The Mardi Gras Mystery by Henry Bedford-Jones (classic novels .txt) 📕

FRONTISPIECE

BY

JOHN NEWTON HOWITT

garden city, n. y., and toronto

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1921

COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

CHAPTER PAGE

Carnival

JACHIN FELL pushed aside the glass curtains between the voluminous over-draperies in the windows of the Chess and Checkers Club, and gazed out upon the riotous streets of New Orleans. Half an hour he had been waiting here in the lounge room for Dr. Cyril Ansley, a middle-aged bachelor who had practised in Opelousas for twenty years, and who had come to the city for the Mardi Gras festivities. Another man might have seemed irritated by the wait, but Jachin Fell was quite unruffled.

He had much the air of a clerk. His features were thin and unremarkable; his pale eyes constantly wore an expression of wondering aloofness, as though he saw around him much that he vainly tried to understand. In his entire manner was a shy reticence. He was no clerk, however, this was evident from his attire. He was garbed from head to foot in soberly blending shades of gray whose richness was notable only at close view. One fancied him a very precise sort of man, an old maid of the wrong sex.

Doctor Ansley, an Inverness flung over his evening clothes, entered the lounge room, and Fell turned to him with a dry, toneless chuckle.

"You're the limit! Did you forget we were going to the Maillards' to-night?"

Ansley appeared vexed and irritated. "Confound it, Fell!" he exclaimed. "I've been all over town looking for El Reys. Caught in a crowd—no El Reys yet!"

Again Fell uttered his toneless chuckle. His voice was absolutely level, unmarked by any change of inflection.

"My dear fellow, there are only three places in the city that can afford to carry El Reys in these parlous times! This club, however, happens to be one of the three. Here, sit down and forget your troubles over a real smoke! We need not leave for fifteen minutes yet, at least."

Doctor Ansley laid aside his cape, stick, and hat, and dropped into one of the comfortable big chairs. He accepted the proffered cigar with a sigh. Across his knees he laid an evening paper, whose flaring headlines proclaimed an extra.

"I suppose you've been gadding all around the town ever since the Revellers opened the season?" he inquired.

"Hardly," said Fell with his shy air. "I'm growing a bit stiff with age, as Eliza said when she crossed the ice. I don't gad much."

"You intend to mask for the Maillards'?" Ansley cast his eye over the gray business attire of the little man.

"I never mask." Jachin Fell shook his head. "I'll get a domino and go as I am. Excuse me—I'll order a domino now, and also provide a few more El Reys for the evening. Back in a moment."

Doctor Ansley, who was himself a non-resident member of the club and socially prominent when he could grant himself leisure for society, followed the slight figure of the other man with speculative eyes. Well as he knew Jachin Fell, he invariably found the man a source of puzzled speculation.

During many years Jachin Fell had been a member of the most exclusive New Orleans clubs. He was even received in the inner circles of Creole society, which in itself was evidence supreme as to his position. At this particular club he was famed as a wizard master of chess. He never entered a tournament, yet he consistently defeated the champions in private matches—defeated them with a bewildering ease, a shy and apologetic ease, an ease which left the beholders incredulous and aghast.

With all this, Jachin Fell was very much of a mystery, even among his closest friends. Very little was known of him; he was inconspicuous to a degree, and it was usually assumed that he was something of a recluse, the result of a thwarted love affair in his youth. He was a lawyer, and certainly maintained offices in the Maison Blanche building, but he never appeared in the courts and no case of his pleading was known.

It was said that he lived in the rebuilt casa of some old Spanish grandee in the Vieux Carre, and that this residence of his was a veritable treasure-trove of historic and beautiful things. This was mere rumour, adding a spice of romance to the general mystery. Ansley knew him as well as did most men, and Ansley knew of a few who could boast of having been a guest in Jachin Fell's home. There was a mother, an invalid of whom Fell sometimes spoke and to whom he appeared to devote himself. The family, an old one in the city, promised to die out with Jachin Fell.

Ansley puffed at his cigar and considered these things. Outside, in the New Orleans streets, was rocketing the mad mirth of carnival. The week preceding Mardi Gras was at its close. Since the beginning of the new year the festival had been celebrated in a steadily climaxing series of balls and entertainments, largely by the older families who kept to the old customs, and to a smaller extent by society at large. Now the final week was at hand, or rather the final three days—the period of the great balls, the period when tourists were flooding into town; for tourists, the whole time of Mardi Gras was comprised within these three days. Despite agonized predictions, prohibition had not adversely affected Mardi Gras or the gaiety of its celebration.

Now, as ever, was Mardi Gras symbolized by masques. In New Orleans the masquerade was not the pale and pitiful frolic of colder climes, where the occasion is but one for display of jewels and costumes, and where actual concealment of identity is a farce. Here in New Orleans were jewels and costumes in a profusion of splendour; but here was preserved the underlying idea of the masque itself—that in concealment of identity lay the life of the thing! Masquers swept the streets gaily; if harlequin husband flirted with domino wife—why, so much the merrier! There was little harm in the Latin masque, and great mirth.

When Jachin Fell returned and lighted his cigar he sank into one of the luxurious chairs beside Ansley and indicated the newspaper lying across the latter's knee, its flaring headlines standing out blackly.

"What's that about the Midnight Masquer? He's not appeared again?"

"What?" Ansley glanced at him in surprise. "You've not heard?"

Fell shook his head. "I seldom read the papers."

"Good heavens, man! He showed up last night at the Lapeyrouse dance, two minutes before midnight, as usual! A detective had been engaged, but was afterward found locked in a closet, bound with his own handcuffs. The Masquer wore his usual costume—and went through the party famously, stripping everyone in sight. Then he backed through the doors and vanished. How he got in they can't imagine; where he went they can't imagine, unless it was by airplane. He simply appeared, then vanished!"

Fell settled deeper into his chair, pointed his cigar at the ceiling, and sighed.

"Ah, most interesting! The loot was valued at about a hundred thousand?"

"I thought you said you'd not heard of it?" demanded Ansley.

Fell laughed softly and shyly. "I didn't. I merely hazarded a guess."

"Wizard!" The doctor laughed in unison. "Yes, about that amount. Exaggerated, of course; still, there were jewels of great value——"

"The Masquer is a piker," observed Fell, in his toneless voice.

"Eh? A piker—when he can make a hundred-thousand-dollar haul?"

"Don't dream that those figures represent value, Doctor. They don't! All the loot the Masquer has taken since he began work is worth little to him. Jewels are hard to sell. This game of banditry is romantic, but it's out of date these days. Of course, the crook has obtained a bit of money, but not enough to be worth the risk."

"Yet he has got quite a bit," returned Ansley, thoughtfully. "All the men have money, naturally; we don't want to find ourselves bare at some gay carnival moment! I'll warrant you've a hundred or so in your pocket right now!"

"Not I," rejoined Fell, calmly. "One ten-dollar bill. Also I left my watch at home. And I'm not dressed; I don't care to lose my pearl studs."

"Eh?" Ansley frowned. "What do you mean?"

Jachin Fell took a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to the physician.

"I met Maillard at the bank this morning. He called me into his office and handed me this—he had just received it in the mail."

Doctor Ansley opened the folded paper; an exclamation broke from him as he read the note, which was addressed to their host of the evening.

Joseph Maillard, President,

Exeter National Bank, City.

I thank you for the masque you are giving to-night. I shall be present. Please see that Mrs. M. wears her diamonds—I need them.

The Midnight Masquer.

Ansley glanced up. "What's this—some hoax? Some carnival jest?"

"Maillard pretended to think so." Fell shrugged his shoulders as he repocketed the note. "But he was nervous. He was afraid of being laughed at, and wouldn't go to the police. But he'll have a brace of detectives inside the house to-night, and others outside."

Ever since the first ball of the year by the Twelfth Night Club this Midnight Masquer, as he was termed, had held New Orleans gripped in terror, fascination, and vivid interest. Until a month previous to this week of Mardi Gras he had operated rarely; he had robbed with a stark