The Carnelian Cube

Ten:

"The race," explained the Colonel, "will be against the hireling minions of the Rotary Club of St. Louis. I am relying on you, suh, to see that our brave boys beat the pants off those damyankees, and I mean lit'rly."

They stood in a morning washed clean with rain, on the dock ef the Pegasus boathouse, where the Wolf joins its muddy course to the Mississippi. The shadow of the bluffs was peeling off the Hanrahan bridge from west to east.

"The sta't will be at the bridge yonder," continued Lee, with a flick of his cane. "Yo' will proceed downriver along the left fork, ci'cumnavigate President Island and return to the bridge."

"I sec," said Finch. Then, to maintain his reputation: "If you really expect to remove their pants and there are ladies present—"

"There is no po'tioh of a damyankee's anatomy, suh, that would bring a blush to the most modest brow of Southern womanhood. I tell you in strict confidence that in view of the restrictions placed on legitimate business by such rascals as the Bummingham Arcadians, it is nec-ess'ry for us to make a killing. I speak in a figurational sense. There will be some inte'esting betting on this race, and I trust the Rotarians will be reduced to a condition of epide'mis. Ah, here come our stalwart champions. Boys, come here. Meet yo' new coach and coxswain, the eccentric conve'sationalist, Mr. Arthur Finch."

Finch, self-consciously aware of the way his paunch bulged out the front of his athletic suit, returned the stares of the eight muscular, motley, and rather truculent young men who had emerged from the boathouse. His first note was that none of them in the least resembled Terry-Tiridat. A shaven-polled individual said from the midst of the group: "Kinda beefy for a cox, ain't he?"

"No heavier'n the last one," said the Colonel. "Speaking whereof and wheresotounder, yo' will understand that this is yo' last coach. If there are any mo' regrettable incidents like that te'minating the career of the lamented Malachi Hodge, the active members of the Pegasus Lit'ry Society will be called upon to maintain culture, an' this will be the last crew. Coaches are too rare to be. wasted." . The eight faces set in various forms of scowl. One voice said: "Yo' cain't keep us here. We-all are individuals." Another voice blanketed it: "Maybe he oughta just git us sta'ted and then jump overboard." Finch noticed that the words came from an oarsman who held a leash in his hand, and the other end of which was connected with a cat of the alley variety.

Finch said: "I'm afraid it wouldn't work, boys. A cox tried it at the Henley regatta, back about 1870, but they disqualified the crew. What's the trouble between you and coaches? Maybe we can settle this in the beginning."

"They git bossy and then they catch pneumony, water in the lungs, ha, ha," said one of the crew, with a snicker that Finch found peculiarly unpleasant. .

"Napoleon means the last one was drownded," explained the shaven poll. "T'were Ozzie Rhett done it." The speaker hiccupped in a manner suggestive of a magnificent hangover and jerked a somewhat unsteady thumb toward the burliest of his companions.

"Aw shucks," protested Rhett, "Cain't no one roun' here take a joke? 'Twarn't nothin' he done; I jest didn't know he couldn't swim till he^ was plumb drownded, an' then I was laughin' so hard at the way them eyes of his'n popped out, I couldn't do nothin'."

The Colonel cleared his throat, which Finch accepted as a signal to do a little cracking down. "Look here," he said, "where I come from, we have some good crews, but it's because all the oarsmen agree that the job of a sweep-swinger is to have a strong back and a weak mind. I don't care what you think, as long as you do your thinking outside the boat, and anyone who doesn't feel that way on this crew will be off it. Where are the alternates?"

Said Oswald Rhett through pouting lips: "Hain't none. We had two-three, but they done quit, like they had a puffict right to do, when they couldn't be reg'lars."

"Well, suh," said the Colonel. "I must return to the restless cares of business, and leave you to frolic. I pe'ceive I may depend upon you to lead these splendid boys in the spirit of harmony which will guarantee their victory over the St. Louis Rotarians, who are nothing but common blacklegs, suh, nothing but common blacklegs."

He saluted with his cane and was off, leaving Finch to face the problem of getting this unprepossessing eight to work together.

"All right," he said, "suppose we try it out. I don't know how you've been boated, but will you, Rhett, take stroke. You—what's your name? Pritchard? Will you take the bow oar?"

Rhett's pout gave way to a grin of satisfied vanity, but Pritchard interrupted with a firm: "No, suh."

"What do you mean, no sir?" demanded Finch.

"Either I have no talent at all, or a very special talent for rowing stroke. I insist upon rowing stroke."

"It isn't a matter of talent, but of physical equipment, and—"

He was talking to air. Pritchard had elevated a Roman nose to the extreme limit and was stalking away in a slow, exasperating goose-step, but with his ear cocked to hear a recall.

"Good ol' Pritch," commented the oarsman with the hangover in a low voice: "Count on him to do jest the opposite what anyone tells him."

Finch gazed at the retreating figure a bare second. "Yes, I guess you're right," he said, in a tone intended to carry. "A man who has pulled stroke can't possibly learn to do anything with a bow oar in less than six months."

Pritchard paused with one foot lifted, then spun round and came back at a trot. "What's that you said?" he snapped. "Why dad gum it, I kin row any position in the boat, and I'd like to see any damyank coach stop me!"

He bounced to the edge of the dock and the shell was launched, but as they began to board, Finch cried sharply: "Number Five! That's no way to board! Use both hands!"

"I don't got no number," protested the oarsman. "I got a good name, an' it's Roderick MacWhorter Hennessey, an' I gotta have one hand for Magnolia.

"Magnolia?"

"Of co'se. That's my lucky cat. I cain't leave her. Las' rime I did, my wife run away with a bus-driver from Knoxville. No Magnolia, no me."

Strong back and weak mind, all right. "Okay," said Finch, reflecting that this was what you got for casting in your lot with a group of self-starting individualists, and hoping that the damned feline would jump overboard.

But once in the boat, Magnolia turned out to be the most cooperative member of the crew; squatted between her owner's ankles just short of the travel of the roller-seat, and did not even lick herself when splashed by an occasional drop. The others were not so easy. Pritchard started the trouble—of course—by trying to row completely out of phase with the rest and Finch's orders, which naturally resulted in a tangle of oars. He was brought to some degree of cooperation by telling him to row as he pleased, but by that rime the shaven-head with the hangover was involved in a violent argument with Number Six over who had splashed whom. The shell drifted while Finch tried to pacify them; picked up and drifted again. It was not until he was visited with the inspiration of telling them about the M.I.T. boat that was mistaken for Washington by the officials at Poughkeepsie that he got them together again. That touched him off on another inspiration in view of the fact that normal coaching rules didn't hold here, so he gave them the Eaton boat song, and at the close of the practice period they came into the dock with a fair appearance of unison, puffing as they tried to put their backs into simultaneously with:

"Swing, swing together—"

The shell slid in. Measuring the dock for distance with his eye, he caught a flutter of something feminine at the shore and made it out as Sonia Kirsch, posed against the nauseous lavender of the Colonel's limousine, chatting with someone in the peg-top trousers and turtle-neck sweater of a college boy of the '90's, who presently became clear as Basil Stewart.

"Let's do it smartly, gang," said Finch. They tossed oars and came home, but as Finch gripped the gunwale and tried to lift himself, something went wrong. He couldn't move. He gave a grunt and tried again. No use; the seat of his pants was stuck fast, and on the bank Oswald Rhett was sputtering and dancing in the first attack of what promised to be a serious outbreak of mirth over his own ingenious humor in having applied glue to the coxswain's seat. As he caught Finch's eyes, the outburst escaped control; he doubled up with both hands to his stomach, giving,hog-calls of laughter.

Finch spat a few pre-Christian curses through his teeth. There was nothing he could do about this sort of antic at present—not with these eight representing the entire available supply of oarsmen. But as he told the boathouse boy to get a knife, he promised himself he would find a way to pay that practical joker the bill he had been running up.

Fortunately, the fascinating Sonia had paused to greet the crew and watch them bunch out their muscles. He tried to sidle past the group unobserved, but it was no use. She came trotting over to offer her hand. "My chevalier!" she cooed. "What delicate attention! You haf them sing to honor me. It was success?"

"Very much, except that I know now how Cadmus felt when his crops began to come up. Will you excuse me? I'll have to get dressed."

"But no! Jus' for that I have brought the car. We swim in the pool at the hall."

Finch shook his head firmly. "I never take exercise for pleasure when I'm making a business of it. Why, I might get to enjoying my work!" He slipped around her crab-wise and sweating profusely to the boathouse door, but in doing so could not avoid presenting his rear elevation to Basil Stewart, who emitted a whoop surpassed only by Rhett's. Finch ignored the active member's amusement and backed through the door. He took his time about dressing.

When he came out Stewart had disappeared but the voluptuous Sonia was waiting without the slightest sign of impatience. As she took his arm and steered him toward the car, he asked where the offspring of disaster was.

"Janus took him to the soda-fountain. It is his weakness. Everyone must have a weakness or not be individual."

"And what is yours?"

She leaned back in the seat of the car and let long lashes lie on her cheek. "I am so blushing. It is not nice, no, to confess as to one as you, so stark and—and fruitful, like the bull."

It was warm in that car. Sonia's eyes snapped open as though she had regretted her impulse.

"I haf known you before," she said, "for so long time! Perhaps in another life. You do not sense it also?"

"Can't say that I do," said Finch, the back of his mind thinking that this was certainly not Eulalie. "Unless you wish to claim identity as the mystical embodiment of all women-kind, like the Phrygian Great Mother."

^"Tiens, the idea!" She jagged one eyebrow upward. "I must ask it of Calioster."

"Who is he?"

"My medium. He is telling me I am meeting a hero of fair hair."

"Look out for him when you do. Women so often think that physical and spiritual fairness are the same thing. That's why most of them are looking for the tall, dark and handsome man; they want to feel they are yielding only to the temptation of the Devil himself."

"Oooh! You are spiritualist also. I have known when we meet it is true. You are the fair-hair one."

Finch emitted a sound that began as a snort, went into a chuckle and ended as a downright laugh. "Dear lady, if only I were! But this kind of fairness goes with decrepitude. When I was your age my hair was black as Hephaeston's forge."

She took it smiling. "Oh, now you are fooling with Sonia—Enfin, le void!"

Basil Stewart folded himself in. "Yeow!" he whooped. "Four sodas, one malted and a banana split! Hold that tiger, they can't hold me! How had you-all been doin'?" He glanced sharply at Sonia, eyes widening, and Finch was reminded of the Colonel the previous evening. "Not so good, huh? Well, hain't none of my business, nohow." He laughed uproariously, and the rest of the journey was completed in a silence that could have been used to blanket a volcano.

When the car had been put away and farewells until cocktail-hour said, Finch wandered through the gardens of Pegasus Hall till he discovered Stewart again, firing a shotgun at clay pigeons thrown by a colored boy from a portable trap. "Hi—ya!" hailed the Child of Catastrophe. "Have a couple pulls at it?"

Finch studied the angle past the trap. "Looks to me as though your spent shot might give people down there in Memphis something original in the line of rain."

Stewart cracked a smile and made a never-mind gesture. "Who lives down there, anyhow? Jest shiftless niggers and pore white wash. If'n they don't like it they can carry umbrellas. Ready? Pull!"

Finch fired a few times, but more interested in studying Stewart's face, turned over the weapon after a few minutes. There must be some reason beside accident why this cheerful extrovert was being thrown in his path in this particular dream-sequence. But no, Basil Stewart could not be the man with the carnelian cube; he bore no resemblance to Terry-Tiridat in mind or body. The thought came to him that perhaps there was to be no guide; that he might have escaped from his dream into another and rather dreadful permanent reality. Just as he felt himself on the paint of working out the implications logically into something important, Basil made a particularly brilliant shot and turned, whooping for approval.

"Beautiful," said Finch. "By the way, Basil, I wonder if you know a friend of mine who's living around here somewhere?" He repeated the description of Terry-Tiridat.

"No," said Stewart, "don't reckon I do know him. If'n vou cain't find him no other way, why don't you go with Miss Kirsch an' see her spook-chaser? She'd be right proud to give you a knock-down to him."

"I take it the eminent Calioster does not have your full confidence."

"Huh? Oh, not that phoney. Even if'n 'twas true, what's the use compared with ESP mind-reading? I know that's genuwine, on account of I kin do it myself, specially when I get all jugged up with sodas."

"You can?"

"Sho' thing." Basil picked off a bird and turned. "For instance, when I got in that there car I saw right away Miss Kirsch had an awful shine on you. You got a shine on her, too, but you're plumb scairt to admit it, on account of not wanting to get in no jam. You worry some about—about sleepin', too, only I don't git that."

Finch stared. He asked: "Is Colonel Lee really a good mind-reader?"

"Yeah boy, he certainly is. Best I ever see. Any time he wants to. But you don't need to worry none. The way he does it, it takes concentration, and the Cunnel has got a hell of a lot of things on his mind. You-all are sittin' pretty, you just play along with Miss Kirsch fur's you want to, and fust thing you know, you'll be the Cunncl's new lieutenant, 'stead of Marmaduke Mtillory. That's when you gotta watch your step, 'cause after a while, the Cunnel's liable to say, 'It's about time I put the high-power mind of mine on my domestic doin's,' and work some mind-reading on you just the wrong minute. Then, blooie! You oughta be like Impy, ain't got no mind to read. But I don't reckon that would do him much good if Miss Kirsch got to wanting him. She's the most persistentist female I ever did see; stick you right through the ribs with that knife of her'n if she gets mad at you."

He fired again, and leaped into the air with a yell. "Yippee! Twenty in a row! Hoi' me down, brethren before I bump the angels in the butt! It's Wild Basil, the terror of the mountains and scourge of the plains!"