MYSTERIES MULTIPLY
Directing Kuroki to remove the ring and bring it along, Cleggett gave his arm to Lady Agatha and led the way back to the Jasper B.Neither said anything to the point until, seated in the cabin, with the twenty-dollar bill and the ring before them, Cleggett picked up the latter and remarked:
"You are certain of the identity of this ring?""Certain," she said."I could not mistake it.There is no other like it, anywhere."It was a very heavy gold band, set with a large piece of dark green jade which was deeply graven on its surface with the Claiborne crest.
"Was it," asked Cleggett, "in the possession of Reginald Maltravers?" "It might have been, readily enough," she said, "although I had notknown that it was.Still, that does not explain...."She shrugged her shoulders.
"There are a number of things unexplained," answered Cleggett, "and the presence of this ring, and the manner in which it has come into our possession, are not the most mysterious of them.The explosion itself appears to me, just now, at least, hard to account for.""The manner in which people get into and out of the hold of your vessel is also obscure," said Lady Agatha.
"Nor is the motive of their hostility clear," said Cleggett.
He picked up the piece of paper money.Something about the feel of it aroused his suspicions.He called Elmer, and when that exponent of reform entered the cabin, asked him bluntly:
"Did you ever have anything to do with bad money?" Elmer intimated that he might know it if he saw it.
"Then look at that, please."
Elmer took the torn bill, produced a penknife, slit the yellow paper, and cut out of it one of the small hair-like fibers with which the texture of such notes is sprinkled.After wetting this fiber and mangling it with his penknife he gave his judgment briefly.
"Queer," he said.
"But what does that explain?" asked Lady Agatha."Perhaps the Earl of Claiborne came to this country and took to making counterfeit money in the hold of the Jasper B., into and out of which he stole like a ghost? Finally he got tired of it and blew himself up with a bomb out there, leaving his ring with a piece of money intact? Is that the explanation we get out of our facts? Because, you know," she added, as Cleggett did not smile, "all that is absurd!""Yes," said Cleggett, still refusing to be amused, "but out of all this jumble of mystery, just one certain thing appears.""And that is?"
"That our destinies are somehow linked!" "Our destinies?Linked?"She gave him a swift look, and as suddenly dropped her eyes again.Cleggett could not tell whether she was offended or not by his expression of the idea.
"The same people," said Cleggett, after a brief pause, "who are so persistently hostile to me are also in some manner connected with your own misfortunes.Their possession of this ring shows that.""Yes," she said, following his thought, "that is true--whoever set off that bomb was also wearing this ring, or was very near the person who was wearing it.And," with a shudder which conveyed to Cleggett that she was thinking of the box on deck, "it COULDN'T have been Reginald Maltravers!""Perhaps," said Cleggett, "someone was sneaking over from Morris's with the intention of destroying the Jasper B., and was himself the victim of a premature explosion as he crouched behind the rocks to awaithis opportunity."
"But why," puzzled Lady Agatha, with contracted brows, "should a dynamiter, anarchistic or otherwise, be holding a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in his hand as he went about his work?"Cleggett brooded in silence.
"We are in the midst of mysteries," he said finally."They are multiplying about us."He was about to say more.He was about to express again his belief that they had been flung together by fate.The sense that their stories were inextricably intertwined, that they must henceforward march on as one mystery towards a solution, was exhilarating to him.But how was it possible that she should feel the same sense of pleasure in the fact that they faced dangers, seen and unseen, together?
Together!--How the thought thrilled him!
On deck, Elmer, before returning to the box of Reginald Maltravers, suddenly and unexpectedly grasped Cleggett by the hand.
"Bo," he said, "I'm wit' youse.I'm wit' youse the whole way.Any friend of the little dame is a friend of mine.She's a square little dame.D' youse get me?""Thank you," said Cleggett, more affected than he would have cared to own."Thank you, my loyal fellow."Cleggett established a watch on deck that night, with a relief every two hours.Towards morning George returned, with Dr.Farnsworth and a nurse.This nurse, Miss Antoinette Medley, was a black-eyed, slender girl with pretty hands and white teeth; she gestured a great deal and smiled often.She and Dr.Farnsworth devoted themselves at once to the young anarchist poet, who had come out of his stupor, indeed, but was now babbling weakly in the delirium of fever.
