Waring's Peril Part 7

"Why, that's odd," said Cram. "Better bolt it now, or all the cattle along the levee will be in there. You can't lock out the water, though.

Who had the key besides Mr. Lascelles or Madame?"

"n.o.body, sare; but there is muddy foots all over the piazza."

"The devil! I'll have to look in for a moment."

A nod to Pierce brought him too from the saddle, and the officers handed their reins to the orderlies. Then together they entered the gate and strode up the white sh.e.l.l walk, looking curiously about them through the dripping shrubbery. Again that dismal howl was raised, and Pierce, stopping with impatient exclamation, tore half a brick from the yielding border of the walk and sent it hurtling through the trees. With his tail between his legs, the brute darted from behind a sheltering bush, scurried away around the corner of the house, glancing fearfully back, then, halting at safe distance, squatted on his haunches and lifted up his mournful voice again.

"Whose dog is that?" demanded Cram.

"M'sieu' Philippe's: he not now here. He is de brudder to Monsieur."

At the steps the captain bent and closely examined them and the floor of the low veranda to which they led. Both were disfigured with muddy footprints. Pierce would have gone still further in the investigation, but his senior held up a warning hand.

"Two men have been here," he muttered. "They have tried the door and tried the blinds.--Where did you sleep last night, boy?" and with the words he turned suddenly on the negro. "Did you hear no sound?"

"No, sare. I sleep in my bed,--'way back. No, I hear noting,--noting."

And now the negro's face was twitching, his eyes staring. Something in the soldier's stern voice told him that there was tragedy in the air.

"If this door is locked, go round and open it from within," said Cram, briefly. Then, as Alphonse disappeared around the north side, he stepped back to the sh.e.l.l walk and followed one of its branches around the other. An instant later Pierce heard him call. Hastening in his wake, the youngster came upon his captain standing under a window, one of whose blinds was hanging partly open, water standing in pools all around him.

"Look here," was all he said, and pointed upward.

The sill was above the level of their heads, but both could see that the sash was raised. All was darkness within.

"Come with me," was Cram's next order, and the lieutenant followed.

Alphonse was unlocking the front door, and now threw it open. Cram strode into the wide hall-way straight to a door of the east side. It was locked. "Open this, Alphonse," he said.

"I have not the key. It is ever with M'sieu' Lascelles. It is his library."

Cram stepped back, gave one vigorous kick with a heavy riding-boot, and the frail door flew open with a crash. For a moment the darkness was such that no object could be distinguished within. The negro servant hung back, trembling from some indefinable dread. The captain, his hand on the door-k.n.o.b, stepped quickly into the gloomy apartment, Pierce close at his heels. A broad, flat-topped desk stood in the centre of the room. Some shelves and books were dimly visible against the wall. Some of the drawers of the desk were open, and there was a litter of papers on the desk, and others were strown in the big rattan chair, some on the floor. Two student-lamps could be dimly distinguished, one on the big desk, another on a little reading-table placed not far from the south window, whose blinds, half open, admitted almost the only light that entered the room. With its head near this reading-table and faintly visible, a bamboo lounge stretched its length towards the southward windows, where all was darkness, and something vague and indistinguishable lay extended upon the lounge. Cram marched half-way across the floor, then stopped short, glanced down, and stepped quickly to one side, shifting his heavily-booted feet as though to avoid some such muddy pool as those encountered without.

"Take care," he whispered, and motioned warningly to Pierce. "Come here and open these shutters, Alphonse," were the next words. But once again that prolonged, dismal, mournful howl was heard under the south window, and the negro, seized with uncontrollable panic, turned back and clung trembling to the opposite wall.

"Send one of the men for the post surgeon at once, then come back here,"

said the captain, and Pierce hastened to the gate. As he returned, the west shutters were being thrown open. There was light when he re-entered the room, and this was what he saw. On the China matting, running from underneath the sofa, fed by heavy drops from above, a dark wet stain. On the lounge, stretched at full length, a stiffening human shape, a yellow-white, parchment-like face above the black clothing, a bluish, half-opened mouth whose yellow teeth showed savagely, a fallen chin and jaw, covered with the gray stubble of unshaved beard, and two staring, sightless, ghastly eyes fixed and upturned as though in agonized appeal.

Stone-dead,--murdered, doubtless,--all that was left of the little Frenchman Lascelles.

CHAPTER V.

All that day the storm raged in fury; the levee road was blocked in places by the boughs torn from overhanging trees, and here, there, and everywhere turned into a quagmire by the torrents that could find no adequate egress to the northward swamps. For over a mile above the barracks it looked like one vast ca.n.a.l, and by nine o'clock it was utterly impa.s.sable. No cars were running on the dilapidated road to the "half-way house," whatever they might be doing beyond. There was only one means of communication between the garrison and the town, and that, on horseback along the crest of the levee, and people in the second-story windows of the store- and dwelling-houses along the other side of the way, driven aloft by the drenched condition of the ground floor, were surprised to see the number of times some Yankee soldier or other made the dismal trip. Cram, with a party of four, was perhaps the first. Before the dripping sentries of the old guard were relieved at nine o'clock every man and woman at the barracks was aware that foul murder had been done during the night, and that old Lascelles, slain by some unknown hand, slashed and hacked in a dozen places, according to the stories afloat, lay in his gloomy old library up the levee road, with a flood already a foot deep wiping out from the grounds about the house all traces of his a.s.sailants. Dr. Denslow, in examining the body, found just one deep, downward stab, entering above the upper rib and doubtless reaching the heart,--a stab made by a long, straight, sharp, two-edged blade. He had been dead evidently some hours when discovered by Cram, who had now gone to town to warn the authorities, old Brax meantime having taken upon himself the responsibility of placing a guard at the house, with orders to keep Alphonse and his mother in and everybody else out.

It is hardly worth while to waste time on the various theories advanced in the garrison as to the cause and means of the dreadful climax. That Doyle should be away from the post provoked neither comment nor speculation: he was not connected in any way with the tragedy. But the fact that Mr. Waring was absent all night, coupled with the stories of his devotions to Madame, was to several minds _prima facie_ evidence that his was the b.l.o.o.d.y hand that wrought the deed,--that he was now a fugitive from justice, and Madame Lascelles, beyond doubt, the guilty partner of his flight. Everybody knew by this time of their being together much of the morning: how could people help knowing, when Dryden had seen them? In his elegantly jocular way, Dryden was already condoling with Ferry on the probable loss of his Hatfield clothes, and comforting him with the a.s.surance that they always gave a feller a new black suit to be hanged in, so he might get his duds back after all, only they must get Waring first. Jeffers doubtless would have been besieged with questions but for Cram's foresight: his master had ordered him to accompany him to town.

In silence a second time the little party rode away, pa.s.sing the flooded homestead where lay the murdered man, then, farther on, gazing in mute curiosity at the closed shutters of the premises some infantry satirists had already christened "the dove-cot." What cared they for him or his objectionable helpmate? Still, they could not but note how gloomy and deserted it all appeared, with two feet of water lapping the garden wall. Summoned by his master, Jeffers knuckled his oil-skin hat-brim and pointed out the spot where Mr. Waring stood when he knocked the cabman into the mud, but Jeffers's tongue was tied and his c.o.c.kney volubility gone. The tracks made by Cram's wagon up the slope were already washed out. Bending forward to dodge the blinding storm, the party pushed along the embankment until at last the avenues and alleys to their right gave proof of better drainage. At Rampart Street they separated, Pierce going on to report the tragedy to the police, Cram turning to his right and following the broad thoroughfare another mile, until Jeffers, indicating a big, old-fashioned, broad-galleried Southern house standing in the midst of grounds once trim and handsome, but now showing signs of neglect and penury, simply said, "'Ere, sir." And here the party dismounted.

Cram entered the gate and pulled a clanging bell. The door was almost instantly opened by a colored girl, at whose side, with eager joyous face, was the pretty child he had seen so often playing about the Lascelles homestead, and the eager joyous look faded instantly away.

"She t'ink it M'sieur Vareeng who comes to arrive," explained the smiling colored girl.

"Ah! It is Madame d'Hervilly I wish to see," answered Cram, briefly.

"Please take her my card." And, throwing off his dripping raincoat and tossing it to Jeffers, who had followed to the veranda, the captain stepped within the hall and held forth his hands to Nin Nin, begging her to come to him who was so good a friend of Mr. Waring. But she would not. The tears of disappointment were in the dark eyes as the little one turned and ran away. Cram could hear the gentle, soothing tones of the mother striving to console her child,--the one widowed and the other orphaned by the tidings he bore. Even then he noted how musical, how full of rich melody, was that soft Creole voice. And then Madame d'Hervilly appeared, a stately, dignified, picturesque gentlewoman of perhaps fifty years. She greeted him with punctilious civility, but with manner as distant as her words were few.

"I have come on a trying errand," he began, when she held up a slender, jewelled hand.

"_Pardon. Permettez._--Madame Lascelles," she called, and before Cram could find words to interpose, a servant was speeding to summon the very woman he had hoped not to have to see.

"Oh, madame," he murmured low, hurriedly, "I deplore my ignorance. I cannot speak French. Try to understand me. Mr. Lascelles is home, dangerously stricken. I fear the worst. You must tell her."

"'Ome! _La bas? C'est impossible._"

"It is true," he burst in, for the swish of silken skirt was heard down the long pa.s.sage. "_Il est mort_,--_mort_" he whispered, mustering up what little French he knew and then cursing himself for an imbecile.

"_Mort! O ciel!_" The words came with a shriek of anguish from the lips of the elder woman and were echoed by a scream from beyond. In an instant, wild-eyed, horror-stricken, Emilie Lascelles had sprung to her tottering mother's side.

"When? What mean you?" she gasped.

"Madame Lascelles," he sadly spoke, "I had hoped to spare you this, but it is too late now. Mr. Lascelles was found lying on the sofa in his library this morning. He had died hours before, during the night."

And then he had to spring and catch the fainting woman in his arms. She was still moaning, and only semi-conscious, when the old family doctor and her brother, Pierre d'Hervilly, arrived.

Half an hour later Cram astonished the aides-de-camp and other bored staff officials by appearing at the general loafing-room at head-quarters. To the chorus of inquiry as to what brought him up in such a storm he made brief reply, and then asked immediately to speak with the adjutant-general and Lieutenant Reynolds, and, to the disgust and mystification of all the others, he disappeared with these into an adjoining room. There he briefly told the former of the murder, and then asked for a word with the junior.

Reynolds was a character. Tall, handsome, and distinguished, he had served throughout the war as a volunteer, doing no end of good work, and getting many a word of praise, but, as all his service was as a staff officer, it was his general who reaped the reward of his labors. He had risen, of course, to the rank of major in the staff in the volunteers, and everybody had prophesied that he would be appointed a major in the adjutant- or inspector-general's department in the permanent establishment. But there were not enough places by any means, and the few vacancies went to men who knew better how to work for themselves.

"Take a lieutenancy now, and we will fix you by and by," was the suggestion, and so it resulted that here he was three years after the war wearing the modest strap of a second lieutenant, doing the duties and accepting the responsibilities of a far higher grade, and being patronized by seniors who were as much his inferiors in rank as they were in ability during the war days. Everybody said it was a shame, and n.o.body helped to better his lot. He was a man whose counsel was valuable on all manner of subjects. Among other things, he was well versed in all that pertained to the code of honor as it existed in the antebellum days,--had himself been "out," and, as was well known, had but recently officiated as second for an officer who had need of his services. He and Waring were friends from the start, and Cram counted on tidings of his absent subaltern in appealing to him. Great, therefore, was his consternation when in reply to his inquiry Reynolds promptly answered that he had neither seen nor heard from Waring in over forty-eight hours. This was a facer.

"What's wrong, Cram?"

"Read that," said the captain, placing a daintily-written note in the aide-de-camp's hand. It was brief, but explicit:

"COLONEL BRAXTON: Twice have I warned you that the attentions of your Lieutenant Waring to Madame Lascelles meant mischief. This morning, under pretence of visiting her mother, she left the house in a cab, but in half an hour was seen driving with Mr. Waring. This has been, as I have reason to know, promptly carried to Monsieur Lascelles by people whom he had employed for the purpose. I could of told you last night that Monsieur Lascelles's friend had notified Lieutenant Waring that a duel would be exacted should he be seen with Madame again, and now it will certainly come. You have seen fit to scorn my warnings. .h.i.therto, the result is on your head." There was no signature whatever.

"Who wrote this rot?" asked Reynolds. "It seems to me I've seen that hand before."

"So have I, and pitched the trash into the fire, as I do everything anonymous that comes my way. But Brax says that this is the second or third, and he's worried about it, and thinks there may be truth in the story."

"As to the duel, or as to the devotions to Madame?" asked Reynolds, calmly.

"We-ll, both, and we thought you would be most apt to know whether a fight was on. Waring promised to return to the post at taps last night.

Instead of that, he is gone,--G.o.d knows where,--and the old man, the reputed challenger, lies dead at his home. Isn't that ugly?"

Reynolds's face grew very grave.

"Who last saw Waring, that you know of?"