CHAPTER VII.
DRIED FROGS--AND LUCK.
Mr. Bangs had a very dark complexion, black hair, black eyes, and aropy black mustache. His face had a puffed, unhealthy look--probablydue to dissipation--and his walk was a sort of slumping process whichproved, beyond the power of words, that he was dead to ambition andlost to hope. In the worst sense of the term, he had ceased to live forhimself and was living for others--a mere tool for the unscrupulouswhenever there was a dollar to be turned.
And yet there was something very plausible about Bangs. He had anengaging way with him, whenever he desired to put it forward, and heused it to the limit when accosting Dick and Carl on the docks.
Carl, no less than Dick, believed firmly that everything was all right,and that Bangs was really the friend of Townsend and had been sent tothe levee to watch for the air ship. It pleased the Dutch boy to thinkthat he was to go with Bangs and the iron chest, and he was delightedwith the dried frog amulet, which Matt had seemed to forget about sinceleaving the bayou.
Of course Carl believed in charms. Having a wholesome regard forYamousa's powers, it was natural for him to have abundant faith inthe dried frog. Stowing the relic away in his pocket, he mounted theexpress wagon with the utmost confidence, waved his hand to Dick, andthen rolled away with Bangs, the expressman, and the iron chest.
Carl's "luck" began the moment the express wagon turned into CanalStreet. The old, square stone flagging, in that part of town, wasdeeply worn. The front wheel of the wagon on Carl's side plunged intoa rut, and Carl fell forward on the backs of the mules and then rolleddown under their heels.
The hind heels of a mule are dangerous objects to tamper with, and inless than half a second the expressman's team got very busy.
Carl distinctly remembered pitching over upon the backs of the mules,and he had a hazy recollection of slipping down inside the pole, butafter that he drew a blank. When he opened his eyes and looked around,he was sitting up in the street, supported by Bangs. The expressman waspicking up his hat, and a crowd was gathering.
"It was a right smart of a jolt," grinned one of the bystanders.
"Don't you-all know it's bad business t' tampah with the south end of amu-el goin' no'th?" asked another.
"Vas it an eart'quake?" inquired Carl, mechanically taking his hat."Der puildings vas shdill shdanding on der shtreet, und nodding vasdorn oop mooch, aber somet'ing must haf habbened."
"You done drapped on de mu-els," said the colored proprietor of theexpress wagon. "Dey's gentle, an' dey'll eat oats off'n de back of achoo-choo engyne, but dey won't stan' fo' no meddlin' wid dey feet."
"Hurt?" inquired Bangs, helping Carl erect.
"Vell," answered Carl, feeling himself all over, "dere don'd vas anyvone blace vere I feel der vorst, but dere iss a goneness all ofer me,oop und down und sideways. Oof I hat a gun," he finished, his temperrising, "I vould go on a mule hunt."
Carl slapped the dust from his clothes and climbed back into the wagon.Before he gripped the seat with both hands, he transferred the driedfrog from the left-hand pocket of his coat to the right-hand pocket.
"Meppy I ditn't put it in der righdt blace," he thought.
The express wagon turned from Canal Street into Royal, and from Royalinto St. Peter, halting before a dingy building, with iron balconies,not far from Congo Square.
A mulatto woman sat in the doorway of the building with a basket ofpralines in front of her on the walk. Carl took one handle of thechest, and Bangs the other. The chest, being of iron, was heavy.Somebody had spilled a pitcher of milk on the sidewalk and Carl's footslipped as he crossed the wet spot. His end of the chest dropped,barking one of his shins and landing on the toes of one of his feet.
Carl gave a yell of pain and toppled over, sitting down with a gooddeal of force in the basket of pralines. The praline vendor had beenknitting, but she sprang up, when she saw the destruction the Dutch boywas causing to her stock in trade, and tried to make a pin cushion ofhim with her knitting needles.
Bangs rushed to the rescue, and Carl, after placating the woman witha silver dollar, once more picked up his end of the chest and limpedafter Bangs.
The doorway through which they passed led them into a narrow,ill-smelling corridor, open to the sky and filled with rubbish. Out ofthe rubbish grew a number of untrimmed and uncared-for oleander bushes.
"Now," remarked Bangs, not unkindly, "you can sit down here and rest.I'll have the creole gentleman who lives here help me up to Townsend'sroom with the chest; then I'll tell Townsend about you, and he'll comedown and give you a hearty greeting."
"Mebby I pedder go mit der chest?" objected Carl.
A look of pained surprise crossed Bangs' face.
"You don't think for a moment, my dear friend," said he, "that I'mtrying to deceive you? I merely wish to announce your coming to myfriend Townsend so that he'll come down here personally and give youwelcome."
"Ach, vell go aheadt," muttered Carl, dropping down on a box near aclump of oleanders and nursing his foot.
Bangs gave a whistle. The creole gentleman, barefooted and wearing ared flannel shirt and tattered trousers, appeared in the courtyard fromnowhere in particular, and he and Bangs passed a few words in French.The creole gentleman grinned a little and laid hold of one of the ironhandles. Bangs took the other, and they carried the iron chest up astairway to a gallery on the second floor.
Carl watched the two mount the stairs and pass around the galleryto a door; then the door opened and the two men and the iron chestdisappeared. The creole gentleman did not show himself again, and if heleft the room into which he had gone with Bangs he must have passed outby some other way than the gallery.
The moment Carl was by himself, he changed the dried frog to the breastpocket of his coat.
"I don'd got him in der righdt blace for luck," thought Carl. "Meppydot iss pedder. Oof I lif long enough to ged der frog vere he ought tobe, I bed you I haf some goot fortunes."
While Carl leaned back, and waited, there came a shrill cry from behindanother clump of oleanders:
"Get out of here! Get out! Get out! Sic him, Tige!"
Carl, fearing the onslaught of a dog, snatched up a piece of wood andjumped to the top of the box. No dog came.
"Don'd you set some dogs on me!" he called. "I got as mooch righdt hereas anypody. I vas vaiding for Misder Downsent. Who you vas, anyhow?"
"You're the limit!" came the shrill words. "Go soak your head! Police!Police!"
As the last word rang through the courtyard, Carl's cap was jerked offhis head from behind. With an angry shout, he whirled just in time tosee the branches shaking as the thief got away.
"I'm der limid, am I?" he muttered, crashing through the bushes. "Wantme to go soak my headt, hey? Vell, py chiminy, I show you somet'ing."
When Carl got through the bushes the thief had disappeared, but a wild,rollicking laugh came from behind the other thicket of oleanders.Running in that direction he came upon a yellow-crested parrot chainedto a perch. The parrot seemed to be getting a good deal of fun out ofthe situation, for he was lifting himself up and down and chucklingfiendishly.
"Vy," gasped Carl, a slow grin working its way over his face, "it vas abarrot! Pooty Poll! Sooch a nice pird vat it iss! Vant some crackers?Say somet'ing, vonce, und----"
Just at that moment, something hit Carl on the back of the head.Whirling away from the parrot, he looked upward. A black monkey wasclinging to the ironwork of the gallery overhead. In one paw the monkeyheld Carl s cap, and with the other paw he was fishing bits of plasterout of the wall and throwing them downward.
"Und dere iss a monkey, too!" exclaimed Carl. "It looks like I vas in amenacherie. Say, you monk, gif me dot hat!"
"Sic 'im, Tige!" shrilled the parrot. "Police! police!"
The monkey chattered and flaunted the cap defiantly, at the same timegetting ready to throw another piece of plaster.
"Nice leedle monk!" wheedled Carl. "Iss der leedle monkey hungry? Dencome down und ged some peanuds vich I
ain'd got! Pooty leedle monk! pyshinks, I vill preak you in doo oof you don'd----"
Biff!
The piece of plaster came downward, straight as a die, and landed onCarl's chin. That was more than Carl's temper could stand, and hestarted up the stairway toward the gallery.
In order to get near the monkey he had to run around the gallery, pastthe door through which the creole gentleman and Bangs had vanished withthe chest.
There was a window, set in a sort of embrasure, beside the door, andone of the lights was broken out.
As Carl passed under the window, on his way around the gallery, heheard a voice that brought him to a gasping halt. All thoughts of hisstolen cap, and the monkey, left his mind.
Staggering up against the balcony rail, he stood there blinking instunned bewilderment.
"Vas I ashleep?" he whispered; "vas I treaming? I vonder oof I canpelief vat I hear, or----"
He broke off his words abruptly, turned and stepped to the wall. Herehe paused just long enough to shift the dried frog from his coat to histrousers pocket, then, softly, climbed into the embrasure and peeredthrough the broken pane of the window.
No, he had not been asleep, or dreaming.
He was peering into a room in which were two men, neither of whom wasthe creole gentleman.
One of the men was Bangs, and the other was--Lat Jurgens! Between themstood the iron chest.