“Gone?” Jeanne felt her knees sink. “She is gone?”
“Ah yes, Mademoiselle. She came as a substitute to this country with us. She has been away. Tonight she comes back. She asks that she may dance. She is very clever, that one. We say, ‘You may dance.’ You have seen, she danced very well. And now she is gone.” He spread his hands wide.
“But where has she gone?” Jeanne demanded eagerly.
The tall, dark man spread his hands wider still. “Who knows? Not one among us here. We are through at this city. She will not come back here. Shall we see her again? Who can say? She is a queer one, that dancer.”
“Yes,” Jeanne murmured low, “she is a queer one.”
At that she made her way from the fast clearing house out into the cool, damp night. She had wanted to dance on that broad stage. She wanted to dance no more. The dark lady had appeared before her very eyes. Now she was gone. She, Petite Jeanne, had failed.
When Jeanne returned from the Ballet Russe she found Madame Bihari seated by a low table. Before her, spread out in rows, were her gypsy witch cards. So intent was her study of these cards that she did not so much as notice the little French girl’s entrance. When Jeanne had put away her cape, she pressed one cold hand against Madame’s cheek to whisper:
“And what do the cards say tonight?”
Madame Bihari started. “Many things,” she murmured low. “Always they speak of many things, hunger, happiness, sickness, sudden death, great riches, love, hate, despair. The cards tell of life, and this, my child, is life.
“But my Jeanne—” her tone changed. “You have often spoken of a visit to Florence and Danby Force in their so beautiful city. It is well that we go tomorrow.”
“Do the cards say this?” Jeanne demanded.
“I say this.” There was a solemn note in Madame’s reply, like the deep tolling of a bell.
“All right.” Jeanne went skipping across the floor. “Tomorrow we shall go, very early, perhaps at dawn.”
Jeanne was happy once more. The dark lady had escaped her. What of that? Had that not happened an hour, two hours before? Was it not already of the past? Was not tomorrow a new day? On with tomorrow! She did a wild gypsy dance. At last dancing out of her dress of a thousand beads, she danced into dream robes and then into the land of dreams.
It was on the evening of the next day that Florence went for a long walk, and made a startling discovery. These evening walks were a source of real joy to her. She loved the cool damp of falling dew on her check; the smell of wood smoke from a hundred chimneys brought back pleasant memories of days spent in the woods along the shores of Lake Huron and on Isle Royale. She derived a keen satisfaction from looking in at open windows where little families sat smiling over their evening meal or reading beside an open fire.
“These are my people,” she would whisper to herself. “It may lie within my power to do them a great good. Perhaps tomorrow, or even tonight within the very next hour I may discover the spy who is threatening their happiness.”
She was in just such a frame of mind when, on passing one of the few truly modern homes of the town, a rather gaudy Spanish bungalow, she stopped dead in her tracks. The house stood quite near the street. In one room the shades were up and the lights on. She could see every object within. The chairs, the fancy spinet desk, the bed covered with a silk spread of brilliant hue, all stood out before her as if arranged for inspection. None of these, however, interested her in the least. The thing that held her attention was a small picture on the wall.
“It can’t be!” she breathed. “And yet it is!” She moved a little closer. “Yes, it is the picture of Verna, that matchless painting by a truly great artist.”
At once her mind was in a whirl. What had happened? Had Mrs. Maver sold that picture? Impossible. She had said that, whatever happened, they would never part with that picture. Had she loaned it? This did not seem probable.
“And yet,” Florence asked herself, “if it had been stolen, would she not have told me?”
Strangely enough, at that moment a cold sweat broke out on her brow. Perhaps the Mavers had missed the picture. Perhaps they believed she had taken it. Perhaps for days, all unknown to her, they had been watching her movements.
“How terrible!” she murmured. “And I an amateur lady cop!
“It was stolen!” she concluded. “And I know who took it.” Words spoken only last night came back to her: “I take what I want.”
Like a flash she was up on the steps and ringing the bell.
“Does the person they call Hugo live here?” she asked the lady who came to the door.
“Oh yes,” the woman replied. “But he’s not here just now. We expect him back any time. Would you care to wait?”
“No, I—I’ll come back later.” Florence turned away to mutter under her breath, “Only I won’t.”
For some time after that, in the shadow of a great elm, she stood watching that room and that one small picture. Hugo did not appear. In time the woman of the house opened the door to snap off the light.
“Oh!” Florence drew in a long deep breath. Her moment had arrived. She moved swiftly. Screens had been removed from the house. The window was not locked. To lift it noiselessly, to step within was the work of seconds. Moving slowly in the pale moonlight, she crossed the room. Her hand was on the picture when a footstep sounded outside. Her heart stopped beating. What if it were Hugo! Supposing the moonlight were strong enough to expose her?
She thought of the night before, and gained courage. “But tonight I am not dressed as a man.” Her heart sank.
The footsteps continued. The person did not turn in. For the moment she was saved.
Swiftly she re-crossed the room, sprang through the window and was once more her own free self walking in the cool damp of night. The picture was safely hidden under her jacket.
“He takes what he wants.” She laughed low as she hurried along. “Well, so do the rest of us—sometimes.”
For all the laugh, she felt depressed. Hugo a thief! She had not thought this possible. For all he had interfered with her plans, she had for this dashing young man a certain admiration.
“Well,” she sighed at last, “we must take people as we find them. We—”
Her thoughts broke off suddenly. Some small object bumped against her leg as she walked. Putting down a hand she grasped a small rubber bulb. The bulb was attached to a tube. She gave a slight pull and it came free from the picture, behind which it had doubtless been hidden.
“That’s queer!” she whispered. “One of Hugo’s little secrets.”
At the other end of the tube was a small cube of black material. The thing did not interest her overmuch. Perhaps it was a small atomizer or an affair for spraying perfume. That Hugo was fond of costly, quite faint perfume, she knew well. She dropped it in the pocket of her jacket and there it remained until the following afternoon when, at Danby Force’s request, she motored up to the stately old mansion where Danby lived with his mother.
She found the young man seated with his mother in an out-of-doors pavilion. The sun was bright. It was a rare autumn afternoon.
“This is my mother,” Danby said simply. The beautiful white-haired woman smiled her a welcome. “Danby has been telling me of you. We are going to have some tea,” she said, motioning Florence to a chair.
“It is beautiful up here.” Florence took one long deep breath. It was, just that. The broad-spreading elms, the wavering shadows, the bright crimson flowers, all this was marvelous.
“Yes,” Danby Force spoke quietly, “life has always been beautiful up here. My father and his father before him worked to make it so. But life down in our little city has not always been beautiful for all. It should be so.”
At that moment Florence caught some movement in a tree, a whisk of gray.
“A squirrel,” Mrs. Force explained. “There must be hundreds of them. We feed them, place boxes for them in the trees. The gray ones are brightest, most friendly. Life is always beautiful for them.”
Just then Florence put her hand in her pocket. Feeling something cold and hard, without thinking what it might be, she drew it out and held it to view.
“Where did you get that?” Danby exclaimed on the instant. It was the curious affair Florence had unintentionally carried away from Hugo’s room the night before.
“Why—I—I—” the girl stammered.
“Do you know what it is?” Danby broke in.
“No, I—”
“Then I’ll tell you.” He was smiling now. “It is a very small camera, the sort spies use in taking pictures. If you look closely you will see that the front is shaped like a button. The tiny lens is in the center of that button. You put that in a button hole and draw the bulb up under your arm. Each press of your arm takes a picture.”
“Where did you get it?” he asked a second time.
“Oh please!” Florence was horribly confused. She did not feel ready to tell the whole story. “Please. I did not know it was of any consequence. Shows how good a lady cop I am! But I—I got it under very unusual circumstances. I—I’ll tell you. I’ll have to, but not—not just now, please.”
“Oh that’s all right.” Danby’s tone was kindly. “Would you mind letting me have it for a time?”
“Of course not.” Florence held it out to him.
Just then the butler appeared. “James,” said Danby, “give this to Oliver and tell him to deliver it at once to Mr. Mills at his photo shop. If there chances to be a film inside, have him instruct Mills to develop it with extraordinary care, then to make enlargements of all the good exposures.”
“And now,” he said, turning to the ladies, “we may have our tea.”
Early on the following morning two planes left the airport. One was small. It resembled a dragon fly. In it rode Jeanne and Madame Bihari. The other was a great bi-motored cabin plane. It carried as its stewardess our good friend Rosemary Sample. Her passengers were as interesting a group as you might hope to meet.
They were destined, these planes, for the same little city, Happy Vale. Both Jeanne and Rosemary were ignorant of this fact. So it is in life, two congenial souls travel for years along the same path, all unconscious of one another’s nearness.
Rosemary’s interest in her passengers increased as she became better acquainted with them. They were, she discovered, from the University—sociologists, teachers of ethics, psychologists—all delightfully simple, kindly people who laughed and joked about the long strings of letters Ph.D., LL.D. and the like, attached to their names.
She was not long in discovering that a tall thin man with long hair and thick glasses named H. Bedford Biddle had chanced upon what he spoke of as a “rare find” in the field of sociology. They were all, it seemed, going for a look at his “find.”
The “find,” she knew in advance, was Danby Force’s cotton mill and his little city of Happy Vale. She was thrilled at the thought of seeing him once more.
As she listened to these learned men discussing the “find” she realized there was much she could tell them about it. Not being asked, however, she kept silent. She smiled from time to time at their curiously learned remarks about a thing that to her had seemed quite simple and very beautiful, a group of common people, working together to make their little city the happiest, most contented in all the world.
They landed on the outskirts of a beautiful little city. A bus carried them to the factory. There they were met by Danby Force who had a very special message for the little stewardess.
“I wanted you to come.” It was a rare smile he gave her, something quite special that warmed her heart. “I felt you were interested and would truly understand.”
“And is—have you—”
“No.” His voice was low. “We have not found her. We have no true notion of the harm she may have done. We can only hope.” He was speaking, Rosemary knew, of the spy.
It was an hour later when, after a frugal repast wonderfully prepared, they were ready to enter the mill.
Rosemary had dropped modestly to the rear of the group when of a sudden she noted some stranger joining their party. With a quick eye for faces she already knew all her party well. “He is not of our party, and yet,” she told herself, “there is something familiar about him. He gives me the shivers. I wonder why.”
A little later she was thinking to herself, “Wonder if he has been invited to join us. None of my affair—but—” But what? She did not know.
Invited or no, the youth did join this group. He did go with them. To Rosemary his attitude was disconcerting. A part of the time he seemed quite indifferent, the rest of the time he was like one on tip-toes. Drinking in every word that was said, at the same time he went through strange motions, fumbling first at his vest, then at his pockets.
Their journey through the plant was half over.
“No,” Danby Force was saying, “this is not Utopia. We have made mistakes and been criticized. Members of our group have complained and claimed unfair treatment. Some have moved away. This is human. But we are trying to live up to our motto: ‘Do something for someone else.’ We—”
For the first time, with no apparent reason, the mysterious stranger looked Rosemary square in the eyes. His black eyes flashed a dark challenge. Instantly she knew this was no youth. This was the mysterious dark lady! By the gleam of an eye she had made this discovery. This woman had changed her complexion and her disguise. She had returned for more facts, perhaps for the secret formula. And what was she, Rosemary Sample, to do about it? Inside her a tumult was raging. Externally she was calm. “I must think,” she told herself, “think calmly. And then I must act.”
In the meantime Jeanne too had made a discovery. Was it important? Who could tell? An hour after Rosemary’s party left the small landing field at Happy Vale, Jeanne’s dragon fly came circling down to at last taxi to a position close beside a small silver plane.
“That ship,” Jeanne said to Madame, “looks familiar. And—” she clapped her hands. “I know where I saw it before.”
Her heart skipped a beat as, making a dash for it, she peered within. “Oh!” she breathed out her disappointment. “She is not there!” This was the luminous silver ship that one night had hovered over her golden tree, the very one she had followed so far next day. She was sure of that. A young man sat at the wheel. He seemed about to start the plane.
Throwing open the door, he said, “Howdy, sister. What can I do for you?”
“Wh—where is she?” Jeanne asked breathlessly.
“She?” He appeared not to understand.
“The dark lady.”
“Which one?” He laughed. “I’m told there are several in America.”
At that Jeanne decided to give him up. “Only one more question,” she thought.
“How do you make it shine all over at night?” she asked.
“There are ten thousand holes in the fusilage and the planes,” he explained in a friendly tone. “Neon tubes made of a special kind of glass run everywhere inside the plane. When we light these tubes they shine out through all the little holes. Simple, what?”
“Very simple,” Jeanne agreed.
A moment later she saw him go bobbing across the field to rise at last and soar away.
“All the same,” Jeanne told herself, “he did once have that dark lady, the spy, as a passenger. Wonder if he has her still?” She concluded that plane would bear watching if it ever returned.
When Rosemary Sample discovered that the person who had attached herself to the learned party being conducted through the textile mill was none other than the spy, she found herself in a tight position. This visit of the wise men, she realized from the look on Danby Force’s serious face, was an occasion of no small importance. “A group of University professors do not charter a plane every day in the week in order that they may be conducted through a factory or mill,” she assured herself. “If I cry ‘WOLF!’—if I let them know there is an industrial spy in their midst, everything will be thrown into confusion. The charm will have been broken, the entire effect lost.
“I’ll keep an eye on this spy,” she thought, “I’ll see that nothing is taken from the mill. When the tour is over I will see that she is taken into account and made, at least, to explain why she is here.” That the matter would go much farther than that, she did not doubt. Would there be a struggle? She shuddered.
During the half hour that followed, though no one would have guessed it, Rosemary heard not a word that her good friend Danby Force was saying to the learned professors.
And then, at the very end, Danby did something that commanded her attention in spite of herself. The guests were passing one at a time through a narrow door. Danby was working levers on a peculiar instrument.
“Perhaps you would like to know—” there was an amused look on his face. “All of you might like to know what I am doing. I am spraying you with the light from an X-ray lamp.
“In your case I am sure it is quite unnecessary. But it is a precaution we take with all those who pass through our mill. In these days of keen industrial struggle there are spies everywhere seeking to secure advantages through trickery. They often carry tiny cameras concealed upon their persons. Should there be one such among you, the X-ray light would entirely ruin his negatives. His picture-taking would be without result.”
As he made this explanation Danby caught and held the little stewardess’ interest for a brief interval. Fatal interest. Ten seconds later, when she gripped his arm to whisper, “Danby Force! There—there is your spy!” she found herself staring at empty space. The spy had vanished.
Danby stared at her in amazement. “What? You don’t mean—” He was apparently unable to finish.
“Yes, yes! She was here. She was dressed as a young man. But it was a woman. I saw her fumbling at the back of her coat, as only a woman would. And now—now she’s gone!”
“Quick!” He whispered low, that the professors might not hear. “Run outside. Perhaps you can see her. If you do, ask any man about the plant to seize her. He’d do it at the risk of his life.”
There was no demand for such heroism. The spy had vanished. Look where she might, call others to her aid as she did, the little stewardess could find no trace of her.
When, disappointed and downhearted, she returned to the office of the plant, Danby Force only smiled and said quietly, “Forget it. We will catch up with her yet. You’ll see!
“And now,” he added briskly, “come with me. We are to take this group of learned men for a tour of our little city. Then, I regret to say, we must part once more. You are to start them back to Chicago in just one hour.”
What Rosemary saw in that hour’s ride through shady streets and narrow, beautiful lanes more than once caused her throat to tighten with pure joy at the realization that here at least was one community where happiness and simple prosperity reigned. The streets were clean, the narrow lawns well cared for, the small homes painted, and the people, for the most part, smiling.
Yet, even as her heart swelled with admiration for those who could bring such a state of affairs into being, her mind was filled with misgiving.
“It doesn’t seem possible that one selfish person could spoil all this,” she said in a low tone to Danby.
“Yet it is possible.” His brow wrinkled. “Once the secrets of our new processes are in the hands of unscrupulous persons, they will be exploited. And that will bring ruin to us.
“We have not tried to expand,” he said a moment later. “Perhaps we should have done so. But it has seemed to us that much of the unhappiness of the world has been brought about by the desire of honest but misguided men to tear down factories and build bigger, to cut costs, to sell cheaper in every market. Our aim has been an honest living, and simple contentment for all.”
“Simple contentment for all,” the girl whispered to herself. “What would that not mean if it were realized by every person in this great land of ours!”
Yet, even as she thought this, an imaginary colossal figure appeared to loom above her, the figure of a dark-faced woman who never smiled, and she seemed to be saying:
“My bag! My traveling bag! It is gone!”
“And yet it was not gone,” the girl told herself.
“There’s a golden-haired French girl,” Danby Force was speaking again. “She travels in an airplane with a gypsy woman and a child. Strange combination,” he mused. Then, more briskly, “They have a secret of dyeing in purple that would be of immense value to us. But it belongs to hundreds of gypsies in France. Dare we ask her to reveal that secret? Have we a right to it? That, for the moment, is a question. I am unable to answer.”
“Yes,” Rosemary replied, “I too know Petite Jeanne. She is a dear!”
Little did either of them realize that at this very moment Jeanne was close at hand, on Happy Vale’s landing field. Rosemary left that very field an hour later without discovering Jeanne’s presence.
That afternoon, on wandering across the grounds before the mill, Florence came face to face with Hugo. He appeared quite worried and ill at ease. His attempt to favor her with one of his dazzling smiles was a failure.
“Does he know I took the picture?” she asked herself after he had passed on. “Does he know about the camera? And was it his camera?”
As she closed her eyes and tried to picture to herself the face of the spy she had so long sought, she saw not Miriam Dvorac and her dark sister, not Hans Schneider, not Ina Piccalo and not the curious person who trimmed the shrubs about the grounds. Instead, a very different face appeared, a smiling face she had seen many times before. Startled by this picture, she exclaimed: “No! No! It cannot be!” And yet the picture remained.
Yes, as Florence had guessed, Hugo was troubled, so very much troubled that any person with an eye for such things could have told it quickly enough. And he was superstitious. Oh, very much so! Selfish people who think much of their own happiness and very little of others are likely to be superstitious. So, when one of his fellow-workers told him that something very strange had happened—that two gypsies, one very old and dark, and one young, blonde and beautiful, had come flying in from the air, he said at once: “It is Fate. I shall have my fortune told.”
Jeanne was not in sight when he arrived. Madame Bihari, seated upon her bright rug before the tent, was shuffling her witch cards. Shuffling, dealing, then gathering them up to shuffle and deal again, she did not so much as look up as Hugo, magnificent in his bright garments, approached. His roving eyes sought in vain for the beautiful young gypsy. His countenance fell.
“But after all,” he reasoned, “I came to have my fortune told. The older ones are best for that.”
“Old woman,” he said rather rudely, “tell my fortune.”
Madame did not look up. Her face darkened as she cut and dealt the cards.
Hugo appeared to understand, for he said in a quiet tone, “I would like my fortune told.”
Madame looked up. Something like a dark frown passed over her face. Madame had lived long and in many lands. There were faces that to her were like an open book in a bright light. She read them with greatest ease.
“Today,” she said slowly, “we have traveled far.”
Then she shuffled and dealt once more.
Hugo grew impatient. He opened his lips to utter harsh words, when Madame said:
“Cross my palm with silver.”
Carelessly, Hugo threw a silver half dollar on the rug. The frown on Madame’s face deepened.
“Here are the cards,” she said in an even tone. “You must sit down before me. You must shuffle them well. You will cut them with your left hand—this is very important, then you will deal them six in a row, then eight in a row for five rows, after that six in a row once more. All must be face up with pictures toward me. To deal wrongly is sure to bring bad fortune.”
Hugo’s hand trembled as he cut and dealt the cards. Darkness had fallen. Only the glimmer of a small fire lighted up the cards and Madame’s dark face. Despite his care, he turned the picture of a snake toward himself.
“Ah!” Madame snatched at the card. “You have redoubled your misfortune.”
“Here! Give me the cards! I’ll deal them again!” Hugo exclaimed.
“What is done is done.” Madame’s voice seemed to come from the depths of a well.
And “Ah!” she muttered after one moment of scrutinizing the cards. “What an evil fortune you have laid out before me!”
At this Hugo appeared to exert all his will to snatch away the cards, but seemed powerless to move a muscle. So he sat there staring.
“The mountain, the broken glass—” Madame was speaking now in a monotonous singsong. “The fox, the dog, the rapier, the lightning, the lion, all clustered about you and all telling of misfortune! My life has been long, but never have I read such omens of evil!
“And such a jolly life as you have lived!” She went on without looking up. “Everything has been yours—youth, love, friends, happiness—all that you could ask.”
“And now?” The words stuck in Hugo’s throat.
“Now—” Madame’s voice rose. “Now it were better for you if you were not in your native land. Discovery is at hand. Hate will enter where admiration and love have lingered long. The wealth you have hoped for will never come. You shall wander far alone without a friend.”
After Madame had ended this long utterance of prophecy, she sat for one full moment staring gloomily at the cards. Would she have changed their reading if she could? Who can say? How had she known so much? Had someone told her? Certainly not. Had the cards truly guided her? Again we must reply, who knows? There is wisdom in every land that to us, who think ourselves so very wise, is hidden.
When Madame looked up at last, Hugo was gone. Darkness had closed about the place where he had been. With a heavy high, Madame gathered up her cards. Then, having thrown fresh fuel on the fire, she called softly: “Jeanne! My Petite Jeanne!”
Jeanne peered with sleepy eyes from within the tent. “Jeanne,” Madame said, “tonight I have told a fortune. Ah, such a terrible fortune! Tomorrow, my Jeanne, tomorrow and the day that is to follow, strange things will happen, very strange indeed.”
She did not describe the person whose fortune had been told, nor had Jeanne seen him. She had been asleep in the tent. Perhaps this was unfortunate. But you alone shall be the judge.
It was rather late on the following afternoon that Florence received a hurry-up call from Danby Force. She went at once to his office in the mill.
As she entered she found him in a fine state of excitement. He had been pacing the floor but, as she entered, he turned abruptly toward his desk. Snatching up a handful of pictures, he held them out to her.
“Look at these!”
Florence looked. “They were taken inside the mill,” she said.
“By a spy!” His eyes fairly shone. “And with the camera you gave me, the little one that is worn in a button hole. Whose is it?”
“I—I truly do not know.” Her head was in a whirl. “But I—per—perhaps I should tell you. Yes, yes I must. Hugo stole a picture, a very rare little painting.”
“Stole it?” He stared.
“Yes. He stole it. Can’t be any doubt of it. I saw it in his private room. I took it for the rightful owner. This—this camera was behind it. Was it—”
“It was his beyond a doubt.” Danby was staring harder than ever.
At that moment the girl thought she caught some stealthy movement about the ivy outside the window. She looked quickly. Did she catch sight of a face? She could not be sure. If so, it was gone on the instant.
“Hugo!” Danby’s voice rose. “Hugo! He is our spy! Who would believe it!”
He pounded hard on an electric button. Mark Sullivan, the day watchman, appeared at the door.
“Mark,” Danby said in a steady tone, “go find Hugo. Bring him here. If he refuses to come, use force—but bring him!”
But Hugo was not to be found. He was gone. He had flown in the truest sense of the word. Strangest of all, it was the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, who aided in his escape. This may not seem so strange when we recall that Jeanne had never seen Hugo and that Hugo surely had a way with the ladies.
It was late afternoon of that same day. Petite Jeanne sat in the door of her dragon fly airplane. The door faced the sun. She was basking in its warmth. She loved the sun, did this little French girl. She had once heard an aged gypsy say the sun was the smiling face of God. A rather fanciful remark this, yet it had stayed in her mind. “At least,” she told herself, “God made the sun and everything He created is good, so surely He means us to enjoy the sunshine.”
All day long, without presuming to call upon the busy Danby Force, or even upon Florence, Jeanne had wandered through the town and had come to love it.
“It is wonderful!” she had said to Madame Bihari. “And to think that any possible harm might come to it! This indeed is too terrible!”
She was thinking of all this when her eye caught sight of a person approaching rapidly. It was Hugo.
“You are Petite Jeanne,” he said. He appeared to be in great haste.
“Yes, I—”
“I am a friend of Florence,” he said, casting his spell with a beaming smile.
“A friend of Florence is my friend.”
“Ah!” One might have detected in the man’s deep intake of breath a feeling of great relief.
“Then you will help me!” he exclaimed.
“But yes, if I may.” Jeanne was on her feet.
“If you would but take me a short distance in your plane—it will not require an hour—you will be back before dark.” Hugo talked rapidly as one in great haste.
“What could be easier? Will you come aboard?” Jeanne climbed to her place at the wheel.
Ah, poor Jeanne! Had you but known!
A little thrill ran up the little flier’s spine as her plane took to the air. She felt restless, ill at ease.
“Ah well,” she whispered, “just one more incident in a flying gypsy’s life—nothing more.”
It was more, much more than that, as she was to learn.
Time passed. In Chicago it had been dark for two hours. Rosemary Sample was seated at her desk in her own private room. A radio head-set had been clamped down over her ears for two hours. She was reading a book. At the same time she was listening. She had not forgotten her promise to be on the air listening every evening she was at her home port, listening for that code number she had given so long ago, but never forgotten.
Of a sudden the book dropped from her nerveless fingers. A message of startling clearness had reached her ears.
“48—48! Petite Jeanne! One hundred miles north of Happy Vale, an abandoned farm. You will see my plane. Help! Come quick, or you may be too late!”
“Too late?” Rosemary repeated, springing to her feet.
A moment later she had Jerry, the mechanic, on the wire:
“That motor done?” she demanded. “This is Rosemary Sample.”
“Just finished. But say!—”
Rosemary hung up.
Another moment and she was talking to Willie VanGeldt.
“Willie,” she said, “this is Rosemary Sample. Be down at the flying field in a quarter hour. I’m going to take a ride in your plane.”
“A ride? That’s great! Say—”
Once more Rosemary hung up.
When Willie appeared, prompt to the moment, he found his plane oiled, fueled and ready for flight.
“What’s happened?” he demanded. “You said you’d never fly in my plane. You—”
“Hop in,” Rosemary commanded. “I’ve had duplicated head-sets put in. We can talk on the way. We’ll be flying the best part of the night.”
Willie’s mouth dropped, but, be it said to his everlasting credit, he never faltered. Three minutes later they were in the air flying an air-lane in the dark.
Rosemary shuddered as she thought what the outcome of this journey might be. Not that night flying over a regular air route, such as they were to follow for hundreds of miles, is usually hazardous. It is not. The way is “fenced” in by code signals broadcast by radio stations along the way. If the pilot is on the beaten path he hears a series of dot signals. If he swings to the right, this becomes dot-dash, and if to the left it becomes dash-dot, so he never loses the way.
“Unless—” the girl whispered to herself. She had seen to it that Willie’s motor was O.K. She smiled grimly as she thought of the month’s pay it would cost her.
“But if I had chartered one of our own planes, it would have taken half a year to pay up.” That, with her mother back in Kansas looking to her for part of her support, was not to be considered. “I just had to come!” she told herself. “I promised. And that little French girl would never call unless there was some great need.”
“Listen to that motor!” Willie chuckled in her ear. “Never heard it rattle along so sweetly.”
“No,” Rosemary agreed, smiling down deep in her soul, “I guess you never did!”
“For all that,” she thought, “he’s a real sport, shooting away like this into the night without asking a single question.”
“Willie!” she exclaimed aloud, “We’re getting dot-dashes! You’re off the course.
“There!” she sighed ten seconds later. “That’s O.K.”
So they zoomed on into the night.
What had caused Jeanne to call for help?
She had flown the hundred miles when, to her surprise, she was ordered to make a landing on a pasture of what appeared to be a small farm.
This was a level country. She experienced no trouble in landing and in taxiing her plane up to a spot near the house.
“Wait!” Hugo commanded. “There may be some message to take back.”
There was that about Hugo’s look, the tone of his voice that gave Jeanne a sudden impulse.
“As soon as he’s inside I’ll take a run down that pasture, then go into the air,” she told herself.
As if he had read Jeanne’s thoughts, Hugo turned and looked back. Then it came to Jeanne as a sort of revelation, “He must be one of the spies! And I—I have been aiding him to escape!”
Hugo had disappeared through a door. Like a flash Jeanne leaped for the shadows beneath a window.
There, chilling and thrilling, she listened to strange voices. There were, she told herself, a man and a woman. They spoke in a foreign tongue. But Jeanne, who had lived long in Europe, knew a little of many tongues. She was able to understand enough to know that they were discussing the advisability of flight over the border.
“But have you all the papers?” a woman’s voice demanded.
“Yes, all.” It was Hugo who answered. “Pictures, diagrams, plans, everything. They are there in the black bag.”
“If only I had that bag!” thought Jeanne.
But now they had reached a decision. They would come out. She must not seem to have been listening.
To her surprise, as she sprang toward her plane, she saw that it had grown quite dark. The discussion had lasted longer than she had thought.
“Here! Where are you?” Hugo called. “We have decided to ask you to fly us to Canada. We will pay you very well.”
“I—I’ll have to see if I have enough gas,” Jeanne said in as even a tone as she could command.
This was true. But that was not all. She meant, at the risk of her life if need be, to get off a message. Then it was that, after softly closing her cabin door she had sent the message that reached Rosemary Sample’s ears and sent her flying away into the night.
“But what am I to do next?” Jeanne whispered to herself, all but in despair. What indeed?
Petite Jeanne surely was in a tight place. Hugo and the dark lady—for it was she who had been with Hugo in the house—with what they had described as all the material needed to exploit the secret process of the Happy Vale textile mill, were awaiting her. To carry them across the border would be a simple matter. She was close to a “radio-fenced” air-lane. To follow this, even in the night, was a simple matter.
But the little French girl did not propose to follow it. To do this would almost certainly lose for Danby Force his only chance to save his happy little city from ruin.
No, Petite Jeanne could not do that. But what could she do? Should she start her motor and make a try at escape? To do this she realized would be perilous. The spies might be armed. She could not get away on the instant. They might wreck her plane, or even worse.