DANGER TOMORROW
“Jeanne, one of your friends has stolen four hundred dollars!” Florence
exclaimed, springing to her feet as Jeanne, garbed in a plaid coat and
with a silver-grey fox fur about her neck, breezed in from the night. She
had been to the Symphony concert. Her ears still rang with the final
notes of a great concerto. Florence’s startling words burst upon her like
a sudden blare of trombones and clash of cymbals all in one.
“My friend?” she exclaimed in sudden consternation. “One of my friends
has stolen all that?”
“From a poor widow with three small children,” Florence said soberly.
Then in a changed, half teasing tone, “Anyway, the paper says the thief
was a gypsy, so I suppose she was, and a fortune teller as well.”
“Oh! A gypsy!” Breathing a sigh of relief, Jeanne threw off her wraps,
tossed back her shock of golden hair, then sank into a chair before the
burned-out fire where Florence had sat musing for an hour.
“My dear—” Jeanne placed a long slender hand on Florence’s arm. “Not all
gypsies are my friends—only some gypsies. Not all gypsies are good. Some
are very, very bad. You should know that. Surely you have not forgotten
how those bad ones in France seized me and carried me away to the Alps
when I was to dance in the so beautiful Paris Opera!”
“No,” Florence laughed, “I have not forgotten. All the same, you must
help me. Mr. Joslyn—he is our editor, you know—sent down a marked copy of
the paper. Above the story of the gypsy fortune teller’s theft he wrote,
‘_This is right in your line_.’
“So!” she sighed. “It’s up to me. Until just now I have been a reporter
of a sort, rather more entertaining and amusing than serious. But now—”
she squared her shoulders. “Now I am to become a sort of
reporter-detective, at least for a time.
“And Jeanne,” she added earnestly, “you must help me, you truly must. You
know all the gypsies in the city.”
“No, not all. But no! No!” Jeanne protested.
“You know the good ones and the bad ones,” Florence went on, ignoring her
denial. “You must help me find this bad one, and, if it is not too late,
we must get that money back.
“How foolish some people are!” Her voice dropped. “Here was a woman with
three small children. She collected four hundred dollars from her
husband’s estate. She hurries right off to the gypsies because one of
them has told her two months before that she is to have money. Money!”
She laughed scornfully. “Probably they tell everyone that—makes them feel
good.
“Then she asks them how to invest it so it will become a great deal of
money right away, and they say, ‘Leave it with us for luck.’ She goes
away. They vanish. And there you are!”
“Where did this so terrible thing happen?” Jeanne asked.
“In one of the narrow streets back of Maxwell Street.”
“Maxwell Street!” Jeanne shuddered. She had been on Maxwell Street; did
not wish ever to go again. But now—
“Ah, well, my good friend,” she sighed, “it is always so. We come into
great good fortune. We have marvelous friends. Marvelous things of beauty
are all about us. We sigh with joy and bask in the sunshine. And then,
bang! Duty says, ‘Go to Maxwell Street. Go where there is dirt and
disorder, unhappiness, hatred and poverty.’ We listen to Duty, and we go.
Yes, my good friend Florence, tomorrow I shall go.
“And,” she added mysteriously, “when I am there, even you, if you meet
me, will not know me.”
“You will be careful!” Florence’s brow wrinkled.
“I shall be careful. And now—” Jeanne rose, then went weaving her way in
a slow rhythmic dance toward a narrow metal stairway leading to a
balcony. “Now I go to my dreams. _Bon nuit!_”
“Good night,” Florence replied as once more her eyes sought the
burned-out fire.
“Strange! Life is strange!” she murmured.
And life for her _had_ been strange. Perhaps it always would be strange.
She did not retire at once. The studio, with its broad fireplace, its
deep-cushioned chairs and dim lights, was a cozy, dreamy place at night.
She wanted to think and dream a while.
Never in all her event-filled life had Florence been employed in a
stranger way than at that moment. She was, you might say, a reporter, or,
better perhaps, an investigator, for one of the city’s great daily
papers.
She had walked into the newspaper office one morning, as she had walked
into a hundred places, just to ask what there was she might do. She had,
by great good fortune, been introduced to Frances Ward, who proved to be
the most interesting and inspiring old lady she had ever known.
“Our paper,” Mrs. Ward had said, “is cutting down on its playground and
welfare work. There is—” she had hesitated to peer searchingly into
Florence’s face—“there is something I have been thinking of for a
considerable time. It’s a thing I can’t do myself.” She laughed a
cackling sort of laugh. “I am too old and wise-looking. You are young and
fresh and, pardon me, innocent-looking.
“You wouldn’t mind,” she asked suddenly, “having your fortune told?”
“Of course not.” Florence stared.
“Several times a day,” Frances Ward added, “by all sorts of people, those
who read the bumps on your head, who study the lines in your palms or the
stars you were born under, card-readers, crystal-gazers and all the
rest.”
“That,” Florence said, “sounds exciting.”
“It won’t be after a while,” Mrs. Ward warned. “All right, we’ll arrange
it. You’ll have to find these fortune tellers. We don’t carry their ads.
Some have signs in their windows. That is easy. But those are not the
best—or perhaps the worst of them. The most successful ones operate more
or less in secret. The way you find these is to say to someone, a clerk
in a store, a hair-dresser, a check girl in a hotel, ‘Where can I find a
good fortune teller?’ She will laugh, like as not, and say, ‘I don’t
know.’ Then, ‘Oh, yes! Mary Martensen, the girl who does my nails, told
me of a wonderful one. She told her the most astonishing things about
herself. And, just think, she’s only been there twice! Wait till I call
her up. I’ll get her address for you.’
“And when you have that address—” Frances Ward settled back in her chair.
“You go there and say, ‘So-and-so told me about you.’ You have your
fortune told. Remember as much as you can, the fortune teller’s name, her
appearance, the kind of fortune she tells you, the setting of her studio,
everything. Then you come here and prepare a story for your column. We’ll
call it ‘Looking Into the Future.’”
“But I—I’m afraid I can’t write stories!” Florence said in sudden dismay.
“You don’t have to,” Mrs. Ward laughed. “Just tell a reporter all about
it and he’ll write it up. It will be a new and popular newspaper feature.
“_Looking Into the Future!_” she repeated softly. “If you do your work
well, as I know you will, the feature is sure to prove a success from the
start.
“But let me warn you!” Her voice dropped. “You will find it not only
interesting and thrilling, but dangerous as well, for some fortune
tellers are wolves. They rob the poor people by leading them on and on.
These must be exposed. And, though we will conceal your identity as much
as possible, there are likely to be times when these people will suspect
you. If this—” she looked at Florence earnestly, “if this is too
terrifying, now is the time to say so.”
Florence had not “said so.” She had taken the position. Her column had
been popular from the start. And now, as she sat there before the fire in
the studio, recalling the words of Frances Ward, “not only interesting,
but dangerous,” she repeated that last word, “dangerous.”
At that moment a tiny spirit seemed to take up the refrain and whisper in
her ear, “Dangerous. That is the place! The midnight blue room is for you
a place of peril. If you go there tomorrow, you are in for it! You can
never turn back until you have found the end of the road which winds on
and on, far and far away.”
“Tomorrow,” she whispered as she rose to fling her strong arms wide,
“tomorrow I shall return to that place of midnight blue draperies, and I
shall ask someone there to teach me how to read fortunes by gazing into
the crystal ball.” There was a new fire in her eye as she mounted the
narrow stairs to enter the chamber which the great artist had so
graciously set aside for her use.