The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

								

who has conscientious scruples against fighting. The fact that he sailed
from New York on the Lusitania last spring can't convince the lady
that she is wrong in her "deductions," as Sherlock Holmes would say. It
only complicates the mystery a little and adds ramifications.
To my mind, Mr. Storm hasn't at all the look of a man opposed to
fighting. I believe he would love it. The odd thing to me is, where
there's such wide opportunity on one side or the other, that he isn't
doing it. And Jack thinks so, too. I do hope he isn't a spy or an
anarchist, or a person who takes passage on ships to blow them up or
signal to submarines or something.
Of course I haven't suggested such horrors to Mrs. Shuster; and
yesterday she made up an exploring party for the steerage, so as to open
communications with the desired protégé. The first officer had promised
to take her, and she asked me to join them. I happened to be talking to
Patsey Moore at the time, and saw by the way her eyes lighted that she
was dying to go, too. So I got her included in the invitation.
It was a lovely calm day, the long level lines of the sea punctuated
with porpoises, dear things like giant commas. A good many of the
third-class passengers were writing letters on their knees, and the
quaintest paper. Among these was the Man of Mystery; and Mrs. Shuster
sailed up to him, billowing out in the breeze of her own enthusiasm.
"We've all heard of you," she said. "And the splendid things you did on
the Arabic."
Actually the man blushed! He rose up politely; and as he is very tall
and straight, rather thin, and extremely dark, he reminded me of a cedar
towering beside one of those squat Dutch trees cut into the shape of
some domestic animal.
"I really did nothing," he protested, with that guilty redness spreading
over his olive face, and making him more mysterious than ever. Because
he had the air of being found out in something. And the blush began
before Mrs. Shuster got as far as mentioning the Arabic. It was more
as if he were afraid she had met him before and recognized him.
"Well, other people are better judges of that than yourself," the dear
lady contradicted him. "I, and a lot more first-class passengers, feel
it's a shame you should be here. We want you to be up with us and--and
telling us all about your adventures. The favour wouldn't be from us to
you, but the other way round, if you accepted the price of a cabin.
We're sure you're a gentleman----"
At that it was Patsey's and my turn to blush! It was such an awful thing
to say to the man, though the poor woman meant so blunderingly well. P.
and I were in the background--an easy place to be, because there's so
much of Mrs. Shuster. We weren't even a chorus, because we hadn't made a
sound or a gesture, and didn't intend to make one. But the colour effect
was unrehearsed and unavoidable. I felt a regular blush of red to the