The Cruise of the Jasper B. | Page 5

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!
CHAPTER II
THE ROOM OF ILLUSION
That part of Brooklyn in which Cleggett lived overlooks a wide sweep
of water where the East River merges with New York Bay. From his
windows he could gaze out upon the bustling harbor craft and see the
ships going forth to the great mysterious sea.

He walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, and as he walked he still
hummed tunes. Occasionally, still with the rapt and fatal manner which
had daunted the managing editor, he would pause and flex his wrist,
and then suddenly deliver a ferocious thrust with his walking-stick.
The fifth of these lunges had an unexpected result. Cleggett directed it
toward the door of an unpainted toolhouse, a temporary structure near
one of the immense stone pillars from which the bridge is swung. But,
as he lunged, the toolhouse door opened, and a policeman, who was
coming out wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, received a jab in
the pit of a somewhat protuberant stomach.
The officer grunted and stepped backward; then he came on, raising his
night-stick.
"Why, it's--it's McCarthy!" exclaimed Cleggett, who had also sprung
back, as the light fell on the other's face.
"Mr. Cleggett, by the powers!" said the officer, pausing and lowering
his lifted club. "Are ye soused, man? Or is it your way of sayin' good
avenin' to your frinds?"
Cleggett smiled. He had first known McCarthy years before when he
was a reporter, and more recently had renewed the acquaintance in his
walks across the bridge.
"I didn't know you were there, McCarthy," he said.
"No?" said the officer. "And who were ye jabbin' at, thin?"
"I was just limbering up my wrist," said Cleggett.
"'Tis a quare thing to do," persisted McCarthy, albeit good-humoredly.
"And now I mind I've seen ye do the same before, Mr. Cleggett. You're
foriver grinnin' to yersilf an' makin' thim funny jabs at nothin' as ye
cross the bridge. Are ye subjict to stiffness in the wrists, Mr. Cleggett?"
"Perhaps it's writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant

humor that was on him. He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of
his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of copy,
sharpened his last pencil.
"Writer's cramp? Is it so?" mused McCarthy. "Newspapers is great
things, ain't they now? And so's writin' and readin'. Gr-r-reat things!
But if ye'll take my advise, Mr. Cleggett, ye'll kape that writin' and
readin' within bounds. Too much av thim rots the brains."
"I'll remember that," said Cleggett. And he playfully jabbed the officer
again as he turned away.
"G'wan wid ye!" protested McCarthy. "Ye're soused! The scent av it's
in the air. If I'm compilled to run yez in f'r assaultin' an officer ye'll get
the cramps out av thim wrists breakin' stone, maybe. Cr-r-r-amps,
indade!"
Cramps, indeed! Oh, Clement J. Cleggett, you liar! And yet, who does
not lie in order to veil his inmost, sweetest thoughts from an
unsympathetic world?
That was not an ordinary jab with an ordinary cane which Cleggett had
directed towards the toolhouse door. It was a thrust en carte; the thrust
of a brilliant swordsman; the thrust of a master; a terrible thrust. It was
meant for as pernicious a bravo as ever infested the pages of romantic
fiction. Cleggett had been slaying these gentry a dozen times a day for
years. He had pinked four of them on the way across the bridge, before
McCarthy, with his stomach and his realism, stopped the lunge
intended for the fifth. But this is not exactly the sort of thing one finds
it easy to confide to a policeman, be he ever so friendly a policeman.
Cleggett--Old Clegg, the copyreader--Clegg, the commonplace--C. J.
Cleggett, the Brooklynite-this person whom young reporters conceived
of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty