The Mardi Gras Mystery, Henry Bedford-Jones [popular e readers .txt] 📗

gone. Loans were made hesitatingly, grudgingly, and of necessity, always on security and never on character.

Such was the Exeter National. Its character was reflected in the cold faces at its windows, and the chance customers who entered its sacred portals were duly cowed and put in their proper place. Most of them were, that is. Occasionally some intrepid soul appeared who seemed impervious to the gloomy chill, who seemed even to resent it. One of these persons was now standing in the lobby and staring around with a cool impudence which drew unfavourable glances from the clerks.

He was a decently dressed fellow, obviously no customer of this sacrosanct place, obviously a stranger to its interior. Beneath a rakishly cocked soft hat beamed a countenance that bore a look of self-assured impertinent deviltry. After one look at that countenance the assistant cashier crooked a hasty finger at the floor guard, who nodded and walked over to the intruder with a polite query.

"Can I help you, sir?"

The intruder turned, favoured the guard with a cool stare, then broke into a laugh and a flood of Creole dialect.

"Why, if it isn't old Lacroix from Carencro! And look at the brass buttons—diable! You must own this place, hein? la tchè chatte poussé avec temps—the cat's tail grows in time, I see! You remember me?"

"Ben Chacherre!" exclaimed the guard, losing his dignity for an instant. "Why—you vaurien, you! You who disappeared from the parish and became a vagrant——"

"So you turn up your sanctified nose at Ben Chacherre, do you?" exclaimed that person jauntily. He thrust his hat a bit farther over one ear, and proceeded to snap his fingers under the nose of Lacroix.

"A vaurien, am I? Old peacock! Lead me to the man who cashes checks, lackey, brass buttons that you are! Come, obey me, or I'll have you thrown into the street!"

"You—you wish to cash a check?" The guard was overcome by confusion, for the loud tones of Chacherre penetrated the entire institution. "But you are not known here——"

"Bah, insolent one! Macaque dan calebasse—monkey in the calabash that you are! Do you not know me?"

"Heaven preserve me! I will not answer for your accursed checks."

"Go to the devil, then," snapped Chacherre, and turned away.

His roving eyes had already found the correct window by means of the other persons seeking it, and now he stepped into the small queue that had formed. When it came his turn, he slid his check across the marble slab, tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and impudently stared into the questioning, coldly repellent eyes of the teller.

"Well?" he exclaimed, as the teller examined the check. "Do you wish to eat it, that you sniff so hard?"

The teller gave him a glance. "This is for a thousand dollars——"

"Can I not read?" said Chacherre, with an impudent gesture. "Am I an ignorant 'Cajun? Have I not eyes in my head? If you wish to start an argument, say that the check is for a hundred dollars. Then, by heaven, I will argue something with you!"

"You are Ben Chacherre, eh? Does any one here know you?"

Chacherre exploded in a violent oath. "Dolt that you are, do I have to be known when the check is endorsed under my signature? Who taught you business, monkey?"

"True," answered the teller, sulkily. "Yet the amount——"

"Oh, bah!" Chacherre snapped his fingers. "Go and telephone Jachin Fell, you old woman! Go and tell him you do not know his signature—well, who are you looking at? Am I a telephone, then? You are not hired to look but to act! Get about it."

The enraged and scandalized teller beckoned a confrere. Jachin Fell was telephoned. Presumably his response was reassuring, for Chacherre was presently handed a thousand dollars in small bills, as he requested. He insisted upon counting over the money at the window with insolent assiduity, flung a final compliment at the teller, and swaggered across the lobby. He was still standing by the entrance when Henry Gramont left the private office of the president and passed him by without a look.

Gramont was smiling to himself as he left the bank, and Ben Chacherre was whistling gaily as he also left and plunged into the whirling vortex of the carnival crowds.

Toward noon Gramont arrived afoot at his pension. Finding the rooms empty, he went on and passed through the garden. Behind the garage, in the alley, he discovered Hammond busily at work cleaning and polishing the engine of the car.

"Hello!" he exclaimed, cheerily. "What luck?"

"Pretty good, cap'n." Hammond glanced up, then paused.

A stranger was strolling toward them along the alleyway, a jaunty individual who was gaily whistling and who seemed entirely carefree and happy. He appeared to have no interest whatever in them, and Hammond concluded that he was innocuous.

"They got them prints fine, cap'n. What's more, they think they've located the fellow that made 'em."

"Ah, good work!" exclaimed Gramont. "Some criminal?"

Hammond frowned. The stranger had come to a halt a few feet distant, flung them a jerky, careless nod, and was beginning to roll a cigarette. He surveyed the car with a knowing and appreciative eye. Hammond turned his back on the man disdainfully.

"Yep—a sneak thief they'd pinched a couple of years back; didn't know where he was, but the prints seemed to fit him. They'll come up and look things over sometime to-day, then go after him and land him."

Gramont gave the stranger a glance, but the other was still surveying the car with evident admiration. If he heard their words he gave them no attention.

"Who was the man, then?" asked Gramont.

"A guy with a queer name—Ben Chacherre." Hammond pronounced it as he deemed correct—as the name was spelled. "Only they didn't call him that. Here, I wrote it down."

He fished in his pocket and produced a paper. Gramont glanced at it and laughed.

"Oh, Chacherre!" He gave the name the Creole pronunciation.

"Yep, Sasherry. I expect they'll come any time now—said two bulls would drop in."

"All right." Gramont nodded and turned away, with another glance at the stranger. "I'll not want the car to-day nor to-night that I know of. I'm not going to the Proteus ball. So your time's your own until to-morrow; make the most of it!"

He disappeared, and Hammond returned to his work. Then he straightened up, for the jaunty stranger was bearing down upon him with evident intent to speak.

"Some car you got there, brother!" Ben Chacherre, who had overheard most of the foregoing conversation, lighted his cigarette and grinned familiarly. "Some car, eh?"

"She's a boat, all right," conceded Hammond, grudgingly. He did not like the other's looks, although praise of the car was sweet unto his soul. "She sure steps some."

"Yes. All she needs," drawled Chacherre, "is some good tires, a new coat of paint, a good steel chassis, and a new engine——"

"Huh?" snorted Hammond. "Say, you 'bo, who sold you chips in this game? Move along!"

Ben grinned anew and rested himself against a near-by telephone pole.

"Free country, ain't it?" he inquired, lazily. "Or have you invested your winnings and bought this here alley?"

Hammond reddened with anger and took a step forward. The next words of Chacherre, however, jerked him sharply into self-control.

"Seen anything of an aviator's helmet around here?"

"Huh?" The chauffeur glared at his tormentor, yet with a sudden sick feeling inside his bosom. He suddenly realized that the man's eyes were meeting his squarely, with a bold and insolent directness. "Who you kiddin' now?"

"Nobody. I was asking a question, that's all." Ben Chacherre flung away his cigarette, untangled himself from the telephone pole, and moved away. "Only," he flung over his shoulder, "I was flyin' along here last night in my airplane, and I lost my helmet overboard. Thought maybe you'd seen it. So long, brother!"

Hammond stood staring after the swaggering figure; for once he was speechless. The jaunty words had sent terror thrilling into him. He started impulsively to pursue that impudent accoster—then he checked himself. Had the man guessed something? Had the man known something? Or had those words been only a bit of meaningless impertinence—a chance shaft which had accidentally flown home?

The last conjecture impressed itself on Hammond as being the truth, and his momentary fright died out. He concluded that the incident was not worth mentioning to Gramont, who surely had troubles enough of his own at this juncture. So he held his peace about it.

As for Ben Chacherre, he sauntered from the alley, a careless whistle upon his lips. Once out of Hammond's sight, however, he quickened his pace. Turning into a side street, he directed his step toward that part of the old quarter which, in the days before prohibition, had been given over to low cabarets and dives of various sorts. Most of these places were now boarded up, and presumably abandoned. Coming to one of them, which appeared more dirty and desolate than the rest, Chacherre opened a side door and vanished.

He entered what had once been the Red Cat cabaret. At a table in the half-darkened main room sat two men. A slovenly waiter pored over a newspaper at another table in a far corner. The two in the centre nodded to Chacherre. One of them, who was the proprietor, jerked his chin in an invitation to join them.

A man famous in the underworld circles, a man whose renown rested on curious feats and facts, this proprietor; few crooks in the country had not heard the name of Memphis Izzy Gumberts. He was a grizzled old bear now; but in times past he had been the head of a far-flung organization which, on each pay day, covered every army post in the country and diverted into its own pockets about two thirds of Uncle Sam's payroll—a feat still related in criminal circles as the ne plus ultra of success. Those palmy days were gone, but Memphis Izzy, who had never been "mugged" in any gallery, sat in his deserted cabaret and still did not lack for power and influence.

The man at his side was apparently not anxious to linger, for he rose and made his farewells as Chacherre approached.

"We have about eighteen cars left," he said to Gumberts. "Charley the Goog can attend to them, and the place is safe enough. They're up to you. I'm drifting back to Chi."

"Drift along," and Gumberts nodded, a leer in his eyes. His face was broad, heavy-jowled, filled with a keen and forceful craft. "It's a cinch that nobody in this state is goin' to interfere with us. About them cars from Texas—any news?"

"I've sent orders to bring 'em in next week."

Gumberts nodded again, and the man departed. Into the chair which he had vacated dropped Ben Chacherre, and took from his pocket the money which he had obtained at the bank. He laid it on the table before Gumberts.

"There you are," he said. "Amounts you want and all. The boss says to gimme a receipt."

"Wouldn't trust you, eh?" jeered Gumberts. He took out pencil and paper, scrawled a word or two, and shoved the paper at Chacherre. Then he reached down to a small satchel which lay open on the floor beside his chair. "Why wouldn't the boss leave the money come out of the takin's, hey?"

"Wanted to keep separate accounts," said Chacherre.

Gumberts nodded and produced two large sealed envelopes, which he pushed