"I would like to know what you mean by meddling in my affairs," began Decherd. "You are interfering--"

"Yes," said a voice, soft but very cold, "I'm interfering. I am going to spoil your chances, Decherd. Sit down." The man thus accosted involuntarily sank back into a seat. Then a sudden rage caught him, and he half-started up again. This time he saw something blue gleaming dully in the idle hand which hung between Eddring's knees.

"Be careful," said the latter. "I told you not to do that. Sit down, now, and listen." An unreasoning, blind terror seized Henry Decherd, and in spite of himself, he obeyed.

"In the first place, Decherd," said Eddring, "I want to say that it was not lucky for you when I got hold of your valise by mistake at the Big House wreck--the time I found that list of claims, and the little old book in French. I have studied all those things over carefully, together with other things. I've been thinking a great deal. That's why I am going to spoil your chances."

"Does she know?" whispered Decherd, hoa.r.s.ely.

"No, she knows nothing about it at all. She doesn't know who she is-- not even why she happened to take the name of Louise Loisson."

Decherd gasped, but the cold voice went on. "You might have told her some of these things. You might have told her who her real mother was, and who her false mother. You might have given her a chance to know herself. I don't fancy that you did. I don't think you told her anything which did not serve your own purposes."

"We were going to be married," began Decherd.

"We are going to be married--"

"You _were,_ perhaps," said Eddring, "but not now. Oh, I don't doubt that you are willing enough to marry Louise Loisson, and to deceive her after your marriage as you did before. I don't doubt that in the least."

"What business is it of yours?" said Decherd, now becoming more sullen than bl.u.s.tering.

"I can't say that it was my business at all," said Eddring. "It's accident, largely; and surely it was not your fault that I blundered on these matters. It was rather fate, or the occasional good fortune of the innocent. You covered up your trail fairly well; but a criminal will always leave behind him some egotistical mark of his crime, either by accident or by intent. You left marks all along your trail, Decherd--there, there, keep quiet. I don't want to use force with you. I'm not going to be the agent of justice. But it won't be altogether healthy for the man on whose shoulders a great many of these things are finally loaded. You were enterprising, Decherd, and you were an abler man than I thought, far abler; but you undertook too much.

"Now, here's a message from Colonel Blount," Eddring resumed. "It looks as though things were coming pretty nearly to a show-down up there. We are going to find out all about that. Incidentally, we are going to find out everything about this poor girl here, whose name and reputation only the mercy of G.o.d kept you from ruining this very night." The two now sat looking each other fairly and fully in the eye. For the first time in many years Henry Decherd recognized the whip hand.

"I might as well tell you," said Eddring, "that I know about the old Loisson estate--a great deal more than its lawful heiress does. I know who paid the taxes on the lands. I know as well as you do about the suit in the United States Supreme Court, where you won and lost at the same time. In that case you proved your client, Delphine, to be Indian, and therefore not French--in plain language, you proved that she was the heiress of the Indian, Paul Loise, and therefore could _not_ inherit certain valuable lands of which we both know.

Before you found yourself on that account forced to pin your faith to the descendants of the French Comte de Loisson, you were willing to use either line of descent, provided it made it possible for you to get possession of these lands. You were willing to deal with a woman of mixed blood, or with one of pure blood, of n.o.ble descent. Let me be frank with you, Decherd. You were playing these girls one against the other. It was Delphine against the descendants of the Comte de Loisson--a delicate game; and you came near winning."

Decherd pa.s.sed a hand across his forehead, now grown clammy, but he could see no method either of attack or of escape, for the cold gray eye still held him, and the blue barrel hung steady beneath the idle hand, as the same steel-like voice went on:

"I will just go over the proof once more, Decherd," said Eddring, "and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one of n.o.ble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are together equal, _in posse_, as we will say, to these valuable lands.

Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if you move your hand.

"Very well, then, my friend, it comes simply to a case of cancelation. No matter what you have told or promised either, there can be but one heiress. Mark out one girl, and the other is equal to that estate, we'll say. You yourself marked out Delphine when you proved her to be of Indian descent. That leaves Miss Lady as the heiress of the estate of the Comte de Loisson, doesn't it, Decherd?

"It leaves, also, two ways of getting the estate. You could marry the girl, or kill her. You might possibly get a tax-t.i.tle in the latter case; if you killed the girl the tax-t.i.tle would mature in your name.

You may count that string as broken. Mrs. Ellison, we will say, wanted your paramour, Delphine, canceled, and wanted also to put the remaining claimant out of sight. Then, as mother of this heiress-- the false mother, as you and I know--she thought that she would inherit the lands--and you.

"That was Mrs. Ellison's plan--a very ignorant plan. Then the simple matter of a marriage--or of no marriage--between Mr. Henry Decherd and this Mrs. Alice Ellison, would enable them comfortably to share this estate. That was the way Mrs. Ellison wanted it, perhaps. But you preferred to marry the true claimant, and get rid of Mrs.

Ellison. That was your plan. You wanted to cancel every possible claimant except Miss Lady, and then you wanted to force Miss Lady into a marriage with you. Do I make myself clear to you, Mr. Decherd?

And do I make myself clear that this country isn't big enough for both of us? Keep quiet now. You've come to your show-down right here.

"Meantime, it was part of your scheme, as I now see, to keep Miss Lady away from her friends, to poison her against those friends. You had to live, and you were a lawyer, or a sort of a lawyer. You got hold of these judgment claims against the railroad which discharged me. You told this girl that I stole those claims. You know you lied.

For a time you deluded this poor girl, poisoning her mind, killing her nature with your deceit. None the less, you left behind you open proofs, ready-made for your own undoing. Why, this very name, this stage name of Louise Loisson, was banner enough to bring her real friends to her side. But you didn't know, did you, Mr. Decherd, that I had read the little book, and that I knew the Loisson history? I said it was by chance I found the book. I am ready now to say it was by fate--by justice. It's like the fetish mark on the church-door-- that negro church in the woods--like the sign on Delphine's handkerchief. Guilt always leaves a sign. Justice always finds some proof.

"Now, I have a message from Colonel Blount. Here it is. He says, 'Louise Loisson our Miss Lady.' He has found out something, too, at the other end of the line, hasn't he, Decherd? Notice, he says, 'our Miss Lady.' She is ours, not yours. I am going to take her along with me, back to the Big House, and to her friend, Colonel Blount. He says, 'Watch out for Decherd.' I am watching out for him. He also says that they have caught the leader who has been making all the trouble up there in the Delta, near the Big House plantation."

"Delphine!" gasped Decherd, from tightened lips, a pale horror now written on every feature. "Has she talked?"

"Yes, Delphine! You were able to guess that, were you, Decherd? Thank you. You were right. I do not know whether or not Delphine has talked. But whether she has or not, there will presently be no chance for you. You are at the end of your string, Decherd.

"And now, get up," said Eddring to him sharply, rising. "Get up, you d.a.m.ned hound, you liar, you thief, you cur. This boat's not big enough for you and me. The world will be barely big enough for a little while, if you're careful. We are not afraid of you, now that we know you. Go back to Mrs. Ellison, if you like. You can't go back to Delphine now, and you can't speak to Miss Lady again. She is _our_ Miss Lady. You can't stay on this boat tonight, where that girl is."

"So you--you're trying to cut in?" began Decherd.

Eddring did not answer.

He caught Decherd by the collar, wrenched the revolver from his pocket and pushed him down the stair, then dragged him along the lower deck. They pa.s.sed a line of sleeping deck-hands too stupid to observe them. Dragging astern of the boat, high between the two long diverging lines of the rolling wake, there rode a river skiff at the end of its taut line.

"Those lights below are at the ferry, eight miles from town," said Eddring. "Get into the boat."

"For G.o.d's sake, can't you get them to slow down?" whined Decherd; but Eddring shook his head. Decherd let himself over the rail of the lower deck, and for an instant the strained line bade fair to hold his weight. Then his feet and legs dropped into the water as he and the boat approached. Desperately he clambered on, and so fell panting and dripping into the bow of the skiff. A moment later the boat and its huddled occupant dropped back into the night, tossing in the wake of the churning wheels.

From above there came pouring down the somber flood of Messasebe, bearing tribute of his wilderness, in part made up of broken, worthless and discarded things.

Eddring gazed after the disappearing boat. He was relaxed, silent, worn. The grip of a great loneliness seized upon him. What had he gained? Why had he interfered? The world about him seemed void and vacant. He felt himself, no less than the other man, a worthless and discarded thing--a bit of flotsam on the flood of fate.

CHAPTER X

THE VOYAGE

"As to the law, Captain Wilson," said Eddring, to the master of the _Opelousas Queen_ the following morning, as he sat in the cabin; "I'm a lawyer myself, and I want to tell you, the law is a strange thing. It will, and it won't. It can, and it can't. It does, and it doesn't. It's blind, crosseyed and clear-sighted all at the same time. It offers a precedent for everything, right or wrong. Now, as you say, it is unlawful for us to stop the delivery of these mails. I know it--big penalty for non-delivery. But let's talk it over a little."

The _Opelousas Queen_ was now plowing steadily up-stream, far above Baton Rouge, meeting the crest of the greatest flood she had ever known in all her days upon the turbid waterway. Her master now, surly but none the less interested, out of sheer curiosity in this strange visitor, sat looking at him without present speech.

"Are you a married man, Captain Wilson?" said Eddring. "Have a cigar with me, won't you?"

"What difference is it to you?" said Wilson, waving aside the courtesy.

"Yes; but _are_ you?"

"Wife died six years ago," said Wilson, gruffly. The muscles ridged up along his jaw as he closed his lips tightly.

"Any children?" said Eddring.

"Daughter, eighteen years old; and a beauty, if I do say it."

"I reckon you love her some, don't you, Captain? Thought a heap of your wife, too, maybe, didn't you?"

Wilson half-rose, one hand upon his chair back, as he pounded on the table in front of him with the other. "Now look here, Mister Who- ever-you-are, I've stood a lot of foolishness from you already," said he, "but those are my matters, and not yours. Get on out of here."

Yet Eddring only looked at him smiling, and into his eyes there came a flash of pleasure.

"I'm mighty glad to hear you say those very words, Captain," said he; "because now I know you'd do anything in the world to help a good girl out of trouble, or to keep her out of it. Now, about the law.

I'm sure, Captain, you believe in the higher law--the supreme law-- the chivalry of the southern man, don't you?" Wilson waved him away again, but still gazed at him curiously. "Now listen, Captain,"

Eddring persisted.