Hour of Enchantment by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER VII THE PLACE OF DARKNESS
Florence never tired of her work on the Enchanted Island. On this islandwhich man by his ingenuity and tireless energy had drawn from the verybottom of the lake, children romped while their elders sought amusementto 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 asthey rode on gay launches or diminutive motor buses, or laughed at thetalking cow and the puppet show; to climb with them the magic mountainwhere all manner of strange people from fairyland awaited them; then tocall all this work and to receive money for it on pay day--this to herseemed 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 Jeanneand tell her of the strange appointment she had made for eleven o'clockthat 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. "Areyou there? I've got exciting news. We are to meet a movie queen at theRutledge 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 shetruly a queen of the cinema? Why must she meet her?
There was some question in the end regarding Jeanne's ability to keepthis engagement. This, fortunately, was outside her knowledge. So, havingeaten a very good dinner at the hotel, and having bestowed a knowing lookupon the check boy, custodian of her mysterious laundry bag, she made herway to the fairgrounds and for a time purposely lost herself in the vastthrong that, eddying now this way and now that, poured like a river downthe broad walks running for miles along the lake front.
"I wonder," she mused as, jostled here and pushed aside there, she movedforward, "how a rain drop feels when it falls into the center of thegreat Mississippi. Snuggles right down and makes itself feel right athome. Surely this is so. And I, wandering here with this throng from allover this broad land, feel as if I had been too long away from it all, asif in some other world I had marched on and on, on and on with a vastthrong that, like the Milky Way, moves forward forever."
The ebb and flow of that great human tide at last carried her to theGolden Temple. And here, more by instinct than desire, she sought oncemore the cool silence of a place where worship seemed the mood of thehour.
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 laughingBuddha, god of happiness. Wart on temple stands for nobility. Long ears,long life."
Glancing up, Jeanne saw the long ears of this grotesque idol, andlaughed. "Long ears, long life," she whispered. "There is one Chinamanwho needs to avoid Florence if his life is to be long. She'd throw himinto the lagoon."
The mandarin was continuing his chant. "The three-bladed knife is not forto 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. Ricenot come up. Millet not get ripe. All people starve. Oh, yes, demon verybad!"
He turned to the prayer wheel. Jeanne ceased to listen. "So that is themeaning of the three-bladed knife and the bell," she was thinking toherself. "How strange! I wonder if the demons flee if the knife isflashed through the air and no bell rings."
Once more the stream of humanity called. Again she lost herself in thatgreat rushing river. Nor did she emerge until she stood before an immenseaffair that, seeming a prodigious barrel one hundred and twenty-five feethigh, 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 deepinto the heart of a tropical jungle where giant tractors dragged greatmahogany logs through the forest, there a magnificent trans-continentallimited leaped at her from the mouth of a tunnel, and here, sailing highover the white vastness of Arctic wilds, a splendid airplane came to reston an endless expanse of snow.
That it was a trick performed by the miracle of a hundred moving pictureprojectors she knew right well. Yet it did not destroy for her the senseof illusion.
She stood there lost to the world about her, entranced, when with asudden shock she felt a hand on her shoulder.
Turning quickly, she found herself looking into the mask-like face of thelong-eared Chinaman.
So sudden was the shock that she thought she might fall to the floor orscream.
But she did neither. With the lightning-like movement of a frighteneddeer, she darted forward. Seeing a door knob, she grasped it. The dooropened. Before her was a steel ladder. She was fifty feet up that ladderbefore she took time to think.
At that instant the door closed. She was in profound darkness. Only farabove 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. Hadit shut itself? Had the long-eared Chinaman entered to close it behindhim?
"He has the three-bladed knife!" she thought with a shudder.
"The three-bladed knife is not for to kill." The mandarin's words cameback to her. Scant comfort in this. It was sharp enough to kill if theOriental's purpose was murder.
She was at the parting of the ways. Above her, a hundred and twenty-fivefeet 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, withouthaving truly willed it, she began to climb.
Never before had she climbed so high on a ladder. Now to go higher andhigher, feeling her way every step in the dark, thinking of the dizzydepths below, was agony.
But what else was there to be done? All her life she had been frightenedby the mysterious silence of Orientals. They moved about with paddedfootsteps. Their voices were low. She seldom heard them speak.
"That man may be coming," she told herself, "climbing like acat--silently."
Up, up she went. The square of light appeared to grow, to come closer andcloser until with a sigh that was half a sob, she tumbled over its brinkto 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 itshut, 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 wouldfasten down the trap door. She shot the bolt into place.
Then, experiencing an overwhelming sense of relief, she sprang to herfeet and, whirling into an intoxicating rhythm, went dancing across thatvast dome.
For the moment she was safe, she was free. Petite Jeanne did not bothertoo much about the future.
Dancing away to the very crest of the dome, which was not a dome as wethink of it, but a vast inverted saucer two hundred feet in diameter, shespread her arms wide and stood there poised like some white bird readyfor flight.
The scene that lay spread out far beneath her was entrancing. To herright, 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 oflights were blinking, racing, plunging, dancing. These were the wildthrill-producing features of the Midway. Here a vast building lifted ablue tower to the sky. Far away the rocket cars of the Sky Ride shotthrough s
For a time Jeanne thought only of that which lay beneath her eye. At lasther 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 whichshe 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 hertone 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 shescream for help the sound of her voice would be lost in the roar of themerry-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, hadbeen 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 thatladder? She would surely be arrested.
"I--I've got to do it!" She set her teeth hard. "I'll find out about thelong-eared one; lift the trap door quick. If he's there I'll slam it downagain.
"And if he's not there, I--I've got to go down!"
Catching a quick breath and whispering: "_Now!_" she lifted the trapdoor.
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 ofthe dome and allow them to dangle until they came into contact with around 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, glancedto the right and to the left, then dashed for the cool outer air ofnight--free!