But as George and the Rev.Mr.Calthrop lifted the box to their shoulders, Cleggett was startled by a loud and violent oath; a veritable bellow of blasphemy that made him shudder.Turning, he saw than an automobile had paused in the road.In the forward part of the machine stood Loge, raving in an almost demoniac fury and pointing at the box.He writhed in the grip of three men who endeavored to restrain him.One of them was the sinister Pierre.
Hoisting himself, as it were, on a mounting billow of his own profanity, Loge cast himself with a wide swimming motion of his arms from the auto.But one of the men clung to him; they came to the ground together like tackler and tackled in a football game.The others cast themselves out of the machine and flung themselves upon their leader; he fought like a lion, but he was finally overpowered and thrown back into the auto, which was immediately started up and which made off towards Fairport at a rattling speed.Three hundred yards away, however, Loge rose again and shook a furious fist at the Jasper B., and though Cleggett could not distinguish the words, the sense of Loge's impotent rage rolled towards him on the wind in a roaring, vibrant bass.
The sight of the box that he had not been able to buy, in Cleggett's possession, had stirred him beyond all caution; he had actually contemplated an attempt to rush the Jasper B.in broad daylight.
But while this queer tableau of baffled rage was enacting itself on the starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less explicable thing was occurring on the port side.The swish of oars and the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction as Loge's booming threats grew fainter.He saw that two oarsmen, near the easternand farther side of the canal, had allowed the dainty, varnished little craft they were supposed to propel to come to a rest in spite of the evident displeasure of a man who sat in its stern.This third man was the same that Cleggett had seen on the deck of the Annabel Lee with a spy glass, and again that same morning driving the two almost nude figures up and down the canal.
The two oarsmen, Cleggett saw with surprise, rowed with shackled feet; their feet were, indeed, chained to the boat itself.About the wrists of each were steel bands; fixed to these bands were chains, the other ends of which were locked to their oars.They were, in effect, galley slaves.
All this iron somewhat hampered their movements.But the reason of their pause was an engrossing interest in the box of Reginald Maltravers, which stood, as has already been said, on the port side of the cabin, on one end, and so was visible from their boat.They were looking at it with slack oars, dropped jaws and starting eyes; the thing seemed to have fascinated them and bereft them of motion; it was as if they were unable to get past it at all.Elmer, worn out by his many long vigils, lay asleep on the deck at the foot of the box, with an arm flung over his face.
The stout man, after vainly endeavoring to start his oarsmen with words, took up an extra oar and began vigorously prodding them with it.Cleggett had not seen this man look towards the Jasper B., but he nevertheless had the feeling that the man had missed little of what had been going on there.He seemed to be that kind of man.
His crew responding to the stabs of the oar, the little vessel went perhaps fifty yards farther up the canal towards Parker's, and then swung daintily around and came back towards the Jasper B.at almost the speed of a racing shell, the men in chains bending doggedly to their work.Cleggett saw that the boat must pass close to the Jasper B., and leaned over the port rail.
The man in the stern had picked up a magazine and was lolling back reading it.As the boat passed under him Cleggett saw on the cover page of the magazine a picture of the very man who was perusing it.It was asingularly urbane face; both the counterfeit presentment on the cover page and the real face were smiling and calm and benign.Cleggett could read the legend on the magazine cover accompanying the picture.It ran:
Wilton Barnstable Tells In this Issue the Inside Storyof How he Broke up the Gigantic Smuggling Conspiracy.
At that instant the man dropped the magazine and looked Cleggett full in the face.He waved his arm in a meaning gesture in the direction in which Loge had disappeared and said, with a gentle shake of his head at Cleggett, as if he were chiding a naughty child:
"When thieves fall out--!When thieves fall out, my dear sir!"As he swept by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man who has delivered himself of a brilliant epigram; it showed in his very shoulders.
"And that," murmured Cleggett, "is Wilton Barnstable, the great detective!"
