A sharp retort came to Lucile’s lips and she said it.
She was in the midst of it when a hand touched her shoulder and a steady voice said:
“Here! Here! What’s this?”
The words, while not said in an unkindly tone, had a ring of authority to them. Wheeling about, Lucile found herself facing a beautiful lady, one of the most beautiful she had ever seen; black hair, full cheeks of wonderful color, and eyes of the deepest blue. Lucile took in all the beauty of her for the first time at a glance, and at the same moment cold terror struck to her heart. This was Miss Bruce, the head of the section, the one who could dismiss a salesgirl at a word. And she had just heard Lucile break the most rigid rule of the house! She had talked back to a customer!
White faced, staring, endeavoring to speak but uttering no sound, Lucile stood there as if frozen to the spot.
“There, there, dearie! I know how it is. Don’t do it again, that’s all.” Lucile felt a friendly pressure on her arm, then the great lady of the section was gone.
In spite of her bravest efforts, tears rushed to Lucile’s eyes. One splashed down on either cheek before she could check them. Were they tears of vexation or gratitude, or merely tired tears? Who could say?
Through the tears Lucile dimly saw a face. It was an electrifying vision, and dashing away the tears, she became at once her own, keen, better self.
“Yes, yes, it is! It’s the Mystery Lady,” she assured herself. “She’s—she’s talking to Cordie. I must——”
As she started toward the wrapping stand where stood the Mystery Lady, a voice at her elbow said:
“Will you sell me this? Could you have them hurry a little? I must make a train. I really must.” It was the harried and hurried lady of a half hour previous. She had found another book and was making another train.
With great reluctance and much pent-up anger, Lucile waited upon her; and in the meantime, as was her wont, the Mystery Lady, the lady of the crimson thread, had vanished.
“Who—who was the tall lady you were speaking to a moment ago?” she breathlessly asked Cordie a moment later.
“How should I know? She asked me for a string to tie a package. Lots of them ask for string, or a piece of corrugated paper, or a card to write a greeting on.”
“Was that all?”
“That was about all.”
“Look!” exclaimed Lucile. “Who put that there?”
She was pointing to a loose end of wrapping paper through which had been drawn and neatly tied a bit of crimson thread with a single purple strand.
“Search me,” smiled Cordie. “How should I know?”
While Lucile was disengaging the thread and thrusting it in her pocket, Cordie was searching the top of her desk.
“That’s funny,” she said at last. “It was here a moment ago. Now it’s gone.”
“What?”
“My iron ring.”
“The one you cut cord with?”
“I’m supposed to use it for that,” Cordie tossed her head. “The thing cuts my finger. All the same, I ought to have it. You’re supposed to turn such things in when they lay you off. But if it’s gone, it’s gone.” Shrugging her shoulders, she promptly forgot it. So did Lucile, but the time came when she was reminded of the loss in a most forceful manner.
“I wonder,” she whispered as she moved away, “I do wonder what she does that for. This is the third time. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard of.” She fingered the crimson thread.
The melting away of great stocks of the year’s most popular book for young people, “Blue Flames,” was most amazing. A fresh truck load, three or four hundred copies, had come down that very morning. By mid-afternoon they were two-thirds gone.
For a time, as she watched, Lucile’s astonishment grew; then it began to ebb. She was learning the secret of it. Laurie Seymour hovered over the pile constantly. Hardly a customer left him without purchasing one or more copies. Apparently well informed regarding the contents of the book, he told still more regarding the personality of the author and how he had gone about the task of gathering the material. All of the local color of the book was penned with minute exactness; the characters were true to life; their actions, while not pedantic, were such as would lead girls and boys to higher thinking and unselfish living. More than that, the story contained precisely the elements which young people of to-day demand. Action, adventure, suspense, mystery—all were here in proper and generous proportions. Thus he would describe the book.
“Yes,” he would assure the prospective purchaser, “it’s this year’s publication; not six weeks off the press and it sells for a dollar. How is that possible? That it might have a large sale the author cut his royalty to one-third, and the publishers cut their profits accordingly. The book compares favorably with many a book selling for nearly twice the price.”
What customer could refuse such a book? Few did. Even more important than this was the fact that the other salespeople, especially those who were new and had little knowledge of the stock but who were zealous for quick sales, listened to his lucid story of the book, and having learned it by heart, joined in selling it. There were times when clerks fluttered as thickly about that pile of books as sparrows around a crust of bread.
“Who is Laurie Seymour; why is he so greatly interested in that particular book, and how does he come to know so much about it?” Having put these questions to herself, Lucile went about the task of asking others about him. She asked Rennie and Donnie, the inseparable two who had worked in that corner so long. She searched out Tommie, the young man of twenty who knew all about boys’ books. She asked Morrison, of the fine bindings section, and even Emmy, the veteran inspector. All shook their heads. They had come down one morning, and there he was selling books. That had been two weeks previous. Someone had pulled some wires and here he was. By-and-by the rush would be over, then out he would go. That was the way things were done at Christmas time. It wasn’t worth while to care too much!
But Lucile did care. Her curiosity had been aroused. She wanted to know more about Laurie Seymour.
Her curiosity was given a trace of satisfaction that very evening. At least she found out who knew about Laurie. Yes, she found out, but then——
She had come hurrying round a pillar when she all but ran into Laurie. He had been talking in low tones and laughing in notes quite as low. To her great surprise she saw that the person he was talking to was none other than the perfectly beautiful Miss Bruce, the head of the section.
“And to think,” Lucile said to herself, “he actually appeared to be joking her about something! And he a sales-person! Ah well, our chief is a star—would have been a star on any stage, and a star has a right to be friendly with any member of the cast.”
“Well,” she smiled to herself, “I know now who could tell me all about Laurie Seymour; but I’d never dare ask. Never! I’ll have to find out some other way.”
One impression coming from this incident bore down heavily upon her. Laurie Seymour was a young man with a past broader than the four walls of the juvenile book section. Just what that past might have been, she could not guess.
“Perhaps,” she told herself, “he is some artist getting pictures from life; or an actor gathering local color for a play, or—”
“Is your table in order?” It was Rennie who broke in upon her meditations.
It wasn’t, so she hurried away to forget, for the time being, Laurie Seymour and her perplexing problems.
“Cordie, there’s something I should tell you.”
Cordie looked up from the book she was reading, stared at Lucile for a moment, then with a toss of her pretty head exclaimed: “If you should, why don’t you?”
They were at the end of another day. Some time had passed since the Mystery Lady had last appeared in the store. Work had increased; crowds of buyers had grown denser, more insistent in their demands. Two perpendicular lines had appeared between Lucile’s eyes. Cordie, too, had felt the strain of it. Her nerves were tense. She had been upon Lucile’s bed for a half hour, trying to relax. It was no use.
“Why don’t you tell me?” she demanded impatiently.
“I’m afraid it may frighten you.”
“Frighten me?” the girl’s eyes went wide with surprise.
“Yes, but I think I should tell you. It may put you on your guard.”
Cordie sat bolt upright.
“Do you remember the time I found you—when you fainted in the Art Museum?” Lucile asked in a quiet voice.
“I couldn’t forget that. Wasn’t it terrible?”
“More terrible than you think, or at least I believe it might have been.”
“Why?” Cordie stared.
“A few seconds after you fainted, a strange young man picked you up in his arms. He said you were his sister. He started to carry you out and would have, too, if I hadn’t made the guard stop him.”
“Oh!” breathed Cordie, wild eyed, incredulous. “So that was what the guard meant when he asked where my brother was? Oh, how—how sort of romantic!”
“It may have been,” said Lucile in a very sober tone. “He may have been romantic, but he also may have been very bad. That’s why I thought you ought to know. He may be keeping a watch on you. Men who are fascinated by a face often do. You ought not to go alone upon the streets. You should not have been alone that day. No girl from the country, unacquainted with the ways of the city, is safe alone upon its streets and within its public buildings.”
“Why, I’m not—” Cordie halted in the midst of the sentence and began again. “Did you think—” then drawing her lips tight as if to keep in a secret that was about to escape, she lapsed into silence.
When she broke the silence a moment later the look on her face was very serious. “I do realize the danger,” she said slowly. “Truly I do. I will be careful, very, very careful. It was wonderful of you to save me from that—that man. How can I ever thank you enough?”
Hopping down from the bed, she wound her arm about Lucile and planted a kiss upon her forehead.
Just at that instant a question entered Lucile’s mind. “I wonder when her appreciation will reach down as deep as her pocketbook? That’s a sordid thought. I ought not to think it,” she told herself, “but I just can’t help it.”
Lucile was having to pay an increased rent on her room because of the girl’s occupying it with her. A pay day had come and gone, yet her young charge had shown no desire to bear her share of this burden.
“No! No! I mustn’t let myself wonder that,” Lucile corrected herself stoutly. “She’ll pay when she can. She’s probably saving up for her rent which is in arrears somewhere else. I do wonder, though, what she was about to tell me when she said: ‘I’m not—’ and ‘Did you think—’ I truly wish she’d tell me about herself, but I can wait her time for revealing.”
Half of the following day had not passed before Lucile repented having told Cordie of her volunteer brother. “He’ll probably never be seen again by any of us,” she told herself, “and now look at the poor girl. She’s all unnerved; grips her desk and stares in a frightened manner every time a man looks at her. And yet,” she reflected, “if anything happened and I hadn’t told her I’d never forgiven myself. Surely life is full of perplexing problems.”
Ere that day was done something was destined to happen which would make this particular problem many times more perplexing. Since she knew nothing of this, Lucile went serenely on selling books.
“Let me tell you something,” said Rennie, the veteran book-seller, who had apparently made an excuse for going to lunch with Lucile that day. “You’re letting this work get on your nerves. Look at those puckers between your eyes. It’s no use. You mustn’t let it. You’ll go to pieces and it’s not worth it. You’ve got your life to live. You—”
“But Rennie—”
Rennie held up a finger for silence. “You’re young; haven’t learned the gospel of repose. You, perhaps, think of repose as the curling of one’s self up in a soft-cushioned chair. That’s not repose; it’s stagnation. Did you ever see a tiny bird balancing himself on a twig over a rushing waterfall and singing his little heart away? That’s repose. You can have poise and repose in the midst of the crowding throng. The bird, only half conscious of the rushing water beneath him, sings the more sweetly because of it. We, too, may have our service sweetened by the very rush of things if we will.
“And it is service! You believe that, don’t you?”
There was a new light in the veteran saleslady’s eyes. Lucile, as she looked at her frail body, thought to herself: “She’s more spirit than body. She’s given half herself away in service.”
“Why yes,” she replied slowly, “I suppose selling juvenile books is a service in a way.”
“You suppose!” Rennie gripped her arm until it hurt. “Don’t you know it is? It may be made a great, a wonderful service. There are books and books. You have read many of them. You know them. You are young. You have read. Some you have loved, some despised. Which do you sell? Which?”
“Why, the ones I love, of course.”
“That’s just it. Being endowed by nature with taste, good taste, and having had that taste improved by education, you are able to choose the best.
“Books are like water. Some are like foam, the white caps of the sea; pure enough but effervescent. They pass in a moment and are lost forever. Others are like scum from a stagnant pool; they are poison. Then there are those blessed others which are like the cool, pure, refreshing water that comes bubbling up from a mountain spring. Reading has an untold and lasting influence on a child. Do you believe that? When you have put one of those better books into the hand of a boy or girl, you have conferred a lasting blessing upon someone. Do you believe that?”
“Ye—yes.”
“Of course you do. Now, when you go back to your work this afternoon, do it with the consciousness that you are really being a benefactor to your generation. Say to yourself: ‘See all those people. Some of these are to go away from here this afternoon richer because I have been here to serve them, to advise them, to select for them the thing they really need.’ Then watch the little annoyances, the petty troubles that tempt you to fret, ‘Fold their tents like the Arabs and silently steal away.’
“Sales-people?” Rennie continued. “Why, we are far more than that. We may, if we will, take our place beside teachers, nurses, librarians, and all those whose names will be written high on the tablet of the future where will appear all those who have truly benefited their race.
“Pardon me,” she smiled again, “I didn’t mean to preach, but really I hope it may do you good.”
“I—I’m sure it will.” There was a mist in the girl’s eyes as she said this. She had caught a vision of what real life work meant to this frail woman. Once more she was tempted to give up her education in favor of a career as a vendor of juvenile books.
At ten minutes before closing time Lucile, having promised to meet Cordie at the northeast door, hurried down the stairs to the first floor. Then things began to happen with lightning-like rapidity.
She had just started on her little journey across the store to the northeast entrance when, all in a flash, she caught sight of a hand, such a hand as she had seen but once and would never forget. The long, slim, muscular fingers and the ring of the dragon’s head were there. She could not be mistaken. Somewhere in that jostling throng was the Mystery Lady. And—yes, Lucile was sure of it, there she was off there to the right. She could not mistake that face. With a bound she was after her.
“Not so fast there! Not so fast!” exclaimed a floor man. “There isn’t any fire. What made you think there was?”
Wedged in between a tall lady from the city and a very broad-shouldered, bear-skin coated man from the country, Lucile could but heed the floorman’s admonition.
“She’s making for the door,” she whispered breathlessly. “I’ll follow her out. Can’t fail to catch her in the street. I’ll get her before she has gone a block. And then—”
Ah yes, and then—well, she’d decide what was to be done when the time came. She’d trust to inspiration.
She did not catch up with her in the first block, nor the second or third, either. The sidewalks were rivers of people; the cross streets filled with automobiles. Considering the fact that this was an obstacle race of an exceedingly unusual type, the Mystery Lady made wonderful progress. As for Lucile, she was not to be outdone; indeed, she gained a little here, and a little there. She dodged through an open space on the sidewalk and sprinted down a stretch of street where no autos were parked or traveling.
“I—I’ll get her in the next block,” she panted. “Suppose there’ll be a scene, but who cares? Here goes!”
A policeman’s whistle, releasing the flood of autos on the cross street, had just blown. With a leap she sprang away before them. Grazed by the wheel of a gray sedan, drawing an angry hoot from a huge touring car, she crossed the channel and was about to dash on when a hand seized her firmly by the arm and gave her such a turn as fairly set her whirling.
“Here you!” exclaimed a gruff voice. “What you tryin’ to do? Tryin’ to commit suicide? Autos has their right as well as them that walks. Give ’em their turn, can’t you?”
What was there to do? She could not tell this policeman of her cause for speed. She could but stand there panting until he chose to release her. And as she stood there, with time to think, a startling question came to her mind: “Cordie! What of Cordie? I promised to meet her at the northeast entrance! Closing time has now passed.”
For a moment her head whirled, but as the grip on her arm relaxed she murmured:
“Well, whatever is to happen has happened back there. I’ll get madamoiselle of mysteries yet!”
At that she crept slowly away until she was lost from sight of the officer; then again raced on at breakneck speed.
* * * * * * * *
She was right. Something indeed had happened by the door of the northeast entrance. Cordie had been prompt in keeping her appointment; especially so since her nerves, disturbed by Lucile’s revelation of the night before, were on edge.
Surprised at not finding Lucile waiting for her, she had moved back into a secluded alcove to watch the passing throng crowd through the doors.
Crowds always amused her. Some of the people were short and some tall; some young, some old; but all were interesting. Each had his story to tell if only he could be induced to tell it. This is why the flow of a river of people is so interesting.
Just when it was that her attention was drawn from the moving throng to a single stationary individual, the girl could not tell. The instant she saw the man she felt he had been watching her; felt too that she had recognized in him her volunteer brother of the Art Museum.
“Yes,” she whispered as cold dread gripped her heart, “there is the hawk-like eye, the marble face. It is he. Oh! How shall I escape?”
Losing her power to reason, she dashed away from the door and into the crowd that was now thronging toward the exits.
* * * * * * * *
Lucile found it rather difficult to again locate the Mystery Lady. When at last she succeeded it was to get a good square look at her, the first she had been afforded.
“How strangely she is dressed!” she murmured. “Like some countrywoman come to the city for shopping.”
For a second she was inclined to doubt her judgment. It could not be the lady—yet, yes, there was her profile. There could be no mistake; so, again she dashed along after her.
Although she maintained a pace that appeared to be a leisurely one, the Mystery Lady was hard enough to overtake. Turning to the right, she crossed two streets to at last come out upon the Boulevard. Swinging to the left, she joined the home-going throng.
Lucile, gaining moment by moment, was all but upon her when she turned quickly to enter a broad, open door.
“Now I have you!” Lucile murmured.
She passed through the broad door just in time to see the mysterious one push back a heavy curtain and disappear.
Lucile was about to follow, when a guard, touching her on the shoulder, demanded:
“Got a pass?”
“Why—why no,” Lucile stood there nonplussed.
“This is Opera Hall. You can’t go back of that curtain without a pass.”
“But—but that lady gave you no pass.”
The guard made no reply. He merely shrugged and smiled.
Dropping back a step or two, Lucile stood staring at the curtain. Her head was whirling. What a strangely privileged woman this one must be. She entered and left a great department store at two hours before midnight, and no one said to her “No.” She steps into a vestibule of a great musical hall and passes behind the curtain without a pass. What would she do next?
Suspended from one brass post to another, a heavy silk rope hung before the curtain. There were gaps in the curtain. Through one of these gaps, as Lucile stood staring at it, a hand was thrust. It was the hand of the mysterious lady. And upon it, beside the dragon’s head ring, was another. And this ring one more unusual and startling than the other. It was the iron ring of a bundle wrapper!
“Cordie’s ring,” Lucile whispered, “and, as I live, a diamond has been set in it. A magnificent diamond, worth hundreds of dollars! How strange! How weird! A diamond set in iron!”
Even as she thought this, the hand disappeared. Instantly the heavy purple curtain began to sway. Expecting anything, the girl stood there breathless. A needle flashed twice through the cloth of the curtain, then in its place there appeared a tiny spot of crimson.
“The crimson thread!” Lucile whispered. “And I may not pass beyond the curtain!”
When Cordie fled from the man of the hawk-like eye and the marble features she dashed directly into the moving throng of shoppers. In this, however, she found scant relief. No matter which way she might turn she felt sure that the man pursued her and would overtake her if she did not flee faster and faster.
Putting her utmost strength into this flight, she dashed past counters strewn with goods, round a bank of elevators, through narrow aisles jammed with shoppers, across a narrow court and again into the throng. At last, in utter desperation, she fled down a stairway; then another and another. Little dreaming that she had been descending into the very depths of the earth, she came up at last with a little suppressed scream to a place where from out a long row of small iron doors fire gleamed red as a noonday sun.
Where was she? Surely she had not dreamed there could be such a place as this in a great department store.
After wavering unsteadily for a moment, she turned, stumbled, righted herself, and would have gone racing back up the stair had not a heavy hand fallen upon her shoulder and a gruff, kindly voice said:
“Beg pardon, Miss Cordelia, are you in trouble?”
Surprised at hearing herself called by her own name, she turned about to find herself staring into the face of James, the bundle man.
For a few seconds she wavered between pause and flight. There was, however, such a light of kindness in the man’s eyes as could not be questioned. So, stepping back from the stairs, she said:
“Yes, I am in trouble. The—the man; I think he was following me.”
“He’d do well not to follow you too far this way, if he meant you any harm.” The bundle man shook his powerful frame, then glanced at the fires.
“Wha—what are they?” Cordie stammered. “Where are we?”
“Don’t you know?” he looked incredulous. “Them’s the boilers that heat the buildin’. I suppose you never wondered before how this huge building got heated? Well, that’s how. Them’s the boilers that does it.
“Sometimes I come down here to sit after hours,” he half apologized. “The boys down here that tends to the stokers let me come. I like it. It’s the nearest thing to the sea that one finds about the buildin’. You see, it’s sort of like a ship’s hold where the stokers work.”
“Oh, you belong to the sea.”
“Yes, Miss. I’ll tell you about it; but that will do for another time. You’ll be going home. If it’s all right, I’ll see you safely on your way, or if you want I’ll see you safely home. You need have no fear of me. I’m old enough to be your father, an’ I took a sort of interest in you from the first. I’d be glad to help you—”
He broke short off to stare at the door through which Cordie had entered. Framed by the outer darkness, a face had appeared there. However well shaven and massaged it might be, it was not a pleasing face to look upon and hawk-like eyes were set in a countenance as expressionless as marble.
“That’s him!” whispered James, staring as if his eyes would pop out of his head. “That’s the very man.”
The next instant the man disappeared. There was reason enough for this too, for with every muscle of his face drawn in lines of hate, the stalwart James had leaped square at the door.
And what of Lucile?
After gazing for a moment in astonishment at the purple curtain with the touch of crimson shining out from it, (beyond which the Mystery Lady had disappeared,) she stepped close enough to make sure that same purple strand ran through the thread. Then she turned and walked out of the building.
She found herself more mystified than ever. When would all this maze of mysteries be solved? Why had the Mystery Lady done that? Why the crimson thread? Why the iron ring? That was the fourth time the crimson thread had appeared, and this time there could be no doubt but that it had been she who had held the needle.
Strangely enough, at this moment there flashed through her mind one sentence in that clipping relating to the lady who called herself the Spirit of Christmas.
“I am the Spirit of Christmas,” she whispered it as she recalled it. “I am the Spirit of Christmas. Wherever I go I leave my mark which is also my sign.” She wondered vaguely what she could have meant by that.
This lady of the Christmas Spirit had the whole city on tip-toes. Everyone was looking for her; everyone hoping to come downtown some fine morning to meet her and to claim her bag of gold. Shoppers gazed into faces of fellow shoppers to wonder: “Are you the Spirit of Christmas? Shall I grasp your hand?” News boys, staring up at lady customers who slipped them pennies for papers, wondered: “Are you the Christmas Lady?”
Every day the paper told how she had been dressed on the previous day, where she had been and what she had done. One day, in the guise of a farmer’s wife, she had visited the stockyards and had spent hours wandering through great buildings or on board-walks above the cattle. The next day found her again among the throngs of shoppers. Here she had purchased a handkerchief and there a newspaper. She described the clerk and the newsboy. The clerk and the boy read it and groaned. For them the great moment had come and was gone forever.
“Who will discover her? When will it be? Who will get the gold?” These were the questions that were on every tongue.
There could be no doubt but the paper was reaping a golden harvest from it, for did not everyone in the city buy a paper that they might read of her latest exploits and to discover where she was to be on that day, and to dream that this day he might be the lucky one; this day he might hear the gold coin jingle?
Lucile thought all this through as she hurried back toward the store. At the same time she chided herself for being so foolish as to miss her appointment with Cordie for such a wild goose chase. She hoped against hope that she would find Cordie still waiting.
She found the door closed. As she pressed her face against the glass she saw but one person near the entrance—the night watchman. Cordie was not there.
“Gone,” Lucile murmured. “I only hope nothing has happened to her.”
At that she turned about and raced away to catch an on-coming elevated train.
* * * * * * * *
As James disappeared through the door of the furnace room of the department store, Cordie sank down in a chair. The chair was black and greasy, but she had no thought for that. Indeed, so excited and frightened was she that for a time she was unable to think clearly about anything.
When at last the full meaning of the situation had forced its way into her consciousness, she leaped to her feet, exclaiming:
“Stop him! Stop him! He’ll be killed!”
“I bet you he won’t,” a burly furnace tender smiled quietly. “He’s a hard boiled egg, that boy; muscles like steel and quick as a cat. If anybody does him in you’ll have to give him credit. Y’ought t’ see him box. There ain’t a man among us that can touch him.”
Somewhat reassured by this glowing description of her companion, the girl settled back again in her seat. She knew that she was safe enough here with these rough but kindly men.
As she sat there thinking, there came to her mind a question. Why did James go into such a fit of anger at sight of the stranger at the door?
“Surely,” she told herself, “it could not have been because the man had been following me. That wouldn’t be natural. James scarcely knows me. Why should he suddenly become such a violent champion of my cause? And besides, he had no way of knowing that that was the man who was following me. He did not wait to ask a single question; just whispered: ‘That’s him!’ and rushed right at him.”
“No he didn’t do it because of me,” she concluded after a few moments of thought. “He’s seen that man before. I wonder when and where. I wonder what he’s done to James?”
Then came another, more startling question. What would James do to the man if he caught him?
Instantly her keen imagination was at work. Quickening her sense of hearing, it set her listening to sounds which she told herself were the dull thud of fist-blows, the sickening rush of a blade as it sped through the air, a low groan of pain, and then sharper, more distinct, the pop-pop of an automatic.
In vain she told herself that with the hiss of steam, the dull thud-thud of revolving grates and the general noises of the boiler-room, it was quite impossible for her to distinguish sounds ten yards away, and that in all probability the two men were hundreds of feet away from her, on some other floor. The illusion still persisted. So certain did she become that a battle was being fought just outside the door that she found herself gripping the arms of her chair to keep from crying out.
The nickel-plated clock against the wall had ticked away a full half hour. The suspense had grown unbearable when of a sudden, with face grimy, hair tousled, and clothing all awry, James appeared at the door.
“You—you,” Cordie started up.
“Yes, miss,” James grinned. “I know I look as if I’d come in from a long and stormy voyage. My deck needs swabbin’ down and my sails a furlin’, but I’ll be shipshape and ready to take another cruise before the clock can strike eight bells.”
This talk sounded so quaint to the girl that she quite forgot the recent danger James had been in, and sat staring at him as he thrust his head into a huge basin of water and proceeded to scrub it with a course brush, much as one might some huge vegetable.
By the aid of a comb and whisk broom, he succeeded in making himself presentable.
“Now,” he smiled a broad smile, “your Uncle James, once a seaman and now a land fighter, is ready to pilot you home. What’s the port?”
“Sixty-first and Drexel,” said Cordie.
“All right. Port ’er bow. We’re off.”
Concerning his recent combat—if there had been a combat—James said not a word. Cordie wondered at this, but eager as she was to know the outcome of the battle, if there had been one, she dreaded quite as much to hear the whole truth. Visions of an inanimate form, lying bruised and bleeding in some dark corner of the stair, set her shuddering. So in the end she asked no question.
Their passage to the upper floor and out of the building was uneventful. The watchman at the door recognized them and allowed them to pass.
Previous to this time James had seemed quiet and uncommunicative, but now as they rattled along on the L train he told her many a wild tale of the sea journeys he had made. In his deep mellow drawl he talked of the whale ship Addler in northern seas; of Eskimo and polar bear and the gleaming northern lights; and then he talked of the Cutter Corwin among the palm shadowed South Sea Islands.
It was with a real feeling of regret that Cordie, hearing her own station announced, realized that their visit was at an end.
Five minutes later, brimming over with excitement, she burst into Lucile’s room.
“Wait!” exclaimed Lucile as she read in Cordie’s eyes the story of some thrilling experience. “You’ve had an adventure. So have I. Let’s not spoil ’em in the telling. Let’s set the stage for a story. You haven’t had a bite to eat, have you?”
“No—o,” Cordie admitted, “not a single bite. I’d forgotten.”
“Neither have I. You’ll find a loaf of bread and a slice of cream pimento cheese in the upper dresser drawer. There are some vanilla wafers, too. You make the sandwiches and I’ll have the cocoa piping hot in a minute. No, I’ll tell you, let’s dress for it first.”
Fifteen minutes later they sat in their bright colored dressing gowns, sipping the delicious hot beverage and hungrily devouring sandwiches.
“Now,” said Lucile after the last sandwich had vanished and fresh cups had been poured, “now’s the time for spinning yarns. You tell yours first.”
With many a gesture and dramatic pause, Cordie told of her startling discovery, her wild dash through the throng, her descent into the depths of the earth, and of the strange doings down there beneath the surface of the city’s streets.
“Yes,” said Lucile, sipping her chocolate thoughtfully as Cordie’s narrative ended, “that surely was the young man who attempted to carry you away when you fainted in the Art Museum. Dear little girl, you must be careful, very careful indeed. You must never be left alone; never! Never! Even if the Mystery Woman beckons or the Lady of the Christmas Spirit clinks her gold in my very ears, I will not desert you again.”
It was a very warm and friendly hand that Lucile felt tucked into her own, and a suspiciously husky voice that said:
“Thank you, my dear big sister.
“But,” Cordie exclaimed suddenly, “I must not tell them. It would never do. They wouldn’t let me——”
Suddenly checking her speech as if about to unwittingly reveal a secret, she changed the subject abruptly. “Please tell me of your adventure,” she said.
“My adventure?” smiled Lucile. “Compared with yours, it was no adventure at all—merely an episode. However, since it throws some light on a mystery and reveals the whereabouts of a bit of stolen property, I must tell you about it.”
Then, while Cordie leaned back among the cushions, her eyes half closed as if she were day dreaming, Lucile told of her experience with the Mystery Lady.
“My iron ring!” exclaimed Cordie, sitting bolt upright as Lucile came to that part of the story. “My iron ring! The old mischief! I might have known! I——”
Again Cordie checked herself.
“Might have known what?” asked Lucile.
“Might have known that someone had stolen it, I suppose,” finished Cordie lamely. “Anyway, someone did, didn’t they? And isn’t it funny that she should have a diamond set in it? Wouldn’t it be a joke to come upon her wearing it? Wouldn’t it, though? I’d march right up and say, ‘Lay-d-e-e give me the ring! You stole it. My precious, my onliest, only iron ring!’” She threw back her head and laughed.
Lucile joined her in the laugh, and with this forgot for a time that Cordie had said something very unusual about the ring and the lady who had taken it. At last Cordie broke the silence:
“James is a very unusual person.”
“Yes, he must be.”
“Do you suppose he caught that man—the one who had been following me?”
“I hope so, but perhaps not. You say he was all mussed up when he came back?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But not bruised, nor bloody, nor anything like that?”
“No, I guess not—no, not a bit.”
“Then probably he didn’t. When I got through my wild race about the place the other night I was good and mussed up, and I hadn’t been in a fight either. It wouldn’t be easy to catch anyone in that labyrinth.”
Again there was silence for a little while.
“Lucile,” whispered Cordie, bending forward eagerly, her face alight with some strange idea. “James is so mysterious. Do you suppose he could be a pirate in hiding?”
“A pirate! Why child, there aren’t any pirates.”
“Not any at all?”
“You don’t read about any, do you?”
“You don’t read about lots of things. You never read about my wrapping bundles, did you? But I am, just the same. Everything doesn’t get in the papers. I think it would be wonderful if he turned out to be a real pirate. You’d think he was one if you heard some of the stories he told me to-night about the sea.”
“All right,” laughed her companion, “if you can make him out a pirate, a nice friendly sort of pirate who is kind to ladies and all that, you’re welcome. But for my part, I’d give a lot more to know what that self appointed brother of yours has done to James. It must have been something rather terrible.”
“Yes,” agreed Cordie, “it surely must.”
“Listen!” exclaimed Lucile. “There go the chimes! Ten o’clock, and you work in the morning!”
Leaping from her chair, she began cleaning up the remnants of their little feast. Ten minutes later the room was darkened for the night.