GYPSIES THAT ARE NOT GYPSIES
While Florence was having a close look into the mystery of the crystal
ball, the little French girl Petite Jeanne was not idle; in truth, Jeanne
was seldom idle. She was like the sparrow of our city streets, always on
the move.
Since the artist did not require her services as a model that day, she
considered it her duty to search out the haunts of certain gypsy groups,
and to discover if possible what had happened to the poor widow’s four
hundred dollars.
“Bah! I don’t like it!” she exclaimed as she drew on an old gray coat and
crowded a small hat over her gorgeous golden hair. “It is dangerous, this
looking for a thief. But it is exciting too. So there you are! I shall
go.” And go she did.
Since Maxwell Street had been mentioned in connection with the theft, it
was to that street she journeyed. It was a bright winter’s day. Wares
that had been dragged indoors during severe weather had been hauled out
again. And such wares as they were! Rags and old iron were offered as
clothing and tools. There were stalls of vile smelling fish, racks of
curious spices, crates of weary looking chickens and turkeys, everything
that one may find in the poor man’s market of any great city. Jeanne had
seen it all in Paris, in London, in New York and now in Chicago. Always
she shuddered. Yet always, too, her heart went out to these poor, brave
people who through sunshine and storm, winter’s cold and summer’s heat
struggled to sell a little of this, a little of that, and so to keep
themselves alive by their own efforts rather than accept charity.
Out of all this drab scene one figure stood bright and colorful, a
dark-eyed maiden dressed in all the many-hued garments of a gypsy. Jeanne
went straight to her.
“Want a fortune told?” The girl’s eyes gleamed. “Step inside. Read your
palm. Tell your fortune with cards. Perhaps today is not so good.” She
looked at Jeanne’s purposely drab costume. “Tomorrow may be better—much
better. You shall see. Step right inside.”
Jeanne stepped inside. The place she entered was blue with cigaret smoke.
Idling about the large room, on couches and rugs were a half dozen girls
dressed, as this other one, in bright costumes. At the back of the room
was a booth, inside the booth a small table and a chair.
Instantly Jeanne found herself ill at ease in these surroundings. She had
seen much of gypsy life, but this—somehow a guardian gnome seemed to
whisper a warning in her ear.
Turning, she said a few words. She spoke in a strange tongue—the lingo of
her own gypsy people. The girl she addressed stared at her blankly.
Turning about, she repeated the words in a louder tone. Every girl in the
room must have heard. Not one replied.
“You are not gypsies!” Jeanne exclaimed, stamping her foot. “You do not
know the gypsy language.”
“Not gypsies! Not gypsies!” The swarm of girls were up and screaming like
a flock of angry bluejays. “We _are_ gypsies! We _are_ gypsies!”
“Well,” said Jeanne, backing toward the door, “you don’t seem much like
gypsies. You should be able to speak the language—”
“Paveoe, our mistress, she speaks that silly nonsense!” one of the girls
exclaimed. “Come when she is here and you shall hear it by the hour.”
“And does she run this place?” Jeanne asked. She was now at the door and
breathing more easily.
“Y-yes,” the girl said slowly, “Paveoe is the woman who runs this place.”
“I’ll be back.” Jeanne opened the door, closed it quietly and was gone.
“I wonder if this Paveoe is the woman I am looking for,” she whispered to
herself. “Perhaps she has the money. Perhaps that is why she is not
here.”
As she crowded through the ragged, jostling and quite merry throng on
Maxwell Street, Jeanne found her heart filled with misgivings. A spirit
of prophecy belonging to gypsy people alone seemed to tell her that this
woman, Paveoe, was bad, that they should meet, and then—. At that point
the spirit of prophecy failed her.
Meanwhile, in Frances Ward’s office the mystery girl, June Travis, was
saying:
“No, I do not remember my father—that is, hardly at all. And yet, it
seems so strange I recognized him instantly when I saw him in—in the
crystal ball! And the girl who was with him—it was I.” June broke off to
stare out of the window and down at the slow-moving river.
Florence wanted to say, “Yes, yes, she was in the crystal ball. I saw
her. It could have been no other.” She opened her mouth to speak; but no
sound came out. She had recalled that she was there to listen and not to
talk. “But what a story this promises to be!” she thought to herself.
Then, with a sudden start she began taking notes.
“June Travis. Plenty of money. Much money when she is sixteen,” she
wrote. “Money—” her pencil stopped. She had thought of the poor widow
with four hundred dollars and the gypsy fortune tellers. “Wolves,” she
thought, “human wolves, they are everywhere.” Once again her pencil
glided across the paper.
“It does seem a little extraordinary.” Frances Ward was speaking slowly,
thoughtfully. She was facing June Travis, still smiling. “Strange indeed
that you should see yourself as you were more than ten years ago, and
that you should recognize your father.”
“It was a beautiful room.” A look of rapture stole over the girl’s face.
“A very beautiful room. Books, a fireplace, everything. Just the sort of
place my father must have had to live in—for he must be rich. If he
wasn’t, how could he leave me all that money?
“And he was to come back.” Her tone became eager. “He _will_ come back.
Madame Zaran, that’s the crystal-gazer, says she’s sure he will come
back. She’s told me wonderful things. I am to travel—California, the
Orient, Europe, around the world.
“But father—” her voice dropped. “She says she can’t get through to
father. That will take money, much money. And very soon I shall have much
money. Only—” she shuddered. “Somehow that makes me afraid.”
“Yes.” Frances Ward nodded her wise old head. “You must not forget to be
afraid, and to be very, very careful. I should like to meet this
wonderful Madame Zaran.”
“You shall meet her!” the girl exclaimed. “But, Mrs. Ward, you are so
kind! You have helped so many. Can’t you help me find my father?” Her
voice rose on a high note of appeal.
“Yes.” Frances Ward spoke with all the gentleness of a mother. “Yes, I
think perhaps I can. But first you must do everything possible for
yourself. Where is your money kept?”
“In a great bank.”
“Good!” Frances Ward’s face lighted. “What do they tell you of your
father?”
“Nothing.” The girl’s face fell. “The man my father left the money with
at the bank is dead. The others know that the money is for me and how it
is to be given out.”
“And you live—”
“At a very fine home for girls, only a few girls, twelve girls, all very
nice.”
“And what does the person in charge tell you of your father?”
“Nothing—nothing at all. I was brought there by a woman who was not my
mother, a little old gray-haired woman who said I was to be kept there.
She gave them some money. She told them where the other money was. Then
she went away.”
“Strange,” Frances Ward murmured softly, “very, very strange. But, my
child!” Her tone changed. “You may be able to be your own best helper.
You were not a baby when your father left you. Under favorable conditions
you might be able to think back, back, back to those days, to recall
perhaps rooms, houses, faces. You might describe them so accurately that
they could be found. And, finding them, we might come upon someone who
knew your father and who knows where he has gone.”
“Oh, if only I could!” The girl clasped and unclasped her hands. “If only
I could!”
“That,” said Mrs. Ward, “may take considerable time, but I feel that it
is a surer and—” she hesitated, “perhaps a safer way than some others
might be.
“My dear,” she laid a hand gently on June’s arm, “you will not go to that
place at night?”
“Oh, no!” June’s eyes opened wide. “We are never allowed to go anywhere
after dark unless Mrs. Maver, our matron, is with us.”
“That’s good.” The frown on the aged woman’s face was replaced by a
smile.
“Florence!” She turned half about in her chair. “You should know June
Travis. I feel sure you might aid her. Perhaps you’d like to take her out
for a cup of something hot. What do young ladies drink? Nothing strong, I
hope.” She laughed.
“Not I!” Florence replied, “I’m always in training.”
“Which every girl should be,” Frances Ward replied promptly.
“My dear,” she put out a hand to June, “I have a ‘dead-line’ to make. You
wouldn’t know about that, but it’s just a column that must be in the
paper a half hour from now. You will come back, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will,” said June. “Thank you. I feel so much better a—about
everything now.”
“That,” said Florence as the two girls walked down the corridor, “is
‘Everybody’s Grandmother.’ She’s truly wonderful. She knows so much about
everything.”
“And,” she added aside to herself, “she knows just how much to say. If
she had told this girl I was engaged in the business of hunting fortune
tellers, that would have spoiled everything. But she didn’t. She didn’t.”
“Have you visited fortune telling studios before?” she asked the
bright-eyed June as they sipped a hot cup of some strange bitter drink
Florence found in a narrow little hole-in-the-wall place.
“Oh, yes, often!” The girl’s eyes shone. “I’m afraid I’ve become quite a
fan. And they do tell you such strange things. Honestly,” her voice
dropped, “Madame Zaran told me things that happened weeks ago and that
only I knew about—or at least only one or two other girls.
“But this—” her voice and her face sobered. “This is different. This is
what Polly, one of our girls, would call ‘very tremendous.’ Think of
seeing yourself and your own father just as you were years and years
ago!”
“Yes,” Florence agreed without hypocrisy, “it _is_ tremendous.”
“But it costs so much!” June sighed. “Don’t you tell a soul—” her voice
dropped to a whisper, “I saved and saved from my allowance until I had it
all—two hundred dollars!”
“Two hundred dollars! Did they charge you that for gazing into the
crystal? Why, they—”
Florence did not finish. She was trying to think how much those people
would charge for their next revelation when, perhaps, this girl had come
into possession of much money.
As she looked at the young and slender girl before her, a big-sister
feeling came sweeping over her. “We—” she placed her large, strong hand
over June’s slender one, “we’re going to stick together, aren’t we?”
“If—if you wish it,” the other girl replied hesitatingly.
“And now—” she rose from her chair. “I must go. There’s a wonderful woman
on the south side. Everyone says she’s marvelous. She’s a fortune teller
too, a voodoo priestess, black, you know.”
“From Africa?”
“No. Haiti. She tells such marvelous fortunes. Her name is Marianna
Christophe. She’s a descendant of a black emperor. And she has a black
goat with golden horns.”
“Perhaps,” Florence laughed, “she borrowed the goat from the gypsy girl
in a book I once read. What’s the address? I must have her tell my
fortune.”
“It’s 3528 Duncan Street. I wish—” the girl hesitated. “I wish you were
going now.” She shuddered a little. “She’s black, a voodoo priestess. She
has a black goat with golden horns. I’m always a little scared of black
things.”
“Say!” Florence exclaimed, seized by a sudden inspiration, “why don’t you
wait until tomorrow, then I can go with you to see this voodoo
priestess?”
“I—I’d love it.” The girl’s face brightened.
“She’s beautiful, this June Travis,” Florence told herself, “beautiful in
a peculiar way, fluffy hair that is not quite red, a round face and
deeply dimpled cheeks. Who could fail to love her and want to protect
her?”
“Let me see,” she said, speaking half to the girl, half to herself, “No,
I can’t go tomorrow. How will the day after do?”
“That will be fine.”
“You’ll meet me here at this same hour?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then I’ll be going.” Florence held out a hand. “Goodbye and good
luck. I have a feeling,” she added as a sort of afterthought, “that we
are going to do a lot of exploring together, you and I.”
As she hurried toward Sandy’s glass box Florence repeated, “An awful
lot.” At that, she had not the faintest notion what a truly awful lot
that would be.