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THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS
BY
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

CHAPTER I

The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what must once have
been a garden, when that part of the Austrian city had been a
royal game preserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria
Theresa had used the building as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly
there was something royal in the proportions of the salon. With
all the candles lighted in the great glass chandelier, and no
sidelights, so that the broken paneling was mercifully obscured
by gloom, it was easy to believe that the great empress herself
had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to anecdotes
of questionable character; even, if tradition may be believed,
related not a few herself.

The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night.
Outside in the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind,
and the heavy barred gate, left open by the last comer, a piano
student named Scatchett and dubbed "Scatch"--the gate slammed to
and fro monotonously, giving now and then just enough pause for a
hope that it had latched itself, a hope that was always destroyed
by the next gust.

One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted for the
purpose of enabling Miss Scatchett to locate the score of a
Tschaikowsky concerto, it had been moved to the small center
table, and had served to give light if not festivity to the
afternoon coffee and cakes. It still burned, a gnarled and stubby
fragment, in its china holder; round it the disorder of the
recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half of a small cake, a
crumpled napkin or two,--there were never enough to go
round,--and on the floor the score of the concerto, clearly
abandoned for the things of the flesh.

The room was cold. The long casement windows creaked in time with
the slamming of the gate and the candle flickered in response to
a draft under the doors. The concerto flapped and slid along the
uneven old floor. At the sound a girl in a black dress, who had
been huddled near the tile stove, rose impatiently and picked it
up. There was no impatience, however, in the way she handled the
loose sheets. She put them together carefully, almost tenderly,
and placed them on the top of the grand piano, anchoring them
against the draft with a china dog from the stand.

The room was very bare--a long mirror between two of the windows,
half a dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in a corner the grand
piano. There were no rugs--the bare floor stretched bleakly into
dim corners and was lost. The crystal pendants of the great
chandelier looked like stalactites in a cave. The girl touched
the piano keys; they were ice under her fingers.

In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the
chandelier, and armed with a handful of matches proceeded to the
unheard-of extravagance of lighting it, not here and there, but
throughout as high as she could reach, standing perilously on her
tiptoes on the chair.

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The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart