CHAPTER XVIII BAGS OF FORBIDDEN TREASURE

Weston’s prophesy that the trunks contained “only junk” proved to be true. As trunk after trunk was opened, their search for hidden treasure continued to be unrewarded. Always there was the suggestion of pinching poverty, carelessness and neglect. These trunks were lost to their owners because they had not the ready money to pay the charges. One need not say that such as these have few valuable treasures to pack in a trunk.

The air of the small shop grew heavy with the odor of soiled clothing, cheap, highly scented soap and spilled talcum powder. The ladies had given up the search and were wandering about, looking at books, when the searching party came at last upon the three large pigskin bags from the British Isles.
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“There is something to intrigue you!” exclaimed Angelo. “And see! They are all tightly locked.”

Kay King’s eyes shone. He had bid in these bags at a rather high figure. He was hoping that his judgment regarding their contents had been correct.

“Let me try these.” He rattled a huge bunch of keys. Not one of them would open the bags. “Oh well,” he smiled, “one may pick his own locks.” With skill born of ripe experience he opened the locks with a bit of twisted wire.

“Now!” He breathed deeply. “Now!”

They all crowded around. A wide-mouthed bag flew open, revealing its contents. At once an exclamation was on every lip. Not one of them all but knew on the instant that Kay had made an exceedingly good buy. The bag was packed to the very top with the choicest of wearing apparel. Indeed, not one of them all had worn such rich garments. A man’s outfit included shirts of finest silk and softest woolens, suits of broadcloth and shoes of rarest quality.
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The second bag, though varying somewhat in its contents, matched the first in quality.

It was the third bag that set them gasping. For in this one the owner had packed with tender care the articles dearest to his heart. An ivory toilet set mounted with gold, a costly present from some dear friend; a brace of gold-mounted pistols; fountain pens; paper knives, elaborately carved; an astonishing collection of rare articles. And at one side, carefully wrapped in a swathing of silk, were three oval frames of beaten gold. Petite Jeanne’s fingers trembled as she unwrapped them and revealed, one after another, the portraits of a beautiful lady, a handsome boy and a marvelous girl, all dimples and golden hair.

“Oh!” She breathed deeply and the breath was half a sob.

More was to come. Having taken up an unframed picture, she studied it for a space of seconds. Then, as her trembling fingers let the picture fall, her slender form stiffened and her face went white as she said in words that seemed to choke her:
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“You can’t sell these things. You truly can’t.”

“Why can’t I?” Kay challenged. He had not looked into her white face.

“Because—” She put out a hand to steady herself. “Because they belong to a friend of mine. That is he,” she said, holding up the picture, “and that,” pointing to a signature at the bottom, “is his name.

“He—he came over on the boat with me. He—he was very, very kind to me. Helped me over the hard places.

“To sell out these would be a sacrilege.

“Sell them to me!” she pleaded, laying a hand on Kay’s arm. “I’ll pay you twice what you gave for them. Please, please do!” She was all but in tears.

She could not know the bargain she appeared anxious to drive. Only Weston and Kay King knew. They knew that in all their pinched and poverty-stricken lives they had never before made such a find; that the bags and their contents were worth not twice but ten times what Kay had paid for them.
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And only Angelo, who had accidentally caught sight of her bankbook, knew that for the sake of a friend she had known only on a short voyage, she was willing to spend her all.

“Wha—what will you do with them?” Kay moistened dry lips.

“I—some way I’ll find him and give them to him. And if—if he’s dead I’ll find her.” She pointed to the beautiful lady in the gold frame. “I—I’ll find her and them.” She nodded toward the other portraits.

Kay was not one who measured out charity in a glass and served it with a spoon. “Then,” he said huskily, “you may have them for exactly what I paid—fifteen dollars.”

Without another word, he snapped the bags shut one by one.

A long silence followed. Merry stood this as long as she could; then, seizing a long strand of narrow golden ribbon that had fallen from the trunk, she dashed round and round the group, encircling them all in this fragile band. Then, with a deft twitch, she thrust herself within the band.
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“This,” she cried, “is our Circle of Gold.”

“And such a circle as it is!” Dan Baker’s voice wavered. “You could break it with a touch, yet it is stronger than bands of steel, for such a band is but the emblem of a bond of human hearts that must not be broken.”

It was a subdued but curiously happy Petite Jeanne who rode back to the studio that night on a rattling street car. She felt as though she had been at church and had joined in the holiest of communions.

“And this is Sunday, too,” she whispered to Florence.

“Yes,” Florence agreed, not a little surprised at her words, not divining their meaning. “This is Sunday.”

Later in the day, when the shadows had fallen across the rooftops and night had come, Dan Baker sat dozing by Angelo’s fireplace. Jeanne sat at the opposite side, but she was not sleeping. She was deep in thought. The others had gone for a stroll on the boulevard.
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Jeanne was trying to recall a name, not the name of the man who had once owned the three bags resting there in the shadows. She knew that. It was Preston Wamsley. But the name of the hotel where he had stopped in New York; this escaped her.

She could picture the place in her mind. She had taken a room there for a night. It was not one of those towering affairs of brick and stone where traveling men uphold the prestige of their firms by paying ten dollars a night for a bed. A humble, kindly old hostelry, it stood mellow with age. Within were many pictures of great men who had stopped there in days gone by.

“There were Presidents and Earls and Dukes,” she told herself. “Yes, and Princes.

“Prince!” she whispered excitedly. “Prince—Prince George! That was the name! I’ll address a letter to him there to-morrow.”

“No.” She changed her mind a moment later. “To-morrow may never come. Better do it now!”
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She helped herself to paper and envelope and penned a simple note to her great friend, saying she had his traveling bags which had, no doubt, been lost; and where should she send them?

“That may reach him,” she told herself, as she hurried down to post it. “Here’s hoping!”

She had cast her bread upon the waters, half of all the bread she had in the world. And the cruel Fates had decreed that she should shortly have still less. For all that, her steps were light, her heart gay, as she clambered back up the long flight of stairs.

As she returned to her place by the fire, it seemed to her that the old trouper, Dan Baker, half hidden there in the darkness, was part of a dim, half dream life that at this moment might be passing forever. Her mind went slipping, gliding back over the days that lay in the shadows that were yesterdays.

She thought of the dark-faced gypsy who had followed her on that first morning when she was on her way to dance the sun up from the lake. It was true that she had recognized him. He was a French gypsy. This much she knew. That was all. She had seen him beside some camp fire in the land of her birth.
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“And I am sure it was he who peered through the skylight on the first night I danced the dance to the God of Fire,” she told herself. Involuntarily her eyes strayed to that skylight. There was no shadow there now.

“Could it have been that man who stole the God of Fire and sent it to America?” she asked herself. “Did he follow, only to find that it had been lost? And if so, what will he do to retrieve it?”

Knowing all too well the answer to this last question, she shuddered. A strange people, the gypsies care little for laws other than their own. If this man felt that he could formulate a claim to the gypsy God of Fire, he would stop at nothing to retake it.

“But he shall not have it!” she clenched her small hands tight.

From the gypsies she had absorbed a spirit of determination that was unshakable.

She thought of the flutter of wings in the theatre. “Some bird,” she reassured herself. “But what sort of bird? And who let him in?” Her mind was far from at rest on this point.
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Nor did the thoughts that came to her as she recalled the “battle of Maxwell Street” bring her comfort. “Angelo was right,” she told herself. “It should not have happened. In times like these one cannot have too many friends; but one enemy is just one too many.”

Warming thoughts filled with great comfort came to her only when she recalled again the three traveling bags. “Ah! There is joy,” she breathed. “To serve another. And he was so big and kind. Perhaps he will come for the bags. It may be that I shall see him again.”

With this comforting thought she curled up in her chair. And there, half an hour later the others, on returning, found her, fast asleep.