The main entrance to Morris's was on the west side.From the west verandah one could enter directly either the main dining-room, at the north side of the building, the office, or the barroom.The barroom, which was large, ran the whole length of the south side of the place.Doors also led into the barroom, from the south verandah, which was built over the water, and from the east verandah, which was visible from the Jasper B.--and onto the roof of which Cleggett had seen Loge tumble the limp body of his victim, Heinrich.That had been only the day before, but so much had happened since that Cleggett could scarcely realize that so little time had elapsed.
Cleggett strolled into the barroom and took a seat at a table in the southeast corner of it, with his back to the angle of the walls.He thus commanded a view of the bar itself; a door which led, as he conjectured, into the kitchen; the door communicating with the office, and a door which gave upon the west verandah--all this easily, and without turning his head.By turning his head ever so slightly to his right, he could command a view of the door leading to the east verandah.Unless the ceiling suddenly opened above him, or the floor beneath, it would be impossible to surprise him.Cleggett took this position less through any positive fear of attack than because he possessed the instinct of the born strategist.Cleggett was like Robert E.Lee in his quick grasp of a situation and, indeed, in other respects--although Cleggett would never under any circumstances have countenanced human slavery.
There were only two men in the place when Cleggett took his seat, the bartender and a fellow who was evidently a waiter.He had entered the west door and walked across the room without looking at them, withholding his gaze purposely.When he looked towards the bar, after seating himself, the waiter, with his back towards Cleggett's corner, was talking in a low tone to the bartender.But they had both seen him; Cleggett perceived they both knew him.
"See what the gentleman wants, Pierre," said the bartender in a voice too elaborately casual to hide his surprise at seeing Cleggett.
The waiter turned and came towards him, and Cleggett saw the man's face for the first time.It was a face that Cleggett never forgot.Cleggett judged the man to be a Frenchman; he was dark and sallow, with nervous, black eyebrows, and a smirk that came and went quickly.But the unforgettable feature was a mole that grew on his upper lip, on the right side, near the base of his flaring nostril.Many moles have hairs in them; Pierre's mole had not merely half a dozen hairs, but a whole crop.They grew thick and long; and, with a perversion of vanity almost inconceivable in a sane person, Pierre had twisted these hairs together, as a man twists a mustache, and had trained them to grow obliquely across his cheek bone.He was a big fellow, for a Frenchman, and, as he walked towards Cleggett with a mincing elasticity of gait, he smirked and caressed this whimsical adornment.Cleggett, 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 steel butt of an army revolver.Loge perceived by his face that he had seen it, and laughed.
"I've been wanting to talk to you," he said, leaning across the table and showing his yellow teeth in a smile which he perhaps intended to be ingratiating.Cleggett, looking Loge fixedly in the eye, withdrew his right hand from beneath his coat, and laid his magazine pistol on the tableunder his hand.
"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."
