LITMIR.BIZ

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nurse, was the only witness to the end of that duel. Richard lay face down across the hearth-stone as she came screaming down the stairs.”

      Ricky was studying the gray stone.

      “By rights,” Val agreed with her unspoken thought, “there ought to be a stain there. Unfortunately for romance, there isn’t.”

      “Rick was standing by the door,” Rupert continued. “When Falesse reached his brother, he laughed unsteadily and half raised his sword in a duelist’s salute. Then he was gone. But there were two swords on the floor. And that niche was empty.

      “When he fled into the night storm with his brother’s blood staining his hands, Rick Ralestone took the Luck of his house with him.

      “After almost a year of invalidism, Richard recovered. He never married his American beauty. But in 1819 he took a wife, a young Creole lady widowed by the Battle of New Orleans. Of Rick nothing was heard again, although his brother searched diligently for more than thirty years.”

      “How,” Val grinned at his brother, “did Richard explain the little matter of the ghost which is supposed to walk at night?”

      “I don’t know. But when the Civil War broke out, Richard’s son Miles was the master of Pirate’s Haven. The once-great fortune of the family had shrunk. Business losses in the city, floods, a disaster at sea, had emptied the family purse—”

      “The Luck getting in its dirty work by remote control,” supplied the irrepressible Val.

      “Perhaps. Young Miles had married in his teens, and the call to the Confederate colors brought both his twin sons under arms as well as their father.

      “Miles, the father, fell in the First Battle of Bull Run. But Miles, the son and elder of the twins, a lieutenant of cavalry, came out of the war the only surviving male of his family.

      “His brother Richard had been wounded and was home on sick leave when the Northerners occupied New Orleans. Betrayed by one of his former slaves, a mulatto who bore a grudge against the family, he was murdered by a gang of bullies and cutthroats who had followed the invading army.

      “Richard had been warned of their raid and had managed to hide the family valuables in a secret place—somewhere within this very hall, according to tradition.”

      Val and Ricky sat up and looked about with wondering interest.

      “But Richard was shot down in cold blood when he refused to reveal the hiding-place. His brother and some scouts, operating south without orders, arrived just in time to witness the last act. Miles Ralestone and his men summarily shot the murderers. But where Richard had so carefully concealed the last of the family treasure was never discovered.

      “The war beggared the Ralestones. Miles went north in search of better luck, and this place was allowed to molder until it was leased in 1879 to a sugar baron. In 1895 it was turned over to a family distantly connected with ours. And since then it has been leased. We have had in all four tenants.”

      “But,” Ricky broke in, “since the Luck went we have not prospered. And until it returns—”

      Rupert tapped out his pipe against one of the fire irons. “It’s nothing but a folk-tale,” he told her.

      “It isn’t!” Ricky contradicted him vehemently. “And we’ve made a good beginning anyway. We’ve come back.”

      “If Rick took the Luck with him, I don’t see how we have an earthly chance of finding it again,” Val commented.

      “It came back once before after it had gone from us,” reminded his sister. “And I think that it will again. At least I’ll hope so.”

      “Outside of the superstition, it would be well worth having. The names of the heads and heirs of the house are all engraved along the blade, from Sir Roderick on down. Seven hundred years of history scratched on steel.” Rupert stretched and then glanced at his wrist-watch. “Ten to ten, and we’ve had a long day. Who’s for bed?”

      “I am, for one.” Val swung his feet down from the couch, disturbing Satan who opened one yellow eye lazily.

      Ricky stood by the fireplace fingering the wreath of stiff flowers carved in the stone. Val took her by the arm.

      “No use wondering which one you push to reveal the treasure,” he told her.

      She looked up startled. “How did you know what I was thinking about?” she demanded.

      “My lady, your thoughts, like little white birds—”

      “Oh, go to bed, Val. When you get poetical I know you need sleep. Just the same,” she hesitated with one foot on the first tread of the stair, “I wonder.”

      The Ralestones Entertain an Unobtrusive Visitor

       Val lay trapped in an underground cavern, chained to the floor. An unseen monster was creeping up his prostrate body. He could feel its hot breath on his cheek. With a mighty effort he broke his bonds and threw out his arms in an attempt to fight off his tormentor.

      The morning sun was warm across his pillow, making him blink. On his chest stood Satan, kneading the bedclothes with his front paws and purring gently. From the open window came a fresh, rain-washed breeze.

      Having aroused the sleeper, Satan deserted his post to hang half-way out the window, intent upon the housekeeping arrangements of several birds who had built in the hedges below. A moment later Val elbowed him aside to look out upon the morning.

      It was a fine one. Wisps of mist from the bayou still hung about the lower garden, but the sun had already dried the brick-paved paths. A bee blundered past Val’s nose, and he realized that it might be well to close the screen hanging shutter-like outside.

      From the direction of the hidden water came the faint putt-putt of a motor-boat, but inside Pirate’s Haven there was utter silence. As yet the rest of the family were not abroad. Val dropped his pajamas in a huddle by the bed and dressed leisurely, feeling very much at peace with this new world. Perhaps that was the last time he was to feel so for many days to come. He stole cautiously out of his room and tiptoed down halls and dark stairs, wanting to be alone while he discovered Pirate’s Haven for himself.

      The Long Hall looked chilly and bleak, even though patches of sunlight were fighting the usual gloom. On the hearth-stone lay a scrap of white, doubtless Ricky’s handkerchief. Val flung open the front door and stepped out on the terrace, drawing deep lungfuls of the morning air. The blossoms on the morning-glory vines which wreathed the edge of the terrace were open to the sun, and the birds sang in the bushes below. Satan streaked by and disappeared into the tangle. It was suddenly very good to be alive. The boy stretched luxuriously and started to explore, choosing the nearest of the crazy, wandering paths which began at the circle of the old carriage drive.

      Here was evidence of last night’s storm. Wisps of Spanish moss, torn from the great live-oaks of the avenue and looking like tufts of coarse gray horsehair, lay in water-logged mats here and there. And in the open places, the grass, beaten flat, was just beginning to rise again.

      A rabbit scuttled across the path as it went down four steps of broken stone into a sort of glen. Here some early owner of the plantation had made an irregular pool of stone to be fed by the trickle of a tiny spring. Frogs the size of postage-stamps leaped panic-stricken for the water when Val’s shadow fell across its rim. A leaden statue of the boy Pan danced joyously on a pedestal above. Ricky would love this, thought her brother as he dabbled his fingers in the chill water trying to catch the stem of the single lily bud.

      Out of nowhere came a turtle to slide into the depths of the pool. The sun was very warm across Val’s bowed shoulders. He liked the garden, liked the plantation, even liked the circumstances which had brought them there. Lazily he arose and turned.

      By the steps down which he had come stood a slight figure in a faded flannel shirt and mud-streaked overalls. His bare brown feet gripped the stones as if

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