THE ROOM OF ILLUSION
That part of Brooklyn in which Cleggett lived overlooks a wide sweep of water where the East River merges with New York Bay.From his windows he could gaze out upon the bustling harbor craft and see the ships going forth to the great mysterious sea.
He walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, and as he walked he still hummed tunes.Occasionally, still with the rapt and fatal manner which had daunted the managing editor, he would pause and flex his wrist, and then suddenly deliver a ferocious thrust with his walking-stick.
The fifth of these lunges had an unexpected result.Cleggett directed it toward the door of an unpainted toolhouse, a temporary structure near one of the immense stone pillars from which the bridge is swung.But, as he lunged, the toolhouse door opened, and a policeman, who was coming out wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, received a jab in the pit of a somewhat protuberant stomach.
The officer grunted and stepped backward; then he came on, raising his night-stick.
"Why, it's--it's McCarthy!" exclaimed Cleggett, who had also sprung back, as the light fell on the other's face.
"Mr.Cleggett, by the powers!" said the officer, pausing and lowering his lifted club."Are ye soused, man? Or is it your way of sayin' good avenin' to your frinds?"Cleggett smiled.He had first known McCarthy years before when he was a reporter, and more recently had renewed the acquaintance in his walks across the bridge.
"I didn't know you were there, McCarthy," he said.
"No?" said the officer."And who were ye jabbin' at, thin?" "I was just limbering up my wrist," said Cleggett.
"'Tis a quare thing to do," persisted McCarthy, albeit good-humoredly."And now I mind I've seen ye do the same before, Mr.Cleggett.You're foriver grinnin' to yersilf an' makin' thim funny jabs at nothin' as ye cross the bridge.Are ye subjict to stiffness in the wrists, Mr.Cleggett?""Perhaps it's writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant humor that was on him.He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of copy, sharpened his last pencil.
"Writer's cramp? Is it so?" mused McCarthy."Newspapers is great things, ain't they now? And so's writin' and readin'.Gr-r-reat things! But if ye'll take my advise, Mr.Cleggett, ye'll kape that writin' and readin' within bounds.Too much av thim rots the brains.""I'll remember that," said Cleggett.And he playfully jabbed the officer again as he turned away.
"G'wan wid ye!" protested McCarthy."Ye're soused! The scent av it's in the air.If I'm compilled to run yez in f'r assaultin' an officer ye'll get the cramps out av thim wrists breakin' stone, maybe.Cr-r-r-amps, indade!"Cramps, indeed! Oh, Clement J.Cleggett, you liar! And yet, who does not lie in order to veil his inmost, sweetest thoughts from an unsympathetic world?
That was not an ordinary jab with an ordinary cane which Cleggett had directed towards the toolhouse door.It was a thrust en carte; the thrust of a brilliant swordsman; the thrust of a master; a terrible thrust.It was meant for as pernicious a bravo as ever infested the pages of romantic fiction.Cleggett had been slaying these gentry a dozen times a day for years.He had pinked four of them on the way across the bridge, before McCarthy, with his stomach and his realism, stopped the lunge intended for the fifth.But this is not exactly the sort of thing one finds it easy to confide to a policeman, be he ever so friendly a policeman.
Cleggett--Old Clegg, the copyreader--Clegg, the commonplace--C.J.Cleggett, the Brooklynite-this person whom young reporters conceived of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty Fact--was secretly a mighty reservoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance.He ate it, he drank it, he breathed it, he dreamed it.The usual copyreader, when he closes his eyes and smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thinking of starting a chicken-farm in New Jersey.But Cleggett--with gray sprinkled in his hair, sober of face and precise of manner, as the world knew him--lived a hidden life which was one long, wild adventure.
Nobody had ever suspected it.But his room might have given to the discerning a clue to the real man behind the mask which he assumed-- which he had been forced to assume in order to earn a living.When he reached the apartment, a few minutes after his encounter on the bridge, and switched the electric light on, the gleams fell upon an astonishing clutter of books and arms....
