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.