Hour of Enchantment / A Mystery Story for Girls

“Lorena!Lorena LeMar!”they shouted in a chorus.

“And now, such a night as we shall make of it!”

Jeanne was pleased and frightened at one and the same time; pleased that she had copied the LeMar manner so well that her friends were thoroughly deceived; frightened at being alone at such a time.

“Oh, no you won’t!”She tried in vain to steady her voice.“I—I’m doing a picture; on the water-wagon and all that, till it’s finished.”

“Water-wagon!Water-wagon!”they shouted in derision, crowding about her.“That’s a good one!A real wise crack!”

Of a sudden the little French girl’s world whirled about her.When it steadied she happened to see, by the most fortunate chance in the world, a familiar figure standing by the corner of a skyscraper.

In appearance this person was not so very different from the three nearer at hand.Natty brown suit, black derby, bright tie, spats, and all that.But his face!Ah, there you had it!His cheeks wore a healthy glow.His muscles were smooth and hard.In the eyes of these three who had so suddenly come upon her there was a nervous twitch.Their faces spoke of excess: too much money, too much fun, too many hours in a day, too much everything.

“Oh, all right!”She tossed her head in the LeMar manner.“I’ll go.Which way?Over here?”She walked rapidly toward the one on the corner.

Caught off their guard, the gay trio followed.Not until it was too late did they realize that they had been tricked.

“Why, hello, my good friend Pat!”Jeanne called suddenly, as if the meeting had been by chance.She grasped the firm hand of the one on the corner.“Boys,” she trilled, “this is Pat Murphy.He’s a detective, aren’t you, Pat?Show them your star, Pat.”

Pat grinned as he threw open his coat.

“Been looking for pickpockets and—and mashers, haven’t you, Pat?”Jeanne gave her detective friend a look.

“Yeah.Just anything.A fellow’s gotta make a pinch now and then to hold his job.”Pat was still grinning.For all that, a queer something had stolen into his voice.

“Oh say, George!”one of the joy-hunting trio exclaimed.“Forgot something, didn’t we?Directors’ meeting, or something like that.It was at ten sharp, wasn’t it?

“Awfully sorry!”He turned hurriedly to Jeanne.“Be seeing you again, LeMar.”

“We’ll be seeing you.”

“We’ll be—” They were gone.

“Yeah, they forgot something!”Pat chuckled.“What’ll I do?Go and get them?”

“Oh no, please don’t!”Jeanne grasped his arm.

“You see,” she explained, “they thought I was some one else.”

“This LeMar person?Well, ain’t you?”

“No, I’m not, really.”She gave him a knowing look.“I’m just Petite Jeanne, the little French girl who lived with Bihari the gypsy.You know that, Pat.You’ve known it quite a long while.

“All the same,” she added hastily, “if you see Lorena LeMar, who looks just like me, having any trouble, you just march right up and say: ‘What’s all this about?’Will you?”She gave his arm a squeeze and was gone.

Dashing to a corner she boarded a bus and was whirled away.No more window-shopping for her that night.Only her own top floor rooms with the door safely locked could still her heart’s wild beating.

“Not Lorena LeMar yet,” she thought, as fresh consternation seized her.“Yet I am threatened with the doubtful kindness of her friends.

“Oh, I know,” she breathed.“They were only three gay play-boys out for a good time.

“But when you don’t know what play-boys are like, when you haven’t the least notion what they expect of you—how terrifying!

“Good old Pat!”she thought with a sigh.“He saved me that time.To think what it means, this having humble friends all strewn along your pathway, scores and scores of just common folks, your friends!

“But why not?”She laughed a little laugh.“Am I not myself only Petite Jeanne, friend of the gypsies, humblest of them all?”

So she hurried home to lock the door, hang the beautiful robe carefully in a corner, settle herself in a great shabby chair and give herself over to watching the rocket cars streak across the sky far above the great Fair.

* * * * * * * *

And in one of these cars, hoping against hope that she might at the other end catch up with the long-eared Chinaman, was Florence.

“No chance!”she breathed a moment later, as she sent one wide sweeping glance across the landing platform.“He’s gone.But which way?Down or across?”

Choosing to re-cross the broad expanse, she once more boarded a rocket car and went speeding away.

This time, having all but given up hope of catching the fugitive, she gave herself over to enjoyment of the moment.

Never, though she rode the Sky Ride a thousand times, would she lose that feeling of breath-taking thrill that came over her as, hanging high in air, she watched the ever changing lights and the milling throng upon the land, the flashing fountains, the darting boats on the lagoon.

“It’s marvelous!”she breathed.“Why must one be disturbed by the problems of others?Why should not one—”

Once more they were across.She leaped to her feet, was first at the door.

“There!There he is!He—he’s going down!”

Leaping for the descending car, she caught it just in time, only to find herself wedged in between a very fat man and two extremely tall women.The Chinaman was in the car, of that she was sure.Yet, crane her neck as she might, she could not catch sight of him.

Nor was she more fortunate upon landing.He was gone before she caught a glimpse of him.Only one thing she knew, he had gone toward the lagoon.Throngs were pressing in that direction.All other avenues were clear.

Following more by instinct than knowledge, she arrived at the shore of the lagoon just in time to see a fluttering yellow jacket go gliding across the water in a Dodge-Em.

“Here!”She crowded a young couple aside, pressed a half dollar into the starter’s hand, leaped into a Dodge-Em and was away.

A Dodge-Em is a curious sort of boat.It is short and broad, is very heavy and has a motor that appears to run forever.That it does not run forever Florence was to learn later, to her sorrow.

You may stand on the edge of a Dodge-Em.It will not tip you out.You may run it nose first into another Dodge-Em or into a stone wall—yet you will not harm the Dodge-Em.It has a solid rubber prow and heavily padded sides.A truly remarkable craft is a Dodge-Em.Only one thing you cannot do; you can never make a Dodge-Em go faster than its accustomed speed, which is some four miles per hour.

This last Florence learned to her great disgust.Step on the gas as she might, and did, she could get no burst of speed from that indolent Dodge-Em.

So, in the end, she lost the race.Having crossed the lagoon, the fleeing one abandoned his boat, climbed the breakwater and disappeared in the Florida orange grove that by some touch of magic had been made to grow on the shores of Chicago.

“Oh, well,” she sighed, settling back in her seat.“It’s a grand night for dreaming, and who could fail to dream at night in a slow old Dodge-Em.I—”

“Hello there!Out for a ride?”

It was Erik Nord who called from another Dodge-Em.

“Did—did you see him, too?”

She spoke before she thought.

“See him?”

“Yes—er—well, there was a curious sort of person out here on the water.Gone now.”She would not tell him, not just yet.

“Let’s double up,” he suggested.“Fine night for sport.”

So it happened that she found herself seated in his Dodge-Em, gliding across the blue waters.

The hour was late.There were few boats on the lagoon.

“Queer, the things you can do with these things.”He steered his craft toward the shadows.In the shadows was another Dodge-Em.Without appearing to plan it, he allowed his boat to strike the other a glancing blow.

Came a scream from the other boat.

“Hey!Watch out!What are you doing?”

“Beg your pardon!”

Erik and Florence glided away.“No,” he chuckled, “you can’t hurt ’em, these Dodge-Ems. Don’t hurt the spooners to shake ’em up a bit.”

“Look out!”Florence gripped his arm.He was headed square for a Dodge-Em coming from the other way.Too late.Came a sudden jolt, a growl from a placid fat man who, up to that moment, had been dreaming along in his own slow way.

“Nope, you can’t hurt them.And they can’t hurt you!”Once again they were away.

They passed out no more sudden shocks that night, but gliding down the lagoon and back again, talked of many things, of customs in China, of temples and gardens, of America and her own ways and of the great Fair.

“It’s been a pleasure to be with you,” he said, as he bade her good-night at the gate.“Here’s hoping we meet again!”

“Here’s hoping.”She hurried away into the night.

There was little need to hope.They would indeed be together again and that under the most unusual circumstances.

CHAPTER XIII
DANCES AND DREAMS

“Jeanne, what can you be doing?”

Florence stared at her eccentric little friend in surprise.

“But can you not see?”Jeanne did not pause for an instant.“I am doing a gypsy dance, practicing for my so very wonderful moving picture.We begin rehearsals to-morrow, and must I not be prepared?”

“Yes, but—”

Florence could say no more.The whole affair was too fantastic for words.Here was Jeanne in the sumptuous apartment of Lorena LeMar.She was clothed in a filmy thing of nile-green that floated around her as clouds float about a mountain peak.She was as radiant, too, as any mountain peak at dawn.She was doing one of her gypsy dances, one of those exotic, fairy-like dances that, now dreamy, now wild as a bird in flight, drug one’s very senses.

“But Jeanne!”she exclaimed, when at last the little French girl threw herself upon a low couch.“Your moving picture is to be one of those simple, human affairs, a story of the Cumberlands.You are to be Zola, an innocent little mountain child.”

“Ah, yes!”Jeanne sat up.Vibrant, alive to the very tips of her toes, she shook her finger at Florence.“There is the trouble!No contrast, none at all.And what is a movie, what can any dramatic thing be, without contrast?

“Our Zola,” she hurried on, “is not so simple as you think.

“You remember she is rescued from a car-load of soft coal, very black, and she is scrubbed up?”

“Yes.”Florence smiled.

“Well!”Jeanne struck a dramatic pose.“When she is washed up she is introduced to the president of the railroad.He thinks she is a—how would you say it?—a ‘wow’!

“So!He takes her home.He has a son and a daughter about her own age.This daughter dresses her up in this.”She touched the filmy gown.

“They are in a place like this.”She glanced about the apartment.“Only grander, much grander; you know: high ceilings, marble pillars, ancestral portraits, butler, and all that.”She threw her arms wide.

“When they have dressed our Zola of the box car up, she does like this.”

Once again she went drifting like a butterfly across the room and again alighted upon her downy perch.

“And then,” she cried exultantly, “they know she is a wow!”

“But, Jeanne,” Florence objected, “where could a little mountain girl learn that dance?”

“Gypsies, traveling gypsies.They go everywhere.

“And,” she went on, “when Zola does that dance, they want to keep her—just the way you’d like to keep a beautiful wild bird who flies into your window.

“They do keep her, too, for a few days.But the little wild thing longs for her mountain home.So, one starry night, she folds up the gorgeous pink nightie they have given her, puts on her old calico dress and steals away, back to her home on the side of Big Black Mountain.

“See!”she exclaimed.“Contrast!Is it not wonderful?”Once again, like some strange tropical bird, she drifted across the room.

“But Jeanne!”Again the skeptic protested.“Is all this in the scenario?”

“Not yet.I am putting it in to-morrow.”

“Putting it in?”Florence was aghast.

“Yes, yes.And why not?Why must one be a star, a movie queen, if she is not to have her own way?”

“And Lorena LeMar is gone?”

“Yes. She ’phoned me this morning, only a few words. She was off on the yacht. I must move in this very day. To-morrow we must rehearse. And voila!Here we are!”

“And you do not know where you can reach her in case—”

“In case what?”

“In case they detect that you are an impostor.”

“Oh, no, my friend, not an impostor!”Jeanne held up her hands in horror.“Only a twin star.”

“Or in case you fail.”

“Fail?But how could I?The movie is already—how shall I say it?—a flop.

“And I—I shall make it a grand success.I, Petite Jeanne, who has never failed.Nevair!I have willed that this so beautiful picture shall be a success!”

“Well,” Florence’s voice was deep and low, “here’s wishing you success.

“To-morrow—” She spoke again after some moments of silence.“To-morrow will tell the story.If you can carry it off to-morrow you are on your way.”

“Ah, yes!”Jeanne was drooping a little now.She was like a butterfly who has ridden the sunbeams long and far.“Ah, yes.To-morrow we shall know.”

CHAPTER XIV
TWO BLACK HORSES AND A COFFIN

For a full half hour the little French girl reposed upon that luxurious couch.Now and again her slender fingers touched the folds of her filmy gown.Often her eyes wandered from pictures to tapestries, then to little touches everywhere that told of lavish expenditure.

As a kitten lying on the doorstep basks in the sunshine, she basked in the warmth of elegance that was all about her.

“I am Lorena LeMar,” she was telling herself.“I am no longer a very careful little French girl.I am care-free, extravagant.I must tip the porter and the bell boy.I must ride in a taxi.I must—

“Oh!”she exclaimed, springing to her feet.“I came near to forgetting.We must go to the Tavern.I must see Jensie.”

“To-night?”

“At once.”

Jeanne was out of her finery and into street clothes in a jiffy.

“Now down the elevator and into a taxi.”They were away like a streak.“You see,” she explained, “there is so very much I do not know about those blessed mountains.Jensie must tell me.She must go with me to-morrow.Ah!That most terrible to-morrow!”she sighed.

Florence scarcely heard her.She was thinking of many things, of the long-eared Chinaman, of Erik Nord’s story, of the three-bladed knife and last but not least of Jensie and her “haunts.”

“Jeanne,” she said quite suddenly, “you didn’t believe that, did you?”

“Believe what?”Jeanne’s tone showed her astonishment.

“Oh,” Florence laughed, “I forgot you were not reading my mind.You don’t believe that a ghost was playing the reed organ in the Tavern that night, do you?”

“What should one believe?You saw no one?”

“No one.”

“And the doors were locked?”

“Of course.”

“The windows, too?”

“Yes, I—I’m sure of it.”

“Well then, what shall we say?”

Florence gave up. Jeanne was at heart a gypsy. And for gypsies all manner of curious creatures are real, ghosts and devils, goblins and witches, all quite real, so what could she say?

It was a dark and gloomy night.Black clouds hurried over the black waters of Lake Michigan.The Tavern seemed dark, mysterious, uninviting.Yet, as ever, there was the pale light, the low fire of coals, the slender girl scrubbing on hands and knees.

“Jensie,” said Jeanne.Her voice was low and friendly when at last they sat before the fire, which had been made to glow a little.“Jensie, when the big show is over, shall you go back to your mountain home?”

“It is beautiful.”Jensie spoke slowly, and with seeming reluctance.“Y-e-s, I shall probably go back.”

“But you do not wish it?”Jeanne was surprised.

“I have been through eighth grade down there.It is as far as I can go.I walked four miles every morning and night for that.I—I would like to study—study more.”

“Where?”Jeanne’s voice was low.

“There is a place—” The mountain girl’s voice took on a new note of enthusiasm.“Such a beautiful place!A school.Lena, my chum, is there now.Her father has a coal mine.

“And this place—” She stared at the fire.“There are trees, great spreading elm trees, very old.And the brown stone building at the top of the hill is old, all grown over with ivy.Some of the teachers are old too.Their hair is like silver.But they are kind, oh so very kind.And they teach you so much.I have visited there.I know.”Her voice fell.

“Is it far?”Jeanne asked.

“Only an hour’s ride from here.”

“We shall go there some time, you and I.

“But Jensie—” The little French girl was all business now.“To-morrow I must go out to the lot.”

“The lot?”

“Where they make moving pictures.Will you go with me?”

“I’d love to.”

“Will you help me?Will you tell me if the trees are wrong, if the porch on the cabin is right, if the old mountaineer says his lines right?”

“I—I’ll do all I can.”

“Jensie,” Jeanne threw her arms about her.“You are a dear!We will make a picture, oh, such a marvelous picture of the land where your great Lincoln was born.And I—I shall be famous as—as Lorena LeMar.And you, ah, well, I shall not tell you now, but if we succeed you shall have something so very wonderful!”

Releasing her little mountain friend, she went flying away down the dark room in a wild gypsy dance.

Ten seconds later, she was back on tiptoe, her face white with terror.

“The hearse!”she whispered hoarsely.“There are now two black horses and a coffin.It moves!Oh, it moves!”

It was a full five minutes before even the stout-hearted Florence found courage to drive her reluctant feet down the long room.When she did, and had taken one look out of the window, she returned in haste.

“It’s gone,” she murmured hoarsely, “the hearse is gone!”

“I told you!”Jeanne repeated.“Two black horses and a coffin.”

“Haunts!”Jensie’s tone was solemn.“The hearse will be back there in the morning.”

“Will it?”Florence asked herself.

Gliding silently out of the room, they locked the door, then hurried away into the darkness with not a single backward look.

CHAPTER XV
TRANSFORMING A MOUNTAIN

If Jeanne carried her heart in her mouth as she passed through the gate and walked out on the lot of that “Little Bit of Hollywood” in Chicago that day, neither her face nor her feet betrayed her.She was smiling.Her feet moved in a sort of rhythmic motion that was almost a dance.

“Come over here.”She steered Jensie, who was at her side, into the shadow of the stadium for spectators.

Before the stadium, a proper distance off, a liberal section of a mountain had been reproduced.This was surprisingly real with trees, bushes, grass and rocks.Real flowers were in bloom.

This did not astonish Jeanne.She had become accustomed to the magic of Chicago scenery.It came and went, she knew that well enough.Four months before this greatest of all Fairs had opened there had not been a tree nor even a shrub upon its grounds.And now, there they were, hundreds of trees, some towering fifty feet in air, thousands of shrubs, miles of hedges.

“Magic,” Jeanne murmured.

“It’s very beautiful.”Jensie’s voice was low.“A very beautiful mountain.But it’s not Big Black Mountain.”

“Why?Tell me!”Jeanne’s voice was eager.

Jensie did tell her.For a full quarter of an hour Jeanne listened, and not a word escaped her.

When at last a short chubby man, who walked with a slight limp, appeared at the foot of the mountain she was ready.That Lorena LeMar was capable of an imperious manner befitting a queen, she knew well enough.She was Lorena LeMar now.She would be imperious.

“Ah!Miss LeMar!”The little man gripped the tips of her fingers.“What a day!”he enthused.“It is so bright, like a child with a washed face.And look!What a mountain I have got for you!”

Jeanne looked into his bright little eyes.She was shaking at the knees, but her voice was steady.

“It’s a very pretty mountain, Mr. Soloman.But it’s not right.”

“What’s this?Not right, you say?”He stared in unfeigned astonishment.

“This story,” she went on, “is about Big Black Mountain.You have pines, young pines all over it.There are no pines on Big Black Mountain.There is mountain ivy, rhododendrons and dogwood in bloom.That’s the title, ‘When the Dogwood Is in Bloom.’Where is it?Not a twig!”

“But Miss LeMar, you know—”

“Yes, I know.”Jeanne was going fast now.“You think the story can never be on the screen.What of that?These people who come to see pictures taken, many of them have traveled in the mountains of Kentucky and Virginia.They will look at your mountain and laugh.”

“Laugh?Laugh at me!At Abe Soloman!”The little director fairly danced.“I shall have it changed.You shall have your way, your ivy and your dogwood and what was it you said?”

“Rhododendrons.”

“Yes, and your dogwood, all over the lot.”

“Oh, thanks, Mr. Soloman.”The queen held out an imaginary sceptre.

“And Mr. Soloman,” Jeanne had intended going no further that day, but an irresistible impulse carried her on, “we can make a success of this picture, a real big success!”

The small eyes gave her a look that bored like a gimlet into her very soul.Had he guessed?Had she betrayed herself?She felt that her trembling knees would betray her.Too late now.She took a fresh start.

“It’s a truly beautiful story.All it lacks is contrast.When this mountain is done over it will do.We—we can shoot the indoor scenes in some fine home.I—I have rich friends.”

“Indoor scenes?Miss LeMar, there are no indoor scenes.”

“Oh, but Mr. Soloman!”In her eagerness Jeanne had her hand on the little man’s shoulder.“There must be indoor scenes.All this, this outside beauty and simplicity is fine, but there must be a palace, silks, gold, grandeur, just for contrast.

“When Zola, the little mountain girl, gets to Louisville in a box car she must be taken up by rich people who live in a grand house.They must dress her up in gowns, silk gowns and all that.”

Jeanne was running down like an eight-day alarm clock, but the little man did not appear to notice it.Before he caught up with her she was off again.

“These people!”She waved a hand at the half-filled stadium.“They come from everywhere.If they see a little bit of a feature picture shot, they’ll want to see the finished picture.That’s natural.Put up a big sign where they can see it.‘The picture now being made is WHEN THE DOGWOOD IS IN BLOOM.See it in your home theater next month.’And won’t they be there?”

“And how!”the little man muttered hoarsely, as he gripped her hand hard.“Miss LeMar, you are a vunder!A vunder!How did you ever get that vay?”

Not daring to utter another word, Jeanne fled precipitately from the spot.

As she rested in the shadow of the stadium, trying in vain to still her wildly beating heart, momentous questions crowded her brain.Had she gotten away with it?Had she truly?It seemed impossible.

“He’s a Jew, Mr. Soloman is a Jew.And whoever deceived a Jew?They are the keenest people living.I didn’t know he was a Jew.If I had known—”

If she had known, what then?Would she have refused?She did not know.

“There’s nothing for it now but to go on until some one shouts: ‘Stop!’” she assured herself as her mind sobered and her heart ceased its wild flutter.

She was still very much in the doldrums when, hours later, she sat wrapped in a satin bathrobe, looking out at the city by night.

“If I only were not so impulsive!”she was saying to Florence.“I meant to unfold my bright ideas one at a time.And there I blurted them out all at once, like some little child.

“And now,” she sighed, “he says there’ll be nothing more done on the picture for two days.

“Nothing more!”Her tone took on a bitter tinge.“Nothing has been done.We went through the motions and the dialogue to-day; did it just the best we knew how, too!The camera men seemed to be making shots.But it was all a fake.People in the stadium got a big kick out of it.But it made me feel all sick inside.

“The others in the cast are so fine, too.”Her voice changed.“This boy who’s playing the part of an Italian riding into the mountains on a donkey is a dear.Just a kid, but such smooth cheeks, such big eyes, such black hair!

“And he’s nice!Not hard as steel the way you expect movie men to be.He told me this was the first real part he’d ever been in, and oh, how he did want it to be a success!But he’d heard it was all set to be a flop.”

“And did you tell him you were going to make it a grand success?”

“No, I—” Jeanne’s voice trailed off.“I—I couldn’t.I—”

“You need more faith,” Florence said quietly.“Did you ever think, Jeanne, that nothing really worth while is ever accomplished without a tremendous amount of faith?You must believe in things and in people.You must believe that this picture is awfully worth while.You must believe in Mr. Soloman and your young Italian.Most of all, you must believe in yourself!Faith!That’s a grand word!”

“Yes. And I will have faith!” Springing to her feet, Jeanne went into such a wild whirl as set her blood racing and brought her back to her place at last with cheeks as rosy as those of her little Kentucky mountain friend.

“Do you know what?”she whispered, as if afraid of being overheard.“Jensie told me the old hearse at the back of the Tavern was in its place as usual this morning!”

“Of course.What did you expect?”

“But there were horses!”Jeanne’s tone carried conviction.“There were two black horses.I saw them.And there was a coffin!I saw that too.And the horses were hauling the hearse away!”

CHAPTER XVI
MAGIC FROM THE EAST

Long after Florence had retired for the night Jeanne paced slowly back and forth in that magnificently furnished living room.Her bare feet sank deep in the softest of Oriental rugs.Her filmy gown shimmered in the moonlight.

Oblivious of all these surroundings, Jeanne was deep in thought.“Faith!”she murmured.“Faith!Faith in one’s self, in one’s associates, one’s tasks.Faith in one’s future.Faith in a kind Providence.

“Faith.Faith.Ah, yes, I shall have faith.”

But the future?How strange the past had been!In her thoughts three-bladed knives, Buddhas and curious Oriental banners were strangely mixed with log cabins, a hearse drawn by black horses, and an organ playing itself.

“Ah, yes, but the future!”she exclaimed.“There is always a to-morrow, to-morrow, and to-morrow.The grand, good, golden future!Who can be afraid?”

At that she snapped out the light to stand looking down upon the vast, mysterious city until the distant chimes rang out the hour of two.

“Ah!”she whispered.“My hour of enchantment!”

For a moment she stood with bowed head as if in prayer.After that, for long hours, this entrancing room knew her not.For long hours she was wrapped in sleep.

It was well that she had faith in the future for to-morrow was to bring events mysterious and terrifying.

The clock was preparing to strike the hour of ten on the following night before she ventured forth from her well-kept fortress, Lorena LeMar’s apartment.She had not forgotten her narrow escape from Miss LeMar’s friends, the three rich and very badly spoiled play-boys.“Not that they were likely to do me any real harm,” she had confided to Florence.“They were out for one wild night and wished me to join them.And that for me?”She had made a face.“No!No!Not for me!Never!”

That she might escape danger from this quarter, she had garbed herself in her ancient gypsy costume of bright red and had hidden herself inside a long drab coat that came to her ankles.

She realized that perfect safety was to be had only by remaining inside.But who wants perfect safety?Certainly not our little French girl.

As a further precaution she descended a back stairway and left the building from a little-used doorway.

A half hour later she might have been found in the throng of joy hunters on the Midway of the great Fair.

She had just emerged from a breath-taking crush when off to the right she caught sight of a curious group gathered about some person beating a drum.

Tum, tum, tum, the dull monotony of beats played upon her ears.

Having joined the circle, she found herself looking at a very dark-skinned person with deep, piercing eyes.The man wore a long white robe.On his head was something resembling a Turkish towel twisted into a large knot.

Seated on the ground near this man were two others quite as dark as he.One was beating a curious sort of drum, the other squeaking away at something resembling a flute.

“Now watch!I will make him go up!Up!He will climb the rope.He will disappear utterly.Utterly!”The dark man’s voice, coming as it did from deep down in his throat, suggested that he might be talking from a well.

Upon hearing these words a small man stepped forward.The dark-faced one drew a circle about this little man.

At once the dark one began to whirl, then to dance.

Jeanne had witnessed many strange dances, but none so weird as this.The man whirled round and round until his robe seemed a winding sheet for a ghost.He began revolving about in a circle.And inside that circle stood the little man who was, Jeanne discovered, dressed in a curious sort of yellow gown.

Faster and faster went the drum beats, squeak-squeak went the flute, wilder and wilder flew the dancer.

“What can be going to happen?”the girl asked herself.In a vague sort of way she wished herself somewhere else, but to her astonishment she found herself unable to move.

Then a discovery, that under normal circumstances must have fairly bowled her over, came to her as in a dream: The little man standing there in the center garbed in an orange gown was none other than the long-eared Chinaman who had snatched the three-bladed knife from her hand.

“You can get him.Get him now,” a low voice seemed to whisper.

“Ah, yes, but you won’t,” a stronger voice appeared to reach her.“You’re going to see this thing through.”

And so she was.

Of a sudden, without for an instant abandoning his mad whirl, the dark-faced conjurer from India, for such he was, produced a rope.Three times he lifted his hand high.

“Now watch!Watch closely.He will go up.”In his voice there was a strange hypnotic cadence.

Like a thing shot from a gun, the rope rose straight in the air and, in so far as Jeanne’s eyes told her the truth, remained there standing on air.

The next instant a figure all in orange began passing up that rope.Up, up a yard, two yards, three, four, five.Up, up until the darkness appeared to stretch out black-robed arms to receive him.

Then of a sudden the dark-faced one ceased whirling.The drum gave forth one more loud boom, the flute one more squeak, and all was still.

With a sigh that was all but a whisper, Jeanne took one long, full breath.

She closed her eyes for an instant, then opened them.

To her astonishment she saw no dark-faced one in a white robe.The musicians, too, were gone.

“And the Chinaman!”she exclaimed aloud.“He has vanished also!”

“What has happened?”It was Erik Nord, the man from China, who spoke to her.He had just come up.“You must have seen a ghost.”

“No.I—I saw a Chinaman go up a rope that was fastened to nothing but air.”

“There was no rope,” Erik Nord laughed, “at least not in air, and no Chinaman.”

“Oh, yes!I saw him!”

“Well, perhaps.But he did not go up the rope.

“That man in the white robe,” he explained, “was India’s cleverest conjurer.With his weird music and wild whirling he cast a spell over you.You saw what he wished you to see.Perhaps you were hypnotized.Who can say?”

“But that Chinaman!”Jeanne murmured.“He was—was—”

She was about to tell the story of the three-bladed knife.Thinking better of it, she made some commonplace remark, then bade this chance acquaintance good-night as he hurried away to fill an engagement.

It is little wonder that, after such a mystifying experience as this, Jeanne should straightway walk into a trap.This is exactly what she did.

CHAPTER XVII
A SCREAM BRINGS STARTLING RESULTS

Erik Nord was to be found anywhere and everywhere.Young, very strong, full of the vigor of youth, he was in what was to him a strange land—America.Little wonder, then, that an hour after he had imparted valuable information to Petite Jeanne, Florence should have come upon him standing near the breakwater of the lagoon.

He was looking at a ship, a battered old windjammer tied up there by the shore.

“Stout little old boat, that!”he said to her with a friendly smile.“Can’t help but admire her, can you?”

“Why?”Florence wondered.

“Don’t you know the story?Come on board, and I’ll tell you.”

They mounted the gangplank, then wandered across the upper deck and descended to the deck below.

“See those!”Nord touched a ten-inch hand-hewn beam of ironwood.“Look at those knees!All hand-hewn.Know how old this ship is?Fifty years.

“And yet—” He paused.“And yet, when Richard Byrd wanted a ship that would carry him safely through the polar ice of the Antarctic, Roald Amundsen, who had sailed on this ship as a boy, said: ‘She’s the one you want.’

“They found her,” his voice was mellow, almost tender, “tied up to a dock far north in Norway.They’d thought she was through; everyone who knew her thought that.And yet, isn’t it magnificent!To-day she’s about the most famous ship afloat.Byrd’s Polar Ship, they call her.

“She’s Scandinavian built,” he said proudly.“My ancestors were Norsemen.Can you blame me for admiring this old ship?”

“No,” said Florence.“I’m glad you told me.This ship was built right, wasn’t it?”

“Right and honest.They took their time about it, too.”

“And if we build our lives that way, right and honest, taking our time, we’ll last, too.”

“There’s reason to hope so.”He gave forth a low chuckle.

“Shall we go up on deck and sit a while?”

“I’d love to.”

So it happened that they found themselves settled comfortably in a dark corner watching the parade of boats pass by.

It was a warm night.The lagoon was crowded.All manner of boats were there, speed boats and tiny motor boats, row boats, canoes, dugouts and gondolas.For some time Florence watched in vain for a certain type of boat.When at last her vigil was rewarded, she received a shock.

“Look!”she exclaimed, seizing Erik Nord by the arm.“Look there, at that Dodge-Em!”

“What’s unusual about that?”He looked at her curiously.

“But see who’s riding in it!”

“A Chinaman.”Erik chuckled.“Suits their style.Goes only just so fast.A Chink is seldom in a hurry.”

“But look who it really is—your long-eared Chinaman!The one who—”

There was not time to finish.One look and Erik Nord was away, dragging Florence by the hand across the deck.

* * * * * * * *

Having witnessed the astonishing performance of Indian magic, Jeanne spent an hour wandering about the Fair grounds in a sort of trance.It was impossible to drive from her highly sensitive mind the memory of the booming drum, squeaking flute and whirling magician.And this walking in a trance, as we have suggested, ended in her undoing.

She had wandered, without thinking much about it, into an all but deserted corner of the grounds, when with the suddenness of thought three figures swooped down upon her.

“Lorena!Lorena LeMar!”

The sound of their voices warned her of danger, but too late.

“The play-boys!”Her mind registered these words, then like a ship sinking at sea her brain went into a wild whirl.

Before she could scream or flee, they were upon her, all three of the play-boys.A hand went over her mouth, others lifted her from the earth.She was dropped with little ceremony onto an upholstered seat, a powerful motor purred, and they were away.

As the car shot down the drive an observer might have noticed that a tall, thin young man loitering near had suddenly leaped into action.Spinning about, he dashed to the nearest waiting taxi, delivered an order in a low tone, leaped in and went rushing away in the direction the car had taken.

Poor little French girl!Once inside that car she found her head spinning round with unimaginable terror.What was to happen?For a time she was unable to think.

When at last a certain degree of composure took possession of her, the car had passed from the Fair grounds and was speeding along the boulevard.

“They think me Lorena LeMar,” she told herself.She shuddered afresh as she thought how she had tricked them on that other occasion.

“They must have been furious.”Her heart sank.“Miss LeMar had been their playmate on other occasions; then to treat them like that!

“Oh, if I get out of that I’ll—”

What would she do?That mattered very little now.What truly mattered was the problem of her immediate conduct and ultimate escape.

“Of course,” she assured herself, “I could tell them I am not Lorena LeMar.But would they believe it?Probably not.And if they did?”

She thought of her hopes and plans, of the movie that had inspired her, of the young Italian actor who was dreaming dreams, and of Jensie.

“No,” she whispered, “not if I can help it.

“I know what I’ll do!I’ll play up to them.Let them think I am Miss LeMar.They will want me to dance.Very good, I shall dance.

“They will—”

She dared think no further.

“I’ll escape,” she told herself stoutly.“I must!But how?”

Her heart sank.Too often she had read of the cruelties practiced by these rich play-boys.

“They should not be permitted to be at large!”she told herself bitterly.

“But none of this!I must seem happy, full of spirits, gay.I must sing, I must dance.And then—”

Before a three-story gray stone building the car came to a grinding halt.All the curtains were drawn, but lights shone through the cracks.

“Some sort of club,” she told herself.

If it indeed was a club it was a very little frequented place.She did not see a person beside her escort as, carrying out her well-formed plan, she romped with them up the steps and into a rather large room where there were numerous chairs and a rather large wood-topped table.

At the far end of the room was a broad fireplace and near it were card tables with cards scattered over them.

“A kindergarten for rich play-boys,” Jeanne smiled to herself in spite of her predicament.

Throwing off her dull coat, with an air of abandon she did a dozen fancy steps across the polished floor.

“Oh, look!”exclaimed the tallest of the three play-boys.“Lorena’s a gypsy to-night!”

Truth was, until that moment Jeanne had forgotten her gown.

“Yes!”she exclaimed in a tone of forced gaiety.“I’m a gypsy to-night.Shall I dance my gypsy dance?”

“Yes, yes!”

“On the table!”A pair of stout arms caught her to toss her up.

Catlike, she landed on her feet.She was angry.“But I must not!I must not be angry!”she told herself fiercely.“I must dance.Time must pass.Surely something will happen.”

Forgetting time and place, she began the weird, wild dance of the gypsies.That her audience was impressed she knew at once.So she prolonged the dance.

All things must have an end.The end of the dance found her heart all aflutter.What next?

“Bravo!Bravo!”they applauded.“That calls for refreshments.”

Taking a bottle from a concealed locker, the shortest of the trio filled four glasses.

“Now!A toast!”He passed one glass to her.“Here’s to Lorena LeMar!Here’s to the new picture!”

When the play-boys lifted their glasses Jeanne followed their example.The stuff in the glass burned her lips.The glass slipped from her hand to go crashing upon the table.

“Oh!She dropped it!Too bad!Here’s another.”There was a note of insolence in the voice of the youth as he poured a second glass.“Here!Drink this!”

“No, my friend!”Her voice was like thin, clear ice.“No, I will not drink it.”No longer was she Lorena LeMar.She was Jeanne, the gypsy.In her veins there coursed the wild, free, fighting spirit of a true vagabond.Had she possessed a knife....Ah, well, she had no knife.

One weapon alone she possessed, truly a woman’s weapon—a scream.

This weapon she used.Not in vain had she practiced for hours a stage scream.When her slender voice rose shrill and high the three play-boys became rigid as stone.

The effect of that scream was sudden and most astonishing.Some bulk struck the door.Again; yet again.Then the lock broke and a tall, slim youth half stepped, half fell into the room.He was followed by a taxi driver.

Recovering from his shock, the leader of the play-boys took a step forward.Hot words were on his lips.They were not spoken.He was met by a heavy chair thrown with lightning-like speed by the astonishing stranger.

Taking him in the pit of the stomach the chair hurled the play-boy backward into his companions.Like so many tenpins they went down with a crash.

Not a word was spoken as the tall stranger gathered Jeanne up in his arms, marched out of the room and down the steps, deposited his burden in the taxi, sprang in beside her, gave the driver orders, then watched the building narrowly as they drove away.

“And I would take my oath I never saw him,” Jeanne whispered to herself.Sinking deep among the cushions, she suddenly felt very small, very young and quite helpless.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE SLIM STRANGER

When Erik Nord and Florence caught sight of the long-eared Chinaman placidly cruising the lagoon in a Dodge-Em, Erik, as we have said, led the girl away in hot pursuit.

Unfortunately, on reaching the nearest available craft, they found it to be but another slow going, doddering old Dodge-Em.

“We’ll take it,” Erik decided on the instant.

“Have to.Nothing else in sight.Probably he hasn’t seen us.Slip up on him without the least trouble.”

“And if he goes ashore I’ll get him.I can run.No Chinaman has out-distanced me yet.”He stepped on the gas and they were away, away at the breakneck speed of four miles an hour.

“Think of finding him right here in Chicago!”Erik exulted.“How’d you come to know him?”

Florence did not reply.

“Look!”She leaned far forward.“There he goes!He’s headed straight down the lagoon.”

“He’ll never go outside.Probably land.We’ll get him!”Erik trod angrily on the lever that kept the motor going.“If only a fellow could get one burst of speed out of this thing!”

He was making that same remark a quarter of an hour later.The long-eared one had not gone ashore.Instead, he had headed straight down the lagoon and out into the open lake where darkness and silence reigned.And Erik Nord, with all the stubbornness of his race, had followed in slow pursuit.

“It’s a turtle race,” he said without apparent emotion.“Two turtles.The question is, which will tire first?”

“We’ll run out of gas,” Florence murmured.

“Something like that.”

“And be stuck out here for the night.”Florence thought this, but did not say it.The moon would be out in an hour.And then—

Slowly but doggedly the Dodge-Em pushed its stout rubber nose through the black water.The Chinaman, a dark spot above the water, was ever before them.They did not lose.They did not gain.They only followed on.

“I’ve been told that a man crossed the lake in one of these,” Erik rumbled.“Safe enough, I guess.Anyway, when you’ve lived in China you get used to any mode of travel.”

Florence wondered if they would cross the lake.“And after that?”she whispered to herself.The rumble of the city was dying away in the distance, the lights of the Fair were growing dim.It was strange to be out here in the night with one she had known for so short a time.And yet this was the turn chance had taken.

Leaning back, she closed her eyes.It had been a long day.The night air sweeping in from the lake fanned her cheek.The darkness had been kind to her tired eyes.Now she felt the need for rest.

Did she fall asleep?Perhaps.Perhaps not.All she knew was that when she opened her eyes at last she became conscious of a change.“Wha—what is it?”

“Motor stopped.We lose,” Erik grumbled.“We lose.”

“And here we are.”She caught a long breath.The moon was just beginning to roll, a ball of red, along the black horizon.

“Here we are,” Erik agreed, then settled back comfortably in his corner.

* * * * * * * *

It was at about this same moment that Jeanne found herself speeding away in a taxi with a man she had never seen before.

“He saved me,” she told herself.“Saved me from a horrible night.He knew I was there.How?He willed to get me out of that place.Why?”To these questions she could find no answers.There was, she believed, but one thing to do; to sit back and allow the future to unfold itself.

They were entering the Loop.There was comfort in that.In the Loop were many people.And in numbers there is always a degree of safety.

“You’ll be in need of a cup of coffee after that,” her companion suggested.“Supposing we stop in here.”The cab had stopped before a well lighted coffee house.

Without a word Jeanne followed him inside and back to a small table in the rear.“Who is he?What does he want?”She was determined now to see the thing through.

“I’m Tom Tobin of the News,” the strange rescuer announced when coffee had been ordered.

“Oh!”Jeanne caught her breath.“You were after news!And—and I—I will be in the paper!That explains—”

“It explains nothing.”Tom Tobin’s smile was disarming.“I wasn’t looking for news, and this will not get you in the paper.Far from it.

“I was keeping tab on you,” he added.

“Tab on me?”Her wide eyes registered astonishment.

“Well, sort of guarding you, if that sounds better.I did it for a very good reason, too.

“You see,” he leaned forward over the table, speaking in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “I know you better than you think.You are not Lorena LeMar.”

“Not—”

He held up a hand for silence.“No use!”he warned.“You are the little French girl, Petite Jeanne.

“No, I’ll not betray you.”He had read the consternation in her eyes.“Why should I?You—you’re doing a big thing for me.”

“For you?”

“You are planning to make a success of the scenario I wrote, ‘When the Dogwood Is in Bloom.’”

“You wrote it?How—how wonderful!”Jeanne stretched a slim white hand across the table.Tom Tobin grasped it frankly.“Here’s luck!”His frank eyes shone.

“And here’s our coffee.How jolly!”Fear had flown from Jeanne’s eyes.She was her own bright, joyous self once more.

“But how could you know I am to make a success of your picture?”she demanded eagerly.“I do not know it myself.”

“Old Sollie, Mr. Soloman, your producer, told me.He’s all het up about it; says you showed him how to make a great picture of it and get a lot of free publicity.He’s working on the scene, got men after real mountain ivy and rhododendrons and dogwood.Sent for two log cabins like the ones in the Lincoln Group, and all that.

“Say!”he exclaimed, “Suppose we get together and work over the dialogue and all that!Sollie says you know a lot about the mountains.”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

“But he told me—”

“Yes, I know.”Jeanne smiled.“I have a friend who prompted me.She has lived there all her life.”

“Then she’ll help us.We’ll work it over together, beginning to-morrow afternoon.”

“That—” Jeanne favored him with her loveliest smile. “That—how do you say it? That is a go!Eh, what?”

“That’s it!”Tom grinned.“We’ll get on grand.You’re a regular guy!”

“And why not?”Jeanne laughed a merry laugh.

A half hour later, as Jeanne entered the lobby of the hotel after bidding Tom Tobin a heartfelt “Happy dreams!”the porter stared at her for a moment as if uncertain of her identity, then said in a matter-of-fact tone: “Your trunk has gone up, Miss LeMar.”

“My trunk?”She stared.“Oh, but I have not—”

She broke short off.Was she about to betray her secret?She was Miss LeMar.Perhaps the real Lorena LeMar had ordered a trunk sent over without informing her.

Her tone changed.“Very well.Thank you.”She dropped a coin into his hand, then hurried away.

“But a trunk?”she thought.“A trunk in our apartment!”An unreasoning terror swept upon her.

“But only a trunk!”She shook herself free of this wild fear.“What is a trunk?”

What indeed?

CHAPTER XIX
A SOUND IN THE NIGHT

“Tell me about that mysterious land, China.”Florence settled back in her place in the stupid little Dodge-Em that, refusing to travel farther, had left them stalled far out on the black waters of night.

“China.”Erik Nord’s tone was full of the enchanting melody of the Far East.“How is one to tell you of China?There are sampans where whole families live their lives away, sampans on the river and great cities on their banks.Farther up there are villages and on the river great old junks.Ships from out of the past, they loom before you in the dark.You never know whether they are manned by brigands who will rob you or soldiers who may take your possessions from you in the name of the law.You—”

“Listen!”Her hand was on his arm.There had come a sound from the water.“Do—do you think his Dodge-Em has stalled too?Wouldn’t it be strange if we drifted together in the moonlight?”

“Nothing would suit me better!”

Florence believed him.

“But that long-eared one has the knife,” she told herself as a thrill coursed up her spine.Closing her eyes she seemed to witness a battle on the water, a fight between a square-jawed white man from China whose ancestors had built boats that were good fifty years later, and a Chinaman inspired by who knows what superstitious terror.

“If only we’d sight him!”Nord’s words came from between his teeth.“I think I might help out a bit, rip a board off this tub of ours and use it for a paddle or something.”

“It seems pretty solid.”Florence felt the boat over.“Besides, we haven’t seen him, we’ve only caught a sound.It might not have been his boat.Probably his gas held out and he’s gone back to land, vanished by now—the vanishing Chinaman.”

“By the way,” Erik’s voice took on a new note, “how did it happen you recognized him out there on the water?”

“I—why, I’ve seen him before.”She was stalling for time.Should she tell him all about the chest, the knife, the banners?She was not proud of the affair.They had been careless, she could see that now.And yet, if he knew, they might work together.

She looked away at the golden moon.Her eyes followed the path it painted across the water.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ll tell you.It was like this.We bought that chest full of your treasures at an auction sale, bought it for I—I’m ashamed to tell you how little.And now—now it’s gone; all gone but the chest.”

“Gone?”

“He got it, that long-eared one.”

“Tell me about it.”Erik leaned forward eagerly.

She told him all there was to tell, described the knife, the bell and all the banners as best she could.

“Gone!”he murmured.“All gone.You have missed much, and the little ones of China have missed more.There was a reward for the return of that chest, five hundred dollars.

“Five hun—”

“Five hundred in gold.With that you could have visited this land that seems to you so mysterious.With care you could have stayed a long time in China, delved into all manner of Oriental mysteries.”

“I’ll do it yet!”He saw her stout figure stiffen with resolve.“I’ll get that long-eared one yet!You wait!You shall have all those treasures back, every one!”

“Splendid!But have a care, my friend.Have a care!”There was a note of warning in his voice.“Those Orientals are dangerous when some superstitious terror takes possession of them.There is something we do not know about those temple adornments; that knife and bell are forces to fight demons.Who can say what demons have taken possession of our vanishing Chinaman?Have a care!Just when you wish for your very life’s sake that he might vanish, you will find him insisting upon being very much of a present reality.He—”

“Listen!”Again her hand rested on his arm.

* * * * * * * *

There are certain people who “feel” events before they transpire.This, psychologists will tell you, is intuition.Jeanne’s intuition caused her knees to tremble as she walked from the elevator to Lorena LeMar’s apartment which, for the time, was her own.

“A trunk,” she whispered.“A trunk beyond that door.”By this time her key was in the lock.She wished to turn back; she willed to go forward.In the end courage won.She pushed open the door.She entered the room.

But she did not go far.One look was enough.The trunk, a huge affair such as is used by commercial traveling men, stood in the center of the room.Its lid was up.It was empty!And the whole apartment, as far as her startled eyes could take it in, was in a state of wild confusion.

Next, without exactly knowing how it happened, she found herself outside with the door locked behind her.

Her heart was beating painfully.As if to still its wild beating she clutched at her breast.Her brain was in a state of wild confusion.For some little time she could not think two thoughts in a row.

When at last her senses returned it all came to her in a flash.“It is that little yellow man with the long ears,” she assured herself.“He or one of his friends.He believed that those things, those priceless banners and that curious bell from the temple, were in this place.He had himself strapped tight in that monstrous trunk and shipped himself to this hotel, ‘To Miss LeMar’s apartment.’To—”

She broke off.“He knows!”The thought fairly floored her.“This long-eared one knows I am not Lorena LeMar.He knows I am Petite Jeanne.Will he tell?Will he spoil all my fine plans?”Here indeed was a terrible probability.

“If I make it possible for him to have just what he wants,” she whispered slowly, “perhaps he will go away and no one will know, no one but Florence and Miss LeMar and Tom Tobin, who will never tell.”

Here indeed was temptation.She did not know that these treasures had been intended as a gift to a children’s hospital, for the little ones of China.Florence had not told her.She only knew that at present they were her own, that she and Florence had bought them and had received a bill of sale for them.

Startling as was this revelation, it did not occupy her thoughts long.Her mind took a fresh turn.

“Florence,” she whispered.“Where is she?The hour is late.”

Once again her head was in a whirl.Where could Florence be?

“Perhaps she is in there!They may have found her.She may have been murd—”

She could not say the word.Her love for her big companion was all but compelling her to re-enter that room.

“He may still be there, that little yellow one with the long ears.”She was fairly beside herself.

Should she call the house detective?This she feared to do.In the excitement of the moment she might give away the secret of her dual personality.

“No!No!I must not!I must be brave!”

Once again she approached the door.Her fingers trembled as she fitted key to lock, yet she did not turn back.The lock clicked.The door opened.She stepped inside.The door closed behind her.

CHAPTER XX
PICTURES ON THE CLOUDS

The sound that came to Florence’s listening ears out there on the lake in the stalled Dodge-Em was a welcome one: the low put-put of a motor boat.

“If it only comes close enough we’re saved from a night on the water,” she said hopefully.

“Chilly business, staying out here,” Erik Nord agreed.

The put-put grew louder. A light came swimming across the expanse of black water. Now they saw it and now it was gone.

“She’s passing to the right of us,” Erik judged.“We’ll have to hail her.”

Standing up in the boat he cupped his hands to shout:

“Ahoy there!”

Never had Florence heard such a roar.

“Ahoy there!”came floating back faintly.

“Give us a lift.We’re stalled.”

“Right O!We’re coming!”The voice seemed very far away.

Presently across the shimmering waters of night a dark bulk loomed.

It was only a fishing boat headed for the dock.This craft smelled of herring and tar, but she carried, too, a hearty welcome such as one might not find on a handsomer boat.

“Give us yer line!

“Now!There we are!Where y’ bound fer in that thing?”the sun-tanned skipper boomed.

“Nowhere in particular.We want to get back to the lagoon.”

“Right O!We’ll tow y’ in.”

Next moment the stranded ones found themselves leaning back comfortably in the broad seat, watching the play of moonlight upon the water that rippled and rolled about their prow.

“It would be a grand world to live in,” Erik murmured, “if all its people were as simple and obliging as these fishermen.”

“They’re common folks.”There was a world of meaning in the girl’s words.

“Uncommon, I’d say, very uncommon indeed.”

“All a matter of point of view, I suppose.”

The fishermen had demanded no pay for their services, were loath in the end to accept it.They did not, however, depart unrewarded.

When, a half hour later, Florence burst into the apartment, she found Jeanne sitting before the window, looking out into the night.The trunk had been sent to a room where empty trunks were kept.The apartment was in apple pie order.Jeanne did not say, “Oh, my friend, such a terrible thing has happened!We have been searched again.”She said nothing at all; she just kept on looking out into the night.

The reason for this is apparent enough.The little French girl harbored a secret.This secret she had hidden even from her bosom pal.The secret had to do with that laundry bag still reposing in a cubicle back there in the small hotel near their own shabby rooms. The check boy was still custodian of her secret.

Why did Jeanne guard this secret so closely?Perhaps for no reason at all.Jeanne was at heart a gypsy.A gypsy has a reason for doing a thing if he chooses.A mere impulse is reason enough for him.Life for him is action, not thought.He dances, he sings, he plays the violin.He travels where he will.If you say to him, “Why?”he shrugs his shoulders.Jeanne was like that.

But to Jeanne, as on other nights long after Florence was asleep, there came, as she sat there before the window, strange fantastic pictures of the past and visions of the future.Of these she wondered as in a dream.

Clouds had come drifting in from the west.They filled the sky.From time to time a powerful radio beacon, swinging in its orbit, appeared to paint pictures on those clouds.In Jeanne’s fanciful vision these pictures took on fantastic forms.

Some of the pictures that came to her as she sat there were vivid, as real as life itself, and some were as indistinct as a mirage on the far horizon.

A hearse in the moonlight.“A sign.”She shuddered.“A hearse with two black horses and a coffin.”Again she shuddered.

But now it was gone.Instead there was a sloping hillside where little streams rushed from beneath dark canopies of mountain ivy.The dark clouds turned white under the powerful light.

“Will it ever be?”She dared to hope now.“Will our moving picture succeed?”Tom Tobin had inspired her.She could see his face on the clouds.Young, slender, eager, full of vitality, he invited hope as sunshine invites a bud to become a flower.

But now in a cavern of the darkened clouds a great trunk yawned.Out from it, like a jack-in-the-box, leaped a little yellow man with long ears.“He wants that bell, those banners.He risks everything to get them.I wonder why?”She mused for a moment; then the scene in this fairyland of clouds changed once more.

A slender white cloud curled upward.Its tip became a rope that rose higher, higher, higher, toward a dark night sky.Up that rope a figure appeared to glide.“He did go up!”she whispered hoarsely.“I saw him!”

The airplane beacon swung about.The sky went black.It became dark waters, and on those waters were two boats gliding one after the other, moving silently out to sea.

“That long-eared one,” she murmured, “he is everywhere at once.

“But Florence—” A smile played about her lips.“Florence and that white man from China.How romantic to be out there with him beneath the moon all alone!Surely one may endure mystery, suspense, anything, if it leads to romance!”

Strangely enough, the night sky took on a tinge of green.In this she saw a frail child of France garbed all in green and gold.Her eyes opened wide.It was her very own self.

Yet even as she looked the picture faded, and in its place was a broad green hill topped by a stately building of brown stone.And after that all visions vanished.

Florence found her there in the morning fast asleep in the great upholstered chair before the window.A shaft of sunshine playing across her face made her seem to smile.A morning breeze from the lake set her golden hair waving a salute.

She did not sleep long after Florence had stolen away to her work, this little French girl.Tom Tobin had wakened hope in her heart.He had set her glorious mind to dreaming.And dreamers seldom sleep too much.

Having wakened, she sprang into action.A shower, ten minutes of wild dancing to set her blood racing, a cup of coffee with crisp squares of hard toast, and she was away.

Gathering up the little mountain girl, Jensie, she hurried her away to the movie lot.There, by great good chance, she came upon Mr. Soloman, who was, after all, only Assistant Production Manager for a great Hollywood producer, and no one to be greatly afraid of.

“Ah, Miss LeMar!”he exclaimed.“How very good it is to see you.Look!Already they have mountain ivy and rhododendrons from the nursery.The dogwood, too, will come, and there are two cabins to come.And now, Miss LeMar, might I ask what more would you suggest?

“This,” said Jeanne, pushing Jensie forward, “is my property lady.We will look over the set together.”

An hour later when she and Jensie reappeared they carried four pages of notes.

Seated there on the improvised hillside in the sun, they discussed details with the eager Mr. Soloman, who said, “Yes, Miss LeMar.Yes, Miss LeMar, this also can be done,” through it all.“A coonskin drying on the outside of the cabin, a well with an oaken bucket, hound dogs, yes, yes, three hound dogs.A long-barreled rifle.Yes, yes, we will have all these.

“And, Miss LeMar, I am wiring Hollywood to-day for approval of my plans.If they say O.K., then we will have a special car and we will go to this Big Black Mountain for long shots and such things that cannot be taken here.What would you say to that?”

“Oh, Mr. Soloman!”Before Jeanne knew what she was doing she had kissed the chubby little man on the cheek.

“Think, Jensie!”she cried.“Think of going right down to your Big Black Mountain!And of course you must come along!”

“But my work!”

“Only for two or three days.We will fix that.”The little man smiled broadly.

“That is all for to-day?”said Jeanne.

“That is all, Miss LeMar.You are very beautiful to-day, Miss LeMar.There is color in your cheeks.Ha!This is wonderful!”He gave Jeanne such a sharp look that deep in her soul she trembled.Was he beginning to guess?And if he knew?

She returned to Lorena LeMar’s apartment with a very sober face.Life had begun to be quite wonderful.If some one spoiled it all by a sudden discovery or a betrayal, what then?

CHAPTER XXI
WORK AND DREAMS

By early afternoon Jeanne’s old cheerful smile was back again.And why not?Was she not seated between two friends, Jensie and Tom, studying the dialogue of this altogether absorbing movie that hour by hour took on a more vivid picture of reality?

They were having a gay time there in Lorena LeMar’s living room.From time to time peals of laughter came drifting out through the open window.

Jensie was the critic.And a very expert critic she turned out to be.

“No.He would never say that, your old Jud who lives at the foot of Big Black Mountain.He would not say, ‘Those horses are fast travelers.’He’d say, ‘Them’s the travelin’est hosses I ever most seed.’He wouldn’t say, ‘It’s done.’He’d say, ‘I done done it.’”

“But Jensie,” Jeanne protested, “if we change all this, how are the people going to know what it’s all about?Might as well have him talk German.”

“W-e-l-l, you asked me.”Jensie puckered her fair brow.“That’s the way we talk down there.We don’t say ‘rifle,’ but ‘rifle-gun.’We say ‘we-uns’ and ‘you-all.’”

“Well,” said Tom after a moment’s thought, “a great deal of that is easy enough to understand.It does make the whole thing seem a lot more real.And if we find old Jud talking too much, why, we’ll just shut him up and make him talk with his hands and his feet.”

“And his pistol-gun,” Jensie added.“Pistol-guns talk a heap down there in the mountings.”

They all had a good laugh, and once more the work moved on smoothly.

“To-morrow,” Jeanne said to Jensie before bidding her good-bye, “to-morrow morning we will go out to that so beautiful college you have been telling me about.What do you say?”

“That,” Jensie laughed joyfully, “that’s a right smart clever idea.”

“Then we shall go.”Jeanne gave her hand a squeeze.“I am tired.There are trees, you say, and grass, very much grass.Good!We shall sit upon the grass beneath those spreading elms and forget this noisy city.”

They went.The electric car whirled them away to the country.It seemed that but a moment had passed when they found themselves walking up a path shaded by two rows of ancient elms.

“So green the grass!”Jeanne murmured.“So graceful the trees and so strong!And that fine old building of limestone.It is like France, my so beautiful France!

“But listen!”

She paused.From a smaller building with very high windows there floated the words of a song.

“Singing?It is Chapel!Come!”Jeanne seized Jensie by the hand.“Come quick!We will slip into a back seat.It has been so long, oh, so long since I heard such singing.”

As they entered the door all heads were bowed in prayer.Deeply religious, as all the best of her race are, Jeanne bowed her head reverently.

The prayer at an end, six hundred young voices burst into song.

“And how they sing it!”There were tears in Jeanne’s eyes.“They sing what they believe.How very, very wonderful!”

Hidden away in a high-backed seat, they listened to the simple, sincere message of a white-haired professor as he talked to this silent audience of young people about God and His relation to their lives.

Jeanne was strangely silent as she left the place.Perhaps in her mind was a picture of the little stone church in her own land where she had so often knelt in prayer.

“It is good,” she murmured at last.“Tomorrow as I try to tell to the world in pictures the story of simple, kindly folks who live in the mountains, I shall do it better because of having been here.”

For a long time they sat on the grass beneath the elms. A gray squirrel came down a tree to chatter at them.A robin, whose nest was in a nearby lilac bush, sang them a song.A cricket chirped.From far away came a dog’s bark.A cobweb went floating high overhead.

“Come!”Jeanne whispered reluctantly.“We must go back.”

That night as she sat looking out into the half darkness of the night, Jeanne saw again in her mind’s eye the girl in a nile-green dress and golden slippers.And as before, the green changed its shade and became a sloping hill where broad elms sighed in the breeze.

“There will be no nile-green dress and golden slippers,” she whispered.“Instead, if success is ours, Jensie shall go to that so beautiful college where they sing that which they believe and ask such wonderful prayers.”

And down in her heart of hearts she knew that she would strive harder for success than ever before, because she was working for another’s happiness and not entirely for her own.

CHAPTER XXII
BENEATH THE FLOODLIGHTS

This brief period of rest was the last Petite Jeanne was to enjoy for many days.The work on that little section of Big Black Mountain progressed more rapidly than had been expected.In order that the re-making of the scenario should progress quite as rapidly, Tom Tobin secured a brief leave of absence from his newspaper work.He and Jeanne, together with Jensie when she could be spared from her beloved Tavern, were together at all hours of day and night.

So long as Tom was with her, Jeanne had no fear of Lorena LeMar’s boy friends.Her only fear was that they might discover that she was not Miss LeMar at all, and end by betraying her secret.

“But what do you care!”Tom exploded one day.“You are as good as Lorena LeMar.”

“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.

CHAPTER XXIII
GOLDEN DAYS

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.”

CHAPTER XXIV
THE BATTLE IN THE ORANGE GROVE

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.”

CHAPTER XXV
ONCE AGAIN THE ORGAN PLAYS AT MIDNIGHT

“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.

CHAPTER XXVI
CARRIED AWAY IN THE NIGHT

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!”

CHAPTER XXVII
HER BIG NIGHT

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.

And when the camera gave its last click, when the screen went white and the lights flashed on, she said to herself, “It was not I.”

Yet, even as she sat there they crowded about her, the members of the cast of that picture, the reporters, the critics.They lifted her to their shoulders, carried her to the platform, set her on her feet, and shouted.

“Speech!Speech!”

Speech?Her head was in a wild whirl.

Then her eyes fell upon the clock.“Listen!”She held up a hand for silence.

“Listen!”Her voice rose like a captain’s shouting a command.A hush, the hush that can come only at two in the morning, fell over the group.But into that hush there came no unusual sound, only the distant chimes heralding the hour of two in the morning.

“My hour of enchantment!”Jeanne sighed blissfully.

“And now you listen!”It was Florence who spoke.“I have heard you say that many times.What do you mean—your hour of enchantment?”

“All right, I’ll tell you.”The little French girl’s face beamed.“Long ago a gypsy woman, a very old and very wise fortune teller, said to me, ‘Your hour of enchantment is two o’clock in the morning.’

“You too,” she hurried on, “each one of you has an enchanted hour—an hour when wonderful things will come to you; good fortune, riches, a proposal, marriage, all these will come to you on that enchanted hour.

“It is true!”She was deeply in earnest, this little French girl, so sincerely in earnest that she did not realize that she was about to betray a secret.

“You think it strange that my enchanted hour is two in the morning when most good people are in their beds.

“But you are forgetting that I am at heart a gypsy, that indeed I once was a gypsy, a French gypsy, a very good gypsy.” She smiled. “But a gypsy all the same.” At this instant the lips of Mr. Soloman parted in a low exclamation of excitement.