Cleggett felt the blood leap faster through his veins; he tingled with a fierce, illogical desire to strike the fellow on the mouth; his soul stirred with a premonition of conflict, and the desire for it.

And yet, on the surface of things at least, the man had been nothing more than rude; as Cleggett watched the machine make off towards an isolated road house on the bayside he wondered at the quick intensity of his own antipathy.

Unconsciously he flexed his wrist in his characteristic gesture.

Scarcely knowing that he spoke, he murmured: "That man gets on my nerves." That man was destined to do something more than get on Cleggett's nerves before the adventures of the Jasper B.were ended..