“We’ve fixed up a sort of boat, wreck of an old dory,” suggested Tillie.
“Will she float?”
“I think so.”
“Fine! Give you a tow.
“Tell you what!” The boy stood up. “We’d better get my motor and bring it to the fire. Dry it out by morning. Got a three gallon can of gas. Be away with the dawn.”
The motor was soon doing its share of steaming by the fire.
“Got some rations?” the boy asked. “Of course you haven’t. But I have. Regular feast, all in cans. Always carried ’em for just such a time as this. Boiled chicken in one can, chili con carne in another, and a sealed tin of pilot biscuits.”
He brought this unbelievable feast to the place before the fire. When the chicken and the chili had been warmed, they enjoyed a repast such as even the millionaire’s son had seldom eaten.
“Well,” he sighed, as the last morsel disappeared, “as it says in The Call of the Wild, ‘He folded his hands across his feet before the fire, allowed his head to drop forward on his breast and fell fast asleep.’”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Tillie. “Let’s not try to sleep. Let’s tell ghost stories till morning.”
“Agreed!” the boy seconded with enthusiasm. “And the one who tells the best one wins this.” He laid a shining gold piece before them on a rock.
The contest was carried forward with spirit and animation. But Sun-Tan Tillie, with her weird stories of that north country was easily winner.
“Now we shall see how it performs,” said the boy, rising stiffly as day began to dawn.
He lifted his motor from its place before the fire, and carried it to his boat. Five minutes had not elapsed before it began to sput-sput merrily.
“Have you home for breakfast,” he predicted.
He made good his word. Just as Jeanne and Turkey Trot, after one more night of fruitless search, sat down to their oatmeal, bacon, and coffee, two well soaked girls broke in upon them. By dint of diligent bailing they had forced their crazy dory, towed by the equally crazy “Spank Me Again,” to carry them home.
CHAPTER XXVIII
GLOWING WATERS
There were dark looks on many faces as the story of the kidnapping of the two girls and the atrocious attempt at their lives spread about the village. The native population of this Northland is intensely loyal to its own people. The summer sojourners, too, had come to have a great love for the happy, carefree Tillie, who caught their minnows and helped to launch their boats.
“Something will come of this,” was the word on many a tongue.
As for Florence, after receiving Jeanne’s open-hearted and joyous welcome home, her first thought was of the lady cop.
“We must tell her at once,” she said to Tillie. “Our experience may fit into the task she has before her.”
“Yes,” replied Tillie, “we must.”
They rowed at once to the lonely cabin among the cedars.
But what was this? As they made their way up from the dock, they spied a white paper fluttering at the door.
“Gone!” was Florence’s intuition.
She was right. On the paper, written in the round hand of the lady cop, were these words:
They are gone. I must follow. Good-bye, girls. And thank you. I hope to meet you in another world.
The Lady Cop.
For a moment they stared in silence.
“Gone!” Florence repeated at last. “They have gone! She means the gamblers.”
“Another world,” Jeanne read in a daze.
“And we have her trunk!” Florence exclaimed suddenly.
“Her trunk?” Jeanne’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. She had not been told of this episode.
“Sit down.” Florence eased herself unsteadily to a low railing. Then she told the story of the trunk.
“And now,” she concluded, “we have that mysterious trunk, which was wanted by the gamblers, though why, not even the lady cop could guess, on our hands. They want it. She wants it. We have it. And we do not know her real name. She implied the Miss Weightman was an assumed name. What a pickle!”
“What a sour pickle indeed!” agreed Jeanne.
“And to-morrow we leave for Chicago.”
“To-morrow! It does not seem possible.” The little French girl’s heart went into a flutter. This meant that ten days from this time she would be at the center of a great stage strewn with broken instruments of war, and lighted only by an artificial moon, doing the gypsy tarantella while a vast audience looked on and—
Applauded? Who could say? So much must come of this crowded quarter of an hour. Her heart stood still; then it went racing.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “only time can tell.”
“I guess that’s true,” Florence agreed, thinking of quite another matter. “We may be able to find her in Chicago and return her trunk.
“And now—” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Now I must go to our cabin and sleep.”
The remainder of that day was uneventful. But night set all the village agog.
After a good sleep, Florence had assisted Jeanne with the packing in preparation for the morrow’s departure. They had said their sad farewell to night and the stars, a farewell that night and stars were not to accept as final. They had crept beneath their blankets and had fallen fast asleep.
Florence awoke some time later with the glow of an unusual light in her eyes.
Springing out of bed, she rushed to the window. The next instant she was shaking Jeanne as she exclaimed excitedly:
“Jeanne! Jeanne! Wake up! There is a fire! A big fire somewhere on the bay!”
After struggling into their outer garments, they rushed to the water’s edge and launched their boat.
They had not gone far before they discovered the location of the fire.
“It’s on Gamblers’ Island.” Her voice was tense with emotion. “It’s the gamblers’ cottage. It will burn to the ground.”
This last seemed certain. Already the flames were mounting high. Even in the village there was scant fire protection. On the smaller islands there was none.
Florence seemed to hear the beating of her own heart. Here was swift revenge for a cowardly crime.
But was it revenge? The lady cop had said the gamblers were gone. Perhaps they were not all gone. One might have remained behind to light the blaze, to cover some evil deed. Who could tell?
Then again, the fire might have been accidental, a mouse chewing a match.
All this time Florence was rowing sturdily. They were approaching the scene of the fire. Other boats were coming. Rowboats, motor boats, speed boats, like particles of steel attracted by the magnet, they came nearer and nearer to a common center, the fire.
At a certain distance all paused. The night was very nearly still. A faint breeze carried the soaring sparks away from the tiny island forest and out toward the water.
As the scores of craft came to rest they formed a semi-circle.
It was strange. The quiet of the night, the flames rushing silently upward. The light on the water, the faces of two hundred people, tense, motionless, lighted red by the flames. And above it all a million stars.
Florence had seen something akin to this pictured in a book. She searched her mind for that picture and found it; a circle of gray wolves sitting in a circle about a half burned-out camp fire, beside which a lone wanderer slept.
“Only these are not wolves,” she told herself. “They are people, kind-hearted people. It is the home of wolves that is going up in flames. May they never return!”
“And they never will.” She started at the sound of a voice at her elbow. Unconsciously she had spoken aloud. Tillie, who had slipped up beside her in her rowboat, had answered.
“That is not their island,” Tillie explained. “They only leased it. Now they will not be allowed to rebuild.”
“You should thank God for that.”
“I have,” Tillie replied frankly.
Once more there
was silence.
Some time later Tillie spoke again. “We have her trunk, the lady cop’s. You are goin’to-morrow. Will you take it?”
“I believe not,” Florence said thoughtfully. “I haven’t her true name. It will be safer here. If I find her I will send for it.”
After that for a space of a full half hour silence reigned supreme. Not a boat left that unbroken circle. What held them there? There was nothing they could do. What is the dread, all-potent charm that holds a throng to the scene of a fire until the last shingle has flared up, the last rafter fallen? Does it hark back to days when our ancestors knew no homes, but slept by camp fires in the forest? Who can say?
As the last wall crumbled in and the chimney came down with a crash, as if touched by a magic wand the circle melted away into the night.
Half an hour later Florence and Jeanne were once more sleeping soundly. Such is the boundless peace of youth.
CHAPTER XXIX
FADING SHORE LINES
The following night found Florence seated on the after deck of a large lake steamer bound for Chicago. Strange and varied were the thoughts and emotions that stirred her soul as she watched the dark shoreline of the North Peninsula fade in the distance.
There was a moment when she sprang to her feet and stretched her arms far out as she cried, “I want to go back! Oh, I want to go back!”
At this moment the woods and the water, the sunsets, the moon at midnight, the fish, all the wild forest creatures were calling her back.
Yet, even as this yearning passed, she felt the smooth comfort of silk stockings, caught the bright gleam of red and blue in her dress and knew that here, too, was joy. In her imagination she heard the rush and felt the thrill of a great city, experienced again the push and pull of it, and once more accepted its challenge.
“I am strong!” she cried aloud. “The summer, this wild life, has renewed my powers.”
But Jeanne? Ah, there was the question. She had accepted a mission. She had agreed to take the little French girl into the north woods and see that she had rest. Had she performed this mission well or ill?
To this question she could form no certain answer. Life in this out-of-the-way place had so pressed in upon her, adventure and mystery had so completely taken possession of her, that she had found too little time to think of Jeanne.
“What if I have failed?” Her heart sank. “What if the doctor says I have failed?”
Jeanne was asleep in her stateroom. She seemed well and happy, quite prepared for the great testing which lay just before her. But who could tell?
“So often,” she thought to herself, “we are led away from the main purpose of our lives by some surprising affair which springs straight up before our eyes and for the moment blinds us.”
Yet, as she reviewed the events of the past weeks she experienced few regrets. She had been working, not for her own glory, but that others might find success and happiness.
“But what came of it all?” she asked herself. “What mysteries did we solve?”
The problems that had perplexed her now passed, like soldiers on parade, before her mind’s eye. Who had run them down and all but drowned them on that first night? The gamblers? The gypsies? Green Eyes and her rich friends? She had found no answer.
Where were the three priceless rubies? Did they lie among the ashes of the gamblers’ cottage? Had the gamblers taken them when they departed? Had the lady cop regained possession of them? Where was the lady cop, and what was her real name? Again no answer.
What of the lady cop’s trunk? Why had the gamblers turned the cabin upside down in search of an empty trunk? How were Tillie and she ever to return it now?
The problem that stood out in her mind strongest of all was this: Who had taken them for that terrible ride out into the night waters of Lake Huron?
“The gamblers, to be sure!” Tillie would have said at once. It seemed probable that the villagers thought the same.
“And perhaps they burned the gamblers’cottage for that reason,” she told herself. Yet, of this there was no proof.
Turkey Trot and Jeanne had surprised gypsies in a feast near Tillie’s abandoned boat. Jeanne believed these gypsies had taken them on that all but fatal ride. Had they?
“If they did,” she told herself, “they were striking at Jeanne. They may strike again.”
The conclusion she reached at the end of this review of affairs was that she must keep a close watch on Petite Jeanne until the first night’s performance was over.
“They kidnapped her on the eve of her other great success,” she murmured. “They may repeat.
“And yet, that was France. This is America.”
At that she rose and walked away to their stateroom.
CHAPTER XXX
THEIR CROWDED HOUR
Petite Jeanne’s one big night was at hand. Already the shadows were growing long in her modest little sitting room. Tonight, for one brief hour at least, she was to be an actress. How the thought thrilled her! An actress for an hour. And then?
True, she had acted once upon the stage of the famous Paris Opera. But that was but a fete, an affair of a single night. Tonight much was to be decided. Would the play go on? Night after night would she dance the gypsy tarantella under the stage moon? Would these Americans applaud?
“Americans,” she said aloud, as she sat looking away into the gathering darkness. “After all, how little I know about them.”
“Americans are like all the rest of the world,” Florence replied. “They love laughter, dancing and song. Then, too, they can feel a pang of pity and shed a tear. Just dream that you are on the stage of the Paris Opera, and all will be well.”
Petite Jeanne was not sure. She had suddenly gone quite cold, and was not a little afraid.
“Green Eyes will be there. She hates me, I fear,” she murmured.
“On the stage, when the great act comes, there will be only Tico and you. The night, the broken cannons and the moon.”
“Ah, yes.” The little French girl sighed. “I must try to feel it and see it all as I felt and saw it, a small child in France.”
“In half an hour we must go to the theatre,” said Florence. “We will have a cup of tea, as we did sometimes when we were in our cabin.”
“If only we were there now,” sighed the little French girl. “Oh, why must we be ambitious? Why do we struggle so for success and yet more success, when peace awaits us in some quiet place?”
To this Florence found no answer. She rose to turn on the electric plate for tea, when the telephone rang.
She went to answer it. Petite Jeanne heard her answer the telephone, but paid no attention to her conversation until she caught the word gypsy. Then she sat straight up.
“I must meet her tonight?” Florence was saying. “A gypsy woman? But that is quite impossible.
“She is being taken to Canada tonight by the officials, you say? But how can it be necessary for me to see a gypsy? I know no gypsies. Besides, I can see no one tonight. Believe me—”
Her words were broken in upon by Petite Jeanne. “If it is a gypsy, you must see her!” The little French girl was pulling at her arm impulsively. “It is important. It must be. Besides, gypsies, they are my friends. You must remain here. I will go to the theatre alone.”
One look at Petite Jeanne’s tense face told Florence that she had no choice in the matter.
“I will see her,” she spoke into the telephone. “Send her over at once.”
They drank their tea in silence. The night was too full of portent for words.
“Gypsy?” Florence thought. “What can she want of me?”
Then she thought of those gypsies they had seen in the north country. Had they made their way to Chicago? That was not impossible. And if they had, what did this woman have to tell?
“Promise me one thing.” Petite Jeanne suddenly leaned toward her. “Bring that gypsy woman to the play. She is French. She knows the tarantella. She has known war, as it was in France. I
will dance for her. She will understand.”
“I promise,” Florence replied solemnly.
The moment for Jeanne’s departure arrived. Florence saw her carefully packed into the car sent from the theatre, then she returned to her room to wait.
With Jeanne gone, the place seemed strangely still. The clock ticked solemnly. From somewhere in the distance a fire siren set up a mournful wail.
“She is too much for me,” she whispered, speaking of Jeanne. “Think of her forcing me to remain here to meet a ragged gypsy, and this the night of all nights. And then I must bring that strange person to her show her first night!”
A knock sounded at the door. She sprang up to open it. A man stood there, not a woman. For a moment she did not see the woman behind him in the shadows.
“I beg your pardon,” said the man, “I am an immigration officer. This woman and her companions entered our country without permission. We found them in the west side settlement. They must return to Canada. This woman insisted upon seeing you.” He pushed the short, brown woman into the light.
Instantly the girl recognized her, and gasped. She was the mother of the beautiful child that had so narrowly escaped drowning.
“You wished to see me?” she asked as soon as she gained possession of her voice.
“Yes. You good. You kind. You not bad. Gypsy not forget. I must tell.”
Mystified, Florence motioned her to a seat.
The tale the woman had to tell was a long one, and passing strange. In her broken tongue, with many repetitions, it was long in the telling.
And all the time the clock was ticking away the moments. Petite Jeanne’s great hour approached.
CHAPTER XXXI
PETITE JEANNE’S DARK HOUR
Petite Jeanne reached the theatre. She was quite alone. She entered at the stage door unnoticed. A chill numbed her being as the shadowy hallway leading to the dressing rooms engulfed her.
The past ten days, as she reviewed them now, seemed a bad dream. Rehearsals had been carried to the last degree of rigor. The director had been tireless and exacting. On her return the physician had pronounced her physically perfect; yet, at this moment her knees seemed ready to cave in beneath her.
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