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?”

“Let me see,” she said, speaking half to the girl, half to herself, “No, I can’t go tomorrow. How will the day after do?”

“That will be fine.”

“You’ll meet me here at this same hour?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Then I’ll be going.” Florence held out a hand. “Goodbye and good luck. I have a feeling,” she added as a sort of afterthought, “that we are going to do a lot of exploring together, you and I.”

As she hurried toward Sandy’s glass box Florence repeated, “An awful lot.” At that, she had not the faintest notion what a truly awful lot that would be.