CHAPTER XI
The Gangsters
GRAMONT left the covert and walked forward.
He was thinking about that odd mention of Jachin Fell—had Chacherre lied in saying he had come here on his master's business? Perhaps. The man had come in Fell's car, and would not hesitate to lie about using the car. For the moment, Gramont put away the circumstance, but did not forget it.
He walked openly toward the Gumberts buildings, thinking that he would have time for a good look around the place before dusk fell; he would then get off for Houma, and attend to Hammond's defence.
As for the place before him, he was convinced that it was abandoned. Had any one, other than Chacherre and his two friends, been about the buildings, the late excitement would have brought out the fact. No one had appeared, and the buildings seemed vacant.
Gramont's intent was simple and straightforward. In case he found, as he expected to find, any evidence of illegal occupation about the place—as the sheriff seemed to have discovered to his cost—he would lay Chacherre and the other two men by the heels that night in Houma. He would then go on to New Orleans and have Gumberts arrested, although he had no expectation that the master crook could be held on the murder-accessory charge. If this place were used for the lotteries, even, he was fairly certain that Memphis Izzy would have his own tracks covered. The men higher up always did.
He walked straight in upon the barn. It loomed before him, closed, lurid in the level rays of the westering sun. The doors in front had been only loosely swung together and Gramont found them unlocked. He stood in the opening, and surprise gripped him. He was held motionless, gazing with astonished wonder at the sight confronting him.
Directly before him was a small roadster, one which he remembered to have seen Jachin Fell using; in this car, doubtless, Ben Chacherre had driven from the city. He recalled the fact later, with poignant regret for a lost opportunity. But, at the present moment, he was lost in amazement at the great number of other cars presenting themselves to his view.
They were lined up as deep as the barn would hold them, crammed into every available foot of space; well over a dozen cars, he reckoned swiftly. What was more, all were cars of the highest class, with the exception of Fell's roadster. Directly before him were two which he was well aware must have cost close upon ten thousand each. What did this mean? Certainly no one man or one group of men, in this back-country spot, could expect to use such an accumulation of expensive cars!
Gramont glanced around, but found no trace of machinery in the barn. Remembering the motor that he had heard, he turned from the doorway in frowning perplexity. He strode on toward the long shed which stood closer to the house. At the end of this shed was a door, and when he tried it, Gramont found it unlocked. It swung open to his hand, and he stepped inside.
At first he paused, confused by the vague objects around, for it was quite dark in here. A moment, and his eyes grew accustomed to the gloomier lighting. Details came to him: all around were cars and fragments of cars, chassis and bodies in all stages of dismemberment. Still more cars!
He slowly advanced to a long bench that ran the length of the shop beneath the windows. A shop, indeed—a shop, he quickly perceived, fitted with every tool and machine necessary to the most complete automobile repair establishment! Even an air-brush outfit, at one end, together with a drying compartment, spoke of repaint jobs.
Comprehension was slowly dawning upon the mind of Gramont; a moment later it became certainty, when he came to a stop before an automobile engine lying on the bench. He found it to be the engine from a Stutz—the latest multi-valve type adopted by that make of car, and this particular bit of machinery looked like new.
Gramont inspected it, and he saw that the men had done their work well. The original engine number had been carefully dug out, and the place as carefully filled and levelled with metal. Beside it a new number had been stamped. A glance at the electrical equipment around showed that these workers had every appliance with which to turn out the most finished of jobs.
As he straightened up from the engine Gramont's eyes fell upon a typed sheet of paper affixed to the wall above the bench. His gaze widened as he inspected it by the failing light. Upon that paper was a list of cars. After each car was a series of numbers plainly comprising the original numbers of the engine, body, radiator, and other component parts, followed by another series of new numbers to be inserted. That sheet of paper showed brains, organizing ability, care, and attention to the last detail!
Here was the most carefully planned and thorough system of automobile thievery that Gramont had ever heard of. He stood motionless, knowing that this typed sheet of paper in itself was damning evidence against the whole gang of workers. What was more to the point, that paper could be traced; the typewriting could be traced to the man higher up—doubtless Memphis Izzy himself! These men ran in cars by the wholesale, probably from states adjacent to Louisiana. Here, at this secluded point on the bayou, they changed the cars completely about, in number, paint, style of body, and then probably got rid of the new product in New Orleans.
Gramont stood motionless. Surprise had taken hold of him, and even a feeling of slight dismay. This was not at all what he had hoped to find there. He had thought to come upon some traces of the lottery game
"Seen all you want, bo?" said a voice behind him.
Gramont turned. He found himself gazing directly into an automatic pistol over which glittered a pair of blazing eyes. The man was a stranger to him. The place had not been deserted, after all. He was caught.
"Who are you?" demanded Gramont, quietly.
"Me?" The stranger was unsmiling, deadly. In those glittering eyes Gramont read the ferocity of an animal at bay. "I s'pose you would like to know that, huh? I guess you know enough right now to get all that's comin' to you, bo! Got any particular business here? Speak up quick!"
Gramont was silent. The other sneered at him, viciously.
"Hurry up! Turn over the name and address, and I'll notify the survivin' relatives. Name, please?"
"Henry Gramont," was the calm response. "Don't get hasty, my friend. Didn't you see me here a little while ago with Chacherre and the other boys?"
"What's that?" The glittering eyes flamed up with suspicion and distrust. "Here—with them? No, I didn't. I been away fishing all afternoon. What the hell you doing around this joint?"
"Your best scheme," said Gramont, coldly, "is to change your style of tone, and to do it in a hurry! If you don't know what's happened here this afternoon, don't ask me; you'll find out soon enough when the other boys get back. You'd better tell them I'm going to get in touch with Memphis Izzy the minute I get back to the city, and that the less talking they do"
"What the hell's all this?" demanded the other again, but with a softening of accent. The moniker of Gumberts had its effect, and seemed to shake the man instantly. Gramont smiled as he perceived that the game was won.
"I never heard of no Gramont," went on the other, quickly. "What you doin' here?"
"You're due to learn a good many things, I imagine," said Gramont, carelessly. "As for me, I happened on the place largely by accident. I happen to be in partnership with a man named Jachin Fell, and I came out here on business"
To Gramont's astonishment the pistol was lowered instantly. It was well that he ceased speaking, for what he had just said proved to be open to misconstruction, and if he had said any more he would have spoiled it. For the man facing him was staring at him in mingled disgust and surprise.
"You're in partnership with the boss!" came the astounding words. "Well, why in hell didn't you say all that in the first place, instead o' beefin' around? That's no way to butt in, and me thinking you was some dick on the job! Got anything to prove that you ain't pullin' something cute on me?"
"Do you know Fell's writing?" asked Gramont, with difficulty forcing himself to meet the situation coherently. Jachin Fell—the boss!
"I know his mitt, all right."
From his pocket Gramont produced a paper—the memorandum or agreement which he had drawn up with Fell on the previous afternoon, relating to the oil company. The other man took it and switched on an electric light bulb overhead. In this glare he was revealed as a ratty little individual with open mouth and teeth hanging out—an adenoidal type, and certainly a criminal type.
It crossed the mind of Gramont that one blow would do the work—but he stood motionless. No sudden game would help him here. The discovery that Fell was "the boss" paralyzed him completely. He had never dreamed of such a contingency. Fell, of all men!
Jachin Fell the "boss" of this establishment! Jachin Fell the man higher up—the brains behind this criminal organization! It was a perfect thunderbolt to Gramont. Now he understood why Chacherre was in the employ of Fell—why no arrest of the man had been possible! Now he perceived that Chacherre must have told the truth about coming here on business for Fell. Reaching farther back, he saw that Fell must have received the loot of the Midnight Masquer, must have turned it over to Lucie Ledanois
Did she know?
"All right, Mr. Gramont." The ratty little man turned to him with evident change of front. "We ain't takin' no chances here, y'understand. Got quite a shipment of cars comin' in from Texas, and we're tryin' to get some o' these boats cleaned out to make room. Bring out any orders?"
Gramont's brain worked fast.
By overcoming this guttersnipe he might have the whole place at his mercy—but that was not what he wanted. He suddenly realized that he had other and more important fish to fry in New Orleans. Gumberts was there. Fell was there. What he must do demanded time, and his best play was to gain all the time possible, and to prevent this gang from suspecting him in any way.
"Did you see Ben Chacherre?" he countered.
"Uh-huh—seen him just after he come. Gumberts will be out day after to-morrow, he said. The boss is framin' some sort of deal on a guy that he wants laid away—some guy name o' Hammond. Chacherre is running it. He figgers on gettin' Hammond on account of some car that's bein' hunted up"
Gramont laughed suddenly, for there was a grim humour about the thing. So Jachin Fell wanted to "get something" on poor Hammond! And Chacherre had seized the golden opportunity that presented itself this afternoon—instead of "getting" Hammond for the theft of a car, Chacherre had coolly fastened murder upon him!
"Ben is one smart man; I expect he thinks the gods are working for him," said Gramont, thinly. "So you don't know what happened to-day, eh? Well, it's great news, but I've got no time to talk about it. They'll tell you when they get back"
"Where'd they go?" demanded the other.
"Houma. Now listen close! Chacherre did not know that I was in partnership with the boss, get me? I didn't want to tell all the crowd in front of him. Between you and me, the boss isn't any too sure about Ben"
"Say, I get you there!" broke in the other, sagely. "I tells him six months ago to watch out for that Creole guy!"
"Exactly. You can tell the boys about me when they come back—I don't suppose Ben will be with them. Now, I've been looking over that place next door"
"Oh!" exclaimed the other, suddenly. "Sure! The boss said that one of his friends would be down to"
"I'm the one—or one of them," and Gramont chuckled as he reflected on the ludicrous aspects of the whole affair. "I'm going to Houma now, and then back to the city. My car's over next door. Mr. Fell wanted me to warn you to lay low on the lottery business. He's got a notion that someone's been talking."
"You go tell the boss," retorted the other in an aggrieved tone, "to keep his eye on the guys that can talk! Who'd we talk to here? Besides, we're workin' our heads off on these here boats. Memphis Izzy is attending to the lottery—he's got the whole layout up to the house, and we ain't touching it, see? Tell the boss all that."
"Tell him yourself," Gramont laughed, good-humouredly. "Gumberts is coming out day after to-morrow, is he? That'll be Friday. Hm! I think that I'd better bring Fell out here the same day, if I can make it. I probably won't see Gumberts until then—I'm not working in with him and he doesn't know me yet—but I'll try and get out here on Friday with Fell. Now, I'll have to beat it in a hurry. Any message to send?"
"Not me," was the answer.
Gramont scarcely knew how he departed, until he found himself scrambling back through the underbrush of the Ledanois place.
He rushed into the house, found the fire had died down beyond all danger, and swiftly removed the few things they had taken from the car. Carrying these, he stumbled back to where he had hidden the automobile. He scarcely dared to think, scarcely dared to congratulate himself on the luck that had befallen him, until he found himself in his own car once more, and with open throttle sweeping out through the twilight toward Paradis and Houma beyond. A whirlwind of mad exultation was seething within him—exultation as sudden and tremendous as the past weeks had been uneventful and dragging!
Gramont, in common with many others, had heard much indefinite rumour of an underground lottery game that was being worked among the negroes of the state and the Chinese villages along the Gulf coast. And now he knew definitely.
Lotteries have never died out in Louisiana since the brave old days of the government-ordained gambles, laws and ordinances to the contrary. No laws can make the yellow man and the black man forego the get-rich-quick heritage of their fathers. On the Pacific coast lotteries obtain and will obtain wherever there is a Chinatown. In Louisiana the days of the grand lottery have never been forgotten. The last two years of high wages had made every Negro wealthy, comparatively speaking. The lottery mongers would naturally find them a ripe harvest for the picking. And who would gravitate to this harvest field if not the great Gumberts, the uncaught Memphis Izzy, the promoter who had never been "mugged!"
Here, at one stroke, stumbling on the thing by sheer blind accident, Gramont had located the nucleus of the whole business!
Gradually his brain cooled to the realization of what work lay before him. He was through Paradis, almost without seeing the town, and switched on his lights as he took the highway to Houma. Sober reflection seized him. Not only was this crowd of crooks working a lottery, but they were also managing a stupendous thievery of automobiles, in which cars were looted by wholesale! And the man at the head of it all, the man above Memphis Izzy and his crooks, was Jachin Fell of New Orleans.
Did Lucie Ledanois dream such a thing? No. Gramont dismissed the question at once. Fell was not an unusual type of man. There were many Jachin Fells throughout the country, he reflected. Men who applied their brains to crooked work, who kept themselves above any actual share in the work, and who profited hugely by tribute money from every crook in every crime.
To the communities in which they lived such men were patterns of all that wealthy gentlemen should be. Seldom, except perhaps in gossip of the underworld, was their connection with crime ever suspected. And—this thought was sobering to Gramont—never did they come within danger of retribution at the hands of the law. Their ramifications extended too far into politics; and the governors of some southern states have unlimited powers of pardon.
"This is a big day!" reflected Gramont, dismissing the sinister suggestion of this last thought. "A big day! What it will lead to, I don't know. Not the least of it is the financial end of it—the oil seepage! That little iridescent trickle of oil on the water means that money worries are over, both for me and for Lucie. I'm sorry that I am mixed up with Fell; I've enough money of my own to drill at least one good well, and one is all we'll need to bring in oil on that place. Well, we'll see what turns up! My first job is to make sure Hammond is safe, and to relieve his mind. I'll have to leave him in jail, I suppose"
Why did Fell want to "get something" on Hammond? To this there was no answer.
He drove into Houma to find the town abuzz with excitement, for the news of the sheriff's murder had stirred the place wildly. Proceeding straight to the court house, Gramont encountered Ben Chacherre as he was leaving the car.
"Hello, there!" he exclaimed. "Lost my road. Where's Hammond?"
Chacherre jerked his head toward the court house.
"In yonder. Say, are you going back to the city to-night?"
"Yes." Gramont regarded him. "Why?"
"Take me back, will you? I've missed the last up train, and if you're goin' back anyhow I won't have to hire a car. I can drive for you, and we'll make it in a couple of hours, before midnight sure."
"Hop in," said Gramont, nodding toward the car. "I'll be back as soon as I've had a word with Hammond. No danger of his getting lynched, I hope?"
"Not a chance," said the other, conclusively. "Six deputies up there now, and quite a bunch of ex-soldiers comin' to stand guard. You goin' to fight the case?"
"No," said Gramont. "Can't fight a sure thing, can you? I'm sorry for him, though."
Chacherre shrugged his shoulders and got into the car.
Gramont was much relieved to find that there was no danger of lynching, which had been his one fear. It was only with much persuasion that he got past the guard and into the court house, where he was received by a number of deputies in charge of the situation.
After conferring with them at some length, he was grudgingly taken to the cell occupied by Hammond. The latter received him with a wide grin, and gave no signs of the gruelling ordeal through which he had passed.
"Listen, old man," said Gramont, earnestly. "Will you play out the game hard to the end? I'll have to leave you here for two days. At the end of that time you'll be free."
The listening deputies sniffed, but Hammond merely grinned again and put a hand through the bars.
"Whatever you say, cap'n," he rejoined. "It sure looks bad"
"Don't you think it," said Gramont, cheerfully. "A lot of things have happened since I saw you last! I've got the real murderer right where I want him—but I can't have him arrested yet."
"It's a gang," said Hammond. "You watch out, cap'n, I heard 'em say somethin' about Memphis Izzy—remember the guy I told you about one day? Well, this is no piker's game! We're up against somethin' solid"
"I know it," and Gramont nodded. He turned to the deputies. "Gentlemen, you have my address if you wish to communicate with me. I shall be back here day after to-morrow—at least, before midnight of that day. I warn you, that if anything happens to this man in the meantime, you shall be held personally responsible. He is innocent."
"Looks like we'd better hold you, too," said one of the men. "You seem to know a lot!"
Gramont looked at him a moment.
"I know enough to tell you where to head in if you try any funny work here," he said, evenly. "Gentlemen, thank you for permitting the interview! I'll see you later."
The coroner's jury had already adjudged Hammond guilty of the murder. Returning to the car, Gramont had Ben Chacherre drive to a restaurant, where they got a bite to eat. Twenty minutes later they were on their way to New Orleans—and Gramont learned for the first time of Joseph Maillard's murder by the Midnight Masquer, and of the arrest of Bob Maillard for the crime.