The Street of Seven Stars | Page 5

door. There were
no footsteps, only the banging of the gate in the wind. She turned to the
Big Soprano, heating a curling iron in the flame of a candle, and held
out her hand.
"Look!" she said. "Under my bed! Ten kronen!"
Without a word the Big Soprano put down her curling-iron, and
ponderously getting down on her knees, candle in hand, inspected the
dusty floor beneath her bed. It revealed nothing but a cigarette, on
which she pounced. Still squatting, she lighted the cigarette in the
candle flame and sat solemnly puffing it.
"The first for a week," she said. "Pull out the wardrobe, Scatch; there
may be another relic of my prosperous days."
But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a

government monopoly and gilt tips. She was looking at the ten-kronen
piece.
"Where is the other?" she asked in a whisper.
"In my powder-box."
Little Scatchett lifted the china lid and dropped the tiny gold-piece.
"Every little bit," she said flippantly, but still in a whisper, "added to
what she's got, makes just a little bit more."
"Have you thought of a place to leave it for her? If Rosa finds it, it's
good-bye. Heaven knows it was hard enough to get together, without
losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New
York--I haven't even a dollar for tips."
"New York!" said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing. "If Henry
meets me I know he will--"
"Tut!" The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down.
"You and your Henry! Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin
young mind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need?
She's going to be alone--and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she
is not like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a
stomach, and I'm thankful for it. But she is different--she's got the thing
that you are as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me
back to fight in a church choir instead of grand opera."
Little Scatchett was rather puzzled.
"Temperament?" she asked. It had always been accepted in the little
colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser
firmament.
The Big Soprano sniffed.
"If you like," she said. "Soul is a better word. Only the rich ought to
have souls, Scatchy, dear."

This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow Harmony was
coming down the hall.
"I thought, under her pillow," she whispered. "She'll find it--"
Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the flame
of a candle.
CHAPTER II
Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when,
having seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had
come back alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks
were gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where
little Scatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry's arms
about her, had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died
in tears of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the
sockets were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends
filled the room.
Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy
sense of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and
slamming gate and the great dark house in the background, was a
forbidding place at best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back
against the door, eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied
that a figure had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the
next moment the gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the
lock behind her.
The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and his
mustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmented
when he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the early
morning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom he
cherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it
was for her he wore the mustache bandage. Perhaps some
day--hopefully! One must be ready!
The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip,

the five Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a
niece of his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip
with a gesture.
"Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a pleasure
to admit you. And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a basin of soup."
The Portier was not pleasant to the eye. His nightshirt was