Late that afternoon Lucile was sent to the twelfth floor storeroom to look up a special order. She enjoyed these trips to the upper realms. This vast storeroom was like a new world to her. As she walked down long, narrow, silent aisles, on either side of which were wired in compartments piled high with every conceivable form of merchandise: rugs, piano lamps, dolls, dishes, couches, clothes-pins, and who knows what others, she could not help feeling that she was in the store house of the world, that she was queen of this little ward and that there remained only for her to say the word and a house would be handsomely furnished, a beautiful bride outfitted with a trousseau, or a Christmas tree decorated for a score of happy children. Yes, these aisles held a charm and fascination all their own. She liked the silence of the place, too. After the hours of listening to the constant babble of voices, the murmur of shoppers, the call of clerks, the answers of floormen, this place seemed the heart of silent woods at night.
Captivated by such thoughts as these, and having located the missing books and started them on their journey down the elevator, she decided to walk down the nine flights to her own floor.
Here, too, as she skipped lightly down from floor to floor, she caught little intimate glimpses of the various lives that were being lived in this little world of which she was for a time a part. Here a score of printing presses and box making machines were cutting, shaping and printing containers for all manner of holiday goods. The constant rush of wheels, the press and thump of things, the wrinkles on the brows of operators, all told at what a feverish heat the work was being pushed forward.
One floor lower down the same feverish pace was being set. Here nimble fingers dipped and packed chocolate bon-bons, while from the right and left of them came the rattle and thump of drums polishing jelly beans and moulding gum drops at the rate of ten thousand a minute.
Ah yes, there was the Christmas rush for you. But one floor lower down there was quiet and composure such as one might hope to find in a meadow where a single artist, with easel set, sketches a landscape. It was not unlike that either, for the two-score of persons engaged here were sketching, too. The sketches they made with pen and ink and water-colors were not unattractive. Drawings of house interiors they were; here the heavily furnished office of some money king, and there the light and airy boudoir of one of society’s queens; here the modest compartment of a young architect who, though of only average means, enjoyed having things done right, and there the many roomed mansion of a steel magnate. These sketches were made and then shown to the prospective customer. The customer offered suggestions, made slight changes, then nodded, wrote a check, and a sale amounting to thousands of dollars was completed.
“That must be fascinating work,” Lucile whispered to herself as an artistic looking young woman showed a finished sketch to a customer. “I think I’d like that. I believe——”
With a sudden shock her thoughts were cut short. Two persons had entered the glassed-in compartment—a woman of thirty and a girl in her late teens. And of all persons!
“The Mystery Lady and Cordie! It can’t be,” she breathed, “and yet it is!”
It was, too. None other. What was stranger still, they appeared to have business here. At sight of them one of the artists arose and lifting a drawing which had been standing face to the wall, held it out for their inspection.
Cordie clasped her hands in very evident ecstasy of delight, and, if Lucile read her lips aright, she exclaimed:
“How perfectly wonderful!”
The expression on the Mystery Lady’s face said plainer than words, “I hoped you’d like it.”
The sketch, Lucile could see plainly enough from where she stood, was a girl’s room. There was a bed with draperies, a study table of slender-legged mahogany, a dresser, one great comfortable chair surprisingly like Lucile’s own, some simpler chairs of exquisite design. These furnishings, and such others as only a girl would love, were done in the gay tints that appeal to the springtime of youth.
“Cordie?” Lucile stared incredulously. “A simple country girl, what can she know about such things? That room—why those furnishings would cost hundreds of dollars. It’s absurd, impossible; and yet there they are—she and the Mystery Lady.”
The Mystery Lady! At thought of her, Lucile was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to rush down there and demand the meaning of that lady’s many strange doings. But something held her back. So Cordie was acquainted with the Mystery Lady! Here was something strange. Indeed, Lucile was beginning to wonder a great deal about Cordie.
“She has her secrets, little Cordie!” exclaimed Lucile. “Who would have thought it?”
Perhaps it is not strange that Lucile did not feel warranted in breaking in upon those secrets. So there she stood, irresolute, until the two of them had left the room and lost themselves in the throngs that crowded every aisle of this great mart of trade.
“Now,” Lucile sighed, “I shan’t ever feel quite the same about Cordie. I suppose, though, she has a right to her secrets. What could she possibly know about interior decorating and furnishing? Perhaps more than I would guess. But a country girl? What does she know about the Mystery Lady? Little, or much? Have they known each other long? I—I’ll ask her. No—n-o-o, I guess I won’t. I wasn’t supposed to see. It was too much like spying. No,” this decisively, “I’ll just have to let things work themselves out. And if they don’t work out to something like a revelation, then I’ll know they haven’t, that’s all. More than half the mysteries of the world are never unravelled at all.”
After this bit of reasoning, she hastened on down the remaining flights of stairs to her work.
“Where’s Cordie?” she asked of Laurie.
“Out on a shopping pass. Swell looking dame came in and called for her.” There was a knowing grin on Laurie’s face as he said this, but Lucile, who had turned to her work, did not notice it.
Cordie returned a few moments later, but not one word did she let fall regarding her shopping mission.
“What do you think!” exclaimed Cordie. “It was such a strange thing to happen. I just have to tell some one, or I’ll burst. I daren’t tell Lucile. I am afraid she’d scold me.”
James, the mysterious seaman who carried bundles in the book department, looked at her and smiled.
“I’ve heard a lot of stories in my life, and them that wasn’t to be repeated, wasn’t. If you’ve got a yarn to file away in the pigeon holes of somebody’s brain, why file it with me.”
She had come upon James while on the way from the cloak room. She would have to wait a full half hour before Lucile would have finished her work, and she felt that she just must tell some one of her thrilling adventure with Dick and the policeman.
Seated on the edge of a table, feet dangling and fingers beating time to the music of her story, she told James of this thrilling adventure.
“You came out well enough at that,” he chuckled when she had finished. “Lots better’n I did the last time I mixed into things.”
Cordie wondered if this remark had reference to his chase after the hawk-eyed young man who had followed her to the furnace room that night. But asking no questions, she just waited.
“Funny trip, that last sea voyage I took,” James mused at last, his eyes half closed. “It wouldn’t have been half bad if it hadn’t been for one vile crook.
“You see,” he went on, “sometimes of a summer I run up to Nome. I’ve always had a few hundred dollars, that is up until now. I’d go up there in the north and sort of wander round on gasoline schooners and river boats, buyin’ up skins; red, white, cross fox, and maybe a silver gray or two. Minks and martin too, and ermine and Siberian squirrel.
“Always had a love for real furs; you know what I mean, the genuine stuff that stands up straight and fluffy and can’t be got anywhere far south of the Arctic Circle—things like the fox skin that’s on that cape your pal Lucile wears sometimes. When I see all these pretty girls wearin’ rabbit skin coats, it makes me feel sort of bad. Why, even the Eskimos do better than that! They dress their women in fawn skin; mighty pretty they are, too, sometimes.
“Well, last summer I went up to Nome, that’s in Alaska, you know, and from there I took a sort of pirate schooner that ranges up and down the coast of Alaska and into Russian waters.”
“Pirate,” breathed Cordie, but James didn’t hear her.
“We touched at a point or two,” he went on, “then went over into Russian waters for walrus hunting—ivory and skins.
“We ran into a big herd and filled the boat up, then touched at East Cape, Siberia.
“There wasn’t any real Russians there, so we went up to the native village. Old Nepassok, the chief, seemed to take a liking to me. He took me into his storeroom and showed me all his treasure—walrus and mastodon ivory, whale bone, red and white fox skins by the hundred, and some mink and beaver. Then at last he pulled out an oily cotton bag from somewhere far back in the corner and drew out of it—what do you think? The most perfect brace of silver fox skins I have ever seen! Black beauties, they were, with maybe a white hair for every square inch. Just enough for contrast. Know who wears skins like that? Only the very wealthiest people.
“And there I was looking at them, worth a king’s ransom, and maybe I could buy them.”
“Could you?” breathed Cordie.
“I could, and did. It took me four hours. The chief was a hard nut to crack. He left me just enough to get back to Chicago, but what did I care? I had a fortune, one you could carry in two fair sized overcoat pockets, but a fortune all the same.
“I got to Chicago with them,” he leaned forward impressively, “and then a barber—a dark faced, hawk-eyed barber—done me out of them. Of course he was a crook, just playing barber. Probably learned the trade in jail. Anyway he done me for my fortune. Cut my hair, he did, and somehow got the fox skins out of my bag. When I got to my hotel all I had in my bag was a few clothes and a ten dollar gold piece. I raced back to the barber shop but he was gone; drawed his pay and skipped, that quick.
“That,” he finished, allowing his shoulders to drop into a slouch, “is why I’m carrying books here. I have to, or starve. Just what comes after Christmas I can’t guess. It’s not so easy to pick up a job after the holidays.
“But do you know—” he sat up straight and there was a gleam in his eye, “do you know when I saw that barber fellow last?”
“Where?”
“Down below the sub-basement of this store, in the boiler room at night.”
“Not—not the one who was following me?”
“The same. And I nearly got him, but not quite.”
“You—you didn’t get him?”
Cordie hardly knew whether to be sorry or glad. She hated violence; also she had no love for that man.
“I did not get him,” breathed James, “but next time I will, and what I’ll say and do for him will be for both you and me. G’night!” He rose abruptly and, shoulders square, gait steady and strong, he walked away.
“What are you dreaming about?” Lucile asked as she came upon Cordie five minutes later.
“Nothing much, I guess. Thinking through a story I just heard, that’s all.”
That evening on the L train Lucile read a copy of the morning paper, one which she had carefully saved for a very definite reason. It was the paper which was exploiting the Lady of the Christmas Spirit. Lucile always got a thrill out of reading about the latest doings of that adventurous person who had managed to be everywhere, to mingle with great throngs, and yet to be recognized by no one.
“Well, I declare!” she whispered to herself as a fresh thrill ran through her being. “She was to be in our store this very afternoon; in the art room of the furniture store. That’s the very room in which I saw Cordie and the Mystery Lady. This Lady of the Christmas Spirit may have been in the room at that exact moment. How very, very exciting!”
Closing her eyes, she tried to see that room again; to call back pictures of ladies who had entered the room while she had been looking down upon it.
“No,” she thought at last, “there isn’t one that fits; one was tall and ugly, one short, stout and middle aged, and two were quite gray. Not one fits the description of this Christmas Spirit person; unless, unless—” her heart skipped a beat. She had thought of the Mystery Lady.
“But of course it couldn’t be,” she reasoned at last. “It doesn’t say she was to be there at that very moment. I was not standing on the stair more than ten minutes. There are six such periods in an hour and nine and a half working hours in a store day. Fine chance! One chance in fifty. And yet, stranger things have happened. What if it were she! What——”
Her dreamings were broken short off by the sudden crumpling of paper at her side. Cordie had been glancing over the evening paper. Now the paper had entirely disappeared, and Cordie’s face was crimson to the roots of her hair.
“Why Cordie, what’s happened?” exclaimed Lucile.
“Noth—nothing’s happened,” said Cordie, looking suddenly out of the window.
That was all Lucile could get out of her. One thing seemed strange, however. At the stand by the foot of the elevated station Cordie bought two copies of the same paper she had been reading on the train. These she folded up into a solid bundle and packed tightly under her arm.
“I wonder why she did that?” Lucile thought to herself.
As often happens in bachelor ladies’ apartments, this night there was nothing to be found in their larder save sugar, milk and cocoa.
“You get the cocoa to a boil,” said Lucile, “and I’ll run over to the delicatessen for something hot. I’m really hungry to-night.” She was down the stairs and away.
Somewhat to her annoyance, she found the delicatessen packed with students waiting their turn to be supplied with eatables. The term had ended, and those who were too far from home to take the holidays away from the University were boarding themselves.
After sinking rather wearily into a corner seat, Lucile found her mind slipping back over the days that had just flown.
“To-morrow,” she told herself soberly, “is the day before Christmas. It is my last day at the store. And then? Oh, bother the ‘and then’! There’s always a future, and always it comes out somehow.”
That she might not be depressed by thoughts of the low state of her finances, she filled her mind with day dreams. In these dreams she saw herself insisting that Cordie reveal to her the secret hiding place of the Mystery Lady. Having searched this lady out, she demanded the return of her well worn, but comfortable, coat. In the dream still she saw the lady throw up her hands to exclaim:
“That frayed thing? I gave it to the rag man!”
Then in a rage she, Lucile, stamps her foot and says: “How could you! Of course now I shall keep your cape of fox skin and Siberian squirrel.”
“Ah,” she whispered, “that was a beautiful dream!”
Glancing up, she saw there were still six customers ahead of her and she must wait for her turn.
“Time for another,” she whispered.
This time it was the Lady of the Christmas Spirit. She saw her among the throngs at the store. Feeling sure that this must be the very person, that she might steal a look at her hands, she followed her from department to department. Upstairs and downstairs they went. More than once she caught the lady throwing back a mocking glance at her.
Then, of a sudden, at the ribbon counter she caught sight of her hands.
“Such hands!” she whispered. “There never were others like them. It is the Lady of the Christmas Spirit.”
Putting out her own hand, she grasped one of the marvelous ones as she whispered: “You are the Lady of the Christmas Spirit.”
At once there came a mighty jingle of gold. A perfect shower of gold went sparkling and tinkling to the floor.
“Oh! Oh!—Oh! It will all be lost!” she cried, leaping forward.
She leaped almost into the delicatessen keeper’s arms. To her surprise she saw that the store was empty. Her day-dream had ended in a real dream; she had fallen asleep.
Hastily collecting her scattered senses, she selected a steaming pot of beans and a generous cylinder of brown bread, then drawing her scarf about her, dashed out into the night.
Lucile may have been dreaming, but Cordie was wide awake and thinking hard. The instant Lucile had closed the door behind her she had spread one of the papers she had bought out before her and, having opened it at page 3, sat down to look at a picture reproduced there.
For a full two minutes she sat staring at it.
“Well anyway, it’s not such a bad picture,” she chuckled at last.
After the chuckle her face took on a sober look.
Then suddenly she exclaimed: “Let’s see what they say about it!”
“Well of all things! Nothing but a line of question marks! Well, at least the reporters know nothing about it.”
For a moment she stared at the long line of interrogation points, then her face dimpled with a smile.
“Just think,” she murmured. “They never whispered one word! Not one of them all! Not Patrick O’Hara, nor the old one they called Tim, nor the young one, nor even Hogan, who was so angry at me. And I’ll bet the reporters begged and tempted them in every way they could think of. What wonderful good sports policemen must be. I—I’d like to hug every one of them!”
Then she went skipping across the floor and back again, then paused and stared again at the picture.
Truth was, all unknown to her, and certainly very much against her wishes, Cordie’s picture had gotten into the paper. This was the picture she was still staring at: Crowds thronging State Street, a gray-haired mounted policeman, and by his side, also riding a police horse, a bobbed haired young girl in a policeman’s great coat.
“What if they see it!” she murmured.
“They wouldn’t let me stay. They will see it too—of course they will.”
“But then, what does it matter?” she exclaimed a moment later. “To-morrow’s the day before Christmas. What will I care after that?”
Hearing steps on the stairs, she hastily tore a page out of each of the two papers, folded them carefully and thrust them into a drawer. Then she threw the remaining part of the paper into the waste basket.
“To-morrow is the day before Christmas,” whispered Lucile as two hours later she sat staring rather moodily at the figures in the worn carpet. “A great Christmas, I suppose, for some people. Doesn’t look like it would be much for me. With term bills and room rent staring me in the face, and only a few dollars for paying them, it certainly doesn’t look good. And here I am with this little pet of mine sleeping on me and eating on me, and apparently no honest way of getting rid of her.” She shook her finger at the bed where Cordie was sleeping.
“If only you were an angora cat,” she chided, still looking at the dreaming girl, “I might sell you. Even a canary would be better—he’d make no extra room rent and he’d eat very little.”
“And yet,” she mused, “am I sorry? I should say I’m not! It’s a long, long life, and somehow we’ll struggle through.”
“Christmas,” she mused again. “It will be a great Christmas for some people, be a wonderful one for Jefrey Farnsworth—that is, it will be if he’s still alive. I wonder when they’ll find him, and where? They say we’ve sold two thousand of his books this season. Think of it!”
After that she sat wondering in a vague and dreamy way about many things. Printed pages relating to the Lady of the Christmas Spirit floated before her mind’s vision to be followed by a picture of Cordie and the Mystery Lady in the art room of the furnishings department. Cordie’s iron ring, set with a diamond, glimmered on the strange, long, muscular fingers of a hand. Laurie sold the last copy of “Blue Flames.” Jefrey Farnsworth, in the manner she had always pictured him, tall, dark, with deep-set eyes and a stern face wrinkled by much mental labor, stood before an audience of women and made a speech. Yellow gold glittered, then spread out like a molten stream. With a start she shook herself into wakefulness. Once more she had fallen asleep.
“Christmas,” she whispered as she crept into bed. “To-morrow is the day before——”
In the meantime Florence had come upon an adventure. The place she entered a half hour after quitting time was a great barn-like room where dark shadows lurked in every corner but one. The huge stacks of bags and trunks that loomed up indistinctly in those dark corners made the place seem the baggage room of some terminal railway depot.
As she joined the throng in the one light corner of the room she was treated to another little thrill. Such a motley throng as it was. Jewish second-hand dealers, short ones, tall ones, long-bearded ones; men of all races. And there were two or three women, and not a few vagabonds of the street, who had come in for no other purpose than to get out of the cold. Such were those who crowded round the high stand where, with gavel in hand, the auctioneer cried the sale:
“How much am I bid? Ten dollars! Thank you. Ten I have. Who’ll make it eleven! ’Leven, ’leven, ’leven. Who’ll make it twelve?”
There was not an attractive face in the group that surrounded the block. Florence was tempted to run away; but recalling the surprise she had promised herself, she stayed.
Presently her eyes fell upon a face that attracted her, the kindly, gentle face of a woman in her thirties. She was seated at a desk, writing.
“She’s the clerk of the sale,” Florence thought. “They’re selling trunks now. She may be able to tell me when they will sell bags.”
She moved over close to the desk and timidly put her question.
“Do you really want one of those bags?” the woman asked, surprise showing in her tone.
“Yes. Why not?” the girl asked.
“No reason at all, I guess,” said the clerk. Then, after looking at Florence for a moment, a comradely smile spread over her face.
“Come up close,” she beckoned. “He’ll be selling bags in fifteen minutes or so,” she whispered. “Sit down here and wait. Why do you want one of those bags so badly?”
“I—I need one,” said Florence.
“That’s not all the reason.”
“No—not—not all,” Florence hesitated, then told her frankly of the surprise she had planned for herself.
The woman’s face became almost motherly as she finished.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” she whispered. “There are just five bags to be sold in the next lot. You won’t want the first one. She—the woman who owned it, died.”
“Oh, no,” Florence whispered.
“You won’t get the second nor the third. That long bearded Jew, and the slim, dark man standing by the post, will run them high if they have to. They know something about them.”
“How—how—”
“How did they find out? I don’t know, but they did. The last two bags are quite good ones, good as you would purchase new for fifteen or twenty dollars, and I shouldn’t wonder,” she winked an eye ever so slightly, “I shouldn’t wonder a bit if there’d be a real surprise in one of them for you. There now, dearie,” she smiled, “run over and look at them, over there beside the green trunk. And don’t whisper a word of what I have told you.
“The one nearest the block will be sold first, and the others just as they come,” she added as the girl rose to go.
Making her way around the outskirts of the crowd, Florence walked over to the place of the green trunk. The bags were all good, and most of them nearly new. Any one of them, she concluded, would see her safely through college, and that was all that mattered. Then, lest she attract too much attention, she slunk away into a dark corner.
Her heart skipped a beat when the first bag was put up. Her hopes fell when she saw it sell for thirty-two dollars. Her little roll of fifteen dollars seemed to grow exceedingly small as she clutched it in her right hand. Was her dream of a surprise for Christmas morning only a dream? It would seem so, for the second and third bags also sold for a high figure. But, recalling the little lady’s advice, she kept up her courage.
“How much am I bid?” said the auctioneer as the fourth bag was handed him. Florence caught her breath. She tried to say “Ten dollars,” but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. A round faced man relieved her of the task. The bag went to eleven dollars, then twelve. Then it came to a halt, giving time for Florence to regain her voice.
“Twelve and a half,” her voice seemed piping and thin in that great place. But the auctioneer got it.
“Thank you. Twelve and a half, a half, a half.”
“Thirteen! Thank you. Thirteen I have. Now the half,” he nodded to Florence and she nodded back, “And a half, I have it. And a half. Now fourteen. Thirteen and a half. Now make it fourteen.”
“Fourteen,” someone shouted. Again the girl’s heart sank. What was the use?
“And a half?” The auctioneer nodded at her and she nodded back.
“Now fifteen. Now fifteen. Now fifteen,” he shouted hoarsely. “Who’ll make it fifteen? Fifteen once. Fifteen twice!” Florence crushed her money into a solid mass, “Fifteen three times, and SOLD to the young lady in blue!” His gavel came down with a bang.
Scarcely believing her senses, the girl groped her way forward to receive the bag, then hurried over to the desk.
“You got it?” smiled the clerk. “Here’s hoping it’s a beautiful, wonderful surprise!” she whispered as she pressed a lonely half dollar into the palm of her hand.
Curiosity regarding the price that would be bid for the last bag of the lot held Florence to the spot for the space of three minutes. And that was a bit of curiosity which she was destined to regret.
As she stood there listening to the bids she could not help but notice a dark man, with burning, hawk-like eyes hurry into the place, glance frantically about, race back to the place where the five bags had been, then stand stock still. His dark eyes roved about the place until they came to rest on one spot and that spot was the one occupied by the bag which Florence held in her hand. From that time until she left the room, although he pretended to be looking at everything else, she was sure his eyes did not leave that bag for a space of more than five seconds at any one time. The cold glitter of his eyes made her feel strangely weak at the knees.
She had not gone twenty rods from the place when she heard footsteps behind her. Looking back, she saw that same small dark man coming behind her.
“Just happened to come out then,” she tried to reassure herself. But it was no use. Something within her told her that she was being followed, followed on the deserted city streets at night.
At once a mad procession of questions began racing through her mind. Who was this man? Was it the bag he wanted? Why? What did he know about the bag? What did it really contain? To none of these questions could she form an adequate answer. Only one thing stood out clearly in her mind—the bag was hers. She had come by it in an honest manner. The hotel had a right to give it to the auctioneer to sell. She had a right to purchase it. She had paid for it. She had the bill of sale. It was rightfully hers.
But even as these thoughts crystallized in her mind she realized that she was desperately afraid. The man with his burning black eyes was enough to inspire fear, and added to that it was night.
“What am I to do?” she asked herself. “The elevated station is only two blocks ahead, but he will board the train I take. He will follow me after I get off and there are five desolate blocks to travel to my room.”
Suddenly a solution came to her. Just before her was the entrance to the LaSalle Street Railway Station. Why not walk in there and leave the bag at the checking room? She could return for it in the morning and carry it to the store where she could check it again and leave it until closing time.
No sooner thought than done. Five minutes later, looking neither to right nor left, she walked demurely out of the station. She did not know what had become of her pursuer, and she did not care. The bag was safe. He could not get it, and aside from that, what did he care for her, an elevator girl going home from work? Very evidently he cared nothing at all, for she did not see him again that night.
“Fooled him,” she smiled to herself as she settled herself comfortably in a seat where she might watch the winter whitened city speed past her. “That’s the last I’ll ever see of him.”
In coming to this conclusion she overlooked one trifling detail. Since the night was cold, she had worn beneath her coat her elevator girl’s uniform. The auction room was warm. While there she had unbuttoned her coat, displaying plainly the uniform and the monogrammed buttons on it. The greatest of stores employ few enough elevator girls. To visit each bank of elevators and to get a look at each girl is but the work of an hour or two at most. The man would have no trouble in locating her if he cared to do so. Since she had not thought of this she rode home humming in a carefree manner and, after a meal of sandwiches, cocoa and pie, followed by an hour of reading, she went to bed to dream of mysterious treasures taken by the truck load from the depths of a heavy, dark brown travelling bag.
She awoke in the morning with a pleasing sense of mystery and anticipation lurking about in the shadowy corners of her brain.
Leaping from bed, she went through a series of wild calesthenics which set every ounce of blood in her veins racing away with new life.
An hour later, with a little suppressed feeling of excitement tugging at her heart and with fingers that trembled slightly, she passed her check over the counter at the depot. She had some slight feeling that it had all been a dream. But no, there it was, her mysterious bag, as big and handsome as ever. It was quite light, but she felt sure it was not empty. What could it contain? She was tempted to draw the key from her pocket then and there and have a peek. But no—to-morrow was Christmas. She could wait. So, seizing the bag, she hurried away to her work.
Once the bag was checked at the store and she back at her lever in the cage that went up and down, up and down all day, she found herself thinking of that other girl, the mysterious double of hers. Where was she to-day? Had she really gone to work, or had she vanished? What manner of plot had she been mixed up in? What train had gone at eleven-thirty? Whose train? Was that girl supposed to go? If so, why did she not wish to go? Where did she live? Who was she anyway?
While the elevator went up and down, up and down, these questions, and a score of others, kept revolving themselves in her mind. At last she found herself forming a firm resolve that should she happen upon her mysterious double again she most certainly would keep in touch with her until she found out more about her.
She saw her mysterious double shortly after she had gone to work, but under conditions which gave her no opportunity to either study or question her. The girl, dressed in her uniform and apparently ready to go to work, was standing before the bank of elevators on the thirteenth floor. She had been talking in low and excited tones to a tall, square shouldered man who, in spite of the fact that he was on a floor of this great store where only employees are allowed, had in his bearing and walk something that spoke strongly of boats and the sea.
“He’s been a captain or a mate or something,” Florence said to herself as she sent her cage speeding downward. “I wonder if that girl belongs to the sea.”
“The day before Christmas! Oh joy! Joy! Joy!”
Lucile leaped out of bed. Throwing off her dream-robe, she went whirling about the room for all the world as if she were playing roll the hoop and she were the hoop.
The day before Christmas! Who cared if room rent was due to-night? Who cared if the school term loomed ahead with little enough cash in her stocking to smooth its way? Who cared about anything? It was the day before Christmas.
This day work would be light. Tommie had said that. Donnie had said it. Rennie and all the others of the sales group who stayed from year to year had said it. What was more, for this one day, if never again, Lucile had resolved to wear the magnificent cape of midnight blue and fox-skin. And at night, when the day was done, the week ended, the season closed, there was to be a wonderful party. A party! Oh joy! A party!
Laurie, the mysterious Laurie Seymour, had invited them, just they of his corner—Donnie and Rennie, Tommie, Cordie and herself.
A grand party it was to be, a supper at Henrici’s and after that Laurie was to take them to a symphony concert! And to this party she would wear the midnight blue cape. For one night, one reckless, joyous night, she would travel in the height of style. And then?
“Oh, bother the ‘and then’! It’s the day before Christmas!” She went through another series of wild whirls that landed her beneath the shower.
When at last she was fully dressed for this last day of work in the book department, Lucile drew on the cape. Then, having told Cordie that she would wait for her outside, she went skipping down the stairs.
It was one of those crisp, snappy, frosty mornings of winter that invite you to inhale deeply of its clear, liquid-like air.
After taking three deep breaths Lucile buried her radiant face in the warm depths of the fox skin.
“How gorgeous,” she murmured. “Oh, that I might own it forever!”
Even as she said this all the unanswered questions that grouped themselves about the cape—its owner, and the girl’s associates at the store—came trooping back to puzzle her. Who was the Mystery Lady? Why had she left the cape that night? Why did she not return for it later? How had it happened that she was in the store that night at two hours before midnight? Who was Laurie Seymour? Why had he given the Mystery Lady his pass-out? How had he spent that night? What had happened to the vanished author of “Blue Flames”? Who was Cordie? Was she really the poor, innocent little country girl she had thought her? What was to come of her, once the season had closed? Who was the “Spirit of Christmas”? Had she ever seen her? Who would get the two hundred in gold? What had she meant by the crimson trail she left behind? Who was Sam? Why was Laurie so much afraid to meet him? Above all, what were the secrets of the crimson thread and the diamond set iron ring?
Surely here were problems enough to put wrinkles in any brow. But it was the day before Christmas, so, as Cordie came dancing down to a place beside her, Lucile gripped her arm and led away in a sort of hop-skip-and-jump that brought them up breathless at the station.
There was just time to grab a paper before the train came rattling in. Having secured a seat, Lucile hid herself behind her paper. A moment later she was glad for the paper’s protection. Had it not been for the paper she felt that half the people on the train might have read her thoughts.
The thing she saw in the Spirit of Christmas column, which daily told of the doings of the lady by that name, was such a startling revelation that she barely escaped a shriek as her eyes fell on it.
“You have been wondering,” she read in the column devoted to the lady of the “Christmas Spirit,” “what I have been meaning by the crimson trail which I have left behind. Perhaps some of you have guessed the secret. If this is true, you have made little use of that knowledge. None of you have found me. Not one of the hundreds of thousands who have passed me has paused to grip my hand and to whisper: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’
“Now I will give you some fresh revelations. It is the day before Christmas. At midnight to-night Christmas comes. As the clock strikes that magic hour my wanderings cease. If no one has claimed my gold by then, no one will.
“I have told you always that hands ofttimes express more than a face. This is true of my hands. They are strange hands. Stranger still are the rings I wear upon them. For days now I have worn an iron ring set with a diamond. Had someone noticed this, read the secret and whispered: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas,’ not only should my gold have clinked for him, but the diamond should have been his as well.”
Lucile caught her breath as she read this. Here indeed was revelation. Could it be—There was more. She read on.
“As for the crimson trail I have left behind. That is very simple. I marvel that people can be so blind. I have left it everywhere. It is unusual, very unusual, yet I have left it everywhere, in hundreds of places, in newsboys’ papers, in shopgirls’ books, in curtains, shades, and even in people’s garments, yet not one has read the sign. The sign is this: a bit of crimson thread drawn twice through and tied. There is a purple strand in the thread. It is unusual, yet no one has understood; no one has said ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas’.”
“The crimson thread,” Lucile breathed. “Why, then—then the Mystery Lady and the Spirit of Christmas Lady are one, and I have seen her many times. I saw her at two hours before midnight. I sold her a book. Twice I saw her talking to Cordie. I followed her upon the street. Had I but known it I might have whispered to her: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’ Then the gold would have been mine. Two hundred in gold!” she breathed. “Two hundred in gold! And now it is gone!
“But is it? Is it quite gone yet? There is yet this day, the day before Christmas.”
Again her eyes sought the printed page. And this is what she read:
“Today I shall not appear before sunset. Early in the evening, and again between the hours of ten and midnight, I shall be somewhere on the Boulevard. I shall attend the Symphony Concert in Opera Hall.”
“The concert,” Lucile murmured with great joy. “We, too, are going there to-night. We shall be on the Boulevard. There is yet a chance. And the beauty of it all is I shall know her the instant I see her. Oh! You glorious bag of gold, please, please do wait for me!”