CHAPTER III

ON THE VERGE OF ADVENTURE

Long after Petite Jeanne's dainty satin slippers had danced her off to bed, Florence Huyler sat before the fire thinking. If your acquaintance with Florence is of long standing, you will know that she was possessed of both courage and strength. For some time a gymnasium director, she had developed her splendid physical being to the last degree. Even now, though her principal business in life had for some time been that of keeping up with the little French girl, she spent three hours each day in the gymnasium and swimming pool. Her courage surpassed her strength; yet as she contemplated the step Petite Jeanne had taken and the events which must immediately follow that move, she trembled.

"It's all too absurd, anyway," she told herself. "She wants to be an opera singer, so she dresses herself up like a boy and becomes an usher. What good could possibly come of that?"

All the time she was thinking this she realized that her objections were futile. Petite Jeanne believed in Fate. Fate would take her where she wished to go.

"If she wished to marry the President's son, she'd become a maid in the White House. And then--" Florence paused. She dared not say that Petite Jeanne would not attain her end. Up to this moment Jeanne had surmounted all obstacles. Adopted by the gypsies, she had lived in their camps for years. She had inherited their fantastic attitude toward life. For her nothing was entirely real, and nothing unattainable.

"But to-morrow night!" Florence shuddered. The little French girl meant to don her dress suit and as Pierre Andrews return to her post as usher in the boxes of that most magnificent of all opera houses.

"A necklace worth thousands of dollars was stolen." She reviewed events. "Petite Jeanne was near. When they looked for her, she had vanished. She stole the necklace. What could be more certain than this? She stole it! They will say that. They'll arrest her on sight.

"She stole it." She repeated the words slowly. "Did she?"

The very question shocked her. Petite Jeanne was no thief. This she knew right well. She had no need to steal. She still had a little money in the bank. Yet, as a means to an end, had she taken the necklace, intending later to return it?

"No! No!" she whispered aloud. "Jeanne is reckless, but she'd never do that!

"But where is the necklace? Who did take it?" For a time she endeavored to convince herself that the precious string of pearls, having become unclasped, had slipped to the floor, that it had been discovered and even now was in its youthful owner's possession.

"No such luck." She prodded the fire vigorously. "In the end fortune smiles upon us. But in the beginning, nay, nay!

"And to-morrow evening--" She rose to fling her splendid arms wide. "To-morrow my little friend walks in, after many brave detectives have spent the day in a vain search for her, and says quite nonchalantly:

"'There you are, madame. Shall I remove your sable coat? Or will you wear it? And will you have the chair, so? Or so? _Voila!_'

"Who can say it is not going to be dramatic? Drama in real life! That's what counts most with Jeanne. Oh, my dear little Jeanne! What an adorable peck of trouble you are!"

And all the time, quite lost in the big, eager, hungry world that waited just outside her window, the little French girl lay among her pink eiderdown quilts and slept the sleep of the just.

The cold gray dawn of the morning after found Petite Jeanne considerably shaken in her mind regarding the outcome of this, her latest adventure.

"Will they truly arrest me?" she asked herself as, slipping into a heavy robe, she sought the comfort of an early fire. "And if they arrest me, what then?" She shuddered. She had once visited a police court in this very city. An uninviting place it had been, too. With judge and lawyers alternately laughing and storming at crestfallen individuals who stood, some quite bewildered, others with an air of hopelessness about them, with two women weeping in a corner, and with an ill-smelling, ogling group of visitors looking on, the whole place had depressed her beyond words.

"Am I to stand there to be stared at? Will the lawyers and the judge make a joke of my misfortune?" She stamped her little foot angrily. "No! No! Nevair! They shall not!

"And yet," she thought more soberly, "I must go back. I truly must!

"Oh, why did I run away? Why did I not say: 'Search me if you must. You will see that I do not have your necklace!'

"But no!" She flushed. "As Petite Jeanne I might be searched. But as Pierre. Ah, no! No!"

A cup of steaming coffee revived her spirits; but for a few hours only. Then the dull, drab day bore down upon her with greater force than ever.

And indeed it was no sort of day to enliven spirits and bolster up courage. Gray skies, gray streets, gray fog, dripping walls of great buildings, these were all about her. And in the end a slow, weepy, drizzling rain began to fall.

There is but one way to endure such a day. That is to don storm rubbers, raincoat and an old hat, and defy it. Defy it Petite Jeanne did. And once in the cool damp of it all, she found relief.

She wandered on and on. The fog grew thicker. Clouds hung dark and low. Lights began to appear. Yet it was not night.

Of a sudden, as she wandered aimlessly on, she became conscious of an astonishing fact: numbers of people were hurrying past her. A strange proceeding on a drab day when men prefer to be indoors. But strangest of all, each one of these individuals was shorter than Petite Jeanne herself. And the little French girl was far from tall.

"How extraordinary!" she murmured under her breath. "It is as if I were some half-grown Gulliver in the land of the Pygmies."

She knew this was pure fancy. But who were these people? A look into one storm-clad, bemuffled face told her the answer:

"Orientals. But where can they be going? They must have come from many places."

The question absorbed her attention. It drove trouble from her mind. She followed the one whose face she had scrutinized. In time she saw him dart up a short flight of stairs to enter a door on which were inscribed the words: "Members Only."

Other figures appeared. One and all, they followed in this one's wake.

As Jeanne looked up she saw that the three-story building was possessed of a highly ornamented front. Strange and grotesque figures, dragons, birds of prey, great, ugly faces all done in wood or metal and painted in gaudy colors, clustered in every available niche.

Suddenly she was seized with a desire to follow these little men.

"But no!" she whispered. "They would never allow me to pass."

She looked for the street number. There was none. She walked a few paces to the left.

"Seven, three, seven," she read aloud. She gave a sudden start. She knew this location. Only three blocks away was a costumer's shop. For a dollar or two this costumer would turn her into any sort of person she might choose to be, a pirate, an Eskimo, yes, even a Chinaman. That was his business. At once Jeanne was on her way to that shop.

In an astonishingly short time she was back; or at least some person answering her description as to height, breadth of shoulders, glove number, etc., was coming down the street. But was it Jeanne? Perhaps not one of her best friends could have told. Certainly in the narrow hallway of that mysterious building, which little men were still entering, her nationality was not challenged. To these mysterious little people, who were gathering for who knows what good or evil reason, she was for the moment an Oriental.