Her task, that of finding the industrial spy, she believed to be an easy one. In the privacy of his inner office, she said to Danby Force, “Most of these people have lived here all their lives. You could not make a spy of them if you chose. All I have to do is to find out the ones who have been here a short time. It must be one of these.”
“You are probably right,” the young man agreed. “Not so many of them either, perhaps a dozen. I shall see that you have their names tomorrow.”
On the morrow she had the names. And, after that, one by one, in the most casual manner she looked them up. There were, she found, two middle-aged, dark-complexioned sisters named Dvorac, expert weavers who lived in a mere shack at the back of the city. Miriam, the taller of the two, appeared to be the leader. “Might be these,” she told herself. “They resemble the one who escaped.”
There was a little weasel-faced German who excited her suspicion at once. He was an expert electrician of a very special sort. He was in charge of the hundreds of motors that ran the looms and spinning machines. He was, of course, all over the place. “Finest chance in the world,” she told herself. “And he appears to be always prying about, even when nothing seems wrong.” This man’s name was Hans Schneider.
There was a girl too, one about her own age, who came in for her full share of suspicion. She worked in the dyeing room. The very first day Florence caught her slipping out with an ink bottle. The bottle was filled with dyeing fluid. “I only wanted to dye a faded dress,” the girl explained reluctantly. “You’d want to do that too if you hadn’t had a new dress for four years.”
Florence guessed she would. She wanted to accompany the girl home, but did not quite dare. So she suggested that the bottle be taken to the floor supervisor and permission obtained for its removal.
The girl, who called herself Ina Piccalo (a strange combination of names) flashed Florence a look of anger as she obeyed instructions.
“Her eyes are black as night,” Florence told herself. “She’d look stunning in a gown of deep purple and the dye is just that. I’ll be looking for that gown,” she told herself as a moment later, with a flash of her white teeth, Ina passed her, the bottle still in her hand.
This was the only instance in which Florence interfered in any way with the actions of the employees of the mill. She was, to all appearances, only a young welfare worker whose business it was to make everyone happy, with special interest in the children of the city.
This part she played very well. Long hours were spent in the mill’s gymnasium and social house, and upon its playgrounds. Not a week had passed before this stalwart, rosy-cheeked girl was known to every child of the city, and nearly every grown-up as well. “That’s her,” she would hear them whisper as she passed. “That’s the Play Lady.” Yes, she was the Play Lady; but much more than this, she was the Lady Cop, the detective who, she hoped, in time was to free their happy little city from the dark cloud that, all unknown to the greatest number, hung over them.
Yes, this truly was a happy city. Florence grew increasingly conscious of this as the days went by. The mill she found enchanting. The little city with its clean white homes, surrounded by the golden glow of autumn, was indeed a place where one might long to linger.
“Just now,” she said to herself, “I feel that I could love to live here forever.”
This mood, like many another in her strange, wandering life, she knew all too well, would pass. “And I must not allow myself to be lulled into inaction by it all,” she told herself. “There is the spy. I must find the spy. Even now he may be gathering up his stolen secrets and preparing to carry them away to some other city, or even across the sea.”
But how was one to catch a spy? Every moment of each day she was watching, watching, watching. And yet, save for the rather simple matter of Ina Piccalo’s carrying away a bottle of purple dye, nothing unusual had caught her eye.
“I may fail,” she told herself, “fail utterly.” Yet she dared to hope for a turn of the wheel of fortune—“the lucky break” as the smiling Willie VanGeldt would have called it.
CHAPTER XIV
GYPSY TRAIL
If life, for the moment, had been robbed of its adventure for Florence, the little French girl Petite Jeanne had not fared so badly. To her life had come one more thrill. It happened in a strange and quite unexpected manner. Having left the gypsy child with friends in Chicago, she and Madame Bihari had gone on a true gypsy tour of the air. Their destination was anywhere, their home the landing field that appeared beneath them at close of day. Never had Jeanne been so buoyantly happy as now. And who could wonder at this?
One evening just at sunset they came soaring down upon a landing field in the open country. Many years ago some great lover of trees had planted here a long row of hard maples. These now formed the farthest boundary of the landing field. The most glorious days of autumn had arrived. Never had there been such a gorgeous array of colors. Here red, orange, yellow and green were blended in a pattern of matchless beauty.
The light of the setting sun presented all this to the little French girl in a manner that delighted her very soul. As if attracted by some great magnet, her little plane taxied toward them. The planes were all but touching the leaves when at last the ship came to a halt.
“Madame,” Jeanne said, all but breathless with delight, “this is where we stay tonight.” Her tone became deeply serious. “Why do men from Europe say America is ugly? Nowhere in the world is there a moment more beautiful than this!” She took up a handful of golden leaves, lifted them high, then sent them sailing away into the breeze.
“Here is a little pile of wood,” she said a moment later. “There is a bare spot just out from the trees. We shall make a little fire and boil some water for tea. We shall dream just this once that we are back in our so beautiful France on the Gypsy Trail.
“And Madame!” she exclaimed joyously, “Why shouldn’t all gypsies travel in airplanes? How wonderful that would be! When the frost comes biting your toes in this beautiful northland, when the trees lose their glory and stand all bleak and bare, then they could fold their tents to go gliding away to the south. One, two, three, four, five hours racing with the wild ducks in their flight, and see! there you are! Would it not be wonderful?”
“Quite wonderful.” Madame Bihari beamed. Already she had the fire burning, the water on to boil.
They had traveled far that day. Jeanne was tired. Dragging out the pad to her cot, she spread it beneath one of those ancient maples. Stretching herself out upon it, she lay there looking up into the labyrinth of red and gold that hung above her.
“Oh,” she breathed, “if only heaven is half as beautiful as this!”
“Madame,” she said after a very long time, “why is there always trouble? Why do people struggle so much, when all this beauty may be had without asking?”
“If I could answer that,” Madame said soberly, “I should be very wise. But this you must remember, my Jeanne: wherever you go, whether you succeed or fail, you will find people ready to drag you down. Shall you let them? Surely not, my Jeanne. We must fight, my Jeanne.”
“Always?” the little French girl asked as a wistful note crept into her tone.
“Always, my Jeanne.”
For a time after that they sat staring dreamily at the fire. Then, seeming to recall half forgotten words, Jeanne murmured softly, “Does the road lead uphill all the way?” Then, as if answering her own question, “Yes, my child, to the very end.
“Trouble,” Jeanne whispered. At once she thought of her good pal Florence, then of Danby Force and the problem they were trying to solve.
“Madame,” she whispered, “do you suppose Florence has found her spy?”
“Who knows?” Madame’s words were spoken slowly. “Spies are hard to find. Some, I am told, went all through the great war and were not captured.”
“We should help her,” Jea
nne decided quite suddenly. “We shall go to that little city. Perhaps tomorrow we shall go.”
At that moment some wood sprite might have whispered, “No, Jeanne, not tomorrow.”
With the lightning bugs flashing about them and the song of tree toads in their ears, they drank their tea, munched some hard crackers, and felt that life was indeed very beautiful.
“Shall you sleep now?” Madame asked a half hour later. “The tent is ready.”
“No. Not yet.” Jeanne wrapped herself in a blanket, then stretched out beneath her canopy of gold. “How wonderful autumn is!” she sighed. “It makes you wish that life were all like this and that one might go on living forever. But this we cannot do, so it is best to sing.
“‘Dance, gypsy, dance.
Sing, gypsy, sing,
Sing while you may, and forget
That life must end.’
“I should go in,” she told herself after a time. But she did not go. Dry leaves, rustling in the breeze, seemed to whisper, stars, peeping through the trees, appeared to wink at her. The whole world seemed at peace. Even the dog that barked from some place far away appeared to be singing in the night.
“How like it is to one of those lovely nights in France,” she thought to herself. “I was only a small child. There were many gypsies, sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred. They sang and they danced. Their violins! Ah yes, how sweetly they sounded out into the night!
“And yet—” her mood changed. “Would I go back to that? Perhaps not. This is America. This is a new day. There are exciting things to do. There are mysteries to solve, people to be helped. I shall solve those mysteries. I shall help those people. I—the little French girl they call Petite Jeanne!” She laughed a low laugh.
“I should go in,” she said again. She took in three deep breaths of the pure night air, yet she did not move. Very soon after, had one been passing, he might have said, “She is asleep.” He would have spoken the truth.
When she awoke some time later, a sense of strangeness filled her mind. A spot of light in the sky caught her eye. An exclamation escaped her lips. “I am still dreaming,” she murmured. She pinched herself hard. It hurt. She must be wide awake, yet, up there in the sky, gleaming as a white tower gleams when a hundred spotlights are upon it, was a silver ship—an airplane.
“Angels!” she murmured. “They too must have taken to the air in planes.” This, she knew well enough, was pure fancy. What could this silver ship be? And what kept it glistening like a star? That there were no spotlights near, she knew well. And if there were, their beams of light would stand out against the darkness.
The silver ship began to circle as for a landing. Jeanne shuddered. What if this strange visitor of the night should land close to her own tiny plane! She was about to spring up and dash for the tent, when a vision of extraordinary beauty caught her eye. The plane, having arrived at a point directly above her leafy bower, formed a gleaming white background against which the red and gold of maple leaves stood out like the colors of the most costly tapestries.
So lost in her contemplation of this was the little French girl, she did not miss the plane when it was gone. The after-image lingered on the picture walls of her mind.
“It is gone!” she cried softly at last, “Gone!” So it was. As if swallowed up by the night, the silver ship had vanished.
“Perhaps it has gone over to the depot,” she told herself. “I may see that mysterious ship in the morning.”
Then, as if in need of companionship and protection, she rolled up her thin mattress and disappeared within the tent.
“There is a plane by the depot, a silver plane!” Jeanne exclaimed excitedly the moment she thrust her head from the tent next morning. “I must see it. There was one that glowed white all over last night. Is this the one? I must know.”
Since it was some distance to the depot Jeanne, using her plane as another might an automobile, warmed up the motor and went taxiing over.
To Madame’s vast astonishment, ten minutes later as the silver plane went gliding over the field to at last rise in air, Jeanne’s dragon fly went speeding on its trail and, in an astonishingly short time, both planes were lost in the blue.
CHAPTER XV
LADY COP OF THE SKY
But we must not forget Florence. At Danby Force’s request, she had arranged for a dance in the Community House. “Call it a waltz night,” he suggested. “All these older people love the old-fashioned dances and the waltz is the best of them all.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “there’s nothing quite like a waltz.”
She took great pleasure in arranging for this simple social affair. She sent a bevy of girls into the hills to gather branches of maple and sumac. These, all afire with colors of autumn, turned the rather drab social hall into an elfin grotto. High in one corner she hung a cardboard moon. Behind this was a powerful electric lamp.
“For the last waltz,” she whispered to Verna who was helping. “We will turn off all the other lamps and waltz by the light of the golden moon.”
“That,” said the happy girl softly, “will be grand.”
Their waltz night came and with it such a crowd as the Community House had never before known.
From the musicians of the community Florence had managed to assemble an excellent orchestra.
To the swinging rhythm of “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” Danby Force and Florence led the merrymakers away for the first dance.
“They’re happy,” Danby Force said as a pleased smile passed over his face. “Truly, peacefully happy. This waltz night idea is going to be fine. We’ll have several of them, have them all winter long.”
“Has he forgotten?” Florence asked herself. “Has the spy and my mission here slipped from his memory so soon?” It surely seemed so, for here he was planning her social service work for the distant future.
“Some day,” she told herself with a little shudder, “there will be a big blow-up around here. The spy will be found. Perhaps I shall find him. And then there will be no more social work done by little, big Florence.”
She resolved to forget all this and, for one night at least, enjoy life to its full.
The fourth waltz had come to a close with a glorious swing. She was seated on the side line with Danby Force when, of a sudden, a figure appeared on the narrow platform. A jolly-faced young man he was. His dark eyes were sparkling, his bushy black hair tumbled about his ears. His was a face to charm the world. From some woman’s gown he had snatched a broad belt of red cloth. A fantastic, romantic figure he cut indeed as he stood there waving his hands. “Well now, that was wonderful!” he shouted. “Beautiful! Artistic! Entrancing! Marvelous!
“And now—” his face became animated like a thing glowing with inner fire. “Now let’s have a little jazz.”
The orchestra leader beckoned. He bent low to listen. Then,
“No music? Bah! Who wants music? It goes like this!”
Like a clown in the circus, he produced a saxophone from nowhere at all, put it to his lips and began a series of strange sounds which everyone knew was jazz.
“Now!” He beckoned to the orchestra. His body swayed. His eyes shone. “Now!”
Who could resist him? Whether they could or not, no one did. The orchestra followed his lead. Dancers swarmed out upon the floor. Soon the place was a mad house of wild, hilarious dancing. Only Florence and Danby Force did not dance.
“Who is he?” Florence asked as a puzzled frown overspread her face.
“Hugo?” Danby Force said in a tone of surprise. “Haven’t you met him? Well, of course you might not. He’s an inspector, works in a back room. But in a place like this he’s what’s known as the life of the party.
“In fact,” he added, “that’s why I employed him. I thought, with his saxophone and his high spirits he’d stir things up. We’re a bit dull in this old town. Well�
��” he laughed an uneasy laugh. “He’s done it all right. He’s stirred us up. See for yourself. He’s only been here three months and he practically runs the town. Jolly fellow, Hugo.”
“Three months,” Florence was thinking to herself. “Then he’s one of the newcomers. He might be—”
Her thoughts broke off suddenly. Had she caught some movement behind her? A door stood ajar. Her keen eyes caught sight of a figure that vanished instantly. It was the little hunchback German, Hans Schneider, one of her suspects—she was sure of that.
As if he had read her thoughts, Danby said: “The German people are the cleverest dye makers in the world. While the World War was on and we could not get their dyes, we made some very poor cloth I can tell you. But now—”
He did not finish. She knew what he would have said: “Now if we can but find this spy, if we can protect our interests, we shall lead the world and our little city may become the center of a great industry.”
“You don’t dance to that sort of music?” he said, nodding his head toward the squealing, squawking, sobbing orchestra.
“Is it music?” Florence smiled.
“I wonder!” He did not smile. He was watching the younger people in this mad whirlpool of motion and sound. “Sometimes I wonder,” he repeated. “I’ve been told that this jazz started in the dark heart of Africa, or perhaps in the black Republic of Haiti. That it used to be practiced as a wild, frenzied dance, mingled with a sort of madness, by the Voodoo worshippers before they performed something terrible—perhaps human sacrifice.
“Anyway—” his voice changed, “this wild revel does things to our people. There’s sure to be things happen tomorrow, a whole batch of color spoiled perhaps, or bolts of cloth ruined, perhaps valuable machines wrecked. People are nervous and jumpy after just one wild night. You can’t trust them to be themselves.
“Last time we had a revel like this,” he laughed low, “one of the girls was working near a vat of indigo blue coloring matter. She—she tried a new jazz step, I believe—and—fell in! She was blue for a week after that.” He laughed aloud. Florence joined him and felt better. Her night of waltz music was spoiled, but here at least was amusement. “She would have been blue for life,” Danby went on, “only the coloring material wasn’t in its last stages.
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