Rose Orchid

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Rose Orchid
by Rex Stout
All-Story Weekly, March 28, 1914
Copyright 1917 by the Frank A. Munsey Co.
All rights reserved.

Accepting as postulates the assertions that human beings are pegs, and that Lieutenant-Commander Brinsley Reed, U. S. N. was a human being, it follows with certainty that he was beautifully fitted for his particular hole.
He was third in his class out of Annapolis. By the time he attained his two full stripes he had successfully dominated three junior messes and been the subject of unusual commendation in two wardrooms; and before he had advanced halfway up the list he was known as the best deck officer in the North Atlantic.
Four different captains applied for his services as executive when he passed into the next rank. But Lieutenant-Commander Reed, who had ideas of his own concerning the proper discipline of a ship, and who was lucky enough to possess a key to a certain door in the Bureau at Washington, disappointed them all by obtaining for himself the command of the gunboat Helena.
For the two years that followed, every man who had the good fortune to be transferred from the Helena to another ship swore at every chance, with violent and profane asseveration, that the Helena was a "madhouse."
"The old man's a holy terror," they would say. "Bag and hammock inspection and fire drill twice a week. Abandon ship three times a month; and when he can't think of nothing else it's general quarters. For a seagoin' hat it's ten days in the brig. And brasswork? Say! Why, this is a home!"
All of which meant to indicate that Lieutenant-Commander Reed was one of those persons who illustrate and justify the rather curious order of the words in the phrase: an officer and a gentleman.
He had at one time believed in the Bible; but it had long ago been discarded for the Blue Book, which is officially known as "Navy Regulations, 1914."
In the third winter under his command, at the conclusion of the annual target practice and maneuvers at Guantanamo, the Helena was ordered to San Juan to relieve the Chester, which was returning to go into dry dock at New York.
Lieutenant-Commander Reed was much pleased at this, for two reasons: first, it would remove him from continual subordination to a flag officer; and second, he would have an opportunity to visit a boyhood friend whom he had not seen for many years, and who was now the owner of a tobacco plantation in Puerto Rico. The Helena had lain at San Juan for a month the previous spring; but the lieutenant-commander had not then known that his friend was on the island.
After all, the visit proved to be disappointing. I will not go so far as to say that Lieutenant-Commander Reed had lost all social instinct, but the fact is that in his endeavor to perfect himself as a military machine he had forgotten how to be a man. He found his friend dull, and his friend found him insufferable.
For two days they made a pretense of amusing each other. On the third morning the lieutenant- commander begged his friend to take no notice of his presence, but to follow his own inclinations; the guest would amuse himself.
"Very well," the other agreed, "then I shall ride over to the north enclosure; the carts should arrive today. You won't join me?"
The lieutenant-commander refused, and spent a miserable day lounging in a hammock between two giant cedars, drinking crushed pineapple and reading some ancient copies of popular magazines. That evening he announced his intention of returning to the Helena at San Juan on the following morning.
"But you were to stay a week," his host protested rather feebly. "And a rest will do you good. It's not very amusing out here, but I'd be glad to have you. What's the hurry?"
"Confound your politeness," said the lieutenant-commander, who regarded bluntness as an untainted virtue. "It's no good, Dick; we don't cut in. We're only in each other's way--and I want to get back to the ship."
Accordingly, at four o'clock in the following afternoon (the start having been postponed some hours on account of the midday heat), the lieutenant-commander mounted his little native pony that had carried him from San Juan to Cerrogordo in six hours, waved a last farewell to his host, and departed on his journey of forty miles across the mountains, through the foothills and down the long plain to the sea.
As he turned into the white wagon road that leads through San Lorenzo, the lieutenant-commander felt a pleasant sense of rehef.
He understood himself perfectly. Stern, passionately fond of authority, conscious of but one code of morals and of conduct, and supremely happy in his power and ability to enforce it, he was utterly unable to breathe in any other atmosphere than that of his cabin. As