She came down, then, across an inclined plank into the orchestra among the audience.
In the aisle seat nearest her sat Victor Cleves. His business was to be there that evening. But she didn’t know that, knew nothing about him—had never before set eyes on him.
At her gesture of invitation he made a cup of both his hands. Into these she poured a double handful of unset diamonds—or what appeared to be diamonds—pressed her own hands above his for a second—and the diamonds in his palms had become pearls.
These were passed around to people in the vicinity, and finally returned to Mr. Cleves, who, at her request, covered the heap of pearls with both his hands, hiding them entirely from view.
At her nod he uncovered them. The pearls had become emeralds. Again, while he held them, and without even touching him, she changed them into rubies. Then she turned away from him, apparently forgetting that he still held the gems, and he sat very still, one cupped hand over the other, while she poured silver coins into a woman’s gloved hands, turned them into gold coins, then flung each coin into the air, where it changed to a living, fragrant rose and fell among the audience.
Presently she seemed to remember Cleve, came back down the aisle, and under his close and intent gaze drew from his cupped hands, one by one, a score of brilliant little living birds, which continually flew about her and finally perched, twittering, on her golden headdress—a rainbow-crest of living jewels.
As she drew the last warm, breathing little feathered miracle from Cleves’s hands and released it, he said rapidly under his breath: “I want a word with you later. Where?”
She let her clear eyes rest on him for a moment, then with a shrug so slight that it was perceptible, perhaps, only to him, she moved on along the inclined way, stepped daintily over the footlights, caught fire, apparently, nodded to a badly rattled audience, and sauntered off, burning from head to foot.
What applause there was became merged in a dissonant instrumental outburst from the orchestra; the great god Jazz resumed direction, the mindless audience breathed freely again as the curtain rose upon a familiar, yelling turbulence, including all that Gotham really understands and cares for—legs and noise.
Victor Cleves glanced up at the stage, then continued to study the name of the girl on the programme. It was featured in rather pathetic solitude under “Entr’ acte.” And he read further: “During the entr’ acte Miss Tressa Norne will entertain you with several phases of Black Magic. This strange knowledge was acquired by Miss Norne from the Yezidees, among which almost unknown people still remain descendants of that notorious and formidable historic personage known in the twelfth century as The Old Man of the Mountain—or The Old Man of Mount Alamout.