“Come in,” he snarled.
It was a servant, who said a gentleman wanted to see him.
“What’s his name? No matter. Show him up.”
With an uneasy, furtive glance at him, the man departed, and in two or three minutes appeared again with Captain Bangham.
“Well, what do you want?” snarled Lafitte, the moment he appeared. “Have you found that curse, Antony?”
The captain looked savage and sullen at this reception, and hated Lafitte ten times worse than ever, while, at the same time, he was afraid of him.
“No, I haven’t found him,” he said, snappishly. “I’ve been two or three times up where that Roux lives, and he’s not there, and nobody knows where he is; and as for the other, I can’t get any clue to him.”
Mr. Lafitte rose from his chair, and with glossy, tigerish eyes, and a ferocious face, advanced upon Bangham, who winced a little as he came, as if he would like to run from the room but for the shame of it. Bullies are not always cowards, but this bully was.
“Hark you, Bangham,” said Mr. Lafitte, in a low, smooth voice, “I’m going home in the first train, and you may tell Atkins I’ve gone, for I shan’t see him again. That Roux I don’t want, so let him alone. But you find Antony for me, or look out. You’re in a fix, my captain, and you know it. You can’t bring any evidence against the presumption of the law that you willfully refused to return that slave. Where are your witnesses to the contrary? Your mate has left Atkins’s employ—your sailors don’t go back to New Orleans with you. You know the penalty for not bringing back a slave you find on board your brig—from three to seven years in prison, and the payment of the full value of the slave; and I’ll set that value high, Bangham, you may depend. Let your brig touch the Levee again and he not on board, and I’ll make you suffer to the full extent of my power, and spread stories around which will ruin Atkins in New Orleans for good. Mind what I say to you. Now go.”
At the haughty mandate of the Southerner, spoken with an outstretched finger, as though he was ordering away his meanest slave, Bangham slunk from the room without a word.