CHAPTER IX
COT 24—HUT H
The guns on the battle front had been silent for twenty-four hours; but there were whispers of the Yankees "getting back" at the Heinies in return for the outbreak of German gunfire which had startled Ruth Fielding the afternoon she had taken tea at the Chateau Marchand.
The outbreak of the new attack—this time from the American side—began about nine o'clock at night. A barrage was laid down, behind which, Ruth learned, several raiding parties would go over.
Just the method of this advance across No Man's Land Ruth did not understand. But all the time the guns were roaring back and forth (for, of course, the Germans quickly replied) she knew the American boys were in peril all along that sector.
That was a bad night for Ruth. She lay in her cot awake, but with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and regularly so that those about her thought she was asleep.
In the morning the matron said:
"You are really quite wonderful, Miss Fielding, to sleep through all that. I wish I could do the same."
And all night long Ruth had been praying—praying for the safety of the boys that had gone over the top, not for herself. That she was in danger did not greatly trouble her. She thought of the soldiers. She thought particularly of Tom Cameron—wherever he might be!
The flurry of gunfire was over by dawn. After breakfast Ruth went down to the gate. She had heard the ambulances rolling in for hours, and now she saw the stretcher-bearers stumbling into the receiving ward with the broken men. Here they were operated upon, when necessary, and sorted out—the grands blessés sent to the more difficult wards, the less seriously wounded to others.
Curiosity did not bring Ruth to the gate. It was in the hope of seeing Charlie Bragg that she went there. Nor was she disappointed.
His shaky old car rolled up with three men under the canvas and one with a bandaged arm sitting on the seat beside him. Charlie was pale and haggard. Half the top of the ambulance had been shot away since she had ridden in it, and the boy had roughly repaired the damage with a blanket. But he nodded to Ruth with his old cheerful grin. Nothing could entirely quench Charlie Bragg.
"Got tipped over and holed up in a marmite cave for a couple of hours during the worst of it last night," he told Ruth. "Never mind. It gave me another chapter for my new book. Surely! I'm going to write a second one. They all do, you know. You rather get the habit."
"But, Charlie! Is—is there any news?" she asked him, with shaking voice and eyes that told much of her anxiety.
He knew well what she meant, and he looked grim enough for a minute, and nodded.
"Yes. A little."
"Oh, Charlie! They—they haven't found him?"
"No. Maybe they'd better not," breathed the boy, shaking his head. "I don't think there's any hope, Miss Ruth."
"Oh, Charlie! He's not dead?"
"Better be," muttered the boy. "I wouldn't ask if I were you. It looks bad for him—everybody says so."
"You know him, Charlie Bragg!" she burst out angrily. "Can you believe Tom Cameron would do such a wicked thing as this they accuse him of?"
"We-ell. I don't want to believe it," he agreed. "But, look here!" and in desperation he pulled something from his pocket. "You know that, don't you?"
"Why! Tom's matchbox!" cried the girl, taking the silver box and seeing the initials of the lost soldier on the case. She had had it engraved herself—and Helen had paid for the box. They had given it to Tom when he went to Harvard for his Freshman course.
"Of course. I've seen him use it, too," Charlie Bragg hurried to say. "I knew it and begged it of the fellow who found it."
"Where did he find it?"
"You know, some of our boys went across and visited the Heinies last night," Charlie said gently. "They got right into the German trenches and drove out the Heinies. And in a German dugout—before they blew it up with bombs—this chap I talked with picked up that box."
"Oh, Charlie!" gasped the girl.
"Yes. He didn't see the significance of the monogram. He didn't know Mr. Cameron personally, I think. He was slightly wounded and I helped him with first aid. He gave the box to me as a German souvenir," and the driver of the ambulance looked grim.
"Then they surely have got poor Tom!" whispered Ruth.
"At least, it looks as though he went over that way," agreed the boy sadly.
"Don't speak so, Charlie!" she cried. "I tell you he has been taken prisoner."
"We-ell," drawled her friend again, "we can't know about that."
"But we will know!" she said, with added vehemence. "It will all come out in time. Only—it will be too late to help poor Tom, then."
"Gosh!" groaned Charlie Bragg. "It's too late to help him now—if you should ask me!"
Ruth had nobody to talk to about Tom Cameron save the young ambulance driver. And him she could see but seldom.
For fear of having to explain to her chum, she could not write to Helen Cameron, who was in Paris. Just now, too, she was too busy for letter writing.
Mrs. Strang found a girl to help Ruth in the supply hut, one who was willing and able to learn all about the merchandise under Ruth's care. The latter was not asked to remain at this hospital outpost for long. Her place was at Clair, and, until the Red Cross directors deliberately changed her, Ruth must give her first thought to the Clair Supply Headquarters.
She saw, however, that she would be several days at this field hospital. She had been glad to come in hope of learning something about Tom. Now she saw that she was doomed to disappointment.
This locality was the last place in which to search for news of the lost lieutenant. Everybody here (everybody who spoke of the matter at all) believed that Tom Cameron had played the traitor and, for money or some other unexplained reason, had gone over to the enemy.
"As though poor Tom could even dream of such a thing!" she thought.
She must keep her opinion to herself. She was too wise to start any argument on the affair. It might be, if she kept still, that she would learn something of significance that would lead to an explanation of the terrible event.
What she personally could do to save Tom's reputation she did not even imagine at the time. Nevertheless, there might be some chance of doing him a good turn.
As for his personal safety, she had lost all hope of that. She believed he had been captured by the Germans, and she had heard too many stories of their treatment of prisoners to hope that he would escape injury and actual torture.
It was said that the enemy would treat the first Americans captured with particular harshness, in hope of "frightening the Yankees." She knew that the advancing Canadians had found their captured brothers crucified on barn doors in the early months of the war. Why should the Yankees expect better treatment from the Huns?
With this load of anxiety and fear upon her heart, Ruth still found time for interest in what went on about her. She was an observant girl. And, as ever, her sympathies were touched in behalf of the wounded.
Although the American Red Cross had taken over this field hospital, most of the wounded were Frenchmen.
She was glad to see so many visitors daily bringing comforts for the men; but of all those who came she noted particularly the peculiar-looking Nicko, the chocolate vender. Daily he came, and Ruth always observed both his comings and goings.
Never did he fail to go into a particular ward—one of those in which the more seriously wounded patients lay—Hut H. She sometimes saw him going through the aisles at his funny, wabbling gait, offering his wares to the soldiers. The latter jeered at him, or joked with him, as their mood was. He wore an old battered hat, the brim of which flopped over his face and half masked his features.
One afternoon Ruth met the strange fellow at the door of Hut H. She was going out as he was coming in. The man backed away from her, mumbling. She threw a coin into his basket and took a small package of chocolate.
"Bien obligé, Mademoiselle!" he was startled into saying, and bowed to her. It was not the stiff, martial bow she had before noted, but the sweeping, ingratiating bow of the Frenchman. Ruth walked on, but she was startled.
Finally she turned swiftly and went back to the door of Hut H. The nurse on duty had just come from the end of the ward. Over her shoulder Ruth saw Nicko halt beside one of the cots far down the line.
"Who is that Nicko converses with?" Ruth asked idly.
"Oh, his friend, the Boche. Didn't you know we had a German officer with us? Cot 24. Not a bad fellow at all. Yes, Nicko never fails to sell our Boche friend chocolate. He is a regular customer."
"Cot 24—Hut H," Ruth repeated in her own mind. She would not forget that. And yet—did it mean anything? Was there something wrong with Nicko, the chocolate peddler?
CHAPTER X
DEVOURING SUSPICION
She had been at the field hospital for a week. It seemed to Ruth Fielding at last as though she could not remain "holed up" like a rabbit any longer.
At Clair she had been used to going out of the hospital when she liked and going anywhere she pleased. Here she found it was necessary to have a pass even to step out of the hospital compound.
"And be careful where you walk, Miss Fielding," said Dr. Monteith, as he signed her pass. "Do not go toward the battle front. If you do you may be halted."
"Halted!" repeated Ruth, not quite understanding.
"And perhaps suspected," he said, nodding gravely. "Even your Red Cross will not save you."
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed the girl. "Is everybody suspected of spying? I think it has become a craze."
"We do not know whom to suspect," he said. "Our closest friends may be enemies. We cannot tell."
"But, Doctor Monteith, who are in this district save our soldiers and the French inhabitants?" asked Ruth.
"True. But there may be a traitor among us. Indeed, it is believed that there has been," and Ruth winced and looked away from him. "As for our allies here—well, all of them may not be above earning German gold. And they would think it was not as though they were betraying their own countrymen. There are only United States soldiers in this sector now, as you say, Miss Fielding."
"I cannot imagine people being so wicked," sighed the girl.
"No matter how it is done, or who does it, the enemy is getting information about our troops and condition, as the last two attacks have proved. So take care where you go, Miss Fielding, and what you do," he added earnestly.
She promised, and went away with her pass. It was late afternoon and her duties were over for the day. She would not be needed at the supply hut until morning. And, indeed, the girl she was breaking in was already mastering the details of the work. Ruth could soon go back to her own work at Clair.
She walked nimbly out of the compound gate, making sure that she was following a road that led away from the front. Nobody halted her. Indeed, she was soon passing through a little valley that seemed as peaceful and quiet as though there was no such thing as war in the world.
The path she followed was plainly but a farm track. It wound between narrow fields that had not been plowed the season before—not even by cannon-shot. Somehow the big shells had flown over this little valley.
The sun was setting, and the strip of western sky above the hills was tinged with his golden glories. Already pale twilight lay in the valley. But in this latitude the twilight would long remain. She did not hasten her steps, nor did she soon turn back toward the field hospital.
She saw a cottage half hidden behind a hedge of evergreens. It stood in a small square of muddy garden. There was a figure at work in this patch—the tall, stoop-shouldered figure of a man. He was digging parsnips that had been left out for the frost to sweeten.
He used the mattock slowly and methodically. With the cottage as a background, and the muddy bit of garden, the picture he made was typical of the country and the people who inhabited it.
Suddenly she realized that she recognized the ragged blue smock and the old droop-brimmed hat he wore. It was Nicko, the chocolate vender. This must be his place of abode.
Ruth hesitated. She had felt some shrinking from the man before; now she realized she was afraid of him. He had not seen her and she stood back and watched him.
Of a sudden another man appeared from around the corner of the cottage. Ruth was more than glad, then, that she had not shown herself. She turned to retrace her steps.
Then she looked again at this new figure in the picture. She almost spoke aloud in her amazement. The newcomer was dressed exactly as Nicko was dressed—the same blue and ragged smock, shapeless trousers, wooden shoes, and with a hat the twin of the one the first Nicko wore. Indeed, it was a second Nicko who stood there in the bit of garden before the laborer's cot.
But amazement and suspicion did not hold her to the spot for long. She did not wish to be discovered by the pair. She was confident now that there was something altogether wrong with Nicko the chocolate peddler—and his double!
Out of view of the cottage she hurried her steps. Through the gloaming she sped up the path in the valley toward the high-road on which faced the hospital stockade.
Her thoughts were in a tangle of doubt. Yet one clear thread of determination she held. She must give her confidence to somebody—she must relate her suspicions to some person who was in authority.
Not the medical chief of staff at this field hospital. Nor did she wish to go to the commanding officer of this sector, whoever he might be. Indeed, she almost feared to talk with any American officer, for Tom Cameron seemed to be entangled in this web of deceit and treachery into which she believed she had gained a look.
There was a man whom she could trust, however; one who would know exactly what to do, she felt sure. And it would be his business to examine into the mystery. The moment she returned to Clair Ruth would get into communication with this individual.
Thus thinking, she hurried on and had almost reached the highway when something made her look back. Not a sound; for even the sleepy birds had stopped twittering and there was no rustle of night wind in the bare shrubbery about her.
But mysteriously she was forced to turn her head. She looked down the path over which her feet had sped from the laborer's cot. There was something behind her!
Ruth did not scream. A form came up the track swiftly and at first she saw it so indistinctly that she had no idea what it really was. Had she been spied by the men in the garden, and was one of them following her?
She trembled so that she could not walk. She crouched back against the hedge, watching fearfully the on-rush of the phantom-like apparition coming so swiftly up the path.
CHAPTER XI
THE FLYING MAN
While yet the silent figure was some rods away Ruth Fielding realized that it was no human being. It was not one of the men she had seen in the garden of Nicko's cottage.
This creature came too swiftly up the path and skimmed the ground too closely. A light-colored object—swift, silent and threatening of aspect.
The girl shrank against the hedge, and the next instant—with a rush of passage that stirred the air all about her—the Thing was gone! It was again that strange and incomprehensible apparition of the werwolf!
If it was Bubu, the greyhound she had seen at the Chateau Marchand, he was much lighter in color than when he appeared pacing beside his mistress on the chateau lawns. The phantom had dashed past so rapidly that, in the gathering dusk, Ruth could make out little of its real appearance.
Headed toward the battle lines, it had disappeared within seconds. The girl, her limbs still trembling, followed in haste to the highway. Already the creature had been swallowed up in the shadows.
She went on toward the hospital gateway and had scarcely recovered her self-control when she arrived there. Altogether, her evening's experience had been most disconcerting.
The two men, dressed alike and apparently of the same height and shambling manner, whom she had seen in Nicko's garden, worried her quite as much—indeed, worried her even more than the sight of the mysterious creature the peasants called the werwolf.
More than ever was she determined to take into her confidence somebody who would be able to explain the mystery of it all. At least, he would be able to judge if what made her so anxious was of moment.
And Tom Cameron's disappearance, too! Ruth's worry of mind regarding her old friend propped her eyes open that night.
In the morning she went over the stock shelves again with the girl she had trained, and finally announced to Mrs. Strang that she felt she must return to Clair. After all, she had been assigned to the job there and must not desert it.
An ambulance was going down to Clair with its burden of wounded men, and Ruth was assigned to the seat beside the driver. He chanced to be "Cub" Holdness, one of the ambulance drivers to whom Ruth had been introduced by Charlie Bragg at Mother Gervaise's cottage the night of her trip up to the field hospital.
Holdness was plainly delighted to have the girl with him for the drive to Clair. He was a Philadelphia boy, and he confessed to having had no chance to drive a girl—even in an ambulance—since coming over.
"I had one of those 'reckless roadsters' back home," he sighed. "Dad said every time his telephone rang he expected it was me calling from some outlying police station for him to come and bail me out for overspeeding.
"And there was a bunch of girls I knew who were just crazy to have me take 'em for a spin out around Fairmount Park and along the speedways. Just think, Miss Fielding, of the difference between those times and these," and he nodded solemnly.
"I should say there was a difference," laughed Ruth, trying to appear in good spirits. "Don't you get dreadfully tired of all these awful sights and sounds?"
"No. Excitement keeps us keyed up, I guess," he replied. "You know, there is almost always something doing."
"I should say there was!"
She saw that while he talked he did not for a moment forget that he was driving three sorely wounded men. He eased the ambulance over the rough parts of the road and around the sharp turns with infinite skill. It was actually wonderful how smoothly the ambulance ran.
Occasionally they were caught in a tight corner and the machine jounced so that moans of agony were wrung from the lips of the wounded behind them on the stretchers. This, however, occurred but seldom.
Once one of the men begged for water—water to drink and its coolness on his head. They were passing a trickling stream that looked clear and refreshing.
"Let me get out a moment and get him some," begged Ruth.
"Can't do it. Against orders. We're commanded not to taste water from any stream, spring, or well in this sector—let alone give it to the wounded. Nobody knows when the water is poisoned."
"But the Germans have been gone from this district so long now!" she cried.
"They may have their spies here. In fact," grumbled Holdness, "we are sure they do have friends in the sector."
"Oh!"
"You know that Devil Corner Charlie Bragg drove you past the other night? The shells have torn that all to pieces. We have to go fully two miles around by another road to get to Clair. We don't pass Mother Gervaise's place any more."
Ruth looked at him sadly but questioningly.
"Do you believe that story they tell about one of our young officers having gone over to the enemy?" she asked.
Holdness flushed vividly. "I didn't know him. I've got no opinion on the matter, Miss Fielding," he said. "But somebody has mapped out the whole sector for the Huns—and it has cost lives, and ammunition. You can't blame folks for being suspicious."
The answer quenched her conversation. Ruth scarcely spoke again during the remainder of the journey.
They welcomed her in most friendly fashion at the Clair Hospital. But the first thing she did after depositing her bag in her cell was to go to the telegraph office and put before the military censor the following message addressed to the prefect of police at Lyse,
"Will you please communicate with M. Lafrane. I have something of importance to tell him."
She signed her name and occupation in full to this, and was finally assured that it would be sent. M. Lafrane was of the secret police, and Ruth Fielding had been in communication with him on a previous occasion.
Several days passed with no reply from her communication to the police. Nor did any news reach her from the field hospital where she had been engaged, nor from her friends at the front. Indeed, those working near the battle lines really know less of what is being done in this war than civilians in America, for instance.
Almost every night the guns thundered, and it was reported that the Americans were making sorties into the German lines and bearing back both prisoners and plunder. But just what was being accomplished Ruth Fielding had no means of knowing.
Not having seen or heard from Henriette Dupay since her return, early in the following week Ruth started out to walk briskly to the Dupay farm one afternoon.
Of late the aeroplanes had become very numerous over this sector. They were, for the most part, American machines. But this afternoon she chanced to see one of the French Nieuports at close quarters.
These are the scouting, or battle planes, and carry but two men and a machine gun. She heard the motor some moments before seeing the aeroplane rise over the tree tops. She knew it must have leaped from a large field on this side of the Dupay farm and not far below the gateway of the Chateau Marchand.
Ruth stopped to gaze upward at the soaring airplane. Her figure stood out plainly in the country road and the two men aboard the Nieuport must have immediately spied her.
The machine dipped and scaled downward until she could have thrown a stone upward and hit it. One of the men—masked and helmeted as the flying men always are—leaned from his seat, and she saw him looking down upon her through the tangle of stay-wires.
Then he dropped a small white object that fell like a plummet at her feet!
"What in the world can that be?" murmured the girl to herself.
For a breath she was frightened. Although the aeroplane carried the French insignia it might be an enemy machine. She, too, was obsessed with the fear of spies!
But the object that fell was not an explosive bomb. It was a weighted ball of oiled silk. As the machine soared again and rapidly rose to the upper air levels, the girl picked up the strange object and burst it open.
The lead pellets that weighted the globe were scattered on the ground. Within there was nothing else but a strip of heavy document paper. On this was traced in a handwriting she knew well, this unsigned message:
"Don't believe everything you hear."
It was Tom Cameron's handwriting—and Ruth knew that the message was meant for her eye and her eye only!
CHAPTER XII
AUNT ABELARD
Of course nothing just like this ever happened save in a fairy story—or in real life. The paper without address, but meant only for Ruth Fielding, had fallen from the aeroplane. She had seen it fall at her feet and could not be mistaken.
Who the two men in the French Nieuport were she could not know. Masked and hooded as they were, she could distinguish the features of neither the pilot nor the man who had dropped the paper bomb. But—she was sure of this—they were somehow in communication with Tom Cameron.
And Tom Cameron was supposed to have gone across the lines to the Germans, or—as Ruth believed—had been captured by them. Yet, if he was a captive, how had he been able to send her this message?
Again, how did he know she was worried about him? He must have reason to suspect that a story was being circulated regarding his unfaithfulness.
Who were those two flying men? Were they German spies? Had Tom been a prisoner in the hands of the Huns, would spies have brought this word from him to her?
And how—and how—and how——?
Her queries and surmises were utterly unanswerable. She turned the bit of paper over and over in her fingers. She could not be mistaken about Tom's handwriting. He had penciled those words.
It was true, any friend of Tom's who knew his handwriting and might have picked up the loaded paper bomb, would have considered the written line a personal message.
"Don't believe everything you hear."
But, then, what friends had Tom in this sector of the battle front save his military associates and Ruth Fielding? The girl never for one moment considered that the written line might have been meant for anybody but herself.
And she did with it the very wisest thing she could have done. She tore the paper into the tiniest of bits, and, as she continued her walk to the Dupay farm, she dribbled the scraps along the grassy road.
She began to have a faint and misty idea of what it all meant—Tom's disappearance, the general belief among his comrades that he was a traitor, and this communication which had reached her hands in seemingly so wonderful a manner.
Tom Cameron had been selected for some dangerous and secret mission. It might have occasioned his entrance through the enemy's lines. He was on secret service beyond the great bombarding German guns!
If this was so he was in extreme peril! But he was doing his duty!
Ruth's heart throbbed to the thought—to both thoughts! His dangerous work was not done yet. But it was very evident that he had means of knowing what went on upon this side of the line of battle.
The men recently flying over her head in the French air machine must be comrades of Tom's in the secret mission which had carried that young fellow into the enemy's country. The message she had received might be only one of several the flying men had dropped about Clair, and at the request of Tom Cameron, the latter hoping that at least one of them would reach Ruth's hands.
The girl knew that American and French flying men often carried communications addressed to the German people into Germany, and dropped them in similar "bombs." One of the President's addresses had been circulated through a part of Germany and Austria by this means.
She had a feeling, too, that the man who had thrown the message to her knew her. But Ruth could not imagine who he was. She might have believed it to be Tom Cameron himself; only she knew very well that Tom had not joined the air service.
The incident, however, heartened her. Whatever Tom was doing—no matter how perilous his situation—he had thought of her. She had an idea that the message had been written within a few hours.
She went on more cheerfully toward the Dupay farm. She arrived amidst a clamor of children and fowls, to find the adult members of the family gathered in the big living-room of the farmhouse instead of occupied, as usual, about the indoor and outdoor work. For the Dupays were no sluggards.
"Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth!" cried Henriette, and ran to meet her. The French girl's plump cheeks were tear-streaked and Ruth instantly saw that not only the girl but the whole family was much disturbed.
"What has happened?" the American girl asked.
In these days of war almost any imaginable thing might happen.
"It is poor old Aunt Abelard!" Henriette exclaimed in her own tongue. "She must remove from her old home at Nacon."
Ruth knew that the place was a little village (and villages can be small, indeed, in France) between Clair and the field hospital where she had herself been for a week, but on another road than that by which she had traveled.
"It is too near the battle line," she said to Henriette. "Don't you think she should have moved long ago?"
"But the Germans left it intact," Henriette declared. "She is very comfortable there. She does not wish to leave. Oh, Mademoiselle Ruth! could you not speak to some of your gr-r-reat, gr-r-reat, brave American officers and have it stopped?"
"Have what stopped?" cried Ruth in amazement.
"Aunt Abelard's removal."
"Are the Americans making her leave her home?"
"It is so!" Henriette declared.
"It is undoubtedly necessary then," returned Ruth gently.
"It is not understood. If she could remain there throughout the German invasion, and was undisturbed by our own army, why should these Americans plague her?"
Henriette spoke with some heat, and Ruth saw that her mother and the grandmother were listening. Their faces did not express their usual cheerful welcome with which Ruth had become familiar. Aunt Abelard's trouble made a difference in their feeling toward the Americans, that was plain.
Nor was this to be wondered at. The French farmer is as deeply rooted in his soil as the great trees of the French forests. That is why their treatment by the German invader and the ruin of their farms have been so great a cross for them to shoulder.
Ruth learned that Aunt Abelard—an aunt of Farmer Dupay, and a widow—had lived upon her little place since her marriage over half a century before. Without her little garden and her small fields, and her cow and pig and chickens, she would scarcely know how to live. And to be uprooted and carried to some other place! It was unthinkable!
"It is fierce!" said Henriette in good American, having learned that much from Charlie Bragg.
"I am sure there must be good reason for it," Ruth said. "I will inquire. If there is any possibility of her remaining without being in danger——"
"What danger?" demanded Madame Dupay, clicking her tongue. "Do these countrymen of yours intend to let the Boches overrun our country again? Our poilus drove them back and kept them back."
Ruth saw she could say nothing to appease the rising wrath of the family. She was rather sorry she had chanced to come upon this day of ill-tidings.
"Of course she will come here?" she asked Henriette.
"Where else can she go?"
"Will your father go after her in the automobile?"
"What?" gasped Henriette. "That is of the devil's concoction, so thinks poor Aunt Abelard. She will not ride in it. And my father is busy. Let the Yankees bring her—and her goods—if they desire to remove her from her own abode."
Ruth could say nothing to soothe either her little friend nor the other members of the family. They could not understand why Aunt Abelard must be removed from her place; nor did Ruth understand.
She was convinced, however, that there must be something of importance afoot in this sector, and that Aunt Abelard's removal from her little cottage was a necessity. The American troops in France were not deliberately making enemies among the farming people.
Henriette walked for some distance toward the hospital when Ruth went back; but the French girl was gloomy and had little to say to her American friend.
When Ruth reached the hospital and was ascending to her cell at the back, the matron came hurrying through the corridor to meet her. She was plainly excited.
"Mademoiselle Fielding!" she cried. "You have a visitor. In the office. Go to him at once, my dear. It is Monsieur Lafrane."
CHAPTER XIII
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
Monsieur Lafrane Ruth could count as one of her friends. Not many months before she had enabled the secret service man to solve a criminal problem and arrest several of the criminals engaged in a conspiracy against the Red Cross.
She had not been sure that he would so quickly respond to her telegram to the elderly prefect of police at Lyse, who was likewise her friend and respectful admirer.
This secret agent was a lean man of dark complexion. His manner was cordial when he rose to greet her. She knew that he was a very busy man and that he had responded personally to her appeal because he took a deeper interest in her than in most people aside from those whose acts it was his duty to investigate.
They were alone in the small office of the hospital. He said crisply and in excellent English:
"Mademoiselle has need of me?"
"I have something to tell you, Monsieur—something that I think may be of importance. Yet, as we Americans say, I may be merely stirring up a mare's nest."
"Ah, I understand the reference," he said, smiling. "Let me be the judge of the value of what you tell me, Mademoiselle. Proceed."
Swiftly she told him of her visit to the field hospital so much nearer the battle line than this quiet institution at Clair, and, in addition, told him of Nicko, the chocolate peddler, and his dual appearance.
"There are two of the men. They dress exactly alike. I was suspicious of the peddler the very first time I saw him. No Frenchman—not even a French soldier—bows as I saw him bow."
"Ha!" ejaculated the secret agent.
"He bows from the hips—the bow of a German military man. I—I have seen them bow before," Ruth hesitated, remembering Major Henri Marchand. "You understand?"
"But, yes, Mademoiselle," said the Frenchman, his eyes flashing.
"Then," she went on, "I saw the man—or supposedly the same man—a second time. He bowed very differently—just as an ordinary humble French peasant might bow."
"Could it not be that he forgot the second time you saw him?" queried M. Lafrane.
"I doubt it. There is something quite distinct in the air of the two men. But I understand that whichever comes to the hospital with the basket of sweets always has a word with the German officer in Hut H, Cot Twenty-four. You can easily find out about him."
"True," murmured the secret agent eagerly.
Then she told him of her walk in the gloaming and what she had seen in the garden of the peasant's cot—the two men dressed exactly alike. One must be the half-foolish Nicko; the other must be the spy.
M. Lafrane nodded eagerly again, pursing his lips.
"Mademoiselle," he said quietly, "I will ask the good madame if you may be relieved for the day. I have a car outside—a swift car. Can you show me that cottage—Nicko's dwelling? I will bring you back immediately."
"Of a surety," she told him in his own tongue, as he had spoken. "Wait. I will get my hat and coat. I may not know the nearest way to the place. But——"
"I am familiar with this territory," he said dryly. "We can strike it, I have no doubt, Mademoiselle. But I need you to verify the place and—perhaps—to identify the man."
"Not the spy?" she gasped.
"Nicko, the peddler."
"I see. I will be with you in the courtyard at once, Monsieur."
When she came out he was ready to step into a two-seated roadster, hung low and painted a battleship gray. A man in uniform on the front seat drove. Ruth got in, was followed by the secret agent, and they started.
She had much more in her heart and mind; but she doubted the advisability of telling M. Lafrane.
There was what she suspected about Major Henri Marchand. Could she turn suspicion toward the son of her good friend, the countess? And his brother who, it was said, had run away?
Ruth felt that she had already told much that might cause the major trouble. She did not know. She only suspected.
As for Tom Cameron's trouble—and the mystery surrounding him—she did not feel that she could speak to the secret agent about that. Tom's affairs could have nothing to do with the work of this French criminal investigator. No. She hugged to her heart all her anxiety regarding Tom.
As soon as they left the hospital courtyard Ruth found that she was traveling with a chauffeur beside whom Charlie Bragg's reckless driving was tame indeed. Besides, Charlie's lame car could not arrive at such speed as this racing type of automobile was capable of.
By looking over the back of the front seat she obtained a glimpse of the speedometer, and saw the indicator traveling from sixty to seventy. After that she did not wish to look again. She did not want to know if they traveled faster.
The road over which they went was strange to Ruth Fielding. It was by a much shorter way Charlie Bragg had taken her to the field hospital, and over which she had returned.
They began before long to meet farmers' wagons, piled high with household goods, on which sat the strange, sad-eyed children of the war zone, or decrepit old people, often surrounded by their fowls. For even the poorest and most destitute of the French peasants manage to have "poulets."
The processions of moving people amazed Ruth. She remembered what the Dupays had said about Aunt Abelard, and she began to see that there was a general exodus being forced from the country nearer the front in this sector.
It was a fact that the people did not look happy. Now and then one of the American military police walked beside a wagon, as though he had been sent on with the movers to make sure that they kept moving.
The girl asked M. Lafrane nothing about this exodus. Perhaps he knew no more the reason for it than Ruth did.
They came to a little dale between hills at last, and in this place stood a cottage and barns—a tiny homestead, but very neat, and one that had been unmarred by the enemy. There were even fruit trees standing.
There was a huge wagon before the door, and into it must go the household goods and the family as well—if there was a family. It seemed that the wagon had just arrived, and the American soldiers with it scarcely knew what to do in this case. There was nothing packed, ready for removal, and an old woman—the only person about the farmstead—was busy feeding her flock of chickens.
"You must come, vite, Tante," Ruth heard the corporal in charge of the squad say to the old woman. The automobile had stopped, for the road was too narrow for it to pass the wagon.
The old woman seemed to understand the American's mixture of English and French. She shook her head with emphasis.
"But I cannot leave my pullets," she said, aghast. "They will starve. You will go along, you Americans, and leave me alone."
"You must come; Tante," repeated the corporal, inflexibly. "You should have prepared for this. You were warned in time." Then to his men: "Go in, boys, and bring out her goods. Careful, now. Don't mess anything up."
"You cannot take my things. Your cart is already full," shrilled the old woman. "And my pullets!"
The American soldiers entered the cottage. Between her anger at them and her fear for the safety of her chickens, the old woman was in a pitiful state, indeed. Ruth looked at M. Lafrane.
"Oh, can we not do anything for her?" she asked.
"Military law knows no change—the laws of the Medes and Persians," he said grimly. "She must go, of course——"
Suddenly he sat up more stiffly beside the American girl and his hand went to his cap in salute. He even rose, and, before Ruth looked around and spied the occasion for this, she knew it must foretell the approach of an officer of importance.
Coming along the road (he had been sheltered from her gaze before by the laden wagon) was a French officer in a very brilliant uniform. Ruth gasped aloud; she knew him at a glance.
It was Major Henri Marchand, in the full panoply of a dress uniform, although he was on foot. He acknowledged M. Lafrane's salute carelessly and did not see the girl at all. He walked directly into the yard surrounding the cottage. The corporal of the American squad was saying:
"I am sorry for you, ma mère. But we cannot wait now. You should have been ready for us. You have had forty-eight hours' notice."
The old countrywoman was quite enraged. She began to vilify the Americans most abominably. Ruth suddenly heard her say that the Abelards had been rooted here for generations. She refused to go for all the soldiers in the world!
Then she shrieked again as she saw the men bringing out her best bed. Major Marchand took a hand in the matter.
"Tante," he said quietly, "I am sorry for you. But these men are in the right. The high authorities have said you must go. All your neighbors are going. It is for la patrie. These are bitter times and we must all make sacrifices. Come, now, you must depart."
Ruth wondered at his quiet, yet forceful, manner. The corporal stood back, thankful to have the disagreeable duty taken out of his hands. And the American girl wondered, too, at the respect Monsieur Lafrane had shown this French officer. Had he saluted the uniform, or was Major Marchand a very important personage? Her brain was in a whirl of doubt.