The Mardi Gras Mystery Part 3

CHAPTER IV.

Callers.

The house in which Lucie Ledanois lived had been her mother's; the furniture and other things in it had been her mother's; the two negro servants, who spoke only the Creole French patois, had been her mother's. It was a small house, but very beautiful inside. The exterior betrayed a lack of paint or the money with which to have painting done.

The Ledanois family, although distantly connected with others such as the Maillards, had sent forth its final bud of fruition in the girl Lucie. Her mother had died while she was yet an infant, and through the years she had companioned her father, an invalid during the latter days. He had never been a man to count dollars or costs, and to a large extent he had outworn himself and the family fortunes in a vain search for health.

With Lucie he had been in Europe at the outbreak of war, and had come home to America only to die shortly afterward. Once deprived of his fine recklessness, the girl had found her affairs in a bad tangle. Under the guardianship of Maillard the tangle had been somewhat resolved and simplified, but even Maillard would appear to have made mistakes, and of late Lucie had against her will suspected something amiss in the matter of these mistakes.

It was natural, then, that she should take Jachin Fell into her confidence. Maillard had been her guardian, but it was to Fell that she had always come with her girlish cares and troubles, during even the lifetime of her father. She had known Fell all her life; she had met him in strange places, both at home and abroad. She entertained a well-grounded suspicion that Jachin Fell had loved her mother, and this one fact lay between them, never mentioned but always there, like a bond of faith and kindliness.

At precisely three o'clock of the Sunday afternoon Jachin Fell rang the doorbell and Lucie herself admitted him. She ushered him into the parlour that was restful with its quiet bra.s.ses and old rosewood.

"Tell me quickly, Uncle Jachin!" eagerly exclaimed the girl. "Did you actually see the Midnight Masquer last night? I didn't know until afterward that he had really been downstairs and had robbed----"

"I saw him, my dear," and the little gray man smiled. There was more warmth to his smile than usual just now. Perhaps it was a reflection from the eager vitality which so shone in the eyes of Lucie. "I saw him, yes."

A restful face was hers--not beautiful at first glance; a little too strong for beauty one would say. The deep gray eyes were level and quiet and wide apart, and on most occasions were quite inscrutable. They were now filled with a quick eagerness as they rested upon Jachin Fell. Lucie called him uncle, but not as she called Joseph Maillard uncle; here was no relationship, no formal affectation of relationship, but a purely abiding trust and friendship.

Jachin Fell had done more for Lucie than she herself knew or would know; without her knowledge he had quietly taken care of her finances to an appreciable extent. Between them lay an affection that was very real. Lucie, better than most, knew the extraordinary capabilities of this little gray man; yet not even Lucie guessed a tenth of the character that lay beneath his surface. To her he was never reserved or secretive. Nonetheless, she touched sometimes an impenetrable wall that seemed ever present within him.

"You saw him?" repeated the girl, quickly. "What was he like? Do you know who he is?"

"Certainly I know," replied Fell, still smiling at her.

"Oh! Then who is he?"

"Softly, softly, young lady! I know him, but even to you I dare not breathe his name until I obtain some direct evidence. Let us call him Mr. X., after the approved methods of romance, and I shall expound what I know."

He groped in his vest pocket. Lucie sprang up, bringing a smoking stand from the corner of the room to his chair. She held a match to his El Rey, and then curled up on a Napoleon bed and watched him intently while he spoke.

"The bandit did not enter the house during the evening, nor did he leave, nor was he found in the house afterward," he said, tonelessly. "So, incredible as it may appear, he was one of the guests. This Mr. X. came to the dance wearing the aviator's costume, or most of it, underneath his masquerade costume. When he was ready to act, he doffed his outer costume, appeared as the Midnight Masquer, effected his purpose, then calmly donned his outer costume again and resumed his place among the guests. You understand?

"Well, then! Maillard yesterday received a note from the Masquer, brazenly stating that he intended to call during the evening. I have that note. It was written with an extremely hard lead pencil, such as few men carry, because it does not easily make very legible writing. Last night I asked Mr. X. for a pencil, and he produced one with an extra hard lead--mentioning that he had borrowed it from Bob Maillard, as indeed he had."

"What! Surely, you don't mean----"

"Of course I don't. Mr. X. is very clever, that's all. Here is what took place last night. Mr. X. brought us another note from the Masquer, saying that he had found it pinned to the library door. As a matter of fact, he had written it on a leaf torn from his notebook. I took the note from him, observing at the time that the paper had no pin holes. Probably, Mr. X. saw that there was something amiss; he presently went back downstairs, took the remainder of the torn leaf from his notebook, and pinned it to the door. A little later, I met him and mentioned the lack of pin holes; he calmly referred me to the piece on the door, saying that he had merely torn off the note without removing the pins. You follow me?"

"Of course," murmured the girl, her eyes wide in fascinated interest. "And he knew that you guessed him to be the Masquer?"

"He suspected me, I think," said Fell, mildly. "It is understood that you will not go about tracing these little clues? I do not wish to disclose his ident.i.ty, even to your very discreet brain----"

"Don't be silly, Uncle Jachin!" she broke in. "You know I'll do nothing of the sort. Go on, please! Did you find the airplane?"

"Yes." Jachin Fell smiled drily. "I was thinking of that as I left the house and came to the line of waiting automobiles. A word with one of the outside detectives showed me that one of the cars in the street had been testing its engine about midnight. I found that the car belonged to Mr. X.

"How simple, Lucie, and how very clever! The chauffeur worked a powerful motor with a m.u.f.fler cutout at about the time Mr. X., inside the house, was making his appearance. It scarcely sounded like an airplane motor, yet frightened and startled, people would imagine that it did. Thus arose the legend that the Midnight Masquer came and departed by means of airplane--a theory aided ingeniously by his costume. Well, that is all I know or suspect, my dear Lucie! And now----"

"Now, I suppose," said the girl, thoughtfully, "you'll put that awful Creole of yours on the track of Mr. X.? Ben Chacherre is a good chauffeur, and he's amusing enough--but he's a bloodhound! I don't wonder that he used to be a criminal. Even if you have rescued him from a life of crime, you haven't improved his looks."

"Exactly--Ben is at work," a.s.sented Jachin Fell. "The gentleman under suspicion is very prominent. To accuse him without proof would be utter folly. To catch him in flagrante delicto will be difficult. So, I am in no haste. He will not disappear, believe me, and something may turn up at any moment to undo him. Besides, I can as yet discover no motive for his crimes, since he is quite well off financially."

"Gambling," suggested the girl.

"I cannot find that he has lost any considerable sums. Well, no matter! Now that I have fully unbosomed myself, my dear, it is your turn."

"All right, Uncle Jachin." Lucie took a large morocco case from the chair beside her, and extended it. "You lent me these things to wear last night, and I----"

"No, no," intervened Fell. "I gave them to you, my dear--in fact, I bought them for you two years ago, and kept them until now! You have worn them; they are yours, and you become them better than even did poor Queen Hortense! So say no more. I trust that Mrs. Maillard was righteous and envious?"

"She was disagreeable," said Lucie. She leaned forward and imprinted a kiss upon the cheek of the little gray man. "There! that is all the thanks I can give you, dear uncle; the gift makes me very happy, and I'll not pretend otherwise. Only, I feel as though I had no right to wear them--they're so wonderful!"

"Nonsense! You can do anything you want to, as Eliza said when she crossed the ice. But all this isn't why you summoned me here, you bundle of mystery! What bothered you last night, or rather, who?"

Lucie laughed. "There was a Franciscan who tried to be very mysterious, and to read my mind. He talked about oil, about a grasping, hard man, and mentioned you as my friend. Then he warned me against a proposal that Bob might make; and sure enough, Bob did propose to buy what land is left to me on Bayou Terrebonne, saying he'd persuade his oil company that there was oil on it, and that they'd buy or lease it. I told him no. The Franciscan, afterward, proved to be Henry Gramont; I wondered if you had mentioned----"

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Mr. Fell, piously. "I never even met Gramont until last night! Do you like him?"

"Very much." The girl's eyes met his frankly. "Do you?"

"Very much," said Jachin Fell.

Lucie's gray eyes narrowed, searched his face. "I'm almost able to tell when you're lying," she observed, calmly. "You said that a trifle too hastily, Uncle Jachin. Why don't you like him?"

Fell laughed, amused. "Perhaps I have a prejudice against foreign n.o.bles, Lucie. Our own aristocracy is bad enough, but----"

"He's discarded all that. He was never French except in name."

"You speak as though you'd known him for some time. Have you had secrets from me?"

"I have!" laughter dimpled in the girl's face. "For years and years! When I was in New York with father, before the war, we met him; he was visiting in Newport with college friends. Then, you know that father and I were in France when the war broke out--father was ill and almost helpless at the time, you remember. Gramont came to Paris to serve with his regiment, and met us there. He helped us get away, procured real money for us, got us pa.s.sage to New York. He knows lots of our friends, and I've always been deeply grateful to him for his a.s.sistance then.

"We've corresponded quite frequently during the war," she pursued. "I mentioned him several times after we got home from France, but you probably failed to notice the name. It's only since he came to New Orleans that I really kept any secrets from you; this time, I wanted to find out if you liked him."

Jachin Fell nodded slowly. His face was quite innocent of expression.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Yes--of course. He's a geologist or engineer, I think?"

"Both, and a good one. He's a stockholder in Bob Maillard's oil company, and I think he's come here to stay. Well, about last night--he probably guessed at some of my private affairs; I've written or spoken rather frankly, perhaps. Also, Bob may have blabbed to him. Bob still drinks--prohibition has not hit him very hard!"

"No," agreed Fell, gravely. "Unfortunately, no. Lucie, I've discovered a most important fact. Joseph Maillard did not own any stock in the Bayou Oil Company at the time your land was sold them by him, and he had no interest at all in the real estate concern that bought your St. Landry swamplands and made a fortune off them. We have really blamed him most unjustly."

For a moment there was silence between them.

"We need not mince matters," pursued Fell, slowly. "Maillard has no scruples and no compa.s.sion; all the same, I am forced to the belief that he has maintained your interest uprightly, and that his mistakes were only errors. I do not believe that he has profited in the least from you. Two small fortunes were swept out of your grip when he sold those lands; yet they had been worthless, and he had good offers for them. His investments in the companies concerned were made afterward, and I am certain he sold the lands innocently."

Lucie drew a deep breath.

"I am glad you have said this," she returned, simply. "It's been hard for me to think that Uncle Joseph had taken advantage of me; I simply couldn't make myself believe it. I think that he honestly likes me, as far as he permits himself to like any one."

"He'd not loan you money on it," said Fell. "Friendship isn't a tangible security with him. And a girl is never secure, as Eliza said when she crossed the ice."

"Well, who really did profit by my loss? Any one?"

Fell's pale gray eyes twinkled, then cleared in their usually wide innocence.

"My dear Lucie, is there one person in this world to whose faults Joseph Maillard is deliberately blind--one person to whose influence he is ever open--one person to whom he would refuse nothing, in whom he would pardon everything, of whom he would never believe any evil report?"

"You mean----" Lucie drew a quick breath, "Bob?"

"Yes, I mean Bob. That he has profited by your loss I am not yet in a position to say; but I suspect it. He has his father's cupidity without his father's sense of honour to restrain him. When I have finished with the Masquer, I shall take up his trail."

Jachin Fell rose. "Now I must be off, my dear. By the way, if I have need of you in running down the Masquer, may I call upon your services?"

"Certainly! I'd love to help, Uncle Jachin! We'd be real detectives?"

"Almost." Jachin Fell smiled slightly. "Will you dine with us to-morrow evening, Lucie? My mother commanded me to bring you as soon as possible----"

"Oh, your mother!" exclaimed the girl, contritely. "I was so absorbed in the Masquer that I forgot to ask after her. How is she?"

"Quite as usual, thank you. I presume that you'll attend Comus with the Maillards?"

"Yes. I'll come to-morrow night gladly, Uncle Jachin."

"And we'll take a look at the Proteus ball afterward, if you like. I'll send Ben Chacherre for you with the car, if you're not afraid of him."

Lucie looked gravely into the smiling eyes of Fell.

"I'm not exactly afraid of him," she responded, soberly, "but there is something about him that I can't like. I'm sorry that you're trying to regenerate him, in a way."

Fell shrugged lightly. "All life is an effort, little one! Well, good-bye."

Jachin Fell left the house at three-forty. Twenty minutes later the bell rang again. Lucie sent one of the servants to admit Henry Gramont; she kept him waiting a full fifteen minutes before she appeared, and then she made no apologies whatever for the delay.

Not that Gramont minded waiting; he deemed it a privilege to linger in this house! He loved to study the place, so reflective of its owner. He loved the white Colonial mantel that surrounded the fireplace, perpetually alight, with its gleaming sheen of old bra.s.ses, and the glittering fire-set to one side. The very air of the place, the atmosphere that it breathed, was sweet to him.

The Napoleon bed that filled the bow window, with its pillows and soft coverings; the inlaid walnut cabinet made by Sheraton, with its quaintly curved gla.s.ses that reflected the old-time curios within; the tilt tables, the rosewood chairs, the rugs, bought before the oriental rug market was flooded with machine-made Senna knots--about everything here had an air of comfort, of long use, of restfulness. It was not the sort of place built up, raw item by raw item, by the colour-frenzied hands of decorators. It was the sort of place that decorators strive desperately to imitate, and cannot.

When Lucie made her appearance, Gramont bent over her hand and addressed her in French.

"You are charming as ever, Shining One! And in years to come you will be still more charming. That is the beauty of having a name taken direct from the cla.s.sics and bestowed as a good fairy's gift----"

"Thank you, monsieur--but you have translated my name at least twenty times, and I am weary of hearing it," responded Lucie, laughingly.

"Poor taste, mademoiselle, to grow weary of such beauty!"

"Not of the name, but of your exegesis upon it. Why should I not be displeased? Last night you were positively rude, and now you decry my taste! Did you leave all your manners in France, M. le prince?"

"Some of them, yes--and all that prince stuff with them." Smiling as he dropped into English, Gramont glanced about the room, and his eyes softened.

"This is a lovey and loveable home of yours, Lucie!" he exclaimed, gravely. "So few homes are worthy the name; so few have in them the intimate air of use and friendliness--why are so many furnished from bargain sales? This place is touched with repose and sweetness; to come and sit here is a privilege. It is like being in another world, after all the money striving and the dollar madness of the city."

"Oh!" The girl's gaze searched him curiously. "I hope you're not going to take the fine artistic pose that it is a crime to make money?"

Gramont laughed.

"Not much! I want to make money myself; that's one reason I'm in New Orleans. Still, you cannot deny that there is a craze about the eternal clutching after dollars. I can't make the dollar sign the big thing in life, Lucie. You couldn't, either."

She frowned a little.

"You seem to have the European notion that all Americans are dollar chasers!"

He shrugged his shoulders slightly. His harshly lined face was very strong; one sensed that its harshness had come from the outside--from hunger, from hardship and privations, from suffering strongly borne. He had not gone through the war unscathed, this young man who had tossed away a princely "de" in order to become plain Henry Gramont, American citizen.

"In a sense, yes; why not?" he answered. "I am an American. I am a dollar chaser, and not ashamed of it. I am going into business here. Once it is a success, I shall go on; I shall see America, I shall come to know this whole country of mine, all of it! I have been a month in New Orleans--do you know, a strange thing happened to me only a few days after I arrived here!"

With her eyes she urged him on, and he continued gravely: "In France I met a man, an American sergeant named Hammond. It was just at the close of things. We had adjoining cots at Nice----"

"Ah!" she exclaimed, quickly. "I remember, you wrote about him--the man who had been wounded in both legs! Did he get well? You never said."

"I never knew until I came here," answered Gramont. "One night, not long after I had got established in my pension on Burgundy Street, a man tried to rob me. It was this same man, Hammond; we recognized each other almost at once.

"I took him home with me and learned his story. He had come back to America only to find his wife dead from influenza, his home broken up, his future destroyed. He drifted to New Orleans, careless of what happened to him. He flung himself desperately into a career of burglary and pillage. Well, I gave Hammond a job; he is my chauffeur. You would never recognize him as the same man now! I am very proud of his friendship."

"That was well said." Lucie nodded her head quickly. "I shan't call you M. Le prince any more--unless you offend again."

He smiled, reading her thought. "I try not to be a sn.o.b, eh? Well, what I'm driving at is this: I want to know this country of mine, to see it with clear, unprejudiced eyes. We hide our real shames and exalt our false ones. Why should we be ashamed of chasing the dollar? So long as that is a means to the end of happiness, it's all right. But there are some men who see it as an end alone, who can set no finis to their work except the dollar dropping into their pouch. Such a man is your relative, Joseph Maillard--I say it without offence."

Lucie nodded, realizing that he was driving at some deeper thing, and held her peace.

"You realize the fact, eh?" Gramont smiled faintly. "I do not wish to offend you, and I shall therefore refrain from saying all that is in my mind. But you have not hesitated to intimate very frankly that you are not wealthy. Some time ago, if you recall, you wrote me how you had just missed wealth through having sold some land. I have taken the liberty of looking up that deal to some extent, and I have suspected that your uncle had some interest in putting the sale through----"

The gray eyes of the girl flashed suddenly.

"Henry Gramont! Are my family affairs to be an open book to the world?" A slight flush, perhaps of anger, perhaps of some other emotion, rose in the girl's cheeks. "Do you realize that you are intruding most unwarrantably into my private matters?"

"Unwarrantably?" Gramont's eyes held her gaze steadily. "Do you really mean to use that word?"

"I do, most certainly!" answered Lucie with spirit. "I don't think you realize just what the whole thing tends toward----"

"Oh, yes I do! Quite clearly." Gramont's cool, level tone conquered her indignation. "I see that you are orphaned, and that your uncle was your guardian, and executed questionable deals which lost money for you. Come, that's brutally frank--but it's true! We are friends of long standing; not intimate friends, perhaps, and yet I think very good friends. I am most certainly not ashamed to say that when I had the occasion to look out for your interests I was very glad of the chance."

Gramont paused, but she did not speak. He continued after a moment: "You had intimated to me, perhaps without meaning to do so, something of the situation. I came here to New Orleans and became involved in some dealings with your cousin, Bob Maillard. I believed, and I believe now, that in your heart you have some suspicion of your uncle in regard to those transactions in land. Therefore, I took the trouble to look into the thing to a slight extent. Shall I tell you what I have discovered?"

Lucie Ledanois gazed at him, her lips compressed. She liked this new manner of his, this firm and resolute gravity, this harshness. It brought out his underlying character very well.