“Dirty fighters?”
“Well, soiled anyway. But if the Boss isn’t nursing a cracked wrist, it isn’t my fault. I don’t know what Jeems did to Red, but he, too, departed in a damaged condition. Do you have to do that?” Val demanded testily, squirming as Rupert ran his hands lightly over the boy’s shoulders and down his ribs, touching every bruise to tingling life.
“Just seeing the extent of the damage,” he explained.
“You don’t have to see, I can feel!” Val snapped pettishly.
Rupert got to his feet. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Oh, a hot bath and then bed. You’ll be taking an interest in life again about this time tomorrow. I think LeFrode had better see you too.”
“No,” Val objected. “I’m not a child.”
Rupert grinned. “If you’d rather I carried you—”
There was no opposing Rupert when he was in that mood, as his brother well knew. Val got up slowly.
The program that Rupert had outlined was faithfully carried out. Half an hour later Val found himself between sheets, blinking at the ceiling drowsily. When two cracks overhead wavered together of their own accord, his eyes closed.
“—still sleeping?” whispered someone at his side much later.
“Yes, best thing for him.”
“Was he badly hurt?”
“No, just banged around more than was good for him.”
Val opened his eyes. It must have been close to dusk, for the sunlight was red across the bedclothes. Rupert stood by the window and Ricky was in the doorway, a tray of covered dishes in her hands.
“Hello!” Val sat up, grimacing at the twinge of pain across his back. “What day is this?”
Rupert laughed. “Still Tuesday.”
“How’s Jeems?”
“Doing very well. I’ve had to have Rupert in to frighten him into staying in bed,” Ricky said. “The doctor thinks he ought to be there a couple of days at least. But Jeems doesn’t agree with him. Between keeping Jeems in bed and keeping Rupert out of the swamp I’ve had a full day.”
Rupert sat down on the foot of the bed. “You’d know this Boss and Red again, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’ll probably have a chance to identify them.”
There was a grim look about Rupert’s jaw. “Ricky’s told me all that you overheard. I don’t know what it means but I’ve heard enough for me to get in touch with LeHeur.
He’ll be out tomorrow morning. And once we get something to work on—”
“I’m beginning to feel sorry for our swamp visitors.”
Val interrupted.
“They’ll be sorry,” hinted Rupert darkly. “How about you, Val, beginning to feel hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, I am discovering a rather hollow ache in my center section. Supper ready?”
“Half an hour. I’ll bring you up a tray—“ began Ricky.
But Val had thrown back the sheet and was sitting on the side of the bed. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not an invalid yet.”
Ricky glanced at Rupert and then left. Val reached for his shirt defiantly. But his brother raised no objection. The painful stiffness Val had felt at first wore off and he was able to move without feeling as if each muscle were tied in cramping knots.
“May I pay Jeems a visit?” he asked as they went out into the hall. Rupert nodded toward a door across the corridor.
“In there. He’s a stubborn piece of goods. Reminds me of you at times. If he’d ever get rid of that scowl of his, he’d be even more like you. He warms to Ricky, but you’d think I was a Chinese torturer the way he acts when I go in.” There was a shade of irritation in Rupert’s voice.
“Maybe he’s afraid of you.”
“But what for?” Rupert stared at the boy in open surprise.
“Well, you do have rather a commanding air at times,”
Val countered. If Ricky had told Rupert nothing of Jeems’ confession, he wasn’t going to.
“So that’s what you really think of me!” observed Rupert. “Go reason with that wildcat if you want to. I’m beginning to believe that you are two of a kind.” He turned abruptly down the hall.
Val opened the door of the bedroom. The sunlight was fading fast and already the corners of the large room were filled with the gray of dusk. But light from the windows swept full across the bed and its occupant. Val hobbled stiffly toward it.
“Hello.” The brown face on the pillow did not change expression as Val greeted the swamper. “How do you feel now?”
“Bettah,” Jeems answered shortly. “Ah’m good but they won’t le’ me up.”
“The Doc says you’re in for a couple of days,” Val told him.
Somehow Jeems looked smaller, shrunken, as he lay in that oversized bed. And he had lost that air of indolent arrogance which had made him seem so independent in their swamp and garden meetings. It was as if Val were looking down upon a younger and less confident edition of the swamper he had known.
“What does he think?” There was urgency in that question.
“Who’s he?”
“Yo’ brothah.”
“Rupert? Why, he’s glad to have you here,” Val answered.
“Does he know ‘bout—”
Val shook his head.
“Tell him!” ordered the swamper. “Ah ain’t a-goin’ to say undah his roof lessen he knows. ‘Tain’t fitten.”
At this clean-cut statement of the laws of hospitality, Val nodded. “All right. I’ll tell him. But what were you after here, Jeems? I’ll have to tell him that, too, you know. Was it the Civil War treasure?”
Jeems turned his head slowly. “No.” Again the puzzled frown twisted his straight, finely marked brows. “What do Ah want wi’ treasure? Ah don’t know what Ah was lookin’ fo’. Man grandpappy—”
“Val, supper’s ready,” came Rupert’s voice from the hall.
Val half turned to go. “I’ve got to go now. But I’ll be back later,” he promised.
“Yo’ll tell him?” Jeems stabbed a finger at the door.
“Yes; after supper. I promise.”
With a little sigh Jeems relaxed and burrowed down into the softness of the pillow. “Ah’Il be awaitin’,” he said.
ON SUCH A NIGHT AS THIS
It had been one of those dull, weepy days when a sullen drizzle clouded sky and earth. In consequence, the walls and floors of Pirate’s Haven seemed to exude chill. Rupert built a fire in the hall fireplace, but none of the family could say that it was a successful one. It made a nice show of leaping flame accompanied by fancy lighting effects but gave forth absolutely no heat.
“Val?”
The boy started guiltily and thrust his notebook under the couch cushion as Charity came in. Tiny drops of rain were strung along the hairs which had blown free of her rain-cape hood like steel beads along a golden wire.
“Yes? Don’t come here expecting to get warm,” he warned her bitterly. “We are very willing but the fire is weak. Looks pretty, doesn’t it?” He kicked at a charred end on the hearth. “Well, that’s all it’s good for!”
“Val, what sort of a mess have you and Jeems jumped into?” she asked as she handed him her dripping cape.
“Oh, just a general sort of mess,” he answered lightly.
“Jeems had callers who forgot their manners. So Ricky and I breezed in and brought the party to a sudden end—”
“As I .can see by your black eye,” she commented. “But what has Jeems been up to?”
Val was suddenly very busy holding her cape before that mockery of a blaze.
“Why don’t you ask him that?”
“Because I’m asking you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague—”
“Rupert has the gift of being exasperatingly uncommunicative,” his brother told her. “The story, so far as I know, is short and simple. Jeems knows a secret way into this house. In addition, his grandfather told him that the fortune of the house of Jeems is concealed here—having been very hazy in his description of the nature of said fortune. Consequently, grandson has been playing haunt up and down our halls trying to find it.
“His story is as full of holes as a sieve but somehow one can’t help believing it. He has explained that he has the secret of the outside entrance only, and not the one opening from the inside. In the meantime he is in bed— guarded from intrusion by Ricky and Lucy with the same care as if he were the crown jewels. So matters rest at present.”
“Neatly put.” She dropped down on the couch. “By the way, do you realize that you have ruined your face for my uses?”
Val fingered the crisscrossing tape on his cheek. “This is only temporary.”
“Icertainly hope so. That must have been some battle.”