“Several times a day,” Frances Ward added, “by all sorts of people, those who read the bumps on your head, who study the lines in your palms or the stars you were born under, card-readers, crystal-gazers and all the rest.”
“That,” Florence said, “sounds exciting.”
“It won’t be after a while,” Mrs. Ward warned. “All right, we’ll arrange it. You’ll have to find these fortune tellers. We don’t carry their ads. Some have signs in their windows. That is easy. But those are not the best—or perhaps the worst of them. The most successful ones operate more or less in secret. The way you find these is to say to someone, a clerk in a store, a hair-dresser, a check girl in a hotel, ‘Where can I find a good fortune teller?’ She will laugh, like as not, and say, ‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘Oh, yes! Mary Martensen, the girl who does my nails, told me of a wonderful one. She told her the most astonishing things about herself. And, just think, she’s only been there twice! Wait till I call her up. I’ll get her address for you.’
“And when you have that address—” Frances Ward settled back in her chair. “You go there and say, ‘So-and-so told me about you.’ You have your fortune told. Remember as much as you can, the fortune teller’s name, her appearance, the kind of fortune she tells you, the setting of her studio, everything. Then you come here and prepare a story for your column. We’ll call it ‘Looking Into the Future.’”
“But I—I’m afraid I can’t write stories!” Florence said in sudden dismay.
“You don’t have to,” Mrs. Ward laughed. “Just tell a reporter all about it and he’ll write it up. It will be a new and popular newspaper feature.
“Looking Into the Future!” she repeated softly. “If you do your work well, as I know you will, the feature is sure to prove a success from the start.
“But let me warn you!” Her voice dropped. “You will find it not only interesting and thrilling, but dangerous as well, for some fortune tellers are wolves. They rob the poor people by leading them on and on. These must be exposed. And, though we will conceal your identity as much as possible, there are likely to be times when these people will suspect you. If this—” she looked at Florence earnestly, “if this is too terrifying, now is the time to say so.”
Florence had not “said so.” She had taken the position. Her column had been popular from the start. And now, as she sat there before the fire in the studio, recalling the words of Frances Ward, “not only interesting, but dangerous,” she repeated that last word, “dangerous.”
At that moment a tiny spirit seemed to take up the refrain and whisper in her ear, “Dangerous. That is the place! The midnight blue room is for you a place of peril. If you go there tomorrow, you are in for it! You can never turn back until you have found the end of the road which winds on and on, far and far away.”