Rose Orchid

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