Mignon (3 page)

He wasn’t there.

Later on, he swore he’d told me good night when he came to his rooming house and gone in to put on his costume. But I hadn’t heard anything, and after what had been said, it gave me a peculiar feeling.

L
AVADEAU’S HAD TWO WINDOWS
in front, one with a wax admiral in it, the other a wax general, both very dignified, but inside it was a madhouse, with pirates, kings, queens, Indians, Turks, jugglers, and harem girls pushing each other around, fighting for space at the mirrors and screaming to be fitted. I got bumped, but managed to hold my feet while I looked around for the girl I’d last seen in a draggled dress with a ruffle. When a vision came skipping at me, a Columbine in black, with gauze skirt, silk tights, and laced velvet bodice, a red rose in her hair, red shoes on her feet, and red mask in one hand, I didn’t even know her. It wasn’t until she grabbed me and asked what I’d found out that I realized who she was, and even then she looked strange, her cheeks rouged and her eyes touched up with some kind of blue. But when I told her I’d found her father and could take her to him, they opened wide and were suddenly the eyes I knew. She darted to Lavadeau, jabbering at him in French, and though he was entirely surrounded, his mouth full of pins, he nodded and she ducked to the rear. Then she was back again, a red domino on, her umbrella in one hand, her cape in the other. Outside, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas were just climbing out of a cab. I grabbed it, loading her in. She snuggled close, saying “I knew you’d find him.” She was so excited I reserved my detailed report, contenting myself with kisses.

At headquarters, the driver of course wanted his money, and while I was paying him off the sentry called the corporal, who took us inside at once and on back, up the little stairs to the Annex, where he knocked on a door. When it opened, he left us, saying: “Call to quarters is at nine forty-five.” We went into a whitewashed room, a cold little cubicle with cot, chair, table, candle, and one barred window. Holding the door was Mr. Landry, who seemed surprised to see us, but took Mignon in his arms and began whispering to her in French. He was a stocky, heavy-set man of medium height, fifty or so, with pouter-pigeon chest, robin-redbreast throat, and round, thick neck, all signifying tremendous physical strength. He had black eyes like hers, a gray tuft on his chin and curled gray mustaches, with a handsome cut to his jib that showed where her looks came from. He wore gray pants, skirted coat, and plaid vest, all very dignified, as well as an overcoat and a scarf over his head. He shook hands when she introduced me and gave me his only chair, sitting with her in the cot. They resumed whispering in French, he looking drawn, she lovely in the candlelight as she patted his cheek and the domino kept falling open to show her beautiful legs. Once or twice I caught the name Burke, or
Boorke
as they called it in French.

Then suddenly he turned to me, saying: “Mr. Cresap, I truly express my thanks for the help you’ve given my daughter, but feel I owe you an explanation. I’m held without charge in this place, as martial law permits, and assume I’m the victim of some kind of mix-up. I’m engaged in the cotton trade, which is legal and therefore open to me, but at the same time is disapproved in certain respects by the occupation authorities, which causes them to encourage with one hand and persecute with the other—a not unfamiliar inconsistency in official conduct. I assumed, therefore, that I’d be shortly released. That’s why I asked my partner, Mr. Frank Burke—of whom you may have heard—not to alarm my daughter or spoil her Mardi Gras by informing her what happened. That’s why she felt she must go to you.”

“My pleasure in any event,” I told him.

“And I was wrong, thank God,” she said, staring at me, “suspicioning people for stabbing him in the back.”

“Must be a relief to know that.”

He went on some more about cotton, but time was going on, and I felt I had to make sure he had things straight. “Mr. Landry,” I interrupted, “this has nothing to do with cotton. You’re held for shipping shoes to Taylor.”

“... For
what
did you say, Mr. Cresap?”

“Shipping shoes—some informer has sent in a note, an unsigned note by mail, saying you sent them by boat, to Morganza I believe was the place, for the use of Taylor’s Army.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“I’m telling you what’s in the note.” His face, which had been handsomely solemn, went slack with consternation, and he said: “I did ship shoes upriver—I made a little in cotton, and felt I had to share, with men less fortunate than I was, Confederate boys, the ones paroled from Port Hudson, who reached home with not even rags on their feet. I sent them as Christmas presents, care of a friend, a Morganza storekeeper, and asked him to distribute for me. I’ve had no dealings with Taylor.”

“He may have captured them, though.”

“In that case, I couldn’t have stopped it.”

I felt he was telling the truth, but I also felt there was something about these shoes, not mentioned as yet, that completely took his nerve. And when Mignon started whispering again and I heard “Who else could have known all that?” I had a hunch what it was. He nudged her, and she switched at once to French, but I heard
Boorke
once more, this time pretty bitter, and deduced there
had
been a stab in the back, which of course could be pretty serious. Because shipping shoes was the kind of thing which might be (as he said) wholly innocent, but which, painted up by someone on the inside, could be made to look like a crime as black as the worst ever seen. However, he obviously wasn’t discussing it, so I told myself shut up, as it was strictly none of my business. But that reminded me of myself, the peculiar status I had, which I hadn’t even brought up, and I thought best to get it out in the open. I said: “Mr. Landry, there’s something I ought to tell you. I’ve been acting so far as your counsel.” I then told of the argument with Dan, and wound up: “Strictly speaking, I was telling the truth, as Mrs. Fournet had engaged me, which as next of kin she could do. And of course, I’m willing to continue doing whatever I can. But if I’m to act in an official capacity, I must have your direct authorization.”

“Mr. Cresap, on that give me a moment.”

“
But
Captain Dorsey’s my only reference.”

“Except one,” Mignon chirped, very bright. “
Me!
” And then, to her father: “You don’t need any moment! He’s wonderful—look what he’s done already! And he’s not any carpetbag spellbinder!”

“I’ve now taken my moment.”

He held out his hand and ground my knuckles to ball bearings. “Mr. Cresap,” he said, “I’m a man of a hundred friends, right here in New Orleans—not one of whom could I trust. So it is when cotton is made semi-legal, and it begins coming between. And now you, whom I never saw till a half-hour ago, with my daughter, are my only reliance. I may say I count myself fortunate.”

It was very moving, so much so that I thought I owed him to say: “There’s just one thing: You’d better know this is partly a matter of principle, of seeing justice done, of clearing a man falsely accused—I hope I’m not indifferent to that. But it’s also a matter of pleasing your daughter.”

“That I had already guessed.”

“I don’t mind saying she takes my eye.”

“Sir, I find her an eyeful myself.”

“My intentions, Mr. Landry, are serious.”

“This does not displease me.”

She said: “
Doesn
’
t
his hair look like taffy?”

“Daughter, to me it looks like hair.”

He said it rather stiffly, winding that subject up. I said, after a moment: “There’s one other thing, too. Whoever this informer may be, if I’m to pin it on him, prove this thing he’s done, he must not have a suspicion that I’m on his trail. Is that understood?”

“It better be,” he said. “Daughter?”

“I’d like to murder him,” she answered.

“You’d wind up by murdering me.”

“It’s understood, of course.”

On the way back we had to walk, I bundling her into her cape and wrapping my oilskin around her, she holding her umbrella over me. She took me by way of Carondelet, to avoid the hullabaloo, and pretty soon pulled me into a doorway out of the wet, to talk. She whispered: “You caught on, Willie, of course? He suspicions Frank Burke.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“Am I——? Willie, how can you ask that?”

“I can ask it. I did ask it. Are you?”

“Of course not!”

“You’ve been running around with him, though?”

“I’ve gone out with him. Is that so terrible?”

“If for inveiglement, yes.”

“Willie, when my father blew in last fall, with a whole lot of warehouse receipts covering cotton in Alexandria that had been signed over to him by people he’d helped in this war, he had a trunkload of worthless paper, as he thought—and as those people up there, who’d been living off him so long, thought but they wanted to give him something in return, to keep their self-respect. But I knew about this invasion next month that would turn his worthless paper to gold, if only we could find someone, a Union man, to act for us in court—to be our godpappy, as it’s called. And Frank Burke had just got in from Mexico, where he’d been trading in Texas cotton. He was the biggest thing in sight, and knew the business too. So I worked things around to meet him. I got myself introduced. In the St. Charles Theatre lobby.”

“And inveigled him?”

“I invited him home to meet my father!”

“But you started going with him?”

“Willie, Frank Burke goes through the motions—he kisses my hand, he sends me flowers, he passes oily compliments. But what he wants is the money.”

“Then why would he turn on a partner?”

“My father figured that out, while you were there—it’s what he was telling me in French. Willie, there’s martial law in New Orleans, and do you know how they do in a case like this?”

“In Maryland, they’d confiscate.”

“Yes, and here, to get confiscated, first you must plead.”

“I don’t follow you, Mignon.”

“They’ll suspend the prison term,
if
you make no defense and
if
you declare all the assets you have.”

“Now I’ve got it. Go on.”

“Well, he can declare the store, which would probably keep him out of prison. They could seize it as soon as they occupy Alexandria. But my father’s biggest asset is his share of his partnership with Burke. You understand, Willie? The cotton has now been made over, all the warehouse receipts, to Burke as godpappy, and articles have been signed giving him half and my father half. If my father declares his share of course it’s gone, so of course he can’t declare. But if he doesn’t declare, he can never claim in court—he can’t sue Burke, even through an assignee. It’s all gone.”

“How much does this cotton amount to?”

“We have three hundred twenty-seven bales—worth a hundred twenty thousand dollars clear of charges.”

“Quite a pot to be playing for.”

“It’s worth sixty thousand dollars to Frank to do my father in.”

I’d got the point at last, but we were a long way from knowing what I could do about it. We both agreed, neither of us liking it much, that as he was supposed to take her, she must go to the ball with him as though nothing had happened at all. That left me and what she should tell him about me, which wasn’t too easy, as almost any story was bound to leave him suspicious. At last I said: “Now I think I have it. You tell it just as it happened, your coming to me, since you hadn’t heard from him, on account of Sandy Gregg’s stories and all that. But now that you’ve got me in, you’re getting cold feet. You don’t like it a bit that first crack out of the box I named myself military counsel. And you think it very peculiar the way I’m talking money—a hundred dollars cash now, and a hundred fifty later, to be guaranteed by someone before I lift a finger. If you lay it on right, he’ll not only not suspicion us, but he
will
suspicion me and feel that he must come to see me. Then he’ll be leading to me, and I’ll have something to go on.”

“All right, Willie, two hundred and fifty. What else?”

I said I wanted a list of stationery stores ready for me when I called at Lavadeau’s the next morning, places that might have sold a cheap tablet to an Irishman. “It’s the kind of thing,” I said, “that a clerk would be sure to remember. If I can find where he bought his paper, I’ll have something resembling proof. But I should have a great deal more. I wish I could line it up so I could demand a search by the Army of his home, to turn everything up—stationery, envelopes, memoranda, and so on. But I have to make sure the stuff is there. Where does he live?”

“The City Hotel, Willie.”

“Ah-ha. Hotel rooms are easily entered.”

“Maybe not his. He keeps a gippo, as he calls it—it’s some kind of Irish word. What
is
a gippo?”

“I never heard of a gippo, Mignon.”

“I think it’s a man, but it
could
be a dog.”

“Whatever it is, it can be dealt with.”

“But when he’s not there,
it
is.”

“How do you know? From being in his rooms?”

“No, Willie! But he talks about it!”

It was just a second’s flare-up, and left us pressing still closer. She said: “It must be going on for nine, and I have to get back. Willie, I’ve figured how I’ll do, so as not to be taken home to an empty flat with somebody pushing in. Everything stops at twelve o’clock on Mardi Gras, so I’ll ask to be taken back to the shop where my clothes are, and then, after I’ve changed, I’ll spend the night with Veronique—Veronique Michaud, one of our dressmakers. Does that please you?”

“I’ve been worrying about it, plenty.”

“Then kiss me. And say you love me a little.”

“I love you so much it’s more like being insane.”

On St. Charles, Mignon pointed out the hall where the ball would be held; it was across the street from Lavadeau’s, a few doors from the Pickwick Club. When we got to the shop, she pointed through the window past the wax admiral to a big, heavy man in Mexican costume talking with Lavadeau. “That’s him,” she whispered. I said: “I hate his guts already.” She laughed, slipped out of my oilskin and gave it back, put a kiss on my mouth with her fingertips, and slipped inside. When I’d put the oilskin back on I started for the hotel, but on the way decided to take advantage of the cat being away. I kept on to Common, turned, walked down one block to Camp, and went into the City Hotel. It was a nice place, not quite in the St. Charles class, but a good hotel just the same, very gay just now, with quite a few people in costume. I registered: “William Crandall, Algiers, La.” My baggage, I said, was delayed, but I’d pay two nights in advance. The clerk took my money, marked my room in the book, called a boy, and gave him the key. However, I took it, saying: “I’ll go up later,” and tipped.