CHAPTER XXII

THE SILVER SHIP

Early on the following morning two planes left the airport. One was small. It resembled a dragon fly. In it rode Jeanne and Madame Bihari. The other was a great bi-motored cabin plane. It carried as its stewardess our good friend Rosemary Sample. Her passengers were as interesting a group as you might hope to meet.

They were destined, these planes, for the same little city, Happy Vale. Both Jeanne and Rosemary were ignorant of this fact. So it is in life, two congenial souls travel for years along the same path, all unconscious of one another’s nearness.

Rosemary’s interest in her passengers increased as she became better acquainted with them. They were, she discovered, from the University—sociologists, teachers of ethics, psychologists—all delightfully simple, kindly people who laughed and joked about the long strings of letters Ph.D., LL.D. and the like, attached to their names.

She was not long in discovering that a tall thin man with long hair and thick glasses named H. Bedford Biddle had chanced upon what he spoke of as a “rare find” in the field of sociology. They were all, it seemed, going for a look at his “find.”

The “find,” she knew in advance, was Danby Force’s cotton mill and his little city of Happy Vale. She was thrilled at the thought of seeing him once more.

As she listened to these learned men discussing the “find” she realized there was much she could tell them about it. Not being asked, however, she kept silent. She smiled from time to time at their curiously learned remarks about a thing that to her had seemed quite simple and very beautiful, a group of common people, working together to make their little city the happiest, most contented in all the world.

They landed on the outskirts of a beautiful little city. A bus carried them to the factory. There they were met by Danby Force who had a very special message for the little stewardess.

“I wanted you to come.” It was a rare smile he gave her, something quite special that warmed her heart. “I felt you were interested and would truly understand.”

“And is—have you—”

“No.” His voice was low. “We have not found her. We have no true notion of the harm she may have done. We can only hope.” He was speaking, Rosemary knew, of the spy.

It was an hour later when, after a frugal repast wonderfully prepared, they were ready to enter the mill.

Rosemary had dropped modestly to the rear of the group when of a sudden she noted some stranger joining their party. With a quick eye for faces she already knew all her party well. “He is not of our party, and yet,” she told herself, “there is something familiar about him. He gives me the shivers. I wonder why.”

A little later she was thinking to herself, “Wonder if he has been invited to join us. None of my affair—but—” But what? She did not know.

Invited or no, the youth did join this group. He did go with them. To Rosemary his attitude was disconcerting. A part of the time he seemed quite indifferent, the rest of the time he was like one on tip-toes. Drinking in every word that was said, at the same time he went through strange motions, fumbling first at his vest, then at his pockets.

Their journey through the plant was half over.

“No,” Danby Force was saying, “this is not Utopia. We have made mistakes and been criticized. Members of our group have complained and claimed unfair treatment. Some have moved away. This is human. But we are trying to live up to our motto: ‘Do something for someone else.’ We—”

For the first time, with no apparent reason, the mysterious stranger looked Rosemary square in the eyes. His black eyes flashed a dark challenge. Instantly she knew this was no youth. This was the mysterious dark lady! By the gleam of an eye she had made this discovery. This woman had changed her complexion and her disguise. She had returned for more facts, perhaps for the secret formula. And what was she, Rosemary Sample, to do about it? Inside her a tumult was raging. Externally she was calm. “I must think,” she told herself, “think calmly. And then I must act.”

In the meantime Jeanne too had made a discovery. Was it important? Who could tell? An hour after Rosemary’s party left the small landing field at Happy Vale, Jeanne’s dragon fly came circling down to at last taxi to a position close beside a small silver plane.

“That ship,” Jeanne said to Madame, “looks familiar. And—” she clapped her hands. “I know where I saw it before.”

Her heart skipped a beat as, making a dash for it, she peered within. “Oh!” she breathed out her disappointment. “She is not there!” This was the luminous silver ship that one night had hovered over her golden tree, the very one she had followed so far next day. She was sure of that. A young man sat at the wheel. He seemed about to start the plane.

Throwing open the door, he said, “Howdy, sister. What can I do for you?”

“Wh—where is she?” Jeanne asked breathlessly.

“She?” He appeared not to understand.

“The dark lady.”

“Which one?” He laughed. “I’m told there are several in America.”

At that Jeanne decided to give him up. “Only one more question,” she thought.

“How do you make it shine all over at night?” she asked.

“There are ten thousand holes in the fusilage and the planes,” he explained in a friendly tone. “Neon tubes made of a special kind of glass run everywhere inside the plane. When we light these tubes they shine out through all the little holes. Simple, what?”

“Very simple,” Jeanne agreed.

A moment later she saw him go bobbing across the field to rise at last and soar away.

“All the same,” Jeanne told herself, “he _did_ once have that dark lady, the spy, as a passenger. Wonder if he has her still?” She concluded that plane would bear watching if it ever returned.