVII CLEGGETT ACCOMMODATES THE KING
CHAPTER I
A BRIGHT BLADE LEAPS FROM A RUSTY SCABBARD
On an evening in April, 191-, Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately into
the news room of the New York Enterprise with a drab-colored
walking-stick 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, unostentatiously sat
down at the copy desk, and unobtrusively opened a drawer.
From the drawer he took a can of tobacco, a pipe, a pair of scissors, a
paste-pot and brush, a pile of copy paper, a penknife and three
half-lengths of lead pencil.
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
untemperamental looking points.
Cleggett himself, as he filled and lighted the pipe, did it in the most
matter-of-fact sort of way. Then he remarked to the head of the copy
desk, in an average kind of voice:
"H'lo, Jim."
"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 the week.
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 for each other.
The superficial observer! How many there are of him! And how much he
misses! He misses, in fact, everything.
At two o'clock in the morning a telegraph operator approached the copy
desk and handed Cleggett a sheet of yellow paper, with the remark:
"Cleggett--personal wire."
It was a night letter, and glancing at the signature Cleggett saw that
it was from his brother who lived in Boston. It ran:
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
temperance outfit. Blood thicker than Apollinaris after all. Poor
Uncle Tom.
Edward.
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
in time to disinherit the enemies of the Demon Rum.
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 somehow reminded one of the visage of a walrus, was preparing to
go home.
"Well?" he said, shortly.
He was a man for whom Cleggett had long felt a secret antipathy. The
man was, in short, the petty tyrant of Cleggett's little world.
"Can you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr. Wharton?" said Cleggett.
But he did not say it with the air of a person who really sues for a
hearing.
"Yes, yes--go 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 every three months for
the past two years, was familiar with the look.
"Go on, go on--what is it?" asked Mr. Wharton unpleasantly, frowning
and stroking the frosty mustache, first one side and then the other.
"I just stepped in to tell you," said Cleggett quietly, "that I don't
think much of the way you are running the Enterprise."
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 could speak Cleggett went on:
"Three years ago I made a number of suggestions to you. You treated me
contemptuously--very contemptuously!"
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 bluster, using the words nearest his
tongue:
"You d-damned im-p-pertinent------"
"Just a moment," Cleggett interrupted, growing visibly angrier, and
seeming to enjoy his anger more and more. "Just a word more. 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
fashion."
And with a gesture which was not devoid of dignity Cleggett drew from
an upper waistcoat pocket a card and flung it on Wharton's desk. After
which he stepped back and made a formal bow.
Wharton looked at the card. Bewilderment almost chased the anger from
his face.
"Eh," he said, "what's this?"
"My card, sir! A friend will wait on you tomorrow!"
"Tomorrow? A friend? What for?"
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 done you the honor of
challenging you to a duel."
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 long pair of shears.
"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
drab-colored 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,
swaggering just a little.
When the managing editor had heard the elevator come up, pause, and go
down again, he went out of his room and said to the city editor:
"Mr. Herbert, don't ever let that man Cleggett into this office again.
He is off--off 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 it's begun to show on him."
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 humming:
"Oh, the Beau Sabreur of the Grande Armee Was the Captain Tarjeanterre!"
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 rusty scabbard!