They were destined, these planes, for the same little city, Happy Vale. Both Jeanne and Rosemary were ignorant of this fact. So it is in life, two congenial souls travel for years along the same path, all unconscious of one another’s nearness.
Rosemary’s interest in her passengers increased as she became better acquainted with them. They were, she discovered, from the University—sociologists, teachers of ethics, psychologists—all delightfully simple, kindly people who laughed and joked about the long strings of letters Ph.D., LL.D. and the like, attached to their names.
She was not long in discovering that a tall thin man with long hair and thick glasses named H. Bedford Biddle had chanced upon what he spoke of as a “rare find” in the field of sociology. They were all, it seemed, going for a look at his “find.”
The “find,” she knew in advance, was Danby Force’s cotton mill and his little city of Happy Vale. She was thrilled at the thought of seeing him once more.
As she listened to these learned men discussing the “find” she realized there was much she could tell them about it. Not being asked, however, she kept silent. She smiled from time to time at their curiously learned remarks about a thing that to her had seemed quite simple and very beautiful, a group of common people, working together to make their little city the happiest, most contented in all the world.
They landed on the outskirts of a beautiful little city. A bus carried them to the factory. There they were met by Danby Force who had a very special message for the little stewardess.
“I wanted you to come.” It was a rare smile he gave her, something quite special that warmed her heart. “I felt you were interested and would truly understand.”
“And is—have you—”
“No.” His voice was low. “We have not found her. We have no true notion of the harm she may have done. We can only hope.” He was speaking, Rosemary knew, of the spy.
It was an hour later when, after a frugal repast wonderfully prepared, they were ready to enter the mill.
Rosemary had dropped modestly to the rear of the group when of a sudden she noted some stranger joining their party. With a quick eye for faces she already knew all her party well. “He is not of our party, and yet,” she told herself, “there is something familiar about him. He gives me the shivers. I wonder why.”
A little later she was thinking to herself, “Wonder if he has been invited to join us. None of my affair—but—” But what? She did not know.
Invited or no, the youth did join this group. He did go with them. To Rosemary his attitude was disconcerting. A part of the time he seemed quite indifferent, the rest of the time he was like one on tip-toes. Drinking in every word that was said, at the same time he went through strange motions, fumbling first at his vest, then at his pockets.
Their journey through the plant was half over.
“No,” Danby Force was saying, “this is not Utopia. We have made mistakes and been criticized. Members of our group have complained and claimed unfair treatment. Some have moved away. This is human. But we are trying to live up to our motto: ‘Do something for someone else.’ We—”
For the first time, with no apparent reason, the mysterious stranger looked Rosemary square in the eyes. His black eyes flashed a dark challenge. Instantly she knew this was no youth. This was the mysterious dark lady! By the gleam of an eye she had made this discovery. This woman had changed her complexion and her disguise. She had returned for more facts, perhaps for the secret formula. And what was she, Rosemary Sample, to do about it? Inside her a tumult was raging. Externally she was calm. “I must think,” she told herself, “think calmly. And then I must act.”
In the meantime Jeanne too had made a discovery. Was it important? Who could tell? An hour after Rosemary’s party left the small landing field at Happy Vale, Jeanne’s dragon fly came circling down to at last taxi to a position close beside a small silver plane.
“That ship,” Jeanne said to Madame, “looks familiar. And—” she clapped her hands. “I know where I saw it before.”
Her heart skipped a beat as, making a dash for it, she peered within. “Oh!” she breathed out her disappointment. “She is not there!” This was the luminous silver ship that one night had hovered over her golden tree, the very one she had followed so far next day. She was sure of that. A young man sat at the wheel. He seemed about to start the plane.
Throwing open the door, he said, “Howdy, sister. What can I do for you?”
“Wh—where is she?” Jeanne asked breathlessly.
“She?” He appeared not to understand.
“The dark lady.”
“Which one?” He laughed. “I’m told there are several in America.”
At that Jeanne decided to give him up. “Only one more question,” she thought.
“How do you make it shine all over at night?” she asked.
“There are ten thousand holes in the fusilage and the planes,” he explained in a friendly tone. “Neon tubes made of a special kind of glass run everywhere inside the plane. When we light these tubes they shine out through all the little holes. Simple, what?”
“Very simple,” Jeanne agreed.
A moment later she saw him go bobbing across the field to rise at last and soar away.
“All the same,” Jeanne told herself, “he did once have that dark lady, the spy, as a passenger. Wonder if he has her still?” She concluded that plane would bear watching if it ever returned.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GYPSY’S WARNING
When Rosemary Sample discovered that the person who had attached herself to the learned party being conducted through the textile mill was none other than the spy, she found herself in a tight position. This visit of the wise men, she realized from the look on Danby Force’s serious face, was an occasion of no small importance. “A group of University professors do not charter a plane every day in the week in order that they may be conducted through a factory or mill,” she assured herself. “If I cry ‘WOLF!’—if I let them know there is an industrial spy in their midst, everything will be thrown into confusion. The charm will have been broken, the entire effect lost.
“I’ll keep an eye on this spy,” she thought, “I’ll see that nothing is taken from the mill. When the tour is over I will see that she is taken into account and made, at least, to explain why she is here.” That the matter would go much farther than that, she did not doubt. Would there be a struggle? She shuddered.
During the half hour that followed, though no one would have guessed it, Rosemary heard not a word that her good friend Danby Force was saying to the learned professors.
And then, at the very end, Danby did something that commanded her attention in spite of herself. The guests were passing one at a time through a narrow door. Danby was working levers on a peculiar instrument.
“Perhaps you would like to know—” there was an amused look on his face. “All of you might like to know what I am doing. I am spraying you with the light from an X-ray lamp.
“In your case I am sure it is quite unnecessary. But it is a precaution we take with all those who pass through our mill. In these days of keen industrial struggle there are spies everywhere seeking to secure advantages through trickery. They often carry tiny cameras concealed upon their persons. Should there be one such among you, the X-ray light would entirely ruin his negatives. His picture-taking would be without result.”
As he made this explanation Danby caught and held the little stewardess’ interest for a brief interval. Fatal interest. Ten seconds later, when she gripped his arm to whisper, “Danby Force! There—there is your spy!” she found herself staring at empty space. The spy had vanished.
Danby stared at her in amazement. “What? You don’t mean—” He was apparently unable to finish.
“Yes, yes! She was here. She was dressed as a young man. But it was a woman. I saw her fumbling at the
back of her coat, as only a woman would. And now—now she’s gone!”
“Quick!” He whispered low, that the professors might not hear. “Run outside. Perhaps you can see her. If you do, ask any man about the plant to seize her. He’d do it at the risk of his life.”
There was no demand for such heroism. The spy had vanished. Look where she might, call others to her aid as she did, the little stewardess could find no trace of her.
When, disappointed and downhearted, she returned to the office of the plant, Danby Force only smiled and said quietly, “Forget it. We will catch up with her yet. You’ll see!
“And now,” he added briskly, “come with me. We are to take this group of learned men for a tour of our little city. Then, I regret to say, we must part once more. You are to start them back to Chicago in just one hour.”
What Rosemary saw in that hour’s ride through shady streets and narrow, beautiful lanes more than once caused her throat to tighten with pure joy at the realization that here at least was one community where happiness and simple prosperity reigned. The streets were clean, the narrow lawns well cared for, the small homes painted, and the people, for the most part, smiling.
Yet, even as her heart swelled with admiration for those who could bring such a state of affairs into being, her mind was filled with misgiving.
“It doesn’t seem possible that one selfish person could spoil all this,” she said in a low tone to Danby.
“Yet it is possible.” His brow wrinkled. “Once the secrets of our new processes are in the hands of unscrupulous persons, they will be exploited. And that will bring ruin to us.
“We have not tried to expand,” he said a moment later. “Perhaps we should have done so. But it has seemed to us that much of the unhappiness of the world has been brought about by the desire of honest but misguided men to tear down factories and build bigger, to cut costs, to sell cheaper in every market. Our aim has been an honest living, and simple contentment for all.”
“Simple contentment for all,” the girl whispered to herself. “What would that not mean if it were realized by every person in this great land of ours!”
Yet, even as she thought this, an imaginary colossal figure appeared to loom above her, the figure of a dark-faced woman who never smiled, and she seemed to be saying:
“My bag! My traveling bag! It is gone!”
“And yet it was not gone,” the girl told herself.
“There’s a golden-haired French girl,” Danby Force was speaking again. “She travels in an airplane with a gypsy woman and a child. Strange combination,” he mused. Then, more briskly, “They have a secret of dyeing in purple that would be of immense value to us. But it belongs to hundreds of gypsies in France. Dare we ask her to reveal that secret? Have we a right to it? That, for the moment, is a question. I am unable to answer.”
“Yes,” Rosemary replied, “I too know Petite Jeanne. She is a dear!”
Little did either of them realize that at this very moment Jeanne was close at hand, on Happy Vale’s landing field. Rosemary left that very field an hour later without discovering Jeanne’s presence.
That afternoon, on wandering across the grounds before the mill, Florence came face to face with Hugo. He appeared quite worried and ill at ease. His attempt to favor her with one of his dazzling smiles was a failure.
“Does he know I took the picture?” she asked herself after he had passed on. “Does he know about the camera? And was it his camera?”
As she closed her eyes and tried to picture to herself the face of the spy she had so long sought, she saw not Miriam Dvorac and her dark sister, not Hans Schneider, not Ina Piccalo and not the curious person who trimmed the shrubs about the grounds. Instead, a very different face appeared, a smiling face she had seen many times before. Startled by this picture, she exclaimed: “No! No! It cannot be!” And yet the picture remained.
Yes, as Florence had guessed, Hugo was troubled, so very much troubled that any person with an eye for such things could have told it quickly enough. And he was superstitious. Oh, very much so! Selfish people who think much of their own happiness and very little of others are likely to be superstitious. So, when one of his fellow-workers told him that something very strange had happened—that two gypsies, one very old and dark, and one young, blonde and beautiful, had come flying in from the air, he said at once: “It is Fate. I shall have my fortune told.”
Jeanne was not in sight when he arrived. Madame Bihari, seated upon her bright rug before the tent, was shuffling her witch cards. Shuffling, dealing, then gathering them up to shuffle and deal again, she did not so much as look up as Hugo, magnificent in his bright garments, approached. His roving eyes sought in vain for the beautiful young gypsy. His countenance fell.
“But after all,” he reasoned, “I came to have my fortune told. The older ones are best for that.”
“Old woman,” he said rather rudely, “tell my fortune.”
Madame did not look up. Her face darkened as she cut and dealt the cards.
Hugo appeared to understand, for he said in a quiet tone, “I would like my fortune told.”
Madame looked up. Something like a dark frown passed over her face. Madame had lived long and in many lands. There were faces that to her were like an open book in a bright light. She read them with greatest ease.
“Today,” she said slowly, “we have traveled far.”
Then she shuffled and dealt once more.
Hugo grew impatient. He opened his lips to utter harsh words, when Madame said:
“Cross my palm with silver.”
Carelessly, Hugo threw a silver half dollar on the rug. The frown on Madame’s face deepened.
“Here are the cards,” she said in an even tone. “You must sit down before me. You must shuffle them well. You will cut them with your left hand—this is very important, then you will deal them six in a row, then eight in a row for five rows, after that six in a row once more. All must be face up with pictures toward me. To deal wrongly is sure to bring bad fortune.”
Hugo’s hand trembled as he cut and dealt the cards. Darkness had fallen. Only the glimmer of a small fire lighted up the cards and Madame’s dark face. Despite his care, he turned the picture of a snake toward himself.
“Ah!” Madame snatched at the card. “You have redoubled your misfortune.”
“Here! Give me the cards! I’ll deal them again!” Hugo exclaimed.
“What is done is done.” Madame’s voice seemed to come from the depths of a well.
And “Ah!” she muttered after one moment of scrutinizing the cards. “What an evil fortune you have laid out before me!”
At this Hugo appeared to exert all his will to snatch away the cards, but seemed powerless to move a muscle. So he sat there staring.
“The mountain, the broken glass—” Madame was speaking now in a monotonous singsong. “The fox, the dog, the rapier, the lightning, the lion, all clustered about you and all telling of misfortune! My life has been long, but never have I read such omens of evil!
“And such a jolly life as you have lived!” She went on without looking up. “Everything has been yours—youth, love, friends, happiness—all that you could ask.”
“And now?” The words stuck in Hugo’s throat.
“Now—” Madame’s voice rose. “Now it were better for you if you were not in your native land. Discovery is at hand. Hate will enter where admiration and love have lingered long. The wealth you have hoped for will never come. You shall wander far alone without a friend.”
After Madame had ended this long utterance of prophecy, she sat for one full moment staring gloomily at the cards. Would she have changed their reading if she could? Who can say? How had she known so much? Had someone told her? Certainly not. Had the cards truly guided her? Again we must reply, who knows? There is wisdom in every land that to us, who think ourselves so very wise, is hi
dden.
When Madame looked up at last, Hugo was gone. Darkness had closed about the place where he had been. With a heavy high, Madame gathered up her cards. Then, having thrown fresh fuel on the fire, she called softly: “Jeanne! My Petite Jeanne!”
Jeanne peered with sleepy eyes from within the tent. “Jeanne,” Madame said, “tonight I have told a fortune. Ah, such a terrible fortune! Tomorrow, my Jeanne, tomorrow and the day that is to follow, strange things will happen, very strange indeed.”
She did not describe the person whose fortune had been told, nor had Jeanne seen him. She had been asleep in the tent. Perhaps this was unfortunate. But you alone shall be the judge.
CHAPTER XXIV
48—48
It was rather late on the following afternoon that Florence received a hurry-up call from Danby Force. She went at once to his office in the mill.
As she entered she found him in a fine state of excitement. He had been pacing the floor but, as she entered, he turned abruptly toward his desk. Snatching up a handful of pictures, he held them out to her.
“Look at these!”
Florence looked. “They were taken inside the mill,” she said.
“By a spy!” His eyes fairly shone. “And with the camera you gave me, the little one that is worn in a button hole. Whose is it?”
“I—I truly do not know.” Her head was in a whirl. “But I—per—perhaps I should tell you. Yes, yes I must. Hugo stole a picture, a very rare little painting.”
“Stole it?” He stared.
“Yes. He stole it. Can’t be any doubt of it. I saw it in his private room. I took it for the rightful owner. This—this camera was behind it. Was it—”
“It was his beyond a doubt.” Danby was staring harder than ever.
At that moment the girl thought she caught some stealthy movement about the ivy outside the window. She looked quickly. Did she catch sight of a face? She could not be sure. If so, it was gone on the instant.
“Hugo!” Danby’s voice rose. “Hugo! He is our spy! Who would believe it!”
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