INTO THE SWAMP

In spite of the fact that they received but lukewarm encouragement from Charity, both Holmes and Creighton lingered on in New Orleans. Mr. Creighton made several attempts to get in touch with Jeems, whom he seemed to suspect of concealing vast literary treasures. And he spent one hot morning going through the trunk of papers which the Ralestones had found in the storage-room. Ricky commented upon the fact that being a publisher’s scout was almost like being an antique buyer, Holmes was a perfect foil for his laboring friend. He lounged away his days draped across the settee on Charity’s gallery or sitting down on the bayou levee—after she had chased him away—pitching pebbles into the water. He told all of them that it was his vacation, the first one he had had in five years, and that he was going to make the most of it. Companioned by Creighton, he usually enlarged the family circle in the evenings. And the tales he could tell about the far comers of the earth were as wildly romantic as Rupert’s—though he did assure his listeners that even Tibet was very tame and well behaved nowadays.

Charity had finished the first illustration and had started another. This time. Ricky and Val appeared polished and combed as if they had just stepped out of a ball-room of a governor’s palace—which they had, according to the story.

It was during her second morning’s work upon this that she threw down her brush with a snort of disgust.

“It’s no use, “she told her models, “I simply can’t work on this now. All I can see is that scene where the hero’s mulatto half-brother watches the ball from the underbrush. I’ve got to do that one first.”

“Why don’t you then?” Ricky stretched to relieve cramped muscles.

“I would if I could get Jeems. He’s my model for the brother. He’s enough like you, Val, for the resemblance, and his darker tan is just right for color. But he won’t come back while Creighton’s here. I could wring that man’s neck!”

“But Creighton left for Milneburg this morning,” Val reminded her. “Rupert told him about the old voodoo rites which used to be celebrated there on June 24^th, St. John’s Eve, and he wanted to see if there were any records—”

“Yes. But Jeems doesn’t know he’s gone. If we could only get in touch with him—Jeems, I mean.”

“Miss ‘Chanda!”

Sam Two, as they had come to call Sam’s eldest son and heir, was standing on the lowest step of the terrace, holding a small covered basket in his hands.

“Yes?”

“Letty-Lou say this am fo’ yo’. Miss ‘Chanda.”

“For me?” Ricky looked at the offering in surprise. “But what in the world—Bring it here, Sam.”

“Yas’m.”

He laid the basket in Ricky’s outstretched hands.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She turned it around. “It seems to be woven of some awfully fine grass—”

“That’s swamp work.” Charity was peering over Ricky’s shoulder. “Open it.”

Inside on a nest of raw wild cotton lay a bracelet of polished wood carved with an odd design of curling lines which reminded Val of Spanish moss. And with the circlet was a small purse of scaled hide.

“Swamp oak and baby alligator,” burst out Charity. “Aren’t they beauties?”

“But who—“ began Ricky.

Val picked up a scrap of paper which had fluttered to the floor. It was cheap stuff, ruled with faint blue lines, but the writing was bold and clear: “Miss Richanda Ralestone.”

“It’s yours all right.” He handed her the paper.

“I know.” She tucked the note away with the gifts. “It was Jeems.”

“Jeems? But why?” her brother protested.

“Well, yesterday when I was down by the levee he was coming in and I knew that Mr. Creighton was here and I told him. So,” she colored faintly, “then he took me across the bayou and I got some of those big swamp lilies that I’ve always wanted. And we had a long talk. Val, Jeems knows the most wonderful things about the swamps. Do you know that they still have voodoo meetings sometimes—way back in there, “.she swept her hand southward. “And the fur trappers live on houseboats, renting their hunting rights. But Jeems owns his own land. Now some northerners are prospecting for oil. They have a queer sort of .car which can travel either on land or water. And Pere Armand has church records that date back to the middle of the eighteenth century. And—”

“So that’s where you were from four until almost six,” Val laughed. “I don’t know that I approve of this riotous living. Will Jeems take me to pick the lilies too?”

“Maybe. He wanted to know why you always moved so carefully. And I told him about the accident. Then he said the oddest thing—“ She was staring past Val at the oaks.

“He said that to fly was worth being smashed up for and that he envied you.”

“Then he’s a fool!” her brother said promptly. “Nothing is worth—“ Val stopped abruptly. Five months before he had made a bargain with himself; he was not going to break it now.

“Do you know,” Ricky said to Charity, “if you really need Jeems this morning, I think I can get him for you. He told me yesterday how to find his cabin.

“But why—“ The objection came almost at once from Charity. Val thought she was more than a little surprised that Jeems, who had steadfastly refused to give her the same information, had supplied it so readily to Ricky whom he hardly knew at all.

“I don’t know,” answered Ricky frankly. “He was rather queer about it. Kept saying that the time might come when I would need help, and things like that.”

“Charity,” Val was putting her brushes straight, “I learned long ago that nothing can be kept from Ricky. Sooner or later out spills out his secrets.”

“Except Rupert!” Ricky aired her old grievance.

“Perhaps Rupert,” her brother agreed.

“Anyway, I do know where Jeems lives. Do you want me to get him for you. Charity?”

“Certainly not, child! Do you think mat I’d let you go into the swamp? Why, even men who know something of woodcraft think twice before attempting such a trip without a guide. Of course you’re not going! I think,” she put her paint-stained hand to her head, “that I’m going to have one of my sick headaches. I’ll have to go home and lie down for an hour or two.”

“I’m sorry.” Ricky’s sympathy was quick and warm. “Is there anything I can do?”

Charity shook her head with a rueful smile. “Time is the only medicine for one of these. I’ll see you later.”

“Just the same,” Ricky stood looking after her, “I’d like to know just what is going on in the swamp right now.”

“Why?” Val asked lightly.

“Because—well, just because,” was her provoking answer. “Jeems was so odd yesterday. He talked as if—as if there were some threat to us or him. I wonder if there is something wrong.” She frowned.

“Of course not!” her brother made prompt answer.

“He’s merely gone off on one of those mysterious trips of his.”

“Just the same, what if there were something wrong? We might go and see.”

“Nonsense!” Val snapped. “You heard what Charity said about going into the swamp alone. And there is nothing to worry about anyway. Come on, let’s change. And then I have something to show you.”

“What?” she demanded.

“Wait and see.” His ruse had succeeded. She was no longer looking swampward with that gleam of purpose in her eye.

“Come on then,” she said, prodding him into action.

Val changed slowly. If one didn’t care about mucking around in the garden, as Ricky seemed to delight in doing, there was so little in the way of occupation. He thought of the days as they spread before him. A little riding, a great amount of casual reading and—what else? Was the South “getting” him as the tropics are supposed to “get” the Northerners?

That unlucky meeting with a mountaintop had effectively despoiled him of his one ambition. Soldiers with game legs are not wanted. He couldn’t paint like Charity, he couldn’t spin yams like Rupert, he possessed a mind too inaccurate to cope with the intricacies of any science.

And as a business man he would probably be a good street cleaner.

What was left? Well, the surprise he had promised Ricky might cover the problem. As he reached for a certain black note-book, someone knocked on his door.

“Mistuh Val, wheah’s Miss ‘Chanda? She ain’t here, an’ Ah wants to—”

Lucy stood in the hall. The light from the round window was reflected from every corrugated wave of her painfully marcelled hair. Her vast flowered dress had been thriftily covered with a dull-green bib-apron and she had changed her smart slippers for the shapeless gray relics she wore indoors. Just now she looked warm and tired. After all, running two households was something of a task even for Lucy.

“Why, she should be in her room. We came up to change. Miss Chanty’s gone home with a headache. What was it you wanted her for?”

“Mistuh Val”—she thrust a mound of snowy and beruffled white stuff at him—“These curtains has got to be hung. An’ does Miss ‘Chanda want ‘em in her room or not?”

“Better put them up. I’ll tell her about it. Here wait, let me open that door.”

Val looked into Ricky’s room. As usual, it appeared as though a whirlwind, a small whirlwind but a thorough one, had passed through it. Her discarded costume lay tumbled across the bed and her slippers lay on the floor, one upside down. He stooped to set them straight.

“It do beat all,” Lucky said frankly as she put her burden down on a chair, “how dat chile make a mess. Now yo’, Mistuh Val, jest put everythin’ jest so. But Miss ‘Chanda leave hers which way afore Sunday! Looka dat now.” She pointed to the half-opened door of the closet.

A slip lay on the floor. Ricky must have been in a hurry; that was a little too untidy even for her.

A sudden suspicion sent Val into the closet to investigate.

Ricky’s wardrobe was not so extensive that he did not know every dress and article in it very well. It did not take him more than a moment to see what was missing.

“Did Ricky go riding?” Val asked. “Her habit is gone.”

“She ain’ gone ‘cross de bayo’ fo’ de hoss,” answered Lucky, reaching for the curtain rod. “Anyway, Sam took dat critter to be shoed.”

“Then where—“ But Val knew his Ricky only too well.

She had a certain stubborn will of her own. Sometimes opposition merely drove her into doing the forbidden thing.

And the swamp had been forbidden. But could even Ricky be such a fool? Certain memories of the past testified, mat she could. But how? Unless she had taken Sam’s boat— Without a word of explanation to Lucy, he dashed out of the room and downstairs at his best pace. As he left the house Val broke into a stumbling run. There was just a chance that she had not yet left the plantation.

But the bayou levee was deserted. And the post where Sam’s boat was usually moored was bare of rope; the boat was gone. Of course Sam Two might have taken it across the stream to the farm.

That hope was extinguished as the small brown boy came out of the bushes along the stream side.

“Sam, have you seen Miss ‘Chanda?” Val demanded.

“Yessuh.”

“Where?” Carrying on a conversation with Sam Two was like prying diamonds out of a rock. He possessed a rooted distaste for talking.

“Heah, suh.”

“When?”

“Jest a li’l while ago.”

“Where did she go?”

Sam pointed downstream.

“Did she take the boat?”

“Yessuh.” And men for the first time since Val had known him Sam volunteered a piece of information. “She say she a-goin’ in de swamp.”

Val leaned back against the bole of one of the willows.

Then she had done it! And what could he do? If he had any idea of her path, he could follow her while Sam aroused Rupert and the house.

“If I only knew where—“ he mused aloud.

“She a-goin’ to see dat swamper Jeems,” Sam continued.

“Heh, hen,” a sudden cackle of laughter rippled across his lips. “Dat ole swamper think he so sma’t. Think no one find his house—”

“Sam!” Val rounded upon him. “Do you know where Jeems lives?”

“Yessuh.” He twisted the one shoulder-strap of his overalls and Val guessed that his knowledge was something he was either ashamed of or afraid to tell.

“Can you take me there?”

He shook his head. “I ain’ a-goin’ in here, I ain’!”

“But, Sam, you’ve got to! Miss ‘Chanda is in there. She may be lost. We’ve got to find her!” Val insisted.

Sam’s thin shoulders shook and he slid backward as if to avoid the white boy’s reach. “I ain’t a-goin’ in dere,” he repeated stubbornly. “Effen yo’ wants to go in—Looky, Mistuh Val, I tells yo’ de way an’ yo’ goes.” He brightented at this solution. “Yo’ kin take pappy’s othah boat; it’s downstream, behin’ dem willows. Den yo’ goes down to de secon’ big pile o’ willows. Behin’ is a li’l bitty bayo. Yo’ goes up dat ‘til yo’ comes to a fur rack. After dat Jeems got a way marked on trees.”

With that he turned and ran as if all the terrors of the night were on his trail. There was nothing for Val to do but to follow his directions. And the longer he lingered before setting out the bigger lead Ricky was getting.

He found the canoe behind the willows as Sam had said.

Awkwardly he pushed off, hoping that Lucy would pry the whole story out of her son and put Rupert on their track as soon as possible.

The second clump of willows was something of a landmark, a huge matted mass of sucker and branch, the lower tips of the long, frond-like twigs sweeping the murky water. A snake swimming with its head just above the surface wriggled to the bank as Val cut into the small hidden stream Sam had told him of.

Vines and water plants had almost choked this, but there was a passage through the center. And one tough spike of vegetation which snapped back into his face bore a deep cut from which the sap was still oozing. The small stinging flies and mosquitoes followed and hung over him like a fog of discomfort. His skin was swollen and rough, irritated and itching. And in this green-covered way the heat seemed almost solid. Drops of moisture dripped from forehead and chin, and his hair was plastered tight to his skull.

Frogs leaped from the bank into the water at the sound of his coming. In the shallows near the bank, crawfish scuttled under water-logged leaves and stones at this disturbance of their world. Twice the bayou widened out into a sort of pool where the trees grew out of the muddy water and all sorts of lilies and bulb plants blossomed in riotous confusion.

Once a muskrat waddled into the protection of the bushes.

And Val saw something like a small cat drinking. But that faint shadow disappeared noiselessly almost before the water trickled from his upraised paddle.

Clumps of wild rice were the meeting grounds for flocks of screaming birds. A snow-white egret waded solemnly across ^a mud-rimmed pocket. And once a snake, more dangerous than the swimmer Val had first encountered, betrayed its presence by the flicker of its tongue.

The smell of me steaming mud, the decaying vegetation, and the nameless evils hidden deeper in this water-rotted land was an added torment. The boy shook a large red ant from its grip in the flesh of his hand and wiped the streaming perspiration from his face.

It was then that the canoe floated almost of its own volition into a dead and distorted strip of country. Black water which gave off an evil odor covered almost half an acre of ground. From this arose the twisted, gaunt gray skeletons of dead oaks. To complete the drear picture a row of rusty-black vultures sat along the broad naked limb of the nearest of these hulks, their red-raw heads upraised as they croaked and sidled up and down.

But the bayou Val was following merely skirted this region, and in a few moments he was again sheltered by flower-grown banks. Then he came upon a structure which must have been the fur rack Sam Two had alluded to, for here was their other boat moored to a convenient willow.

Val fastened the canoe beside it. The turf seemed springy, though here and there it gave way to patches of dark mud.

It was on one of these that Ricky had left her mark in the clean-cut outline of the sole of her riding-boot.

With a last desperate slap at a mosquito Val headed inland, following with ease mat trail of footprints. Ricky was suffering, too, for her rashness he noted with satisfaction when he discovered a long curly hair fast in the grip of a thorny branch he scraped under.

But the path was not a bad one. And the farther he went the more solid and me dryer it became. Once he passed through a small clearing, man-made, where three or four cotton bushes huddled together forlornly in company with a luxuriant melon patch.

And the melon patch was separated by only a few feet of underbrush from Jeems’ domain. In me middle of a clearing was a sturdy platform, reinforced with upright posts and standing about four feet from me surface of the ground. On this was a small cabin constructed of slabs, of baric-covered wood. As a dwelling it might be crude, but it had an air of scrupulous neatness. A short distance to one side of the platform was a well-built chicken-run, now inhabited by five hens and a ragged-tailed cock.

The door of the cabin was shut and there were no signs of life save the chickens. But as Val lowered himself painfully onto the second step of the ladder-like stairs leading up to the cabin, he thought he heard someone moving around. Glancing up, he saw Ricky staring down at him, open-mouthed.

“Hello,” she called, for one of the few times in her life really astounded.

“Hello,” Val answered shortly and shifted his weight to try to relieve the ache in his knee. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

RALESTONES TO THE RESCUE!

“Val! What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Following you. Good grief, girl,” he exploded, “haven’t you any better sense than to come into the swamp this way?”

Ricky’s mouth lost its laughing curve and her eyes seemed to narrow. She was, by all the signs, distinctly annoyed.

“It’s perfectly safe. I knew what I was doing.”

“Yes? Well, I will enjoy hearing Rupert’s remarks on that subject when he catches up with us,” snapped her brother.

“Val!” She lost something of her defiant attitude. He guessed that for all her boasted independence his sister was slightly afraid of Mr. Rupert Ralestone. “Val, he isn’t coming, too, is he?”

“He is if he got my message.” Val stretched his leg cautiously. The cramp was slowly leaving the muscles and he felt as if he could stand the remaining ache without wincing. “I sent Sam Two back to tell Rupert where his family had eloped to. Frankly, Ricky, this wasn’t such a smart trick. You know what Charity said about the swamps. Even the little I’ve seen of them has given me ideas.”

“But there was nothing to it at all,” she protested. “Jeems told me just how to get here and I only followed directions.”

Val chose to ignore this, being hot, tired, and in no mood for one of those long arguments such as Ricky enjoyed. “By the way, where is Jeems?” He looked about him as if he expected the swamper to materialize out of thin air.

Ricky sat down on the edge of me platform and dangled her booted feet. “Don’t know. But he’ll be here sooner or later. And I don’t feel like going back through the swamp just yet. The flies are awful. And did you see those dreadful vultures on that dead tree? What a place! But the flowers are wonderful and I saw a real live alligator, even if it was a small one.” She rubbed her scarf across her forehead. “Whew! It seems hotter here than it does at home.”

“This outing was all your idea,” Val reminded her.

“And we’d better be getting back before Rupert calls out the Marines or the State Troopers or something to track us down.”

Ricky pouted. “Not going until I’m ready. And you can’t drag me if I dig my heels in.”

“I have no desire to be embroiled in such an undignified struggle as you suggest,” he told her loftily. “But neither do I yearn to spend the day here. I’m hungry. I wonder if our absent host possesses a larder?”

“If he does, you can’t raid it,” Ricky answered. “The door’s locked, and mat lock,” she pointed to the bright disk of brass on the solid cabin door, “is a good one. I’ve already tried a hairpin on it,” she added shamelessly.

They sat awhile in silence. A wandering breeze had found its way into the clearing, and with it came the fragrance of flowers blossoming under the sun. The chicken family were pursuing a worm with more energy than Val decided he would have cared to expend in that heat, and a heavily laden bee rested on the lip of a sunflower to brush its legs. Val’s eyelids drooped and he found himself thinking dreamily of a hammock under the trees, a pillow, and long hours of lazy dozing. At the same time a comer of his brain was sending forth nagging messages that they should be up and off, back to their own proper world. But he simply did not have the will power to get up and go.

“Nice place,” he murmured, looking about with more approbation than he would have granted the clearing some ten minutes earlier.

“Yes,” answered Ricky. “It would be nice to live here.”

Val was beginning to say something about “no bathtubs” when a sound aroused them from their lethargy. Someone was coming down the path. Ricky’s hand fell upon her brother’s shoulder.

“Quick! Up here and behind the house,” she urged him.

Not knowing just why he obeyed, Val scrambled up on the tiny platform and scuttled around behind the cabin.

Why they should hide thus from Jeems who had given Ricky directions for reaching the place and had asked her to come, was more than he could understand. But he had a faint, uneasy feeling of mistrust, as if they had been caught off guard at a critical moment.

“This the place. Red?” The clipped words sounded clear above the murmurs of life from swamp and woods.

“Yeah. Bum-lookin’ joint, ain’t it? These guys ain’t got no brains; they like to live like this.” The contempt of the second speaker was only surpassed by the stridency of his voice.

“What about this boy?” asked the first.

“Dumb kid. Don’t know yet who his friends is.” There was a satisfied grunt as the speaker sat down on the step Val had so lately vacated. Ricky pressed closer to her brother.

“What about the cabin?”

“He ain’t here. And it’s locked, see? You’d think he kept the crown jewels there.” The tickling scent of a cigarette drifted back to the two in hiding. “Beats me how he slipped away this morning without Pitts catching on.

For two cents I’d spring that lock of his—”

“Isn’t worth the trouble,” replied the other decisively.

“These trappers have no money except at the end of the fur season, and then most of them are in debt to the storekeepers.”

“Then why—”

“I sometimes wonder,” the voice was coldly cutting, “why I continue to employ you. Red. What profit would I find in a cabin like this? I want what he knows, not what he has.”

Having thus reduced his henchman to silence, the speaker went on smoothly, as if he were thinking aloud. “With Simpson doing so well in town, we’re close to the finish. This swamper must tell us—“ His voice trailed away.

Except for the creaking of wood when the sitter shifted his position, there was no other sound.

Then Red must have grown restless, for someone stamped up to the platform and rattled the chain on the cabin door aggressively. Val flattened back against the wall. What if the fellow took it into his head to walk around?

“Gonna wait here all day?” demanded Red.

“As it is necessary for me to have a word with him, we will. This waste of time is the product of Pitts’ stupidity. I shall remember that. It is entirely needless to use force except as a last resource. Now that this swamper’s suspicions are aroused, we may have trouble.”

“Yeah? Well, we can handle that. But how do yuh know that this guy has the stuff?”

“I can at least believe the evidence of my own eyes,” the other replied with bored contempt. “I came down river alone the night of the storm and saw him on the levee. He has a way of getting into the house all right. I saw him in these. And he doesn’t go through any of the doors, either.

I must know how he does it.”

“All right. Boss. And what if you do get in? What are we for?”

“What those bright boys up there found a few days ago. That clerk told us that they’d discovered whatever the girl was talking about in the office that day. And we’ve got to get that before Simpson comes into court with his suit. I’m not going to lose fifty grand.” The last sentence ended abruptly as if the speaker had snapped his teeth shut upon a word like a dog upon its quarry.

“What does this guy Jeems go to the house for?” asked Red.

“Who knows? He seems to be hunting something too. But that’s not our worry. If it’s necessary, we can play ghost also. I’ve got to get into that house. If I can do it the way this Jeems does, without having to break in—so much the better. We don’t want the police ambling around here just now.”

Val stiffened. It didn’t require a Sherlock Holmes to get the kernel of truth out of the conversation he had overheard.

“Night of the storm,” “play ghost,” were enough. So Jeems had been the ghost. And me swamper knew a secret way into the house!

“Wait,” Ricky’s lips formed the words by his ear as Val stirred restlessly. “Someone else is coming.”

“I don’t like the set-up in town,” Red was saying peevishly. “That smooth mouthpiece is asking too darn many questions. He’s always asking Simpson about things in the past. If you hadn’t got Sim that family history to study, he’d been behind bars a dozen times by now.”

“And he had better study it,” commented the other dryly, “because he is going to be word perfect before the case comes to court, if it ever does. There are not going to be any slip-ups in this deal.”

“ ‘Nother thing I don’t like,” broke in the other, “is this Waverly guy. I don’t like his face.”

“No? Well, doubtless he would change it if you asked him to. And I do not think it is wise of you to be too critical of plans which were made by deeper thinkers than yourself. Sometimes, Red, you weary me.”

There was no reply to that harsh judgment. And now Val could hear what Ricky had heard earlier—a faint swish as of a paddle through water. Again Ricky’s lips shaped words he could barely hear.

“Spur of bayou runs along here in back. Someone coming up from there.”

“Jeems?”

“Maybe.”

“We’d better—“ Val motioned toward the front of the cabin. Ricky shook her head. Jeems was to be allowed to meet the intruders unwarned.

“This swamper may be tough,” ventured Red.

“We’ve met hard cases before,” answered the other significantly.

Red moved again, as if flexing his muscles.

“One boy, and a small one at that, shouldn’t force you to undergo all that preparation,” goaded the Boss.

Ricky must get away at once, her brother decided. Stubbornness or no stubbornness, she must go this time.

Why he didn’t think of going himself Val never afterwards knew. Perhaps he possessed a spark of the family love of danger, after all, but mostly he clung to his perch because of that last threat. Whoever Jeems was or whatever he had done, he was one and alone. And he might relish another player on his side. But Ricky must go.

He said as much in a fierce whisper, only to have her grin recklessly back at him. In pantomime she gestured mat he might try to make her. Val decided that he should have known the result of his efforts. Ricky was a Ralestone, too. And short of throwing her off the platform and so unmasking themselves completely, he could not move her against her will.

“No,” she whispered. “They’re planning trouble for Jeems. He’ll probably need us.”

“Well,” Val cautioned her, “if it gets too tough, you’ve got to promise to cut downstream for help. We’ll be able to use it.”

She nodded. “It’s a promise. But we’ve got to stand by Jeems if he needs us.”

“If he does—“ Val was still suspicious. “He may fall in with their suggestions.”

Ricky shook her head. “He isn’t that kind. I don’t care if he has been playing ghost.”

Someone was walking along the path among the bushes bordering the back of the clearing. Although they could hear no sound, they could mark the passing of a body by the swish of the foliage. Val lay, face down, on the platform and reached for a stick of wood lying on the ground below. Somehow he did not like to think of being caught empty-handed when the excitement began.

“Hello.” It was Red, suddenly genial. The Ralestones could almost feel the radiance of the smile which must have split his face.

“Whatta yo’ doin’ heah?” That was Jeems, and his demand was sharply hostile.

“Now, bub, don’t get us wrong.” That was Red, still genial. “I know my pal sorta flew off his base this momin’. But it was all in fun, see? So we kinda wanted yuh to stick around till he came and not do the run-out on us. And now the Boss has come down here so we can talk business all friendly like.”

“Shut up. Red!” Having so bottled his companion’s flow of words, the other spoke directly to Jeems. “My men made a mistake. All right. That’s over and done with; they’ll get theirs. Now let’s get down to business. What do you know about that big plantation up river, the one called ‘Pirate’s Haven’?”

“Nothin’.” Jeems’ answer was clear. The hostility was gone from his voice; nothing remained but an even tonelessness.

“Come now, I know you have reason to be hot. But this is business. I’ll make it worth your while—”

“Nothin’,” answered Jeems as concisely as before.

“You can’t expect us to believe that. I followed you one night.”

“Yo’ did?” The challenge was unmistakable.

“I did. So you see I know something of you. Something which even the present owner does not. Say the ghost in the hall, for example.”

There was the sound of a deeply drawn breath.

“So you see it is to your advantage to listen to us,” continued the Boss smoothly.

“What do yo’ want?”

Val knew disappointment at that question. Would Jeems surrender as easily as that?

“Just an explanation of how you get into the house unseen.”

“Yo’ll nevah know!” The swamper’s reply came swift and clear.

“No? Well, I’d think twice before I held to that answer if I were you,” purred the other softly. “A word to the Ralestones about those nightly walks of yours—”

“Won’t give yo’ what yo’ want,” replied Jeems shrewdly.

“I see. Perhaps I have been using the wrong approach,” observed the Boss composedly. “You work for a living, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know the value of money. What is your price? Come on, we won’t haggle.” The Boss’ impatience colored his tone. “How much do you want for this information?”

“Nothin’!”

“Nothing?”

“Ah ain’t said nothin’ an’ Ah ain’t a-goin’ to say nothin’. An’ yo’ bettah be a-gittin’ often this heah land of mine afo’—”

“Before what, swamper?” Red was taking a hand in the game.

“Yo’ can’t fright’n me with that gun,” came calmly enough from Jeems. “Yo’ ain’t a-goin’ to risk shootin’—”

“There ain’t no witnesses here, kid. And there ain’t no law back in these swamps. Yuh’re gonna tell the Boss what he wants to know an’ yuh’re gonna spill it quick, see? I know some ways of making guys squeal—”

At that suggestion Val’s fingers tightened on his club and Ricky choked back a cry as her brother crept toward the comer of the cabin. Their melodrama was fast taking on the color of tragedy.

“So yuh better speak up.” Red was still encouraging Jeems.

There was no immediate answer from the swamper, but Ricky touched Val’s arm and nodded toward the bushes.

She had decided that it was time for her to leave. He agreed eagerly. She dropped lightly to the ground and he watched her crawl away unnoticed by those in front who were so intent upon the baiting of their quarry.

“Three minutes, swamper’“

Ricky was gone, free from whatever might develop. Val edged forward and for the first time peered around the comer of the cabin. The two assailants were still only voices, but he could see Jeems. The swamper’s face was bruised and there was a smear of dried blood across one cheek as if he had already been roughly handled. But he stood at ease, facing the cabin. His hands were hanging loosely at his sides and he was seemingly unconcerned by what confronted him. Suddenly his eyes flickered to the bushes at one side. Had Ricky betrayed herself, Val wondered breathlessly.

Clear now of the cabin, Val wriggled his way around the platform. In a minute he would be able to see the Boss and Red. He gripped the club.

Then Jeems stared straight into his face. But the swamper gave no sign of seeing Val. And that, to the boy’s mind, was the greatest feat of all that afternoon. For Val knew that if he had been in Jeems’ place he would have betrayed them both in his surprise.

The others were at last visible, their backs to Val.

Nervously he sized them up. The Boss was tall and thin, but his movements suggested possession of wiry strength.

Red, his brick-colored hair making him easy to identify, was shorter and thick across the shoulders, but his waistline was also thick and the boy thought that his wind was bad. Of the two, the Boss was the more dangerous. Red might lose his head in a sudden attack, but not the Boss.

Val decided to tackle the latter.

Slowly he got from his knees to his feet. After the first quick glance, Jeems hadn’t looked at him, but Val knew that the swamper was ready and waiting to take advantage of any diversion he might make.

“Three minutes are up, swamper. So yuh’ve decided to be tough, eh?”

“Whatta yo’ wanna know?” Jeems’ question held their attention.

“We have told you several times,” answered the Boss, his temper beginning to fray visibly. “What is the trick of getting into that house?”

“Well,” Jeems raised his hand to rub his ear, “yo’ turn to the left—”

So he agreed with the listener. Val was to take the Boss on his left. He gathered his feet under him for the leap which he hoped would land him full upon the invader.

“Yes?” prompted me man impatiently as Jeems hesitated.

At that moment Val sprang.

But his game leg betrayed him again. Instead of landing cleanly upon the other, he came down draggingly across the Boss’s shoulders. The gun roared and then the attacked man lashed back a vicious blow which split the skin over Val’s cheekbone.

For the next three minutes Val was more than occupied.

His opponent was a dirty fighter, and when he had recovered from his surprise he was more than the boy could handle. Val’s club was twisted out of his hands, and he found himself fighting wildly to keep the man’s clawing fingers from his eyes. They were both rolling on the ground, flailing out at each other. Twice Val tasted his own blood when one of the enemy’s vicious jabs glanced along his face. Either blow would have finished Val had it landed clean.

Then in a sudden turn the Boss caught him in a deadly body-lock which left him half-stunned and panting, at his mercy. And there was no mercy in the man. When Val looked up into that flushed, snarling face, he knew that he was as hopeless as a trapped animal. The man could—and would—finish him at his leisure.

“This way, Rupert! Sam!” the cry reached even Val’s dulled ears.

The man above him stirred. The boy saw the Mood-lust fade from his eyes and apprehension take its place. He got to his feet, launching a last bruising kick at Val’s ribs before he limped across the clearing. On his way he hauled Red to his feet. They were going, not toward the path from the bayou, but around the house on the trail that Jeems had followed. Val struggled up and looked around. The turf was torn and gouged. In the dust lay his club and Red’s revolver.

And by the steps lay something else, a slight brown figure. Painfully the boy got to his feet and lurched across to Jeems.

THE RALESTONES BRING HOME A RELUCTANT QUEST

The swamper was lying on his back, his eyes closed. From a great purple welt across his forehead blood oozed sluggishly. When Val touched him he moaned faintly, “Val! Are you hurt? What’s the matter?” Ricky was upon them like a whirlwind out of the bush.

“Jeems stopped a nasty one,” her brother panted.

“Is he—“ She dropped down in the dust beside them.

“He’s knocked out, and he’ll have a bad headache for some time, but I don’t think it’s any worse than that.”

Ricky had pulled out a microscopic bit of handkerchief and was dabbing at the blood in an amateurish way. Jeems moaned and turned his head as if to get away from her ministrations.

“Where’s Rupert—and Sam?” Val looked toward the path. “They were with you, weren’t they?”

Ricky shook her head. “No. That was just what you call creating a diversion. For all I know, they’re busy at home.”

Her brother straightened. “Then we’ve got to get out of here—fast. Those two left because they were rattled, but when they have had a chance to cool off they’ll be back.”

“What about Jeems?”

“Take him with us, of course. We won’t be able to manage the canoe. But you brought the outboard, so we’ll go in that and tow me canoe. We ought to have something to cover his head.” Val regarded the bleeding wound doubtfully.

Without answering, Ricky leaned forward and began systematically going through Jeems’ pockets. In the second she found a key. Val took it from her and hobbled up the cabin steps. For a wonder, he thought thankfully, me key was the right one. The lock clicked and he went in.

Like the clearing, the interior of the one-room shack was neat, a place for everything and everything in its place. Under the window in the far wall was a small chest of some dark polished wood. Save for its size, it was not unlike the chests the Ralestones had found in their storeroom. Opposite it was a wooden cot, the covers smoothly spread. A stool, a blackened cook stove, and a solid table with an oil lamp were me extent of the furnishings. Lines of traps hung on the walls, along with the wooden boards for the stretching of drying skins, and there was a half-finished grass basket lying on top of the chest.

Val hefted a stoneware jug. They had no time to hunt for a spring. And if this contained water, they would need it. At the resulting gurgle from within, he set it by the door and returned to rob the cot of pillow and the single coarse but clean sheet.

Ricky tore the sheet and made a creditable job of washing and bandaging the ugly bruise. Jeems drank greedily when they offered him water but he did not seem to recognize them. In answer to Ricky’s question of how he felt, he muttered something in the swamp French of the Cajuns. But he was uneasy until Val locked the cabin door and put the key in his hand.

“How are we going to get him to the boat?” asked Ricky suddenly.

“Carry him.”

“But, Val—“ for the first time she looked at her brother as if she really saw him— “Val, you’re hurt!”

“Just a little stiff,” he hastened to assure her. “Our late visitors play rather rough. We’ll manage all right. I’ll take his shoulders and you his feet.”

They wavered drunkenly along the path. Twice Val stumbled and regained his balance just in time. Ricky had laid the pillow across their burden’s feet, declaring that she would need it when they got to the boat. Val passed the point of aching misery—when he thought that he could not shuffle forward another step—and now he came into what he had heard called “second wind.” By fixing his eyes on a tree or a bush a step or two ahead and concentrating only upon passing that one, and then that, and that, he got through without disgracing himself.

At the bayou at last, they wriggled Jeems awkwardly into the boat. Val had no doubt that a woodsman might have done the whole job better in much less time and without a tenth of the effort they had expended. But all he ever wondered afterward was how they ever did it at all.

It was when Ricky had made their passenger as comfortable as she could in the bottom of the boat, steadying his head across her knees, that her brother partially relaxed.

“Val, you run the engine,” she said without looking up.

He dragged himself toward the stern of the boat, remembering too late, when he had cast off, that he had not taken the canoe in tow. The engine coughed, sputtered, and then settled down to a steady putt-putt. They were off.

“Val, do you—do you think he is badly hurt?”

He dared not look down; it required all his powers of concentration on what lay before them to keep his hand steady.

“No. We’ll get a doctor when we get back. He’ll come around again in no time—Jeems, I mean.”

But would he? Head injuries were sometimes more serious than they seemed, Val remembered dismally.

It was not until they came out into the main bayou that Jeems roused again. He looked up at Ricky in a sort of dull surprise, and then his gaze shifted to Val.

“What—”

“We won the war,” Val tried to grin, an operation which tore his mask of dried blood, “thanks to Ricky. And now we’re going home.”

At that. Jeems made a violent effort to sit up.

“Non!” his English deserted him and he broke into impassioned French.

“Yes,” Val replied firmly as Ricky pushed the swamper down. “Of course you’re coming with us. You’ve had a nasty knock on the head that needs attention.”

“Ah’m not a-goin’ to no hospital!” His eyes burned into Val’s.

“Certainly not!” cried Ricky. “You’re bound for our guest-room. Now keep quiet. We’ll be there soon.”

“Ah ain’t a-goin’,” he declared mutinously.

“Don’t be silly,” Ricky scolded him; “we’re taking you. Does Val have to come and hold you down?”

“Ah can’t!” His eyes flickered from Val’s face to hers. There was something more than independence behind that firm refusal. “Ah ain’t a-goin’ theah.”

“Why not?”

He seemed to shrink from her. “It ain’t fitten,” he murmured.

“How perfectly silly,” laughed Ricky. But Val thought that he understood.

“Because of the secret you know?” he asked quietly.

The pallor beneath Jeems’ heavy tan vanished in a flush of slow-burning red. “Ah reckon so,” he muttered, but he met Val’s eyes squarely.

“Let’s leave all explanations until later,” Val suggested.

“Ah played haunt!” the confession came out of the swamper in a rush.

“Then you were my faceless ghost?”

Jeems tried to nod and the action printed a frown of pain between his eyes.

“Why? Didn’t you want us to live there?” asked Ricky gently.

“Ah was huntin’—”

“What for?”

The frown became one of puzzlement. “Ah don’t know—“ His voice trailed off into a thin whisper as his eyes closed wearily. Val signaled Ricky to keep quiet.

“Ahoy there!” Along the bank toward them came Rupert and after him Sam. Beyond them lay the Ralestone landing. Val headed inshore.

“Just what does this mean—Val! Has there been an accident?” The irritation in Rupert’s voice became hot concern.

“An intended one,” his brother replied. “We’ve got the real victim here with us.”

They tied up to the landing and Sam came down to hand out Jeems who apparently had lapsed into unconsciousness again.

“You’d better call a doctor,” Val told Rupert. “Jeems has a head wound.”

But Rupert had already taken charge of affairs with an efficiency which left Val humbly grateful. The boy didn’t even move to leave the boat. It was better just to sit and watch other people scurry about. Sam had started for the house, carrying Jeems as if the long-legged swamper was the same age and size as his own small son. Ricky dashed on ahead to warn Lucy. Rupert had Sam Two by the collar and was giving him instructions for catching Dr. LeFrode, who was probably making his morning rounds and might be found at the sugar-mill where one of the feeders had injured his hand. Sam Two’s sister had seen the doctor on his way there a scant ten minutes earlier.

Val watched all this activity dreamily. Everything would be all right now that Rupert was in charge. He could relax— “Now,” his brother turned upon Val, “just what did— What’s the matter with you?”

“Tired, I guess,” Val said ruefully. But Rupert was already in the boat, getting the younger boy to his unsteady feet.

“Can you make it to the house?” he asked anxiously.

“Sure. Just give me an arm till I get on the landing.”

But when Val had crawled up on the levee he did not feel at all like walking to the house. Then Rupert’s arm was about his thin shoulders and he thought that he could make it if he really tried.

The garden path seemed miles long, and it was not until Val had the soft cushions of the hall couch under him that he felt able to tell his story. But at that moment the short, stout doctor came through the door in a rush. Sam Two had led him to believe that half the household had been murdered. At first Dr. LeFrode started toward Val, until in alarm the boy swung his feet to the floor and sat up, waving the man to the stairway where Ricky hovered to act as guide.

Then Val was alone, even Sam Two having edged upstairs to share in the excitement. The boy sank back on his pillows and wondered where their late assailants were now, and why they had been so determined to learn Jeems’ secret. As Ricky had said once before, the Ralestones seemed to have been handed a gigantic tangle without ends, only middle sections, and had been told to unravel it.

Boot heels clicked on the stone flooring. Val fumed his head cautiously and tried not to wince. Rupert was coming in with a bowl of water, from which steam still arose.

Across his arm lay a towel and in his other hand was their small first-aid kit.

“Suppose we do a little patching,” he suggested. “Your face at present is not all it might be. What did you and your swamp friend do—run into a mowing machine?” He swabbed delicately at the cut the Boss had opened across Val’s cheek-bone, and at another by his mouth.

“I thought it might be that for a moment—a mowing machine, I mean. No, we just met a couple of gentlemen— enterprising fellows who wanted to see more of this commodious mansion of ours—“ Val’s words faded into a sharp hiss as Rupert applied iodine with a liberal hand.

“They seemed to think that Jeems knew a lot about Pirate’s Haven and they were going to persuade him to tell all. Only it didn’t turn out the way they had planned.”

“Due to you?” Rupert eyed his brother intently. The boy’s face was swollen almost out of recognition and he didn’t like this sudden talkativeness.

“Due partly to me, but mostly to Ricky. She—ah— created the necessary diversion. I had sort of lost interest at the time. I know so little about gouging and biting in clinches.”

“Dirty fighters?”

“Well, soiled anyway. But if the Boss isn’t nursing a cracked wrist, it isn’t my fault. I don’t know what Jeems did to Red, but he, too, departed in a damaged condition. Do you have to do that?” Val demanded testily, squirming as Rupert ran his hands lightly over the boy’s shoulders and down his ribs, touching every bruise to tingling life.

“Just seeing the extent of the damage,” he explained.

“You don’t have to see, I can feel!” Val snapped pettishly.

Rupert got to his feet. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Oh, a hot bath and then bed. You’ll be taking an interest in life again about this time tomorrow. I think LeFrode had better see you too.”

“No,” Val objected. “I’m not a child.”

Rupert grinned. “If you’d rather I carried you—”

There was no opposing Rupert when he was in that mood, as his brother well knew. Val got up slowly.

The program that Rupert had outlined was faithfully carried out. Half an hour later Val found himself between sheets, blinking at the ceiling drowsily. When two cracks overhead wavered together of their own accord, his eyes closed.

“—still sleeping?” whispered someone at his side much later.

“Yes, best thing for him.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“No, just banged around more than was good for him.”

Val opened his eyes. It must have been close to dusk, for the sunlight was red across the bedclothes. Rupert stood by the window and Ricky was in the doorway, a tray of covered dishes in her hands.

“Hello!” Val sat up, grimacing at the twinge of pain across his back. “What day is this?”

Rupert laughed. “Still Tuesday.”

“How’s Jeems?”

“Doing very well. I’ve had to have Rupert in to frighten him into staying in bed,” Ricky said. “The doctor thinks he ought to be there a couple of days at least. But Jeems doesn’t agree with him. Between keeping Jeems in bed and keeping Rupert out of the swamp I’ve had a full day.”

Rupert sat down on the foot of the bed. “You’d know this Boss and Red again, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ll probably have a chance to identify them.”

There was a grim look about Rupert’s jaw. “Ricky’s told me all that you overheard. I don’t know what it means but I’ve heard enough for me to get in touch with LeHeur.

He’ll be out tomorrow morning. And once we get something to work on—”

“I’m beginning to feel sorry for our swamp visitors.”

Val interrupted.

“They’ll be sorry,” hinted Rupert darkly. “How about you, Val, beginning to feel hungry?”

“Now that you mention it, I am discovering a rather hollow ache in my center section. Supper ready?”

“Half an hour. I’ll bring you up a tray—“ began Ricky.

But Val had thrown back the sheet and was sitting on the side of the bed. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’m not an invalid yet.”

Ricky glanced at Rupert and then left. Val reached for his shirt defiantly. But his brother raised no objection. The painful stiffness Val had felt at first wore off and he was able to move without feeling as if each muscle were tied in cramping knots.

“May I pay Jeems a visit?” he asked as they went out into the hall. Rupert nodded toward a door across the corridor.

“In there. He’s a stubborn piece of goods. Reminds me of you at times. If he’d ever get rid of that scowl of his, he’d be even more like you. He warms to Ricky, but you’d think I was a Chinese torturer the way he acts when I go in.” There was a shade of irritation in Rupert’s voice.

“Maybe he’s afraid of you.”

“But what for?” Rupert stared at the boy in open surprise.

“Well, you do have rather a commanding air at times,”

Val countered. If Ricky had told Rupert nothing of Jeems’ confession, he wasn’t going to.

“So that’s what you really think of me!” observed Rupert. “Go reason with that wildcat if you want to. I’m beginning to believe that you are two of a kind.” He turned abruptly down the hall.

Val opened the door of the bedroom. The sunlight was fading fast and already the corners of the large room were filled with the gray of dusk. But light from the windows swept full across the bed and its occupant. Val hobbled stiffly toward it.

“Hello.” The brown face on the pillow did not change expression as Val greeted the swamper. “How do you feel now?”

“Bettah,” Jeems answered shortly. “Ah’m good but they won’t le’ me up.”

“The Doc says you’re in for a couple of days,” Val told him.

Somehow Jeems looked smaller, shrunken, as he lay in that oversized bed. And he had lost that air of indolent arrogance which had made him seem so independent in their swamp and garden meetings. It was as if Val were looking down upon a younger and less confident edition of the swamper he had known.

“What does he think?” There was urgency in that question.

“Who’s he?”

“Yo’ brothah.”

“Rupert? Why, he’s glad to have you here,” Val answered.

“Does he know ‘bout—”

Val shook his head.

“Tell him!” ordered the swamper. “Ah ain’t a-goin’ to say undah his roof lessen he knows. ‘Tain’t fitten.”

At this clean-cut statement of the laws of hospitality, Val nodded. “All right. I’ll tell him. But what were you after here, Jeems? I’ll have to tell him that, too, you know. Was it the Civil War treasure?”

Jeems turned his head slowly. “No.” Again the puzzled frown twisted his straight, finely marked brows. “What do Ah want wi’ treasure? Ah don’t know what Ah was lookin’ fo’. Man grandpappy—”

“Val, supper’s ready,” came Rupert’s voice from the hall.

Val half turned to go. “I’ve got to go now. But I’ll be back later,” he promised.

“Yo’ll tell him?” Jeems stabbed a finger at the door.

“Yes; after supper. I promise.”

With a little sigh Jeems relaxed and burrowed down into the softness of the pillow. “Ah’Il be awaitin’,” he said.

ON SUCH A NIGHT AS THIS

It had been one of those dull, weepy days when a sullen drizzle clouded sky and earth. In consequence, the walls and floors of Pirate’s Haven seemed to exude chill. Rupert built a fire in the hall fireplace, but none of the family could say that it was a successful one. It made a nice show of leaping flame accompanied by fancy lighting effects but gave forth absolutely no heat.

“Val?”

The boy started guiltily and thrust his notebook under the couch cushion as Charity came in. Tiny drops of rain were strung along the hairs which had blown free of her rain-cape hood like steel beads along a golden wire.

“Yes? Don’t come here expecting to get warm,” he warned her bitterly. “We are very willing but the fire is weak. Looks pretty, doesn’t it?” He kicked at a charred end on the hearth. “Well, that’s all it’s good for!”

“Val, what sort of a mess have you and Jeems jumped into?” she asked as she handed him her dripping cape.

“Oh, just a general sort of mess,” he answered lightly.

“Jeems had callers who forgot their manners. So Ricky and I breezed in and brought the party to a sudden end—”

“As I .can see by your black eye,” she commented. “But what has Jeems been up to?”

Val was suddenly very busy holding her cape before that mockery of a blaze.

“Why don’t you ask him that?”

“Because I’m asking you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague—”

“Rupert has the gift of being exasperatingly uncommunicative,” his brother told her. “The story, so far as I know, is short and simple. Jeems knows a secret way into this house. In addition, his grandfather told him that the fortune of the house of Jeems is concealed here—having been very hazy in his description of the nature of said fortune. Consequently, grandson has been playing haunt up and down our halls trying to find it.

“His story is as full of holes as a sieve but somehow one can’t help believing it. He has explained that he has the secret of the outside entrance only, and not the one opening from the inside. In the meantime he is in bed— guarded from intrusion by Ricky and Lucy with the same care as if he were the crown jewels. So matters rest at present.”

“Neatly put.” She dropped down on the couch. “By the way, do you realize that you have ruined your face for my uses?”

Val fingered the crisscrossing tape on his cheek. “This is only temporary.”

“Icertainly hope so. That must have been some battle.”

“One of our better efforts.” He coughed in mock modesty. “Ricky saved the day with alarms and excursions without. Rupert probably told you that.”

“Yes, he can be persuaded to talk at times. Is he always so silent?”

“Nowadays, yes,” he answered slowly. “But when we were younger—You know,” Val turned toward her suddenly, his brown face serious to a degree, “it isn’t fair to separate the members of a family. To put one here and one there and the third somewhere else. I was twelve when Father died, and Ricky was eleven. They sent her off to Great-aunt Rogers because Uncle Fleming, who took me, didn’t care for a girl—”

“And Rupert?”

“Rupert—well, he was grown, he could arrange his own life; so he just went away. We got a letter now and then, or a post-card. There was money enough to send us to expensive schools and dress us well. It was two years before I really saw Ricky again. You can’t call short visits on Sunday afternoons seeing anyone.

“Then Uncle Fleming died and I was simply parked at Great-aunt Rogers’. She”—Val was remembering things, a bitter look about his mouth—“didn’t care for boys. In September I was sent to a military academy. I needed discipline, it seemed. And Ricky was sent to Miss Somebody’s-on-the-Hudson. Rupert was in China then. I got a letter from him that fall. He was about to join some expedition heading into the Gobi.

“Ricky came down to the Christmas hop at the academy, then Aunt Rogers took her abroad. She went to school in Switzerland a year. I passed from school to summer camp and then back to school. Ricky sent me some carvings for Christmas—they arrived three days late.”

He stared up at the stone mantel. “Kids feel things a lot more than they’re given credit for. Ricky sent me a letter with some tear stains between the lines when Aunt Rogers decided to stay another year. And that was the year I earned the reputation of being a ‘hard case.’

“Then Ricky cabled me that she was coming home. I walked out of school the same morning. I didn’t even tell anyone where I was going. Because I had money enough, I thought I would fly. And that, dear lady, is the end of this very sad tale.” He grinned one-sidedly down at her.

“It was then that—that—”

“I was smashed up? Yes. And Rupert came home without warning to find things very messy. I was in the hospital when I should have been in some corrective institution, as Aunt Rogers so often told me during those days. Ricky was also in disgrace for speaking her mind, as she does now and then. To make it even more interesting, our guardian had been amusing himself by buying oil stock with our capital. Unfortunately, oil did not exist in the wells we owned. Yes, Rupert had every right to be anything but pleased with the affairs of the Ralestones.

“He swept us off here where we are still under observation, I believe.”

“Then you don’t like it here?”

“Like it? Madam, ‘like’ is a very pallid word. What if you were offered everything you ever wished for, all tied up in pink ribbons and laid on your door-step? What would your reaction be?”

“So,” she was staring into the fire, “that’s the way of it?”

“Yes. Or it would be if—“ He stooped to reach for another piece of wood. The fire was threatening to the again.

“What is the flaw in the masterpiece?” she asked quietly.

“Rupert. He’s changed. In the old days he was one of us; now he’s a stranger. We’re amusing to have around, someone to look after, but I have a feeling that to him we don’t really exist. We aren’t real—“ Val floundered trying to express that strange, walled-off emotion which so often held him in this grown-up brother’s presence. “Things like this ‘Bluebeard’s Chamber’ of his—that isn’t like the Rupert we knew.”

“Did you ever think that he might be shy, too?” she asked. “He left two children and came home to find two distrustful adults. Give him his chance—”

“Charity!” Ricky ran lightly downstairs. “Why didn’t Val tell me you had come?”

“I just dropped in to inquire concerning your patient.”

“He’s better-tempered than Val,” declared Ricky shamelessly. “You’ll stay to dinner of course. We’re having some sort of crab dish that Lucy seems to think her best effort. Rupert will be back by then, I’m sure; he’s out somewhere with Sam. There’s been some trouble about trespassers on the swamp lands. Goodness, won’t this rain ever stop?”

As if in answer to her question, there came a great gust of wind and rain against the door, a blast which shook the oak, thick and solid as it was. And then came the thunder of the knocker which Letty-Lou had polished into shining life only the day before.

Val opened the door to find Mr. Creighton and Mr. Holmes huddled on the mat. They came in with an eagerness which was only surpassed by Satan, wet and displaying cold anger towards his mistress, whom he passed with a disdainful flirt of his tail as he headed for that deceptive fire.

“You, again,” observed Charity resignedly as Sam Two was summoned and sent away again draped with wet coats and drenched hats.

“Man”—Holmes argued with Satan for the possession of the hearthstone—“when it rains in this country, it rains. A branch of your creek down there is almost over the road—”

“Bayou, not creek,” corrected Charity acidly. Lately she had shown a marked preference for Holmes’ absence rather than his company.

“I stand corrected,” he laughed; “a branch of your bayou.”

“If you found it so unpleasant, why did you—“ began Charity, and then she flushed as if she had suddenly realized that that speech was too crude even for her recent attitude.

“Why did we come?” Holmes’ crooked eyebrow slid upward as his face registered mock reproof. “My, my, what a warm welcome, my dear.” He shook his head and Charity laughed in spite of herself.

“Don’t mind my bearishness,” she made half apology. “You know what pleasant moods I fall into while working. And this rain is depressing.”

“But Miss Biglow is right.” Creighton smiled his rare, shy smile. Brusque and impatient as he was when on business bent, he was awkwardly uncomfortable in ordinary company. The man, Val sometimes thought privately, lived, ate, slept books. Save when they were the subject of conversation, he was as out of his element as a coal-miner at the ballet. “We should explain the reason for this—this rather abrupt call.” He fingered his brief-case, which he still clutched, nervously.

“Down to business already.” Holmes seated himself on the arm of Ricky’s chair. “Very well, out with it.”

Creighton smiled again, laid the case across his knees, and looked straight at Ricky. For some reason he talked to her, as if she above all others must be firmly convinced of the importance of his mission.

“It is a very queer story. Miss Ralestone, a very queer—”

“Said me mariner to the wedding guest.” Holmes snapped his fingers at Satan, who contemptuously ignored him. “Or am I thinking of the Whiting who talked to the Snail?”

“Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning,” continued Creighton, frowning at Holmes who refused to be so suppressed.

“Why be so dramatic about it, old man? It’s very simple. Miss Ricky. Creighton has lost an author and he wants you to help find him.”

When Ricky’s eyes involuntarily swept about the room, Val joined in the laughter. “No, it isn’t as easy as all that, I’m afraid.” Creighton had lost his nervous shyness. “But what Holmes says is true. I have lost an author and do hope mat you can help me locate the missing gentleman—or lady. Two months ago an agent sent a manuscript to our office for reading. It wasn’t complete, but he thought it was well worth our attention. It was.

“Although there were only five chapters finished, the rest being but synopsis and elaborated scenes, we knew that we had something—something big. We delayed reporting upon it until Mr. Brewster—our senior partner—returned from Europe. Mr. Brewster has the final decision on all manuscripts; he was as well pleased with this offering as we were. Frankly, we saw possibilities of another great success such as those other long historical novels which have been so popular during the past few years.

“Queerly enough, the author’s name was not upon the papers sent us by the agent—that is, his proper name; there was a pen-name. And when we applied to Mr. Lever, the agent, we received a most unpleasant shock. The author’s real name, which had been given in the covering letter mailed with the manuscript to Mr. Lever, had most strangely disappeared, due to some carelessness in his office.

“Now we have an extremely promising book and no author—”

“What I can’t understand,” cut in Holmes, “is the modesty of the author. Why hasn’t he written to Lever?”

“That is the most unfortunate part of the whole affair.”

Mr. Creighton shook his head. “Lever recalled that the chap had said in the letter that if Lever found the manuscript unsalable he should destroy it, as the writer was moving about and had no permanent address. The fellow added that if he didn’t hear from Lever he would assume that it was not acceptable. Lever wrote to the address given in the letter to acknowledge receipt, but that was all.”

“Mysterious,” Val commented, interested in spite of himself.

“Just so. Lever deduced from the tone of the letter mat the writer was very uncertain of his own powers and hesitated to submit his manuscript. And yet, what we have is a very fine piece of work, far beyond the ability of the average beginner. The author must have written other things.

“The novel is historical, with a New Orleans setting. Its treatment is so detailed that only one who had lived here or had close connections with this country could have produced it. Mr. Brewster, knowing that I was about to travel south, asked me to see if I could discover our missing author through his material. So far I have failed; our man is unknown to any of the writers of the city or to any of those interested in literary matters.

“Yet he knows New Orleans and its history as few do today except those of old family who have been born and bred here. Dr. Hanly Richardson of Tulane University has assured me that much of the material used is authentic— historically correct to the last detail. And it was Dr. Richardson who suggested that several of the scenes must have actually occurred, becoming with the passing of time part of the tradition of some aristocratic family.

“The period of the story is that time of transition when Louisiana passed from Spain to France and then under the control of the United States.. It covers the years immediately preceding the Battle of New Orleans. Unfortunately, those were years of disturbance and change. Events which might have been the talk of the town, and so have found description in gossipy memoirs, were swallowed by happenings of national importance. It is, I believe, in intimate family records only that I can find the clue I seek.”

“Which scenes”—Ricky’s eyes shone in the firelight— “are those Dr. Richardson believes real?”

“Well, he was very certain that the duel of the twin brothers must have occurred— Why, Mr. Ralestone,” he interrupted himself as the stick Val was about to place on the fire fell from his hands and rolled across the floor.

“Mr. Ralestone, what is the matter?”

Across his shoulder Ricky signaled her brother. And above her head Val saw Holmes’ eyes narrow shrewdly.

“Nothing. I’m sorry I was so clumsy.” Val stooped hurriedly to hide his confusion.

“A duel between twin brothers.” Ricky twisted one of the buttons which marched down the front of her sport dress. “That sounds exciting.”

“They fought at midnight”—Creighton was enthralled by the story he was telling—“and one was left for dead. The scene is handled with restraint and yet you’d think that the writer had been an eye-witness. Now if such a thing ever did happen, there would have been a certain amount of talk afterwards—”

Charity nodded. “The slaves would have spread the news,” she agreed, “and the person who found the wounded twin.”

Val kept his eyes upon me hearthstone. There was no stain there, but his vivid imagination painted the gray as red as it had been that cold night when the slave woman had come to find her master lying there, her brother’s sword across his body. Someone had used the story of the missing Ralestone. But who today knew that the story except themselves, Charity, LeFleur, and some of the blacks.

“And you think that some mention of such an event might be found in the papers of me family concerned?” asked Ricky. She was leaning forward in her chair, her lips parted eagerly.

“Or in those of some other family covering the same period,” Creighton added. “I realize that this is an impertinence on my part, but I wonder if such mention might not be found among the records of your own house. From what 1 have seen and heard, your family was very prominent in the city affairs of that time—”

Ricky stood up. “There is no need to ask, Mr. Creighton. My brother and I will be most willing to help you. Unfortunately, Rupert is very much immersed in a business matter just now, but Val and I will go through the papers we have.”

Val choked down the protest that was on his lips just in time to nod agreement. For some reason Ricky wanted to keep the secret. Very well, he would play her game. At least he would until he knew what lay behind her desire for silence.

“That is most kind,” Creighton was beaming upon both of them. “I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your cooperation in this matter—”

“Not at all,” answered Ricky with that deceptive softness in her voice which masked her rising temper. “We are only too grateful to be allowed to share a secret.”

And then her brother guessed that she did not mean Creighton’s secret but some other. She crossed the room and rang the bell for Letty-Lou to bring coffee. Something triumphant in her step added to Val’s suspicion. Like the Englishman of Kipling’s poem, Ricky was most to be feared when she grew polite. He turned in time to see her wink at Charity.

Rupert came in just then, wet and thoroughly out of sorts, full of the evidences he had discovered on Ralestone lands bordering the swamp that strangers had been camping there. Their guests all stayed to supper, lingering long about the table to discuss Rupert’s find, so that Val did not get a chance to be alone with Ricky to demand an explanation. And for some reason she seemed to be adroitly avoiding him. He did have her almost cornered in the upper hall when Letty-Lou came up behind him and plucked at his sleeve.

“Mistuh Val,” she said, “that Jeems boy wants to see yo’all.”

“Brother Jeems!” Val exploded, his eyes on Ricky’s back. But he stepped into the bedroom where the swamper was still imprisoned by Lucy’s orders.

The boy was propped up on his pillows, looking out of the window. His body was tense. At the sound of Val’s step he turned his bandaged head.

“Can’t yo’ git me outa heah?” he demanded.

“Why?”

“The watah’s up!” His eyes were upon the water-filled darkness of the garden.

“But that’s all right,” the other assured him. “Sam says that it won’t reach the top of the levee. At the worst, only the lower part of the garden will be flooded.”

Jeems glanced at Val over his shoulder and then without a word he edged toward the side of the bed and tried to stand. But with a muffled gasp he sank back again, pale and weak. Awkwardly Val forced him back against his pillows.

“It’s all right,” he assured him again.

But in answer the swamper shook his head violently, “It ain’t all right in the swamp.”

In a flash Val caught his meaning. Swampers lived on house-boats for me most part, and the boats will outride all but unusual floods. But Jeems’ cabin was built on land, land none too stable even in dry weather. The swamp boy touched Val’s hand.

“It ain’t safe. Two of them piles is rotted. If the watah gits that far, they’ll go.”

“You mean the piles holding up your cabin platform?” Val asked.

He nodded. For a second Val caught a glimpse of forlorn loneliness beneath the sullen mask Jeems habitually wore.

“But there’s nothing you can do now—”

“It ain’t the cabin. Ah gotta git the chest—”

“The one in the cabin?”

His black eyes were fixed upon Val’s, and then they swerved and rested upon the wall behind the young Ralestone.

“Ah gotta git the chest,” he repeated simply.

And Val knew that he would. He would get out of bed and go into the swamp after that treasure of his. Which left only one thing for Val to do.

“I’ll get the chest, Jeems. Let me have your key to the cabin. I’ll take the outboard motor and be back before I’m missed.”

“Yo’ don’t know the swamp—”

“I know how to find the cabin. Where’s the key?”

“In theah,” he pointed to the highboy.

Val’s fingers closed about the bit of metal.

“Mistuh,” Jeems straightened, “Ah won’t forgit this.”

Val glanced toward the downpour without.

“Neither will I, in all probability,” he said dryly as he went out.

It had been on just such a night as this that the missing Ralestone had gone out into the gloom. But he was coming back again, Val reminded himself hurriedly. Of course he was. With a shake he pulled on his trench-coat and Slipped out the front door unseen.

PIRATE WAYS ARE HIDDEN WAYS

The rain, fine and needlelike, stung Val’s face. There was ominous pools of water gathering in the garden depressions.

Even the small stream which bisected their land had grown from a shallow trickle into a thick, mud-streaked roll crowned with foam.

But the bayou was the worst. It had put off its everyday sleepiness with a, roar. A chicken coop wallowed by as the boy struggled with the knot of the painter which held the outboard. And after the coop traveled a dead tree, its topmost branches bringing up against the plantation landing with a crack. Val waited for it to whirl on before he got on board his craft.

The adventure was more serious than he had thought. It might not be a case of merely going downstream and into the swamp to the cabin; it might be a case of fighting the rising water in grim battle. Why he did not turn back to the house then and there he never knew. What would have happened if he had? he sometimes speculated afterward. If Ricky had not come into the garden to hunt him? If together they had not— While Val went with the current, his voyage was ease itself. But when he strove to cut across and so reach the mouth of the hidden swampstream, he narrowly escaped upsetting. As it was, he fended off some dark blot bobbing through he water, his palm meeting it with a force that jarred his bones.

But he did make the mouth of the swampstream. Switching on the strong search-light in the bow, he.headed on.

And because he was moving now against the current, it seemed that he lost two feet for every one that he advanced.

The muddy water was whipped into foam where h tore around shrub and willow. There were no longer any confining banks, only a waste of water glittering through the dark foliage. The drear habitat of the vultures was being swept bare by the scouring of the incoming streams, but its moldy stench still arose stronger than ever, as if some foulness were being stirred up from its ancient bed.

It was only by chance that Val found the drying rack which marked the boundary of Jeems’ property. Here fee land was higher than the flood, which had not yet spread inland. He tied the boat to a willow and splashed ashore.

In the lower portions of the path his feet sank into patches of wet. Something which might have been—and probably was—a snake oozed away from the beam of his pocket torch.

The clearing was much as it had been, save that the door of the chicken-run stood ajar and its feathered population was gone. But under the cabin Val saw the betraying sparkle of water. The bayou in the rear must have topped flood level.

Someone had been there before him. The lock was battered and there had been an attempt to pry loose its staples, an attempt which had left betraying gouges on the door frame. But misused as it had been, the lock yielded to the key and Val went in. Warned by a lapping sound from beneath it did not take him long to get the chest, relock the door, and head back to the boat.

He was none too soon. Already, in the few moments of his absence, there were rills cutting across the mud, rills which were growing in strength and size. And the flood around the drying rack was up a good three inches. Val dumped the chest into the bow with little ceremony and climbed in after it, his wet trousers clinging damply to his legs. Something plate-armored and possessing wicked yellow eyes swam effortlessly through the light beam—a ‘gator bound for the Gulf, whether he would or no.

The return as far as the bayou was easy enough, for again the boat was borne on the current. But when Val faced the torn waters of the river he experienced a certain tightness of throat and chill of blood. What might have been the roof of a small shed was passing lumpily as he hesitated. Then came a tree burdened with a small ‘coon which stared at the boy piteously, its eyes green in the Sight. An eddy sent its ship close to the boat; the top branches clung a moment to the bow. And to Val’s surprise, the ‘coon roused itself to a mighty effort and crossed into the egg-shell safety the boat offered. Once in the outboard, it retreated to the bow where it crouched beside the chest and kept a wary eye on Val’s every movement.

But he could not rescue the wildcat which swept by spitting at the water from a log, nor the shivering doe which awaited the coming of death, marooned on an islet which was fast being cut away by the hungry waters. And all the time the stinging rain fed the flood.

Val gripped the rudder until the bar was printed deep across his palm. Soon it would be too late. He must cross now, heading diagonally downstream to escape the full fury of the current. With a deep breath he turned out into the bayou.

It was like fighting some vast animated featherbed. His greatest efforts were as nothing against the overpowering sweep seaward. And there was constant danger from the floating booty of the storm. The muddy spray lashed his body, filling the bottom of his craft as if it were a tea-cup.

And once the boat was whirled almost around.

Val was beginning to wonder just how long a swimmer might last in that black fog of rain, wind, and water when his bow eased into comparatively quiet water. He had crossed the main current; now was the time to head upstream. Grimly he did, to begin a struggle which was to take on all the more horrible properties of a nightmare. For this was many times worse than his fight against the swampstream.

Twice the engine sputtered protestingly and Val thought of trying to leap ashore. But stubbornly the outboard fought on. If there ever were a sturdy ship, fit to be named with Columbus’ gallant craft or Hudson’s vessel, it was that frail outboard which buffeted the rising waters of a Louisiana bayou gone flood mad.

It achieved the impossible; it crept upstream inch by inch, escaping disaster after disaster by the thinness of a dime. Since he had apparently not been born to drown, Val thought as he saw his headlight touch the tip of the landing, he would doubtless depart this life by hanging.

Then his light picked out something else which lay between him and the landing. The sleek, knife-bowed cruiser certainly did not belong to Pirate’s Haven. And what neighbor would come calling by water on such a night? It was moored by two thick ropes to a sunken post, and already the mooring was dragging the bow down. Val headed in toward it, running the outboard between the stranger and the landing.

Out of the blackness ashore a shadow arose and waved at him frenziedly. Then he saw Ricky’s white face above her long oil-silk cape. Her hair was plastered tight to her skull and she was protecting her eyes from the fury of the rain with her hands.

Val sent the boat inshore until it bit into the crumbling surface of the levee with a shock which threatened Ms balance. Ricky snatched at the painter and held steady while he jumped. They made the boat fast and Val landed the chest. The passenger did his own disembarking, making his way into the garden without a backward-look. Then Val demanded an explanation.

“What are you doing here?” he tried to outscreech the wind.

In answer she clapped her wet, muddy hand across his mouth and pulled him back from the levee.

They reached the semi-shelter of a rotting summerhouse where he put down the chest. Ricky pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. It was impossible for them to hear each other without screaming madly.

“Jeems told me—after you left—Val! How could you be so mad!”

“I made it.” He touched the chest with his toe. “After we had practically kidnapped him, we couldn’t let his belongings just float away. But why are you out here? And where did that boat come from?”

“I came out here after Jeems told me. I’m all right.”

She laughed shakily. “I’ve got my oldest clothes on—and this,” she touched her cape. “I couldn’t stay in there waiting—after I knew. And I didn’t want Rupert to ask questions. So I said that I was going to bed with a headache. Then I slipped out here to the levee. And I hadn’t been here two minutes before that boat came downstream. There were four men in it and they got out and went into the bushes over there. And, Val, Rupert is down at the other end of the garden where they are having trouble with the levee. Holmes and Creighton went down to see if they could help, too, just after you left. There’s nobody but Charity up at the house with Lucy and Letty-Lou. Val, what are we going to do?” she appealed to him.

“First I’ll investigate these visitors,” he said easily, though he felt far from easy within.

“Me too,” she said firmly if ungrammatically, and since Val could not wait to argue, she went along.

They took the route she had watched the invaders follow, wriggling through wet bushes and around trees.

“Val, look out!” She grabbed his arm and so saved him from tumbling headlong into a black hole in the ground.

Vines and a small shrub or two had been ruthlessly torn out to bare the opening. It was here that the visitors must have gone to earth. And then Val had a glimmering of the truth; the “Boss” and his friends had at last found Jeems’ private door.

Prudence urged that they return to the house and send Sam Two or some other messenger down to the crossroads store to summon the police by phone. Prudence however had never successfully advised any Ralestone.

They had a decided taste for righting their own battles. So, torch in hand, Val dropped into the hole. And a moment later Ricky slid down to join him.

They stood in a rough passage. Stout timbers banked its sides and guarded the roof. There was a damp underground smell such as Val had noted in the cellar of the house, but the air was fresh enough. After the first hasty survey, the boy held his fingers over the bulb of the flash-Sight so that only the faintest glimmer escaped to light their path.

The passage was short, ending abruptly in a low bricked room. Save for themselves, a tangle of rotting rope in a far corner, and two lively black beetles, it was empty.

“Val,” Ricky’s throaty whisper reached him, “can’t you guess what this is? The first pirate Ralestone’s storage-house!”

It was a likely enough explanation—though nothing could have been stored there very long; the place was too damp.

Beads of slimy moisture from the walls dripped slowly down, shining like silver in the light.

At the other side of the room was a corridor branching away. But this they barely glanced into, little knowing how that neglect was to prove disastrous in the end. It was the main door to their right which interested them most, for that led, so far as Val could determine, toward the house.

And that must have been the one the mysterious visitors had followed.

Thus they came into the second of their pirate ancestor’s store-rooms. This one was long and narrow. Three wooden casks eaten with decay and spotted with fungus stood against the wall, testifying to the use to which this chamber had been put, though the all-pervading damp could not have been good for the wine.

Again a dark archway tempted them on, and the third room into which they came had a more grim reminder of the scarlet past of the house. For Ricky stumbled over something which clinked dully. And when Val used the flash they looked down upon a telltale length of chain ending in an iron ring, its other end soldered into the wall.

“Val,” Ricky’s voice quavered, “did—did they keep people here?”

“Slaves, perhaps,” her brother answered soberly and shoved the rusting metal aside with his foot. But there were two other chains hanging from the wall, speaking of past horrors of which he did not care to think.

And then as their light picked out these damning testimonials, Val thought that the Ralestones, for all their pride and fine, brave airs, had been only pirates after all, akin to those whom they were now hunting through the dark.

There was a low arched doorway of brick on the right side of the room, and this they passed through. Beyond were three broad stone steps, worn a little on the treads, one cracked clear across. These led to a wide landing paved with brick. Here the walls were brick as” well.

Ricky touched one involuntarily and drew back her hand with a little exclamation of disgust. She wiped her palm vigorously on the wet surface of her cape.

Everywhere was the smell of rot and slow, vile decay.

In spite of its historical associations, decided Val, this vault should be sealed forever from the daylight and left to the sole occupancy of those nameless things which creep in its dark. The very air, in spite of its freshness, seemed tainted.

Another flight of stairs was before them, the treads fashioned of stone but equipped with a rotted wooden hand-rail. And above was the faint reflection of light and the sound of voices. Val hesitated and realized for the first time how foolhardy their expedition was.

Those above would be prepared to handle interruptions.

Val was determined to keep Ricky out of trouble, and to go on alone was the rankest folly. But, as he hesitated, the decision was taken out of his hands, for the light above suddenly became brighter. Grabbing at Ricky’s arm, he stumbled back into the shelter of the archway, pulling her after him.

A round circle of light shone plainly at the top of the stairs. Someone was coming down. Ricky’s breath was warm on Val’s cheek and she moved with a faint crackling of her cape which sounded as loud as a thunderclap in his ears.

“How’re we gonna do it without bustin’ the wall down?” demanded an aggrieved voice from the top of the stairs. “There ain’t no knob, no handle, no nothin’ to work it from this side. And these guys what stored their stuff here in the boot-leggin’ days never got into the house.”

“The boy got through, didn’t he?” Val knew that voice, the Boss of the swamp meeting. “Well, if he did, we can.”

“Lissen, Boss, it’s a secret, ain’t it? An’ we gotta know how it works before we can work it. An’ lissen here, you swamp bum, you keep outta my way—see? I don’t care if you were one of Mike Flannigan’s boys; that don’t cut no ice with me.” This truculent warning must have been addressed to an unseen companion on the same stair level.

The listeners below heard a faint sound which might have marked a collision and then the hiss of swamp French spoken hurriedly and angrily.

“What’re you gonna do now. Boss?”

The light half-way down the stairs paused. “There is some way of opening that panel—”

“An’ we gotta find it. All right, all right. But tell me how.”

“I don’t know whether it will be necessary to open it—from this side.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Use that thick skull of yours. Red. Doors swing two ways, don’t they? They can be used either to go in or to go out.”

“Got it!” The thick voice was oily with flattering approval. “We can get out this way—”

“Smart work. Red. Did you think that out all by yourself?” asked the other contemptuously. “Yes, we can come out this way when”—his voice was sharp with purpose—“we are finished. Send one of these swampers down to the levee where the men are working. As long as this flood keeps rising we’re safe. Then the other three of us will go for the house. We may be seen that way, but there’s no use spending any more time here playing ticktack-toe on that wood up there. We locate what we want, and if we’re cornered we can come out through here to the bayou. Slick enough.”

“Great stuff, Boss—“ Red began. But the rest was muffled, for Ricky and Val drew back into the room of the chains. There was only one thing to do now—reach Rupert and the others and prepare to meet these skulkers in the open. But before they had quite crossed the room Ricky came to grief. She caught her foot in one of those gruesome chains and stumbled forward, falling on her hands and knee. The noise of her fall echoed around the low chamber with betraying clamor.

A white light beat upon them as Val stooped to aid Ricky.

“Stop!” came the shout, but Val had only one thought, to dim that light. He swung back his arm and flung his own flash straight at the other. There was a grunt of pain and the light fell to the floor. With the tinkle of breaking glass it went out. Val pulled Ricky to her feet and threw her toward the door, forgetting everything but the wild panic which urged him out of that place of foul darkness.

They bruised their hands against the brick as they felt for the opening, and then they were out in the other chamber.

“Val,” Ricky clung to him, “I’ve got that little flash I keep under my pillow at night. Wait a minute until I get it out of my pocket. We can’t find our way out of here without a light.”

Muffled sounds from behind them suggested that their pursuers were on the trail even without light. After all, given time enough, it would be easy for them to feel their way out of the vaults. Val hustled Ricky on, taking his direction from one of the wine-casks he had bumped- into.

And before he-allowed her to hunt for her torch they stood in the first of the chambers.

The light she produced was poor and it flickered warningly. But it was good enough for them to see the dark opening which led to the outer world. They ducked into this just as the first of the other party came cursing into the open. At Val’s orders, Ricky switched off the light and they crept along by the wall, one hand on its guiding surface.

But the way seemed longer than it had upon their entering.

Surely they should have reached the garden entrance by now. And the surface underfoot remained level instead of slanting upward. Suddenly Ricky gave a little cry.

“We’ve taken the wrong passage! There’s only a blank wall in front of us!”

She was right. The torch showed a brick surface across their path, and Val remembered too late the second passage out of the first chamber. They must go back and hope to elude the others in the dark.

“They may have all gone out, thinking we were still ahead of them,” he mused aloud.

“Well, it’s got to be done,” Ricky observed, “so we might as well do it.”

Back they went along the unknown passage. This appeared to run straight out from the first chamber. But why it had been fashioned and then walled up they had no way of knowing. Ricky’s torch picked out the entrance at last.

“Wait,” Val cautioned her, “we had better see how the land lies before we go out in the open.”

They stood listening. Save for the constant drip, drip of water, there was no sound.

“I guess it’s clear,” he said.

“Wonder where all the water is coming from?” Ricky shivered.

“Down from the garden. Come on, I think it’s safe to have a light now.”

Ricky must have been holding the torch upward when She pressed the button, for the round circle of light appeared on the supporting timbers above the door. They both looked up, fascinated for a moment. The old oak had been laid in a crisscross pattern, the best support possible in the days when the vaults had been made.

“How wet—“ began Ricky.

Val cried out suddenly and struck at her. The blow sent her sprawling some three or four feet back in the passage.

There might be time yet to cover her body with his own, he planned desperately, before— The sound of slipping earth was all about them as Val flung himself toward Ricky. As he thrust blindly at her body, rolling her back farther into the tunnel, he felt the first clod strike full upon his shoulder. Ricky’s complaining whimper was the last thing he heard clearly. For out of the dark came the crash of breaking timber.

He was felled by a stroke across the upper arm, and then followed a chill darkness in which he was utterly swallowed up.

PIECES OF EIGHT— RALESTONES’ FATE!

Through the dull roaring which filled his ears Val heard a sharp call: “Val! Val, where are you? Val!”

He stared up into utter blackness.

“Val!”

“Here, Ricky!” But that thin thread of a whisper surely didn’t belong to him. He tried again and achieved a sort of croak. Something moved behind him and there was an answering rattle of falling clods.

“Val, I’m afraid to move,” her voice wavered unsteadily.

“It seems to be falling yet. Where are you?”

The boy tried to investigate, only to find himself more securely fastened than if he had been scientifically bound.

And now that the mists had cleared from him, his spine and back felt a sharp pain to which he was no stranger.

From his breast-bone down he was held as if in a vise.

“Are you hurt, Ricky?” He formed the words slowly.

Every breath he drew thrust a red-hot knife between his ribs. He turned his head toward her, pillowing his cheek on the gritty clay.

“No. But where are you, Val? Can’t you come to me?”

“Sorry. I’m—unavoidably detained,” he gasped. “Don’t try any crawling or the rest may come down on us.”

“Val! What’s the matter? Are you hurt?” Her questions cut sharply through the darkness.

. “Banged up a little. No”—he heard the rustle which betrayed her movements—“don’t try to come to me—Please, Ricky!”

But with infinite caution she came, until her brother felt the edge of her cape against his face. Then her questing hand touched his throat and slid downward to his shoulders.

“Val!” He knew what horror colored that cry as she came upon what imprisoned him.

“It’s all right, Ricky. I’m just pinned in. If I don’t try to move I’m safe.” Quickly he tried to reassure her.

“Val, don’t lie to me now—you’re hurt!”

“It’s not bad, really, Ricky—”

“Oh!” There was a single small cry and a moment of litter silence and then a hurried rustling.

“Here.” Her hand groped for his head. “I’ve wadded up my cape. Can I slip it under your head?”

“Better not try just yet. Anything might send off the landslide again. Just—just give me a minute or two to—to sort of catch my breath.” Catch his breath, when every sobbing gasp he drew was a stab!

“Can’t we—can’t I lift some of the stuff off?” she asked.

“No. Too risky.”

“But—but we can’t stay here—,’ Her voice trailed off and it was then that she must have realized for the first time just what had happened to them.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to, Ricky,” said her brother quietly.

“But, Val—Val, what if—if—”

“If we aren’t found?” he put her fear into words. “But we will be. Rupert is doubtless moving a large amount of earth right now to accomplish that.”

“Rupert doesn’t know where we are.” She had regained control of both voice and spirit. “We—we may never be found, Val.”

“I was a fool,” he stated plainly a fact which he now knew to be only too true.

“I would have come even if you hadn’t, Val,” she answered generously and untruthfully. It was perhaps the kindest thing she had ever said.

Now that the noise of the catastrophe had died away they could hear again the drip of water. And that sound tortured Val’s dry throat. A glass of cool water—He turned his head restlessly.

“If we only had a light,” came Ricky’s wish.

“The flash is probably buried.”

“Val, will—will it be fun?”

“What?” he demanded, suddenly alert at her tone. Had the dark and their trouble made her light-headed?

“Being a ghost. We—we could walk the hall with Great-uncle Rick; he wouldn’t begrudge us that.”

“Ricky! Stop it!”

Her answering laugh, though shaky, was sane enough.

“I do pick the wrong times to display my sense of humor, don’t I? Val, is it so very bad?”

Something within him crumbled at that question.

“Not so good. Lady,” he replied in spite of the resolutions he had made.

She brushed back the hair glued by perspiration to his forehead. Ricky was not gold, he thought, for gold is a rather dirty thing. But she was all steel, as clean and shining as a blade fresh from the hands of a master armorer.

He made a great effort and found that he could move his right arm an inch or two. Concentrating all his strength there, he wriggled it back and forth until he could draw it free from the wreckage. But his left, shoulder and side were numb save for the pain which came and went.

“Got my arm free,” Val told her exultantly and reached up to feel for her in the dark. His fingers closed upon coarse cloth. He pulled feebly and something rolled toward him.

“What’s this?”

Ricky’s hands slid along his arm to the thing he had found. He could hear her exploring movements.

“It’s some sort of a bundle. I wonder where it came from.”

“Some more remains of the jolly pirate days, I suppose.”

“Here’s something else. A bag, I think. Ugh! It smells nasty! There’s a hole in it— Oh, here’s a piece of money. At least it feels like money. There’s more in the bag.” She pressed a disk about as large as a half-dollar into Val’s palm.

“Pirate loot—“ he began. Anything that would keep them from thinking of where they were and what had happened was to be welcomed.

“Val”—he could hear her move uneasily—“remember that old saying: “Pieces of eight—Ralestones’ fate?”

“All good families have curses,” he reminded her.

“And good families can have—can have accidents, too.”

There could be no answer to that. Nor did Val feel like answering. The savage pain in his legs and back had given way to a kind of numbness. A chill not caused by the dank air crawled up his body. What—what if his injuries were worse than he had thought? What if—if—The dripping of the water seemed louder, and it no longer fell with the same rhythm. Ricky must be counting money from the bag. He could hear the clink of metal against stone as she dropped a piece.

“Don’t lose it,” he muttered foggily.

“Lose what?”

“Your pieces of eight.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t touched— Val, do—do you feel worse?”

But he had no thought now for his body. If Ricky had not dropped the money, then what had caused the clink?

He ground his cheek against the clay. Thud. thud, clink, thud. That was not water dripping nor coin rattling. That was the sound of digging. And digging meant— “Ricky! They’re digging! I can hear them!”

Her fingers closed about his free hand until the nails dug into the flesh. “Where?”

“I don’t know. Listen!”

The sound had grown in strength until now, though muffled, it sounded through that part of the passage still remaining open.

“It comes from this end. From behind that wall. But why should it come from there?”

“Does it matter? Val, do you suppose they could hear me if I pounded on the wall at this side?”

“You haven’t anything heavy enough to pound with.”

“Yes, I have. This package thing that you found. It’s quite heavy. Val, we’ve got to let them know we’re here!”

She crawled away, moving with caution lest she bring on another slide. That reassuring thud, thud still sounded.

Then, after long minutes, Val heard the answering blow from their side. Three times Ricky struck before the rhythm of the digging was broken. Then there was silence followed by three sharp blows. They had heard!

Ricky beat a perfect tattoo in joy and was quickly answered. Then the thud, thud began again, but this time the pace was quickened.

“They’ve heard! They’re coming!” Ricky’s voice shrilled until it became a scream. “Val, we’re found!”

A clod was loosened somewhere above them and crashed upon the wreckage. Would the efforts of their rescuers bring on another slide?

“Be quiet, Ricky,” Val croaked a warning, “it’s still moving.”

Then there came the sharp clink of metal against stone.

“Val,” called Ricky, “they’re right against the wall now!”

“Come back here, away from it. We—we don’t want you caught, too,” he answered her.

Obediently she crawled back to him and again he felt her hand close about his. The sound of metal grating against stubborn brick filled their pocket of safety. But as an ominous accompaniment came the soft hiss of earth sliding onto the wreckage. Which would win to them first, the rescuers or the second slide?

There was a vicious grinding noise from the walled end of the passage. A moment later a blinding ray of light swung in, to focus upon them.

“Ricky! Val!”

Val was blinking stupidly at the light, but Ricky had presence of mind enough to answer.

“Here we are!”

“Look out,” Val roused enough to warn, “the walls are unsafe!”

“We’re coming through,” rang the answer out of the dark. “Stand away!”

Now that they could see, Val realized for me first time the danger of their position. A jagged, water-rotten beam half covered with clay and sand lay across him, and beyond mat was a mass of splintered wood and wet earth. A little sick, he looked up at Ricky. She was staring at the wreckage.

Her eyes were black in a white, mud-smeared face.

“Val—Val!” His name came as the thinnest of whispers.

“It isn’t as bad as it looks,” he said hurriedly. “Something underneath must be supporting most of the weight or—or I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“Val,” she repeated, and then, paying no heed to his frantic injunctions to keep away, she dug at earth and rotten wood with her hands. Using the long bundle clumsily wrapped in stained canvas, she levered a piece of beam out of the way so that she might get down on her knees and scoop up the sand and clay.

“Ricky! Val!” The light swung ahead as someone scrambled through the hole in the barrier wall. Then, when the ray held firm upon them, the headlong rush was checked for a long instant. “Val!”

“Get her—away,” he begged. “Another—slip—”

But before he had done, a long arm gathered Ricky up as if she had been a child. “Right,” came the firm answer.

“Sam, take Miss ‘Chanda back. Then—”

Val was watching the reflection of the flash on the broken roof above him. Sand slid in tiny streams down the wall, mingling with the greenish trickles of water. There were queer blue and green arcs painted on the brick which had something to do with the hot pain behind his eyes. The blue turned to orange—to scarlet— “Careful! Right here in the hall, Holmes—”

The broken earth above him had somehow been changed to a high ceiling, the chill darkness to blazing light and warmth.

“Ricky?” he asked.

“Here, Val.” Her face was very close to his.

“You—are—all—right?”

“ ‘Course!” But she was crying. “Don’t try to talk, Val. You must be quiet.”

He heard someone moving toward them but he kept his eyes on Ricky’s face. “We did it!”

“Yes,” she answered slowly, “we did it.”

“Val, don’t try to talk.” Rupert’s face showed above Ricky’s hunched shoulder. There was an odd, strained look about his mouth, a smear of mud across his cheek.

But the harsh tone of his voice struck his brother as dumb as if he had slapped him.

“Sorry,” Val shaped the words stiffly, “all my fault.”

“Nothing’s your fault,” Ricky’s indignant answer cut in. “But—but just be quiet, Val, until the doctor comes.”

He turned his head slowly. On the hearth-stone stood Charity talking quietly to Holmes. Just within the circle of the firelight lay a bundle which he had seen before. But of course, that was the thing they had found in the passage, which Ricky had used to pound out their answer to Rupert.

“Ricky—“ Val always believed that it was some instinct out of the past which forced that whisper out of him—“Ricky, open that package.”

“Why—“ she began, but then she got to her feet and went to the bundle, twisting the tarred rope that fastened it in a vain attempt to undo the intricate knots. It was Holmes who produced a knife and sawed through the tough cord.

And it was Holmes who unrolled the strips of canvas, oil-silk, and greasy skins. But it was Ricky who took up what lay within and held it out so that it reflected both red firelight and golden room light.

Her brother’s sigh was one of satisfaction.

For Ricky held aloft by its ponderous hilt a great war sword. There could be no doubt in any of them—the Luck of Lome had returned.

“We found it!” breathed Ricky.

“Put it in its place,” Val ordered.

Without a word, Rupert drew out a chair and scrambled up. Taking from Ricky’s hands the ancient weapon, he slipped it into the niche their pirate ancestor had made for it. In spite of me years underground, the metal of hilt and blade was clear. Seven hundred years of history—their Luck!

“Everything will come right again.” Val repeated as Ricky came back to him. “You’ll see. Everything—will— be—all—right.”

His eyes closed in spite of his efforts. He was back in the darkness where he could only feel the warmth of Ricky’s hands clasped about his.

RALESTONES STAND TOGETHER

“I like Louisiana,” drawled Holmes lazily from his perch on the window-seat. ‘ “The most improbable things happen here. One finds secret passages under houses and medieval war swords stuck in drains. Then there are ‘things that go boomp in the night,’ too. It might be worth settling down here—”

“Not for you,” cut in Charity briskly. “Too far from the bright lights for you, my man.”

“Just for that,” he triumphed, “I shall not return this lost property found under a cushion of the couch in the hall.”

At the sight of that familiar black note-book, Val shifted uneasily on his pillows. Rupert got up.

“Tired, old man?” he asked and reached to straighten one of his brother’s feather-stuffed supports.

Val shook his head. Being bandaged like a mummy was wearying, but one had to humor two broken ribs and a fractured collar-bone.

“Sometimes,” replied Charity, “you are just too clever, Mr. Judson Holmes. That does not happen to be my property.”

“No?” He flipped it open and held it up so that she might see what lay within. “I’ll admit that it isn’t your usual sort of stuff, but—”

She was staring at the drawings. “No, that isn’t mine. But who—”

Ricky got up from the end of Val’s cot and went to look. Then she turned, her eyes shining with excitement.

“You’re trying them again! But, Val, you said you never would.”

“Give me that book!” he ordered grimly. But Rupert had calmly collected the trophy and was turning over the pages one by one. Val made a horrible face at Ricky and resigned himself to the inevitable.

“How long have you been doing this sort of thing?” his brother asked as he turned the last page.

“Ever so long,” Ricky answered for Val brightly. “He used to draw whole letters from them when we were at school. There were two sets, one for good days and the other for bad.”

“And now,” Val cut in, “suppose we just forget the whole matter. Will you please let me have that!”

“Rupert, don’t let him go all modest on us now,” urged the demon sister. “One retiring violet in the family is enough.”

“And who is the violet? Your charming self?” inquired Holmes.

“No.” Ricky smiled pleasantly. “Only Mr. Creighton might be interested in the contents of Bluebeard’s Chamber. What do you think, Rupert?”

At that audacious hint, Val remembered the night of the storm and Ricky’s strange attitude then.

“So Rupert’s the missing author,” he commented lightly.

“Well, well, well.”

Charity’s indulgent smile faded, and Holmes, suddenly alert, leaned forward. Rupert stared at Val for a long moment, his face blank. Was he going to retire behind his wall of reserve from which their venture underground had routed him? Or was he going to remain the very human person who had spent eight hours of every day at his brother’s beck and call for the past few weeks?

“Regular Charlie Chan, aren’t you?” he asked mildly.

Val’s sigh of relief was echoed by Ricky. “Thanks—so much,” Val replied humbly in the well-known manner of the famous detective Rupert had likened him to.

“Then we are right?” asked Ricky.

Rupert’s eyebrows slid upward. “You seemed too sure to be in doubt,” he commented.

“Well, I was sure at times. But then no one can ever be really sure of anything about you,” she admitted frankly.

“But why—“ protested Charity.

“Why didn’t I spread the glad tidings that I was turning out the great American novel?” he asked. “I don’t know. Perhaps I am a violet—no?” He looked pained at Ricky’s snort of dissent. “Or perhaps I just don’t like to talk about things which may never come true. When I didn’t hear from Lever, I thought that my worst forebodings were realized and that my scribbling was worthless. But you know,” he paused to fill his pipe, “writing is more or less like the drug habit. I’ve told stories all my life, and I found myself tied to my typewriter in spite of my disappointment. As for talking about it—well, how much has Val ever said about these?” He ruffled the pages of the note-book provokingly.

“Nothing. And you would never have seen those if I could have prevented it,” his brother replied. “Those are for my private satisfaction only.”

“Two geniuses in one family.” Ricky rolled her eyes heavenward. “This is almost too, too much!”

“Jeems,” Val ordered, “you’re the nearest. Can’t you make her shut up?”

“Just let him try,” said his sister sweetly. The swamper grinned but made no move to stir from his chair.

Jeems had become as much a part of Pirate’s Haven as the Luck, which Val could see from his cot glimmering dully in its niche in the Long Hall. The swamper’s confinement in the sick-room had paled his heavy tan and he had lost the sullen frown which had made him appear so old and bitter. Now, dressed in a pair of Val’s white slacks and a shirt from his wardrobe, Jeems was as much at ease in his surroundings as Rupert or Holmes.

It had been Jeems who had saved Ricky and Val on that night of terror when they had been trapped in the secret ways of their private ancestors. Sam Two had trailed Ricky to the garden and had witnessed their entering the tunnel. But fear of the dark unknown had kept him from venturing in after them. So he had lingered there long enough to see the invaders come out and take to the river.

Catching some words of theirs about a cave-in, he had gone pelting off to Rupert with the story.

The investigating party from the levee had discovered to their horror, the passage choked for half its length. They were making a futile and dangerous attempt to clear it when Jeems appeared on the scene. Letty-Lou having given him a garbled account of events, he had staggered from his bed in an effort to reach Rupert. He alone knew the underground ways as well as he knew the garden. And so once getting Rupert’s attention, he had set them to work in the cellar cutting through to the one passage which paralleled the foundation walls.

In the weeks which followed their emergence from the threatened tomb, the swamper had unobtrusively slipped into a place in the household. While Val was frightening his family by indulging in a bout of fever to complicate his injuries, Jeems was proving himself a tower of strength and a person to be relied upon. Even Lucy had once asked his opinion on the importance of a fire in the hall, and with that his position was assured.

Of the invaders they had heard or seen no more, although the police had visited Pirate’s Haven on two separate occasions, interviewing each and every member of the household. They had also made a half-hearted attempt to search the swamp. But for all the evidence they found, Ricky and Val might have been merely indulging in an over-vivid dream. Save that the Luck hung again in the Long Hall.

“Seriously, though,” Holmes drew Val’s thoughts out of the past, “these are worth-while. Would you mind if I showed them to a friend of mine who might be interested?” Since Rupert had already nodded and Charity had handed him the note-book, Val decided that he could hardly raise a protest.

“Rupert,” Charity glanced at him, “are you going to see Creighton?”

“Since all has been discovered,” he misquoted, “I suppose dial that is all mere is left for me to do.”

“Then you had better do it today; he’s planning to leave for the North tonight,” she informed turn.

Rupert came to life. For all his pose of unconcern, he was excited. In the long days Val had been tied to the cot hurriedly set up in a comer of the drawing-room on the night of the rescue—it had been thought wiser to move him no farther than necessary—he had found again the real Rupert they had known of old. There was little he could conceal from his younger brother now—or so Val thought.

“Sam has the convertible,” Rupert said. “There’s something wrong with the brakes and I told him to take it to town and have it looked over. Goodness only knows what time he’ll be back.”

“See here, Ralestone,” Holmes looked at his wristwatch, “I’ve the car I rented here with me. Let me drive you in. Charity has to go, anyway, and see about sending off those sketches of hers.”

“Oh, but we were going together,” protested Ricky. “I have some shopping to do.”

“Very simple,” Val suggested. “Why don’t you all go?”

“But that would leave you alone.” Rupert shook his head.

“No. There’s Jeems.”

“I don’t know,” Rupert hesitated doubtfully.

“It doesn’t require more than one person to wait on me at present,” Val said firmly. “Now all of you go. But remember, I shall expect the Greeks to return bearing gifts.”

Holmes saluted. “Right you are, my hearty. Well, ladies, the chariot awaits without.”

In spite of their protests, Val at last got rid of them.

Since he had a project of his own, he was only too glad to see the last of his oversolicitous family for awhile.

Val had never been able to understand why broken ribs or a fractured collar-bone should chain one to the bed. And since he had recovered from his wrenched back he was eager to be up and around. In private, with the protesting assistance of Sam Two, he had made a pilgrimage across the room and back. And now it was his full intention to be seated on the terrace when the family came home.

It was Lucy of all people who aided fortune to give him his opportunity.

“Mistuh Val,” she announced from the doorway as the sound of the car pulling out of the drive signaled the departure of the city-bound party, “them light’s out agin.”

“Another fuse gone? That’s the second this week. Who’s been playing games?” he asked.

“This no-‘count!” She dragged out of hiding from behind her voluminous skirts her second son, a infant who rejoiced in the name of Gustavus Adolphus and was generally called “Doff.” At that moment he was sobbing noisily and eyeing Val as if the boy were the Grand High Executioner of Tartary. “Yo’ tell Mistuh Val what yos doin’!” commanded his mother, emphasizing her order with a shake.

“Ain’t done nothin’,” wailed Doff. “Sam give me a nickle an’say. ‘Le’s hab fun.’ I puts the nickle in HI’ hole, then Mammy catched me.”

“Doff seems to be the victim, Lucy,” Val observed.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Don’ know. But I’m a-goin’ to fin’ out!” she stated with ominous determination. “How I’m a-goin’ git ironin’ done when dere ain’t no heat fo’ de iron, I asks yo’?”

“There are some fuses in the pantry and Jeems will put one in for you,” Val promised.

With a sniff Lucy withdrew, her fingers still hooked in the collar of her tearful son. Jeems glanced at Val as he went by the boy’s cot. And Val didn’t care for what he read into that glance. Had the swamper by any foul chance come to suspect Val’s little plan?

But it all turned out just as he had hoped. Val made that most momentous trip in four easy stages, resting on the big chair where Rupert had spent so many hours, on the bench by the window, in the first of the deck-chairs by the side of the French doors leading to the terrace, and then he reached the haven of the last deck-chair and settled down just where he had intended. And when Jeems returned there was nothing he could do but accept the fact that Val had fled the cot.

“Miss Ricky won’t like this,” he prophesied darkly.

“Nor Mr. Rupert neither. Yo’ wouldn’t’ve tried if they’d been heah.”

“Oh, stop worrying. If you’d been tied to that cot the way I’ve been, you’d be glad to get out here, too. It’s great!”

The sun was warm but the afternoon shadow of an oak overhung his seat so that Val escaped the direct force of the rays. A few feet away Satan sprawled full length, giving a fine imitation of a cat that had rid himself of all nine lives, or at least of eight and a half.

Never had the garden shown so rich a green. Ricky’s care had sharpened the lines of the flower-beds and had set shrubs in their proper places. And the plants had repaid her with a riot of blossoms. A breeze set the gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan’s ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. “It’s great,” he murmured again.

“Sure is,” Jeems echoed. He dropped down cross-legged beside Val, disdaining the other chair.

Satan stretched without opening his eyes and yawned, gaping to the fullest extent of his jaws, his tongue rising so that it seemed pointed like a snake’s. Then he rolled over on his other side and curled up with his paws under his chin. A bumblebee blundered by Val’s head on its way to visit the morning-glories. He suddenly discovered it difficult to keep his eyes open.

“Someone’s comin’,” observed Jeems. “Ah just heard a car turn in from the road.”

“But the folks have been gone such a short time,” Val protested.

However, the car which came almost noiselessly down the drive was not the one in which the family had departed.

It had the shape of a sleek gray beetle, rounded so that it was difficult to tell at first glance the hood from the rear. It glided to a stop before the steps and after a moment four passengers disembarked.

Val simply stared, but Jeems got to his feet in one swift movement.

For, coming purposefully up the terrace steps, were four men they had seen before and had very good cause to remember for the rest of their lives.

In the lead strutted the rival, a tight smile rendering his unlovely features yet more disagreeable. Behind him trotted the red-faced counselor who had accompanied him on his first visit. But matching the rival step for step was the “Boss,” while “Red” brought up the rear in a tidy fashion.

“Swell place, ain’t it?” demanded the rival, taking no notice of Val or Jeems. “Make yourselves to home, boys; the place is yours.”

Val gripped the arm of his chair. Sam, Rupert, Holmes— they were all beyond call. It was left to him to meet this unbelievable invasion alone. There was a stir beside him.

Val glanced up to meet the slightest of reassuring nods from the swamper. Jeems was with him.

“Whatcha gonna do with the joint. Brick?” asked Red, tossing his cigarette down on the flagstones and grinding it to powder with his heel.

“I dunno yet.” The rival strode importantly toward the front door.

“You might tell us when you find out,” Val suggested quietly.

With an exaggerated start of surprise the rival turned toward the boy.

“Oh, so it’s you, kid?”

“Perhaps,” Val said softly, “you had better introduce your friends. After all, I like to know the names of my guests.”

The Boss smiled sardonically and Red grinned. Only the red-faced lawyer shuffled his feet uneasily and looked from one to another of his companions with an expression of pleading. But the rival came directly to the point.

“Where’s that high and mighty brother of yours?” he demanded.

“Mr. Ralestone will doubtless be very glad to see you,”

Val evaded, having no desire for the visitors to discover just how slender his resources were. “Jeems, you might go and tell him that we have visitors. Go through the Long Hall, it’s nearer that way.” He dug the fingernails of his sound hand into the soft wood of the chair arm. Could Jeems interpret that hint? Someone must remove and hide the Luck before these men saw it.

“Right.” The swamper turned on his heel and padded toward the French windows.

“No, you don’t!” the rival snarled as he moved into line between Jeems and his objective. “When we want that guy, we’ll hunt him out ourselves. When we’re good and ready!”

“If you don’t wish to see my brother, just why did you come?” Val asked feverishly. He must keep them talking there until he had time to think of some way of getting that slender blade of steel into hiding.

“We’re movin’ in,” Red answered casually for them all.

“How interesting. I think that the police will enjoy hearing that.” Val commented.

“It’s perfectly legal,” bleated the lawyer. “We possess a court order to view the place with the purpose of appraising it for sale.” He drew a stiff paper from the inside pocket of his coat and waved it toward the boy.

“Bunk! I don’t know much about the law but I do know that you could have obtained nothing of the kind without our being notified. And just which one of you has been selected to do the appraising?”

“Him,” answered Red laconically and jerked his thumb at the Boss.

“So,” Jeems stared at him. “since yo’ couldn’t git what yo’ want by thievin’ at night, yo’re goin’ to try and git it by day.”

“But what are you really after? I’m curious to know. You certainly don’t want a sugar plantation which hasn’t been paying its way since the Civil War. That just isn’t reasonable. And you ought to know that we can’t afford to buy you off. We must be living over a gold-mine that we haven’t discovered. Come on, tell us where it is,” Val prodded.

“Cut the cackle,” advised Red, “an’ let’s git down to it.”

“I would advise you to get back in your car and drive out.” Val Wondered if his face looked as stiff as it felt. “This visit isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“We ain’t goin’ any place, kid,” remarked the rival. “You don’t seem to understand. We’re stayin’ right here. I got rights and the judge has recognized them. I’m top guy here now.”

“Yeah. Yuh ain’t so smart as yuh think yuh are,” contributed Red, scowling at Val. “We ain’t gonna leave.”

It wasn’t Red’s speech, however, that straightened the boy’s back and made Jeems shift his position an inch or two. There was another car coming up the drive. And since their enemies were all gathered before them, they could only be receiving friends, or at the worst neutrals.

But the car which came from between the liveoaks to park behind the first contained only two passengers. LeFleur and Creighton got out, stopped in surprise to view the party on the terrace, and then came up, shoving by Red.

“Quite a party,” Val observed. “But how did you manage to arrive so opportunely?”

“We have made a discovery,” panted the Creole lawyer; “a very important discovery. What are these men doing here?”

“We got a court order to view this house for sale.” The rival was truculent. “An’ it’s all legal. The mouthpiece says so,” he indicated his counselor.

“Perhaps,” Creighton’s cool tones cut through, “you had better introduce us.” There was a decided change in his manner. Gone was his shy nervousness, his slightly hesitant reserve, it was a keen business man who stood there now.

Val grinned. “You see before you the family skeleton. May I introduce Mr. Ralestone, who firmly believes that he is the Ralestone of Pirate’s Haven? And three other—shall we say gentlemen—whom I myself have never met formally. Though I did have the pleasure, I believe,” he addressed the Boss directly, “of blackening your eye.”

“Yeah, I’m Ralestone, and I’m gonna have my rights,” stated the rival briskly.

“You are a descendant of Roderick Ralestone?” asked Leieur.

“Yuh know I am. I got proofs!”

“The man is a liar,” Creighton said calmly.

As they stared at him, LeFleur nodded. Val saw an ugly grin begin to curve Red’s thick lips.

“Yeah? An how do yuh know that, wise guy?” he asked.

“Because there is only one Roderick Ralestone in this generation and he is standing right there. Permit me to introduce Roderick St. Jean Ralestone!”

The person he turned to was Jeems

THE RETURN OF RICK RALESTONE

Val ventured to break the sudden silence which resulted from Creighton’s astonishing statement.

“But how—why—”

“Yeah,” the rival had collected a measure of his scattered wits, “whatta yuh mean, wise guy?”

“Just this—“ LeFleur drew himself up and faced the invaders sternly—“I have only this very morning deposited with the probate court certain documents making very plain the identity of this young man. Without the shadow of a doubt he is the only living descendant of Roderick Ralestone and his wife. Valeric St. Jean de Roche. I have also sworn out a complaint—”

Then the Boss took a hand in the game. “The boy’s a minor,” he observed.

“Through me,” LeFleur returned, “Mr. Rupert Ralestone as nearest of kin has applied for guardianship and there will be no difficulty in the settlement of that matter.”

“Yeah!” The rival threw his gloves on the terrace and glared not at LeFleur but at his own backing. Having stared at the lawyer of his party until that unfortunate man lost all assurance, he attacked the Boss. “So, wise guy, what now? We ain’t got such a snap as yuh said we were gonna have. We were gonna move right in and take over the joint, were we? We didn’t have anything to worry about. For once we was playin’ with the law. Yeah, we were. We are nothin’ but a gang of mugs. Whatta we gonna do now, huh? You oughta know. Ain’t yuh been doin’ our thinkin’ for us all along? We can’t grab the land and run. We gotta camp right here if we’re gonna git anything. And how are we gonna—”

“Simpson!” the Boss’s voice was sharp. “Be quiet!

You are becoming wearisome. Gentlemen,” he bowed slightly toward LeFleur and Creighton, “one cannot fight bad luck, and this time Fate smiles upon you. It was a good-idea if it had worked,” he added musingly. “Young Ralestone seems to have gathered all the aces into his hand. Even,” the drawl became a sneer, “even the guardianship of the missing heir, which will mean a nice sum in the bank for the happy guardian, if all reports are true.”

“What did you want here?” Val asked for the last time.

The Boss smiled. “I shall leave that mystery for you to unravel, my wounded hero. It should occupy an idle moment or two. Doubtless all will be made clear in the fullness of time. As for you,” he turned upon LePleur, “there is no use in your entertaining any foolish idea of calling the police. For our invasion today we have a court order; unhappily it is no longer of use. But we did come here in good faith, as we are prepared to prove. And all other evidence of any lawbreaking upon our part rests, I believe, upon the word of two boys, evidence which might be twisted by a clever lawyer. You may prosecute Simpson for perjury, of course. But I think that Simpson will not be in this part of tile country long. Yes,” he looked about him once more at garden and house, “it was a very good idea. A pity it did not work. Well, I must be going before I begin to curse my luck. When a man does that, he sometimes loses it. You must have found yours, I think.”

“We did,” Val answered, but the Boss did not hear him, for he had turned on his heel and was striding down the terrace. For a moment his followers hesitated uncertainly and then they were after him. Back into their sinister beetle-car went the invaders and then they were gone down the drive, leaving the Ralestones in possession of the victorious field.

“Now,” Val said plaintively, “will somebody please tell me just what this is all about? Who is Jeems, really?”

“Just who I said,” answered Creighton promptly. “Roderick St. Jean Ralestone, the only descendant of your pirate ancestor.”

“Bettah tell us the story,” suggested the swamper quietly. “Yo’ ain’t foolin’, are yo’, Mistuh Creighton?”

The New Yorker shook his head. “No, I’m not fooling. But you are not the first one to question my story.” He smiled reminiscently. “Judge Henry Lane had to see every line of written proof this morning before he would admit that the tale might be true.”

“But where did you find this ‘proof?” Val demanded as Jeems pulled up chairs for the lawyer and Creighton.

“In that chest of Jeems’ which you brought out of the swamp on the night of the storm,” he replied promptly.

“And. young man,” he said to Jeems indignantly, “if you had let me see those papers of yours a month ago, instead of waiting until last week, we would have had this matter cleared up then—”

“But then we might never have found the Luck!” Val protested.

“Humph, that piece of steel is historically interesting, no doubt,” conceded Creighton, “but hardly worth risking your life for.”

“No? Well, you heard what that man said just now— that we had found our luck. It’s so; we have had good luck since. But I’m sorry; do get on with the story of Jeems’ box.”

“Ah gave it to him Monday,” said the swamper slowly. “But, Mistuh Creighton, there weren’t nothin’ in that chest but some books full of handwritin’—most in some funny foreign stuff—an’ a French prayer-book.”

“Plenty to establish your right to the name and a quarter interest in the estate,” snapped LeFleur. Val thought the lawyer rather resented the fact that it was Creighton and not he who had found the way out of their difficulties.

“Two of those books were ships’ logs, kept in the fashion of diaries, partly in Latin,” explained the New Yorker. “The log of the ship Annette Mane for the years 1814 and 1815 gave us what we wanted. The master was Captain Roderick Ralestone, although he concealed his name in a sort of an anagram. After his quarrel with his brother he apparently went to Lafitte and purchased the ship which he had once commanded for the smuggler. Then he sailed off into the Gulf to become a free-trader, with his headquarters first in Georgetown, British Guiana, then in Dutch Curacao, and Finally at Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was there that he met and fell in love with Valerie St. Jean de Roche, the only living child and heir of the Comte de Roche, who had survived the Terror of the French Revolution only to fall victim to the rebel slaves on his Haitian estates.

“Horribly injured, the Comte de Roche had been saved from death by the devotion of his daughter and her nurse, a free woman of color. These two women not only saved his life, but managed to keep him and themselves alive through the dark years which followed the horrors of the uprising and the overthrow of the French rule. The courage of that lady of France must have been very great. But she was near to the end of her strength when she met Roderick Ralestone.

“Against the direct orders of the despots in the land, young Ralestone got de Roche and his daughter away on his ship. Her maid chose to remain among her people. Ralestone hints that she was a sort of priestess of Voodoo and that it had been her dark powers which had protected the lives of those she loved.

“Ralestone took the refugees to Curacao, but de Roche did not survive. He lived only long enough to see his daughter married to her rescuer and to persuade his son-in-law to legally adopt the name of St. Jean de Roche, that an old and honored family might not be forgotten. The Comte’s only son had been killed.

“So it was as Roderick St. Jean—he dropped the ‘de Roche’ in time—that he returned here in 1830. His wife was dead, worn out while yet in her youth by the horrors of her girlhood. But Roderick brought with him a ten-year old boy who had the right to both the name of Ralestone and mat of de Roche.

“Roderick himself was greatly changed. Years of free trading, both in the Gulf and in the South Seas, had made him wholly sailor. A cutlass cut disfigured his face and altered the line of his mouth. Anyone who had known Roderick Ralestone would have little interest in Captain St. Jean, the merchant adventurer. He discusses this point at some length in his log, always concealing his real name.

“For the space of a year or two he was content to live quietly. He even opened a small shop and dealt in luxuries from the south. Then the desire to wander, which must have been the keynote of his life, drove him out into the world again. He placed his son in the care of a certain priest, whom he trusted, and went south to become one of the visionary revolutionists who were fighting their way back and across South and Central America. In one bloody engagement he fell, as his son notes in the old logs which he was now using to record his own daily experiences.”

“Ricky said,” Val mused, “that Roderick Ralestone never died in his bed. What became of the son?”

“Father Justinian wanted him to enter the Church, but in spite of his strict training he bad no vocation. The money his father had left with the priest was enough to establish him in a small coastwise trading venture, and later he developed a flatboat freight service running upriver to Nashville.”

“But didn’t he ever try to get in touch with the Ralestones?” Val asked.

“No. When Roderick Ralestone sailed from New Orleans he seems to have determined to cut himself off from the past entirely. As I said, he used an anagram to hide his name all the way through the log, and doubtless his son never knew that there was anything strange about his father’s past. Laurent St. Jean, the son, prospered. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War he was reckoned one of the ten wealthiest men of his native city.

“But that wealth vanished in the war when shipping no longer went form from the port. I did come across one interesting fact in Laurent’s notes covering those years. In 1861 Laurent St. Jean built a blockade-runner called the Red Bird. His backer in the venture was a Mr. Ralestone of Pirate’s Haven. So once Ralestone did meet Ralestone without being aware of the fact.

“Laurent St. Jean was imprisoned by ‘Beast’ Butler, along with other prominent men of the city, when the Yankees captured New Orleans. And he died in 1867 from a lingering illness contracted during his imprisonment. His son, Rehe St. Jean, came home from war to find himself ruined. His father’s shipping business existed on paper only. Having the grit and determination of his grandfather, he struggled along for almost ten years trying to get back on his feet. But those were dark years for the whole country.

“In 1876 St. Jean gave up the struggle. With his Creole wife and their two sons he moved into the swamps. Working first as a guide and trapper and then as a hunter of birds, he managed to make a sparse living. His eldest son followed in his footsteps, but the younger took to the sea. Roderick St. Jean, the eldest son, died of yellow fever in 1890. He left one son to the guardianship of his brother who had come home from the sea. That son came to look upon his uncle as his father and the real relationship between them was half forgotten.

“But Rene St. Jean the second was curious. He knew something of the world and he was interested in the past. It was his custom to do a great amount of reading, especially reading which concerned the history of his own state and city. And once he was inclined to get out the old sea chest which had been moved with the family for so many years. Then he must have discovered his relationship to the Ralestones; perhaps he solved the anagram or found the pasted pages in the prayer-book—

“He was not ambitious for himself, but he wanted a better chance for his foster-son and nephew than the one he had had. So he endeavored to prove his claim to this property. Unfortunately, the lawyer he trusted was shyster of the worst sort. He himself had no belief in his client’s story and merely bled him for small sums each month without ever really looking into the matter.”

“Gran’pappy said he was tryin’ to git his rights,” broke in Jeems. “He nevah tol’ mah pappy what he knowed. An’ he wouldn’t let anyone see into that chest—he kep’ it undah his bed. Then aftah Pappy died of the fever—‘long with mah mothah—Gran’pappy cotched it too. An’ the doctah said that was what made him so fo’getful aftahwards. He stopped goin’ in town; but he came heah—‘huntin’ his rights,’ he said. An’ he tol’ me that our fortune was hidden heah. ‘Course,” Jeems looked at them apologetically, “it soun’s sorta silly, but when Gran’pappy tol’ yo’ things yo’ kinda believed ‘em. So aftah he died Ah usta come huntin’ heah too. An’ then when Ah opened the chest and fbun’ these—“ From his breast pocket he drew a wash-leather bag and opened it.

He held out to Val a chain of gold mesh ending in a camelian carved into a seal. “This is youah crest,” he pointed to the seal. “Ah took it in town an’ a man at the museum tol’ me about it.-An’ this heah is Ralestone, too,” he indicated a small miniature painted on a slip of yellowed ivory. Val was looking at the face of the Ralestone rebel, as near like the water-color copy Charity had made of the museum portrait at one pea is to its pod-mate.

Creighton took up the small painting.

“Hm-m,” he looked from the ivory to Jeems and then to Val, “this is the final proof. Either one of you might have sat for this. You have the same coloring and features. If it were not for a slight difference of expression you might pass for twins. At any rate, there is no denying that you are both Ralestones.”

“I don’t think that we’ll ever attempt to deny it,” Val laughed. “But you were right, Jeems—I mean Roderick,” he said to his newly discovered cousin, “you do have as much right here as we do.”

Jeems colored. “Ah’m sorry for sayin’ that,” he confessed. “Ah thought yo’ were right smart and too good for us. An’ Ah’m sorry Ah played ha’nt. But Ah didn’t expec’ yo’ would evah see me, only the blacks, an’ I didn’t care ‘bout them. Ah always came when yo’ were ‘way or in bed.”

“Well, you’ve explained your interest in the place,” Val assented, “but what about the rival? Why did he appear?”

“It started in a blackmail plot. Your family have been wealthy, you know,” explained LeFleur. “But then the scheme became more serious when the oil prospectors aroused interest in the swamp. Already several men whose property bounds yours have been approached by the Central American Oil Company with an offer for their land. It would not at all surprise me if you were asked to dispose of your swamp wasteland for a good price. And the rumor of oil is what made the rival, as you call him, try to press his false claim instead of merely holding it over you as a threat.”

“The Luck is certainly doing its stuff,” Val observed. “Here’s the lost heir found, oil-wells bubbling at our back door—”

“I would hardly say that, Mr. Valerius,” remonstrated LeFleur.

“They may bubble yet,” the boy assured him airily. “I wouldn’t put it beyond the power of that length of Damascus steel to make wells bubble. Oil-wells bubbling,” Val continued from the point where the lawyer had interrupted him. “Rupert turning out to be the missing author—”

“What was that?” demanded Creighton sharply. He was on the point of handing a small book to Jeems.

“We just discovered that Rupert is your missing author,” Val explained. “Didn’t you guess when you heard the story of the missing Ralestone? The family went into town to tell you all about it; that’s why we were alone when the invaders arrived.”

“Mr. Ralestone my missing author! No, I didn’t guess. I was too interested in the story—but I should have! How stupid!” He looked down at the book he still held and then put it into the swamper’s hand. “Between the pages of the prayerbook, covering the offices for St. Louis’ Day, you’ll find the birth certificate for Laurent St. Jean-with his right name,” he said. “That’s a very important paper to keep, young man. Mr. Ralestone my author.” He wiped his forehead with the handkerchief from his breast-pocket. “How stupid of me not to have seen at once. But why—”

“He had some idea that his stuff was no good when he didn’t hear from that agent,” Val explained, “so he just tried to forget the whole matter.”

“But I have to see him, I have to see him at once.” The New Yorker looked about him as if by will-power alone he could summon Rupert to stand before him on the terrace.

“Stay to supper and you will,” Val invited. “Ricky and I discovered him for you just as we promised we would. But then you’ve given us Rod in return. I am not,” Val told his cousin, “going to call you Rick even though there is a tradition for it. There are too many ‘Ricks’ complicating the family history now. I think you had better be ‘Rod’.”

“Anythin’ yo’ say,” he grinned.

For the third time that afternoon Val heard a car coming up the drive.

“If this should turn out to be the Grand Chan of Tartary or the Lama of Peru I shall not be one iota surprised,” he announced. “After what I’ve been through this afternoon, nothing, absolutely nothing, would surprise me. Oh, it’s only the family.”

With the impatience of one who has a good earthshaking shock ready to administer, he watched his wandering relatives disembark. Charity and Holmes were still with them and a sort of aura of disappointment hung over me group. Then Ricky looked up and with a cry of joy came up the terrace steps in what seemed like a single leap.

“Oh, Mr. Creighton,” she began when Val lifted his hand.

“Let me tell it,” he begged, “I’ve been waiting for a chance like this for years.” Ricky was obediently silent, thinking that he wished to break the mystery of the author.

But Jeems and LeFleur understood that it was to them Val appealed.

“Val, what are you doing out of bed?” was Rupert’s first question.

 “Saving the old homestead while you went joyriding. We had visitors this afternoon.”

“Visitors? Who?” he began when his brother silenced him with a frown.

“Oh, let’s not go into that now,” Val said hurriedly. “There is something more important to be discussed. Since you left this afternoon we have had an addition to the family.”

“An addition to the family?” puzzled Ricky. “What do you mean?”

“Rick Ralestone has come back,” Val announced.

“Val, hadn’t you better go back to bed?” suggested his sister.

“Not now,” he grinned at her. “1 haven’t lost my mind yet, nor am I raving. Ladies and gentlemen,” Val prepared to echo Creighton’s speech of an hour before, “permit me to introduce Roderick St. Jean de Roche Ralestone, the missing heir!”

With an impish grin Val had never seen on his face before, Jeems clicked his heels in a creditable imitation of a court bow.

RUPERT BRINGS HOME HIS MARCHIONESS

“Such a nice domestic scene,” Val observed.

Ricky looked up from the bowl into which she was shelling peas. “Now just what do you mean by that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing, nothing at all. It’s getting so I can’t say a word around here without you suspecting some sort of a catch in it,” her brother complained. He shifted the drawingboard Rod had fixed up for him an inch or two. Although Val’s arm was at last out of the sling, he was not supposed to use it unless absolutely necessary.

“Well, after that afternoon when you made the missing heir appear like a rabbit out of a hat—“ began his sister.

“Rod,” Val called down to where their cousin was busied over the stretching of the new badminton net, “did you hear that? She referred to you as a rabbit—deliberately.”

“Hm-m,” Rod answered in absent-minded fashion. “That cat of Miss Charity’s just walked away with one of those feathered things yo’ bat ‘round.”

“Let us hope that he returns it in time,” Val said; “otherwise I can prophesy that you are going to spend the rest of the morning crawling around under hedges and things hunting for him and it. Ricky will not be balked. If she says that we are going to play badminton—well, we are going to play badminton.”

“I think that you might help too.” Ricky attacked a fresh pod viciously as their cousin came up on the terrace.

He stopped for a moment by Ricky’s chair, long enough to gather the pods together on the paper she had put down for them, piling them up in a more orderly fashion than she was capable of.

“Doing what?” Val inquired. “You know that Lucy has chased everyone out of the house. And now that Rod has finished setting out the lawn sports, what is there left to do? By the way, did Sam mend that croquet mallet, the one with the loose head?”

“The one that you broke hitting the stone with when you aimed at your ball yesterday?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes, I saw to that this morning.”

“Then what more is there to worry about? Let the party begin.” Val reached for his box of pencils.

That afternoon promptly at three-thirty the Ralestones of Pirate’s Haven were going to give their first party. They had lived, eaten, and slept with the idea of a party for the past week until Rupert rebelled and disappeared for the morning, taking Charity with him. He declared before he left that the house was no longer habitable for anyone above the mental level of a party-mad monomaniac, a statement with which Val privately agreed. But Ricky did trap him before he got the convertible out and made him promise to bring home two pounds of salted nuts and some more ice, because she simply knew that they wouldn’t have enough.

Ricky dropped the last of the peas into the bowl and leaned back in her canvas deck-chair. “I’m going to wear green,” she murmured dreamily, “with that leaf thing in my hair. And Charity’s going to wear her rose, the one that swishes when she walks.”

“I think I’ll appear in saffron,” Val announced firmly. “Somehow I feel like saffron. How about you. Rod?”

The thin, efficient, brown-faced person who was Roderick St. Jean de Roche Ralestone, to grant him his full name, stretched lazily and transferred a fistful of Ricky’s peas to his mouth, a mouth which was no longer sullen. At Val’s question he raised his shoulders in one of his French shrugs and considered.

“Yellow, with lilies behind mah ears,” he grinned at Ricky. “Bettah give them somethin’ to stare at; they’ll all be powerful interested, anyway.”

“Yes, the lost viscount,” Val agreed. “Of course, you’re really only a Lord like me, but it sounds better to say ‘the lost viscount.’ You’ll share the limelight with Rupert and the Luck, so you’d better take that pair of my flannels which haven’t turned quite yellow yet.”

Rod shook his head. “This time Ah have mah own. Ah went in town shoppin’ yesterday. It’s mah turn to share domes. Youah brothah told me to get yo’ some shirts. So Ah did. Lucy put them in the top drawer.”

“Don’t tell me,” Val begged, aroused by this news, “that we are actually able to afford some new clothes again?”

Rod nodded and Ricky sat up. “Don’t be silly,” she said, “we’re comfortably well off. With Rupert writing books, and a lot of oil or something in the swamp, why, what have we got to worry about? And next fall Rod’s going to college and I’m taking that course in dress designing and Rupert’s going to write another book and—and—”

Her inventive powers failed as Holmes came out on the terrace.

“Hello there.” Val glanced at his watch. “I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but you’re about four hours too early. We haven’t even crawled into our party duds.”

“So I see. But this isn’t a social call. By the way, where’s Charity?”

“Oh, she went off with Rupert this morning,” answered Ricky. “And I think it was mean of them, running out on us that way, when there was so much to do.”

It seemed to Val that there was a faint shadow of irritation across the open good nature of Holmes’ smile when he heard her answer. “That damsel is becoming very elusive nowadays,” he observed as he sat down. “But now for business.”

“More business? Not another oil-well!” Ricky expressed her surprise vividly with upflung hands.

“Not an oil-well, no. Just this—“ He pulled Val’s black note-book from his pocket. “Now I am not going to tell you that I have shown them to a publisher and that he wants fifty thousand or so at five dollars apiece. But I did show them to that friend I spoke of. He isn’t very well known at present but he will be some day. His name is Fenly Moss and he is interested in animated cartoons. He has some ideas that sound rather big to me.

“Fen says that these animal drawings of yours show promise and he wants to know whether you ever thought of trying something along his line?”

Val shook his head, impatient to hear the rest.

“Well, he’s in town right now on his vacation and he’s coming out to see you tomorrow. I advise you, Ralestone, that if Fen makes you the proposition I think he’s going to, to grab it. It’ll mean hard work for you and plenty of it, but there is a future to it.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” the boy began when Holmes frowned at him half-seriously.

“None of that. I was really doing Fen a favor, but you need’t tell him that. Do you know how long Charity and your brother are going to be gone?”

“No. But they’ll be back for lunch,” Ricky said. “If they remember lunch—they’re getting so vague lately. Val went out to call them to dinner last night and it took him a good five minutes to get them out of the garden.”

“Five? Nearer ten,” scoffed her brother.

Holmes got up abruptly. “Well, I’ll be drifting. When is this binge of yours?”

“Three-thirty, which really means four,” answered Ricky. “Aren’t you going to stay to lunch?”

The New Yorker shook his head. “Sorry, I’ve another engagement. Thanks just the same.”

“Thank you!” Val waved the note-book as he vanished. “Wonder why he hurried off that way?”

“Mad to think that Miss Charity was gone,” answered Rod shrewdly. “Yo’ve had that board long enough.” He calmly possessed himself of Val’s drawing equipment. “Time to rest.”

“Yes, grandfather,” his cousin assented meekly.

Ricky slapped at a fly. “It seems to get hotter and hotter,” she said. From the breast pocket of her sport dress she produced a handkerchief and mopped her face. Then she looked at the handkerchief in surprise.

“What’s the matter? Some face come off along with the paint?” asked Val.

“No. But I just remembered what this is—our clue!”

“You mean the handkerchief we found in the hall? I wonder who—”

Rod reached up and took it out of her hand.

“Mine. Miss Charity gave me a dozen last Christmas.”

“Then you left it there,” Ricky laughed. “Well, that solves the last of our mysteries.”

“All present or accounted for,” Val agreed as around the house came Rupert and their tenant.

“So there you are,” began Ricky. “And I’d like to know what you’ve been doing all morning—”

“Would you really?” asked Rupert.

Ricky stared at him for a long moment and then she arose before transferring her gaze to Charity. It might have been sunburn or the heat Ricky had complained of which colored the cheeks of the Boston Biglow.

“Rod! Val!” cried Ricky. “Where are your manners?”

As she sank forward in a deep and graceful curtsy she added, “Can’t you see that Rupert has brought home his Marchioness?”

“Now that,” said Val. as he held out his hand to the new mistress of Pirate’s Haven, “is what I call ‘Ralestone Luck.’ “