The Magic Curtain Part 3

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 Pet.i.te 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 Pet.i.te 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, bem.u.f.fled 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, cl.u.s.tered 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 pa.s.s."

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.

CHAPTER IV A LIVING STATUE

In the meantime Florence, too, had gone for a walk in the rain. The discovery she made that day was destined to play a very large part in her immediate future.

Florence by nature belonged to the country, not to the city. Fate had, by some strange trick, cast her lot in the city. But on every possible occasion she escaped to quiet places where the rattle and bang of city life were gone and she might rest her weary feet by tramping over the good, soft, yielding earth.

Since their rooms were very near the heart of the city, at first thought it might seem impossible for her to reach such a spot of tranquility without enduring an hour-long car ride.

This was not true. The city which had for so long been Florence's home is unique. No other in the world is like it. Located upon a swamp, it turned the swamp first into a garden, then into a city where millions live in comfort. Finding a stagnant river running into the lake, it turned the river about and made it a swift one going from the lake. Lacking islands upon its sh.o.r.e-line, this enterprising metropolis proceeded to build islands. A brisk twenty-minute walk brought Florence to one of these islands.

This island at that time, though of a considerable size, was quite incomplete. In time it was to be a place where millions would tread. At that moment, save for one dark, dome-shaped building at its north end, it was a place of desolation, or so it seemed to Florence.

At either end the land rose several feet above the surface of the lake.

In the center it was so low that in time of storm waves dashed completely over it.

Since the island had been some years in building a voluntary forest which might better, perhaps, be called a jungle, had sprung up on its southern extremity. Beyond this jungle lay the breakwater where in time of storm great waves mounted high and came crashing down upon heaps of limestone rocks as large as small houses.

To the left of this jungle, on the side facing the lake, was a narrow, sandy beach. It was toward this beach that Florence made her way. There she hoped to spend an hour of quiet meditation as she promenaded the hard-packed sand of the beach. Vain hope. Some one was there before her.

Pet.i.te Jeanne had entered many strange places. None was more strange nor more fantastically beautiful than the one she found within the four walls of that dragon-guarded building in the heart of a great city.

Playing the role of an American born Chinese lady, she pa.s.sed the attendant and climbed two flights of stairs unmolested.

As she reached the top of the second flight she found her feet sinking deep in the thick pile of an Oriental rug. One glance about her and she gripped at her heart to still it.

"It is a dream!" she told herself. "There is no place like this."

Yet she dared not distrust her senses. Surely the lovely Chinese ladies, dressed in curious Chinese garments of matchless silk, gliding silently about the place, were real; so, too, was the faint, fragrant odor of incense, and the lamps that, burning dimly, cast a shadow of purple and old rose over all.

"Dragons," she murmured, "copper dragons looking as old as time itself.

Smoke creeps from their nostrils as if within them burned eternal fire.

Lamps made of three thousand bits of gla.s.s set in copper. Banners of silk. Pictures of strange birds. Who could have planned all this and brought it into being?

"And there," she whispered, as she dared a few steps across the first soft-carpeted s.p.a.ce, "there is an altar, an altar to a G.o.d wholly unknown to me. The ladies are kneeling there. Suppose they invite me to join them!" At once she felt terribly frightened. She sank deep in the shadows. She was playing the part of a Chinese lady, yet she knew nothing of their religion. And this appeared to be a temple.

She was contemplating flight when a sound, breaking in upon her attention, caused her to pause. From somewhere, seemingly deep down and far away, came the dong-dong of a gong. Deep, serene, melodious, it seemed to call to her. A simple, impulsive child of nature, she murmured:

"It calls. I shall go."

Turning her back to the broad stairs that led down and away to the cool, damp, outer air, she took three steps downward on a narrow circular staircase which led, who could tell where?

Smoke rose from the s.p.a.ces below, the smoke of many incense burners.

Pausing there, she seemed about to turn back. But again came the deep, melodious, all but human call of the gong. Moving like one in a trance, she took three more steps downward and was lost from sight.

The person who had disturbed Florence's hoped-for hour of solitude on the island beach was a girl. Yet, as Florence first saw her, she seemed less a living person than a statue. Tanned by the sun to a shade that matched the giant rock on which she stood, clad only in a scant bathing suit that in color matched her skin, standing rigid, motionless, she seemed a thing hewn of stone to stand there forever.

Yet, even as Florence looked on entranced, she flung her arms high, gave vent to a scream that sent gulls scurrying from rocky roosts, and then, leaping high, disappeared beneath the dull surface of the water.

That scream, together with the deft arching of her superb body as she dove, marked her as one after Florence's own kind. Gone was her wish for solitude. One desire possessed her now: to know this animated statue of the island.

"Where does she live?" she asked herself. "How can she dare to visit this desolate spot alone?"

Even as she asked this question, the girl emerged from the water, shook back her tangled hair, drew a rough blue overall over her dripping bathing suit, and then, leaping away like a wild deer, cleared the breakwater at a bound and in a twinkling lost herself on a narrow path that wound through the jungle of low willows and cottonwoods.

"She is gone!" Florence exclaimed. "I have lost her!" Nevertheless, she went racing along the beach to enter the jungle over the path the girl had taken. She had taken up a strange trail. That trail was short. It ended abruptly. This she was soon enough to know.

CHAPTER V THE SECRET PLACE