Gramont scarcely knew how he departed, until he found himself scrambling back through the underbrush of the Ledanois place.
He rushed into the house, found the fire had died down beyond all danger, and swiftly removed the few things they had taken from the car. Carrying these, he stumbled back to where he had hidden the automobile. He scarcely dared to think, scarcely dared to congratulate himself on the luck that had befallen him, until he found himself in his own car once more, and with open throttle sweeping out through the twilight toward Paradis and Houma beyond. A whirlwind of mad exultation was seething within him—exultation as sudden and tremendous as the past weeks had been uneventful and dragging!
Gramont, in common with many others, had heard much indefinite rumour of an underground lottery game that was being worked among the negroes of the state and the Chinese villages along the Gulf coast. And now he knew definitely.
Lotteries have never died out in Louisiana since the brave old days of the government-ordained gambles, laws and ordinances to the contrary. No laws can make the yellow man and the black man forego the get-rich-quick heritage of their fathers. On the Pacific coast lotteries obtain and will obtain wherever there is a Chinatown. In Louisiana the days of the grand lottery have never been forgotten. The last two years of high wages had made every Negro wealthy, comparatively speaking. The lottery mongers would naturally find them a ripe harvest for the picking. And who would gravitate to this harvest field if not the great Gumberts, the uncaught Memphis Izzy, the promoter who had never been "mugged!"
Here, at one stroke, stumbling on the thing by sheer blind accident, Gramont had located the nucleus of the whole business!
Gradually his brain cooled to the realization of what work lay before him. He was through Paradis, almost without seeing the town, and switched on his lights as he took the highway to Houma. Sober reflection seized him. Not only was this crowd of crooks working a lottery, but they were also managing a stupendous thievery of automobiles, in which cars were looted by wholesale! And the man at the head of it all, the man above Memphis Izzy and his crooks, was Jachin Fell of New Orleans.
Did Lucie Ledanois dream such a thing? No. Gramont dismissed the question at once. Fell was not an unusual type of man. There were many Jachin Fells throughout the country, he reflected. Men who applied their brains to crooked work, who kept themselves above any actual share in the work, and who profited hugely by tribute money from every crook in every crime.
To the communities in which they lived such men were patterns of all that wealthy gentlemen should be. Seldom, except perhaps in gossip of the underworld, was their connection with crime ever suspected. And—this thought was sobering to Gramont—never did they come within danger of retribution at the hands of the law. Their ramifications extended too far into politics; and the governors of some southern states have unlimited powers of pardon.
"This is a big day!" reflected Gramont, dismissing the sinister suggestion of this last thought. "A big day! What it will lead to, I don't know. Not the least of it is the financial end of it—the oil seepage! That little iridescent trickle of oil on the water means that money worries are over, both for me and for Lucie. I'm sorry that I am mixed up with Fell; I've enough money of my own to drill at least one good well, and one is all we'll need to bring in oil on that place. Well, we'll see what turns up! My first job is to make sure Hammond is safe, and to relieve his mind. I'll have to leave him in jail, I suppose——"
Why did Fell want to "get something" on Hammond? To this there was no answer.