A Mystery Story for Girls

The
CRYSTAL BALL

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

Printed in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT 1936
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I Midnight Blue Velvet] 11 [II “Just Nothing at All”] 28 [III Danger Tomorrow] 36 [IV The “Tiger Woman”] 45 [V Florence Gazes into the Crystal] 51 [VI Gypsies That Are Not Gypsies] 62 [VII The Bright Shawl] 75 [VIII A Vision for Another] 86 [IX Jeanne Plans an Adventure] 104 [X A Voodoo Priestess] 113 [XI Fireside Reflections] 128 [XII Jeanne’s Fortune] 134 [XIII A Startling Revelation] 148 [XIV Fire Destroys All] 157 [XV The Interpreter of Dreams] 169 [XVI The Secret of Lost Lake] 177 [XVII From Out the Past] 189 [XVIII D.X.123] 195 [XIX One Wild Dream] 199 [XX Some Considerable Treasure] 213 [XXI Battle Royal] 228 [XXII Little Lady in Gray] 238 [XXIII Strange Treasure] 252 [XXIV Through the Picture] 266 [XXV A Visit in the Night] 274 [XXVI In Which Some Things Are Well Finished] 279

THE CRYSTAL BALL

CHAPTER I
MIDNIGHT BLUE VELVET

Florence Huyler read the number on the door. She wondered at the lack of light from within; the glass of the door was like a slab of ebony.

“No one here,” she murmured. “Just my luck.”

For all that, she put out a hand to grasp the knob. In a city office building, ten stories up, one does not knock. Florence did not so much as allow the yielding door to make a sound. She turned the knob as one imagines a robber might turn the dial of a safe—slowly, silently.

Why did she do this? Could she have answered this question? Probably not! Certainly she was not spying on the occupants of that room—at least, not yet. Perhaps that was the way she always opened a door. We all have our ways of doing things. Some of us seize a door knob, give it a quick turn, a yank, and there we are. And some, like Florence, move with the slyness and softness of a cat. It is their nature.

One thing is sure; once the door had yielded to her touch and she had ushered herself into the semi-darkness that was beyond, she was glad of that sly silence, for something quite mysterious was going on beyond that door.

She found herself in a place of all but complete darkness. Only before her, where a pair of heavy drapes parted, was there a narrow slit of eery blue light.

There was no need of tiptoeing as she moved toward that long line of light. Her sturdy street shoes sank deep in something she knew must be a rich Oriental rug.

“In such a building!” she thought with increasing surprise. The building was old, might at any time be wrecked to make parking space for cars. The elevator, as she came up, had swayed and teetered like a canary bird’s cage on a coiled spring.

“And now this!” she whispered. “Oriental rugs and—yes, a heavy velvet curtain of midnight blue. What a setting for—”

Well, for what? She did not finish. That was the reason for her visit, to find out what. She was engaged, these days, in finding out all manner of curious and fantastic goings on. Was this to be one of the strangest, weirdest, most fantastic, or was it, like many another, to turn out as a simple, flat, uninteresting corner of a sad little world?

Moving silently to that narrow streak that could barely be called light, she peered boldly within.

What she saw gave her a start. It was, she thought, like entering the “Holy of Holies” of Bible times or the “Forbidden City” of Mongol kings. For there, resting in a low receptacle at the exact center of a large room, was a faintly gleaming crystal ball. This ball, which might have been six inches in diameter with its holder, rested on a cloth of midnight blue. Before it sat a silent figure.

This person was all but hidden in shadows. A head crowned by a circle of fluffy hair, a pair of youthful, drooping shoulders; this for the moment was all she could see. The eyes, fixed upon the crystal ball, were turned away from her.

Even as she wondered and shuddered a little at what she saw, a voice, seeming to come from nowhere, but everywhere at once, said:

“It is given to some to see. Observe that which thou seest and record it well upon the walls of thy memories, for thou mayest never look upon it again.”

That voice sent a shudder through Florence’s being. Was it the voice of a woman or a man? A woman, she believed, yet the tone was low and husky like a man’s. As Florence looked she wondered, for the girl sitting there before the crystal ball did not shudder. She sat gazing at the ball with all the stillness of one entranced.

Nor was the strange girl’s perfect attention without purpose. Even as Florence stood there all ears and eyes, she was ready to fly on the instant, but just as determined to stay.

The whole affair, the midnight blue of the curtains, the spot of light that was a crystal ball, the girl sitting there like a statue, all seemed so unreal that Florence found herself pinching her arm. “No,” she whispered, “it is not a dream.”

At that instant her attention was caught and held by that crystal ball. Things were happening within that ball, or at least appeared to be happening.

The gleaming ball itself changed. It was grayer, less brilliant. Then, to Florence’s vast astonishment, she saw a tiny figure moving within the ball. A child it was, she saw at a glance. A fair-haired, animated child was moving within that ball. She came dancing into the center of what appeared to be a large room. There she paused as if expecting someone. The room the child had entered was beautiful. Real oil paintings hung on the wall. There was a gorgeous bit of tapestry above the large open fireplace. A great golden collie lay asleep before the fire. All this was within the ball. And the animated child too was within the ball.

Florence thought she had been bewitched. Surely nothing like this could be seen within a solid glass ball.

Just then the voice began again to speak. This time the voice was low. Words were said in a distinct tone and all just alike. This is what it said:

“Sit quite still. Let your mood be one of tranquillity. Look with dreamy eyes upon the crystal. Do not stare. It is not given to all to have magic vision. Some see only in symbols. Some see those whom they seek—face to face. You—”

The voice broke off. The girl, seated in that mahogany chair, surrounded by midnight blue velvet, had been gazing at the crystal all this time; yet at this instant she appeared suddenly to become conscious of the change within the crystal ball. Perhaps, since she looked at it from a different angle, her vision had been obscured.

The effect on the girl was strange. She shook like one with a chill. She gripped the arms of the black chair until, in that strange light, her hands appeared glistening white. Then, seeming to gain control of herself, she settled back in her place and, at the command of that slow, monotonous voice, “Keep your eyes on the crystal,” fell into an attitude of repose. Not, however, before Florence had noted a strange fact. “That girl in the glass ball,” she told herself, “is the one sitting in that black chair.

“But no! How could she be? Besides, the one in the ball is younger, much younger. This is impossible. And yet, there are the same eyes, the same hair, the same profile. It is strange.”

Then of a sudden she recalled that she was within the room of a crystal-gazer, that the crystal ball had been credited with magic properties, that one who gazed into it was supposed to see visions. Was she seeing a vision?

“How could I see that girl as a child when I have never before seen her at any age?” she asked herself. It was unbelievable. Yet, there it was.

Could the crystal ball bring back to the girl memories of her childhood? That did not appear so impossible. But—

Now again there was a change coming over the crystal ball. A sudden lighting up of its gray interior announced the opening of a door in that fanciful house, the letting in of bright sunshine. The door closed. Gray shadows reappeared. Into those shadows walked a distinguished appearing, tall, gray-haired man. At once, into his arms sprang the fair-haired child. All this appeared to go forward in that astonishing crystal ball.

At this instant Florence’s attention was distracted by a low cry that was all but a sob. It came from the lips of that girl sitting close to the crystal ball. As Florence looked she saw her staring with surprising intensity at the ball. At the same time Florence, who read lips almost as well as she could hear with her ears, made out her words:

“Father—that must be my father! My long lost father! It must be! It—”

At that instant something touched Florence’s shoulder. As she looked back she saw only the hand and half an arm. It was a woman’s hand. From the third finger, gleaming like an evil eye, shone a large ruby. The hand was long, hard and claw-like. It grasped Florence’s shoulder and pulled her back. She did not resist, though she might very successfully have done so. She was strong, was Florence—strong as a man. But about that hand there was something terrifying and altogether sinister. Florence had studied hands. She had come to know their meanings. They tell as much of character as do faces. And this, a left hand, seemed to say, “My mate, the right hand, is hidden. In it is a dagger. So beware!”

Florence did not resist. Before she knew what had happened she was out in the dark and dusty hallway. The door she had entered was closed and locked against her.

“So that’s that!” she said with a forced smile. But was that that? Was there to be much more? Very much more? Only time would tell. When one discovers an enthralling mystery, one does not soon forget. Such a mystery was contained in that crystal ball.

“That’s one of them!” Florence declared emphatically to herself. “It surely must be!

“That girl,” she thought with a sigh, “can’t be more than sixteen—perhaps not that. And her appearance speaks of money. Clothes all fit perfectly and in exquisite taste. Didn’t come from a department store, that’s sure.

“But the look on her face—sad, eager, hopeful, all in one. How easy it is to lead such a person on and on and on.

“On to what?” she asked herself with a start.

“This,” she concluded, “is a case that calls for action. I’ll see Frances Ward first thing in the morning.

“And then,” she laughed a low laugh, “perhaps I’ll take a few lessons in crystal gazing. Just perhaps. And again, perhaps not.” She recalled that claw-like hand and the ruby that appeared to burn like fire. “Anyway, I’ll try.”

Florence, as you may have guessed by this time, was back in Chicago. It had been late autumn when she arrived. So often these days she had been in need of friends. She had found friends, two of them. And such wonderful friends as they were! One, Frances Ward, had given her work of a sort, a very strange sort. The other, Marie Mabee, had given her a home, and a marvelous home it was. Florence had not dreamed of such good fortune. And best of all, Petite Jeanne, the little French girl, was with her.

Jeanne’s airplane, the Dragonfly, was stored away. For the time at least, her flow of gold from France had ceased. Her chateau in her native land lay among the hills where grapes were grown. It was surrounded by grape arbors, miles of them. Some strange blight had fallen upon the vines. Grapes failed to ripen. There was no more money.

“And why should there be?” Jeanne had exclaimed when the letter came. “Who wants money? One is happier without it. I have my friends, the gypsies. They seldom have money, yet they never starve. I shall go to them. Perhaps I may find a bear who will dance with me. Then how the coins shall jingle!”

To her surprise and great unhappiness, she found that her gypsy friends were now living in a tumbled-down tenement house, that they had parted with their vans and brightly colored cars and were living like the sparrows on what they might pick up on the unfriendly city streets.

Disheartened, the little French girl had gone to the park by the lake for a breath of God’s pure air. And there, in a strange manner, she had found glorious happiness.

Jeanne never forgot her friends. She hunted up Florence and made for her a place in that path of happiness quite as broad as her own.

Just now, as Florence hurried down the wind-driven, wintry streets, as she dodged a skidding cab, rounded a corner where the wind took her breath away, then went coursing on toward the south, she thought of all this and smiled.

Two hours later, just as a distant clock tolled out the hour of nine, she found herself seated in the very midst of all this glorious happiness.

She was seated in a room above the city’s most beautiful boulevard. The room was beneath the very roof of a great skyscraper. It was a large room, a studio. Not a place where some very rich person played at being an artist, but a real studio where beautiful and costly works of art were produced by a slim and masterly hand.

Had Florence turned artist? She would have laughed had you asked her. “I, an artist!” she would have exclaimed. She would have held out two shapely, quite powerful hands and have said, “Paint pictures with these? Well, perhaps. But I was born for action. How could I stand for hours, touching a canvas here and there with a tiny brush?”

No, Florence had not turned artist, nor had Petite Jeanne. For all this, the most wonderful thing had happened to them. Often and often they had dreamed of it. In days of adversity when they sat upon stools and washed down hamburger sandwiches with very black coffee, Jeanne had said, “Florence, my very good friend, would it not be wonderful if someone very good and very successful would take us under her wing?”

“Yes.” Florence had fallen in with the dream. “A great opera singer, or perhaps one who writes wonderful books.”

“Or an artist, one who paints those so marvelous pictures one sees in the galleries!” Jeanne dreamed on.

Even in days of their greatest prosperity, when Jeanne had gone flitting across the country, a “flying gypsy,” and Florence was happy in her work, they had not given up this dream. For, after all, what in all this world can compare with the companionship of one older than ourselves, who is at one and the same time kind, beautiful, talented, and successful?

And then, out of the clear October sky that shone over the park by the lake there in Chicago, their good angel had appeared.

It was not she who had appeared at once. Far from it. Instead, when Jeanne went to the park that day she had found at first only a group of tired and rather ragged gypsies, who, having parked their rusty cars, had gathered on the grass to eat a meager lunch.

Jeanne had spied them. She had hurried away without a word, to return fifteen minutes later with a bundle all too heavy for her slender arms. Inside that bundle were, wonderful to relate, three large meat pies, four apple pies, a small Swiss cheese such as gypsies love, and all manner of curious French pastry. There were a dozen gypsy children in the group gathered there in the park. How their dark eyes shone as Jeanne spread out this rich repast!

These strange people stared at her doubtfully. When, however, she laughed and exclaimed in their own strange tongue, “I too am a gypsy!” and when, seizing the oldest girl of the group, she dragged her whirling and laughing over the grass in her own wild gypsy dance, they all cried, “Bravo! Bravo! She is one of us indeed!”

Then how meat pies, apple pies, cheese and pastry vanished!

When the feast was over, having borrowed a bright skirt, a broad sash and kerchief, Jeanne led them all in a dance that was wilder, more furious than any they had known for many a day.

“Come!” they shouted when the dance was over. “We were sad. You have brought us happiness. See!” They pointed to a dark cloud that was a flock of blackbirds flying south. “You must come with us. We will follow these birds in their flight. When winter comes we shall camp where roses bloom all the winter through, where oranges hang like balls of gold among the leaves and the song of spring is ever in the air.”

Jeanne listened and dreamed. But her good friend Florence? She was not faring so well. Winter was at hand. How could Jeanne leave her in this great dark city alone?

Just then a strange thing happened. A tall woman of striking appearance came up to the group. She wore a green smock all marked up with red and blue paint. There was a smudge of orange on her cheek, and in her hand a dozen small brushes.

“See!” She held up an unfinished sketch. It was a picture of Petite Jeanne, Jeanne in her bright costume dancing with the raggedest gypsy of them all. On the face of Jeanne and the ragged child was a look of inspired joy.

“You are a genius!” Jeanne cried in surprise, “You have painted my picture!” She was overjoyed.

“I am a painter,” the lady, who was neither young nor old, said. “Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But you?” She turned to Jeanne. “Do you know many of these people?”

“I—” Jeanne laughed. “I am related to them all. Is it not so?” She appealed to her new-found friends.

“Yes! Yes! To us all,” they cried in a chorus.

When, a half hour later, Jeanne bade a reluctant farewell to the gypsy clan, it was in the company of the artist. The leader of the gypsies had been presented with a bright new twenty-dollar bill, and Jeanne had made a friend she would not soon forget. What a day! What a happy adventure!

CHAPTER II
“JUST NOTHING AT ALL”

The artist’s name was Marie Mabee. It was in her studio that Florence, on the evening after her strange experience with the crystal ball, found herself seated. It was a marvelous place, that studio. It was a large room. Its polished floor was strewn with all manner of strange Indian rugs. Marie Mabee was American to the tips of her toes. Save for one picture, everything in that room was distinctly American. The spinet desk with chair that matched, the drapes and tapestries, the andirons before the broad open fireplace, the great comfortable upholstered chair, all these were made in America.

The one cherished bit from the Old World that adorned the room was a picture. It was a masterpiece of the nineteenth century. In that picture the sun shone bright upon a flock of sheep hurrying for shelter from a storm that lay black as night against the rugged hills behind. Trees were bending before a gale, the shepherd’s cloak was flying, every touch told of the approaching storm.

“It’s all so very real!” Florence thought to herself as she looked at the picture now. “It is like Marie Mabee herself. She too is real. And the things she creates are real. That is why she is such a great success.”

As if to verify her own conclusion, she looked at a canvas reposing on an easel in the corner. The picture was almost done. It showed Petite Jeanne garbed in a bright gypsy costume, flinging arms wide in a wild gypsy dance. In the background, indistinct but quite real, were wild eager faces, a fiddler, two singing gypsy children, and behind them the night.

Marie Mabee had determined that by her pictures there should be preserved the memory of much that was passing in American life. The gypsies were passing. One by one they were being swallowed up by great cities. Soon the country would know them no more. She had taken Jeanne into her heart and home because in Jeanne’s heart there lived like a flame the spirit of the gypsies at their best, because Jeanne knew all the gypsies and could bring them to the studio to be posed and painted. She had taken in Florence as well; first, because she was Jeanne’s friend, and second, because, with all others, the moment she came to know her she loved her.

“It is all very wonderful!” Florence whispered to herself as, after an exciting day, she sank deeper into the great chair by the fire. “How inspiring to live with one who has made a grand success of life, whose pictures are hung in every gallery and coveted by every rich person in the city! And yet,” she sighed contentedly, “how simple and kind she is! Not the least bit high-hat or superior. Wonder if all truly great people are like that? I wonder—”

She broke short off to listen. A stairway led up from the top of the elevator shaft, one floor below. She did not recognize the tread of the person coming up the stairs. She wondered and shuddered. Somehow she felt that on leaving that room of midnight blue and a crystal ball, she had been followed. Had she? If so, why? She was not long in guessing the reason. Twice in the last few weeks she had whispered a few well-chosen words in the ears of Patrick Moriarity, a bright young policeman who was interested in people, just any kind of people. Patrick had rapped on certain doors and had said his little say. When next Florence passed that way, there was a “For Rent” sign on the door, right where Patrick had rapped.

“Folded their tents like the Arabs

And silently stole away,”

she whispered to herself.

She wondered in a dreamy sort of way whether those people, while they reluctantly packed a few tricks of their crooked trade, had recalled a large, ruddy-faced girl who had visited them once or twice to have her fortune told, and did they know she was that girl?

“Fortunes!” she exclaimed. “Fortunes!” Then she laughed a low laugh.

At once her face sobered. Was it, after all, a laughing matter, this having your fortune told? For some surely it was not. She had seen them seated on hard chairs, waiting. There were lines of sorrow and disappointment on their faces. They had come to ask the crystal-gazer, the palmist, the phrenologist, the reader of cards or stars, to tell their fortune. They wanted terribly to know when the tide of fortune would turn for them, when prosperity would come ebbing back again. And she, Florence, all too often could read in their faces the answer which came to her like the wash of the waves on a sandy shore:

“Never—never—never.”

“And what do these tellers of fortunes predict?” she asked herself. She did not know. Only her own fortune she knew well enough. Had she not had it told a half hundred times in the last months?

“My fortune!” she laughed anew. “What a strange fortune it would be if all they told me came true! A castle, a farm, a city flat, a sea island, a mountain home, a dark man for a husband, a light one for a husband, and one with red hair! Whew! I’d have to be a movie actress to have all that.

“And yet—” Once again her smile vanished. Was there, after all, in some of it something real? That crystal ball now—the one she had seen that very afternoon. She had been told that visions truly do come to those who gaze into the crystal ball. Had she not seen visions? And that fair-haired girl, had she not seen visions as well?

Once again her mood changed. What was it this girl had wanted to know? She had said, “My long lost father!” Was her father really lost? Who was her father? She was dressed like a child of the rich. Was she rich? And was she in danger?

“I must know!” Florence sprang to her feet. “I must go back there. I—”

Once again she broke short off. There came a sound from without. A key rattled in the lock.

“Some—someone,” she breathed, starting back, “and he has a key!”

Her eyes were frantically searching for a place of hiding when the door swung open and a tall lady in a sealskin coat appeared.

“Oh! Miss Mabee!” Florence exclaimed. “It is you!”

“Yes. And why not I?” Marie Mabee laughed. “What’s up? How startled you looked!”

“Nothing—just nothing at all,” Florence said in a calmer tone as she sprang forward to assist her hostess with her wraps.

“Did you see anyone on the stairs?” she asked quietly.

“No. Why? Have you stolen something?” Miss Mabee laughed. “Are you expecting the police?”

“No, not that,” Florence laughed in answer. “I’ve only been having my fortune told.”

“Is that so dangerous?” Miss Mabee arched her brows.

“Yes, sometimes I’m afraid it is,” Florence replied soberly. “I know of one case where it cost a poor woman four hundred dollars.”

“How could it?” came in a tone of surprise.

“She had the money. They told her to leave it with them for luck. The luck was all wrong. They vanished.”

“But that is an extreme case.”

“Yes,” Florence replied slowly, “it is extreme. And yet, in days like these, people, who might in happier days be harmless, turn wolf and prey upon the innocent. At least, that’s what Frances Ward says. And she usually knows. She says it is the duty of those who are strong to battle against the wolves.”

“And so you, my beautiful strong one, are battling the wolves? Good for you!” Marie Mabee gave her sturdy arm an affectionate squeeze. “That’s quite all right. Only,” she laughed, “please let me know when the wolves start coming up the stairs.”

“I—I’ll try,” Florence replied in a changed tone.

“And now,” said Marie Mabee, “how about a nice cup of steaming chocolate and some of those rare cakes that just came from that little bakery around the corner?”

“Grand!” Florence exclaimed. “Here is one person who can always eat and never regret.”

“Fine!” the artist exclaimed. “It’s wonderful to be strong and be able to glory in it. On with the feast!”

CHAPTER III
DANGER TOMORROW

“Jeanne, one of your friends has stolen four hundred dollars!” Florence exclaimed, springing to her feet as Jeanne, garbed in a plaid coat and with a silver-grey fox fur about her neck, breezed in from the night. She had been to the Symphony concert. Her ears still rang with the final notes of a great concerto. Florence’s startling words burst upon her like a sudden blare of trombones and clash of cymbals all in one.

“My friend?” she exclaimed in sudden consternation. “One of my friends has stolen all that?”

“From a poor widow with three small children,” Florence said soberly. Then in a changed, half teasing tone, “Anyway, the paper says the thief was a gypsy, so I suppose she was, and a fortune teller as well.”

“Oh! A gypsy!” Breathing a sigh of relief, Jeanne threw off her wraps, tossed back her shock of golden hair, then sank into a chair before the burned-out fire where Florence had sat musing for an hour.

“My dear—” Jeanne placed a long slender hand on Florence’s arm. “Not all gypsies are my friends—only some gypsies. Not all gypsies are good. Some are very, very bad. You should know that. Surely you have not forgotten how those bad ones in France seized me and carried me away to the Alps when I was to dance in the so beautiful Paris Opera!”

“No,” Florence laughed, “I have not forgotten. All the same, you must help me. Mr. Joslyn—he is our editor, you know—sent down a marked copy of the paper. Above the story of the gypsy fortune teller’s theft he wrote, ‘This is right in your line.’

“So!” she sighed. “It’s up to me. Until just now I have been a reporter of a sort, rather more entertaining and amusing than serious. But now—” she squared her shoulders. “Now I am to become a sort of reporter-detective, at least for a time.

“And Jeanne,” she added earnestly, “you must help me, you truly must. You know all the gypsies in the city.”

“No, not all. But no! No!” Jeanne protested.

“You know the good ones and the bad ones,” Florence went on, ignoring her denial. “You must help me find this bad one, and, if it is not too late, we must get that money back.

“How foolish some people are!” Her voice dropped. “Here was a woman with three small children. She collected four hundred dollars from her husband’s estate. She hurries right off to the gypsies because one of them has told her two months before that she is to have money. Money!” She laughed scornfully. “Probably they tell everyone that—makes them feel good.

“Then she asks them how to invest it so it will become a great deal of money right away, and they say, ‘Leave it with us for luck.’ She goes away. They vanish. And there you are!”

“Where did this so terrible thing happen?” Jeanne asked.

“In one of the narrow streets back of Maxwell Street.”

“Maxwell Street!” Jeanne shuddered. She had been on Maxwell Street; did not wish ever to go again. But now—

“Ah, well, my good friend,” she sighed, “it is always so. We come into great good fortune. We have marvelous friends. Marvelous things of beauty are all about us. We sigh with joy and bask in the sunshine. And then, bang! Duty says, ‘Go to Maxwell Street. Go where there is dirt and disorder, unhappiness, hatred and poverty.’ We listen to Duty, and we go. Yes, my good friend Florence, tomorrow I shall go.

“And,” she added mysteriously, “when I am there, even you, if you meet me, will not know me.”

“You will be careful!” Florence’s brow wrinkled.

“I shall be careful. And now—” Jeanne rose, then went weaving her way in a slow rhythmic dance toward a narrow metal stairway leading to a balcony. “Now I go to my dreams. Bon nuit!”

“Good night,” Florence replied as once more her eyes sought the burned-out fire.

“Strange! Life is strange!” she murmured.

And life for her had been strange. Perhaps it always would be strange.

She did not retire at once. The studio, with its broad fireplace, its deep-cushioned chairs and dim lights, was a cozy, dreamy place at night. She wanted to think and dream a while.

Never in all her event-filled life had Florence been employed in a stranger way than at that moment. She was, you might say, a reporter, or, better perhaps, an investigator, for one of the city’s great daily papers.

She had walked into the newspaper office one morning, as she had walked into a hundred places, just to ask what there was she might do. She had, by great good fortune, been introduced to Frances Ward, who proved to be the most interesting and inspiring old lady she had ever known.

“Our paper,” Mrs. Ward had said, “is cutting down on its playground and welfare work. There is—” she had hesitated to peer searchingly into Florence’s face—“there is something I have been thinking of for a considerable time. It’s a thing I can’t do myself.” She laughed a cackling sort of laugh. “I am too old and wise-looking. You are young and fresh and, pardon me, innocent-looking.

“You wouldn’t mind,” she asked suddenly, “having your fortune told?”

“Of course not.” Florence stared.

“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.”

“Tomorrow,” she whispered as she rose to fling her strong arms wide, “tomorrow I shall return to that place of midnight blue draperies, and I shall ask someone there to teach me how to read fortunes by gazing into the crystal ball.” There was a new fire in her eye as she mounted the narrow stairs to enter the chamber which the great artist had so graciously set aside for her use.

CHAPTER IV
THE “TIGER WOMAN”

For Florence fortune telling had always held a certain fascination, not unmixed with fear. Very early in life she had lived for some time with an aunt. Always now, as she closed her eyes, she could see that aunt, straight-lipped, diligent, at times friendly, but always holding close to what she believed was “duty.” Often, too, she seemed to hear her say, “Cards, all playing cards, belong to the Devil. They are of very ancient origin, almost as old as Satan himself. The first cards were made for the purpose of fortune telling. Fortune telling, when it is not pure fraud, belongs to the Devil. Remember Saul. Think how, when he was going to battle he slipped away to that wicked witch. He asked her to tell him how the battle would go. Well, he found out, but little pleasure it brought him! He lost his throne and his head the very next day!”

Florence did not believe all this, nor did she entirely disbelieve it. She tried to look at things calmly and clearly, then decide for herself. All the same, she shuddered as next day she tapped lightly at the door behind which a room was shrouded in midnight blue, and where a crystal ball shone dully.

She smiled in spite of herself as the door opened only a crack and a pair of suspicious inquiring eyes peered out.

“Something to hide,” was the thought that came to her. But was this quite fair? There were policemen always loitering about in the hallway of her own newspaper office. Perhaps all of life was a little dangerous these days.

“Marian Stanley sent me,” she hastened to say before the door might close. “She is the night clerk at the Dunbar Hotel. She told me about you, how—”

“Won’t you come in?” The door was wide open now. Before her stood a short, stout woman with strangely tawny hair. “Like a tiger’s,” Florence thought, “and I believe it’s a genuine shade.”

“I—I’d like to learn about crystal gazing,” she said as she entered the room of midnight blue. “Is—is it frightfully difficult?”

“To learn?” The Tiger Lady, as Florence was to call her, elevated her eyebrows. “A certain way, it is not difficult. But to go far, very far, as I have done—” the Tiger Woman sighed. “Ah, that is a matter of years. Then, too, there are secrets, deep secrets.” Her voice took on an air of mystery. “Secrets regarding the meaning of light, sound, and feelings; secrets regarding the moon and the stars, which we who have journeyed far could not afford to share.

“But if you care to go a little way—” she spread out her hand. “Then I am here to show you for—let me see—” She pretended to consider. “Oh, you shall pay me two dollars. Huh? Will that be O. K.?” Her voice took on a playful note.

“Two dollars will be all right. And may I begin at once?” There was in Florence’s words a note of eagerness that was genuine.

“This,” she was thinking, “is a fresh way of approach. Perhaps there is something to this crystal gazing. I may become a famous gazer. How grand that will be!

“Besides,” came as an afterthought, “I may be able to discover some worthwhile facts about that girl who saw those pictures in the crystal ball. Surely those pictures were real enough. But how did they come there? Could her imagination produce them? If so, would I too be able to see them?” She had a feeling that they had been produced by some strange magic—or was it magic? She could not be sure.

“Now—” Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer, took on a manner quite professional as she hid Florence’s two dollars on her person. “Now we shall proceed.”

She motioned the girl to the ebony chair beside the table where the crystal ball rested. Then with nervous, active fingers she began arranging articles on that table.

Florence was interested in these few objects. A raven carved from black marble, a bronze dragon with fiery eyes, and a god of some sort with an ugly countenance and a prodigious mouth, all these were on that table. Madame arranged them about the crystal ball, but some distance away from it. Then, as if the ball were a sacred thing, she lifted it with great care to place it in a saucer-like receptacle over which a bronze eagle perpetually hovered.

The girl was much interested in the gazer’s hands. In her wanderings about the city in search of fortune telling facts, she had picked up interesting bits about hands. She was convinced that long slender fingers belonged to a person of a nervous and artistic temperament and that a very broad hand told of force coupled with great determination. Madame’s hand was fairly broad, but her fingers were not long. Instead they were short and curved. “Like the claws of some great cat,” the girl thought with a shudder. Never had she seen fingers that seemed better suited to clawing in hoards of gold.

“And she would not care how she came by it,” Florence thought. And yet, how could she be sure of that?

“Now,” Madame said in a changed tone, “look at the crystal. Concentrate. There is no spirit moving in the crystal. You need not draw one out. The pictures of past and future you are to see by gazing in the crystal are to come from within your own mind, or shall come to you from the spirit world outside the crystal.

“Do not stare. Relax. Look quietly at the crystal. In this room there is nothing to disturb you, no radio with its noise, no ticking clock, nothing. The light is subdued. I myself shall retire. You have only to gaze in the crystal. This time you may see much. Then again, you may see nothing. It is not given to all, this great gift of looking into the future.

“If it is given you to see, you will find first that the crystal begins to look dull and cloudy, with pin points of light glittering out of that fog. When this appears, you shall know that you are beginning to have crystalline vision. In time this shall vanish. In its stead will come a sort of blindness wherein you shall appear to float through great spaces of blue. It is against this background of blue that your vision must appear.

“Ready? Concentrate. Gaze.

“I am gone,” came in a tone that sounded faint and far away. Florence was alone—alone in the room of midnight blue and the faintly gleaming crystal ball.

CHAPTER V
FLORENCE GAZES INTO THE CRYSTAL

She was alone with the crystal—or was she? She could not be sure. Which is more disturbing, to be alone in a room where a half-darkness hangs over all, or to feel that there is someone else in the room?

Only yesterday she had been seized by a clutching hand and ushered out of that room. Where now was the owner of that hand? She had no way of knowing. One thing was sure, that had not been Madame Zaran’s hand. Those fingers had been long, slim and bony. Madame’s were not like that.

“But I must concentrate!” She shook herself vigorously. “I must gaze at the crystal.” As she focussed her attention on the crystal ball, she became conscious of two gleaming green eyes. These were small but piercing. They belonged to the bronze eagle that, hovering over the ball in this dim light, seemed to have suddenly come alive.

“Bah!” she exclaimed low, “what a bother sometimes an imagination may become! It must be controlled. I shall control it!” she ended stoutly.

In the end she did just that and with the most surprising results. Settling back easily in her chair, feeling the cool darkness of the place and heaving a sigh, she fixed her eyes dreamily upon the crystal ball. For a full five minutes there was no change. The ball remained simply a faintly gleaming circle of light. Then, ah, yes! a change came. The ball lost some of its distinctness. It turned gray and cloudy. Pin points of light like shooting stars appeared against the gray.

This continued for some time. Then, of a sudden, warmth came over the girl as she saw that gray turn to the faint blue of a morning sky. Leaning eagerly forward, she waited.

“Yes! Yes!” Her lips formed words she did not speak. The lower portion of that blue turned to gray and green. She was looking now at rocky ridges half overgrown with glorious trees—spruce, birch, and balsam. Beneath this were dark, cool waters. Above, fleecy clouds raced across a dark blue sky. On the water were no boats, in the forest no people. She was gloriously alone.

“Oh!” Florence breathed, stretching out her hands as if to gather it in.

Now there came another change. Fading away as in the movies, half the trees became bare and leafless. The rocks, the grass and all the barren branches were bedecked with snow. The surface of the water glistened. “Winter,” she whispered. Then, as a strange emotion swept over her, she cried, “Where? Where?”

As if frightened away by that sudden sound, the vision vanished and there she sat staring at a glass ball that was, as far as her eyes could tell her, just a hard glass ball and nothing more.

“How strange!” She pinched herself. “How very strange!”

But now a change was coming over the room itself. It was slowly filling with a dim light. She made out indistinctly a broad, black, dead fireplace, and above it on the mantel a great green dragon with fiery eyes.

Then with a sudden start she sat straight up. On the opposite wall, against the midnight blue velvet, a shadow had appeared, a very distinct shadow of a man. Or was it of a man? The nose was long and sharp. The chin curved out like the tip of a new moon. It was a terrifying profile.

“The—the Devil!” She did not say the words—only thought them. At the same time she seemed to hear her dead aunt say, “All this fortune telling business belongs to the Devil.”

“Well? How about it?”

Florence could not have been more startled by these words had they been shouted in her ear. They had been said quietly by Madame Zaran. She had returned. And in the meantime the sinister shadow had vanished from the wall.

“I—why, I—” With a sort of mental click the girl’s mind returned to her vision of water, forest, and sky. “I saw—”

“Wait! Do not tell me, not now.” Madame held up a hand. “Ah, you are one of those who are fortunate! It is given to very few that they shall see visions in the crystal ball on the very first time of their trying. You will go far. You must come again and again.”

Madame’s hands were in motion. Florence fancied she could see those claw-like fingers raking in piles of crisp new greenbacks.

“But I may be doing her a grave injustice,” she reproved herself.

“I shall return,” she found herself saying to Madame Zaran.

“Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Perhaps tomorrow.”

Scarcely knowing what she did, the girl let herself out of the room, caught the elevator, and next moment found herself in the bright sunlight, which, after all that midnight blue darkness and air of mystery, seemed very strange indeed.

“Now for Sandy and his glass box,” she thought to herself when her mind had become accustomed to the world of solid reality about her. Sandy was her youthful red-headed reporter. Sandy was her “ghost writer.” She supplied the material of her own column, “Looking Into the Future.” It was Sandy who pounded it all into form on his trusty typewriter. His “glass box,” as she laughingly called it, was an office on the sixth floor of the newspaper office building that looked down upon the city’s slow, easy-going river.

Sandy was not at all like the river. He was up-and-coming, was Sandy. The instant she came into his glass box he bounced out of his chair.

“Hope you’ve got something good today!” he cried. “Big Girl, we’ve got a real thing here. Knocking ’em cold, we are. Look at this!” He put his hand on a wire basket filled to overflowing with letters. “All for you, all fan mail. And the things they want to know!” He laughed a merry laugh. “Old maid wanting to know some charm for attracting a man; a mother wanting the name of a crystal-gazer who can see where her long lost boy is; men wanting a fortune teller that will give them tips on the stock market. Funny, sad, tragic little old world of ours! It wants to gaze into the future right enough. They—

“But say!” he broke off to exclaim. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

“Do I?” Florence’s eyes brightened. “Well, I’ve got a real story this time. I—

“Wait a minute!” Florence broke short off to go dashing out of the glass box, then started gliding on tiptoe after a girl who was hurrying down the long narrow corridor.

“It doesn’t seem possible,” she whispered to herself. “But it’s true. That’s the girl I saw in that room of midnight blue velvet, the one who saw moving figures in the crystal ball. And here she is hurrying along toward Frances Ward’s desk. I’ll get her story. I surely will. I must!” she murmured low as she hurried on.

She was mistaken in part at least. There are some people whose stories are not to be told at a single sitting. The girl hurrying on before her was one of these.

Frances Ward it had been who found Florence her latest opportunity for work, mystery and adventure. As Florence thought of all this now, a great wave of affection for the gray-haired woman swept over her.

Frances Ward was old, perhaps past seventy. Her hair was frizzy, her dress plain and at times almost uncouth. Her desk was always covered with a littered mess of letters, paper files, scribbled notes and pictures. “A poor old woman,” you might say. Ah, no! Frances Ward was rich—not in dollars perhaps; still she was not altogether poor at that—she was rich in friends. For Frances Ward was, as someone had named her, “Everybody’s Grandmother.” She called herself, at the head of one column, “Friend of the People.” This, in a great busy sometimes selfish, sometimes wicked city, was Frances Ward at her best, the Friend.

Because of this, the mysterious young girl whom Florence had only the day before seen gazing into the crystal ball and apparently seeing most mysterious pictures of her early life, was now calling upon Frances Ward for advice.

As Florence reached the door of Mrs. Ward’s office, she heard the mysterious girl say, “I—I am June Travis.”

“Oh!” There was a note of welcome in the aged woman’s voice. “Won’t you have a chair? And what can I do for you?”

Frances Ward did not so much as look up as Florence, after slipping by her, seated herself before a narrow table in the corner of her office and began scribbling rapidly. This was not Florence’s accustomed place. But Frances Ward was old. She understood many things.

“Well, you see—” the strange girl’s fingers locked and unlocked nervously. “I—I read your column al—almost every day. It—it has interested me, the way you—you help people. I—I thought you might be able to help me.”

“Yes.” Frances Ward bestowed upon her a warm, sincere smile. “I might be able to help you. Will you please tell me how? You see—” she smiled broadly. “I am neither a mind reader nor a fortune teller, so—”

“No!” The girl shuddered. “No, of course you’re not. But just think! It is partly that, about fortune tellers, I wanted to ask you. Do you believe in them, crystal-gazers and all that?”

“No—” Frances Ward appeared to weigh her words. “N-no, I’m afraid I don’t, at least not very much. Of course, some of them are keen students of human nature. If they can read your face, understand your actions, they may be able to help you to understand yourself so as to meet with greater success. But—”

“Do you believe they could make you see people in the crystal ball—people that you have not seen for years and years?” The girl leaned forward eagerly.

“I should say that would be quite unusual.” Frances Ward smiled. “I should like to witness such a feat. I should indeed.”

“Perhaps you can!” June Travis exclaimed. “I saw it only last evening, saw it with my own eyes. I saw my father, whom I have not seen for ten years—saw him distinctly in the crystal ball!”

“You seem quite young.” Frances Ward spoke slowly. “You must have been a very small child when your father—” she hesitated. “Did he die?”

“No! Oh, no!” the girl exclaimed. “He—he just went away. But he didn’t desert me. He left money, plenty of money, for my care. That—that’s why I am so anxious to find him now. It’s the money. There is quite a lot of it, and I shall soon be sixteen. And then—then I shall have to manage the money all by myself. And that—that frightens me.”

“Money. Plenty of money,” Florence was repeating to herself in the corner. Strangely enough, at that moment she seemed to see the shining crystal ball. About the ball, with wings that carried them round and round in ever widening circles, were bank notes. Ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred dollar bills, they circled round and round. And, swinging wildly, clawing at them frantically but never catching one, was a hand, the Tiger Woman’s hand, the hand of Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer.

CHAPTER VI
GYPSIES THAT ARE NOT GYPSIES

While Florence was having a close look into the mystery of the crystal ball, the little French girl Petite Jeanne was not idle; in truth, Jeanne was seldom idle. She was like the sparrow of our city streets, always on the move.

Since the artist did not require her services as a model that day, she considered it her duty to search out the haunts of certain gypsy groups, and to discover if possible what had happened to the poor widow’s four hundred dollars.

“Bah! I don’t like it!” she exclaimed as she drew on an old gray coat and crowded a small hat over her gorgeous golden hair. “It is dangerous, this looking for a thief. But it is exciting too. So there you are! I shall go.” And go she did.

Since Maxwell Street had been mentioned in connection with the theft, it was to that street she journeyed. It was a bright winter’s day. Wares that had been dragged indoors during severe weather had been hauled out again. And such wares as they were! Rags and old iron were offered as clothing and tools. There were stalls of vile smelling fish, racks of curious spices, crates of weary looking chickens and turkeys, everything that one may find in the poor man’s market of any great city. Jeanne had seen it all in Paris, in London, in New York and now in Chicago. Always she shuddered. Yet always, too, her heart went out to these poor, brave people who through sunshine and storm, winter’s cold and summer’s heat struggled to sell a little of this, a little of that, and so to keep themselves alive by their own efforts rather than accept charity.

Out of all this drab scene one figure stood bright and colorful, a dark-eyed maiden dressed in all the many-hued garments of a gypsy. Jeanne went straight to her.

“Want a fortune told?” The girl’s eyes gleamed. “Step inside. Read your palm. Tell your fortune with cards. Perhaps today is not so good.” She looked at Jeanne’s purposely drab costume. “Tomorrow may be better—much better. You shall see. Step right inside.”

Jeanne stepped inside. The place she entered was blue with cigaret smoke. Idling about the large room, on couches and rugs were a half dozen girls dressed, as this other one, in bright costumes. At the back of the room was a booth, inside the booth a small table and a chair.

Instantly Jeanne found herself ill at ease in these surroundings. She had seen much of gypsy life, but this—somehow a guardian gnome seemed to whisper a warning in her ear.

Turning, she said a few words. She spoke in a strange tongue—the lingo of her own gypsy people. The girl she addressed stared at her blankly. Turning about, she repeated the words in a louder tone. Every girl in the room must have heard. Not one replied.

“You are not gypsies!” Jeanne exclaimed, stamping her foot. “You do not know the gypsy language.”

“Not gypsies! Not gypsies!” The swarm of girls were up and screaming like a flock of angry bluejays. “We are gypsies! We are gypsies!”

“Well,” said Jeanne, backing toward the door, “you don’t seem much like gypsies. You should be able to speak the language—”

“Paveoe, our mistress, she speaks that silly nonsense!” one of the girls exclaimed. “Come when she is here and you shall hear it by the hour.”

“And does she run this place?” Jeanne asked. She was now at the door and breathing more easily.

“Y-yes,” the girl said slowly, “Paveoe is the woman who runs this place.”

“I’ll be back.” Jeanne opened the door, closed it quietly and was gone.

“I wonder if this Paveoe is the woman I am looking for,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps she has the money. Perhaps that is why she is not here.”

As she crowded through the ragged, jostling and quite merry throng on Maxwell Street, Jeanne found her heart filled with misgivings. A spirit of prophecy belonging to gypsy people alone seemed to tell her that this woman, Paveoe, was bad, that they should meet, and then—. At that point the spirit of prophecy failed her.

Meanwhile, in Frances Ward’s office the mystery girl, June Travis, was saying:

“No, I do not remember my father—that is, hardly at all. And yet, it seems so strange I recognized him instantly when I saw him in—in the crystal ball! And the girl who was with him—it was I.” June broke off to stare out of the window and down at the slow-moving river.

Florence wanted to say, “Yes, yes, she was in the crystal ball. I saw her. It could have been no other.” She opened her mouth to speak; but no sound came out. She had recalled that she was there to listen and not to talk. “But what a story this promises to be!” she thought to herself. Then, with a sudden start she began taking notes.

“June Travis. Plenty of money. Much money when she is sixteen,” she wrote. “Money—” her pencil stopped. She had thought of the poor widow with four hundred dollars and the gypsy fortune tellers. “Wolves,” she thought, “human wolves, they are everywhere.” Once again her pencil glided across the paper.

“It does seem a little extraordinary.” Frances Ward was speaking slowly, thoughtfully. She was facing June Travis, still smiling. “Strange indeed that you should see yourself as you were more than ten years ago, and that you should recognize your father.”

“It was a beautiful room.” A look of rapture stole over the girl’s face. “A very beautiful room. Books, a fireplace, everything. Just the sort of place my father must have had to live in—for he must be rich. If he wasn’t, how could he leave me all that money?

“And he was to come back.” Her tone became eager. “He will come back. Madame Zaran, that’s the crystal-gazer, says she’s sure he will come back. She’s told me wonderful things. I am to travel—California, the Orient, Europe, around the world.

“But father—” her voice dropped. “She says she can’t get through to father. That will take money, much money. And very soon I shall have much money. Only—” she shuddered. “Somehow that makes me afraid.”

“Yes.” Frances Ward nodded her wise old head. “You must not forget to be afraid, and to be very, very careful. I should like to meet this wonderful Madame Zaran.”

“You shall meet her!” the girl exclaimed. “But, Mrs. Ward, you are so kind! You have helped so many. Can’t you help me find my father?” Her voice rose on a high note of appeal.

“Yes.” Frances Ward spoke with all the gentleness of a mother. “Yes, I think perhaps I can. But first you must do everything possible for yourself. Where is your money kept?”

“In a great bank.”

“Good!” Frances Ward’s face lighted. “What do they tell you of your father?”

“Nothing.” The girl’s face fell. “The man my father left the money with at the bank is dead. The others know that the money is for me and how it is to be given out.”

“And you live—”

“At a very fine home for girls, only a few girls, twelve girls, all very nice.”

“And what does the person in charge tell you of your father?”

“Nothing—nothing at all. I was brought there by a woman who was not my mother, a little old gray-haired woman who said I was to be kept there. She gave them some money. She told them where the other money was. Then she went away.”

“Strange,” Frances Ward murmured softly, “very, very strange. But, my child!” Her tone changed. “You may be able to be your own best helper. You were not a baby when your father left you. Under favorable conditions you might be able to think back, back, back to those days, to recall perhaps rooms, houses, faces. You might describe them so accurately that they could be found. And, finding them, we might come upon someone who knew your father and who knows where he has gone.”

“Oh, if only I could!” The girl clasped and unclasped her hands. “If only I could!”

“That,” said Mrs. Ward, “may take considerable time, but I feel that it is a surer and—” she hesitated, “perhaps a safer way than some others might be.

“My dear,” she laid a hand gently on June’s arm, “you will not go to that place at night?”

“Oh, no!” June’s eyes opened wide. “We are never allowed to go anywhere after dark unless Mrs. Maver, our matron, is with us.”

“That’s good.” The frown on the aged woman’s face was replaced by a smile.

“Florence!” She turned half about in her chair. “You should know June Travis. I feel sure you might aid her. Perhaps you’d like to take her out for a cup of something hot. What do young ladies drink? Nothing strong, I hope.” She laughed.

“Not I!” Florence replied, “I’m always in training.”

“Which every girl should be,” Frances Ward replied promptly.

“My dear,” she put out a hand to June, “I have a ‘dead-line’ to make. You wouldn’t know about that, but it’s just a column that must be in the paper a half hour from now. You will come back, won’t you?”

“Yes, I will,” said June. “Thank you. I feel so much better a—about everything now.”

“That,” said Florence as the two girls walked down the corridor, “is ‘Everybody’s Grandmother.’ She’s truly wonderful. She knows so much about everything.”

“And,” she added aside to herself, “she knows just how much to say. If she had told this girl I was engaged in the business of hunting fortune tellers, that would have spoiled everything. But she didn’t. She didn’t.”

“Have you visited fortune telling studios before?” she asked the bright-eyed June as they sipped a hot cup of some strange bitter drink Florence found in a narrow little hole-in-the-wall place.

“Oh, yes, often!” The girl’s eyes shone. “I’m afraid I’ve become quite a fan. And they do tell you such strange things. Honestly,” her voice dropped, “Madame Zaran told me things that happened weeks ago and that only I knew about—or at least only one or two other girls.

“But this—” her voice and her face sobered. “This is different. This is what Polly, one of our girls, would call ‘very tremendous.’ Think of seeing yourself and your own father just as you were years and years ago!”

“Yes,” Florence agreed without hypocrisy, “it is tremendous.”

“But it costs so much!” June sighed. “Don’t you tell a soul—” her voice dropped to a whisper, “I saved and saved from my allowance until I had it all—two hundred dollars!”

“Two hundred dollars! Did they charge you that for gazing into the crystal? Why, they—”

Florence did not finish. She was trying to think how much those people would charge for their next revelation when, perhaps, this girl had come into possession of much money.

As she looked at the young and slender girl before her, a big-sister feeling came sweeping over her. “We—” she placed her large, strong hand over June’s slender one, “we’re going to stick together, aren’t we?”

“If—if you wish it,” the other girl replied hesitatingly.

“And now—” she rose from her chair. “I must go. There’s a wonderful woman on the south side. Everyone says she’s marvelous. She’s a fortune teller too, a voodoo priestess, black, you know.”

“From Africa?”

“No. Haiti. She tells such marvelous fortunes. Her name is Marianna Christophe. She’s a descendant of a black emperor. And she has a black goat with golden horns.”

“Perhaps,” Florence laughed, “she borrowed the goat from the gypsy girl in a book I once read. What’s the address? I must have her tell my fortune.”

“It’s 3528 Duncan Street. I wish—” the girl hesitated. “I wish you were going now.” She shuddered a little. “She’s black, a voodoo priestess. She has a black goat with golden horns. I’m always a little scared of black things.”

“Say!” Florence exclaimed, seized by a sudden inspiration, “why don’t you wait until tomorrow, then I can go with you to see this voodoo priestess?”

“I—I’d love it.” The girl’s face brightened.

“She’s beautiful, this June Travis,” Florence told herself, “beautiful in a peculiar way, fluffy hair that is not quite red, a round face and deeply dimpled cheeks. Who could fail to love her and want to protect her?”