THE SILVER SHIP
Early on the following morning two planes left the airport. One was
small. It resembled a dragon fly. In it rode Jeanne and Madame Bihari.
The other was a great bi-motored cabin plane. It carried as its
stewardess our good friend Rosemary Sample. Her passengers were as
interesting a group as you might hope to meet.
They were destined, these planes, for the same little city, Happy Vale.
Both Jeanne and Rosemary were ignorant of this fact. So it is in life,
two congenial souls travel for years along the same path, all
unconscious of one another’s nearness.
Rosemary’s interest in her passengers increased as she became better
acquainted with them. They were, she discovered, from the
University—sociologists, teachers of ethics, psychologists—all
delightfully simple, kindly people who laughed and joked about the long
strings of letters Ph.D., LL.D. and the like, attached to their names.
She was not long in discovering that a tall thin man with long hair and
thick glasses named H. Bedford Biddle had chanced upon what he spoke of
as a “rare find” in the field of sociology. They were all, it seemed,
going for a look at his “find.”
The “find,” she knew in advance, was Danby Force’s cotton mill and his
little city of Happy Vale. She was thrilled at the thought of seeing him
once more.
As she listened to these learned men discussing the “find” she realized
there was much she could tell them about it. Not being asked, however,
she kept silent. She smiled from time to time at their curiously learned
remarks about a thing that to her had seemed quite simple and very
beautiful, a group of common people, working together to make their
little city the happiest, most contented in all the world.
They landed on the outskirts of a beautiful little city. A bus carried
them to the factory. There they were met by Danby Force who had a very
special message for the little stewardess.
“I wanted you to come.” It was a rare smile he gave her, something quite
special that warmed her heart. “I felt you were interested and would
truly understand.”
“And is—have you—”
“No.” His voice was low. “We have not found her. We have no true notion
of the harm she may have done. We can only hope.” He was speaking,
Rosemary knew, of the spy.
It was an hour later when, after a frugal repast wonderfully prepared,
they were ready to enter the mill.
Rosemary had dropped modestly to the rear of the group when of a sudden
she noted some stranger joining their party. With a quick eye for faces
she already knew all her party well. “He is not of our party, and yet,”
she told herself, “there is something familiar about him. He gives me
the shivers. I wonder why.”
A little later she was thinking to herself, “Wonder if he has been
invited to join us. None of my affair—but—” But what? She did not know.
Invited or no, the youth did join this group. He did go with them. To
Rosemary his attitude was disconcerting. A part of the time he seemed
quite indifferent, the rest of the time he was like one on tip-toes.
Drinking in every word that was said, at the same time he went through
strange motions, fumbling first at his vest, then at his pockets.
Their journey through the plant was half over.
“No,” Danby Force was saying, “this is not Utopia. We have made mistakes
and been criticized. Members of our group have complained and claimed
unfair treatment. Some have moved away. This is human. But we are trying
to live up to our motto: ‘Do something for someone else.’ We—”
For the first time, with no apparent reason, the mysterious stranger
looked Rosemary square in the eyes. His black eyes flashed a dark
challenge. Instantly she knew this was no youth. This was the mysterious
dark lady! By the gleam of an eye she had made this discovery. This
woman had changed her complexion and her disguise. She had returned for
more facts, perhaps for the secret formula. And what was she, Rosemary
Sample, to do about it? Inside her a tumult was raging. Externally she
was calm. “I must think,” she told herself, “think calmly. And then I
must act.”
In the meantime Jeanne too had made a discovery. Was it important? Who
could tell? An hour after Rosemary’s party left the small landing field
at Happy Vale, Jeanne’s dragon fly came circling down to at last taxi to
a position close beside a small silver plane.
“That ship,” Jeanne said to Madame, “looks familiar. And—” she clapped
her hands. “I know where I saw it before.”
Her heart skipped a beat as, making a dash for it, she peered within.
“Oh!” she breathed out her disappointment. “She is not there!” This was
the luminous silver ship that one night had hovered over her golden
tree, the very one she had followed so far next day. She was sure of
that. A young man sat at the wheel. He seemed about to start the plane.
Throwing open the door, he said, “Howdy, sister. What can I do for you?”
“Wh—where is she?” Jeanne asked breathlessly.
“She?” He appeared not to understand.
“The dark lady.”
“Which one?” He laughed. “I’m told there are several in America.”
At that Jeanne decided to give him up. “Only one more question,” she
thought.
“How do you make it shine all over at night?” she asked.
“There are ten thousand holes in the fusilage and the planes,” he
explained in a friendly tone. “Neon tubes made of a special kind of
glass run everywhere inside the plane. When we light these tubes they
shine out through all the little holes. Simple, what?”
“Very simple,” Jeanne agreed.
A moment later she saw him go bobbing across the field to rise at last
and soar away.
“All the same,” Jeanne told herself, “he _did_ once have that dark lady,
the spy, as a passenger. Wonder if he has her still?” She concluded that
plane would bear watching if it ever returned.