The Mardi Gras Mystery - Henry Bedford-Jones (beginner reading books for adults TXT) 📗

observed Jachin Fell, frowning. "I wonder what happened to them so abruptly? Perhaps the deal was finished—they're having a game. Well, go ahead, Joseph! We'll back you up as a deputation from the blackcoats, and if you need any moral support, call on Judge Forester."

"Correct!" assented that gentleman with dignity. "I'll give these jackanapes a little advice! It's going a bit far, this sort of thing; we can't have Comus turned into a common drinking bout. Ready, Joseph?"

He flung open the door, and Maillard entered at his side. They then came to a startled halt, at view of the scene which greeted them.

The room was large and well lighted, windows and transom darkened for the occasion. Tobacco smoke made a bluish haze in the air. In the centre of the room stood a large table, littered with glasses and bottles, with scattered cards, with chips and money.

About this table had been sitting half a dozen members of the Krewe of Comus. Now, however, they were standing, their various identities completely concealed by the grotesque costumes which cloaked them. Their hands were in the air.

Standing at another doorway, midway between their group and that of the four unexpected intruders, was the Midnight Masquer—holding them up at the point of his automatic!

There was a moment of tense and strained silence, as every eye went to the four men in evening attire. It was plain what had cut short the boisterous song—the Masquer must have made his appearance only a moment or two previously. From head to foot he was hidden under his leathern attire. His unrecognizable features, at this instant, were turned slightly toward the four new arrivals. It was obvious that he, no less than the others, was startled by this entry.

Maillard was the first to break that silence of stupefaction.

"By heavens!" he cried, furiously. "Here's that damned villain again—hold him, you! at him, everybody!"

In a blind rage, transported out of himself by his sudden access of passion, the banker hurled himself forward. From the bandit burst a cry of futile warning; the pistol in his hand veered toward his assailant.

This action precipitated the event. Perhaps because the Masquer did not fire instantly, and perhaps because Maillard's mad action shamed them, the nearer members of the drinking party hurled themselves at the bandit. The threat of the weapon was forgotten, unheeded in the sweeping lust of the man-hunt. It seemed that the fellow feared to fire; and about him closed the party in a surging mass, with a burst of sudden shouts, striking and clutching to pull him down and put him under foot.

Then, when it seemed that they had him without a struggle, the Masquer broke from them, swept them apart and threw them off, hurled them clear away. He moved as though to leap through the side doorway whence he had come.

With an oath, Maillard hurled himself forward, struck blindly and furiously at the bandit, and fastened upon him about the waist. There was a surge forward of bodies as the others crowded in to pull down the Masquer before he could escape. It looked then as though he were indeed lost—until the automatic flamed and roared in his hand, its choking fumes bursting at them. The report thundered in the room; a second report thundered, deafeningly, as a second bullet sought its mark.

Like a faint echo to those shots came the slam of a door. The Masquer was gone!

After him, into the farther room, rushed some of the party; but he had vanished utterly. There was no trace of him. Of course, he might have ducked into any of the dark rooms, or have run down the corridor, yet his complete disappearance confused the searchers. After a moment, however, they returned to the lighted room. The Masquer had gone, but behind him had remained a more grim and terrible masquer.

In the room which he had just left, however, there had fallen a dread silence and consternation. One of the masqued drinkers held an arm that hung helpless, dripping blood; but his hurt passed unseen and uncared for, even by himself.

Doctor Ansley was kneeling above a motionless figure, prone on the dirty floor; and it was the figure of Joseph Maillard. The physician glanced up, then rose slowly to his feet. He made a terribly significant gesture, and his crisp voice broke in upon the appalled silence.

"Dead," he said, curtly. "Shot twice—each bullet through the heart. Judge Forester, I'm afraid there is no alternative but to call in the police. Gentlemen, you will kindly unmask—which one of you is Robert Maillard?"

Amid a stunned and horrified silence the members of the Krewe one by one removed their grotesque headgear, staring at the dead man whose white face looked up at them with an air of grim accusation. But none of them came forward to claim kinship with the dead man. Bob Maillard was not in the room.

"I think," said the toneless, even voice of Jachin Fell, "that all of you gentlemen had better be very careful to say only what you have seen—and know. You will kindly remain here until I have summoned the police."

He left the room, and if there were any dark implication hidden in his words, no one seemed to observe it.

CHAPTER IX

On The Bayou

AT THREE o'clock in the morning a great office building is not the most desolate place on earth, perhaps; but it approaches very closely to that definition.

At three o'clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday the great white Maison Blanche building was deserted and desolate, so far as its offices were concerned. The cleaners and scrub-women had long since finished their tasks and departed. Out in the streets the tag-ends of carnival were running on a swiftly ebbing tide. A single elevator in the building was, however, in use. A single suite of offices, with carefully drawn blinds, was lighted and occupied.

They were not ornate, these offices. They consisted of two rooms, a small reception room and a large private office, both lined to the ceiling with books, chiefly law books. In the large inner room were sitting three men. One of the three, Ben Chacherre, sat in a chair tipped back against the wall, his eyes closed. From time to time he opened those sparkling black eyes of his, and through narrow-slitted lids directed keen glances at the other two men.

One of the men was the chief of police. The second was Jachin Fell, whose offices these were.

"Even if things are as you say, which I don't doubt at all," said the chief, slowly, "I can't believe the boy did it! And darn it all, if I pinch him there's goin' to be a hell of a scandal!"

Fell shrugged his shoulders, and made response in his toneless voice:

"Chief, you're up against facts. Those facts are bound to come out and the newspapers will nail your hide to the wall in a minute. You've a bare chance to save yourself by taking in young Maillard at once."

The chief chewed hard on his cigar. "I don't want to save myself by putting the wrong man behind the bars," he returned. "It sure looks like he was the Masquer all the while, but you say that he wasn't. You say this was his only job—a joke that turned out bad."

"Those are the facts," said Fell. "I don't want to accuse a man of crimes I know he did not commit. We have the best of evidence that he did commit this crime. If the newspapers fasten the entire Midnight Masquer business on him, as they're sure to do, we can't very well help it. I have no sympathy for the boy."

"Of course he did it," put in Ben Chacherre, sleepily. "Wasn't he caught with the goods?"

The others paid no heed. The chief indicated two early editions of the morning papers, which lay on the desk in front of Fell. These papers carried full accounts of the return of the Midnight Masquer's loot, explaining his robberies as part of a carnival jest.

"The later editions, comin' out now," said the chief, "will crowd all that stuff off the front page with the Maillard murder. Darn it, Fell! Whether I believe it or not, I'll have to arrest the young fool."

Chacherre chuckled. Jachin Fell smiled faintly.

"Nothing could be plainer, chief," he responded. "First, Bob Maillard comes to us in front of the opera house, and talks about a great joke that he's going to spring on his friends across the way——"

"How'd you know who he was?" interjected the chief, shrewdly.

"Gramont recognized him; Ansley and I confirmed the recognition. He was more or less intoxicated—chiefly more. Now, young Maillard was not in the room at the moment of the murder—unless he was the Masquer. Five minutes afterward he was found in a near-by room, hastily changing out of an aviator's uniform into his masquerade costume. Obviously, he had assumed the guise of the Masquer as a joke on his friends, and the joke had a tragic ending. Further, he was in the aviation service during the war, and so had the uniform ready to hand. You couldn't make anybody believe that he hasn't been the Masquer all the time!"

"Of course," and the chief nodded perplexedly. "It'd be a clear case—only you call me in and say that he wasn't the Masquer! Damn it, Fell, this thing has my goat!"

"What's Maillard's story?" struck in Ben Chacherre.

"He denies the whole thing," said the worried chief. "According to his story, which sounded straight the way he tells it, he meant to pull off the joke on his friends and was dressing in the Masquer's costume when he heard the shots. He claims that the shots startled him and made him change back. He swears that he had not entered the other room at all, except in his masquerade clothes. He says the murderer must have been the real Masquer. It's likely enough, because all young Maillard's crowd knew about the party that was to be held in that room during the Comus ball——"

"No matter," said Fell, coldly. "Chief, this is an open and shut case; the boy was bound to lie. That he killed his father was an accident, of course, but none the less it did take place."

"The boy's a wreck this minute." The chief held a match to his unlighted cigar. "But you say that he ain't the original Masquer?"

"No!" Fell spoke quickly. "The original Masquer was another person, and had nothing to do with the present case. This information is confidential and between ourselves."

"Oh, of course," assented the chief. "Well, I suppose I got to pull Maillard, but I hate to do it. I got a hunch that he ain't the right party."

"Virtuous man!" Fell smiled thinly. "According to all the books, the chief of police is only too glad to fasten the crime on anybody——"

"Books be damned!" snorted the chief, and leaned forward earnestly. "Look here, Fell! Do you believe in your heart that Maillard killed his father?"

Fell was silent a moment under that intent scrutiny.

"From the evidence, I am forced against my will to believe it," he said at last. "Of course, he'll be able to prove that he was not the Masquer on previous occasions; his alibis will take care of that. Up to the point of the murder, his story is all right. And, my friend, there is a chance—a very