Bright Blade Leaps From Rusty Scabbard
and, since faults as well as virtues must be told, swaggering just a little.
When the managing editor had heard the elevator come up, pause, and go down again, he went out of his room and said to the city editor:
"Mr. Herbert, don't ever let that man Cleggett into this office again. He is off—off mentally. He's a dangerous man. He's a homicidal maniac. More'n likely he's been a quiet, steady drinker for years, and now it's begun to show on him."
But nothing was further from Cleggett than the wish ever to go into the Enterprise office again. As he left the elevator on the ground floor he stabbed the astonished elevator boy under the left arm with his cane as a bayonet, cut him harmlessly over the head with his cane as a saber, tossed him a dollar, and left the building humming:
"Oh, the Beau Sabreur of the Grande Armée
Was the Captain Tarjeanterre!"
It is thus, with a single twitch of her playful fingers, that Fate will sometimes pluck from a man the mask that has obscured his real identity for many years. It is thus that Destiny will suddenly draw a bright blade from a rusty scabbard!
