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.