“Day after to-morrow is the night of nights.” She caught her breath. How much it meant to them all; to Angelo, to Swen, to Dan Baker, to Petite Jeanne and to all the rest.
This night they had held dress rehearsal. And it had been such a glorious affair! She had not dreamed that such a multitude of lovely scenes and heavenly melodies could be packed into two short hours. Everyone, from Solomon, the manager, to the least and youngest of the chorus, was jubilant. They were made! In a lean year they would score a triumph. The thing would run for months. They would ride in taxis and find flowers in their dressing rooms each night.
“But I must not dream.” Shaking herself free from these thoughts, Florence tucked a small package securely under her arm. Then picking up the bag she stepped out.
She must find a cab for the little French girl. Still warm from exercise and excitement, Jeanne must not be exposed to the night’s damp chill.
No cab was in sight. “Must go round the corner and call one.”
She was about to do so when, with the suddenness of thought, a terrible thing happened. Springing from the shadows of a great pillar, two short, dark men dashed at her. Ten seconds of mad tussle in which her dress was torn, her arm wrenched, and her cheeks bruised, and they were away—with the leather bag!
The thing Florence did next was little short of amazing. She did not cry: “Stop thief!” did not call out at all. Instead, she ran after the fleeing men. But when they arrived at the end of the building, turned and darted into the darkness beside a bridge, she followed no longer; but, taking a tighter grip on the paper-wrapped package under her arm, she redoubled her speed and raced straight on. This soon brought her into the shadow of a block-long shed which housed derelict automobiles and river boats.
Arrived at the end of this shed, she turned, abruptly to the left and lost herself in a labyrinth of railway tracks and freight cars.
Here, beside a car marked BANANAS, she paused for breath. Strangely enough, at this moment she laughed a low, musical laugh.
She tarried there for only a moment. Then, like a startled deer, she sprang to attention. Heavy footsteps sounded in the night.