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Rose Orchid
by Rex Stout
All-Story Weekly, March 28, 1914
Copyright 1917 by the Frank A. Munsey Co.
All rights reserved.
Accepting as postulates the assertions that human beings are pegs, and that Lieutenant-Commander Brinsley Reed, U. S. N. was a human being, it follows with certainty that he was beautifully fitted for his particular hole.
He was third in his class out of Annapolis. By the time he attained his two full stripes he had successfully dominated three junior messes and been the subject of unusual commendation in two wardrooms; and before he had advanced halfway up the list he was known as the best deck officer in the North Atlantic.
Four different captains applied for his services as executive when he passed into the next rank. But Lieutenant-Commander Reed, who had ideas of his own concerning the proper discipline of a ship, and who was lucky enough to possess a key to a certain door in the Bureau at Washington, disappointed them all by obtaining for himself the command of the gunboat Helena.
For the two years that followed, every man who had the good fortune to be transferred from the Helena to another ship swore at every chance, with violent and profane asseveration, that the Helena was a "madhouse."
"The old man's a holy terror," they would say. "Bag and hammock inspection and fire drill twice a week. Abandon ship three times a month; and when he can't think of nothing else it's general quarters. For a seagoin' hat it's ten days in the brig. And brasswork? Say! Why, this is a home!"
All of which meant to indicate that Lieutenant-Commander Reed was one of those persons who illustrate and justify the rather curious o