by Don Wilcox
Louise caught smiles from all corners of the dining room. These guests were an interesting group, so very congenial regardless of their difficulties with the King’s English. There were Americans among them, too, famous names and faces that were familiar to Louise. She couldn’t help realizing that the whole group of them loved her, and it was quite amusing the way they vied with each other to secure her attention.
The radio mention of Robert Porter and James Stark gave the American scientists their chance to recount some harmless gossip concerning the careers of the persons involved.
Sometimes Louise blushed a little as she listened. Both of these men were her personal friends. Presently she excused herself to answer a long-distance telephone call.
Louise Wilmott had often denied that” she was a political genius, and the public was aware that she was not striving for a high political career for the sake of selfish ambition or personal glory. But Louise Wilmott herself was something of a legend.
She had once been known as that nice little Wilmott girl who ran errands tor people. Back in the small town she had done all sorts of odd jobs while attending high school. When she went on to college she worked for two years in the homes of wealthy people, as maid, bookkeeper, hostess, and companion to the lady of the house.
Wherever she went she was recognized as a person of talent and intellect and beauty that was more than skin-deep. Before she had finished college she had traveled in Europe and learned some foreign languages. Slowly but surely, her single, simple philosophy crystallized. Her friends watched her apply it in a thousand ways, and they were convinced.
In college politics, and soon thereafter toward the affairs of the nation, she boldly declared her principles: Our science stands ready to serve us; our problems are quickly solved if we drop personal prejudices and look to science for our answers.
Two promising young politicians were primarily responsible for Louise Wilmott’s rise to the honorary position of Miss Citizen.
One was James Stark, the youngest senator, a relative of one of the wealthy families that had once employed Louise.
James Stark never made a speech, in Congress or out, without referring to her political principle.
When Louise recently decided to retire from her throne of honor it was partly because of James Stark. He wanted to marry her. She was not in love with him.
Perhaps she had never had time to fall in love. But was James Stark in love with her—or was he seeking a marriage that would enhance his political prestige?
Louise had found it impossible to answer that question. She had come away from Washington partly to search her own heart.
The person who had yielded his position in the Senate to James Stark was the magnetic young orator, Robert G. Porter.
Bob Porter had been disqualified from office on a curious technicality. He was judged to be too young to meet the constitutional requirements. It was a rare case in which there were no existing records to show how old he was.
Bob Porter was quoted as saying, “My age? I haven’t any age. I’m simply a part of the never-ending life of all mankind. I don’t feel any need for an age.”
This statement was twisted into the damning implication that Bob Porter knew his years didn’t qualify him, and so his victory slipped out of his hands.
But Bob Porter was a gifted speaker, and he was put to work in Washington and over the nation for a bloc of Congressmen. They were the most outspoken champions of a true democracy, and he was their silver-tongued spokesman.
Like his one-time opponent, he made frequent references to the principle that Miss Citizen stood for. But with one important difference: “If science can supply the answers . . .”
That ever-present if was in itself a challenge to thought. It would lead the listeners to ask themselves, “Is there an. agreement among the scientists on these matters? Can science be applied in this field? Would the lawmakers dare to demand the scientists’ answers in politics as they do demand it in their telephones and radios and airplanes?”
Twice Louise Wilmott had been on the same platform with Bob Porter, and her brief, pleasant conversations with him before and after the speeches were her only personal association with him.
She had remembered those conversations, always with a renewed surprise to recall that the confident young orator had seemed a trifle shy in her presence.
Their paths had not crossed for more than a year. But somehow, as Louise now left the dining room to answer the telephone, she thought, half aloud, “Bob Porter Bob Porter What keeps bringing him into my mind?”
She picked up the receiver, half expecting—But it was not Bob Porter.
It was Washington’s youngest and handsomest senator, James Stark.
“I’ve just returned from South America,” came the familiar voice. “I find that you make news even when you go into seclusion.”
“Not intentionally,” said Louise, laughing. “I came here to be alone.”
“And fifty scientists barge in on you. I’d call that a major accident.” The Senator sounded slightly sarcastic. But in a very determined voice he added that he’d like a chance to talk with that group before it disbanded. “And I want to talk with you, too, Louise, now that you’ve had some time to think things over.”
“But I haven’t had time to think of anything: I just got here.”
“Come, come. I’ll bet you’ve had a dozen games of chess with that nutty scientist your aunt used to talk about.”
“Only one game so far.”
“And you beat him?”
“It wasn’t with him. It was—oh, I can’t tell you.”
“You can tell me everything, Louise. You know I don’t like secrets. I’m going to fly out tonight.”
“Please, Jim, there’s such a lot of confusion here.”
“Then tomorrow night. I’m coming out and beat you at chess.”
“You never did, you know,” Louise laughed.
“Sometimes I think that’s the reason you’ve refused to marry me. You and your silly chess. Well, I’m coming, and I’m going to win the game . . . Tomorrow night. . .”
Louise crossed the hallway to the oaken doors with the squares of colored glass. She looked out at the wide garden stretching over the gentle slope to the wooded hills. The shadows of the poplars spread long and blue across the open spaces. The sun was setting. One of the garden workers was riding back to the shed on the power lawn mower. Night hawks were swooping down on fluttering wings.
She ascended the stairs to her room, picked up her little portable radio and returned to the north door. She spoke to the maid.
“Janet, you may tell Brenda and Professor White that I’m going for a walk this evening. I may be quite late.”
CHAPTER V
Dancing Shadows
The rising moon gave forth its shower of strained gold. The silver maples glistened. The red roses on the trellis turned to deep purple. The graceful white arcade and the marble table softened their surfaces with a mottled blanket of moonlight and leafy shadows.
Louise placed the little portable radio on the table, arid then there was music to blend with the night’s colors and forms and fragrances. There was Nature’s music, too—the low, humming sounds of a garden on a summer evening, all a part of the larger symphony of an enchanting night.
Louise sat, listened, waited. Her soul was in tune with all this beauty. The spirit that enveloped her was the sort of indescribable pleasure that might come with journeying far away from the practical world of urgent problems, drifting into a new universe of untold wonders.
The table was before her. She had only to touch the edge. The drawer opened silently, as if in response to her unspoken wish.
Silently the chess-men lifted back the covering of black silk and crept forth, each to his place on the surface of pink and white squares.
Then it was that the jeweled men began to move. Not as if in a game, but to the music, gently swaying. The music grew brighter; the little creatures of ivory sw
ung into the dance.
It was fun to watch them. Louise, laughing, began to sway with them, and fancied she caught a quick smile from the white queen each time the little figurine spun around.
Louise began to tap her feet. Then in response to a merry beckon from the queen, she rose and began to dance around the table.
She saw the mischievous black bishop dodge in front of the black knight and send him and his flashy sword spinning across the king row. The knight avoided falling off the table only by tumbling against the little radio. He gave the volume control a turn as he climbed to his feet. The little radio did its best then to sing its music out to the whole garden, and so the dance went on.
Dancing toys, dancing shadows, dancing hearts.
Was it a shadow that moved through the arcade and caught Louise dancing in his arms? Or a toy? Or a human heart?
Whatever it might be within its silken mask and its jeweled cloak, it was a part of the gay, rapturous night.
“I’m dreaming,” Louise whispered. “I know I’m dreaming. But reality is too far away. I’ll never, never wake up.”
“Is there anything unreal about dancing?” the jeweled phantom asked. “I only wish there were a little sawdust under our feet.”
“Yes—even if I’m dreaming,” Louise smiled. “A little smoother footing—a little sand, perhaps—”
“Sand—of course. That’s easy.”
And as the low voice sounded in her ear there was a sanded surface beneath her feet. What a pleasant dream, where wishes could be so easily answered.
“And now,” her phantom partner said, “you must have some emeralds to match my own. A bracelet? Rings?”
At once the jeweled adornments appeared to grace her hands—yes, and her feet! A band of precious stones sparkled from the toe of each of her slippers. The dance went on gayer than ever. The weight of bracelets made her aware of the graceful drooping of her hands.
But should she accept this gift of jewelry? No, that would be wrong. Such exquisitely valuable gifts! And from one whose Very existence she was trying to deny!
“What are you thinking?” her dancing partner asked.
“They’re so beautiful, but I’m waiting for them to disappear. I mustn’t wear them.”
“They only add charm to your graceful dancing. Are they too heavy on your arms?”
“Please, let’s sit this one out,” said Louise.
Then they were sitting hand in hand at the edge of the platform, and the gay dance was going on without them. Only now it was just the shadows of themselves that danced.
Most of the merry little chess-men were still whirling and tumbling to the radio’s rhythm. A few of them were standing at the edge of the table pointing, out to the phantom dance of Louise and her partner. It amused the black bishop so that he bent double with laughter. The black and white queen applauded in rhythm.
For the phantom dance was as if Louise and the man in the mask were still spinning about with graceful movements. Only they weren’t really there. It was just their shoes and jewels and adornments that kept going. Louise could see the emerald-studded fanshaped cap swaying as if being worn. She would see the rings and the bracelets glide through curves, glittering with reflected light. Beneath were her jeweled pumps and his shoes carrying on with swift graceful step.
“There we have it,” said the man sitting beside her. “While our spirits dance on we’ll sit here and talk. I hope you don’t miss your slippers too much.”
Louise smiled to discover that she was in her stocking-feet. Her mysterious partner was barefoot.
“I should think,” she said, “that you would remove your mask.”
“I hope to remove it very soon,” he said. “First, however, I wish to be sure that you are willing to go farther with me into my world.”
“Is it a far-off world?”
“It’s a very special world,” he said. “Very few persons will ever look to it with an attitude of trying to understand or appreciate it. The average person would fear it as something unreal.”
“I’m afraid I’m dreadfully average,” said Louise. He was pressing her hand with a touch almost as gentle as moonlight. She could not understand the spell that was being woven around her. She tried to explain it to herself. “It’s utterly unreasonable that I should have come out here to see you again tonight. But I can’t deny that I do rather like you.”
“Will you come with me?” He rose. “There is an invisible river of magic flowing through this garden. Very few persons ever see it. But perhaps you—”
Louise didn’t rise. Presently the man in the mask sat down beside her again. The music faded to silence and the radio switch clicked off. Then Louise saw that her pumps were on her feet, that his shoes had been restored, that the dancing chess-men were climbing back into the drawer and drawing the black silk over them.
“If you care to understand why I am reluctant to enter this realm of fantasy with you,” she said, “it is because it is all opposed to what I am and what I believe.”
“Explain, please.”
“I have built my career out of championing science.”
“And do you know all there is to know about science? Or is much more waiting to be discovered?”
“Much waits, I realize—but this weird demonstration of impossibilities that goes on out here in the garden—it can’t have any reality.”
“You dislike it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. In fact, I find myself turning to all these cavortings of chess-men and magic jewelry. I am falling in love with the impossible!”
“And why not?”
Louise looked back toward the lighted mansion. “The scientists are. here tonight. They have come for the benefit of my leadership—they are ready to help me with the world’s most important task—applying science to the needs of government. This very moment I am a deserter to my own cause”
The man in the mask was looking at her very intently. His fan-shaped cap tilted back slowly, and she felt the penetration of his steady dark eyes. “Is that all?” he said.
“There is a certain—” she began.
“Ah!”
“A man who is making a career for himself in Washington. He boosted me for the position of Miss Citizen. You may have heard of him. He’s a senator.”
“I know him well,” said the man in the mask. “He’s Senator. Stark.”
“Oh—how did you know?”
“He has crossed my path often enough. I should know him.”
“Then he is not your friend?”
“My sworn enemy. And, need I add, my bitter and hated rival.”
“Rival? For office?”
“For your hand. You see, Miss Wilmott Louise—I fell in love with you a long while ago. Now that the fates have brought us together again I am more hopelessly in love than ever.”
“Oh!” Louise caught her breath. “And so I’m asking—aren’t you ready to bend to this world of mine? Is this senator in love with you?”
“He’s coming tomorrow night determined to marry me.”
The man in the mask repeated slowly, “Is he in love with you?”
“He has professed the highest admiration for my scientific program.”
“And you?”
“I’m on a toboggan, coasting-coasting away—coasting into the unknown so fast I can’t stop. Please—”
“Take you back?”
“Please stay with me.”
CHAPTER VI
Vanishing Act
Brenda was having her difficulties keeping everything under control. Teddy White was no more help than a ten-year-old boy. You’d think a man of fifty with a white beard and a very brainy forehead would be of some use when it came to herding a gang of his own fellow scientists.
“Your beard should be on a frisky young billy-goat,” said Brenda, “Stop running around in circles up and down the stairs. What’s the matter?”
“It’s my papers,” Professor White complained. “If I could but find a few fragments
of notes which brought me to the summation of my theories, I would have something concrete upon which to base my abstract remarks to my assembled compatriots.”
“In short, if you had your papers you could talk,” said Brenda. “Have you forgotten you made your gardener burn all your waste paper the night before the bushy-haired fellow dropped through the skylight?”
“So I did. With that recollection I shall deem it futile to search further.”
“What are you going to do? I’ve sent the scientists into the big room for their conference. They’re clamoring for Louise. But if you’ll go ahead and give them a speech—”
“Without papers? Impossible!”
“Can’t you give them some kind of a speech right out of your head?”
“I would be out of my head to attempt it. Where is Louise? Why isn’t she here to quell this disturbance?”
“She’s gone for a walk. But we’ll get her. It’s the only thing to do. Teddy, could you—no, I’d just as well do it myself.”
Brenda started to the door. As an afterthought, she turned back to give Theodore White what she thought was a reasonable responsibility. “Watch that doctor, Teddy. See that he keeps out of mischief.”
“Which doctor?” said Teddy. Practically all of these scientists were doctors of something or other.
“Dr. Marcus. He’s much too interested in Louise’s bank account. Watch him.”
Brenda hurried along the garden path. At the last row of rose-bushes she hesitated for a moment. For years past she had refrained from going farther. The strange disappearances of past years—she had forgotten just how long ago—had rooted a superstition in her mind.
She summoned her nerve and hurried on. Soon she was approaching the graceful columns that surrounded the little platform and marble table. She could hear Louise’s low voice, now, also the deep, soft-spoken voice of a young man.
