The Cossack Cowboy. Lester S. Taube

      Mr. Blatherbell turned pale. “It goes to your next of kin, Your Grace.”

      “Exactly!” shouted the Duke. “To that rum-swilling, hussy-chasing, card-playing blackguard. Quick! Draw up another will!”

      Mr. Blatherbell opened his case and took out a sheet of paper. The butler hurried over with a quill and pot of ink.

      “I hereby leave all my worldly goods to ...” He looked up at Mr. Blatherbell writing swiftly on the paper. “To whom?” he asked. “There’s actually nobody else.”

      Mr. Blatherbell’s face brightened. “To the Crown, Your Grace. He would never be able to contest your will under those conditions.”

      The old man chuckled. “Blatherbell, you’re a scoundrel after my own heart. Quick, let me sign.”

      Mr. Blatherbell placed the paper in front of the Duke and two doctors lifted him upright. The Duke grasped the quill and poised it over the paper. “Hee, hee,” he cackled. “The happiest moment of my life.”

      At that instant, he dropped dead!

      Silence filled the room as the doctors slowly lowered the corpse to the bed. Mr. Blatherbell reached out to take the quill from the lifeless hand. He tugged and tugged, but the fingers had closed in a vice-like grip on the feather. He looked down at the newly drawn-up will, needing only a very small signature to make it valid. He pushed the hand of the dead man closer to the paper, as if by magic it would leap to life and just scrawl his initials at the bottom. His face twisted as he pondered the affect of this evening on his fortunes, for he was quite aware that he had undertaken the execution of the Duke’s will on a percentage basis rather than his usual fee, and that collecting his commission from the black sheep of the family could be somewhat difficult.

      With a low sigh, he released the hand and picked up the paper, tearing it slowly into tiny bits.

      “Well,” he said, to no one in particular. “We had best begin looking for His Grace, Paul Sanderson, the Fourteenth Duke of Wesfumbletonshire.”

      

      

       Chapter II

      The Gare St. Lazare in Paris, France, was crowded. Mr. Blatherbell leaned out of his compartment window as the train eased to a halt and looked up and down the platform.

      “Porteur!” he called, spying a simply clad man with a leather apron wheeling a small cart.

      The man hustled over and took off his hat, “A votre service, Monsieur.”

      “Les bagages. Et appelez un fiacre.”

      “Immediatement, Monsieur.”

      While their cases were being passed out of the window by the car porter to the baggage man, Mr. Blatherbell led his two partners off the train onto the platform. He lifted his cane and stabbed it to the left. “The way out must be there. Forward.” Without a backward glance at his junior partners, Mr. Blatherbell took off, followed at exactly two paces by Mr. Snoddergas, who was followed at exactly two paces by Mr. Poopendal. In perfect time, their canes thrust forward, striking the ground, then lifted for another thrust, they steamed through the crowd towards the exit.

      A carriage driver, observing their fine apparel and foreign appearance, waved off a less affluent-looking customer and moved his carriage ahead a few paces to garner the three tourists.

      “Inspect the baggage,” said Mr. Blatherbell to Mr. Poopendal, and then concerned himself with fingering through a leather notebook for an address. When the baggage handler came up, Mr. Poopendal carefully counted their six pieces of luggage and had them stowed on the rear of the vehicle.

      Mr. Blatherbell finally found the address he was searching for. “La Reine de Coeur,” he ordered the driver as he climbed into the carriage, his two partners on his heels.

      “Ce n'est pas encore ouvert, Monsieur.”

      “I did not ask whether it was open or not,” snapped Mr. Blatherbell. “Just take us there.”

      “Comment?” asked the driver, not understanding English.

      “Rien. Allez.”

      It was spring, and the ladies were out in all their finery, their gaily-colored parasols framing their bold glances, their bustled skirts sweeping within an inch of the sidewalks, the pigeons scurrying out of their way as their high-buttoned boots pattered on the flagstones. Even Mr. Blatherbell sat up straighter and his brows twitched as they started up Rue Lafayette and his eyes grew rounder as they passed the Eglise de la Trinite and rolled along Rue Blanche, where the coquettish looks were not the playful ones of Rue Lafayette but downright serious, seductive magnets which would require the payment of fifty francs to explore.

      The carriage turned into a narrow street, and here were the true sights and sounds of Paris, a marketplace lined with stalls of scarves and stockings and caps, and crowded with push-carts and horse-drawn carts piled high with vegetables and meats and fruits and cheeses, and the owner of each cart vying with his neighbor as to who could shout the louder or drag a customer from the other, and the horses contentedly munching hay and pooping in the faces of all who passed by.

      And here, too, were the ten-franc girls, leaning out of the first-floor windows and making signs spelling out in no uncertain terms what their darlings would receive for their money. Mr. Poopendal blushed and turned his eyes upward. Mr. Snoddergas’ tongue hung from his mouth and his ears stood out even further from his head. Mr. Blatherbell was busy computing ten francs into English pence.

      Barely a block further on, the carriage came to a halt in front of a princely dancehall, its façade of white Italian marble, with wide, tiled steps leading to twin gilded doors, and three royal blue marquees gracing its entrance, one leading directly to the street and the others along the sidewalk for twenty paces in each direction, guarded at each end by a richly-uniformed doorman dressed in silk pants and knee-length stockings, patent-leather shoes, and a brocaded cape with a matching d’Artagnan hat.

      Huge letters stretching from one side of the building to the other indicated that here one found ‘La Reine de Coeur’.

      The doorman on the street sprang to attention as they stopped in front of his marquee, and with a flourish he whipped off his feathered hat, bowed low, opened the door of the carriage, and cried in English, “Welcome, your Lordships,” - all at the same time.

      Mr. Blatherbell stepped down, waited until his partners had also alighted then leveled his cane at the driver, “Attendez-nous,” he ordered sternly.

      “He will wait,” cried the doorman, holding his open hand closer to Mr. Blatherbell. “On the soul of my maitresse’s mother, I promise that not one article will disappear.” Mr. Blatherbell placed a coin in his hand and the doorman’s vast smile of bonhomie turned sour when he appraised its value.

      “We are here to see…” he looked again at his notebook, “Mademoiselle Colette Potier. Is she here now?”

      “Of course, Messieurs,” answered the doorman, forgetting for the moment that he had addressed them as ‘Your Lordships’ upon their arrival. “Follow me.”

      Inside was a small, ornate stage faced by row after row of plush lounge chairs. The floor above consisted of a narrow balcony divided into luxurious boxes. The doorman led them around the chairs to a corridor leading to the rear of the stage. On one side of the corridor were several doors, and as they walked past one which was opened it revealed an opulent sitting-room containing silk-covered divans and lovers’ chairs, and walls decorated with silk cloth in which floral designs were woven, and fresh flowers standing on a centre table next to a bowl of fruit and a bottle of wine. At the rear of the room was another door, and this being open disclosed a vast, silk-covered bed resting under a brightly-lighted mirror fixed to the ceiling.

      “Is this a hotel, too?” asked Mr. Poopendal of Mr. Snoddergas.