“There,” he said, “is a title for you.”

She read the title: “The Hope for Happiness.”

“Why should one hope for it when they may really have it?” Laurie exclaimed.

“May one have happiness?” Lucile asked.

“Surely one may! Why if one—”

Lucile turned to find a customer at her elbow.

“Will you sell me this?”

The customer, a lady, thrust a copy of Pinocchio into her hand.

“Cash?”

“Yes. I’ll take it with me, please.”

There was a sweet mellowness in the voice.

Without glancing up, Lucile set her nimble fingers to writing the sale. As she wrote, almost automatically, she chanced to glance at the customer’s hands.

One’s hands may be as distinctive and tell as much of character as one’s face. It was so with these hands. Lucile had never seen such fingers. Long, slim, tapering, yet hard and muscular, they were such fingers as might belong to a musician or a pickpocket. Lucile felt she would always remember those hands as easily as she might recall the face of some other person. As if to make doubly sure that she might not forget, on the forefinger of the right hand was a ring of cunning and marvelous design; a dragon wrought in gold, with eyes of diamonds and a tongue of ten tiny rubies. No American craftsmanship, this, but Oriental, Indian or Japanese.

Without lifting her eyes, Lucile received the money, carried her book to the wrapper and delivered the package to the purchaser. Then she returned to her task of putting things to rights.

Scarcely a moment had elapsed when, on glancing toward her cash book which lay open on a pile of books, she started in surprise.

There could be no mistaking it. From it there came a flash of crimson. Imagine her surprise when she found that the top page of her book had been twice pierced by a needle and that a crimson thread had been drawn through and knotted there in exactly the same manner as had that other bit of thread on the blue cape.

It required but a glance to assure her that through this thread there ran the single strand of purple. The next instant she was dashing down the aisle, hoping against hope that she might catch a glimpse of the mystery woman with the extraordinary fingers and the strange ring.

In this she failed. The woman had vanished.

“And to think,” she exclaimed in exasperation, “to think that I did not look at her face! Such a foolish way as we do get into—paying no attention to our customers! If I had but looked at her face I would have known. Then I would have demanded the truth. I would have—” she paused to reflect, “well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said so much to her, but I would have known her better. And now she is gone!”

But there was yet work to be done. Drawing herself together with an effort, she hurried back to her table where the disorderly pile of books lay waiting to be rearranged.

“Speaking of happiness,” said Laurie, for all the world as if their conversation had not been interrupted, “I don’t see much use of writing a book on the hope for happiness when one may be happy right here and now. Oh, I know there are those who sing:

“But that’s religion, of a sort; mighty poor sort, too, I’d say. Idea being that this world’s all wrong and that if you enjoy any of it, if the scent of spring blossoms, the songs of birds, the laugh of children at play, the lazy drift of fleecy clouds against the azure sky, if these things make you happy, then you’re all wrong. I guess they’d say: ‘Life here is to be endured. Happiness only comes after death.’ Huh! I don’t think much of that.”

“How can one secure happiness?” Lucile asked the question almost wistfully. She was over-tired and not a little perplexed.

“There’s a lot of things that go with making people happy,” said Laurie as his nimble fingers flew from book to book. “I’m quite sure that happiness does not come from long hours in a ball-room nor from smoking cigarettes, nor any one of the many things that put dark rings about the eyes of our young new rich or near rich, and that set their eyelids twitching.

“Happiness,” he mused, throwing back his head and laughing softly. “Why, it’s as easy to be happy as it is to tell the truth. Have friends and be true to them. Find a place you love to be and be there. Keep your body and mind fit. Sleep eight hours; eat slowly; take two hours for quiet thinking every day. Have a crowd you love, a crowd you feel that you belong to and fit in with. Of course they’ll not be perfect. None of us are. But loveable they are, all the same.

“For instance, take the crowd here,” he said, lowering his voice. “You and I are transients here. Christmas eve comes and out we go. But look at Donnie and Rennie, Bob, Bettie, and dear old Morrison over there in the corner. They’re the regular ones, been here for years, all of them.

“See here,” he continued earnestly, “I’ll bet that when you came in here you had the popular magazine notion of the people who work in department stores; slang of the worst kind, paint an inch thick, lip stick, sordid jealousy, envy, no love, no fellowship. But look! What would happen if Rennie, the dear mother and straw-boss of us all, should slip before a car and be seriously injured to-night? What would happen? Not a soul of us all, even us transients, but would dig down and give our last penny to buy the things that would help her bear it. That’s what I mean, a gang that you belong to, that you suffer with, endure things with and enjoy life with! That’s the big secret of happiness.”

As Lucile listened to this short lecture on happiness, she worked. At last her task was done. Then with a hurried: “Thanks awfully. Goodnight,” she rushed for the cloak-room preparatory to donning the fur-lined cape. She half expected to find it gone, but it was not, and after throwing it across her shoulders she dashed down the stairs to join the homeward rushing throng.

As she snuggled down beneath the covers that night, she found her mind dwelling with unusually intense interest upon the events of the past two days. Like pictures on a screen, strange, unanswerable questions passed through her mind. Who was the mystery woman of the night shadows in the book department? Why had Laurie given her his pass-out? Why had she left her gorgeously beautiful cape behind for a shop girl to wear home? How had the unusual crimson thread come to be drawn into the cloth of the cape? Had the mystery woman put it there? Had she drawn that thread through the page of Lucile’s cash book? It seemed that she must have. But why? Why? Why? This last word kept ringing in her ears. Why had Laurie given up his pass-out? Where had he slept that night? How did it happen that an elevator in a department store at night ran of its own accord with no one to work the lever? Surely here were problems enough to keep one small brain busy.

Then again, there was the problem of the missing author of that wonderfully successful book. What did Laurie know about that? Why had he talked so strangely about it?

When she had allowed all these problems to pass in review before her mind’s eye, she came to but one conclusion—that she would believe Laurie a sincere and trustworthy person until he had been proven otherwise. Her faith had been shaken a bit by the revelation of the night before.

“Life,” she whispered sleepily to herself, “is certainly strange. Surely one who can talk so wonderfully about happiness can’t be bad. And yet it’s all very mysterious.”

Right there she concluded that mysteries of the right sort added much to the happiness of us all, and with that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV
THE PICTURE GIRL

Little dreaming of the stirring events that awaited her, and without the slightest anticipation of the new mystery and unusual responsibilities that were crowding in upon her that day, Lucile took her Monday morning train with the quiet composure of one who, having enjoyed a perfect Sunday of rest, looks forward with enthusiasm to a day of interesting service.

The supreme moment of that day arrived in a rather unusual place at a time when the clock’s hands were nearing the hour of 1:00. Before that, however, there came hours of the usual toil which many would call drudgery. From eight-thirty until ten there were few customers. Every moment was taken up. Two truckloads of books had come down from the apparently inexhaustable storerooms above. These must be placed on the tables. Tables must be dusted; cash-books filled with blanks for the day; books out of place must be returned to the proper section.

As Lucile came and went in the performance of her allotted tasks, she was more and more impressed with what Laurie had said about this group of loyal friends, this company of sales-people who were so much like a very large family.

“They are all my friends, almost my kinsfolk,” she told herself with a little gulp of joy that was very near to tears.

And so they were. Even outside her little corner they greeted her with a comradely smile. There was the pleasing lady who sold new fiction, and the tumbled haired lady who sold travel books and had sold books in stores from coast to coast. In the first alcove was the worried lady who handled standard sets; in the second was the dignified one who murmured in low, church-like tones of prayer books and rosaries; while in the farthest, deepest alcove of all was dear old Morrison, the young-old man with premature gray hair and a stoop. But his lustrous eyes were lighted with an earnestness such as one seldom looks into, and he had an air of poise and refinement and a smile of perfect fellowship. He sold fine bindings, and knew them well. Besides that, he could tell you the name and publishers of every book for serious minded people published since the days of Ben Franklin.

Working among such people as these, and in spite of all her strenuous hours of labor, Lucile dreaded the coming of Christmas Eve when she must bid them all farewell and return to her studies. Never before had she been so tempted to relinquish her cherished hope of university training and to settle down to work among a host of interesting and loyal friends.

So the forenoon wore away, and with the passing of each hour the great and startling event of that day came sixty minutes nearer.

The noon hour at last arrived. Having hastily eaten her paper-bag lunch, Lucile hurried from the store. There was yet three-quarters of an hour to spend. She would spend the time sauntering through a place of great enchantment, the Art Museum.

Five minutes of battling with wind and intense cold, and she was there. Racing up the stone steps, she paused an instant for breath. Then she entered and hurried up the broad marble stairway. At last she came to a place where a great circular leather cushioned seat in the center of a room offered opportunity for perfect repose. There she sank down, to hide her eyes with her hands until the frost and the glare of snow had left them, then to open them slowly and to squint away contentedly toward the wall which lay before her.

Before her, and a little to the left, was a painting from Ireland, the work of a great master. It was a simple thing in a way, a boy clad in humble garb shoveling snow, and a girl with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, coming down the well cleaned path. Very simple people these, but happy and kind. There were sparrows perched along the path. A very humble theme, but such masses of wonderful color! Had she not seen it, Lucile would not have believed that artists could have achieved such perfection.

To the left was an equally lovely picture; dawn on the heather, the sun rising from the dripping dewy green and a girl reaper going to her toil with the song of a lark on her lips and joy in her eye.

These were the pictures that brought rest and joy to Lucile’s half hour of leisure and helped prepare her for events that cast no shadow before them.

She had descended the marble stairs and was about to leave the building when a picture arrested her attention; a living picture of a girl. And such a girl as she was! A supple grace to her waist and shoulders, a proper curve at the ankles, and a face—such a face! Cheeks aglow with the color the frosty out-of-doors had given them. Cheeks offset by dark, deep-set eyes, made darker still by eyelashes that were like hemlocks in a snow covered valley, and a smooth oval forehead backed by a wealth of short, wavy hair. This was the picture; only faintly sketched, for behind all this beauty there was a certain strength of character, a force of will that seemed a slumbering fire gleaming from her eyes. In the background were people and marble pillars. The girl had just entered the Museum and, uncertain of her way, stood irresolute.

“She’s from the country,” Lucile whispered to herself. “Her clothes show that. But how startling, how unusual, how—how striking she is!

“She’s like the pictures I’ve been seeing, they were unusual and priceless. She is the same. And yet,” a feeling of fear and sadness swept over her, “those priceless pictures are carefully guarded night and day. I wonder if she is? She seems alone. It’s not to be wondered at, their guarding those pictures. Who would not like one for his room? Who would not love to open his eyes each morning upon the girl in the ‘Song of the Lark’? But they’d wish to possess that girl, too. A father, a mother, sister, brother, would be proud to possess her, to look at her every morning, a—anyone would. And yet, she’s not—”

Her meditations were cut short by sight of a figure standing not ten feet from her; a tall, slim, young man whose features might have been carved from marble, and in whose eyes Lucile had surprised a steely glance such as she had once caught in the beady eye of a down-swooping hawk.

And then, as if enacting her part in a play, the girl of this living picture suddenly wavered where she stood. Her face went white, then with a little, wavering cry, she crumpled in a heap on the marble floor.

Lucile could have sworn the girl was alone and uncertain of her next move. She understood what had happened. Having traveled far in the intense cold, the girl had been overcome by the heavy warmth of the museum and had fainted. The thing that happened next puzzled Lucile beyond belief.

After ten seconds of motionless panic, a half score of people sprang to her assistance. But the young man, he of the marble features and steely eye, was first up.

“It’s all right,” he was saying in a quiet, even tone, “she’s my sister. I’ll take care of her. We have a car outside.”

Lifting the unconscious girl in his arms, he started for the door.

“It’s not all right! It’s not all right!” Lucile fairly shrieked the words.

To her vast astonishment, the next moment she was gripping a burly guard by the arm and saying in a voice hoarse with emotion:

“It’s not all right! He’s not her brother. He—he’s stealing her! Stop them!”

To her further astonishment, the guard believed her. With three strides he reached the door and blocked it.

“Here! Here!” he said in the tone of one who is accustomed to be obeyed. “It won’t do. You can’t take her out like that.”

“Oh, all right,” there was a note of forced indifference in the young man’s voice, but there was murder in his cold, hard eyes. “All right, if you know so much. Fetch some water and get her out of it. She’ll tell you I’m her brother. But be quick about it. You’re a beef-head for ordering a gentleman about.”

Lucile’s heart went to the bottom of her shoes. What was this? Had her emotions led her astray? Was he indeed the girl’s brother? It would seem so, else why would he consent so readily to the delay, which must mean proof one way or another? She was soon to see. Tremblingly, she awaited the outcome. Dropping upon the marble floor, she pillowed the girl’s head in her lap and brushing away the hair from the face, caressed the cold forehead with a soft hand.

When the water had been brought Lucile dampened her handkerchief and laid it icy cold on the other’s forehead. Almost instantly the eyes opened and the girl, having dragged herself to a sitting position, stared about the museum.

“Wha—where am I?” she asked. “What has happened?”

“You’re in the Art Museum. You fainted.”

“Faint—fainted!” There was terror in her eyes.

“It was the cold. It’s nothing, really nothing.” Lucile put a steadying arm about her. “You’ll be quite all right in a moment.”

“Now where is that brother of hers?” grumbled the guard. “He’s nowhere to be seen! He’s gone!”

“Gone?” echoed Lucile.

“Brother?” said the girl in astonishment. “I have no brother. I am alone.”

Such a wave of feeling swept over Lucile as made her sick and faint. She had been right, dreadfully right. She had saved this girl, this wonderful creature, from—she dared not think from what.

For a moment, rocked by her emotions, she sat there in silence. At last, with a supreme effort, she dragged herself to her feet.

“You look the worst of the two,” said the guard, giving her a keen glance.

“I’m all right,” she protested stoutly.

To the girl, whom she had assisted to her feet, she said, “You may come with me if you wish. Our store’s only two blocks away. There’s a rest room. You’ll be all right there until you sort of get your bearings. Perhaps I can help you.”

“I’d—I’d be glad to,” said the other, clinging to her impulsively.

So they left the museum together. Though she kept a sharp watch to right and left, Lucile caught no sign of the volunteer brother, but she shivered once or twice at the very thought of him.

* * * * * * * *

It was a very much perplexed Lucile who curled up in her big chair that night for a few moments of quiet thought before retiring.

A new mystery had been added to her already well filled list of strange doings. “First,” she said to herself, telling them off like beads on a rosary, “there comes the beautiful mystery woman and the cape she left behind; then Laurie Seymour and the vanishing author; then the crimson thread; and now this girl.”

As she whispered this last she nodded toward the bed. There, lying wrapped in slumber, was the beautiful girl she had saved in the museum.

“She’s even more beautiful in sleep than when awake,” Lucile murmured. “And such a strange creature! She hasn’t told me a thing.”

The last statement was entirely true. Any notion Lucile had of the girl, any guess at her hidden secrets, was based on observation and conjecture alone. Not one word regarding them had escaped the strange girl’s lips.

Having accompanied Lucile to the store, she had lain upon a couch in the “quiet room” for three hours. Whenever Lucile had stolen a moment from work to look in upon her, the girl had appeared to be day-dreaming. Far from being worried about events of the past or the immediate future, she had appeared to be enjoying the recalling of an interesting adventure or anticipating one.

At five she had risen from the cot and, having brushed her hair and arranged her clothing, had insisted upon helping her new-found friend to put her tables to rights. She had accepted Lucile’s invitation to pass the night with her with the nonchalance of one who is offered this courtesy from a long-time friend.

Innocent of one scrap of baggage, in the same manner she had accepted Lucile’s offer of a dream robe.

In only one respect had she showed her independence. Having produced a dollar bill from somewhere on her person, she had insisted on paying for her own frugal lunch.

“Her clothes are the strangest of all,” Lucile whispered to herself. “When a girl comes upon a run of hard luck, she’s likely to try to keep up an appearance even though she is shabby underneath. But look at her; a countrified suit of shiny blue serge, two years behind the times, and her undergarments are new and of the finest silk, up to the minute, too. How is one to explain that?”

She was not disturbed in the least about the girl’s morals. She was as sweet and clean as a fresh blooming rose. Lucile would have sworn to that. With the lights turned out, and with the tingling winter air entering the open window, before retiring the girl had joined Lucile in the nightly “setting up” exercises and had appeared to enjoy them, too.

The strange girl’s skin was like the finest satin. Her lines were perfect, her muscles superb. Through lack of knowledge of the exercises, she often blundered. But she could whirl more quickly, leap higher and swing about more gracefully than Lucile, who had never failed to throw her whole heart into her gym work.

“All that,” Lucile murmured as she drew off her bathrobe preparatory to slipping beneath the covers, “all that, and she has not told me one word about herself. For a country girl she certainly has her full supply of reserve. To-morrow I am to try to get work for her as a wrapper. No doubt I can do it. And then?”

She thought about the future for a moment. She was alone this year. If you have read our book, “The Cruise of the O’Moo,” you will remember that while living in the yacht in dry dock she had two companions—Florence and Marion. Florence had gone home. Marion was in Alaska. Now Lucile was alone. She would welcome a friend and, unless she had misread her character, this girl had the qualities of a steadfast and loyal pal.

“But her past?” Lucile whispered as she placed her slippers beneath the bed and drew back the covers. “Ah well, we shall see.”

Once during the night she was wakened by the girl, who was evidently talking in her sleep.

“Don’t let them. Don’t! Don’t!” she all but screamed as she threw out her arms for protection from some dream foe.

Putting her arms about her, Lucile held her tight until the dream had passed and she fell back once more into peaceful slumber.

CHAPTER V
“COME AND FIND ME”

“I’ll pull some wires.” The kindly face of Morrison, the man of fine bindings, gleamed as he said these words to Lucile next morning. “That’s the way things are done these days. I haven’t much notion how they were done in the past. But now, if I want anything, I pull some wires. For instance, your young friend whom you found in the Art Museum and whose name is Cordelia but whom you choose to call Cordie for short, wants work in this store. You ask me to pull wires and I pull ’em. I pull one and Miss So and So comes bowing out of her box of an office and I whisper what I want. ‘I’ll pull some wires,’ says she, putting on her best smile. ‘I’ll put in a wedge, a very thin wedge.’

“She puts in her thin wedge. She pulls some wires and Mr. So and So up on the eleventh floor bobs bowing out of his box and inclines his ear to listen.

“‘Ah! Yes, I see, I see,’ he murmurs. ‘I shall pull some wires.’

“He pulls some wires. A slip of paper appears. It is signed. It is given to your friend. She goes here, she bobs there, and presently here she is. She has accepted ‘the iron ring,’ wrapping packages with very gay company all about her, having a good time and getting pay for it. But let me assure you it could not be done without wires pulled and thin wedges inserted. No, it could not be done. Nothing these days is done without wires and wedges. Wires and wedges, wedges and wires, my dear.”

With this very lucid explanation of the way the world is run these days, the benevolent Morrison bowed himself away.

True to his prediction, two hours later the mysteriously silent Cordelia was installed in an obscure corner of the book section, working at the wrapping counter. She had accepted “the iron ring,” said ring being an affair of solid iron into which, in a semi-circular bump on its edge, had been set a sharp bit of steel. The theory is that the steel edge cuts the stout cord with which the bundles are tied. Truth was that more often the sharp edge cut the girls’ fingers than did the steel the string. So, in time having learned wisdom, Cordie discarded this doubtful bit of jewelry and used a knife. However, she worked on steadily and quite skillfully. Before night it had become evident to all that the girl was proving a credit to her young protector, and that, take it all in all, wires had not been pulled nor wedges inserted in vain.

Two matters of interest came to Lucile’s attention that day. A rumor was confirmed and a discovery made that in the end was to take someone somewhere.

First in regard to the discovery. Someone had left a morning paper on Lucile’s table of books. She snatched it up and was about to consign it to the waste box when a headline caught her eye:

“COME AND FIND ME”

Beneath this was a second headline:

“Two Hundred Dollars for a Handshake.”

There was not time to read what followed. Hastily tearing the corner from the page, she thrust this scrap into her pocket to be read later.

“The rumor’s confirmed,” said Laurie a moment later as he thrust a clipping from a publisher’s weekly in her hand.

There were but a few lines. Lucile read them in a moment. It had to do with the disappearance of the promising young writer, Jefrey Farnsworth, author of “Blue Flames.”

“There can be no doubt,” the article went on to say, “that the young man has utterly disappeared. Being a single man with few intimates, and a man who lived a rather secluded life, he has either slipped away without being noticed or has met with some grave mishap. His publishers are greatly disturbed over his disappearance. Without doubting his willingness to assist in the task of being made famous, they had booked him for talks before no less than twenty women’s clubs.

“As the popularity of his book, ‘Blue Flames,’ had grown by leaps and bounds, every woman in the country was ready to be told by him just what her son or daughter should or should not read. There was not the least doubt but that here was the first genuine best seller in the line since the first days of Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn. Yes, the world was ready to hear him speak. But Farnsworth was not ready—at least he has vanished.”

“Twenty women’s clubs,” exclaimed Laurie, doing a feint in pantomime. “Think of speaking to twenty women’s clubs! Thousands and thousands of kid-gloved, well fed, contented women! Oh! Wow! Twenty clubs, then twenty more and twenty after that! To drink tea with ’em and to have them grip your hand and tell you how they enjoyed the rot you fed to them! Oh! Ow! Ow!”

“Women’s clubs are all right,” protested Lucile, her face lighting with anger. “Their work is constructive. They do a great deal of good.”

“Beg a thousand pardons,” said Laurie, coloring in his turn. “I didn’t mean to say they weren’t. They’re all right, and the ladies too, Lord bless ’em. But how does that go to prove that a poor, innocent young writer, who happens to have struck gold with his pen but who never made a speech in his life, should be chained to a platform and made to do tricks like a trained bear before thousands of women? Women’s clubs are all right, but they couldn’t club me to death with their clubs.” He threw back his shoulders to join Lucile in a laugh over his rather bad pun, and there, for the time being the matter ended.

Lucile was destined to recall the whole affair from time to time. Hours later, she had an opportunity to study his face unobserved. She noted his high forehead, his even and rugged features, his expressive hands, and when she saw him selling away on that stock of “Blue Flames” as if his life depended upon it, she was led to wonder a great wonder. However, she kept this wonder to herself.

The noon hour had come before Lucile found time to again look at the scrap of printing she had torn from the discarded newspaper. In the employees’ lunch room, over a glass of milk and a sandwich, and with the wonderful Cordie sitting opposite, she read the thing through.

“Come and find me. I am the Spirit of Christmas,” it ran. “I offer gold, two hundred in gold, for a shake of the hand, yet no one is so kind as to give me the clasp of cheer. I am the Spirit of Christmas. I am tall and slim, and of course I am a woman—a young woman whom some have been so kind as to call fair. To-day I dress in the garb of a working woman. Yesterday it was the coat of a sales-girl. At another time it was in more gorgeous apparel. But always my face and my hands are the same. Ah yes, my hands! There is as much to be learned from the hands as from the face. Character and many secrets are written there.

“Yesterday I walked the Boulevard, as I promised I should, yet not one of the rushing thousands paused to shake my hand and say: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’ Had one done so, tho’ he had been but a beggar in rags, the two hundred of gold would have clinked into his pocket. Yet not one paused. They all passed on.

“I entered a little shop to purchase a tiny bit of candy. The saleslady, a little black-eyed creature, scowled at me and refused to sell so little, even though I looked to be a shop-girl. She did not shake my hand, and I was glad, for had she done so and had she said: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas,’ the gold would have clinked for her. I left my mark, which is my sign, and passed on.

“Later I entered a busy shop, a great shop where tired girls rushed here and there constantly. I troubled a dear little girl who had a wan smile and tender eyes, to show me many things. I bought nothing in the end, but she was kind and courteous for all that. I wished—Oh, how I wished that she would grasp my hand and whisper ever so softly: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’ But she said never a word, so the gold did not clink for her. After leaving my mark, which is also my sign, I passed on.

“To-day I shall join the throngs that shop among the windows of State Street. I shall enter a store here and another there. I shall pause here to examine goods and there to make a purchase. At every place, as I pass on, I shall leave my mark, which is also my sign. If you chance to see me, if you know me, if you read my secret in my face or in my hands, grasp those hands and whisper: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’ Then gold will clink for you, two hundred in gold.

“I am the Spirit of Christmas. Everywhere I go I leave a crimson trail behind.”

This was the end. Lucile glanced up with a dazed and puzzled look in her eyes.

“What in the world can it mean?” she asked, holding the bit of paper before Cordie.

Cordie laughed. “That’s something the paper is doing. I think it’s just to make people buy the paper. No one has ever recognized her. She’s clever.”

“I’d like to find her,” mused Lucile.

“Wouldn’t you, though? Who wouldn’t? You’d get the gold if you did; but you never will. She’s keen. Why, only two days ago she was in this store for a half hour. Bought a book, mind you, and you may have sold it to her. Think of that! The day before that she was in the store for six hours. Think of that! And no one knew her. They’ll never get her, trust her for that. But if they do, the gold will clink.” The girl laughed a merry laugh, then hurried away for a cream-puff.

Left to herself, Lucile had time for a few moments of quiet thinking. She found her pulse strangely quickened by the news story and her companion’s interpretation. Somehow, almost as if some strange power outside her were whispering it to her, she felt forced to believe that she could connect this new and interesting discovery with some of the other mysteries which had come to haunt her.

“But how?” she asked herself. “How?”

Cordie appeared to know a great deal about this “Spirit of Christmas” lady and the gold that would clink for a handshake. But after all, she had revealed no facts that were not known to hundreds of thousands who had followed the matter closely. It had all been in the papers.

“No, it doesn’t tell me anything about Cordie,” Lucile whispered, “except—” she paused suddenly. Cordie had told of things that had happened in the city four days back. Could she have been in the city all this time? Probably had been. And without baggage, or so much as a dream-robe. How very strange!

But had she been without baggage? Might she not owe a board bill? Might not her belongings be in the hands of some landlady at the present time?

“It’s a wonder she doesn’t tell me about herself,” Lucile murmured. “It’s no use to ask her. A person who is forced to reveal her past is almost sure to tell anything but the truth. I must wait her time. It’s true she has a little money; but perhaps not enough to pay the bill.

“I wonder,” she went on thoughtfully, “why I don’t cut her adrift? Why should I be looking after her? Haven’t I enough to do in looking after myself?”

It was true that she had her own responsibilities, but she knew right well that if need be she would do a great deal more for the girl before casting her off to become an easy prey to the human hawks and vultures who haunt a great city.

“But this lady of the Christmas Spirit,” she murmured. “The good fates surely know I need that gold. And if this strange little beauty, Cordie, costs me something, which she promises to do, I shall need it more than ever.”

Once more her eyes ran over the scrap of paper. They came to a sudden pause.

“Behind me I leave a crimson trail,” she read.

For a moment her brow was wrinkled in puzzled thought. Then she gave a sudden start.

“If it should be! If it meant just that!” she exclaimed half aloud.

“But then, of course it couldn’t. A crimson trail—a crimson trail——”

“Here’s one for you,” exclaimed Cordie, setting a delicious cream-puff before her. “There’s just time for devouring them before we go back to work. Work! Oh, boy! I say it’s work! But it’s heaps of fun, anyway.

“Say!” she exclaimed suddenly, “Do you know James?”

“Who is James?”

“The man who carries away the packages from my desk.”

“A stooped old man.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“They always are.”

“He’s not. Take a look at him. He’s a sight for tired eyes. He—he’s intriguing. I—I’m working on him. He’s awful reserved, but I think he likes me. He’s got a story. I’ll get it. Leave that to me.”

“So even little Cordie loves mysteries and has found one to study out,” thought Lucile with an amused smile as she turned to go.

CHAPTER VI
THE IRON RING

Cordie’s description of James proved quite true. An intriguing figure was this James; a stalwart man of forty, a straight, square-shouldered six-footer, with face as brown as a coffee bean. He was unmistakably American, yet he seemed oddly out of place as, with arms piled high with bundles, he moved steadily through the crowd. There was a certain directness, and with all that a slight roll about his walk, that suggested some sort of sea craft. He was not unlike some port-to-port steamer, waiting at dock for its load, then steaming away to the port of discharge.

“A silent man, and one who has been accustomed to command, not to plod,” was Lucile’s mental comment. “He’s not accustomed to being called James, like a chauffeur or a butler. You can see that by the twinkle in the corner of his eye when someone calls him by that name. I wonder what could have brought him to the extremity of carrying bundles for twenty dollars a week. I’m sure he doesn’t drink to excess. His face would show it if he did. Oh well, that’s Cordie’s little mystery. Let her fathom it when the opportunity comes.”

Cordie’s opportunity came a little later, and in a decidedly startling manner.

In the meantime this was another busy afternoon; one of the busiest of the season.

“Only listen to them!” Lucile said to Cordie as she waited for a parcel. “Most of them are women trying to select books for boys and girls. Not one in ten really knows what she wants or what boys and girls read these days. Listen—”

Cordie listened as she worked, and this, from a score of pairs of lips, is what she heard: “Have you got the Alger books?” “Do you keep Peck’s Bad Boy? That’s such a splendid story. Don’t you think so?” “I want a—a book for a boy fourteen years old. What can you recommend?” “Have you the Elsie books? Those are such sweet stories!” “I want a book for a boy twelve years old. I don’t want anything trashy, though. Which of these fifty-cent books would you recommend?” “Is this a good book?”

“The answer,” whispered Lucile with a little giggle, “the answer, if they say ‘Is this a good book?’ is always ‘Yes.’ Always yes, whether you think so or not. I’ll tell you why. Nine times out of ten, when a woman customer says ‘Is this a good book?’ she has already made up her mind that it is a good book. If you say ‘Yes’ she’ll smile and buy it. If you say ‘No,’ she’ll frown and buy it anyway. So why provoke a frown, and Christmas only two weeks away?”

Only her untiring good nature and her native sense of humor, kept Lucile on her feet and going. There were times, however, when even these deserted her. One of those unfortunate moments arrived this very afternoon. A particularly unpleasant customer had said to her: “I want a book about a boy who was brought up by the monks.” After suggesting everything that seemed akin to this, she happened upon “Tarzan.” “Oh yes!” exclaimed the customer, “That’s it. Tarzan.”

A second customer wanted “Laddie.” When the modern “Laddie” was produced, the customer insisted that this was not the original “Laddie,” but a cheap substitute; that the first “Laddie” was written years ago by a person who’s name she did not recall, but who had written another book called something else. She had insisted on Lucile’s asking everyone in the section about it and, after leaving very warm and unhappy, reappeared ten minutes later with another clerk, still looking for the original “Laddie.”

In the midst of all this Lucile came upon a fidgeting customer whose fingers were constantly plaiting stray locks of hair and whose lips were saying: “I must make a train. I really must. Do you think you could get them to hurry. Do you? Do you really? That would be so nice of you!”

After hurrying the sale through and getting many a sharp look for stepping in ahead of her turn, Lucile had the pleasure of seeing the customer meet a friend an aisle over and pause for a prolonged spell of gossip.

“Who could believe that they could be such children?” she murmured. “No, we haven’t the Broncho Buster Boys,” she turned to answer a query. “That’s a fifty-cent series which we do not carry.” The person who asked the question was a rather pompous lady in kid gloves.

“Have you the Broncho Buster Boys?”

She caught the words spoken behind her back. The customer, ignoring her decided negative, had deliberately turned about and asked the same question of a girl who had come on the floor that morning and knew nothing about the stock.

“I told her,” Lucile said in as steady a tone as she could command, “that we do not carry them.”

Instantly the customer flew into a towering rage. Her words, though quite proper on the lips of a society lady, were the sort that cut to the very soul.