“There are people, great psychologists, who have ways of making people think back, back, back into the remotest corners of their past.”
“Do you know one of them?” June asked excitedly.
“Not at this moment, but I could find one, I think.”
“Will you try?”
“Yes, I’ll try.
“And now—” Florence’s tone changed. “I’ll have to leave you here. I—I have an appointment.”
Florence was, in the end, to find a psychologist, and that in the strangest possible manner. Meanwhile, her appointment was with Madame Zaran and her crystal ball. There was just time to make it.
She arrived, rather out of breath, to find the place much the same, yet somehow different. The crystal ball was in its place at the center of the room. The chair, the rug, the midnight blue draperies were the same. Madame Zaran came out with a smile to greet her. All was as before, and yet—the big girl shuddered—there seemed to be an air of hostility about the place.
“Yes, you may gaze into the crystal.” Madame’s claw-like hands folded and unfolded. “You may see much today. I have read it in a book, the book of the stars. You were born under a remarkable constellation. Yes, I do horoscopes as well. But now you shall gaze into the crystal ball.”
She withdrew. Florence was left alone with her thoughts and the crystal ball.
There followed a half hour’s battle between her thoughts and the magic ball. Her thoughts won. No beautiful island came to her in the ball, no stately trees, no still waters, nothing. Only the sordid little world which, it seemed, pressed in about her, stifling all beauty, all romance, filled her mind. With all her heart she wished that she was to fly away with Sandy and Jeanne to the magic of Isle Royale in winter.
“But I will not go.” She set her will hard. “I must not!”
And then there, standing before her, was Madame Zaran.
There was a strange light in the fortune teller’s eyes. She said but one word:
“Well?”
In that one word Florence seemed to feel a dark challenge.
“No vision today,” she replied simply.
“No!” Madame’s voice was harsh. “And there will be no visions for you. Never again. You have betrayed the sacred symbol!” Her voice rose shrill and high. Her short fingers formed themselves into claw-like curves. Her tiger-like hair appeared to stand on end.
“You—” her eyes burned fire. “You are a traitor. You—”
She broke short off. Her weak mouth fell open. Her pupils dilated, she stared at the midnight blue drapes. Then, for a third time, Florence saw it—the shadow, the long, thin face, the narrow nose, the curved chin, the shadow of Satan, all but the horns and the forked tail.
While Madame still stared speechless, Florence slipped from her chair, glided from the room, caught the teetering elevator, then found herself once more upon the noisy city street.
“Ah!” she breathed. “There was a time when I thought this street a dangerous place. Now it is a haven, a place of refuge.”
She walked three blocks. Her blood cooled. Her heart resumed its normal beat. She was in a mood for thought. What did Madame Zaran know? Did she know all? There had been a little in her column that day, the column “Looking Into The Future,” that was about Madame Zaran’s place and her methods. No names were mentioned, no address given. It was written only as an amusing incident.
“And of course my name was not signed. It never is,” Florence thought to herself. “How could she know that I conduct that column? And yet—” Here truly was food for thought.
“Jeanne,” she said as, two hours later, they sat reading beside a studio light, “these fortune tellers have an uncanny way of finding out all about you. That black priestess today told June all about herself. And yet, she had never seen her before. Jeanne had made an appointment over the phone, that was all. I don’t believe in black magic, though I did see something very like a black ghost. But how do they do it?”
“How can they do it?” Jeanne echoed.
“I’ve got a notion!” Florence exclaimed. “We’ll try it out on one of the fortune tellers of the simpler sort, you and I. What do you say?”
“Anything for a little happy adventure,” Jeanne laughed.
“All right, it’s a go! We’ll start it tomorrow. And finish it, perhaps, the next day.”
“My dear, I am intrigued!” Jeanne threw back her head to indulge a merry laugh.
Florence was glad that someone in the world could laugh. As for herself, she felt that things were getting rather too thick for comfort. She felt that somehow she was approaching an hour of testing, perhaps a crisis. When would the testing come? Tomorrow? Next day? In a week? A month? Who could say? Meanwhile, she could but carry on.
“Fortune telling with cards,” Jeanne said thoughtfully after a time, “is very old. Madame Bihari told me all about it many, many times. She truly believed that cards could foretell your fate. Do you think she was wrong?”
“It is strange,” Florence replied in a sober tone. “It is hard to know what to believe. The whole thing seems impossible, and yet—”
“There are many thousands who have believed,” Jeanne broke in. “Many years ago there was a very famous teller of fortunes. He used seventy-eight cards. Those were terrible times, the days of revolution. Men were having their heads cut off because they were called traitors. No one knew who would be next to be suspected and led away to the guillotine.
“Men used to come creeping to Ettella’s place in the middle of the night to ask if their heads were to fall in the morning.
“Can you see it, Florence?” Jeanne spread out her arms in a dramatic gesture. “A dimly lighted room, a haggard face opposite one who quietly shuffles the cards, invites the haggard one to cut the cards, then shuffles again. He spreads them out, one, two, three, four. Nothing to laugh at, Florence—no joke! It is life or death. Could the cards tell? Did they tell? When the fortune teller whispered, ‘You shall live,’ or when he said hoarsely, ‘Tomorrow you shall die,’ did he always speak the truth? Who can say? That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. But Florence,” Jeanne’s eyes shone with a strange light, “even under those terrible circumstances, mendidbelieve. And they still believe today.”
“Yes.” Florence shook her shoulders as if to waken herself from a bad dream. “But—many of them are frauds of the worst sort. I can prove that. We—” she sprang to her feet. “We shall try it tomorrow. This time you shall have your fortune told. What do you say?”
“Anything you may desire,” Jeanne answered quietly. “Only let us hope it may be a good fortune.”
“That will not matter,” was Florence’s rather strange reply, “for in the end I feel certain that I can prove the fortune teller to be a cheat. And that,” she added, “in spite of the fact that I only know her name is Myrtle Rand and that her ‘studio,’ as she calls it, is in the twenty-five hundred block on North Clark Street.”
“We have agreed to try this,” said Jeanne, “but how will you prove that she is a fraud?”
“You shall see!” Florence laughed. “This wonderful ‘reading’ is going to cost you two whole dollars. This is my prediction. But if you feel it is not worth it, I shall make it up to you out of my expense account.”
“Very well, it is done. Tomorrow my fortune shall be told.” Jeanne lapsed into silence.
It was Miss Mabee who broke in upon that silence.
“Jeanne,” she exclaimed, “we must do something for this beautiful boy musician you found upon the roof! What is it he calls himself?”
“Tum Morrow.”
“Well, we must turn his tomorrow into today. He is too splendid to be lost in the drab life of those who never have a chance. Let me see—
“I have it!” she exclaimed after a moment’s reflection. “There is Tony Piccalo. He is owner of that wonderful restaurant down there in the theatre district. He is a patron of art. He paid me well for two pictures of west side Italian life. He has often urged me to display my pictures at his restaurant. All the rich people go there after a concert or a show. I shall accept his offer. I shall display all my gypsy pictures.
“And of course—” she smiled a wise smile. “We must have gypsy music and gypsy dancing to go with the pictures. You, my Jeanne, shall be the dancer and your Tum Morrow the star musician. What could be sweeter?”
“But Tum is not a gypsy,” Jeanne protested.
“Who cares for that?” the artist laughed. “A few touches of red and brown on his cheeks, a borrowed costume, and who shall know the difference? If we bill him as a gypsy boy, no one will insist upon him joining the union. And who knows but on that night he shall find some good angel with a good deal of money. The angel will pay for his further education. And there you are!”
“But, Miss Mabee,” Jeanne protested, “they will become so absorbed in the show, they will forget your pictures!
“But no!” She sprang to her feet as a sudden inspiration seized her. “We’ll make them look, and we’ll give them one grand shock!
“This is it!” Her manner became animated. “You paint a sketch upon a large square of thin paper, then mount it in a frame. Set it up with all your other pictures, only have it close to the platform where I am to dance.
“I—” she laughed a merry laugh. “I shall entertain them with the wildest gypsy dance ever seen upon the stage, and right in the midst of it I shall leap high, appear to lose my balance, and go crashing right through that picture!”
“Rather fantastic,” said Miss Mabee. “I agree with you in one particular, however. Itwillgive them a surprise. And that, in this drab world, is what people are looking for.”
“You will do the picture?” Jeanne demanded eagerly.
“I will do the picture.”
“A very large one?”
“A very large one,” Miss Mabee echoed.
“And we shall have one very grand show!” Jeanne went rocketing across the floor in that wildest of all gypsy dances.
Three days later the colorful sketch of gypsy life, done on a large square of paper, was finished and framed. It was a beautiful bit of work. At a distance it could scarcely have been told from a real masterpiece.
“Why did you make it so beautiful? How can I destroy it?” Jeanne wailed at sight of it.
Well might some sprite have echoed, “How can she?”
The picture was to meet a stranger fate than that, and to serve an unusual purpose as well.
Next morning it was arranged that Jeanne should go unaccompanied to the fortune teller on Clark Street. Florence would be loitering on the street, not too far away.
Jeanne, as she started forth on this exciting little journey, cut a real figure. She had put on her finest silk dress. White gloves that reached to her elbows were on her hands. Her hat was from one of the best Michigan Avenue shops. And, to make sure that she would be taken for a “little daughter of the rich,” she had borrowed the famous artist’s very best fur coat.
“Ah!” she breathed, “it is wonderful to be quite rich!”
The place on Clark Street surprised her a little. A plain dwelling with ancient brownstone front, it suggested nothing of the mysterious or supernatural. Inside it was no better. A sign read, “Knock on the door.” The door in question was a glass door that had been painted a solid brown.
Jeanne knocked timidly. The door opened a crack, and a feminine voice said, “Y-e-s?”
The eyes that shone out from the narrow opening registered surprise. Such a gorgeous apparition as Jeanne presented in the borrowed coat, apparently had seldom crossed that threshold.
“Dorothy Burns, who sells rare stamps at the Arcade, told me how wonderful you are,” Jeanne murmured wistfully.
This was a well-memorized speech. She was at that moment recalling Florence’s last words before they parted.
“The fortune teller will not ask your name or address. Don’t give them to her. Shewill, under one pretext or another, ask the name and address of some person whom you know, quite probably a rather humble person. However that may be, give her my name and address. Give her our telephone number, too, and tell her I am always in between three and four in the afternoon.” Jeanne smiled in spite of herself, recalling these words.
But the fortune teller was saying, “Won’t you come in, please? There now. Shall I take your coat? You wanted a reading? Is that not so? My very best readings are two dollars.”
Jeanne removed her coat and placed it upon the back of the chair offered her. She produced two crisp one-dollar bills.
“Ah!” The round face of the fortune teller shone. “You are to have a very wonderful future, I can see that at once.”
“I—I hope so.” Jeanne appeared to falter. “You see—” she leaned forward eagerly. “I have been—well, quite fortunate un—until just lately. And now—” her eyes dropped. “Now things are not so good! And I—you know, I’m worried!”
Jeannewasworried, all about that gorgeous coat. She hoped Florence was near and perhaps a policeman as well, but she need have had no fear.
Florence was near, very near. Having slipped through the outer door, she had found a seat in the dimly lighted corridor. There was a corner in the plastered wall just beyond her. From behind this there floated faint, childish whispers.
At last a face appeared, a slim pinched face surrounded by a mass of uncombed hair. A second face peeked out, then a third.
“Come here,” Florence beckoned. Like birds drawn reluctantly forward by some charm, the three unkempt children glided forward until they stood beside her chair.
“Who are you?” Florence whispered.
“I’m Tillie,” the largest girl whispered back. “She’s Fronie, and he’s Dick. Our mother’s gone away. Myrtle takes care of us, sort of like.”
“We—we’re going to have ice cream and cake for dinner!” Fronie burst forth in a loud whisper. “The beautiful lady gave Myrtle two whole dollars. We always have ice cream and cake when Myrtle gets a dollar. This time it’s two.” The child’s pathetic face shone.
Within, Myrtle Rand, the fortune teller, was saying to Jeanne:
“You may shuffle the cards. Now cut them twice with your right hand. That’s it.
“Now—one, two, three, four, five, six; and one, two, three, four, five, six. I see a change in your life. I think you will go to California. Yes, it is California. One, two, three, four, five, six.” She spread out a third row of cards, then paused to study Jeanne’s face intently.
“Your hair is beautifully done,” she said in a low tone. “Who does it for you?”
“You—you mean you’d like her address?” Jeanne started. How nearly Florence’s words were coming true!
“Yes, yes I would.” There was eagerness in the fortune teller’s tone. Then, as if she had been surprised into revealing too much, she added, “But then it does not matter too much. You see I have a daughter who has a very good position and—”
“She might like to try my hair-dresser,” Jeanne supplemented. “Here, I’ll write it down.”
With the pencil proffered her she scribbled down a name and address. The name was Florence Huyler and the address that of their studio. Then she smiled a puzzling smile.
Outside, Florence was saying to Tillie, “How do you know the beautiful lady has given Myrtle two dollars?”
“We—we—we saw them through the crack,” Fronie sputtered. “Two whole dollars! Mostly it’s only quarters and sometimes dimes that Myrtle gets for telling ’em things. Then we have bread that is dry and hard and sometimes soup that is all smelly.”
“Myrtle, she’s good to us,” the older child confided. “Good as she can be. But the rent man comes every week and says, ‘Pay, or out you go!’ So all the quarters get gone!”
“For a quarter Myrtle, she tells ’em their husbands will come back next week, and some day they’ll have money, plenty of money.” The little girl leaned forward eagerly and confidingly.
“But for two whole dollars—o-o-oh, my, what a swell fortune! She—”
Just then the outer door opened. A shabbily dressed woman, carrying a bundle that looked like a washing she was taking home to be done, came in and dropped wearily into a chair. Her eyes lighted for an instant with hope as she stared at the closed door, then faded.
The children vanished. A moment later a second drab creature entered, and after that a third.
“All working women,” Florence thought, “and all ready to part with a hard-earned quarter that they may listen to rosy prophecies about their future.” She found her spirits sinking. She hoped Jeanne’s fortune would be a short one.
It was not short. The cards were shuffled three times. Then the crystal ball on the table was gazed into. Jeanne’s fortune grew and grew. “I see fine clothes and a big car for you. You will go to California. Yes, yes, I am sure of that. And money—much money. You have rich relatives. Is it not so? And they are quite old.” Myrtle Rand went on and on.
At last Jeanne said, “I—I think I must go now.”
“But you will return?” Myrtle Rand’s tone was eager. “There is much more to be told. Very much more. Next time I will tell of your past. I shall tell you many strange things. It will surprise you.”
Jeanne managed to slip from the room without committing herself. A moment later the poor woman with the large bundle took her place before the crystal ball.
“Well,” Jeanne laughed low as she and Florence walked into the bright light of day, “I have a very rosy future! I am to have all that heart could desire—love, money, automobiles, travel, everything!”
“And next time you are going to be very much surprised,” Florence added.
“How did you know that?” Jeanne stared. “You can’t have heard.”
“No, but it’s true nevertheless.”
“And you,” Jeanne laughed afresh, “you are now my hair-dresser. You are to be at home between three and four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Why you made me tell that fib is something I don’t at all understand.”
“You will,” Florence laughed merrily. Then, “Here’s our car. Let’s hurry.”
Next day Miss Mabee and Jeanne journeyed to Maxwell Street in search of Bihari and his gypsy blacksmith shop. Jeanne carried a stool and folding easel, Miss Mabee her box of beautiful colors and her brushes.
It was a lovely winter’s day. Even the drab shops of Maxwell Street seemed gay.
Bihari’s shop was not hard to find. Miss Mabee fell in love with it at once. “Long and narrow. Plenty of light, but not too much. The very place!” was her joyous commendation. “And here are the women!”
Sure enough, there was a group of women patiently waiting to have their pots and pans repaired.
“But where are the children?” she asked.
For answer Bihari stepped to the door, put two fingers to his lips, blew a loud blast, and behold, as if by magic the place swarmed with children.
“This one. That one. This, and that one.” Miss Mabee selected her cast quickly.
Disappointed but not in the least rebellious, the remainder of the band moved away. The shop door was closed and work began.
Never had Jeanne experienced greater happiness than now. To be the constant companion of a famous artist—what more could one ask? It was not so much that Marie Mabee was famous. Jeanne was no mere hero-worshiper. The thing that counted most was their wonderful association. Somehow Jeanne felt the power, the sense of skill that was Miss Mabee’s flowing in her own veins. And now that she, for the time, was not the model, but the onlooker, she experienced this sense of fresh power to a far greater degree.
To sit in a remote corner of Bihari’s long narrow shop, to witness the skill with which Miss Mabee assembled the cast for a great picture, ah, that was something! To watch her skilful fingers as by some strange magic she placed a daub of color here, another there, twisted her brush here and twirled it there, sent it gliding here, gliding there, until, like the slow coming of a glorious dawn, there grew a picture showing Bihari, the powerful gypsy blacksmith, the ragged gypsy children, the anxious housewives, all in one group that seemed to glorify toil. Ah, that was glory indeed!
Jeanne would never be a painter, she knew this well enough. Yet she had sensed a great fact, that all true art is alike, that a painter draws inspiration and fresh power from a great musician, that a novelist listens to a symphony and goes home to write a better book, that even a dancer does her part in the world more skilfully because of her association with a famous painter. So Jeanne basked in the light that Miss Mabee spread about her and was gloriously happy.
In the meantime Florence was keeping an appointment on the telephone and, to all appearances having a grand time of it. She was saying:
“Yes, yes—yes, indeed!—Oh, yes, very rich.—And old. Oh, quite old, perhaps eighty—Famous?—Oh, surely, terribly famous.—Glorious pictures. Yes—In Hollywood? She hasn’t told me for sure. But yes, I think so.”
This went on for a full ten minutes. From time to time she put a hand over the mouth-piece while she indulged in peals of laughter. Then, sobering, she would go on with her conversation.
When the thing was all over, the receiver hung up, she went into one more fit of laughter, then said as she slowly walked across the floor, “That’s great! I wonder how many of them do it just that way? Perhaps all of them, and just think how they can rake in the money if they go after it in a big way!”
A big way? Her face sobered. That beautiful girl, June Travis, had met her once more at the newspaper office. She had confided to her that Madame Zaran had asked her for a thousand dollars.
“A thousand dollars!” Florence had exclaimed. “For what?”
“To tell me where my father is.” She turned a puzzled face toward Florence. “Why not? If you were all alone in the world and if you had even a great deal of money, wouldn’t you give it all just to get your father back?”
“Yes, perhaps,” Florence replied slowly, “if they really did bring him back.”
“Oh, they will!” the girl exclaimed. “They will! Madame Zaran knows a truly great man in the east. He has done wonderful things. His fees are high. But great lawyers, great surgeons ask large fees too. So,” she sighed, “if my father is not found before I get my money, I shall pay them.”
“Yes, and perhaps much more,” Florence thought with an inward groan. “But her father shall be found. He must be, and that in natural ways. He really must!
“But how?” Her spirits drooped. How? Truly that was the question.
A key in the door startled her from her troubled thoughts. It was Jeanne back from Maxwell Street.
“Did you find that thieving gypsy?” Florence asked.
“No, but we did a glorious sketch of Bihari in his shop.”
“But what of the poor widow? She can’t eat your pictures.”
“N-no.” Jeanne put on a sad face. “I shall find her for you, though! Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Florence with a lightning-like change to a lighter mood, “you shall go to that place on North Clark Street and have your past as well as your future told.
“And,” she added with a chuckle, “lest you be too much surprised by your fortune, I will say this much: Myrtle Rand will tell you that you have a grandfather who is very old and very rich—”
“But, Florence, I have no grandfather. I—”
Florence held up a hand for silence. “As for yourself, she will tell you that you have been a gay deceiver, that you are a truly famous young artist, a painter of landscapes, a—”
“But, my dear, I—”
“Yes, I know. But how can I help that? This is to be your past and future. If you don’t like the future, you may ask her to change it. But what is done is done! You can’t change your past!
“As for your future,” she went on, grinning broadly, “you are to journey to Hollywood. There you shall be employed by a great moving picture company simply to plan magnificent backgrounds against which the world’s greatest moving picture dramas are to be played.”
By this time Jeanne was so dazed that she had no further questions to ask.
“Only tomorrow will tell,” she sighed as she sank into a chair.
And tomorrow did tell. Scarcely had Jeanne paid her two dollars to the fortune teller, Myrtle Rand, than the fortune Florence had promised her began unfolding itself.
“The cards say this—” Myrtle Rand shuffled and dealt, shuffled and dealt again. “I see this and this and this in the crystal ball.” Nothing of importance was changed. Jeanne had heard it all before. Florence had told her.
“But how could she know that the fortune teller would say all this?” she kept asking herself. “And almost all of it untrue.”
She was still asking herself this question when she joined Florence for lunch two hours later.
“How could you know?” she demanded.
“Very simple,” Florence replied in high glee. “I told her all that over the phone.”
“But why?” Jeanne stared.
“Can’t you see?” Florence replied, “I was testing her system which, after all, is a very simple one. The first time you visited her she, on a very simple pretext, got the name and address of someone who knows you. On still another pretext she called me on the phone to ask about you, thinking me your hair-dresser, and I told her things that were entirely untrue.”
“And if they had been true,” Jeanne exclaimed, “if I had known nothing of the phone call, how astonished I should have been to find that she could get so much of my past from the cards and the crystal ball!”
“To be sure. And, quite naturally, you would have had great faith in her prophecies for the future.”
“Florence!” Jeanne cried, “she is a fraud!”
“Yes,” Florence agreed. “But not a very great fraud.
“Tillie, Fronie and Dick will have ice cream and cake for dinner,” she said softly.
“Who are they?” Jeanne asked in surprise.
“They are three foundlings that Myrtle Rand is befriending. So-o,” Florence ended slowly, “I shall not write up Myrtle Rand, at least not with her real name and address. I shall, however, make a good story of our grand discovery.
“And that,” she added abruptly, “brings me to another subject. Sandy is flying north tomorrow to witness the moose trapping.”
“Tomorrow!”
“That’s it. You may as well hurry home and pack your bag. As for me, that may spell defeat. I’ll have to write my own stories, and if I fail—” She did not finish, but the look on her face was a sober one. She had come to love her strange task. She had planned some things that to her seemed quite important. She must not fail.
That evening at ten they sat once more before the fire, Florence, Jeanne and Miss Mabee. Because Jeanne was to go flying away through the clouds next morning, they were in a mellow mood.
Marie Mabee rested easily in her deeply cushioned chair before the fire. She was wrapped in a dressing gown of gorgeous hue, a bright red, trimmed in deepest blue. Upon the sleeves was some strange Oriental design. On her feet, stretched out carelessly before the fire, were low shoes of shark skin, red like the gown. With her sleek black hair combed straight back from the high forehead, with her deep dark eyes shining and her unique profile half hidden by shadows, she seemed to Florence some strange princess just arrived from India.
“What is it,” Marie Mabee spoke at last, “what is it we ask of life?”
“Peace. Happiness. Beauty,” Jeanne spoke up quickly.
“Success. Power,” Florence added.
“Peace—” Marie Mabee’s tone was mellow. “Ah, yes, how many there are who seek real peace and never find it! I wonder if we have it, you and you and I.” She spread her long slender hands out before the fire.
“And why not?” She laughed a laugh that was like the low call of birds at sunset. “Is this not peace? We are here before the fire. No one wishes to do us harm, or at least they cannot reach us. We have food, shelter and a modest share of life’s beautiful things. Do we not have peace? Ah, yes. But if not, then it is our own fault.
“‘The mind has its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’
“But beauty?” Her tone changed. She sat bolt upright. “Yes, we want beauty.” Her eyes swept the room. There were elaborate draperies, a tiny clock of solid gold, an ivory falcon, an exquisite bust of pure white marble, all the works of art she had gathered about her, and above them all, one great masterpiece, “Sheep on the Hillside.” “Yes,” she agreed, “we have a craving for beauty. All have that perhaps. Some much more than others. But beauty—” she sprang to her feet. “Beauty, yes! Yes, we must have beauty first, last and always.”
As she began marching slowly back and forth before the fire, Florence was shocked by the thought that she resembled a sleek black leopard. “Nonsense!” she whispered to herself.
“Happiness? Yes.” Marie Mabee dropped back to her place of repose. “Happiness may be had by all. The simplest people are happiest because their wants are few. Or are they?”
Neither Jeanne nor Florence knew the answer. Who does?
“But success,” Florence insisted. “Yes, and power.”
“Success?” There was a musing quality in Marie Mabee’s voice. “I wonder if success is what I am always striving for? Or do I make pictures because I enjoy creating beauty?
“After all—” she flung her arms wide. “What does it matter?
“But power!” Her tone changed. “No! No! I have no desire for power. Leave that to the rich man, to the rulers, anyone who desires it. I have no use for power. Give me peace, beauty, happiness, and, if you insist, success, and I will do without all the rest.”
After that, for a long time there was silence in the room. Florence studied the faces of her companions, each beautiful in its own way, she wondered if they were thinking or only dreaming.
For herself, she was soon lost in deep thought. To her mind had come a picture of Frances Ward. Her littered desk, her tumbled hair, her bright eager eyes, the slow procession of unfortunate and unhappy ones that passed all day long before that desk of hers—all stood out in bold relief.
“What does Frances Ward want?” she asked herself. “Peace ... beauty ... happiness ... success?” She wondered.
Here were two people, Marie Mabee and Frances Ward. How strangely different they were! And yet, what wonderful friends they had both been to her!
“Life,” she whispered, “is strange. Perhaps there was a time when Frances Ward too wanted peace, beauty, happiness, success for herself, just as Miss Mabee does. But now she desires happiness for others—that and that alone.
“Perhaps,” she concluded, “I too shall want only that when I am old.
“And yet—”
Ah, that disquieting “And yet—.” She was wondering in her own way what the world would be like if everyone sought first the happiness of others.
Upon her thoughts there broke the suddenly spoken words of Marie Mabee, “Let us have beauty. By all means! Beauty first, last and always!”
Two hours later Florence sat alone in the half darkness that enshrouded the studio. The others had retired for the night. She was still engaged in the business of putting her thoughts to bed.
It was a strange little world she found herself in at this time. Having started out, with an amused smile, to discover novel and interesting newspaper stories about people who pretended to understand other men’s minds, who read their bumps, studied the stars under which they were born, psychoanalyzed their minds, told their fortunes and all the rest, she found herself delving deeper, ever deeper into the mysteries of their strange cults. Ever striving to divide the true from the false, tracking down, as best she could, those who were frauds and robbers, she had at last got herself into a difficult if not dangerous situation.
“There’s that gypsy woman who stole from a poor widow,” she told herself. “Jeanne’s going away. That cannot wait. I’ll have to find that gypsy. And then—?”
Then there was June Travis and her lost father. Madame Zaran was on her trail; the voodoo priestess too. June had made one more visit to the priestess. She was afraid the girl had said too much. At any rate, she was sure the priestess had demanded a large fee for finding the lost father.
“Ishall find him,” the big girl said, springing to her feet. “I must!”
Her eyes fell upon a picture standing on a low easel in the corner. It was the one done on thin paper. “That is for Tum Morrow’s party,” she thought. “Well, Tum Morrow’s party will have to wait.
“Jeanne’s going away will leave us lonely,” she sighed. “But who can blame her? Isle Royale was beautiful in summer. What must it be in winter?”
For a time she stood there dreaming of rushing waters, leaf-brown trails and sighing spruce trees. Then she turned to make her way slowly across the room, up the narrow stairway and into her own small chamber.
One question remained to haunt her even in her dreams. Were all fortune tellers like Myrtle Rand? Did they secure their facts in an underhanded manner, then pass them on to you as great surprises? Who could answer this? Surely not Florence.
A great wave of loneliness swept over Florence as on the morrow’s chilly dawn she bade good-bye to her beloved boon companion and to Sandy, then saw them mount the steps of their plane and watched that plane soar away into the blue.
“Isle Royale is hundreds of miles away,” she thought to herself. “They will be back, I’m sure enough of that. Airplanes are safe enough. But when shall I see them again?”
It was not loneliness alone that depressed her. She was experiencing a feeling of dread. She had dug deeper into the lives and ways of some fortune tellers than they could have wished.
“They are wolves,” she told herself, “and wolves are cowards. They fight as cowards fight, in the dark.” She told them off on her fingers: the dark-faced gypsy woman was one, Madame Zaran a second, Marianna Cristophe, the voodoo priestess, a third. And there were others.
“And now,” she thought, “I am alone.”
Alone? No! Her spirits rose. There was still Frances Ward. “Good old gray-haired Frances Ward!” she whispered. “Everybody’s grandmother. May God bless her!”
It was Frances Ward who helped her over the first difficult hurdle of that day. Sandy was gone. She must write her own stories. This seemed easy enough, until she sat down to the typewriter. Then, all thoughts left her.
“My dear, try a pencil,” Frances Ward suggested after a time. “A pencil becomes almost human after you have used it long enough; a typewriter never. And why don’t you write the story of your little lost girl, June Travis? Use no names, but tell it so well that someone who knew her father will come to her aid.”
“I’ll try.” Florence was endowed with fresh hope.
With four large yellow pencils before her, she began to write. The first pencil broke. She threw it at the wall. The second broke. She threw it after the first. Then thoughts and pencils began flowing evenly.
When, an hour later, Florence presented a typewritten copy of the story for Mrs. Ward’s inspection she pronounced it, “Capital! The best that has been in your column so far.”
It may be that this extravagant praise turned the girl’s head, leading her to commit an act that brought her into great peril. However that may be, at eight o’clock that night she fell into a trap.
The thing seemed safe enough. True, Florence did the greater part of investigating in the day time. But a “spiritual adviser”—who would expect any sort of danger from such a person?
That was what Professor Alcapar styled himself, “Spiritual Adviser.” Had his sign hung from a church, Florence would not have given it a second thought. But the card that fell into her hand said his studio was on one of the upper floors of a great office building. Perhaps this should have warned her, but it did not.
“I’ll just take the elevator up there and ask a question or two,” she told herself. “Might get a grand story for tomorrow.” She did, but she was not to write it—at least, not yet.
There was no glass in the door of Professor Alcapar’s studio. A light shone through the crack at the edge of the door. She knocked, almost timidly. The door was opened at once. She stepped inside. The door closed itself. She was there.
Save for one small light in a remote corner, the room was shrouded in darkness.
“More of their usual stuff,” she thought to herself without fear. “Darkness stands for secrecy, mystery. At least, these people know how to impress their clients. Spiritual adviser, clothed in darkness.”
She became conscious of someone near her. Then of a sudden she caught the distinct click of a lock, and after that came a flood of light.
She took two backward steps, then stood quite still. With a single sweep of her practiced eye, she took in all within the room. She started as her eyes fell upon—of all persons!—Madame Zaran. She was seated in a chair, smiling a complacent and knowing smile.