“To-day I shall join the throngs that shop among the windows of State Street. I shall enter a store here and another there. I shall pause here to examine goods and there to make a purchase. At every place, as I pass on, I shall leave my mark, which is also my sign. If you chance to see me, if you know me, if you read my secret in my face or in my hands, grasp those hands and whisper: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’ Then gold will clink for you, two hundred in gold.
“I am the Spirit of Christmas. Everywhere I go I leave a crimson trail behind.”
This was the end. Lucile glanced up with a dazed and puzzled look in her eyes.
“What in the world can it mean?” she asked, holding the bit of paper before Cordie.
Cordie laughed. “That’s something the paper is doing. I think it’s just to make people buy the paper. No one has ever recognized her. She’s clever.”
“I’d like to find her,” mused Lucile.
“Wouldn’t you, though? Who wouldn’t? You’d get the gold if you did; but you never will. She’s keen. Why, only two days ago she was in this store for a half hour. Bought a book, mind you, and you may have sold it to her. Think of that! The day before that she was in the store for six hours. Think of that! And no one knew her. They’ll never get her, trust her for that. But if they do, the gold will clink.” The girl laughed a merry laugh, then hurried away for a cream-puff.
Left to herself, Lucile had time for a few moments of quiet thinking. She found her pulse strangely quickened by the news story and her companion’s interpretation. Somehow, almost as if some strange power outside her were whispering it to her, she felt forced to believe that she could connect this new and interesting discovery with some of the other mysteries which had come to haunt her.
“But how?” she asked herself. “How?”
Cordie appeared to know a great deal about this “Spirit of Christmas” lady and the gold that would clink for a handshake. But after all, she had revealed no facts that were not known to hundreds of thousands who had followed the matter closely. It had all been in the papers.