by Andre Norton
“I don’t see why not.” Val guided the roadster into a side street. “Where’s that map of the city? We’ve got to see how to get back on to North Rampart from here.”
“I’ll look.” Ricky bent her head and so she did not see the two figures walking close together and so rapt in conversation that the one on the curb side brushed against a lamp-post.
Now just what, considered Val, was the slim young clerk from Mr. LeFleur’s office telling that red-faced man in the too-snug suit? He would have liked to have overheard a word or two. Perhaps he had become unduly suspicious but—he had his doubts.
“We turn left at the next corner,” said Ricky.
Val changed gears and drove on.
CHAPTER V
Their Tenant Discovers the Ralestones
Val stood on the small ornamental bridge pitching twigs down into the tiny garden brook. A moody frown creased his forehead. Under his feet lay a pair of pruning-shears he had borrowed from Sam with the intention of doing something about the jungle which surrounded Pirate’s Haven on three sides. That is, he had intended doing something, but now—
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“Lady,” he answered dismally without turning around, “you can have a bushel of them for less than that.”
“There is a neat expression which describes you beautifully at this moment,” commented Ricky as she came up beside her brother. “Have you ever heard of a ‘sour puss?”
“Several times. Oh, what’s the use!” Val kicked at a long twig. A warm wind brought in its hold the heavy scent of flowering bushes and trees. His shirt clung to his shoulders damply. It was hot even in the shade of the oaks. Rupert had gone to town to see LeFleur and hear the worst, so that Pirate’s Haven, save for themselves and Letty-Lou, was deserted.
“Come on,” Ricky’s arm slid through his, “let’s explore. Think of it—we’ve been here two whole days and we don’t know yet what our back yard looks like. Rupert says that our land runs clear down into the swamp. Let’s go see.”
“But I was going to—” He made a feeble beginning toward stooping for the pruning-shears.
“Val Ralestone, nobody can work outdoors in this heat, and you know it. Now come on. Bring those with you and we’ll leave them in the carriage house as we pass it. You know,” she continued as they went along the path, “the trouble with us is that we haven’t enough to do. What we need is a good old-fashioned job.”
“I thought we were going to be treasure hunters,” he protested laughingly.
“That’s merely a side-line. I’m talking about the real thing, something which will pay us cash money on Saturday nights or thereabout.”
“Well, we can both use a typewriter fairly satisfactorily,” Val offered. “But as you are the world’s worst speller and I am apt to become entangled in my commas, I can’t see us the shining lights of any efficient office. And while we’ve had expensive educations, we haven’t had practical ones. So what do we do now?”
“We sit down and think of one thing we’re really good at doing and then—Val, what is that?” She pointed dramatically at a mound of brick overgrown with vines. To their right and left stretched a row of tumble-down cabins, some with the roofs totally gone and the doors fallen from the hinges.
“The old plantation bake oven, I should say. This must be what’s left of the slave quarters. But where’s the carriage house?”
“It must be around the other side of the big house. Let’s try that direction anyway. But I think you’d better go first and do some chopping. This dress may be a poor thing but it’s my own and likely to be for some time to come. And short of doing a sort of snake act, I don’t see how we’re going to get through there.”
Val applied the shears ruthlessly to vine and bush alike, glad to find something to attack. The weight of his depression was still upon him. It was all very well for Ricky to talk so lightly of getting a job, but talk would never put butter on their bread—if they could afford bread.
“You certainly have done a fine job of ruining that!”
Val surpassed Ricky’s jump by a good inch. By the old bake oven stood a woman. A disreputable straw hat with a raveled brim was pulled down over her untidy honey-colored hair and she was rolling up the sleeves of a stained smock to bare round brown arms.
“It’s very plain to the eye that you’re no gardener,” she continued pleasantly. “And may I ask who you are and what you are doing here? This place is not open to trespassers, you know.”
“We did think we would explore,” answered Ricky meekly. “You see, this all belongs to my brother.” She swept her hand about in a wide circle.
“And just who is he?”
“Rupert Ralestone of Pirate’s Haven.”
“Good—!” Their questioner’s hand flew to cover her mouth, and at the comic look of dismay which appeared on her face, Ricky’s laugh sounded. A moment later the stranger joined in her mirth.
“And here I thought that I was being oh so helpful to an absent landlord,” she chuckled. “And this brother of yours is my landlord!”
“How—? Why, we didn’t know that.”
“I’ve rented your old overseer’s house and am using it for my studio. By the way, introductions are in order, I believe. I am Charity Biglow, from Boston as you might guess. Only beans and the Bunker Hill Monument are more Boston than the Biglows.”
“I’m Richanda Ralestone and this is my brother Valerius.”
Miss Biglow grinned cheerfully at Val. “That won’t do, you know; too romantic by far. I once read a sword-and-cloak romance in which the hero answered to the name of Valerius.”
“I haven’t a cloak nor a sword and my friends generally call me Val, so I hope I’m acceptable,” he grinned back at her.
“Indeed you are—both of you. And what are you doing now?”
“Trying to find a building known as the carriage house. I’m beginning to believe that its existence is wholly mythical,” Val replied.
“It’s over there, simply yards from the direction in which you’re heading. But suppose you come and visit me instead. Really, as part landlords, you should be looking into the condition of your rentable property.”
She turned briskly to the left down the lane on which were located the slave cabins and guided the Ralestones along a brick-paved path into a clearing where stood a small house of typical plantation style. The lower story was of stone with steep steps leading to a balcony which ran completely around the second floor of the house.
As they reached the balcony she pulled off her hat and threw it in the general direction of a cane settee. Without that wreck of a hat, with the curls of her long bob flowing free, she looked years younger.
“Make yourselves thoroughly at home. After all, this is your house, you know.”
“But we didn’t,” protested Ricky. “Mr. LeFleur didn’t tell us a thing about you.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know.” Charity Biglow was pinning back her curls. “I rented from Harrison.”
“Like the bathroom,” Val murmured and looked up to find them staring at him. “Oh, I just meant that you were another improvement that he had installed,” he stammered. Miss Biglow nodded in a satisfied sort of way. “Spoken like a true southern gentleman, though I don’t think in the old days that bathrooms would have crept into a compliment paid to a lady. Now I did have some lemonade—if you will excuse me,” and she was gone into the house.
Ricky smiled. “I like our tenant,” she said softly.
“You don’t expect me to disagree with that, do you?” her brother had just time enough to ask before their hostess appeared again complete with tray, glasses, and a filled pitcher which gave forth the refreshing sound of clinking ice. And after her paraded an old friend of theirs, tail proudly erect. “There’s our cat!” cried Ricky.
Val snapped his fingers. “Here, Satan.”
After staring round-eyed at both of them, the cat crossed casually to the settee and proceeded to sharpen his claws.
“Why, where did you meet Cinders?” asked Miss Biglow as she put down the tray.
“He came to us the first night we were at Pirate’s Haven,” explained Ricky. “I thought he was a ghost or something when he scratched at the back door.”
“So that’s where he was. He used to go over to the Harrisons’ for meals a lot. When I’m working I don’t keep very regular hours and he doesn’t like to be neglected. Come here, Cinders, and make your manners.”
Replying to her invitation with an insolent flirt of his tail, Cinders, whom Val continued obstinately to regard as “Satan,” disappeared around the corner of the balcony. Charity Biglow looked at them solemnly. “So obedient,” she observed; “just like a child.”
“Are you an artist, too?” Ricky asked as she put down her glass.
Miss Biglow’s face wrinkled into a grimace. “My critics say not. I manage to provide daily bread and sometimes a slice of cake by doing illustrations for action stories. And then once in a while I labor for the good of my soul and try to produce something my more charitable friends advise me to send to a show.”
“May—may we see some of them—the pictures, I mean?” inquired Ricky timidly.
“If you can bear it. I use the side balcony for a workshop in this kind of weather. I’m working on a picture now, something more ambitious than I usually attempt in heat of this sort. But my model didn’t show up this morning so I’m at a loose end.”
She led them around the corner where Satan had disappeared and pointed to a table with a sketching board at one end, several canvases leaning face against the house, and an easel covered with a clean strip of linen. “My workshop. A trifle untidy, but then I am an untidy person. I’m expecting an order so I’m just whiling away my time working on an idea of my own until it comes.”
Ricky touched the strip of covering across the canvas on the easel. “May I?” she asked.
“Yes. It might be a help, getting some other person’s reaction to the thing. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I started but I don’t think it’s turning out to be what I planned.”
Ricky lifted off the cover. Val stared at the canvas.
“But that is he!” he exclaimed.
Charity Biglow turned to the boy. “And what do you mean—”
“That’s the boy I found in the garden, Ricky!”
“Is it?” She stared, fascinated, at the lean brown face, the untidy black hair, the bitter mouth, which their hostess had so skilfully caught in her unfinished drawing.
“So you’ve met Jeems.” Miss Biglow looked at Val thoughtfully. “And what did you think of him?”
“It’s rather—what did he think of me. He seemed to hate me. I don’t know why. All I ever said to him was ‘Hello.’”
“Jeems is a queer person—”
“Sam says that he is none too honest,” observed Ricky, her attention still held by the picture.
Miss Biglow shook her head. “There is a sort of feud between the swamp people and the farmers around here. And neither side is wholly to be believed in their estimation of the other. Jeems isn’t dishonest, and neither are a great many of the muskrat hunters. In the early days all kinds of outlaws and wanted men fled into the swamps and lived there with the hunters. One or two desperate men gave the whole of the swamp people a bad name and it has stuck. They are a strange folk back there in the fur country.
“Some are Cajuns, descendants of exiles from Evangeline’s country; some are Creoles who took to that way of life after the Civil War ruined them. There’s many a barefooted boy or girl of the swamps who bears a name that was once honored at the Court of France or Spain. And there are Americans of the old frontier stock who came down river with Andrew Jackson’s army from the wilds of Tennessee and the Indian country. It’s a strange mixture, and once in a while you find a person like Jeems. He speaks the uneducated jargon of his people but he reads and writes French and English perfectly. He has studied under Père Armand until he has a classical education such as was popular for Creole boys of good family some fifty years ago. Père Armand is an old man now, but he is as good an instructor as he is a priest.
“Jeems wants to make something of himself. He argues logically that the swamp has undeveloped resources which might save its inhabitants from the grinding poverty which is slowly destroying them. And it is Jeems’ hope that he can discover some of the swamp secrets when he is fitted by training to do so.”
“Who is he?” Val asked. “Is Jeems his first or last name?”
“His last. I have never heard his given name. He is very reticent about his past, though I do know that he is an orphan. But he is of Creole descent and he does have breeding as well as ambition. Unfortunately he had quite an unpleasant experience with a boy who was visiting the Harrisons last summer. The visitor accused Jeems of taking a fine rifle which was later discovered right where the boy had left it in his own canoe. Jeems has a certain pride and he was turned against all the plantation people. His attitude is unfortunate because he longs so for a different sort of life and yet has no contact with young people except those of the swamp. I think he is beginning to trust me, for he will come in the mornings to pose for my picture of the swamp hunter. Do you know,” she hesitated, “I think that you would find a real friend in Jeems if you could overcome his hatred of plantation people. You would gain as much as he from such an association. He can tell you things about the swamp—stories which go back to the old pirate days. Perhaps—”
Ricky looked up from the uncompleted picture. “I think he’d be nice to know. But why does he look so—so sort of starved?”
“Probably because the bill of fare in a swamp cabin is not as varied as it might be,” answered Charity Biglow. “But you can’t offer him anything, of course. I don’t even know where he lives. And now, tell me about yourselves. Are you planning to live here?”
Her frank interest seemed perfectly natural. One simply couldn’t resent Charity Biglow.
“Well,” Ricky laughed ruefully, “we can’t very well live anywhere else. I think Rupert still has ten dollars—”
“After his expedition this morning, I would have my doubts of that,” Val cut in. “You see, Miss Biglow, we are back to the soil now.”
“Charity is the name,” she corrected him. “So you’re down—”
“But not out!” Ricky hastened to assure her. “But we might be that.” And then and there she told their tenant of the rival claimant.
Charity listened closely, absent-mindedly sucking the wooden shaft of one of her brushes. When Ricky had done, she nodded.
“Nice mess you’ve dropped into. But I think that your lawyer has the right idea. This is a neat piece of blackmail and your claimant will disappear into thin air if you have a few concrete facts to face him down with. Are you sure you’ve looked through all the family papers? No hiding-places or safes—”
“One,” said Ricky calmly, “but we don’t know where that is. In the Civil War days, after General Butler took over New Orleans, some family possessions were hidden somewhere in the Long Hall, but we don’t know where. The secret was lost when Richard Ralestone was shot by Yankee raiders.”
“Is he the ghost?” asked Charity.
“No. You ask that as if you know something,” Val observed.
“Nothing but talk. There have been lights seen, white ones. And a while back my maid Rose left because she saw something in the garden one night.”
“Jeems, probably,” the boy commented. “He seems to like the place.”
“No, not Jeems. He was sitting right on that railing when we both heard Rose scream.”
“Val, the handkerchief!” Ricky’s hand arose to her buttoned pocket. “Then there was someone inside the house that night. But why—unless they were after the treasure!”
“The quickest way to find out,” her brother got up from the e
dge of the table where he had perched, “is to go and do a little probing of our own. We have a good two hours until lunch. Will you join us?” he asked Charity.
“You tempt me, but I’ve got to get in as much work on this as I can,” she indicated her canvas. “And Jeems may show up even if it is late. So my conscience says ‘No.’ Unfortunately I do possess a regular rock-ribbed New England conscience.”
“Rupert will be back by four,” said Ricky. “Will your conscience let you come over for coffee with us then? You see how quickly we have adopted the native customs—coffee at four.”
“Ricky,” her brother explained, “desires to become that figure of Romance—the southern belle.”
“Then we must do what we can to help her create the proper atmosphere,” urged Charity solemnly.
“Even to the victoria and the coach-hound?” Val demanded in dismay.
“Well, perhaps not that far,” she laughed. “Anyway, I accept your kind invitation with pleasure. I shall be there at four—if I can find a presentable dress. Now clear out, you two, and see what secrets of the past you can uncover before lunch time.”
But their explorations resulted in nothing except slightly frayed tempers. Val had sounded what paneling there was, but as he had no idea what a hollow panel should sound like if rapped, he inwardly decided that he was not exactly fitted for such investigations.
Ricky broke two fingernails pressing the carving about the fireplace and sat down on the couch to state in no uncertain terms what she thought of the house, and of their ancestor who had been so misguided as to get himself shot after hiding the stuff. She ended with a brilliant but short description of Val’s present habits and vices—which she added because he happened to have said meekly enough that if she would only trim her nails to a reasonable length, such accidents could be avoided.
When she had done, her brother sat back on the lowest step of the stairs and wiped his hands on his handkerchief.