This was murder, committed in the presence of half a hundred witnesses!
It was the bearded Scribe who started the hue and cry. Wildly, he pointed to the doorway toward which the murderer had started only to be blocked by the uniformed Seneschal. He was raising his smoking gun, this Satan who was living the part, when he saw that the Seneschal wasn"t to be cowed. Turning, the man with the Mephisto Mask dashed for the stairs, took them with long strides and was around the turn of the landing by the time people began to follow. The bearded Scribe led the rush in that direction, while the bold Seneschal, seeing the route was crowded, dashed across the floor and beckoned the guests to a rear stairway that offered a chance to cut off Mephisto"s flight.
Completely lost in the rush, Margo didn"t have time to philosophize how brave people could become after someone else showed them how. Practically everybody had chased upstairs, by one route or the other, and the Seneschal, back at the outer door, was waving to bring back the few who had fled in that direction. Who those few were, Margo didn"t know, because so many had preferred to pursue the Satanic murderer.
It was something of Margo"s business to check on facts, since Cranston wasn"t here. Besides, she wasn"t anxious to stay around with n.o.body but the dead Messenger for company.
The stairs were long and by the time Margo reached the top, results had been gained. The Scribe"s crowd were smashing at a door which gave suddenly to pitch them into a room where a door on the other side was cracking to admit another valiant horde that included the Seneschal.
This room was scarcely more than a hall where the front and back stairs joined; it had a window through which the murderer might have pushed the Mephisto head, but certainly couldn"t have squeezed himself after it. The Seneschal was quick to recognize that fact, for he was doing more than beckon now. He was shouting for the rest to follow him up the joined stairway to the third floor front.
There, the only handy window opened above the alley, but there was a sheer drop of thirty feet and nothing in the way of a hanging rope or other device by which the murderous Mephisto could have made it. There was a ladder leading to a cupola atop the house, while bolted doors offered access to windows that led out to the side roofs of adjoining buildings. His fugitive Majesty could have taken any of those routes after barring the way behind him, so people began to climb the ladder and bang down doors in order to overtake him.
By then, Margo was on her way downstairs. From the second floor she could hear the sound of a car pulling away along a rear street but she was sure the murderer couldn"t have reached the ground that soon. In fact it was all so puzzling that Margo felt there was only one person who could crack the riddle, if he happened to be still around.
That person was The Shadow.
Margo went out through the front alley to hunt for the cloaked figure that she should have realized could not be found in darkness, when she ran into an old friend - or enemy, providing how you felt about somebody who had outdrawn you in a trifling matter of one hundred thousand dollars.
Margo felt friendly enough when she saw the fellow"s plight. He was the Harlequin who had won and lost. His costume was tattered and his mask was gone, revealing a drawn, long-jawed face that suited his frail figure.
The frantic Harlequin gasped his story to Margo.
"I"ve been robbed!" he panted. "I"ve been robbed and it"s terrible! I wouldn"t think it could have happened!"
"Look in there." Margo steered the Harlequin into the Hoodoo House, straight toward the Messenger"s body. "You"ll see somebody who"s been murdered and that"s even more terrible. He didn"t think it could happen either!"
Rushing out to the street, Margo heard shouts from roof tops, delivered by searchers who thought she was Mephisto in full flight. Heedless of those calls Margo looked for the mule-drawn float, but wasn"t surprised to find it was gone. There still was a chance that The Shadow might have followed it.
The streets were clear now, for all the maskers had gone to Ca.n.a.l Streetand other points from which they could view the Comus procession, which Margo was going to see after all. Yet all she hoped was that she could find The Shadow and tell him what she knew of murder.
It was a long chance, longer than the odds against winning the Louisiana Lottery, this hope of finding The Shadow out of all the costumed spectators who were watching the big event of Mardi Gras. Still, there was an element that favored Margo"s quest.
If you saw trouble, you could probe into the thick of it and generally find The Shadow. Such trouble was due along the path of the Comus parade.
The Shadow had done more than ask for it!
CHAPTER V.
THERE were twenty-one floats in the Comus parade instead of the advertised twenty, but comparatively few of the spectators checked that difference. The first float in the parade was the t.i.tle car, listing the names of the eighteen that were following the king"s car, and by the time the last float pa.s.sed, most people had forgotten some of the t.i.tles.
The squatty Humpty Dumpty, perched upon his mammoth egg, was so in keeping with the theme of Mother Goose that it brought huge rounds of applause.
Indeed, the only fault with this topic was that it was too good, and the fake maskers who had taken over the spurious float were quite aware of it.
They were arguing that point as they flung good luck trinkets to the crowd.
"It"s time we were mooching out of this," one masker said. "Like we mooched into it. When we get to the review stand, they"ll know we"re phoney."
"Only we ain"t going past the review stand," returned another. "We"re keeping right ahead the next time this caravan turns."
"Yeah, but what"s the crowd going to think?"
"Nothing. There"s always a chance that a float is going to fall out of line. That"s why a repair truck rides along with the coppers up front of the parade."
"Then they"ll be sending the truck back to help us out -"
"Yeah, only when it gets back, n.o.body"s going to find us. Listen, we ain"t any phonier than the phonies we took over from and we know how they had it figured."
The figuring was easy.
This float had joined the parade simply to lose itself, or rather cover its own trail. The revivers of the Louisiana Lottery had planned it as a special service for the winner of their illicit game, something which they could well afford, since they had sold more than double the number of tickets needed to pay off the grand and only prize.
By easing into the parade, then out again, the fake float was supposed to reach some unknown destination where the occupant of the boiler-plate egg could depart in peace and security with his precious box of funds.
Such was the original plan and in forestalling it, the present occupants of the float were simply adapting it to their own purposes.
They too intended to ride to some unstated place with their charge, but when or if they sent him on his way, he would go without the money. The fact that the prize winner was masquerading as The Shadow had jarred this faction only briefly; indeed they were possibly less worried than their predecessors might have been. The Lottery racket was illegal from the start! There didn"t seem much that The Shadow could do to remedy his present situation, considering that he was clamped in a metal container and if he tried to pry his way out, he would give his ident.i.ty away. These maskers who had taken over weren"t going to give The Shadow a chance to start anything.
So they thought, not realizing that The Shadow had already started all that was needed.
Just as the parade was turning a corner, about the time when the middle of the procession had made the swing, the thing happened.
A group of maskers who looked like fugitives from a Comus float came hustling through the crowd that thronged the corner. They were using the old New Orleans system which the younger set thought was sport; they were coming as a human chain, hands locked as they whip-lashed through the crowd.
Once such a string got under way, its own momentum carried it. If the head of the chain struck too tight a cl.u.s.ter of people, the backwash cleared it.
This sort of horse-play was annoying and quite unseemly during the grand parade of Comus, but it served its purpose.
The crowd suddenly parted and the lined maskers plunged through, practically into the parade itself. Torch bearers scattered, the horses of the Comus Knights reared madly and the general confusion might have ruined the parade if the roisterers hadn"t veered away and gone barging back to the rear of the cart-wheeled flotilla. So it all looked like a happy ending until they reached Humpty Dumpty.
There these madcaps turned into a veritable pirate crew that swarmed on board the egg exhibit with intent to capture it. So far, maskers on the other floats had repelled these trouble-makers with fistfuls of thrown trinkets, but the Humpty Dumpty guardians were better equipped.
They drew guns, as did the attackers and in a trice the whole float was a riot of slugging and shooting. One tough crew was seeking revenge on the other.
They were canceling each other out, due to The Shadow"s foresight!
Somebody lashed the mules and away they went, past the last float that was clearing the corner. Things were jammed long enough for the crowd to open a path so the mules could rocket straight ahead, taking the float battle out of circulation. Quite a spectacle in itself, the fugitive float drew a mad rush of spectators after it and they saw the climax of the furious fray.
m.u.f.fled shots went unheard within the pill-box that was shaped like an egg, but the smoke from a gun muzzle curled out through the cracks. The Shadow had broken the lock with those shots; now, a human instrument of double vengeance, he was springing out to settle the balance of the battle to the misfortune of both sides.
The trailing populace saw this cloaked avenger clout down fighters impartially until the float was strewn with dazed maskers; then, seizing the discarded reins, The Shadow lashed the mules and fired a few shots past the pair on the right. The stampeded steeds veered left, around a narrow corner.
The float couldn"t make its turn and Humpty Dumpty took his great fall, egg, float, and all, flinging the battle-weary maskers to the flagstones.
All the crowd had to do was pick them up and turn them over to the police, a task that The Shadow seemed to indicate by a parting, sweeping gesture, as he sprang lightly from the crashing float and disappeared along the narrow streetleading into Frenchtown.
Only one person followed The Shadow. She was a Columbine whose trim legs were built for speed as well as looks. Hearing shooting, Margo Lane had gone to look for The Shadow and found him.
Suddenly blocking the Columbine"s path, he halted her with a whispered laugh and again was piloting Margo among the narrow streets.
Margo was too breathless to talk until she found herself in an upstairs cafe on Exchange Place, that single block where the night spots were so popular that they were forced to double-deck themselves. There, his slouch hat removed, his black cloak thrown back, Lamont Cranston was again his complacent self.
"Lamont!" Margo panted the name. "I must tell you - something."
"Don"t tell me that the grand prize disappeared."
"It did, but that wasn"t all." About to go into the news of murder, Margo halted abruptly. "But how did you know about the money?"
From the draped cloak, Cranston brought the sealed box that Margo had last seen in the hands of the prize-winning Harlequin. For the moment, Margo was too astounded to think of anything else, so Cranston took a table-knife, cut open the heavy seals and lifted the lid of the compact treasure chest.
Margo gave a grateful sigh, since one thing at least seemed settled, but that sigh turned to a gasp, accompanied by a stare of amazed alarm.
Mystery was only beginning in New Orleans. Instead of containing a bundle of tight-packed currency, the oblong box was empty, lacking even a trifling souvenir from the Krewe of the Knights of Hades!
CHAPTER VI.
POLICE CAPTAIN SELBERT listened in stolid style to the excited testimony that he was hearing in the midst of Hoodoo House. Jim Selbert missed seeing the Comus parade, but he"d been expecting something to happen here in the French Quarter where he was in charge.
Something always happened in the Vieux Carre on Mardi Gras Night and Selbert couldn"t have looked forward to a more bizarre setting than this old Hoodoo House which had once been the temporary residence of the famous Dominique You, a lieutenant of that once-renowned pirate, Jean Lafitte.
And right now, Jim Selbert was getting the inside story on the Krewe of the Knights of Hades, whose ways were known but whose ident.i.ties until now had never been revealed.
The Scribe, deprived of his Druid gown and whiskers, was none other than Tourville Talbot who p.r.o.nounced his name with a round "O" and an absence of the final "T." Older than he looked, Talbot was known to everyone as Tourville because he"d refused to grow up. Selbert wasn"t surprised to find Tourville as Scribe of the Knights of Hades. The old boy simply couldn"t wait for Mardi Gras to come around each year and he"d grown jaded attending the functions put on by Comus, Rex, Aparomest, Mithras, Oberon, and all the rest of them.
The Seneschal in real life was Hubert Aldion, a rugged but rather handsome young chap who had probably done much to finance the Hades Krewe, since like Tourville, Aldion had inherited some money but hadn"t found time to sink it in sucker investments. In contrast to Tourville, who was shaky and distressed, Aldion was grim and determined. Tourville could only talk about the murderer"sflight, while Aldion was chiding himself for his own failure to overtake the killer.
In death, the Messenger proved to be Louis Chardelle, a middle-aged gentleman of very checkered history. Some people had said that Chardelle had his ups-and-downs; others termed them his ins-and-outs. It was all one and the same, because definitely Chardelle was now down and out, to stay that way.
The skull hood, peeled back, disclosed Chardelle"s dead face as a wan one, its eyes still carrying the look of a schemer in their gla.s.sy bulge, the lips opened wide in a grimace of surprise which Chardelle had evidently felt when he saw King Satan bring out the gun that delivered those fatal blasts.
The uniformed guards were unimportant in the opinion of Jim Selbert, but he intended to check them just the same. He knew their names when he heard them; they belonged to some of the older families of New Orleans, by marriage at least, and they were just the sort of young chaps who would join up with an outfit like the Krewe of Hades on the chance that it would some day develop into an outstanding Carnival society.
As for the guests, Selbert had simply blocked them in the corner of the room where he intended to question them later. Right now, Jim wanted to know who King Satan was, so he put the question bluntly.
The guards looked at Aldion, who looked at Tourville, and the elderly Scribe decided that his Oath of Hades could be waived at the demand of the law.
"You"ve heard of Frederick Ferrand," said Tourville. "He was supposed to play King Satan."
Selbert turned to Aldion, who nodded, as did the guards. Then in hard tone, Selbert demanded: "What do you mean supposed to play King Satan?"
"It was Ferrand"s office," explained Tourville. "He was the head of the Krewe of Hades. But I couldn"t swear that it was Ferrand who murdered Chardelle."
Selbert wheeled on Aldion.
"Could you?"
Aldion shook his head, as did the guards.
"Why not?" snapped Selbert. "Granted that he was masked, didn"t he go through the proper mummery?"
"More or less," conceded Aldion, "but I can"t understand why he would have murdered Chardelle. I didn"t see the actual shooting" - Aldion thumbed across the room - "because I was over by the outer door, and there were too many people in between. But it was all very crazy."
"Perhaps not," grunted Selbert. "Any of you might have murdered Chardelle on account of the Lottery."
Aldion stared blankly.
"What lottery?"
Bluntly, Selbert gestured toward the wheel and Aldion"s face, furrowing in new surprise, gradually relaxed into a deprecating smile.
"Why that was just part of the flubdubbery," declared Aldion. "We always banish one of our guests with some souvenir. This year we were giving a pen and pencil set, weren"t we, Scribe?"
With his question, Aldion turned to Tourville, who nodded. As for Selbert, he wouldn"t have credited Aldion"s ignorance if Tourville hadn"t corroborated it. Even yet, Selbert doubted.
"You mean you don"t know what was happening here tonight?" demanded the police captain. "You didn"t know that you were fronting for the Louisiana Lottery?" Old Tourville stared; then cackled: "It"s been years since that Lottery was held, Captain!"
Checking the faces of the guards, Selbert found them as puzzled as those of Tourville and Aldion. Swinging to the unmasked guests, Selbert demanded why they had come here and a chorus answered that they had come to partic.i.p.ate in a prize drawing of one hundred thousand dollars.
To emphasize that feature, Selbert brought forward a dapper man in tattered harlequin attire who answered to the name of Howard Shorke and asked why he had come all the way from Buffalo.
"I wanted to win the big money," declared Shorke plaintively, "and I did.
Only somebody took it away from me -"
"We"ll get to that," interrupted Selbert. "Meanwhile" - he swung back to the group that represented the Krewe of Hades - "I want to know why you"re all so ignorant."
As Scribe, old Tourville was looking over the list of guests and he couldn"t find Shorke"s name on it. When Tourville said so, Selbert took the list and called off the other names. None of them tallied with the persons present, a point which impressed Selbert.
"Who prepared this list?"
"I did," replied Tourville, "and I gave it to the Messenger so he could deliver the invitations."
Over the list, Selbert stared down at Chardelle"s rigid body.
"So it was your racket, Chardelle," mused Selbert as though speaking to someone who could still hear. "I might have known it, considering some of the deals you were mixed in. But it still doesn"t add up."