Mignon (17 page)

In a moment a soldier was there, not a corporal but a private, belted for duty with sidearms, who took things in with one look and came over to Burke and me. “What’s going on here?” he wanted to know. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a nice, sociable brawl that’s nobody’s business but ours.” But then, thinking fast, I added: “But I feel my life in some danger, going home tonight, and if you’d ask your corporal, or whoever’s in command, to provide me with an escort, I’d feel myself obliged.”

“Where do you live, sir?”

“Schmidt store, block and a half down.”

“It’s on my post. I’ll take you there myself.”

“
And
me,” said Burke. “Me life’s in danger too.”

That got a laugh, for some reason, and we got a laugh and a hand when the boy formed us up, Burke and me in front, he bringing up the rear, and we marched out the door. Even Ball was laughing, but for once that day I didn’t feel like a dolt.

We were quite a noisy parade, going down the street, the guard’s heels clopping, my stick clicking, my corduroys whining, and Burke’s jackboots whispering like a deck of cards being riffled. When we got to our corner I told Burke to rouse out Mr. Landry and Mrs. Fournet while I got some stuff I’d need, and then, after thanking the guard, I went through the little gate, up the stairs to the platform, and into my flat with my key. I was no sooner in than I scrambled fast to the bedroom, clawed into the bag, and after scattering all kinds of stuff—sandwiches, clothes, and gear—I got my hooks on the gun. I dropped it in my pocket, not bothering with the harness, then went down to the street again. The guard was still on the corner, looking up at the Landry flat, where Burke was on the platform, beating on the door, and calling loudly in French. Not a sound came from inside, and no light showed. “They don’t answer,” he said peevishly.

“I bet they don’t,” I said, “after you told them not to, in that trick language you speak with them. They’ll answer me, though.”

“Hey,
you!
”

That was the guard, snapping it out as I started up, and stopping me in my tracks. He called Burke down, and gave us both a bawling out, ordering us “to your billets, or you’ll spend the night in the clink.” I told Burke: “You be at my place in the morning, with them,
both
of them, do you hear—at nine,
sharp
.” Then I watched him march off in the dark, thanked the guard once again, and went back up to my flat. I bolted the door, lit a half candle that was there in an iron stick, hung up my clothes in the armoire in the bedroom, put on my nightshirt, and went to bed. As I reached for the candle to blow it out, there grinning at me from the night table was one of the china heads. I said: “My friend, for once, the joke is not on me, and you haven’t seen anything yet. Just you wait till tomorrow, and you may really have something to laugh at.”

I
HAD SLEPT A LONG TIME
, several hours from the way I felt, then awoke all of a sudden with a prickle up my back that told me I wasn’t alone. Whether I heard anything I don’t know, but I could have, as I was so well-slept-out the slightest sound would have reached me. I stared at the dark, wondering how anyone, short of a conjure trick, could have slid those bolts on the door to get in. Then I remembered the window, the one by the cistern, that I’d opened and forgotten about. From the wall, the tongue-and-groove partition between room and hall, came a sound—the faint, trembling rub that a hand would make feeling its way along from the rear of the flat. I groped for where I’d hung the gun in its harness on the bedpost. When I had it I lay there for a moment, but at the sound of another rub began to feel like a sitting duck. I slid out, grabbed one of the pillows and shoved it under the covers in such way that it made a bulge, then took the china head and pressed it down on the other pillow. Suddenly a man was there, sleeping. I crouched down with the gun by the side of the bed, out of sight, waiting.

The rub was repeated again, still closer to the door. Then the latch clicked and the hinge spoke. The door opened by inches and a dark shadow was there. I wanted to growl “Hands up,” but made myself bite it back, to give this shadow its chance to move farther into the room, so I could jump between it and the door and cut off any retreat. I had no doubt it was Burke; if I could hold him at gun’s point, then I could go ahead without turning him in yet or starting something I couldn’t stop. I could beat on the wall between flats, get Mignon and her father over, and have my showdown at once: find out who was guilty of what. If she had connived at that pass, letting Burke bespeak it for her as a preliminary to murdering Powell, I meant to turn them all in—her no less than the others. If that seems unduly mean, all I can say is that I could still smell her spit, and she’d done nothing the day before to make me forget its aroma. But if she hadn’t known of the pass, if she’d become an unwitting accessory, then I meant to stand pat until somebody brought me the papers. When I’d stuffed them into the stove and made her touch them off with a match, then I’d feel myself hunk and be able to take a new start—hie me back to New Orleans, begin again looking for twenty-five thousand dollars, perhaps take up with Marie, if she was still speaking to me.

That, some kind of way but fairly clearly, I think, is what went through my mind as I crouched there holding my breath. But then, in one blazing second, it all got out of hand, and the smoke that filled the room could not be stuffed back in the shells. The shadow darted. It was suddenly close to the bed. Then the room filled with light and there came a crash—the ear-splitting crash a gun makes when it’s fired indoors. And then self-preservation, which seems to be stronger somehow than any plan you can make—for getting hunk or otherwise—got into it. While china still clattered around from the shot smashing the head, I fired by reflex action, not knowing I would. Then I fired again, on purpose. You can’t sight a gun in the dark, but your hand will do it for you, and the thud on the floor told me I’d found my mark. I circled the bed, felt around with my bare toe, touched a gun. I picked it up, shook what was lying there to see if it still lived. It didn’t move, so I knew
I
had to—and move by the book, quick. I made my way to the sitting room, threw up the window, and called: “Corporal of the Guard,
help!
” I did it three times, each time banging a shot in the night, in the prescribed military way. Then I got a military answer: “Corporal of the Guard—
yo!
We hear you! Who are you who call? Locate yourself and we’ll come!”

“Schmidt store, second floor, Front Street!”

“On our way, coming up!”

I ducked for the bedroom again, but in the hall came a whisper from the dark: “Willie! Are you all right?”

“Mignon! For God’s sake, where are you?”

“Here! Can’t you see?”

Something touched my head, and when I grabbed it it was her hand, reaching down from the skylight. For a moment, one tremendous moment, her fingers locked with mine, and then she repeated, “Willie!
Are you all right?
”

“Yes, but will you go? I’ve had to kill a man, Burke, I think. The Provost Guard’s on its way—and they must not find you here!”

“I almost died when I heard those shots!”

“
Heard
them? Where the hell have you been?”

“Home! Where do you think?”

“Then why didn’t you answer Burke’s knock?”

“With Father not home? I wouldn’t answer
anyone
’
s
knock! It’s the one protection I have, and—”

“You answered my knock, though.”

“Well? I knew it was you. ... As for Frank—”

“Never mind about him. He’s dead.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you: I don’t care.”

I shook her hand, as a mother shakes a child, to make it listen. I said: “Mignon, you
have
to care, or everything’s in the soup! Things have been going on that I can’t take time to explain—terrible things that you can’t know about, or you wouldn’t be talking this way! Things that can land you on the gallows, and not only you but your father! We have to cover up! I do, you do, your father does, especially about those papers in Burke’s house! So if you hear me talking funny, don’t you undercut me, don’t you get in it, giving your two cents’ worth! I’ll have my reasons, and your life is at stake! Mignon, do you hear what I say?”

“My, but you sound funny.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, Willie, but
are
you all right?”

“I am! Now, will you
go?
”

“You don’t even sound like yourself.”

“Mignon, here comes the Provost Guard!”

At last, she pulled back her head and lowered the frame as footsteps sounded outside. My heart raced as I went to the door, and my head was spinning around because, of course, from her failure to answer Burke and the way she acted with me, she’d never lived up with him and had had no part of his scheme—at least any scheme leading to Powell’s murder. It put a different light on everything.

I opened to the corporal, who was carrying a bull’s-eye lantern, and two of his men, then led at once to the bedroom. But when he threw his beam I got my first jolt. The thing on the floor wasn’t Burke, but Pierre Legrand, the gippo. The corporal took both guns, which by then I had in one hand, sniffed them, and put them on the night table. Then he opened Pierre’s reefer and felt around in his pockets, perhaps for some identification. He didn’t seem to find any, which suddenly tipped me off that he wasn’t known to soldiers just recently here, and mightn’t be, at least right away, if I played my cards right. So when I was asked, I told everything just as it happened, except that I used the word
prowler
and gave no clue that could be followed up. In other words, I told the truth, but not quite all of the truth. The corporal shook his head, said “This damned place is so full of jayhawkers, bushwhackers, and swine of all different kinds, they’d steal our goddam boats if they wasn’t tied fast to the bank.” He posted a man to stand guard, said he’d get the captain, told me dress if I wanted to, but there was really no need, “as give us a half hour, and we ought to be off your neck, with
him
outen the way too.”

He was all ready to leave when suddenly, at the door, he turned to his other man, asked: “You see what I see, soldier?”

“Well Corporal, gimme some light.”

“That hat, under the bed!”

“Brother!”

He strode over, picked it up, and stared at the red pompon. “It’s him,” he whispered, “the one that killed Lieutenant Powell! That’s what the bosun said, the one on duty with him—he saw the man’s hat plain, it was one like the French Navy wears and had a red tassel on it!”

“That there’s a tuft, not a tassel.”

“Whatever it is, it’s red.”

“Corporal, you could be letting the Navy know.”

“You bet I’m letting the Navy know.”

In so short a time that I barely had my clothes on, I was a bigger hero than I’d ever been in my life, and I’ve had my share of praise. The Navy got there: Ball, Sandy, and three ensigns from the
Eastport
; a two-striper from the flag boat, and seamen from other boats. They piled in with a Captain Hager from the Provost Guard, the corporal, more privates, a stretcher, and so many bull’s-eye lanterns the place was bright as day. They closed in on the corpse like staghounds, and all kowtowed to me as the one who had made the kill. None of them, as yet, seemed to know who Pierre was, except that he’d murdered Powell, and I certainly didn’t enlighten them, though I avoided direct statements, one way or the other, by pretending “a bad reaction—don’t ask me to look at this man.” Hager, though, when he made me admit I was the one who had asked for a bodyguard earlier on in the evening, at once began boring in, but I told him: “
That
was just a precaution I felt I should take, from carrying a large sum of money, and had no connection with this—that I know of, unless this fellow had heard rumors about me.” That seemed to satisfy him; he even returned me my gun. “Obviously,” he said, “under the circumstances, in this godawful, lawless place, you may need it.”

Then he had the privates clean the room up, and Ball ordered the seamen to help. They found a pan and brooms in the kitchen, and swept up the china that was crunching underfoot, then brushed off the bed and made it up fresh. They did a bang-up policing job, and while it was going on, Sandy drew me into the hall. “Boy!” he growled. “Did you fall into the cream pot!”

“... Cream pot? What are you talking about?”

“Your receipt! We’ll have to sign it now!”

“Sandy! I don’t have a receipt!”

“I know you don’t! You don’t even have any cotton, but this is your chance to get it! Bill, don’t you see? The Navy couldn’t refuse you now and still look you in the eye—and we wouldn’t
want
to! After all, we look out for our friends, and you’ve just settled the hash of the killer we were looking for!
You get some cotton
,
Bill!
From your hombre if you can—the one holding the other half of your torn fifty-dollar bill! But if he doesn’t show, forget him—go buy up stock of your own, from whoever holds any titles to that cotton we took from the warehouse! You’re the only one who can get a receipt, you got a monopoly, you’ll be the only bidder, they’ll have to take what you offer, you can get hold of that stock for a song! Don’t you see, Bill?
Stop arguing with me!
Here I’ve been racking my brains all night for some scheme you could pull to make that twenty-five thousand dollars, and now when it’s right in your hand, you stand there—”

“I haven’t said a goddam word.”

“All right then, why
don
’
t
you say something?”

“I’ll think it over, I certainly will.”

At last they went, carrying the corpse with them, and after I’d closed the window and bolted the door, I started back to bed. But for a moment I stood in the hall, trying to gather my wits, to think what to do next, about Burke and his deadly papers, and how to do it in time, before Pierre’s identification, when the cat would be out of the bag. And then, from above, came the whisper: “Willie, have they gone?”