The Cruise of the Jasper B. Page 9

  CHAPTER IX

  MYSTERIES MULTIPLY

  Directing Kuroki to remove the ring and bring it along, Cleggett gavehis arm to Lady Agatha and led the way back to the Jasper B. Neithersaid anything to the point until, seated in the cabin, with thetwenty-dollar bill and the ring before them, Cleggett picked up thelatter and remarked:

  "You are certain of the identity of this ring?"

  "Certain," she said. "I could not mistake it. There is no other likeit, anywhere."

  It was a very heavy gold band, set with a large piece of dark greenjade which was deeply graven on its surface with the Claiborne crest.

  "Was it," asked Cleggett, "in the possession of Reginald Maltravers?"

  "It might have been, readily enough," she said, "although I had notknown that it was. Still, that does not explain...." She shrugged hershoulders.

  "There are a number of things unexplained," answered Cleggett, "and thepresence of this ring, and the manner in which it has come into ourpossession, are not the most mysterious of them. The explosion itselfappears to me, just now, at least, hard to account for."

  "The manner in which people get into and out of the hold of your vesselis also obscure," said Lady Agatha.

  "Nor is the motive of their hostility clear," said Cleggett.

  He picked up the piece of paper money. Something about the feel of itaroused his suspicions. He called Elmer, and when that exponent ofreform entered the cabin, asked him bluntly:

  "Did you ever have anything to do with bad money?"

  Elmer intimated that he might know it if he saw it.

  "Then look at that, please."

  Elmer took the torn bill, produced a penknife, slit the yellow paper,and cut out of it one of the small hair-like fibers with which thetexture of such notes is sprinkled. After wetting this fiber andmangling it with his penknife he gave his judgment briefly.

  "Queer," he said.

  "But what does that explain?" asked Lady Agatha. "Perhaps the Earl ofClaiborne came to this country and took to making counterfeit money inthe 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 explanationwe get out of our facts? Because, you know," she added, as Cleggettdid not smile, "all that is absurd!"

  "Yes," said Cleggett, still refusing to be amused, "but out of all thisjumble of mystery, just one certain thing appears."

  "And that is?"

  "That our destinies are somehow linked!"

  "Our destinies? Linked?"

  She gave him a swift look, and as suddenly dropped her eyes again.Cleggett could not tell whether she was offended or not by hisexpression of the idea.

  "The same people," said Cleggett, after a brief pause, "who are sopersistently hostile to me are also in some manner connected with yourown misfortunes. Their possession of this ring shows that."

  "Yes," she said, following his thought, "that is true--whoever set offthat bomb was also wearing this ring, or was very near the person whowas wearing it. And," with a shudder which conveyed to Cleggett thatshe was thinking of the box on deck, "it COULDN'T have been ReginaldMaltravers!"

  "Perhaps," said Cleggett, "someone was sneaking over from Morris's withthe intention of destroying the Jasper B., and was himself the victimof a premature explosion as he crouched behind the rocks to await hisopportunity."

  "But why," puzzled Lady Agatha, with contracted brows, "should adynamiter, anarchistic or otherwise, be holding a counterfeittwenty-dollar bill in his hand as he went about his work?"

  Cleggett brooded in silence.

  "We are in the midst of mysteries," he said finally. "They aremultiplying about us."

  He was about to say more. He was about to express again his beliefthat they had been flung together by fate. The sense that theirstories were inextricably intertwined, that they must henceforwardmarch on as one mystery towards a solution, was exhilarating to him.But how was it possible that she should feel the same sense of pleasurein the fact that they faced dangers, seen and unseen, together?

  Together!--How the thought thrilled him!

  On deck, Elmer, before returning to the box of Reginald Maltravers,suddenly and unexpectedly grasped Cleggett by the hand.

  "Bo," he said, "I'm wit' youse. I'm wit' youse the whole way. Anyfriend of the little dame is a friend of mine. She's a square littledame. D' youse get me?"

  "Thank you," said Cleggett, more affected than he would have cared toown. "Thank you, my loyal fellow."

  Cleggett established a watch on deck that night, with a relief everytwo hours. Towards morning George returned, with Dr. Farnsworth and anurse. This nurse, Miss Antoinette Medley, was a black-eyed, slendergirl with pretty hands and white teeth; she gestured a great deal andsmiled often. She and Dr. Farnsworth devoted themselves at once to theyoung anarchist poet, who had come out of his stupor, indeed, but wasnow babbling weakly in the delirium of fever.

  The night was not a cheerful one, and morning came gloomily out of agray bank of mist. Cleggett, as he looked about the boat in the firstpale light, could not resist a slight feeling of depression, courageousas he was. The wounded man gibbered in a bunk in the forecastle. Thebox of Reginald Maltravers stood on one end, leaning against the portside of the cabin, and dripped steadily. Elmer, wrapped in blankets,lay on the deck near the box of Reginald Maltravers, looking even moredejected in slumber than when his eyes were open. Teddy, thePomeranian, was snuggled against Elmer's feet, but, as if a prey tofrightful nightmares, the little dog twitched and whined in his sleepfrom time to time. These were the apparent facts, and these facts wereset to a melancholy tune by the long-drawn, dismal snores of Cap'nAbernethy, which rose and fell, and rose and fell, and rose again likethe 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 toask me, I'd say it ain't a cheerful ship this mornin', Mr. Cleggett, itain't a cheerful ship."

  But Cleggett's nature was too lively and vigorous to remain clouded forlong. By the time the red disk of the sun had crept above the easternhorizon he had shaken off his fit of the blues.

  The sun looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisanof integrity and honor. He drew strength from it. Cleggett, like allpoetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena ofnature.

  The sun did him another office. It showed him a peculiar tableauvivant on the eastern bank of the canal, near the house boat AnnabelLee. This consisted of three men, two of them naked except for bathingtrunks of the most abbreviated sort, running swiftly and earnestly upand down the edge of the canal. He saw with astonishment that the twomen in bathing suits were handcuffed together, the left wrist of one tothe right wrist of the other. A rope was tied to the handcuffs, andthe other end of it was held by the third man, who was dressed inordinary tweeds. The third man had a magazine rifle over one shoulder.He followed about twenty feet behind the two men in bathing suits anddrove them.

  Cleggett perceived that the man who was doing the driving was the samewho had watched the Jasper B. so persistently the day before from thedeck of the Annabel Lee. He was middle-sized, and inclined to bestout, and yet he followed his strange team with no apparent effort.Cleggett saw through the glass that he had a rather heavy blackmustache, and was again struck by something vaguely familiar about him.The two men in bathing suits were slender and undersized; they did notlook at all like athletes, and although they moved as fast as theycould it was apparent that they got no pleasure out of it. They ranwith their heads hanging down, and it seemed to Cleggett that they werequarreling as they ran, for occasionally one of them would give avicious jerk to the handcuffs that would almost upset the other, andthat must have hurt the wrists of both of them.

  As Cleggett watched, the driver pulled them up short, and waved themtowards the canal. They stopped, and it was
apparent that they werebalking and expostulating. But the driver was inexorable. He went nearto them and threatened their bare backs with the slack of the rope.Gingerly and shiveringly they stepped into the cold water, while thedriver stood on the bank. The water was up to their waists and he hadto threaten them again with his rope before they would duck their headsunder.

  When he allowed them on shore again they needed no urging, it wasevident, to make them hit up a good rate of speed, and back and forthalong the bank they sprinted. But the cold bath had not improved theirtemper, for suddenly one of them leaped and kicked sidewise at theother, with the result that both toppled to the ground. The stout manwas upon them in an instant, hazing them with the rope end. He drovethem, still lashing out at each other with their bare feet, into thewater again, and after a more prolonged ducking whipped them, at aplunging gallop, upon the Annabel Lee, where they disappeared fromCleggett's view.

  While Cleggett was still wondering what significance could underliethis unusual form of matutinal exercise, Dr. Farnsworth came out of theforecastle and beckoned to him. The young Doctor had a red Vandyckbeard sedulously cultivated in the belief that it would make him lookolder and inspire the confidence of patients, and a shock of dark redhair which he rumpled vigorously when he was thinking. He was rumplingit now.

  "Who's 'Loge'?" he demanded.

  "Loge?" repeated Cleggett.

  "You don't know anyone named 'Loge,' or Logan?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Whoever he is, 'Loge' is very much on the mind of our young friend inthere," said Farnsworth, with a movement of his head towards theforecastle. "And I wouldn't be surprised, to judge from the boy'sdelirium, if 'Loge' had something to do with all the hell that's beenraised around your ship. Come in and listen to this fellow."

  Miss Medley, the nurse, was sitting beside the wounded youth's bunk,endeavoring to soothe and restrain him. The young anarchist, whoseeyes were bright with fever, was talking rapidly in a weak buthigh-pitched singsong voice.

  "He's off on the poems again," said the Doctor, after listening amoment. "But wait, he'll get back to Loge. It's been one or the otherfor an hour now."

  "I spit upon your flag," shrilled Giuseppe Jones, feebly declamatory."'I spit--I spit--but, as I spit, I weep.'" He paused for a moment,and then began at the beginning and repeated all of the lines whichCleggett had read from the little book. One gathered that it wasGiuseppe's favorite poem.

  "'I spit upon the whole damned thing!'" he shrilled, and then with asad shake of his head: "But, as I spit, I weep!"

  If the poem was Giuseppe's favorite poem, this was evidently hisfavorite line, for he said it over and over again--"'But, as I spit, Iweep'"--in a breathless babble that was very wearing on the nerves.

  But suddenly he interrupted himself; the poems seemed to pass from hismind. "Loge!" he said, raising himself on his elbow and staring, witha frown not at, but through, Cleggett: "Logan--it isn't square!"

  There was suffering and perplexity in his gaze; he was evidently livingover again some painful scene.

  "I'm a revolutionist, Loge, not a crook! I won't do it, Loge!"

  Watching him, it was impossible not to understand that the struggle,which his delirium made real and present again, had stamped itself intothe texture of his spirit. "You shouldn't ask it, Loge," he said. Thecrisis of the conflict which he was living over passed presently, andhe murmured, with contracted brows, and as if talking to himself: "IsLoge a crook? A crook?"

  But after a moment of this he returned again to a rapid repetition ofthe phrase: "I'm a revolutionist, not a crook-not a crook--not acrook--a revolutionist, not a crook, Loge, not a crook----" Once hevaried it, crying with a quick, hot scorn: "I'll cut their throats andbe damned to them, but don't ask me to steal." And then he was offagain to declaiming his poetry: "I spit, but, as I spit, I weep!"

  But as Cleggett and the Doctor listened to him the youth's ravingssuddenly took a new form. He ceased to babble; terror expanded thepupils of his eyes and he pointed at vacancy with a shaking finger."Stop it!" he cried in a croaking whisper. "Stop it! It's hisskull--it's Loge's skull come alive. Stop it, I say, it's come aliveand getting bigger." With a violent effort he raised himself beforethe nurse could prevent him, shrinking back from the horridhallucination which pressed towards him, and then fell prone andsenseless on the bunk.

  "God!--his wounds!" cried the Doctor, starting forward. As Farnsworthhad feared, they had broken open and were bleeding again. "It's aticklish thing," said Farnsworth, rumpling his hair. "If I give himenough sedative to keep him quiet his heart may stop any time. If Idon't, he'll thrash himself to pieces in his delirium before the day'sover."

  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 thestoop shoulders and the odd, skull-shaped scarfpin, for whom he hadconceived at first sight such a tingling hatred--the same fellow whohad so ruthlessly manhandled the flaxen-haired Heinrich on the roof ofthe verandah the day before.