The Magic Curtain

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER XIV THE DISAPPEARING PARCEL

  In the meantime Florence and Jeanne were making the best of theiropportunity to leave the "made land." They hoped to cross the bridge andreach the car line before the threatened storm broke. Petite Jeanne wasterribly afraid of lightning. Every time it streaked across the sky shegripped her strong companion's arm and shuddered.

  It was impossible to make rapid progress. From this point the beaten pathdisappeared. There were only scattered tracks where other pedestrians hadpicked their way through the litter of debris.

  Here Florence caught her foot in a tangled mass of wire and all but fellto the ground; there Jeanne stepped into a deep hole; and here they foundtheir way blocked by a heap of fragments from a broken sidewalk.

  "Why did we come this way?" Petite Jeanne cried in consternation.

  "The other was longer, more dangerous. Cheer up! We'll make it." Florencetook her arm and together they felt their way forward through thedarkness that grew deeper and blacker at every step.

  Rolling up as they did at the back of a city's skyscrapers, the mountingclouds were terrible to see.

  "The throng!" Petite Jeanne's heart fairly stopped beating. "What must aterrific thunderstorm mean to that teaming mass of humanity?"

  Even at her own moment of distress, this unselfish child found time for acompassionate thought for those hundreds of thousands who still throngedthe city streets.

  As for the crowds, not one person of them all was conscious that acatastrophe impended. Walled in on every side by skyscrapers, noslightest glance to the least of those black clouds was granted them.Their ears filled by the honk of horns, the blare of bands and the shoutsof thousands, they heard not one rumble of distant thunder. So theylaughed and shouted, crowded into this corner and that, to come outshaken and frightened; but never did one of them say, "It will storm."

  Yet out of this merry-mad throng two beings were silent. A boy of sixteenand a hunchback of uncertain age, hovering in a doorway, looked, marveleda little, and appeared to wait.

  "When will it break up?" the boy asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  "Early," was the reply. "There's too many of 'em. They can't have muchfun. See! They're flooding the grandstands. The bands can't play. They'llbe going soon. And then--" The hunchback gave vent to a low chuckle.

  * * * * * * * *

  After snatching a pair of boy's strap-overalls from the rocks the girl,who had emerged from the water beside the submerged net, with the darkpackage under her arm hurried away over a narrow path and lost herself atonce in the tangled mass of willows and cottonwood.

  She had not gone far before a light appeared at the end of that trail.

  Seen from the blackness of night, the structure she approached took on agrotesque aspect. With two small round windows set well above the door,it seemed the face of some massive monster with a prodigious mouth andgreat gleaming eyes. The girl, it would seem, was not in the leastfrightened by the monster, for she walked right up to its mouth and,after wrapping her overalls about the black package which still drippedlake water, opened the door, which let out a flood of yellow light, anddisappeared within.

  Had Florence witnessed all this, her mystification regarding this childof the island might have increased fourfold.

  As you already know, Florence was not there. She was still with PetiteJeanne on the strip of "made land" that skirted the shore. They were morethan a mile from the island.

  They had come at last to a strange place. Having completely lost theirway in the darkness, they found themselves of a sudden facing a blankwall.

  A strange wall it was, too. It could not be a house for, though made ofwood, this wall was composed not of boards but of round posts set soclose together that a hand might not be thrust between them.

  "Wh--where are we?" Jeanne cried in despair.

  "I don't know." Florence had fortified her mind against any emergency. "Ido know this wall must have an end. We must find it."

  She was right. The curious wall of newly hewn posts did have an end. Theywere not long in finding it. Coming to a corner they turned it and againfollowed on.

  "This is some enclosure," Florence philosophized. "It may enclose someform of shelter. And, from the looks of the sky, shelter is what we willneed very soon."

  "Yes! Yes!" cried her companion, as a flare of lightning gave her aninstant's view of their surroundings. "There is a building looming justover there. The strangest sort of building, but a shelter all the same."

  Ten minutes of creeping along that wall in the dark, and they came to amassive gate. This, too, was built of logs.

  "There's a chain," Florence breathed as she felt about. "It's fastened,but not locked. Shall we try to go in?"

  "Yes! Yes! Let us go in!" A sharp flash of lightning had set the littleFrench girl's nerves all a-quiver.

  "Come on then." There was a suggestion of mystery in Florence's tone. "Wewill feel our way back to that place you saw."

  The gate swung open a crack. They crept inside. The door swung to. Thechain rattled. Then once more they moved forward in the dark.

  After a time, by the aid of a vivid flash, they made out a tall, narrowstructure just before them. A sudden dash, and they were inside.

  "We--we're here," Florence panted, "but where are we?"

  "Oo--o! How dark!" Petite Jeanne pressed close to her companion's side."I am sure there are no windows."

  "The windows are above," whispered Florence. A flash of lightning hadrevealed an opening far above her head.

  At the same instant she stumbled against a hard object.

  "It's a stairway," she announced after a brief inspection. "A curioussort of stairway, too. The steps are shaped like triangles."

  "That means it is a spiral stairway."

  "And each step is thick and rough as if it were hand-hewn with an axe.But who would hew planks by hand in this day of steam and greatsawmills?"

  "Let's go up. We may be able to see something from the windows."

  Cautiously, on hands and knees, they made their way up the narrowstairway. The platform they reached and the window they looked through amoment later were quite as mysterious as the stairway. Everywhere was themark of an axe. The window was narrow, a mere slit not over nine incheswide and quite devoid of glass.

  Yet from this window they were to witness one of God's greatest wonders,a storm at night upon the water.

  The dark clouds had swung northward. They were now above the surface ofthe lake. Blackness vied with blackness as clouds loomed above the water.Like a great electric needle sewing together two curtains of purplevelvet for a giant's wardrobe, lightning darted from sky to sea and fromsea to sky again.

  "How--how marvelous! How terrible!" Petite Jeanne pressed her companion'sarm hard.

  "And what a place of mystery!" Florence answered back.

  "But what place _is_ this?" Jeanne's voice was filled with awe. "Andwhere are we?"

  "This," Florence repeated, "is a place of mystery, and this is a night ofadventure.

  "Adventure and mystery," she thought to herself, even as she said thewords. Once more she thought of the cameo.

  "I promised to return it to-morrow. And now it seems I am moving fartherand farther from it."

  Had she but known it, the time was not far distant when, like two bits offlotsam on a broad sea, she and the lost cameo would be drifting closerand closer together. And, strange as it may seem, the owner of the cameo,that frail, little, old lady, was to play an important part in the livesof Petite Jeanne and Florence.

  * * * * * * * *

  In the meantime the two officers and the man of the evil eye were playinga bit of drama all their own on the sand-blown desert portion of theisland.

  "You'll have to come clean!" the senior officer was saying to the manwhom he addressed as Al.

  "All you got to do is search me. You'll find nothing on me, not even arod."
The man stood his ground.

  "Fair enough." With a skill born of long practice, the veteran detectivewent through the man's clothes.

  "You've cached it," he grumbled, as he stood back empty-handed.

  "I'm not in on the know." The suspicion of a smile flitted across thedark one's face. "Whatever you're looking for, I never had it."

  "No? We'll look about a bit, anyway."

  The officers mounted the breakwater to go flashing electric lanterns intoevery cavity. As the boom of thunder grew louder they abandoned thesearch to go tramping back across the barren sand.

  Left to himself, Al made a pretense of leaving the island, but in realitylost himself from sight on the very brush-grown trail the nymph of thelake had taken a short time before.

  "Well, I'll be--!" he muttered, as he brought up squarely before thestructure that seemed a monster's head, whose eyes by this time werequite sightless. The light had blinked off some moments before.

  After walking around the place twice, he stood before the door and lifteda hand as if to knock. Appearing to think better of this, he sank downupon the narrow doorstep, allowed his head to fall forward, and appearedto sleep.

  Not for long, however. Foxes do not sleep in the night. Having rousedhimself, he stole back over the trail, crept to the breakwater, liftedhimself to a point of elevation, and surveyed the entire scene throughoutthree lightning flashes. Then, apparently satisfied, he made his way tothe windlass he had left an hour or two before. He repeated the processof drowning the complaining voice of the windlass and then, turning thecrank, rapidly lifted the dripping net from the bottom of the lake.

  With fingers that trembled slightly, he drew a small flashlight from hispocket to cast its light across the surface of the net.

  Muttering a curse beneath his breath, he flashed the light once again,and then stood there speechless.

  What had happened? The meshes of that net were fine, so fine that a dozenminnows not more than two inches long struggled vainly at its center. Yetthe package he had thrown in this net was gone.

  "Gone!" he muttered. "It can't have floated. Heavy. Heavy as a stone. AndI had my eyes on it, every minute; all but--but the time I went down thattrail.

  "They tricked me!" he growled. He was thinking now of the policemen. "Butno! How could they? I saw them go, saw them on the bridge. Couldn't havecome back. Not time enough."

  At this he thrust both hands deep in his pockets and went stumping away.