THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.(杰斯帕·B·之游)

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THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

THE CRUISE OF THE

JASPER B.

BY DON MARQUIS

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

CHAPTER I

A BRIGHT BLADE LEAPS

FROM A RUSTY SCABBARD

On an evening in April, 191-, Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately into

the news room of the New York Enterprise with a drab-colored walking-

stick in his hand. He stood the cane in a corner, changed his sober street

coat for a more sober office jacket, adjusted a green eyeshade below his

primly brushed grayish hair, unostentatiously sat down at the copy desk,

and unobtrusively opened a drawer.

From the drawer he took a can of tobacco, a pipe, a pair of scissors, a

paste-pot and brush, a pile of copy paper, a penknife and three half-lengths

of lead pencil.

The can of tobacco was not remarkable. The pipe was not

picturesque. The scissors were the most ordinary of scissors. The copy

paper was quite undistinguished in appearance. The lead pencils had the

most untemperamental looking points.

Cleggett himself, as he filled and lighted the pipe, did it in the most

matter-of-fact sort of way. Then he remarked to the head of the copy desk,

in an average kind of voice:

"H'lo, Jim."

"H'lo, Clegg," said Jim, without looking up. "Might as well begin on

this bunch of early copy, I guess."

For more than ten years Cleggett had done the same thing at the same

time in the same manner, six nights of the week.

What he did on the seventh night no one ever thought to inquire. If

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

any member of the Enterprise staff had speculated about it at all he would

have assumed that Cleggett spent that seventh evening in some way

essentially commonplace, sober, unemotional, quiet, colorless, dull and

Brooklynitish.

Cleggett lived in Brooklyn. The superficial observer might have said

that Cleggett and Brooklyn were made for each other.

The superficial observer! How many there are of him! And how

much he misses! He misses, in fact, everything.

At two o'clock in the morning a telegraph operator approached the

copy desk and handed Cleggett a sheet of yellow paper, with the remark:

"Cleggett--personal wire."

It was a night letter, and glancing at the signature Cleggett saw that it

was from his brother who lived in Boston. It ran:

Uncle Tom died yesterday. Don't faint now. He splits bulk

fortune between you and me. Lawyers figure nearly $500,000

each. Mostly easily negotiable securities. New will made

month ago while sore at president temperance outfit. Blood

thicker than Apollinaris after all. Poor Uncle Tom.

Edward.

Despite Edward's thoughtful warning, Cleggett did nearly faint.

Nothing could have been less expected. Uncle Tom was an irascible

prohibitionist, and one of the most deliberately disobliging men on earth.

Cleggett and his brother had long ceased to expect anything from him.

For twenty years it had been thoroughly understood that Uncle Tom would

leave his entire estate to a temperance society. Cleggett had ceased to

think of Uncle Tom as a possible factor in his life. He did not doubt that

Uncle Tom had changed the will to gain some point with the officials of

the temperance society, intending to change it once again after he had been

deferred to, cajoled, and flattered enough to placate his vanity. But death

had stepped in just in time to disinherit the enemies of the Demon Rum.

Cleggett read the wire through twice, and then folded it and put it into

his pocket. He rose and walked toward the managing editor's room. As

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

he stepped across the floor there was a little dancing light in his eyes, there

was a faint smile upon his lips, that were quite foreign to the staid and

sober Cleggett that the world knew. He was quiet, but he was almost

jaunty, too; he felt a little drunk, and enjoyed the feeling.

He opened the managing editor's door with more assurance than he

had ever displayed before. The managing editor, a pompous, tall, thin

man with a drooping frosty mustache, and cold gray eyes in a cold gray

face that somehow reminded one of the visage of a walrus, was preparing

to go home.

"Well?" he said, shortly.

He was a man for whom Cleggett had long felt a secret antipathy.

The man was, in short, the petty tyrant of Cleggett's little world.

"Can you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr. Wharton?" said Cleggett.

But he did not say it with the air of a person who really sues for a hearing.

"Yes, yes--go on." Mr. Wharton, who had risen from his chair, sat

down again. He was distinctly annoyed. He was ungracious. He was

usually ungracious with Cleggett. His face set itself in the expression it

always took when he declined to consider raising a man's salary.

Cleggett, who had been refused a raise regularly every three months for

the past two years, was familiar with the look.

"Go on, go on--what is it?" asked Mr. Wharton unpleasantly, frowning

and stroking the frosty mustache, first one side and then the other.

"I just stepped in to tell you," said Cleggett quietly, "that I don't think

much of the way you are running the Enterprise."

Wharton stopped stroking his mustache so quickly and so amazedly

that one might have thought he had run into a thorn amongst the hirsute

growth and pricked a finger. He glared. He opened his mouth. But

before he could speak Cleggett went on:

"Three years ago I made a number of suggestions to you. You treated

me contemptuously--very contemptuously!"

Cleggett paused and drew a long breath, and his face became quite red.

It was as if the anger in which he could not afford to indulge himself three

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

years before was now working in him with cumulative effect. Wharton,

only partially recovered from the shock of Cleggett's sudden arraignment,

began to stammer and bluster, using the words nearest his tongue:

"You d-damned im-p-pertinent------"

"Just a moment," Cleggett interrupted, growing visibly angrier, and

seeming to enjoy his anger more and more. "Just a word more.

I had intended to conclude my remarks by telling you that my

contempt for YOU, personally, is unbounded. It is boundless, sir! But

since you have sworn at me, I am forced to conclude this interview in

another fashion."

And with a gesture which was not devoid of dignity Cleggett drew

from an upper waistcoat pocket a card and flung it on Wharton's desk.

After which he stepped back and made a formal bow.

Wharton looked at the card. Bewilderment almost chased the anger

from his face.

"Eh," he said, "what's this?"

"My card, sir! A friend will wait on you tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow? A friend? What for?"

Cleggett folded his arms and regarded the managing editor with a

touch of the supercilious in his manner.

"If you were a gentleman," he said, "you would have no difficulty in

understanding these things. I have just done you the honor of

challenging you to a duel."

Mr. Wharton's mouth opened as if he were about to explode in a roar

of incredulous laughter. But meeting Cleggett's eyes, which were, indeed,

sparkling with a most remarkable light, his jaw dropped, and he turned

slightly pale. He rose from his chair and put the desk between himself

and Cleggett, picking up as he did so a long pair of shears.

"Put down the scissors," said Cleggett, with a wave of his hand. "I do

not propose to attack you now."

And he turned and left the managing editor's little office, closing the

door behind him.

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

The managing editor tiptoed over to the door and, with the scissors

still grasped in one hand, opened it about a quarter of an inch. Through

this crack Wharton saw Cleggett walk jauntily towards the corner where

his hat and coat were hanging. Cleggett took off his worn office jacket,

rolled it into a ball, and flung it into a waste paper basket. He put on his

street coat and hat and picked up the drab-colored cane. Swinging the

stick he moved towards the door into the hall. In the doorway he paused,

cocked his hat a trifle, turned towards the managing editor's door, raised

his hand with his pipe in it with the manner of one who points a dueling

pistol, took careful aim at the second button of the managing editor's

waistcoat, and clucked. At the cluck the managing editor drew back

hastily, as if Cleggett had actually presented a firearm; Cleggett's manner

was so rapt and fatal that it carried conviction. Then Cleggett laughed,

cocked his hat on the other side of his head and went out into the corridor

whistling. Whistling, and, since faults as well as virtues must be told,

swaggering just a little.

When the managing editor had heard the elevator come up, pause, and

go down again, he went out of his room and said to the city editor:

"Mr. Herbert, 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

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

from a rusty scabbard!

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

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.

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

"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.

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.

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 Fact--was secretly a mighty reservoir

of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance. He ate it, he drank it,

he breathed it, he dreamed it. The usual copyreader, when he closes his

eyes and smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thinking of starting a

chicken-farm in New Jersey. But Cleggett--with gray sprinkled in his

hair, sober of face and precise of manner, as the world knew him--lived a

hidden life which was one long, wild adventure.

Nobody had ever suspected it. But his room might have given to the

discerning a clue to the real man behind the mask which he assumed--

which he had been forced to assume in order to earn a living. When he

reached the apartment, a few minutes after his encounter on the bridge,

and switched the electric light on, the gleams fell upon an astonishing

clutter of books and arms. . . .

Stevenson, cavalry sabers, W. Clark Russell, pistols, and Dumas; Jack

London, poignards, bowie knives, Stanley Weyman, Captain Marryat, and

Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban machetes, Conan Doyle,

Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting

knives, Fenimore Cooper, G. P. R. James, broadswords, Dumas; Gustave

Aimard, Rudyard Kipling, dueling swords, Dumas; F. Du Boisgobey,

Malay krises, Walter Scott, stick pistols, scimitars, Anthony Hope, single

sticks, foils, Dumas; jungles of arms, jumbles of books; arms of all makes

and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the fireplace, leaning

against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under the bed, peeping out of the

wardrobe, propping the windows open, serving as paper weights; pictures,

warlike and romantic prints and engravings, pinned to the walls with

daggers; in the wardrobe, coats and hats hanging from poignards and

stilettos thrust into the wood instead of from nails or hooks. But of all

the weapons it was the rapiers, of all the books it was Dumas, that he

loved. There was Dumas in French, Dumas in English, Dumas with

pictures, Dumas unillustrated, Dumas in cloth, Dumas in leather, Dumas

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THECRUISEOFTHEJASPERB.1THECRUISEOFTHEJASPERB.BYDONMARQUISTHECRUISEOFTHEJASPERB.2CHAPTERIABRIGHTBLADELEAPSFROMARUSTYSCABBARDOnaneveninginApril,191-,ClementJ.CleggettwalkedsedatelyintothenewsroomoftheNewYorkEnterprisewithadrab-coloredwalking-stickinhishand.Hestoodthecaneinacorner,changedhissoberstreet...

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