_A Mystery Story for Girls_
HOUR OF
ENCHANTMENT
_By_
ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
COPYRIGHT 1933
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Three-Bladed Knife 11
II The Sky Walk 24
III Footsteps on the Stairs 32
IV The Golden Temple 40
V A Hearse in the Moonlight 50
VI “The Chest Is Empty!” 62
VII The Place of Darkness 70
VIII Jeanne’s Double 82
IX “Haunts” 94
X Entering a New World 104
XI From China’s Ancient Treasure 111
XII The Dodge-Ems 121
XIII Dances and Dreams 136
XIV Two Black Horses and a Coffin 141
XV Transforming a Mountain 147
XVI Magic from the East 156
XVII A Scream Brings Startling Results 164
XVIII The Slim Stranger 175
XIX A Sound in the Night 183
XX Pictures on the Clouds 191
XXI Work and Dreams 200
XXII Beneath the Floodlights 205
XXIII Golden Days 214
XXIV The Battle in the Orange Grove 223
XXV Once Again the Organ Plays at Midnight 230
XXVI Carried Away in the Night 235
XXVII Her Big Night 242
HOUR OF ENCHANTMENT
CHAPTER I
THE THREE-BLADED KNIFE
Florence Huyler took one look at the Chinaman. He was wearing a long
yellow coat and carrying a huge yellow umbrella. His back was toward her.
“I can’t be sure,” she whispered. “If—”
She paused, uncertainly. In a moment he would move, and then she would
know—by his ears.
Again, for a moment, she gave herself over to a study of the magnificent
panorama that lay before her. She was poised, like a pigeon in a belfry,
but oh, so high up! Six hundred and twenty feet in the air, she could
look down upon every skyscraper in the city.
She had been doing just this until her eyes had fallen by chance upon
this Chinaman. She had been looking for a Chinaman, looking hard—for a
Chinaman with prodigiously long ears. But she had decided to forget him
for a time, to enjoy the Sky Ride and its observation towers. And now
here he was, haunting her still.
The Sky Ride! Ah, there was a marvel indeed! Eiffel Tower, not the Ferris
wheel, could be compared with this. Two steel towers reared themselves to
dizzy heights. Between these there were steel cables. And darting from
one tower to the other over these cables, like veritable rockets which
they were made to represent, were cars of steel and glass from which one
might view the magnificent spectacle of the fairgrounds at night. All
aflame with a million lights, truly alive with a hundred thousand
merrymakers, the grounds seemed a picture from another world.
With great eagerness she had paid her fee and entered the express
elevator to go shooting upward toward the stars.
She had decided not to take her sky ride at once. Truth was, Fate had
decreed that she should not take it at all that night. This, of course,
she could not know. So, quite joyously, she had shot up and up until she
was at the very top of that steel tower.
She had shuddered as she left the elevator. The tower appeared to sway,
as indeed it did.
“What if, by some secret power of rhythmic motion, it should be made to
sway too far?” she whispered to herself now. “What if it should swing and
swing, and at last bend and bend—then go crashing down!
“Nonsense!” She got a grip on herself. “That could not happen. This is
one of the marvels created by our American engineers. They figure and
figure for days and days. Then they set mill wheels revolving, turning
out steel. They send steel workers to their tasks, and here we are.
Nothing could go wrong. It’s all been figured out.”
Having settled this problem to her own satisfaction, she walked to the
rail and began studying the city she had learned to love.
“It looks so strange!” she told herself. And so it did. Streets were
steel-gray ribbons where automobiles, mere bugs all black, blue and
yellow, crept along, blinking their fiery eyes.
Her eye was caught by twinkling lights atop a skyscraper.
Drawing forth her binoculars she focussed them upon that spot. Then she
laughed. Atop that skyscraper was a home, a pent house, a gorgeous affair
that shone like marble. About it, all gay with flowers, was a garden.
“A garden party,” she whispered, as if afraid they might hear. “That’s
the reason for the strings of lights.”
She could see graceful women in gorgeous gowns with men all in white and
black evening dress swaying to the rhythm of some entrancing music.
“They are rich,” she thought to herself. “Bankers, perhaps, or managers
of great corporations. Members of Society spelled with a big S. They
don’t know I am looking at them.” She turned away again.
“Ah, well!” she sighed. “Even a mouse may look upon a queen. If—”
Had the tower indeed begun to sway in an ominous manner it could not have
startled her more than the vision that met her gaze. The little yellow
man in the long yellow coat had turned about. She could see his ears now.
“The—the long-eared Chinaman! I—I’ve got him!” she hissed.
At that instant the wind blew his long yellow coat aside, exposing to
view the hilt of the three-bladed knife. And in the hilt of that knife
jewels shone.
“I—I’ve—”
She spoke too soon, for without appearing to see her at all the man
glided to an elevator and before she could cry: “Stop him!” shot
downward.
“Oh!” she breathed, and again, “Oh!”
The next instant she too had leaped to an elevator and went shooting down
after him. “I’ll get him yet!” But would she?
Even as her elevator shot downward from those dizzy heights, she had time
to think of the circumstances leading up to this, one of the most
thrilling moments of her not uneventful life.
* * * * * * * *
It had been night, deep, silent, mysterious night, when first she had
seen that three-bladed knife, and the long-eared Chinaman. No stars had
shone. No moon had cast its golden gleam across the black and sullen
waters of Lake Michigan. From afar, as in a dream, seated with Petite
Jeanne, her companion, on the sand before a little fire of sticks, she
had caught the ceaseless rumble of the city.
“The hour of enchantment, it is near at hand,” Jeanne, the little French
girl, murmured.
“The—the hour of enchantment?” Florence murmured after her. Not
understanding, but being too full of dreams to care, she said no more.
“Yes, my good friend, Florence Huyler, the enchanted hour.”
Once more the little French girl lapsed into silence.
Florence moved her lips as if about to speak. But she remained silent.
Why break a magic spell with mere talk?
And to her this was indeed a magic moment. For hours, earlier in the day,
she had listened to the roar of the greatest carnival the world has ever
known. About her had swarmed a thousand children. Brown heads, golden
heads, laughing eyes, weeping eyes, dancing feet, all that goes to make
up a host of youngsters on a holiday. And every day was a holiday on the
grounds of this great show.
Nor did Florence miss a day of it. Indeed she could not, for she was a
part of it.
On her ear drums had beat the noisy blare of the merry-go-round and the
shrill whistle of the miniature train, the hilarious shouts of the
joy-makers.
“And now,” she breathed, “it is night. They are home, tucked in bed,
those blessed children. I have only to rest here by the fire with
Jeanne.” She threw out her splendid arms in an air of abandon, then
curled herself up on the dry sand before the fire.
“Only just look!” Jeanne began all over again a moment later. “See what I
found to-day in the chest. That last one we bought; the oh, so mysterious
chest with a dragon on its cover.”
In her hand she held an object that cast back the light of the dying
fire.
For the moment Florence could not be roused from her dreamy stupor. Never
had she worked so hard as on these days of the great Fair. Never had life
seemed so full of joy. Jeanne was with her once more; a whole half year
the French girl had been in her native land. Now she was back. There was,
too, a spirit of glorious madness about this great exhibition, that
somehow entered into her very soul. Cars packed with screaming visitors
rocketing across the sky, airplanes drumming and dipping, speed boats
thundering down the lagoon; speed, light, joy—who could resist it all?
But when day was done, the throngs departed, it was good to pick up a few
broken bits of wood, kindle a small fire here on the beach and play the
vagabond through one wee hour of the night. To sip black tea, to stare at
the fire, to dream—who could ask for more? And yet here was Petite Jeanne
insisting that she “only look.” Look at what?
Ah, well, Jeanne had not worked that day. She had no need to work. She
was rich. Fortune had overtaken her at last—given her a chateau in France
and much else.
“Jeanne,” she grumbled like some good-natured bear, “you have been curled
up among the pillows all day, petting the cat. And now you ask me to
look, to think—I, who have done nothing all day but lead children in
play, march them up the magic mountain and down again, lift them on the
little train and off again, follow them on—”
“Stop!” Jeanne stamped her pretty foot. “It is enough. I would not say
‘Look’ but it is yours, yours and mine, this curious dagger. You must
tell me what it is. Only see! It has three blades!”
“Dagger! Three blades!” Florence found herself at last.
“Yes, yes! Three blades! A very strange dagger!”
The thing Florence took from Jeanne’s hand was indeed a curious affair. A
knife with a hilt of ordinary length, it had not one blade, but three,
extending in triangular formation, ten inches from the hilt.
“That,” Florence declared emphatically, “is something!”
“And see the handle!” Jeanne was her old enthusiastic self. “See how it
shines in the light! Jewels, some red, some white—”
“Glass, I suppose.” Absent-mindedly Florence drew one of the white spots
that glistened in the light across the crystal of her watch. Then she sat
up quite abruptly.
“Dumb! Now I’ve scratched my crystal and it will break. Jeanne! Don’t ask
me to buy another chest. No need to buy trouble. That, at least, you may
get free.”
“But see!” Jeanne snatched the curious dagger from her. “If it indeed
scratches glass, then truly it is a diamond. And see! There are one, two,
three, four—oh, how is one to count them? There are many jewels, and they
go round and round the handle.”
“Diamonds?”
“Yes. Surely! They are diamonds. And the red ones are rubies. Half belong
to you and half to me. For see, we bought the box together, the box with
the dragon on the cover.
“Truly!” she cried, dancing across the sand, waving the dagger over her
head. “Truly this is for me the hour of enchantment!
“Listen!” The little French girl’s voice changed abruptly. She held up a
hand.
From somewhere in the distance came the slow _D-o-n-g, D-o-n-g_, of a
clock striking two.
“The enchanted hour!” Her tone was solemn.
Once again she swung her hands high. Next instant a sharp cry escaped her
lips. The three-bladed knife with all its jewels was gone. Some one half
concealed in the darkness at her back had snatched it from her.
It was the stout Florence who sprang to her feet and, but for Jeanne,
would have dashed away in mad pursuit.
But Jeanne prevented this. She leaped forward just in time to seize her
friend about the waist.
“No! No! My friend, you must not! You will be killed! He has a knife!”
she exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. “He has that dagger with three blades!
You—you have nothing!”
“I have my two hands!” Florence continued to struggle. “He is small, only
a little Chinaman. I—I saw him. I’d break his back if he did not give me
the knife!”
“But think!” Jeanne loosed her hold as Florence ceased to struggle. “It
is only a dagger, a dagger I found in a box, and we paid so little for
that box.”
“Only a dagger with a hilt encrusted with jewels!” Florence dropped to
her place beside the dying fire.
“Rich for a moment,” she sighed, “then poor forever.
“But I’ll know that man if I ever see him again,” she added hopefully.
“He had the longest ears of any person I ever saw. He wore an
orange-colored cap, and there was a bit of bright glass—oval-shaped it
was—shining from his forehead. And those ears!” she exclaimed. “Who could
mistake them?”
“We will find him. Truly we must!” Jeanne spoke with confidence. “This is
the enchanted hour. My enchanted hour!”
* * * * * * * *
And now, twenty-four hours later, shooting down, down, down, a hundred,
two, three, four hundred feet, Florence was in pursuit of that very
long-eared Chinaman. From his belt had shone the jeweled hilt of the
three-bladed knife.
“It’s ours!” she muttered low to herself. “Jeanne’s and mine. I’ll get
him yet!”
But would she?