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Roy Glashan's Library
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The Popular Magazine, 20 Sep 1925, with "The Yellow Angel"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
Robert Henry Blane, known to his intimates as The Texan Wasp, once more hearkens to the siren, adventure, and discovers she holds plenty of thrills in store for him, as into the languorous atmosphere of old New Orleans there creeps a crime-tainted character from the Old World.
TO New Orleans, "the City that Care forgot," rode Robert Henry Blane. Word had come up from old Louisiana that the sun was shining brightly in the romantic French Quarter, that sleek thoroughbreds were running at Jefferson Park and that roses were blooming along Esplanade Avenue, so The Texan Wasp fled from the scouting winds of winter that clattered like invisible Uhlans through the streets of Manhattan. The debonair adventurer had a great and lasting love for New Orleans. Robert Henry Blane registered at the St. Charles, but he paid tribute to the glorious past by crossing Canal Street at meal times and eating in the Vieux Carré. At Antoine's and The Louisiane he ate fat oysters from Bayou Cook, gumbo a la Creole, broiled pompano and roast canvasbacks and blessed the little fat-bellied gods that gave deftness to the studious chefs that ruled the kitchens.
For three whole days The Wasp sunned himself in the soft backwaters of Lazyland, then the golden threads of chance dragged him into a whirlpool. He was sitting in Jackson Square, where "Old Hickory" on his champing horse lifts his hat eternally to the redbrick houses opposite, when a drunken Swedish sailor came weaving along the pathway.
The Swede, a huge, muscular giant, was heavily loaded with wood alcohol. He rolled from side to side of the path, now and then by an almost miraculous effort preventing one of his big feet from eliminating an inoffensive pansy bed.
Coming toward the viking was a tall, handsome girl carrying a basket filled with all the good things that one can buy in the French Market. Fruit, yellow and gold, gleamed in the sunshine and the bleary eye of the Swede was attracted, Possibly thirst ruled him at the moment.
He gave a little more attention to his steering machinery, swung to port with a curious stealthy movement, then, abreast of the basket, he made a grab for a big orange that crowned the pile.
The orange rolled from the stubby fingers as the frightened girl jerked the basket away. The Swede made a second attempt. He stumbled; his enormous paw hooked itself in the handle; the basket was torn from the grip of its owner; and the purchases were scattered over the walk.
Robert Henry Blane was beside the girl in an instant. He recovered the basket and hurriedly collected the nearest objects while the Swede was climbing to his feet. Instead of apologizing the sailor showed a malicious humor.
WITH berserker grunts of rage he hopped after a rolling orange
and placed an enormous boot upon it. He yelled with joy as he
pursued another, reducing it to pulp in the same manner, He
staggered after a third, gurgling as he clumped along the
asphalt.
The Texan' Wasp thought it time to interfere with the sailor's fun. As the Swede's hoof was lifted to squash the third orange, Blane gave him a swift push from the rear that sent him sprawling, then, without glancing at the drunk, the Texan picked up the orange and carried it back to the basket.
The Swede lifted himself slowly. His little blue eyes were aflame. A fool had interfered with his game of squashing oranges. Quietly, ever so gently, he gathered his big body together and rushed.
Blane had stooped to collect some scattered okra and the girl's cry of alarm came too late. The hairy mammoth of a sailor was upon him before he could straighten himself. Arms as thick as the body of a full-grown python were around the neck of The Wasp, a garlic-scented breath with the hurtful possibilities of poison gas enveloped him. The Swede was filled with a great desire to garrote the person who objected to his playful manner of rounding up fugitive oranges.
The great Japanese wrestler, Isuchi, who lived in the days of the Emperor Hideyoshi, invented a grip to foil the garroter. It took Isuchi a year to think it out and of the very few who had patiently learned it was a muscular person from Houston named Robert Henry Blane.
He bent back with the neck-breaking pull of the Swede, then, with lightning swiftness, he applied the grip. A roar of pain came from the sailor, a roar that echoed against the walls of the old houses on the square; his arms were flung wide as he released The Wasp and staggered across the path.
The face of Blane became hard and cold; the scar on his right jaw showed white as his mouth tightened. "On your way!" he cried, as the Swede turned. "Beat it or I'll teach you something!" The Swede made a noise like an angry boar. "Py chiminy! Ah bane teach you sumping!" he screamed, and, as he spoke, he charged.
The sailor swung at Blane's head. The head moved the fraction of a second before the fist arrived, then, as the Swede was carried forward by the force of the blow, cold accurate science fell upon him like a barrage from hell. The Texan Wasp was annoyed. He detested blind, brutal force and the huge, flailing arms of the ungallant giant put the TNT of hot indignation into the broadside of jolts and jabs that the sailor stopped. The flat nose of the seafaring gentleman thought its owner had challenged a steam foundry. A swift punch to the jaw, placed with matchless precision, ended the fight.
Robert Henry Blane stepped to the side of the girl. She seemed a. little stunned by the happening; a little hypnotized by the manner in which the debonair stranger who had come to her assistance had disposed of the giant. The Wasp picked up the basket of fruit and vegetables. Inquisitive folk were hurrying from the levee.
"Let us go," said Blane gently. "A crowd will gather soon. I'll carry the basket, please!"
The girl made no objection. Side by side they crossed the square into Decatur, then, in a strange silence, they walked along by the old Cathedral of St. Louis into Royal. The owner of the basket took an occasional frightened glance at the man at her side; the gray eyes of The Texan Wasp were not altogether idle.
He thought the girl had an extraordinary charm. Into his mind floated pictures of lavender gardens, jalousies, little tinkling fountains in shady courts. His companion seemed to be the spirit of the old French Quarter through which they walked—the quarter of other days.
The girl paused at the corner of Royal and St. Peter. Eyes that were soft and dark and luminous examined the face of Robert Henry Blane. A voice that thrilled him whispered thanks.
"I—I would like my mother to thank you," she murmured. "Mother would think it wrong if I—if I let you go before she could express her gratitude. It is just a step up Royal Street. I wonder if you would come?"
"I am delighted at being asked," said Blane. "Not that I crave thanks from your mother, but because I am mindful of the honor that you are doing me in taking me to your home."
The girl flushed sweetly. The soft accent of the South had crept into the voice of the adventurer. For the moment his speech and manner were her own.
PASSING out of the white sunshine into the inky shadows of the
old house in Royal Street, Robert Henry Blane was strangely
impressed. The house seemed a refuge for the past. A refuge for
all the dreams and poetry that went with the old Creole days.
Little phantoms of the days of romance peeped at The Wasp from the dim corners of the big rooms, from behind massive pieces of rosewood, from the shade of big armoires of Spanish mahogany—armoires that had held in their perfumed depths the soft linen of countless generations.
The past peeped from behind Empire mirrors that had reflected the faces of Creole beauties for whose smiles beruffled bucks fought duels at dawn at Spanish Fort and Lake Pontchartrain. An inquisitorial ghost looked the tall Texan over and wondered if the girl had done right in bringing him into the repository of dreams.
The girl ran toward a figure resting in a big armchair near the window of the sitting room.
"Mother, dear," she cried, "I have brought some one with me! A drunken man upset my basket and this gentleman protected me."
The woman turned and Robert Henry Blane, as he bowed low, felt that she too was of a period that the hurrying present had ruthlessly throttled. A frail, sweet woman whose clutch upon life seemed so feeble that one wondered where the energy to breathe, to talk, to eat was actually stored.
She was gracious to The Wasp. She made him sit beside her at the window. She plied him with questions, questions that amused him. He was Southern, of course? Ah, yes, she knew it the moment he had entered the room. And he had traveled far? For her foreign places had no lure.. She had been born in New Orleans and in New Orleans she would die.
"In this house my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and myself were born," she said gently. "My husband lived here for twenty years and sometimes—". She turned her head and looked swiftly at the door by which the girl had left the room a few moments before. "Sometimes," she continued, "he—my husband—returns and talks to me. Talks to me from the court at the back of the house."
Robert Henry Blane, schooled in the art of control, exhibited no surprise at hearing the extraordinary statement. He simply inclined his head and waited for further details. He saw that the woman had chosen the moment when the girl was absent from the room to make the startling confession.
The frail lady watched his face for a moment and, finding that no amazement showed thereon, she leaned forward and spoke in a hurried whisper.
"It is strange, is it not?" she murmured. "I will tell you how it began. Three weeks ago I was sitting one night overlooking the court at the back of the house. I whispered my husband's name, and—and he answered. Answered me from the court. I was astonished and I—"
The girl returned to the room and the 'mother stopped abruptly in her recital. It was evident to Robert Henry Blane that the story of the spirit voice was one that received little credence from the daughter. He thought the younger woman looked questioningly at the elder before she again returned to her duties in the rear of the house. The Wasp studied the face of the old lady and found nothing that would suggest mental derangement.
The mother took immediate advantage of the girl's absence.
"He, my husband, spoke to me!" she gasped excitedly. "Dorothy Anne doesn't believe. She was out that evening and she didn't hear. But I heard him distinctly!"
Blane was puzzled.
"Has it happened more than once?" he asked, his curiosity mildly roused by the story. "I mean, have you heard the voice since that evening?"
"Yes, yes!" breathed the old lady, delighted at the interest of the handsome Texan. "I have spoken with him on two other occasions. You see, I could not be fooled because he has spoken to me about something that only he and I knew about. A great secret!"
"That is strange,' murmured Blane.
"This—this secret was a piece of verse," continued the frail reciter. "My husband made me learn it, thinking he might forget it. You see, it—it was a very important piece of poetry and—and he couldn't write it down on paper lest some one would steal it. So my husband made me commit it to memory. I was never to tell it to any one. Never! I promised him. I never whispered it aloud even!"
THE slight interest that Robert Henry Blane had in the
fanciful tale received a sudden fillip. The story took on a new
value. There was a suggestion of an uncanny cleverness on the
part of some unknown seeker after information. The Wasp was
interested.
"This verse," he said gently, "would it be useful to any one now? Your husband has been dead some years—"
"Seven," interrupted the woman. "He was murdered on the twenty-fourth of December, seven years ago."
"Murdered!" cried Blane. "Here?"
"In Barataria—" answered the old lady. "In the swamps across the river. His body was found floating in a bayou near Fleming's on the way to Grand Isle. Do you know Barataria?"
"I have been to Grand Isle."
"Well, it was a boat bringing terrapins from Grand Isle up to Harvey's that found my husband's body. Some one had knifed him. We never discovered who it was."
Again Dorothy Anne returned to the sitting room and on this occasion she showed the reason for her absence in the kitchen. Southern hospitality had to be extended to the visitor and the girl carried a pitcher of golden liquid with tall, slender glasses that, like everything else in the house, seemed to date back to the splendid and romantic days that had fled forever.
She begged The Wasp to drink and the courteous Blane felt that he was whirled back into those other days as he accepted the invitation. For an instant the magic spell cast by the old house and the two sweet women who occupied it clutched him and made him curiously forgetful of the present.
He wondered idly if there really was a busy, bustling Canal Street within five blocks of where he sat, a Canal Street so dreadfully Northern, filled with speeding street cars, wild-eyed shoppers, hurrying drummers, and moneyed Yankees who looked with amused contempt at the Vieux Carré.
The Wasp longed to ask the old lady about the present usefulness of the verse that her husband had taught her, but he held his curiosity in leash and chatted with Dorothy Anne as he sipped the beverage. He thought the girl charming. Her presence brought to his mind thoughts of New England gardens, of blossoming apple trees and dappled sunshine. Her beautiful hands made him think of Betty Allerton, his sweetheart of the long ago.
The chance that Blane awaited arrived at last. The girl left the room and he hurriedly put the question.
"This verse your husband taught you," he asked, "would it be useful to any one now? I mean, would it bring profit in any way?"
"I don't know," replied the woman. "My husband, when he made me memorize the lines, told me that it was part of some secret instructions that would enable him to find something. He didn't tell me what. To me the lines mean nothing at all."
"And have you repeated them to the person—I mean to your husband when he has spoken to you from the court?"
"No, not yet," answered the old lady. "At first when he spoke of them I could not recall them exactly, so I did not like to make the effort. Now I have them perfectly. I could repeat them at once if he asks me."
The Texan Wasp nodded gravely. The frail woman regarded him for a few moments in silence, then she spoke.
"I don't know why I have bothered you with all this!" she cried. "Something—something about you made me think of my husband, so I wanted to tell. You—you are like him. He was adventurous and—and handsome."
Robert Henry Blane smiled his thanks for the compliment as the girl returned to the room, then he rose and thanked mother and daughter for their hospitality.
"You will come and see us again?" asked the mother.
"If I may!" cried The Wasp, his eyes seeking those of the girl.
"Please do," murmured Dorothy Anne.
ONE'S imagination is fired by New Orleans more than by any
other city in America. It is a town of haunting memories. It is a
place where the unbelievable can be suddenly invested with the
props of truth.
Robert Henry Blane motored down to Point à la Hache and dreamed away a few days watching the bald-headed vultures wheel over the desolate land through which the Mississippi plows its way to the Gulf and during those days the story told him by the elderly lady in the old house in Royal Street fought valiantly against all the attempts to evict it from his mind. It stuck like a bur.
It rose up and harried him with questions. What secret did the verse tell of? Who was the clever trickster who had laid such a strange plan to make the old lady repeat the lines? What was the mystery behind the murder of the husband in the swamp lands of Barataria? There came a morning when The Wasp could not withstand the questions. They drove him up through the flat country to the city, up by the battlefield of Chalmette where Andy Jackson whipped the British while the good folk of New Orleans flocked to the cathedral and prayed for "Old Hickory's" success.
The Wasp went direct to the house in Royal Street and had the good fortune to find the old lady alone. Dorothy Anne was out shopping, so the field was clear for cross-examination.
The elderly woman was evidently eager to tell her story in detail. For some reason or other she looked upon the tall Texan as a suitable confessor and she made no attempt to hide her pleasure at his visit. Tactfully The Wasp listened and questioned.
A STRANGE story was that of Captain Jules Despard, husband of
the woman living in the house of memories. It was a colorful and
adventurous tale that delighted Blane. A story that belonged to
the hectic and feverish New Orleans of other days. Captain Jules
Despard had been a soldier of fortune. A plain, humdrum existence
was a nightmare to him. He craved a myriad of sensations. His
fingers had grown stubby from moving pawns on the board of
chance.
Blane listened as the old lady unfolded the story of her husband's life. The Road, the Husks, and Fortune calling him insistently! Out of New Orleans to fever-stricken ports along the hot Caribbean. Plots hatched in the Old Absinthe House, at Fabacher's over a broiled papabotte, at noon breakfasts in Madame Begue's long-remembered restaurant at the corner of Madison and Decatur.
Crazy plots they were, but thrilling. Crammed with the ginger of glorious chance! Chatter of guns, of ammunition, of fool authorities, of charts, of channels, of signal lights from marshy shores! Mother Trouble as the figurehead, Death at the wheel!
Madame Despard brought out old clippings and letters. An account in Spanish of the arrival of Captain Jules Despard in the schooner Georgia Lee at Barranquilla on the Magdalena River. Treasure seeking, so ran the tale. A faded photograph of the captain, a tall, lean-flanked man, leading a half score of followers across the Plaza Bolivar at Caracas. A year in a carcel was the captain's reward for that exploit.
Robert Henry Blane listened attentively, waiting anxiously for the old lady to arrive at the last chapter in the feverish life of Captain Despard. The Wasp was a little afraid that Dorothy Anne would return and interrupt the story, but the fates were kind. Madame Despard came at last to the part that really interested her listener.
"My husband came back from Belize a week before he was murdered," she related. "He was very excited, because he had information of something that would make him rich. Very, very rich. He could not eat; he could not sleep. He was restless and irritable Now and then he would tell me little scraps. Tell me of the wealth that would be his.
"It was always like that," she went on. "Always! Treasure, treasure, always treasure! He dreamed of it, waking and sleeping. He would start up in the middle of the night with the belief that he had gold and jewels in his hands.
"It was during that week that he taught me the verse I mentioned to you," she continued. "He made me learn it carefully. He was afraid that he might forget some little word and he could not write it down on paper lest some one would steal it from him. Poor Jules! A score of times I repeated the lines to him till he was satisfied that I knew them thoroughly. Ah, yes. A day before he was murdered, he made me whisper it to him. Just whisper it into his ear."
The curiosity of The Texan Wasp was intense. He wondered what the verse had to do with the death of the adventurous Despard? Who was the clever trickster who was playing on the old lady's credulity in an effort to get her to repeat it? He was puzzled and yet delighted that he was puzzled.
"Could you connect the verse in any way with your husband's death?" asked Blane.
"There were one or two words that had a relation to the place where his body was found," answered the widow. "Once my husband told me that the verses he knew and which he taught me were only part of the whole poem. There were other lines that some one else knew. Do you understand? I think it was a sort of puzzle. I remember distinctly the day he told me this, because I had protested that the lines had no sense in them at all.
"For seven years I have sat here at the window and wondered over it all," she went on. "Wondered day after day. Curiously I felt during that last week with Jules that he was closer to his dreams than he had ever been. That was strange, wasn't it? You see his belief in the story that he had heard came out from him and forced me to believe. I thought we would be rich. Yes, really rich!
"I would sing songs as I walked about the house and I would tell Dorothy Anne of the things that we would buy and the places where we would go when my husband found the treasure. Then—then one morning the police came and told me that a shrimp boat from Grand Isle had found the body of Jules floating in the bayou near Fleming's. I couldn't believe it. You see—you see, he had made me believe in his star just before he died."
There was silence as the old lady finished her story. The effort seemed to have exhausted her. Her eyes closed gently and her head sank wearily against the pillows. Blane remained motionless, afraid to disturb her slumber.
DOROTHY ANNE returned to find The Wasp sitting in the shadowy
room. Blane held up a warning finger as the girl entered and she
understood immediately. She beckoned him to follow her into the
big kitchen that looked out over the picturesque court at the
rear of the house and on tiptoe the Texan obeyed the summons
without arousing the sleeper.
"I am afraid that I imposed upon your mother," he whispered. "She told me the story of your father's life. All of it. I had a great desire to hear it, so I did not stop her, and now I think the effort was too much for her."
The girl looked at him intently. "Why did you wish to hear it?" she asked.
"I don't know," replied Blane, looking directly into the soft, dark eyes of his questioner. "Ever since my first visit I have been wondering. I couldn't rest till—"
"Then mother must have spoken to you of the voice in the court when you first came, here?" interrupted Miss Despard.
"Yes," confessed Blane. "She told me of the incident when you were out of the room."
The wonderful eyes of the girl examined the face of the tall adventurer from Houston, They swept over his features in a curious purposeful way, seeking, so the man thought, for every little foundation that would warrant her confidence. He realized this as he waited, his quiet, gray eyes fixed upon her face.
The girl turned, busied herself for a moment with the packages that she had brought home, then spoke softly, her head turned away from her visitor.
"I am glad that you know all about it," she said, her voice so low that Blane could hardly catch her words. "I was thinking of—of telling you myself. I have wondered ever since we first met if you—if you could help."
"I would like to do anything that I could to assist you," said Blane. "I am at your service if you need me."
AGAIN there fell a little silence, as the girl debated the
propriety of bringing an utter stranger into the matters that
concerned her family, then she spoke.
"I am worried over the matter," she said, turning toward Robert Henry Blane. "You see, mother has heard the voice on two different occasions, and on each of those occasions I was absent from the house. Both times were in the night, as you know. When she first heard the voice, she told me when I came home and I made a resolve that I would not leave her alone in the house after nightfall. That was more than three weeks ago.
"For ten days," the girl continued, "nothing happened although mother listened on the balcony above the court every evening, then I had to go out again for a few minutes. I had to run up to the druggist's for some medicine that mother was taking. The pharmacy is at the corner of Royal and Louis and I was not away from the house for more than thirty minutes.
"But in those thirty minutes the person who had spoken to my mother from the dark court spoke to her again and asked her to repeat the verse that my father taught her. You see, he must have been watching the house and, when he saw me leave, he must have rushed around into Bourbon Street, ran up the passage at the rear of our house and climbed the brick wall into the court."
"Then you do not believe what your mother believes?" said Blane. "I mean, you do not connect the voice with your father?"
"No," answered the girl.
"Can I ask why?"
"Yes. I am telling you everything, thinking you might be able to advise me. I have not left the house since that evening because I have been afraid that something terrible might happen. I mean something dreadful like what—like what happened to father. Some one wants to know something that mother knows, and—and I am afraid of what they will do in their efforts to make her tell.
"I wish—I wish mother had repeated the verse," the girl went on. "You see, on the second occasion I returned to the house just as mother was going to do what the voice requested her to do and my arrival upset her. I cried out to her and she became excited and fainted."
"And then?" prompted The Wasp. "Did something happen that made you feel sure there was nothing spiritualistic about the affair?"
"Yes," answered Dorothy Anne. "I looked down into the court, but it was so dark I could see nothing. Then, as I carried mother into the sitting room, I heard some one stumbling through the flower pots at the back. Next morning I went down and looked at them. Half a dozen were broken and there were footprints in the soft soil. A man's footprints."
"Did you tell your mother?" asked Blane.
"No," replied Miss Despard. "I didn't like to. You see, I did not wish to be cruel to mother, who firmly believes that it was my father's voice that came to her out of the court, and then again if I proved to her that some stranger was doing such a wicked thing, she would be horribly frightened."
The Texan Wasp remained silent for a few minutes, then the questioning eyes of the girl forced him to speak.
"I would suggest that we find out why this unknown gentleman is so anxious to hear the verses that your mother learned," he said quietly. "Scaring him off the premises by telling the police will not solve the secret. There must be a great value to the lines. They may be worth thousands of dollars."
"But—but I am afraid of him!" gasped the girl. "I wish now that mother had repeated the lines the last time he came. Then we would be free of him. Now I am terrified. I am afraid to leave the house at night, lest something might happen to mother. You know, she only knows a part of the chant. Perhaps—perhaps he thinks that she knows all of it, and—and if he 'thought that, he might do something dreadful to us."
Robert Henry Blane stepped to the side of the girl.
"Do you believe in me?" he asked gently. "Do you trust me?"
"Oh, yes! Yes!" she answered.
"Then let us do something together," said Blane. "Let us make a little plan. I am rather interested in this fellow who is trying to fool your mother. Suppose to-night that you go out and leave your—"
"I cannot! I am afraid!" cried the girl. "This—this brute who is pretending to be the spirit of my father might kill mother!"
The Wasp took the soft hand of the girl and held it in a firm grip.
"I will be in the court when he comes," he said quietly. "I give you my word that no harm will come to your mother. No harm at all. There is something big behind all this. Now let us map out a little plan that will make this faker look cheap."
IT was exactly eight o'clock when Robert Henry Blane crept up
the little passage from Bourbon Street to the brick wall that
fenced in the courtyard at the rear of the old Despard house. The
passage was not more than two feet wide and it was dark and
smelly. Some disputed right to the few inches of ground had left
it unoccupied between two houses.
Blane, on reaching the wall, felt carefully for projections that would help him to scale it, then quietly climbed over and dropped noiselessly into the court. Dorothy Anne had agreed to leave the house at fifteen minutes after eight and the Texan thought to make himself perfectly at home in the yard before the arrival of the person who was evidently watching the house in the hope that the girl would leave and give him a free field for his humbug.
The Wasp found a large Spanish water jar in one corner of the yard and snuggled in behind it. A solitary light showed in the rear of the Despard house. Its yellow gleam came through the French windows and faintly illuminated the handmade ironwork of the balcony that ran around the rear of the house, high above the courtyard. Blane knew that the light came from a small sewing room in which Mrs. Despard often sat.
The minutes passed slowly. Infinite silence reigned in the court. Faintly, ever so faintly, came the soft rumble of cars running on Royal.
Then, after what seemed a century of waiting, the sharp ears of Robert Henry Blane heard the patter of feet in the passage up which he had come from Bourbon. Keenly alert he thrust his head forward and registered the slight sounds that followed.
There was the scratching of feet on the brick wall, the grunt of a person slightly winded by the effort made in scaling the barrier, then the plop as the intruder dropped on the soft soil. The fellow passed close to the corner where Blane crouched. He was stumbling forward to a point beneath the window in which the light showed.
The incidents that followed were peculiarly eerie and outlandish. They brought a certain queer thrill to the nerves of The Texan Wasp, who generally adopted a rather blasé attitude in the face of all kinds of happenings. He found himself gripped by a tremendous and all-consuming curiosity.
From the darkness of the courtyard there went up a low moan that had an immediate effect. The French windows of the sewing room were thrown open and Madame Despard appeared upon the balcony. Her attitude, as far as The Wasp could judge, gave no indications of fear. She seemed excited, but not alarmed. She leaned over the iron railing and whispered the name of her dead husband.
"Jules!" she murmured. "Jules!"
THERE was no response. The intruder was coy. He wished to let
the mystery of the night help him in his work of deception. Blane
thought him a rather clever and artistic scoundrel. Madame
Despard called again, and her call brought a faint ghostly
whisper from the court. A whisper so wonderfully soft and pliant
that The Wasp was thrilled by the creepy feel that the fellow put
into it. It might have been the faint echo of a voice calling
from the farthest star. The work was admirably well done.
Blane watched the woman on the balcony, outlined clearly against the windows of the sewing room. She was erect now, her hands clasped upon her breast, her whole attitude expressive of belief and exalted joy.
The faker in the court began to whisper softly. Attenuated whispers that seemed to be thin tentacles of sound filled the darkness. They rose and fell and died away. They were disjointed and meaningless, but they were fearfully and dreadfully ghostly.
The fellow was bulldozing the widow by all the old tricks and humbug peculiar to the séances of spiritualistic fakers. He was exhausting her small brain power by getting her to puzzle madly over scraps of nonsense. Coquettish scraps that carried a sort of "well there might be something in it" feel which tired the listener who tried to solve them.
For five minutes or more the widow, hands clasped and head thrust forward, tried to dredge something understandable out of the farrago of nonsense, then the fellow thought it time to make a bold attempt to get the information that he sought. There was a slight interval of complete silence, then he called the name of the woman on the balcony, called it softly, lovingly.
"Luella May!"
It was a little thread of musical sound that went softly upward.
"Jules! Jules!" gasped the woman.
"The verse!" came the whisper from the court. "You have not forgotten the verse?"
"No, no!" cried Madame Despard. "No, Jules!"
"Then say the lines!" came the whispered order from the man in the darkness.
Robert Henry Blane leaned forward. His ears ached with the longing to hear the lines which he knew the woman would repeat. Hearing was the predominant sense at the moment. The silence of the courtyard as Madame Despard braced herself and moistened her dry lips brought to The Wasp an almost unbearable agony.
Then came the words, clear and distinct. They were meaningless words. They floated down to the dark court. Only once was there a break as excitement overcame the speaker and forced her to pause for an instant. It was a strange verse:
"Deep it lies where the shell mounds rise,
Darky keep a-blinking for the big, blue flies,
Big, burned cypress on the right of the stream,
Mighty lonely when the bitterns scream.
Step off the distance from the big shell mound,
Nine to the left and then turn round."
Madame Despard's voice died away. There was absolute silence in the courtyard. The woman thrust herself forward over the railing of the balcony and whispered again and again the name of her dead husband. No answering voice came back to her.
The Texan Wasp, crouching behind the Spanish tinaja, knew why there was no response, Blane's keen ears told him that the fellow in the court was crawling on all fours toward the brick wall at the rear. His mission was accomplished and he wished to escape as quickly as possible.
The Wasp, noiseless as a stalking panther, reached the court side of the brick wall as the fellow dropped into the passageway leading to Bourbon. Mystery, with manacles of steel, bound the tall Texan to the fleeing faker. Something extraordinary, unbelievable—something that was a little terrifying was, so Blane felt, connected with the mission of the man he was starting to trail. He told himself, as he scaled the wall and followed, that the fellow must never get away from him. Imagination pictured some great palpitating nodule of horror that was on the point of bursting.
THE fellow hurried up Bourbon Street to Iberville and turned
eastward to the river. The streets were nearly deserted. The
French Quarter has little attraction for pedestrians when the
night comes down.
The pursued reached the levee, paused for a moment beneath an arc light and scribbled hurriedly on a scrap of paper. The Wasp, hard on his trail, knew that the fellow was putting down the lines that Madame Despard had repeated. They were evidently so important that he did not trust his memory till he could reach a place of comparative privacy.
The man swung southward, taking advantage of all the shadowy sections that he could find. A less efficient trailer than The Wasp might have been thrown off the track, but Blane was an artist in the business of keeping a person in sight without rousing the suspicion of the pursued.
The man reached Howard Avenue and increased his speed. At a run he dashed along the avenue toward Lee Circle and Blane, hugging the shadows on the opposite side of the street, followed swiftly. The terrible curiosity of The Wasp was increasing with each step that he covered. He had a firm and overwhelming conviction that he was on the track of big things.
At the base of the monument erected to the memory of the great Confederate leader, the quarry halted. Blane crouched in the shadow of a big magnolia tree and waited. The actions of the fellow suggested to The Wasp that the monument was the agreed meeting place with a friend.
The guess was correct. From the other side of the avenue came a man moving as fast as a lame leg would allow him to and, as the newcomer passed under the fierce rays of an electric arc on Lee Circle, the Texan in the shadow gave a soft whistle of astonishment. He recognized the limping friend of the man he was following.
The mind of Robert Henry Blane flung up a picture of other days. A picture of a narrow street in Marseilles where a half score of small but wonderfully active French police were blazing away at the roof of a house upon which a lame bandit had taken refuge. The lame one rejected all their suggestions to surrender. He was in plain view, standing bareheaded in the white sunlight of the Midi, his yellow face with huge teeth scowling down at his pursuers.
On that morning at Marseilles, The Wasp, whose knowledge of the Continental underworld was second to none, had immediately recognized the man on the roof. Once or twice, here and there in the big cities of Europe, he had spoken to the fellow. He was known as Gabriel Amade and his Christian name together with his strange yellow face had earned for him the soubriquet of "L'Ange Jaune"—The Yellow Angel.
It was The Yellow Angel who limped across Lee Circle to meet the clever faker who had forced Madame Despard to repeat the lines. And it was evident to the watching Blane that the lame man was delighted with the report which the other made. Gabriel Amade patted his friend softly on the shoulder, then the two turned and hurried along St. Charles Avenue in the direction of Canal.
A rather startled Texan followed on their heels. The yellow-faced bandit had a reputation for tackling big jobs and his ways of getting through those jobs had brought the bloodhounds of the world on his trail.
The pair reached Canal and The Wasp took advantage of the increased pedestrian traffic and moved closer.
Under the lights of the big thoroughfare he could see the yellow face of the French bandit as he turned from time to time to his companion. A joy that was immense sat upon the queer citrine features of the fellow.
At a jog trot they reached Rampart and swung to the right, Blane at a safe distance in the rear. The lamp of a small and rather frowsy hotel seemed to attract them. They headed for it, passed through the door of frosted glass and were lost to view.
Robert Henry Blane stood and reviewed the happenings of the night. The fact that the Despard house had been watched with such care that the departure of Dorothy Anne was immediately noticed by the watcher proved that the information sought from the widow was considered of great consequence. The joy of The Yellow Angel confirmed this belief.
The Texan Wasp, standing on the curb, repeated the scrap of doggerel in an undertone. The verse seemed absolutely meaningless, a loose jumble of incoherent directions. One by one he analyzed the lines, seeking something definite and useable. He took the first: "Deep it lies where the shell mounds rise." The "it" suggested treasure, of course, but "shell mounds" might be anywhere. The whole State of Louisiana was covered with shell mounds.
The second line was more indefinite than the first. It was merely advice to a darky to "keep a-blinking for the big, blue flies." Large blue flies, like shell mounds, were not unusual. The third line told of something that could be taken as sailing directions: "Big, burned cypress on the right of the stream." Nothing very tangible. Across the Mississippi in the great swamp stretches of Barataria there were thousands of cypress trees, burned and otherwise.
The fourth line that told of the bitterns screaming was also coy in the matter of details. In the swamp patches between Galveston and Key West, the bitterns boomed at all hours in their breeding season.
The fifth and sixth lines were more informative. They suggested that the big shell mound was the point from which measurements should start and that nine steps and a turn would bring you to something. Something! Where?
A TELEGRAPH messenger passed whistling. To The Texan Wasp came
an idea. His old adversary who was now his friend, No. 37, was
still in New York. The great man hunter, who carried within his
brain a complete Who's Who of the Underworld, might know
something of the immediate aspirations of Gabriel Amade. It was
worth while asking. The boy had a form and-a pencil. Blane wrote
a wire reading:
TO OCCUPANT, ROOM 74, DELZA HOTEL, NEW YORK.
DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING OF L'ANGE JAUNE OF BORDEAUX? HERE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS. THINK HE HAS BIG SCHEME ON HAND. INTERESTS ME GREATLY. WIRE IMMEDIATELY ALL THAT YOU KNOW. BLANE.
HOTEL ST. CHARLES, NEW ORLEANS.
The messenger, with a dollar tip, hurried off with the wire; Blane slipped off his tie and collar, carelessly thrust his shapely shoes into the mud of the gutter, ruffled his hair, turned up the collar of his coat, pulled the rakish velours hat well over his eyes and stepped across the street to the hotel door through which The Yellow Angel and his friend had disappeared.
A dwarfed and consumptive-looking clerk squatted in the pill box that was labeled "Office." The Wasp turned upon him a smile that suggested near drunkenness. The clerk grinned. He guessed that Robert Henry Blane had received a load in a speak-easy along Rampart.
"What is it, colonel?" asked the clerk.
"Want a—a room," hiccuped The Wasp. "Nice room. Feel very tired."
"You can have one, skipper," said the clerk, humorously changing the title of his guest. "The whole caboose is yours if you've got the frog skins."
The Texan Wasp sprawled forward and became confidential. "Misht my friends," he gurgled. "Two o' 'em Thought they might 'a' come here. Jusht a minute ago. Good fellows! Two, jusht two."
The clerk was amused.
"Don't think they did, general," he said, switching his customer back from the sea to the army. "Two chaps: came in a few minutes ago, but I don't think they were your friends. They might be. Look 'em up if you like. They're in No. 14 and you're going to rest your tired frame in No. 17. Same landing. The stairs are behind you. Here's your key. Good night!"
With erratic steps the Texan stumbled to the stairs, clawed for the banister with an artistry that delighted the clerk, then climbed laboriously into the upper regions. The Yellow Angel and his spiritualistic companion were quartered quite close to the room allotted to Blane and the knowledge pleased him. The night was young.
HALF a dozen times during the next three hours Robert Henry
Blane rose from his crouching position before the door of room
No. 14 and fled into his own. Each time he returned as soon as
the field was clear. He returned with an eagerness that would
have made an observer wonder.
The thin door allowed scraps of conversation to filter through to the alert ears of the Texan. They were thrilling and absorbing scraps. Within the room the yellow-faced bandit and the faker were busy dovetailing the verse that Madame Despard had repeated with lines that they already knew. Out of the medley they were fashioning a concise and definite set of directions.
The interruptions caused by other guests seeking their rooms, and which forced The Wasp to retire momentarily from his observation post, maddened the Texan. He lost track of the verbal smithy work that was being done within the chamber of the two. And it always seemed that he was chased from the corridor when the most important work was in progress.
On one matter Blane was certain. He understood the method which the two had adopted to make sense out of the matter they had collected and that which they already knew. First came a line from the widow's chant, then a line of their own. Then another line from the Despard verse and after this another of their own vintage. The secret was plain to Blane. Madame Despard had told him that her husband only knew part of the whole poem and, as he listened, he realized that either half was useless without the other.
The gurgling of a bottle came from the room as the night progressed. The voice of The Yellow Angel mouthing the lines became thicker; the rather cultivated tones of his friend lost the charm that had been noticeable to The Wasp as he listened to the fellow in the courtyard of the Despard house.
Delight at the victory which enabled them to read off the full directions to the place they sought had tempted them to indulge deeply in bootleg stuff that they had on hand. The listener at the door found it harder to understand the words that came to him.
It was midnight when the two retired. Blane listened to the confused mass of adjurations, congratulations and imprecations that they exchanged. They were both hopelessly drunk. Their puzzle had been solved and they were jubilant.
The last remark was made by the French bandit. His English, not too good when he was sober, was shot to pieces by the wood alcohol that he was celebrating on.
"To-morrow him come. Ah buys zee boat!" he gurgled. "Piff, piff, piff, we go! Mighty fast boat, by gar! What he say here? Black Bayou where zee lily pads are! Mon Dieu! Ah am zee rich man! Rich! Rich! Ah go back to Bordeaux an' buy one tam beeg house! Zee grand house for Gabriel Amade!"
Robert Henry Blane went back to his bare and stuffy room, seated himself in a chair and considered the situation. The Yellow Angel and his friend had robbed Madame Despard of a secret that was evidently worth money, much money, if one could judge by the words of the bandit. They had robbed the girl, Dorothy Anne. They had robbed the old house of memories, They had robbed Captain Jules Despard, although the captain had gone to a place where treasure doesn't cut any figure.
Blane returned to the passage and tried the door of room No. 14. It was bolted from the inside and there was no transom. Although drunk, the pair had securely closed the door before retiring.
The Wasp scurried back to his own room, opened the window and thrust his head into the night. The room he occupied was in the rear, its walls close to the back of buildings fronting on Burgundy. About three feet below the window ran a plaster ledge of some fourteen inches in width and the Texan calmly analyzed the chances of reaching the room of the two by means of this pathway.
The ledge offered a precarious foothold to a climber. Here and there it had been bitten into by the relentless teeth of time, proving that its composition was not of a granite-like character. Beneath it was a thirty-foot drop into the cluttered yard of the hotel Blane's eyes examined the section of ledge that showed in the light thrown from his window. He thought of his weight with a little twinge of regret. Lacking an ounce of fat, he scaled one hundred and seventy pounds and he wondered if the builder of the ornamental excresence had ever dreamed that a person of that weight would attempt to climb along it.
HE thought not. But then the builder had never imagined that
the plaster shelf would be a path along which a cool-headed
person could reach a scrap of doggerel that held the secret to
some wonderful cache.
Some five feet above the ledge ran a wire that would give a person on the bracket an opportunity to balance himself by clinging lightly to it. The Wasp blessed the wire. He thought a kind Providence had placed it there so that he might imitate Blondin in passing to the chamber of the two. He sat himself down to wait till The Yellow Angel and his friend had passed into a state of drunken slumber that would make it perfectly safe to call upon them.
A clock struck one as Blane lowered himself cautiously onto the ledge. Very gently he tried his weight upon it, his muscular hands gripping the window sill and easing his poundage softly onto the perilous shelf.
Scraps of soft plaster crumbled under the shoes of the adventurous Texan and clattered into the yard below. The noise they made was not altogether pleasing. A sort of hissing whisper came up out of the darkness to the ears of the amateur Blondin. But the nerves of Robert Henry Blane were of steel. They had been tried in many corners of the earth.
Carefully, slowly, he moved forward. His right hand went up and gripped the wire. It steadied him on the narrow pathway. Inch by inch he shuffled along, the little warning whisper of falling plaster accompanying him as he moved. He thought of Captain Jules Despard. He felt that the spirit of the dead captain, if aware of the purpose of the journey, might lend a helping hand. The belief pleased him.
He passed the window of room No. 16. He passed that of No. 15. The next window was that of the chamber he desired to reach. He held his breath and moved ever so slowly. The inch-by-inch progression from his own room had taken more than half an hour.
PARTICULARLY threatening section of the ledge met him as he
crept close to his goal. It was a treacherous stretch, where the
shelf had been weakened considerably by the leakage from a
downpipe. A leakage that had continued for years.
The hail of plaster that dropped into the yard made The Wasp pause. He clung to the wire in an effort to ease the strain. A section of crumbling cement tore itself from a point directly in his path, dropped into space and sent back a threatening rumble as it struck an empty barrel in the yard. For an instant Blane wondered if the whole ledge was going. He stood tense and motionless, listening to the trickle of dry pebbles that followed the fall of the large mass.
His situation was perilous. Caution suggested a quick and speedy return to his own room, but caution was swatted heavily by the old Blane-like slogan of "Take a Chance." He took it, a bold chance.
He stepped boldly forward over the gap caused by the breakaway, flung his hands up into the darkness and grasped the window sill of room No, 14. He clung to it and listened to the cannonade of plaster missiles that came from below. A full yard of the ledge had collapsed beneath him.
The Wasp took a breath of relief and hauled himself up. The window was unlocked. Noiselessly he crawled into the room and dropped upon the floor.
He knew that he was between the beds of the two. The drunken pair were conducting a snoring competition, responding to each other's efforts with a vigor and regularity that spoke highly for the soporific properties of the bootleg stuff they had swallowed.
Blane was a swift and competent worker. He found the clothes of The Yellow Angel and transferred to his own person all the papers that he found in the pockets. He did the same with the clothing of the spiritualistic faker, keeping the papers of each separate so that he would be able to return the documents to the pockets he had taken them from. Then with great deftness he unbarred the door, slipped into the passage and reached his own room.
Then, in the papers he had collected from the pockets of Gabriel Amade, Blane found what he was in search of. It was the completed verse, the lines recited by Madame Despard interlaced with those that the pair already knew.
Hurriedly the big Texan copied them on the back of an envelope he found in his pocket. A thrill of delight came to him as he scribbled them down. They were strange lines:
Deep it lies where the shell mounds rise,
Up Black Bayou where the lily fields are.
Darky keep a-blinking for the big, blue flies.
Hold to the right to dodge the bar.
Big, burned cypress on the right of the stream,
Spanish moss like a giant's beard;
Mighty lonely when the bitterns scream.
Don't be afeard, darky! Don't be afeard!
Step off the distance from the big shell mound.
Ninety paces, darky, bearing straight to the right!
Nine to the left, and then turn round,
Swing a spade, darky, and the snake will bite!
The task finished, Robert Henry Blane peeped out into the passage. It was empty. In stockinged feet he dashed back to the room of the two, replaced the papers in their clothes and noiselessly retreated. He had to take a chance by leaving their door unlocked. He reasoned that the condition in which they retired would make it impossible for them to remember with any degree of certainty whether they had locked it or not.
FOR a long time The Wasp sat looking at the lines on the back
of the envelope. They brought to him a succession of spinal
thrills. They fascinated him. They possessed a queer quality of
delightful idiocy that brought again the exquisite creepy
titillation of the skin that we experience over childhood
wonders, but which we lose in later life. With this sensation
still upon him he laid himself down on the hard bed and fell
asleep.
Robert Henry Blane was awake at six the next morning. He stepped into the passage and listened for a moment outside the door of room No. 14. The barrage of snores was still walloping the silence. Blane smiled and returned to his own chamber. He carefully rubbed the mud from his shoes, put on the collar and tie that he had discarded on the previous evening, stepped downstairs and out into the sunlight.
He walked to the corner of Canal and Rampart and looked around for a likely messenger through whom he could establish a liaison with his hotel. He was anxious to know if the great man-hunter had responded to the telegram of inquiry regarding Monsieur Gabriel Amade, known to the continental underworld as The Yellow Angel.
A colored boy sprang at the chance to run a message, and Blane, with an eye upon the hotel that sheltered the pair of worthies, wrote an order to the mail clerk of the St. Charles. He was anxious to hear from No. 37.
The boy darted up Canal Street and inside of ten minutes he was back with a telegram. It was from the great sleuth, and it read:
L'ANGE JAUNE ESCAPED FROM THE PENAL SETTLEMENT AT CAYENNE FOUR MONTHS AGO. WAS SERVING TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR SENTENCE FOR MURDER. LEAVING HERE FOR NEW ORLEANS AT ONCE. KEEP HIM IN SIGHT TILL I ARRIVE. DANGEROUS KILLER. STOPS AT NOTHING.
THIRTY-SEVEN.
The message pleased Robert Henry Blane. The bulldog tenacity of the man hunter in his fight against crime and criminals was rather delightful. Personally he, Blane, had no quarrel with the French bandit on the matter of former escapades, and he would never have mentioned The Yellow Angel to the sleuth if the lame crook had not interfered with the widowed lady and her daughter who lived in the old house in Royal Street.
Blane thought of Dorothy Anne at the moment and he gladdened the heart of the negro boy by hiring him to take a message to her. He told her that all was, well, that there was no danger as far as she and her mother were concerned and that he would report personally at the earliest opportunity.
That much attended to, he sat himself down to watch the door of the frowzy hotel. Sooner or later the two would bestir themselves and get upon the trail of the thing they sought. Blane thought that he would go along with them. He had an all-consuming desire to see the "it" which the verse mentioned. It was treasure, in all probability, hidden somewhere in Barataria.
The Wasp had a belief that a local resident would tell him the exact situation of Black Bayou, and that with the information he possessed he might locate the exact spot, but he thrust aside the desire, to outwit the pair by beating them to the cache. He had a longing to trail along with them and this longing was augmented by the message that came from No. 37 asking that The Yellow Angel might be kept in sight till the great tracker of criminals reached New Orleans.
Hour after hour passed. The Wasp held his post. The noon whistle screamed from a factory near the Bayou St. John before the pair appeared.
They stepped forth together, apparently well pleased with themselves and the world in general. They swung into Canal Street and Robert Henry Blane took up the chase. The Wasp felt that the welding of the scraps of doggerel would lead himself and the two he followed into an inevitable clash, but he was resolved to let the pair lead him to the cache when he would decide what he would do.
They ate a hurried breakfast lunch at a restaurant on Beronne, then, with determination: in their stride, they headed for the levee and boarded a Tchoupitoulas Street car. Blane, as he swung himself onto the rear platform, had no doubt as to where they were heading. The car would pass the landing dock of the ferry for Harvey's and beyond was the treasure country.
The guess was correct. With The Wasp trailing them, the pair boarded the old ferryboat that thrust its blunt nose into the swift, yellow waters of the Mississippi. The Father of Waters wrestled with the old tub, which, after describing a great arc, dropped down before the thrust of the current and dived into the pile-sheltered landing of Harvey's. Harvey's, flat, bleak, and unromantic, was the gateway to the "Free State of Barataria."
Thousands come to New Orleans and never see Barataria. Some one mentions it and they are curious. Where is it? What is it? Who lives there? The ordinary resident knows little of it. He waves his arm in an indefinite manner and tells the little that he knows.
Why, it's the swamp country on the other side of the river. Miles and miles of it running down to Grand Isle where they breed the terrapins. You've read Hearn? Lafcadio Hearn? Well, he wrote about it. Tales of the days when the waters of the Gulf rose like a million stallions and came charging up over the leagues of half-submerged country and flung themselves into the Mississippi.
It is the country of shrimps and shrimpers, land of the Cajuns. The uncharted territory in which Jean Lafitte, the pirate, and his thousand followers had their haunts in the roaring days of old. There Lafitte is supposed to have buried his treasure, which the Cajuns hunt for in their spare time. Unromantic folk ask why the pirate didn't dig up the hoard when he wanted money in his latter and poverty-stricken days, but the Cajuns ignore the question. The hoard is there. Somewhere!
ALL the stories that Robert Henry Blane had heard about the
swamp country flowed into his mind as he followed the two along
the straggling street of Harvey's. New Orleans seemed a thousand
miles away. He was in Barataria with the smell of black mud in
his nostrils, the wind charged with the odor of shrimps from the
cannery on the canal, where a mile of straight waterway takes the
adventurous into the network of bayous that lead away to the
Gulf.
The Yellow Angel and his friend made for the canal and their mission was immediately obvious. They wished to buy or rent a motor boat. They asked questions of slouching loafers who fished the narrow waterway. They tramped up and down, examining the rather tired craft chained to the mud banks of the canal. They had long arguments with the owners of paint-blistered boats whose disloyal engines refused to start when the prospective buyers asked for an exhibition.
They consulted together, sitting on the banks of the straight mile of water that led to the bayous. They watched the shabby, untidy vessels that came chunking up from Grand Isle, the clumsy stern-wheelers that had worn themselves out pulling half-mile tows of cypress logs out of the mysterious lands that battled continually with the flood.
It seemed to Blane, as he watched from a distance, that the sorcery and the fierce diablerie of the swamp country had slackened their desire for the moment. The bayous possessed an atmosphere of weird magic, an air of shamanism that took the immediate hurry from the pair.
The afternoon passed without a bargain being struck. Night came down upon Barataria and the two sought a small restaurant and lodging house. Blane, cleverly keeping out of their way, saw them eat a meal and retire to their room above the restaurant.
The Wasp understood the slowing-up of the pair. Now that the directions to the cache were in their hands they were a little afraid to put the verse to the test. And they were a trifle startled at the look of the country they were called upon to explore. They were town rats, and the bare, bleak swamp country looked evil and threatening.
The Wasp thought of No. 37. He wondered if the delay in the purchase of a boat would enable the man hunter to reach New Orleans before the two made their drive into the bad lands. Blane thought not, but he was so impressed with the ability of the sleuth to teach any spot in the quickest possible time that he thought it well to leave a report as to what was doing.
He found a messenger and sent him across the river to the Hotel St. Charles with a letter that was to be given to the great detective on his arrival. The letter contained instructions as to the manner of reaching Harvey's and where to find Blane on arrival there. This done, The Wasp found a room and went to bed. The verse swirled round within his brain. He found himself chanting the lines: "Big, burned cypress on the right of the stream, Spanish moss like a giant's beard; Mighty lonely when the bitterns scream! Don't be afeard, darky! Don't be afeard!"
He thought that this adventure, above all the other strange affairs in which he, had been interested, was the most thrilling. He fell asleep and dreamed of Captain Jules Despard, of Dorothy Anne, and the old house of storied memories.
THE YELLOW ANGEL and his friend showed increased activity on
the following morning. Immediately after breakfast they induced
the owner of a small speed boat to give them a trial of his
craft, and the watching Blane saw that the demonstration was
satisfactory. The boat was brought up to the drawbridge that
spanned the canal, and the two tinkered with it during the late
morning and the early hours of the afternoon.
Cajun curiosity was stirred by the news of the purchase. Waterside loafers, startled by the fact that two strangers had bought a speed boat after a short trial, sought for reasons. Few strangers go into the swamps. Hunters occasionally, but hunters went with guides. The two, so rumor ran, were going alone. It was against all the laws of Barataria.
A loafing resident, who had blunted his information-seeking teeth upon The Yellow Angel and his pal, offered his opinions unsolicited to Robert Henry Blane.
"They say they're hunters!" he snorted. "Why, they never hunted anything but cooked grub since they were born!"
"Fishermen, perhaps?" suggested The Wasp, amused at the old man's indignation.
"No, nor fishermen either!" cried the local resident, made acidulous by stored curiosity. "I know fishermen when I see 'em, an' sometimes I can smell them when I don't see 'em. Do you know what I think those birds are?"
"What?" asked the amused Texan.
The other spat into the waters of the canal and took a long look at the distant speed boat, above which on the bank sat a group of silent watchers. "I think they're treasure hunters," he whispered. "That's what I think. They know something. Found an old chart, I guess. If I wasn't sick to death with rheumatism, I'd take my old beat an' follow 'em. They're pullin' out this afternoon."
"Which is your boat?" asked Blane.
"The yellow one that's tied up next to theirs," answered the other. "They wanted to buy it yesterday, but I wouldn't sell it to em. Drat 'em!"
The Texan Wasp glanced at the yellow boat and then at its owner. He carelessly took a roll of bills from his pocket and stripped off five tens.
"You might rent your boat to me," he said quietly. "I can handle it. Get it all ready so that I can start after they get away. And hold your tongue about the matter. Savvy? Keeping your mouth shut will bring you another half hundred. Go to it. I'll be sitting here if you want to tell me anything."
The Cajun took the bills, winked slowly and ambled off to do the bidding of his generous patron. There is little money in Barataria. Besides, the owner of the yellow boat saw a chance of. finding out the real reason that was taking what he described as "a close-mouthed pair of damned furriners" into the swamp country.
The afternoon wore on. The Yellow Angel made several trips to the local store and returned with loads of provisions and gasoline. The inquisitive loafers grew in numbers. They craned their necks and fought with each other for positions as they watched the preparations. Then, close to sunset, The Yellow Angel started the engine and excitement ran high.
Blane, at his post of observation, watched the start. The pair were not accomplished boatmen. They made a bad get-away, narrowly escaping a collision with an upbound shrimp boat, then, with the bandit at the wheel, they straightened out and headed down the canal for the bayous.
The Wasp, at a run, made for the yellow boat he had hired. Its owner was ready for him.
"Everything is in tiptop shape," confided the old man. "Engine runs like a watch. Plenty o' gas on her. I'll start her up. An' say, if you can find out what those chaps are goin' after, I'll go—"
"Hop ashore and throw off!" interrupted The Wasp. "Quick about it!"
The owner, recognizing authority in the voice of his client, sprang ashore. He tossed off the ropes and thrust the boat away from the mud wall, but, as he straightened up, he was nearly knocked into the canal by the rush of a stranger. A man with cold, merciless eyes and a chin that had thrust peace to the winds had charged down the sloping bank, gathered himself together as the boat swung away from the shore and with a mighty leap landed in the cockpit beside Blane.
"Just in time," he growled. "Had the devil of a trip. Flew part of the way to make a fast connection. Got your note at the hotel and came straight over. Queer country this, isn't it?"
ROBERT HENRY BLANE smiled as he glanced at the man hunter. The
eyes of No. 37 were fixed upon the speed boat that carried The
Yellow Angel and his friend into Barataria. Without being told,
he sensed the quarry like a falcon.
Hurriedly Robert Henry Blane told of the house of memories, the verse of Madame Despard, the addition made to it by the pair they were following, the purchase of the boat and the stories of treasure buried in the swamps.
"If I had arrived five minutes earlier, I'd have had him before he started," snapped the sleuth. "We might lose him down here."
"We won't!" snapped The Wasp. "And I wouldn't have stood for you pinching him before he started on this expedition. I want my share of the fun."
"Very well," agreed the sleuth. "But it looks to me that his boat is a lot faster than yours. They're dropping us."
This fact was evident to Robert Henry Blane. The pair in front had the faster boat and before they reached the end of the canal where the network of bayous led into the big swamps, the distance between the two boats had increased perceptibly.
The light was failing fast. The weirdness of the marsh country was made more evident as the boat containing Blane and the man hunter swung into the bayou at the end of the canal. A clear path had been cut through the lily beds, but the black water, unrestrained by the mud walls that marked the canal, slopped in among the trees whose low-hanging branches were decorated with huge beards of Spanish moss. From far ahead came back the pip-pip of the leading boat.
Blane turned over the wheel to the sleuth and tinkered with the engine. He was a trifle annoyed. If The Yellow Angel and his friend got away from them in the swamps, there was a chance of the pair doubling back by another route and making for the city with anything that they might have discovered.
Past half-submerged trees and great stretches of lily fields raced the boat. Darkness came down on the swamps like a pall of velvet. At great distances apart there gleamed a candle in the hut of a moss gatherer or a fur hunter. The silence was terrific.
The Wasp shut off the engine and the boat drifted. No. 37 made a queer snarling noise that brought up a picture of a bulldog registering dissatisfaction because an enemy had found safe sanctuary.
"Nice place," he grumbled. "Darkest spot I've ever seen."
"Seems as if we've lost them," said The Wasp. "If we could locate Black Bayou, we might pick them up."
"If there's any bayou blacker than this, I'd like to see it," growled the man hunter. "I didn't believe you could get this quality of blackness anywhere."
From far ahead a lantern flashed and The Wasp started the engine and made cautiously for the pin point of light. Any one who could give definite information as to their position or the position of Black Bayou would be a godsend.
The lantern bearer was a colored man in a flat-bottomed boat attending to his traps on the edge of the bayou. A shack, supported on poles, showed above the water as Blane turned a flash light on him.
"Yessuh," admitted the trapper, answering the question of The Wasp, "you is mighty close to Black Bayou tight now. Jest creep along the shore heah for a hundred yards or so an' Black Bayou is to yoah right."
THE flash light revealed the lily-choked opening of Black Bayou. Blane killed the engine, took a long pole and thrust it into the slime. Noiselessly and carefully he drove the boat forward, and as he worked there came to him a strange conviction that the channel up which they worked their way was the one mentioned in the verse. In a whisper he confided his belief to the sleuth whose ears strained the silence. The slowly moving boat disturbed the slumber of swamp things. Dank, blind, clammy things that plopped from mud banks, rotten logs, and lily pads as the boat nosed its way forward. Turtles, lizards, crabs, giant frogs, and water snakes.
There was protest in the little slurring noises that they made, in the discontented plop as the black water received them. The invisible things whispered of death, a devilish death in the slime with the roots of submerged cypress trees clutching one's body.
It was slow and tedious work. The mud odor was appalling. Vicious snags tore at the bottom of the boat; the tenacious, octopus-like lilies clutched the craft with a million fingers.
The two men took turn and turn about with the poling. The job would have been disheartening to any other pair. Blane stiffened his courage and brought new strength to his aching limbs by picturing the old house in Royal Street, the fair face of the girl who had such implicit trust in his honesty. The man hunter thought only of the quarry, Gabriel Amade, The Yellow Angel of Bordeaux.
A TRAILING bunch of Spanish moss, hanging from a limb, brushed
the face of Robert Henry Blane, feeling for all the world like
the wet beard of some old man of the swamps who protested against
the approach of the Texan and his companion. The Wasp recalled
the lines of the poem and cautiously turned the flash light on
the right bank. A big, burned cypress leaped out of the
blackness! It was the cypress of the verse and "the Spanish moss
like a giant's beard."
"We're close," he whispered. "If they have beat us to it, they cannot be far away."
A slimy frog plopped onto Blane's hand; from the bow of the boat came a soft hiss that suggested the presence of a cottonmouth who had dropped from the overhanging limb as the boat slipped beneath.
And then, as the boat crept round a bend of the bayou, the light of a small fire showed immediately ahead.
Blane stopped poling. Standing together in silence he and the sleuth regarded the blaze. The boat nudged the bank of the bayou.
The figure of a man came between them and the flames. The fellow tossed a bundle of wood upon the fire and it blazed up brightly. The Wasp and No. 37 could see the stretch of shell-made bank on which the man stood. They could see the boat; they had a fleeting view of another person digging furiously some twenty feet from the blaze.
Blane reached out and felt the muddy bank against which the boat rocked. It was not exactly dry ground, but it was dangerous to pole their craft closer to the shell mound on which were the two men they had followed. It was wiser to climb ashore and approach through the undergrowth.
No. 37 understood. The two climbed noiselessly upon the bank, tied the boat securely to a stump and crept toward the fire. The approach was a quagmire. They sank to their knees in black mud; they found precarious footing on submerged tree trunks.
NEARER and nearer they came. Blane, glancing at his companion,
could see the features of the man hunter. Now both men on the
shell mound were digging furiously; their muttered words came to
the Texan and the sleuth. The fire illuminated the showers of
shell lime that were tossed out of the trench in which they
worked. The Yellow Angel gave a cry of delight that went out over
the swamps. A hoarse cry of joy that was a little frightening in
that wilderness. His companion rushed to his side. Together they
dropped upon their knees in the trench, and The Wasp and No. 37
seized the opportunity to move swiftly toward the shell
mound.
They stumbled through the mud till they found solid footing beneath their feet. The two in the trench were half hidden by the depth of the ditch they had dug. Something that they had discovered had dragged their heads earthward and held them there with the grip of unholy greed.
No. 37 raced across the shell mound, a short revolver in his right hand. He cried out the name of Amade, and The Yellow Angel thrust his head out of the trench. The firelight showed him the face of the enemy, the pitiless tracker of criminals whose numerical pseudonym was known from one end of the world to the other.
A cool devil in the face of danger was Gabriel Amade. For an instant he stared at the man hunter, then he sprang from the trench, dropped to his knees and started to crawl hurriedly through the underbrush to his boat. A bullet from his gun whizzed by the head of the sleuth; the silence of the bayou was shattered by the explosion.
No. 37 rushed forward. The Yellow Angel had gained the bank of the bayou. He sprang for the boat as the man hunter fired. The big hands of. Gabriel Amade clutched at the side of the boat, held him there for an instant, then the black waters of the swamp sucked up to him as the boat listed; the fingers lost their grip and the escaped murderer sank into the stream. Black Bayou had taken the French bandit to its depths.
The great detective stepped back to the trench to find The Wasp trussing up the spiritualistic faker who had induced Madame Despard to recite the lines that had been told to her by her husband.
"They had just found something," said the Texan. "It's in that bronze pot. Wait till I bring it to the fire."
THE strong tight hand of Robert Henry Blane took a handful of
coins from the Javanese pot of bronze and let them run slowly
through his fingers. The Wasp had a knowledge of numismatics that
would have done credit to the keeper of a coin museum, and he
recognized the pieces as they shuffled down his palm and trickled
like frightened things into the heavily leaded pot.
They were wonder pieces of other days. Pieces whose days of active circulation were buried in the centuries. Coins from fives-core ports. Gold star-pagoda pieces from the Coromandel coast, minted two hundred years before; yellow mohurs struck by Mogul emperors; coins from Morocco bearing the Hectagram, or so-called "Solomon's Seal;" pieces of the old Sierra Leone Company, showing the hand of a slave grasping the hand of his master.
Round pieces, square pieces, shapeless slugs upon which a clumsy imprint had been made. He smiled grimly as he looked at them. Sweat polished by forgotten fingers. Pale gold doubloons—"Doblons de Isabel"—that had paid for murder and pillage. Time-fretted pieces from hot slave ports that had been exchanged for living flesh. Yellow, century-worn slugs from the Guinea coast whose soft jingle had placed iron shackles on black wrists and ankles.
Blane had a desire to laugh. To laugh at the soul-killing methods by which men tried to gather gold. In the slime of the bayou was the escaped convict from Cayenne who had been offered up as the latest sacrifice to the god in the bronze pot.
The Wasp glanced at No. 37. The sleuth was testing the cords that held his prisoner. He turned as he felt the eyes of the Texan upon him and spoke slowly.
"I suppose we had better stay here till dawn," he said. "I heard a snake hiss when we were coming up this bayou and Eve got a dread of snakes. I would have turned back if I didn't think that L'Ange Jaune was in front of me."
"And when we get to New Orleans I'll take you down and introduce you to a young lady who is a representative of the Old South," said Blane quietly. "We are going to take her this pot of coins if you have no objection."
"I have none at all," answered the sleuth. "My reward rests in ridding the world of a bad gentleman. I sent The Yellow Angel to Cayenne and I was a little peeved to think that he had escaped. I'll be greatly pleased to meet your young friend."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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