CHAPTER I HER LUCKY DAY

“Friday, the thirteenth! This is my luck-e-e day!”

Petite Jeanne half sang these words as she sat bolt upright in bed and switched on the light.

“You’ll be entirely out of luck if you don’t lie right down and go to sleep!” Florence Huyler, her pal, exclaimed, making a significant gesture toward a sofa pillow which, as the little French girl had reason to know, was both heavy and hard. And Florence had muscle. Of late she had been developing herself. She had gone back to her old work as physical director in one of the many gymnasiums of this great city.
12

“But why?” the slim girl protested. “It is morning. I am awake. Who wants to sleep after waking up?”

“But look at the clock! Such an hour!”

Petite Jeanne looked. Then her small mouth formed a perfect circle.

“But yet I am awake!” she protested.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she pleaded, “you with your hundred and sixty pounds, and poor me, just a little bit of nothing.”

No, Florence would not harm her little French friend. She adored her.

“See!” The exquisite little dancer tossed her blonde head, danced out of bed, flipped out one light, flipped on another, and then continued, “I shall be away in one little minute. This is my luckee day. I must go to dance the sun up from the lake where he has been sleeping, the lazee fellow!”

Florence turned her face to the wall.

“There’s no resisting her,” she whispered to herself.

“And yet many have been resisting her,” she thought sorrowfully.
13

This was true. All that is life—each joy, every sorrow—must come to an end. The run of the gypsy drama in which Jeanne had played so important a role had ended in June. At first they had believed it would be easy to secure a booking for the coming season. It was not easy. Jeanne’s talents were limited. No dramatic production of any sort was being prepared for the coming year which had a part she could play. They had gone from booking house to booking house, from manager to manager. All had returned Petite Jeanne’s smile, but none had offered her a contract.

All this had not discouraged the little French girl in the least. She believed in what she called her “luck.” Fortunate child! Who can fail if he but believes hard enough and long enough in his luck?

So, though the booking season was all but at an end and prospects were as dark as a December dawn, Jeanne was keeping up her training. Just now, two hours before dawn, she was preparing to go to the park and dance the dew off the grass while the sun came creeping up from the waters of Lake Michigan.
14

As Jeanne peered into the closet a spot of flaming red smote her eye.

“My luckee dress!” she whispered. “And this is my luckee day! Why not?”

Without further ado, she robed herself in a dress of flaming red which was as short as a circus rider’s costume and decorated with so many ruffles that it was impossible to tell where dress ended and ruffles began.

After tying a broad sash of darker red about her waist, she slipped on socks that rose scarcely above her shoetops, kicked on some pumps, switched out the light and tripped down the stairs to step out into the dewy night.

There are those who are thrilled as they prowl about a city in the dead of night. Others are fascinated by the white lights that gleam before midnight. As for Petite Jeanne, she preferred the hour before dawn, when all the world is asleep. Then, like some wood nymph, she might haunt the dew-drenched park and dance to her heart’s content.
15

But now, as she left her home at the edge of the park to go skipping down the deserted street, a strange feeling stole over her.

“It’s the dress,” she told herself.

And so it was. She had worn that dress, no, not in America at all. And yet she had called it her lucky dress.

It had been in France. Ah yes, in France, her beloved France! That was where it had brought her good fortune. There, as a girl in her early teens, she had traveled with the Gypsies and danced with her pet bear. When she danced in this flaming gown, spinning round and round until the ruffles seemed a gay windmill wheel, how the coins had come thumping in around her tiny feet!

“But now I am fourteen no more,” she sighed. “And yet, perhaps it is a lucky dress for Petite Jeanne, even now. Who can tell?”

As she spoke these words half aloud, she cast a furtive glance down a dark alley. Instantly her mood changed. On her face came a look of horror. Her lithe limbs trembled. She seemed about to fall.
16

She did not fall. Instead, summoning all her courage, she went bounding down the street.

What had happened? She had seen a face, a gypsy face. It was an evil face, and one she had seen before. But not in America. In France.

She had read the look in those burning eyes. The man had seen the dress before. He could not but know the one who wore it.

“And he is bad! Bad!” she panted.

One quick glance back, and she doubled her pace. The man was coming. He was gaining.

What had she to fear from him? What had she not? Was he not the leader of a gypsy clan who bore a deadly hate for every member of the Bihari Tribe? And had she not traveled for many months with the Bihari?

She rounded a corner. Before her stood an open basement window. “Any port in a storm.” With a sprightly spring she cleared the window sill and disappeared.

And then—confusion! Where was she? What had happened?