He glanced at Mitsi with a smile.
“So far,” he added.
“But I don’t see what this—” began Julia.
“Quiet, my dear, and you shall! I can’t get Mirielle. In fact, there’s no one in Paris, or anywhere, who’d draw the crowds into Tony’s club the way he wants ’em! No one who’s gettable at such short notice. No one…except Mitsi!”
“Larry! You are crazy!” cried Julia.
Mitsi stared at him incredulously. Leo snorted at the impossibility of the idea.
“I’ve been crazy before!” said Larry.
His voice was modulated, but his eyes gleamed. Julia glanced at him, and sighed. She knew him. Knew he was determined to see this fantastic idea through.
“But I’ve got away with it!” he continued. “I’ll do the same this time, or blow up!”
He shook his finger at Julia. The words tumbled out forcefully, concisely. Why, he demanded, shouldn’t Mitsi—transformed in the glorious creature depicted on Leo’s canvas—why shouldn’t she star at the night-club? She can sing as well as any other cabaret favourite—better than most! With her foreign accent, her appealingly husky voice, cloaked in colourful mystery, she’d be a sensation!
He’d see her launched on the public on such a mighty wave of newspaper publicity that’d put her over with a wallop.
He stopped talking and laughed out loud.
Julia was looking at him with mixed admiration and incredulity. She said:
“Of course, this just suits your sense of humour!”
He waved the remark away.
“I tell you it’s great! There’s a job—and not such a bad one at that!—waiting for the girl to step right into! Am I right?”
Julia smiled, excited, and her shining eyes told him that he’d convinced her. He turned to her brother.
“I think it’s the maddest idea I’ve ever heard of… But it’s not half bad!”
“That’s fine!” He turned to Mitsi. “Well—and what d’you think?… Not that it matters, really, because all you’ve got to do is—trust me.”
She stood, her dark eyes full of wonder. But the amazing confidence of the man, his extraordinary power to convince her, to make her believe that whatever he said was right, seemed to sweep over her in electric waves.
“I—I cannot think… It is all so quick. You talk so quick. I feel helpless, as if I am wax to be moulded by you, and by—Fate…”
His expression softened. For a fleeting second they seemed to be quite alone.
“You trust me?” he said with infinite gentleness.
She nodded.
Julia banged down the piano-lid.
“Well—and what next, you resourceful fellow?” she asked.
“You’ve got to fix her up! Have her hair altered, have clothes made! She’s got to look like Leo’s picture overnight! We’re in a hurry! You know how to do all those things, Julia! I leave her in your hands. Spend what you like, money doesn’t matter. But make her look a million dollars! I’m going to phone Raymond.”
“I think this is going to be fun!” exclaimed Julia, with a quick smile at Mitsi.
Mitsi gave a little laugh.
She watched Larry cross to the door, pausing to slap Leo on the shoulder. Her eyes never left him as he moved. At the door she found his look. Across the room they gazed at each other. She braced her shoulders, while her blood tingled in her veins. Her heartbeats quickened with the thrill of the adventure into which he was leading her.
“I’ll tell Bob I’ve found the most sensational woman on the earth!” he said. “A star who’ll pack his club to suffocation!”
With a quick grin he was gone. Julia was saying to her:
“We’ll make you look all of that, Mitsi my pet. Now then, Leo—you must help, too…”
She took her hand, and they crossed to look at her brother’s picture again, Julia rattling off a list of names of hairdressers, beauty specialists, and dress-experts.
CHAPTER 5
Leaving Mitsi in Julia’s capable hands, Larry hopped over to London the following day. He was to go ahead with preparations for Mitsi’s arrival in London. With Bob Raymond’s club due to open in a week’s time it meant fast work, and plenty of it.
But it was a job after Larry’s own heart, and he threw himself into it with zest.
While Julia went to work with equally expert enthusiasm.
With her brother’s picture as a basis, and Larry’s: “Make her look a million dollars!” echoing like a challenge in her ears, she shot dazed, dizzy and dragooned Mitsi from beauty-parlours to hairdressers, from hat-shops to dress-shops, and back to beautifiers and hair experts again.
Brought up quietly and unsensationally as she had been there were times when the excitement, the hectic rush, was almost too much for Mitsi.
At first she was inclined to be rebellious. When she longed for the quiet serenity that was no more—and it seemed would never be again.
But Julia’s sympathy, tact and encouragement quickly got her on her toes, enthusiastic, thrilled. Particularly on the second afternoon of the mad round of beauticians. When she stared at herself in a mirror, and saw not her own face, but that which Leo had put on canvas.
Julia’s hired army of beauty experts had done her proud.
This delicate, heart-shaped face, the beautifully modelled features—framed in its new blonde setting. Could it be hers? And this aureole of shimmering, pale gold glory that had been dull, indeterminately mouse-coloured hair?
She leant closer forward to examine the smooth, fine skin which glowed. Gazed deeper into her own eyes, violet pools fringed by dark lashes. Touched her soft, red lips—and noted, almost with a sense of shock, her slender, tapering fingers with the long, pointed nails, whose colour matched her mouth. So different from the badly cut nails and unkempt hands of yesterday.
With pleasurable satisfaction she smoothed a thinly pencilled and slanting eyebrow. Remembered the pain she had suffered under the swiftly plucking tweezers.
Julia herself hardly recognized this golden, transformed young creature who sat beside her in a taxi en route to a shoe shop.
“Will it not all cost so much money?” sighed Mitsi, remembering the shops they had already visited.
“But you have got to be a success Mitsi! Then you will be able to repay Larry for all this. You have the chance of fame, of making money, the chance such as few girls get nowadays. You are going to live! Meet all sorts of famous and interesting people. And you are going to charm them with your new beauty, your attractive voice and foreign accent. You must get assurance and confidence. Never let yourself be afraid of anybody or anything and believe me you will be a great success!”
“You are so very kind Julia, I do hope all the people I meet will be like you.” She smiled shyly at her.
Julia suddenly felt a wave of pity, and a strong affection was born in her for this girl whom Larry had found so strangely. And she determined for Mitsi’s own sake as much as for her love for Larry she would do her best to make things easy for her.
“Everybody’ll like you,” she replied briskly. “Anyway you have Larry to look after you in London.”
It was not to be expected Mitsi