Ruth Fielding in the Red Cross; Or, Doing Her Best for Uncle Sam

CHAPTER VI—THE PATRIOTISM OF THE PURSE

One of her romantic scenarios had been screened at the Red Mill and on the picturesque Lumano and along its banks. Then, less than a year before, “The Forty-Niners” had been made; and during the succeeding winter this picture had been shown all over the country and, as the theatrical people say, “had played to big business.”

Ruth had bought stock in the corporation and was sometimes actually consulted now by Mr. Hammond and the heads of departments as to the policies of the concern. As the president of the corporation had already written her, the time was about ripe for another “big” film.

Ruth Fielding was expected to suggest the idea, at least, although the working out of the story would probably be left to the director in the field. He knew his people, his properties, and his locations. The bare skeleton of the story was what Mr. Hammond wanted.

Ruth’s success in making virile “The Forty-Niners” urged Mr. Hammond to hope for something as good from her now. And, like most composers of every kind, the real inspiration for the new reel wonder had leaped to life on the instant in her brain.

The idea of “The Boys of the Draft” came from her talk with her chum, Helen Cameron. Helen had a limited amount of pride in Ruth’s success on this occasion for, as she said, she had blunderingly “sicked Ruth on.” But, oddly enough, Ruth Fielding’s first interest in the success of the new picture was in what effect it might have upon Uncle Jabez Potter’s purse.

The drive for Red Cross contributions was on now all over the country. That effort confined to the county in which Cheslow and the Red Mill were located had begun early; but it had gone stumblingly. Indeed, as Helen said, if it was a drive, it was about like driving home the cows!

Mr. Cameron had expected much of Ruth and his own daughter among the farming people; but they were actually behind the collectors who worked in the towns. It was at a time in the year when the men of the scattered communities were working hard out of doors; and it is difficult to interest farmers in anything but their crops during the growing season. Indeed, it is absolutely necessary that they should give their main attention to those crops if a good harvest is to be secured.

But Ruth felt that she was failing in this work for the Red Cross just because she could not interest her uncle, the old miller, sufficiently in the matter. If she could not get him enthused, how could she expect to obtain large contributions from strangers?

After seeing a screen production of Ruth’s play of the old West Uncle Jabez had for the first time realized what a really wonderful thing the filming of such pictures was. He admitted that Ruth’s time was not being thrown away.

Then, he respected the ability of anybody who could make money, and he saw this girl, whom he had “taken in out of charity” as he had more than once said, making more money in a given time—and making it more easily—than he did in his mill and through his mortgages and mining investments.

If Uncle Jabez did not actually bow down to the Golden Calf, he surely did think highly of financial success. And he had begun to realize that all this education Ruth had been getting (quite unnecessary he had first believed) had led her into a position where she was “making good.”

Through this slant in Uncle Jabez’s mind the girl began to hope that she might encourage him to do much more for the cause her heart was so set on than he seemed willing to do. Uncle Jabez was patriotic, but his patriotism had not as yet affected his pocket.

As soon as Uncle Jabez knew that Ruth contemplated helping to make another picture he showed interest. He wanted to know about it, and he figured with Aunt Alvirah “how much that gal might make out’n her idees.”

“For goodness’ sake, Jabez Potter!” exclaimed the little old woman, “ain’t you got airy idee in your head ’cept money making?”

“I calc’late,” said the miller grimly, “that it’s my idees about money in the past has give me what I’ve got.”

“But our Ruthie is going to git up a big, patriotic picture—somethin’ to stir the hearts of the people when they think the boys air actually going over to help them French folks win the war.”

“I wish,” cried the old woman shrilly, “that I warn’t too old and too crooked, to do something myself for the soldiers. But my back an’ my bones won’t let me, Jabez. And I ain’t got no bank account. All I can do is to pray.”

The miller looked at her with his usual grim smile. Perhaps it was a little quizzical on this occasion.

“Do you calc’late to do any prayin’ about this here filum Ruth is going to make, ‘The Boys of the Draft’?” he asked.

“I sartinly be—for her success and the good it may do.”

“By gum! she’ll make money, then,” declared Uncle Jabez, who had unbounded faith in the religion Aunt Alvirah professed—but he did not.

Ruth, hearing this, developed another of her inspirational ideas. Uncle Jabez fell into a trap she laid for him, after having taken Mr. Hammond into her confidence regarding what she proposed doing.

“I reckon you’ll make a mint of money out’n this draft story,” the miller said one evening, when the actual work on the photographing of the film was well under way.

“I hope so,” admitted Ruth slowly. “But I am afraid some parts of it will have to be cut or changed because it would cost more than Mr. Hammond cares to put into it at this time. You know, the Alectrion Corporation is in the field with several big things, and it takes a lot of money.”

“Why don’t he borry it?” demanded the miller sharply.

“He never does that. The only way in which he accepts outside capital is to let moneyed men buy into a picture he is making, taking their chance along with the rest of us that the picture will be a success.”

“Yep. An’ if it ain’t a success?” asked the miller shrewdly.

“Then their money is lost.”

“Ahem! That’s a hard sayin’,” muttered the old man. “But if it does make a hit—like that Forty-Niner story of yourn, Niece Ruth—then the feller that buys in makes a nice little pile?”

“Our successes,” Ruth said with pride, “have run from fifty to two hundred per cent profit.”

“My soul! Two hunderd! Ain’t that perfec’ly scand’lous?” muttered Uncle Jabez. “An’ here jest last week I let Amos Blodgett have a thousand dollars on his farm at five an’ a ha’f per cent.”

“But that investment is perfectly safe,” Ruth said slyly.

“My soul! Yes. Blodgett’s lower forty’s wuth more’n the mortgage. But sech winnin’s as you speak of——! Niece Ruth how much is needed to make this picture the kind of a picture you want it to be?”

She told him—as she and Mr. Hammond had already agreed. The idea was to divide the cost in three parts and let Uncle Jabez invest to the amount of one of the shares if he would.

“But, you see, Uncle Jabez, Mr. Hammond does not feel as confident as I do about ‘The Boys of the Draft,’ nor has he the same deep interest in the picture. I want it to be a success—and I believe it will be—because of the good it will do the Red Cross campaign for funds.”

“Humph!” grunted the miller. “I’m bankin’ on your winnin’ anyway.” And perhaps his belief in the efficacy of Aunt Alvirah Boggs’ prayers had something to do with his “buying into” the new picture.

The screening of the great film was rushed. A campaign of advertising was entered into and the fact that a share of the profits from the film was to be devoted to Red Cross work made it popular at once. But Uncle Jabez showed some chagrin.

“What’s the meanin’ of it?” he demanded. “Who’s goin’ to give his share of the profits to any Red Cross? Not me!”

“But I am, Uncle Jabez,” Ruth said lightly. “That was my intention from the first. But, of course, that has nothing to do with you.”

“I sh’d say not! I sh’d say not!” grumbled the miller. “I ain’t likely to git into a good thing an’ then throw the profit away. I sh’d say not!”

The film was shown in New York, in several other big cities, and in Cheslow simultaneously. Ruth arranged for this first production with the proprietor of the best movie house in the local town, because she was anxious to see it and could not spare the time to go to New York.

Mr. Hammond, as though inspired by Ruth’s example, telegraphed on the day of the first exhibition of the film that he would donate his share of the profits as well to the Red Cross.

“‘Nother dern fool!” sputtered Uncle Jabez. “Never see the beat. Wal! if you’n he both want to give ‘way a small fortune, it’s your own business, I suppose. All the less need of me givin’ any of my share.”

He went with Ruth to see the production of the film. Indeed, he would not have missed that “first night” for the world. The pretty picture house was crowded. It had got so that when anything from the pen of the girl of the Red Mill was produced the neighbors made a gala day of it.

Ruth Fielding was proud of her success. And she had nothing on this occasion to be sorry for, the film being a splendid piece of work.

But, aside from this fact, “The Boys of the Draft” was opportune, and the audience was more than usually sensitive. The very next day the first quota of the drafted boys from Cheslow would march away to the training camp.

The hearts of the people were stirred. They saw a faithful reproduction of what the boys would go through in training, what they might endure in the trenches, and particularly what the Red Cross was doing for soldiers under similar conditions elsewhere.

As though spellbound, Uncle Jabez sat through the long reel. The appeal at the end, with the Red Cross nurse in the hospital ward, the dying soldier’s head pillowed upon her breast while she whispered the comfort into his dulling ear that his mother would have whispered——

Ah, it brought the audience to its feet at the “fadeout”—and in tears! It was so human, so real, so touching, that there was little audible comment as they filed out to the soft playing of the organ.

But Uncle Jabez burst out helplessly when they were in the street. He wiped the tears from the hard wrinkles of his old face with frankness and his voice was husky as he declared:

“Niece Ruth! I’m converted to your Red Cross. Dern it all! you kin have ev’ry cent of my share of the profit on that picter—ev’ry cent!”

CHAPTER VII—ON THE WAY

“But, Ruthie,” Helen said, her eyes big and moist, “each seems to know just what the other is thinking about. Sometimes papa says a word, and sometimes Tom; and the other nods and there is perfect understanding. It—it’s almost uncanny.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said the more observant girl of the Red Mill. “We grew up some time ago, Helen. And you know we have rather thought of Tom as a boy, still.

“But he is a man now. There is a difference in the sexes in their attitude to this war which should establish in all our minds that we are not equal.”

“Who aren’t equal?” demanded Helen, almost wrathfully, for she was a militant feminist.

“Men and women are not equal, dear. And they never will be. Wearing mannish clothes and doing mannish labor will never give women the same outlook upon life that men have. And when men encourage us to believe that our minds are the same as theirs, they do it almost always for their own selfish ends—or because there is something feminine about their minds.”

“Traitor!” cried Helen.

“No,” sighed Ruth. “Only honesty.

“Tom and his father understand each other’s thoughts and feelings as you and your father never could. After all, in the strongest association between father and daughter there is the barrier of sex that cannot be surmounted. You know yourself, Helen, that at a certain point you consider your father much of a big boy and treat him accordingly. That, they tell us, is the ‘mother instinct’ in the female, and I guess it is.

“On the other hand, I have seen girls and their mothers together (we never had mothers after we were little kiddies, Helen, and we’ve missed it) but I have seen such perfect understanding and appreciation between mothers and their daughters that it was as though the same soul dwelt in two bodies.”

Helen sniffed in mingled scorn and doubt over Ruth’s philosophy. Then she said in an aggrieved tone: “But papa and Tom ought not to shut me out of their lives—even in a small way.”

“The penalty of being a girl,” replied Ruth, practically. “Tom doesn’t believe, I suppose, that girls would quite understand his manly feelings,” she added with a sudden elfish smile.

“Cat’s foot!” ejaculated the twin, with scorn.

Tom Cameron, however, did not run altogether true to form if Ruth was right in her philosophy. He had always been used to talking seriously at times with Ruth, and during this furlough he found time to have a long and confidential talk with the girl of the Red Mill. This might be the only furlough he would have before sailing for France, for he had already obtained his commission as second lieutenant.

There was an understanding between the young man and Ruth Fielding—an unspoken and tacit feeling that they were “made for each other.” They were young. Ruth’s thoughts had never dwelt much upon love and marriage. She never looked on each man she met half-wonderingly as a possible husband. She had never met any man with this feeling. Perhaps, in part, that was, unconsciously to herself, because Tom had always been so a part of her life and her thoughts. Lately, however, she had come to the realization that if Tom should really ask her to marry him when his education was completed and he was established in the world, the girl of the Red Mill would be very likely to consider his offer seriously.

“Things aren’t coming out just as we had planned, Ruth,” the young man said on this occasion. “I guess this war is going to knock a lot of plans in the head. If it lasts several years, many of us fellows, if we come through it safely, will feel that we are too old to go back to college.

“Can you imagine a fellow who has spent months in the trenches, and has done the things that the soldiers are having to do and to endure and to learn over there—can you imagine his coming back here and going to school again?”

“Oh, Tom! I suppose that is so. The returned soldier must feel vastly older and more experienced in every way than men who have never heard the bursting of shells and the rattle of machine guns. Oh, dear, Tommy! Are we going to know you at all when you come back?”

“Maybe not,” grinned Tom. “I may raise whiskers. Most of the poilus do, I understand. But you could not really imagine a regiment of Uncle Sam’s soldiers that were not clean shaven.”

“We want to see it all, too—Helen and I,” Ruth said, sighing. “We are so far away from the front.”

“Goodness!” he exclaimed. “I should think you would be glad.”

“But some women must go,” Ruth told him gravely. “Why not us?”

“You—— Well, I don’t know about you, Ruth. You seem somehow different. I expect you could look out for yourself anywhere. But Helen hasn’t got your sense.”

“Hear him!” gasped Ruth.

“It’s true,” he declared doggedly. “She hasn’t. Father and I have talked it over. Nell is crazy to go—and I tell father he would be crazy to let her. But it may be that he will go to London and Paris himself, for there is some work he can do for the Government. Of course, Helen would insist upon accompanying him in that event.”

“Oh, Tom!” exclaimed Ruth again.

“Why, they’d take you along, of course, if you wanted to go,” said Tom.

“But I don’t wish to go in any such way,” the girl of the Red Mill declared. “I want to go for just one purpose—to help. And it must be something worth while. There will be enough dilettante assistants in every branch of the work. My position must mean something to the cause, as well as to me, or I will stay right here in Cheslow.”

He looked at her with the old admiration dawning in his eyes.

“Ah! The same old Ruthie, aren’t you?” he murmured. “The same independent, ambitious girl, whose work must count. Well, I fancy your chance will come. We all seem to be on our way. I wonder to what end?”

There was no sentimental outcome of their talk. After all they were only over the line between boy-and-girlhood and the grown-up state. Tom was too much of a man to wish to anchor a girl to him by any ties when the future was so uncertain. And nothing had really ever happened to them to stir those deeper passions which must rise to the surface when two people talk of love.

They were merely the best of friends. They had no other ties of a warmer nature than those which bound them in friendship to each other. They felt confidence in each other if the future was propitious; but now——

“I am sure you will make your mark in the army, Tom, dear,” Ruth said to him. “And I shall think of you—wherever you are and wherever I am—always!”

CHAPTER VIII—THE NEAREST DUTY

But the girl of the Red Mill, as she told Tom Cameron, wished to make whatever she did count. Yet she was spurred by no inordinate desire for praise or adulation. Merely she wanted to feel that she actually was doing her all for Uncle Sam.

Being untrained in nursing it could not be hospital work—not of the usual kind. Ruth wanted something that her capabilities fitted. Something she could do and do well. Something that was of a responsible nature and would count in the long run for the cause of humanity.

Meanwhile she did not refuse the small duties that fell to her lot. She was always ready to “jump in” and do her share in any event. Helen often said that her chum’s doctrinal belief was summed up in the quotation from the Sunday school hymn: “You in your small corner, and I in mine!”

One day at the Cheslow chapter it was said that there was need of somebody who could help out in the supply department of the State Headquarters in Robinsburg. A woman or girl was desired who would not have to be paid a salary, and preferably one who could pay her own living expenses.

“That’s me!” exclaimed Ruth to Helen. “I certainly can fill that bill.”

“But it really amounts to nothing, dear,” her chum said doubtfully. “It seems a pity to waste your brain and perfectly splendid ideas for organization and the like in such a position.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!” ejaculated Ruth, quoting Uncle Jabez. “Nobody has yet appreciated my ‘perfectly splendid ideas of organization,’” and she repeated the phrase with some scorn, “so I would better put forward some of my more simple talents. I have a good head for figures, I can letter packages, I can even stick stamps on letters and do other office work. My capabilities will not be strained. And, then,” she added, “I feel that in State Headquarters I may be in a better position to ‘grab off’ something really worth while.”

“‘Johannah on the spot,’ as it were?” said Helen. “But you’ll have to go down there to live, Ruthie.”

“The Y. W. C. A. will take me in, I am sure,” declared her friend. “I am not afraid of being alone in a great city—at my age and with my experience!”

She telephoned to Robinsburg and was told to come on. Naturally, by this time, the heads of the State Red Cross, at least, knew who Ruth Fielding was.

But every girl who had raised a large sum of money for the cause was not suited to such work as was waiting for her at headquarters. She knew that she must prove her fitness.

Helen took her over in the car the next morning and was inclined to be tearful when they separated.

“Just does seem as though I couldn’t get on without you, Ruthie!” she cried.

“Why, you are worse than poor Aunt Alvirah! Every time I go away from home she acts as though I might never come back again. And as for you, Helen Cameron, you have plenty to do. You have my share of Red Cross work in Cheslow to do as well as your own. Don’t forget that.”

Headquarters was a busy place. The very things Ruth told Helen she could do, she did do—and a multitude besides. Everything was systematized, and the work went on in a businesslike manner. Everybody was working hard and unselfishly.

At least, so Ruth at first thought. Then, before she had been there two days, she chanced into another department upon an errand and came face to face with Mrs. Rose Mantel, the woman in black.

“Oh! How d’do!” said the woman with her set smile. “I heard you were coming here to help us, Miss Fielding. Hope you’ll like it.”

“I hope so,” Ruth returned gravely.

She had very little to say to the woman in black, although the latter, as the days passed, seemed desirous of ingratiating herself into the college girl’s good opinion. But that Mrs. Mantel could not do.

It seemed that Mrs. Mantel was an expert bookkeeper and accountant. She confided to Ruth that, before she had married and “dear Herny” had died, she had been engaged in the offices of one of the largest cotton brokerage houses in New Orleans. She still had a little money left from “poor Herny’s” insurance, and she could live on that while she was “doing her bit” for the Red Cross.

Ruth made no comment. Of a sudden Mrs. Mantel seemed to have grown patriotic. No more did she repeat slanders of the Red Cross, but was working for that organization.

Ruth Fielding would not forbid a person “seeing the light” and becoming converted to the worthiness of the cause; but somehow she could not take Mrs. Mantel and her work at their face value.

Gradually, as the weeks fled, Ruth became acquainted with others of the busy workers; with Mr. Charles Mayo, who governed this headquarters and seldom spoke of anything save the work—so she did not know whether he had a family, or social life, or anything else but just Red Cross.

There was a Mr. Legrand, whom she did not like so well. He seemed to be a Frenchman, although he spoke perfect English. He was a dark man with steady, keen eyes behind thick lenses, and, unusual enough in this day, he wore a heavy beard. His voice was a bark, but it did not seem that he meant to be unpleasant.

Legrand and a man named José, who could be nothing but a Mexican, often were with the woman in black—both in the offices and out of them. Ruth took her meals at a restaurant near by, although she roomed in the Y. W. C. A. building, as she said she should. In that restaurant she often saw the woman in black dining with her two cavaliers, as Ruth secretly termed Legrand and José.

It was a trio that the girl of the Red Mill found herself interested in, but with whom she wished to have nothing to do.

All sorts and conditions of people, however, were turning to Red Cross work. “Why,” Ruth asked herself, “criticize the intentions of any of them?” She felt sometimes as though her condemnation of Mrs. Mantel, even though secret, was really wicked.

But in the bookkeeping and accounting department—handling the funds that came in, as well as the expense accounts—a dishonest person might do much harm to the cause. And Ruth knew in her heart that Mrs. Mantel was not an honest woman.

Her tale that day at the Ladies’ Aid Society, in Cheslow, had been false—strictly false. The woman knew it at the time, and she knew it now. Ruth was sure that every time Mrs. Mantel looked at her with her set smile she was thinking that Ruth had caught her in a prevarication and had not forgotten it.

Yet the girl of the Red Mill felt that she could say nothing about Mrs. Mantel to Mr. Mayo, or to anybody else in authority. She had no proved facts.

Besides, she had never been so busy before in all her life, and Ruth Fielding was no sluggard. It seemed as though every moment of her waking hours was filled and running over with duties.

She often worked long into the evening in her department at the Red Cross bureau. She might have missed the folks at home and her girl friends more had it not been for the work that crowded upon her.

One evening, as she came down from the loft above the business office where she had been working alone, she remarked that there was a light in the office. Mrs. Mantel and her assistants did not usually work at night.

The door stood ajar. Ruth looked in with frank curiosity. She saw Mr. José, the black-looking Mexican, alone in the room. He had taken both of the chemical fire extinguishers from the wall—one had hung at one end of the room and the other at the other end—and was doing something to them. Repairing them, perhaps, or merely cleaning them. He sat there cheerfully whistling in a low tone and manipulating a polishing rag, or something of the kind. He had a bucket beside him.

“I wonder if he can’t sleep nights, and that is why he is so busily engaged?” thought Ruth, as she went on out of the building. “I never knew of his being so workative before.”

But the matter made no real impression on her mind. It was a transitory thought entirely. She went to her clean little cell in the Y. W. C. A. home and forgot all about Mr. José and the fire extinguishers.

CHAPTER IX—TOM SAILS, AND SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS

With Mr. Cameron holding an important government position and being ready himself to go across before many weeks, it was only natural that he should have this information sent him that he might say good-bye to Tom. The latter had already been a fortnight with “his boys” in the training camp and was fixed in his assignment to his division of the expeditionary forces.

Ruth chanced to be at the Outlook, as the Cameron home was called, for over Sunday when this telegram was received. Both she and Helen were vastly excited.

“Oh, I’m going with you! I must see Tommy once more,” cried the twin with an outburst of sobs and tears that made her father very unhappy.

“My dear! You cannot,” Mr. Cameron tried to explain.

“I can! I must!” the girl cried. “I know I’ll never see Tommy again. He—he’s going over there to—to be shot——”

“Don’t, dear!” begged Ruth, taking her chum into her arms. “You must not talk that way. This is war——”

“And is war altogether a man’s game? Aren’t we to have anything to say about it, or what the Government shall do with our brothers?”

“It is no game,” sighed Ruth Fielding. “It is a very different thing. And our part in it is to give, and give generously. Our loved ones if we must.”

“I don’t want to give Tom!” Helen declared. “I can never be patriotic enough to give him to the country. And that’s all there is to it!”

“Be a good girl, Helen, and brace up,” advised her father, but quite appreciating the girl’s feelings. There had always been a bond between the Cameron twins stronger than that between most brothers and sisters.

“I know I shall never see him again,” wailed the girl.

“I hope he’ll not hear that you said that, dear,” said the girl of the Red Mill, shaking her head. “We must send him away with cheerfulness. You tell him from me, Mr. Cameron, that I send my love and I hope he will come back a major at least.”

“He’ll be killed!” Helen continued to wail. “I know he will!”

But that did not help things a mite. Mr. Cameron went off late that night and reached the rendezvous called for in the telegram. It was in a port from which several transports were sailing within a few hours, and he came back with a better idea of what it meant for thousands of men under arms to get away on a voyage across the seas.

Tom was busy with his men; but he had time to take supper with his father at the hotel and then got permission for Mr. Cameron to go aboard the ship with him and see how comfortable the War Department had made things for the expeditionary force.

Mr. Cameron stopped at Robinsburg on his return to tell Ruth about it, for she had returned to Headquarters, of course, on Monday, and was working quite as hard as before. He brought, too, a letter for Ruth from Tom, and just what their soldier-boy said in that missive the girl of the Red Mill never told.

Ruth was left, when her friends’ father went on to Cheslow, with a great feeling of emptiness in her life. It was not alone because of Tom’s departure for France; Mr. Cameron and Helen, too, would soon go across the sea.

Mr. Cameron had repeated Helen’s offer—that Ruth should accompany them. But the girl, though grateful, refused. She did not for a moment belittle his efforts for the Government, or Helen’s interest in the war.

But Mr. Cameron was a member of a commission that was to investigate certain matters and come back to make report. He would not be over there long.

As for Helen, Ruth was quite sure she would join some association of wealthy women and girls in Paris, as Jennie Stone had, and consider that she was “doing her bit.” Ruth wanted something more real than that. She was in earnest. She did not wish to be carefully sheltered from all hard work and even from the dangers “over there.” She desired a real part in what was going forward.

Nevertheless, while waiting her chance, she did not allow herself to become gloomy or morose. That was not Ruth Fielding’s way.

“I always know where to come when I wish to see a cheerful face,” Mr. Mayo declared, putting his head in at her door one day. “You always have a smile on tap. How do you do it?”

“I practice before my glass every morning,” Ruth declared, laughing. “But sometimes, during the day, I’m afraid my expression slips. I can’t always remember to smile when I am counting and packing these sweaters, and caps, and all, for the poor boys who, some of them, are going to stand up and be shot, or gassed, or blinded by liquid fire.”

“It is hard,” sighed the chief, wagging his head. “If it wasn’t knowing that we are doing just a little good——But not as much as I could wish! Collections seem very small. Our report is not going to be all I could wish this month.”

He went away, leaving Ruth with a thought that did not make it any easier for her to smile. She saw people all day long coming into the building and seeking out the cashier’s desk, where Mrs. Mantel sat, to hand over contributions of money to the Red Cross. If only each brought a dollar there should be a large sum added to the local treasury each day.

There was no way of checking up these payments. The money passed through the hands of the lady in black and only by her accounts on the day ledger and a system of card index taken from that ledger by Mr. Legrand, who worked as her assistant, could the record be found of the moneys contributed to the Red Cross at this station.

Ruth Fielding was not naturally of a suspicious disposition; but the honesty of Mrs. Mantel and the real interest of that woman in the cause were still keenly questioned in Ruth’s mind.

She wondered if Mr. Mayo knew who the woman really was. Was her story of widowhood, and of her former business experience in New Orleans strictly according to facts? What might be learned about the woman in black if inquiry was made in that Southern city?

Yet at times Ruth would have felt condemned for her suspicions had it not been for the daily sight of Mrs. Mantel’s hard smile and her black, glittering eyes.

“Snakes’ eyes,” thought the girl of the Red Mill. “Quite as bright and quite as malevolent. Mrs. Mantel certainly does not love me, despite her soft words and sweet smile.”

There was some stir in the headquarters at last regarding a large draft of Red Cross workers to make up another expeditionary force to France. Two full hospital units were going and a base supply unit as well. Altogether several hundred men and women would sail in a month’s time for the other side.

Ruth’s heart beat quicker at the thought. Was there a prospect for her to go over in some capacity with this quota?

Most of the candidates for all departments of the expeditionary force were trained in the work they were to do. It was ridiculous to hope for an appointment in the hospital force. No nurse among them all had served less than two years in a hospital, and many of them had served three and four.

She asked Mr. Mayo what billets there were open in the supply unit; but the chief did not know. The State had supplied few workers as yet who had been sent abroad; Robinsburg, up to this time, none at all.

“Why, Miss Fielding, you must not think of going over there!” he cried. “We need you here. If all our dependable women go to France, how shall we manage here?”

“You would manage very well,” Ruth told him. “This should be a training school for the work over there. I know that I can give any intelligent girl such an idea of my work in three weeks that you would never miss me.”

“Impossible, Miss Fielding!”

“Quite possible, I assure you. I want to go. I feel I can do more over there than I can here. A thousand girls who can’t go could be found to do what I do here. Approve my application, will you please, Mr. Mayo?”

He did this after some hesitation. “Am I going to lose everybody at once?” he grumbled.

“Why, only poor little me,” laughed Ruth Fielding.

“Yours is the seventh application I have O.K.’d. And several others may ask yet. The fire is spreading.”

“Oh! Who?”

“We are going to lose Mrs. Mantel for one. I understand that the Red Cross wants her for a much more important work in France.”

For a little while Ruth doubted after all if she so much desired to go to France. The fact that Mrs. Mantel was going came as a shock to her mind and made her hesitate. Suppose she should meet the woman in black over there? Suppose her work should be connected with that of the woman whom she so much suspected and disliked?

Then her better sense and her patriotism came to the force. What had she to do with Mrs. Mantel, after all? She was not the woman’s keeper. Nor could it be possible that Mrs. Mantel would disturb herself much over Ruth Fielding, no matter where they might meet.

Was Ruth Fielding willing to work for the Red Cross only in ways that would be wholly pleasant and with people of whom she could entirely approve? The girl asked herself this seriously.

She put the thought behind her with distaste at her own narrowness of vision. Born of Yankee stock, she was naturally conservative to the very marrow of her bones. This New England attitude is not altogether a curse; but it sometimes leads one out of broad paths.

Surely the work was broad enough for both her and the woman in black to do what they might without conflict. “I’ll do my part; what has Mrs. Mantel to do with me?” she determined.

Before Ruth had a chance to tell her chum of the application she had put in, Helen wrote her hurriedly that Mr. Cameron’s commission was to sail in two days from Boston. Ruth could not leave her work, but she wrote a long letter to her dearest chum and sent it by special delivery to the Boston hotel, where she knew the Camerons would stop for a night.

It really seemed terrible, that her chum and her father should go without Ruth seeing them again; but she did not wish to leave her work while her application for an assignment to France was pending. It might mean that she would lose her chance altogether.

She only told Helen in the letter that she, too, hoped to be “over there” some day soon.

But several days slipped by and her case was not mentioned by Mr. Mayo. It seemed pretty hard to Ruth. She was ready and able to go and nobody wanted her!

The weather chanced to be unpleasant, too, and that is often closely linked up to one’s very deepest feelings. Ruth’s philosophy could not overcome the effect of a foggy, dripping day. Her usual cheerfulness dropped several degrees.

It drew on toward evening, and the patter of raindrops on the panes grew louder. The glistening umbrellas in the street, as she looked down upon them from the window, looked like many, many black mushrooms. Ruth knew she would have a dreary evening.

Suddenly she heard a door bang on the floor below—a shout and then a crash of glass. Next——

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

In an instant she was out of her room and at the head of the stairs. It was an old building—a regular firetrap. Mr. Mayo had dashed out of his office and was shouting up the stairs:

“Come down! Down, every one of you! Fire!”

Through the open transom over the door of Mrs. Mantel’s office Ruth saw that one end of the room was ablaze.

CHAPTER X—SUSPICIONS

“I was opening a gallon of lubricating oil. It broke and spurted everywhere. I cut myself—see?”

He showed his hand. Ruth saw that blood seemed to be running from the cut freely. But she was more interested in the efforts of the porter. His extinguisher seemed to be doing very little good.

Ruth heard Mr. Mayo trying to discover the cause of the fire; but Mr. Legrand seemed unable to tell that. He ran out to a drugstore to have his hand attended to.

Mr. Mayo seized the second extinguisher from the wall. The porter flung his down, at the same time yelling:

“No good! No good, I tell you, Mr. Mayo! Everything’s got to go. Those extinguishers must be all wrong. The chemicals have evaporated, or something.”

Mr. Mayo tried the one he had seized with no better result. While this was going on Ruth Fielding suddenly remembered something—remembered it with a shock. She had seen the man, José, tampering with those same extinguishers some days before.

While a certain spray was puffed forth from the nozzle of the extinguisher, it seemed to have no effect on the flames which were, as the porter declared, spreading rapidly.

Mrs. Mantel’s big desk and the file cabinet were all afire. Nothing could save the papers and books.

An alarm had been turned in by somebody, and now the first of the fire department arrived. These men brought in extinguishers that had an effect upon the flames at once. The fire was quite quenched in five minutes more.

Ruth had retreated to Mr. Mayo’s office. She heard one of the fire chiefs talking to the gentleman at the doorway.

“What caused that blaze anyway?” the fireman demanded.

“I understand some oil was spilled.”

“What kind of oil?” snapped the other.

“Lubricating oil.”

“Nonsense! It acted more like benzine or naphtha to me. But you haven’t told me how it got lit up?”

“I don’t know. The porter says he first saw flames rising from the waste basket between the big desk and the file cabinet,” Mr. Mayo said. “Then the fire spread both ways.”

“Well! The insurance adjusters will be after you. I’ve got to report my belief. Looks as though somebody had been mighty careless with some inflammable substance. What were you using oil at all for here?”

“I—I could not tell you,” Mr. Mayo said. “I will ask Mr. Legrand when he comes back.”

But Ruth learned in the morning that Legrand had not returned. Nobody seemed to know where he lived. Mrs. Mantel said he had moved recently, but she did not know where to.

The insurance adjusters did make a pertinent inquiry about the origin of the fire. But nobody had been in the office with Legrand when it started save the porter, and he had already told all he had seen. There was no reason for charging anybody else with carelessness but the missing man.

Save in one particular. Mrs. Mantel seemed horror-stricken when she saw the charred remains of her desk and the file cabinet. The files of cards were completely destroyed. The cards were merely brown husks—those that were not ashes. The records of contributions for six months past were completely burned.

“But you, fortunately, have the ledgers in the safe, have you not, Mrs. Mantel?” the Chief said.

The woman in black broke down and wept. “How careless you will think me, Mr. Mayo,” she cried. “I left the two ledgers on my desk. Legrand said he wished to compare certain figures——”

“The ledgers are destroyed, too?” gasped the man.

“There are their charred remains,” declared the woman, pointing dramatically to the burned debris where her desk had stood.

There was not a line to show how much had been given to the Red Cross at this station, or who had given it! When Mr. Mayo opened the safe he found less than two thousand dollars in cash and checks and noted upon the bank deposit book; and the month was almost ended. Payment was made to Headquarters of all collections every thirty days.

Mrs. Mantel seemed heartbroken. Legrand did not appear again at the Red Cross rooms. But the woman in black declared that the funds as shown in the safe must be altogether right, for she had locked the safe herself and remembered that the funds were not more than the amount found.

“But we have had some large contributions during the month, Mrs. Mantel,” Mr. Mayo said weakly.

“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Mayo,” the woman declared, her eyes flashing. “Our contributions for some weeks have been scanty. People are getting tired of giving to the Red Cross, I fear.”

Ruth heard something of this discussion, but not all. She did not know what to think about Mrs. Mantel and Legrand. And then, there was José, the man whom she had seen tampering with the fire extinguishers!

Should she tell Mr. Mayo of her suspicions? Or should she go to the office of the fire insurance adjustors? Or should she keep completely out of the matter?

Had Mr. Mayo been a more forceful man Ruth might have given him her confidence. But she feared that, although he was a hard-working official and loyal to the core, he did not possess the quality of wisdom necessary to enable him to handle the situation successfully.

Besides, just at this time, she heard from New York. Her application had been investigated and she was informed that she would be accepted for work with the base supply unit about to sail for France, with the proviso, of course, that she passed the medical examination and would pay her share of the unit’s expenses and for her own support.

She had to tell Mr. Mayo, bid good-bye to her fellow workers, and leave Robinsburg within two hours. She had only three days to make ready before going to New York, and she wished to spend all of that time at the Red Mill.

Chapter XI—SAID IN GERMAN

“But it will be only for a few months. I might remain away as long if I returned to Ardmore for my junior year.”

“Ah, but that’s not like going away over to France where there is so much danger and trouble,” the little old woman objected.

“Don’t worry about me, dear,” urged Ruth, with great gentleness.

“We don’t know what may happen,” continued Aunt Alvirah. “A single month at my time o’ life is longer’n a year at your age, my pretty.”

“Oh, I am sure to come back,” Ruth cried.

“We’ll hope so. I shall pray for you, my pretty. But there’ll be fear eatin’ at our hearts every day that you are so far from us.”

Uncle Jabez likewise expressed himself as loath to have her go; yet his extreme patriotism inspired him to wish her Godspeed cheerfully.

“I vum! I’d like to be goin’ with you. Only with Old Betsey on my shoulder!” declared the miller. “You don’t want to take the old gun with you, do you, Niece Ruth?” he added, with twinkling eyes. “I’ve had her fixed. And she ought to be able to shoot a Hun or two yet.”

“I am not going to shoot Germans,” said Ruth, shaking her head. “I only hope to do what I can in saving our boys after the battles. I can’t even nurse them—poor dears! My all that I do seems so little.”

“Ha!” grunted Uncle Jabez. “I reckon you’ll do full and plenty. If you don’t it’ll be the first time in your life that you fall down on a job.”

Which was remarkably warm commendation for the miller to give, and Ruth appreciated it deeply.

He drove her to town himself and put her on the train for New York. “Don’t you git into no more danger over there than you kin help, Niece Ruth,” he urged. “Good-bye!”

She traveled alone to the metropolis, and that without hearing from or seeing any of her fellow-workers at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg. She did wonder much, however, what the outcome of the fire had been.

What had become of Mrs. Rose Mantel, the woman in black? Had she been finally suspected by Mr. Mayo, and would she be refused further work with the organization because of the outcome of the fire? Ruth could not but believe that the conflagration had been caused to cover shortages in the Red Cross accounts.

At the Grand Central Terminal Ruth was met by a very lovely lady, a worker in the Red Cross, who took her home to her Madison Avenue residence, where Ruth was to remain for the few days she was to be in the city.

“It is all I can do,” said the woman smiling, when Ruth expressed her wonder that she should have turned her beautiful home into a clearing house for Red Cross workers. “It is all I can do. I am quite alone now, and it cheers me and gives me new topics of interest to see and care for the splendid girls who are really going over there to help our soldiers.”

Later Ruth Fielding learned that this woman’s two sons were both in France—one in a medical corps and the other in the trenches. She had already given her all, it seemed; but she could not do too much for the country.

The several girls the lady entertained at this time had little opportunity for amusement. The Red Cross ship was to sail within forty-eight hours.

Ruth was able to meet many of the members of her supply unit, and found them a most interesting group. They had come from many parts of the country and had brought with them varied ideas about the work and of what they were “going up against.”

All, however, seemed to be deeply interested in the Red Cross and the burden the war had laid upon them. They were not going to France to play, but to serve in any way possible.

There was a single disturbing element in the bustling hurry of getting under way. At this late moment the woman who had been chosen as chief of the supply unit was deterred from sailing. Serious illness in her family forced her to resign her position and remain to nurse those at home. It was quite a blow to the unit and to the Commissioner himself.

The question, Who will take her place? became the most important thought in the minds of the members of the unit. Ruth fully understood that to find a person as capable as the woman already selected would not be an easy matter.

Until the hour the party left New York for Philadelphia, the port of sail for the Red Cross ship, no candidate had been settled on by the Commissioner to head the supply unit.

“We shall find somebody. I have one person in mind right now who may be the very one. If so, this person will be shipped by a faster vessel and by another convoy than yours,” and he laughed. “You may find your chief in Paris when you get there.”

Ruth wondered to herself if they really would get there. At this time the German submarines were sinking even the steamships taking Red Cross workers and supplies across. The Huns had thrown over their last vestige of humanity.

The ship which carried the Red Cross units joined a squadron of other supply ships outside Cape May. The guard ships were a number of busy and fast sailing torpedo boat destroyers. They darted around the slower flotilla of merchant steamships like “lucky-bugs” on a millpond.

Ruth shared her outside cabin with a girl from Topeka, Kansas—an exceedingly blithe and boisterous young person.

“I never imagined there was so much water in the ocean!” declared this young woman, Clare Biggars. “Look at it! Such a perfectly awful waste of it. If the ocean is just a means of communication between countries, it needn’t be any wider than the Missouri River, need it?”

“I am glad the Atlantic is a good deal wider than that,” Ruth said seriously. “The Kaiser and his armies would have been over in our country before this in that case.”

Clare chuckled. “Lots of the farming people in my section are Germans, and three months ago they noised it abroad that New York had been attacked by submarines and flying machines and that a big army of their fellow-countrymen were landing in this country at a place called Montauk Point——”

“The end of Long Island,” interposed Ruth.

“And were going to march inland and conquer the country as they marched. They would do to New York State just what they have done to Belgium and Northern France. It was thought, by their talk, that all the Germans around Topeka would rise and seize the banks and arsenals and all.”

“Why didn’t they?” asked Ruth, much amused.

“Why,” said Clare, laughing, too, “the police wouldn’t let them.”

The German peril by sea, however, was not to be sneered at. As the fleet approached the coast of France it became evident that the officers of the Red Cross ship, as well as those of the convoy, were in much anxiety.

There seems no better way to safeguard the merchant ships than for the destroyers to sail ahead and “clear the way” for the unarmored vessels. But a sharp submarine commander may spy the coming flotilla through his periscope, sink deep to allow the destroyers to pass over him, and then rise to the surface between the destroyers and the larger ships and torpedo the latter before the naval vessels can attack the subsea boat.

For forty-eight hours none of the girls of the Red Cross supply unit had their clothing off or went to bed. They were advised to buckle on life preservers, and most of them remained on deck, watching for submarines. It was scarcely possible to get them below for meals.

The strain of the situation was great. And yet it was more excitement over the possibility of being attacked than actual fear.

“What’s the use of going across the pond at such a time if we’re not even to see a periscope?” demanded Clare. “My brother, Ben, who is coming over with the first expedition of the National Army, wagered me ten dollars I wouldn’t know a periscope if I saw one. I’d like to earn that ten. Every little bit adds to what you’ve got, you know.”

It was not the sight of a submarine periscope that startled Ruth Fielding the evening of the next-to-the-last day of the voyage. It was something she heard as she leaned upon the port rail on the main deck, quite alone, looking off across the graying water.

Two people were behind her, and out of sight around the corner of the deckhouse. One was a man, with a voice that had a compelling bark. Whether his companion was a man or a woman Ruth could not tell. But the voice she heard so distinctly began to rasp her nerves—and its familiarity troubled her, too.

Now and then she heard a word in English. Then, of a sudden, the man ejaculated in German:

“The foolish ones! As though this boat would be torpedoed with us aboard! These Americans are crazy.”

Ruth wheeled and walked quickly down the deck to the corner of the house. She saw the speaker sitting in a deck chair beside another person who was so wrapped in deck rugs that she could not distinguish what he or she looked like.

But the silhouette of the man who had uttered those last words stood out plainly between Ruth and the fading light. He was tall, with heavy shoulders, and a fat, beefy face. That smoothly shaven countenance looked like nobody that she had ever seen before; but the barking voice sounded exactly like that of Legrand, Mrs. Rose Mantel’s associate and particular friend!