CHAPTER IX

LITTLE SWEDEN

Little Sweden, strange to say, is not in Europe, but on the near-north side in Chicago. It is a place to eat, a unique and interesting place. There buxom maidens in white aprons and quaint starched caps do your bidding. It is a place of marvelous abundance. You do not order food. It is there before you on a long table. You pay for a meal, then help yourself. On the long board tables are great circles of chopped meat—beef, veal and chicken cooked in the most delicious manner. Salads, also done in circles, and luscious fruits, strange cakes and curious loaves of brown bread. It is as if all that is best in Sweden had been carried across the sea and reassembled for you and for your guests.

Our four friends, Rosemary, Jeanne, Danby and Willie had been whisked away from the airport to this remarkable place. A half hour after Florence had asked the question, “Where is Little Sweden?” they might have been found shut away in a small private dining room of the place, holding a conference over cakes and coffee.

Rosemary was on a forty-eight hour rest period. This is a regular thing for all stewardesses when they arrive at their home port. During the past twelve hours Rosemary had seen much of Petite Jeanne, and she had found her to be a very charming person. Simple in her tastes, modest, kindly, ever ready to serve others, Jeanne was, she thought, altogether lovely. During that twelve hours Danby Force had kept the wires hot in a vain search for some clue that might lead him to the dark-faced woman who had so mysteriously vanished.

Willie VanGeldt had been admitted to the conference because, as Rosemary had discovered, beneath his apparently happy-go-lucky and altogether haphazard nature there was a foundation of pure gold. He liked folks and was ready to help them, to “go the limit,” as he expressed it, if only they would tell him what might be done. He had been quite entranced with the company of the little stewardess and was more than ready to aid her friends.

“First of all,” Rosemary was saying, “I want you all to keep in touch with me as far as that is possible. I have a radio in my room. You have radios on your airplanes. We will see that they are in tune. When I am here I’ll be in my room from eight to eleven in the evening. Should you have anything to report or be in need, call the numbers 48—48, give your location if you can, then deliver your message. I’ll not be able to reply by radio, but I’ll help in any way I can.”

“And I’ll take you round the world in my plane if need be,” said Willie.

To this he received a strange reply from the little stewardess: “You’ll not take me off the ground, no matter what happens.”

“Why? Why won’t I?” He stared in unbelief.

“I’ll answer that later.” She cast him a half apologetic look. “Mr. Force has something to show us.”

“This,” said Danby Force, “is a picture of the lady who threatens to ruin our happy community.” He held the photograph before them.

“She appears to prefer air travel, and she will travel again,” said Rosemary. “We have a hundred and fifty stewardesses in the air. Why not have a picture made for each of these? If they all keep watch, we may find her quickly.”

“Grand idea!” Danby exclaimed. “I’ll have them made at once.”

“I’ll be wandering about, as gypsy people have a way of doing,” Jeanne said with a fine smile. “If I catch sight of that dark lady, I’ll whisper 48—48 into my receiver and things will be doing at once.” Little did Jeanne dream of the strange circumstances under which that mystic signal 48—48 would slip from her lips.

“But tell us—” Jeanne leaned forward eagerly. “Tell us of these so terrible spies. Shall they be shot at sunrise?”

“No.” Danby Force smiled. “We don’t shoot industrial spies. In fact I’m afraid it would be difficult to so much as get them put in prison. An idea, however valuable, is not easy to get hold of and prove. You may steal it, yet no one in the world can prove that you have it. That sounds rather strange, doesn’t it?” He laughed a jolly laugh.

“And by the way!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Just this morning I received a message that proves we still have spies in our plant. A scrap of note-paper with plans drawn on it, picked up off the floor of the mill, proves that. And this,” he added rather strangely, “gives me fresh hope.”

“Hope! Hope! Hope!” the others cried in chorus.

“To be sure,” said Danby, “if they are still with us, then they have not yet secured all the secrets needed for their selfish and cowardly plans. You see—”

He broke short off. There came a movement at the draperies of the door. A head was thrust in. A smiling face looked down upon them. A pair of lips said:

“Jeanne, I have found you!”

Ten seconds later Jeanne was in someone’s arms. It was her good pal Florence. They were together once more.

“This,” said Jeanne, turning a smiling face to her friends at the table, “is Florence Huyler, the best girl friend I have ever known. And,” she added, eagerly nodding at Danby Force, “she’s a fine solver of mysteries as well.”

“Ah!” Danby’s eyes gleamed. “Come and join us, Miss Huyler.”

“I shall be back very soon.” Jeanne popped out of the little dining room to reappear in an incredibly short time with a heaping plate of food.

“This,” she exclaimed, “is Little Sweden, the place where everyone eats all he can.”

“And now,” said Danby, nodding to Jeanne, “tell me about your friend. Why do you think she is a solver of mysteries?”

“Because,” Jeanne replied, “she has solved many.” At once she launched into a recital of her friend’s many achievements. She spoke of the mysterious “Crimson Thread,” of the “Thirteenth Ring,” of the “Lady Cop and the Three Rubies.”

“I am delighted,” said Danby Force. “But then—” his voice dropped, “no doubt you are permanently employed and cannot join us in our search for this dark lady and her companion spies.”

“On the contrary,” Florence smiled a doubtful smile, “I am very much unemployed.”

“How fortunate!” Danby extended his hand. “And you are a social worker of a sort, a recreation lady. I have been promising myself for a long time that we should have a social secretary at our plant. I shall appoint you at once and you shall have a double duty—to serve our simple, kindly people, and to search for a spy. What do you say?”

“What can I say but yes!” The large girl beamed. “What a day!” she was thinking to herself. “I go blundering into a place looking for a job that’s several sizes too small for me. And now I fall upon one that is just exactly my kind.”

“Life,” she said aloud, “is beautiful.”

“Yes,” Danby Force agreed, “life is beautiful at times, and should always be so. When we are selfish or unkind we mar the beauty of life for someone. When we are suspicious or unjust, when we lay heavy burdens on the weak, we are destroying life’s beauty.

“Yes,” he repeated slowly, “life must be beautiful.”

“Listen!” Rosemary Sample held up a hand. “What was that?”

“A horn,” said Jeanne. “There’s another and another. This, why this!” She sprang to her feet. “This is the night of Hallowe’en! And this is the last night of the Great Fair, that most beautiful Century of Progress. Florence,” she cried, “do you not remember the ‘Hour of Enchantment’? We must go there tonight. We truly must!”

“We shall all go,” said Danby Force. “It will prove a never-to-be-forgotten night, I feel sure.” He spoke the truth, but he did not even so much as dream the half of it.