Inside the Lines

CHAPTER XIII
ENTER, A CIGARETTE

Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Waterport Street, was absorbed, heart and soul, in a curious task. He was emptying the powder from two-grain quinine capsules on to a sheet of white letter paper on his desk.

It was noon of Wednesday, the day following the arrival of Captain Woodhouse. Almer was alone in the hotel's reception room and office behind the dingy glass partially enclosing his desk. His alpaca-covered shoulders were close to his ears; and his bald head, with its stripes of plastered hair running like thick lines of latitude on a polished globe, was held far forward so as to bring his eyes on the work in hand. Like some plump magpie he appeared, turning over bits of china in a treasure hole.

A round box of the gelatine cocoons lay at his left hand; it had just been delivered by an Arab boy, quick to pick up the street commission for a tuppence. Very methodically Almer picked the capsules from the box one by one, opened them, and spilled the quinine in a little heap under his nose. He grunted peevishly when the sixth shell had been emptied. The seventh capsule brought an eager whistle to his lips. When he had jerked the concentric halves apart, very little powder fell out. Instead, the thin, folded edges of a pellet of rice paper protruded from one of the containers. This Almer had extracted in an instant. He spread it against the black back of a ledger and read the very fine script written thereon. This was the message:

"Danger. An informer from Alexandria has denounced our two friends to Crandall. You must warn; I can not."

The spy's heart was suddenly drained, and the wisp of paper in his hand trembled so that it scattered the quinine about in a thin cloud. Once more he read the note, then held a match to it and scuffed its feathery ash with his feet into the rug beneath his stool. The fortitude which had held Joseph Almer to the Rock in the never-failing hope that some day would bring him the opportunity to do a great service for the fatherland came near crumbling that minute. He groaned.

"Our friends," he whispered, "Woodhouse and Louisa—trapped!"

The warning in the note left nothing open to ambiguity for Almer; there were but four of them—"friends" under the Wilhelmstrasse fellowship of danger—there in Gibraltar: Louisa, the man who passed as Woodhouse, and whose hand was to execute the great coup when the right moment came, himself, and that other one whose place was in Government House itself. From this latter the note of warning had come. How desperate the necessity for it Almer could guess when he took into reckoning the dangers that beset any attempt at communication on the writer's part. So narrow the margin of safety for this "friend" that he must look at each setting sun as being reasonably the last for him.

Almer did not attempt to go behind the note and guess who was the informer that had lodged information with the governor-general. He had forgotten, in fact, the incident of the night before, when the blustering Capper called the newly arrived Woodhouse by name. The flash of suspicion that attached responsibility to the American girl named Gerson was dissipated as quickly as it came; she had arrived by motor from Paris, not on the boat from Alexandria. His was now the imperative duty to carry warning to the two suspected, not to waste time in idle speculation as to the identity of the betrayer. There was but one ray of hope in this sudden pall of gloom, and that Almer grasped eagerly. He knew the character of General Crandall—the phlegmatic conservatism of the man, which would not easily be jarred out of an accustomed line of thought and action. The general would be slow to leap at an accusation brought against one wearing the stripes of service; and, though he might reasonably attempt to test Captain Woodhouse, one such as Woodhouse, chosen by the Wilhelmstrasse to accomplish so great a mission, would surely have the wit to parry suspicion.

Yes, he must be put on his guard. As for Louisa—well, it would be too bad if the girl should have to put her back against a wall; but she could be spared; she was not essential. After he had succeeded in getting word of his danger to Woodhouse, Almer would consider saving Louisa from a firing squad. The nimble mind of Herr Almer shook itself free from the incubus of dread and leaped to the exigency of the moment. Calling his head waiter to keep warm the chair behind the desk, Almer retired to his room, and there was exceedingly busy for half an hour.

The hour of parade during war time on Gibraltar was one o'clock. At that time, six days a week, the half of the garrison not actually in fighting position behind the great guns of the defense marched to the parade grounds down by the race track and there went through the grilling regimen that meant perfection and the maintenance of a hair-trigger state of efficiency. Down from the rocky eminences where the barracks stood, marched this day block after block of olive-drab fighting units—artillerymen for the most part, equipped with the rifle and pack of infantrymen. No blare of brass music gave the measure to their step; bandsmen in this time of reality paced two by two, stretchers carried between them. All the curl and snap of silken banners that made the parade a moving spectacle in ordinary times was absent; flags do not figure in the grim modern business of warfare. Just those solid blocks of men trained to kill, sweeping down on to the level grounds and massing, rank on rank, for inspection and the trip-hammer pound-pound-pound of evolutions to follow. Silent integers of power, flexing their muscles for the supreme test that any morning's sun might bring.

Mr. Henry J. Sherman stood with his wife, Kitty and Willy Kimball—Kimball had developed a surprising interest in one of these home folks, at least—under the shade of the row of plane trees fringing the parade grounds. They tried to persuade themselves that they were seeing something worth while. This pleasing fiction wore thin with Mr. Sherman before fifteen minutes had passed.

"Shucks, mother! The boys at the national-guard encampment down to Galesburg fair last year made a better showing than this." He pursed out his lips and regarded a passing battalion with a critical eye.

"Looked more like soldiers, anyway," mother admitted. "Those floppy, broad-brimmed hats our boys wear make them look more—more romantic, I'd say."

"But, my dear Mrs. Sherman"—Willy Kimball flicked his handkerchief from his cuff and fluttered it across his coat sleeve, where dust had fallen—"the guards back in the States are play soldiers, you know; these chaps, here—well, they are the real thing. They don't dress up like picture-book soldiers and show off——"

"Play soldiers—huh!" Henry J. had fire in his eye, and the pearl buttons on his white linen waistcoat creaked with the swelling of a patriot's pride. "You've been a long time from home, Willy. Perhaps you've forgotten that your own father was at Corinth. Guess you've overlooked that soldiers' monument in Courthouse Square back in little old Kewanee. They were 'play soldiers,' eh?—those boys who marched away with your dad in sixty-one. Gimme a regiment of those old boys in blue, and they could lick this whole bunch of——"

"Father!" Kitty had flipped her hand over her parent's mouth, her eyes round with real fear. "You'll get arrested again, talking that way here where everybody can hear you. Remember what that hotel man said last night about careless remarks about military things on the Rock? Be good, father."

"There, there!" Sherman removed the monitory hand and patted it reassuringly. "I forgot. But when I get aboard the Saxonia and well out to sea, I'm going to just bust information about what I think of things in general over here in this Europe place—their Bottycelly pictures and their broken-down churches and—and—— Why, bless my soul! The little store buyer and that Iowa girl who's married to the governor here!"

The patriot stopped short in his review of the Continent's delinquencies to wave his hat at Lady Crandall and Jane Gerson, who were trundling down under the avenue of planes in a smart dog-cart. Lady Crandall answered his hail with a flourish of her whip, turned her horse off the road, and brought her conveyance to a stop by the group of exiles. Hearty greetings passed around. The governor's wife showed her unaffected pleasure at the meeting.

"I thought you wouldn't miss the parade," she called down from her high seat. "Only thing that moves on the Rock—these daily reviews. Brought Miss Gerson down here so when she gets back to New York she can say she's seen the defenders of Gibraltar, if not in action, at least doing their hard training for it."

"Well, I don't mind tellin' you," Sherman began defiantly, "I think the national guard of Illynoy can run circles around these Englishmen when it comes to puttin' up a show. Now, Kitty, don't you try to drive a plug in your dad's sentiments again; Mrs. Crandall's all right—one of us." A shocked look from his daughter. "Oh, there I go again, forgettin'. Lady Crandall, I mean. Excuse me, ma'am."

"Don't you dare apologize," the governor's wife playfully threatened Mr. Sherman with her whip. "I love the sound of good, old-fashioned 'Missis.' Just imagine—married five years, and nobody has called me 'Mrs. Crandall' until you did just now. 'Wedded, But Not a Missis'; wouldn't that be a perfectly gorgeous title for a Laura Jean novel? Miss Gerson, let's hop out and join these home folks; they're my kind."

The burst of laughter that greeted Lady Crandall's sally was not over before she had leaped nimbly from her high perch, Henry J. gallantly assisting. Jane followed, and the coachman from his little bob seat in the back drove the dog-cart over the road to wait his mistress' pleasure. The scattered blocks of olive-gray on the field had coalesced into a solid regiment now, and the long double rank of men was sweeping forward like the cutting arm of a giant mower. The party of Americans joined the sparse crowd of spectators at the edge of the field, the better to see. Jane Gerson found herself chatting with Willy Kimball and Kitty Sherman a little apart from the others. A light touch fell on her elbow. She turned to find Almer, the hotel keeper, smiling deferentially.

"Pardon—a thousand pardons for the intrusion, lady. I am Almer, of the Hotel Splendide."

"You haven't remembered something more I owe you," Jane challenged bruskly.

"Oh, no, lady!" Almer spread out his hands. "I happened to see you here watching the parade, and I remembered a trivial duty I have which, if I may be so bold as to ask, you may discharge much more quickly than I—if you will."

"I discharge a duty—for you?" The girl did not conceal her puzzlement. Almer's hand fumbled in a pocket of his flapping alpaca coat and produced a plain silver cigarette case, unmonogrammed. She looked at it wonderingly.

"Captain Woodhouse—you met him at my hotel last night, lady. He left this lying on his dresser when he quit his room to go to barracks to-day. For me it is difficult to send a messenger with it to the barracks—war time, lady—many restrictions inside the lines. I came here hoping perhaps to see the captain after the parade. But you——"

"You wish me to give this to Captain Woodhouse?" Jane finished, a flicker of annoyance crossing her face. "Why me?"

"You are at Government House, lady. Captain Woodhouse comes to tea—all newcomers to the garrison do that. If you would be so good——"

Jane took the cigarette case from Almer's outstretched hand. Lady Crandall had told her the captain would be in for tea that afternoon. It was a small matter, this accommodation, as long as Almer did not insinuate—as he had not done—any impertinence; imply any over eagerness on her part to perform so minor a service for the officer. Almer bowed his thanks and lost himself in the crowd. Jane turned again to where Kitty and Kimball were chatting.

"A dun for extra service the landlord forgot last night, I'll wager," the youth greeted her.

"Oh, no, just a little present," Jane laughed back at him, holding up the silver case. "With Almer's compliments to Captain Woodhouse, who forgot it when he gave up his room to-day. I've promised to turn it over to the captain and save the hotel man a lot of trouble and red tape getting a messenger through to the captain's quarters."

"By Jove!" Kimball's tired eyes lighted up with a quick flash of smoker's yearning. "A life-saver! Came away from my room without my pet Egyptians—Mr. Sherman yelling at me to hurry or we'd miss this slow show and all that. I'm going to play the panhandler and beg one of your captain friend's smokes. He must be a good sort or you wouldn't be doing little favors for him, Miss Gerson. Come, now; in your capacity as temporary executrix will you invest one of the captain's cigarettes in a demand of real charity?"

Keen desire was scarcely veiled under Kimball's fiction of light patter. Smilingly the girl extended the case to him.

"Just to make it businesslike, the executrix demands your note for—um—sixty days, say. 'For one cigarette received, I promise to pay——'"

"Given!" He pulled a gold pencil from his pocket and made a pretense of writing the form on his cuff. Then he lit his borrowed cigarette and inhaled it gratefully.

"Your captain friend's straight from Egypt; I don't have to be told that," Willy Kimball murmured, in polite ecstasy. "At Shepard's, in Cairo, you'll get such a cigarette as this, and nowhere else in a barren world. The breath of the acanthus blossom—if it really has a breath—never heard."

"Back in Kewanee the Ladies' Aid Society will have you arrested," Kitty put in mischievously. "They're terribly wrought up over cigarettes—for minors."

Kimball cast her a glance of deep reproach. As he lifted the cigarette to his lips for a second puff, Jane's eyes mechanically followed the movement. Something caught and held them, wonder-filled.

On the side of the white paper cylinder nearest her a curious brown streak appeared—by the merest freak of chance her glance fell on it. As she looked, the thin stain grew darker nearest the fresh ash. The farther end of the faint tracing moved—yes, moved, like a threadworm groping its way along a stick.

"Now what are they all doing out there?" Kitty Sherman was asking. "All those men running top speed with their guns carried up so high."

"Bayonet charge," Kimball answered. "Nothing like the real thing, of course."

Jane Gerson was watching the twisting and writhing of that filament of brown against the white. An invisible hand was writing in brown ink on the side of the cigarette—writing backward and away from the burning tip. It lengthened by seconds—"and Louisa to Crandall."

So the letters of silver nitrate formed themselves under her eyes. Kimball took the cigarette from his lips and held it by his side for a minute. He and Kitty were busy with each other's company for the time, ignoring Jane. She burned with curiosity and with excitement mounting like the fire of wine to her brain. Would he never put that cigarette to his lips again, so she could follow the invisible pen! So fleeting, so evanescent that worm track on the paper, wrought by fire and by fire to be consumed. A mystery vanishing even as it was aborning! After ages, the unconscious Kimball set the cigarette again in his lips.

"—nformer has denounced you and Louisa-t-
—play your game and he will be slow to——"

Again the cigarette came away in Kimball's hand. Acting on impulse she did not stop to question, Jane struck it from the young man's outstretched hand and set her foot on it as it fell in the dust.

"Oh, I'm clumsy!" She fell lightly against Kimball's shoulder and caught herself in well-simulated confusion. "Standing tiptoe to see what that man on a horse is going to do—lost my balance. And—and your precious cigarette—gone!"

The anguish in Jane Gerson's voice was not play. It was real—terribly real.

CHAPTER XIV
THE CAPTAIN COMES TO TEA

Jane Gerson, alone for the first time since the incident of the cigarette on the parade ground a few hours back, sat before a narrow window in her room at Government House, fighting a great bewilderment. The window opened on a varied prospect of blooming gardens and sail-flecked bay beyond. But for her eyes the riot of color and clash of contrast between bald cliff and massed green had no appeal. Her hands locked and unlocked themselves on her lap. The girl's mind was struggling to coordinate scattered circumstances into a comprehensible whole, to grapple with the ethical problem of her own conduct.

What she knew, or thought she knew—and what she should do—those were the two saber points of the dilemma upon which she found herself impaled.

Could there now be any doubt of what she felt to be the truth? First, she had met Captain Woodhouse on the Express du Nord—an officer in the English army, by his own statement, returning from leave in England to his post in Egypt. Then, the encounter of last night at the Hotel Splendide, Captain Woodhouse first denying his identity, then admitting it under the enforced pledge that she should not reveal the former meeting. Captain Woodhouse, not in Egypt, but at Gibraltar, and, as she had soon learned, there with papers of transfer from an Egyptian post to the garrison of the Rock. Following this surprise had come General Crandall's dogged examination of that morning—his blunt declaration that a serious question as to the captain's position at Gibraltar had arisen, and his equally plain-spoken threat to have the truth from her concerning her knowledge of the suspected officer.

To cap all, the message on the cigarette! An informer—she guessed the prefix to the unfinished word—had denounced "you and Louisa" to General Crandall. To whom the pronoun referred was unmistakable—Almer's eagerness to insure Captain Woodhouse's receiving the cigarette case plainly defined that. As to "Louisa," involved with Woodhouse, the girl from Hildebrand's was sensible only of a passing flash of curiosity, made a bit more piquant, perhaps, by a little dart of jealousy, hardly comprehended as such. A hotel keeper warns an officer in the Gibraltar garrison that he has been denounced, but in the same message adjures him to "play your own game." That was the single compelling fact.

Jane Gerson flushed—in anger, or was it through guilt?—when she found her lips framing the word "spy"!

Now she understood why General Crandall had put her on the grill—why he, informed, had leaped to the significance of the gift of roses and deduced her previous acquaintance with their donor. Her host was not, after all, the possessor of magical powers of mind reading. He was, instead, just the sober, conscientious protector of the Rock on whom rested responsibility for the lives of its defenders and the maintenance of England's flag there. His duty was to catch—and shoot—spies.

Shoot spies! The girl's heart contracted at the thought. No, no! She would not—she could not reveal to the governor the knowledge she had. That would be to send death to a man as surely as if hers was the finger at the trigger.

Jane Gerson was on her feet now, pacing the room. Over and over again she told herself that this man who had come into her life, obliquely enough, had no claim on her; had brought nothing to her but distress. He had deceived her even, and then, when caught in the deception, had wrested from her a promise that she would help him continue further deception against others. Against her will he had made her a party to some deep and audacious plot, whose purpose she could not guess, but which must be but a part of the huge mystery of war.

And soon this Captain Woodhouse was to come to his trial—the purpose of his invitation to tea that afternoon flashed clear as white light. Soon she would be in the same room with him; would be forced to witness the spinning of the web set to trap him. He would come unwarned, unsuspecting. He might leave that room under guard and with guns at his back—guns soon to be leveled at his heart. Yet she, Jane Gerson, possessed the power to save him—as the warning of the cigarette surely would be saving, once a clever man were put on his guard by it.

Would she speak—and betray General Crandall, her kindly host? Would she lock her lips and see a man walk blindfolded to his death?

A few minutes before five o'clock, Major Bishop was announced at Government House and received by General Crandall in the library. Before Jaimihr Khan, who had preceded the visitor through the double doors from the hall, could retire, his master stopped him.

"One minute, Jaimihr! Have a seat, Bishop; glad you've come a bit early. Come here, Jaimihr!"

The tall reedlike figure of the Indian glided to General Crandall's side. His thin ascetic features were set in their usual mold of unseeing detachment; only his dark eyes showed animation.

"Yes, my General," he said, as he stopped before the Englishman.

"I have a little commission for you, Jaimihr," General Crandall began, weighing his words with care. "The utmost discretion—you understand?"

"The utmost. I understand." Jaimihr Khan's lips moved ever so slightly, and his eyes looked steadily ahead.

"In the course of a few minutes, Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service, will be here to tea," the general began. The Indian repeated mechanically: "Cap-tain Wood-house."

"As soon as you have ushered him into this room, you will go as quickly as you can to the West Barracks. His room will be No. 36, on the second gallery. You will enter his room with a key I shall give you and search it from end to end—everything in it. Anything that is of a suspicious nature—you understand, Jaimihr, what that might be—you will bring here to me at once."

"It shall be done, General Sahib."

"No one, officer or man, must suspect your errand. No one must see you enter or leave that room."

"No one," the Indian repeated.

General Crandall went to a wall safe set by the side of the double doors, turned the combination, and opened it. He took from a drawer therein a bunch of keys, selected one, and passed it to Jaimihr Khan.

"The utmost care, remember!" he warned again.

"Is it likely I should fail you this time, General Sahib, when so many times I have succeeded?"

"Make the search complete." General Crandall ignored his servant's question. "But return as quickly as you can. I shall keep Captain Woodhouse here until you do so. You must report to me before he leaves this house."

"When the moment arrives, your servant shall fly, General Sahib," the Indian replied, and withdrew.

"I say, General, you have a great deal of faith in your Indian," Bishop ventured, accepting a cigarette from his superior's case. "Rather a delicate commission you've given him."

"Absolute faith, yes. Been with me five years—picked him up in Rangoon—have tried him many times, and found him loyal as any officer in the service." General Crandall put in his words enough emphasis to carry slight rebuke for the other's implied criticism. But the pursy little major was too sure of the fine terms of personal friendship between himself and his superior to feel embarrassment.

"About that girl, General—that cigar girl, Josepha, concerning whom your beach-comber friend sent that warning this morning from the safe ground of Spain——"

"Obvious thing would have been to clap her in a cell," the governor answered. "But I have not, for the very good reason that if there's anything in this fellow's accusations against her, as well as against Woodhouse, the game will be to keep her watched and give our captain an opportunity to communicate with her. Minute he does that—why, we've got our proof against both."

"Then I take it you've put a trailer on the girl?"

"At eight o'clock to-night I'll know where she's been every hour of the day," the general returned confidently. "She can't leave the town without being arrested. Now, as to our plan for Woodhouse's reception—this affair of Craigen's wife; we might as well agree on points, so that——" He heard his wife's voice in the room off the library, and broke off abruptly. "Confound it; the women are coming! Just step into my room with me, and we'll go over this little matter, Major."

General Crandall held open a small door at the left of his desk and followed Bishop through. Lady Crandall and Jane entered the library almost at the same time.

"This tea of George's is preposterous," the lady of Government House was grumbling. "Said we must have this man from Egypt here at once."

"If you were English, no tea could be preposterous," Jane countered, with a brave attempt at lightness. She felt each passing moment a weight adding to the suspense of the inevitable event.

"Well, I'm going to get it through with just as soon as I can," Lady Crandall snapped. Then Jaimihr Khan threw open the double doors and announced: "Cap-tain Wood-house, my lady!"

"Show him up!" she commanded; then in complaint to Jane: "Now where do you suppose that husband of mine went? Just like him to suggest a tea and forget to make an appearance."

Captain Woodhouse appeared between the opened doors in khaki and trim puttees. He stood very straight for an instant, his eyes shooting rapidly about the room. Lady Crandall hurried forward to greet him, and his momentary stiffness disappeared. The girl behind her followed slowly, almost reluctantly. Woodhouse grasped her extended hand.

"It was good of you to send the flowers," she murmured. The man smiled appreciation.

"Do you know," he said, "after I sent them I thought you'd consider me a bit—prompt."

"I am learning something every day—about Englishmen," Jane managed to answer, with a ghost of a smile.

"Always something good, I hope," Woodhouse was quick to retort, his eyes eagerly trying to fathom the cause of the girl's restraint.

Lady Crandall, who had been vainly ringing for Jaimihr Khan, excused herself on the necessity of looking after the tea things. Jane experienced a quick stab of dread at finding herself alone with this man. Unexpected opportunity was urging a decision which an hour of solitude in her room had failed to bring. Yet she trembled, appalled and afraid to speak, before the very magnitude of the moment's exigency. "A spy—a spy!" whispered austere duty. "He will die!" her heart cried in protest.

"Miss Gerson, it's good to see you again and know by your handclasp you have forgiven me for—for what was very necessary at the moment—last night—our meeting in the Splendide." Captain Woodhouse was standing before her now, his grave eyes looking down into hers. The girl caught a deep note of sincerity and something else—something vibrantly personal. Yet her tongue would not be loosed of its burden.

"A very pretty speech," she answered, with attempted raillery. "I shall think of it on the boat going home."

"I say, I wish you weren't always in that horrid state of mind—on your way home mentally," Captain Woodhouse challenged.

"I shall be so in reality day after to-morrow, I hope," she replied. "Away from all this bewildering war and back in comfortable little New York." The man seemed genuinely grieved at her announcement.

"New York must be worth while; but I imagine you have nothing picturesque—nothing old there. I'll wager you haven't a single converted monastery like Government House in all your city."

"Not many things in New York have been converted," she answered, with a smile. "Our greatest need is for a municipal evangelist."

False—all false, this banter! She knew it to be, and so she believed he must read it. And the man—his ease of manner was either that of innocence or of supreme nerve, the second not less to be admired than the first. Could it be that behind his serious eyes, now frankly telling her what she dared not let herself read in them, lay duplicity and a spy's cunning?

"I fancy you New Yorkers suffer most from newness—newness right out of the shop," she heard him saying. "But the old things are the best. Imagine the monks of a long-ago yesterday toasting themselves before this ancient fireplace." He waved toward the massive Gothic mantel bridging a cavernous fireplace. An old chime bell, green with weathering, hung on a low frame beside the firedogs.

"You're mistaken; that's manufactured antiquity," Jane caught him up. "Lady Crandall told me last night that fireplace is just five years old. One of the preceding governor's hobbies, it was."

Woodhouse caught at her answer with a quick lifting of the brows. He turned again to feast his eyes on the girl's piquant face, even more alluring now because of the fleeting color that left the cheeks with a tea rose's coldness.

"Miss Gerson, something I have done or said"—the man was laboring after words—"you are not yourself, and maybe I am respon——"

She turned from him with a slight shudder. Her hand was extended in mute appeal for silence. He waited while his eyes followed the heaving of her shoulders under the emotion that was racking her. Suddenly she faced him again, and words rushed from her lips in an abandon of terror:

"Captain Woodhouse, I know too much—about you and why you are here. Oh, more than I want to! Accident—bad luck, believe me, it is not my seeking that I know you are a—a——"

He had started forward at her outburst, and now he stood very close to her, his gray eyes cold and unchanging.

"Say it—say the word! I'm not afraid to hear it," he commanded tensely. She drew back from him a little wildly, her hands fluttering up as if to fend him off.

"You—you are in great danger this minute. You were brought here this afternoon to be trapped—exposed and made——"

"I was fully aware of that when I came, Miss Gerson," he interrupted. "The invitation, coming so suddenly—so pressing—I think I read it aright."

"But the promise you made me give last night!" Sudden resentment brushed aside for the instant the girl's first flood of sympathy. "That has involved me with you. Oh, that was unfair—to make me promise I would not allude to—to our first meeting!"

"Involved you?" He closed one of her hands in his as if to calm her and force more rational speech. "Then you have been——"

"Questioned by General Crandall—about you," she broke in, struggling slightly to free her hand. "Questioned—and even bullied and threatened."

"And you kept your promise?" The question was put so low Jane could hardly catch it. She slowly nodded.

"Miss Gerson, you will never have cause to regret that you did." Woodhouse pressed her hand with almost fierce intenseness, then let it go. Her face was flaming now under the stress of excitement. She knew tears stood in her eyes, and was angered at their being there; he might mistake them. Woodhouse continued, in the same suppressed tone:

"You were on the point of using a word a minute ago, Miss Gerson, which was hard for you to voice because you thought it an ugly word. You seemed sure it was the right word to fit me. You only hesitated out of—ah—decency. Yet you kept faith with me before General Crandall. May I hope that means——"

"You may hope nothing!" Quick rebellion at what she divined to be coming flamed in Jane's eyes. "You have no right to hope for more from me than what you forced by promise. I would not be saying what I have to you if—if I did not feel I—that your life——"

"You misunderstood," he broke in stiffly. "I was on the point of saying I hoped you would not always believe me a——"

"Not believe!" Her hand went to the broad ribbon belt she wore and brought out the silver cigarette case. This she passed to him with a swift gesture.

"Almer, the Hotel Splendide man, gave me this to-day at parade, urging that I deliver it to you." She was speaking hurriedly. "By a miracle—the strangest circumstance in the world—I learned the message this cigarette case was to carry to you. Oh, no, innocently enough on my part—it came by a chance I must not take the time to explain."

"A message from—Almer to me?" Woodhouse could not conceal the start her words gave him. He took a step toward her eagerly.

"Yes, a message. You must have it to protect yourself. The message was this:

"Informer has denounced you and Louisa to——"

Her voice died in her throat. Over Captain Woodhouse's shoulder she saw a door open. General Crandall and a short fat man in officer's uniform entered the library.

CHAPTER XV
THE THIRD DEGREE

"Good afternoon, Captain Woodhouse."

General Crandall came forward and shook the captain's hand cordially. "Miss Gerson, Major Bishop, of my staff."

Jane acknowledged the introduction. Major Bishop advanced to the meeting with Woodhouse expectantly. With an air of ill-assumed ease, the governor made them known to each other.

"Major Bishop, your new man in the signal tower, Captain Woodhouse, from Wady Halfa. Captain, do you happen to remember the major? Was a captain when you were here on the Rock—captain in the engineers."

"I'm afraid we never met," Woodhouse began easily. "I was here such a short time. Expected to meet Major Bishop when I reported at his office this morning, but he was over at the wireless station, his aid told me."

"Right, Captain!" Bishop chirped, shaking his subordinate's hand. "I—ah—imagine this is the first time we've met." He put the least shade of emphasis on the verb.

Woodhouse met his eyes boldly. Lady Crandall, bustling in at this minute, directed a maid where to wheel the tea wagon, while Jane went to assist her with the pouring. The men soon had their cups, and the general and major contrived to group themselves with Woodhouse sitting between them. Sir George, affecting a gruff geniality, launched a question:

"Rock look familiar to you, Captain?"

"After a fashion, yes," Woodhouse answered slowly. "Though three months is so short a time for one to get a lasting impression."

"Nonsense!" the general reproved gustily. "Some places you see once you never forget. This old Rock is one of them; eh, Bishop?"

"I don't know," the chunky little officer replied. "The powers back home never give me a chance to get away and forget." There was a pause as the men sipped their tea. Woodhouse broke the silence:

"Man can be stationed in worse places than Gibraltar."

"If you mean Egypt, I agree with you," Crandall assented. "There six years."

"Were you, General? What station?" Woodhouse was coolly stirring his tea, emphatically at his ease. Jane, her back to the men as she fussed over the tea wagon, filled her own cup with hot water inadvertently. She tried to laugh over the mistake, but her fingers trembled as she poured the water back into the kettle.

"Not on the lazy old Nile, as you were—lucky dog!" the general returned. "Out on the yellow sands—at Arkowan—a place in the sun, never fear!"

The women had their cups now, and joined the men, sitting a little behind. Jane caught a shrewd sidewise glance from the general—a glance that sought a quick and sure reading of her emotions. She poised her cup as if expecting a question and the glance turned aside. But it had warned the girl that she was not altogether a passive factor in the situation. She set a guard over her features.

"Let me see, Captain Woodhouse"—it was little Bishop who took up the probe—"you must have been here in the days when Craigen was governor—saw your papers have it that you were here three months in nineteen seven."

"Yes, Craigen was governor then," Woodhouse answered guardedly.

"You never saw him, General." Bishop turned to Sir George. "Big, bluff, blustering chap, with a voice like the bull of Bashan. Woodhouse, here, he'll recognize my portrait."

Woodhouse smiled—secret disdain for the clumsy trap was in that smile.

"I'm afraid I do not," he said. "Craigen was considered a small, almost a delicate, man." He had recognized the bungling emphasis laid by Bishop on the Craigen characteristics, and his answer was pretty safely drawn by choosing the opposites. Bishop looked flustered for an instant, then admitted Woodhouse was right. He had confused Sir David Craigen with his predecessor, he said in excuse.

"I fancy I ought to remember the man. I had tea in this very room with him several times," Woodhouse ventured. He let his eyes rove as if in reminiscence. "Much the same here—as—except, General Crandall, I don't recall that fireplace." He indicated the heavy Gothic ornament on the opposite side of the room.

Jane caught her breath under the surge of secret elation. The resource of the man so to turn to advantage a fact that she had carelessly given him in their conversation of a few moments back! The girl saw a flicker of surprise cross General Crandall's face. Lady Crandall broke in:

"You have a good memory, after all, Captain Woodhouse. That fireplace is just five years old."

"Um—yes, yes," her husband admitted. "Clever piece of work, though. Likely to deceive anybody by its show of antiquity."

General Crandall called for a second slice of lemon in his cup. He was obviously sparring for another opening, but was impressed by the showing the suspected man was making. Bishop pushed the inquisition another step:

"Did you happen to be present, Captain, at the farewell dinner we gave little Billy Barnes? I think it must have been in the spring you were here."

"There were many dinners, Major Bishop." Woodhouse was carefully selecting his words, and he broke his sentences with a sip from his cup. "Seven years is a long time, you know. We had much else to think about in Egypt than old dinners elsewhere."

Bishop appeared struck by an inspiration. He clapped his cup into its saucer with a sudden bang.

"Hang it, man, you must have been here in the days of Lady Evelyn. Remember her, don't you?"

"Would I be likely to forget?" the captain parried. Out of the tail of his eye he had a flash of Jane Gerson's white face, of her eyes seeking his with a palpitant, hunted look. The message of her eyes brought to him an instant of grace in sore trial.

"Seven years of Egypt—or of a hotter place—couldn't make a man forget her!" The major was rattling on for the benefit of those who had not come under the spell of the charmer. "Sir David Craigen's wife, and as lovely a woman as ever came out from England. Every man on the Rock lost his heart that spring. Woodhouse, even in three months' time you must have fallen like the rest of us."

"I'd rather not incriminate myself." Woodhouse smiled sagely as he passed his cup to Lady Crandall to be refilled.

"Don't blame you," Bishop caught him up. "A most outrageous flirt, and there was the devil to pay. Broken hearts were as thick on the Rock that year as strawberries in May, including poor Craigen's. And after one young subaltern tried to kill himself—you'll remember that, Woodhouse—Sir David packed the fair charmer off to England. Then he simply ate his heart out and—died."

"What an affecting picture!" Jane commented. "One lone woman capturing the garrison of Gibraltar!"

General Crandall rose to set his cup on the tea wagon. With the most casual air in the world, he addressed himself to Woodhouse:

"When Sir David died, many of his effects were left in this house to await their proper owner's disposition, and Lady Craigen has been—er—delicate about claiming them. Among them was the portrait of Lady Craigen herself which still hangs in this room. Have you recognized it, Captain?"

Woodhouse, whose mind had been leaping forward, vainly trying to divine the object of the Lady Evelyn lead, now knew, and the knowledge left him beyond his resources. He recognized the moment of his unmasking. But the man's nerve was steady, even in extremity. He rose and turned to face the rear wall of the library, against the tapestry of which hung four oil portraits in their deep old frames of heavy gold. Three of these were of women. A fourth, also the likeness of a woman, hung over the fireplace. Chances were four to one against blind choice.

As Woodhouse slowly lifted his eyes to the line of portraits, he noticed that Jane had moved to place the broad tent shade of a floor lamp on its tall standard of mahogany between herself and the other two men so that her face was momentarily screened from them. She looked quickly at the portrait over the mantel and away again. Woodhouse, knowing himself the object of two pairs of hostile eyes, made his survey deliberately, with purpose increasing the tension of the moment. His eyes ranged the line of portraits on the rear wall, then turned to that one over the fireplace.

"Ah, yes, a rather good likeness, eh, Major?" He drawled his identification with a disinterested air.

Crandall's manner underwent instant change. His former slightly strained punctiliousness gave way to naturalness and easy spirits. One would have said he was advocate for a man on trial, for whom the jury had just pronounced, "Not proven." Scotch verdict, yes, but one acceptable enough to the governor of Gibraltar. The desk telephone sounded just then, and General Crandall answered. After listening briefly, he gave the orders, "Dress flags!" and hung up the receiver.

"'Fleet's just entering the harbor,' signal tower reports," he explained to the others. "Miss Gerson, if you care to step here to the window you'll see something quite worth while."

Jane, light-hearted almost to the point of mild hysteria at the noticeable relaxation of strain denoting danger passed, bounded to a double French window giving on a balcony and commanding a view of all the bay to the Spanish shore. She exclaimed, in awe:

"Ships—ships! Hundreds of them! Why, General, what——"

"The Mediterranean fleet, young woman, bound home to protect the Channel against the German high-seas fleet." Deep pride was in the governor's voice. His eyes kindled as they fell on the distant pillars of smoke—scores of them mounting straight up to support the blue on their blended arches. Captain Woodhouse could scarcely conceal the start General Crandall's announcement gave him. He followed the others to the window more slowly.

"Wirelessed they'd be in ten hours ago," the governor explained to his wife. "Rear-admiral won't make his official call until morning, however. In these times he sticks by his flagship after five o'clock."

"Wonderful—wonderful!" Bishop turned in unfeigned enthusiasm to Woodhouse, behind him. "There is the power—and the pride—of England. Sort of thrills a chap, eh?"

"Rather!" Woodhouse replied.

"Well, must get down to the quay to receive any despatches that may come ashore," the major exclaimed. "Gad, but it gives me a little homesick tug at the heart to see these grim old dogs of war. They represent that tight little island that rules the waves."

"Ah, London—London—the big, old town where they pull the strings that make us dance!" General Crandall, leaning against the window frame, his eyes on the incoming fleet, voiced the chronic nostalgia of the man in the service.

"The town for me!" Woodhouse exclaimed with fervor. "I'm sick for the sight of her—the sounds of her—the smells of her: the orange peel and the asphalt and the gas coming in over Vauxhall Bridge."

Bishop turned on him admiringly.

"By George, that does hit it off, old man—no mistake!"

Jane was out on the balcony now with field glasses she had picked up from the governor's desk. She called back through the curtains, summoning Woodhouse to come and pick out for her the flagship. When he had joined her, Bishop stepped quickly to his superior's side.

"What do you think, General? By George, it seems to me it would need an Englishman to give one that sniff of London this chap just got off."

"Exactly," the general caught him up crisply. "And an Englishman's done it—Rudyard Kipling. Any German who can read English can read Kipling."

"But what do you think, General? Chap strikes me as genuine—that portrait of Lady Evelyn clenched things, I take it."

"Confound it! We haven't absolutely proved anything, pro or con," General Crandall grumbled, in perplexity. "Thing'll have to be decided by the Indian—what he finds, or doesn't find—in Woodhouse's room. Let you know soon as I hear."

Bishop hurried to make his adieux to Lady Crandall and her guest, and was starting for the doors when Woodhouse, stepping in from the balcony, offered to join him. The governor stopped him.

"By the way, Captain, if you'll wait for me a minute I should like your company down the Rock."

Bishop had gone, and the general, taking Woodhouse's agreement for granted, also left the room.

Woodhouse, suddenly thrown back on his guard, could find nothing to do but assent. But when Lady Crandall excused herself on the score of having to dress for dinner, he welcomed compensation in being alone with the girl who had gone with him steadfastly, unflinchingly, through moments of trial. She stood before the curtains screening the balcony, hesitant, apparently meditating flight. To her Woodhouse went, in his eyes an appeal for a moment alone which would not be denied.

"You were—very kind to me," he began, his voice very low and broken. "If it had not been—for your help, I would have——"

"I could not see you—see you grope blindly—and fail." She turned her head to look back through the opened glass doors to the swiftly moving dots in the distance that represented the incoming battle fleet.

"But was there no other reason except just humanity to prompt you?" He had possessed himself of one of her hands now, and his eyes compelled her to turn her own to meet their gaze. "Once when they—were trying to trip me, I caught a look from your eyes, and—and it was more than—than pity."

"You are presuming too much," the girl parried faintly; but Woodhouse would not be rebuffed.

"You must hear me," he rushed on impetuously. "This is a strange time for me to say this, but you say you are going—going away soon. I may not have another opportunity—hear me! I am terribly in earnest when I tell you I love you—love you beyond all believing. No, no! Not for what you have done for me, but for what you are to me—beloved."

She quickly pulled her hand free from his grasp and tried to move to the door. He blocked her way.

"I can not have you go without a word from you," he pleaded. "Just a word to tell me I may——"

"How can you expect—that—I—knowing what I do——" She was stumbling blindly, but persisted: "You, who have deceived others, are deceiving them now—how can I know you are not deceiving me, too?"

"I can not explain." He dropped his head hopelessly, and his voice seemed lifeless. "It is a time of war. You must accept my word that I am honest—with you."

She slowly shook her head and started again for the double doors. "Perhaps—when you prove that to me——." He took an eager step toward her. "But, no, you can not. I will be sailing so soon, and—and you must forget."

"You ask the impossible!" Woodhouse quickly seized her hand and raised it to his lips. As he did so, the double doors opened noiselessly and Jaimihr Khan stood between them, sphinx-like.

Jane, startled, withdrew her hand, and without a farewell glance, ran across the library and through the door to Lady Crandall's room. Jaimihr Khan, with a cold glance at Woodhouse, moved silently to the door of General Crandall's room and knocked.

"It is I—Jaimihr Khan," he answered to the muffled hail from within. "Yes, General Sahib, I will wait."

He turned and looked toward Woodhouse. The latter had taken a cigarette from the case Almer had sent him through Jane, and was turning it over in his hand curiously. The Indian, treading like a hunting cat, began lighting candles. His tour of the room brought him to the captain's side, and there he stood, motionless, until Woodhouse, with a start, observed him.

"Cap-tain Wood-house has been most in-discreet," he said, in his curious mechanical way of speech.

Woodhouse turned on him angrily.

"What do you mean?" he snapped.

"Is it that they have ceased to teach discretion—at the Wilhelmstrasse?" The Indian's face was a mask.

"I know nothing about the Wilhelmstrasse," the white man answered, in a voice suddenly strained.

"Then it is veree, veree foolish for the captain to leave in his room these plans." Jaimihr Khan took from his girdle a thin roll of blue prints—the plans of the signal tower and Room D which Almer had given Woodhouse the night before. He held them gingerly between slender thumb and forefinger.

Woodhouse recoiled.

"The general sahib has sent me to search the cap-tain's room," the even voice of Jaimihr Khan ran on. "Behold the results of my journey!"

Woodhouse sent a lightning glance at the door leading to the governor's room, then stepped lightly away from the Indian and regarded him with hard calculating eyes.

"What do you propose to do—with those plans?"

"What should I do?" The white shoulders of the Indian went up in a shrug. "They will stand you before a wall, Cap-tain Wood-house. And fire. It is the price of in-discretion at a time like this."

Woodhouse's right hand whipped back to his holster, which hung from his sword belt, and came forward again with a thick, short-barreled weapon in it.