tt,
fascinated, stared at it as the fellow paused before him. Pierre,
evidently gratified at the sensation he was creating, continued to
smirk and twist, and then, seeing that he held his audience, he took
from his waistcoat pocket a little piece of cosmetic and, as a final
touch of Gallic grotesquerie, waxed the thing. It was all done with
that air of quiet histrionicism, and with that sense of
self-appreciation, which only the French can achieve in its perfection.
"You ordered, M'sieur?" Pierre, having produced his effect, like the
artist (though debased) that he was, did not linger over it.

"Er--a Scotch highball," said Cleggett, recovering himself. "And with
a piece of lemon peeling in it, please."

Pierre served him deftly. Cleggett stirred his drink and sipped it
slowly, gazing at the bartender, who elaborately avoided watching him.
But after a moment a little noise at his right attracted his attention.
Pierre, with his hand cupped, had dashed it along a window pane and
caught a big stupid fly, abroad thus early in the year. With a sense
of almost intolerable disgust, Cleggett saw the man, with a rapt smile
on his face, tear the insect's legs from it, and turn it loose. If
ever a creature rejoiced in wickedness for its own sake, and as if its
practice were an art in itself, Pierre was that person, Cleggett
concluded. Knowing Pierre, one could almost understand those cafes of
Paris where the silly poets of degradation ostentatiously affect the
worship of all manner of devils.

An instant later, Pierre, as if he had been doing something quite
charming, looked at Cleggett with a grin; a grin that assumed that
there was some kind of an understanding between them concerning this
delightful pastime. It was too much. Cleggett, with an oath--and
never stopping to reflect that it was perhaps just the sort of action
which Pierre hoped to provoke--grasped his cane with the intention of
laying it across the fellow's shoulders half a dozen times, come what
might, and leaving the place.

But at that instant the door from the office opened and the man whom
he knew only as Loge entered the room.

Loge paused at the right of Cleggett, and then marched directly across
the room and sat down opposite the commander of the Jasper B. at the
same table. He was wearing the cutaway frock coat, and as he swung his
big frame into the seat one of his coat tails caught in the chair back
and was lifted.

Cleggett saw the st