Having overtaken the cab, she gave the driver hasty instructions, and then settled back against the cushions.
Her head was in a whirl. What was it she planned to do? To follow a dangerous criminal? Alone? To frustrate his plans single-handed? The thing seemed tremendous, preposterous.
“Probably not going to his haunt at all. May not be his haunt.”
Pressing her hands against her temples, she closed her eyes. For a space of several moments she bumped along.
Then she straightened up. The cab had ceased its bumping. They were rolling along on smooth paving. This was not to be expected.
“Driver! Driver!” she exclaimed, sliding the glass window to one side with a bang. “Where are we?”
“Kinzie and Carpen.”
“Oh, oh!” She could have wept. “You’re going north. The address I gave you is south.”
“It can’t be, Miss.”
“It is!”
“Then I’m wrong.”
“Of course! Turn about and go south to 2200. Then I’ll tell you the way.”
Once again they glided and jolted along. In the end they pulled up before a stone building. A two-story structure that might once have been a mansion, it stood between two towering warehouses.
“That’s the place. There’s the number.”
She hesitated. Should she ask the driver to remain? “No, they’ll see him and make a run for it.” She had thought of a better way. She paid him and as if frightened by his surroundings he sped away.
“Not a moment to lose!” she whispered. Some sixth sense seemed to tell her that this was the place—that the dark one and his victim were inside.
Speeding to a corner where a boy cried his papers, she thrust half a dollar into his hand, and whispered a command:
“Bring a policeman to that house!” She poked a thumb over her shoulder.
“You’ll need three of ’em!” the boy muttered, as he hurried away. She did not hear. She was speeding back.
“Now!” she breathed, squaring her shoulders.
Up the stone steps, a thrust at the doorbell. Ten seconds. No answer. A vigorous thump. A kick. Still no response.
Examining the door, she found it to be a double one.
“Rusty catches. Easy!
“But then?”
She did not stand on ceremony. Stepping back a pace, she threw her sturdy form against the door. It gave way, letting her into a hallway. To the right of the hallway was a door.
A man was in the act of springing at her when someone from behind exclaimed:
“Wait! It’s a frail!”
The words appeared to upset the other’s plans, or at least to halt them for a second.
During that second the girl plunged head foremost. Striking him amidships, she capsized him and took all the wind from his sail in one and the same instant.
She regained her balance just in time to see a long, blue gun being leveled at her. It was in the hand of the evil-eyed one.
Not for naught had she labored in the gymnasium. Before the gun flashed, it went whirling through space, crashed a window and was gone.
As for the evil-eyed one, he too vanished. At the same moment three stolid policemen came stamping in. The newsboy had done yeoman duty.
The offender who had been overturned by Florence was duly mopped up. The evil-eyed one was sought in vain. Groaning in a corner was the short Frenchman.
His arms were bound behind him in a curious fashion; in fact they were so bound by ropes and a stick that his arms might have been twisted from their sockets, and this by a few simple turns of that stick.
“Kidnappin’ an’ torture!” said one of the police, standing the captured offender on his feet. “You’ll get yours, Mike.”
“It was Blackie’s idea,” grumbled the man.
“And where’s Blackie?”
The man shrugged.
“Left you to hold the bag. That’s him. Anyway, now we got it on him, we’ll mop him up! Blamed if we don’t! Tim, untie that man.” He nodded toward the little Frenchman.
“Now then,” the police sergeant commanded, “tell us why you let ’em take you in.”
“They—they told me they would take me to a person known as Petite Jeanne.”
“Pet—Petite Jeanne!” Florence could have shouted for joy. “And have you money for her, a great deal of money?”
“No, Miss.” The little man stared at her.
Florence wilted. Her pet dream had proven only an illusion. “At any rate,” she managed to say after a time, “when the police are through with you I’ll take you to her lodgings. I am her friend and pal.”
The little man looked at her distrustfully. He had put his confidence in two American citizens that day, and with dire results.
“We’ll see about that later.” The police sergeant scowled.
“I think—” His scowl had turned to a smile when, a few moments later, after completing his investigation and interrogating Florence, he turned to the Frenchman. “I think—at least it’s my opinion—that you’ll be safe enough in this young lady’s company.
“If she’d go to the trouble of hirin’ a taxi and followin’ you, then breakin’ down a door and riskin’ her life to rescue you from a bloody pair of kidnappers and murderers, she’s not goin’ to take you far from where you want to go.”
“I am overcome!” The Frenchman bowed low. “I shall accompany her with the greatest assurance.”
So, side by side, the curious little Frenchman and the girl marched away.
“But, Mademoiselle!” The Frenchman seemed dazed. “Why all this late unpleasantness?”
“Those two!” Florence threw out her arms. “They’d have tortured you to death. They thought, as I did, that you were in possession of money, a great deal of money.”
“In France,” the man exclaimed in evident disgust, “we execute such men!”
“In America,” Florence replied quietly, “we mostly don’t. And what a pity!
“The elevated is only three blocks away.” She took up a brisk stride. “We’ll take it. I hate taxis. Drivers never know where you want to go. Outside the Loop, they’re lost like babes in the wood.”
A taxi might indeed have lost both Florence and the polite little Frenchman. Under Florence’s plan only the Frenchman was lost. And this, to her, was just as bad, for shedidwant Petite Jeanne to meet this man and receive the message from him, even though the message was not to be delivered in the form of bank notes.
It was the little man’s extreme politeness that proved his undoing. In the Loop they were obliged to change trains. Florence had waited for the right train, and then had invited him to go before her, when, with a lift of his hat, he said, bowing:
“After you, my dear Mademoiselle!”
This was all well enough. But there were other Madams and Mademoiselles boarding that train.
Again and yet again the little man bowed low. When at last the gates banged and the train rattled on its way, Florence found to her consternation that she was alone.
“We left him there bowing!” There was a certain humor in the situation. But she was disappointed and alarmed.
Speeding across the bridge at the next station, she boarded a second train and went rattling back. Arrived at her former station, she found no trace of the man.
“He took another train. It’s no use.” Her shoulders drooped. “All that and nothing for it.”
Her dejection lasted but for a moment.
“To-morrow,” she murmured. “It is not far away. And on the morrow there is ever something new.”
Midnight. The lights of Chinatown were dim as four figures made their way to a door marked: “For Members Only.”
Jeanne, the foremost of these figures, knew that door. She had entered it before. Yet, as her hand touched the heavy handle, she was halted by a sudden fear. Her face blanched.
Close at her side Marjory Dean, artist and supreme interpreter of life as she was, understood instantly.
“Come, child. Don’t be afraid. They are a simple people, these Orientals.”
“Yes. Yes, I know.” The girl took a tight grip on herself and pressed on through the door. Marjory Dean, Angelo and Swen followed.
At the top of the second stair they were halted by a dark shadow-like figure.
“What you want?”
“Hop Long Lee.”
“You come.”
The man, whose footsteps made not the slightest sound, led the way.
“Midnight,” Jeanne whispered to herself. “Why did I say midnight?” It was always so. Ever she was desiring mystery, enchantment at unheard-of hours. Always, when the hour came she was ready to turn back.
“The magic curtain.” She started. A second dark figure was beside her. “You wished to see?”
“Y-yes.”
“You shall see. I am Hop Long Lee.
“And these are your friends? Ah, yes! Come! You will see!” His hand touched Jeanne’s. She started back. It was cold, like marble.
They followed in silence. They trod inch-thick rugs. There came no sound save the tok-tok-tok of some great, slow clock off there somewhere in the dark.
“I am not afraid,” Jeanne told herself. “I am not going to be afraid. I have seen all this before.”
Yet, when she had descended the narrow, winding stairs, when a small, Oriental rug was offered her in lieu of a chair, her limbs gave way beneath her and she dropped, limp as a rag, to the comforting softness of the rug.
That which followed will remain painted on the walls of never-to-be-forgotten memories.
Figures, dark, creeping figures, appeared in this dimly lighted room.
Once again the curtain, a red and glowing thing, crept across the stage. She gripped Marjory Dean’s hand hard.
Some figures appeared before the curtain. Grotesque figures. They danced as she had imagined only gnomes and elves might dance. A vast, many-colored dragon crept from the darkness. With a mighty lashing of tail, he swallowed the dancers, then disappeared into the darkness from which he had come.
“Oh!” Jeanne breathed. Even Marjory Dean, who had witnessed many forms of magic, was staring straight ahead.
A single figure appeared on the stage, one all in white. The figure wore a long, flowing robe. The face was white.
From somewhere strange music began to whisper. It was like wind sighing in the trees, the trees in the graveyard at midnight. And this was midnight.
Next instant Jeanne leaped straight into the air. Someone had struck a gong, an Oriental gong.
Mortified beyond belief, she settled back in her place.
And now the magic curtain, like some wall of fire, burned a fiercer red. From the shadows the dragon thrust out his head once more.
The white-faced figure ceased dancing. The wind in the trees sang on. The figure, appearing to see the dragon, drew back in trembling fright.
He approached the fiery curtain, yet his back was ever toward it. There was yet a space between the two sections of the curtain. The figure, darting toward this gap, was caught in the flames.
“Oh!” Jeanne breathed. “He will die in flames!”
Marjory Dean pressed her hand hard.
Of a sudden the floor beneath the white figure opened and swallowed him up.
Jeanne looked for the dragon. It was gone. The fiery red of the curtain was turning to an orange glow.
“Come. You have seen.” It was Hop Long Lee who spoke. Once again his marble-cold hand touched Jeanne’s hand.
Ten minutes later the four figures were once more in the street.
“Midnight in an Oriental garden,” Angelo breathed.
“That,” breathed Marjory Dean, “is drama, Oriental drama. Give it a human touch and it could be made supreme.”
“You—you think it could be made into a thing of beauty?”
“Surely. Most certainly, my child. Nothing could be more unique.”
“Come,” whispered Jeanne happily. “Come with me. The night is young. The day is for sleep. Come. We will have coffee by my fire. Then we will talk, talk of all this. We will create an opera in a night. Is it not so?”
And it was so.
A weird bit of opera it was that they produced that night. Even the atmosphere in which they worked was fantastic. Candle light, a flickering fire that now and then leaped into sudden conflagration, mellow-toned gongs provided by the little lady of the cameo; such were the elements that added to the fantastic reality of the unreal.
In this one-act drama the giant paper dragon remained. The flaming curtain, the setting for some weird Buddhist ceremony, was to furnish the motif. A flesh and blood person, whose part was to be played by Marjory Dean, replaced the thing of white cloth and paper that had danced a weird dance, and became entangled in the fiery curtain. Oriental mystery, the deep hatred of some types of yellow men for the white race, these entered into the story.
In the plot the hero (Marjory Dean), a white boy, son of a rich trader, caught by the lure of mystery, adventure and tales of the magic curtain, volunteers to take the place of a rich Chinese youth who is to endure the trial by fire.
A very ugly old Chinaman, who holds the white boy in high regard, learning of his plans and realizing his peril, prepares the trap-door in the floor beneath the magic curtain.
When the hour comes for the trial by fire, the white boy, being ignorant of the secrets that will save him, appears doomed as the flames of the curtain surround him, consuming the very mask from his face and leaving him there, his identity revealed in stark reality.
Then as the rich Chinaman, who has planned the trial, realizes the catastrophe that must befall his people if the rich youth is burned to death, prepares to cast himself into the flames, the floor opens to swallow the boy up, and the curtain fades.
There is not space here to tell of the motives of love, hate, pride and patriotism that lay back of this bit of drama. Enough that when it was done Marjory Dean pronounced it the most perfect bit of opera yet produced in America.
“And you will be our diva?” Jeanne was all eagerness.
“I shall be proud to.”
“Then,” Angelo’s eyes shone, “then we are indeed rich once more.”
“Yes. Your beautiful rugs, your desk, your ancient friend the piano, they shall all come back to you.” In her joy Jeanne could have embraced him. As it was she wrung his hand in parting, and thanked him over and over for his part in this bit of work and adventure.
“The music,” she whispered to Swen, “you will do it?”
“It is as well as done. The wind whispering in the graveyard pines at midnight. This is done by reeds and strings. And there are the gongs, the deep melodious gongs of China. What more could one ask?”
What more, indeed?
“And now,” said Florence, after she had, some hours later, listened to Jeanne’s recital of that night’s affairs, “now that it is all over, what is there in it all for you?”
“For me?” Jeanne spread her hands wide. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Then why—?”
“Only this,” Jeanne interrupted her, “you said once that one found the best joy in life by helping others. Well then,” she laughed a little laugh, “I have helped a little.
“And you shall see, my time will come.”
Was she right? Does one sometimes serve himself best by serving others? We shall see.
Time marched on, as time has a way of doing. A week passed, another and yet another. Each night of opera found Jeanne, still masquerading as Pierre, at her post among the boxes. Never forgetting that a priceless necklace had been stolen from those boxes and that she had run away, ever conscious of the searching eyes of Jaeger and of the inscrutable shadow that was the lady in black, Jeanne performed her tasks as one who walks beneath a shadow that in a moment may be turned into impenetrable darkness.
For all this, she still thrilled to the color, the music, the drama, which is Grand Opera.
“Some day,” she had a way of whispering to herself, “some happy day!” Yet that day seemed indistinct and far away.
The dark-faced menace to her happiness, he of the evil eye, appeared to have vanished. Perhaps he was in jail. Who could tell?
The little Frenchman with the message, too, had vanished. Why had he never returned to ask Pierre, the usher in the boxes, the correct address of Petite Jeanne? Beyond doubt he believed himself the victim of a practical joke. “This boy Pierre knows nothing regarding the whereabouts of that person named Petite Jeanne.” Thus he must have reasoned. At any rate the message was not delivered. If Jeanne had lost a relative by death, if she had inherited a fortune or was wanted for some misdemeanor committed in France, she remained blissfully ignorant of it all.
Three times Rosemary Robinson had invited her to visit her at her home. Three times, as Pierre, politely but firmly, she had refused. “This affair,” she told herself, “has gone far enough. Before our friendship ripens or is blighted altogether, I must reveal to her my identity. And that I am not yet willing to do. It might rob me of my place in this great palace of art.”
Thanks to Marjory Dean, the little French girl’s training in Grand Opera proceeded day by day. Without assigning a definite reason for it, the prima donna had insisted upon giving her hours of training each week in the role of the juggler.
More than this, she had all but compelled Jeanne to become her understudy in the forthcoming one-act opera to be known as “The Magic Curtain.”
At an opportune moment Marjory Dean had introduced the manager of the opera to all the fantastic witchery of this new opera. He had been taken by it.
At once he had agreed that when the “Juggler” was played, this new opera should be presented to the public.
So Jeanne lived in a world of dreams, dreams that she felt could never come true. “But I am learning,” she would whisper to herself, “learning of art and life. What more could one ask?”
Then came a curious invitation. She was to visit the studios of Fernando Tiffin. The invitation came through Marjory Dean. Strangest of all, she was to appear as Pierre.
“Why Pierre?” she pondered.
“Yes, why?” Florence echoed. “But, after all, such an invitation! Fernando Tiffin is the greatest sculptor in America. Have you seen the fountain by the Art Museum?”
“Where the pigeons are always bathing?”
“Yes.”
“It is beautiful.”
“He created that statue, and many others.”
“That reminds me,” Jeanne sought out her dress suit and began searching its pockets, “an artist, an interesting man with a beard, gave me his card. He told me to visit his studio. He was going to tell me more about lights and shadows.”
“Lights and shadows?”
“Yes. How they are like life. But now I have lost his card.”
* * * * * * * *
Florence returned to the island. There she sat long in the sunshine by the rocky shore, talking with Aunt Bobby. She found the good lady greatly perplexed.
“They’ve served notice,” Aunt Bobby sighed, “the park folks have. All that is to come down.” She waved an arm toward the cottonwood thicket and the “Cathedral.” “A big building is going up. Steam shovels are working over on the west side now. Any day, now, we’ll have to pack up, Meg and me.
“And where’ll we go? Back to the ships, I suppose. I hate it for Meg. She ought to have more schoolin’. But poor folks can’t pick and choose.”
“There will be a way out,” Florence consoled her. But would there? Who could tell?
She hunted up Meg and advised her to look into that mysterious package. “It may be a bomb.”
“If it is, it won’t go off by itself.”
“It may be a gun.”
“Don’t need a gun. Got two of ’em. Good ones.”
“It may be stolen treasure.”
“Well, I didn’t steal it!” Meg turned flashing eyes upon her. And there for a time the matter ended.
* * * * * * * *
Jeanne attended the great sculptor’s party. Since she had not been invited to accompany Marjory Dean, she went alone. What did it matter? Miss Dean was to be there. That was enough.
She arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon. A servant answered the bell. She was ushered at once into a vast place with a very high ceiling. All about her were statues and plaster-of-paris reproductions of masterpieces.
Scarcely had she time to glance about her when she heard a voice, saw a face and knew she had found an old friend—the artist who had spoken so interestingly of life, he of the beard, was before her.
“So this is where you work?” She was overjoyed. “And does the great Fernando Tiffin do his work here, too?”
“I am Fernando Tiffin.”
“Oh!” Jeanne swayed a little.
“You see,” the other smiled, putting out a hand to steady her, “I, too, like to study life among those who do not know me; to masquerade a little.”
“Masquerade!” Jeanne started. Did he, then, see through her own pretenses? She flushed.
“But no!” She fortified herself. “How could he know?”
“You promised to tell me more about life.” She hurried to change the subject.
“Ah, yes. How fine! There is yet time.
“You see.” He threw a switch. The place was flooded with light. “The thing that stands before you, the ‘Fairy and the Child,’ it is called. It is a reproduction of a great masterpiece: a perfect reproduction, yet in this light it is nothing; a blare of white, that is all.
“But see!” He touched one button, then another, and, behold, the statue stood before them a thing of exquisite beauty!
“You see?” he smiled. “Now there are shadows, perfect shadows, just enough, and just enough light.
“Life is like that. There must be shadows. Without shadows we could not be conscious of light. But when the lights are too bright, the shadows too deep, then all is wrong.
“Your bright lights of life at the Opera House, the sable coats, the silks and jewels, they are a form of life. But there the lights are too strong. They blind the eyes, hide the true beauty that may be beneath it all.
“But out there on that vacant lot, in the cold and dark—you have not forgotten?”
“I shall never forget.” Jeanne’s voice was low.
“There the shadows were too deep. It was like this.” He touched still another button. The beauty of the statue was once more lost, this time in a maze of shadows too deep and strong.
“You see.” His voice was gentle.
“I see.”
“But here are more guests arriving. You may not be aware of it, but this is to be an afternoon of opera, not of art.”
Soon enough Jeanne was to know this, for, little as she had dreamed it, hers on that occasion was to be the stellar role.
It was Marjory Dean who had entered. With her was the entire cast of “The Magic Curtain.”
“He has asked that we conduct a dress rehearsal here for the benefit of a few choice friends,” Miss Dean whispered in Jeanne’s ear, as soon as she could draw her aside.
“A strange request, I’ll grant you,” she answered Jeanne’s puzzled look. “Not half so strange as this, however. He wishes you to take the stellar role.”
“But, Miss Dean!”
“It is his party. His word is law in many places. You will do your best for me.” She pressed Jeanne’s hand hard.
Jeanne did her best. And undoubtedly, despite the lack of a truly magic curtain, despite the limitations of the improvised stage, the audience was visibly impressed.
At the end, as Jeanne sank from sight beneath the stage, the great sculptor leaned over to whisper in Marjory Dean’s ear:
“She will do it!”
“What did I tell you? To be sure she will!”
The operatic portion of the program at an end, the guests were treated to a brief lecture on the art of sculpture. Tea was served. The guests departed. Through it all Jeanne walked about in a daze. “It is as if I had been invited to my own wedding and did not so much as know I was married,” she said to Florence, later in the day.
Florence smiled and made no reply. There was more to come, much more. Florence believed that. But Jeanne had not so much as guessed.
The great hour came at last. “To-night,” Jeanne had whispered, “‘The Magic Curtain’ will unfold before thousands! Will it be a success?”
The very thought that it might prove a failure turned her cold. The happiness of her good friends, Angelo, Swen and Marjory Dean was at stake. And to Jeanne the happiness of those she respected and loved was more dear than her own.
Night came quite suddenly on that eventful day. Great dark clouds, sweeping in from the lake, drew the curtain of night.
Jeanne found herself at her place among the boxes a full hour before the time required. This was not of her own planning. There was a mystery about this; a voice had called her on the telephone requesting her to arrive early.
“Now I am here,” she murmured, “and the place is half dark. Who can have requested it? What could have been the reason?”
Still another mystery. Florence was with her. And she was to remain. A place had been provided for her in the box usually occupied by Rosemary Robinson and her family.
“Of course,” she had said to Florence, “they know that we had something to do with the discovery of the magic curtain. It is, perhaps, because of this that you are here.”
Florence had smiled, but had made no reply.
At this hour the great auditorium was silent, deserted. Only from behind the drawn stage curtain came a faint murmur, telling of last minute preparations.
“‘The Magic Curtain.’” Jeanne whispered. The words still thrilled her. “It will be witnessed to-night by thousands. What will be the verdict? To-morrow Angelo and Swen, my friends of our ‘Golden Circle,’ will be rich or very, very poor.”
“The Magic Curtain.” Surely it had been given a generous amount of publicity. Catching a note of the unusual, the mysterious, the uncanny in this production, the reporters had made the most of it. An entire page of the Sunday supplement had been devoted to it. A crude drawing of the curtains, pictures of Hop Long Lee, of Angelo, Swen, Marjory Dean, and even Jeanne were there. And with these a most lurid story purporting to be the history of this curtain of fire as it had existed through the ages in some little known Buddhist temple. The very names of those who, wrapped in its consuming folds, had perished, were given in detail. Jeanne had read, had shuddered, then had tried to laugh it off as a reporter’s tale. In this she did not quite succeed. For her the magic curtain contained more than a suggestion of terror.
She was thinking of all this when an attendant, hurrying up the orchestra aisle, paused beneath her and called her name, the only name by which she was known at the Opera House:
“Pierre! Oh, Pierre!”
“Here. Here I am.”
Without knowing why, she thrilled to her very finger tips. “Is it for this that I am here?” she asked herself.
“Hurry down!” came from below. “The director wishes to speak to you.”
“The director!” The blood froze in her veins. So this was the end! Her masquerade had been discovered. She was to be thrown out of the Opera House.
“And on this night of all nights!” She was ready to weep.
It was a very meek Pierre who at last stood before the great director.
“Are you Pierre?” His tone was not harsh. She began to hope a little.
“I am Pierre.”
“This man—” The director turned to one in the shadows. Jeanne caught her breath. It was the great sculptor, Fernando Tiffin.
“This man,” the director repeated, after she had recovered from her surprise, “tells me that you know the score of this new opera, ‘The Magic Curtain.’”
“Y-yes. Yes, I do.” What was this? Her heart throbbed painfully.
“And that of the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame.’”
“I—I do.” This time more boldly.
“Surely this can be no crime,” she told herself.
“This has happened,” the director spoke out abruptly, “Miss Dean is at the Robinson home. She has fallen from a horse. She will not be able to appear to-night. Fernando Tiffin tells me that you are prepared to assume the leading role in these two short operas. I say it is quite impossible. You are to be the judge.”
Staggered by this load that had been so suddenly cast upon her slender shoulders, the little French girl seemed about to sink to the floor. Fortunately at that instant her eyes caught the calm, reassuring gaze of the great sculptor. “I have said you are able.” She read this meaning there.
“Yes.” Her shoulders were square now. “I am able.”
“Then,” said the director, “you shall try.”
Ninety minutes later by the clock, she found herself waiting her cue, the cue that was to bid her come dancing forth upon a great stage, the greatest in the world. And looking down upon her, quick to applaud or to blame, were the city’s thousands.
In the meantime, in her seat among the boxes, Florence had met with an unusual experience. A mysterious figure had suddenly revealed herself as one of Petite Jeanne’s old friends. At the same time she had half unfolded some month-old mysteries.
Petite Jeanne had hardly disappeared through the door leading to the stage when two whispered words came from behind Florence’s back:
“Remember me?”
With a start, the girl turned about to find herself looking into the face of a tall woman garbed in black.
Reading uncertainty in her eyes, the woman whispered: “Cedar Point. Gamblers’ Island. Three rubies.”
“The ‘lady cop’!” Florence sprang to her feet. She was looking at an old friend. Many of her most thrilling adventures had been encountered in the presence of this lady of the police.
“So it was you!” she exclaimed in a low whisper. “You are Jeanne’s lady in black?”
“I am the lady in black.”
“And she never recognized you?”
“I arranged it so she would not. She never saw my face. I have been a guardian of her trail on many an occasion.
“And now!” Her figure grew tense, like that of a springing tiger. “Now I am about to come to the end of a great mystery. You can help me. That is why I arranged that you should be here.”
“I?” Florence showed her astonishment.
“Sit down.”
The girl obeyed.
“Some weeks ago a priceless necklace was stolen from this very box. You recall that?”
“How could I forget?” Florence sat up, all attention.
“Of course. Petite Jeanne, she is your best friend.
“She cast suspicion upon herself by deserting her post here; running away. Had it not been for me, she would have gone to jail. I had seen through her masquerade at once. ‘This,’ I said to myself, ‘is Petite Jeanne. She would not steal a dime.’ I convinced others. They spared her.
“Then,” she paused for a space of seconds, “it was up to me to find the pearls and the thief. I think I have accomplished this; at least I have found the pearls. As I said, you can help me. You know the people living on that curious man-made island?”
“I—” Florence was thunderstruck.
Aunt Bobby! Meg! How could they be implicated? All this she said to herself and was fearful.
Then, like a bolt from the blue came a picture of Meg’s birthday package.
“You know those people?” the “lady cop” insisted.
“I—why, yes, I do.”
“You will go there with me after the opera?”
“At night?”
“There is need for haste. We will go in Robinson’s big car. Jaeger will go, and Rosemary. Perhaps Jeanne, too. You will be ready? That is all for now.
“Only this: I think Jeanne is to have the stellar role to-night.”
“Jeanne! The stellar role? How could that be?”
“I think it has been arranged.”
“Arranged?”
There came no answer. The lady in black was gone.
The strangest moment in the little French girl’s career was that in which, as the juggler, she tripped out upon the Opera House stage. More than three thousand people had assembled in this great auditorium to see and hear their favorite, the city’s darling, Marjory Dean, perform in her most famous role. She was not here. They would know this at once. What would the answer be?
The answer, after perfunctory applause, was a deep hush of silence. It was as if the audience had said: “Marjory Dean is not here. Ah, well, let us see what this child can do.”
Only her tireless work under Miss Dean’s direction saved Jeanne from utter collapse. Used as she was to the smiling faces and boisterous applause of the good old light opera days, this silence seemed appalling. As it was, she played her part with a perfection that was art, devoid of buoyancy. This, at first. But as the act progressed she took a tight grip on herself and throwing herself into the part, seemed to shout at the dead audience: “You shall look! You shall hear! You must applaud!”
For all this, when the curtain was run down upon the scene, the applause, as before, lacked enthusiasm. She answered but one curtain call, then crept away alone to clench her small hands hard in an endeavor to keep back the tears and to pray as she had never prayed before, that Marjory Dean might arrive prepared to play her part before the curtain went up on the second act.
But now a strange thing was happening. From one corner of the house there came a low whisper and a murmur. It grew and grew; it spread and spread until, like a fire sweeping the dead grass of the prairies, it had passed to the darkest nook of the vast auditorium.
Curiously enough, a name was on every lip;
“Petite Jeanne!”
Someone, a fan of other days, had penetrated the girl’s mask and had seen there the light opera favorite of a year before. A thousand people in that audience had known and loved her in those good dead days that were gone.
When Jeanne, having waited and hoped in vain for the appearance of her friend and benefactor, summoned all the courage she possessed, and once more stepped upon the stage, she was greeted by such a round of applause as she had never before experienced—not even in the good old days of yesteryear.
This vast audience had suddenly taken her to its heart. How had this come about? Ah, well, what did it matter? They were hers, hers for one short hour. She must make the most of this golden opportunity.
That which followed, the completing of the “Juggler,” the opening of “The Magic Curtain,” the complete triumph of this new American opera, will always remain to Jeanne a beautiful dream. She walked and danced, she sang and bowed as one in a dream.
The great moment of all came when, after answering the fifth curtain call with her name, “Petite Jeanne! Petite Jeanne!” echoing to the vaulted ceiling, she left the stage to walk square into the arms of Marjory Dean.
“Why, I thought—” She paused, too astounded for words.
“You thought I had fallen from a horse. So I did—a leather horse with iron legs. It was in a gymnasium. Rosemary pushed me off. Truly it did not hurt at all.”
“A frame-up!” Jeanne stared.
“Yes, a frame-up for a good cause. ‘The Magic Curtain’ was yours, not mine. You discovered it. It was through your effort that this little opera was perfected. It was yours, not mine. Your golden hour.”
“My golden hour!” the little French girl repeated dreamily. “But not ever again. Not until I have sung and sung, and studied and studied shall I appear again on such a stage!”
“Child, you have the wisdom of the gods.”
“But the director!” Jeanne’s mood changed. “Does he not hate you?”