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

offence."

Lucie nodded, realizing that he was driving at some deeper thing, and held her peace.

"You realize the fact, eh?" Gramont smiled faintly. "I do not wish to offend you, and I shall therefore refrain from saying all that is in my mind. But you have not hesitated to intimate very frankly that you are not wealthy. Some time ago, if you recall, you wrote me how you had just missed wealth through having sold some land. I have taken the liberty of looking up that deal to some extent, and I have suspected that your uncle had some interest in putting the sale through——"

The gray eyes of the girl flashed suddenly.

"Henry Gramont! Are my family affairs to be an open book to the world?" A slight flush, perhaps of anger, perhaps of some other emotion, rose in the girl's cheeks. "Do you realize that you are intruding most unwarrantably into my private matters?"

"Unwarrantably?" Gramont's eyes held her gaze steadily. "Do you really mean to use that word?"

"I do, most certainly!" answered Lucie with spirit. "I don't think you realize just what the whole thing tends toward——"

"Oh, yes I do! Quite clearly." Gramont's cool, level tone conquered her indignation. "I see that you are orphaned, and that your uncle was your guardian, and executed questionable deals which lost money for you. Come, that's brutally frank—but it's true! We are friends of long standing; not intimate friends, perhaps, and yet I think very good friends. I am most certainly not ashamed to say that when I had the occasion to look out for your interests I was very glad of the chance."

Gramont paused, but she did not speak. He continued after a moment:

"You had intimated to me, perhaps without meaning to do so, something of the situation. I came here to New Orleans and became involved in some dealings with your cousin, Bob Maillard. I believed, and I believe now, that in your heart you have some suspicion of your uncle in regard to those transactions in land. Therefore, I took the trouble to look into the thing to a slight extent. Shall I tell you what I have discovered?"

Lucie Ledanois gazed at him, her lips compressed. She liked this new manner of his, this firm and resolute gravity, this harshness. It brought out his underlying character very well.

"If you please, Henry," she murmured very meekly. "Since you have thrust yourself into my private affairs, I think I should at least get whatever benefit I can!"

"Exactly. Why not?" He made a grave gesture of assent. "Well, then, I have discovered that your uncle appears to be honestly at fault in the matter——"

"Thanks for this approval of my family," she murmured.

"And," continued Gramont, imperturbably, "that your suspicions of him were groundless. But, on the other hand, something new has turned up about which I wish to speak—but about which I must speak delicately."

"Be frank, my dear Henry—even brutal! Speak, by all means."

"Very well. Has Bob Maillard offered to buy your remaining land on the Bayou Terrebonne?"

She started slightly. So it was to this that he had been leading up all the while!

"He broached the subject last night," she answered. "I dismissed it for the time."

"Good!" he exclaimed with boyish vigour. "Good! I warned you in time, then! If you will permit me, I must advise you not to part with that land—not even for a good offer. This week, immediately Mardi Gras is over, I am going to inspect that land for the company; it is Bob Maillard's company, you know.

"If there's any chance of finding oil there, I shall first see you, then advise the company. You can hold out for your fair share of the mineral rights, instead of selling the whole thing. You'll get it! Landowners around here are not yet wise to the oil game, but they'll soon learn."

"You would betray your business associates to help me?" she asked, curious to hear his reply. A slow flush crept into his cheeks.

"Certainly not! But I would not betray you to help my business friends. Is my unwarrantable intrusion forgiven?"

She nodded brightly. "You are put on probation, sir. You're in Bob's company?"

"Yes." Gramont frowned. "I invested perhaps too hastily—but no matter now. I have the car outside, Lucie; may I have the pleasure of taking you driving?"

"Did you bring that chauffeur?"

"Yes," and he laughed at her eagerness.

"Good! I accept—because I must see that famous soldier-bandit-chauffeur. If you'll wait, I'll be ready in a minute."

She hurried from the room, a snatch of song on her lips. Gramont smiled as he waited.

CHAPTER V

The Masquer Unmasks

IN NEW ORLEANS one may find pensions in the old quarter—the quarter which is still instinct with the pulse of old-world life. These pensions do not advertise. The average tourist knows nothing of them. Even if he knew, indeed, he might have some difficulty in obtaining accommodations, for it is not nearly enough to have the money; one must also have the introductions, come well recommended, and be under the tongue of good repute.

Gramont had obtained a small apartment en pension—a quiet and severely retired house in Burgundy Street, maintained by a very proud old lady whose ancestors had come out of Canada with the Sieur d'Iberville. Here Gramont lived with Hammond, quite on a basis of equality, and they were very comfortable.

The two men sat smoking their pipes before the fireplace, in which blazed a small fire—more for good cheer than through necessity. It was Sunday evening. Between Gramont and Hammond had arisen a discussion regarding their relations—a discussion which was perhaps justified by Gramont's quixotic laying down of the law.

"It's all very well, Hammond," he mused, "to follow custom and precedent, to present to the world a front which will not shock its proprieties, its sense of tradition and fitness. In the world's eye you are my chauffeur. But when we're alone together—nonsense!"

"That's all right, cap'n," said Hammond, shrewdly. To him, Gramont was always "cap'n" and nothing else. "But you know's well as I do it can't go on forever. I'm workin' for you, and that's the size of it. I ain't got the education to stack up alongside of you. I don't want you to get the notion that I'm figuring on takin' advantage of you——"

"Bosh! I suppose some day I'll be wealthy, married, and bound in the chains of social usage and custom," said Gramont, energetically. "But that day isn't here yet. If you think I'll accept deference and servility from any man who has endured the same hunger and cold and wounds that I endured in France—then guess again! We're friends in a democracy of Americans. You're just as good a man as I am, and vice versa. Besides, aren't we fellow criminals?"

Hammond grinned at this. There was no lack of shrewd intelligence in his broad and powerful features, which were crowned by a rim of reddish hair.

"All that line o' bull sounds good, cap'n, only it's away off," he returned. "Trouble with you is, you ain't forgot the war yet."

"I never will," said Gramont, his face darkening.

"Sure you will! We all will. And you ain't as used to this country as I am, either. I've seen too much of it. You ain't seen enough."

"I've seen enough to know that it's my country."

"Right. But I ain't as good a man as you are, not by a long shot!" said Hammond, cheerfully. "You proved that the night you caught me comin' into the window at the Lavergne house. You licked me without half tryin', cap'n!

"Anyhow," pursued Hammond, "America ain't a democracy, unless you're runnin' for Congress. It sounds good to the farmers, but wait till you've been here long enough to get out of your fine notions! Limousines and money ain't got much use for democracy. The men who have brains, like you, always will give orders, I reckon."

"Bosh!" said Gramont again. "It isn't a question of having brains. It's a question of knowing what to do with them. All men are born free and equal——"

"Not much!" retorted the other with conviction. "All men were born free, but mighty few were born equal, cap'n. That sort o' talk sounds good in the newspapers, but it don't go very far with the guy at the bottom, nor the top, either!"

Gramont stared into the flickering fire and sucked at his pipe. He realized that in a sense Hammond was quite correct in his argument; nonetheless, he looked on the other man as a comrade, and always would do so. It was true that he had not forgotten the war. Suddenly he roused himself and shot a glance at Hammond.

"Sergeant! You seem to have a pretty good recollection of that night at the Lavergne house, when I found you entering and jumped on you."

"You bet I have!" Hammond chuckled. "When you'd knocked the goggles off me and we recognized each other—hell! I felt like a boob."

Gramont smiled. "How many places had you robbed up to then? Three, wasn't it?"

"Three is right, cap'n," was the unashamed response.

"We haven't referred to it very often, but now things have happened." Gramont's face took on harsh lines of determination. "Do you know, it was a lucky thing that you had no chance to dispose of the jewels and money you obtained? But I suppose you didn't call it good luck at the time."

"No chance?" snorted the other. "No chance is right, cap'n! And I was sore, too. Say, they got a ring of crooks around this town you couldn't bust into with grenades! I couldn't figure it out for a while, but only the other day I got the answer. Listen here, and I'll tell you something big."

Hammond leaned forward, lowered his voice, and tamped at his pipe.

"When I was a young fellow I lived in a little town up North—I ain't sayin' where. My old man had a livery stable there, see? Well, one night a guy come along and got the old man out of bed, and slips him fifteen hundred for a rig and a team, see? I drove the guy ten miles through the hills, and set him on a road he wanted to find.

"Now, that guy was the biggest crook in the country in them days—still is, I guess. He was on the dead run that night, to keep out o' Leavenworth. He kep' out, all right, and he's settin' in the game to this minute. Nobody never pinched him yet, and never will."

Gramont's face had tensed oddly as he listened. Now he shot out a single word:

"Why?"

"Because his gang runs back to politicians and rich guys all over the country. You ask anybody on the inside if they ever heard of Memphis Izzy Gumberts! Well, cap'n, I seen that very identical guy on the street the other day—I never could forget his ugly mug! And where he is, no outside crooks can get in, you believe me!"

"Hm! Memphis Izzy Gumberts, eh? What kind of a crook is he, sergeant?"

"The big kind. You remember them Chicago lotteries? But you don't, o' course. Well, that's his game—lotteries and such like."

Gramont's lips clenched for a minute, then he spoke with slow distinctness:

"Sergeant, I'd have given five hundred dollars for that information a week ago!"

"Why?" Hammond stared at him suddenly. Gramont shook his head.

"Never mind. Forget