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Updated: June 17, 2025
But the rest was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted.
"I am at your service," he said, steadily, giving back unwavering gaze for gaze. "I am looking for some information myself, and I am in exactly the humor for a little comfortable chat." Loge dropped his gaze to the pistol, and the smile upon his lips slowly turned into a sneer. But when he lifted his eyes to Cleggett's again there was no fear in them. "Put up your gun," he said, easily enough.
The Duke thanked Cleggett for the compliment; and Cleggett thought he had heard the end of it. He was, therefore, surprised, a few weeks later, as he was conversing with the King at Buckingham Palace, when His Majesty himself, laying his hand familiarly on Cleggett's shoulder, renewed the petition in person. It is hard to refuse things continually without seeming unappreciative.
To all appearances Loge had an immense advantage over Cleggett; his legs were a good two inches longer; so were his arms. And he knew how to make these peculiarities count. He fought for a while with a calm and steady precision that repeatedly baffled the calculated impetuosity of Cleggett's attack. But the air of bantering certainty with which he had begun the duel had left him.
"If you had not chanced to drop in here today," said Loge, "I had intended paying you a visit." "I have had several visitors lately," said Cleggett nonchalantly, "and I think at least two of them can make no claim that they were not warmly received." "Yes?" said Loge. But if Cleggett's meaning reached him he was too cool a hand to show it. He persisted in his affectation of a businesslike air.
Every barrel or cask that was placed upon the deck was stove in with an ax before Cleggett's eyes; he satisfied himself that every bottle was empty; he turned over the broken boxes and beer cases with his foot to see that they contained nothing. But the work was three-quarters done before he found what he was looking for.
Yet he jested; he laid his strong and devilish will across Cleggett's mentality; it was a duel in which the two minds met and tried each other like swords; the first break in intention, and one or the other was a dead man. Cleggett felt the weight of that powerful and evil soul upon his own almost as if it were a physical thing.
"Oh, I am not an altogether useless person," she said, with a momentary smile, as she saw the look in Cleggett's face. And Cleggett remembered with shame that he had not thanked her for her ministrations to himself. A pistol bullet had gone quite through the young man's shoulder. There was a deep cut on his head, and there were half a dozen other stab wounds on his body.
Indeed, how did he know that it was not the box of Reginald Maltravers which had brought the Great Detective to that vicinity? This man of world-wide fame, and reputed to possess an almost miraculous instinct in the unraveling of criminal mysteries might be even now on the trail of Lady Agatha. If so, he was Cleggett's enemy.
He smoked a short pipe which was partially hidden in a tangle of beard that had once been yellowish red but was now streaked with dirty white; he fished earnestly without apparent result, and from time to time he spat into the water. Cleggett's nimble fancy at once put rings into his ears and dowered him with a history.
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