The Shadow - The Mask Of Mephisto Part 9

Into the dimness came a pale, gaunt face, with hard-glaring eyes. It was Ferrand's face, now shaven, and therefore unrecognizable by his latest pictures, all of which were hunting snap-shots. Instead of the hunter's costume, Ferrand was wearing the garb of the New Orleans waterfront, dungarees with a dark blue cap to match.

What Ferrand saw through the dust encouraged him. Aldion and Trenhue had once been friends of his and still might be, with reasonable reservations.

Selbert wasn't around, which eliminated the chief hazard. As for the workmen, Ferrand might have been one of them, judged by his attire, and that gave him confidence.

From his vantage spot, Cranston watched Ferrand's face undergo the evolution that transformed the hunted into the hunter. As the gaunt lips formed a taut smile, Ferrand's hand clutched the one thing necessary to bolster his self-a.s.surance, the gun that bulged in his hip pocket.

Simultaneously The Shadow weighed an automatic, urging its muzzle deftly between the gate bars. One false move from Ferrand and The Shadow's gun would clang the gate. Such a touch would bring the gaunt man full about, too late to outspeed The Shadow in a duel.

Fortunately for Ferrand, he made no false move. Instead, he was merely careless.

Men were coming toward the door and like Ferrand, The Shadow could hear their footsteps and their voices.

Ferrand came into even closer range, back first.

The gate's slight clang occurred when Ferrand pressed his back against it, only an inch from The Shadow's withdrawn gun muzzle. As for Ferrand's revolver, The Shadow could have acquired it from the fellow's hip pocket, for Ferrand spread his arms against the gate to flatten himself further in the darkness.

No trouble was due from Ferrand yet.

Two men stepped from the house: Aldion and Trenhue. They stood outside the front door to hold a conversation that the workmen couldn't overhear.

"They'll be done tomorrow midnight," calculated Aldion, "if we keep them working steady. We'd better stay and watch the job right through."

Trenhue grunted an agreement.

"What about those letters?" asked Aldion anxiously. "You didn't give them to Selbert, did you?" "He wasn't interested," replied Trenhue, "any more than Fred was. Somehow they both have bayous on their mind."

"Then it was just a coincidence, buying this house?"

"In a way, yes," decided Trenhue, "except that Fred went in for anything that had to do with old pirate tradition. Anyway, I took the letters back to Moubillard's. They belonged to him, you know."

"I know. Fred borrowed old doc.u.ments from everybody."

"At least I saw that they were kept in their proper envelopes," said Trenhue, with a note of finality. "They'll all be returned to their proper owners when Selbert is through with them."

The two men went back into the house, disappearing through the inexhaustible dust that the stone hackers were producing. As Ferrand turned to the gate and opened it to go through, The Shadow swung back with it.

From then on, it wasn't necessary to trail Ferrand closely, for The Shadow knew exactly where the man would go.

To Moubillard's.

The famous old costume shop was locked and temporarily forgotten, until the appraisers would find time to come around and take stock, which could be almost any time between now and next year's Mardi Gras. But there was still a way into the place which Ferrand had heard about, even though he wasn't the person who had used it.

That way was the trap door through the roof, squarely into Moubillard's office, the place where the now important letters could be found.

Reaching the neighborhood in due course, The Shadow was in time to witness Ferrand's return from Moubillard's preserves. All The Shadow did was pick an observation spot from across the street, one which gave him a view of the s.p.a.ce between Moubillard's roof and the hugely ornate balcony next door.

There, The Shadow glimpsed Ferrand's crouchy figure coming back to the balcony, but Ferrand wasn't merely carrying the mail. Or if he was, he was playing parcel postman, for with him he was bringing a light but bulky bundle that formed a double armful.

Letting Ferrand continue his departure unmolested, The Shadow turned and went the opposite direction, his whispered laugh blending like his cloaked figure into the thickness of the night.

Again, The Shadow's restrained mirth carried a prophetic note.

Translated, it meant tomorrow - midnight.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE dust in Hoodoo House was thicker but finer and it was becoming so troublesome that the workmen were wearing bandanna handkerchiefs around their faces so they could stand it. They weren't complaining, however, because their employers were paying overtime rates in order to get this annoying job finished.

It was most annoying, too, because Aldion and Trenhue were forced to stay up on the third floor to keep away from the dust. That was where Cranston and Selbert found them late the next afternoon, working over plans for remodeling the house.

Selbert coughed from the dust on the way upstairs and commented: "It's terrible! Next thing, you chaps will be living in the cupola!"

"We have been," said Trenhue in his dry style. "At least at intervals.

When we want fresh air we go up there and get some. Want to try?"

Selbert decided not. However, the cupola trip appealed to Cranston, so he climbed the ladder into the window-walled box above the room that formed the present quarters of Messrs. Aldion and Trenhue.

There, Cranston stayed to watch the Vieux Carre adjust itself totwilight.

Here and there came spots of light, not with the jeweled magnificence that characterized the greater city on the far side of Ca.n.a.l Street, but in a furtive style. The light was mostly a reflected glow, since this cupola by no means predominated the scene. There were buildings though that peeked at it, through s.p.a.ces among intervening walls, and these interested Cranston most.

Definitely, Cranston was sighting toward a certain sector of the Quarter and he seemed pleased because his view of it was restricted. In brief, if Cranston had looked that direction from a higher elevation, he would have seen too many buildings, but from here he could observe only one.

Even better, his view was restricted to just the top floor of that building which he recognized as an ancient apartment house. And the top story was itself restricted, for it was undersized, as if the builders had grown weary and clamped the roof down a little too soon. Just a few pitiable windows, peering out from under eaves, but when a dim glow suddenly appeared from them, Cranston smiled.

All the while, Cranston had been hearing the conversation from below.

Jim Selbert was making most of it. He'd been comparing the data belonging to Ferrand with the much greater ma.s.s gathered by the research laboratory to which Cranston had a.s.signed Margo and Joan.

"Take this fellow Dominique," Selbert was saying. "He spent half his lifetime around New Orleans and you'd spend half of yours trying to keep up with You. I don't mean yourself, I mean You -"

"Just call him Dominique," suggested Trenhue. "It will be easier for you."

"I guess You had a hard time of it," laughed Selbert, "and I mean Dominique. But let's switch to the bayou question. I'm not getting results."

"Maybe Ferrand isn't either," put in Aldion. "Anyway, he's probably having a hard time of it."

"I don't think so," declared Trenhue. "Let me tell you why."

Selbert wanted to hear and so did Cranston, though his arrival from the ladder at that moment simply indicated that he'd had enough fresh air.

"Tell me this," said Trenhue to Selbert. "Why did Ferrand spend so much time down in the bayou country?"

"Simple enough," returned Selbert. "He thinks Dominique stashed a load of treasure down there somewhere, before signing off with Lafitte and Company."

"Any evidence in favor of it?"

"Plenty. Take Vincent Gambi for instance. He played pirate too long. He was asleep on a pile of gold when his playmates busted him apart with a broad-axe. That's all told about in the data I've been reading. Dominique was smarter than Gambi, that's all."

"How much smarter?"

"Smart enough to bury his cash."

"Where somebody else would be waiting around when he dug it up?"

Selbert considered Trenhue's question. Then: "Maybe you've got something," said Jim. "If you're right, Ferrand may have been wasting his time around a lot of empty diggings."

"Perhaps they're not empty any longer."

Selbert's frown was puzzled.

"What Rolfe means," put in Aldion, "is that you haven't found the cash that went with the Louisiana Lottery."

Impressed, Selbert looked to Cranston, who gave the slightest of nods.

"It would be a good way to bury loot," Cranston decided. "Right on the site of a forgotten treasure trove." He turned from Aldion to Trenhue. "Could you think of any better way?" "I think Dominique did," returned Trenhue, frankly. "I am confident he buried his share right here in New Orleans."

"What gives you that idea?" asked Selbert.

"Because Dominique stayed here," Trenhue replied. "He made a point of it.

Why, when he died in 1830 he was one of the biggest men in town. They hung the flags at half-mast."

"I read about it," nodded Selbert. "In that French newspaper, L'Abeille."

He turned to Cranston. "It was in the stuff the girls gathered."

Cranston gave a tired nod. He needed more fresh air so he climbed up into the cupola to get it.

"Getting back to date," said Trenhue to Selbert, "Ferrand may have returned from his bayou trip."

"You mean he's put the Lottery cash where we won't find it?" queried Selbert. "That he figures now he can beat the murder rap for lack of evidence?"

"That's what we both think," blurted Aldion. Then, as Trenhue gestured for him to tone down, he added in a lower voice. "It's why we're digging the cement.

To worry Ferrand."

Interested, Selbert wanted to hear more. It was Trenhue who glanced up to the cupola, gave a hush-hush gesture and then whispered so that Cranston wouldn't hear: "That's only one reason. The other is, we think we may come across Dominique's treasure."

Aldion gave a despairing gesture: "But, Rolfe -"

"It's all right, Hubert." Trenhue's undertone was calm. "We got our break and Jim is ent.i.tled to his." Turning to Selbert, Trenhue explained. "Remember those Dominique letters that were in Moubillard's envelope?"

Selbert nodded. "Political stuff. I didn't read them."

"I did," confided Trenhue. "There was one addressed to the editor of L'Abeille when Dominique rigged out the brig Seraphine to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena."

Selbert shook his head.

"I don't remember it."

"Napoleon died before Dominique could start," continued Trenhue, "so he never sent the letter. But it happened Dominique thought he was the one who might be dead soon, so the letter was written something like a will."

This interested Selbert.

"There were some flowery phrases in it," recalled Trenhue. "One about New Orleans being a land of treasure -"

"And a man's real treasure," quoted Aldion, as Trenhue paused, "being in his home. That was when Dominique lived here."

Eyebrows raised, Selbert gestured downward with his thumb, meaning the sound of pick-axes that kept persisting from below.

"You mean?"

"Just that," undertoned Trenhue. "Come around after the workmen leave at midnight, in case we find some treasure."

"And in case Ferrand finds us," added Aldion, cautiously. "We figure he may."

"Fifty-fifty," agreed Selbert grimly. "You can have the treasure. I'll take Ferrand."

The looks that Aldion exchanged with Trenhue were accompanied by nods, indicating that they were both right in their estimate of Selbert as a man who believed in duty first, last, and all the time.

The acoustics of the cupola were perfect, at least from Cranston's standpoint. It picked up everything that had been said, like a big mechanical ear; hence Cranston had heard all. But that wasn't exactly why Cranston came down from his temporary perch. What Lamont Cranston had heard, he had already antic.i.p.ated. What he had just seen was more important.

The lights in those dim windows beneath the distant eaves had turned off.

Lamont Cranston had another appointment, as The Shadow.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE window slid sideward and The Shadow squeezed through. Windows in this room couldn't go upward, or they would raise the roof. This was the tiny, forgotten apartment that The Shadow had spotted from the cupola of the Hoodoo House.

It went back to Joan's statement to Selbert; when she had told the police captain how she had looked for Ferrand in some of his hangouts in the French Quarter. When a man habituated several places in the same neighborhood, it indicated that he was used to living there.

If Joan had known that Ferrand had some hideaway, she would have said so.