CHAPTER VI
Chacherre
AT TEN o'clock that Monday morning Gramont's car approached Canal Street, and halted a block distant. For any car to gain Canal, much less to follow it, was impossible. From curb to curb the wide avenue was thronged with carnival folk, who would hold their own until Proteus came ashore to manage his own parade and his own section of the festivities.
Gramont left the car, and turned to speak with Hammond.
"I've made out at least two fingerprints on the luggage compartment," he said, quietly. "Drive around to police headquarters and enter a complaint in my name to a robbery of the compartment; say that the thief got away with some valuable packages I had been about to mail. They have a process of transferring fingerprints such as these; get it done. Perhaps they can identify the thief, for it must have been some clever picklock to get into the compartment without leaving a scratch. Take your time about it and come home when you've finished."
Hammond listened stolidly. "If it was the bulls done it, cap'n, going to them will get us pinched sure"
"If they had done it," said Gramont, "we'd have been pinched long before this! It was someone sent by that devil Jachin Fell, and I'll land him if I can!"
"Then Fell will land us if he's got the stuff!"
"Let him! How can he prove anything, unless he had brought the police to open up that compartment? Get along with you!"
Hammond grinned, saluted, and drove away.
Slowly Gramont edged his way through the eddying crowds to Canal Street, and presently gained the imposing portals of the Exeter National Bank. Entering the building, he sent his card to the private office of the president; a moment later he was ushered in, and was closeted with Joseph Maillard.
The interior of the Exeter National reflected the stern personality that ruled it. The bank was dark, old fashioned, conservative, guarded with much effrontery of iron grills and bars against the evil doer.
The window men greeted their customers with infrequent smiles, with caution and reserve so great that it was positively chilly. Suspicion seemed in the air. The bank's reputation for guarding the sanctity of wealth seemed to rest heavily upon each pair of bowed shoulders. Even the stenographers were unhandsome women, weary-eyed, drearily efficient, and obviously respectable.
As befitted so old and conservative a New Orleans institution, much of its business was transacted in French.
The business customers of this bank found their affairs handled coldly, efficiently, with an inhuman precision that was admirable. It was good for business, and they liked it. There were no mistakes.
People who were accustomed to dealing with bankers of cordial smile and courteous word, people who liked to walk into a bank and to be met with a personal greeting, did not come here, nor were they wanted here. The Exeter National was a place for business, not for courtesy. It was absolutely precise, cold, inhuman, and spelled business from the ground up. Its oldest customer could not buy a draft on Paris or London or other of the bank's correspondents without paying the required fee. The wealthiest depositor could not expect to overdraw his checking account one dollar without being required to settle up before the next day was gone. Loans were made hesitatingly, grudgingly, and of necessity, always on security and never on character.
Such was the Exeter National. Its character was reflected in the cold faces at its windows, and the chance customers who entered its sacred portals were duly cowed and put in their proper place. Most of them were, that is. Occasionally some intrepid soul appeared who seemed impervious to the gloomy chill, who seemed even to resent it. One of these persons was now standing in the lobby and staring around with a cool impudence which drew unfavourable glances from the clerks.
He was a decently dressed fellow, obviously no customer of this sacrosanct place, obviously a stranger to its interior. Beneath a rakishly cocked soft hat beamed a countenance that bore a look of self-assured impertinent deviltry. After one look at that countenance the assistant cashier crooked a hasty finger at the floor guard, who nodded and walked over to the intruder with a polite query.
"Can I help you, sir?"
The intruder turned, favoured the guard with a cool stare, then broke into a laugh and a flood of Creole dialect.
"Why, if it isn't old Lacroix from Carencro! And look at the brass buttons—diable! You must own this place, hein? la tchè chatte poussé avec temps—the cat's tail grows in time, I see! You remember me?"
"Ben Chacherre!" exclaimed the guard, losing his dignity for an instant. "Why—you vaurien, you! You who disappeared from the parish and became a vagrant"
"So you turn up your sanctified nose at Ben Chacherre, do you?" exclaimed that person jauntily. He thrust his hat a bit farther over one ear, and proceeded to snap his fingers under the nose of Lacroix.
"A vaurien, am I? Old peacock! Lead me to the man who cashes checks, lackey, brass buttons that you are! Come, obey me, or I'll have you thrown into the street!"
"You—you wish to cash a check?" The guard was overcome by confusion, for the loud tones of Chacherre penetrated the entire institution. "But you are not known here"
"Bah, insolent one! Macaque dan calebasse—monkey in the calabash that you are! Do you not know me?"
"Heaven preserve me! I will not answer for your accursed checks."
"Go to the devil, then," snapped Chacherre, and turned away.
His roving eyes had already found the correct window by means of the other persons seeking it, and now he stepped into the small queue that had formed. When it came his turn, he slid his check across the marble slab, tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and impudently stared into the questioning, coldly repellent eyes of the teller.
"Well?" he exclaimed, as the teller examined the check. "Do you wish to eat it, that you sniff so hard?"
The teller gave him a glance. "This is for a thousand dollars"
"Can I not read?" said Chacherre, with an impudent gesture. "Am I an ignorant 'Cajun? Have I not eyes in my head? If you wish to start an argument, say that the check is for a hundred dollars. Then, by heaven, I will argue something with you!"
"You are Ben Chacherre, eh? Does any one here know you?"
Chacherre exploded in a violent oath. "Dolt that you are, do I have to be known when the check is endorsed under my signature? Who taught you business, monkey?"
"True," answered the teller, sulkily. "Yet the amount"
"Oh, bah!" Chacherre snapped his fingers. "Go and telephone Jachin Fell, you old woman! Go and tell him you do not know his signature—well, who are you looking at? Am I a telephone, then? You are not hired to look but to act! Get about it."
The enraged and scandalized teller beckoned a confrere. Jachin Fell was telephoned. Presumably his response was reassuring, for Chacherre was presently handed a thousand dollars in small bills, as he requested. He insisted upon counting over the money at the window with insolent assiduity, flung a final compliment at the teller, and swaggered across the lobby. He was still standing by the entrance when Henry Gramont left the private office of the president and passed him by without a look.
Gramont was smiling to himself as he left the bank, and Ben Chacherre was whistling gaily as he also left and plunged into the whirling vortex of the carnival crowds.
Toward noon Gramont arrived afoot at his pension. Finding the rooms empty, he went on and passed through the garden. Behind the garage, in the alley, he discovered Hammond busily at work cleaning and polishing the engine of the car.
"Hello!" he exclaimed, cheerily. "What luck?"
"Pretty good, cap'n." Hammond glanced up, then paused.
A stranger was strolling toward them along the alleyway, a jaunty individual who was gaily whistling and who seemed entirely carefree and happy. He appeared to have no interest whatever in them, and Hammond concluded that he was innocuous.
"They got them prints fine, cap'n. What's more, they think they've located the fellow that made 'em."
"Ah, good work!" exclaimed Gramont. "Some criminal?"
Hammond frowned. The stranger had come to a halt a few feet distant, flung them a jerky, careless nod, and was beginning to roll a cigarette. He surveyed the car with a knowing and appreciative eye. Hammond turned his back on the man disdainfully.
"Yep—a sneak thief they'd pinched a couple of years back; didn't know where he was, but the prints seemed to fit him. They'll come up and look things over sometime to-day, then go after him and land him."
Gramont gave the stranger a glance, but the other was still surveying the car with evident admiration. If he heard their words he gave them no attention.
"Who was the man, then?" asked Gramont.
"A guy with a queer name—Ben Chacherre." Hammond pronounced it as he deemed correct—as the name was spelled. "Only they didn't call him that. Here, I wrote it down."
He fished in his pocket and produced a paper. Gramont glanced at it and laughed.
"Oh, Chacherre!" He gave the name the Creole pronunciation.
"Yep, Sasherry. I expect they'll come any time now—said two bulls would drop in."
"All right." Gramont nodded and turned away, with another glance at the stranger. "I'll not want the car to-day nor to-night that I know of. I'm not going to the Proteus ball. So your time's your own until to-morrow; make the most of it!"
He disappeared, and Hammond returned to his work. Then he straightened up, for the jaunty stranger was bearing down upon him with evident intent to speak.
"Some car you got there, brother!" Ben Chacherre, who had overheard most of the foregoing conversation, lighted his cigarette and grinned familiarly. "Some car, eh?"
"She's a boat, all right," conceded Hammond, grudgingly. He did not like the other's looks, although praise of the car was sweet unto his soul. "She sure steps some."
"Yes. All she needs," drawled Chacherre, "is some good tires, a new coat of paint, a good steel chassis, and a new engine"
"Huh?" snorted Hammond. "Say, you 'bo, who sold you chips in this game? Move along!"
Ben grinned anew and rested himself against a near-by telephone pole.
"Free country, ain't it?" he inquired, lazily. "Or have you invested your winnings and bought this here alley?"
Hammond reddened with anger and took a step forward. The next words of Chacherre, however, jerked him sharply into self-control.
"Seen anything of an aviator's helmet around here?"
"Huh?" The chauffeur glared at his tormentor, yet with a sudden sick feeling inside his bosom. He suddenly realized that the man's eyes were meeting his squarely, with a bold and insolent directness. "Who you kiddin' now?"
"Nobody. I was asking a question, that's all." Ben Chacherre flung away his cigarette, untangled himself from the telephone pole, and moved away. "Only," he flung over his shoulder, "I was flyin' along here last night in my airplane, and I lost my helmet overboard. Thought maybe you'd seen it. So long, brother!"
Hammond stood staring after the swaggering figure; for once he was speechless. The jaunty words had sent terror thrilling into him. He started impulsively to pursue that impudent accoster—then he checked himself. Had the man guessed something? Had the man known something? Or had those words been only a bit of meaningless impertinence—a chance shaft which had accidentally flown home?
The last conjecture impressed itself on Hammond as being the truth, and his momentary fright died out. He concluded that the incident was not worth mentioning to Gramont, who surely had troubles enough of his own at this juncture. So he held his peace about it.
As for Ben Chacherre, he sauntered from the alley, a careless whistle upon his lips. Once out of Hammond's sight, however, he quickened his pace. Turning into a side street, he directed his step toward that part of the old quarter which, in the days before prohibition, had been given over to low cabarets and dives of various sorts. Most of these places were now boarded up, and presumably abandoned. Coming to one of them, which appeared more dirty and desolate than the rest, Chacherre opened a side door and vanished.
He entered what had once been the Red Cat cabaret. At a table in the half-darkened main room sat two men. A slovenly waiter pored over a newspaper at another table in a far corner. The two in the centre nodded to Chacherre. One of them, who was the proprietor, jerked his chin in an invitation to join them.
A man famous in the underworld circles, a man whose renown rested on curious feats and facts, this proprietor; few crooks in the country had not heard the name of Memphis Izzy Gumberts. He was a grizzled old bear now; but in times past he had been the head of a far-flung organization which, on each pay day, covered every army post in the country and diverted into its own pockets about two thirds of Uncle Sam's payroll—a feat still related in criminal circles as the ne plus ultra of success. Those palmy days were gone, but Memphis Izzy, who had never been "mugged" in any gallery, sat in his deserted cabaret and still did not lack for power and influence.
The man at his side was apparently not anxious to linger, for he rose and made his farewells as Chacherre approached.
"We have about eighteen cars left," he said to Gumberts. "Charley the Goog can attend to them, and the place is safe enough. They're up to you. I'm drifting back to Chi."
"Drift along," and Gumberts nodded, a leer in his eyes. His face was broad, heavy-jowled, filled with a keen and forceful craft. "It's a cinch that nobody in this state is goin' to interfere with us. About them cars from Texas—any news?"
"I've sent orders to bring 'em in next week."
Gumberts nodded again, and the man departed. Into the chair which he had vacated dropped Ben Chacherre, and took from his pocket the money which he had obtained at the bank. He laid it on the table before Gumberts.
"There you are," he said. "Amounts you want and all. The boss says to gimme a receipt."
"Wouldn't trust you, eh?" jeered Gumberts. He took out pencil and paper, scrawled a word or two, and shoved the paper at Chacherre. Then he reached down to a small satchel which lay open on the floor beside his chair. "Why wouldn't the boss leave the money come out of the takin's, hey?"
"Wanted to keep separate accounts," said Chacherre.
Gumberts nodded and produced two large sealed envelopes, which he pushed across the table.
"There's rakeoff for week before last," he announced. "Last week will be the big business, judgin' from early reports."
Chacherre pocketed the envelopes, lighted a cigarette, and leaned forward.
"Say, Izzy! You got to send a new man down to the Bayou Latouche right away. Lafarge was there, you know; a nigger shot him yesterday. The nigger threatened to squeal unless he got his money back—Lafarge was a fool and didn't know how to handle him. The lottery's goin' to get a bad name around there"
Gumberts snapped his fingers. "Let it!" he said, calmly. "The big money from all that section is Chinese and Filipino, my friend. The niggers don't matter."
"Well, the boss says to shoot a new man down there. Also, he says, you'd better watch out about spreadin' the lottery into Texas and Alabama, account of the government rules."
The heavy features of Gumberts closed in a scowl.
"You tell your boss," he said, "that when it comes to steerin' clear of federal men, I don't want no instructions from nobody! We got every man in this state spotted. Every one that can be fixed is fixed—and that goes for the legislators and politicians clear up the line! Tell your boss to handle the local gov'ment as well as I handle other things, and he'll do all that's necessary. What he'd ought to attend to, for one thing, is this here guy who calls himself the Midnight Masquer. I've told him before that this guy was playing hell with my system! This Masquer gets no protection, see? The quicker Fell goes after him, the better for all concerned"
Chacherre laughed, not without a swagger.
"We've attended to all that, Izzy—we've dropped on him and settled him! The guy was doin' it for a carnival joke, that's all. His loot is all goin' back to the owners to-day. It needn't worry you, anyhow! There was nothin' much to it—jewellery that couldn't be disposed of, for the most part. We couldn't take chances on that sort o' junk."
"I should say not." Gumbert regarded him with a scowl. "You've got the stuff?"
"The boss has. Look here, Izzy, I want you to use a little influence with headquarters on this deal—the boss doesn't want to show his hand there," and leaning forward, Ben Chacherre spoke in a low tone. Then, Gumberts heard him out, chuckled, and nodded assent.
At two that afternoon Henry Gramont, who was writing letters in total disregard of the carnival parade downtown, was summoned to the telephone. He was greeted by a voice which he did not recognize, but which announced itself promptly.
"This is Mr. Gramont? Police headquarters speakin'. You laid a charge this morning against a fellow named Chacherre?"
"Yes," answered Gramont.
"Must ha' been some mistake, then," came the response. "We thought the prints fitted, but found later they didn't. We looked up the Chacherre guy and found he was workin' steady and strictly O. K. What's more to the point, he proved up a dead sure alibi for the other night."
"Oh!" said Gramont. "Then there's nothing to be done?"
"Not yet. We're workin' on it, and maybe we'll have some news later. Good-bye."
Gramont hung up the receiver, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. But, after a minute, he laughed softly—a trace of anger in the laugh.
"Ah!" he murmured. "I congratulate you on your efficiency, Mr. Fell! But now wait a little—and we'll meet again. I think I'm getting somewhere at last, and I'll have a surprise for you one of these days!"