The Law of the Land, Emerson Hough [best beach reads of all time TXT] 📗

“I don’t blame you for being disturbed,” said Eddring, himself smiling. “As you see, there is something under all this. Maybe Mr. Decherd is a bigger man than we gave him credit for being. Maybe this little book is a bigger book than we thought it was.

“Now, you know, the entail has been abolished in the state of Missouri. So we come directly to the question of the descent of these lead lands under a certain name. Of course, a single heir in each of three generations would carry the title down clear till to-day; provided, of course, that there was no escheat to the government— that all the taxes had been kept up. Very well. That means that it is at least a legal possibility for a living heir to-day to have title to those Loisson lead mines, which are very valuable. Cal—” and here Eddring rose, tapping with his finger on the table in front of him, “the Louise Loisson who went to France in 1825 was the owner of those lead mines! Now I have looked up the tax record. The taxes on these lands for several years back have been paid by Henry Decherd!”

Blount himself rose and stood back, hands in pockets, looking at the speaker. “—I’ll take my stand!” he continued with his hymn.

“For a long time,” went on Eddring, “these lands, not supposed to be worth anything, were not listed by any assessor, and hence did not appear upon the tax-rolls. Thus they were not forfeited by the original purchaser, who must have had his title pretty nearly direct from Uncle Sam himself. Louise Loisson, the first, the French noblewoman dancer, owned those lead mines. If this dancer at New Orleans be a relative of hers, a daughter or granddaughter, she won’t have to dance unless she feels like it. For I am here to tell you, as a lawyer, her claim to this tract can be proved, just as readily as the claim to a place on the Omaha pay-rolls for a descendant of Paul Loise was proved in the United States Court five years ago, by means of this same book on the table there before you!”

“Well now, my son, that’s what an ignorant fellow like me would call a mighty pretty lawsuit,” said Blount, turning over the curious little red-bound volume in his hand.

“It’s more than pretty,” said Eddring, “it’s deep, and it’s important—important to you and me, for more reasons than one. There has been a heap of trouble down in the Delta, and there has been a head to all this trouble-making. We are now entitled to our guess as to whether or not we have in this curious way located the head. If we are right, we have at least connected Henry Decherd with an attempt to secure, either for himself or some one else, the title to these lands.

“Now, whether the rightful heir, if there be any heir, knows of the existence of these lands, or ever heard of this book, or ever heard of that Indian lawsuit, is something which we don’t know. There may not be any living descendant of the Loisson family. All we know is that there is some one using the Loisson name; and that there is some one else who is after the Loisson estates. Now, just why this latter has had certain associates, or just why he has done certain other acts, you and I can’t say at this time. But we’ll know some time.”

“The first thing to do, of course, is to go to New Orleans to see that dancer woman.”

“Of course,” said Eddring. “I shall start tomorrow. As for you, Blount, you’ve got hint enough about what’s going on in your own neighborhood. You’d better watch that girl Delphine. What are you letting her stay around there for, anyway?”

“Because I’ve got to eat,” said Blount, “and because I’ve got to have some one to run that place. As I told you, I haven’t been there much of the time till lately. I reckon she’s been boss, about as much as anybody. You know there wasn’t a white woman on the place, not since Miss Lady left. I couldn’t ever bear to try to get anybody else in there. I just let things go.”

“What became of Mrs. Ellison, after she left your place?”

“I don’t know; don’t ask me. I was an awful fool ever to get caught in any such a way. I heard Mrs. Ellison went to St. Louis, but I don’t know. As I look at it now, I believe Decherd was more than half willing to make up to Miss Lady. I reckon maybe Mrs. Ellison didn’t like that, though why she should care I don’t know. Don’t ask me about all these things—I’ve had too much trouble to want to think about it. All I know is that the girl was as fine a one as ever lived. She was good—now I know that, and that’s all I do know. I always thought she was Mrs. Ellison’s daughter; but when the break-up came, they allowed it wasn’t that way. I never did try to figure it all out. When Miss Lady disappeared, and we-all couldn’t find her nowhere, I just marked the whole thing off the slate, and went out hunting.”

“Cal,” said Eddring, quietly, “did you ever stop to think that there is quite a similar sound in those three names, Loise, and Loisson, and Ellison?”

Blount threw out his hands before him. “Oh, go on away, man,” said he. “You’ve got me half-crazy now. I don’t know where I’m standing, nor where I’ve been standing. I don’t feel safe in my own home—I haven’t been safe. My whole place has gone to ruin, and all on account of this business. It’s nigh about done me up, that’s what it has. And now here you come making it worse and worse all the time.”

“But we’ve got to see it through together.”

“Oh, I reckon so. Yes, of course we must.”

“Well, now, let’s just look over the matter once more,” said Eddring. “Let us suppose that Decherd has stumbled on this knowledge of the unclaimed Loisson estate. He works every possible string to get hold of it. He tries to get tax title—and that is where he uncovers his own hand. Meanwhile, he tries the still safer plan of finding a legal heir. We will suppose he has two claimants. From this letter here we may suppose that Delphine was one of them, his first one. He seems to have learned from this Indian lawsuit, whether or not he was concerned other than as counsel in that lawsuit—and the record does not show whether or not he was—that Delphine, or his claimant, whoever that was—we’ll say Delphine, for we don’t know Delphine’s real name, perhaps—could and did stick on the pay-rolls of an Indian tribe. That meant that she was Loise, and not Loisson. The United States Court records hold that absolute evidence, res adjudicata— stare decisis; which means, in plain English, that ends it. It also means that that Indian claimant could not inherit the Loisson estate!

“Now here is an unknown woman, whom we will call Delphine, begging Decherd not to forsake her. There would seem to have been a failure on this line of the Decherd investigation. Perhaps the result of the test case didn’t please Decherd very much, although he was on the winning side. At least, it marked the Loise claimant off the Loisson slate. So much for claimant number one. So much for Delphine, we’ll say.

“But now, at some time or other, Miss Lady and Mrs. Ellison appeared on the scene. I don’t know, any more than you do, how these three happened to know each other, or why Decherd happened to appear so steadily at your place, after you had so eagerly taken his suggestion and employed Mrs. Ellison as your household supervisor. But now, we will say, Decherd takes a great notion to Miss Lady. All the time Delphine is there watching him. She puts on a heap more airs than a colored mistress. Along about the time of the train wreck, she begins to charge him with faithlessness. She refers vaguely, as you see in the letter, to his interest in this other woman. Now, can that be our Miss Lady?

“We don’t know. None of us can tell, as yet, who that mysterious other person is. Mrs. Ellison might tell us, if we could find her, or if we cared to find her.”

“No, you don’t,” said Blount. “That woman stays off the map. The only one of the three we want to find is Miss Lady.”

“Yes,” said Eddring, “if we had Miss Lady, and if we could get Mrs. Ellison and Henry Decherd to tell the truth as Miss Lady would, then we would learn easily a great many things which perhaps it will cost us a great deal of trouble to uncover.”

“Well,” said Blount, sighing, as he walked moodily across the room, “my own little world seems to be pretty much turned upside down. I can’t say you make me any happier by all this. The only thing I can see clear is that you’ve got to get to New Orleans as soon as you can. There’s reasons plenty for you to go.”

The two men looked at each other for a moment, but said nothing. “Give me my little book,” said Eddring, finally. “I fancy Mr. Henry Decherd would be glad enough to have that back in his own hands again. There’s his evidence. This is the key to his plans, whatever they are.”

Blount groaned as he swung about on his heel. “Good God! man,” he said, “don’t! To hell with your lawsuit! What do we care about mixed names, or all this underhanded work? Never mind about me and my affairs—I’ll take care of that. Man, it’s Miss Lady we want. We don’t know what has happened to her. The rest don’t make any difference.”

“Yes,” said John Eddring, “it’s Miss Lady. The rest makes little difference.”

“Go on, then,” said Blount, fiercely, smiting on the table. “Now, find out about this Louise Loisson. Maybe then you’ll hear something, somewhere, that’ll give you track of our Miss Lady. Start to New Orleans at once—I’m going down home, to watch that end of the line. We’re going after those levee-cutters. As I said, we may want you, and if I send for you, get to my place as fast as you can. Never mind how you get there, but come. And man! if we could only get Miss Lady back! If she—”

“If we could!” said John Eddring, reverently.