“How gorgeous,” she murmured. “Oh, that I might own it forever!”
Even as she said this all the unanswered questions that grouped themselves about the cape—its owner, and the girl’s associates at the store—came trooping back to puzzle her. Who was the Mystery Lady? Why had she left the cape that night? Why did she not return for it later? How had it happened that she was in the store that night at two hours before midnight? Who was Laurie Seymour? Why had he given the Mystery Lady his pass-out? How had he spent that night? What had happened to the vanished author of “Blue Flames”? Who was Cordie? Was she really the poor, innocent little country girl she had thought her? What was to come of her, once the season had closed? Who was the “Spirit of Christmas”? Had she ever seen her? Who would get the two hundred in gold? What had she meant by the crimson trail she left behind? Who was Sam? Why was Laurie so much afraid to meet him? Above all, what were the secrets of the crimson thread and the diamond set iron ring?
Surely here were problems enough to put wrinkles in any brow. But it was the day before Christmas, so, as Cordie came dancing down to a place beside her, Lucile gripped her arm and led away in a sort of hop-skip-and-jump that brought them up breathless at the station.
There was just time to grab a paper before the train came rattling in. Having secured a seat, Lucile hid herself behind her paper. A moment later she was glad for the paper’s protection. Had it not been for the paper she felt that half the people on the train might have read her thoughts.
The thing she saw in the Spirit of Christmas column, which daily told of the doings of the lady by that name, was such a startling revelation that she barely escaped a shriek as her eyes fell on it.
“You have been wondering,” she read in the column devoted to the lady of the “Christmas Spirit,” “what I have been meaning by the crimson trail which I have left behind. Perhaps some of you have guessed the secret. If this is true, you have made little use of that knowledge. None of you have found me. Not one of the hundreds of thousands who have passed me has paused to grip my hand and to whisper: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas.’
“Now I will give you some fresh revelations. It is the day before Christmas. At midnight to-night Christmas comes. As the clock strikes that magic hour my wanderings cease. If no one has claimed my gold by then, no one will.
“I have told you always that hands ofttimes express more than a face. This is true of my hands. They are strange hands. Stranger still are the rings I wear upon them. For days now I have worn an iron ring set with a diamond. Had someone noticed this, read the secret and whispered: ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas,’ not only should my gold have clinked for him, but the diamond should have been his as well.”
Lucile caught her breath as she read this. Here indeed was revelation. Could it be—There was more. She read on.
“As for the crimson trail I have left behind. That is very simple. I marvel that people can be so blind. I have left it everywhere. It is unusual, very unusual, yet I have left it everywhere, in hundreds of places, in newsboys’ papers, in shopgirls’ books, in curtains, shades, and even in people’s garments, yet not one has read the sign. The sign is this: a bit of crimson thread drawn twice through and tied. There is a purple strand in the thread. It is unusual, yet no one has understood; no one has said ‘You are the Spirit of Christmas’.”