“Cordie?” Lucile stared incredulously. “A simple country girl, what can she know about such things? That room—why those furnishings would cost hundreds of dollars. It’s absurd, impossible; and yet there they are—she and the Mystery Lady.”
The Mystery Lady! At thought of her, Lucile was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to rush down there and demand the meaning of that lady’s many strange doings. But something held her back. So Cordie was acquainted with the Mystery Lady! Here was something strange. Indeed, Lucile was beginning to wonder a great deal about Cordie.
“She has her secrets, little Cordie!” exclaimed Lucile. “Who would have thought it?”
Perhaps it is not strange that Lucile did not feel warranted in breaking in upon those secrets. So there she stood, irresolute, until the two of them had left the room and lost themselves in the throngs that crowded every aisle of this great mart of trade.
“Now,” Lucile sighed, “I shan’t ever feel quite the same about Cordie. I suppose, though, she has a right to her secrets. What could she possibly know about interior decorating and furnishing? Perhaps more than I would guess. But a country girl? What does she know about the Mystery Lady? Little, or much? Have they known each other long? I—I’ll ask her. No—n-o-o, I guess I won’t. I wasn’t supposed to see. It was too much like spying. No,” this decisively, “I’ll just have to let things work themselves out. And if they don’t work out to something like a revelation, then I’ll know they haven’t, that’s all. More than half the mysteries of the world are never unraveled at all.”
After this bit of reasoning, she hastened on down the remaining flights of stairs to her work.
“Where’s Cordie?” she asked of Laurie.
“Out on a shopping pass. Swell looking dame came in and called for her.” There was a knowing grin on Laurie’s face as he said this, but Lucile, who had turned to her work, did not notice it.
Cordie returned a few moments later, but not one word did she let fall regarding her shopping mission.
CHAPTER XII
SILVER GRAY TREASURE
“What do you think!” exclaimed Cordie. “It was such a strange thing to happen. I just have to tell some one, or I’ll burst. I daren’t tell Lucile. I am afraid she’d scold me.”
James, the mysterious seaman who carried bundles in the book department, looked at her and smiled.
“I’ve heard a lot of stories in my life, and them that wasn’t to be repeated, wasn’t. If you’ve got a yarn to file away in the pigeon holes of somebody’s brain, why file it with me.”
She had come upon James while on the way from the cloak room. She would have to wait a full half hour before Lucile would have finished her work, and she felt that she just must tell some one of her thrilling adventure with Dick and the policeman.
Seated on the edge of a table, feet dangling and fingers beating time to the music of her story, she told James of this thrilling adventure.
“You came out well enough at that,” he chuckled when she had finished. “Lots better ’n I did the last time I mixed into things.”
Cordie wondered if this remark had reference to his chase after the hawk-eyed young man who had followed her to the furnace room that night. But asking no questions, she just waited.
“Funny trip, that last sea voyage I took,” James mused at last, his eyes half closed. “It wouldn’t have been half bad if it hadn’t been for one vile crook.
“You see,” he went on, “sometimes of a summer I run up to Nome. I’ve always had a few hundred dollars, that is up until now. I’d go up there in the north and sort of wander round on gasoline schooners and river boats, buyin’ up skins; red, white, cross fox, and maybe a silver gray or two. Minks and martin too, and ermine and Siberian squirrel.
“Always had a love for real furs; you know what I mean, the genuine stuff that stands up straight and fluffy and can’t be got anywhere far south of the Arctic Circle—things like the fox skin that’s on that cape your pal Lucile wears sometimes. When I see all these pretty girls wearin’ rabbit skin coats, it makes me feel sort of bad. Why, even the Eskimos do better than that! They dress their women in fawn skin; mighty pretty they are, too, sometimes.
“Well, last summer I went up to Nome, that’s in Alaska, you know, and from there I took a sort of pirate schooner that ranges up and down the coast of Alaska and into Russian waters.”
“Pirate,” breathed Cordie, but James didn’t hear her.
“We touched at a point or two,” he went on, “then went over into Russian waters for walrus hunting—ivory and skins.
“We ran into a big herd and filled the boat up, then touched at East Cape, Siberia.
“There wasn’t any real Russians there, so we went up to the native village. Old Nepassok, the chief, seemed to take a liking to me. He took me into his storeroom and showed me all his treasure—walrus and mastodon ivory, whale bone, red and white fox skins by the hundred, and some mink and beaver. Then at last he pulled out an oily cotton bag from somewhere far back in the corner and drew out of it—what do you think? The most perfect brace of silver fox skins I have ever seen! Black beauties, they were, with maybe a white hair for every square inch. Just enough for contrast. Know who wears skins like that? Only the very wealthiest people.
“And there I was looking at them, worth a king’s ransom, and maybe I could buy them.”
“Could you?” breathed Cordie.
“I could, and did. It took me four hours. The chief was a hard nut to crack. He left me just enough to get back to Chicago, but what did I care? I had a fortune, one you could carry in two fair sized overcoat pockets, but a fortune all the same.
“I got to Chicago with them,” he leaned forward impressively, “and then a barber—a dark faced, hawk-eyed barber—done me out of them. Of course he was a crook, just playing barber. Probably learned the trade in jail. Anyway he done me for my fortune. Cut my hair, he did, and somehow got the fox skins out of my bag. When I got to my hotel all I had in my bag was a few clothes and a ten dollar gold piece. I raced back to the barber shop but he was gone; drawed his pay and skipped, that quick.
“That,” he finished, allowing his shoulders to drop into a slouch, “is why I’m carrying books here. I have to, or starve. Just what comes after Christmas I can’t guess. It’s not so easy to pick up a job after the holidays.
“But do you know—” he sat up straight and there was a gleam in his eye, “do you know when I saw that barber fellow last?”
“Where?”
“Down below the sub-basement of this store, in the boiler room at night.”
“Not—not the one who was following me?”
“The same. And I nearly got him, but not quite.”
“You—you didn’t get him?”
Cordie hardly knew whether to be sorry or glad. She hated violence; also she had no love for that man.
“I did not get him,” breathed James, “but next time I will, and what I’ll say and do for him will be for both you and me. G’night!” He rose abruptly and, shoulders square, gait steady and strong, he walked away.
“What are you dreaming about?” Lucile asked as she came upon Cordie five minutes later.
“Nothing much, I guess. Thinking through a story I just heard, that’s all.”
CHAPTER XIII
LUCILE’S DREAM
That evening on the L train Lucile read a copy of the morning paper, one which she had carefully saved for a very definite reason. It was the paper which was exploiting the Lady of the Christmas Spirit. Lucile always got a thrill out of reading about the latest doings of that adventurous person who had managed to be everywhere, to mingle with great throngs, and yet to be recognized by no one.
“Well, I declare!” she whispered to herself as a fresh thrill ran through her being. “She was to be in our store this very afternoon; in the art room of the furniture store. That’s the very room in which I saw Cordie and the Mystery Lady. This Lady of the Christmas Spirit may have been in the room at tha
t exact moment. How very, very exciting!”
Closing her eyes, she tried to see that room again; to call back pictures of ladies who had entered the room while she had been looking down upon it.
“No,” she thought at last, “there isn’t one that fits; one was tall and ugly, one short, stout and middle aged, and two were quite gray. Not one fits the description of this Christmas Spirit person; unless, unless—” her heart skipped a beat. She had thought of the Mystery Lady.
“But of course it couldn’t be,” she reasoned at last. “It doesn’t say she was to be there at that very moment. I was not standing on the stair more than ten minutes. There are six such periods in an hour and nine and a half working hours in a store day. Fine chance! One chance in fifty. And yet, stranger things have happened. What if it were she! What—”
Her dreamings were broken short off by the sudden crumpling of paper at her side. Cordie had been glancing over the evening paper. Now the paper had entirely disappeared, and Cordie’s face was crimson to the roots of her hair.
“Why Cordie, what’s happened?” exclaimed Lucile.
“Noth—nothing’s happened,” said Cordie, looking suddenly out of the window.
That was all Lucile could get out of her. One thing seemed strange, however. At the stand by the foot of the elevated station Cordie bought two copies of the same paper she had been reading on the train. These she folded up into a solid bundle and packed tightly under her arm.
“I wonder why she did that?” Lucile thought to herself.
As often happens in bachelor ladies’ apartments, this night there was nothing to be found in their larder save sugar, milk and cocoa.
“You get the cocoa to a boil,” said Lucile, “and I’ll run over to the delicatessen for something hot. I’m really hungry tonight.” She was down the stairs and away.
Somewhat to her annoyance, she found the delicatessen packed with students waiting their turn to be supplied with eatables. The term had ended, and those who were too far from home to take the holidays away from the University were boarding themselves.
After sinking rather wearily into a corner seat, Lucile found her mind slipping back over the days that had just flown.
“Tomorrow,” she told herself soberly, “is the day before Christmas. It is my last day at the store. And then? Oh, bother the ‘and then’! There’s always a future, and always it comes out somehow.”
That she might not be depressed by thoughts of the low state of her finances, she filled her mind with day dreams. In these dreams she saw herself insisting that Cordie reveal to her the secret hiding place of the Mystery Lady. Having searched this lady out, she demanded the return of her well worn, but comfortable, coat. In the dream still she saw the lady throw up her hands to exclaim:
“That frayed thing? I gave it to the rag man!”
Then in a rage she, Lucile, stamps her foot and says: “How could you! Of course now I shall keep your cape of fox skin and Siberian squirrel.”
“Ah,” she whispered, “that was a beautiful dream!”
Glancing up, she saw there were still six customers ahead of her and she must wait for her turn.
“Time for another,” she whispered.
This time it was the Lady of the Christmas Spirit. She saw her among the throngs at the store. Feeling sure that this must be the very person, that she might steal a look at her hands, she followed her from department to department. Upstairs and downstairs they went. More than once she caught the lady throwing back a mocking glance at her.
Then, of a sudden, at the ribbon counter she caught sight of her hands.
“Such hands!” she whispered. “There never were others like them. It is the Lady of the Christmas Spirit.”
Putting out her own hand, she grasped one of the marvelous ones as she whispered: “You are the Lady of the Christmas Spirit.”
At once there came a mighty jingle of gold. A perfect shower of gold went sparkling and tinkling to the floor.
“Oh! Oh!—Oh! It will all be lost!” she cried, leaping forward.
She leaped almost into the delicatessen keeper’s arms. To her surprise she saw that the store was empty. Her day-dream had ended in a real dream; she had fallen asleep.
Hastily collecting her scattered senses, she selected a steaming pot of beans and a generous cylinder of brown bread, then drawing her scarf about her, dashed out into the night.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NEWSPAPER PICTURE
Lucile may have been dreaming, but Cordie was wide awake and thinking hard. The instant Lucile had closed the door behind her she had spread one of the papers she had bought out before her and, having opened it at page 3, sat down to look at a picture reproduced there.
For a full two minutes she sat staring at it.
“Well anyway, it’s not such a bad picture,” she chuckled at last.
After the chuckle her face took on a sober look.
Then suddenly she exclaimed: “Let’s see what they say about it!”
“Well of all things! Nothing but a line of question marks! Well, at least the reporters know nothing about it.”
For a moment she stared at the long line of interrogation points, then her face dimpled with a smile.
“Just think,” she murmured. “They never whispered one word! Not one of them all! Not Patrick O’Hara, nor the old one they called Tim, nor the young one, nor even Hogan, who was so angry at me. And I’ll bet the reporters begged and tempted them in every way they could think of. What wonderful good sports policemen must be. I—I’d like to hug every one of them!”
Then she went skipping across the floor and back again, then paused and stared again at the picture.
Truth was, all unknown to her, and certainly very much against her wishes, Cordie’s picture had gotten into the paper. This was the picture she was still staring at: Crowds thronging State Street, a gray-haired mounted policeman, and by his side, also riding a police horse, a bobbed haired young girl in a policeman’s great coat.
“What if they see it!” she murmured.
“They wouldn’t let me stay. They will see it too—of course they will.”
“But then, what does it matter?” she exclaimed a moment later. “Tomorrow’s the day before Christmas. What will I care after that?”
Hearing steps on the stairs, she hastily tore a page out of each of the two papers, folded them carefully and thrust them into a drawer. Then she threw the remaining part of the paper into the waste basket.
“Tomorrow is the day before Christmas,” whispered Lucile as two hours later she sat staring rather moodily at the figures in the worn carpet. “A great Christmas, I suppose, for some people. Doesn’t look like it would be much for me. With term bills and room rent staring me in the face, and only a few dollars for paying them, it certainly doesn’t look good. And here I am with this little pet of mine sleeping on me and eating on me, and apparently no honest way of getting rid of her.” She shook her finger at the bed where Cordie was sleeping.
“If only you were an angora cat,” she chided, still looking at the dreaming girl, “I might sell you. Even a canary would be better—he’d make no extra room rent and he’d eat very little.”
“And yet,” she mused, “am I sorry? I should say I’m not! It’s a long, long life, and somehow we’ll struggle through.”
“Christmas,” she mused again. “It will be a great Christmas for some people, be a wonderful one for Jeffrey Farnsworth—that is, it will be if he’s still alive. I wonder when they’ll find him, and where? They say we’ve sold two thousand of his books this season. Think of it!”
After that she sat wondering in a vague and dreamy way about many things. Printed pages relating to the Lady of the Christmas Spirit floated before her mind’s vision to be followed by a picture of Cordie and the Mystery Lady in the art room of the furnishings department. Cordie’s iron ring, set with a diamond, glimmered on the strange, long, muscular fingers of a hand. Laurie sold the last copy of “Blue Flames.” Jeffrey Fa
rnsworth, in the manner she had always pictured him, tall, dark, with deep-set eyes and a stern face wrinkled by much mental labor, stood before an audience of women and made a speech. Yellow gold glittered, then spread out like a molten stream. With a start she shook herself into wakefulness. Once more she had fallen asleep.
“Christmas,” she whispered as she crept into bed. “Tomorrow is the day before—”
CHAPTER XV
“WITH CONTENTS, IF ANY”
In the meantime Florence had come upon an adventure. The place she entered a half hour after quitting time was a great barn-like room where dark shadows lurked in every corner but one. The huge stacks of bags and trunks that loomed up indistinctly in those dark corners made the place seem the baggage room of some terminal railway depot.
As she joined the throng in the one light corner of the room she was treated to another little thrill. Such a motley throng as it was. Jewish second-hand dealers, short ones, tall ones, long-bearded ones; men of all races. And there were two or three women, and not a few vagabonds of the street, who had come in for no other purpose than to get out of the cold. Such were those who crowded round the high stand where, with gavel in hand, the auctioneer cried the sale:
“How much am I bid? Ten dollars! Thank you. Ten I have. Who’ll make it eleven! ’Leven, ’leven, ’leven. Who’ll make it twelve?”
There was not an attractive face in the group that surrounded the block. Florence was tempted to run away; but recalling the surprise she had promised herself, she stayed.
Presently her eyes fell upon a face that attracted her, the kindly, gentle face of a woman in her thirties. She was seated at a desk, writing.
“She’s the clerk of the sale,” Florence thought. “They’re selling trunks now. She may be able to tell me when they will sell bags.”
She moved over close to the desk and timidly put her question.
“Do you really want one of those bags?” the woman asked, surprise showing in her tone.
“Yes. Why not?” the girl asked.
“No reason at all, I guess,” said the clerk. Then, after looking at Florence for a moment, a comradely smile spread over her face.
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