Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/156

 "You ordered, M'sieur?" Pierre, having produced his effect, like the artist (though debased) that he was, did not linger over it.

"Er—a Scotch highball," said Cleggett, recovering himself. "And with a piece of lemon peeling in it, please."

Pierre served him deftly. Cleggett stirred his drink and sipped it slowly, gazing at the bartender, who elaborately avoided watching him. But after a moment a little noise at his right attracted his attention. Pierre, with his hand cupped, had dashed it along a window pane and caught a big stupid fly, abroad thus early in the year. With a sense of almost intolerable disgust, Cleggett saw the man, with a rapt smile on his face, tear the insect's legs from it, and turn it loose. If ever a creature rejoiced in wickedness for its own sake, and as if its practice were an art in itself, Pierre was that person, Cleggett concluded. Knowing Pierre, one could almost understand those cafés of Paris where the silly poets of degradation ostentatiously affect the worship of all manner of devils.

An instant later, Pierre, as if he had been doing something quite charming, looked at Cleggett with a grin; a grin that assumed that there was some kind