“You have seen one set with jewels, diamonds and rubies?”
“Only yesterday.”
“And where is it now?” The mandarin strove in vain to maintain his Oriental calm.
“Who knows?” Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. She had said too much. “A—a Chinaman had it. He is gone. I know not where.”
The mandarin went on telling in his slow way of the treasures in that golden temple; yet it was plain that his mind was not upon the ancient bell, the miniature pagoda nor the smiling Buddha. He was thinking of that knife with a jeweled handle, Jeanne was sure of that.
“I wonder how much he knows,” she thought to herself. “Could he help us find that long-eared one? I am sure of it. And if he did? Ah, well, what then?”
In the end she decided that she dared not trust him, at least not yet.
For some time she lingered in that place of soft lights and silent footsteps.
When at last with a sigh she prepared to drag herself out where humanity flowed like a great river, she dropped a coin in the mandarin’s hand and whispered:
“I will return again, and yet again.”
“Y-e-s.” The mandarin’s tone was barely audible. “Those who reveal dark secrets are often richly rewarded. It is written in a book. You have said one hundred million prayers. You will not forget.”
“I will not forget.”
She was about to leave the place when again her mind received a shock. Because the light was dim, she had not observed until now that the walls were hung with banners.
“They are like those in the chest!” she told herself with a sudden shock. “They belong to some temple. Were they stolen from a temple, all those, the knife, the bell, the banners? And did the thief, after bringing them to America, fear to claim them? Is that why we were able to buy them at that auction house where unclaimed goods are sold?
“Ah, yes, it must be so! There was an Oriental bidding against us. Some strange persons came and dragged him away, the secret police, I am sure.”
She was trembling from head to foot. What strange Oriental mystery had caught her in its web? What intrigue had she but half unearthed?
“Bah!” She took a strong grip on herself. “It is nothing. This place, it gives me strange ideas.”
“These banners on the wall?” She spoke in the casual tone of an inquisitive visitor. “Are they also very old?”
“Many are very old.” The mandarin was smiling again. “These were made by rich Chinese ladies who wish to have the gods be very good to them. They are all made by hand, embroidered with gold and silver thread. Worth many dollars, very, very many dollars, each one of these.”
Jeanne asked not another question. She had had enough for one night. Never before had she so wished herself in the outer air.
She was nearing the door when a voice she had not heard before said:
“Would you like a book telling of the Golden Temple?”
She turned quickly to find herself looking into the face of a man, and at once she knew that here was a person well worth knowing. He was large, well built, muscular. His face was brown, the brown of one who lives in the out-of-doors. His hat was drawn low over his eyes, yet he did not inspire her with fear.
“Y-yes, I would like a book.” She held out a quarter. “Do you know China?”
“I was born there.” The man spoke in the steady, even tone of the white man who has lived long in strange lands. “Until six weeks ago I lived in China.”
“Then—then perhaps you can help me.”
“Gladly. How?”
“An—another time.” Once more Jeanne felt she had spoken too soon.
Without a backward look, she left the place to lose herself in the merry-mad throng that, whirling and swirling like autumn leaves caught in a gust of wind, revolved about the entrance to the million dollar Skyway.
CHAPTER V
A HEARSE IN THE MOONLIGHT
Petite Jeanne, too, seemed a bright autumn leaf as, dressed in a filmy orange-colored gown, she drifted down the broad paved walk.
Passing a great building that gleamed from within as if it were on fire, she marveled at the mystery of light.
“Why should I find myself intrigued by a mere Oriental dagger and one small Chinaman with long ears?” she asked herself, “when a thousand mysteries of science, chemistry, light, heat and sound lie all about me?”
Finding no answer to this question, she still kept a keen watch for that long-eared Chinaman who had snatched the jeweled dagger from her hand and later had walked the cables of the Sky Ride.
“It is like a Chinaman to have three blades to his knife where only one is needed,” she assured herself. “But why must one have a dagger in a temple? I’ll ask that interesting white man who sold me the book.”
Indeed she would, and many other questions besides. “There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hew them though we may.” The men we meet and pass, never to meet again, the ones who because of a passing word become part of our very lives, all their names are written in a book, and the name of that book is FATE.
A long, low bus, looking for all the world like a mammoth greyhound, stopped at Jeanne’s very feet. Because on the long seat filled with smiling people there was room for one more, Jeanne paid her fare and took her place with the rest.
Where was she going? She did not know nor care. Some time perhaps she would take this exhibition seriously. Time enough for that. The whole summer was before her, fifteen glorious weeks. For the moment she would wander at will.
Gliding along in the bus she lost all sense of time until, with a start, she found herself at the far end of that all but endless pageant.
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. “Why did I come all this way? Florence is waiting. She will never forgive me!”
Climbing aboard a second bus, she went gliding back the way she had come.
“Ah, my dear!” she cried as she sighted her good friend seated in a camp chair, watching the fading lights. “How can you forgive me?”
“That is not so hard,” the big girl drawled. “I’ve been sitting here half asleep, watching the throngs pass by.
“Do you know, Jeanne,” her tone became animated, “people come a long distance from north, south, east and west, thousands of miles, to view the wonders of this place. And who can blame them? But, after all, when they are here, throngs and throngs of them, they themselves are more interesting than all the marvels they come to see.”
“Ah, yes. It is so.
“But, Florence!” Jeanne cried suddenly. “I have found such a charm of a place! And we may dine there if we hurry.
“Ah, but I fear the buses are stopped. See, all the lights are fading.” Her voice dropped.
It was true. The lights were fading. Here a brightly illuminated tower went dark, there a fiery fountain became a well of blackness, and there an endless chain of light vanished into the night.
“It is like the end of the world!” Jeanne said in an awed whisper.
“But this place you speak of? Is it far?” Florence sprang to her feet.
“Oh, yes, very far.”
“Then we will go. I am tired of seeing and hearing. A long walk will be just grand.”
“And, ah! to see this place by moonlight!” Jeanne clasped her hands. “That will be so very wonderful!”
The broad, paved way, where thousands had wandered during the day, was all but deserted. Here a belated visitor hurried toward a gateway. There an attendant, his labors over, raced away to catch a home-bound car.
Down by the shore a score of camp fires were gleaming. For the first time in many years Indians were camping on Chicago’s water front. The wavering light of their fires turned their tepees into ghost-homes of the long ago.
Farther south other fires gleamed about the temporary homes of other wild men from faraway lands. All these were a part of the great show.
But it was none of these that had caught and held the little French girl’s attention.
Before them loomed the Midway. With lights out, its fantastic structures, standing out black against the sky, seemed huge beasts come to life from the past and now crouching by the roadway in their sleep.
As if feeling something of this, Jeanne quickened her pace. But not for long.
“Here!” she exclaimed. “Down here it is!”
She turned sharply to the right, hurried forward twenty steps, then halted before a door.
“If it is closed!” she breathed. “Can it be? Yes, perhaps. See! The electric light is out.
“No, no. There is some one!”
“Only a scrub woman.” Florence pressed close to the glass door.
Just then the person inside stood up. Florence caught her breath. She had not been wrong. The one who stood there had been scrubbing. Her dress was pinned up; her arms were bare to the elbow. But surely she was not a regular scrub woman! Seldom had Florence seen a more beautiful face. She was young, too, surely not yet twenty. Cheeks aglow with natural bloom, big eyes shining, brown hair tossed back, she stood there smiling, a picture of natural youth and beauty. Smiling at what? Had she seen them? Yes, she was coming to the door.
“Would you like to come in?” she whispered.
Too astonished to answer, the girls found themselves inside.
The place they had entered was a long, low room. The floor was of rough boards. Massive beams ran from one end to the other of the paneled ceiling. At one side was a curious sort of refreshment stand, and to the right of this the broadest fireplace Florence had ever seen.
Noting the surprised look on Florence’s face, the girl said: “Have you never been here before?”
By her rich, melodious drawl, Florence knew at once that this girl came from the southern mountains.
“This,” the girl went on, “is the Rutledge Tavern. It was by this fireplace that the young man, Abe Lincoln, sat and talked for long hours to a girl with hair like corn tassels in autumn. Can you see them there now? She is sewing. He is dreaming of days that are to come.”
“So this is the spot that charmed my little French friend,” Florence whispered to herself. “Little wonder! Coming from the past with its simple grandeur, it has an appeal all its own.”
“Perhaps,” said the stranger, “you’d like to sit here by the fire. I—I’ll soon be through with my work.”
“But you,” Florence exclaimed, “surely you do not have to scrub floors all night long!”
“Oh, no! Not all night long. Only this one. And I love it!” The girl’s eyes shone. “I am Jensie Crider. I am from the mountains of Kentucky. This is the Lincoln group. And Abraham Lincoln, our great President, came from the mountains where I was born. They—they let me care for these buildings because I understand how they should be kept.
“Come!” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Come back here and you shall see those other buildings by the moonlight.”
She led the way to the back of that long room, then pointed silently. Standing there, bathed in the golden moonlight, were two small log cabins and a rough structure built of boards.
“That little cabin,” the girl whispered, “is the one in which the great President was born; no, not quite. It is exactly like it, but for me it is the same.
“Does it not seem wonderful?” Her low voice was singing now. “No windows, a stick chimney, a clay floor. He was born there, the great President. He was one of us, of our poor mountain folk. Do you wonder that I love my work?”
“No,” Florence whispered.
“But look!” Jeanne gripped her companion’s arm. “What is that strange thing over there?”
“That—” The girl’s tone changed. “That is a very old hearse. Perhaps it is the one that carried our martyred President to his grave.”
“A hearse!” Jeanne shrank back. “A hearse in the moonlight.”
“Come!” said Florence. “Let’s go and sit by the fireplace and dream.”
“Yes, do!” The mountain girl’s voice rang with hospitality. “I have some corn bread, the sort we make in the mountains, baked in an oven under the coals. I’ll make some tea very soon, and we shall have a bite to eat.”
To sit in the Rutledge Tavern, beside the fireplace where Abe Lincoln and Ann Rutledge had made love long ago! Could anything be more romantic?
A moment more and they were there, Florence and Jeanne, staring dreamily at the fire. But try as she might, Jeanne could not quite drive from her mind the image of that ancient hearse standing out there in the moonlight.
“It seems a sign,” she told herself. A sign of what? She could not tell.
The mountain girl’s corn bread baked in a Dutch oven beneath the coals was delicious. Buried in strained honey which, Jensie Crider assured them, came from a bee tree away up on the side of Big Black Mountain, it was a dish to set before a king.
“Those other buildings there,” Jensie explained in a quiet voice, “one is the home of Abe Lincoln in Indiana and the other, that one built of boards, is where Lincoln and Berry kept store, or tried to and failed.
“I—I’m sort of glad they failed.” Her voice trailed into silence. On the broad hearth the coals glowed. Behind them, down the long room, all was shrouded in darkness. And still in the golden moonlight the dilapidated hearse stood. Jeanne thought of this, and shuddered.
“Why?” It was Florence who spoke at last. “Why are you glad that Lincoln failed.”
“Because he is my hero,” Jensie’s tone was deeply serious. “And if my hero never failed, how could I hope to be like him? We all fail sometimes.
“Of all these buildings,” she went on after a time, “I have the little cabin where he was born. I was born in just such a cabin, way up on the side of Big Black Mountain.”
“Oh!” Jeanne’s eyes opened wide. “And is that your home now?”
“No, no! Now we have two rooms and two real glass windows.
“Of course,” Jensie half apologised, “that isn’t very much. But there’s a porch to sit on all summer long. And oh! it is beautiful in the mountains in the springtime. When the dogwood blossoms are like drifting snow on the hillsides, when little streams covered over with mountain ivy come dashing, cool, damp and fragrant, from far up the mountains, oh, then it is a joy to live!
“Will you come and see me there some time? You two?” Her voice rang with eagerness.
“Yes, yes!” Jeanne cried impulsively, throwing her arms about the girl and kissing her apple-red cheek. “Yes, indeed! We will come in spring when the dogwood is in bloom.”
Once again silence settled over the room where darkness played hide and seek with little streaks of light among the massive hand-hewn rafters.
Only an ancient clock in a far corner disturbed the silence with its solemn tick-tock, tick-tock.
“Listen!” Jeanne gripped Florence’s arm. The clock made a curious noise like a very old man clearing his throat, then struck twice: Dong! Dong!
“Two o’clock!” Jeanne sprang to her feet. “Two o’clock! This is my hour of enchantment! We must be going!
“Good-bye.” Once again she embraced the mountain girl. “We will be back. Many times.”
She led Florence out into the moonlight. But even as she did so she cast an apprehensive look behind her. She was thinking still of the hearse in the moonlight. A fence hid it from her view. With a shudder she exclaimed, “Come! Let us go fast!”
CHAPTER VI
“THE CHEST IS EMPTY!”
“Jeanne, you left the door open!”
Standing on the stair landing before the door to their apartment, Florence gave her companion a reproving glance.
“I? Leave the door open?” The little French girl was vigorous in her denial. “To be sure I did not leave it open. I closed it tight!”
“Then,” said Florence, catching her breath, “some one has been here, may be here yet.”
“If they are here still, you may throw them out of the window. See, you have my permission.” Crowding past her, Jeanne entered their living room and snapped on the light.
What she saw caused her to hold up her hands in horror. The place was in the wildest state of confusion. Cushions had been dragged from sofas and chairs, beds tumbled about, dresser drawers emptied on the floor.
“Anyway,” Jeanne sighed, “they are gone.”
“And the chest!” Florence exclaimed. “That Oriental chest?”
“The chest is empty, to be sure.” Jeanne threw back the lid. “What would you have? They came for that which was in the chest; nothing more. Why then would they not take it if they found it here?”
“Gone!” Florence sat down to stare at the chest. “And I don’t feel so sorry about that. After all, what use could we have for some dusty old Chinese banners and a silly little bell?”
“What indeed?” There was a curious light in Jeanne’s eye that Florence did not quite understand.
“But Jeanne!” Florence sprang to her feet. “If those people found what they wanted in the chest, why did they take the trouble to tear this place up so terribly?”
“Who knows?” Jeanne’s eyes were veiled, dreamy now.
When order had been restored, Florence retired for the night.
Jeanne sat up for a long time studying. She was reading the book she had purchased in the Golden Temple of Jehol.
As she read her wonder grew. From her reading she learned for certain that the embroidered panels that had but yesterday reposed in the now empty chest had indeed come from the temples of China—not one, but many temples; that they had been made of gold and silver thread. When she recalled them one by one and attempted to compute their value, it made her a little dizzy.
“But then,” she sighed at last, “it is not so much what one possesses that counts; it is what he is able to sell it for.
“And how did you come to Chicago?” She addressed the chest. “You have no address on you. No, not one! I scoured you clean. You have only a dragon on your cover. Did some one steal all those priceless things? And were they afraid at last to claim them in America?”
Once again she recalled the circumstances under which she had bought the box. Both she and Florence had long haunted auction houses. Once she had bought an ancient gypsy god.
“And did that cause me trouble!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Oo, la, la! But it was great fun, and very mysterious, too.
“And now there is this box.” She kicked the thing with her toe. “It was lost in the express with no label on it, the auctioneer said.
“I made a bid. A Chinaman raised me. I bid again. Once more he raised. There was murder in his eye. And then—” She paused for breath. “Then some officers in plain clothes came and carried him away.
“Poor fellow! It is hard when you wish very much to buy a package so mysterious, and you cannot.
“But then,” she added after a moment, “perhaps it was to him not so mysterious after all. Possibly he knew what was in the chest.
“Ah, well, we will keep an eye out for that one with the long ears. And if we find him? What then?”
Unable to answer this question, she crept into her bed and fell asleep.
Next day she spent three hours alternately laughing and crying over Sandburg’s life of Lincoln called The Prairie Years.
“Ah, now I understand it all,” she sighed, as she wiped her eyes after reading the chapter telling of the love of young Abe for Ann Rutledge. “Who would not gladly scrub the floors of those buildings where our little Jensie Crider labors? And yet, how I love her for it!”
On this day Florence was given the surprise of her life. And to Jeanne a bright new dream was born.
Florence was on her way to work on the Enchanted Island. She was about to start across the bridge over the lagoon when she saw some one leaning on the rail looking away at the water.
“Why, it’s Jeanne!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “What in the world?”
Tiptoeing up to the girl who was looking away from her, she seized her by the shoulders as she fairly shouted in her ear:
“Jeanne! How did you get here? And where did you get that jacket? It’s a peach!”
Taken by surprise, as she undoubtedly had been, the girl did not so much as start.
“My name’s not Jeanne!” Her voice was icy cold. “What’s got you?”
“Oh, come on, Jeanne,” Florence laughed, looking her full in the face, “you can’t fool me! But, honest, where did you get that jacket?”
A sudden and quite surprising light overspread the other girl’s face.
“Say!” There was a ring in her voice now. “I told you the truth the first time. My name’s not Jeanne. But say! Do you mean to tell me there’s a girl in this city that looks so much like me that you really can’t tell I’m not that girl even when you look me square in the face?”
Florence stared at her in blank amazement. “If you’re not Petite Jeanne, the little French girl, who are you?”
“I’m Lorena LeMar, the movie star. Surely you must recognize me from the screen!”
“I—I’m sorry. I seldom go to the movies.” Florence looked her apology. “I’m convinced now, and I—I apologise.”
She was about to pass on when the other girl seized her arm eagerly. “Who is this girl? Has she been in the movies? No, of course not. Could she act a part, do you think?”
The girl seemed so much in earnest that for a moment Florence could only stare.
When at last she found her tongue she assured the young movie star that while Jeanne had never appeared in the movies she was quite capable of acting a part, that she had once starred for an entire season in light opera and that for one glorious night she had sung a stellar part in grand opera.
“Do you believe in luck?” the girl demanded.
“Mostly in the luck that comes after a lot of hard work,” Florence smiled.
“Sometimes you get the breaks. You can’t deny that,” the girl insisted. “Might as well call it luck. Who is this friend of yours? Does she like acting? Does she need money? Is she a kindly person? Would she throw a rope to a drowning soul?”
“Mostly yes,” Florence smiled.
“Lead me to her.”
“Can’t now. Going to work.”
“What work?”
“Over on the Enchanted Island.”
“When can I see her then?”
“At eleven to-night, at the Rutledge Tavern in the Lincoln Group.” Florence was thinking fast. She must be on her way.
“That—that will be swell. Here, shake on it!” The girl gripped Florence’s hand. “You won’t fail me?”
“We’ll be there.”
Florence went dashing across the bridge. All the way over she was saying: “What does it all mean? What can she want of Petite Jeanne?”
No answers came to her, but deep in her soul was the conviction that Jeanne was in for one more novel adventure, and the sort of adventure she loved, at that.
Still, she had not guessed the half of it.
CHAPTER VII
THE PLACE OF DARKNESS
Florence never tired of her work on the Enchanted Island. On this island which man by his ingenuity and tireless energy had drawn from the very bottom of the lake, children romped while their elders sought amusement to their own liking.
Florence loved small children. With their gay frocks, their tossing hair, their frank smiles, she found them entrancing. Just to watch over them as they rode on gay launches or diminutive motor buses, or laughed at the talking cow and the puppet show; to climb with them the magic mountain where all manner of strange people from fairyland awaited them; then to call all this work and to receive money for it on pay day—this to her seemed absurd.
And yet this was her manner of spending her day on the Enchanted Island. So absorbed in it did she become that she all but forgot to call Jeanne and tell her of the strange appointment she had made for eleven o’clock that night.
At four she did think of it, and at once dashed to the telephone.
“Oh, Jeanne!” she exclaimed, as a voice came to her over the wire. “Are you there? I’ve got exciting news. We are to meet a movie queen at the Rutledge Tavern to-night—eleven o’clock. You’ll be there?”
“Of a certainty!” Jeanne’s tone was eager. “But why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t know. Good-bye. See you at eleven.”
She hung up, leaving the little French girl in a state of bewilderment, her mind all awhirl with questions. Who was this movie person? Was she truly a queen of the cinema? Why must she meet her?
There was some question in the end regarding Jeanne’s ability to keep this engagement. This, fortunately, was outside her knowledge. So, having eaten a very good dinner at the hotel, and having bestowed a knowing look upon the check boy, custodian of her mysterious laundry bag, she made her way to the fairgrounds and for a time purposely lost herself in the vast throng that, eddying now this way and now that, poured like a river down the broad walks running for miles along the lake front.
“I wonder,” she mused as, jostled here and pushed aside there, she moved forward, “how a rain drop feels when it falls into the center of the great Mississippi. Snuggles right down and makes itself feel right at home. Surely this is so. And I, wandering here with this throng from all over this broad land, feel as if I had been too long away from it all, as if in some other world I had marched on and on, on and on with a vast throng that, like the Milky Way, moves forward forever.”
The ebb and flow of that great human tide at last carried her to the Golden Temple. And here, more by instinct than desire, she sought once more the cool silence of a place where worship seemed the mood of the hour.
Sinking into a chair, she sat in a dreamy mood listening to the low, melodious voice of the mandarin. “This,” he was saying, “is the laughing Buddha, god of happiness. Wart on temple stands for nobility. Long ears, long life.”
Glancing up, Jeanne saw the long ears of this grotesque idol, and laughed. “Long ears, long life,” she whispered. “There is one Chinaman who needs to avoid Florence if his life is to be long. She’d throw him into the lagoon.”
The mandarin was continuing his chant. “The three-bladed knife is not for to kill. Oh, no, he is for drive demons away. Always ring little bell, swing three-bladed knife through the air. Demon go away.
“Demon very bad. Make people sick. Make people die. Make land dry. Rice not come up. Millet not get ripe. All people starve. Oh, yes, demon very bad!”
He turned to the prayer wheel. Jeanne ceased to listen. “So that is the meaning of the three-bladed knife and the bell,” she was thinking to herself. “How strange! I wonder if the demons flee if the knife is flashed through the air and no bell rings.”
Once more the stream of humanity called. Again she lost herself in that great rushing river. Nor did she emerge until she stood before an immense affair that, seeming a prodigious barrel one hundred and twenty-five feet high, stood out against the night.
As she stepped inside this gigantic barrel her mind went into a tailspin. Had she passed into another world? It seemed so.
The inner walls of that great barrel were all alive. Here she looked deep into the heart of a tropical jungle where giant tractors dragged great mahogany logs through the forest, there a magnificent trans-continental limited leaped at her from the mouth of a tunnel, and here, sailing high over the white vastness of Arctic wilds, a splendid airplane came to rest on an endless expanse of snow.
That it was a trick performed by the miracle of a hundred moving picture projectors she knew right well. Yet it did not destroy for her the sense of illusion.
She stood there lost to the world about her, entranced, when with a sudden shock she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Turning quickly, she found herself looking into the mask-like face of the long-eared Chinaman.
So sudden was the shock that she thought she might fall to the floor or scream.
But she did neither. With the lightning-like movement of a frightened deer, she darted forward. Seeing a door knob, she grasped it. The door opened. Before her was a steel ladder. She was fifty feet up that ladder before she took time to think.
At that instant the door closed. She was in profound darkness. Only far above her shone pale light, a small square of night sky.
Her heart was racing furiously. Why had she indulged in such madness? That great dome of the Transportation Building was thronged with people. Any one of these would have offered her protection.
Now here she was in a narrow place of darkness. The door was closed. Had it shut itself? Had the long-eared Chinaman entered to close it behind him?
“He has the three-bladed knife!” she thought with a shudder.
“The three-bladed knife is not for to kill.” The mandarin’s words came back to her. Scant comfort in this. It was sharp enough to kill if the Oriental’s purpose was murder.
She was at the parting of the ways. Above her, a hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, up that narrow ladder, was the top of the dome. Beneath her, fifty feet down, the good earth and the man she feared.
All this passed through her mind in ten seconds of time. Then, without having truly willed it, she began to climb.
Never before had she climbed so high on a ladder. Now to go higher and higher, feeling her way every step in the dark, thinking of the dizzy depths below, was agony.
But what else was there to be done? All her life she had been frightened by the mysterious silence of Orientals. They moved about with padded footsteps. Their voices were low. She seldom heard them speak.
“That man may be coming,” she told herself, “climbing like a cat—silently.”
Up, up she went. The square of light appeared to grow, to come closer and closer until with a sigh that was half a sob, she tumbled over its brink to fall upon the cold metallic surface of the dome.
“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh!”
Then, having thought of the Chinaman, she seized a trap door, slammed it shut, and sat down upon it.
“He might be able to lift me!”
Her keen eyes sought and found a bolt that could be drawn. It would fasten down the trap door. She shot the bolt into place.
Then, experiencing an overwhelming sense of relief, she sprang to her feet and, whirling into an intoxicating rhythm, went dancing across that vast dome.
For the moment she was safe, she was free. Petite Jeanne did not bother too much about the future.
Dancing away to the very crest of the dome, which was not a dome as we think of it, but a vast inverted saucer two hundred feet in diameter, she spread her arms wide and stood there poised like some white bird ready for flight.
The scene that lay spread out far beneath her was entrancing. To her right, by the lagoon’s bank, blazed the camp fire of the African village. Farther away were the tepees of the red men. Close at hand all manner of lights were blinking, racing, plunging, dancing. These were the wild thrill-producing features of the Midway. Here a vast building lifted a blue tower to the sky. Far away the rocket cars of the Sky Ride shot through space.
For a time Jeanne thought only of that which lay beneath her eye. At last her gaze wandered to the cool of Lake Michigan’s vast waters by night.
And then her thoughts returned to that great circle of steel upon which she stood.
“Not a beam support, not a post nor a girder. It is suspended in air. Great steel cables hold it in place. Cut those steel cables, and—”
She shuddered at the thought. And yet, what a marvel it all was!
Then of a sudden she recalled her appointment at the Rutledge Tavern.
“Florence said I was to meet a movie queen. There was something in her tone that tells me an exciting time is to be had, and here—here I am!”
Instantly her mind sobered. She was alone on this broad dome. Should she scream for help the sound of her voice would be lost in the roar of the merry-mad throng. From the Midway came the grind of a merry-go-round. Somewhere much farther away a band was dispensing glorious music.
“I must get down. The ladder is the only way.”
She shuddered. Coming up, straight up a hundred and twenty-five feet, had been nerve-wracking. What must a descent into that black hole be?
“And that terrible Chinaman!”
Well, perhaps, after all, he had not followed.
Then a thought struck her. What if some guard had seen her mount that ladder? She would surely be arrested.
“I—I’ve got to do it!” She set her teeth hard. “I’ll find out about the long-eared one; lift the trap door quick. If he’s there I’ll slam it down again.
“And if he’s not there, I—I’ve got to go down!”
Catching a quick breath and whispering: “Now!” she lifted the trap door.
She did not drop it. There was no one at the top of the ladder.
Who can say that it did not take courage to drag her feet off the top of the dome and allow them to dangle until they came into contact with a round of the ladder? Who can tell how many miles it seemed to the bottom?
Enough that she reached solid earth at last.
Then, catching her breath for the second time, she seized the knob, turned it, swung the door open, stepped out, closed it silently, glanced to the right and to the left, then dashed for the cool outer air of night—free!
CHAPTER VIII
JEANNE’S DOUBLE
On reaching the Tavern Jeanne found herself in a high state of agitation. The hour was late. How late? This she could not tell. Had she missed her appointment? Would the movie queen be gone? She caught her breath at the thought. Something had told her that this meeting meant an open door, one more great opportunity.
“Oh!” she breathed as, dropping into a chair, she looked at the clock. “It lacks ten minutes of the hour.”
Her eyes roved the room. “They are not here.”
“Tea,” she said to the waitress, “very black tea, one large pot of tea.”
After that experience in the great dome she felt in need of this mild stimulant.
She was in a state of mellow glow imparted by the tea, when Florence ushered into the now all but empty room a person who on the instant brought a gasp from Jeanne’s pink lips.
For a full moment Jeanne and the stranger stared at one another in amazement.
“You,” said Jeanne at last, “must be I.”
“No,” said the other quite positively, “it is you who are to be some one else. You are to be Lorena LeMar. That is what we are here to talk about.
“Waiter,” she ordered, “bring us coffee, very black.”
“One demi-tasse,” Jeanne murmured.
It was only after the golden-haired movie star had drained the last drop of her coffee piping hot, that she turned to Jeanne.
“You see, I—”
“Won’t you-all draw your chairs up to the fire?” It was Jensie Crider, the rosy-cheeked mountain girl, who stood beside them. “You see everyone is gone. There is a cool breeze from the lake. The fire is so cheerful!”
“Yes, yes, let us do that!” Jeanne exclaimed quickly, touched by the girl’s simple kindness. “Yes, we shall do that, and you, my dear, shall sit with us.”
“But this—” Miss LeMar’s tone suggested caution. “This is to be something of a secret.”
“This,” Jeanne said in a sharp whisper, “does not matter. In the mountains secrets are kept as nowhere else in the world. Jensie is from the mountains. It is not so?” She turned to Jensie.
“It most certainly is true,” Jensie agreed.
“Oh, well then—” Lorena LeMar moved toward the fire.
“You see,” she threw out a petulant hand as they gathered about the fire, “I am on the lot over there in what they call ‘Little Hollywood.’ Five days from now I am to begin a picture—you know, show the people how it’s done. There are seats for thousands out there, and all that. Bah! I don’t like seats. And I hate people about, when I am making a picture!”
“But people, an audience!” Jeanne murmured, “That is wonderful!”
“Glad you like it. Not for me!” Miss LeMar tossed her head.
“And now,” she went on, “comes the opportunity of a lifetime. My opportunity. Rodney McBride, one of the richest men in Chicago, is making up a yachting party to go north. Think of it! A yacht a hundred and forty feet long! Singing, dancing, drinking! Oh, yi! yi! Moonlit waters. Mackinac Island, the Soo Canal, Isle Royale in Lake Superior, speed boats, sailboats and all that!” She sprang to her feet in a gesture of great impatience. “Think of giving up all that just to work out there on the lot with five thousand people staring at you!”
“But think of having your name on the electric signs all over the country!” Jeanne murmured.
“Nix!” Miss LeMar stamped her foot. “When it’s all over the thing’s sure to be scrapped. The picture’s too big for the lot.
“They’ve shot some fine little stories out there, short ones; but not this. No! No!” Again she stamped her foot.