It did not seem possible to her that the glamorous, beautiful figure to whom the spieler had made a deep and ironic salaam was Sally Ford. She wondered if all those people staring at her with wide, curious eyes or with envy really believed she was the Princess Lalla, an escaped member of the harem of the Sultan of Turkey. She made herself see herself as they saw her—a slim, rounded, young-girl figure in fantastic purple satin trousers, wrapped close about her legs from knee to ankle with ropes of imitation pearls; a green satin tunic-blouse, sleeveless and embroidered with sequins and edged with gold fringe, half-revealing and half-concealing her delicate young curves; a provocative lace veil dimming and making mysterious the brilliance of her wide, childish eyes.
She wondered if any of the more skeptical would mutter that the golden-olive tint of her face, neck and bare arms had come out of a can of burnt-sienna powder, applied thickly and evenly over a film of cold cream. The mock-jewel-wrapped ropes of her blue-black hair, however, were real, and she felt their beauty as they lay against her slowly rising and falling breast.
To her gravely expressed doubts of the authenticity of her Turkish costume Mrs. Bybee had replied curtly, contemptuously: “My Gawd! Who knows or cares whether Turkish dames dress like this? It’s pretty, ain’t it? Them women may wear turbans and what-nots for all I know, but that black hair of yours ain’t going to be covered up with no towel around your head.”
And so, circling her brow and holding the scrap of black lace nose veil in place, was a crudely fashioned but gaudily pretty crown studded with imitation rubies and emeralds and diamonds as big as bird’s eggs. Her feet felt very tiny and strange in red sandals, whose pointed toes turned sharply upward and ended roguishly in fluffy silk pompoms.
“I declare, you make a lot better Princess Lalla than Minnie Brooks did,” Mrs. Bybee had commented after out-fitting Sally. “She took down with appendicitis in Sioux City and we ain’t had a crystal gazer since—one of the big hits of the show, too.”
But the spieler was going on and on, giving her a fearful and wonderful history, endowing her with weird gifts—“... Yes, sir, folks, the Princess Lalla sees all, knows all—sees all in this magic crystal of hers. She sees past, present and future, and will reveal all to anyone who cares to step up on this platform and be convinced. Just 25 cents, folks, one lonely little quarter, and you’ll have past, present and future revealed to you by the Turkish seeress, favorite fortune-teller of the Sultan of Turkey. Who’ll be first, boys and girls? Step right up.”
As he exhorted and harangued, the spieler, whom Sally had heard called Gus, was busy arranging the little pine table, covered with black velvet embroidered in gold thread with the signs of the Zodiac. On the table stood a crystal ball, mounted on a tarnished gilt pedestal, and covered over with a black square. Gus whisked off the square and revealed the “magic crystal” to the gaping crowd. Then, with another deep salaam, he conducted the “Princess Lalla” to her throne-like chair. She seated herself and cupped her brown-painted hands with their gilded nails over the large glass bowl.
A young man vaulted lightly upon the platform, followed by giggles and slangy words of encouragement. Sally’s eyes, mercifully shielded by the black lace veil, widened with terror. Her hands trembled so as they hovered over the crystal that she had an almost irresistible impulse to cover her face with them. Then she remembered that the black lace veil and the brown powder did that.
For the first to demand an exhibition of her powers as a seeress was Ross Willis, Pearl Carson’s “boy friend,” Ross Willis who had not asked her to dance because she was the Carsons’ “hired girl” from the orphanage.
While Ross Willis, awkward and embarrassed, shuffled to the canvas chair which Gus, the spieler, whisked forward, Sally reflected that there was no need for her to remember any of the multitudinous instructions which Mrs. Bybee had primed her for her job of “seeress.”