Chapter 4: Pistols for Two--Coffee for One

Val braced himself against the back of the roadster’s seat and struggled to hold the car to a road which was hardly more than a cart track. Twice since Ricky and he had left Pirate’s Haven they had narrowly escaped being bogged in the mud which had worked up through the thin crust of gravel on the surface.

To the south lay the old cypress swamps, dark glens of rotting wood and sprawling vines. A spur of this unsavory no-man’s land ran close along the road, and looking into it one could almost believe, fancied Val, in the legends told by the early French explorers concerning the giant monsters who were supposed to haunt the swamps and wild lands at the mouth of the Mississippi. He would not have been surprised to see a brontosaurus peeking coyly down at him from twenty feet or so of neck. It was just the sort of place any self-respecting brontosaurus would have wallowed in.

But at last they won free from that place of cold and dank odors. Passing through Chalmette, they struck the main highway. From then on it was simple enough. St. Bernard Highway led into St. Claude Avenue and that melted into North Rampart street, one of the boundaries of the old French city.

“Can’t we go slower?” complained Ricky. “I’d like to see some of the city without getting a crick in my neck from looking over my shoulder. Watch out for St. Anne Street. That’s one corner of Beauregarde Square, the old Congo Square--”

“Where the slaves used to dance on Sundays before the war. I know; I’ve read just as many guide-books as you have. But there is such a thing as obstructing traffic. Also we have about a million and one things to do this afternoon. We can explore later. Here we are; Bienville Avenue. No, I will not stop so that you can see that antique store. Six blocks to the right,” Val reminded himself.

“Val, that was the Absinthe House we just passed!”

“Yes? Well, it would have been better for a certain ancestor of ours if he had passed it, too. That was Jean Lafitte’s headquarters at one time. Exchange Street--the next is ours.”

They turned into Chartres Street and pulled up in the next block at the corner of Iberville. A four-story house coated with grayish plaster, its windows framed with faded green shutters and its door painted the same misty color, confronted them. There was a tiny shop on the first floor.

A weathered sign over the door announced that Bonfils et Cie. did business within, behind the streaked and bluish glass of the small curved window-panes. But what business Bonfils and Company conducted was left entirely to the imagination of the passer-by. Val locked the roadster and took from Ricky the long legal-looking envelope which Rupert had given them to deliver to Mr. LeFleur.

Ricky was staring in a puzzled manner at the shop when her brother took her by the arm. “Are you sure that you have the right place? This doesn’t look like an office to me.”

“We have to go around to the courtyard entrance. LeFleur occupies the second floor.”

A small wooden door, reinforced with hinges of hand-wrought iron, opened before them, making them free of a courtyard paved with flagstones. In the center a tall tree shaded the flower bed at its foot and threw shadows upon the first of the steps leading to the upper floors. The Ralestones frankly stared about them. This was the first house of the French Quarter they had seen, although their name might have admitted them to several closely guarded Creole strongholds. LeFleur’s house followed a pattern common to the old city. The lower floor fronting on the street was in use only as a shop or store-room. In the early days each shopkeeper lived above his place of business and rented the third and fourth floors to aristocrats in from their plantations for the fashionable season.

A long, narrow ell ran back from the main part of the house to form one side of the courtyard. The ground floor of this contained the old slave quarters and kitchens, while the second was cut into bedrooms which had housed the young men of the family so that they could come and go at will without disturbing the more sedate members of the household. These small rooms were now in use as the offices of Mr. LeFleur. From the balcony, running along the ell, onto which each room opened, one could look down into the courtyard. It was on this balcony that the lawyer met them with outstretched hands after they had given their names to his dark, languid young clerk.

“But this is good of you!” René LeFleur beamed on them impartially. He was a small, plumpish, round-faced man in his early forties, who spoke in perpetual italics. His eyebrows, arched over-generously by Nature, gave him a look of never-ending astonishment at the world and all its works. But his genial smile was kindness itself. Unaccustomed as Val was to sudden enthusiasms, he found himself liking René LeFleur almost before his hand gripped Val’s.

“Miss Ralestone, it is a pleasure, a very great pleasure, to see you here! And this,” he turned to Val, “this must be that brother Valerius both you and Mr. Ralestone spoke so much of during our meeting in New York. You have safely recovered from that most unfortunate accident, Mr. Ralestone? But of course, your presence here is my answer. And how do you like Louisiana, Miss Ralestone?” His eyes behind his gold-rimmed eyeglasses sparkled as he tilted his head a fraction toward Ricky as if to hear the clearer.

“Well enough. Though we’ve seen very little of it yet, Mr. LeFleur.”

“When you have seen Pirate’s Haven,” he replied, “you have seen much of Louisiana.”

“But we’re forgetting our manners!” exclaimed the girl. “We want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us. Rupert said to tell you that while he doesn’t care for beans as a rule, the beans we found in our cupboard were very superior beans.”

Mr. LeFleur hooted with laughter like a small boy. “He is droll, is that brother of yours. And has Sam been to see you?”

“Sam and--Lucy,” answered Ricky with emphasis. “Lucy has decided to take us in hand. She has installed Letty-Lou over our protests.”

The little lawyer nodded complacently. “Yes, Lucy will take care of you. She is a master housekeeper and cook--ah!” His eyes rolled upward. “And Mr. Ralestone, how is he?”

“All right. He’s going over the farm with Sam this afternoon. We were sent in his place to give you the papers he spoke to you about.”

At Ricky’s answer, Val held out the envelope he had carried. To their joint surprise, LeFleur pounced upon it and withdrew to the window of the room into which he had conducted them. There he spread out the four sheets of yellowed paper which the envelope had contained.

“What were we carrying?” whispered Ricky. “Part of Rupert’s deep, dark secret?”

“No,” her brother hissed back, “those are the plans of the Patagonian fort which were stolen from the Russian Embassy last Thursday by the beautiful woman spy disguised with a long green beard. You know, the proper first chapter of an international espionage thriller. You are the dumb but beautiful newspaper reporter on the scent, and I--”

“The even dumber G-man who spends most of his time running three steps ahead of Fu Chew Chow and his gang of oriental demons. In the second chapter--”

But a glance at Mr. LeFleur’s face as he turned away from the window put an end to their nonsense. Gone was his smile, his beaming good-will toward the world. He seemed a little tired, a trifle stooped. “Not here then,” he said slowly to himself as he slipped the papers back into the envelope.

“Mr. Valerius,” he looked up at the boy very seriously, “the LeFleurs have served the Ralestones, acting as their men of business, for over a hundred years. We owe your family a great debt. When young Denys LeFleur was shipped over here to New Orleans under false accusation of his enemies, the first Richard Ralestone became his patron. He helped the boy salvage something from the wreck of the LeFleur fortunes in France to start anew in a decent profession under tolerable surroundings, when others of his kind died miserably as beggars on the mud flats. Twice before have we been forced to be the bearers of ill news, but--” he shrugged, “that was in the past. This lies in the future.”

“What does?” asked Ricky.

“It is such a tangle,” he said, running his hand through his short, gray-streaked hair. “A tangle such as lawyers are supposed to delight in. But they don’t, I assure you that they don’t, Miss Ralestone. Not if they have their client’s interest at heart. You know, of course, of the missing Ralestone--Roderick?”

Ricky and Val both nodded. Mr. LeFleur spread out his plump hands in a queer little gesture as if he were pushing something away. “This whole unfortunate business begins with him. As far as we know today, he and his brother were co-owners of Pirate’s Haven. When young Roderick disappeared, he was still part owner. Although he was presumed dead, he was never lawfully declared so. Pirate’s Haven was simply assumed to be the property of your branch of the family.”

“Our branch of the family?” Val echoed him. “Do you mean that some descendant of Roderick has appeared to put in a claim?”

“That is the problem. Three days ago a man came to my office. He said that he is the direct descendant of Roderick Ralestone and that he can produce proof of that fact.”

“And he wants his share of the estate?” asked Ricky shrewdly.

“Yes.”

“He can keep on wanting,” Val said shortly. “We’ve nothing to give.”

“There’s Pirate’s Haven,” pointed out Mr. LeFleur.

“But he can’t--” Ricky’s hand closed about her brother’s wrist.

“Naturally he can’t take it,” Val assured her hotly. “Pirate’s Haven is ours. This looks to me like blackmail. He’ll threaten to stir up a lot of trouble unless we buy him off.”

Mr. LeFleur nodded. “That is perhaps the motive behind it all.”

“Well,” Val forced a laugh, “then he loses. We haven’t the money to buy him off.”

“Neither have you the money to fight a case through the courts, Mr. Valerius,” answered the lawyer soberly.

“But there is some chance, there must be!” urged Ricky.