The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  She had seen everything, but she had not understood everything.

  Despite strict orders, she left her assigned place at the door and crept into bed, pulling the covers over her head.

  A cold sweat ran down her forehead. She wanted to rise again and rush back to the bedroom to see whether she had dreamed it all. Yet something unexplainable prevented her from carrying this out.

  With uncertain step, the Hungarian left the place where he had committed his double crime against Merlina.

  Was there a greater monster on earth at this instant? Had the two hemispheres ever harbored a worse criminal?

  The Hungarian wandered several times about the bedroom, like a ghost, throwing a glance into the dormitory.

  The cats of the mill had all sunk into the deepest slumber. A few breathed softly, others cried out in their sleep and tossed about. The overseer was snoring like a man, or rather like a member of some sexless race.

  The Hungarian paused and leaned on the splintered door. He was probably the only being in the mill who was awake at this moment.

  Merlina dead—Sulla dead! Everything quiet, observed by no one! Should he abandon this secure position without drawing any advantage from it? Didn’t he know the place where the whole wealth of the mill was to be found? Why not become a wealthy man with one blow? What value did the lives of all these people in the mill have, anyway? And wasn’t it better to ruin it all, leaving no one behind?

  The pale murderer reasoned in this manner, taking steps at once to carry out the decision he had just made.

  To get to the mill’s money, he had to creep under the bed and raise a plank.

  On one side of the bed the legs of the zambo negresse hung down to the floor, cold and stiff. Her torso lay in a grotesque state under the mosquito netting. He grasped the legs and threw them up on the bed. He did this so quickly that the corpse fell off the other side, striking the Negro on his forehead as he lay with his face pressed against the foot of the bedpost.

  The Hungarian ducked down and crept on all fours under the broad master bed.

  The plank was not as easy to raise as he had imagined. After several failed attempts, which left his fingertips torn and bloody, he crept on all fours out from under the bed and fetched the ax Merlina had left beside Sulla’s body. He returned with it to the place where the money lay hidden.

  After much effort he finally managed to raise the plank.

  Underneath it there was a hollow about two feet wide and the same distance in depth, entirely filled by a book. He took out the book, crept out from under the bed with it, and laid it on the top of the washstand Sulla had shoved against the door such a short time before. He opened it, and his expectations were not disappointed. With each page he turned, his eyes fell on a valuable banknote, none less than a hundred dollars in value. By the time he had leafed through the book from start to finish, he was in the possession of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

  He folded the banknotes together with a calm and practiced hand, sticking them into his trouser pockets.

  “Money! money!” he chortled to himself, and his eyes were revived again.

  He looked at his watch. It was 2:00 A.M.

  High time to get to work quickly.

  He went quietly through the two dormitories and entered the club chamber of the 99th and 100th degrees. Here he opened a drawer under one of the tables, at which he had sat an hour before with the other clubmen, discussing the affairs of the club and giving orders to the subordinate members of the gang.

  Beneath the Book of the Mill, which was wrapped in waxcloth, lay the dreadful murder instrument of the college of clubmen of the Hamburg Mill. Merlina had taught them how to use it. Since the origin of the zambo negresse’s gang, it had been used more than twelve times. Seven times it had been used against clubmen, when it was determined to be necessary to neutralize them. It was a tar mask, * which was pressed over the face of its selected victims until they suffocated.

  Lajos took the tar mask from a waxed bag and hid it in his shirt, across his breast. Then he went through the salon of the mill as quietly as he had first entered the club chamber, exiting through the passage in the floor.

  Before we follow his footsteps, we should remark that the Italian Lombardi slept next to his fruit store, separated from it by a thin carpet partition. He slept upstairs only on rare occasions, such as when he longed for one of Merlina’s cats or when he was too drunk to get downstairs.

  Lombardi had gone to bed right after taking his leave of the Hungarian, who had himself rushed from the club chamber to Merlina.

  But he had been unable to sleep, for the Hungarian’s attitude to his own office as Pontifex Maximus of the mill lay on his breast like a mountain. He had not even undressed.

  To pass the time, he bit off a large piece of chewing tobacco.

  Lombardi’s bedroom was totally in agreement with his exterior and competed with it in dirtyness and disorder. There was no window, and the little air that entered came through a very narrow, barred hole above the door.

  This person could have lived like a lord, but his filthy soul rejected every comfort. The grimiest and most down-at-the-heels ragpicker would not have deigned to lie in his cot, which had been fouled and pigmented in the most repellent manner by the results of his frequent drunkenness. Used, torn pieces of clothing, tallow candle-ends, cigar stumps, used chewing tobacco wads, orange-peels, lemon-peels, and empty matchboxes lay everywhere; a tin pot that served him, besides in its original purpose, as both a drinking vessel and as a washing pot, did not help mark his setting with the scent of milles fleurs.

  The best object to be found in the Italian’s bedroom was a Venetian lamp, whose light passed through glass colored dark blue and ruby red, formed in an octahedron. This lamp, which had been brought over from Italy and which had once given him great aide in his work as a pipo, could be turned in any direction, and it would keep the position given it. Today the red lights of the lamp head were turned toward his cot. On the ceiling the reflection from the octahedron swayed, lengthening and narrowing in keeping with the air currents passing through the narrow hole over the door. The Italian sat staring emptily at this play of light as he tried to master his distress over the events in the club chamber.

  The Hungarian stood at the back door of the fruit store, from which he could survey the entire yard all the way to the alley. This view was interrupted by the hanging laundry, which flapped with the movement of air through the courtyard.

  The moon, which had a large halo tonight, beamed down a weak and uncertain light.

  A mockingbird screamed as if its throat would burst, copying first the meow of a cat, then the cawing of a crow, then the crowing of a cock, whistling charming bastard songs or trilling like a mad opera singer in between.

  Hardly two steps from the back door of the fruit store was the entrance to Lombardi’s bedroom.

  The Hungarian looked in through the barred hole over the door. It was no surprise to him that he saw light, for he knew that the Italian never slept in total darkness.

  He drew the tar mask out of his shirt, but in such a way that he could replace it quickly. Then he placed his ear against the door and listened. He heard the Italian coughing, and he heard the straining of the cot’s straps.

  He knocked, first softly, then a bit stronger.

  “Who’s there?” the Italian’s voice sounded from inside, in such a dubious tone that one could easily imagine that he had just been brought to consciousness.

  “Death or Merlina!” the Hungarian sounded his password.

  The Italian left his groaning cot and pulled back the double bar on the door.

  “I thought you were already asleep,” Lajos told Lombardi the fruitmonger, affecting a waggish smile.

  “If you were of the opinion that I was asleep, why did you wake me, then? … Does the mill have a new order?”

  The Italian ushered the Hungarian into his bedroom, stretching out once more on his filthy cot.

 
“Your bed is worm-eaten, Lombardi, and it creaks and groans like an old nun,” the Hungarian remarked, looking for a place he could sit without soiling his trousers. He removed the black silk handkerchief that he had draped across his breast like a sash, and he carefully spread it on an old chair that had only half a back. Then he moved closer to the Italian’s bed, leaving a small space still open.

  “The Lady Merlina sends me down to you, Lombardi, to discover how you’re doing, since she thinks that you have not really been well for several days.”

  “Thanks, thanks!” the Italian smirked, very flattered over the zambo negresse’s tender attentions.

  “Lady Merlina concerns herself with you like a mother,” Lajos continued, pressing his left arm against the mask under his shirt.

  “Tell the Lady Merlina that I am quite well since dosing with calomel—only a bit of back pain and an ache in my gums, but that means nothing since I am used to it,” the Italian responded, spitting a considerable quantity of chewing tobacco onto his greasy bedspread and biting off another plug.

  “Then I can withdraw and assure the Lady Merlina that you feel excellent,” the Hungarian said.

  “You do not exactly need to use the word excellent, but you could tell her that it goes passably well with me,” the Italian responded.

  The Hungarian now looked across the Italian’s bed, leaning a bit forward.

  “You are looking for a particular thing, Lajos? It is here on your right, you don’t need to fuss,” Lombardi commented, bending his back, which suddenly hurt him again.

  “Not that,” the Hungarian responded, “I saw a rat so shameless it was gnawing on your shoe, and it did not let our presence interrupt his feeding. You spoil your rats, Lombardi, and you train them to be real gourmands. That’s not right.”

  As the Italian leaned to the other side of the bed in order to see the gnawing rat, the Hungarian swiftly drew the tar mask from his shirt and fell upon him.

  Before Lombardi could defend himself, the Hungarian threw the mask over his face and pressed it on with both hands.

  The Italian reached for his face and tore at the mask in vain. He leaped into the air, but he fell back at once. Then his hands and feet twitched for a few more moments until he lay back and gave up his spirit.

  Then across the tar mask scrambled the cold body of a rat.

  “So there was a rat after all!” the Hungarian laughed, “If you paint the devil on the wall, he comes to call.

  “I want to take along one souvenir of you, my greasy pipo—the lamp is just too pretty. My blonde Frida will be glad to be able to sleep by its light—she loves colorful lamps and lusters. But, you hard-luck fool, just so your soul in hell does not lodge a complaint with Lord Satan and his Lady, saying that I stole something from you, I will pay royally for it. If you leave the money, that’s your own problem.” The Hungarian looked at the Italian as he spoke these words, and then turned to look away, throwing a hundred-dollar bill on the table on which the lamp stood. He then unscrewed the small lamp head from the lamp and put it in his pocket. He threw the oil lamp itself on the fruitmonger’s bed, causing the rat, which had returned and was already gnawing a hole in the throttled man’s throat, to bolt away.

  Unbeknownst to him, however, there was another person present besides the Hungarian and the suffocated man.

  Hastily but silently as a Hotooh, the Hungarian streaked up the stairway into the Hamburg salon.

  He heard the loud rattling of the clubman of the 98th degree, who had been granted Pharis and Elma for the night.

  “You dogs and cats will not laugh for much longer,” Lajos thought to himself. “The shutters are nailed shut and I will close the escape and even block the lower doors to make sure—but just a minute! I could wake Semiramis—no, that won’t do, it would spoil the whole joke.”

  The Hungarian went to the bar, whose shelves held not only wines but also several vessels filled with spirits. He took their glass stoppers out and poured their contents on the carpet. Then he tore a strip from a newspaper and lit it on a camphene lamp. He held this burning fuse to the alcohol-soaked carpet.

  Then he went swiftly to the exit in the salon and pulled the trapdoor after him as he was halfway through. When he came to the foot of the stairway, he locked the door leading up and threw the key into a trough in the yard.

  When he came out to the street, there was no one to be seen in the vicinity of the mill.

  He could hear the clinking of coffee spoons and the clattering of cups and plates from the direction of the market. The butchers were already drinking their coffee.

  The Hungarian proceeded at an easy pace to the place where he had commanded Tiberius to wait with a rowboat until 3 A.M.

  The waves on the Mississippi from the wake of a newly arrived steamer were lapping against the posts of the wharf. A cannon salvo and its reply indicated that the steamer had just come from overseas. The torches on the riverbank sent their glow toward the fortunate arrival, illuminating the red stripe above the cabin portholes. One could hear the monotonous refrain of the sailors and the captain’s commands through the rattle of the anchor chains.

  “The Georgia!” a man could be heard to say, “Coming from San Francisco—a golden cargo and a merry mob!”

  The Hungarian turned about and met the eyes of the harbor watchman. They greeted him and asked him if he knew anyone on board.

  “If it’s the Georgia,” Lajos responded, “then I came down here in vain. The steamer with my friend has nothing to do with this one.”

  “That’s a bother,” the watchman commented, leaving the Hungarian, who turned left and went along the wharf, descending to the level of the river.

  There he found his boat, tilting up and down in the agitated water. It was tied to a post with a cable. Little Tiberius lay on the bottom of the boat, sleeping. The oars lay crossed above his head.

  Lajos stepped onto the boat’s seat, shaking the Negro from his sleep. He sat up in shock, but once he recognized his master he calmed down. He stepped out of the boat, loosed the cable from the post, and threw it into the box over the keel. The Hungarian sat forward on the seat and looked back idly in the direction from which he had come.

  Tiberius pushed against the riverbank with one of the oars, ably maneuvering away from the shore.

  The moon’s halo had unwound into a long, narrow strip of mist, leaving the disk of the moon free.

  Tiberius was a capable ferryman. The oars rose out of the waves like two long, black arms, then plunged immediately back in.

  They had already made half of the passage when a snow-white seagull settled down so close to the Hungarian that he could have grasped it with his hands.

  “How did seagulls get here, Tiberius?” he asked the small Negro, who always knew much more about such things than his master.

  “The Georgia brought them,” Tiberius declared. “Sea birds often hang on the masts and travel as far as the city.”

  “Bad-luck birds!”* the Hungarian thought. “The nest is not burning yet.” He looked back at the place were the mill stood.

  He pulled out his watch. The hands stood at five minutes before two. “That’s impossible,” he said to himself, putting the watch to his ear.

  The watch had stopped—at the moment when he had placed the tar mask over the Italian’s face.

  The strokes of the oars quickly brought the boat to the opposite shore. Tiberius pulled the oars in, laying them next to the gunwales on the sitting boards. Then he jumped out, grabbed the cable, and bound it to a hook with a true sailor’s knot.

  The Hungarian stepped slowly out of the boat, and, as soon as he was on the soil of Algiers, he stood with folded arms looking toward New Orleans.

  The last silver beams of the moon shone over the Gulf City. Then thick clouds of smoke, which the wind drove in snaky streams, hid the moon completely.

  The Hungarian’s eyes flamed in devilish joy as he saw this.

  “From the north comes smoke, and no one is alone in his te
nt—howl gate, scream city, all of Philistia cowers!” he proclaimed in a dramatic tone as if he were in the midst of his clubmen of the 99th and 100th degree.

  Little Tiberius looked curiously at his master, who had said the words to himself, half-aloud.

  Now they left the riverbank and proceeded with rapid steps.

  The Negro followed the Hungarian at a short distance. The Hungarian often looked behind himself.

  The fire spread rapidly, appearing to set the whole of heaven aflame. The dynamic breezes drove millions of sparks into the dizzying heights, spreading so that it appeared the heavens had lost all their stars or the stars themselves were all showering down into the bosom of the marvelous city.

  When the Hungarian turned his back on New Orleans again, he heard the dull report of a building collapsing.

  • • •

  On the same day, the evening edition of one of the English-language newspapers published the following passage:

  It is truly horrifying, justifying the opinion that our city stands under the influence of an evil demon who takes his pleasure in keeping our hard-tested New Orleans in terror. Yesterday an entire row of buildings, most of them brick houses, as well as the left wing of that great warehouse that once belonged to messrs. Albin and McPherson, and on which the infamous Parasina Brulard had bestowed such a bad reputation, burned to the ground. Today, between two and three in the morning, a second fire alarm set the residents of the same quarter in the greatest distress. The fire was said to have started in the notorious strangers’ inn called the “Hamburg Mill.” We have not yet heard anything about loss of life.

  The reporter of a French-language journal was somewhat more precise, eschewing the fatalistic tone of the English-language paper.

  He said: “One can think what he wishes, but this much is true, that these fires following in such a rapid succession are not the result of simple negligence or any other accident. One can assume the opposite, which is that it is the work of a well-organized arsonists’ gang who has already pursued its criminal trade for several years in this city. It is to be hoped that the police will finally do their duty and not be so negligent in pursuing such criminals.”