“Not in pictures!” Jeanne protested. “No, no! And then you know I have promised. I said, ‘Yes, I will be Lorena LeMar.’ And Lorena LeMar I must be.”
It was with grave misgiving that she approached the movie lot on the first day of actual work. “There is so much I do not know,” she told herself. “If it is necessary to explain much to me, what must that sharp-eyed Mr. Soloman think?”
These fears vanished as she saw the rows on rows of faces packed in the stadium ready to witness the actual making of a movie feature, for it was this and nothing less that the keen Mr. Soloman had advertised in big electric words outside the gate.
“I must succeed! I must! I must!” She set her will to the task.
To her vast surprise she found that first day passing as serenely as a journey down a country lane. The scenes were simple ones, the lines short and easy. She came to it all with a simple naturalness that pleased both Soloman and her audience.
But, as the days passed, it seemed to her that the whole affair was like a gigantic machine that gathers speed as its many wheels revolve.
Not three days had passed ere every person in the cast realized that here was a real task, the making of a genuine feature in record time on an improvised stage. “Seldom has it been done,” they were told. “All the more reason for succeeding,” came their answer.
Powerful lights were hung over the mountain and long after the spectators were gone the cast of the play toiled on.
Important scenes were filmed not once or twice, but six, eight, ten times. Each little detail must be right.
Those burning lights burned into Jeanne’s very soul. What matter this? She must smile. She must weep. She must shout for pure joy when the script said, smile, weep, shout.
And all this time she felt the small eyes of Soloman upon her. At times his eyes merely twinkled; at others his lips curled in a smile. Then again he seemed anxious.
When, on rare occasions, he broke the silence to murmur, “Beautiful! Beautiful!” she knew that the praise came from the very depths of his soul and she was glad.
“Does he know that I am not Lorena LeMar?” she said to Tom one night. “He must!”
“N-no. Well, perhaps. I am sure he does not know who you are.”
“And if he did?” Jeanne’s heart stood still.
“If God found a human as perfect as you are mixed with the angels,” Tom smiled, “I think He would let that human remain with the angels.”
“But Soloman is not God.”
“He’s no fool either.”
They left it at that, but Jeanne did not cease, at times, to tremble.
There was no picture on the clouds these days. So weary was she when at last each day was done, that she crept away to Lorena LeMar’s sumptuous apartment to sleep the hours away.
The long-eared Chinaman, the three-bladed knife, the hearse and the two black horses, Rutledge Tavern, even the laundry bag checked in the little hotel were for the moment crowded out of her life.
And then came the marvelous news that they were to board a special car and speed away to the real mountains.
So weary was Jeanne, by the time she reached that car, that she crept beneath the blankets in her berth and did not awaken until the morning sun and the green hills of Kentucky greeted her eyes.
At noon of that same day Jeanne found herself seated on a great rock at the foot of Big Black Mountain. She was dressed in boys’ unionalls. Her feet were bare. On her head, slouched down about her ears, she wore an old straw hat. Gripped in both hands was a fishing rod made from the branch of a chestnut tree. She was fishing, fishing joyously for “green perch.” What mattered it that a movie camera was clicking across the stream, or that the villain of the movie tried in vain to talk to her of love? All this was but play stuff. The fishing was real.
When the fishing was over she dived, clothes and all, into that deep, limpid pool to enjoy a glorious swim while the camera clicked on, and from time to time Ted Hunter, the director, shouted “Cut! Cut!”
“This,” Jeanne whispered to Jensie when the day was over and they stood before a spring dashing handfuls of clear, cool water over their faces, “This is not work! It is play.”
And so it seemed to them all. Catching the spirit of the mountains, of the easy-going, beauty-loving, loyal people of the Cumberlands, they dreamed the hours away. Only Ted Hunter’s sharp “No! No! Not that!” and “Yes! Yes! That’s it!” made them realize that they were making a moving picture.
As for the members of the company, in this mellow atmosphere Jeanne came to love them all. Anthony Hope, the droll, handsome youth who in the first and last scenes of the movie made bashful love to her; Scott Ramsey, the aged character actor; Pietro, the young Italian; and even the chubby villain came to have a safe little spot in Jeanne’s generous heart.
There were hours off. And what could be more delightful than to don those boys’ overalls once more and with Pietro as guard against bears, to climb far up the side of Big Black Mountain?
Having climbed and climbed until they had lost their breath, they came at last upon a lovely spot where the sunlight, sifting through the leafy bower above, wove strange patterns in the moss.
There Pietro threw himself flat upon nature’s soft bed to stare up at an eagle wheeling high in the sky. It was then that he spoke to her, sometimes calmly, sometimes passionately, of his hopes, his dreams and his moments of black despair.
“You think I was born in Italy!” he exclaimed. “I was not, but in Chicago. Not beautiful Chicago, but ugly Chicago, the near West Side.
“There are seven of us. Three boys. Four girls. I am the oldest.
“I studied hard. I graduated from High School. And then what? Nothing. I tramped the streets looking for work, any work. There was no work.
“One month, two, three, four, five months!” His voice took on a bitter note. “Six months I tramped the streets! No work.
“I said, ‘I will get tough. I will join the 42 Gang.’ I—”
“No! No! Never! You would not!” Jeanne’s tone was deep with emotion.
“It was not so much that I would not.” Pietro sat up. “It was that I could not. My people were honest. I could not steal.
“And then—” His voice mellowed. “Then I met a fat little Jew. He said, ‘Come with me, my boy. I will give you a chance.’
“I did not wish to go. I said to myself, ‘He is a Jew. A Jew!’
“But what was there to do?
“I went. He has taught me how to act in pictures, this little Jew, your friend, my friend, Mr. Soloman.” There was a touch almost of reverence in his voice. “And now, here I am,” he concluded.
“And, Miss LeMar—” His eyes appeared to look into her very soul. So deep was her feeling at that moment that she actually feared he was reading her true name from her very eyes. But he was not. “Miss LeMar,” he repeated softly, “tell me that this picture, this ‘Dogwood in Bloom’ story, is to be a success, a real success!”
“Pietro,” her hand was on his arm, “if you and I and all the rest can make it a success, then it shall be—a grand, a very glorious success. I can say no more.”
“Good!”
Putting out a hand, solemn as a priest in a temple, he lifted her white fingers to his lips and kissed them.
Then, as if a little ashamed, he sprang to his feet to lead the way back down the mountain.
It was night. All alone Jeanne sat upon the side of that man-made section of Big Black Mountain there on the studio lot in Chicago. The faint light that reached her, coming from afar, served only to intensify the shadows of trees and shrubs all about her.
It was perfect, this bit of Big Black Mountain. The trees, the shrubs, the rocks, the little rushing stream, all were perfect.
“Perfect,” she whispered. “And the picture we have been making, will it be perfect, too?” Her brow wrinkled. She was to know. To-night was the great night. The picture was finished. To-night came the preview.
“At midnight,” she breathed. “Midnight, one o’clock, and after that my hour of enchantment. Shall it truly be? Shall—?”
She broke short off to cast a hurried glance up the slope above her. Had she caught some sound, the snapping of a twig, the rolling of a stone?
“Perhaps nothing,” she told herself. “I am excited. This is a grand night.”
Ah, yes, this was the night of nights. Two weeks had passed since Lorena LeMar had walked out of her richly furnished apartment and Jeanne had walked in.
Two weeks, fourteen days, and such days as they had been! Jeanne sighed as she thought of it now. And yet her lips were able to form the words “Golden Days.” They had been just that, beautiful, glorious, golden days.
“It is perfect, this mountain,” she whispered. “Even in the dark one senses the beauty of it. Ah, the rushing cold water, the scent of mountain ivy, the glint of sunbeams through the trees!”
Yes, it was a perfect little corner of Big Black Mountain, but the little French girl’s thoughts were far away. They had wandered to the spot where Big Black Mountain itself stretched away, away and away until its glorious green turned to blue that blended with a cloudless sky.
She was thinking of Pietro who rode a donkey so badly he had actually fallen off more than once, and who sang his Italian songs so divinely.
She was thinking of Tom Tobin and wondering vaguely which of the two she liked best.
“I want the picture to be a success for them,” she whispered. Her words were almost a prayer. “Oh, God, make the critics kind! It is for them, for Pietro and Jensie, for Old Scott Ramsey, for Soloman and—and for Tom.”
Tom had been with her on her visit to Big Black Mountain. Yes, Tom had gone, for by this time the story of the possible success of a real feature written by a Chicago boy and being filmed at Chicago’s front door had become town talk.
There had been publicity. “Ah, yes, such publicity!” she sighed. Every day for a week her picture had appeared in the paper. She had been shown among the dogwood blossoms on the movie lot, on the Enchanted Island with a hundred beautiful children crowding about her, in a gondola riding down the lagoon like a queen. Ah, yes, there had been publicity.
“And always,” she breathed, “I am not Petite Jeanne at all, but Lorena LeMar. Ah, well, what can it matter? To-day one is a queen, to-morrow she is forgotten.
“And besides—” She smiled a bit wearily. “Besides, how shall I say it? This picture may, after all, be a flop, and if it is, then it is Lorena LeMar who has failed and not I.”
Again a little tremor shot up her spine. She had caught a sound above her. She half rose as if to flee. But the night was warm. The day had been a hard one. It was good to be alone. Soon the floodlights would be turned on, the press men with their cameras would be here. To-night was the preview of that much talked of picture, “When the Dogwood Is in Bloom.” It had been arranged that the showing should take place in the Children’s Theatre on the Enchanted Island of the Fair.
“There is no one up there.” She settled back. “Only a few moments more to think.”
Strangely enough, her thoughts for a moment whirled through a score of mysteries, the hearse and the two black horses in the dark night, the organ that played its own tunes, the three-bladed knife, the long-eared Chinaman, all these remained as mysteries.
“But these,” she told herself, “these are not for to-night. To-morrow or the day after, perhaps.”
Oh, were they not, though? One may not always elect the hour for the unfolding of life’s mysteries. Fate at times takes a hand.
But one may choose the subject of one’s own thoughts. Jeanne chose to think of the real Big Black Mountain. What a glorious time she had down there in the hills of Kentucky! Climbing steep slopes, she had dropped upon beds of moss to catch the call of a yellow-hammer or the chatter of a squirrel.
At night she had sat for long hours before a narrow home-made fireplace, to creep at last beneath home-woven blankets, and with Jensie at her side to sleep the long night through.
That had lasted only two days. And then back to the city they were whirled.
“We must go back!” the producer had exclaimed. “The public is clamoring for a look at the task we are at, making a feature right in Chicago.”
The public had been there. Every afternoon, as they worked at the unfolding of this tense drama, the stadium had been packed.
The picture had grown, too. Under the inspiration of the hour, new fragments of plot were added, new scenes sprang into being. A mountain feud was added. The scene in a mansion which Jeanne suggested had sprung into being. A friend of Lorena LeMar, a rich society fan of the movies, had thrown her home open to them. And there in the midst of the greatest splendor Jeanne had tripped with dainty feet down a winding marble staircase, only to cast aside her silken finery at last and don her calico gown to go stealing out of the mansion and borrow a ride in a box car back to her beloved mountains.
All this had become part of the thing they were making. Working at white heat, inspired by one grand idea that success was to be achieved where failure had been expected, they had poured their very lives into the business of creating a thing of beauty that in the hearts of men would be a joy forever.
Never, even in the good days of light opera, had Jeanne so thoroughly lost herself in the thing she was doing. Day and night she lived, moved and breathed as Zola, the mountain girl.
She had worked untiringly, not so much for herself as for others. Once again she had gathered about her a golden circle of friends. Pietro, Soloman, Tom, Jensie, Scott Ramsey, all these and many others were included in her Golden Circle.
“And now—” She caught a short breath as she sat there among the trees. “Now we have done all that can be done. To-night we shall know.
“We shall know.” How her heart raced. Not one foot of that film had she seen thrown upon the screen. To-night she was to see it all—the picture she had made.
“I—I can’t wait!” She sprang to her feet.
At that instant floodlights flashed on. Instantly night was turned into day.
Involuntarily she glanced in the direction from which that disturbing sound had come.
It was only by exerting the utmost of will power that she avoided screaming. There, crouching with the three-bladed knife in his hand, not ten feet away, was the long-eared Chinaman.
“I must not scream! I will not!” She shut her lips tight.
She looked again. He was gone.
Scarcely believing her eyes, she stood staring at the spot.
“I must not say a word,” she whispered to herself. “This is to be the big night. There must be no scene! No hue and cry, no wild man-hunt! No! No! No!”
And there was none.
Five minutes later when the photographers came to take one more picture of the “Queen” on the mountainside, she stood calm and smiling as a June bride.
“To think,” she said to Tom Tobin when this ordeal was over, “to-morrow this beautiful mountain will be a thing of the past! Not one stick, nor stone, nor even a handful of earth will remain. To-morrow a new picture is to begin, a desert scene, new director, new cast, new setting, a brand new movie world.”
“Sort of life-like,” Tom philosophized. “We move a little slower, stay a little longer on this good, green earth, that’s all.”
“Ah, yes, but to-night let us forget.” Jeanne gripped his arm impulsively. “This, my friend, is our big moment, yours and mine. Let us dream for a moment, hope for an hour. Let us dare hope.
“And—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And if it is not too much, let us pray a little.”
It was Florence who next saw the mysterious Chinaman, and that not an hour from the time he disappeared from Jeanne’s delectable mountain. Her day’s work at an end, she had retired to the orange grove on the banks of the lagoon for a short period of rest. She had been here often of late. There was something very unusual and charming about this orange grove thriving here in the very front yard of Chicago.
The place was in reality a tropical garden. As she lay there, propped up on an elbow, the fragrance of tropical flowers, the pungent odor of ripe tropical fruit suggested that she might be thousands of miles from her native city, at the edge of some Central American jungle.
And yet, as she opened her eyes to look away across the lagoon, her eyes told her that she was in truth at the very heart of a fantastical world of play.
“How like a theatre it is!” she exclaimed.
And indeed, as she allowed her eyes to follow the lagoon until it lost itself in the broader waters of the lake, she found them filled with the ever-changing lights of a stage on opening night. Gayly decorated barges drawn by small power boats drifted past. A bevy of girls, all garbed in gowns of bright red, shot past in a speed boat. They were singing, “Sailing! Sailing!”
From a floating platform came the martial music of a band. Overhead an airplane motor droned. The plane was shooting out a spiral of smoke. The smoke formed itself into clouds and on these clouds there played living, moving pictures.
As she lay there on the grass, head propped on elbow, watching, dreaming, like Petite Jeanne, she caught an unusual sound.
“Not far away,” she whispered. “Over there among the banana leaves, perhaps.” She thought of investigating this. But she was tired, and as she had promised to wait for Jeanne’s preview she wished to rest.
So she dismissed the matter from her mind and once again allowed her mind to drift.
“Wonderful spot, this,” she whispered to herself. “Probably never be seen in Chicago again, orange trees loaded with fruits and flowers.”
This was true. With endless pains men had grown trees in boxes, then had shipped them to the Fair. There were lemon trees, and mangoes, and tall trees that grew tropical melons. In one spot there was a perfect tangle of tropical vegetation.
“Yes, and banana trees.”
Once again her eyes were upon that cluster of banana trees.
“There is something moving there.”
Getting a grip on herself, she kept up the semblance of dreaming. In reality she was very much alert, quite alive—watching.
Nor did she watch in vain.
As she watched, fascinated, waiting for she knew not what, ready on the instant to go dashing away, she saw the banana leaves stir, move to one side, then fall back into their original position.
Every muscle in her splendid body was tense now. Had she caught a glimpse of a face? She believed so.
“And yet, one is so easily deceived.”
She should leave the place. This was plain enough; yet stubbornly she stayed.
She watched the darting rocket cars as they flashed across the sky, followed the course of an airplane by its spark of light, allowed her mind to wander for an instant to Jeanne and her problems. But all the time she was thinking, “I must be on my guard.”
With all this, when at last the banana leaves parted and a form crept out, she was surprised beyond measure. She recognized the person on the instant. The very stealth of his movements gave him away. It was the long-eared Chinaman.
She gasped. “Has he seen me?
“If he has, he’s playing a game.” He did not look her way.
Then it was that, as though it were some picture on the clouds, she saw faces of children, hundreds of faces, cute Chinese children, and above them all, resolute, determined, hopeful, the serious face of Erik Nord, the white man from China.
“Ah! Now I have you!” Was it she who thought this? Or was it Erik Nord thinking through her? She did not pause for an answer. Instead, she sprang squarely at the crouching figure.
Her plan, if she might be said to have one, was to snatch the precious three-bladed knife from beneath his long coat, then to run for it.
In this she failed. With a panther-like spring, the yellow man eluded her. Then, perceiving perhaps that escape was impossible, he took the offensive.
He did not draw the knife. There was not time. Then, too, it was for demons, not for men, nor for girls either. Instead, with a leap and the swing of an arm he encircled her neck in such a vice-like grip that for a space of ten seconds she was helpless.
“You shall give the bell!” he hissed. “The bell and the banners you shall give!”
Too close to the point of strangulation to reply or so much as think clearly, she placed her hands against his chest, then suddenly threw all her superb strength into one tremendous thrust.
Did she hear a bone crack in his wrist? Was her own neck being broken?
For a space of seconds, with head ready to burst, she could not tell. Then, with a sighing groan the intruder relaxed his hold and all but fell to the ground.
Following up this advantage she fell toward him in such a manner as to start him rolling down the hill. And then, all in a flash, she caught a gleam of white on the grass at her feet.
“The knife! The three-bladed knife! If only—”
With one more tremendous push she set the yellow man into a spin that landed him with a splash into the water of the lagoon.
“He swims well enough,” she assured herself.
Then, with heart thumping wildly, she snatched up the much coveted knife with the jeweled hilt and went sprinting away up the slope, away to the south and across the bridge over the lagoon, to lose herself at last in a throng that had gathered about a wandering Egyptian street fakir.
“Have I lost him?” she whispered.
The answer, though she could not know it now, was “Yes, but not for long.”
“I promised to wait for Jeanne on Byrd’s Polar Ship,” she recalled. “I’ll go there now. Peter Nordsen, the watchman, will be there. People will be passing through. It will be safe enough now.” She had hidden the three-bladed knife beneath her blouse. For all this, she did not feel quite easy about it.
To her surprise, when she arrived at the spot where the ship had been moored she found it gone.
“Gone!” she exclaimed in surprise.
This surprise lasted but an instant. “Oh! I forgot. There was a parade of ships on the lake to-day. Byrd’s ship was in that parade. It will be tied up outside the bridge. The mast must come down before she’ll go under the bridge.
“That’s fine!” she exulted. “I’ll have a good rest on the old ship with no one about but old Peter Nordsen smoking his pipe. If Jeanne doesn’t show up I’ll go to the little theatre at midnight.”
She found the ship readily enough, gave Peter a smile and a “Good evening,” then went forward to a seat well up in the prow.
“Sturdy old ship!” she murmured as she sank into the chair. Then she relaxed in a fit attitude for dreaming.
She had learned to love this old ship. It was easy to imagine it in motion, booming along with all sails set before a nor’west wind.
“Good old ship!” she murmured again. “If only I could sail with you over the seven seas. Australia, the South Sea Islands, Japan, China and—” She drew a deep breath. “That mysterious land, China.”
She thought quite suddenly of the jewel-hilted knife. “I should hunt up Erik Nord and give it to him at once,” she told herself. “But then, I have no notion where he is; he went off duty an hour ago.”
She laughed a little low laugh as she thought of the Chinaman splashing in the water of the lagoon. Then, of a sudden there came a thought that puzzled her. “He said we had the bell and the banners. How absurd! The chest was empty. They were gone. Who could have taken them if he did not?”
The thought did not remain with her. No thought did. This was an hour for relaxation and dreaming. But she must not dream too long. This was Jeanne’s big night. She must not miss it. “Jeanne’s big night,” she murmured.
She allowed her eyes to wander once more over the magnificent spectacle that lay before her. What a sight! Fountains playing amid golden walls, a hundred lights gleaming as white as diamonds from a lofty tower, trees turning red and gold under the touch of many-hued lamps, and a ladder of light towering skyward. All this exercised upon this impressionable girl a semi-hypnotic spell.
“I must not forget. This is Jeanne’s big night. I must not be late. I—I will not fail—”
For all that, her head sank lower and lower. The day had been a long one. The battle in the orange grove had drawn heavily from her reserve of energy. The hypnotic spell of night and the ever-changing panorama of light sank deep. She nodded twice, then her head fell slowly forward. She was asleep.
Along the breakwater at that moment there glided a mysterious figure. By his nervous stops and starts one might judge him to be in a high state of nervous excitement. Yet there was in his movements a suggestion of extreme caution.
As he came near to the spot where the Polar ship lay anchored, he came to a sudden halt, stood there for a full moment as if rooted to the spot, then dashed away at full speed.
* * * * * * * *
At this moment Jeanne was standing with Jensie at the back of the Rutledge Tavern. They were looking out into the night. As if for mutual protection, they had their arms locked tightly together.
“There it is!” Jensie whispered.
“The hearse!” Jeanne shuddered.
And there most certainly it was, standing in the moonlight just as it had been on that first memorable night.
“Ah, well,” Jeanne whispered to herself, “much has happened since then.”
They were all here at the Tavern, her little company. They had come here for a late dinner; Soloman, Anthony Hope, Scott Ramsey, Pietro, Tom and Jensie were by the fireplace.
Now as Jeanne felt the urge to retreat she said to Jensie in a tone that came from down deep in her throat, “There were two black horses and a coffin. I saw them.”
“Yes,” Jensie agreed. “There were. And, Jeanne,” her voice took on an air of mystery, “last night the organ played again.”
“It played again?” Looking into the mountain girl’s eyes, Jeanne thought she detected there a curious unwonted gleam, but she said not another word as they wandered back to their place by the fireside.
Florence awoke with a start. She sprang to her feet. Where was she? She knew on the instant, or thought she knew. But truly, where was she? Cold fear gripped her heart. All the bright glory of the Fair, the changing lights, splashing fountains, clashing rocket cars had faded into mere nothing, a dull blue against the horizon.
Was she going blind? Men had gone blind in just that way. She rubbed her eyes, then looked at her hand. She could see it, indistinctly it is true, but with plenty of detail.
She looked over the rail. Black water was all about her. The old ship swayed slightly. To her ears there came the sound of a motor.
“But this old ship has no motor. Byrd took it out before he passed through the Panama Canal.”
For all this, she was convinced that the ship was in motion. She looked up. Masts, but no sails.
“A tow! Some one is giving it a tow!” Once again her blood chilled. There had been no plans for moving the ship; this she knew. The old night watchman had said that the masts would be lowered during the night and the ship would be brought back within the lagoon.
“But this? What can it mean?”
She had not long to wait. A light came swinging forward. A gas lantern, it was carried by a short man. Two others were just behind him.
As they came into view she gasped. The leader of the trio was the long-eared Chinaman. The others were his fellow-countrymen. As if sure of his ground, he advanced slowly. There was something sinister, deadly, about that slow advance, like a march of death.
“Caught!” Her head whirled. She thought of leaping overboard. A strong swimmer, she might make land. But the blur of red and gold that was the Fair was dim, indistinct.
“We’re far off shore.” Taking a grip on herself, she held her ground.
She took to counting the short, gliding steps of those who approached. “One, two, three, four, five.”
They came to a halt. The leader advanced two steps farther.
“You will give me that knife!” His tone was low, smooth, musical, menacing.
“No!” Her tone was defiant.
“The water is deep; the distance is very far.” His tone had not changed. “You will give me the knife.”
“No.”
“This knife is for Chinaman. Very old, that knife.” His body rocked slowly back and forth. His voice rose in a sort of chant. “Very powerful, that knife. Not fight man, that knife. Fight demons. Very ’fraid demons. Wave that knife, ring that bell, demons gone. You have that bell. You also give bell, give banners.”
“We do not have the banners or the bell. But if we had, you should not have them.” Florence held her ground.
“You not speak truth. You have bell, have banners. You will give. The water is deep. The distance is far.
“Long time fight demons, that knife.” He was chanting again. “Far away, back very far in China, people all happy, all demons ’fraid, stay away. Priests of Buddha fight demons, that knife.
“White man take knife, take bell, take banners. Now demons come back. Make people sick, those demons. Many people die. No knife, no bell, no banners, can’t fight demons.
“Very dry, no rain. No millet, no rice. Demons make land dry. No knife, no bell, no banner. Can’t fight demons. I come for knife. He come. He come.” He nodded at his statue-like companions. “Come for knife, for bell, for banners. You give.”
“No.” The girl’s figure stiffened. “You will not get the knife. I do not have those others. You have them. You stole them. The chest was empty.
“All you have said is nonsense!” Her voice rose. “Demons do not make men die. If your people are sick they should go to the white doctor. He will cure them. All those things, the knife, the bell, the banners were sold for money, much money. That money would buy things for the white doctor. You have no right to them. You stole them. You have them all but the knife. You will not get the knife.”
“The water is deep. The distance is very far. You will give the knife!” He advanced a step. Without appearing to move their feet, the statue-like pair advanced.
The whole scene, the dark ship, the menacing men, the water, the night, was so like a play that Florence could scarcely believe her senses.
Then to her alert ears came a sound, a low chant:
“A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh!”
She had heard that sound before. But where? For ten seconds she wracked her brain. Then she knew.
“Listen!” She endeavored to speak quietly. “You believe in demons. Listen! What do you hear?”
The long-eared one stood rigid, silent, listening.
The sound grew louder: “A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh!”
“You believe in demons,” she repeated. “Well, here are demons for you, black demons with long knives in their belts. They are coming to rescue me. And let me tell you, you will need a hundred three-bladed knives to frighten these away, and men to use the knives. You are only three. They are many. They are big, black!”
The menacing ones and the statues glided back a step.
The sound they had heard was the chant of a crew of black men from the heart of Africa. A part of this great carnival, they were practicing in their forty-foot dugout, a hollow log boat, for a race.
What she had said was, she supposed, pure fiction. Now her courage forsook her. They were not coming for her. They would pass a long way off. They would turn and go back before they came within hailing distance.
For once luck was with her. What she had said was true. Jeanne, having come in search of her, had found the ship gone and had seen a frantic watchman, who had left the ship “but for one short breathing spell,” racing up and down the breakwater.
At that instant the boatload of black men hove into view. Fearing treachery, Jeanne had begged them to take her in search of the missing ship.
So now here they were, out on the dark waters of night. The watchman in the prow, twenty black men from the heart of Africa at the oars, and the golden-haired Petite Jeanne urging them on and shouting with them:
“A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh! A hey, yuh!”
It was no time at all before it became plain that their destination was the misplaced ship. And at this the three yellow men vanished. Came the sound of a boat’s motor throbbing. Then that sound grew fainter and fainter in the distance.
“They are gone!” Florence breathed. “And I still have the knife!”
It was the crew of smiling blacks who carried Florence and Jeanne back to shore. A stout little tug came out for the Polar ship, but that was too slow for them.
With oars flashing in the moonlight, with their crew chanting a weird song, they went sweeping back to Jeanne’s “Big Night.”
All their friends, the movie company, Tom Tobin and even Erik Nord were waiting.
“I have it,” Florence whispered to Erik. “The three-bladed knife.” She slipped it into his hand.
“Wonderful!” He gripped her hand. “But the bell? The banners?”
“There’s something strange about them.”
“Tell me what happened.”
She told him briefly as they hurried along with the others to the little theatre.
“You’ll never see him again,” Erik said with conviction. “The emigration officers are on his trail. They’ll get him. He’ll go back to China.”
“Do you know,” Florence spoke in a low, serious tone, “I feel rather sorry for him.”
“Yes, one does. But that is often so in China. The old is losing out, the new is coming. That is always sad. But it must be.”
They were at the theatre entrance.
* * * * * * * *
Once, while Jeanne, still quite a young girl, was traveling with the gypsies a man had asked permission to take her picture as she danced with the bear. Proudly she had posed for the camera man. That had been spring.
“In the autumn when you return this way you shall see your picture,” the kindly white-haired photographer had said to her.
She recalled all that now as she sat in the little theatre waiting for the preview of her picture to begin.
“Ah, yes,” she thought, “How thrilled I was when at last we returned to that village and I was permitted to see that picture! But this! How much more wonderful! But, perhaps—how terrible!”
And indeed, what an occasion was this! Never before had she seen herself in motion. Never had she heard her own voice after the sound had been allowed to grow cold. And now, now she was to see and hear a feature never before shown on the screen. And in this feature she was the star. Each act, each movement, every little habit of gesture, yes, almost of thought, was recorded here. Her very book of life was to be opened up before her, or so she believed. And not before herself alone was she to appear, but to an assembled group of notable people. There were rich men and their wives, friends of the producer. There were reporters and critics. By the judgment of these last the picture must stand or fall. Little wonder then that she actually shuddered and leaned hard on Florence’s arm as Ted Hunter, the director, stepped into the spotlight to make the accustomed announcement.
It seemed that there were to be still some moments of suspense. They had made, Ted Hunter announced, a very short mystery reel which they would now run as a curtain-raiser to the main event.
Too much overcome by thoughts of the immediate future to focus her attention on this mystery, Jeanne watched with half closed eyes until with a sudden start she sat straight up, to grip Jensie’s arm and whisper shrilly:
“Jensie! Only look!”
There was no need for this. Jensie had seen and was staring hard, for upon the screen there walked with solemn tread two black horses. They were hitched to an ancient, dilapidated hearse, and on that hearse there rested a coffin.
That this was a part of the mystery Jeanne knew, but what that part was she could not guess. She had not followed the plot. One thing was plain and this she whispered to Jensie.
“That’s the old hearse. It belongs back of the Tavern in the Lincoln Group. They—they must have borrowed it for this picture. They took it in the night. That was the time I saw the black horses and the coffin.”
“Yes. And you know that organ?” the mountain girl whispered back. “I found out about that. It was a colored girl who washes dishes at the Tavern. She loves music, so she hid in the closet and slipped out to play the organ at night. I—I caught her.”
“Sh—sh!”
The mystery was over. Once again Ted Hunter was in the spotlight’s glare. The great moment was at hand.
Never will Jeanne forget the hour that followed. From a distance she heard the motor hum. Next instant she saw herself upon the screen. One good look, ten seconds, she saw herself. Then she, Petite Jeanne, vanished. In her place, standing among the rhododendrons at the side of Big Black Mountain was Zola the child of that mountain.
All that hour she looked upon the screen, listened and lived with Zola. She laughed when it was time to laugh, wept when others wept and shouted as they shouted.