"Yes," said Eddring. "But that Louise Loisson must have been dead, buried and forgotten half a hundred years ago. If so, what is she doing dancing down at New Orleans to-day? As soon as I saw that name in the newspaper, I looked it up again in my little book. Then I put together my suspicions about the letter, and the list, and the valise. If I hadn"t seen the name in the newspaper, I might never have been so much interested in it; and certainly I should never have put the matter before you."
"I am mighty glad you did. There may be a heap under all this that I want to know about."
"There is. And now I want you to follow me closely; because this very same thing has come to me from another direction.
"You know that in my work I have to examine papers in all sorts of claim cases. Now, within the year, I ran across a United States Supreme Court brief, a case which came up from the Indian Nations, and which was decided not long ago. It seems that the plaintiff used to be on the Omaha pay-rolls. Some one in the tribe, apparently as a test case, covering certain other claims, objected that the claimant was not all Indian, indeed not Indian at all, and hence not ent.i.tled to be on the rolls; although you know Uncle Sam recognizes Indian blood to the one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth part.
"I might never have taken much interest in that suit, which I happened to be going over for other reasons, if I hadn"t caught sight, in the testimony, of the names of Loise and Loisson, and if I hadn"t found the name of Henry Decherd among counsel for the plaintiff!"
"Well, by jinks, _that"s_ mighty curious!" said Blount. "I didn"t know he was a lawyer."
"Yes. He was a lawyer; so much the more dangerous, as I"ll show you.
Now Paul Loise was official interpreter for the United States government at St. Louis in 1825. He was of absolutely no kinship to the Comte de Loisson, the similarity of names being a mere coincidence, though one which has made much trouble in the records since that time, as I have discovered. The confusion of these two names was one of the most singular legal blunders ever known in the South. It was this entanglement of the records that gave Henry Decherd his chance.
"The Comte de Loisson was a widower, and he brought with him from France a young daughter. He pushed on up the Missouri River in search of adventures, but he left this daughter, as nearly as can now be learned, in charge of the half-breed interpreter, Paul Loise, perhaps with the understanding that the latter was to obtain suitable care for her from officials in the government employ. That was about the time the Redhead Chief--Clark, of Lewis and Clark, you know--was Indian commissioner at St. Louis.
"Now Paul Loise, at that time engaged in the government treaty work with the tribes, was moving about from tribe to tribe, and he seems to have had an Indian wife in pretty much every one of them. He also had a white wife, or one nearly white, whom he left at his headquarters in St. Louis; and it was with this woman, white or partly white, that the young daughter of the Comte de Loisson was left, at least for a time. Paul Loise himself on one journey went up the river to the place where the Omaha tribe then lived. Whether he took this white child with him, or whether he left her in charge of his white wife at St. Louis, is something now very difficult to prove. This United States Supreme Court case hinges very largely on that same question; and hence it is of great interest to us, as I will show you after a while."
"Well, now, couldn"t this dancer down at New Orleans--some sort of Creole like enough--have been a descendant of this Loise family of St. Louis?" asked Blount.
"That we can"t tell," replied Eddring. "As I said, the similarity of the names set me looking up the whole matter as soon as I could."
"Well, didn"t the French girl"s father ever come back after her?"
"Wait. We"ll come to that. The one thing certain is that he never came back down the Missouri River. He disappeared absolutely, no doubt killed somewhere by the Indians. His daughter grew up as best she might. She went to France, as our book shows. After a time Paul Loise, her erstwhile protector, died also. Here Louise Loisson disappears from view. She left behind her a very pretty legal question for others to solve, and a mightily mixed set of records to aid in the solution.
"Out of the uncertainty regarding the descendants of Paul Loise there arose a great deal of litigation. This lawsuit, which I have mentioned, no doubt originated by reason of that very confusion. Now, the attorneys in that suit had a knowledge of the existence of this very book which you have in your hand. They stated in this brief that there was but one copy of this book existing in America, that in the Congressional Library at Washington. They won their case by means of this book as evidence; for here is full proof, printed in Paris in 1825, that these Indians went to Paris, accompanied by Paul Loise, and by one Louise Loisson, a white girl, n.o.ble, and _not_ his daughter; which meant that he had a mixed-blood daughter elsewhere, from whom the claimant had descent.
"How this book got into the possession of Henry Decherd--of course it did not belong to the man Thompson-is something I can"t tell. He no doubt intended to use it for his own purposes, as I will try to show you after a while. As to this Supreme Court case from the Indian Nations, it simply proves that the claimant did have a status on the pay-rolls; and it stops at that. The case is irrefutable evidence on the Paul Loise descent question. Perhaps Decherd, for reasons which we shall possibly find out, was not willing to let the matter rest quite there.
"As to our little book, it is a gay one enough. It says that the chieftains from America were received with distinguished honors in the city of Paris. They had so much champagne that three of them died. A t.i.tled woman of France fell in love with one of them, and there were all sorts of high jinks. As to the young girl--_La Belle Americaine_ they called her--it seems that Paris could not have enough of her. She was all the rage. She taught them the dances of the _"sauvages." "Tres interessantes"_ the Frenchmen thought these dances, it seems. That"s all we know of her--she danced. Well, if Mademoiselle Louise Loisson, down at New Orleans to-day, is as successful with her line of dancing as her possible mamma or grandmamma was in Paris years ago, it would certainly seem she has no reason for complaint."
Blount sank back in his chair with a deep sigh. "You were right,"
said he. "It is a little hard to understand all this at first, but I"m beginning to see. And unless I"m mistaken, this thing is going to come home mighty close to us. Decherd has surely been mixed up in this, if this was really his book, or in his valise, as you think.
Delphine is in it, too, if that letter to him means anything. But now, what was Decherd after?"
"I"ll tell you," said Eddring, "or at least, I"ll show you what I have discovered so far, and you can guess at the rest.
"When I got thus far along I was pretty deeply interested, as you see, and I followed it on out, just for the love of the mystery. Now I have unearthed the fact that the Comte de Loisson did leave some property when he died. Soon after his arrival in the neighborhood of St. Louis, he bought a good-sized tract of land, down in what is now St. Francois County, below St. Louis. The lands at that time were thought valueless, but perhaps the Comte de Loisson had more scientific knowledge than most of the inhabitants of St. Louis at that time. Perhaps he intended to develop his lands after he returned from his adventures up the Missouri River. He never did return, and the lands seem to have lain untouched for a generation or more, still for the most part considered valueless.
"Now, when I had got _that_ far along, I took the trouble to look up the numbers of the sections of this land. Cal, I want to tell you that that land to-day is in the middle of the St. Francois lead region, which is full of this new disseminated lead ore, which everybody for a time thought was only flint!"
"On Jordan"s _strand_--" began Blount, suddenly bursting into song.
"I don"t blame you for being disturbed," said Eddring, himself smiling. "As you see, there is something under all this. Maybe Mr.
Decherd is a bigger man than we gave him credit for being. Maybe this little book is a bigger book than we thought it was.
"Now, you know, the entail has been abolished in the state of Missouri. So we come directly to the question of the descent of these lead lands under a certain name. Of course, a single heir in each of three generations would carry the t.i.tle down clear till to-day; provided, of course, that there was no escheat to the government-- that all the taxes had been kept up. Very well. That means that it is at least a legal _possibility_ for a living heir to-day to have t.i.tle to those Loisson lead mines, which are very valuable. Cal--"
and here Eddring rose, tapping with his finger on the table in front of him, "the Louise Loisson who went to France in 1825 was the owner of those lead mines! Now I have looked up the tax record. The taxes on these lands for several years back have been paid by Henry Decherd!"
Blount himself rose and stood back, hands in pockets, looking at the speaker. "--I"ll _take_ my stand!" he continued with his hymn.
"For a long time," went on Eddring, "these lands, not supposed to be worth anything, were not listed by any a.s.sessor, and hence did not appear upon the tax-rolls. Thus they were not forfeited by the original purchaser, who must have had his t.i.tle pretty nearly direct from Uncle Sam himself. Louise Loisson, the first, the French n.o.blewoman dancer, owned those lead mines. If this dancer at New Orleans be a relative of hers, a daughter or granddaughter, she won"t have to dance unless she feels like it. For I am here to tell you, as a lawyer, her claim to this tract can be proved, just as readily as the claim to a place on the Omaha pay-rolls for a descendant of Paul Loise was proved in the United States Court five years ago, by means of this same book on the table there before you!"
"Well now, my son, that"s what an ignorant fellow like me would call a mighty pretty lawsuit," said Blount, turning over the curious little red-bound volume in his hand.
"It"s more than pretty," said Eddring, "it"s deep, and it"s important--important to you and me, for more reasons than one. There has been a heap of trouble down in the Delta, and there has been a head to all this trouble-making. We are now ent.i.tled to our guess as to whether or not we have in this curious way located the head. If we are right, we have at least connected Henry Decherd with an attempt to secure, either for himself or some one else, the t.i.tle to these lands.
"Now, whether the rightful heir, if there be any heir, knows of the existence of these lands, or ever heard of this book, or ever heard of that Indian lawsuit, is something which we don"t know. There may not be any living descendant of the Loisson family. All we know is that there _is_ some one using the Loisson name; and that there _is_ some one else who is after the Loisson estates. Now, just why this latter has had certain a.s.sociates, or just why he has done certain other acts, you and I can"t say at this time. But we"ll know some time."
"The first thing to do, of course, is to go to New Orleans to see that dancer woman."
"Of course," said Eddring. "I shall start tomorrow. As for you, Blount, you"ve got hint enough about what"s going on in your own neighborhood. You"d better watch that girl Delphine. What are you letting her stay around there for, anyway?"
"Because I"ve got to eat," said Blount, "and because I"ve got to have some one to run that place. As I told you, I haven"t been there much of the time till lately. I reckon she"s been boss, about as much as anybody. You know there wasn"t a white woman on the place, not since Miss Lady left. I couldn"t ever bear to try to get anybody else in there. I just let things go."
"What became of Mrs. Ellison, after she left your place?"
"I don"t know; don"t ask me. I was an awful fool ever to get caught in any such a way. I heard Mrs. Ellison went to St. Louis, but I don"t know. As I look at it now, I believe Decherd was more than half willing to make up to Miss Lady. I reckon maybe Mrs. Ellison didn"t like that, though why she should care I don"t know. Don"t ask me about all these things--I"ve had too much trouble to want to think about it. All I know is that the girl was as fine a one as ever lived. _She_ was good--now I know that, and that"s all I do know. I always thought she was Mrs. Ellison"s daughter; but when the break-up came, they allowed it wasn"t that way. I never did try to figure it all out. When Miss Lady disappeared, and we-all couldn"t find her nowhere, I just marked the whole thing off the slate, and went out hunting."
"Cal," said Eddring, quietly, "did you ever stop to think that there is quite a similar sound in those three names, Loise, and Loisson, and Ellison?"
Blount threw out his hands before him. "Oh, go on _away,_ man,"
said he. "You"ve got me half-crazy now. I don"t know where I"m standing, nor where I"ve been standing. I don"t feel safe in my own home--I _haven"t_ been safe. My whole place has gone to ruin, and all on account of this business. It"s nigh about done me up, that"s what it has. And now here you come making it worse and worse all the time."
"But we"ve got to see it through together."
"Oh, I reckon so. Yes, of course we must."
"Well, now, let"s just look over the matter once more," said Eddring.
"Let us suppose that Decherd has stumbled on this knowledge of the unclaimed Loisson estate. He works every possible string to get hold of it. He tries to get tax t.i.tle--and that is where he uncovers his own hand. Meanwhile, he tries the still safer plan of finding a legal heir. We will suppose he has two claimants. From this letter here we may suppose that Delphine was one of them, his first one. He seems to have learned from this Indian lawsuit, whether or not he was concerned other than as counsel in that lawsuit--and the record does not show whether or not he was--that Delphine, or his claimant, whoever that was--we"ll say Delphine, for we don"t know Delphine"s real name, perhaps--could and did stick on the pay-rolls of an Indian tribe. That meant that she was Loise, and not Loisson. The United States Court records hold that absolute evidence, _res adjudicata-- stare decisis;_ which means, in plain English, that ends it. It also means that that Indian claimant could _not_ inherit the Loisson estate!
"Now here is an unknown woman, whom we will call Delphine, begging Decherd not to forsake her. There would seem to have been a failure on this line of the Decherd investigation. Perhaps the result of the test case didn"t please Decherd very much, although he was on the winning side. At least, it marked the Loise claimant off the Loisson slate. So much for claimant number one. So much for Delphine, we"ll say.
"But now, at some time or other, Miss Lady and Mrs. Ellison appeared on the scene. I don"t know, any more than you do, how these three happened to know each other, or why Decherd happened to appear so steadily at your place, after you had so eagerly taken his suggestion and employed Mrs. Ellison as your household supervisor. But now, we will say, Decherd takes a great notion to Miss Lady. All the time Delphine is there watching him. She puts on a heap more airs than a colored mistress. Along about the time of the train wreck, she begins to charge him with faithlessness. She refers vaguely, as you see in the letter, to his interest in this other woman. Now, can that be our Miss Lady?
"We don"t know. None of us can tell, as yet, who that mysterious other person is. Mrs. Ellison might tell us, if we could find her, or if we cared to find her."
"No, you don"t," said Blount. "That woman stays off the map. The only one of the three we want to find is Miss Lady."
"Yes," said Eddring, "if we had Miss Lady, and if we could get Mrs.
Ellison and Henry Decherd to tell the truth as Miss Lady would, then we would learn easily a great many things which perhaps it will cost us a great deal of trouble to uncover."
"Well," said Blount, sighing, as he walked moodily across the room, "my own little world seems to be pretty much turned upside down. I can"t say you make me any happier by all this. The only thing I can see clear is that you"ve got to get to New Orleans as soon as you can. There"s reasons plenty for you to go."
The two men looked at each other for a moment, but said nothing.
"Give me my little book," said Eddring, finally. "I fancy Mr. Henry Decherd would be glad enough to have that back in his own hands again. There"s his evidence. This is the key to his plans, whatever they are."
Blount groaned as he swung about on his heel. "Good G.o.d! man," he said, "don"t! To h.e.l.l with your lawsuit! What do we care about mixed names, or all this underhanded work? Never _mind_ about me and my affairs--I"ll take care of that. Man, it"s _Miss Lady_ we want. We don"t know what has happened to her. The rest don"t make any difference."