So I out with my pocket shiv, and cut him loose, and I also remove the towel, and as soon as he can talk, Colonel Samuel B. Venus issues a statement to me in a most severe tone of voice, as follows:
“They try to murder me,” he says. “My own wife, Cora, and a character in a white polo coat with a little cap to match. When the alarm of fire is sounded,” Colonel Samuel B. Venus says, “she starts screaming, and he comes banging up against our door, and she unlocks it and lets him in before I have time to think, and then he knocks me down with something, I do not know what.”
“The chances are,” I say, “it is a blunt instrument.”
“You may be right,” Colonel Samuel B. Venus says. “Anyway, after he knocks me down, my own wife, Cora, picks up one of my shoes and starts belting me over the head with the heel, and then she helps the character in the polo coat and the little cap to match tie me up as you find me.”
“It is a scurvy trick,” I say.
“I am half unconscious,” Colonel Samuel B. Venus says, “but I remember hearing my own wife, Cora, remark that the fire is a wonderful break for them, and will save them a lot of bother in New York. And then before they leave, she hits me another belt on the head with the shoe. I fear,” Colonel Samuel B. Venus says, “that my own wife, Cora, is by no means the ever-loving helpmeet I think. In fact,” he says, “I am now wondering about the overdose of sleeping powders she gives me in London, England, in 1931, and about the bomb in my automobile in Los Angeles, Cal., in 1933.”
“Well, well, well,” I say, “let us let bygones be bygones, and get off this tub, as it seems to be getting hotter than a ninth-inning finish around here.”
But Colonel Samuel B. Venus remains very testy about the incident he just describes, and he fumbles around under a pillow on the bed on which I find him, and outs with that thing, and opens the cylinder as if to make sure it is loaded, and says to me like this:
“I will shoot him down like a dog,” he says. “I mean the character in the white polo coat and the little cap to match. He undoubtedly leads my poor little wife, Cora, astray in this, although,” he says, “I do not seem to recall him anywhere in the background of the overdose and the bomb matters. But she is scarcely more than a child and does not know right from wrong. He is the one who must die,” Colonel Samuel B. Venus says. “I wonder who he is?” he says.
Well, of course I know Colonel Samuel B. Venus must be talking about Count Tomaso, but I can see that Count Tomaso is a total stranger to him, and while I am by no means opposed to Colonel Samuel B. Venus’s sentiments with reference to Count Tomaso, I do not approve of his spirit of forgiveness toward Mrs. Colonel Samuel B. Venus, because I figure that as long as she is around and about, Colonel Samuel B. Venus will always be in danger of accidents.
But I do not feel that this is a time for argument, so I finally get him to go up on the deck with me, and as soon as we are on deck, Colonel Samuel B. Venus leaves me and starts running every which way as if he is looking for somebody.
There seems to be some little agitation on deck, what with smoke and flame coming out of the Castilla amidships, and many characters, male and female, running up and down, and around and about, and small children crying.
Some of the crew are launching lifeboats, and then getting into these boats themselves, and pulling away from the burning ship without waiting for any passengers, which strikes me as most discourteous on the part of the sailors and which alarms many passengers so they start chucking themselves over the rail into the sea trying to catch up with the boats.
Well, this scene is most distasteful to me, so I retire from the general melee, and go looking elsewhere about the ship, figuring I may find an opportunity to ease myself quietly into a boat before all the seats are taken by sailors, and finally I come upon a group trying to launch a big life raft over the rail, and about this time I observe Colonel Samuel B. Venus standing against the rail with that thing in his hand, and peering this way and that.
And then I notice a boat pulling away from the ship, and in the stern of the boat I see a character in a white polo coat, and a little cap to match, and I call the attention of Colonel Samuel B. Venus to same.
The boat is so overcrowded that it is far down in the water, but the waves, which are running very high, are carrying it away in long lunges, and it is fully one hundred yards off, and is really visible to the naked eye by the light of the flames from the Castilla only when it rises a moment to the top of a wave, and Colonel Samuel B. Venus looks for some time before he sees what I wish him to see.
“I spot him now,” he says. “I recognize the white polo coat and the little cap to match.”
And with this he ups with that thing and goes rooty-toot-toot out across the water three times, and the last I see of the white polo coat and the little cap to match they are folding up together very gently just as a big wave washes the boat off into the darkness beyond the light of the burning ship.
By this time the raft is in the water, and I take Colonel Samuel B. Venus and chuck him onto the raft, and then I jump down after him, and as the raft is soon overcrowded, I give the foot to a female character who is on the raft before anybody else and ease her off into the water.
As this female character disappears in the raging sea, I am not surprised to observe that she is really nobody but Count Tomaso, as I seem to remember seeing Count Tomaso making Mrs. Colonel Samuel B. Venus change clothes with him at the point of a knife.
Well, some of the boats get ashore, and some do not, and in one that does arrive, they find the late Mrs. Colonel Samuel B. Venus, and everybody is somewhat surprised to note that she is in male garments with a white polo coat and a little cap to match.
I wish to call attention to the public service I render in easing Count Tomaso off the raft, because here is a character who is undoubtedly a menace to the sanctuary of the home.
And I take pride in the fact that I discharge my debt of gratitude to Colonel Samuel B. Venus, and it is not my fault that he permits himself to be so overcome by his experience on the ship and on the raft that he turns out to be a raving nut, and never has the pleasure of learning that his aim is still so good that he can put three slugs in a moving target within the span of a baby’s hand.
“Why, George,” I say to Gentleman George, “then you are the victim of a great wrong, and I will see the governor, or somebody, in your behalf at once. They cannot do this to you, when, according to your own story, you are not directly connected with the matter of Mrs. Colonel Samuel B. Venus, and it is only a case of mistaken identity, at best.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Gentleman George says. “They are not taking the severe measures they contemplate with me because of anything that happens to Mrs. Colonel Samuel B. Venus. They are vexed with me,” George says, “because one night I take Lou Adolia’s automobile out on the salt meadows near Secaucus, N. J., and burn it to a crisp, and it seems that I forget to remove Lou Adolia first from same.”
“Well, George,” I say, “bon voyage.”
“The same to you,” George says, “and many of them.”
The Greuze Girl