"Come out and eat with me, Cal," said Eddring. "I've some other matters to put before you. A great many things have been so confused in my mind that I have hardly known where to begin to straighten them out."
"I reckon you've got some new lawsuit or other on your hands," said
Blount.
"You're right. At least it may be a lawsuit, and it certainly bids fair to be a puzzling study, lawsuit or not."
After they were seated at table in an adjoining cafe, Eddring tossed over to his friend a late copy of a New Orleans newspaper. "You see that headline?" said he. "It's all about a dancer, Miss Louise Loisson. You ever hear that name before?"
"Why, no, I don't seem to remember it, if I ever did."
"Well, that name is bothering me mightily just now. You know something of the history of those old Y. V. damage judgments, after I left the road?"
"Yes, I reckon I heard something about it. Some one seems to have got hold of the list of claims, and pushed them for all they were worth. Of course, I know you hadn't anything to do with that."
"It was an odd sort of thing," said Eddring, "and it has led up to a number of other things still more strange. Now, no one knows how that information regarding the claims got out. I told you that I found that complete list of the claims in the valise of the mysterious man, Mr. Thompson, who was killed in the train wreck at your place. Of course I turned over all this material to the company at once. But there must have been a duplicate list out somewhere. I had my own suspicions. I knew, or thought I knew, why the dogs ran that trail right up to your house. Here's one reason I had for that." He threw on the table before Blount a soiled and wrinkled bit of linen, the same mysterious handkerchief which he had put in his pocket at the train wreck long ago.
"Did you ever see that before?" asked he. Blount sat up straighter and looked closely at the object, but shook his head.
"It might be Delphine's," said Eddring. At this the other man shut his mouth hard and his face grew suddenly serious.
"Now, I say I had suspicions," resumed Eddring. "That list of claims was never written out by that traveling man, Thompson. It might have been done by Henry Decherd, might it not?"
"What makes you think so?"
"Nothing, except that I believe those papers were in Henry Decherd's valise. In fact, I know it. He did not want to claim the valise when he saw that I had it. This letter might very possibly have been written by Delphine to Decherd. See here." He placed before Blount the unsigned letter which he had preserved ever since the time of its discovery. Blount read it through in silence, flushing a bit to see his own name mentioned by a servant in such connection; but without comment he looked quietly at Eddring, now eager in the instinct of the chase.
"I'll tell you frankly, Cal," said the latter, "I guessed all along that these two were concerned in all this business, but I couldn't speak. I didn't dare tell my suspicions when I had no better proof than was possible to get at that time. I didn't want to tell the sheriff. I didn't dare tell even you what I thought. Now there was something else in that valise which I did not turn over to the company, because I did not think it was their property."
He took from his pocket the mysterious little volume, the same which had so strangely appeared at different times and in the hands of different parties, not all of whom were at that time known to himself. Blount turned it over curiously in his hand.
"Funny sort of book for a traveling man to have in his valise," said he. "You reckon he was some sort of book collector?"
"Well, I don't reckon that Thompson was. Upon the other hand, Henry
Decherd might have been, for certain reasons. Let's see.
"Now, here is this little French book. It tells about a certain journey made from America to France in the year 1825 by several Indian chieftains. They went with one Paul Loise, interpreter. With them was a young girl, Louise Loisson — don't you see the name? — and she is carefully described as a descendant, not of Paul Loise, but of the Comte de Loisson, a nobleman who came to St. Louis shortly before 1825."
Blount sat up still straighter in his chair. "This here is mighty strange," said he. "Names sound right near alike."
"Yes," said Eddring. "But that Louise Loisson must have been dead, buried and forgotten half a hundred years ago. If so, what is she doing dancing down at New Orleans to-day? As soon as I saw that name in the newspaper, I looked it up again in my little book. Then I put together my suspicions about the letter, and the list, and the valise. If I hadn't seen the name in the newspaper, I might never have been so much interested in it; and certainly I should never have put the matter before you."
"I am mighty glad you did. There may be a heap under all this that I want to know about."
"There is. And now I want you to follow me closely; because this very same thing has come to me from another direction.
"You know that in my work I have to examine papers in all sorts of claim cases. Now, within the year, I ran across a United States Supreme Court brief, a case which came up from the Indian Nations, and which was decided not long ago. It seems that the plaintiff used to be on the Omaha pay-rolls. Some one in the tribe, apparently as a test case, covering certain other claims, objected that the claimant was not all Indian, indeed not Indian at all, and hence not entitled to be on the rolls; although you know Uncle Sam recognizes Indian blood to the one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth part.
"I might never have taken much interest in that suit, which I happened to be going over for other reasons, if I hadn't caught sight, in the testimony, of the names of Loise and Loisson, and if I hadn't found the name of Henry Decherd among counsel for the plaintiff!"
"Well, by jinks, that's mighty curious!" said Blount. "I didn't know he was a lawyer."
"Yes. He was a lawyer; so much the more dangerous, as I'll show you. Now Paul Loise was official interpreter for the United States government at St. Louis in 1825. He was of absolutely no kinship to the Comte de Loisson, the similarity of names being a mere coincidence, though one which has made much trouble in the records since that time, as I have discovered. The confusion of these two names was one of the most singular legal blunders ever known in the South. It was this entanglement of the records that gave Henry Decherd his chance.
"The Comte de Loisson was a widower, and he brought with him from France a young daughter. He pushed on up the Missouri River in search of adventures, but he left this daughter, as nearly as can now be learned, in charge of the half-breed interpreter, Paul Loise, perhaps with the understanding that the latter was to obtain suitable care for her from officials in the government employ. That was about the time the Redhead Chief — Clark, of Lewis and Clark, you know — was Indian commissioner at St. Louis.
"Now Paul Loise, at that time engaged in the government treaty work with the tribes, was moving about from tribe to tribe, and he seems to have had an Indian wife in pretty much every one of them. He also had a white wife, or one nearly white, whom he left at his headquarters in St. Louis; and it was with this woman, white or partly white, that the young daughter of the Comte de Loisson was left, at least for a time. Paul Loise himself on one journey went up the river to the place where the Omaha tribe then lived. Whether he took this white child with him, or whether he left her in charge of his white wife at St. Louis, is something now very difficult to prove. This United States Supreme Court case hinges very largely on that same question; and hence it is of great interest to us, as I will show you after a while."
"Well, now, couldn't this dancer down at New Orleans — some sort of
Creole like enough — have been a descendant of this Loise family of
St. Louis?" asked Blount.
"That we can't tell," replied Eddring. "As I said, the similarity of the names set me looking up the whole matter as soon as I could."
"Well, didn't the French girl's father ever come back after her?"