“Pay fo’!” Lucy’s indignant sniff reduced him to his extremely unimportant place. “We’s not talkin’ ‘bout pay workin’, Mistuh Ralestone. Letty-Lou don’ git no pay but her eatments. ‘Co’se, effen Miss ‘Chanda wanna give her some ole do’s now an’ den, she kin tak’ dem. Letty-Lou, she don’ hav’ to git a pay-work job, her pappy make’s a good livin’. But Miss ‘Chanda ain’ a-goin’ to tak’ keer dis big nous’ all by herself! We’s Ralestone folks. Letty-Lou, git on youah ap’on an’ git to work.”
“But we can’t let her,” Ricky raised her last protest.
“Miss ‘Chanda, we’s Ralestone folks. Mah gran’ pappy Bob was own man to Massa Miles Ralestone. He fit in de wan ‘longside o’ Massa Miles. When de wan was done finish’d, the two of ‘em come home togethah. Massa Miles call mah gran’pappy in an’ say, ‘Bob, yo’all is free an’ I’se a ruinated man. Heah is fiv’ dollahs gol’ money, which is all I got left. Yo’ kin hav’ youah hoss.’ An’ Bob, he say, ‘Cap’n Miles dese heah Yankees done said I’m free but nobody says I ain’t a Ralestone man. What time does yo’ wan’ breakfas’ in de mornin’?’ Then when Massa Miles wen’ no’th to make his fo’tune, he told Bob, ‘Bob, I’se leavin’ dis heah house in youah keer.’ An’, Miss ‘Chanda, we done look aftah Pirate’s Haven evah since, me gran’pappy, me pappy, Sam an’ me.”
Ricky held out her hand. “I’m sorry, Lucy. You see, we don’t understand very well, we’ve been away so long.”
PISTOLS FOR TWO—COFFEE FOR ONE
Val braced himself against the back of the convertible’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 monster 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 comer 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 comer 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. LeFteur.
Ricky was staring in a puzzled manner at me shop when her brother took her by the arm. “Are you sure that you have me right place? This doesn’t look like an office to me.”
“We have to go around to the courtyard entrance. LeFteur occupies the second floor.”
A small wooden door, reinforced with hinges of handwrought 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 fcouse 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!” RenC 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 Rene 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—”