A door leading onto the veranda opened, and a man stepped out to speak in low tones to the guard who was patrolling that side of the house at the moment. Slender, dressed in immaculate white trousers and a blousy white shirt, the man was undoubtedly Paul Clement. Longarm's jaw tightened as he watched Clement talking to the guard. The big man nodded, and Clement went back inside.
A couple of minutes later, two more men came from the direction of the slave quarters. They had a young black woman with them. The dress she wore was short and so tight that her lush body seemed to be on the verge of bursting out of it. She looked scared and reluctant, and Longarm wasn't surprised when she was taken up on the veranda and led into the house. Clement had almost certainly sent for her so that she could warm his bed tonight.
Longarm's fingers strayed to the walnut grips of the Colt he carried in his cross-draw rig. He was no cold- blooded killer, and he wasn't just about to take the law into his own hands... but a man like Clement made him at least ponder the possibility for a few moments before discarding it.
If he could, Longarm was going to take Clement back to New Orleans so that the law could deal with him. But if Clement made that impossible... well, Longarm wasn't going to lose a hell of a lot of sleep over it. Or any sleep, for that matter.
It was going to take a distraction for him to be able to get into the house, Longarm realized. But what was it going to be?
The sudden shouts that came to his ears through the warm night air made his head jerk up. He looked around, toward the slave quarters. An orange glow lit the sky in that direction, and even though Longarm didn't speak much French, he knew that whoever was hollering over there was alerting the plantation to the fact that something was on fire.
Providence, thought Longarm. He looked toward the house and saw that the other three guards had run around the veranda to join the one on this side. All four of the sentries were staring toward the slave quarters.
Clement appeared in the doorway behind them, his shirt open to the waist. He yelled at them in French and waved a hand toward the fire. Three of the four sentries took off in a run, and passed within ten feet of where Longarm was hidden at the edge of the path. None of them saw him.
As he had back in New Orleans, Longarm thought about luck and how he basically distrusted it. But since nobody knew he was here, this couldn't be a trap for him, and besides, he doubted that even somebody as ruthless as Clement would burn down the slave quarters just to bait a trap.
No, this was an opportunity Longarm had to take advantage of, and he intended to do just that.
He began circling the house, working his way through the brush. He didn't know the names of most of these tropical plants, but they were persistent in clinging to him. Not wanting to make much noise, he couldn't hurry, but even so, within a few minutes he reached a spot where the sole remaining sentry couldn't see him. Longarm drew his gun, emerged from the undergrowth in a crouch, and sprinted across the clearing toward the plantation house.
When he reached the veranda, he slowed and stepped up carefully, rather than bounding. Silence was still important, although judging by the shouts in the night, none of the other sentries were paying attention to anything except the fire. Longarm glanced in that direction again and decided it wasn't the slave quarters that were burning after all. The blaze that lit up the night sky was too big for that.
It looked to him like the cane fields were on fire.
If that was the case, then no wonder Clement was so upset that he had sent all but one of his guards away to help battle the blaze. The sugarcane was all he had left to help him recoup his losses from the destruction of the slave-running ring.
Longarm cat-footed along the wall to the nearest door and carefully tried the knob. It was locked, which came as no surprise. Maybe one of the windows...
Each of them that Longarm tried was latched as well. He didn't have time to go around the entire house trying all the doors and windows. He had to get inside more quickly than that.
He went to the edge of the veranda. There was a railing around it, and it took only a moment to step up on that railing and reach up to the edge of the roof that overhung it. Longarm had to holster the gun so that he could use both hands, but he was able to swing up onto the roof of the veranda without much trouble. Maybe one of the windows on the second floor wouldn't be fastened.
He saw right away in the moonlight that none were. In fact, one of them stood wide open so that the night breezes could flutter the thin white curtains that hung inside it. Longarm slid the Colt from its holster once more as he moved to the window. The room inside was dark, and no sound came from it. Longarm swung a leg over the sill and dropped through the window.
He landed on something soft--something that let out a muffled cry and then started flailing away at him furiously.
Longarm figured out what had happened and lifted an arm to ward off the blows. 'Stop it!' he hissed. 'I'm here to help you! Settle down, damn it!'
The whispered words got no response, so he had no choice but to grab the figure struggling with him. She was young and lithe and naked, and he didn't have to be a genius to figure out that she was the same young woman who had been taken reluctantly into the house to serve as a plaything for Paul Clement. He managed to get hold of both her wrists with one hand and found himself sitting astride her on a fourposter bed. 'Hush!' he said quickly as he heard her draw a deep breath in preparation for a scream. 'I'm the law, and I've come for Clement!'
That wasn't strictly true. He was a hell of a long way from anywhere where he had jurisdiction. But he meant to bring Paul Clement to justice anyway. That fact must have penetrated the young woman's brain, because she stopped struggling. After panting for a moment, she said, 'M'sieu Clement... is an evil man.'
'Don't I know it,' said Longarm.
'You are here to... to kill him?'
'I don't rightly know. It depends on what he does. But I can promise you this, ma'am... he won't ever bother you again.'
'If you can... kill him!' The vehemence in her voice made Longarm's blood turn a little icy.
