"Yes, sir--there's no doubt of it--a schooner, Mr.Cleggett," said Mr.Goldberg, turning pale and backing away from the door.
The ordinary man inspects a house or a horse first and buys it, or fails to buy it, afterward; but genius scorns conventions; Cleggett was not an ordinary man; he often moved straight towards his object by inspiration; great poets and great adventurers share this faculty; Cleggett paid for the Jasper B.first and went back to inspect his purchase later.
The vessel lay about two miles from the center of Fairport.He could get within half a mile of it by trolley.Nevertheless, when he reached the Jasper B.again after leaving Mr.Goldberg it was getting along towards dusk.
He first entered the cabin.It was of a good size and divided into several compartments.But it was in a state of dilapidation and littered with a jumble of odds and ends which looked like the ruins of a barroom.As he turned to ascend to the deck again, after possibly five minutes, intending to take a look at the forecastle next, he heard the sound of a motor.
Looking out of the cabin he saw a taxicab approaching the boat fromthe direction of Fairport.It was a large machine, but it was overloaded with seven or eight men.It stopped within twenty yards of the vessel, and two men got out, one of them evidently a person who imposed some sort of leadership on the rest of the party.This was a tall fellow, with a slouching gait and round shoulders.And yet, to judge from his movements, he was both quick and powerful.The other was a short, stout man with a commonplace, broad red face and flaxen hair.The two stood for a moment in colloquy in the road that led from Fairport proper to the bayside, passing near the Jasper B., and Cleggett heard the shorter of the two men say:
"I'm sure I saw somebody aboard of her." "How long ago, Heinrich?" asked the tall man."An hour or so," said Heinrich.
"It was old man Abernethy; he's harmless," said the tall fellow."He's the only person that's been aboard her in years.""There was someone else," persisted Heinrich."Someone who was talking to Abernethy."The tall man mumbled something about having been a fool not to buy her before this; Cleggett did not catch all of the remark.Then the tall fellow said:
"We'll go aboard, Heinrich, and take a look around."With that they advanced towards the vessel.Cleggett stepped on deck from the cabin companionway, and both men stopped short at the sight of him, Heinrich obviously a trifle confused, but the other one in no wise abashed.He made no attempt, this tall fellow, to give the situation a casual turn.What he did was to stand and stare at Cleggett, candidly, and with more than a touch of insolence, as if trying to beat down Cleggett's gaze.
Cleggett, staring in his turn, perceived that the tall man, ungainly as he was, affected a bizarre individualism in the matter of dress.His clothing cried out, rather than suggested, that it was expensive.His feet were cased in button shoes with fancy tops; his waistcoat, cut in the extreme ofstyle, revealed that little strip of white which falsely advertises a second waistcoat beneath, but in his case the strip was too broad.There were diamonds on the fingers of both powerful hands.But the thing that grated particularly upon Cleggett was the character of the man's scarfpin.It was by far the largest ornament of the sort that Cleggett had ever seen; he was near enough to the fellow to make out that it had been carved from a piece of solid ivory in the likeness of a skull.In the eyeholes of the skull two opals flamed with an evil levin.The man suggested to Cleggett, at first glance, a bartender who had come into money, or a drayman who had been promoted to an important office in a labor union and was spending the most of a considerable salary on his person.And yet his face, more closely observed, somehow gave the lie to his clothes, for it was not lacking in the signs of intelligence.In spite of his taste, or rather lack of taste, there was no hint of weakness in his physiognomy.His features were harsh, bold, predatory; a slightly yellowish tinge about the temples and cheek bones, suggestive of the ivory ornament, proclaimed a bilious temperament.
Cleggett, both puzzled and nettled by the man's persistent gaze, advanced towards him across the deck of the Jasper B.and down the gangplank, hand on hip, and called out sharply:
"Well, my friend, you will know me the next time you see me!"The tall man turned without a word and walked back to the taxicab, the occupants of which had watched this singular duel of looks in silence.In the act of getting into the machine he face about again and said, with a lift of the lip that showed two long, protruding canine teeth of an almost saffron hue:
"I WILL know you again."
He spoke with a kind of cold hostility that gave his words all the effect of a threat.Cleggett felt the blood leap faster through his veins; he tingled with a fierce, illogical desire to strike the fellow on the mouth; his soul stirred with a premonition of conflict, and the desire for it.And yet, on the surface of things at least, the man had been nothing more than rude;as Cleggett watched the machine make off towards an isolated road house on the bayside he wondered at the quick intensity of his own antipathy.Unconsciously he flexed his wrist in his characteristic gesture.Scarcely knowing that he spoke, he murmured:
"That man gets on my nerves."
That man was destined to do something more than get on Cleggett's nerves before the adventures of the Jasper B.were ended.
