Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER XV
MARGO LANE was getting tired of reading up on a man named Dominique whose name was short for Dominique You. In her opinion, Dominique was the least picturesque of all the Baratarians, those swashbucklers headed by Lafitte and who were termed pirates or smugglers, according to the point of view.
Those bullies of the bayous dated back more than a century. They had reformed long enough to help win the Battle of New Orleans; then they had gone back to their questionable ways. All except Dominique; he'd become a ward politician in New Orleans.
Margo expressed her disappointment to Joan.
”What a tame ending for an adventurous career!”
”You don't know our ward politicians,” rejoined Joan, sweetly. ”If you're really thinking of tame endings, consider those who left New Orleans and wound up among the bayous.” Joan's sweet tone had grown bitter, word by word: ”Like Fred Ferrand!”
Margo looked across the courtyard. She and Joan were doing the Dominique research in an empty studio just off Ken's patio. From where they were, they could see Ken working on Wingless Victory, whose bullet wounds had long ago been plastered.
Following Margo's gaze and noting that it contained no envy, Joan queried softly: ”Do you think I'm right?”
”If you mean because you've gone sculptor-minded,” returned Margo, ”yes.”
”Ken is a realist,” considered Joan. ”Take his Wingless Victory. He decided that Victory needed a head more than wings, so he swapped. I like that.”
”Wasn't Fred a realist?”
”If you mean because he bayed around the bayous, I suppose he was. But let's forget Fred.”
”What about Rolfe Trenhue?”
Joan shook her head.
”If you must bring up comparisons, Margo, I suppose I'll have to a.n.a.lyze them for you. Let's take the Krewe of Hades as the balance point. Can you think of anything sillier than sponsoring a thing like that?”
”Off-hand,” admitted Margo, ”I can't.”
”Well, I can,” retorted Joan. ”Starting such stupid organizations is bad enough; trying to stop them is worse. That sums Rolfe.”
Margo admitted that it did. Then: ”Tell me, Joan,” queried Margo. ”What do you think of a man who spends his time looking at old coins but never buying any?”
”If you mean Lamont,” returned Joan, ”I'd say he's just trying to avoid something worse, like doing research on Dominique.”
”I'm not so sure,” said Margo. ”Old coins are getting scarcer and therefore worth more.”
”But Lamont isn't buying any, is he?”
”He isn't and that's the funny part about it. Maybe the business is only booming locally. Still, old coins ought to be a good investment.”
Remembering something, Joan went through a batch of clippings and found the ones she wanted.
”Speaking of investments,” she said, ”Dominique was a bad hand at them.
He was practically broke when he died and that's a real mystery.”
”I'll tell Lamont,” decided Margo. ”He likes mystery, though I can't say he's been working at it lately.” Right then, Cranston was really working at it. In a secluded courtyard behind the old Hoodoo House, he was helping Jim Selbert reconstruct a crime, though the police captain didn't know it. In Selbert's opinion, they were merely adding to the intricacies of an existing mystery.
Cranston was standing directly below the tiny window of that little second floor hallway where pursuers had barged in from two directions to find that Mephisto had continued along his way, which could only have been further upstairs.
In the window itself, Selbert's head and shoulders were framed with little s.p.a.ce to spare.
”Here's a question,” called down Selbert. ”Ever hear of a midget who was a contortionist too?”
”Can't say that I have,” Cranston called up. ”Why do you ask?”
”Because n.o.body else could have squeezed through this window,” Jim decided. ”Well, it proves one thing. The murderer must have gone up to the cupola or the roof. Come around to the front door and I'll meet you there.”
Coming around to the front door was easy. Cranston simply went around the side of the house, through an adjacent pa.s.sage, and opened the unlocked iron gate that brought him to the front door of the old stone house. He was there before Selbert had time to come downstairs and since the door was open, Cranston entered.
Men were at work hacking the cement floor of the Devil's Den with pick-axes. When Selbert came down the stairs, Cranston asked: ”What are you doing? Hunting for Ferrand? I thought you said that he wasn't hiding here.”
”Not my idea.” Selbert shrugged in the direction of the workmen.
”Improvements, that's all.”
”Who ordered them?”
”Trenhue or Aldion; maybe both. They've got to liquidate this architectural horror in order to get back their investment.”
”They're going to tear down the house?”
”No, indeed.” Selbert seemed outraged by the suggestion. ”That's no longer being done in New Orleans, now that historical landmarks are running out.
They'll just remodel the place and rent it out as studios or apartments.”
After watching the workmen hack away a while, Selbert decided to go outdoors. From the front alley, he surveyed the Hoodoo House again and gave a puzzled head shake.
”If it had been The Shadow,” Selbert said to Cranston, ”I could understand it. The disappearing stuff is his specialty. But I can't see how Ferrand dropped out of sight so fast, if he did drop.”
With the final comment, Selbert looked up to the roof to make sure that it was as high above the alley as it always was. Satisfied that the mad escape of the Masked Mephisto still rated as a superhuman achievement, Selbert decided to let it rest at that.
”There's something I want to ask Miss Marcy,” Selbert told Cranston.
”Let's go over to the studio and see her.”
Questions from Selbert had become part of Joan's daily dozen, so she wasn't surprised when the police captain arrived in the recently formed bureau of research that was devoting itself to data concerning Dominique.
Nor was Margo surprised when she saw Lamont. He'd said he would stop around to learn how the work had progressed. Nevertheless, Margo wasinterested in what Selbert was asking Joan, but it turned out to be the usual routine.
Selbert wanted to know where Joan had been at every odd minute on Mardi Gras Night and all the persons she had seen. He was still trying to get some trifling fact that would lead to Ferrand.