The green of the rank growth below, thought Val, seemed intensified by the strange yellowish light. A moss-grown path led straight into the heart of a jungle where sweet olive, banana trees, and palms grew in a matted mass. Harrison might have done wonders for the house but he had allowed the garden to lapse into a wilderness.
“Val!”
“Coming!” he shouted and pushed back through the curtain. He could hear Rupert moving about the lower hall.
“Just made it in time,” he said as the younger Ralestone limped down to join him. “Hear that?”
A steady pattering outside was growing into a wild dash of wind-driven rain. It was dark and Rupert himself was but a blur moving across the hall.
“Do you still have the flash? Might as well descend into the lower regions and put on the lights.”
They crossed the Long Hall, passing through another large chamber where furniture huddled under dust covers, and then into a small cupboard-lined passage. This gave upon a dark cavern where Val’s hand scraped a table top only too painfully as he went. Then Rupert found the door leading to the cellar, and they went down and down into inky blackness upon which their thread of torch-light made little impression.
The damp, unpleasant scent of mold and wet grew stronger as they descended, and their fingers brushed slime-touched walls.
“Phew! Not very comfy down here,” Val protested as Rupert threw the torch beam along the nearest wall. With a grunt of relief he stepped forward to pull open the door of a small black box. “That does it,” he said as he threw the switch. “Now for the topside again and some supper.”
They negotiated the steps and found the button which controlled the kitchen lights. The glare showed them a room on the mammoth scale suggested by the Long Hall. A giant fireplace still equipped with three-legged pots, toasting irons, and spits was at one side, its brick oven beside it. But a very modern range and sink faced it.
In the center of the room was a large table, while along the far wall were closed cupboards. Save for its size and the novelty of the fireplace, it was an ordinary kitchen, complete to red-checked curtains at the windows. Pleasant and homey, Val thought rather wistfully. But that was before the coming of that night when Ricky walked in the garden and he heard something stir in the Long Hall—which should have been empty—
“Val! Rupert!” A cry which started valiantly became a wail as it echoed through empty rooms. “Where are yo-o-ou!”
“Here, in the kitchen,” Val shouted back.
A moment later Ricky stood in the doorway, her face flushed and her usually correct curls all on end.
“Mean, selfish, utterly selfish pigs!” she burst out. “Leaving me all alone in the dark! And it’s so dark!”
“We just went down to turn on the lights,” Val began.
“So I see.” With a sniff she looked about her. “It took two of you to do that. But it only required one of me to make three beds. Well, this is a warning to me. Next time—” she did not finish her threat. “I suppose you want some supper?”
Rupert was already at the cupboards. “That,” he agreed, “is the general idea.”
“Beans or—” Ricky’s hand closed upon Val’s arm with a nipper-like grip. “What,” her voice was a thin thread of sound, “was that?”
Above the steady beat of the rain they heard a noise which was half scratch, half thud. Under Rupert’s hand the latch of the cupboard clicked.
“Back door,” he said laconically.
“Well, why don’t you open it?” Ricky’s fingers bit tighter so that Val longed to twist out of her grip.
The key grated in the lock and then Rupert shot back the accompanying bolt.
“Something’s there,” breathed Ricky.
“Probably nothing but a branch blown against the door by the wind,” Val assured her, remembering the tangled state of the garden.
The door came back, letting in a douche of cold rain and a black shadow which leaped for the security of the center of the room.
“Look!” Ricky laughed unsteadily and released Val’s arm.
In the center of the neat kitchen, spitting angrily at the wet, stood a ruffled and oversized black tom-cat.
CHAPTER II
THE LUCK OF THE LORDS OF LORNE
“Nice of you to drop in, old man,” commented Rupert dryly as he shut the door. “But didn’t anyone ever mention to you that gentlemen wipe their feet before entering strange houses?” He surveyed a line of wet paw prints across the brick floor.
“Did he get all wet, the poor little—” Ricky was on her knees, stretching out her hand and positively cooing. The cat put down the paw he had been licking and regarded her calmly out of round, yellow eyes. Then he returned to his washing. Val laughed.
“Evidently he is used to the strong, silent type of human, Ricky. I wonder where he belongs.”
“He belongs to us now. Yes him does, doesn’t him?” She attempted to touch the visitor’s head. His ears went back and he showed sharp teeth in no uncertain manner.
“Better let him alone,” advised Rupert. “He doesn’t seem to be the kind you can cuddle.”
“So I see.” Ricky arose to her feet with an offended air. “One would think that I resembled the more repulsive members of my race.”
“In the meantime,” Rupert again sought the cupboard, “let’s eat.”
Half an hour later, fed and well content (even Satan, as the Ralestones had named their visitor because of his temperament, having condescended to accept some of the better-done bits of bacon), they sat about the table staring at the dishes. Now it is a very well-known fact that dishes do not obligingly leap from a table into a pan of well-soaped water, slosh themselves around a few times, and jump out to do a spot of brisk rubbing down. But how nice it would be if they did, thought Val.
“The dishes—” began Ricky in a faint sort of way.
“Must be done. We gather that. How utterly nasty bacon grease looks when it’s congealed.” Her younger brother surveyed the platter before him with mournful interest.
“And the question before the house is, I presume, who’s going to wash them?” Rupert grinned. “This seems to be as good a time as any to put some sort of a working plan in force. There is a certain amount of so-called housework which has to be done. And there are three of us to do it. It’s up to us to apportion it fairly. Shall we say, let everyone care for his or her own room—”
“There are also the little matters of washing, and ironing, and cleaning,” Ricky broke in to remind him.
“And we’re down to fifty a month in hard cash. But the tenant farmer on the other side of the bayou is to supply us with fresh fruit and vegetables. And our wardrobes are fairly intact. So I think that we can afford to hire the washing done. We’ll take turns cooking—”
“Who’s elected to do the poisoning first?” Val inquired with interest. “I trust we possess a good cook-book?”
“Well, I’ll take breakfast tomorrow morning,” Rupert volunteered. “Anyone can boil coffee and toast bread. As for dishes, we’ll all pitch in together. And suppose we start right now.”
When the dishes were back again in their neat piles on the cupboard shelves, Ricky vanished upstairs, to come trailing down again in a house-coat which she fondly imagined made her look like one of the better-known screen sirens. The family gathered in an aimless way before the empty fireplace of the Long Hall. Rupert was filling a black pipe which allowed him to resemble—in very slight degree, decided Val—an explorer in an English tobacco advertisement. Val himself was stretched full length on the couch with about ten pounds of cat attempting to rest on his center section in spite of his firm refusal to allow the same.
“Br-r-r!” Ricky shivered. “It’s cold in here.”
“Probably just Uncle Rick passing through—not the weather. No, cat, you may not sit on that stomach. It’s just as fu
ll of bacon as yours is and it wants a nice long rest.” Val swept Satan off to the floor and he resignedly went to roost by the boy’s feet in spite of the beguiling noises Ricky made to attract his attention.
“These stone houses are cold.” Rupert scratched a match on the sole of his shoe. “We ought to have flooring put down over this stone paving. I saw some wood stacked up in an outhouse when I put the car away. We’ll have it in tomorrow and see what we can do about a fire in the evening.”
“And I thought the South was always warm.” Ricky examined her hands. “Whoever,” she remarked pleasantly, “took my hand lotion better return it. The consequences might not be very attractive.”
“Are you sure you packed it this morning?” Val asked.
“But of—” Her fingers went to her mouth. “I wonder if I did? I’ve just got to have some. We’ll drive to town tomorrow and get a bottle.”
“Thirty miles or so for a ten-cent bottle of gooey stuff,” Val protested.
“Good idea.” Rupert stood with his back to the fireplace as if there really were a flame or two within its black emptiness. “I’ve some papers that LeFleur wants to see. Then there’re our boxes at the freight station to arrange transportation for, and we’ll have to see about getting a newspaper and—”
“Make a list,” murmured his brother.
Rupert dropped down upon the wide arm of Ricky’s chair and with her only too willing aid set to work. Val eyed them drowsily. Rupert and Ricky—or to give her her very formal name in full—Richanda Anne, were “Red” Ralestones, possessing the thin, three-cornered faces, the dark mahogany hair, the sharply defined cheek-bones which had been the mark of the family as far back in history as portraits or written descriptions existed. The “Red” Ralestones were marked also by height and a suppleness of body and movement. The men had been fine swordsmen, the ladies noted beauties. But they were also cursed, Val remembered vividly, with uncertain tempers.
Rupert had schooled himself to the point where his emotions were mastered by his will. But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and the last occasion was not so long ago that the scene had become misty in his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary, loyal to a fault, and incurably romantic, that was a “Red” Ralestone.
Val himself was a “Black” Ralestone, which was a very different thing. They were a new growth on the family tree, a growth which appeared after the Ralestones had been exiled to colonial America. His black hair, his long, dark face of no particular beauty marked with straight, black brows set in a perpetual frown—that was the sign of a “Black” Ralestone. They were as strong-willed as the “Reds,” but their anger could be controlled to icy rage.
“Now that you have spent the monthly income,” Val suggested as Rupert added up a long column of minute figures scrawled across the first page of his pocket note-book, “let’s really get away from economics for one evening. The surroundings suggest something more romantic than dollars and cents. After all, when did a pirate ever show a saving disposition? Would the first Roderick—”
“The Roderick who brought home the Luck?” Ricky laughed. “But he brought home a fortune, too, didn’t he, Rupert?”
Her brother relit his pipe. “Yes, but a great many lords came home from the Crusades with their pockets filled. Sir Roderick de la Stone thought the Luck worth his entire estate even after he was made Baron Ralestone.”
Ricky shivered delicately. “Not altogether nice people, those ancestors of ours,” she observed.
“No,” Val grinned. “By rights this room should be full of ghosts instead of the beat of just one. How many Ralestones died violently? Seven or eight, wasn’t it?”
“But the ones who died in England should haunt Lorne,” argued Ricky, half seriously.
“Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our great-great-great-grandfather scuttled,” her brother replied.
“Rupert,” Ricky turned and asked impulsively, “do you really believe in the Luck?”
Rupert looked up at the empty niche. “I don’t know—No, I don’t. Not the way that Roderick and Richard and all the rest did. But something that has seven hundred years of history behind it—that means a lot.”
“‘Then did he take up ye sword fashioned by ye devilish art of ye East from two fine blades found in ye tomb,’” Val quoted from the record of Brother Anselm, the friar who had accompanied Sir Roderick on his crusading. “Do you suppose that that part’s true? Could the Luck have been made from two other swords found in an old tomb?”
“Not impossible. The Saracens were master metal workers. Look at the Damascus blades.”
“It all sounds like a fairy-tale,” commented Ricky. “A sword with magic powers beaten out of two other swords found in a tomb. And the whole thing done under the direction of an Arab astrologer.”
“You’ve got to admit,” broke in Val, “that Sir Roderick had luck after it was given to him. He came home a wealthy man and he died a Baron. And his descendants even survived the Wars of the Roses when four-fifths of the great English families were wiped out.”
“‘And fortune continued to smile,’” Rupert took up the story, “‘until a certain wild Miles Ralestone staked the Luck of his house on the turn of a card—and lost.’”
“O-o-oh!” Ricky squirmed forward in her chair. “Now comes the pirate. Tell us that, Rupert.”
“You know the story by heart now,” he objected.
“We never heard it here, where some of it really happened. Tell it, please, Rupert!”
“In your second childhood?” he asked.
“Not out of my first yet,” she answered promptly. “Pretty please, Rupert.”
“Miles Ralestone, Marquess of Lorne,” he began, “rode with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic. And he even threw the family Luck across the gaming table.”
“‘The Luck went from him who did it no honor,’” Val repeated slowly. “I read that in that old letter among your papers, Rupert.”
“Yes, the Luck went from him. He survived Marston Moor; he survived the death of his royal master, Charles the First, on the scaffold. He lived long enough to witness the return of the Stuarts to England. But the Luck was gone, and with it the good fortune of his line. Rupert, his son, was but a penniless hanger-on at the royal court; the manor of Lorne a fire-gutted wreckage.
“Rupert followed James Stuart from England when that monarch became a fugitive to escape the wrath of his subjects. And the Marquess of Lorne sank to the role of pot-house bully in the back lanes of Paris.”
“And then?” prompted Val.
“And then a miracle occurred. Rupert was employed by his master on a secret mission to London, and there the Luck came again into his hands. Perhaps by murder. But he died miserably enough of a heavy cold got by lying in a ditch to escape Dutch William’s soldiers.”
“‘So is this perilous Luck come again into our hands. Then did I persevere to mend the fortunes of my house.’ That’s what Rupert’s son Richard wrote about the Luck,” Ricky recalled. “Richard, the first pirate.”
“He did a good job of fortune mending,” commented Val dryly. “Married one of the wealthiest of the French king’s wards and sailed for the French West Indies all in a fortnight. Turned pirate with the approval of the French and took to lifting the cargoes of other pirates.”
“I’ll bet that most of his success was due to the Lady Richanda,” observed Ricky. “She sailed with him dressed in man’s clothes. Remember that miniature of her that we saw in New York, the one in the museum? All the ‘Black’ Ralestones are supposed to look like her. Hear that, Val?”
“At least it was the Lady Richanda who persuaded her husband to settle ashore,” said Rupert. “She was personally acquainted with Bienville and Iberville who were proposing to rule the Mississippi valley for France by building a city near the mouth of
the river. And ‘Black Dick,’ the pirate, obtained a grant of land lying along Lake Borgne and this bayou. Although the city was not begun until 1724, this house was started in 1710 by workmen imported from England.
“The house of an exile,” Rupert continued slowly. “Richard Ralestone was born in England, but he left there in his tenth year. In spite of the price on his head, he crept back to Devon in 1709 to see Lorne for the last time. And it was from the rude sketches he made of ruined Lorne that Pirate’s Haven was planned.”
“Why, we saw those sketches!” Ricky’s eyes shone with excitement. “Do you remember, Val?”
Her brother nodded. “Must have cost him plenty to do it,” he replied. “Richard had an immense personal fortune of his own gained from piracy, and he spared no expense in building. The larger part of the stone in these walls was brought straight from Europe, just as they later brought the paving blocks for the streets of New Orleans. When he had done—and the place was five years a-building because of Indian troubles and other disturbances—he settled down to live in feudal state. Some of his former seamen rallied around him as a guard, and he imported blacks from the islands to work his indigo fields.
“The family continued to prosper through both French and Spanish domination until the time of American rule.”
“Now for Uncle Rick.” Ricky settled herself with a wriggle. “This is even more exciting than Pirate Dick.”
“In the year 1788, the time of the great fire which destroyed over half of New Orleans, twin boys were born at Pirate’s Haven. They came into their heritage early, for their parents died of yellow fever when the twins were still small children.
“Those were restless times. New Orleans was full of refugees. From Haiti, where the revolting blacks were holding a reign of terror, and from France, where to be a noble was to be a dead one, came hundreds. Even members of the royal house, the Duc d’Orleans and his brother, the Duc de Montpensier, came for a space in 1798.