“Kidnap me?”
“Sometimes villains work through our friends to undo their victims,” he replied wearily. “You must be very careful. Never go out on the street without your capable Florence. And never walk when you can use a cab. So, I think you will be safe.
“There!” he exclaimed, noting the wrinkles in her brow. “I have got you worrying. Do not think of it again. Those men are cowards. All evil doers are. We will not hear from them again.”
“No, no! Dear old trouper,” Jeanne said in the gentlest of tones, “I was not thinking of myself, but of you.
“However,” she added a moment later, “I shall be careful.”
Florence, in her big-hearted way, had given up her work at the settlement house and, casting her lot with the others, had once more become the little French girl’s stage “mother” and protector. She also became the guardian of his Majesty the God of Fire. And it seemed to her that he was quite as much in need of mothering as his youthful possessor. For was there not a dark-faced gypsy lurking, as she sometimes imagined, in every dark corner, ready at any moment to spring upon her and snatch her strange treasure away?
She had fitted up a Boston bag with a chain, ending in a lock, run through the leather and clamping the top tight. This she carried when the ancient God of Fire, in pursuance of his art as a silent actor, was obliged to make his way from their room to the theatre and back again. At all other times his Highness continued to remain in hiding in the hole beneath the floor of the room.
At times Florence thought of the red-faced man, their chance enemy of Maxwell Street, the one who on that stormy night had apparently ridden half way across the city in order to take down their street address.
“He’s planning some meanness,” she assured herself. “What it will be only time can tell.”
When Petite Jeanne told her of the threat made to the old trouper over the telephone, she redoubled her vigil. They traveled only in taxicabs, and kept a sharp watch on every occasion. One other change was made by the stout young guardian. Whenever the gypsy god went with them she carried beneath her arm a rather heavy, paper-bound package, whose contents were her secret.