The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Julia K. Duncan

  “Darkness,” she heard then—“Spirit of Cristophe—darkness—the black goat—gold, gold, gold—spirit of darkness.”

  Even as these last words were spoken, the lights began slowly to fade. Then it was that for the first time Florence became conscious of some living creature in the corner opposite her own. As she looked, she saw it was a black goat with golden horns. Strangely enough, as the light continued to fade, she felt herself imagining that the goat was a spirit, the spirit of that black goat sacrificed on the highest mountain at midnight in the dark of the moon. This, she knew, was pure nonsense.

  But why all this failing light? Was this some trick? She was about to leap to her feet and demand that the thing be stopped. Then she thought of the ones who waited in the room beyond the plastered wall. “Nothing serious can happen.” She settled back.

  But what was this? The room was now almost completely dark. Along the far side of the room she seemed to catch sight of something moving. It rose and fell, like some filmy shadow or trace of light.

  “Like a ghost!” She shuddered. “Yet it is not white. It shines like ebony. It—”

  She could not really think the notion that formed in her mind which was, “This is Cristophe’s ghost, a black ghost.”

  As the thing moved slowly, oh so slowly across the wall, there came the sound of whispers—whispered words that could be heard but not understood.

  Florence was ready to flee. But what of June? She must not leave her. This thing was horrible. Yet it was fascinating.

  And then, close beside her, there was a movement. Looking down quickly, she caught two golden gleams. “The goat’s horns. He has moved, he is near me!” She was filled with fresh terror.

  And then the light began returning. Slowly as it had faded, so slowly did it return.

  Once again Florence looked at that spot close by her side. The goat was not there. Her eyes sought the opposite corner. There lay the goat, apparently fast asleep.

  “I have asked the spirit of Cristophe.” The priestess spoke in her usual melodious drawl. “He says dere must be gold, much gold. A statue to his memory must be built. There must be gold, much gold. He will tell all things—all—all things for gold.

  “There now!” she ended abruptly. “Some other time, you shall know all. There must be gold, much gold—”

  And then, for the second time, Florence saw it, the shadow on the wall. It was the same, the very same as that she had seen on Madame Zaran’s midnight blue drapes. There was the sharp nose, the curved chin, all that made up a perfect Satan’s face. One second it was there, the next it was gone. But in that second Florence saw the large black woman half rise as a look of surprise not unmixed with fear overspread her face. Then, as the shadow faded, she dropped heavily back into the arms of the chair that might have been a throne.

  A bell tinkled. The brown girl appeared. They were led out into the light of day.

  “She—she didn’t even take my ten dollars,” June whispered.

  “No, but she will in the end, and much, very much more!” These words were on the tip of Florence’s tongue, but she did not say them. This surely was a strange world.

  “June,” said Florence after they had left the home of the voodoo priestess—her voice was low and serious—“you must be very careful! Such things as these might get you into a great deal of trouble; yes, and real peril.”

  “Peril?” The younger girl’s voice trembled.

  “Just that,” Florence replied. “Most of these fortune tellers, I’m convinced, are rather simple-minded people who earn a living by telling people the things they want to hear. They read your palm, study the bumps on your head, tell you what the stars you were born under mean to you, or gaze into a crystal. After that they make you happy by saying they see that you are to inherit money, have new clothes, go on a journey, marry a rich man and live happily ever after.” Florence laughed low.

  “They charge you half a dollar,” she went on. “You go away happily and no real harm is done.

  “But some of these people, I think—mind you, I don’t know for sure—some of them may be sharpers, grafters in a big way. And when a dishonest person is prevented from reaping a rich but unearned reward, he is likely to become truly dangerous. S—so, watch your step!

  “Anyway,” she added after a time, “your problem may perhaps be solved in simpler ways. Remember the suggestion of Frances Ward? She said you should be able to recall more than you have told thus far. If you could remember the place where you lived with your father, perhaps we could find that place. Then, it is possible someone living near there would remember your father. That would help. In time perhaps we could untangle the twisted skein that is your mysterious past.”

  “Oh, do you think we could?” June’s tone was eager. “But how can I remember a thing I don’t recall?”

  “There are people, great psychologists, who have ways of making people think back, back, back into the remotest corners of their past.”

  “Do you know one of them?” June asked excitedly.

  “Not at this moment, but I could find one, I think.”

  “Will you try?”

  “Yes, I’ll try.

  “And now—” Florence’s tone changed. “I’ll have to leave you here. I—I have an appointment.”

  Florence was, in the end, to find a psychologist, and that in the strangest possible manner. Meanwhile, her appointment was with Madame Zaran and her crystal ball. There was just time to make it.

  She arrived, rather out of breath, to find the place much the same, yet somehow different. The crystal ball was in its place at the center of the room. The chair, the rug, the midnight blue draperies were the same. Madame Zaran came out with a smile to greet her. All was as before, and yet—the big girl shuddered—there seemed to be an air of hostility about the place.

  “Yes, you may gaze into the crystal.” Madame’s claw-like hands folded and unfolded. “You may see much today. I have read it in a book, the book of the stars. You were born under a remarkable constellation. Yes, I do horoscopes as well. But now you shall gaze into the crystal ball.”

  She withdrew. Florence was left alone with her thoughts and the crystal ball.

  There followed a half hour’s battle between her thoughts and the magic ball. Her thoughts won. No beautiful island came to her in the ball, no stately trees, no still waters, nothing. Only the sordid little world which, it seemed, pressed in about her, stifling all beauty, all romance, filled her mind. With all her heart she wished that she was to fly away with Sandy and Jeanne to the magic of Isle Royale in winter.

  “But I will not go.” She set her will hard. “I must not!”

  And then there, standing before her, was Madame Zaran.

  There was a strange light in the fortune teller’s eyes. She said but one word:

  “Well?”

  In that one word Florence seemed to feel a dark challenge.

  “No vision today,” she replied simply.

  “No!” Madame’s voice was harsh. “And there will be no visions for you. Never again. You have betrayed the sacred symbol!” Her voice rose shrill and high. Her short fingers formed themselves into claw-like curves. Her tiger-like hair appeared to stand on end.

  “You—” her eyes burned fire. “You are a traitor. You—”

  She broke short off. Her weak mouth fell open. Her pupils dilated, she stared at the midnight blue drapes. Then, for a third time, Florence saw it—the shadow, the long, thin face, the narrow nose, the curved chin, the shadow of Satan, all but the horns and the forked tail.

  While Madame still stared speechless, Florence slipped from her chair, glided from the room, caught the teetering elevator, then found herself once more upon the noisy city street.

  “Ah!” she breathed. “There was a time when I thought this street a dangerous place. Now it is a haven, a place of refuge.”

  She walked three blocks. Her blood cooled. Her heart resumed its normal beat. She was in a mood for thought. What did Madame Za
ran know? Did she know all? There had been a little in her column that day, the column “Looking Into The Future,” that was about Madame Zaran’s place and her methods. No names were mentioned, no address given. It was written only as an amusing incident.

  “And of course my name was not signed. It never is,” Florence thought to herself. “How could she know that I conduct that column? And yet—” Here truly was food for thought.

  “Jeanne,” she said as, two hours later, they sat reading beside a studio light, “these fortune tellers have an uncanny way of finding out all about you. That black priestess today told June all about herself. And yet, she had never seen her before. Jeanne had made an appointment over the phone, that was all. I don’t believe in black magic, though I did see something very like a black ghost. But how do they do it?”

  “How can they do it?” Jeanne echoed.

  “I’ve got a notion!” Florence exclaimed. “We’ll try it out on one of the fortune tellers of the simpler sort, you and I. What do you say?”

  “Anything for a little happy adventure,” Jeanne laughed.

  “All right, it’s a go! We’ll start it tomorrow. And finish it, perhaps, the next day.”

  “My dear, I am intrigued!” Jeanne threw back her head to indulge a merry laugh.

  Florence was glad that someone in the world could laugh. As for herself, she felt that things were getting rather too thick for comfort. She felt that somehow she was approaching an hour of testing, perhaps a crisis. When would the testing come? Tomorrow? Next day? In a week? A month? Who could say? Meanwhile, she could but carry on.

  CHAPTER XI

  FIRESIDE REFLECTIONS

  “Fortune telling with cards,” Jeanne said thoughtfully after a time, “is very old. Madame Bihari told me all about it many, many times. She truly believed that cards could foretell your fate. Do you think she was wrong?”

  “It is strange,” Florence replied in a sober tone. “It is hard to know what to believe. The whole thing seems impossible, and yet—”

  “There are many thousands who have believed,” Jeanne broke in. “Many years ago there was a very famous teller of fortunes. He used seventy-eight cards. Those were terrible times, the days of revolution. Men were having their heads cut off because they were called traitors. No one knew who would be next to be suspected and led away to the guillotine.

  “Men used to come creeping to Ettella’s place in the middle of the night to ask if their heads were to fall in the morning.

  “Can you see it, Florence?” Jeanne spread out her arms in a dramatic gesture. “A dimly lighted room, a haggard face opposite one who quietly shuffles the cards, invites the haggard one to cut the cards, then shuffles again. He spreads them out, one, two, three, four. Nothing to laugh at, Florence—no joke! It is life or death. Could the cards tell? Did they tell? When the fortune teller whispered, ‘You shall live,’ or when he said hoarsely, ‘Tomorrow you shall die,’ did he always speak the truth? Who can say? That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. But Florence,” Jeanne’s eyes shone with a strange light, “even under those terrible circumstances, men did believe. And they still believe today.”

  “Yes.” Florence shook her shoulders as if to waken herself from a bad dream. “But—many of them are frauds of the worst sort. I can prove that. We—” she sprang to her feet. “We shall try it tomorrow. This time you shall have your fortune told. What do you say?”

  “Anything you may desire,” Jeanne answered quietly. “Only let us hope it may be a good fortune.”

  “That will not matter,” was Florence’s rather strange reply, “for in the end I feel certain that I can prove the fortune teller to be a cheat. And that,” she added, “in spite of the fact that I only know her name is Myrtle Rand and that her ‘studio,’ as she calls it, is in the twenty-five hundred block on North Clark Street.”

  “We have agreed to try this,” said Jeanne, “but how will you prove that she is a fraud?”

  “You shall see!” Florence laughed. “This wonderful ‘reading’ is going to cost you two whole dollars. This is my prediction. But if you feel it is not worth it, I shall make it up to you out of my expense account.”

  “Very well, it is done. Tomorrow my fortune shall be told.” Jeanne lapsed into silence.

  It was Miss Mabee who broke in upon that silence.

  “Jeanne,” she exclaimed, “we must do something for this beautiful boy musician you found upon the roof! What is it he calls himself?”

  “Tum Morrow.”

  “Well, we must turn his tomorrow into today. He is too splendid to be lost in the drab life of those who never have a chance. Let me see—

  “I have it!” she exclaimed after a moment’s reflection. “There is Tony Piccalo. He is owner of that wonderful restaurant down there in the theatre district. He is a patron of art. He paid me well for two pictures of west side Italian life. He has often urged me to display my pictures at his restaurant. All the rich people go there after a concert or a show. I shall accept his offer. I shall display all my gypsy pictures.

  “And of course—” she smiled a wise smile. “We must have gypsy music and gypsy dancing to go with the pictures. You, my Jeanne, shall be the dancer and your Tum Morrow the star musician. What could be sweeter?”

  “But Tum is not a gypsy,” Jeanne protested.

  “Who cares for that?” the artist laughed. “A few touches of red and brown on his cheeks, a borrowed costume, and who shall know the difference? If we bill him as a gypsy boy, no one will insist upon him joining the union. And who knows but on that night he shall find some good angel with a good deal of money. The angel will pay for his further education. And there you are!”

  “But, Miss Mabee,” Jeanne protested, “they will become so absorbed in the show, they will forget your pictures!

  “But no!” She sprang to her feet as a sudden inspiration seized her. “We’ll make them look, and we’ll give them one grand shock!

  “This is it!” Her manner became animated. “You paint a sketch upon a large square of thin paper, then mount it in a frame. Set it up with all your other pictures, only have it close to the platform where I am to dance.

  “I—” she laughed a merry laugh. “I shall entertain them with the wildest gypsy dance ever seen upon the stage, and right in the midst of it I shall leap high, appear to lose my balance, and go crashing right through that picture!”

  “Rather fantastic,” said Miss Mabee. “I agree with you in one particular, however. It will give them a surprise. And that, in this drab world, is what people are looking for.”

  “You will do the picture?” Jeanne demanded eagerly.

  “I will do the picture.”

  “A very large one?”

  “A very large one,” Miss Mabee echoed.

  “And we shall have one very grand show!” Jeanne went rocketing across the floor in that wildest of all gypsy dances.

  Three days later the colorful sketch of gypsy life, done on a large square of paper, was finished and framed. It was a beautiful bit of work. At a distance it could scarcely have been told from a real masterpiece.

  “Why did you make it so beautiful? How can I destroy it?” Jeanne wailed at sight of it.

  Well might some sprite have echoed, “How can she?”

  The picture was to meet a stranger fate than that, and to serve an unusual purpose as well.

  CHAPTER XII

  JEANNE’S FORTUNE

  Next morning it was arranged that Jeanne should go unaccompanied to the fortune teller on Clark Street. Florence would be loitering on the street, not too far away.

  Jeanne, as she started forth on this exciting little journey, cut a real figure. She had put on her finest silk dress. White gloves that reached to her elbows were on her hands. Her hat was from one of the best Michigan Avenue shops. And, to make sure that she would be taken for a “little daughter of the rich,” she had borrowed the famous artist’s very best fur coat.

  “Ah!” she breathed, “it is wonder
ful to be quite rich!”

  The place on Clark Street surprised her a little. A plain dwelling with ancient brownstone front, it suggested nothing of the mysterious or supernatural. Inside it was no better. A sign read, “Knock on the door.” The door in question was a glass door that had been painted a solid brown.

  Jeanne knocked timidly. The door opened a crack, and a feminine voice said, “Y-e-s?”

  The eyes that shone out from the narrow opening registered surprise. Such a gorgeous apparition as Jeanne presented in the borrowed coat, apparently had seldom crossed that threshold.

  “Dorothy Burns, who sells rare stamps at the Arcade, told me how wonderful you are,” Jeanne murmured wistfully.

  This was a well-memorized speech. She was at that moment recalling Florence’s last words before they parted.

  “The fortune teller will not ask your name or address. Don’t give them to her. She will, under one pretext or another, ask the name and address of some person whom you know, quite probably a rather humble person. However that may be, give her my name and address. Give her our telephone number, too, and tell her I am always in between three and four in the afternoon.” Jeanne smiled in spite of herself, recalling these words.

  But the fortune teller was saying, “Won’t you come in, please? There now. Shall I take your coat? You wanted a reading? Is that not so? My very best readings are two dollars.”

  Jeanne removed her coat and placed it upon the back of the chair offered her. She produced two crisp one-dollar bills.

  “Ah!” The round face of the fortune teller shone. “You are to have a very wonderful future, I can see that at once.”

  “I—I hope so.” Jeanne appeared to falter. “You see—” she leaned forward eagerly. “I have been—well, quite fortunate un—until just lately. And now—” her eyes dropped. “Now things are not so good! And I—you know, I’m worried!”

  Jeanne was worried, all about that gorgeous coat. She hoped Florence was near and perhaps a policeman as well, but she need have had no fear.

  Florence was near, very near. Having slipped through the outer door, she had found a seat in the dimly lighted corridor. There was a corner in the plastered wall just beyond her. From behind this there floated faint, childish whispers.