A Mystery Story for Girls

GYPSY FLIGHT

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT 1935
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I The Dark Lady] 11 [II The Vanishing Bag] 34 [III The “Flying Corntassel”] 48 [IV With the Aid of Providence] 58 [V Danby’s Secret] 64 [VI The Gypsy Witch Cards] 75 [VII A Strange Battle] 83 [VIII Trailing an Old Pal] 94 [IX Little Sweden] 103 [X One Wild Night] 111 [XI Goodbye Fair] 118 [XII Flying Through the Night] 126 [XIII Suspects] 135 [XIV Gypsy Trail] 142 [XV Lady Cop of the Sky] 150 [XVI A Suspicious Character] 161 [XVII A Surprise Visit] 170 [XVIII The Red Devil] 178 [XIX The Fire-Bird] 189 [XX Someone Vanishes] 195 [XXI An Astonishing Discovery] 202 [XXII The Silver Ship] 211 [XXIII The Gypsy’s Warning] 217 [XXIV 48-48] 228 [XXV Lost in the Air of Night] 238

GYPSY FLIGHT

CHAPTER I
THE DARK LADY

Rosemary Sample adjusted her jaunty cap carefully, smoothed out her well-tailored suit, then lowering her head, stepped from her trans-continental airplane.

Oh yes, that was Rosemary’s plane. Rosemary was still young, and she looked even younger than her years. A slender slip of a girl was Rosemary, rather pretty, too, with a touch of natural color and a dimple in each cheek, white even teeth, smiling eyes of deepest blue.

Strange sort of person to have a huge bi-motored plane with two 555 horse-power motors and a cruising speed of one hundred and seventy miles per hour. It cost seventy thousand dollars did that airplane. Yet this slip of a girl was its captain, its conductor, its everything but pilot, as long as it hung in air. Rosemary was its stewardess—and that meant a very great deal.

Rosemary stepped across the cement runway with a buoyant tread. “Life,” she thought with a happy tilt of her head, “is just wonderful! It is perfection itself.”

Rosemary loved perfection. And where may one find perfection of high degree if not in a great metropolitan airport? Those giant silver birds of the air, their motors drumming in perfect unison, wheeling into position for flight—how perfect! The touch of genius, the brain and brawn of the world’s greatest has gone into their making. And as to the care of them, Rosemary knew that the most valuable horse in the world never received more perfect treatment.

The depot, too, was perfect. Its hard white floor was spotless. The ticket sellers, the loitering aviators, even the black-faced redcaps somehow appeared to fit into a perfect picture.

“The travelers and their luggage,” she whispered, “they too fit in. No shabby ones. No drab ones. Per—”

She did not finish for of a sudden, as if caught and banged against a post, her picture was wrecked, for a young man apparently unsuited to the place had dashed through the depot’s outer door and, grasping her by the arm, said in a low hoarse whisper:

“I must speak to you personally, privately.”

For a space of ten seconds there was grave danger that Rosemary would deviate from the path of duty, that she would smash Rule No. 1 for all airplane hostesses into bits. “Courtesy to all,” that was the rule. And in the end the rule won.

Getting a steady grip on herself, the girl glanced about, noted that the small room to the right was at that moment vacant, motioned her strangely distraught visitor—who, if appearances could be trusted, must have slept the night before in an alley and fought six policemen single-handed in the morning—inside, after which she closed the door.

“Than—oh thank you!” the young man gasped.

Then for a period of seconds he seemed quite at a loss as to what he might say next.

This gave the girl an opportunity for a swift character analysis. She was accustomed to this. She had flown for two years. Four hundred thousand miles of flying were down to her credit. Passengers, usually ten of them, flew with her. It was her duty to keep them comfortable and happy. To do this she must know them, though she had seen them but for an hour.

“He’s not as bad as I thought,” was her mental comment. “He’s not been drinking. He needs sleep. There’s a lot of trouble somewhere. But it’s not his trouble—at least not much of it. He needs help. He—”

As if reading this last thought, the youth gripped her arm to exclaim:

“You must help me!”

“All right.” Rosemary displayed all her teeth in a dazzling smile. “That’s my job. How shall I help you?”

“You’re flying west to Salt Lake City. Plane leaves in half an hour. I must have a place in that plane.”

“I’m sorry.” Rosemary truly was. She had seen most of the other passengers. They promised to be rather dull. But this young man—“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “The trip was sold out forty-eight hours ago.”

“I know—” The young man’s tone was impatient. “But—but it must be arranged. Here!” He crowded a small roll of bills into her hand. “You can fix it. I can’t. You know who they are. There must be no fuss. No one must know. You find one. You know folks; you can pick the right one. Surely there’s one of them that will wait until the night plane. That’s not sold out yet.

“Be-believe me!” His eyes were appealing as he saw her waver. “It’s not for myself. If it were, I’d never ask it. It—it’s for a thousand others.”

“No,” Rosemary was saying under her breath, “it’s not for himself. And so—”

“All right,” she said quietly, “I’ll try.”

She went away swiftly, so swiftly he could not catch at her arm to thank her.

On entering the main waiting room of the airport, the young stewardess looked quickly about her. Twenty or more people were in the room. Which were passengers, which mere sightseers? She knew some of the men who were to be with her on this trip. They were old-timers, mostly traveling men. She would not dare suggest to one of these that he sell his reservation.

Her gaze at last became fixed upon a youth. “Must be about twenty,” she told herself. “He’s going. First trip. Nervous, and trying not to show it. He’ll welcome a delay, like as not. Have to try.” She took in his ready-to-wear suit, his $5.99 variety of shoes, wondered vaguely why he was going by air at all, then plunged.

“You mean to tell me,” he was saying slowly three minutes later, “that some man will give me fifty dollars just to wait six hours for the next plane? Say! I’d wait a week. Where’s the money?”

“Here! Here it is.” Rosemary felt a great wave of relief sweep over her. She wanted to ask this youth a dozen questions, but there was not time.

“What’s the name of the man that’s taking your reservation?” the ticket seller asked of the ready-to-wear youth.

“Why I—”

“I’ll have that for you right away, Charlie,” Rosemary broke in.

“O.K.” Charlie turned to other matters.

Ten minutes later Rosemary received the second shock of the day and from the same source. Someone touched her on the arm. She wheeled about to find herself looking at a young man in spotless linen, faultless gray suit and traveling cap. In his hand he carried a dark brown walrus-hide bag.

“I—I—why you—” she stammered.

“Quick change artist.” He smiled broadly. “Got hold of my bag, you see.”

It was the young man who only a brief time before did not fit into her picture of perfection.

“Di-did you get it?” he asked. There was a slight twitch about his mouth.

She nodded. “Step over here.”

“You’re a marvel!” he murmured. “I can’t tell you—”

“Don’t,” she warned.

“You’ll have to give your name and address here,” she said in a brusque tone. Then, “Here Charlie. This is the man.”

“Name and address, please,” said Charlie.

“Danby Force, Happy Vale, Connecticut,” said the young man promptly.

“Goodbye,” said Rosemary, “I’ll be seeing you.” And indeed she should—many times. The power behind all things, that directs the stars in their courses, that keeps all the little streams moving downhill and notes the sparrow’s fall, had willed that their paths should cross many times and in many curious places.

“There is time,” Rosemary told herself, “for a stroll in the open air before we take to the air.” Then, of a sudden, she recalled a curious sort of plane that had landed but a short time before. “Wonder if it’s still here.” She hurried out to the landing field.

“Yes, there it is! I must have a look.”

Speeding over the broad cement way, she crossed to a spot where a small plane rested. Truly it was a strange plane. It had been painted to represent a gigantic dragon fly. Its planes seemed thin and gauze-like. This, she knew, was pure illusion.

“But how beautiful!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, it is beautiful.” To her surprise, she was answered by a blonde-haired girl who had just stepped round the plane.

“Is—is it yours?” she asked in surprise.

“But yes.” The strange girl spoke with a decided French accent. “I am the one they call Petite Jeanne. You have heard of me. No? Ah well, it does not matter.” She laughed a silvery laugh. She was, Rosemary noted, a slender girl with beautifully regular features and dancing eyes. “Dancing feet too,” she whispered to herself. “They are never still.”

Unconsciously she had been following the girl round the plane. There, on the other side, she met with a surprise. Seated on bright colored bundles, close to a small fire over which a small teakettle steamed, was a large, stolid-looking gypsy woman and a small gypsy girl.

“So the gypsies are taking to the air!” she exclaimed. “And you—” she turned to the blonde girl, “are you a gypsy too?”

“As you like.” A cloud appeared to pass over the girl’s face. It was followed by a smile. “Anyway,” she said, “I am flying now. And you, since you are flying always, you may see me again in some strange new place.

“Indeed,” she added after a brief silence, “Madame Bihari here, who is my foster mother, was telling my fortune with cards.”

“Your fortune?”

“But yes.” The girl laughed merrily. “What would a gypsy be if she did not tell fortunes?

“And in my fortune,” she went on, “I was to meet a stewardess of the air. This meeting was to lead me into strange and mysterious adventures. And now here you are. Is it not strange? It is very wonderful, truly it is, this telling fortunes with gypsy cards. You must try it.”

“I will,” replied Rosemary. “But now it is almost time for my plane. I’ll hope to be seeing you. I—”

“One moment please!” Bending over, the blonde girl picked up three small sticks. “Wherever I land,” she went on, “I shall put two sticks so, and one stick so, close to the door of the airport depot. If you see it you will know that I have been there and may be there still.”

“I get you,” Rosemary laughed, “but what do you call that?”

“It is our gypsy patteran,” the girl explained soberly. “It is a custom older than any of your country’s laws.”

“Good! I’ll be seeing you!” Rosemary hurried away. She was not soon to forget this blonde-haired Petite Jeanne, whom so many of you already know well. Nor was she to forget that even the gypsies had taken to the air.

After casting a practiced eye over the interior of her ship, adjusting a chair and looking to her supply of newspapers and magazines, Rosemary stepped down from the plane into the sunlight of a glorious day.

A porter was wheeling the baggage cart into position, the chain was being dropped. In an even tone through a microphone the announcer was saying, “Plane No. 56 leaving for Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City and points west, now loading.”

“We’ll be in the air soon,” Rosemary whispered to herself. The faintest possible thrill ran up her spine. For this very-much-alive girl, even after two years of flying, could never quite still the joy and thrill of flight.

Then the sound of an excited voice reached her ears.

“I must take the bag with me in the cabin,” a woman’s voice was saying.

“But that is contrary to the rules,” the attendant at the gate replied politely. “The cabin is small. A brief case is quite all right. But bags, no. If everyone took a bag inside, there’d be no getting about. We will give you a check for your bag. It will be locked in the baggage compartment. Nothing can happen to it. In case of loss, the Company’s millions insure you.”

“But I want—” The tall, dark-complexioned owner of the bag cast a sweeping glance over her fellow travelers who stood awaiting their turn at the gate. She appeared to suspect them, one and all, of having designs on her bag.

The much-traveled commercial passengers smiled indulgently, two ladies gave the dark-complexioned one a half sympathetic glance. But the young man who had, through Rosemary’s good offices, so recently acquired a place on the plane favored her with not so much as a look. He appeared to have become greatly interested in a small yellow plane that was just then taking off.

“He just seems to be interested in that plane.” The thought leapt unbidden into the young stewardess’ mind. “He’s more interested in that woman than he’d like anyone to know. I wonder why?”

“Oh well, if you insist!” The dark-complexioned lady dropped her bag, grabbed impatiently at the check offered for it, then hurrying past Rosemary without affording her so much as a look, climbed aboard the plane to sink into the seat farthest to the rear.

“As if she proposed to watch the others all the way to Salt Lake City,” was Rosemary’s mental comment, although she knew the thought to be unwarranted and absurd.

Ten minutes later, with all on board, they were sailing out over the city. Rosemary settled down to the business of the hour. She loved her work, did this slender girl. Hers was an unusual task. She performed it unusually well. She was in charge of the “ship” while it was in the air. She was hostess to the ten passengers entrusted to her care. At once her alert mind took up the problems of this particular journey. She smiled as two of the four traveling men launched forth on a discussion of the country’s economic problems. “That settles them,” she told herself. The third traveling man buried himself in the latest newspaper, and the fourth dragged out papers from his brief case to pour over figures. Two rather flashily dressed young men, who had not slept the night before, asked for pillows. They were soon checked off to the land of dreams. Two middle-aged women began discussing the feeding and training of children.

All this left to Rosemary’s care only the dark-complexioned woman in a rear seat and the young man of great haste. “A very quiet trip,” she told herself. In this, as all too often, she was mistaken.

“What can I do for you?” She flashed a smile at the dark-complexioned woman. She received no smile in reply.

“Nothing.”

“Magazine? A pillow?”

“No. Nothing.” The woman’s black and piercing eyes were fixed upon her for a full ten seconds. Then they shifted to the world beneath the swiftly gliding plane.

Rosemary was neither dismayed nor disheartened. There were many such people. All they wanted was to be left alone with their thoughts. Perhaps flashing through the air thousands of feet from the ground brought serious and solemn thoughts to some types of mind. She rather guessed it did.

But how about the young man of great haste? He intrigued her. Perhaps he was the kind who liked to talk. If he were, then perhaps he would tell secrets. Men often told her secrets. She always guarded them well. “He may tell me why he was in such great haste,” she thought to herself.

Some people like to talk, some to listen. It is the duty of an airplane stewardess to talk or to listen as occasion demands. Rosemary was prepared in this case, as in all others, to do her duty.

“Strange sort of profession, yours,” the young man said, smiling.

“It’s wonderful work!” Rosemary knew on the instant that she would do most of the talking.

For half an hour he asked questions and she answered them. His questions, never very personal, were about the life an airplane stewardess leads. She answered them honestly and frankly. “He honestly wants to know,” she told herself. “He is the type of person who absorbs knowledge as a sponge does water. Delightful sort. I’d like to know him better.”

“But look!” he exclaimed suddenly. “The propeller on this side is gone!”

“Oh, no!” She laughed low. “It’s not gone. Just going around so fast you can’t see it.”

“But I saw it revolving when we started.”

“We were going slowly then.”

“So it is really still there, producing tremendous power, helping pull us along—tons of people, mail and steel—at a hundred and seventy miles an hour! And yet we cannot see it. Marvelous! Unseen power!

“Do you know,” he said, “that’s like God’s influence on our lives. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it as we feel things with our hands; yet it is there, a tremendous force in our lives.”

“Yes,” she agreed soberly, “it must be like that.”

At that moment she found herself liking this strange young man very much. It was, she believed, because of his deeply serious thoughts.

Having discovered that the two traveling salesmen had settled all the nation’s problems and were looking for reading material, she excused herself, gripped the seat ahead to steady her, then moved swiftly forward.

With all her passengers happy once more, she dropped into the one vacant seat to indulge in a few moments of quiet meditation. Into this meditation there crept, as she closed her eyes, a slim girlish figure. Blonde-haired and smiling, she stood beside a plane that resembled a dragon fly.

“The flying gypsy,” she whispered. “But is she a gypsy?” To this question she found no answer.

That this slender girl was an interesting person she did not doubt. She found herself hoping that the gypsy woman’s fortune telling might prove a success—that they might meet many times.

“Mystery and adventure, those were the words she used.” Mystery and adventure. Well, this day had not been without its mystery. There was the strange man, Danby Force, and his urgent need for going somewhere. Then too there was the dark woman with the bag which she had all but refused to trust away from her, even in the locked compartment of a trans-continental plane. What could she have in that bag? The girl thought of one instance when it had been believed that high explosives carried in a bag on an air-liner had brought disaster to a score of persons. “But of course it would not be that,” she told herself.

Rising from her place, she moved back to where the dark-faced one rode. She seemed fast asleep. But was this only a pose? She could not tell. Someone forward beckoned to her. Routine duties were resumed.

The hours passed quietly. At five o’clock they were over the Rockies. Marvelous moment! The golden sun was sinking over the distant prairies. The mountains, half white with snow, half green with forests, lay beneath them. They were beyond the timber line.

Suddenly the co-pilot’s light blinked at the back of the cabin.

“Signaling for me. I wonder why.” She moved swiftly forward.

“A storm roaring up the mountains from the west.” Mark Morris, the young co-pilot, spoke in short jerky sentences. “Going down here. Landing field of a sort. Laid out on the plateau. Hunting lodge below. No real danger. Get straps hooked up. Usual stuff.”

Rosemary understood. She passed swiftly along the aisle. A word, a whisper, a smile, that quiet, care-free air of hers did the work.

“Forced landing. What of that?” This was what the passengers read in her face.

What indeed? They swooped downward, bumped with something of a shock, bumped more lightly, glided forward, then came to a standstill.

The tall dark woman sprang to her feet, threw open the door, then swung herself down. She was wearing low shoes and sheer silk stockings. She landed squarely in eighteen inches of snow.

“Wait!” Rosemary cried in dismay. “Give her a hand up, some of you men. I’ll fix you all up right away.”

There were, of course, neither high boots nor leggings in the airplane cabin, but Rosemary was equal to the occasion. Tearing up a blanket, she was soon busy fashioning moccasins for the ladies.

“Tie these cords about the bottoms of your trousers,” she said to the men. “Yes, we’ll go down to the hunting lodge. Be three or four hours anyway.”

“Where’s the trail?” She spoke now to the young co-pilot.

“See that big rock?”

“Yes.”

“Blazed trail starts there. Easy to follow. About half a mile. Fine place. Been there three times. Big fireplace. Bacon and other things to eat. You’ll enjoy your stay,” he chuckled.

“All airways are beaten trails to our pilots,” Rosemary murmured.

A cold wind came sweeping up the mountain. Sharp bits of snow cut at their cheeks. They were impatient to make a start when, as before, the dark-faced lady held them up.

“My bag!” she exclaimed. “I must have it!”

“Safe enough here,” said Mark. “All locked up. We’re staying, the pilot and I.”

“But I insist!” She stamped the ground impatiently.

Five minutes of chilling delay, and she had it. Nor would she relinquish its care to the most courteous traveling man. She plunged through the snow with it banging at her side.

“Queer about that bag,” Rosemary murmured to Danby Force, who marched at her side.

To her surprise he shot her a strange—perhaps, she thought, a startled look.

“As if I had discovered some secret,” she thought to herself. “Well, I haven’t—not yet.”

After floundering through the snow for some distance, they came at last to a spot where a trail wound down the mountainside. Ten minutes of following this trail brought them to a long, low, broad-roofed building that, in the gathering darkness, seemed gloomy and forbidding.

“Fine place for a murder,” Danby Force whispered to Rosemary.

“Don’t say that!” She shuddered.

Stamping their feet on the broad veranda, they pushed the door open and entered. Danby Force struck a match. Directly before him, at the opposite side of the room, was a fire all laid in a broad fireplace. The young man’s second match set a mellow glow of light from the dancing flames searching out every dark corner. For the time at least, the place lost its forbidding aspect. Indeed it might well have been the banquet hall of some ancient British hunting lodge, of long ago.

Nor was the banquet lacking. Rosemary Sample was from Kansas. And in Kansas mothers teach their daughters to cook. Fragrant coffee, crisp bacon, candied sweet potatoes, plum pudding from a can, steamed to a delicious fineness—this was the repast she prepared for the guests of her trans-continental airplane.

All thoughts of the dark-faced lady’s mysterious bag, of Danby Force’s urgent need, and of the gypsies’ fortune telling were forgotten in the merriment that followed. One of the college youths, who had slept all the day, discovered an ancient accordion and at once began playing delirious music. The rough floor was cleared and all joined in a wild dance—all but the dark-faced one who sat gloomily in a corner.

From time to time as the music died away, Rosemary listened for the sounds that came down the chimney. There was a whistle and a moan, the sighing of evergreen trees and then a rushing roar as if a giant were blowing across a mammoth bottle.

“Be here all night,” she said to Danby Force at last.

“Guess so. Fine place for a murder.” He smiled at her in a curious way as he repeated that weird remark of a few hours before.

“Strange place for a—” Rosemary could not make her lips form that remaining word as, two hours later, staring into the dark, she whispered that line. She was in the bunk room at the back of the lodge. The women of the company were all sleeping there. The men had cots before the fire in the main room.

The dark lady had dragged her traveling bag into the farthest corner and had crept beneath her blankets after very little undressing. A very strange person, this dark lady. Rosemary did not exactly like her, but found in her a certain fascination. Even now, as she turned her face toward that corner, she fancied that she could see her eyes shining like a cat’s eyes in the dark. Pure fancy, she knew, but disturbing for all that.

Just when she fell asleep she never quite knew. She was always definite about the time of waking—it was just at the break of dawn. She was startled out of deep sleep by a sudden piercing scream. Instantly Danby Force’s words came to her. “Fine place for a murder.” But there had been no murder.

CHAPTER II
THE VANISHING BAG

“My bag! It is gone! My traveling bag! It has been stolen!” The young stewardess knew on the instant that the dark-faced lady was the one who was screaming. That the bag was truly missing she did not doubt.

“Well, it’s happened,” she thought to herself as she tumbled from her bunk.

What she said to the dark-faced lady was done in a more official manner:

“I’m sure it can’t be far away. Someone has moved it by mistake. We’ll dress, then we will have a look.” Her tone was calm enough, though her heart was not.

They did dress and they did have a look—several looks, but all to no avail.

To Rosemary this was distressing. The whole affair had gone off so extremely well until now. Of course no one had wished to be delayed on the journey, but the evening in the lodge had been a delightful one. She had planned waffles with real maple syrup and coffee for breakfast. And now came this. It was disheartening.

Here in the gloom of early morning was the dark-faced woman claiming that her traveling bag had been taken. And who, in the end, could doubt it? It surely was not to be seen in the bunk room. Everything was turned over there except the dark one’s bunk which had been made up. And of course in a bunk flat as a pancake one does not look for a sizable traveling bag stuffed with all manner of things.

It was not in the large outer room either. When they went outside to see if some person might have crept in and taken it, or, as the dark-faced one insisted, “crept out to hide it” there was the clean white snow with never a track save the half-buried one of Mark Morris coming to report on the progress of the storm some hours before.

“It’s the strangest thing!” said Rosemary, for once finding herself quite out of bounds. “It can’t have gotten away. It just can’t!”

“I insist that every person in the place be searched!” the dark woman demanded.

“What! Search our pockets for a traveling bag?” A rotund drummer roared with laughter.

“Not for the bag, but for the valuable papers I carried. The bag, more than likely, has been burned in the fireplace.”

“Absurd!” exclaimed one of the middle-aged ladies. “Leather creates a terrible odor when burned.”

“Who said it was leather?” snapped the inquisitor. “It was, I believe, fiber.”

In the end, for the good of her company’s reputation, Rosemary persuaded them to submit to a search of a sort. The men emptied their pockets, then turned them inside out. The dark-faced woman went over the other women with hands that suggested they might have been used for that same purpose often, so deft, precise and cat-like were her motions.

It was while the men were going through their part of the performance that the young stewardess noticed a curious thing. The woman watched them all with what appeared to be slight interest until it came the turn of Danby Force who had paid so high a price for his reservation on this plane. Then it seemed to the girl that veritable sparks of fire shot from the black eyes of the woman. That she took in every detail was evident. That a look of grim satisfaction, seeming to say, “Ah ha! It is as I thought!” settled on the woman’s face at that moment, the girl could not for a moment doubt.

“But why?” she asked herself. “Why?”

To this question she could form no sensible answer for, as in all other cases, the woman said in a low tone: “None of these are mine.”

Just then the airplane pilot came in to tell them that the storm was at an end and they might resume their journey. In the rush of preparation, the hurried brewing of coffee, the hasty eating of a rather meager breakfast, the dark-faced woman and her vanished traveling bag were pretty much forgotten.

When at last the travelers were on their way, walking single-file up the steep incline, Rosemary found herself standing quite unexpectedly beside the strange young man, Danby Force.

“Wonderful place, this lodge!” he was saying. “Wouldn’t mind coming up here for a week sometime.”

“Nor I!” Rosemary spoke with unfeigned enthusiasm. And who would not? They were standing on a broad ledge. Above them, seeming to melt into the fleecy clouds, was the mountain’s snowy peak. Below, a sheer drop of a thousand feet, was a very narrow valley all covered with the dark green of pine, spruce, cedar and tamarack. The air was rich with the fragrance of the forest.

“One of the high officials in our company is a member,” Rosemary said, nodding back at the lodge. “That’s why we are free to use it.”

“I fancy I shall be coming back.” The young man spoke slowly. He looked her squarely in the eyes. Then turning, he followed swiftly after the others.

“What did he mean by that?” Rosemary asked herself. A strange thought leaped unbidden into her mind. “Supposing the young man took the missing bag and hid it somewhere about the place?

“Nonsense!” she whispered. “Where could he have hidden it? No one had been outside, absolutely no one. And if he did take it, surely he would not tell me he hoped to return.”

Then a strange fact struck her—the look on this young man’s face had changed. When she first saw him he had the appearance of one who had gone through much, who was still haunted by the thought of some great loss. Now his face was as bland and cheerful as an early spring morning.

“What am I to make of that?” she asked herself.

The answer in the end appeared simple enough, “One good night’s sleep.” This, she knew full well, was capable of working wonders on a young and buoyant spirit.

It is strange the manner in which a single incident may change the whole course of thought for an entire group. As they resumed their journey to Salt Lake City, no one in the plane discussed economic conditions or child welfare. No one read. No one wrote or figured. When they spoke it was in low tones just above the roar of the motors. And Rosemary, though she heard never a word, knew they talked of the dark-faced woman and her missing bag. “And those who do not talk are thinking of it,” she told herself. “And it is strange! What can have become of that bag?”

As if reading her thoughts, Danby Force leaned across the aisle to say in a low distinct tone: “I fancy Santa Claus must have come down that broad chimney and carried it off.”

Those were the only words spoken to her until they were nearing their destination. Then that strange young man leaned over once more to say:

“Curious sort of job you’ve got here! Necessary enough, though. And you fit in very well, I can see that. I am no end grateful for what you did back there in Chicago. You saved the situation for me, you surely did! Hope I may travel with you often. This is my first trip by air, but not the last—you may be assured of that. I enjoy being carried along by this—this invisible power.” He chuckled. “And I—I like the company, if you don’t mind my saying it.”

“Not in the least. I’ve enjoyed knowing you.” Rosemary was vexed at herself for saying so trite a thing. Truth was, her mind was still filled with that missing bag. That the dark-faced woman would report the loss to the office and that there would be no end of fuss about it, she did not doubt.

“I—I’d like to know you better,” she added as a kind of after-thought, as she favored Danby Force with a smile.

“You will,” he prophesied, “Oh yes, I am sure you will.”

“And if I don’t,” she told herself a moment later, “I shan’t know much except that he says his name is Danby Force and that he fancies, at least, that he can be of service to a few thousand people. Well—” she sighed, “that’s really something, if it’s not pure fancy.”

The landing field at Salt Lake City seemed hot after their rapid gliding down from the lands of perpetual snow. In spite of this, Rosemary Sample breathed a sigh of relief. Her journey was over. From this point the party would break up. She would rest for a few hours, then go soaring back to home base where she was to have two whole days to herself.

“Guess we’d better stick around for a bit,” suggested the pilot. “That woman will be putting in a complaint. We’ll have to tell what we know.

“For that matter, though,” he added, “I can’t see that we have much responsibility in the matter. She refused to leave the bag locked in the plane where it would have been safe. Took the matter in her own hands. The bag was in her possession when it disappeared. So—o!” He smiled. “That about lets us out. We—

“Look there!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Even the gypsies are taking to the air.”

At that moment a stout dark-faced woman, wearing the typical gypsy garb, broad, bright-colored skirt and dazzling silk scarf tied about her head, was alighting from a small cabin-type monoplane. The plane was like a huge dragon fly. It had a bottle-green body and silver wings that glistened like glass in the sun.

The stout, dark woman was followed by a girl of some eight years. And after her, in a pilot’s garb, came a golden-haired girl who did not look a day over eighteen.

“It’s strange!” Rosemary’s tone expressed her surprise. “I saw those same people in Chicago, just before we took off. And now, here they are right with us.”

“Not so strange,” replied the pilot. “That giant bug of hers may be quite speedy. They probably took off later than we did and just in time to miss the storm.

“But look!” he exclaimed, “If that sort of thing is allowed to go on, what is to come of this bright new thing we call aviation? There’ll be a crack-up every day in the week. The papers will be full of them and no one will dare to travel by air. And all that because of rank amateurs and lax regulations. I’m starting an investigation right now.”

“Nice plane you have,” he said to the golden-haired girl.

“Oh yes, but perhaps a little too small.” The girl spoke with a pleasing foreign accent.

“You’re not a gypsy?” The veteran pilot smiled in spite of himself.

“But no.” The girl smiled back. “Not entirely. I am French. People call me Petite Jeanne. I was adopted by gypsies in France. Oh so good, Christian gypsies! This lady is Mrs. Bihari, my foster mother.”

“I suppose,” said Mark with a laugh, “that you traded a flivver for an automobile, the auto for a better one, the better one for a poor airplane, the poor plane for a good one?”

“But no!” The golden-haired girl frowned. “A year ago my own people were found in France. I had inherited property. This is my very own plane. And see!” She held out a paper. “This is my license to fly.”

“Mind if I take your ship up for a little spin?” Mark said bluntly.

“But no.” The girl spoke slowly. “That is, if I may go, and if she will go with us.” She nodded her head toward Rosemary.

Rosemary had little desire to fly in a small plane. She had always traveled in the magnificent big bi-motored transportation planes which, she believed, were safe as walking. She had it on the tip of her tongue to refuse, when the girl cast her an appealing look that she could not well disregard.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, surely I will go.”

Three minutes later they were in the air. Ten minutes later, with a sigh of relief Rosemary found her feet once more on the solid earth.

“You’d be surprised!” Mark whispered enthusiastically. “Never saw a better equipped plane, nor one in finer condition. That motor is a joy! The radio is perfect. Everything, just everything. If all the amateurs were as careful this world of the air would be one great big joy.”

“Wonderful little plane!” he exclaimed, gripping the little French girl’s hand. “And how wonderfully cared for!”

“But why not?” The girl showed all her white teeth in a smile. “We gypsy people have a saying, ‘Life is God’s most beautiful gift to man.’ This is true, I am sure. Then why should anyone do less than the very best that he might keep that gift?”

“Why indeed? And thanks for the good word.”

“Do you travel much?” It was a new voice that asked this question. The rather mysterious Danby Force had come up unobserved.

“Oh yes! We are gypsies. All gypsies travel much,” was the girl’s reply.

“Where will you go next?”

“Over the mountains to Cheyenne.”

“Ah, then you will be going part way back the way we came,” Danby Force said. There was an eager note in his voice. “I wonder if it would be possible for you to take a passenger and to pause for a brief time at a safe landing field?”

Rosemary started. So Danby Force meant to return. He was going back to the lodge. Had he, after all, taken the dark-faced lady’s bag? Had he hidden it there? Would he return and carry it away? If so, why? Why? Such were the questions that crowded her mind. And she did not like them. She did like Danby Force. She wanted to believe that he was incapable of doing a thing dishonest or dishonorable. She had not forgotten his delightful words about God’s invisible power in our lives.

But the little French girl was speaking. “If it will help someone,” she was saying. “We will take you over the mountains and stop at this safe place you speak of.”

“It will help—help a great deal, I assure you!” Danby Force exclaimed. “It may help three thousand people.”

“There it is again,” Rosemary thought. “Always speaking of thousands.”

“We might as well get over to the airport,” Mark, the pilot, suggested to Rosemary. “The dark lady has had ample time to lodge her complaint.”

They went, but much to their surprise found that no complaint had been filed. What was more, the dark lady had vanished. No one about the place could tell them how she had gone, nor where.

“It’s the strangest business I ever had anything to do with!” Mark grumbled. “Loses her bag, valuable papers and all, and still no complaint. But believe me!” he exclaimed, “we’ve not heard the last of this!” Nor had they.

CHAPTER III
THE “FLYING CORNTASSEL”

The evening after her arrival in Salt Lake City, Rosemary Sample, the young airplane stewardess, overheard a conversation that interested her greatly and at the same time strengthened her faith in the rather mysterious young man, Danby Force.

She might have thought of herself as an eavesdropper had not the incident occurred in that most public of all public places, the lobby of a large hotel, the Hotel Temple Square. Not that she was staying at so expensive a place. Far from that, she occupied a room in a clean, modest-priced rooming house. But Rosemary had a weakness for large downy chairs, soft lights, expensive draperies and all that and, since at this time of year this hotel was not crowded, she could see no reason why she might not indulge these tastes for an hour or two at least.

She was buried deep in a heavily upholstered chair, thinking dreamily of her home in Kansas, of her mother, father, and the young people of the old crowd back home. She was smiling at the name they had given her, “The Flying Corntassel of Kansas,” when, chancing to look up, she beheld a vision of beauty all wrapped in deep purple and white. To her astonishment she realized that this was none other than the flying gypsy’s adopted daughter who called herself Petite Jeanne. She wore a long cape of purple cloth trimmed with white fox fur.

At the same moment someone else caught the vision, Danby Force. And Danby Force had something to say about it.

“What a gorgeous cape, and what marvelous color!” he exclaimed. There was in his tone not a trace of flattery. He spoke with the sincerity of one who really knows beauty of texture when he sees it.

“Yes,” the little French girl agreed, “it is very beautiful. It was sent to me only last month by my gypsy friends in France. Since I have had a little money I have helped them at times. Their life is hard. These days are very hard.

“The cloth,” she went on after a time, “was woven by hand from pure sheep’s wool taken from the high French Alps.”

“And the color?” Danby Force asked eagerly.

“Ah-h—” the little French girl smiled. “That is a deep secret that only the gypsies know. There are those who say the kettle of color only boils at midnight and that then the color is mixed with blood. That is nonsense. These are good gypsies, Christian gypsies, just as the great preacher, Gypsy Smith was. But they have their secrets and they keep them well.

“Perhaps,” she added after a moment’s thought, “this is the royal purple one reads of in the Bible. Who can tell?”

“That,” said Danby Force, “is a valuable secret.” He motioned the little French girl to a seat and took one close beside her.

“I know a man,” he said after a moment of silence, “who made some valuable discoveries regarding colors. He could dye cloth in such a manner that it would not fade, yet the process was not costly.

“This man had spent his boyhood in a town where textile mills had flourished. After his remarkable secret discoveries he returned to that town to find the people idle, the mills falling into decay. The weaving industry had moved south where there was cotton and cheap labor—pitifully cheap!”

Danby Force paused to stare at the pattern of the thick carpet on the floor. He appeared to be making a mental comparison between that carpet and the cheap rag rugs on the floors in that forgotten town.

Rosemary stole a look at the little French girl’s face. It was all compassion.

“And this little forgotten town?” suggested Petite Jeanne at last.

“It is forgotten no longer.” Danby Force smiled a rare smile. “The man who possessed those rare secrets of color gave them to his home town. Since they were able to produce cloth that was cheap, and better than any other of its kind, the mills began to flourish again and the people to work and smile.

“But now,” he added as a shadow passed over his interesting face, “their prosperity is threatened once more.”

Then, as if he had been about to divulge a forbidden secret, he sprang to his feet. “I must be going. We leave at eight. That right?”

“It is quite right,” agreed Petite Jeanne.

Rosemary Sample went to her rest that night with a strange sense of futile longing gnawing at her heart. What was its cause? She could not tell. Had she become truly interested in that strange young man, Danby Force, who talked so beautifully of God’s unseen power, who spoke of doing good to thousands, and yet who might have—. She would not say it even to herself, yet she could not avoid thinking. Could she become seriously interested in such a young man? She could not be sure.

“That charming little French girl is carrying him away in the morning,” she assured herself. “I may never see him again.

“He is going back to the hunting lodge. I wonder—”

She tried to picture in her mind the bit of life’s drama that would be enacted by Danby Force and the little French girl after they had landed and gone down the narrow trail to the lodge. In the midst of this rather vain imagining she fell asleep.

She awoke next morning prepared for one more journey through the air, one more group of passengers. “Wonder if there will be any interesting ones?” she whispered. “Wonder if that dark-faced woman will return with me?” She shuddered. “She’s like a raven, Poe’s raven. Wonder if she’s filed a complaint about her missing bag. And if she has, what will come of it?”

After oatmeal, coffee and rolls eaten at a counter with the capable and ever friendly Mark Morris at her side, she felt well fortified for the day’s adventures, come what might.

We advertise our occupation in life by the posture we assume. The barber has his way of standing that marks him as a barber. The clerk of a department store puts on a mask in the morning and takes it off at night. The posture of an airplane stewardess is one suggesting the jaunty joy of life pictured by a blue bird on the tiptop of a tree, seventy feet in air.

“Safe?” her posture says plainer than words. “Of course it’s safe to fly. Look at me, I’ve flown four hundred thousand miles.”

Rosemary Sample was an airplane stewardess to the very tips of her fingers. Her task was a dual one, to inspire confidence and to entertain. She did both extremely well. Yet she too must be entertained. She must receive a thrill now and again. Riding in a plane brought no thrill to her. Only her passengers could bring her the change she craved.

“There’s always one,” she had a way of saying to her friends, “one passenger who is worth five hours of study.”

She was not long in finding the “one” on this journey back to Chicago. Strangely enough, he took the seat vacated by the dark-complexioned lady. Yet, how different he was! He was young, not much over twenty, Rosemary thought.

“Hello, little girl!” were his first words. “What’s your name?”

“Rosemary Sample.” She smiled because she was saying to herself, “He’ll do the talking. That’s fine. I’m too tired to talk.”

“So you’re a sample.” He laughed. “I’d like a dollar bottle of the same.”

“A sample’s all there is and all there can be,” she replied quickly.

“What! You mean to say you couldn’t grow?”

“Exactly. Five feet four inches tall, weight a hundred and twenty pounds. Those are the regulations for a stewardess. You can be smaller, but no larger. You see,” she laughed, “they couldn’t make the airplane cabins to fit the stewardesses, tall, short, thin or thick, so the stewardess must be picked to fit the cabin.”

“Oh!” The young man’s grin was frank, honest and friendly. “Well, this is my first trip in these big birds. I’ve got a little ship all my own, only just now she’s busted up quite a bit.”

“Cracked up? Too bad!” Rosemary was truly sorry. She was going to like this passenger. Besides, to one who sails the air a crack-up is just as true an occasion for sorrow as a shipwreck is to a mariner on the high seas. “What happened?” she asked quietly. “Bad storm?”

“No.” He laughed lightly. “Couple of struts got loose. I nearly lost control two thousand feet up. Cracked up in a corn field. Shucked a lot of corn.” He laughed rather loudly.

Rosemary’s face was sober. She had seen his kind before. They went in for flying because it promised thrills. They neglected their planes. If they crashed and were not killed, they turned it into a joke. The whole thing made her feel sick inside. She loved flying. She thought of it as one of God’s latest and most marvelous gifts to man. She knew too that nothing very short of perfection in care, equipment and piloting could put it in the place in every man’s life where it belonged.

“So you laugh at a crash that results from carelessness?” Her lips were white. “That’s the sort of thing that makes life hard for all of us who are trying to make flying seem a safe and wonderful thing. Nothing but selfishness could make one laugh at a tragedy or a near tragedy that is his own fault. It—”

But she stopped herself. After all, she was a stewardess, being paid to be pleasant.

Springing to her feet, she moved up the aisle to see that the airplane load of traveling salesmen forward had the papers, pencils, magazines and pillows they needed.

“So you’re a sample,” said the youth as she returned to her seat. “Don’t know as I want a full bottle after all.”

“In the end you’ll take it.” She was smiling now. “Or someone will be setting up a marble marker where little Willie lies. And that,” she added slowly, “would be too bad.”

She spoke, not of herself, but her attitude toward aviation. He knew this. She could read it in his eyes.

“Tha—thanks for these few kind words,” he replied rather lamely.

Five minutes later this young man, who went by the name of William VanGeldt and whose family evidently were possessed of considerable wealth, was speaking in glowing tones of his mother. He had, the young stewardess discovered, beneath his thin coating of indifference to the serious things of life, a warm heart full of appreciation for the ones who had given of their best that his life might be well worth living.

“He’ll take the full bottle,” she whispered to herself. “And he’ll get to like it.” She was to learn the truth of these words in days that were to come.

CHAPTER IV
WITH THE AID OF PROVIDENCE

To the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, each day dawned as a bright new adventure. Mysteries might come and go, as indeed they often had, but adventure! Ah yes, adventure was always with her.

Nor had her new treasure, the airplane with its gauze-like wings, lessened her opportunity for adventure. Indeed it had increased it tenfold. To Rosemary Sample one might say, “Well, you’re off to another airplane journey,” and she undoubtedly would answer with a sigh, “Yes, one more trip.” Not so Petite Jeanne. She was not reckless, this slender child of the air. Her motor was inspected often, each guy and strut tested, her radio tuned to the last degree of perfection. For all that, each day as she took to the air it was with such a leaping of the heart as comes only with fresh adventure.

And so it was that, as she climbed into the cockpit, with Madame Bihari, Danby Force, and the tiny gypsy girl at her back, she touched the controls of her perfect little plane for all the world as if never before had her fingers known that touch. And as, after skimming along the air above the foothills, she began climbing toward one lone snowy peak among the Rockies, her heart was filled to overflowing with a fresh zest for living.

“Just to live,” she whispered, “to live, to love, to dream, to hope and sometimes see our hopes fulfilled! To see the dew on the grass in the early morning, to hear the robins chirping in the early evening, to watch children play, to feel the wind playing in your hair, to feel the warm sunshine kiss your cheeks, to watch the red and gold of evening sky. Ah yes, and to watch that snowy peak just before me, watch it grow and grow and grow—that is life—beautiful, wonderful, glorious life!”

The airplane, which might have seemed to one far away a giant silver insect, went gliding about the white capped mountain to drop at last with scarcely a bump upon that landing field that had at other times been a pasture above the clouds.

How convenient it would be if at times one’s spirit might, for a space of a half hour or more, leave the body that, closing about it, holds it in one place, and go with the speed of light to distant scenes. The spirit of Rosemary Sample, speeding away toward Chicago, might for a quarter hour or more have been spared from the great trans-continental airplane. No one surely would have begrudged so faithful a worker such a short period of recreation. And surely Rosemary would have been thrilled by the opportunity of following our little company on the mountain crest as they left Jeanne’s plane and followed the trail winding down to the hunting lodge.

Had the spirit of Rosemary truly been with them, she must surely have been asking herself, “Why is Danby Force here? What does he expect to find at the lodge? Did he take the dark lady’s traveling bag? Is it hidden there? Will he find it? And if he does, what will he take from it? ‘Valuable papers’ were the dark lady’s words. Were there such papers? There is some relation between this fine-appearing young man and that lady. What can it be?” So the spirit of Rosemary Sample might have spoken to itself had it followed down the mountainside. But the spirit of Rosemary Sample was not there. Rosemary Sample, body, soul and spirit, was in the trans-continental plane speeding on toward Chicago. And beside her, now talking loudly and boastfully of his dangerous exploits as an amateur aviator, and now speaking in kindly and gentle tones of his mother, was young Willie VanGeldt.

“I should not care for him at all,” Rosemary told herself. Yet there was something about him, his light and good-natured views of life, his smile perhaps, something about him that claimed her interest.

“As if the stars had willed that for a time our lives should run together, like trains on parallel tracks,” she whispered to herself. Little did she guess the part that this youth with his wealth and his reckless ways would play in her life, nor that which she would play in his.

In the meantime Jeanne, Danby Force and their gypsy companions were wending their way down the trail that led to the hunting lodge.

“I shan’t detain you long,” Danby Force was saying to Jeanne. “It’s just a little thing I want to look into up here.”

Jeanne, whose curiosity had not as yet been aroused, scarcely heard him. She was awed and charmed by the grandeur and beauty of the mountains. To look up two thousand feet to the snow-clad rocks that were the mountain peaks, then to look down quite as far to the tree-grown canyons far below—ah that was grand!

When at last they came in sight of the rustic lodge, flanked as it was by massive rocks and half covered by overhanging boughs of evergreens, she stopped in her tracks to stand there lost in admiration.

“Ah!” she murmured, “What a grand solitude is here! Who would not wish to return many, many times!”

She was soon enough to learn that it was not solitude the interesting young man, Danby Force, sought. For, contrary to Rosemary Sample’s suspicion, he had not hidden the dark lady’s traveling bag. He had returned to seek it. How did he hope to succeed when, on that other occasion, all others had failed? Well may one ask. Yet Danby Force did not lack for hope. He believed in a kind Providence that sometimes guides an honest soul in its search for hidden things. With the aid of this Providence he might succeed where others had failed.

CHAPTER V
DANBY’S SECRET

Before leaving Salt Lake City, in accord with the customs of all gypsies, Madame Bihari and Jeanne had laid in a supply of provisions. Having come upon them while in the act, Danby Force had added a few luxuries to the stock. They were therefore prepared for a stay of some length if need be.

In spite of this, Danby Force said as he entered the lodge, “We won’t be here long I hope. I came to look for that bag.” He favored Jeanne with a smile.

“Oh, a mystery!” she cried. “A missing bag. Was it yours? And how was it lost?”

“Oh! Of course!” he exclaimed. “You don’t know a thing about it! How stupid of me! Sit down and I’ll tell you about it. At least—” he hesitated, “I’ll tell you some things.”

Madame Bihari had kindled a fire in the huge fireplace. The glow of it lighted up the little French girl’s face. It made her look extraordinarily beautiful. Danby Force took in a long breath before he began.

That which he told her after all was not so very much—at least he did not tell her why he was so intensely interested in that traveling bag. He did tell her all that had passed in that cabin on the previous day.

“So you see,” he ended, “that the bag must be here somewhere. You don’t carry away a leather bag a foot high and two feet long in your mouth, nor inside your shoe either.” The little French girl joined him in a low laugh.

“But no!” she exclaimed. “And yet I cannot see how it could matter so much.”

“It’s the papers in that bag,” he explained. “She did not steal those papers, that dark lady. She is no common thief. They are hers in a way. And yet she could use them to ruin the prosperity and happiness of three thousand people.”

“But why would she do such a terrible thing?” The little French girl spread her hands in horror.