THE PLACE OF DARKNESS
Florence never tired of her work on the Enchanted Island. On this island
which man by his ingenuity and tireless energy had drawn from the very
bottom of the lake, children romped while their elders sought amusement
to their own liking.
Florence loved small children. With their gay frocks, their tossing hair,
their frank smiles, she found them entrancing. Just to watch over them as
they rode on gay launches or diminutive motor buses, or laughed at the
talking cow and the puppet show; to climb with them the magic mountain
where all manner of strange people from fairyland awaited them; then to
call all this work and to receive money for it on pay day—this to her
seemed absurd.
And yet this was her manner of spending her day on the Enchanted Island.
So absorbed in it did she become that she all but forgot to call Jeanne
and tell her of the strange appointment she had made for eleven o’clock
that night.
At four she did think of it, and at once dashed to the telephone.
“Oh, Jeanne!” she exclaimed, as a voice came to her over the wire. “Are
you there? I’ve got exciting news. We are to meet a movie queen at the
Rutledge Tavern to-night—eleven o’clock. You’ll be there?”
“Of a certainty!” Jeanne’s tone was eager. “But why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t know. Good-bye. See you at eleven.”
She hung up, leaving the little French girl in a state of bewilderment,
her mind all awhirl with questions. Who was this movie person? Was she
truly a queen of the cinema? Why must she meet her?
There was some question in the end regarding Jeanne’s ability to keep
this engagement. This, fortunately, was outside her knowledge. So, having
eaten a very good dinner at the hotel, and having bestowed a knowing look
upon the check boy, custodian of her mysterious laundry bag, she made her
way to the fairgrounds and for a time purposely lost herself in the vast
throng that, eddying now this way and now that, poured like a river down
the broad walks running for miles along the lake front.
“I wonder,” she mused as, jostled here and pushed aside there, she moved
forward, “how a rain drop feels when it falls into the center of the
great Mississippi. Snuggles right down and makes itself feel right at
home. Surely this is so. And I, wandering here with this throng from all
over this broad land, feel as if I had been too long away from it all, as
if in some other world I had marched on and on, on and on with a vast
throng that, like the Milky Way, moves forward forever.”
The ebb and flow of that great human tide at last carried her to the
Golden Temple. And here, more by instinct than desire, she sought once
more the cool silence of a place where worship seemed the mood of the
hour.
Sinking into a chair, she sat in a dreamy mood listening to the low,
melodious voice of the mandarin. “This,” he was saying, “is the laughing
Buddha, god of happiness. Wart on temple stands for nobility. Long ears,
long life.”
Glancing up, Jeanne saw the long ears of this grotesque idol, and
laughed. “Long ears, long life,” she whispered. “There is one Chinaman
who needs to avoid Florence if his life is to be long. She’d throw him
into the lagoon.”
The mandarin was continuing his chant. “The three-bladed knife is not for
to kill. Oh, no, he is for drive demons away. Always ring little bell,
swing three-bladed knife through the air. Demon go away.
“Demon very bad. Make people sick. Make people die. Make land dry. Rice
not come up. Millet not get ripe. All people starve. Oh, yes, demon very
bad!”
He turned to the prayer wheel. Jeanne ceased to listen. “So that is the
meaning of the three-bladed knife and the bell,” she was thinking to
herself. “How strange! I wonder if the demons flee if the knife is
flashed through the air and no bell rings.”
Once more the stream of humanity called. Again she lost herself in that
great rushing river. Nor did she emerge until she stood before an immense
affair that, seeming a prodigious barrel one hundred and twenty-five feet
high, stood out against the night.
As she stepped inside this gigantic barrel her mind went into a tailspin.
Had she passed into another world? It seemed so.
The inner walls of that great barrel were all alive. Here she looked deep
into the heart of a tropical jungle where giant tractors dragged great
mahogany logs through the forest, there a magnificent trans-continental
limited leaped at her from the mouth of a tunnel, and here, sailing high
over the white vastness of Arctic wilds, a splendid airplane came to rest
on an endless expanse of snow.
That it was a trick performed by the miracle of a hundred moving picture
projectors she knew right well. Yet it did not destroy for her the sense
of illusion.
She stood there lost to the world about her, entranced, when with a
sudden shock she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Turning quickly, she found herself looking into the mask-like face of the
long-eared Chinaman.
So sudden was the shock that she thought she might fall to the floor or
scream.
But she did neither. With the lightning-like movement of a frightened
deer, she darted forward. Seeing a door knob, she grasped it. The door
opened. Before her was a steel ladder. She was fifty feet up that ladder
before she took time to think.
At that instant the door closed. She was in profound darkness. Only far
above her shone pale light, a small square of night sky.
Her heart was racing furiously. Why had she indulged in such madness?
That great dome of the Transportation Building was thronged with people.
Any one of these would have offered her protection.
Now here she was in a narrow place of darkness. The door was closed. Had
it shut itself? Had the long-eared Chinaman entered to close it behind
him?
“He has the three-bladed knife!” she thought with a shudder.
“The three-bladed knife is not for to kill.” The mandarin’s words came
back to her. Scant comfort in this. It was sharp enough to kill if the
Oriental’s purpose was murder.
She was at the parting of the ways. Above her, a hundred and twenty-five
feet from the ground, up that narrow ladder, was the top of the dome.
Beneath her, fifty feet down, the good earth and the man she feared.
All this passed through her mind in ten seconds of time. Then, without
having truly willed it, she began to climb.
Never before had she climbed so high on a ladder. Now to go higher and
higher, feeling her way every step in the dark, thinking of the dizzy
depths below, was agony.
But what else was there to be done? All her life she had been frightened
by the mysterious silence of Orientals. They moved about with padded
footsteps. Their voices were low. She seldom heard them speak.
“That man may be coming,” she told herself, “climbing like a
cat—silently.”
Up, up she went. The square of light appeared to grow, to come closer and
closer until with a sigh that was half a sob, she tumbled over its brink
to fall upon the cold metallic surface of the dome.
“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh!”
Then, having thought of the Chinaman, she seized a trap door, slammed it
shut, and sat down upon it.
“He might be able to lift me!”
Her keen eyes sought and found a bolt that could be drawn. It would
fasten down the trap door. She shot the bolt into place.
Then, experiencing an overwhelming sense of relief, she sprang to her
feet and, whirling into an intoxicating rhythm, went dancing across that
vast dome.
For the moment she was safe, she was free. Petite Jeanne did not bother
too much about the future.
Dancing away to the very crest of the dome, which was not a dome as we
think of it, but a vast inverted saucer two hundred feet in diameter, she
spread her arms wide and stood there poised like some white bird ready
for flight.
The scene that lay spread out far beneath her was entrancing. To her
right, by the lagoon’s bank, blazed the camp fire of the African village.
Farther away were the tepees of the red men. Close at hand all manner of
lights were blinking, racing, plunging, dancing. These were the wild
thrill-producing features of the Midway. Here a vast building lifted a
blue tower to the sky. Far away the rocket cars of the Sky Ride shot
through space.
For a time Jeanne thought only of that which lay beneath her eye. At last
her gaze wandered to the cool of Lake Michigan’s vast waters by night.
And then her thoughts returned to that great circle of steel upon which
she stood.
“Not a beam support, not a post nor a girder. It is suspended in air.
Great steel cables hold it in place. Cut those steel cables, and—”
She shuddered at the thought. And yet, what a marvel it all was!
Then of a sudden she recalled her appointment at the Rutledge Tavern.
“Florence said I was to meet a movie queen. There was something in her
tone that tells me an exciting time is to be had, and here—here I am!”
Instantly her mind sobered. She was alone on this broad dome. Should she
scream for help the sound of her voice would be lost in the roar of the
merry-mad throng. From the Midway came the grind of a merry-go-round.
Somewhere much farther away a band was dispensing glorious music.
“I must get down. The ladder is the only way.”
She shuddered. Coming up, straight up a hundred and twenty-five feet, had
been nerve-wracking. What must a descent into that black hole be?
“And that terrible Chinaman!”
Well, perhaps, after all, he had not followed.
Then a thought struck her. What if some guard had seen her mount that
ladder? She would surely be arrested.
“I—I’ve got to do it!” She set her teeth hard. “I’ll find out about the
long-eared one; lift the trap door quick. If he’s there I’ll slam it down
again.
“And if he’s not there, I—I’ve got to go down!”
Catching a quick breath and whispering: “_Now!_” she lifted the trap
door.
She did not drop it. There was no one at the top of the ladder.
Who can say that it did not take courage to drag her feet off the top of
the dome and allow them to dangle until they came into contact with a
round of the ladder? Who can tell how many miles it seemed to the bottom?
Enough that she reached solid earth at last.
Then, catching her breath for the second time, she seized the knob,
turned it, swung the door open, stepped out, closed it silently, glanced
to the right and to the left, then dashed for the cool outer air of
night—free!