CHAPTER I
Carnival
JACHIN FELL pushed aside the glass curtains between the voluminous over-draperies in the windows of the Chess and Checkers Club, and gazed out upon the riotous streets of New Orleans. Half an hour he had been waiting here in the lounge room for Dr. Cyril Ansley, a middle-aged bachelor who had practised in Opelousas for twenty years, and who had come to the city for the Mardi Gras festivities. Another man might have seemed irritated by the wait, but Jachin Fell was quite unruffled.
He had much the air of a clerk. His features were thin and unremarkable; his pale eyes constantly wore an expression of wondering aloofness, as though he saw around him much that he vainly tried to understand. In his entire manner was a shy reticence. He was no clerk, however, this was evident from his attire. He was garbed from head to foot in soberly blending shades of gray whose richness was notable only at close view. One fancied him a very precise sort of man, an old maid of the wrong sex.
Doctor Ansley, an Inverness flung over his evening clothes, entered the lounge room, and Fell turned to him with a dry, toneless chuckle.
"You're the limit! Did you forget we were going to the Maillards' to-night?"
Ansley appeared vexed and irritated. "Confound it, Fell!" he exclaimed. "I've been all over town looking for El Reys. Caught in a crowd—no El Reys yet!"
Again Fell uttered his toneless chuckle. His voice was absolutely level, unmarked by any change of inflection.
"My dear fellow, there are only three places in the city that can afford to carry El Reys in these parlous times! This club, however, happens to be one of the three. Here, sit down and forget your troubles over a real smoke! We need not leave for fifteen minutes yet, at least."
Doctor Ansley laid aside his cape, stick, and hat, and dropped into one of the comfortable big chairs. He accepted the proffered cigar with a sigh. Across his knees he laid an evening paper, whose flaring headlines proclaimed an extra.