MAGIC FROM THE EAST
Long after Florence had retired for the night Jeanne paced slowly back
and forth in that magnificently furnished living room. Her bare feet sank
deep in the softest of Oriental rugs. Her filmy gown shimmered in the
moonlight.
Oblivious of all these surroundings, Jeanne was deep in thought. “Faith!”
she murmured. “Faith! Faith in one’s self, in one’s associates, one’s
tasks. Faith in one’s future. Faith in a kind Providence.
“Faith. Faith. Ah, yes, I shall have faith.”
But the future? How strange the past had been! In her thoughts
three-bladed knives, Buddhas and curious Oriental banners were strangely
mixed with log cabins, a hearse drawn by black horses, and an organ
playing itself.
“Ah, yes, but the future!” she exclaimed. “There is always a to-morrow,
to-morrow, and to-morrow. The grand, good, golden future! Who can be
afraid?”
At that she snapped out the light to stand looking down upon the vast,
mysterious city until the distant chimes rang out the hour of two.
“Ah!” she whispered. “My hour of enchantment!”
For a moment she stood with bowed head as if in prayer. After that, for
long hours, this entrancing room knew her not. For long hours she was
wrapped in sleep.
It was well that she had faith in the future for to-morrow was to bring
events mysterious and terrifying.
The clock was preparing to strike the hour of ten on the following night
before she ventured forth from her well-kept fortress, Lorena LeMar’s
apartment. She had not forgotten her narrow escape from Miss LeMar’s
friends, the three rich and very badly spoiled play-boys. “Not that they
were likely to do me any real harm,” she had confided to Florence. “They
were out for one wild night and wished me to join them. And that for me?”
She had made a face. “No! No! Not for me! Never!”
That she might escape danger from this quarter, she had garbed herself in
her ancient gypsy costume of bright red and had hidden herself inside a
long drab coat that came to her ankles.
She realized that perfect safety was to be had only by remaining inside.
But who wants perfect safety? Certainly not our little French girl.
As a further precaution she descended a back stairway and left the
building from a little-used doorway.
A half hour later she might have been found in the throng of joy hunters
on the Midway of the great Fair.
She had just emerged from a breath-taking crush when off to the right she
caught sight of a curious group gathered about some person beating a
drum.
_Tum_, _tum_, _tum_, the dull monotony of beats played upon her ears.
Having joined the circle, she found herself looking at a very
dark-skinned person with deep, piercing eyes. The man wore a long white
robe. On his head was something resembling a Turkish towel twisted into a
large knot.
Seated on the ground near this man were two others quite as dark as he.
One was beating a curious sort of drum, the other squeaking away at
something resembling a flute.
“Now watch! I will make him go up! Up! He will climb the rope. He will
disappear utterly. Utterly!” The dark man’s voice, coming as it did from
deep down in his throat, suggested that he might be talking from a well.
Upon hearing these words a small man stepped forward. The dark-faced one
drew a circle about this little man.
At once the dark one began to whirl, then to dance.
Jeanne had witnessed many strange dances, but none so weird as this. The
man whirled round and round until his robe seemed a winding sheet for a
ghost. He began revolving about in a circle. And inside that circle stood
the little man who was, Jeanne discovered, dressed in a curious sort of
yellow gown.
Faster and faster went the drum beats, squeak-squeak went the flute,
wilder and wilder flew the dancer.
“What can be going to happen?” the girl asked herself. In a vague sort of
way she wished herself somewhere else, but to her astonishment she found
herself unable to move.
Then a discovery, that under normal circumstances must have fairly bowled
her over, came to her as in a dream: The little man standing there in the
center garbed in an orange gown was none other than the long-eared
Chinaman who had snatched the three-bladed knife from her hand.
“You can get him. Get him now,” a low voice seemed to whisper.
“Ah, yes, but you won’t,” a stronger voice appeared to reach her. “You’re
going to see this thing through.”
And so she was.
Of a sudden, without for an instant abandoning his mad whirl, the
dark-faced conjurer from India, for such he was, produced a rope. Three
times he lifted his hand high.
“Now watch! Watch closely. He will go up.” In his voice there was a
strange hypnotic cadence.
Like a thing shot from a gun, the rope rose straight in the air and, in
so far as Jeanne’s eyes told her the truth, remained there standing on
air.
The next instant a figure all in orange began passing up that rope. Up,
up a yard, two yards, three, four, five. Up, up until the darkness
appeared to stretch out black-robed arms to receive him.
Then of a sudden the dark-faced one ceased whirling. The drum gave forth
one more loud boom, the flute one more squeak, and all was still.
With a sigh that was all but a whisper, Jeanne took one long, full
breath.
She closed her eyes for an instant, then opened them.
To her astonishment she saw no dark-faced one in a white robe. The
musicians, too, were gone.
“And the Chinaman!” she exclaimed aloud. “He has vanished also!”
“What has happened?” It was Erik Nord, the man from China, who spoke to
her. He had just come up. “You must have seen a ghost.”
“No. I—I saw a Chinaman go up a rope that was fastened to nothing but
air.”
“There was no rope,” Erik Nord laughed, “at least not in air, and no
Chinaman.”
“Oh, yes! I saw him!”
“Well, perhaps. But he did not go up the rope.
“That man in the white robe,” he explained, “was India’s cleverest
conjurer. With his weird music and wild whirling he cast a spell over
you. You saw what he wished you to see. Perhaps you were hypnotized. Who
can say?”
“But that Chinaman!” Jeanne murmured. “He was—was—”
She was about to tell the story of the three-bladed knife. Thinking
better of it, she made some commonplace remark, then bade this chance
acquaintance good-night as he hurried away to fill an engagement.
It is little wonder that, after such a mystifying experience as this,
Jeanne should straightway walk into a trap. This is exactly what she did.