THE MISCHIEF OF MEN
Barnstable seemed bound to behave like a bee in a bottle, which goes bumping its idiotic head without reason or cessation. On Monday morning after the polo game he was ushered into the chambers of Jack and Dick, both of whom were at home. He looked more excited than on the previous day, and moved with more alacrity. The alteration was not entirely to his advantage, for Mr. Barnstable was one of those unfortunates who appear worse with every possible change of manner.
"Good-morning, Mr. Fairfield," was the visitor's greeting. "Damme if I'll say good-morning to you, Mr. Neligage."
Jack regarded him with languid astonishment.
"Well," he said, "that relieves me of the trouble of saying it to you."
Barnstable puffed and swelled with anger.
"Damme, sir," he cried, "you may try to carry it off that way, but—"
"Good heavens, Mr. Barnstable," interrupted Fairfield, "what in the world do you mean?"
"Is it your general custom," drawled Jack, between puffs of his cigarette, "to give a Wild West show at every house you go into?"
Dick flashed a smile at his chum, but shook his head.
"Come, Mr. Barnstable," he said soothingly, "you can't go about making scenes in this way. Sit down, and if you've anything to say, say it quietly."
Mr. Barnstable, however, was not to be beguiled with words. He had evidently been brooding over wrongs, real or fancied, until his temper had got beyond control.
"Anything to say?" he repeated angrily,—"I've this to say: that he has insulted my wife. I'll sue you for libel, damme! I've a great mind to thrash you!"
Jack grinned down on the truculent Barnstable from his superior height. Barnstable stood with his short legs well apart, as if he had to brace them to bear up the enormous weight of his anger; Jack, careless, laughing, and elegant, leaned his elbow on the mantle and smoked.
"There, Mr. Barnstable," Fairfield said, coming to him and taking him by the arm; "you evidently don't know what you're saying. Of course there's some mistake. Mr. Neligage never insulted a lady."
"But he has done it," persisted Barnstable. "He has done it, Mr. Fairfield. Have you read 'Love in a Cloud'?"
"'Love in a Cloud'?" repeated Dick in manifest astonishment.
"You must know the book, Dick," put in Jack wickedly. "It's that rubbishy anonymous novel that's made so much talk lately. It's about a woman whose husband's temper was incompatible."
"It's about my wife!" cried Barnstable. "What right had you to put my wife in a book?"
"Pardon me," Neligage asked with the utmost suavity, "but is it proper to ask if it was your temper that was incompatible?"
"Shut up, Jack," said Dick hastily. "You are entirely off the track, Mr. Barnstable. Neligage didn't write 'Love in a Cloud.'"
"Didn't write it?" stammered the visitor.
"I give you my word he didn't."
Barnstable looked about with an air of helplessness which was as funny as his anger had been.
"Then who did?" he demanded.
"If Mr. Barnstable had only mentioned sooner that he wished me to write it," Jack observed graciously, "I'd have been glad to do my best."
"Shut up, Jack," commanded Dick once more. "Really, Mr. Barnstable, it does seem a little remarkable that you should go rushing about in this extraordinary way without knowing what you are doing. You'll get into some most unpleasant mess if you keep on."
"Or bring up in a lunatic asylum," suggested Jack with the most unblushing candor.
Barnstable looked from one to the other with a bewildered expression as if he were just recovering his senses. He walked to the table and took up a glass of water, looked around as if for permission, and swallowed it by uncouth gulps.
"Perhaps I'd better go," he said, and turned toward the door.
"Oh, by the way, Mr. Barnstable," Jack observed as the visitor laid his hand on the door-knob, "does it seem to you that it would be in good form to apologize before you go? If it doesn't, don't let me detain you."
The strange creature turned on the rug by the door, an abject expression of misery from head to feet.
"Of course I'd apologize," he said, "if it was any use. When my temper's up I don't seem to have any control of what I do, and what I do is always awful foolish. This thing's got hold of me so I don't sleep, and that's made me worse. Of course you think I'm a lunatic, gentlemen; and I suppose I am; but my wife—"
The redness of his face gave signs that he was not far from choking, and out of his fishy eyes there rolled genuine tears. Jack stepped forward swiftly, and took him by the hand.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Barnstable," he said. "Of course I'd no idea what you were driving at. Will you believe me when I tell you something? I had nothing to do with writing 'Love in a Cloud,' but I do know who wrote it. I can give you my word that the author didn't have your story in mind at all."
"Are you sure?" stammered Barnstable.
"Of course I'm sure."
"Then there is nothing I can do," Barnstable said, shaking his head plaintively. "I've just made a fool of myself, and done nothing for her."
The door closed behind Barnstable, and the two young men looked at each other a moment. Neither laughed, the foolish tragedy of the visitor's last words not being mirth-provoking.
"Well, of all the fools I've seen in my life," Jack commented slowly, "this is the most unique specimen."
"I'm afraid I can't blame the divorced Mrs. Barnstable," responded Dick; "but there's something pathetic about the ass."
It seemed the fate of Barnstable that day to afford amusement for Jack Neligage. In the latter part of the afternoon Jack sauntered into the Calif Club to see if there were anything in the evening papers or any fresh gossip afloat, and there he encountered the irascible gentleman once more. Scarcely had he nodded to him than Tom Harbinger and Harry Bradish came up to them.
"Hallo, Jack," the lawyer said cordially. "Anything new?"
"Not that I know of," was the response. "How are you, Bradish?"
"How are you?" replied Bradish. "Mr. Barnstable, I've called twice to-day at your rooms."
"I am sorry that I was out," Barnstable answered with awkward politeness. "I have been here since luncheon."
"I'm half sorry to find you now," Bradish proceeded, while Harbinger and Jack looked on with some surprise at the gravity of his manner. "I've got to do an errand to you that I'm afraid you'll laugh at."
"An errand to me?" Barnstable returned.
Bradish drew out his pocket-book, and with deliberation produced a note. He examined it closely, as if to assure himself that there was no mistake about what he was doing, and then held out the missive to Barnstable.
"Yes," he said, "I have the honor to be the bearer of a challenge from the Count Shimbowski, who claims that you have grossly insulted him. Will you kindly name a friend? There," he concluded, looking at Harbinger and Neligage with a grin, "I think I did that right, didn't I?"
"Gad!" cried Jack. "Has the Count challenged him? What a lark!"
"Nonsense!" Harbinger said. "You can't be serious, Bradish?"
"No, I'm not very serious about it, but I assure you the Count is."
"Challenged me?" demanded Barnstable, tearing open the epistle. "What does the dago mean? He says—what's that word?—he says his honor ex—expostulates my blood. Of course I shan't fight."
Bradish shook his head, although he could not banish the laughter from his face.
"Blood is what he wants. He says he shall have to run you through in the street if you won't fight."
"Oh, you'll have to fight!" put in Jack.
"The Count's a regular fire-eater," declared Tom. "You wouldn't like to be run through in the street, Barnstable."
Barnstable looked from one to another as if he were unable to understand what was going on around him.
"Curse it!" he broke out, his face assuming its apoplectic redness. "Curse those fellows that write novels! Here I've got to be assassinated just because some confounded scribbler couldn't keep from putting my private affairs in his infernal book! It's downright murder!"
"And the comic papers afterward," murmured Jack.
"But what are you going to do about it?" asked Tom.
"You might have the Count arrested and bound over to keep the peace," suggested Bradish.
"That's a nice speech for the Count's second!" cried Jack with a roar.
"What am I going to do?" repeated Barnstable. "I'll fight him!"
He struck himself on the chest, and glared around him, while they all stood in astonished silence.
"My wife has been insulted," he went on with fresh vehemence, "and I had a right to call the man that did it a villain or anything else! I owe it to her to fight him if he won't take it back!"
"Gad!" said Jack, advancing and holding out his hand, "that's melodrama and no mistake; but I like your pluck! I'll back you up, Barnstable!"
"Does that mean that you'll be his second, Jack?" asked Harbinger, laughing.
"There, Tom," was the retort, "don't run a joke into the ground. When a man shows the genuine stuff, he isn't to be fooled any longer."
Bradish followed suit, and shook hands with Barnstable, and Harbinger after him.
"You're all right, Barnstable," Bradish observed; "but what are we to do with the Count?"
"Oh, that ass!" Jack responded. "I'd like to help duck him in a horse-pond; but of course as he didn't write the book, Mr. Barnstable won't mind apologizing for a hasty word said by mistake. Any gentleman would do that."
"Of course if you think it's all right," Barnstable said, "I'd rather apologize; but I'd rather fight than have any doubt about the way I feel toward the whelp that libelized my wife."
Jack took him by the shoulder, and spoke to him with a certain slow distinctness such as one might use in addressing a child.
"Do have some common sense about this, Barnstable," he said. "Do get it out of your head that the man who wrote that book knew anything about your affairs. I've told you that already."
"I told him too," put in Harbinger.
"I suppose you know," Barnstable replied, shaking his head; "but it is strange how near it fits!"
Bradish took Barnstable off to the writing room to pen a suitable apology to the Count, and Jack and Harbinger remained behind.
"Extraordinary beggar," observed Jack, when they had departed.
"Yes," answered the other absently. "Jack, of course you didn't write 'Love in a Cloud'?"
"Of course not. What an idiotic idea!"
"Fairfield said Barnstable had been accusing you of it, but I knew it couldn't be anything but his crazy nonsense. Of course the Count didn't write it either?"
Jack eyed his companion inquiringly.
"Look here, Tom," he said, "What are you driving at? Of course the Count didn't write it. You are about as crazy as Barnstable."
"Oh, I never thought he was the man; but who the deuce is it?"
"Why should you care?"
Harbinger leaned forward to the grate, and began to pound the coal with the poker in a way that bespoke embarrassment. Suddenly he turned, and broke out explosively.
"I should think I ought to care to know what man my wife is writing letters to! You heard her say she wrote that letter to Christopher Calumus."
Jack gave a snort of mingled contempt and amusement.
"You old mutton-head," he said. "Your wife didn't write that letter. I know all about it, and I got it back from the Count."
"You did?" questioned Harbinger with animation. "Then why did Letty say she wrote it?"
"She wanted to shield somebody else. Now that's all I shall tell you. See here, are you coming the Othello dodge?"
Tom gave a vicious whack at a big lump which split into a dozen pieces, all of which guzzled and sputtered after the unpleasant fashion of soft coal.
"There's something here I don't understand," he persisted.
Jack regarded him curiously a moment. Then he lighted a fresh cigarette, and lay back in his chair, stretching out his legs luxuriously.
"It's really too bad that your wife's gone back on you," he observed dispassionately.
"What?" cried Tom, turning violently.
"Such a nice little woman as Letty always was too," went on Jack mercilessly. "I wouldn't have believed it."
"What in the deuce do you mean?" Tom demanded furiously, grasping the poker as if he were about to strike with it. "Do you dare to insinuate—"
Jack sat up suddenly and looked at him, his sunny face full of earnestness.
"What the deuce do you mean?" he echoed. "What can a man mean when he begins to distrust his wife? Heavens! I'm beastly ashamed of you, Tom Harbinger! To think of your coming to the club and talking to a man about that little trump of a woman! You ought to be kicked! There, old man," he went on with a complete change of manner, "I beg your pardon. I only wanted to show you how you might look to an unfriendly eye. You know you can't be seriously jealous of Letty."
The other changed color, and looked shame-facedly into the coals.
"No, of course not, Jack," he answered slowly. "I'm as big an idiot as Barnstable. I do hate to see men dangling about her, though. I can't help my disposition, can I?"
"You've got to help it if it makes a fool of you."
"And that infernal Count with his slimy manners," Tom went on. "If he isn't a rascal there never was one. I'm not really jealous, I'm only—only—"
"Only an idiot," concluded Jack. "If I were Letty I'd really flirt with somebody just to teach you the difference between these fool ideas of yours and the real thing."
"Don't, Jack," Tom said; "the very thought of it knocks me all out."