That same afternoon Florence met Sandy at the door of his glass box. “Are—are you leaving?” she asked in sudden consternation. “I didn’t get my story in.”
“Oh, that’s O. K.” Sandy, who was small, young, red-haired and freckled, threw back his head and laughed. “I did it for you. It’s gone to press. Remember that psychoanalyst who wears some sort of a towel wrapped round his head and claims he is a Prince of India?”
“Oh, yes. He was funny—truly funny. And he wanted to hold my hand.” Florence showed her two large dimples in a smile.
“Yes. Well, I did him for you. So! Come on downstairs for a cup of coffee.”
“Sure.” Florence grinned. She was not on a diet and she was ready for just one more cup of coffee any time. Besides, she wanted to tell Sandy about her latest finds, Madame Zaran, June Travis, and the crystal ball.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she was saying fifteen minutes later as, seated in a remote corner of the cafeteria maintained for employees only, she looked at Sandy over a steaming cup of coffee. “I gazed into the crystal and, almost at once, I began seeing things!”
“What did you see?” There was a questioning look on Sandy’s freckled face.
“Trees, evergreen trees.” Florence’s eyes became dreamy. “Trees and dark waters, rocks—the wildest sort of place in the great out-of-doors.”
“And then?”
“And then it all changed. I saw the same trees, rocks and waters covered with ice and snow.”
“That surelyisstrange!” The look on Sandy’s face changed. “You must have been seeing things for me.”
“For you?” The girl’s eyes opened wide.
“Absolutely.” Sandy grinned. “You see, they’re trapping moose on Isle Royale, and—”
“Isle Royale!” Florence exclaimed. “I’ve been there, spent a whole summer there. It’s marvelous!”
“Tell me about it.” Sandy leaned forward eagerly.
“Oh—” Florence closed her eyes for a space of seconds. “It—why it’s wild and beautiful. It’s a big island, forty miles long. It’s all rocks and forest primeval. No timber has ever been cut there. And there are narrow bays running back two miles where, early in summer, marvelous big lake trout lurk. You put a spoon hook on your line and go trolling. You just row and row. You gaze at the glorious green of birch and balsam, spruce and fir; you watch the fleecy clouds, you feel the lift and fall of your small boat, and think how wonderful it is just to live, when Zing! something sets your reel spinning. Is it a rock? You grab your pole and begin reeling in. No! It moves, it wobbles. It is a fish.
“Ten yards, twenty, thirty, forty you reel in. There he is! What a beauty—a ten pounder. You play him, let out line, reel in, let out, reel in. Then you whisper, ‘Now!’ You reel in fast, you reach out and up, and there he is thrashing about in the bottom of your boat. Oh, Sandy! You’ll love it! Wish I could go. Next summer are you going?”
“Next week, most likely.”
“Next week! Why, it’s all frozen over. There are no boats going there now.”
“No boats, but we’ll take a plane, land on skiis. You see,” Sandy explained, “our nature editor has gone south. Now this moose-trapping business has come up and our paper wants a story. The thing has been dumped in my lap. I’ll probably have to go.”
“Oh!” The big girl’s face was a study. She loved the wide out-of-doors and all wild, free places. Isle Royale must be glorious in winter. “Wish I could go along! But I—I can’t.”
“Why not?” Sandy asked.
“I’ve got this girl, June Travis, on my hands. And, unless something is done, I’m afraid it will turn out badly.”
“June Travis?” Sandy stared.
“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? But of course not. It’s the strangest, most fantastic thing! I should have told you that first, but of course, like everyone else, I was most interested in my own poor little experience.”
“Tell me about it.”
Florence did tell him. She told the story well, about June gazing into the crystal ball, the moving figures in that ball, June’s fortune which she was soon to possess, the voodoo priestess and all the rest. She told it so well that Sandy’s second cup of coffee got cold during the telling.
“I say!” Sandy exclaimed. “Youhavegot something on your hands. Look out, big girl! They may turn out too many for you. My opinion is that all fortune tellers are fakes, and that the biggest of them are crooked and dangerous, so watch your step.”
“Oh, I know my way around this little town,” Florence laughed. “And now allow me to get you a fresh cup of coffee.”
“Sandy,” Florence said a moment later, “the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, was with me on Isle Royale. She’d like to hear all about your proposed trip to the island. We may be able to think up some facts that will be a real help to you. Why don’t you come over to our studio for dinner tomorrow night? I’m sure Miss Mabee would be delighted to have you.”
“All right, I’ll be there. How about your gypsy girl friend preparing a chicken for us, one she has caught behind her van, on the broad highway?”
“Her van has vanished, much to her regret,” Florence laughed. “We’ll have the chicken all the same.”
“And about this story of the crystal ball,” Sandy asked as they prepared to leave the cafeteria. “Shall I run that tomorrow?”
“Oh, no!” Florence exclaimed in alarm. “Not yet. I want to dig deeply into that. I—I’m hoping I may find something truly magical there.”
“Well, don’t hope too much!” Sandy dashed away to make one more “dead-line.”
That had been an exciting day for the little French girl. After she had crept beneath the covers in her studio chamber at ten o’clock that night, she could not sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw a thousand faces. Old, wrinkled faces, pinched young faces and the half greedy, half hopeless faces of the middle-aged. All that Maxwell Street had been as she danced so madly for the prize that meant so little to her and so much to another.
“Life,” she whispered to herself, “is so very queer! Why must we always be thinking of others? Life should not be like that. We should be free to seek happiness for ourselves alone. Happiness! Happiness!” she repeated the word softly. “Why should not happiness be our only aim in life? To sing like the nightingale, to dart about like a humming-bird, to dance wild and free like the fairies. Ah, this should be life!”
Still she could not sleep. It was often so. It was as if life were too thrilling, too joyous and charming to be spent in senseless sleep.
Slipping from her bed, she drew on heavy skating socks and slippers, wrapped herself in a heavy woolen dressing gown; then slipping silently out of her room, felt about in the half darkness of the studio until she found the rounds of an iron ladder. Then she began to climb. She had not climbed far when she came to a small trap door. This she lifted. Having taken two more steps up, she paused to stare about her. Her gaze swept the surface of a broad flat roof, their roof.
“Twelve o’clock, and all’s well,” she whispered with a low laugh. The roof was silent as a tomb. She stepped out upon the roof, then allowed the trap door to drop without a sound into its place. She was now at the top of her own little world.
And what a world on such a night! Above her, like blue diamonds, the stars shone. Hanging low over the distant dark waters of the lake, the moon lay at the end of a path of gold.
Here, there, everywhere, lights shone from thousands of windows. How different were the scenes behind those windows! There were windows of homes, of offices, of hospitals and jails. Each hid a story of life.
So absorbed was the little French girl in all these things as she sat there in the shadow of a chimney, she did not note that a trap door a hundred feet away had lifted silently, allowed a dark figure to pass, then as silently closed. Had she noted this she must surely have thought the person some robber escaping with his booty. She would, beyond doubt, have fled to her own trap door and vanished.
Since she did not see the intruder upon her reveries, she continued to drink in the crisp fresh air of night and to sit musing over the strangeness of life.
Some moments later she was startled by one long-drawn musical note, it seemed to have come from a violin, and that not far away. Before she could cry out or flee, there came to her startled ears, played exquisitely on a violin, the melodious notes ofO Sole Mio.
To her vexation and terror, at that moment the moon passed behind a cloud and all the roof was dark. Still the music did not cease.
Awed by the strangeness of it all, captivated by that marvelous music played in a place so strange, Jeanne sat as one entranced until the last note had died away.
“There, my pretty ones!” said a voice with startling distinctness, “how do you like that? Not so bad, eh?”
There was something of a reply. It was, however, too indistinct to be understood.
“Could anything be stranger?” Jeanne asked herself. She knew that the voice was that of a young man, or perhaps a boy. She felt that perhaps she should proceed to vanish.
“But how can I?” she whispered, “and leave all this mystery unsolved?”
Oddly enough, the very next tune chosen by the musician was one of those wild, rocketing gypsy dance tunes that Jeanne had ever found irresistible.
Before she knew what she was about, she went gliding like some wild bewitching sprite across the flat surface of the roof. She was in the very midst of that dance, leaping high and swinging wide as only she could do, when with a suddenness that was appalling, the music ceased.
An ominous silence followed. Out of that silence came a small voice.
“Wha—where did you come from?”
“Ple—oh, please go on!” Jeanne entreated. “You wouldn’t dash a beautiful vase on the floor; you would not strangle a canary; you would not step upon a rose. You must not crush a beautiful dance in pieces!”
“But, ah—”
“Please!” Jeanne was not looking at the musician.
With a squeak and a scratch or two, the music began once more. This time the dance was played perfectly to its end.
“Now!” breathed Jeanne as she sank down upon a stone parapet. “I ask you, where didyoucome from—the moon, or just one of the stars?” She was staring at a handsome dark-eyed boy in his late teens. A violin was tucked under his arm.
“Neither,” he answered shyly. “Up from a hole in the roof.”
“But why are you playing here?” Jeanne demanded.
“I came—” there was a low chuckle. “I came here so I could play for the pigeons who roost under the tank there. They like it, I’m sure. Did you hear them cooing?”
“Yes. But why—” Jeanne hesitated, bewildered. “Why for the pigeons? You play divinely!”
“Thanks.” He made a low bow. “I play well enough, I suppose. So do a thousand others. That’s the trouble. There is not room for us all, so I must take to the house-tops.”
“But how do you live?” Jeanne did not mean to go on, yet she could not stop.
“I play twice a week in a—a place where people eat, and—and drink.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“Not too nice, but it is a nice five dollars a week they pay me. One may eat and have his collars done for five a week. The janitor of this building lets me have a cubbyhole under the roof, and so—” he laughed again. “I am handy to the pigeons. They appreciate my music, I am sure of it.”
“Don’t!” Jeanne sprang up and stamped a foot. “Don’t joke about art. It—it’s not nice!”
“Oh!” the boy breathed, “I’m sorry.”
“What’s your name?” Jeanne demanded.
The boy murmured something that sounded like “Tomorrow.”
“No!” Jeanne spoke more distinctly. “I said, what’s your name?”
The boy too spoke more distinctly. Still the thing he said was to Jeanne simply “Tomorrow.”
“I don’t know,” she exclaimed almost angrily, “whether it is today still, or whether we have got into tomorrow. My watch is in my room. What I’d like to know is, what do your parents call you?”
“Tomorrow,” the boy repeated, or so it sounded to Jeanne.
Then he laughed a merry laugh. “I’ll spell it for you. T-U-M, Tum. That’s my first name. And the second is Morrow. I defy you to say it fast without making it ‘tomorrow’!
“And that,” he sighed, “is a very good name for me! It is always tomorrow that good things are to happen. Then they never do.”
“Tum Morrow,” said Jeanne, “tomorrow at three will you have tea with me?”
“I surely will tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “but where do I come?”
“Follow me with your eye until I vanish.” Jeanne rose. “Tomorrow lift that same trap door, climb down the ladder, then look straight ahead and down. You will probably be looking at me in a very beautiful studio.”
“Tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “I’ll be there.”
“And tomorrow, Tum Morrow, may be your lucky day,” Jeanne laughed as she went dancing away.
Tomorrow came. So did Tum Morrow. Jeanne did not forget her appointment. She saw to it that water was hot for tea. She prepared a heaping plate of the most delicious sandwiches. Great heaps of nut meats, a bottle of salad-dressing and half a chicken went into their making.
“Tea!” Florence exclaimed. “That will be a feast!”
“And why not?” Jeanne demanded. “One who eats on five dollars a week and keeps his collars clean in the bargain deserves a feast!”
The moods of the great artist were not, however, governed by afternoon appointments to tea. When Tum Morrow, having followed Jeanne’s instructions, found himself upon the studio balcony, he did not speak, but sat quietly down upon the top step of the stair to wait, for there in the center of the large studio, poised on a narrow, raised stand, was Jeanne.
Garbed in high red boots, short socks, skirts of mixed and gorgeous hues and a meager waist, wide open at the front, she stood with a bright tambourine held aloft, poised for a gypsy dancer.
To the right of her, working furiously, dashing a touch of color here, another there, stepping back for a look, then leaping at her canvas again, was the painter, Marie Mabee.
Evidently Tum Morrow had seen nothing like this before, for he sat there, mouth wide open, staring. At that moment, so far as he was concerned, tomorrow might at any moment become today. He would never have known the difference.
When at last Marie Mabee thrust her brushes, handles down, in the top of a jug and said, “There!” Tum Morrow heaved such a prodigious sigh that the artist started, whirled about, stared for an instant, then demanded, “Where did you come from?”
Before the startled boy could find breath for reply, she exclaimed, “Oh, yes! I remember. Jeanne told me! Come right down! She has a feast all prepared for you.”
She extended both hands as he reached the foot of the stairs. Tum took the hands. His eyes were only for Jeanne.
It was a jolly tea they had, Jeanne, the artist, and Tum. Tum’s shyness at being in the presence of a great personage gradually passed away. Quite frankly at last he told his story. His music had been the gift of his mother. A talented woman, she had taught him from the age of three. When she could go no farther, she had employed a great teacher to help him.
“They called me a prodigy.” He sighed. “I never liked that very much. I played at women’s clubs and all sorts of luncheons and all the ladies clapped their hands. Some of the ladies had kind faces—some of them,” he repeated slowly. “I played only for those who had kind faces.”
“But now,” he ended rather abruptly, “my teacher is gone. My mother is gone. I am no longer a prodigy, nor am I a grown musician, so—”
“So you play for the pigeons on the roof!” Jeanne laughed a trifle uncertainly.
“And for angels,” Tum replied, looking straight into her eyes. Jeanne flushed.
“What does he mean?” Miss Mabee asked, puzzled.
“That angels come down from the sky at night,” Jeanne replied teasingly.
“But Miss Mabee,” she demanded, “what does one do between the time he is a prodigy and when he is a man?”
“Oh, I—I don’t know.” Miss Mabee stirred her tea thoughtfully. “He just does the best he can, gets around among people and hopes something will happen. And, bye and bye, something does happen. Then all is lovely.
“Excuse me!” She sprang to her feet. “There’s the phone.”
“But you?” said Tum, “you, Miss Jeanne, are a famous dancer—you must be.”
“No.” Jeanne was smiling. “I am only a dancing gypsy. Once, it is true, I danced a light opera. And once, just once—” her eyes shone. “Once I danced in that beautiful Opera House down by the river. That Opera House is closed now. What a pity! I danced in theJuggler of Notre Dame. And the people applauded. Oh, how they did applaud!
“But a gypsy—” her voice dropped. “With a gypsy it is different. Nothing wonderful lasts with a gypsy. So now—” she laughed a little, low laugh. “Now I’m just a wild dancing bumble bee with invisible wings on my feet.”
“Are you?” The boy’s eyes shone with a sudden light. “Do you know this?” Taking up his violin, he began to play.
“What is it?” she demanded, enraptured.
“They call it ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee.’”
“Play it again.”
Tum played it again. Jeanne sat entranced.
“Encore!” she exclaimed.
Then, snatching up a thin gauzy shawl of iridescent silk, she went leaping and whirling, flying across the room.
In the meantime, Miss Mabee, who had returned, stood in a corner fascinated.
And it was truly worthy of her admiration. As a dancer, when the mood seized her Jeanne could be a spark, a flame, a gaudy, darting humming-bird, and now indeed she was a bee with invisible wings on her feet.
“That,” exclaimed the artist, “is a tiny masterpiece of music and dancing! It must be preserved. Others must know of it. We shall find a time and place. You shall see, my children.”
Jeanne flushed with pleasure. Tum was silent, but deep in both their hearts was the conviction that this was one of the truly large moments of their lives.
The dinner served in Sandy’s honor at the artist’s studio was an occasion long to be remembered. Jeanne had chanced to speak of her gypsy step-father, Bihari.
“And is he now in America?” Miss Mabee asked with sudden interest.
“Yes. In Chicago!” Jeanne replied joyously.
“Then we must have him at our party tonight. Perhaps I might like to paint his picture.”
“Oh, you are sure to!” Jeanne cried. “There is no one in the world like Bihari.”
So Bihari was sent for. Tum Morrow too had been invited and, to help the affair along, had volunteered to bring three boon companions, all destitute musicians, and all glad to provide music in exchange for Jeanne’s gypsy-style chicken dinner.
When the hour arrived all were there; so too were the great steaming platters of chicken with dumplings and gravy. And such a feast as that was! Bihari had persuaded two good cooks of his own race to prepare the feast. And, because of their love for Bihari and Jeanne, they had spared neither time nor labor.
“That,” said Sandy, as at last the final toast of delicious fruit juice had been drunk, “is the finest feast I have ever known.”
“And now,” he said to Jeanne, “tell us about this magic isle I am to visit, this Isle Royale.”
“You?” Jeanne looked at him in surprise. “You are going to Isle Royale? In winter?”
“Yes. In an airplane.”
“In an airplane?” The look of surprise and longing on Jeanne’s face was a wonderful thing to behold. Her own Dragonfly was stored away, but never would she forget those golden days when she had gone gliding through the air. Nor would she forget the glorious days she had spent on the shores of the “Magic Isle.”
“You are going to Isle Royale in an airplane,” she repeated slowly. “Then I shall tell you all about it—but on one condition!”
“Name it.” Sandy smiled.
“That you take me with you.”
A little cry of surprise ran round the room. For a space of seconds Sandy was silent. Then, with a look of sudden decision on his face, he said, “It’s a go!”
“And now, Jeanne,” Miss Mabee arose, “when our good friend Tum has put another log on the fire and we have all drawn up our chairs, suppose you tell us all about this very wonderful isle.”
So there, with the lights turned out, with the glow of the fire playing over her bewitching face, Jeanne told them of Isle Royale. She spoke of the deep, dark waters where lake trout gleam like silver; of the rocky shore where at times the waters of old Lake Superior come thundering in, and of the little lakes that lay gleaming among the dark green forests.
She told of wild moose that come down to the shores at sunset to dip their noses in the bluest of waters, then to lift their antlers high and send a challenge echoing away across the ridges. She told of the bush wolves who answered that challenge, then of the slow settling down of night that turned this whole little world to a pitchy black.
“And then,” she whispered, “the moon comes rolling like a golden chariot wheel over the ridge to paint a path of gold across those black waters. And you, not to be outdone by a mere moon, touch a match to your campfire and it blazes high to meet the stars.
“That,” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and executing a wild dance before the fire, “that is summer! What must it be in winter? All those tall spruce trees decorated with snow, all those little lakes gleaming like mirrors. And tracks through the snow—tracks of moose, bush wolves, lynx and beaver, mysterious tracks that wind on and on over the ridge. To think,” she cried, “we are to see all this!
“But Sandy!” Her mood changed. “You said they were trapping moose. Why should they trap any wild thing? That—why that’s like trapping a gypsy!”
“Some gypsies should be trapped.” Sandy laughed, seizing her hand teasingly. “But as for the moose of Isle Royale, they have become too numerous for the island. They are trapping them and taming them a little. In the spring they are to be taken to game sanctuaries on the mainland where there is an abundance of food. But look!” he exclaimed. “We are taking up all the time raving about this island. What about our musicians? Let’s have a tune.”
His words were greeted with hand-clapping. Tum Morrow and his companions tuned up and for the next half hour the studio walls echoed to many a melody. Some were of today, modern and rhythmical, and some of yesterday with all their tuneful old melodies.
During this musical interlude Florence, seated in a dark corner, gave herself over to reflections concerning the amusing, mysterious and sometimes threatening events of the days just past.
“It is all so strange, so intriguing, so rather terrible!” she was thinking to herself. “This Madame Zaran, is she truly a genius at crystal gazing? How could she fail to be? Did I not, myself, see a vision in the crystal ball? And that girl June, who could doubt but that she saw herself as she was when a child, with her father? And yet—” the whole affair was terribly disturbing. They had compelled the girl, a mere child, to pay two hundred dollars for this vision. How much for the next? They had promised to reveal her father’s whereabouts, tell her when he would return. Could they do that? “Ten years!” she whispered. “One is tempted to believe him dead. And yet—”
Then there was the voodoo priestess, she with the black goat. They were to visit her on the morrow. “And I have an appointment with Madame Zaran too. A busy day!”
She thought, with a new feeling of alarm, of Jeanne’s experience on that day. “Wish I hadn’t told her of that thieving gypsy fortune teller. Get her into no end of trouble. Dangerous, those gypsies!” Then, at a sudden remembrance, she smiled. It was good that Jeanne had won the dancing contest; good, too, that she had helped that gypsy child of the bright shawl. Jeanne had “cast bread upon the waters.” It would return.
Then of a sudden as the music stopped, she gave a start. Before her eyes there appeared to float a shadow, a curiously frightening shadow. It was the shadow of a face she had seen on the midnight blue of Madame Zaran’s studio, a face that had somehow reminded her of Satan. “My dear old aunt used to say Satan had a hand in all fortune telling,” she whispered. But then, aunts were almost always old-fashioned and sometimes a little foolish.
Now the music played so well by Tum Morrow and his companions came to an end. There was instant applause, and Florence was wakened from her disturbing day dream.
“Can you play one of Liszt’s rhapsodies?” Miss Mabee asked.
“I’m sorry,” Tum said regretfully, “I have never studied them.”
“But yes!” Bihari, the gypsy blacksmith, sprang up. “Let me show you! The best one it goes like this. Every gypsy knows it.”
Taking the violin from Tum Morrow’s hand, he began drawing forth a teasing, bewitching melody. “Come!” he exclaimed, nodding his head at the other musicians. “You know this one. Surely you must!”
They did. Soon piano, cello, clarinet and violin were doing full justice to this glorious gypsy music written down for the world by a master composer.
A perfect silence fell over the room. When the violin dropped to a whisper and was heard alone, there was not another sound.
As for Jeanne, while Bihari played she was far, far away beside a hedge where the grass was green and the midnight blue of the sky was sprinkled with golden stars. Again, with her fellow wanderers she breathed the sweet free air of night, listened to the call of the whippoorwill and the wail of the violin.
“Wonderful!” Miss Mabee exclaimed as the music ended. “You almost make me want to be a gypsy. And Bihari, you shall make me famous. I shall paint your picture. You shall be seated on your anvil, playing Liszt’s rhapsody to a group of ragged children. In the background shall be a dozen poorly clad women holding their pots and pans to be mended, but all carried away by that glorious music. Ah, what a picture! Shall I have it?”
“If you wish it,” Bihari replied humbly.
“Tomorrow?”
“If you wish.”
“Done!” the artist exclaimed. “And all the ones with ragged shawls and leaky pans shall be well paid.
“And now, Tum, my dear boy,” she turned to the boy musician. “You give us a goodnight lullaby, and we shall be off to pleasant dreams.”
A half hour later Miss Mabee and Florence sat before the fire. Florence had just told of her experience as a crystal-gazer.
“You were day-dreaming, my dear,” Miss Mabee laughed lightly. “Had you been looking dreamily at a spot of light or a blank wall, you would have seen the same thing. You are fond of the wide out-of-doors and our bits of American wilderness. Day-dreaming is our most wonderful indoor sport. Were it not for our day-dreams, there are many who would go quite mad in these troublous times. But when life is too hard, off we drift on our magic carpet of dreams, and all is well.”
When Florence and June Travis arrived at the home of Marianna Christophe, the voodoo priestess, next afternoon, they met with a surprise. The surprise was not in the building—it was unpretentious enough, a long, low building with a pink front. The surprise came when they found several large and shiny automobiles parked along the curb before the door.
“Our visit is off,” Florence sighed. “Must be a funeral or something.”
“But I have an appointment at four o’clock!” June protested.
“Oh, well, we’ll see.” Florence lifted an ancient brass knocker and let it fall.
Instantly the door flew open and a brownish young lady with white and rolling eyes peered out.
“I have an appointment,” June Travis said timidly.
“I’ll look.” The brown one vanished, to return almost at once.
“Yass’m! Jest step right in!” She bowed low. “The priestess will see you, ’zactly at four.”
The reception room which the girls entered was large. Along one side was a row of comfortable chairs. All but two of the chairs were filled. If one were to judge by their rich attire, these people were the owners of the cars parked outside. They were all women. One was old and one quite young. The others, four in all, were middle-aged.
“She’s marvelous!” one of the waiting ones said in a half whisper. “The first time I saw her she told me I had a boy who was not yet sixteen and who was more than six feet tall. She said I had been married twice, but that I have no husband now. She said my principal jewels were a necklace of pearls coming down from my grandmother, a diamond bracelet and three diamond rings. All of this is exactly right. And think of it! She had never seen me before! I had not so much as given her my name. Wasn’t that most astonishing?”
Florence listened in vast surprise. This woman was speaking, beyond doubt, of the voodoo priestess. Could she indeed tell you all about yourself, your innermost secrets? She shuddered. Who could want any stranger to know all that? She looked at June. She, too, had heard. Her face was all alight. “All these people believe in her,” she whispered. “They are much older than I, and must be wiser, and they are rich. Surely she will tell me where my father is, and when he will come back. It—it’s so very little to ask.” There was an appealing note in the girl’s low voice that went straight to Florence’s heart.
“I have ten dollars left,” June whispered. “Next week I’ll have a little more, and soon a very great deal.”
“Yes,” Florence thought, “and therein lies your great peril! In such times as these much money is a menace to any innocent and unprotected person. We must find her father, we must indeed! But how? There’s the trouble.”
Her thoughts were broken in upon by the brown girl of the rolling eyes. “The priestess will see you all now,” she whispered.
“June,” Florence asked in a low tone, “have you been here before?”
“Never.” The girl shuddered.
“And yet,” Florence thought, “they are passing her in ahead of those others! Can it be that this priestess has already heard of this child’s money?” For the first time in her life she began to believe that at least some of these fortune tellers knew everything, even the innermost secrets of one’s heart. The feeling made her uncomfortable.
The room they entered was weirdly fantastic. Its walls were covered with paper so blue that it seemed black. Over this paper flew a thousand tiny imaginary birds of every hue. The floor was jet black. On a sort of raised platform, in a highly ornamental chair that seemed a throne, sat a very large black woman with deep-set dark eyes. She was dressed in a robe of dark red. As the two girls entered, she was swinging her arms slowly up and down as if to drive away an imaginary swarm of flies, or perhaps ghosts.
“I am—” June began.
“No, child. Don’t tell me.” The woman’s tone was melodiously southern. “I’s a priestess, a voodoo priestess. I’s the great, great granddaughter of Cristophe, the Emperor of Haiti.
“Listen, child!” Her voice dropped. It seemed to Florence that the lights grew dim. “At midnight in the dark of de moon, on de highest mountain in Haiti, dey took me an’ a big black goat, all black. Dey sacrificed de goat in de dark of de moon. But me, honey, me dey made a priestess. To me it is given to ask and to know all things. As I look at you now, I seem to see no father near you, no mother near you, but girls, one, two, three, oh, mebby a dozen. That right?”
“Yes, I—”
“Don’t speak, honey. You come to ask where your Daddy is, and I—I am here to tell you. Only—”
“I—I’ve got ten—”
“Don’t speak of money, not yet. I—”
The priestess broke off suddenly. Florence had entered silently, but had fallen back at once into a dark corner. For the first time the priestess became conscious of her presence.
“Who’s that?” she demanded.
“Only my friend,” June replied timidly.
“Well, she can sit over there.” The priestess pointed to the farthest corner.
When Florence was seated the woman began again her monotonous monologue, but she spoke in such low tones that Florence could catch only a word here and there.
“Darkness,” she heard then—“Spirit of Cristophe—darkness—the black goat—gold, gold, gold—spirit of darkness.”
Even as these last words were spoken, the lights began slowly to fade. Then it was that for the first time Florence became conscious of some living creature in the corner opposite her own. As she looked, she saw it was a black goat with golden horns. Strangely enough, as the light continued to fade, she felt herself imagining that the goat was a spirit, the spirit of that black goat sacrificed on the highest mountain at midnight in the dark of the moon. This, she knew, was pure nonsense.
But why all this failing light? Was this some trick? She was about to leap to her feet and demand that the thing be stopped. Then she thought of the ones who waited in the room beyond the plastered wall. “Nothing serious can happen.” She settled back.
But what was this? The room was now almost completely dark. Along the far side of the room she seemed to catch sight of something moving. It rose and fell, like some filmy shadow or trace of light.
“Like a ghost!” She shuddered. “Yet it is not white. It shines like ebony. It—”
She could not really think the notion that formed in her mind which was, “This is Cristophe’s ghost, a black ghost.”
As the thing moved slowly, oh so slowly across the wall, there came the sound of whispers—whispered words that could be heard but not understood.
Florence was ready to flee. But what of June? She must not leave her. This thing was horrible. Yet it was fascinating.
And then, close beside her, there was a movement. Looking down quickly, she caught two golden gleams. “The goat’s horns. He has moved, he is near me!” She was filled with fresh terror.
And then the light began returning. Slowly as it had faded, so slowly did it return.
Once again Florence looked at that spot close by her side. The goat was not there. Her eyes sought the opposite corner. There lay the goat, apparently fast asleep.
“I have asked the spirit of Cristophe.” The priestess spoke in her usual melodious drawl. “He says dere must be gold, much gold. A statue to his memory must be built. There must be gold, much gold. He will tell all things—all—all things for gold.
“There now!” she ended abruptly. “Some other time, you shall know all. There must be gold, much gold—”
And then, for the second time, Florence saw it, the shadow on the wall. It was the same, the very same as that she had seen on Madame Zaran’s midnight blue drapes. There was the sharp nose, the curved chin, all that made up a perfect Satan’s face. One second it was there, the next it was gone. But in that second Florence saw the large black woman half rise as a look of surprise not unmixed with fear overspread her face. Then, as the shadow faded, she dropped heavily back into the arms of the chair that might have been a throne.
A bell tinkled. The brown girl appeared. They were led out into the light of day.
“She—she didn’t even take my ten dollars,” June whispered.
“No, but she will in the end, and much, very much more!” These words were on the tip of Florence’s tongue, but she did not say them. This surely was a strange world.
“June,” said Florence after they had left the home of the voodoo priestess—her voice was low and serious—“you must be very careful! Such things as these might get you into a great deal of trouble; yes, and real peril.”
“Peril?” The younger girl’s voice trembled.
“Just that,” Florence replied. “Most of these fortune tellers, I’m convinced, are rather simple-minded people who earn a living by telling people the things they want to hear. They read your palm, study the bumps on your head, tell you what the stars you were born under mean to you, or gaze into a crystal. After that they make you happy by saying they see that you are to inherit money, have new clothes, go on a journey, marry a rich man and live happily ever after.” Florence laughed low.
“They charge you half a dollar,” she went on. “You go away happily and no real harm is done.
“But some of these people, I think—mind you, I don’t know for sure—some of them may be sharpers, grafters in a big way. And when a dishonest person is prevented from reaping a rich but unearned reward, he is likely to become truly dangerous. S—so, watch your step!
“Anyway,” she added after a time, “your problem may perhaps be solved in simpler ways. Remember the suggestion of Frances Ward? She said you should be able to recall more than you have told thus far. If you could remember the place where you lived with your father, perhaps we could find that place. Then, it is possible someone living near there would remember your father. That would help. In time perhaps we could untangle the twisted skein that is your mysterious past.”
“Oh, do you think we could?” June’s tone was eager. “But how can I remember a thing I don’t recall?”