“Well,” he sighed once more, “they flew away to return a little later with parts for our plane. We paid them with our gold mine, what there is left of it. We sailed away into the blue with our gold. We were headed for Chicago and would have made it, too, if fog hadn’t caught us. It did catch us, as you know. We tried to land on ice. We were successful. We were saved. But the ice gave way, the plane sank!
“But now—” he sprang to his feet. “Now we are safe again. And soon, please God, I shall be with my child again. And this time I am ready to swear it on the open Bible, I shall never again leave her alone!
“Until now,” he ended, “we did not know where we were.”
“But now you know!” Jeanne exclaimed. “Soon all the world shall know. Vivian! Sandy! The radio! We are to be the bearers of good tidings, of great joy!”
CHAPTER XXVI
IN WHICH SOME THINGS ARE WELL FINISHED
“We’ll just get the janitor to go up with us,” said Patrick Moriarity as he and Florence arrived at the building in which Madame Zaran conducted her readings. “They’re gone, more than likely.”
And so they were. The room, as they approached it, was dark and appeared deserted.
As, under police orders, the janitor opened the door, Florence once again felt a thrill run up her spine. In her mind she felt again, as on that first day, the grip of those bony fingers on her shoulders. Once again she saw the shadow against those midnight blue draperies—the shadow of “Satan”—this time in imagination alone.
“Deserted as a tomb,” was Patrick’s conclusion. “We’ll just have a look.” Florence had told him of all the strange doings that had gone on here.
“What’s this?” he muttered as they came upon a narrow stairway hidden among the draperies.