Inside the Lines

CHAPTER V
A FERRET

Consider the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria. Even to the guard, unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing. But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate has its victim pushed into a corner. So submerged was Capper under the flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station—a tall, quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his white livery. The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class carriage behind the one in which Capper rode.

Here was Capper—poor old Hardluck Billy Capper—floored again, and just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor strain of self-pity under the brown bowler. A failure once more, and through no fault of his own. No, no! Hadn't he been ready to deliver the goods? Hadn't he come all the way down here from Berlin, faithful to his pledge to Louisa, the girl in the Wilhelmstrasse, ready and willing to embark on that important mission of which he was to be told by Doctor Emil Koch? And what happens? Koch turns him into the street like a dog; threatens to have him before the military as a spy if he doesn't make himself scarce. Koch refuses even to admit he'd ever heard of the Wilhelmstrasse. Clever beggar! A jolly keen eye he's got for his own skin; won't take a chance on being betrayed into the hands of the English, even when he ought to see that a chap's honest when he comes and tells a straight story about losing that silly little bit of paper with his working number on it. What difference if he can't produce the ticket when he has the number pat on the tip of his tongue, and is willing to risk his own life to give that number to a stranger?

Back upon the old perplexity that had kept Capper's brain on strain ever since the first day aboard La Vendée—who had lifted his ticket, and when was it done? The man recalled, for the hundredth time, his awakening aboard the French liner—what a horror that first morning was, with the ratty little surgeon feeding a fellow aromatic spirits of ammonia like porridge! Capper, in this mood of detached review, saw himself painfully stretching out his arm from his bunk to grasp his stick the very first minute he was alone in the stateroom; the crooked handle comes off under his turning, and the white wisp of paper is stuck in the hollow of the stick. Blank paper!

Safe as safe could be had been that little square of paper Louisa had given him with his expense money, from the day he left Berlin until—when? To be sure, he had treated himself to a little of the grape in Paris and, maybe, in Marseilles; but his brain had been clear every minute. Oh, Capper would have sworn to that! The whole business of the disappearance of his Wilhelmstrasse ticket and the substitution of the blank was simply another low trick the Capper luck had played on him.

The train rushed through the dark toward the distant prickly coral bed of lights, and the whirligig of black despair churned under the brown bowler. No beginning, no end to the misery of it. Each new attempt to force a little light of hope into the blackness of his plight fetched up at the same dead wall—here was Billy Capper, hired by the Wilhelmstrasse, after having been booted out of the secret offices of England and Belgium—given a show for his white alley—and he couldn't move a hand to earn his new salary. Nor could he go back to Berlin, even though he dared return with confession of the stolen ticket; Berlin was no place for an Englishman right now, granting he could get there. No, he was in the backwash again—this time in this beastly half-caste city of Alexandria, and with—how much was it now?—with a beggarly fifteen pounds between himself and the beach.

Out of the ruck of Capper's sad reflections the old persistent call began to make itself heard before ever the train from Ramleh pulled into the Alexandria station. That elusive country of fountains, incense and rose dreams which can only be approached through the neck of a bottle spread itself before him alluringly, inviting him to forgetfulness. And Capper answered the call.

From the railroad station, he set his course through narrow villainous streets down to the district on Pharos, where the deep-water men of all the world gather to make vivid the nights of Egypt. Behind him was the faithful shadow, Cæsar, Doctor Koch's man. The Numidian trailed like a panther, slinking from cover to cover, bending his body as the big cat does to the accommodations of the trail's blinds.

Once Capper found himself in a blind alley, turned and strode out of it just in time to bump heavily into the unsuspected pursuer. Instantly a hem of the Numidian's cloak was lifted to screen his face, but not before the sharp eyes of the Englishman had seen and recognized it. A tart smile curled the corners of Capper's mouth as he passed on down the bazaar-lined street to the Tavern of Thermopylæ, at the next corner. So old Koch was taking precautions, eh? Well, Capper, for one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances?

The Tavern of Thermopylæ was built for the Billy Cappers of the world—a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the stranger's money. Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as one could find from Port Said to Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor. Greeks, Levantines, Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the African back country—all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old Testament police records was represented there.

Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a deserted corner of the smoke-filled room. There was music, of sorts, and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship to those who needed company with their drink. But Billy Capper ignored the music and closed his ears to the sirens; he knew who was his best cup companion.

The thin green blood of the wormwood drip-dripped down on to the ice in Capper's glass, coloring it with a rime like moss. He watched it, fascinated, and when he sipped the cold sicky-sweet liquor he was eager as a child to see how the pictures the absinth drew on the ice had been changed by the draft. Sip—sip; a soothing numbness came to the tortured nerves. Sip—sip; the clouds of doubt and self-pity pressing down on his brain began to shred away. He saw things clearly now; everything was sharp and clear as the point of an icicle.

He reviewed, with new zest, his recent experiences, from the night he met Louisa in the Café Riche up to his interview with Doctor Koch. Louisa—that girl with the face of a fine animal and a heart as cold as carved amethyst; why had she been so willing to intercede for Billy Capper with her superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse and procure him a number and a mission to Alexandria? For his information regarding the Anglo-Belgian understanding? But she paid for that; the deal was fairly closed with three hundred marks. Did Louisa go further and list him in the Wilhelmstrasse out of the goodness of her heart, or for old memory's sake? Capper smiled wryly over his absinth. There was no goodness in Louisa's heart, and the strongest memory she had was how nearly Billy Capper had dragged her down with him in the scandal of the Lord Fisher letters.

How the thin green blood of the wormwood cleared the mind—made it leap to logical reasoning!

Why had Louisa instructed him to leave Marseilles by the steamer touching at Malta when a swifter boat scheduled to go to Alexandria direct was leaving the French port a few hours later? Was it that the girl intended he should get no farther than Malta; that the English there should——

Capper laughed like the philosopher who has just discovered the absolute of life's futility. The ticket—his ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse which Louisa had procured for him; Louisa wanted that for other purposes, and used him as the dummy to obtain it. She wanted it before he could arrive at Malta—and she got it before he left Marseilles. Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the Double 0 on the wheel—fate's percentage in every game; she could not know the Vendée would be warned from lingering at Malta because of the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria, after all.

The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical exactness of deduction. As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria—the poor deluded body of a dupe. With this certitude of logic came the beginnings of resolve. Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by the absinth to focus, was this new determination. Capper nursed it, elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing himself in the new light of a humble hero. It was near morning, and the Tavern of Thermopylæ was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to his hotel. His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and acutely sober.

"Very drunk, master," was the report Cæsar, the Numidian, delivered to Doctor Koch at the Ramleh villa. The doctor, believing Cæsar to be a competent judge, chuckled in his beard. Cæsar was called off from the trail.

Across the street from Doctor Koch's home on Queen's Terrace was the summer home of a major of fusileers, whose station was up the Nile. But this summer it was not occupied. The major had hurried his family back to England at the first mutterings of the great war, and he himself had to stick by his regiment up in the doubtful Sudan country. Like Doctor Koch's place, the major's yard was surrounded by a high wall, over which the fronds of big palms and flowered shrubs draped themselves. The nearest villa, aside from the Kochs' across the street, was a hundred yards away. At night an arc light, set about thirty feet from Doctor Koch's gate, marked all the road thereabouts with sharp blocks of light and shadow. One lying close atop the wall about the major's yard, screened by the palms and the heavy branches of some night-blooming ghost flower, could command a perfect view of Doctor Koch's gateway without being himself visible.

At least, so Billy Capper found it on the night following his visit to the German physician's and his subsequent communion with himself at the Tavern of Thermopylæ. Almost with the falling of the dark, Capper had stepped off the train at Ramleh station, ferried himself by boat down the canal that passed behind the major's home, after careful reconnoitering, discovered that the tangle of wildwood about the house was not guarded by a watchman, and had so achieved his position of vantage on top of the wall directly opposite the gateway of No. 32. He was stretched flat. Through the spaces between the dry fingers of a palm leaf he could command a good view of the gate and of the road on either side. Few pedestrians passed below him; an automobile or two puffed by; but in the main, Queen's Terrace was deserted and Capper was alone. It was a tedious vigil. Capper had no reliance except his instinct of a spy familiar with spy's work to assure that he would be rewarded for his pains. Some sixth sense in him had prompted him to come thither, sure in the promise that the night would not be misspent. A clock somewhere off in the odorous dark struck the hour twice, and Capper fidgeted. The hard stone he was lying on cramped him.

The sound of footsteps on the flagged walk aroused momentary interest. He looked out through his screen of green and saw a tall well-knit figure of a man approach the opposite gate, stop and ring the bell. Instantly Capper tingled with the hunting fever of his trade. In the strong light from the arc he could study minutely the face of the man at the gate—smoothly shaven, slightly gaunt and with thin lips above a strong chin. It was a striking face—one easily remembered. The gate opened; beyond it Capper saw, for an instant, the white figure of the Numidian he had bumped into at the alley's mouth. The gate closed on both.

Another weary hour for the ferret on the wall, then something happened that was reward enough for cramped muscles and taut nerves. An automobile purred up to the gate; out of it hopped two men, while a third, tilted over like one drunk, remained on the rear seat of the tonneau. One rang the bell. The two before the gate fidgeted anxiously for it to be opened. Capper paid not so much heed to them as to the half-reclining figure in the machine. It was in strong light. Capper saw, with a leap of his heart, that the man in the machine was clothed in the khaki service uniform of the British army—an officer's uniform he judged by the trimness of its fitting, though he could not see the shoulder straps. The unconscious man was bareheaded and one side of his face was darkened by a broad trickle of blood from the scalp.

When the gate opened, there were a few hurried words between the Numidian and the two who had waited. All three united in lifting an inert figure from the car and carrying it quickly through the gate. Consumed with the desire to follow them into the labyrinth of the doctor's yard, yet not daring, Capper remained plastered to the wall.

Captain Woodhouse, sitting in the consultation room with the doctor, heard the front door open and the scuffle of burdened feet in the hall. Doctor Koch hopped nimbly to the folding doors and threw them back. First, the Numidian's broad back, then, the bent shoulders of two other men, both illy dressed, came into view. Between them they carried the form of a man in officer's khaki. Woodhouse could not check a fluttering of the muscles in his cheeks; this was a surprise to him; the doctor had given no hint of it.

"Good—good!" clucked Koch, indicating that they should lay their burden on the operating chair. "Any trouble?"

"None in the least, Herr Doktor," the larger of the two white men answered. "At the corner of the warehouse near the docks, where it is dark—he was going early to the Princess Mary, and——"

"Yes, a tap on the head—so?" Koch broke in, casting a quick glance toward where Captain Woodhouse had risen from his seat. A shrewd appraising glance it was, which was not lost on Woodhouse. He stepped forward to join the physician by the side of the figure on the operating chair.

"Our man, Doctor?" he queried casually.

"Your name sponsor," Koch answered, with a satisfied chuckle; "the original Captain Woodhouse of his majesty's signal service, formerly stationed at Wady Halfa."

"Quite so," the other answered in English. Doctor Koch clapped him on the shoulder.

"Perfect, man! You do the Englishman from the book. It will fool them all."

Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. Koch cackled on, as he began to lay out sponge and gauze bandages on the glass-topped table by the operating chair:

"You see, I did not tell you of this because—well, that fellow Capper's coming last night looked bad; even your explanation did not altogether convince. So I thought we'd have this little surprise for you. If you were an Englishman you'd show it in the face of this—you couldn't help it. Eh?"

"Possibly not," the captain vouchsafed. "But what is your plan, Doctor? What are you going to do with this Captain Woodhouse to insure his being out of the way while I am in Gibraltar. I hope no violence—unless necessary."

"Nothing more violent than a violent headache and some fever," Koch answered. He was busy fumbling in the unconscious man's pockets. From the breast pocket of the uniform jacket he withdrew a wallet, glanced at its contents, and passed it to the captain.

"Your papers, Captain—the papers of transfer from Wady Halfa to Gibraltar. Money, too. I suppose we'll have to take that, also, to make appearances perfect—robbery following assault on the wharves."

Woodhouse pocketed the military papers in the wallet and laid it down, the money untouched. The two white aids of Doctor Koch, who were standing by the folding doors, eyed the leather folder hungrily. Koch, meanwhile, had stripped off the jacket from the Englishman and was rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. That done, he brought down from the top of the glass instrument case a wooden rack containing several test tubes, stoppled with cotton. One glass tube he lifted out of the rack and squinted at its clouded contents against the light.

"A very handy little thing—very handy." Koch was talking to himself as much as to Woodhouse. "A sweet little product of the Niam Niam country down in Belgian Kongo. Natives think no more of it than they would of a water fly's bite; but the white man is——"

"A virus of some kind?" the other guessed.

"Of my own isolation," Doctor Koch answered proudly. He scraped the skin on the victim's arm until the blood came, then dipped an ivory spatula into the tube of murky gelatine and transferred what it brought up to the raw place in the flesh.

"The action is very quick, and may be violent," he continued. "Our friend here won't recover consciousness for three days, and he will be unable to stand on his feet for two weeks, at least—dizziness, intermittent fever, clouded memory; he'll be pretty sick."

"But not too sick to communicate with others," Woodhouse suggested. "Surely——"

"Maybe not too sick, but unable to communicate with others," Doctor Koch interrupted, with a booming laugh. "This time to-morrow night our friend will be well out on the Libyan Desert, with some ungentle Bedouins for company. He's bound for Fezzan—and it will be a long way home without money. Who knows? Maybe three months."

Very deftly Koch bound up the abrasion on the Englishman's arm with gauze, explaining as he worked that the man's desert guardians would have instructions to remove the bandages before he recovered his faculties. There would be nothing to tell the luckless prisoner more than that he had been kidnaped, robbed and carried away by tribesmen—a not uncommon occurrence in lower Egypt. Koch completed his work by directing his aids to strip off the rest of the unconscious man's uniform and clothe him in a nondescript civilian garb that Cæsar brought into the consultation room from the mysterious upper regions of the house.

"Exit Captain Woodhouse of the signal service," the smiling doctor exclaimed when the last button of the misfit jacket had been flipped into its buttonhole, "and enter Captain Woodhouse of the Wilhelmstrasse." Turning, he bowed humorously to the lean-faced man beside him. He nodded his head at Cæsar; the latter dived into a cupboard at the far end of the room and brought out a squat flask and glasses, which he passed around. When the liquor had been poured, Doctor Koch lifted his glass and squinted through it with the air of a gentle satyr.

"Gentlemen, we drink to what will happen soon on the Rock of Gibraltar!" All downed the toast gravely. Then the master of the house jerked his head toward the unconscious man on the operating chair. Cæsar and the two white men lifted the limp body and started with it to the door, Doctor Koch preceding them to open doors. The muffled chug-chugging of the auto at the gate sounded almost at once.

The doctor and Number Nineteen Thirty-two remained together in the consultation room for a few minutes, going over, in final review, the plans that the latter was to put into execution at the great English stronghold on the Rock. The captain looked at his watch, found the hour late, and rose to depart. Doctor Koch accompanied him to the gate, and stood with him for a minute under the strong light from the near-by arc.

"You go direct to the Princess Mary?" he asked.

"Direct to the Princess Mary," the other answered. "She is to sail at five o'clock."

"Then God guard you, my friend, on—your great adventure." They clasped hands, and the gate closed behind the doctor.

A shadow skipped from the top of the wall about the major's house across the road. A shadow dogged the footsteps of the tall well-knit man who strode down the deserted Queen's Terrace toward the tiled station by the tracks. A little more than an hour later, the same shadow flitted up the gangplank of the Princess Mary at her berth. When the big P. & O. liner pulled out at dawn, she carried among her saloon passengers one registered as "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service," and in her second cabin a "William Capper."

CHAPTER VI
A FUGITIVE

"No, madam does not know me; but she must see me. Oh, I know she will see me. Tell her, please, it is a girl from New York all alone in Paris who needs her help."

The butler looked again at the card the visitor had given him. Quick suspicion flashed into his tired eyes—the same suspicion that had all Paris mad.

"Ger-son—Mademoiselle Ger-son. That name, excuse me, if I say it—that name ees——"

"It sounds German; yes. Haven't I had that told me a thousand times these last few days?" The girl's shoulders drooped limply, and she tried to smile, but somehow failed. "But it's my name, and I'm an American—been an American twenty-two years. Please—please!"

"Madam the ambassador's wife; she ees overwhelm wiz woark." The butler gave the door an insinuating push. Jane Gerson's patent-leather boot stopped it. She made a quick rummage in her bag, and when she withdrew her hand, a bit of bank paper crinkled in it. The butler pocketed the note with perfect legerdemain, smiled a formal thanks and invited Jane into the dark cool hallway of the embassy. She dropped on a skin-covered couch, utterly spent. Hours she had passed moving, foot by foot, in an interminable line, up to a little wicket in a steamship office, only to be told, "Every boat's sold out." Other grilling hours she had passed similarly before the express office, to find, at last, that her little paper booklet of checks was as worthless as a steamship folder. Food even lacked, because the money she offered was not acceptable. For a week she had lived in the seething caldron that was Paris in war time, harried, buffeted, trampled and stampeded—a chip on the froth of madness. This day, the third of August, found Jane Gerson summoning the last remnants of her flagging nerve to the supreme endeavor. Upon her visit to the embassy depended everything: her safety, the future she was battling for. But now, with the first barrier passed, she found herself suddenly faint and weak.

"Madam the ambassador's wife will see you. Come!" The butler's voice sounded from afar off, though Jane saw the gleaming buckles at his knees very close. The pounding of her heart almost choked her as she rose to follow him. Down a long hall and into a richly furnished drawing-room, now strangely transformed by the presence of desks, filing cabinets, and busy girl stenographers; the click of typewriters and rustle of papers gave the air of an office at top pressure. The butler showed Jane to a couch near the portières and withdrew. From the tangle of desks at the opposite end of the room, a woman with a kindly face crossed, with hand extended. Jane rose, grasped the hand and squeezed convulsively.

"You are——"

"Yes, my dear, I am the wife of the ambassador. Be seated and tell me all your troubles. We are pretty busy here, but not too busy to help—if we can."

Jane looked into the sympathetic eyes of the ambassador's wife, and what she found there was like a draft of water to her parched soul. The elder woman, smiling down into the white face, wherein the large brown eyes burned unnaturally bright, saw a trembling of the lips instantly conquered by a rallying will, and she patted the small hand hearteningly.

"Dear lady," Jane began, almost as a little child, "I must get out of Paris, and I've come to you to help me. Every way is closed except through you."

"So many hundreds like you, poor girl. All want to get back to the home country, and we are so helpless to aid every one." The lady of the embassy thought, as she cast a swift glance over the slender shoulders and diminutive figure beneath them, that here, indeed, was a babe in the woods. The blatant, self-assured tourist demanding assistance from her country's representative as a right she knew; also the shifty, sloe-eyed demi-vierge who wanted no questions asked. But such a one as this little person——

"You see, I am a buyer for Hildebrand's store in New York." Jane was rushing breathlessly to the heart of her tragedy. "This is my very first trip as buyer, and—it will be my last unless I can get through the lines and back to New York. I have seventy of the very last gowns from Poiret, from Paquin and Worth—you know what they will mean in the old town back home—and I must—just simply must get them through. You understand! With them, Hildebrand can crow over every other gown shop in New York. He can be supreme, and I will be—well, I will be made!"

The kindly eyes were still smiling, and the woman's heart, which is unchanged even in the breast of an ambassador's wife, was leaping to the magic lure of that simple word—gowns.

"But—but the banks refuse to give me a cent on my letter of credit. The express office says my checks, which I brought along for incidentals, can not be cashed. The steamship companies will not sell a berth in the steerage, even, out of Havre or Antwerp or Southampton—everything gobbled up. You can't get trunks on an aeroplane, or I'd try that. I just don't know where to turn, and so I've come to you. You must know some way out."

Jane unconsciously clasped her hands in supplication, and upon her face, flushed now with the warmth of her pleading, was the dawning of hope. It was as if the girl were assured that once the ambassador's wife heard her story, by some magic she could solve the difficulties. The older woman read this trust, and was touched by it.

"Have you thought of catching a boat at Gibraltar?" she asked. "They are not so crowded; people haven't begun to rush out of Italy yet."

"But nobody will honor my letter of credit," Jane mourned. "And, besides, all the trains south of Paris are given up to the mobilization. Nobody can ride on them but soldiers." The lady of the embassy knit her brows for a few minutes while Jane anxiously scanned her face. Finally she spoke:

"The ambassador knows a gentleman—a large-hearted American gentleman here in Paris—who has promised his willingness to help in deserving cases by advancing money on letters of credit. And with money there is a way—just a possible way—of getting to Gibraltar. Leave your letter of credit with me, my dear; go to the police station in the district where you live and get your pass through the lines, just as a precaution against the possibility of your being able to leave to-night. Then come back here and see me at four o'clock. Perhaps—just a chance——"

Hildebrand's buyer seized the hands of the embassy's lady ecstatically, tumbled words of thanks crowding to her lips. When she went out into the street, the sun was shining as it had not shone for her for a dreary terrible week.

At seven o'clock that night a big Roman-nosed automobile, long and low and powerful as a torpedo on wheels, pulled up at the door of the American embassy. Two bulky osier baskets were strapped on the back of its tonneau; in the rear seat were many rugs. A young chap with a sharp shrewd face—an American—sat behind the wheel.

The door of the embassy opened, and Jane Gerson, swathed in veils, and with a gray duster buttoned tight about her, danced out; behind her followed the ambassador, the lady of the embassy and a bevy of girls, the volunteer aids of the overworked representative's staff. Jane's arms went about the ambassador's wife in an impulsive hug of gratitude and good-by; the ambassador received a hearty handshake for his "God speed you!" A waving of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the car leaped forward. Jane Gerson leaned far over the back, and, through cupped hands, she shouted: "I'll paint Hildebrand's sign on the Rock of Gibraltar!"

Over bridges and through outlying faubourgs sped the car until the Barrier was gained. There crossed bayonets denying passage, an officer with a pocket flash pawing over pass and passport, a curt dismissal, and once more the motor purred its speed song, and the lights of the road flashed by. More picket lines, more sprouting of armed men from the dark, and flashing of lights upon official signatures. On the heights appeared the hump-shouldered bastions of the great outer forts, squatting like huge fighting beasts of the night, ready to spring upon the invader. Bugles sounded; the white arms of search-lights swung back and forth across the arc of night in their ceaseless calisthenics; a murmuring and stamping of many men and beasts was everywhere.

The ultimate picket line gained and passed, the car leaped forward with the bound of some freed animal, its twin headlights feeling far ahead the road to the south. Behind lay Paris, the city of dread. Ahead—far ahead, where the continent is spiked down with a rock, Gibraltar. Beyond that the safe haven from this madness of the millions—America.

Jane Gerson stretched out her arms to the vision and laughed shrilly.

CHAPTER VII
THE HOTEL SPLENDIDE

Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Gibraltar's Waterport Street, was alone in his office, busy over his books. The day was August fifth. The night before the cable had flashed word to General Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock, that England had hurled herself into the great war. But that was no concern of Mr. Joseph Almer except as it affected the hotel business; admittedly it did bring complications there.

A sleek well-fed Swiss he was; one whose neutrality was publicly as impervious as the rocky barriers of his home land. A bland eye and a suave professional smile were the ever-present advertisements of urbanity on Joseph Almer's chubby countenance. He spoke with an accent that might have got him into trouble with the English masters of the Rock had they not known that certain cantons in Switzerland occupy an unfortunate contiguity with Germany, and Almer, therefore, was hardly to be blamed for an accident of birth. From a window of his office, he looked out on crooked Waterport Street, where all the world of the Mediterranean shuffled by on shoes, slippers and bare feet. Just across his desk was the Hotel Splendide's reception room—a sad retreat, wherein a superannuated parlor set of worn red plush tried to give the lie to the reflection cast back at it by the dingy gold-framed mirror over the battered fireplace. Gaudy steamship posters and lithographs of the Sphinx and kindred tourists' delights were the walls' only decorations. Not even the potted palm, which is the hotel man's cure-all, was there to screen the interior of the office-reception room from the curious eyes of the street, just beyond swinging glass doors. Joseph Almer had taken poetic license with the word "splendide"; but in Gibraltar that is permissible; necessary, in fact. Little there lives up to its reputation save the Rock itself.

It was four in the afternoon. The street outside steamed with heat, and the odors that make Gibraltar a lasting memory were at their prime of distillation. The proprietor of the Splendide was nodding over his books. A light footfall on the boards beyond the desk roused him. A girl with two cigar boxes under her arm slipped, like a shadow, up to the desk. She was dressed in the bright colors of Spain, claret-colored skirt under a broad Romany sash, and with thin white waist, open at rounded throat. A cheap tortoise-shell comb held her coils of chestnut hair high on her head. Louisa of the Wilhelmstrasse; but not the same Louisa—the sophisticated Louisa of the Café Riche and the Winter Garden. A timid little cigar maker she was, here in Gibraltar.

"Louisa!" Almer's head bobbed up on a suddenly stiffened neck as he whispered her name. She set her boxes of cigars on the desk, opened them, and as she made gestures to point the worthiness of her wares, she spoke swiftly, and in a half whisper:

"All is as we hoped, Almer. He comes on the Princess Mary—a cablegram from Koch just got through to-day. I wanted——"

"You mean——" Almer thrust his head forward in his eagerness, and his eyes were bright beads.

"Captain Woodhouse—our Captain Woodhouse!" The girl's voice trembled in exultation. "And his number—his Wilhelmstrasse number—is—listen carefully: Nineteen Thirty-two."

"Nineteen Thirty-two," Almer repeated, under his breath. Then aloud: "On the Princess Mary, you say?"

"Yes; she is already anchored in the straits. The tenders are coming ashore. He will come here, for such were his directions in Alexandria." Louisa started to move toward the street door.

"But you," Almer stopped her; "the English are making a round-up of suspects on the Rock. They will ask questions—perhaps arrest——"

"Me? No, I think not. Just because I was away from Gibraltar for six weeks and have returned so recently is not enough to rouse suspicion. Haven't I been Josepha, the cigar girl, to every Tommy in the garrison for nearly a year? No—no, señor; you are wrong. These are the purest cigars made south of Madrid. Indeed, señor."

The girl had suddenly changed her tone to one of professional wheedling, for she saw three entering the door. Almer lifted his voice angrily:

"Josepha, your mother is substituting with these cigars. Take them back and tell her if I catch her doing this again it means the cells for her."

The cigar girl bowed her head in simulated fright, sped past the incoming tourists, and lost herself in the shifting crowd on the street. Almer permitted himself to mutter angrily as he turned back to his books.

"You see, mother? See that hotel keeper lose his temper and tongue-lash that poor girl? Just what I tell you—these foreigners don't know how to be polite to ladies."

Henry J. Sherman—"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"—mopped his bald pink dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer. Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to need little invitation to be precipitated into a crying spell. Her daughter Kitty, a winsome little slip, stood behind her, arms about the mother's neck, and her hands stroking the maternal cheeks.

"There—there, mother; everything'll come out right," Kitty vaguely assured. Mrs. Sherman, determined to have no eye for the cloud's silver lining, rocked back and forth on the sofa and gave voice to her woe:

"Oh, we'll never see Kewanee again. I know it! I know it! With everybody pushing and shoving us away from the steamers—everybody refusing to cash our checks, and all this fighting going on somewhere up among the Belgians——" The lady from Kewanee pulled out the stopper of her grief, and the tears came copiously. Mr. Sherman, who had made an elaborate pretense of studying a steamer guide he found on the table, looked up hurriedly and blew his nose loudly in sympathy.

"Cheer up, mother. Even if this first trip of ours—this 'Grand Tower,' as the guide-books call it—has been sorta tough, we had one compensation anyway. We saw the Palace of Peace at the Hague before the war broke out. Guess they're leasing it for a skating rink now, though."

"How can you joke when we're in such a fix? He-Henry, you ne-never do take things seriously!"

"Why not joke, mother? Only thing you can do over here you don't have to pay for. Cheer up! There's the Saxonia due here from Naples some time soon. Maybe we can horn a way up her gangplank. Consul says——"

Mrs. Sherman looked up from her handkerchief with withering scorn.

"Tell me a way we can get aboard any ship without having the money to pay our passage. Tell me that, Henry Sherman!"

"Well, we've been broke before, mother," her spouse answered cheerily, rocking himself on heels and toes. "Remember when we were first married and had that little house on Liberty Street—the newest house in Kewanee it was; and we didn't have a hired girl, then, mother. But we come out all right, didn't we?" He patted his daughter's shoulder and winked ponderously. "Come on, girls and boys, we'll go look over those Rock Chambers the English hollowed out. We can't sit in our room and mope all day."

The gentleman who knew Kewanee was making for the door when Almer, the suave, came out from behind his desk and stopped him with a warning hand.

"I am afraid the gentleman can not see the famous Rock Chambers," he purred. "This is war time—since yesterday, you know. Tourists are not allowed in the fortifications."

"Like to see who'd stop me!" Henry J. Sherman drew himself up to his full five feet seven and frowned at the Swiss. Almer rubbed his hands.

"A soldier—with a gun, most probably, sir."

Mrs. Sherman rose and hurried to her husband's side, in alarm.

"Henry—Henry! Don't you go and get arrested again! Remember that last time—the Frenchman at that Bordeaux town." Sherman allowed discretion to soften his valor.

"Well, anyway"—he turned again to the proprietor—"they'll let us see that famous signal tower up on top of the Rock. Mother, they say from that tower up there, they can keep tabs on a ship sixty miles away. Fellow down at the consulate was telling me just this morning that's the king-pin of the whole works. Harbor's full of mines and things; electric switch in the signal tower. Press a switch up there, and everything in the harbor—Blam!" He shot his hands above his head to denote the cataclysm. Almer smiled sardonically and drew the Illinois citizen to one side.

"I would give you a piece of advice," he said in a low voice. "It is——"

"Say, proprietor; you don't charge for advice, do you?" Sherman regarded him quizzically.

"It is this," Almer went on, unperturbed: "If I were you I would not talk much about the fortifications of the Rock. Even talk is—ah—dangerous if too much indulged."

"Huh! I guess you're right," said Sherman thoughtfully. "You see—we don't know much about diplomacy out where I come from. Though that ain't stopping any of the Democrats from going abroad in the Diplomatic Service as fast as Bryan'll take 'em."

Interruption came startlingly. A sergeant and three soldiers with guns swung through the open doors from Waterport Street. Gun butts struck the floor with a heavy thud. The sergeant stepped forward and saluted Almer with a businesslike sweep of hand to visor.

"See here, landlord!" the sergeant spoke up briskly. "Fritz, the barber, lives here, does he not?" Almer nodded. "We want him. Find him in the barber shop, eh?"

The sergeant turned and gave directions to the guard. They tramped through a swinging door by the side of the desk while the Shermans, parents and daughter alike, looked on, with round eyes. In less than a minute, the men in khaki returned, escorting a quaking man in white jacket. The barber, greatly flustered, protested in English strongly reminiscent of his fatherland.

"Orders to take you, Fritz," the sergeant explained not unkindly.

"But I haf done nothing," the barber cried. "For ten years I haf shaved you. You know I am a harmless old German." The sergeant shrugged.

"I fancy they think you are working for the Wilhelmstrasse, Fritz, and they want to have you where they can keep their eyes on you. Sorry, you know."

The free-born instincts of Henry J. Sherman would not be downed longer. He had witnessed the little tragedy of the German barber with growing ire, and now he stepped up to the sergeant truculently.

"Seems to me you're not giving Fritz here a square deal, if you want to know what I think," he blustered. "Now, in my country——" The sergeant turned on him sharply.

"Who are you—and what are you doing in Gib?" he snapped. A moan from Mrs. Sherman, who threw herself in her daughter's arms.

"Kitty, your father's gone and got himself arrested again!"

"Who am I?" Sherman echoed with dignity. "My name, young fellow, is Henry J. Sherman, and I live in Kewanee, Illynoy. I'm an American citizen, and you can't——"

"Your passports—quick!" The sergeant held out his hand imperiously.

"Oh, that's all right, young fellow; I've got 'em, all right." Kewanee's leading light began to fumble in the spacious breast pocket of his long-tailed coat. As he groped through a packet of papers and letters, he kept up a running fire of comment and exposition:

"Had 'em this afternoon, all right. Here; no, that's my letter of credit. It would buy Main Street at home, but I can't get a ham sandwich on it here. This is—no; that's my only son's little girl, Emmaline, taken the day she was four years old. Fancy little girl, eh? Now, that's funny I can't—here's that list of geegaws I was to buy for my partner in the Empire Mills, flour and buckwheat. Guess he'll have to whistle for 'em. Now don't get impatient, young fellow. This—— Land's sakes, mother, that letter you gave me to mail, in Algy-kiras—— Ah, here you are, all proper and scientific enough as passports go, I guess."

The sergeant whisked the heavily creased document from Sherman's hand, scanned it hastily, and gave it back, without a word. The outraged American tucked up his chin and gave the sergeant glare for glare.

"If you ever come to Kewanee, young fellow," he snorted. "I'll be happy to show you our new jail."

"Close in! March!" commanded the sergeant. The guard surrounded the hapless barber and wheeled through the door, their guns hedging his white jacket about inexorably. Sherman's hands spread his coat tails wide apart, and he rocked back and forth on heels and toes, his eyes smoldering.

"Come on, father"—Kitty had slipped her hand through her dad's arm, and was imparting direct strategy in a low voice—"we'll take mother down the street to look at the shops and make her forget our troubles. They've got some wonderful Moroccan bazaars in town; Baedeker says so."

"Shops, did you say?" Mrs. Sherman perked up at once, forgetting her grief under the superior lure.

"Yes, mother. Come on, let's go down and look 'em over." Sherman's good humor was quite restored. He pinched Kitty's arm in compliment for her guile. "Maybe they'll let us look at their stuff without charging anything; but we couldn't buy a postage stamp, remember."

They sailed out into the crowded street and lost themselves amid the scourings of Africa and south Europe. Almer was alone in the office.

The proprietor fidgeted. He walked to the door and looked down the street in the direction of the quays. He pulled his watch from his pocket and compared it with the blue face of the Dutch clock on the wall. His pudgy hands clasped and unclasped themselves behind his back nervously. An Arab hotel porter and runner at the docks came swinging through the front door with a small steamer trunk on his shoulders, and Almer started forward expectantly. Behind the porter came a tall well-knit man, dressed in quiet traveling suit—the Captain Woodhouse who had sailed from Alexandria as a passenger aboard the Princess Mary.

He paused for an instant as his eyes met those of the proprietor. Almer bowed and hastened behind the desk. Woodhouse stepped up to the register and scanned it casually.

"A room, sir?" Almer held out a pen invitingly.

"For the night, yes," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he signed the register. Almer's eyes followed the strokes of the pen eagerly.

"Ah, from Egypt, Captain? You were aboard the Princess Mary, then?"

"From Alexandria, yes. Show me my room, please. Beastly tired."

The Arab porter darted forward, and Woodhouse was turning to follow him when he nearly collided with a man just entering the street door. It was Mr. Billy Capper.

Both recoiled as their eyes met. Just the faintest flicker of surprise, instantly suppressed, tightened the muscles of the captain's jaws. He murmured a "Beg pardon" and started to pass. Capper deliberately set himself in the other's path and, with a wry smile, held out his hand.

"Captain Woodhouse, I believe." Capper put a tang of sarcasm, corroding as acid, into the words. He was still smiling. The other man drew back and eyed him coldly.

"I do not know you. Some mistake," Woodhouse said.

Almer was moving around from behind the desk with the soft tread of a cat, his eyes fixed on the hard-bitten face of Capper.

"Hah! Don't recognize the second-cabin passengers aboard the Princess Mary, eh?" Capper sneered. "Little bit discriminating that way, eh? Well, my name's Capper—Mr. William Capper. Never heard the name—in Alexandria; what?"

"You are drunk. Stand aside!" Woodhouse spoke quietly; his face was very white and strained. Almer launched himself suddenly between the two and laid his hands roughly on Capper's thin shoulders.

"Out you go!" he choked in a thick guttural. "I'll have no loafer insulting guests in my house."

"Oh, you won't, won't you? But supposing I want to take a room here—pay you good English gold for it. You'll sing a different tune, then."

"Before I throw you out, kindly leave my place." By a quick turn, Almer had Capper facing the door; his grip was iron. The smaller man tried to walk to the door with dignity. There he paused and looked back over his shoulder.

"Remember, Captain Woodhouse," he called back. "Remember the name against the time we'll meet again. Capper—Mr. William Capper."

Capper disappeared. Almer came back to begin profuse apologies to his guest. Woodhouse was coolly lighting a cigarette. Their eyes met.

CHAPTER VIII
CHAFF OF WAR

Dinner that evening in the faded dining-room of the Hotel Splendide was in the way of being a doleful affair for the folk from Kewanee, aside from Captain Woodhouse, the only persons at table there. Woodhouse, true to the continental tradition of exclusiveness, had isolated himself against possible approach by sitting at the table farthest from the Shermans; his back presented an uncompromising denial of fraternity. As for Mrs. Sherman, the afternoon's visit to the bazaars had been anything but a solace, emphasizing, as it did, their grievous poverty in the midst of a plenty contemptuous of a mere letter of credit. Henry J. was wallowing in the lowest depths of nostalgia; he tortured himself with the reflection that this was lodge night in Kewanee and he would not be sitting in his chair. Miss Kitty contemplated with melancholy the distress of her parents.

A tall slender youth with tired eyes and affecting the blasé slouch of the boulevards appeared in the door and cast about for a choice of tables. Him Mr. Sherman impaled with a glance of disapproval which suddenly changed to wondering recognition. He dropped his fork and jumped to his feet.

"Bless me, mother, if it isn't Willy Kimball from old Kewanee!" Sherman waved his napkin at the young man, summoning him in the name of Kewanee to come and meet the home folks. The tired eyes lighted perceptibly, and a lukewarm smile played about Mr. Kimball's effeminate mouth as he stepped up to the table.

"Why, Mrs. Sherman—and Kitty! And you, Mr. Sherman—charmed!" He accepted the proffered seat by the side of Kitty, receiving their hearty hails with languid politeness. With the sureness of English restraint, Mr. Willy Kimball refused to become excited. He was of the type of exotic Americans who try to forget grandpa's corn-fed hogs and grandma's hand-churned butter. His speech was of Rotten Row and his clothes Piccadilly.

"Terrible business, this!" The youth fluttered his hands feebly. "All this harrying about and peeping at passports by every silly officer one meets. I'm afraid I'll have to go over to America until it's all over—on my way now, in fact."

"Afraid!" Sherman sniffed loudly, and appraised Mr. Kimball's tailoring with a disapproving eye. "Well, Willy, it would be too bad if you had to go back to Kewanee after your many years in Paris, France; now, wouldn't it?"

Kimball turned to the women for sympathy. "Reserved a compartment to come down from Paris. Beastly treatment. Held up at every city—other people crowded in my apartment, though I'd paid to have it alone, of course—soldier chap comes along and seizes my valet and makes him join the colors and all that sort——"

"Huh! Your father managed to worry along without a val-lay, and he was respected in Kewanee." This in disgust from Henry J.

Kitty flashed a reproving glance at her father and deftly turned the expatriate into a recounting of his adventures. Under her unaffected lead the youth, who shuddered inwardly at the appellation of "Willy," thawed considerably, and soon there was an animated swapping of reminiscences of the Great Terror—hours on end before the banks and express offices, dodging of police impositions, scrambling for steamer accommodations—all that went to compose the refugee Americans' great epic of August, 1914.

Sherman took pride in his superior adventures: "Five times arrested between Berlin and Gibraltar, and what I said to that Dutchman on the Swiss frontier was enough to make his hair curl."

"Tell you what, Willy: you come on back to Kewanee with us, and mother and you'll lecture before the Thursday Afternoon Ladies' Literary Club," Sherman boomed, with a hearty blow of the hand between Willy's shoulder blades. "I'll have Ed Porter announce it in advance in the Daily Enterprise, and we'll have the whole town there to listen. 'Ezra Kimball's Boy Tells Thrilling Tale of War's Alarms.' That's the way the head-lines'll read in the Enterprise next week."

The expatriate shivered and tried to smile.

"We'll let mother do the lecturing," Kitty came to his rescue. "'How to Live in Europe on a Letter of Discredit.' That will have all the gossips of Kewanee buzzing, mother."

The meal drew to a close happily in contrast to its beginning. Mrs. Sherman and her daughter rose to pass out into the reception room. Sherman and Kimball lingered.

"Ah-h, Willy——"

"Mr. Sherman——"

Both began in unison, each somewhat furtive and shamefaced.

"Have you any money?" The queries were voiced as one. For an instant confusion; then the older man looked up into the younger's face—a bit flushed it was—and guffawed.

"Not a postage stamp, Willy! I guess we're both beggars, and if mother and Kitty didn't have five trunks between them this Swiss holdup man who says he's proprietor of this way-station hotel wouldn't trust us for a fried egg."

"Same here," admitted Kimball. "I'm badly bent."

"They can't keep us down—us Americans!" Sherman cheered, taking the youth's arm and piloting him out into the reception room. "We'll find a way out if we have to cable for a warship to come and get us."

Just as Sherman and Kimball emerged from the dining-room, there was a diversion out beyond the glass doors on Waterport Street. A small cart drew up; from its seat jumped a young woman in a duster and with a heavy automobile veil swathed under her chin. To the Arab porter who had bounded out to the street she gave directions for the removal from the cart of her baggage, two heavy suit-cases and two ponderous osier baskets. These latter she was particularly tender of, following them into the hotel's reception room and directing where they should be put before the desk.

The newcomer was Jane Gerson, Hildebrand's buyer, at the end of her gasoline flight from Paris. Cool, capable, self-reliant as on the night she saw the bastions of the capital's outer forts fade under the white spikes of the search-lights, Jane strode up the desk to face the smiling Almer.

"Is this a fortress or a hotel?" she challenged.

"A hotel, lady, a hotel," Almer purred. "A nice room—yes. Will the lady be with us long?"

"Heaven forbid! The lady is going to be on the first ship leaving for New York. And if there are no ships, I'll look over the stock of coal barges you have in your harbor." She seized a pen and dashed her signature on the register. The Shermans had pricked up their ears at the newcomer's first words. Now Henry J. pressed forward, his face glowing welcome.

"An American—a simon-pure citizen of the United States—I thought so. Welcome to the little old Rock!" He took both the girl's hands impulsively and pumped them. Mrs. Sherman, Kitty and Willy Kimball crowded around, and the clatter of voices was instantaneous: "By auto from Paris; goodness me!" "Not a thing to eat for three days but rye bread!" "From Strassburg to Luneville in a farmer's wagon!" Each in a whirlwind of ejaculation tried to outdo the other's story of hardship and privation.

The front doors opened again, and the sergeant and guard who had earlier carried off Fritz, the barber, entered. Again gun butts thumped ominously. Jane looked over her shoulder at the khaki-coated men, and confided in the Shermans:

"I think that man's been following me ever since I landed from the ferry."

"I have," answered the sergeant, stepping briskly forward and saluting. "You are a stranger on the Rock. You come here from——"

"From Paris, by motor, to the town across the bay; then over here on the ferry," the girl answered promptly. "What about it?"

"Your name?"

"Jane Gerson. Yes, yes, it sounds German, I know. But that's not my fault. I'm an American—a red-hot American, too, for the last two weeks."

The sergeant's face was wooden.

"Where are you going?"

"To New York, on the Saxonia, just as soon as I can. And the British army can't stop me."

"Indeed!" The sergeant permitted himself a fleeting smile. "From Paris by motor, eh? Your passports, please."

"I haven't any," Jane retorted, with a shade of defiance. "They were taken from me in Spain, just over the French border, and were not returned."

The sergeant raised his eyebrows in surprise not unmixed with irony. He pointed to the two big osier baskets, demanding to know what they contained.

"Gowns—the last gowns made in Paris before the crash. Fashion's last gasp. I am a buyer of gowns for Hildebrand's store in New York."

Ecstatic gurgles of pleasure from Mrs. Sherman and her daughter greeted this announcement. They pressed about the baskets and regarded them lovingly.

The sergeant pushed them away and tried to throw back the covers.

"Open your baggage—all of it!" he commanded snappishly.

Jane, explaining over her shoulder to the women, stooped to fumble with the hasps.

"Seventy of the darlingest gowns—the very last Paul Poiret and Paquin and Worth made before they closed shop and marched away with their regiments. You shall see every one of them."

"Hurry, please, my time's limited!" the sergeant barked.

"I should think it would be—you're so charming," Jane flung back over her shoulder, and she raised the tops of the baskets. The other women pushed forward with subdued coos.

The sergeant plunged his hand under a mass of colored fluffiness, groped for a minute, and brought forth a long roll of heavy paper. With a fierce mien, he began to unroll the bundle.

"And these?"

"Plans," Hildebrand's buyer answered.

"Plans of what?" The sergeant glared.

"Of gowns, silly! Here—you're looking at that one upside down! This way! Now isn't that a perfect dear of an afternoon gown? Poiret didn't have time to finish it, poor man! See that lovely basque effect? Everything's moyen age this season, you know."

Jane, with a shrewd sidelong glance at the flustered sergeant, rattled on, bringing gown after gown from the baskets and displaying them to the chorus of smothered screams of delight from the feminine part of her audience. One she draped coquettishly from her shoulders and did an exaggerated step before the smoky mirror over the mantelpiece to note the effect.

"Isn't it too bad this soldier person isn't married, so he could appreciate these beauties?" She flicked a mischievous eye his way. "Of course he can't be married, or he'd recognize the plan of a gown. Clean hands, there, Mister Sergeant, if you're going to touch any of these dreams! Here, let me! Now look at that musquetaire sleeve—the effect of the war—military, you know."

The sergeant was thoroughly angry by this time, and he forced the situation suddenly near tragedy. Under his fingers a delicate girdle crackled suspiciously.

"Here—your knife! Rip this open; there are papers of some sort hidden here." He started to pass the gown to one of his soldiers. Jane choked back a scream.

"No, no! That's crinoline, stupid! No papers——" She stretched forth her arms appealingly. The sergeant humped his shoulders and put out his hand to take the opened clasp-knife.

A plump doll-faced woman, who possessed an afterglow of prettiness and a bustling nervous manner, flounced through the doors at this juncture and burst suddenly into the midst of the group caught in the imminence of disaster.

"What's this—what's this?" She caught sight of the filmy creation draped from the sergeant's arm. "Oh, the beauty!" This in a whisper of admiration.

"The last one made by Worth," Jane was quick to explain, noting the sergeant's confusion in the presence of the stranger, "and this officer is going to rip it open in a search for concealed papers. He takes me for a spy."

Surprised blue eyes were turned from Jane to the sergeant. The latter shamefacedly tried to slip the open knife into his blouse, mumbling an excuse. The blue eyes bored him through.

"I call that very stupid, Sergeant," reproved the angel of rescue. Then to Jane——

"Where are you taking all these wonderful gowns?"

"To New York. I'm buyer for Hildebrand's, and——"

"But, Lady Crandall, this young woman has no passports—nothing," the sergeant interposed. "My duty——"

"Bother your duty! Don't you know a Worth gown when you see it? Now go away! I'll be responsible for this young woman from now on. Tell your commanding officer Lady Crandall has taken your duty out of your hands." She finished with a quiet assurance and turned to gloat once more over the gowns. The sergeant led his command away with evident relief.

Lady Crandall turned to include all the refugees in a general introduction of herself.

"I am Lady Crandall, the wife of the governor general of Gibraltar," she said, with a warming smile. "I just came down to see what I could do for you poor stranded Americans. In these times——"

"An American yourself, I'll gamble on it!" Sherman pushed his way between the littered baskets and seized Lady Crandall's hands. "Knew it by the cut of your jib—and—your way of doing things. I'm Henry J. Sherman, from Kewanee, Illynoy—my wife and daughter Kitty."

"And I'm from Iowa—the red hills of ole Ioway," the governor's wife chanted, with an orator's flourish of the hands. "Welcome to the Rock, home folks!"

Hands all around and an impromptu old-home week right then and there. Lady Crandall's attention could not be long away from the gowns, however. She turned back to them eagerly. With Jane Gerson as her aid, she passed them in rapturous review, Mrs. Sherman and Kitty playing an enthusiastic chorus.