After that she drew the gas mask over her head and plunged into the work.
“Ten grains,” she murmured; “a fluid ounce; three drams; three fluid ounces; heat this in a beaker; add two drams—”
So she went on mumbling to herself in her excitement, like some witch in a play.
“Too bad! Too bad! Won’t hold it,” she mumbled at last, after waiting for her concoction to cool. “Won’t go in one vial. Have to use two.”
Having filled one thin glass vial and closed it with a glass-stopper, she was in the act of filling the second when the half-filled vial slipped from her hand and went crashing to the tile floor.
“Oh! Help!” she uttered a muffled scream, and, before she realized what she was doing, threw the door leading into the main cabin wide open. Before her, regarding her in great astonishment, were Marian and Florence. For a few seconds they stood there, then of a sudden they began to act in the most startling manner. Jumping up and down, waving their arms, laughing, screaming, they vaulted over tables, knocked chairs end-over-end and sent books and papers flying in every direction.
Having recovered her power of locomotion, Lucile dashed for the outer door. This she flung wide open. Then, watching her chance, she propelled her two delirious, dancing companions out into the open air.
There, for a moment, she was obliged to cling to them lest they throw themselves over the rail, to go crashing to the frozen earth below.
In another moment it was all over. The two wild dancers collapsed, crumpling up in heaps on the deck.
“Oh, girls, I’m so sorry. I really truly am.” Lucile’s mortification was quite complete, in spite of the fact that she was fairly bursting with a desire to laugh.
“What—what—made us do that?” Florence stammered weakly.
“Gas, a new gas,” answered Lucile. Then, seeing the look of consternation on the girls’ faces, she hastened to add, “It’s perfectly harmless; doesn’t attack the tissues; works on the motor nerves like laughing-gas only it gets all the muscles excited, not just those of the face.”
“Well, I’ll say,” remarked Marian, “you really created something.”
“I only wish I had,” said Lucile regretfully, “but that chances to be a formula worked out by Dr. Holmes. I merely mixed it up. The bottle slipped from my hand and smashed on the floor—I didn’t aim to try it out on you.”
After the cabin had been thoroughly aired, the three girls went back to their work. As Lucile put the laboratory in order she noted the vial containing the remainder of the strange fluid. Having labeled it, “Quick action gas,” she put it away on the shelf, little dreaming that she would find an unusual use for it later.
It was two weeks after Lucile’s mysterious experience in the old Mission building. Things had settled down to the humdrum life of hard work and faithful study. On Saturday night two girls from the university dormitories skated down the lagoon and walked down the beach to spend the evening at the “ship,” as they called it.
They were jolly Western girls. The five of them spent a pleasant evening popping corn, pulling candy and relating amusing incidents from their own lives. At eleven the visitors declared that they must go home.
“Wait, I’ll go a piece with you,” suggested Florence, reaching for her skates.
At the end of the lagoon the three put on their skates. Florence’s were on first, for she wore a boyish style which went on with a clamp.
Gliding out on the ice, she struck out in a wide circle, then returned to the others. Just as they came gliding out to meet her, she fancied she caught a movement in the branches of some shrubs at the left which grew down to the edge of the ice. For a second her eyes rested there, then she was obliged to turn about to join her companions.
It was a glorious night; the skating was wonderful. Keen air caressed their cheeks as they shot over the glistening surface to the tune of ringing steel. Little wonder she forgot the moving bushes in the joy of the moment.
Florence was a born athlete. Tipping the scale at one hundred and sixty, she carried not a superfluous ounce of fat. Four hours every day she spent on the gym floor or in the swimming pool. She was equipping herself for the work of a physical culture teacher and took her task seriously. She believed that most girls could be as strong as boys if they willed to be, and she proceeded to set a shining example.
It was on her return trip that she was reminded of the moving bushes. Catching the distant ring of skates, she saw a person dressed in a long coat of some sort coming rapidly toward her.
The channel where they would meet was narrow. Some instinct told her to turn back, to circle the island and to reach the nearest point to the yacht that way. Whirling about, she set herself going rapidly in the other direction.
“Now that was a foolish thing to do,” she told herself. “Probably someone saving a long walk by putting on his skates, same as I’m doing. Might embarrass him to have me turn about that way.”
She was getting in some long, strong strokes now. There were few who could gain on her when she chose to exert herself.
She rounded the point of the island with a swift curve, then went skimming down the other side. Without further thought of the lone skater, she was nearing her goal and had gone into a long slide when, of a sudden the clip-clip of skates again came to her ears. It was hardly necessary for her to turn about to make sure that the stranger in the long coat had also rounded the island.
For a second she glided on, uncertain what course to take. It was nearing midnight. She was alone on the lagoon, a long way from any habitation. A stranger was following her; why, she could not tell. To throw off her skates and gain the bank before he came up was impossible. She decided, without being greatly alarmed about it, again to circle the island and, if necessary, take a spin the whole length of the lagoon.
CHAPTER IV
TRAPPED IN THE OLD MUSEUM
Florence had little fear for the outcome of this rather amusing adventure. She had been trailed over the ice by possible admirers before. She did not care to allow this one to catch up with her, that was all. She would skim along down to the far end of the lagoon where, a mile and a half away, the dome of the old museum loomed, a black bulk in the dark. She would then make the broad turn which this end of the lagoon afforded. She would have a clear mile and a half in which to put forth her best efforts. Surely she could outdistance the stranger and, with skates off, be away over the slope and down the beach toward the O Moo before he had reached this end of the lagoon once more.
Saving her strength on the down trip, keeping an even distance from the mysterious skater, she glided onward toward the old museum.
Just as she neared the broad end, where she was to make the turn, she glanced back. At that very moment, the flash of a powerful automobile lamp on the park drive a half mile away fell full upon the stranger’s face.
A little cry escaped her lips. This was no mere youthful enthusiast. His was the face of one whom few would trust. At that very moment his visage was twisted into an ugly snarl which said plainer than words:
“Now, young lady, I have you!”
“Why!” she whispered to herself, “that might be the face of a murderer!”
At that same instant, there flashed through her mind the note of warning tacked on the schooner. Perhaps this was the man who had placed it there.
In her consternation, she missed a stroke. One skate struck a crack in the ice; the clamp slipped; the skate went flying; disaster impended.
Florence was not a person to be easily defeated. One instant she had kicked the remaining skate from her foot and the next she was racing away over the glistening ice. She stumbled and all but fell. But, gaining courage from the near-by sloping bank, she plunged on.
Now she was ten yards away, now five. The metal cut-cut of skates behind her grew louder. Redoubling her efforts, she at last flung herself upon the snowy slope, to climb on hands and knees to the crest, then to race across a level space and gain the sheltering shadows of the museum.
It had been a hard struggle. For a few seconds she leaned panting against the wall. One skate was still in her hand. Without thinking why, she tucked this skate into the belt of her coat.
Her mind was in a whirl. What should she do? She was not safe here. For the man to remove his skates and scale the bank required but a moment. They were alone in the frozen park, a mile from any protection she could be sure of. She was not a good runner.
“No,” she whispered, “I couldn’t do it.”
She chanced to glance up, and her lips parted in a suppressed exclamation. There was a window open above her. True, it was some fifteen feet up, but there was an iron grating on the window beneath it.
“If only the grating is not rusted out,” she murmured hopefully, and the next instant she had reached the ledge of brickwork and was shaking the railing vigorously.
“It’ll hold I guess.”
Up she went like a monkey climbing the side of a cage. At the top of this grating there came an agonizing second in which she felt herself in danger of toppling over before she gained her balance on the window ledge above. Her splendid training served her well. She threw herself across the stone casing and, for a few seconds, lay there listening.
Hardly had she dropped noiselessly to the floor, some three feet below, than she heard the thud-thud of hurrying footsteps on the hard-packed snow. Holding her breath, she crouched there motionless, hoping beyond hope that she might hear those footsteps pass on around the building.
In this hope she was disappointed. Like a hound who has lost his scent, the man doubled back, then paused beneath her window.
The girl’s heart raced on. Was she trapped? The man, she felt sure, would, somehow, gain access to the building. Nevertheless, she might escape him.
The building had once been a museum, the central building of a great world exposition. No longer used as a museum, it stood there, an immense, unused structure, slowly dropping into decay. The floor on which she had landed was really a broad balcony with a rusty railing at its edge. From where she crouched she could see down into the main floor where stretched, twining and inter-twining, mile upon mile of rooms and corridors.
Slipping out of her shoes, she buttoned them to her belt, then stole noiselessly along the balcony. Moving ever in the shadow of the wall, she came to a rusty iron stair. Here she paused.
Would the stair creak, give her away? The man might at this moment be in the building on the ground floor. Yet, on this narrow balcony, she was sure sooner or later to be trapped. She must risk it.
Placing one trembling foot on the top step, she allowed her weight to settle upon it. There followed no sound. Breathing more easily, she began the descent. Only once did her heart stand still; a bit of loose plaster, touched by her foot, bounded downward.
She dared not pause. The die was cast.
Once on the ground floor, she sprang across a patch of light and found herself in the shadows once more.
Moving with the greatest possible speed, yet with even greater caution, avoiding bits of plaster, rustling papers and other impediments in her course, she made her way along a wall which to her heightened imagination seemed to stretch on for a mile.
Once as she paused she thought she caught the sound of heavy breathing, followed by a dull thud. “Must have come in through my window,” she decided, and, indeed there appeared to be no other means of access; all the ground floor doors and windows were either heavily shuttered or grated.
“These shutters and gratings,” she told herself, trying to still the fear in her heart by thinking of other things, “are relics of other days. Here millions of dollars worth of relics, curios, and costly jewels were once displayed. Mounted animals and birds, aisle after aisle of them, rooms full of rich furs and costly silks, jewels too in abundance. They’re all gone now, but the shutters are still here and I am trapped. There’s only one exit and that guarded. Well, perhaps another somewhere. Anyway, I can wait. Daylight drives wolves to their dens. If only I can reach the other balcony!”
She had been in the building in the days of its glory, and had visited one of the curators, a friend of her mother. There were, on this other balcony, she remembered, a perfect labyrinth of rooms—cubbyholes and offices. Once she gained access to these she probably would be safe.
But here was another stair. She must go up.
Only partially enshrouded in darkness, it might betray her.
Dropping on hands and knees, she began to climb. A bit of glass cut her stocking. She did not notice that. A crumpled sheet of paper fluttered away; that was maddening. A broad patch of light from far above her head threw her out in bold relief for a second. For a second only. Then, leaping to her feet, she raced down the balcony and again entered the shadows.
Pressing a hand to her breast to still her heart’s wild beating, she listened intently.
Did she hear? Yes, there could be no mistake, there came a soft pit-pat, the footsteps of a person walking on tiptoes.
“Like one of those mounted tigers come to life,” she thought with a shudder.
Slowly she moved along the wall. If only she could reach a door! If she only could!
But that door was a distance of some fifty yards away. Could she make it?
Stealthily she moved forward. Stopping now and then to listen, she caught as before the stealthy pit-pat of footsteps. Once some object rattled on the floor and she heard a muffled exclamation. Then she caught a creaking sound—was he mounting the stair? Had the banister creaked?
Now she was twenty yards from the door, now ten, now five, and now—now she gripped its casing. Excitedly she swung around, only to find herself facing a rusted square of steel. The labyrinth of rooms was closed to her. She was trapped on a narrow balcony with no way to turn for escape.
As she crouched there trembling, her hand touched something cold—her skate. Here was hope; if the worst came to worst, here was a formidable weapon and she was possessed of the power to swing it.
Cautiously she drew it from her belt, then crouching low, gripping the small end, she waited.
Came again the pit-pat-pit-pat. He was on the balcony, she felt sure of that now. Her hand gripped the skate until the blade cut through the skin, but still she crouched there waiting.
* * * * * * * *
When Florence failed to return, Marian and Lucile might have been seen pacing the floor while Marian pretended to study and made a failure of it.
“I think we should go out and look for her,” said Lucile.
“Probably just a bit overcome by the wonderful skating in the moonlight,” answered Marian, in what was intended as an unworried tone, “but we’ll go down to the lagoon and have a look.”
“Wait just a moment,” said Lucile as she disappeared inside her laboratory. When she returned, something beneath her coat bulged, but Marian did not ask her what it might be.
After dropping down the rope ladder they hurried along the beach and across the park to the lagoon. From the ridge above it they could see the greater part of the lagoon’s surface. Not a single moving figure darkened its surface. For fully five minutes they stood there, looking, listening. Then Marian led the way to the edge of the ice.
By the side of a clump of bushes she had spied something.
“What’s that?”
“Pair of men’s rubbers,” replied Lucile kicking at them.
For a full moment the two stood and stared at one another.
“She—she isn’t down here,” said Lucile at last. “Perhaps we had better go up and look among the boats.”
Silently they walked back to where the hundred boats were looming in the dark, their masts like slender arms reaching for the moon. As they rounded a small schooner, they were startled by a footstep.
“Don’t be afraid. It is only I,” called a friendly voice. “Out for a stroll in the moonlight. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
Marian recognized the young man of the schooner, Mark Pence. She had talked with him once before. He had helped her home with her two dozen cans of label-less fruits and vegetables. Having liked him then, she decided to trust him now, so in a few well-chosen words she confided their fears for their companion’s safety.
“Shucks!” said the boy. “That’ll be all right. She’ll show up all right. Probably went farther than she intended. But—sure, I’ll take a turn with you through our little village of boats. Be glad to.”
They wandered in and out among the various crafts. Scarcely a word was spoken until they came to the great black bulk of the scow inhabited by the Chinamen.
“I’ll rout ’em out. Might know something,” said Mark.
He knocked several times but received no response. He was about to enter when Lucile whispered:
“Wait a minute. Were—were you in the war?”
“A trifle. Not to amount to much.”
“Know how to use a gas mask?”
“Well, rather. Six seconds is my record. Know that old joke about the ‘quick and the dead,’ don’t you? I was quick.”
Lucile smiled. She was holding out an oblong package fastened to a strap, also a small glass bottle.
“Take—take these,” she whispered nervously. “You can’t tell about those folks. Break the bottle if they go after you, then put on the mask. It’s pretty powerful gas but does no permanent injury.”
Mark smiled as he slipped the strap over his shoulder. “Nonsense, I guess,” he murmured, “but might not be. Just like going over the top, you never can tell.” He drew a small flashlight from his pocket, then pushed the door open.
He was gone for what to the girls seemed an exceedingly long time. When he returned he had little enough to tell.
“Not a soul in the place, far as I could see,” he reported. “But, man, Oh, man! It’s a queer old cellar. Smells like opium and chop-suey. And talk about narrow winding stairs! Why, I bet I went down—” He paused to stare at the scow. “Why that tub isn’t more than ten feet high and I went down a good twenty feet. Rooms and rooms in it. Something queer about that.”
The girls were too anxious for Florence’s safety to give much attention to what he was saying.
“Well, we are greatly obliged to you,” said Lucile, taking her bottle and gas mask. “I guess there’s nothing to do but go back to the yacht and wait.”
With a friendly good-night they turned and made their way back to the O Moo.
CHAPTER V
A CATASTROPHE AVERTED
As Florence crouched in the dark corner of the deserted museum, many and wild were the thoughts that sped through her mind. Could she do it? If worse came to worst, could she strike the blow? She had the power; the muscles of her arm, thanks to her splendid training, were as firm as those of a man. Yes, she had the power, but could she do it? There could be no mincing matters. “Strike first and ask questions after,” that must be her motto in such an extremity. There would be ample opportunity. A beast always hunts with nose close to the ground. The man would be a fair mark. The skate was as perfect a weapon as one might ask. Keen and powerful as a sword, it would do its work well. Yet, after all, did she have the nerve?
While this problem was revolving in her mind, the pit-pat of footsteps grew more and more distinct. Her heart pounded fearfully. “He’s coming—coming—coming!” it seemed to be repeating over and over.
Then, suddenly, there flashed through her mind the consequences of the blow she must strike. The man must be given no chance to fight; one blow must render him unconscious. Whatever was done must be done well. But after that, what? She could not leave him alone in this great, deserted shell of a building. Neither could she await alone his return to consciousness. No, that would never do. She would be obliged to seek aid. From whom? The police, to be sure. But then there would be a court scene and a story—just such a story as cub reporters dote on. She saw it all in print: “Three girls living in a boat. One pursued by villain. An Amazon, this modern girl, she brains him with her skate.”
Yes, that would make a wonderful news story. And after that would come such publicity as would put an end to their happy times aboard the O Moo. That would mean the end of their schooldays, just when they were becoming engrossed in their studies; when they had just begun to realize the vast treasures of knowledge which was locked up in books and the brains of wise men and which would be unlocked to them little by little, if only they were able to remain at the university.
The whole thing was unthinkable. She must escape. She must not strike the blow. There must be another way out. Yet she could think of none. Before her was an iron railing, but to go over this meant a drop of twenty feet. Beyond her at the end of the balcony, towered a brick wall; at her back, an iron door. To her left there sounded ever more plainly the pit-pat of tiptoeing feet.
“I must! I must!” she determined, her teeth set hard. “There is no other way.”
And yet, even as she expected to hear the shift of feet which told of a turn on the balcony, some ten feet from where she cowered, the pit-pat went steadily forward. She could not believe her ears. What had happened?
Then on the heels of this revelation, there followed another: The sound of the footsteps was growing fainter. Of a sudden the truth dawned upon her: The man was not on the balcony. He had not ascended the stairs. He was still on the floor below. Her sense of location had been distorted by the vast silence of the place. She was for the moment safe.
A wave of dizziness swept over her. She sank into a crumpled heap on the floor. Reviving, she was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh, but, clenching and unclenching her hands, she maintained an unbroken silence. At length, her nerves in hand once more, she settled down to watchful waiting. With eyes and ears alert, she caught every new move of the prowler.
As the sound of his footsteps died away in the distance, she settled herself to calmer thoughts. This place she was in was a vast cathedral of gloom. When the moon went under a cloud, blotting out the broad circle of light which fell from the vaulted dome, the darkness was so profound that she felt she must scream or flee.
Yet there was something magnetic about the place. She might have been held there even though she were not pursued. It was a place to dream of. Some twenty-eight years before a hundred thousand people in a single day had passed in and out along the aisles of this vast structure. That had been in the days of its glory. All—the rich, the poor, the cultured, the illiterate, the laborer, the street gamin—had peered at the marvels displayed between its walls. And now—now two beings haunted its vast corridors, the one pursuing the other. How strange life was!
A whiff of wind sweeping over the main floor sent a whirl of waste paper flying in circles halfway to the ceiling. Two tiny red eyes peered at her at a safe distance—then another and another.
“Rats,” she whispered. “Three of them.”
The pit-pat of feet became distinct again. Putting out her hand to grip the skate, she discovered that her fingers were too stiff for service. She had grown cold without sensing it. Rubbing her hands together, she warmed them. Her limbs too had grown stiff. Rising silently, she went through a series of exercises which sent the blood coursing through her veins.
“Must get out of here some way,” she told herself, “but how?”
Then suddenly she thought of the girls. They would be anxious about her, might come out to seek her, only to fall into a trap.
A trap? She thought of Lucile, slim, nervous. Lucile hovering as she had in the corner of that old Mission on that other night; thought too of the things Lucile had seen there; admired the nerve she had displayed.
But what did it all mean? She could but feel that it all was connected in some way; the note of warning tacked to the schooner; Lucile’s experience in the Mission and her present one, all fitted together in one.
What was it all about? Were they innocently checkmating, or appearing to checkmate, some men in their attempt to perform some unlawful deed? Were these persons moonshiners, gamblers, smugglers, or robbers living in the dry dock? If so, who were they?
Again the sound of footsteps grew indistinct in the distance.
“Ought to be getting out of here,” she told herself. “Getting late—horribly late and—and cold. The girls will be searching for me. There’s an open window over there to my right. Terribly high up, but I might make the ground though.”
She listened intently, but caught no sound. Then stealthily, step by step, she made her way toward the window.
Now she was fifty feet away from it, now thirty, now ten. And now—now she dropped silently to the floor and crept to the opening. There was no glass; she was glad of that. Flattening herself out, she peered over the sill to the void below.
“Terribly far down. Easily thirty feet!” she breathed. “Two gratings; rotten too, perhaps. Ground frozen too.”
She reached far down and, gripping the top of the nearest window grating, threw all her strength into an effort to wrench it free.
“That one’s strong enough,” she concluded; “but how about the other?”
Again she lay quite still, listening. In the distance she fancied she caught the pit-pat again.
“Better try it while I’ve got a chance,” she decided.
With the care and skill of a trained athlete she swung herself over the window sill, clung to the grating with her toes; dropped down; gripped the grating with her hands; slid her feet to the grating below; tested that as best she could; trusted her weight to it; swung low; touched the ground; then in her stocking-feet sped away toward the nearest street.
Arrived at a clump of bushes which skirted the street, she sat down and drew on her shoes. Then with a loud “Whew!” she crossed the street and made her way toward the O Moo over a roundabout but safe route, which led her by the doors of closed shops and beneath huge apartments where some of Chicago’s thousands were sleeping.
Her mind, as she hurried on, was deep in the mystery and full of possible plans as to the uncertain future.
“I suppose,” she mumbled once, “we should give up the O Moo. Most people would say it was a wild notion, this living on a ship, but what’s one to do? No rooms you can pay for, and who would give up a university education without a fight? What have we done? What are these people bothering us for anyway? What right have they? Who are they anyway?”
This cast her into deeper reflections. The face she had seen was not that of Mark Pence. Whether it was one of the Orientals living on the scow, or one of the fishermen living in their fishing smack, she could not tell. She had never seen the fishermen. Even Marian had seen but two of them.
“Might not be any of these,” she concluded with a shrug. “Might have been some night prowler who will never come back.”
* * * * * * * *
The two girls in the cabin of the O Moo had waited an hour. Lucile had fallen half-asleep. Marian had lifted a trap door and had started the small gasoline-driven generator which furnished them light and heat. The engine was racing away with a faint pop-pop-pop, when Lucile sat up suddenly.
“Marian,” she exclaimed, “what did that boy say about the scow those Chinese people live in?”
“Why,” said Marian, wrinkling her brow, “he said something about going down twenty feet.”
“That seems strange, doesn’t it?” Lucile considered for a moment.
“Yes, but then it was a winding stairway. Probably he isn’t used to that kind. Perhaps he just thought it was farther down than it really was. I—”
“What was that?” exclaimed Lucile, starting up. There had come a muffled sound from below, barely heard above the pop-pop of the engine.
In a second Marian had stopped the generator. Each girl strained her ears to listen. It came again, this time more distinct; tap-tap-tap, a pause, then a fourth tap.
“Florence!” exclaimed Lucile springing for the door.
Three taps, a halt, then a tap was the signal for lowering the rope-ladder.
A moment later Florence was being dragged into the cabin and ordered to give an account of herself.
“Sit down,” she said. “It’s rather a long story. When I’m through you’ll very likely be for leaving the O Moo in the morning, and I’m not so sure but that is the right thing to do. The cruise of the O Moo,” she laughed a bit uncertainly, “gives some indication of turning out to be an ill-fated voyage.”
With Lucile and Marian listening intently Florence told her story.
“Florence,” said Lucile, when she had finished, “do—do you suppose that has anything to do with the old Mission affair I told you about?”
“Or the warning tacked on our hull?” suggested Marian.
“I don’t know,” said Florence thoughtfully, “It might. The point really is, though, are we leaving in the morning?”
She was answered by an emphatic:
“No! No!”
“Do you know,” said Lucile a few moments later as she sipped a cup of hot chocolate and nibbled at a wafer, “I peeped into that room in the old Mission yesterday. The shutter had been replaced but I could see through the cracks. There really wasn’t anything on the table. The candles and crucifix were there, but nothing on the old table—not anything at all. I—I must just have imagined that face.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Florence mysteriously.
“Oh!” exclaimed Lucile suddenly, “You were going to tell me the story that face reminded you of—the story told by an old seaman.”
“I will,” said Florence, “but not to-night. Just look,” she sprang to her feet, “it’s after three o’clock and to-day is already to-morrow.”
CHAPTER VI
THE BLUE GOD
As Florence returned from her lectures the following afternoon she passed across the end of the lagoon.
Once she had found her skate, lost on the previous night, and thrust it into the bag with her books, she glanced up at the ragged giant of a building which lay sleeping there on its blanket of snow. She felt an almost irresistible desire again to enter and roam about its deserted corridors.
Walking to the corner beneath the broken windows, she glanced to the right and left of her, allowed her gaze to sweep the horizon, then, seeing no one who might observe her actions, she sprang upon the edge of the wall, scaled the grating with the agility of a squirrel, tumbled over the upper window sill and found herself once more inside.
In spite of the fact that it was now broad daylight and would be for an hour, she found her heart fluttering painfully. The experiences of the previous night were all too freshly burned on the tissues of her brain.
As she tiptoed down the balcony, then dropped from step to step to the main floor below, the unpleasant sensations left her. She found herself walking, as she had some years before as a child, in the midst of a throng, exclaiming at every newly discovered monster or thing of delicate beauty. The treasures had long since been removed to newer and more magnificent quarters, but the memory of them lingered.
She was wandering along thus absorbed when her foot touched something. Thinking it but a stray brick or crumbling bit of plaster, she was about to bestow upon it only a passing glance when, with a sudden exclamation, she stooped and picked it up.
The thing at first sight appeared to be but a bundle of soiled silk cloth of a peculiar blue tint. Florence knew, however, that it was more than that, for when her toe had struck it, she had thought it some solid object.
With trembling fingers she tore away the silk threads which bound it, to uncover a curious object of blue stone shaped like a short, squat candlestick. Indeed, there were traces of tallow to be seen in the cuplike hollow at the top of it.
“Looks like it might be blue jade,” she told herself. “If it is, it’s worth something—”
The whisper died on her lips. A thought had come to her, one which made her afraid of the gathering darkness, and caused her to hastily thrust the thing into the pocket of her coat and hurry from the building.
That night, after the dinner dishes were washed, Florence, who had been fumbling with something in the corner, suddenly turned out the lights. Scratching a match, she lighted the half of a candle which she had thrust into the candlestick she had found in the museum.
“Gather round, children,” she said solemnly.
Placing the candle on the floor, she sat down tailor-fashion before it.
“Gather round,” she repeated, “and you shall hear the tale of the strange blue god. It is told best while seated in the floor as the Negontisks sit, with legs crossed. It is told best by the dim and flaring light of a candle.”
“Oh! Good!” exclaimed Lucile, dropping down beside her.
“But where did you get the odd candlestick?” asked Marian as she followed Lucile. “What a strange thing it is; made of some almost transparent blue stone. And see! little faces peer out at you from every angle. It is as if a hundred wicked fairies had been bottled up in it.”
All that Marian had said was true, and even Florence stared at it a long time before she answered:
“Found it in the old museum. Probably left behind when the displays were moved out. I ought to take it down to the new museum and ask them, I guess.”
There was something in Florence’s tone which told Lucile that she herself did not believe half she was saying but she did not give voice to those thoughts. Instead she whispered:
“Come now, let us have the story of the blue god.”
“As the old seaman told it to me,” said Florence, “it was like this: He had been shanghaied by a whaler captain whose ship was to cruise the coast of Arctic Siberia. So cruel and unjust was this captain that the sailor resolved to escape at the first opportunity. That opportunity came one day when he, with others, had been sent ashore on the Asiatic continent somewhere between Korea and Behring Straits.
“Slipping away when no one was looking, he hid on the edge of a rocky cliff until he saw the whaler heave anchor and sail away.
“At first it seemed to him that he had gone from bad to worse; the place appeared to be uninhabited. It was summer, however, and there were solman berries on the tundra and blueberries in the hills. There were an abundance of wild birds’ eggs to be gathered on the ledges. The meat of young birds was tender and good; so he fared well enough.
“But, not forgetting that summer would soon pass and his food supply be gone, he made his way southward until at last he came within sight of the camp fires of a village.
“It was with much fear that he approached these strangers. He found them friendly enough, ready to share food and shelter with him providing he was willing to share their labor.
“You wouldn’t care to hear of his life among these natives. Only the part relating to the blue god is of importance.
“He found that these people worshipped a strange god, or idol. This idol was a very ugly face carved out of a block of solid blue jade. When being worshipped it was always illumined by some strange light which caused it to appear to smile and frown at alternating intervals.”
Lucile leaned over and gripped the speaker’s arm. “See how the faces in the candlestick smile and frown,” she shuddered.
Florence smiled and nodded, then proceeded with her story:
“Little by little, as these people who called themselves Negontisks, who lived in skin tents and traveled in skin boats as the Eskimos do, and are considered by some to be the forefathers of the Eskimos, came to have confidence in the seaman, they told him the story of the blue god.
“So ancient was this god that not the oldest man in the village could recall the time when it had first been accepted as their god. They did know, however, that one time when there were but five villages of their tribe, and when all these villagers had joined in a great feast of white whale meat and sour berries, on a slope at the foot of a great mountain a huge rock had come rattling down from the cliffs above and, passing through their midst, had crushed to death five of their number.
“As is the custom with most barbaric tribes, these people considered that anything which had the power to destroy them must be a god. This rock, which proved to be of blue jade, became their god. And that they might have it ever with them as they traveled, that it might protect them and bring them good fortune, they carved from it five hollow faces, like masks. One of these was taken by each village. Then they went their way.
“From that day, so the story goes, the Negontisk people were greatly prospered. They found food in abundance. No longer were there starving times. They had children in numbers and all these lived to grow to manhood.
“As the tribe grew, they wished to create new villages. They returned to the place of the rock for new gods, only to find that the rock had vanished.
“Their medicine men explained that, being a god, the rock had the power of going where it pleased. So there could be only five blue gods. But the people lived on and prospered.
“As the years passed, many cruel practices grew up in connection with the worship of these gods. Some of them are so terrible that the old seaman would not tell me of them. One, however, he did tell; that was that all the illuminations of the gods were held in a tent made of many thicknesses of skins. Only men were permitted to be present during the illumination. The life of a woman or child who chanced to look into the tent at such a time must be sacrificed. Their blood must be spilled before the face of the blue god. Very strange sort of”—she broke off abruptly, to exclaim:
“Why, Lucile, what makes you tremble so?”
“Nothing, I guess.” Lucile tried to smile but made a poor attempt at it. “It—it’s ridiculous, I know,” she stammered, “but you know I saw a blue face illumined and I am a girl, so—”
“Nonsense! Pure nonsense!” exclaimed Marian. “You are in America, Chicago. This story comes from Siberia. Probably not one of those tribesmen has ever set foot on the American continent, let alone in Chicago. And if they did, do you suppose for a moment that our authorities would allow them to continue to perform these terrible religious rites?”
Florence was silent.
Suddenly Lucile whispered: