The Crimson Thread Part 8

What customer could refuse such a book? Few did. Even more important than this was the fact that the other salespeople, especially those who were new and had little knowledge of the stock but who were zealous for quick sales, listened to his lucid story of the book, and having learned it by heart, joined in selling it. There were times when clerks fluttered as thickly about that pile of books as sparrows around a crust of bread.

"Who is Laurie Seymour; why is he so greatly interested in that particular book, and how does he come to know so much about it?" Having put these questions to herself, Lucile went about the task of asking others about him. She asked Rennie and Donnie, the inseparable two who had worked in that corner so long. She searched out Tommie, the young man of twenty who knew all about boys' books. She asked Morrison, of the fine bindings section, and even Emmy, the veteran inspector. All shook their heads. They had come down one morning, and there he was selling books.

That had been two weeks previous. Someone had pulled some wires and here he was. By-and-by the rush would be over, then out he would go. That was the way things were done at Christmas time. It wasn't worth while to care too much!

But Lucile did care. Her curiosity had been aroused. She wanted to know more about Laurie Seymour.

Her curiosity was given a trace of satisfaction that very evening. At least she found out who knew about Laurie. Yes, she found out, but then----

She had come hurrying round a pillar when she all but ran into Laurie. He had been talking in low tones and laughing in notes quite as low. To her great surprise she saw that the person he was talking to was none other than the perfectly beautiful Miss Bruce, the head of the section.

"And to think," Lucile said to herself, "he actually appeared to be joking her about something! And he a sales-person! Ah well, our chief is a star--would have been a star on any stage, and a star has a right to be friendly with any member of the cast."

"Well," she smiled to herself, "I know now who could tell me all about Laurie Seymour; but I'd never dare ask. Never! I'll have to find out some other way."

One impression coming from this incident bore down heavily upon her.

Laurie Seymour was a young man with a past broader than the four walls of the juvenile book section. Just what that past might have been, she could not guess.

"Perhaps," she told herself, "he is some artist getting pictures from life; or an actor gathering local color for a play, or--"

"Is your table in order?" It was Rennie who broke in upon her meditations.

It wasn't, so she hurried away to forget, for the time being, Laurie Seymour and her perplexing problems.

CHAPTER VII CORDIE'S MAD FLIGHT

"Cordie, there's something I should tell you."

Cordie looked up from the book she was reading, stared at Lucile for a moment, then with a toss of her pretty head exclaimed: "If you should, why don't you?"

They were at the end of another day. Some time had pa.s.sed since the Mystery Lady had last appeared in the store. Work had increased; crowds of buyers had grown denser, more insistent in their demands. Two perpendicular lines had appeared between Lucile's eyes. Cordie, too, had felt the strain of it. Her nerves were tense. She had been upon Lucile's bed for a half hour, trying to relax. It was no use.

"Why don't you tell me?" she demanded impatiently.

"I'm afraid it may frighten you."

"Frighten me?" the girl's eyes went wide with surprise.

"Yes, but I think I should tell you. It may put you on your guard."

Cordie sat bolt upright.

"Do you remember the time I found you--when you fainted in the Art Museum?" Lucile asked in a quiet voice.

"I couldn't forget that. Wasn't it terrible?"

"More terrible than you think, or at least I believe it might have been."

"Why?" Cordie stared.

"A few seconds after you fainted, a strange young man picked you up in his arms. He said you were his sister. He started to carry you out and would have, too, if I hadn't made the guard stop him."

"Oh!" breathed Cordie, wild eyed, incredulous. "So that was what the guard meant when he asked where my brother was? Oh, how--how sort of romantic!"

"It may have been," said Lucile in a very sober tone. "He may have been romantic, but he also may have been very bad. That's why I thought you ought to know. He may be keeping a watch on you. Men who are fascinated by a face often do. You ought not to go alone upon the streets. You should not have been alone that day. No girl from the country, unacquainted with the ways of the city, is safe alone upon its streets and within its public buildings."

"Why, I'm not--" Cordie halted in the midst of the sentence and began again. "Did you think--" then drawing her lips tight as if to keep in a secret that was about to escape, she lapsed into silence.

When she broke the silence a moment later the look on her face was very serious. "I do realize the danger," she said slowly. "Truly I do. I will be careful, very, very careful. It was wonderful of you to save me from that--that man. How can I ever thank you enough?"

Hopping down from the bed, she wound her arm about Lucile and planted a kiss upon her forehead.

Just at that instant a question entered Lucile's mind. "I wonder when her appreciation will reach down as deep as her pocketbook? That's a sordid thought. I ought not to think it," she told herself, "but I just can't help it."

Lucile was having to pay an increased rent on her room because of the girl's occupying it with her. A pay day had come and gone, yet her young charge had shown no desire to bear her share of this burden.

"No! No! I mustn't let myself wonder that," Lucile corrected herself stoutly. "She'll pay when she can. She's probably saving up for her rent which is in arrears somewhere else. I do wonder, though, what she was about to tell me when she said: 'I'm not--' and 'Did you think--' I truly wish she'd tell me about herself, but I can wait her time for revealing."

Half of the following day had not pa.s.sed before Lucile repented having told Cordie of her volunteer brother. "He'll probably never be seen again by any of us," she told herself, "and now look at the poor girl. She's all unnerved; grips her desk and stares in a frightened manner every time a man looks at her. And yet," she reflected, "if anything happened and I hadn't told her I'd never forgiven myself. Surely life is full of perplexing problems."

Ere that day was done something was destined to happen which would make this particular problem many times more perplexing. Since she knew nothing of this, Lucile went serenely on selling books.

"Let me tell you something," said Rennie, the veteran book-seller, who had apparently made an excuse for going to lunch with Lucile that day.

"You're letting this work get on your nerves. Look at those puckers between your eyes. It's no use. You mustn't let it. You'll go to pieces and it's not worth it. You've got your life to live. You--"

"But Rennie--"

Rennie held up a finger for silence. "You're young; haven't learned the gospel of repose. You, perhaps, think of repose as the curling of one's self up in a soft-cushioned chair. That's not repose; it's stagnation.

Did you ever see a tiny bird balancing himself on a twig over a rushing waterfall and singing his little heart away? That's repose. You can have poise and repose in the midst of the crowding throng. The bird, only half conscious of the rushing water beneath him, sings the more sweetly because of it. We, too, may have our service sweetened by the very rush of things if we will.

"And it is service! You believe that, don't you?"

There was a new light in the veteran saleslady's eyes. Lucile, as she looked at her frail body, thought to herself: "She's more spirit than body. She's given half herself away in service."

"Why yes," she replied slowly, "I suppose selling juvenile books is a service in a way."

"You suppose!" Rennie gripped her arm until it hurt. "Don't you know it is? It may be made a great, a wonderful service. There are books and books. You have read many of them. You know them. You are young. You have read. Some you have loved, some despised. Which do you sell? Which?"

"Why, the ones I love, of course."

"That's just it. Being endowed by nature with taste, good taste, and having had that taste improved by education, you are able to choose the best.

"Books are like water. Some are like foam, the white caps of the sea; pure enough but effervescent. They pa.s.s in a moment and are lost forever.

Others are like sc.u.m from a stagnant pool; they are poison. Then there are those blessed others which are like the cool, pure, refreshing water that comes bubbling up from a mountain spring. Reading has an untold and lasting influence on a child. Do you believe that? When you have put one of those better books into the hand of a boy or girl, you have conferred a lasting blessing upon someone. Do you believe that?"

"Ye--yes."