This was the only instance in which Florence interfered in any way with the actions of the employees of the mill. She was, to all appearances, only a young welfare worker whose business it was to make everyone happy, with special interest in the children of the city.
This part she played very well. Long hours were spent in the mill’s gymnasium and social house, and upon its playgrounds. Not a week had passed before this stalwart, rosy-cheeked girl was known to every child of the city, and nearly every grown-up as well. “That’s her,” she would hear them whisper as she passed. “That’s the Play Lady.” Yes, she was the Play Lady; but much more than this, she was the Lady Cop, the detective who, she hoped, in time was to free their happy little city from the dark cloud that, all unknown to the greatest number, hung over them.
Yes, this truly was a happy city. Florence grew increasingly conscious of this as the days went by. The mill she found enchanting. The little city with its clean white homes, surrounded by the golden glow of autumn, was indeed a place where one might long to linger.
“Just now,” she said to herself, “I feel that I could love to live here forever.”
This mood, like many another in her strange, wandering life, she knew all too well, would pass. “And I must not allow myself to be lulled into inaction by it all,” she told herself. “There is the spy. I must find the spy. Even now he may be gathering up his stolen secrets and preparing to carry them away to some other city, or even across the sea.”
But how was one to catch a spy? Every moment of each day she was watching, watching, watching. And yet, save for the rather simple matter of Ina Piccalo’s carrying away a bottle of purple dye, nothing unusual had caught her eye.
“I may fail,” she told herself, “fail utterly.” Yet she dared to hope for a turn of the wheel of fortune—“the lucky break” as the smiling Willie VanGeldt would have called it.
CHAPTER XIV
GYPSY TRAIL
If life, for the moment, had been robbed of its adventure for Florence, the little French girl Petite Jeanne had not fared so badly. To her life had come one more thrill. It happened in a strange and quite unexpected manner. Having left the gypsy child with friends in Chicago, she and Madame Bihari had gone on a true gypsy tour of the air. Their destination was anywhere, their home the landing field that appeared beneath them at close of day. Never had Jeanne been so buoyantly happy as now. And who could wonder at this?
One evening just at sunset they came soaring down upon a landing field in the open country. Many years ago some great lover of trees had planted here a long row of hard maples. These now formed the farthest boundary of the landing field. The most glorious days of autumn had arrived. Never had there been such a gorgeous array of colors. Here red, orange, yellow and green were blended in a pattern of matchless beauty.