Going downtown, he mailed the letter to Fell, confident that the latter would receive it on the following morning; but he did not telephone Fell. He preferred to leave the absence of Chacherre unexplained, rightly judging that Fell would not be particularly anxious about the man. It was now Thursday evening. The meeting of the oil company would be held at nine on Friday evening. Between those two times Gramont figured on many things happening.
He chuckled as he sent the telegram to Dick Hearne at Houma—a telegram signed with the name Chacherre, instructing Hearne not to burn the bundle, but to meet Gramont early in the morning at Houma. He had a very shrewd idea that this Dick Hearne might prove an important person to dispose of, and quite useful after he had been disposed of. In this conjecture he was right.
CHAPTER XIV
Chacherre's Bundle
IT WAS seven in the morning when Henry Gramont drove his car into Houma.
In the wire which he had sent over Chacherre's signature he had commanded Dick Hearne to meet Gramont at about this time at a restaurant near the court house. Putting his car at the curb, Gramont went into the restaurant and ordered a hasty breakfast. He had brought with him copies of the morning papers, and was perusing the accounts of Bob Maillard's pitifully weak story regarding his father's murder, when a stranger stopped beside him.
"Gramont?" said the other. "Thought it was you. Hearne's my name—I had orders to meet you. What's up?"
The other man dropped into the chair opposite Gramont, who put away his papers. Hearne was a sleek individual of pasty complexion who evidently served the gang in no better light than as a go-between and runner of errands. That he suspected nothing was plain from his casual manner, although he had never seen Gramont previously.