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

slim, tenuous chance—that his entire story is true. In that case, another person must have appeared as the Masquer which seems unlikely——"

"Or else," put in Ben Chacherre, smoothly, "the real original Masquer showed up!"

There was an instant of silence. Jachin Fell regarded his henchman with steady gray eyes. Ben Chacherre met the look with almost a trace of defiance. The chief frowned darkly.

"Yes," said the chief. "That's the size of it, Fell. You're keepin' quiet about the name of the real Masquer; why?"

"Because," said Fell, calmly, "I happen to know that he was in the auditorium at the time of the murder."

Again silence. Ben Chacherre stared at Fell, with amazement and admiration in his gaze. "When the master lies, he lies magnificently!" he murmured in French.

"Well," and the chief gestured despairingly, "I guess that lets out the real Masquer, eh?"

"Exactly," assented Fell. "No use dragging his name into it. I'll keep at work on this, chief, and if anything turns up to clear young Maillard, I'll be very glad."

"All right," grunted the chief, and rose. "I'll be on my way."

He departed. Neither Fell nor Chacherre moved or spoke for a space. When at length the clang of the elevator door resounded through the deserted corridors Ben Chacherre slipped from his chair and went to the outer door. He glanced out into the hall, closed the door, and with a nod returned to his chair.

"Well?" Jachin Fell regarded him with intent, searching eyes. "Have you any light to throw on the occasion?"

Chacherre's usual air of cool impudence was never in evidence when he talked with Mr. Fell.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Hammond worked on the car until about nine o'clock, then beat it to bed, I guess. I quit the job at ten, and his light had been out some time. Well, master, this is a queer affair! There's no doubt that Gramont pulled it, eh?"

"You think so?" asked Fell.

Chacherre made a gesture of assent. "Quand bois tombé, cabri monté—when the tree falls, the kid can climb it! Any fool can see that Gramont was the man. Don't you think so yourself, master?"

Jachin Fell nodded.

"Yes. But we've no evidence—everything lies against young Maillard. Early in the morning Gramont goes to Paradis to examine that land of Miss Ledanois' along the bayou. He'll probably say nothing of this murder to Hammond, and the chauffeur may not find out about it until a day or two—they get few newspapers down there.

"Drive down to Paradis in the morning, Ben; get into touch with Hammond, and discover what time Gramont got home to-night. Write me what you find out. Then take charge of things at the Gumberts place. Make sure that every car is handled right. A headquarters man from Mobile will be here to-morrow to trace the Nonpareil Twelve that Gramont now owns."

Chacherre whistled under his breath. "What?"

Jachin Fell smiled slightly and nodded. "Yes. If Gramont remains at Paradis, I may send him on down there—I'm not sure yet. I intend to get something on that man Hammond."

"But you can't land him that way, master! He bought the car——"

"And who sold the car to the garage people? They bought it innocently." A peculiar smile twisted Fell's lips awry. "In fact, they bought it from a man named Hammond, as the evidence will show very clearly."

Ben Chacherre started, since he had sold that car himself. Then a slow grin came into his thin features—a grin that widened into a noiseless laugh.

"Master, you are magnificent!" he said, and rose. "Well, if there is nothing further on hand, I shall go to bed."

"An excellent programme," said Jachin Fell, and took his hat from the desk. "I must get some sleep myself."

They left the office and the building together.

Three hours afterward the dawn had set in—a cold, gray, and dismal dawn that rose upon a city littered with the aftermath of carnival. "Lean Wednesday" it was, in sober fact. Thus far, the city in general was ignorant of the tragedy which had taken place at the very conclusion of its gayest carnival season. Within a few hours business and social circles would be swept by the fact of Joseph Maillard's murder, but at this early point of the day the city slept. The morning papers, which to-day carried a news story that promised to shock and stun the entire community, were not yet distributed.

Rising before daylight, Henry Gramont and Hammond breakfasted early and were off by six in the car. They were well outside town and sweeping on their way to Terrebonne Parish and the town of Paradis before they realized that the day was not going to brighten appreciably. Instead, it remained very cloudy and gloomy, with a chill threat of rain in the air.

Weather mattered little to Gramont. When finally the excellent highway was left behind, and they started on the last lap of their seventy-mile ride, they found the parish roads execrable and the going slow. Thus, noon was at hand when they at length pulled into Paradis, the town closest to Lucie Ledanois' bayou land. The rain was still holding off.

"Too cold to rain," observed Gramont. "Let's hit for the hotel and get something to eat. I'll have to locate the land, which is somewhere near town."

They discovered the hotel to be an ancient structure, and boasting prices worthy of Lafitte and his buccaneers. As in many small towns of Louisiana, however, the food proved fit for a king. After a light luncheon of quail, crayfish bisque, and probably illegal venison, Gramont sighed regret that he could eat no more, and set about inquiring where the Ledanois farm lay.

There was very little, indeed, to Paradis, which lay on the bayou but well away from the railroad. It was a desolate spot, unpainted and unkept. The parish seat of Houma had robbed it of all life and growth on the one hand; on the other, the new oil and gas district had not yet touched it.

Southward lay the swamp—fully forty miles of it, merging by degrees into the Gulf. Forty miles of cypress marsh and winding bayou, uncharted, unexplored save by occasional hunters or semi-occasional sheriffs. No man knew who or what might be in those swamps, and no one cared to know. The man who brought in fish or oysters in his skiff might be a bayou fisherman, and he might be a murderer wanted in ten states. Curiosity was apt to prove extremely unhealthy. Like the Atchafalaya, where chance travellers find themselves abruptly ordered elsewhere, the Terrebonne swamps have their own secrets and know how to keep them.

Gramont had no difficulty in locating the Ledanois land, and he found that it was by no means in the swamp. A part of it, lying closer to Houma, had been sold and was now included in the new oil district; it was this portion which Joseph Maillard had sold off.

The remainder, and the largest portion, lay north of Paradis and ran along the west bank of the bayou for half a mile. A long-abandoned farm, it was high ground, with the timber well cleared off and excellently located; but tenants were hard to get and shiftless when obtained, so that the place had not been farmed for the last five years or more. After getting these facts, Gramont consulted with Hammond.

"We'd better buy some grub here in town and arrange to stay a couple of nights on the farm, if necessary," he said. "There are some buildings there, so we'll find shelter. Along the bayou are summer cottages—I believe some of them are rather pretentious places—and we ought to find the road pretty decent. It's only three or four miles out of town."

With some provisions piled in the car, they set forth. The road wound along the bayou side, past ancient 'Cajun farms and the squat homes of fishermen. Here and there had been placed camps and summer cottages, nestling amid groups of huge oaks and cypress, whose fronds of silver-gray moss hung in drooping clusters like pale and ghostly shrouds.

Watching the road closely, Gramont suddenly found the landmarks that had been described to him, and ordered Hammond to stop and turn in at a gap in the fence which had once been an entrance gate.

"Here we are! Those are the buildings off to the right. Whew! I should say it had been abandoned! Nothing much left but ruins. Go ahead!"

Before them, as they drove in from the road by a grass-covered drive, showed a house, shed, and barn amid a cluster of towering trees. Indeed, trees were everywhere about the farm, which had grown up in a regular sapling forest. The buildings were in a ruinous state—clapboards hanging loosely, roofs dotted by gaping holes, doors and windows long since gone.

Leaving the car, Gramont, followed by the chauffeur, went to the front doorway and surveyed the wreckage inside.

"What do you say, Hammond? Think we can stop here, or go back to the hotel? It's not much of a run to town——"

Hammond pointed to a wide fireplace facing them.

"I can get this shack cleaned out in about half an hour—this one room, anyhow. When we get a fire goin' in there, and board up the windows and doors, we ought to be comfortable enough. But suit yourself, cap'n! It's your funeral."

Gramont laughed. "All right. Go ahead and clean up, then, and if rain comes down we can camp here. Be sure and look for snakes and vermin. The floor seems sound, and if there's plenty of moss on the trees, we can make up comfortable beds. Too bad you're not a fisherman, or we might get a fresh fish out of the bayou——"

"I got some tackle in town," and Hammond grinned widely.

"Good work! Then make yourself at home and go to it. We've most of the afternoon before us."

Gramont left the house, and headed down toward the bayou shore.

He took a letter from his pocket, opened it, and glanced over it anew. It was an old letter, one written him nearly two years previously by Lucie Ledanois. It had been written merely in the endeavour to distract the thoughts of a wounded soldier, to bring his mind to Louisiana, away from the stricken fields of France. In the letter Lucie had described some of the more interesting features of Bayou Terrebonne—the oyster and shrimp fleets, the Chinese and Filipino villages along the Gulf, the far-spread cypress swamps; the bubbling fountains, natural curiosities, that broke up through the streams and bayous of the whole wide parish—fountains that were caused by gas seeping up from the earth's interior, and breaking through.

Gramont knew that plans were already afoot to tap this field of natural gas and pipe it to New Orleans. Oil had been found, too, and all the state was now oil-mad. Fortunes were being made daily, and other fortunes were being lost daily by those who dealt with oil-stocks instead of with oil.

"Those gas-fountains did the work!" reflected Gramont. "And according to this letter, there's one of those fountains here in the bayou, close to her property. 'Just opposite the dock,' she says. The first thing is to find the dock, then the fountain. After that, we'll decide if it's true mineral gas. If it is, then the work's done—for I'll sure take a chance on finding oil near it!"

Gramont came to the bayou and began searching his way along