A dark bulk, lying close to the water, appeared before them.
“The boat,” thought Florence, “it did not sink. There is hope.”
She was right. As they reached the overturned boat, they found the Erie boy, in a semi-conscious condition and with a bad cut on his temple, clinging feebly to the stern.
To assist him to a position across the boat’s narrow hull, then to push and pull the small craft ashore, was the work of an hour.
By the time they reached the beach, the boy had so far regained his strength that he was able, with their assistance, to walk to their camp.
A great fire was soon busy dispelling the cold, while clouds of steam rose from their drenched clothing.
Florence bandaged the boy’s head; then, with all the skill of a trained nurse, she brought him fully back to life by chafing his hands and feet.
“So—so that’s who it was?” he found words to gasp at last.
“I thought it was—well, mebby I didn’t think at all. I just lost control and she went over. Good thing you were here.”
“It was.” There was conviction in Tillie’s tone. “I always knew that thing would kill you. And it’s pretty near done it.”
“Mighty close,” he agreed.
“But why are you here?” he asked in some amazement, as he took in their crude accommodations.
“Because we can’t get away. We’re marooned,” Florence explained.
She proceeded to relate in a dramatic manner their strange adventure.
“The beasts!” exclaimed the boy. “How could they?”
“Guess that gets asked pretty often these days,” said Florence soberly.
“Question is,” mused the boy, “how are we to get away?”
“Your boat—” began Florence.
“Soaked. Engine dead. Besides, she carries only one person. Positively. Couldn’t even hold one of you on my lap.”
“We’ve fixed up a sort of boat, wreck of an old dory,” suggested Tillie.
“Will she float?”
“I think so.”
“Fine! Give you a tow.
“Tell you what!” The boy stood up. “We’d better get my motor and bring it to the fire. Dry it out by morning. Got a three gallon can of gas. Be away with the dawn.”
The motor was soon doing its share of steaming by the fire.
“Got some rations?” the boy asked. “Of course you haven’t. But I have. Regular feast, all in cans. Always carried ’em for just such a time as this. Boiled chicken in one can, chili con carne in another, and a sealed tin of pilot biscuits.”
He brought this unbelievable feast to the place before the fire. When the chicken and the chili had been warmed, they enjoyed a repast such as even the millionaire’s son had seldom eaten.
“Well,” he sighed, as the last morsel disappeared, “as it says in ‘The Call of the Wild,’ ‘He folded his hands across his feet before the fire, allowed his head to drop forward on his breast and fell fast asleep.’”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Tillie. “Let’s not try to sleep. Let’s tell ghost stories till morning.”
“Agreed!” the boy seconded with enthusiasm. “And the one who tells the best one wins this.” He laid a shining gold piece before them on a rock.
The contest was carried forward with spirit and animation. But Sun-Tan Tillie, with her weird stories of that north country was easily winner.
“Now we shall see how it performs,” said the boy, rising stiffly as day began to dawn.
He lifted his motor from its place before the fire, and carried it to his boat. Five minutes had not elapsed before it began to sput-sput merrily.
“Have you home for breakfast,” he predicted.
He made good his word. Just as Jeanne and Turkey Trot, after one more night of fruitless search, sat down to their oatmeal, bacon, and coffee, two well soaked girls broke in upon them. By dint of diligent bailing they had forced their crazy dory, towed by the equally crazy “Spank Me Again,” to carry them home.
There were dark looks on many faces as the story of the kidnapping of the two girls and the atrocious attempt at their lives spread about the village. The native population of this Northland is intensely loyal to its own people. The summer sojourners, too, had come to have a great love for the happy, carefree Tillie, who caught their minnows and helped to launch their boats.
“Something will come of this,” was the word on many a tongue.
As for Florence, after receiving Jeanne’s open-hearted and joyous welcome home, her first thought was of the lady cop.
“We must tell her at once,” she said to Tillie. “Our experience may fit into the task she has before her.”
“Yes,” replied Tillie, “we must.”
They rowed at once to the lonely cabin among the cedars.
But what was this? As they made their way up from the dock, they spied a white paper fluttering at the door.
“Gone!” was Florence’s intuition.
She was right. On the paper, written in the round hand of the lady cop, were these words:
They are gone. I must follow. Good-bye, girls. And thank you. I hope to meet you in another world.The Lady Cop.
They are gone. I must follow. Good-bye, girls. And thank you. I hope to meet you in another world.
The Lady Cop.
For a moment they stared in silence.
“Gone!” Florence repeated at last. “They have gone! She means the gamblers.”
“Another world,” Jeanne read in a daze.
“And we have her trunk!” Florence exclaimed suddenly.
“Her trunk?” Jeanne’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. She had not been told of this episode.
“Sit down.” Florence eased herself unsteadily to a low railing. Then she told the story of the trunk.
“And now,” she concluded, “we have that mysterious trunk, which was wanted by the gamblers, though why, not even the lady cop could guess, on our hands. They want it. She wants it. We have it. And we do not know her real name. She implied the Miss Weightman was an assumed name. What a pickle!”
“What a sour pickle indeed!” agreed Jeanne.
“And to-morrow we leave for Chicago.”
“To-morrow! It does not seem possible.” The little French girl’s heart went into a flutter. This meant that ten days from this time she would be at the center of a great stage strewn with broken instruments of war, and lighted only by an artificial moon, doing the gypsy tarantella while a vast audience looked on and—
Applauded? Who could say? So much must come of this crowded quarter of an hour. Her heart stood still; then it went racing.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “only time can tell.”
“I guess that’s true,” Florence agreed, thinking of quite another matter. “We may be able to find her in Chicago and return her trunk.
“And now—” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Now I must go to our cabin and sleep.”
The remainder of that day was uneventful. But night set all the village agog.
After a good sleep, Florence had assisted Jeanne with the packing in preparation for the morrow’s departure. They had said their sad farewell to night and the stars, a farewell that night and stars were not to accept as final. They had crept beneath their blankets and had fallen fast asleep.
Florence awoke some time later with the glow of an unusual light in her eyes.
Springing out of bed, she rushed to the window. The next instant she was shaking Jeanne as she exclaimed excitedly:
“Jeanne! Jeanne! Wake up! There is a fire! A big fire somewhere on the bay!”
After struggling into their outer garments, they rushed to the water’s edge and launched their boat.
They had not gone far before they discovered the location of the fire.
“It’s on Gamblers’ Island.” Her voice was tense with emotion. “It’s the gamblers’ cottage. It will burn to the ground.”
This last seemed certain. Already the flames were mounting high. Even in the village there was scant fire protection. On the smaller islands there was none.
Florence seemed to hear the beating of her own heart. Here was swift revenge for a cowardly crime.
But was it revenge? The lady cop had said the gamblers were gone. Perhaps they were not all gone. One might have remained behind to light the blaze, to cover some evil deed. Who could tell?
Then again, the fire might have been accidental, a mouse chewing a match.
All this time Florence was rowing sturdily. They were approaching the scene of the fire. Other boats were coming. Rowboats, motor boats, speed boats, like particles of steel attracted by the magnet, they came nearer and nearer to a common center, the fire.
At a certain distance all paused. The night was very nearly still. A faint breeze carried the soaring sparks away from the tiny island forest and out toward the water.
As the scores of craft came to rest they formed a semi-circle.
It was strange. The quiet of the night, the flames rushing silently upward. The light on the water, the faces of two hundred people, tense, motionless, lighted red by the flames. And above it all a million stars.
Florence had seen something akin to this pictured in a book. She searched her mind for that picture and found it; a circle of gray wolves sitting in a circle about a half burned-out camp fire, beside which a lone wanderer slept.
“Only these are not wolves,” she told herself. “They are people, kind-hearted people. It is the home of wolves that is going up in flames. May they never return!”
“And they never will.” She started at the sound of a voice at her elbow. Unconsciously she had spoken aloud. Tillie, who had slipped up beside her in her rowboat, had answered.
“That is not their island,” Tillie explained. “They only leased it. Now they will not be allowed to rebuild.”
“You should thank God for that.”
“I have,” Tillie replied frankly.
Once more there was silence.
Some time later Tillie spoke again. “We have her trunk, the lady cop’s. You are goin’ to-morrow. Will you take it?”
“I believe not,” Florence said thoughtfully. “I haven’t her true name. It will be safer here. If I find her I will send for it.”
After that for a space of a full half hour silence reigned supreme. Not a boat left that unbroken circle. What held them there? There was nothing they could do. What is the dread, all-potent charm that holds a throng to the scene of a fire until the last shingle has flared up, the last rafter fallen? Does it hark back to days when our ancestors knew no homes, but slept by camp fires in the forest? Who can say?
As the last wall crumbled in and the chimney came down with a crash, as if touched by a magic wand the circle melted away into the night.
Half an hour later Florence and Jeanne were once more sleeping soundly. Such is the boundless peace of youth.
The following night found Florence seated on the after deck of a large lake steamer bound for Chicago. Strange and varied were the thoughts and emotions that stirred her soul as she watched the dark shoreline of the North Peninsula fade in the distance.
There was a moment when she sprang to her feet and stretched her arms far out as she cried, “I want to go back! Oh, I want to go back!”
At this moment the woods and the water, the sunsets, the moon at midnight, the fish, all the wild forest creatures were calling her back.
Yet, even as this yearning passed, she felt the smooth comfort of silk stockings, caught the bright gleam of red and blue in her dress and knew that here, too, was joy. In her imagination she heard the rush and felt the thrill of a great city, experienced again the push and pull of it, and once more accepted its challenge.
“I am strong!” she cried aloud. “The summer, this wild life, has renewed my powers.”
But Jeanne? Ah, there was the question. She had accepted a mission. She had agreed to take the little French girl into the north woods and see that she had rest. Had she performed this mission well or ill?
To this question she could form no certain answer. Life in this out-of-the-way place had so pressed in upon her, adventure and mystery had so completely taken possession of her, that she had found too little time to think of Jeanne.
“What if I have failed?” Her heart sank. “What if the doctor says I have failed?”
Jeanne was asleep in her stateroom. She seemed well and happy, quite prepared for the great testing which lay just before her. But who could tell?
“So often,” she thought to herself, “we are led away from the main purpose of our lives by some surprising affair which springs straight up before our eyes and for the moment blinds us.”
Yet, as she reviewed the events of the past weeks she experienced few regrets. She had been working, not for her own glory, but that others might find success and happiness.
“But what came of it all?” she asked herself. “What mysteries did we solve?”
The problems that had perplexed her now passed, like soldiers on parade, before her mind’s eye. Who had run them down and all but drowned them on that first night? The gamblers? The gypsies? Green Eyes and her rich friends? She had found no answer.
Where were the three priceless rubies? Did they lie among the ashes of the gamblers’ cottage? Had the gamblers taken them when they departed? Had the lady cop regained possession of them? Where was the lady cop, and what was her real name? Again no answer.
What of the lady cop’s trunk? Why had the gamblers turned the cabin upside down in search of an empty trunk? How were Tillie and she ever to return it now?
The problem that stood out in her mind strongest of all was this: Who had taken them for that terrible ride out into the night waters of Lake Huron?
“The gamblers, to be sure!” Tillie would have said at once. It seemed probable that the villagers thought the same.
“And perhaps they burned the gamblers’ cottage for that reason,” she told herself. Yet, of this there was no proof.
Turkey Trot and Jeanne had surprised gypsies in a feast near Tillie’s abandoned boat. Jeanne believed these gypsies had taken them on that all but fatal ride. Had they?
“If they did,” she told herself, “they were striking at Jeanne. They may strike again.”
The conclusion she reached at the end of this review of affairs was that she must keep a close watch on Petite Jeanne until the first night’s performance was over.
“They kidnapped her on the eve of her other great success,” she murmured. “They may repeat.
“And yet, that was France. This is America.”
At that she rose and walked away to their stateroom.
Petite Jeanne’s one big night was at hand. Already the shadows were growing long in her modest little sitting room. To-night, for one brief hour at least, she was to be an actress. How the thought thrilled her! An actress for an hour. And then?
True, she had acted once upon the stage of the famous Paris Opera. But that was but a fete, an affair of a single night. To-night much was to be decided. Would the play go on? Night after night would she dance the gypsy tarantella under the stage moon? Would these Americans applaud?
“Americans,” she said aloud, as she sat looking away into the gathering darkness. “After all, how little I know about them.”
“Americans are like all the rest of the world,” Florence replied. “They love laughter, dancing and song. Then, too, they can feel a pang of pity and shed a tear. Just dream that you are on the stage of the Paris Opera, and all will be well.”
Petite Jeanne was not sure. She had suddenly gone quite cold, and was not a little afraid.
“Green Eyes will be there. She hates me, I fear,” she murmured.
“On the stage, when the great act comes, there will be only Tico and you. The night, the broken cannons and the moon.”
“Ah, yes.” The little French girl sighed. “I must try to feel it and see it all as I felt and saw it, a small child in France.”
“In half an hour we must go to the theatre,” said Florence. “We will have a cup of tea, as we did sometimes when we were in our cabin.”
“If only we were there now,” sighed the little French girl. “Oh, why must we be ambitious? Why do we struggle so for success and yet more success, when peace awaits us in some quiet place?”
To this Florence found no answer. She rose to turn on the electric plate for tea, when the telephone rang.
She went to answer it. Petite Jeanne heard her answer the telephone, but paid no attention to her conversation until she caught the word gypsy. Then she sat straight up.
“I must meet her to-night?” Florence was saying. “A gypsy woman? But that is quite impossible.
“She is being taken to Canada to-night by the officials, you say? But how can it be necessary for me to see a gypsy? I know no gypsies. Besides, I can see no one to-night. Believe me—”
Her words were broken in upon by Petite Jeanne. “If it is a gypsy, you must see her!” The little French girl was pulling at her arm impulsively. “It is important. It must be. Besides, gypsies, they are my friends. You must remain here. I will go to the theatre alone.”
One look at Petite Jeanne’s tense face told Florence that she had no choice in the matter.
“I will see her,” she spoke into the telephone. “Send her over at once.”
They drank their tea in silence. The night was too full of portent for words.
“Gypsy?” Florence thought. “What can she want of me?”
Then she thought of those gypsies they had seen in the north country. Had they made their way to Chicago? That was not impossible. And if they had, what did this woman have to tell?
“Promise me one thing.” Petite Jeanne suddenly leaned toward her. “Bring that gypsy woman to the play. She is French. She knows the tarantella. She has known war, as it was in France. I will dance for her. She will understand.”
“I promise,” Florence replied solemnly.
The moment for Jeanne’s departure arrived. Florence saw her carefully packed into the car sent from the theatre, then she returned to her room to wait.
With Jeanne gone, the place seemed strangely still. The clock ticked solemnly. From somewhere in the distance a fire siren set up a mournful wail.
“She is too much for me,” she whispered, speaking of Jeanne. “Think of her forcing me to remain here to meet a ragged gypsy, and this the night of all nights. And then I must bring that strange person to her show her first night!”
A knock sounded at the door. She sprang up to open it. A man stood there, not a woman. For a moment she did not see the woman behind him in the shadows.
“I beg your pardon,” said the man, “I am an immigration officer. This woman and her companions entered our country without permission. We found them in the west side settlement. They must return to Canada. This woman insisted upon seeing you.” He pushed the short, brown woman into the light.
Instantly the girl recognized her, and gasped. She was the mother of the beautiful child that had so narrowly escaped drowning.
“You wished to see me?” she asked as soon as she gained possession of her voice.
“Yes. You good. You kind. You not bad. Gypsy not forget. I must tell.”
Mystified, Florence motioned her to a seat.
The tale the woman had to tell was a long one, and passing strange. In her broken tongue, with many repetitions, it was long in the telling.
And all the time the clock was ticking away the moments. Petite Jeanne’s great hour approached.
Petite Jeanne reached the theatre. She was quite alone. She entered at the stage door unnoticed. A chill numbed her being as the shadowy hallway leading to the dressing rooms engulfed her.
The past ten days, as she reviewed them now, seemed a bad dream. Rehearsals had been carried to the last degree of rigor. The director had been tireless and exacting. On her return the physician had pronounced her physically perfect; yet, at this moment her knees seemed ready to cave in beneath her.
“The first night!” she whispered to herself. How often, in the last few days, she had heard those words. Experienced actors who had known many “first nights” and many failures as well, spoke them in whispers. Inexperienced youngsters shouted them. As for Jeanne, no one had heard these words fall from her lips.
“So much depends upon to-night,” she told herself. “Success or failure. And who does not wish to succeed grandly?”
The curtain was down, the stage deserted, as she paused in the wings before going to her dressing room, where Tico, curled up in a warm corner, awaited her.
Many times she had stared up into the dark rows of empty seats as she did her dance. In her mind’s eye she could see them even now. But now, too, she caught the rustle of programs. The seats were filling, filling with Americans—to her the great unknown. In wild panic she fled to her dressing room.
The place was bare, barn-like. Only Tico greeted her. It was cruel that Florence could not be here now.
“But she will come,” she assured herself, as a feeling of great hope surged through her being. “They will be there in the audience, she and the gypsy woman. I will see them. They will give me much courage.”
As she changed to her stage costume, a great peace stole over her. But this was not for long.
The sound of the orchestra’s opening number sent fresh chills up her spine. What was she to do? How could she find fresh courage for this hour? No answer came.
The curtain went up. Then, amid such a hush as she had never before experienced, she tremblingly took her place on the stage. The scene was a French gypsy camp, for the play told of gypsy life during the World War.
Fortunately her part in the first act, also in the second, was small. She sat unobtrusively beside the bear in her corner, or moved silently to the side of the ancient gypsy fortune teller.
The story of the gypsies during that war is a fascinating one. Their young men volunteered. They died as bravely as any other true Frenchmen. The older ones, the women and children, wandered here, there, everywhere, enduring the suffering and privation that had fallen upon the land.
In the story of this play, at its beginning, like Cinderella, Petite Jeanne, a diminutive figure, was held in the background. Marie Condelli, a fascinating dark-eyed gypsy girl, dressed in many bright silk skirts, took the front of the stage. It was she for whom feasts were arranged, she with whom a great American officer fell madly in love on the very day before his heroic death on the battlefield, she who was the very darling of gypsy camp and war camp alike.
One night, so the play ran in its second act, the two girls, the dark-eyed one and Petite Jeanne, sat at the feet of the fortune teller when that aged person spread her arms wide as she cried:
“I see a vision. It is a battlefield. Many are dying. A great officer is wounded. He falls. He is a father. She, his child, comes to him. It is a girl, a young woman. She bends over him. I see her face. Now I do not see it. But yes. It is Marie. No, it is little Jeanne. No! No! It is one. Which is it? My God, the vision is gone!” She falls to the earth in a spasm. When she comes to herself, the two girls implore her to tell them the truth. Had she seen one? Had it been the other? For both Marie and Petite Jeanne had been brought up like orphans in the gypsy camp. It had been rumored that one of these was stolen as a babe from a great French family. But which? No one knew.
Such is the story of that drama up to the great third act in which Petite Jeanne was to emerge from her obscurity and play an important role.
One fact we have not mentioned. Early in this play, it is revealed that Petite Jeanne’s gypsy lover has gone to war, and is believed to have been killed.
All during the first act, and again through the second, Jeanne’s eyes strayed to one spot, to the seats that had been allotted to Florence and any friend she might care to bring. Always the seats were unoccupied. At each fresh disappointment her despair deepened.
“Will they not come?” she asked herself over and over. “They must! Theymust!”
The tale the gypsy woman had to tell was as astonishing as it was fascinating. As we have said, told in her halting speech, it was long. Florence’s face showed her consternation as she looked at her watch when it was done.
“Come!” she cried, seizing the woman’s arm. “We must go to the theatre at once! We will miss some. We must not miss all. It is the first big night.”
She started and all but screamed as a man loomed before her. The officer! She had quite forgotten him.
“No tricks!” he warned. “She must start for Canada to-night.”
“But she must go with me first.” Florence was quick in recovery.
“No tricks,” he repeated.
“None at all. You may go with us. Only—” she hesitated, “we have but two seats.”
The man bent a steady look upon her. “You look all right. I’ll meet you at the box office after the show.”
“Oh, thank—thanks! But we must rush!” Florence was halfway out of the door.
Down the stairs they raced, then round the corner to a taxi stand.
Only once they paused before reaching the theatre. Leaping from the taxi, Florence dashed into a telegraph office. There she sent the following message to Sun-Tan Tillie at her home in the north woods:
“Bring the trunk at once. Your expenses will be paid.”
On returning to the taxi, she murmured, more to herself than to the gypsy woman:
“So they were in that trunk all the time! How perfectly marvelous!”
A moment later the taxi came to a grinding stop before the theatre. Here they were, at last.
* * * * * * * *
At that moment Petite Jeanne sat in a dark corner backstage, engulfed in despair. The curtain was down. The scene shifters were preparing for the great third act. The orchestra could be heard faintly. Her zero hour was at hand.
Thus far, the play had gone well. Its fate now lay in her hands. The big scene, the gypsy dance on a battlefield under the moon, would decide all.
And to Petite Jeanne at that moment all seemed lost. “If only they were my own French people,” she moaned.
At that moment all the hateful acts performed by her people against visiting Americans since the war, passed through her mind.
“How they must hate us!” she thought in deep despair. “And they know I am French. These Americans. They are so tremendous in their approval, so terrible in their disapproval! How can I dance before them? If only Florence and that gypsy woman were here!”
At that moment of sheer despair, a hand was laid upon her shoulder. A voice spoke to her.
“Cheer up, sister!” the voice said. “You are going to be a wonder! Only forget them all, and dance as you danced that night in the forest beneath a real moon. That was heavenly!”
The little French girl started in astonishment. She found herself looking up into the peculiar greenish eyes of the stage star she had thought of as her enemy.
“You—you saw?” Her eyes were filled with wonder. “And you do not hate me?”
“I? Hate you? I am your sister of the stage. Your success is the success of all.”
Petite Jeanne’s mind whirled. Then her thoughts cleared. She stood up straight and strong. She planted one kiss on the cheek of Green Eyes, shed one hot tear, then she was gone.
A few moments later, in the hush of moonlight, with a great throng looking down upon them, she and Tico appeared upon the stage.
In this act, as the play runs, the dark-eyed rival of the girl portrayed by Jeanne discovers her father, a great French officer who has lived unknown to his daughter for years, only to find that he is dying.
The light-haired gypsy comes upon the scene to find the other girl in her dying father’s embrace, thus to learn that her hope of finding as a father some noble Frenchman is dashed to the ground.
Downhearted, despairing, her lover gone, hopes vanished, she remains with bowed head while the dying officer is carried away. Then, as her bear’s nose touches her hand, she remembers her art, the art of dancing. In this art she finds solace.
Moving gracefully into the dance, Petite Jeanne danced as she had never danced before. One pair of eyes in all that vast audience inspired her most. Gypsy eyes they were, the eyes of a stranger who had belonged to the camps of her enemy in France, but who, in a strange land, had become her friend. Florence and the strange gypsy had arrived in time.
The spell woven over the audience at that hour was sheer magic. The moonlight, the battlefield with its broken cannons; all this, with the bewitching dance of the tarantella, held the throng breathless, spellbound.
Then, at the dramatic moment, a soldier appeared. He was dressed in the uniform of a French poilu, but his face was the face of a gypsy.
He stood motionless, entranced, till the dance was done. Then, with a cry of joy, he clasped Petite Jeanne to his heart. He was her long lost lover.
To crown all, there comes from the distance a sound of shouting. Jeanne lifts her head to listen.
“What is it?” she asks hoarsely.
“That?” There is the joy of heaven in her lover’s eyes. “That is the armistice. The war is over!”
At these words, like the roar of a pent-up torrent, applause from those silent walls of humanity broke loose. Never before in the history of the theatre had there been such acclaim.
Petite Jeanne took curtain after curtain. She dragged forth her rival and her lover, all the cast. At last, quite exhausted, she fled to her dressing room, where she found Florence and the faithful Tico awaiting her.
“Oh, Florence!” Her voice broke as she threw herself into her boon companion’s arms. “These Americans! They are so very wonderful!”
“Down deep in our hearts we love the French as we love no other people.” Florence’s tone was solemn. “Two millions of our boys have lived in your villages. They shared your homes. They ate at your tables. They know how brave and generous the French people are. How could they help loving them?
“But, oh, Jeanne!” Her voice rose to a high tremolo. “I know all! All that we wish to know about those mysterious affairs of the north country!”
“Stop!” implored the little French girl. “You shall not tell me now. We must escape. We will go to our room. There we will have coffee and some most wonderful wafers, and we shall talk until it is day. Is this not the way of actors? And I am an actress now!” She laughed a merry laugh.
“Yes,” said Florence, “you are a very great actress!”
“Tico and I are very great,” Petite Jeanne laughed again, for at that moment she was the happiest girl in the world.
One moment that wild enthusiasm lasted; then again came desire to know, to hear the answers to many sealed secrets.
“Come!” she said. “Let us tell secrets by the light of a candle.”
In the meantime, in the far-away Northland, there was great commotion within one small cottage. Tillie had received Florence’s message. She had read it over twice before showing it to her father and to Turkey Trot.
At last she read it aloud: “Bring the trunk at once. Your expenses will be paid.”
“What trunk does she mean?” her father asked in surprise.
“It’s a trunk we foolishly took from the lady cop’s cottage last summer,” Tillie replied, and groaned.
“But oh, father!” she cried a moment later, “I must go!”
Without a word her father disappeared through a door. He reappeared a moment later holding a well-worn leather bag. In it were their summer’s savings. He counted out some soiled bills. “She said she’d pay it back,” was his quiet comment. “Such folks don’t often go back on their word. Here’s the money.”
“Turkey,” he addressed himself next to his son, “you hitch old Billy to the stone-boat and go after the trunk. We’ll get Mike Donovan to drive Tillie over to the station. If we hurry, there’ll be just about time.”
So it happened that an excited girl stepped from the train in mid-afternoon of the next day in the great city of Chicago. This was Tillie. She had wired ahead to Florence, who was there to meet her. They clasped each other tightly.
“Have you got it?” Florence asked breathlessly.
“The trunk? I have. Here’s the check.”
“Good! It’s fearfully important and too mysterious for words. Let’s go after it at once.”
They were some little time in finding the baggage room in the large depot. When they did there was a crowd waiting and they were obliged to stand in line. To such a pair of eager spirits these waits seemed endless. But at last their time came. With trembling fingers Florence handed over the check. The agent disappeared with it. After some little delay he returned. The check was in his hand.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Not here yet.”
“Not in,” Florence voiced her disappointment. “It was on the Copper Express.”
“The Copper Express!” The man seemed puzzled. “What sort of a trunk? That baggage—”
Just then a strange thing happened. Gripping Florence’s arm hard, Tillie exclaimed in a shrill whisper, “Look! There goes the trunk! That young man has it!”
Florence could not believe her ears. She did not doubt the testimony of her eyes. The mystery trunk was fast disappearing down a passageway that led to the street. It was on a strange young man’s back.
“Come on!” she cried. “He is stealing it! We must not let him.”
After that things happened so rapidly that there was no time to call for aid. They dashed away after the thief. They found him dumping the trunk into the back of a low-built, high power automobile. Another young man was seated at the wheel. With a sudden leap of the heart, Florence recognized this young man. He was the one Tillie had pitched so unceremoniously into the water.
“Here, you,” she cried, seizing the trunk stealer by the shoulder and whirling him about, “that’s our trunk.”
Taken completely by surprise, the man did not act at once. It was well, for when he did come to his senses, he flashed an automatic. A second too late. He saw his gun whirl into space as Florence launched her full one hundred and sixty pounds against his chest. He went down in a heap.
His companion, attempting to come to his aid, found himself expertly tripped by the versatile Tillie. The next instant, like some jaguar, she was at his throat and he heard her hiss: “Now we got you. You gamblin’, robbin’ kidnapper.”
It was fortunate for the girls that they were not obliged to hold their poses long. Half a dozen coppers arrived in time to give them aid, and assured them that matters would be adjusted in court at the proper time.
An investigation revealed the astonishing fact that the slick crooks had learned in some way, perhaps through Florence’s telegram, that the trunk was on the way. They had boarded the train at an up-state station, forged a check for the trunk and claimed it.
“They nearly got it that time,” Florence sighed as two red-caps tumbled the trunk into a waiting taxi and she and Tillie whirled away. “We’ll take it to Petite Jeanne’s apartment. It will be safe enough there. The gypsy told us where we could find the lady cop. We have located her. She and the ‘poor little rich girl’ will be with us at Petite Jeanne’s show to-night. After that we will go to the apartment and have the formal opening of the trunk. Won’t that give us a thrill?”
“Won’t it, though?” Tillie bobbed up and down in her excitement.
“Those young men we just caught,” Florence said after a time, “were the last of the band.”
“What band?”
“A band of gamblers and thieves the law has been after for a long time. Through information provided by our gypsy friend, the others were taken to-day. They will not be bothering the kindly people of your settlement for some time to come. There is enough chalked up against them to last half a lifetime.”
“I suppose,” replied Tillie thoughtfully, “that I should feel sorry for them. But I just can’t. They went too far.”
“About two miles too far,” agreed Florence, recalling their heart-breaking swim in the cold night waters of Lake Huron.