The Magic Curtain Part 6

"If the pearls had been found that notice would have been taken down,"

she a.s.sured herself. "But if this is true, why did I go unmolested? One would suppose that at least I would be questioned regarding the affair.

But no!" She shrugged her graceful shoulders. "They ask me nothing. They look and look, and say nothing. Oh, yes, indeed, they say: 'What is your name?' That most beautiful rich one, she says this. And the dark one who is only a voice, she says: 'Do you like the opera?' She asks this. And who is she? I know that voice. I have heard it before. It is very familiar, yet I cannot recall it. If she is here again I shall see her face."

Having thus worked herself into a state of deep perplexity that rapidly ripened into fear, she glided, once her duties were done, down a narrow aisle, across the end of the stage where a score of stage hands were busy s.h.i.+fting scenes, then along a narrow pa.s.sage-way, with which, as you will know from reading _The Golden Circle_, she was thoroughly familiar. From this pa.s.sageway she emerged upon a second and narrower stage.

This was the stage of the Civic Theatre. The stage was dark. The house was dark. Only the faintest gleam of light revealed seats like ghosts ranged row on row.

How familiar it all seemed to her. The time had been when, not many months back, she had stood upon that stage and by the aid of her G.o.d-given gift, had stirred the audience to admiration, to laughter and to tears.

As she stood there now a wave of feeling came over her that she could not resist. This stage, this little playhouse had become to her what home means to many. The people who had haunted those seats were _her_ people.

They had loved her. She had loved them. But now they were gone. The house was dark, the light opera troop was scattered. She thought she knew how a mother robin must feel as she visits her nest long after the fledglings have flown.

Advancing to the center of the stage, she stretched her arms wide in mute appeal to the empty seats. But no least whisper of admiration or disapproval came back to her.

A moment she stood thus. Then, as her hands dropped, her breast heaved with one great sob.

But, like the sea, Jeanne was made of many moods. "No! No!" She stamped her small foot. "I will not come back to this! I will not! The way back is closed. Only the door ahead is open. I will go on.

"Grand Opera, this is all now. This is art indeed. Pictures, music, story. This is Grand Opera. Big! Grand! n.o.ble! Some day, somehow I shall stand upon that most wonderful of all stages, and those people, those thousands, the richest, the most learned, the most n.o.ble, they shall be my people!"

Having delivered this speech to the deserted hall, she once again became a very little lady in a trim black dress suit, seeking a way to the outer air and the street that led to home.

She had come this way because she feared that the slender, dark-faced stranger who had accosted her earlier in the evening would await her at the door.

"If he sees me he will follow," she told herself. "And then--"

She finished with a shudder.

In choosing this way she had counted upon one circ.u.mstance. Nor had she counted in vain. As she hurried down the dark aisle toward the back of the theatre which was, she knew, closed, she came quite suddenly upon a man with a flashlight and time clock.

"Oh, Tommy Mosk!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "How glad I am that you are still here!"

The watchman threw his light upon her face.

"Pet.i.te Jeanne!" he exclaimed. "But why the masquerade?" Tommy belonged to those other days and, with the rest, had come to love the simple, big-hearted little light opera star. "Pet.i.te Jeanne! But why--"

"Please don't make me tell." She gripped his arm. "Only let me out, and see me safe into a taxi. And--and--" She put a finger to her lips. "Don't whisper a word."

"I--it's irregular, but I--I'll do it," he replied gallantly.

Jeanne gave his arm another squeeze and they were away.

Three minutes later, still dressed as Pierre, the usher, she was huddled on the broad seat of a taxi, speeding for home.

CHAPTER VIII AN ISLAND MYSTERY

When Florence, whose work as physical director required her attention until late hours three nights in the week, arrived, she found the little French girl still dressed as Pierre, curled up in a big chair shuddering in the cold and the dark.

"Wh-what's happened?" She stared at her companion in astonishment.

"N-n-nothing happened!" wailed Pet.i.te Jeanne. "That is why I am so very much afraid. They have said not one word to me about the pearls. They believe I have them. They will follow me, shadow me, search this place.

Who can doubt it? Oh, _mon Dieu_! Such times! Such troubles!

"And yes!" she cried with a fresh shudder. "There is the slim, dark-faced one who is after me. And how can I know why?"

"You poor child!" Florence lifted her from the chair as easily as she might had she been a sack of feathers. "You shall tell me all about it.

But first I must make a fire and brew some good black tea. And you must run along and become Pet.i.te Jeanne. I am not very fond of this Pierre person." She plucked at the black coat sleeve. "In fact I never have cared for him at all."

Half an hour later the two girls were curled up amid a pile of rugs and cus.h.i.+ons before the fire. Cups were steaming, the fire crackling and the day, such as it had been, was rapidly pa.s.sing into the joyous realm of "times that are gone," where one may live in memories that amuse and thrill, but never cause fear nor pain.

Jeanne had told her story and Florence had done her best to rea.s.sure her, when the little French girl exclaimed: "But you, my friend? Only a few hours ago you spoke of a discovery on the island. What was this so wonderful thing you saw there?"

"Well, now," Florence sat up to prod the fire, "that was the strangest thing! You have been on the island?"

"No, my friend. In the fort, but not on the island."

"Then you don't know what sort of half wild place it is. It's made of the dumping from a great city: cans, broken bricks, clay, everything. And from sand taken from the bottom of the lake. It's been years in the making. Storms have washed in seeds. Birds have carried in others. Little forests of willow and cottonwood have sprung up. The south end is a jungle. A fit hide-out for tramps, you'd say. All that. You'd not expect to find respectable people living there, would you?"

"But how could they?"

"That's the queer part. They could. And I'm almost sure they do. Seems too strange to be true.

"And yet--" She prodded the fire, then stared into the flames as if to see reproduced there pictures that had half faded from her memories. "And yet, Pet.i.te Jeanne, I saw a girl out there, quite a young girl, in overalls and a bathing-suit. She was like a statue when I first saw her, a living statue. She went in for a dip, then donned her overalls to dash right into the jungle.

"I wanted to see where she went, so I followed. And what do you think!

After following a winding trail for a little time, I came, just where the cottonwoods are tallest, upon the strangest sort of dwelling--if it was a dwelling at all--I have ever seen."

"What was it like?" Jeanne leaned eagerly forward.

"Like nothing on land or sea, but a little akin to both. The door was heavy and without gla.s.s. It had a great bra.s.s k.n.o.b such as you find on the cabin doors of very old s.h.i.+ps. And the windows, if you might call them that, looked like portholes taken from s.h.i.+ps.

"But the walls; they were strangest of all. Curious curved pillars rose every two or three feet apart, to a considerable height. Between these pillars brick walls had been built. The whole was topped by a roof of green tile."

"And the girl went in there?"

"Where else could she have gone?"

"And that was her home?"

"Who could doubt it?"

"America--" Jeanne drew a long breath. "Your America is a strange place."

"So strange that even we who have lived here always are constantly running into the most astonis.h.i.+ng things.