THE SECOND OBLONG BOX
When Cleggett returned to the ship he found Captain Abernethy in
conversation with a young man of deprecating manner whom the Captain
introduced as the Rev. Simeon Calthrop.
"I been tellin' him," said the Cap'n, pitching his voice shrilly above
the din the workmen made, and not giving the Rev. Mr. Calthrop an
opportunity to speak for himself, "I been tellin' him it may be a long
time before the Jasper B. gets to the Holy Land."
"Do you want to go to Palestine?" asked Cleggett of Mr. Calthrop, who
stood with downcast eyes and fingers that worked nervously at the
lapels of his rusty black coat.
"I've knowed him sence he was a boy. He's in disgrace, Simeon Calthrop
is," shrieked the Captain, preventing the preacher from answering
Cleggett's question, and scorning to answer it directly himself. "Been
kicked out of his church fur kissin' a married woman, and can't get
another one." (The Cap'n meant another church.)
The preacher merely raised his eyes, which were large and brown and
slightly protuberant, and murmured with a kind of brave humility:
"It is true."
"But why do you want to go to Palestine?" said Cleggett.
"She sung in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n
Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks say she had a cork foot. Hey,
Simeon, DID she have a cork foot?"
Mr. Calthrop flushed painfully, but he forced himself courageously to
answer. "Mr. Abernethy, I do not know," he said humbly, and with the
look of a stricken animal in his big brown eyes.
He was a handsome young fellow of about thirty--or he would have been
handsome, Cleggett thought, had he not been so emaciated. His hair was
dark and brown and inclined to curl, his forehead was high and white
and broad, and his fingers were long and white and slender; his nose
was well modeled, but his lips were a trifle too full. Although he
belonged to one of the evangelical denominations, the Rev. Mr. Calthrop
affected clothing very like the regulation costume of the Episcopalian
clergy; but this clothing was now worn and torn and dusty. Buttons
were gone here and there; the knees of the unpressed trousers were
baggy and beginning to be ragged, and the sole of one shoe flapped as
he walked. He had a three days' growth of beard and no baggage.
When Cap'n Abernethy had delivered himself and walked away, the Rev.
Mr. Calthrop confirmed the story of his own disgrace, speaking in a low
but clear voice, and with a gentle and wistful smile.
"I am one of the most miserable of sinners, Mr. Cleggett," he said. "I
have proved myself to be that most despicable thing, an unworthy
minister. I was tempted and I fell."
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop seemed to find the sort of satisfaction in
confessing his sins to the world that the medieval flagellants found in
scoring themselves with whips; they struck their bodies; he drew forth
his soul and beat it publicly.
Cleggett learned that he had set himself as a punishment and a
mortification the task of obtaining his daily bread by the work of his
hands. It was his intention to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
refusing all assistance except that which he earned by manual labor.
After such a term of years as should satisfy all men (and particularly
his own spiritual sense) of the genuineness of his penitence, he would
apply to his church for reinstatement, and ask for an appointment to
some difficult mission in a wild and savage country. The Rev. Mr.
Calthrop intimated that if he chose to accept rehabilitation on less
arduous terms, he might obtain it; but the poignancy of his own sense
of failure drove him to extremes.
"Are you sure," said Cleggett sternly, "that you are not making a
luxury of this very penitence itself? Are you sure that it would not
be more acceptable to Heaven if you forgave yourself more easily?"
"Alas, yes, I am sure!" said Mr. Calthrop, with a sigh and his calm and
wistful smile. "I know myself too well! I know my own soul. I am
cursed with a fatal magnetism which women find it impossible to resist.
And I am continually tempted to permit it to exert itself. This is the
cross that I bear through life."
"You should marry some good woman," said Cleggett.
"I do not feel that I am worthy," said Mr. Calthrop meekly. "And think
of the pain my wife would experience in seeing me continually tempted
by some woman who believed herself to be my psychic affinity!"
"You are a thought too subtle, Mr. Calthrop," said Cleggett bluntly.
"But I suppose you cannot help that. To each of us his destiny. I am
prepared, until I see some evidence to the contrary, to believe your
repentance to be genuine. In the meantime, we need a ship's chaplain.
If your conscience permits, you may have the post--combining it,
however, with the vocation of a common sailor before the mast. I am
inclined to agree with you that manual labor will do you good. Some
time or another, in her progress around the world, the Jasper B. will
undoubtedly touch at a coast within walking distance of Jerusalem.
There we will put you ashore. Before we sail you can put in your time
holystoning the deck.
"The deck of the Jasper B.," said Cleggett, looking at it, "to all
appearances, has not been holystoned for some years. You will find in
the forecastle several holystones that have never been used, and may
begin at once."
Cleggett, if his tastes had not inclined him towards a more active and
adventurous life, would have made a good bishop, for he knew how to
combine justice and mercy. And yet few bishops have possessed his
rapidity of decision, when compelled, upon the spur of the moment, to
become the physician of an ailing soul. He had determined in a flash to
make the man ship's chaplain, that Calthrop might come into close
contact with other spiritual organisms and not think too exclusively of
his own.
The Rev. Mr. Calthrop thanked him with becoming gratitude and departed
to get the new holystones.
By three o'clock that afternoon, with such celerity had the work gone
forward, Mr. Watkins, the contractor, announced to Cleggett that his
task was finished, except for the removal of the rubbish in the hold.
Cleggett, going carefully over the vessel, and examining the new parts
with a brochure on the construction and navigation of schooners in his
hand, verified the statement.
"She is ready to sail," said Cleggett, standing by the new wheel with a
swelling heart, and sweeping the vessel from bowsprit to rudder with a
gradual glance.
It was a look almost paternal in its pride; Cleggett loved the Jasper
B. She was an idea that no one else but Cleggett could have had.
"Sail?" said Mr. Watkins.
"Why not?" said Cleggett, puzzled at his tone.
"Oh, nothing," said Mr. Watkins. "It's none of my business. My
business was to do the work I was hired to do according to
specifications. Further than that, nothing."
"But why did you think I was having the work done?"
"Can't say I thought," said Mr. Watkins. "I took the job, and I done
it. Had an idea mebby you were in the movin' picture game."
Mr. Watkins, as he talked, had been regarding Cap'n Abernethy, who in
turn was looking at the mainmast. There seemed to be something in the
very way Cap'n Abernethy looked at the mainmast which jarred on Mr.
Watkins. Mr. Watkins dropped his voice, indicating the Cap'n with a
curved, disparaging thumb, as he asked Cleggett:
"Is HE going to sail her?"
"Why not?"
"Oh--nothing; nothing at all," said Mr. Watkins. "It's none o' MY
business."
Cleggett began to be a little annoyed. "Have you," he said with
dignity, and fixing a rather stern glance upon Mr. Watkins, "have you
any reason to doubt Cap'n Abernethy's ability as a sailing master?"
"No, indeed," said Mr. Watkins cheerfully, "not as a sailing master.
He may be the best in the world, for all I know. _I_ never seen him
sail anything. I never heard him play the violin, neither, for that
matter, and he may be a regular jim-dandy on the violin for all I know."
"You are facetious," said Cleggett stiffly.
"Meaning I ain't paid to be fresh, eh?" said Mr. Watkins. "And right
you are, too. And there's all that junk down in the hold to pass out
and cart away."
Cleggett personally supervised this removal, standing on the deck by
the hatchway and scanning everything that was handed up. The character
of this junk has already been described. Every barrel or cask that was
placed upon the deck was stove in with an ax before Cleggett's eyes; he
satisfied himself that every bottle was empty; he turned over the
broken boxes and beer cases with his foot to see that they contained
nothing.
But the work was three-quarters done before he found what he was
looking for. From under a heap of debris, which had completely hidden
it, towards the forward part of the vessel, the workmen unearthed an
unpainted oblong box, almost seven feet in length. It was of
substantial material and looked newer than any of the other stuff.
Cleggett had it placed on one side of the hatchway and sat down on it.
It was tightly nailed up; all of its surfaces were sound. Cleggett did
not doubt that he would find in it what he wanted, yet in order to be
on the safe side he continued to scrutinize everything else that came
out of the hold.
But finally the hold was as empty as a drum, and Watkins and his men
departed. The oblong box upon which Cleggett sat was the only possible
receptacle of any sort in an undamaged condition, which had been in the
hold. He determined to have it opened in the cabin.
As he arose from it he was struck by its resemblance to the box in
Elmer's charge, the dank box of Reginald Maltravers, which stood on one
end near the cabin companionway, leaning against the port side of the
cabin so that it was not visible from the road, which ran to the
starboard of the Jasper B. But, since all oblong boxes are bound to
have a general resemblance, Cleggett, at the time, thought little
enough of this likeness.
He called to George and Mr. Calthrop, who, with Dr. Farnsworth, were
forward receiving their first lecture on seamanship from Cap'n
Abernethy and Kuroki, to carry the box into the cabin.
But as George and the Rev. Mr. Calthrop lifted the box to their
shoulders, Cleggett was startled by a loud and violent oath; a
veritable bellow of blasphemy that made him shudder. Turning, he saw
than an automobile had paused in the road. In the forward part of the
machine stood Loge, raving in an almost demoniac fury and pointing at
the box. He writhed in the grip of three men who endeavored to restrain
him. One of them was the sinister Pierre.
Hoisting himself, as it were, on a mounting billow of his own
profanity, Loge cast himself with a wide swimming motion of his arms
from the auto. But one of the men clung to him; they came to the
ground together like tackler and tackled in a football game. The
others cast themselves out of the machine and flung themselves upon
their leader; he fought like a lion, but he was finally overpowered and
thrown back into the auto, which was immediately started up and which
made off towards Fairport at a rattling speed. Three hundred yards
away, however, Loge rose again and shook a furious fist at the Jasper
B., and though Cleggett could not distinguish the words, the sense of
Loge's impotent rage rolled towards him on the wind in a roaring,
vibrant bass.
The sight of the box that he had not been able to buy, in Cleggett's
possession, had stirred him beyond all caution; he had actually
contemplated an attempt to rush the Jasper B. in broad daylight.
But while this queer tableau of baffled rage was enacting itself on the
starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less
explicable thing was occurring on the port side. The swish of oars and
the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction
as Loge's booming threats grew fainter. He saw that two oarsmen, near
the eastern and farther side of the canal, had allowed the dainty,
varnished little craft they were supposed to propel to come to a rest
in spite of the evident displeasure of a man who sat in its stern.
This third man was the same that Cleggett had seen on the deck of the
Annabel Lee with a spy glass, and again that same morning driving the
two almost nude figures up and down the canal.
The two oarsmen, Cleggett saw with surprise, rowed with shackled feet;
their feet were, indeed, chained to the boat itself. About the wrists
of each were steel bands; fixed to these bands were chains, the other
ends of which were locked to their oars. They were, in effect, galley
slaves.
All this iron somewhat hampered their movements. But the reason of
their pause was an engrossing interest in the box of Reginald
Maltravers, which stood, as has already been said, on the port side of
the cabin, on one end, and so was visible from their boat. They were
looking at it with slack oars, dropped jaws and starting eyes; the
thing seemed to have fascinated them and bereft them of motion; it was
as if they were unable to get past it at all. Elmer, worn out by his
many long vigils, lay asleep on the deck at the foot of the box, with
an arm flung over his face.
The stout man, after vainly endeavoring to start his oarsmen with
words, took up an extra oar and began vigorously prodding them with it.
Cleggett had not seen this man look towards the Jasper B., but he
nevertheless had the feeling that the man had missed little of what had
been going on there. He seemed to be that kind of man.
His crew responding to the stabs of the oar, the little vessel went
perhaps fifty yards farther up the canal towards Parker's, and then
swung daintily around and came back towards the Jasper B. at almost the
speed of a racing shell, the men in chains bending doggedly to their
work. Cleggett saw that the boat must pass close to the Jasper B., and
leaned over the port rail.
The man in the stern had picked up a magazine and was lolling back
reading it. As the boat passed under him Cleggett saw on the cover
page of the magazine a picture of the very man who was perusing it. It
was a singularly urbane face; both the counterfeit presentment on the
cover page and the real face were smiling and calm and benign.
Cleggett could read the legend on the magazine cover accompanying the
picture. It ran:
Wilton Barnstable Tells In this Issue the Inside Story
of How he Broke up the Gigantic Smuggling Conspiracy.
At that instant the man dropped the magazine and looked Cleggett full
in the face. He waved his arm in a meaning gesture in the direction in
which Loge had disappeared and said, with a gentle shake of his head at
Cleggett, as if he were chiding a naughty child:
"When thieves fall out--! When thieves fall out, my dear sir!"
As he swept by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man
who has delivered himself of a brilliant epigram; it showed in his very
shoulders.
"And that," murmured Cleggett, "is Wilton Barnstable, the great
detective!"