Hour of Enchantment / A Mystery Story for Girls

“I thought—” Her tone changed as she dropped into a chair. “I thought that since you are my double, so perfectly, and since you’d been in light opera, you might—” she cleared her throat—“you might be willing to take my place on—on the lot.”

“As Lorena LeMar?” Jeanne stared at her in unbelief.

“As Lorena LeMar. It wouldn’t be hard, really.” The movie star’s tone was eager. “All you’d have to do would be to study the script, get the continuity and the lines, then just go on and—and do your bit.

“And really,” she half apologized, “it’s not as if the thing would ever get across. It never will. One of those natural things, not spicy at all—don’t you know? And besides, there’s the lot—it’s too small. It could only be done properly in Hollywood, really.”

Jeanne looked at Florence. Florence was gazing at the fire. Jeanne knew what that meant. Florence was saying to herself: “She’s off again! First it was light opera, then grand opera; now it’s to be the movies.”

“Tell me,” Jeanne’s tone was little more than a whisper, “the story of this movie.”

“The story,” Miss LeMar said lightly, “doesn’t amount to much. As I’ve told you, it may never get as far as a preview.”

“I must know,” Jeanne murmured.

“Oh, it’s just one of those mountain things.” Miss LeMar’s tone was light. “The side of Big Black Mountain; that’s the place, I think.”

“Big Black Mountain!” Jensie, who had listened quietly until now, exclaimed. “That’s my home!” Her cheek turned crimson.

“And down there somewhere Lincoln was born!” said Jeanne. There was a touch of reverence in her tone.

All this was lost on Lorena LeMar. “It’s a love story, of course,” she went on. “Boy and girl standing on the side of a mountain. Springtime. Trees in bloom. Apple trees, I guess.”

“Dogwood,” Jensie corrected. She was leaning forward eagerly.

“Well, anyway, there’s the girl, about sixteen, and a boy about eighteen. Lovers. Boy’s going away. They’re saying good-bye. No clinches. Too bashful for that. Just a touch of the hand. Girl throws her apron over her eyes after he’s gone—that sort of thing.

“The girl—her name’s Zola Setser—hears some one singing. She listens. She looks. A donkey appears around the rough path. An Italian, with big brown eyes and all that, rides the donkey bareback. He is singing ‘O Sole Mio.’

“She listens and watches. A horse comes into view. A downcast sort of woman is riding the horse; two ragged children are hanging on behind.

“Of a sudden there comes the clatter of hoofs and a fat youth, dressed to kill, all leggings, silver spurs, you know, comes dashing along on a blooded horse. He bumps into the woman, knocks the children off the horse, bumps into the Italian and sends him sprawling.

“‘Damn poor white trash!’ the fat youth swears, as he leaps from his saddle. ‘Damn Dago!’” Miss LeMar waved her hands.

“The mountain girl’s dog,” Lorena LeMar’s voice went on, “a long-eared sort of hound, comes out barking. The fat youth gives the poor hound a kick that sends him away with a wild howl.

“Then he puts on a grand air, and favors the beautiful Zola with a flattering smile while he asks the way to Pounding Mill Creek.

“Zola tells him the way. But you can see she’d much rather shoot him.

“‘Damn poor white trash!’ the Italian repeats, picking himself up from the dust after the fat youth has ridden on. ‘Damn Dago!’ Everybody like us, eh? Ha! Getta ’long fine. I gotta ten dolla’, gotta one donkey. What say we start a coal mine?’

“Zola laughs at the joke.

“But the Italian is serious. He makes good his word and starts a mine. Zola’s father owns some rough land full of coal. He and this Italian, Tony Riccordio, join as partners.

“And that,” Miss LeMar yawned, “is what you might call the first act.”

“It’s a fine beginning,” Florence enthused. “And I suppose the mine prospers. Zola marries the dark-eyed Italian, and they live happily ever after.”

“No, no, you’re wrong. That’s too simple.” Lorena LeMar took a fresh start. “They mine coal and ship it. The fat youth from the outside, who is supposed to be rich, mines coal and ships it too.

“But there is intrigue in Louisville. Tony Riccordio has his coal held on the rails. Costs pile up. He is about to go into bankruptcy and Zola’s papa with him.

“So Zola hides in a load of soft coal and rides to Louisville. The switchmen dig her out and wash her up. When they see what a swell looker she is, they swear allegiance to her cause, and the day is won.

“Zola goes back. There is a dance. Mountmorris Mortimer, the fat youth, insults Zola. Tony throws him over a cliff—not a very high cliff. Only two ribs are broken. They ship him out in a freight car.

“It turns out that Mountmorris has lost all his money. His mine closes. Tony gets rich—”

“And he marries—” Jeanne put a hand over Florence’s mouth.

“No,” Miss LeMar smiled, “the handsome mountain boy Zola was telling good-bye in the beginning comes back. He and Zola go into a clinch. Tony adds his blessing, sells his share in the mine, stuffs his pockets with money and goes riding back over the mountains, singing ‘O Sole Mio’.

“That,” Miss LeMar added with a drawl, “is the drift of the story. Of course there’s a lot more to it. But you can see. What do you say? Is it a go? I’ll see that you get five hundred dollars a week. Two full weeks if you’ll only do it.”

“Five hundred dollars for just one week!” It was Jensie, the little mountain girl who spoke in a whisper.

“That, dearie,” Lorena LeMar favored her with a smile, “is nothing, just nothing at all.

“I’m sorry,” she half apologised to Jeanne. “It’s all I can spare just now.”

“Oh, it—it’s all right.” One could see plainly enough that Jeanne was not thinking of the money at all, but of the strange circumstances that had brought this unusual opportunity to her door.

“To be some one else for two whole weeks,” she was saying to herself. “To forget that Petite Jeanne lives at all. To act in the movies when one has never crossed a movie lot before. It seems quite impossible. And yet—”

“It sounds like a beautiful story,” she murmured after a time.

“It is beautiful!” Jensie exclaimed. “But they could make it so much more beautiful if they only knew.”

“Knew what?” Miss LeMar opened her eyes wide.

“Knew the mountains.”

“But that—” The movie star’s voice was low, almost sad. There was about the little mountain girl an all but irresistible appeal. “That does not matter. It’s only an exhibition. It’ll never go on the screen.”

“It could be made very beautiful,” Jeanne repeated musingly. Then suddenly a new light sprang into her eyes.

“All right, I’ll do it!”

“Wonderful!” Miss LeMar leaped to her feet.

“I shall have to see a great deal of you in the next few days,” Jeanne insisted. “I must copy your character.”

“See me all you like, so long as I can get off on that yacht cruise. Good-night. I’ll be seeing you.” The great movie star, Lorena LeMar, was away, leaving in her wake surprise, anticipation, eager hope and blank despair.

“Why did I say ‘yes’?” Jeanne murmured at last. “Who in the world could ever do that?”

“Only one person,” Florence smiled. “And her name is Petite Jeanne.”

But could she?

CHAPTER IX
“HAUNTS”

“Does she mean that you can really act in the movies?” Jensie Crider’s eyes were big with wonder as she ventured this question. They were still seated by the fire.

“She undoubtedly thinks that.” Springing to her feet, the little French girl walked the length of the long room and back again.

“But it is too bad it is not to be a real picture.” There was genuine sadness in the little mountain girl’s tone. “I’ve seen some mountain pictures. They are so, so terrible! And they could be so beautiful!

“When the dogwood is in bloom,” she murmured softly.

“Jensie!” Jeanne cried, seizing her by the shoulders and looking far back into her deep, mysterious eyes. “If I tried to make that a real picture, would you help me?”

“I—I’d do my double-durndest!” Jensie laughed in spite of herself.

“All right, Jensie.” Jeanne was like a spring day. Sunshine and joy came one moment. The next there were clouds and rain. “All right, little girl.” Her shoulders drooped. “We—we might try it. You never can tell.”

She dropped into a chair before the fire.

Jensie went about the humble task of scrubbing the floor. Florence insisted upon helping her, so together, on hands and knees, they made their way back and forth, back and forth across the large room.

All this time Jeanne sat in deep thought. Once she murmured to herself, “It was before the fire in Rutledge Tavern that the great one, Abraham Lincoln, who with all his greatness was so simple and kind, sat for long hours dreaming of the future, reading his fortune in the flames, reading it to a girl, Ann Rutledge who, as simple and kind as he, understood.

“And then—” She stared hard at the fire. “Then the girl was gone forever, and he had to go on alone, all the way alone.

“He was an American, this great Lincoln, and I am only a poor little French girl.

“But perhaps—” She stared once more at the flames of orange and gold. “Perhaps I might make people understand and love him more if I could give them a true picture of the mountain country where he was born.

“When the dogwood is in bloom,” she whispered. Her voice was deep and mellow, like a night bird’s call.

“Come on, Jeanne! Snap out of it!” Florence was at her side. “The floor is done. We’re going to have hot chocolate and some of those cake squares they call brownies.”

Once again Jeanne marched across the floor to the back of the room. As she turned, her gaze strayed through the window.

“The hearse,” she whispered with a shudder. “It’s still waiting in the moonlight.”

Having turned quickly about to shut out the scene, she found herself looking at a tall-backed organ standing against the wall. The moonlight falling across its ivory keys, yellow with age, gave it a ghostly appearance.

“Boo! Spooky place!”

She was glad enough to retreat to the narrow circle made by the fire’s yellow glow.

“When the dogwood is in bloom,” she whispered a moment later. With the light of the fire in her eyes, she forgot all else save those far away mountains.

She called back from memory’s hidden places one springtime when, with Bihari the gypsy and his good wife, she had stolen away to the mountains of France in a gypsy van. They had gone to meet the loitering spring.

They had found her lingering among the hills. There tiny flowers were blooming gaily. There, too, they had caught the white drift of blossoming trees.

Never in all her wanderings had Jeanne found such simple and kindly people as those who had hewn their homes from the forests on these hills.

When nights were damp and chill they had invited her to sit beside their rough stone fireplaces. At night they had tucked her away in a corner and piled her high with blankets and coverlids woven in fantastic patterns, all woven by hand.

When Bihari had mended their pots and pans, when they were ready to journey onward, they had crowded round to press her hand and add as a blessing an invitation to return.

“And these mountains where our Jensie lives,” she whispered. “They are like that. They must be.

“Ah, yes,” she breathed, “it must be truly wonderful when the dogwood is in bloom on Big Black Mountain. Jensie shall tell me all about it. Then, who knows? If only—”

“Dreaming still,” Florence broke in. “Come! The hot chocolate and cakes are ready.”

During this late hour of refreshment, which was indeed a time of glorious fellowship, a thing happened which will linger long in their memories.

“It was in this Tavern,” Jeanne was saying, “that Abe Lincoln and Ann Rutledge sang those strange religious songs that people of those times loved so well. I read some of them only yesterday. Listen! This is one of them:

There was silence down that long, dark room, where only the dull glow of coals cast an uncertain light about the narrow semicircle. Jeanne’s soul was like a deep pool; it reflected all that came before it. Deeply moved by the strange sad words of other days, she could move her listeners.

Presently her mellow voice rose again:

“Such songs as these,” she whispered. “Is it not very strange?”

“Yes,” the little mountain girl replied, catching the spirit of the moment. “And sometimes Ann Rutledge sat before that tall old reed organ and played while they sang together. They—”

“Listen!” Jeanne held up a hand. Out from the silence of that long room came the Dong! Dong! of the ancient clock striking the hour. “This—” Her tone was deep and low. “This is my hour of enchantment. This—”

Who knows what she was about to say? She broke off to sit listening, stiff with sudden emotion. From the far corner where the darkness reigned came the strange, church-like notes of a reed organ.

The melody that came rolling back to them was strange, a wild, weird something, perhaps from the past—a forgotten song no living mortal had ever heard.

It continued for a full five minutes. And in all that time not one of them moved or spoke.

When the last note died away, the stout Florence found her courage returning. “I’m going to see.” Her voice reached them in a low whisper.

Dropping on hands and knees, she disappeared into the dark.

“Who—who can it be?” Jeanne whispered to Jensie.

“There is no one.” Jensie’s words were scarcely audible.

After that they sat in silence until with a start Jeanne felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh!” She sprang to her feet.

Florence stood beside her.

“Who—who was it?”

The look on Florence’s face was strange. “There was no one.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Jensie reminded Jeanne. “I told you there was no one.”

“Wha—what do you mean?”

“Haunts,” Jensie explained quite simply. “We have haunts in the mountains. There are good haunts and bad haunts. I think this was a good haunt. Ann Rutledge was good.”

After that, without a word, they filed out of the place in silence, locked the door behind them, then hurried away into the night.

* * * * * * * *

For a long time that night after Florence had retired, Jeanne sat by the open window, thinking.

Far away she caught the black sweep of Lake Michigan’s waters, where dim, indistinct, a single ship’s light gleamed.

“It’s a strange and wonderful world!” she told herself. “Sometimes quite terrible, too.”

Once more she allowed her mind to drift over the events of the past few days. She saw it all as in a dream: the auction house, the mysterious chest, the fire on the beach, and the Chinaman fleeing into the night with the three-bladed knife.

“Florence will never rest until she has found him and has that precious knife back,” she told herself. “But will she find him?”

Once again in her imagination she saw their room in wild confusion—saw, too, the empty chest.

“I never told Florence about—about that laundry bag I left with the check boy at the hotel. I wonder if I should? And should I leave it there any longer? The mandarin said they were worth many, many dollars, those ancient pieces of embroidery work all done in threads of silver and gold.

“Ah well, the place to hide things is where no one will expect to find them. And as for Florence, the things you do not seem to possess are the ones that trouble you least.”

Again she sat wriggling her pink toes and staring away at that one yellow light far out upon the lake.

“But this moving picture!” she exclaimed at last. “Why did I say ‘yes’? How can I be some one else for even two short weeks?

“But then—” Her face took on a rapt expression. “If one could but make a success of that picture when every one believes it is to be a failure. Ah, that would be marvelous! So very, very superb!”

Leaping to her feet, she danced across the floor and at last tucked herself into her bed.

CHAPTER X
ENTERING A NEW WORLD

“Of course, when I sail away on that glorious yachting party, you’ll come here to live.” That Lorena LeMar, Jeanne’s double, spoke in a matter-of-fact tone made no difference. Jeanne’s heart fluttered.

“Here!” she managed to gasp as her eyes swept the spacious hotel apartment with its glimmer of silver and gold, silk and satin. “Here? I couldn’t!”

“Oh, but you must!” In Lorena LeMar’s tone there was a note of finality. “You couldn’t well live anywhere else. This is the apartment of Lorena LeMar. Every one knows that. This is my address. They call me on the phone here, my company, my friends, my—”

“Your friends!” Jeanne gasped afresh. “Am I to be Lorena LeMar to your friends also? How—how very impossible!”

Jeanne’s head was in a wild whirl. For three days she had haunted the steps of her double, Lorena LeMar. They had been obliged to show great caution. Never had they been where others might see them together. This would have proved fatal to their plans. Nevertheless in out-of-the-way places and in this, Lorena LeMar’s apartment, Jeanne had been privileged to study her famous double until, as she expressed it to Florence, “already I am no more Petite Jeanne, but altogether Lorena LeMar.”

Never until this moment had it occurred to her that if she were to carry off her part she must abandon the shabby comfort of her rooms with Florence and come here to live, nor that Lorena LeMar’s friends must for two weeks be her friends.

“How does Lorena LeMar live?” she asked herself with a sinking heart. “And what do those friends expect of her?”

Little need to ask. Already she knew all too well. Lorena LeMar was an American, city-bred girl, no better and no worse than the average. Slender, vivacious, frank, quite lovable, she lived as those others live. There were dances, late parties, jazz and everything that went with it. Jeanne knew very little of this type of life.

“Your—your friends—” she stammered again.

“Oh, well, as to that—” Lorena LeMar shrugged her shoulders. “Shake ’em, every one of them. Tell them that Lorena LeMar, meaning you, is doing a picture, a vastly important picture, going to make you famous and all that. Tell ’em you are in mourning or something like that, no parties, no nothing until this picture is made.”

“I—I see,” Jeanne replied.

“And that,” she thought aside, “is perhaps more true than you think.”

Once again her gaze swept the room. Could she do it, live like an American queen for two weeks?

Costly paintings were on the walls, the sort she loved. Inch-deep Oriental rugs were on the floor. Against the broad wall was a great friendly hearth where a real wood fire burned. Heavy draperies were everywhere.

“Those Oriental embroideries, threads of silver and gold,” she thought suddenly. “How they would fit in here!

“But no! No! It must never be! I—”

“If you’ll step in here for a moment,” the movie queen threw open a door, “I will show you my wardrobe.”

“It’s rather poor,” she apologised. “Some good things, though.”

Jeanne found herself in a sleeping chamber. The opening of a second door revealed row upon row of coats and gowns. Here squirrel, mink and ermine vied with silk and satin.

“Oh!” she breathed. “Oo, la la!”

“Of course,” once again Lorena LeMar’s tone was matter-of-fact, “while you are Lorena LeMar you will wear these. Nothing will go so far toward perfecting your disguise.”

This time Jeanne had no word to offer. She was trying in vain to picture herself, Petite Jeanne—the little French girl who for many months had traveled with gypsies, dancing with a bear—living in this apartment and wearing these clothes.

It was true that for the better part of a year she had been considered rich. But, in France, to be rich is to be thrifty. Her people were all that. She had fallen into their way of thinking. Few garments had been added to her wardrobe.

“And now this!” she thought. “Ah, well, I am to be a queen, a queen of the movies for two weeks.”

She went skipping away across the floor in one of her wild gypsy dances.

Lorena LeMar caught her in her arms as she came dancing back. “Then you will do it? You dearest of all creatures!”

“How could I resist it?”

And yet, left alone in the midst of all this splendor while her double went on a shopping tour to secure sports clothes for her yachting trip, the little French girl was all but overcome with misgivings. It is one thing to appear on a movie lot each day and say certain words, go through certain gestures that have been learned and rehearsed; but quite another to live as your double has lived, among acquaintances, associates, friends off stage, from morning till night.

“I shall become a bookworm,” she assured herself. “When I am not rehearsing or playing a part I shall be right here curled up reading a book.”

But could she? Would Lorena LeMar’s friends permit it? What did those friends expect?

“Ah, well, time will tell,” she sighed.

“And besides, there is that so beautiful story, the movie story of mountain life, life of Lincoln’s own country, where he was born. One cannot forget, one must not forget!

“When the dogwood is in bloom,” she murmured. “If only I can do it! If only I can!

“Ah, well,” she consoled herself, “Lorena LeMar belongs in California. All her friends are there, or nearly all. They must be.”

That she was mistaken in this, she was to know, and that almost at once. As she left the hotel elevator on the way home, a hand touched her arm. She turned about to find herself looking into a pair of smiling eyes.

“I’m Jerry,” the boy was saying. “You remember me, don’t you, Miss LeMar? Could I—”

For a second Jeanne’s head spun, then she found her senses and her ready French tongue.

“No, no, Jerry! No dates! I’m out on the lot, doing a picture, you know. It—it’s dreadfully important. Sorry, Jerry. Good-bye.”

“There now,” she whispered to herself as she leaped into a taxi, “I got away with it.”

For all that, a sinking feeling lurked around the pit of her stomach. “This,” she was thinking, quite against her will, “is but the beginning. Miss LeMar has many friends and more admirers. Not all of these will be as smiling and as kind as this Jerry.

“Oh, well,” she reassured herself, “Florence shall be my bodyguard. She’ll throw them from the window.” She smiled a merry smile.

But Florence was working. Long hours every day she was on the Enchanted Island. And just there came the blow to Jeanne’s plans.

CHAPTER XI
FROM CHINA’S ANCIENT TREASURE

While Jeanne was making the rather disturbing discovery that when you take over a double’s labors you take over her friends as well, Florence was listening to words that, now thrilling her to the very depths of her soul, and now slowing up her heart until her very blood ran cold, left her at last full of half-formed hopes and well established fears.

Every afternoon from four o’clock to six, she was given a rest from her duties on the Enchanted Island. During these periods of leisure she wandered through the grounds. The wonders of science and invention that were spread out before her never failed to hold her interest. For all this, she took pleasure at times in visiting the more bizarre attractions. To watch the Seminole Indians dive beneath a great alligator with his snapping jaws and thrashing tail, to watch the little brown man’s conquest of the scaly monster, gave her a thrill. To study the quaint customs of men from the heart of Africa; to don a bathing suit and take a long, long slide into the blue waters, all these things held a charm for this sturdy, adventure-loving girl.

This day she had entered the Golden Temple of Jehol to study its varied treasures from the heart of China. These things charmed and fascinated her.

The place was crowded. With such a throng pushing through its narrow aisles, the temple had lost much of its charm. She was about to wander once more into the open air, when her attention was caught and held by a face.

To her own astonishment, she stood there and stared at the man until he turned and smiled at her. Then she felt ashamed.

“Want a book?”

It was the white man who had been born in China and had lived all his life there; the one who had so held Jeanne’s attention and had all but drawn from her the secret of the three-bladed dagger and the chest of Oriental embroideries. Surely here was some one it was hard to overlook. The tone in which he spoke was matter-of-fact. Yet a strange light shone from his eyes.

There are meetings that appear to have been ordered by some power outside ourselves. The instant the thing has happened we know it. With a simple flash of an eye one soul says to the other: “We are kindred spirits. We were born to be friends.”

“Where—where did all this come from?” she asked rather breathlessly.

“All this stuff, the idols, the trumpets, the tapestries?”

“Yes.”

“From China. Much of it from far back in the interior, even in Mongolia. I—I had a hand in gathering it. All came from temples, ancient temples—hard to get at times.”

The man, who was quite young, spoke with a curious accent.

“You are not American?”

“I belong to China.”

“But you are not Chinese,” she laughed.

“Not Mongolian; but if you are born in China, live there always, what are you then?” He showed his fine white teeth in a grin.

Looking her up and down, taking in her costume that told she was “one of them,” he said in a tone quite low and aside:

“I’ll be free in half an hour. What about a cup of coffee? I’ll tell you about these things.”

“All—all right.”

“See you then?”

“Sure.”

As she wandered out into the sunlight, something told her she had started one more friendship that would end in adventure. What she did not know was that she was about to be given one more chapter in the history of the mysterious Oriental chest and its temple treasures.

An hour after leaving the temple, she found herself seated at a narrow table in a dark little corner of a nearby coffee house, drinking black coffee and following every word of this most astonishing young man. His name, she had discovered, was Erik Nord. He had lived all his life in China and, as he expressed it, had “adventured all over the place.”

“We’d gone into Mongolia, that cold, barren land where no one is wanted,” he was saying. “The man I was with—I shall not tell you his name—had been commissioned to gather up a lot of this art treasure that is so rapidly disappearing from the decaying temples.

“There was a long-eared Chinaman who came near doing me in! Big knife and all that.”

“A—a long-eared Chinaman!” Florence exclaimed.

“Longest ears I ever saw. Looked as if some plastic surgeon had spliced pieces on from some other fellow’s ears—might have, too.

“It happened like this,” he went on, taking no notice of her stare.

“We’d picked up some things, jolly unusual they were, too; gold and silver embroidery, rare old stuff, a bell and a knife—three-bladed affair—some rare old pieces of embroidery—”

“A knife!” Florence was staring again. “Three-bladed!

“But of course,” she added hurriedly, “they are common, I suppose. There is one over in the temple, isn’t there?”

“I must not betray secrets,” she was saying to herself. “Not to a man I have known for only an hour.”

“This one was not common,” Erik Nord said quietly. “The hilt was all studded with jewels, diamonds and rubies.”

Once again Florence opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it.

“We found these things,” Erik Nord went on, after a moment, “in a rather extraordinary manner. It seems some American, a curious sort of fellow, but very real in his devotion to these people, had somehow talked the whole little city out of their temple worship. He’d turned the temple into a hospital for children, Chinese children.” His voice trailed off into silence.

“Ever see any?” he asked a moment later.

“See what?” Florence asked, startled.

“Beg pardon. Ever see any Chinese children? No, of course not. Well, they’re the cutest ever.

“Look!”

Drawing a thin metal case from his pocket, he shook a handful of cards from it, then spread them out on the table.

Florence stared in astonishment. Each card was a photograph, the picture of a Chinese child. Children asleep, children crying, laughing, romping. In their quaint costumes they were indeed fascinating.

“Little children.” His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “The hospital was for them. The people had agreed that all the treasures of the temple should be sold and the money spent in equipping their hospital for children, the quaint little children of China.

“And then,” his voice changed abruptly, “the treasures were all lost. I fear the money may never be paid. And it was entirely my own fault! Can you imagine what that means to me?”

Florence did not answer. She was thinking hard. And in her thoughts the mental image of a long-eared Chinaman was blended with flashes of a three-bladed knife and the pictures of a host of cute Chinese children.

When at last she broke the silence she was surprised to find that her voice, too, had taken on a suspicious hoarseness.

“You—you said there was a long-eared Chinaman?”

“Yes, that long-eared fellow. It—it was queer.” He took a long pull at his black coffee. “He looked like some sort of monk, or priest. A Buddhist, I mean. He nearly got the chest of treasure from us.

“You see, it was entrusted to our care. It was sold all right, but wouldn’t be paid for until delivered to the purchaser in America.

“He tried to knife the man I was with, this long-eared fellow did. Entered our tent at night. Fortunately, I was awake. I smashed him one just in time; nearly killed him. Thought I had, until he showed up in Tientsin and made a second attempt to rob us.”

“But the treasure?” Florence tried to still her wildly beating heart, to seem calm, unconcerned. “The treasure? What happened?”

“That’s just the question!” Erik Nord shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was entrusted to me. I sent the chest that contained it all—worth a lot of dollars I can tell you—to San Francisco in care of a friend. It arrived in due time. The friend paid the duty and re-shipped it to Chicago. As far as I know, it never arrived.” He sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I trusted the wrong man. He bungled it somehow.

“That,” he added in a whisper, “is one of the reasons I’m here. Somehow that long-eared Chinaman has beaten us. We’ve got to catch up with him. In time we’ll get him, too.”

“That man—”

Florence did not finish. What should she tell? All or nothing?

“Might not be the man,” she assured herself. “Might not have been the same chest. Anyway, the chest is all I have left. That’s worthless. What’s the good of getting mixed up in an Oriental intrigue? Anyway, I’ll talk it over with Jeanne.”

Thus her mind ran, and all this time Erik Nord was studying her face.

“That man,” she finished rather lamely, “must have been clever.”

“Clever no end!

“Well, time to wander back.” He rose. “It’s been a pleasure to be with you. I’d like to know about America, the best of America.”

“Do you think I belong to the best?” she laughed.

“You seem rather real.” His smile was frank. “I don’t like all this face-paint and jazz, pretty girls smoking cigarets, and all that. Well, I’m old-fashioned, I suppose. In China we put paint on the temples and burn incense in ancient copper dragons, not between young ladies’ lips.” He laughed good-naturedly, then ushered her into the twilight of the passing day.

CHAPTER XII
THE DODGE-EMS

“They say,” Florence murmured to herself, as she left the Enchanted Island that night, “that murderers always return to the scene of their crimes. That long-eared Chinaman did not commit murder when he took that sky-walk of his, but if he didn’t commit suicide he may be back. Perhaps the Sky Ride holds for him some strange fascination. I wonder.”

She was still wondering when her feet had led her to the foot of the east tower of that spectacular Sky Way. She waited for an up-going car.

“I’d like to get him,” she told herself. “I must!” A fierce determination took possession of her. Erik Nord’s story had embedded itself deeply in her soul.

“Children.” She smiled as she recalled the pictures of cute Chinese youngsters he had shown her. “And to think that they should be robbed of hospital care by one selfish Chinaman!”

Just then the elevator door opened. She stepped inside to go whirling upward. She did not cease to ponder. “Is this long-eared Chinaman merely selfish? Is he greedy for wealth?” There had been a rather startling look of fierce determination on his face. “Superstitious,” she whispered. “All Orientals are that, I suppose. There must be something about that knife, the bell and the banners that we don’t know about. He would risk his life for them, I am sure of that. Commit murder, too!” She shuddered.

“And yet—” A sudden thought struck her. “He has them all now; he must have; the chest was empty. What more can he want?”

She recalled Jeanne’s story of her flight up the ladder in that vast steel dome. “He was about to speak to her, touched her on the shoulder. What did he want? He—”

Her car shuddered slightly, then came to a halt. They had reached the two hundred foot level where one boards the Sky Ride.

Without really willing it, she allowed herself to be carried out with the crowd.

She was standing there only half conscious of the rocket car just loading before her, still asking herself questions. “Should she tell Jeanne Erik Nord’s story? What should she do about the whole affair? Should she tell Erik what she knew? Should—”

Of a sudden, eyes wide, arms extended, she sprang forward. But she was just one step too late. The door closed. The rocket car went shooting on its way. And in it, smiling sardonically no doubt, was the long-eared Chinaman.

* * * * * * * *

Jeanne went for a stroll on the boulevard that night. And she wore not her own modest sport coat but one of Lorena LeMar’s wraps, a superb creation.

“You must do this,” the screen star had insisted. “You must become accustomed to wearing these things. And you must wear them, you know. You couldn’t be Lorena LeMar without them.”

Jeanne had not objected in the least. The truth was, she loved fine clothes. And this was such a “darb” of a cape: midnight-blue satin trimmed with real white fox, the sort of thing that catches the eye of every passer-by; that causes them to turn and stare.

And to stroll on the boulevard as she had seen so many fine ladies do! Ah, that would be heavenly!

And it was all of that. One fact troubled her a little; she was alone. She would have felt better with a woman companion dressed as she was, or a gentleman in evening clothes and a high hat.

But then, Jeanne was at heart a gypsy. Gypsies are never afraid, nor do they mind being alone.

There are beautiful shops on the boulevard. The windows of Paris are not more gay than are those of our boulevards. Jeanne went window-shopping.