Chapter VII: Dried Frogs--And Luck

Mr. Bangs had a very dark complexion, black hair, black eyes, and a ropy black mustache. His face had a puffed, unhealthy look--probably due to dissipation--and his walk was a sort of slumping process which proved, beyond the power of words, that he was dead to ambition and lost to hope. In the worst sense of the term, he had ceased to live for himself and was living for others--a mere tool for the unscrupulous whenever there was a dollar to be turned.

And yet there was something very plausible about Bangs. He had an engaging way with him, whenever he desired to put it forward, and he used it to the limit when accosting Dick and Carl on the docks.

Carl, no less than Dick, believed firmly that everything was all right, and that Bangs was really the friend of Townsend and had been sent to the levee to watch for the air ship. It pleased the Dutch boy to think that he was to go with Bangs and the iron chest, and he was delighted with the dried frog amulet, which Matt had seemed to forget about since leaving the bayou.

Of course Carl believed in charms. Having a wholesome regard for Yamousa's powers, it was natural for him to have abundant faith in the dried frog. Stowing the relic away in his pocket, he mounted the express wagon with the utmost confidence, waved his hand to Dick, and then rolled away with Bangs, the expressman, and the iron chest.

Carl's "luck" began the moment the express wagon turned into Canal Street. The old, square stone flagging, in that part of town, was deeply worn. The front wheel of the wagon on Carl's side plunged into a rut, and Carl fell forward on the backs of the mules and then rolled down under their heels.

The hind heels of a mule are dangerous objects to tamper with, and in less than half a second the expressman's team got very busy.

Carl distinctly remembered pitching over upon the backs of the mules, and he had a hazy recollection of slipping down inside the pole, but after that he drew a blank. When he opened his eyes and looked around, he was sitting up in the street, supported by Bangs. The expressman was picking up his hat, and a crowd was gathering.

"It was a right smart of a jolt," grinned one of the bystanders.

"Don't you-all know it's bad business t' tampah with the south end of a mu-el goin' no'th?" asked another.

"Vas it an eart'quake?" inquired Carl, mechanically taking his hat. "Der puildings vas shdill shdanding on der shtreet, und nodding vas dorn oop mooch, aber somet'ing must haf habbened."

"You done drapped on de mu-els," said the colored proprietor of the express wagon. "Dey's gentle, an' dey'll eat oats off'n de back of a choo-choo engyne, but dey won't stan' fo' no meddlin' wid dey feet."

"Hurt?" inquired Bangs, helping Carl erect.

"Vell," answered Carl, feeling himself all over, "dere don'd vas any vone blace vere I feel der vorst, but dere iss a goneness all ofer me, oop und down und sideways. Oof I hat a gun," he finished, his temper rising, "I vould go on a mule hunt."

Carl slapped the dust from his clothes and climbed back into the wagon. Before he gripped the seat with both hands, he transferred the dried frog from the left-hand pocket of his coat to the right-hand pocket.

"Meppy I ditn't put it in der righdt blace," he thought.

The express wagon turned from Canal Street into Royal, and from Royal into St. Peter, halting before a dingy building, with iron balconies, not far from Congo Square.

A mulatto woman sat in the doorway of the building with a basket of pralines in front of her on the walk. Carl took one handle of the chest, and Bangs the other. The chest, being of iron, was heavy. Somebody had spilled a pitcher of milk on the sidewalk and Carl's foot slipped as he crossed the wet spot. His end of the chest dropped, barking one of his shins and landing on the toes of one of his feet.

Carl gave a yell of pain and toppled over, sitting down with a good deal of force in the basket of pralines. The praline vendor had been knitting, but she sprang up, when she saw the destruction the Dutch boy was causing to her stock in trade, and tried to make a pin cushion of him with her knitting needles.

Bangs rushed to the rescue, and Carl, after placating the woman with a silver dollar, once more picked up his end of the chest and limped after Bangs.

The doorway through which they passed led them into a narrow, ill-smelling corridor, open to the sky and filled with rubbish. Out of the rubbish grew a number of untrimmed and uncared-for oleander bushes.

"Now," remarked Bangs, not unkindly, "you can sit down here and rest. I'll have the creole gentleman who lives here help me up to Townsend's room with the chest; then I'll tell Townsend about you, and he'll come down and give you a hearty greeting."

"Mebby I pedder go mit der chest?" objected Carl.

A look of pained surprise crossed Bangs' face.

"You don't think for a moment, my dear friend," said he, "that I'm trying to deceive you? I merely wish to announce your coming to my friend Townsend so that he'll come down here personally and give you welcome."

"Ach, vell go aheadt," muttered Carl, dropping down on a box near a clump of oleanders and nursing his foot.

Bangs gave a whistle. The creole gentleman, barefooted and wearing a red flannel shirt and tattered trousers, appeared in the courtyard from nowhere in particular, and he and Bangs passed a few words in French. The creole gentleman grinned a little and laid hold of one of the iron handles. Bangs took the other, and they carried the iron chest up a stairway to a gallery on the second floor.

Carl watched the two mount the stairs and pass around the gallery to a door; then the door opened and the two men and the iron chest disappeared. The creole gentleman did not show himself again, and if he left the room into which he had gone with Bangs he must have passed out by some other way than the gallery.

The moment Carl was by himself, he changed the dried frog to the breast pocket of his coat.

"I don'd got him in der righdt blace for luck," thought Carl. "Meppy dot iss pedder. Oof I lif long enough to ged der frog vere he ought to be, I bed you I haf some goot fortunes."

While Carl leaned back, and waited, there came a shrill cry from behind another clump of oleanders:

"Get out of here! Get out! Get out! Sic him, Tige!"

Carl, fearing the onslaught of a dog, snatched up a piece of wood and jumped to the top of the box. No dog came.

"Don'd you set some dogs on me!" he called. "I got as mooch righdt here as anypody. I vas vaiding for Misder Downsent. Who you vas, anyhow?"

"You're the limit!" came the shrill words. "Go soak your head! Police! Police!"

As the last word rang through the courtyard, Carl's cap was jerked off his head from behind. With an angry shout, he whirled just in time to see the branches shaking as the thief got away.

"I'm der limid, am I?" he muttered, crashing through the bushes. "Want me to go soak my headt, hey? Vell, py chiminy, I show you somet'ing."

When Carl got through the bushes the thief had disappeared, but a wild, rollicking laugh came from behind the other thicket of oleanders. Running in that direction he came upon a yellow-crested parrot chained to a perch. The parrot seemed to be getting a good deal of fun out of the situation, for he was lifting himself up and down and chuckling fiendishly.

"Vy," gasped Carl, a slow grin working its way over his face, "it vas a barrot! Pooty Poll! Sooch a nice pird vat it iss! Vant some crackers? Say somet'ing, vonce, und----"

Just at that moment, something hit Carl on the back of the head. Whirling away from the parrot, he looked upward. A black monkey was clinging to the ironwork of the gallery overhead. In one paw the monkey held Carl s cap, and with the other paw he was fishing bits of plaster out of the wall and throwing them downward.

"Und dere iss a monkey, too!" exclaimed Carl. "It looks like I vas in a menacherie. Say, you monk, gif me dot hat!"

"Sic 'im, Tige!" shrilled the parrot. "Police! police!"

The monkey chattered and flaunted the cap defiantly, at the same time getting ready to throw another piece of plaster.

"Nice leedle monk!" wheedled Carl. "Iss der leedle monkey hungry? Den come down und ged some peanuds vich I ain'd got! Pooty leedle monk! py shinks, I vill preak you in doo oof you don'd----"

Biff!

The piece of plaster came downward, straight as a die, and landed on Carl's chin. That was more than Carl's temper could stand, and he started up the stairway toward the gallery.

In order to get near the monkey he had to run around the gallery, past the door through which the creole gentleman and Bangs had vanished with the chest.

There was a window, set in a sort of embrasure, beside the door, and one of the lights was broken out.

As Carl passed under the window, on his way around the gallery, he heard a voice that brought him to a gasping halt. All thoughts of his stolen cap, and the monkey, left his mind.

Staggering up against the balcony rail, he stood there blinking in stunned bewilderment.

"Vas I ashleep?" he whispered; "vas I treaming? I vonder oof I can pelief vat I hear, or----"

He broke off his words abruptly, turned and stepped to the wall. Here he paused just long enough to shift the dried frog from his coat to his trousers pocket, then, softly, climbed into the embrasure and peered through the broken pane of the window.

No, he had not been asleep, or dreaming.

He was peering into a room in which were two men, neither of whom was the creole gentleman.

One of the men was Bangs, and the other was--Lat Jurgens! Between them stood the iron chest.