The Crystal Ball

by Roy J. Snell

  CHAPTER V FLORENCE GAZES INTO THE CRYSTAL

  She was alone with the crystal--or was she? She could not be sure. Whichis more disturbing, to be alone in a room where a half-darkness hangsover all, or to feel that there is someone else in the room?

  Only yesterday she had been seized by a clutching hand and ushered out ofthat room. Where now was the owner of that hand? She had no way ofknowing. One thing was sure, that had not been Madame Zaran's hand. Thosefingers had been long, slim and bony. Madame's were not like that.

  "But I must concentrate!" She shook herself vigorously. "I must gaze atthe crystal." As she focussed her attention on the crystal ball, shebecame conscious of two gleaming green eyes. These were small butpiercing. They belonged to the bronze eagle that, hovering over the ballin this dim light, seemed to have suddenly come alive.

  "Bah!" she exclaimed low, "what a bother sometimes an imagination maybecome! It must be controlled. I shall control it!" she ended stoutly.

  In the end she did just that and with the most surprising results.Settling back easily in her chair, feeling the cool darkness of the placeand heaving a sigh, she fixed her eyes dreamily upon the crystal ball.For a full five minutes there was no change. The ball remained simply afaintly gleaming circle of light. Then, ah, yes! a change came. The balllost some of its distinctness. It turned gray and cloudy. Pin points oflight like shooting stars appeared against the gray.

  This continued for some time. Then, of a sudden, warmth came over thegirl as she saw that gray turn to the faint blue of a morning sky.Leaning eagerly forward, she waited.

  "Yes! Yes!" Her lips formed words she did not speak. The lower portion ofthat blue turned to gray and green. She was looking now at rocky ridgeshalf overgrown with glorious trees--spruce, birch, and balsam. Beneaththis were dark, cool waters. Above, fleecy clouds raced across a darkblue sky. On the water were no boats, in the forest no people. She wasgloriously alone.

  "Oh!" Florence breathed, stretching out her hands as if to gather it in.

  Now there came another change. Fading away as in the movies, half thetrees became bare and leafless. The rocks, the grass and all the barrenbranches were bedecked with snow. The surface of the water glistened."Winter," she whispered. Then, as a strange emotion swept over her, shecried, "Where? Where?"

  As if frightened away by that sudden sound, the vision vanished and thereshe sat staring at a glass ball that was, as far as her eyes could tellher, just a hard glass ball and nothing more.

  "How strange!" She pinched herself. "How very strange!"

  But now a change was coming over the room itself. It was slowly fillingwith a dim light. She made out indistinctly a broad, black, deadfireplace, and above it on the mantel a great green dragon with fieryeyes.

  Then with a sudden start she sat straight up. On the opposite wall,against the midnight blue velvet, a shadow had appeared, a very distinctshadow of a man. Or was it of a man? The nose was long and sharp. Thechin curved out like the tip of a new moon. It was a terrifying profile.

  "The--the Devil!" She did not say the words--only thought them. At thesame time she seemed to hear her dead aunt say, "All this fortune tellingbusiness belongs to the Devil."

  "Well? How about it?"

  Florence could not have been more startled by these words had they beenshouted in her ear. They had been said quietly by Madame Zaran. She hadreturned. And in the meantime the sinister shadow had vanished from thewall.

  "I--why, I--" With a sort of mental click the girl's mind returned to hervision of water, forest, and sky. "I saw--"

  "Wait! Do not tell me, not now." Madame held up a hand. "Ah, you are oneof those who are fortunate! It is given to very few that they shall seevisions in the crystal ball on the very first time of their trying. Youwill go far. You must come again and again."

  Madame's hands were in motion. Florence fancied she could see thoseclaw-like fingers raking in piles of crisp new greenbacks.

  "But I may be doing her a grave injustice," she reproved herself.

  "I shall return," she found herself saying to Madame Zaran.

  "Perhaps tomorrow?"

  "Perhaps tomorrow."

  Scarcely knowing what she did, the girl let herself out of the room,caught the elevator, and next moment found herself in the brightsunlight, which, after all that midnight blue darkness and air ofmystery, seemed very strange indeed.

  "Now for Sandy and his glass box," she thought to herself when her mindhad become accustomed to the world of solid reality about her. Sandy washer youthful red-headed reporter. Sandy was her "ghost writer." Shesupplied the material of her own column, "Looking Into the Future." Itwas Sandy who pounded it all into form on his trusty typewriter. His"glass box," as she laughingly called it, was an office on the sixthfloor of the newspaper office building that looked down upon the city'sslow, easy-going river.

  Sandy was not at all like the river. He was up-and-coming, was Sandy. Theinstant she came into his glass box he bounced out of his chair.

  "Hope you've got something good today!" he cried. "Big Girl, we've got areal thing here. Knocking 'em cold, we are. Look at this!" He put hishand on a wire basket filled to overflowing with letters. "All for you,all fan mail. And the things they want to know!" He laughed a merrylaugh. "Old maid wanting to know some charm for attracting a man; amother wanting the name of a crystal-gazer who can see where her longlost boy is; men wanting a fortune teller that will give them tips on thestock market. Funny, sad, tragic little old world of ours! It wants togaze into the future right enough. They--

  "But say!" he broke off to exclaim. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost."

  "Do I?" Florence's eyes brightened. "Well, I've got a real story thistime. I--

  "Wait a minute!" Florence broke short off to go dashing out of the glassbox, then started gliding on tiptoe after a girl who was hurrying downthe long narrow corridor.

  "It doesn't seem possible," she whispered to herself. "But it's true.That's the girl I saw in that room of midnight blue velvet, the one whosaw moving figures in the crystal ball. And here she is hurrying alongtoward Frances Ward's desk. I'll get her story. I surely will. I _must_!"she murmured low as she hurried on.

  She was mistaken in part at least. There are some people whose storiesare not to be told at a single sitting. The girl hurrying on before herwas one of these.

  Frances Ward it had been who found Florence her latest opportunity forwork, mystery and adventure. As Florence thought of all this now, a greatwave of affection for the gray-haired woman swept over her.

  Frances Ward was old, perhaps past seventy. Her hair was frizzy, herdress plain and at times almost uncouth. Her desk was always covered witha littered mess of letters, paper files, scribbled notes and pictures. "Apoor old woman," you might say. Ah, no! Frances Ward was rich--not indollars perhaps; still she _was_ not altogether poor at that--she wasrich in friends. For Frances Ward was, as someone had named her,"Everybody's Grandmother." She called herself, at the head of one column,"Friend of the People." This, in a great busy sometimes selfish,sometimes wicked city, was Frances Ward at her best, the Friend.

  Because of this, the mysterious young girl whom Florence had only the daybefore seen gazing into the crystal ball and apparently seeing mostmysterious pictures of her early life, was now calling upon Frances Wardfor advice.

  As Florence reached the door of Mrs. Ward's office, she heard themysterious girl say, "I--I am June Travis."

  "Oh!" There was a note of welcome in the aged woman's voice. "Won't youhave a chair? And what can I do for you?"

  Frances Ward did not so much as look up as Florence, after slipping byher, seated herself before a narrow table in the corner of her office andbegan scribbling rapidly. This was not Florence's accustomed place. ButFrances Ward was old. She understood many things.

  "Well, you see--" the strange girl's fingers locked and unlockednervously. "I--I read your column al--almost every day. It--it hasinterested me, the way you--you help
people. I--I thought you might beable to help me."

  "Yes." Frances Ward bestowed upon her a warm, sincere smile. "I might beable to help you. Will you please tell me how? You see--" she smiledbroadly. "I am neither a mind reader nor a fortune teller, so--"

  "No!" The girl shuddered. "No, of course you're not. But just think! Itis partly that, about fortune tellers, I wanted to ask you. Do youbelieve in them, crystal-gazers and all that?"

  "No--" Frances Ward appeared to weigh her words. "N-no, I'm afraid Idon't, at least not very much. Of course, some of them are keen studentsof human nature. If they can read your face, understand your actions,they may be able to help you to understand yourself so as to meet withgreater success. But--"

  "Do you believe they could make you see people in the crystalball--people that you have not seen for years and years?" The girl leanedforward eagerly.

  "I should say that would be quite unusual." Frances Ward smiled. "Ishould like to witness such a feat. I should indeed."

  "Perhaps you can!" June Travis exclaimed. "I saw it only last evening,saw it with my own eyes. I saw my father, whom I have not seen for tenyears--saw him distinctly in the crystal ball!"

  "You seem quite young." Frances Ward spoke slowly. "You must have been avery small child when your father--" she hesitated. "Did he die?"

  "No! Oh, no!" the girl exclaimed. "He--he just went away. But he didn'tdesert me. He left money, plenty of money, for my care. That--that's whyI am so anxious to find him now. It's the money. There is quite a lot ofit, and I shall soon be sixteen. And then--then I shall have to managethe money all by myself. And that--that frightens me."

  "Money. Plenty of money," Florence was repeating to herself in thecorner. Strangely enough, at that moment she seemed to see the shiningcrystal ball. About the ball, with wings that carried them round andround in ever widening circles, were bank notes. Ten, twenty, fifty, onehundred dollar bills, they circled round and round. And, swinging wildly,clawing at them frantically but never catching one, was a hand, the TigerWoman's hand, the hand of Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer.