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

CHAPTER XII—THROUGH DANGEROUS WATERS

It seemed scarcely possible that this could be Legrand, the man who she had come to believe was actually responsible for the fire in the Robinsburg Red Cross rooms. If he was a traitor to the organization—and to the United States as well—how dared he sail on this ship for France, and with an organization of people who were sworn to work for the Red Cross?

Was he sufficiently disguised by the shaving of his beard to risk discovery? And with that peculiar, sharp, barking voice! “A Prussian drill master surely could be no more abrupt,” thought Ruth.

As the ship in these dangerous waters sailed with few lamps burning, and none at all had been turned on upon the main deck, it was too dark for Ruth to see clearly either the man who had spoken or the person hidden by the wraps in the deck chair.

She saw the spotlight in the hand of an officer up the deck and she hastened toward him. The passengers were warned not to use the little electric hand lamps outside of the cabins and passages. She was not mistaken in the identity of this person with the lamp. It was the purser.

“Oh, Mr. Savage!” she said. “Will you walk with me?”

“Bless me, Miss Fielding! you fill me with delight. This is an unexpected proposal I am sure,” he declared in his heavy, English, but good-humored way.

“‘Fash not yoursel’ wi’ pride,’ as Chief Engineer Douglas would say,” laughed Ruth. “I am going to ask you to walk with me so that you can tell me the name of another man I am suddenly interested in.”

“What! What!” cried the purser. “Who is that, I’d like to know. Who are you so suddenly interested in?”

She tried to explain the appearance of the round-shouldered man as she led the purser along the deck. But when they reached the spot where Ruth had left the individuals both had disappeared.

“I don’t know whom you could have seen,” the purser said, “unless it was Professor Perry. His stateroom is yonder—A-thirty-four. And the little chap in the deck chair might be Signor Aristo, an Italian, who rooms next door, in thirty-six.”

“I am not sure it was a man in the other chair.”

“Professor Perry has nothing to do with the ladies aboard, I assure you,” chuckled the purser. “A dry-as-dust old fellow, Perry, going to France for some kind of research work. Comes from one of your Western universities. I believe they have one in every large town, haven’t they?”

“One what?” Ruth asked.

“University,” chuckled the Englishman. “You should get acquainted with Perry, if his appearance so much interests you, Miss Fielding.”

But Ruth was in no mood for banter about the man whose appearance and words had so astonished her. She said nothing to the purser or to anybody else about what she had heard the strange man say in German. No person who belonged—really belonged—on this Red Cross ship, should have said what he did and in that tone!

He spoke to his companion as though there was a settled and secret understanding between them. And as though, too, he had a power of divination about what the German U-boat commanders would do, beyond the knowledge possessed by the officers of the steamship.

What could a “dry-as-dust” professor from a Western university have in common with the person known as Signor Aristo, who Ruth found was down on the ship’s list as a chef of a wealthy Fifth Avenue family, going back to his native Italy.

It was said the Signor had had a very bad passage. He had kept to his room entirely, not even appearing on deck. Was he a man at all?

The thought came to Ruth Fielding and would not be put away, that this small, retiring person known as Signor Aristo might be a woman. If Professor Perry was the distinguished Legrand what was more possible than that the person Ruth had seen in the deck chair was Mrs. Rose Mantel, likewise in disguise?

“Oh, dear me!” she told herself at last, “I am getting to be a regular sleuth. But my suspicions do point that way. If that woman in black and Legrand robbed the Red Cross treasury at Robinsburg, and covered their stealings by burning the records, would they be likely to leave the country in a Red Cross ship?

“That would seem preposterous. And yet, what more unlikely method of departure? It might be that such a course on the part of two criminals would be quite sure to cover their escape.”

She wondered about it much as the ship sailed majestically into the French port, safe at last from any peril of being torpedoed by the enemy. And Professor Perry had been quite sure that she was safe in any case!

Ruth saw the professor when they landed. The Italian chef she did not see at all. Nor did Ruth Fielding see anybody who looked like Mrs. Rose Mantel.

“I may be quite wrong in all my suspicions,” she thought. “I would better say nothing about them. To cause the authorities to arrest entirely innocent people would be a very wicked thing, indeed.”

Besides, there was so much to do and to see that the girl of the Red Mill could not keep her suspicions alive. This unknown world she and her mates had come to quite filled their minds with new thoughts and interests.

Their first few hours in France was an experience long to be remembered. Ruth might have been quite bewildered had it not been that her mind was so set upon the novel sights and sounds about her.

“I declare I don’t know whether I am a-foot or a-horseback!” Clare Biggars said. “Let me hang on to your coat-tail, Ruth. I know you are real and United Statesy. But these funny French folk——

“My! they are like people out of a story book, after all, aren’t they? I thought I’d seen most every kind of folk at the San Francisco Fair; but just nobody seems familiar looking here!”

Before they were off the quay, several French women, who could not speak a word of English save “’Ello!” welcomed the Red Cross workers with joy. At this time Americans coming to help France against her enemies were a new and very wonderful thing. The first marching soldiers from America were acclaimed along the streets and country roads as heroes might have been.

An old woman in a close-fitting bonnet and ragged shawl—not an over-clean person—took Ruth’s hand in both hers and patted it, and said something in her own tongue that brought the tears to the girl’s eyes. It was such a blessing as Aunt Alvirah had murmured over her when the girl had left the Red Mill.

She and Clare, with several of the other feminine members of the supply unit were quartered in an old hotel almost on the quay for their first night ashore. It was said that some troop trains had the right-of-way; so the Red Cross workers could not go up to Paris for twenty-four hours.

Somebody made a mistake. It could not be expected that everything would go smoothly. The heads of the various Red Cross units were not infallible. Besides, this supply unit to which Ruth belonged really had no head as yet. The party at the seaside hotel was forgotten.

Nobody came to the hotel to inform them when the unit was to entrain. They were served very well by the hotel attendants and several chatty ladies, who could speak English, came to see them. But Ruth and the other girls had not come to France as tourists.

Finally, the girl of the Red Mill, with Clare Biggars, sallied forth to find the remainder of their unit. Fortunately, Ruth’s knowledge of the language was not superficial. Madame Picolet, her French teacher at Briarwood Hall, had been most thorough in the drilling of her pupils; and Madame was a Parisienne.

But when Ruth discovered that she and her friends at the seaside hotel had been left behind by the rest of the Red Cross contingent, she was rather startled, and Clare was angered.

“What do they think we are?” demanded the Western girl. “Of no account at all? Where’s our transportation? What do they suppose we’ll do, dumped down here in this fishing town? What——”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Ruth laughed. “Don’t lose your temper, my dear,” she advised soothingly. “If nothing worse than this happens to us——”

She immediately interviewed several railroad officials, arranged for transportation, got the passports of all viséed, and, in the middle of the afternoon, they were off by slow train to the French capital.

“We can’t really get lost, girls,” Ruth declared. “For we are Americans, and Americans, at present, in France, are objects of considerable interest to everybody. We’ll only be a day late getting to the city on the Seine.”

When they finally arrived in Paris, Ruth knew right where to go to reach the Red Cross supply department headquarters. She had it all written down in her notebook, and taxicabs brought the party in safety to the entrance to the building in question.

As the girls alighted from the taxis Clare seized Ruth’s wrist, whispering:

“Why! there’s that Professor Perry again—the one that came over with us on the steamer. You remember?”

Ruth saw the man whose voice was like Legrand’s, but whose facial appearance was nothing at all like that suspected individual. But it was his companion that particularly attracted the attention of the girl of the Red Mill.

This was a slight, dark man, who hobbled as he walked. His right leg was bent and he wore a shoe with a four-inch wooden sole.

“Who is that, I wonder?” Ruth murmured, looking at the crippled man.

“That is Signor Aristo,” Clair said. “He’s an Italian chef I am told.”

Signor Aristo was, likewise, smoothly shaven; but Ruth remarked that he looked much like the Mexican, José, who had worked with Legrand at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg.

CHAPTER XIII—THE NEW CHIEF

Ruth accompanied the remainder of the “left behind” party of workers into the building, and they found the proper office in which to report their arrival in Paris. The other members of the supply unit met the delayed party with much hilarity; the joke of their having been left behind was not soon to be forgotten.

The hospital units, better organized, and with their heads, or chiefs, already trained and on the spot, went on toward the front that very day. But Ruth’s battalion still lacked a leader. They were scattered among different hotels and pensions in the vicinity of the Red Cross offices, and spent several days in comparative idleness.

It gave the girls an opportunity of going about and seeing the French capital, which, even in wartime, had a certain amount of gayety. Ruth searched out Madame Picolet, and Madame was transported with joy on seeing her one-time pupil.

The Frenchwoman held the girl of the Red Mill in grateful remembrance, and for more than Ruth’s contribution to Madame Picolet’s work among the widows and orphans of her dear poilus. In “Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall,” Madame Picolet’s personal history is narrated, and how Ruth had been the means of aiding the lady in a very serious predicament is shown.

“Ah, my dear child!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman, “it is a blessing of le bon Dieu that we should meet again. And in this, my own country! I love all Americans for what they are doing for our poor poilus. Your sweet and volatile friend, Helen, is here. She has gone with her father just now to a southern city. And even that mischievous Mam’zelle Stone is working in a good cause. She will be delight’ to see you, too.”

This was quite true. Jennie Stone welcomed Ruth in the headquarters of the American Women’s League with a scream of joy, and flew into the arms of the girl of the Red Mill.

The latter staggered under the shock. Jennie looked at her woefully.

“Don’t tell me that work agrees with me!” she wailed. “Don’t say that I am getting fat again! It’s the cooking.”

“What cooking? French cooking will never make you fat in a hundred years,” declared Ruth, who had had her own experiences in the French hotels in war times. “Don’t tell me that, Jennie.

“I don’t. It’s the diet kitchen. I’m in that, you know, and I’m tasting food all the time. It—it’s dreadful the amount I manage to absorb without thinking every day. I know, before this war is over, I shall be as big as one of those British tanks they talk about.”

“My goodness, girl!” cried Ruth. “You don’t have to make a tank of yourself, do you? Exercise——”

“Now stop right there, Ruth Fielding!” cried Jennie Stone, with flashing eyes. “You have as little sense as the rest of these people. They tell me to exercise, and don’t you know that every time I go horseback riding, or do anything else of a violent nature, that I have to come right back and eat enough victuals to put on twice the number of pounds the exercise is supposed to take off? Don’t—tell—me! It’s impossible to reduce and keep one’s health.”

Jennie was doing something besides putting on flesh, however. Her practical work in the diet kitchen Ruth saw was worthy, indeed.

The girl of the Red Mill could not see Helen at this time, but she believed her chum and Mr. Cameron would look her up, wherever the supply unit to which Ruth belonged was ultimately assigned.

She received a letter from Tom Cameron about this time, too, and found that he was hard at work in a camp right behind the French lines and had already made one step in the line of progress, being now a first lieutenant. He expected, with his force of Pershing’s boys, to go into the trenches for the first time within a fortnight.

She wished she might see Tom again before his battalion went into action; but she was under command of the Red Cross; and, in any case, she could not have got her passport viséed for the front. Mr. Cameron, as a representative of the United States Government, with Helen, had been able to visit Tom in the training camp over here.

Ruth wrote, however—wrote a letter that Tom slipped into the little leather pouch he wore inside his shirt, and which he would surely have with him when he endured his first round of duty in the trenches. With the verities of life and death so near to them, these young people were very serious, indeed.

Yet the note of cheerfulness was never lost among the workers of the Red Cross with whom Ruth Fielding daily associated. While she waited for her unit to be assigned to its place the girl of the Red Mill did not waste her time. There was always something to see and something to learn.

When congregated at the headquarters of the Supply Department one day, the unit was suddenly notified that their new chief had arrived. They gathered quickly in the reception room and soon a number of Red Cross officials entered, headed by one in a major’s uniform and with several medals on the breast of his coat. He was a medical army officer in addition to being a Red Cross commissioner.

“The ladies of our new base supply unit,” said the commissioner, introducing the workers, “already assigned to Lyse. That was decided last evening.

“And it is my pleasure,” he added, “to introduce to you ladies your new chief. She has come over especially to take charge of your unit. Madame Mantel, ladies. Her experience, her executive ability, and her knowledge of French makes her quite the right person for the place. I know you will welcome her warmly.”

Even before he spoke Ruth Fielding had recognized the woman in black. Nor did she feel any overwhelming surprise at Rose Mantel’s appearance. It was as though the girl had expected, back in her mind, something like this to happen.

The man who spoke like Legrand and the one who looked like José, appearing at the Paris Red Cross offices, had prepared Ruth for this very thing. “Madame” Mantel had crossed the path of the girl of the Red Mill again. Ruth crowded behind her companions and hid herself from the sharp and “snaky” eyes of the woman in black.

The question of how Mrs. Mantel had obtained this place under the Red Cross did not trouble Ruth at all. She had gained it. The thing that made Ruth feel anxious was the object the woman in black had in obtaining her prominent position in the organization.

The girl could not help feeling that there was something crooked about Rose Mantel, about Legrand, and about José. These three had, she believed, robbed the organization in Robinsburg. Their “pickings” there had perhaps been small beside the loot they could obtain with the woman in black as chief of a base supply unit.

Her first experience with Mrs. Mantel in Cheslow had convinced Ruth Fielding that the woman was dishonest. The incident of the fire at Robinsburg seemed to prove this belief correct. Yet how could she convince the higher authorities of the Red Cross that the new chief of this supply unit was a dangerous person?

At least, Ruth was not minded to face Mrs. Mantel at this time. She managed to keep out of the woman’s way while they remained in Paris. In two days the unit got their transportation for Lyse, and it was not until they were well settled in their work at the base hospital in that city that Ruth Fielding came in personal contact with the woman in black, her immediate superior.

Ruth had charge of the linen department and had taken over the supplies before speaking with Mrs. Mantel. They met in one of the hospital corridors—and quite suddenly.

The woman in black, who still dressed so that this nickname was borne out by her appearance, halted in amazement, and Ruth saw her hand go swiftly to her bosom—was it to still her heart’s increased beat, or did she hide some weapon there? The malevolent flash of Rose Mantel’s eyes easily suggested the latter supposition.

“Miss Fielding!” she gasped.

“How do you do, Mrs. Mantel?” the girl of the Red Mill returned quietly.

“How—— I had no idea you had come across. And in my unit?”

“I was equally surprised when I discovered you, Mrs. Mantel,” said the girl.

“You—— How odd!” murmured the woman in black. “Quite a coincidence. I had not seen you since the fire——”

“And I hope there will be no fire here—don’t you, Madame Mantel?” interrupted Ruth. “That would be too dreadful.”

“You are right. Quite too dreadful,” agreed Mrs. Mantel, and swept past the girl haughtily.

CHAPTER XIV—A CHANGE OF BASE

She found that in her off hours she could be of use in the hospital wards. So many of the patients wished to write home, but could do so only through the aid of the Red Cross workers. This task Ruth could perform, for she could write and speak French.

Nobody interfered with her when she undertook these extra tasks. She saw that many of the girls in her own unit kept away from the wards because the sight of the wounded and crippled men was hard to bear. Even Clare Biggars had other uses for her spare moments than writing letters for helpless blessés.

Ruth was not forced into contact with the chief of her unit, and was glad thereof. Her weekly reports went up to Madame Mantel, and that was quite all Ruth had to do with the woman in black.

But the girl heard her mates talking a good deal about the woman. The latter seemed to be a favorite with most of the unit. Clare Biggars quite “raved” about Madame Mantel.

“And she knows so many nice people!” Clare exclaimed. “I wish my French was better. I went to dinner last night with Madame Mantel at that little café of the Chou-rouge. Half the people there seemed to know her. And Professor Perry——”

“Not the man who came over on the steamer with us?” Ruth asked with sudden anxiety.

“The very same,” said Clare. “He ate at our table.”

“I don’t suppose that little Italian chef, Signor Aristo, was among those present, too?” Ruth asked suspiciously.

“No. The only Italian I saw was not lame like Signor Aristo. Madame said he was an Italian commissioner. He was in uniform.”

“Who was in uniform? Aristo?”

“Why, no! How you talk! The Italian gentleman at the restaurant. Aristo had a short leg, don’t you remember? This man was dressed in an Italian uniform—all red and green, and medals upon his coat.”

“I think I will go to the Chou-rouge myself,” Ruth said dryly. “It must be quite a popular place. But I hope they serve something to eat besides the red cabbage the name signifies.”

Again her suspicions were aroused to fever heat. If Professor Perry was Legrand disguised, he and Mrs. Mantel had got together again. And Clare’s mention of the Italian added to Ruth’s trouble of mind, too.

José could easily have assumed the heavy shoe and called himself “Aristo.” Perhaps he was an Italian, and not a Mexican, after all. The trio of crooks, if such they were, had not joined each other here in Lyse by accident. There was something of a criminal nature afoot, Ruth felt sure. And yet with what evidence could she go to the Red Cross authorities?

Besides, something occurred to balk her intention of going to the café of the Chou-rouge to get a glimpse of the professor and the Italian commissioner. That day, much to her surprise, the medical major at the head of the great hospital sent for the girl of the Red Mill.

“Miss Fielding,” he said, upon shaking hands with her, “you have been recommended to me very highly as a young woman to fill a certain special position now open at Clair. Do you mind leaving your present employment?”

“Why, no,” the girl said slowly.

“I think the work at Clair will appeal to you,” the major continued. “I understand that you have been working at off hours in the convalescent wards. That is very commendable.”

“Oh, several of the other girls have been helping there as well as I.”

“I do not doubt it,” he said with a smile. “But it is reported to me that your work is especially commendable. You speak very good French. It is to a French hospital at Clair I can send you. A representative of the Red Cross is needed there to furnish emergency supplies when called upon, and particularly to communicate with the families of the blessés, and to furnish special services to the patients. You have a way with you, I understand, that pleases the poor fellows and that fits you for this position of which I speak.”

“Oh, I believe I should like it!” the girl cried, her eyes glistening. It seemed to be just the work she had hoped for from the beginning—coming in personal touch with the wounded. A place where her sympathies would serve the poor fellows.

“The position is yours. You will start to-night,” declared the major. “Clair is within sound of the guns. It has been bombarded twice; but we shall hope the Boches do not get so near again.”

Ruth was delighted with the chance to go. But suddenly a new thought came to her mind. She asked:

“Who recommended me, sir?”

“You have the very best recommendation you could have, Miss Fielding,” he said pleasantly. “Your chief seems to think very highly of your capabilities. Madame Mantel suggested your appointment.”

Fortunately, the major was not looking at Ruth as he spoke, but was filling out her commission papers for the new place she had accepted. The girl’s emotion at that moment was too great to be wholly hidden.

Rose Mantel to recommend her for any position! It seemed unbelievable! Unless——

The thought came to Ruth that the woman in black wished her out of the way. She feared the girl might say something regarding the Robinsburg fire that would start an official inquiry here in France regarding Mrs. Mantel and her particular friends. Was that the basis for the woman in black’s desire to get Ruth out of the way? Should the latter tell this medical officer, here and now, just what she thought of Mrs. Mantel?

How crass it would sound in his ears if she did so! Rose Mantel had warmly recommended Ruth for a position that the girl felt was just what she wanted.

She could not decide before the major handed her the papers and an order for transportation in an ambulance going to Clair. He again shook hands with her. His abrupt manner showed that he was a busy man and that he had no more time to give to her affairs.

“Get your passport viséed before you start. Never neglect your passport over here in these times,” advised the major.

Should she speak? She hesitated, and the major sat down to his desk and took up his pen again.

“Good-day, Miss Fielding,” he said. “And the best of luck!”

The girl left the office, still in a hesitating frame of mind. There were yet several hours before she left the town. Her bags were quickly packed. All the workers of the Red Cross “traveled light,” as Clare Biggars laughingly said.

Ruth decided that she could not confide in Clare. Already the Western girl was quite enamored of the smiling, snaky Rose Mantel. It would be useless to ask Clare to watch the woman. Nor could Ruth feel that it would be wise to go to the French police and tell them of her suspicions concerning the woman in black.

The French have a very high regard for the American Red Cross—as they have for their own Croix Rouge. They can, and do, accept assistance for their needy poilus and for others from the American Red Cross, because, in the end, the organization is international and is not affiliated with any particular religious sect.

To accuse one of the Red Cross workers in this great hospital at Lyse would be very serious—no matter to what Ruth’s suspicions pointed. The girl could not bring herself to do that.

When she went to the prefect of police to have her passport viséed she found a white-mustached, fatherly man, who took a great interest in her as an Americaine mademoiselle who had come across the ocean to aid France.

“I kiss your hand, Mademoiselle!” he said. “Your bravery and your regard for my country touches me deeply. Good fortune attend your efforts at Clair. You may be under bombardment there, my child. It is possible. We shall hope for your safety.”

Ruth thanked him for his good wishes, and, finally, was tempted to give some hint of her fears regarding the supposed Professor Perry and the Italian Clare had spoken of.

“They may be perfectly straightforward people,” Ruth said; “but where I was engaged in Red Cross work in America these two men—I am almost sure they are the same—worked under the names of Legrand and José, one supposedly a Frenchman and the other a Mexican. There was a fire and property was destroyed. Legrand and José were suspected in the matter, but I believe they got away without being arrested.”

“Mademoiselle, you put me under further obligations,” declared the police officer. “I shall make it my business to look up these two men—and their associates.”

“But, Monsieur, I may be wrong.”

“If it is proved that they are in disguise, that is sufficient. We are giving spies short shrift nowadays.”

His stern words rather troubled Ruth. Yet she believed she had done her duty in announcing her suspicions of the two men. Of Rose Mantel she said nothing. If the French prefect made a thorough investigation, as he should, he could not fail to discover the connection between the men and the chief of the Red Cross supply unit at the hospital.

Ruth’s arrangements were made in good season, and Clare and the other girls bade her a warm good-bye at the door of their pension. The ambulance that was going to Clair proved to be an American car of famous make with an ambulance body, and driven by a tall, thin youth who wore shell-bowed glasses. He was young and gawky and one could see hundreds of his like leaving the city high schools in America at half-past three o’clock, or pacing the walks about college campuses.

He looked just as much out of place in the strenuous occupation of ambulance driver as anyone could look. He seemingly was a “bookish” young man who would probably enjoy hunting a Greek verb to its lair. Tom Cameron would have called him “a plug”—a term meaning an over-faithful student.

Ruth climbed into the seat beside this driver. She then had no more than time to wave her hand to the girls before the ambulance shot away from the curb, turned a corner on two wheels, and, with the staccato blast of a horn that sounded bigger than the car itself, sent dogs and pedestrians flying for their lives.

“Goodness!” gasped Ruth when she caught her breath. Then she favored the bespectacled driver with a surprised stare. He looked straight ahead, and, as they reached the edge of the town, he put on still more speed, and the girl began to learn why people who can afford it buy automobiles that have good springs and shock absorbers.

“Do—do you have to drive this way?” she finally shrilled above the clatter of the car.

“Yes. This is the best road—and that isn’t saying much,” the bespectacled driver declared.

“No! I mean so fa-a-ast!”

“Oh! Does it jar you? I’ll pull her down. Got so used to getting over all the ground I can before I break something—or a shell comes——”

He reduced speed until they could talk to each other. Ruth learned all in one gush, it seemed, that his name was Charlie Bragg, that he had been on furlough, and that they had given him a “new second-hand flivver” to take up to Clair and beyond, as his old machine had been quite worn out.

He claimed unsmilingly to be more than twenty-one, that he had left a Western college in the middle of his freshman year to come over to drive a Red Cross car, and that he was writing a book to be called “On the Battlefront with a Flivver,” in which his brother in New York already had a publisher interested.

“Gee!” said this boy-man, who simply amazed Ruth Fielding, “Bob’s ten years older than I am, and he’s married, and his wife makes him put on rubbers and take an umbrella if it rains when he starts for his office. And they used to call me ‘Bubby’ before I came over here.”

Ruth could appreciate that! She laughed and they became better friends.

CHAPTER XV—NEW WORK

“We have to stop here and put the lights out,” he added, seeing a gaunt post beside the road on which was a half-obliterated sign.

“If you have to do that it must be perilous,” declared Ruth.

“No. It’s just an order. Maybe they’ve forgotten to take the sign down. But I don’t want to be stopped by one of these old territorials—or even by one of our own military police. You don’t know when you’re likely to run into one of them. Or maybe it’s a marine. Those are the boys, believe me! They’re on the job first and always.”

“But this time you boys who came to France to run automobiles got ahead of even the marine corps,” laughed Ruth. “Oh! What’s that?”

They were then traveling a very dark bit of road. Right across the gloomy way and just ahead of the machine something white dashed past. It seemed to cross the road in two or three great leaps and then sailed over the hedge on the left into a field.

“Did you see it?” asked Charlie Bragg, and there was a queer shake in his voice.

“Why, what is it? There it goes—all white!” and the excited girl pointed across the field, half standing up in the rocking car to do so.

“Going for the lines,” said the young driver.

“Is it a dog? A big dog? And he didn’t bark or anything!”

“Never does bark,” said her companion. “They say they can’t bark.”

“Then it’s a wolf! Wolves don’t bark,” Ruth suggested.

“I guess that’s right. They say they are dumb. Gosh! I don’t know,” Charlie said. “You didn’t really see anything, did you?” and he said it so very oddly that Ruth Fielding was perfectly amazed.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded. “I saw just as much as you did.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I saw anything,” he told her slowly. “The French say it’s the werwolf—and that means just nothing at all.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Ruth, repeating the word. “What old-world superstition is that? The ghost of a wolf?”

“They have a story that certain people, selling themselves to the Devil, can change at will into the form of a wolf,” went on Charlie.

“Oh, I know! They have that legend in every language there is, I guess,” Ruth returned.

“Now you’ve said it!”

“How ridiculous that sounds—in this day and generation. You don’t mean that people around here believe such stories?”

“They do.”

“And you half believe it yourself, Mr. Bragg,” cried Ruth, laughing.

“I tell you what it is,” the young fellow said earnestly, while still guiding the car through the dark way with a skill that was really wonderful. “There are a whole lot of things I don’t know in this world. I didn’t used to think so; but I do now.”

“But you don’t believe in magic—either black or white?”

“I know that that thing you saw just now—and that I have seen twice before—flies through this country just like that, and at night. It never makes a sound. Soldiers have shot at it, and either missed—or their bullets go right through it.”

“Oh, how absurd!”

“Isn’t it?” and perhaps Charlie Bragg grinned. But he went on seriously enough: “I don’t know. I’m only telling you what they say. If it is a white or gray dog, it leaps the very trenches and barbed-wire entanglements on the front—so they say. It has been seen doing so. No one has been able to shoot it. It crosses what they call No Man’s Land between the two battlefronts.”

“It carries despatches to the Germans, then!” cried Ruth.

“That is what the military authorities say,” said Charlie. “But these peasants don’t believe that. They say the werwolf was here long before the war. There is a chateau over back here—not far from the outskirts of Clair. The people say that the woman lives there.”

“What do you mean—the woman?” asked Ruth, between jounces, as the car took a particularly rough piece of the road on high gear.

“The one who is the werwolf,” said Charlie, and he tried to laugh.

“Mr. Bragg!”

“Well, I’m only telling you what they say,” he explained. “Lots of funny things are happening in this war. But this began before August, nineteen-fourteen, according to their tell.”

“Whose tell? And what other ‘funny’ things do you believe have happened?” the girl asked, with some scorn.

“That’s all right,” he declared more stoutly. “When you’ve been here as long as I have you’ll begin to wonder if there isn’t something in all these things you hear tell of. Why, don’t you know that fifty per cent, at least, of the French people—poilus and all—believe that the spirit of Joan of Arc led them to victory against the Boches in the worst battle of all?”

“I have heard something of that,” Ruth admitted quietly. “But that does not make me believe in werwolves.”

“No. But you should hear old Gaston Pere tell about this dog, or wolf, or ghost, or whatever it is. Gaston keeps the toll-bridge just this side of Clair. You’ll likely see him to-night. He told me all about the woman.”

“For pity’s sake, Mr. Bragg!” gasped Ruth. “Tell me more. You have got my feelings all harrowed up. You can’t possibly believe in such things—not really?”

“I’m only saying what Gaston—and others—say. This woman is a very great lady. A countess. She is an Alsatian—but not the right kind.”

“What do you mean by that?” interrupted Ruth.

“All Alsatians are not French at heart,” said the young man. “This French count married her years ago. She has two sons and both are in the French army. But it is said that she has had influence enough to keep them off the battle front.

“Oh, it sounds queer, and crazy, and all!” he added, with sudden vehemence. “But you saw that white thing flashing by yourself. It is never seen save at night, and always coming or going between the chateau and the battle lines, or between the lines themselves—out there in No Man’s Land.

“It used to race the country roads in the same direction—only as far as the then frontier—before the war. So they say. Months before the Germans spilled over into this country. There you have it.

“The military authorities believe it is a despatch-carrying dog. The peasants say the old countess is a werwolf. She keeps herself shut in the chateau with only a few servants. The military authorities can get nothing on her, and the peasants cross themselves when they pass her gate.”

Ruth said nothing for a minute or two. The guns grew louder in her ears, and the car came down a slight hill to the edge of a river. Here was the toll-bridge, and an old man came out with a shrouded lantern to take toll—and to look at their papers, too, for he was an official.

“Good evening, Gaston,” said Charlie Bragg.

“Evening, Monsieur,” was the cheerful reply.

The American lad stooped over his wheel to whisper: “Gaston! the werwolf just crossed the road three miles or so back, going toward——” and he nodded in the direction of the grumbling guns.

“Ma foi!” exclaimed the old man. “It forecasts another bombardment or air attack. Ah-h! La-la!”

He sighed, nodded to Ruth, and stepped back to let the car go on. The girl felt as though she were growing superstitious herself. This surely was a new and strange world she had come to—and a new and strange experience.

“Do you really believe all that?” she finally asked Charlie Bragg, point-blank.

“I tell you I don’t know what I believe,” he said. “But you saw the werwolf as well as I. Now, didn’t you?”

“I saw a light-colored dog of large size that ran across the track we were following,” said Ruth Fielding decisively, almost fiercely. “I’ll confess to nothing else.”

But she liked Charlie Bragg just the same, and thanked him warmly when he set her down at the door of the Clair Hospital just before midnight. He was going on to the ambulance station, several miles nearer to the actual front.

There were no street lights in Clair and the windows of the hospital were all shrouded, as well as those of the dwellings left standing in the town. Airplanes of the enemy had taken to bombing hospitals in the work of “frightfulness.”

Ruth was welcomed by a kindly Frenchwoman, who was matron, or directrice, and shown to a cell where she could sleep. Her duties began the next morning, and it was not long before the girl of the Red Mill was deeply engaged in this new work—so deeply engaged, indeed, that she almost forgot her suspicions about the woman in black, and Legrand and José, or whatever their real names were.

However, Charlie Bragg’s story of the werwolf, of the suspected countess in her chateau behind Clair, and Gaston’s prophecy regarding the meaning of the ghostly appearance, were not easily forgotten. Especially, when, two nights following Ruth’s coming to the hospital, a German airman dropped several bombs near the institution. Evidently he was trying to get the range of the Red Cross hospital.

CHAPTER XVI—THE DAYS ROLL BY

She had read (who has not?) of the noble sacrifices of that great woman whose work for the helpless soldiers in hospital antedates the Red Cross and its devoted workers—Florence Nightingale. She knew how the sick and dying soldiers in the Crimea kissed her shadow on their pillows as she passed their cots, and blessed her with their dying breaths.

The roughest soldier, wounded unto death, turns to the thought of mother, of wife, of sweetheart, of sister—indeed, turns to any good woman whose voice soothes him, whose hand cools the fever of his brow.

Ruth Fielding began to understand better than ever before this particular work that she was now called upon to perform, and that she was so well fitted to perform.

She was cheerful as well as sympathetic; she was sane beyond most young girls in her management of men—many men.

“Bless you, Mademoiselle!” declared the matron, “of course they will make love to you. Let them. It will do them good—the poor blessés—and do you no harm. And you have a way with you!”

Ruth got over being worried by amatory bouts with the wounded poilus after a while. Her best escape was to offer to write letters to the afflicted one’s wife or sweetheart. That was part of her work—to attend to as much of the correspondence of the helplessly wounded as possible.

And all the time she gave sympathy and care to these strangers she hoped, if Tom Cameron should chance to be wounded, some woman would be as kind to him!

She had not received a second letter from Tom; but after a fortnight Mr. Cameron and Helen came unexpectedly to Clair. Helen spent two days with her while Mr. Cameron attended to some important business connected with his mission in France.

They had seen Tom lately, and reported that the boy had advanced splendidly in his work. Mr. Cameron declared proudly that his son was a born soldier.

He had already been in the trenches held by both the French and British to study their methods of defence and offence. This training all the junior, as well as senior, officers of the American expeditionary forces were having, for this was an altogether new warfare that was being waged on the shell-swept fields of France and Belgium.

Helen had arranged to remain in Paris with Jennie Stone when her father went back to the States. She expressed herself as rather horrified at some of the things she learned Ruth did for and endured from the wounded men.

“Why, they are not at all nice—some of them,” she objected with a shudder. “That great, black-whiskered man almost swore in French just now.”

“Jean?” laughed Ruth. “I presume he did. He has terrible wounds, and when they are dressed he lies with clenched hands and never utters a groan. But when a man does that, keeping subdued the natural outlet of pain through groans and tears, his heart must of necessity, Helen, become bitter. His irritation spurts forth like the rain, upon the unjust and the just—upon the guilty and innocent alike.”

“But he should consider what you are doing for him—how you step out of your life down into his——”

“Up into his, say, rather,” Ruth interrupted, flushing warmly. “It is true he of the black beard whom you are taking exception to, is a carter by trade. But next to him lies a count, and those two are brothers. Ah, these Frenchmen in this trial of their patriotism are wonderful, Helen!”

“Some of them are very dirty, unpleasant men,” sighed Helen, shaking her head.

“You must not speak that way of my children. Sometimes I feel jealous of the nurses,” said Ruth, smiling sadly, “because they can do so much more for them than I. But I can supply them with some comforts which the nurses cannot.”

They were, indeed, like children, these wounded, for the most part. They called Ruth “sister” in their tenderest moments; even “maman” when they were delirious. The touch of her hand often quieted them when they were feverish. She read to them when she could. And she wrote innumerable letters—intimate, family letters that these wounded men would have shrunk from having their mates know about.

Ruth, too, had to share in all the “news from home” that came to the more fortunate patients. She unpacked the boxes sent them, and took care of such contents as were not at once gobbled down—for soldiers are inordinately fond of “goodies.” She had to obey strictly the doctors’ orders about these articles of diet, however, or some of the patients would have failed to progress in their convalescence.

Nor were all on the road to recovery; yet the spirit of cheerfulness was the general tone of even the “dangerous” cases. Their unshaken belief was that they would get well and, many of them, return to their families again.

“Chère petite mère,” Louis, the little Paris tailor, shot through both lungs, whispered to Ruth as she passed his bed, “see! I have something to show you. It came to me only to-day in the mail. Our first—and born since I came away. The very picture of his mother!”

The girl looked, with sympathetic eyes, at the postcard photograph of a very bald baby. Her ability to share in their joys and sorrows made her work here of much value.

“I feel now,” said Louis softly, “that le bon Dieu will surely let me live—I shall live to see the child,” and he said it with exalted confidence.

But Ruth had already heard the head physician of the hospital whisper to the nurse that Louis had no more than twenty-four hours to live. Yet the poilu’s sublime belief kept him cheerful to the end.

Many, many things the girl of the Red Mill was learning these days. If they did not exactly age her, she felt that she could never again take life so thoughtlessly and lightly. Her girlhood was behind her; she was facing the verities of existence.

CHAPTER XVII—AT THE GATEWAY OF THE CHATEAU

However, her heart and hands were so filled with hourly duties that Ruth could not give much thought to the unsavory trio. Rose Mantel, the woman in black, and the two men Ruth feared and suspected, must be attended to by the proper authorities. The girl of the Red Mill had done quite all that could be expected of her when she warned the police head at Lyse to be on his guard.

Her work in the hospital and supply room engaged so much of her time that for the first few weeks Ruth scarcely found opportunity to exercise properly. Madame, la Directrice, fairly had to drive her out of the hospital into the open air.

The fields and lanes about the town were lovely. Here the Hun had not seized and destroyed everything of beauty. He had been driven back too quickly in the early weeks of the war to have wreaked vengeance upon all that was French.

Clair was the center of a large agricultural community. The farmers dwelt together in the town and tilled the fields for several miles around. This habit had come down from feudal times, for then the farmers had to abide together for protection. And even now the inhabitants of Clair had the habit of likewise dwelling with their draft animals and cattle!

The narrow courts between the houses and stables were piled high with farm fertilizer, and the flies were a pest. The hospital authorities could not get the citizens to clean up the town. What had been the custom for centuries must always be custom, they thought.

The grumbling of the big guns on the battlefront was almost continuous, day and night. It got so that Ruth forgot the sound. At night, from the narrow window of her cell, she could see the white glare over the trenches far away. By day black specks swinging to and fro in the air marked the observation balloons. Occasionally a darting airplane attracted her to the window of her workroom.

Clair was kept dark at night. Scarcely the glimmer of a candle was allowed to shine forth from any window or doorway. There was a motion picture theater in the main street; but one had to creep to it by guess, and perhaps blunder in at the door of the grocer’s shop, or the wine merchant’s, before finding the picture show.

By day and night the French aircraft and the anti-aircraft guns were ready to fight off enemy airplanes. During the first weeks of Ruth Fielding’s sojourn in the town there were two warnings of German air raids at night. A deliberate attempt more than once had been made to bomb the Red Cross hospital.

Ruth was frightened. The first alarm came after she was in bed. She dressed hurriedly and ran down into the nearest ward. But there was no bustle there. The ringing of the church bells and the blowing of the alarm siren had not disturbed the patients here, and she saw Miss Simone, the night nurse, quietly going about her duties as though there was no stir outside.

Ruth remembered Charlie Bragg’s statement of the case: “If they get you they get you, and that’s all there is to it!” And she was ashamed to show fear in the presence of the nurse.

The French drove off the raider that time. The second time the German dropped bombs in the town, but nobody was hurt, and he did not manage to drop the bombs near the hospital. Ruth was glad that she felt less panic in this second raid than before.

Thinking of Charlie Bragg must have brought that young man to see her. He came to the hospital on his rest day; and then later appeared driving his ambulance and asked her to ride.

The red cross she wore gave authority for Ruth’s presence in the ambulance, and nobody questioned their object in driving through the back roads and lanes beyond Clair.

The country here was not torn up by marmite holes, or the chasms made by the Big Berthas. Such a lovely, quiet country as it was! Were it not for the steady grumbling of the guns Ruth Fielding could scarcely have believed that there was such a thing as war.

But it was not likely that Ruth would ride much with Charlie Bragg for the mere pleasure of it. The young fellow drove at top speed at all times, whether the road was smooth or rutted.

“Really, I can’t help it, Miss Ruth,” he declared. “Got the habit. We fellows want always to get as far as we can with our loads before something breaks down, or a shell gets us.

“By the way, seen anything of the werwolf again?”

“Mercy! No. Do you suppose we did really see anything that night?”

“Don’t know. I know there was an attack made upon this sector two nights after that, and a raid on an artillery base that we were keeping particularly secret from the Boches. Somebody must have told them.”

“The Germans are always flying over and photographing everything,” said Ruth doubtfully.

“Not that battery. Had it camouflaged and only worked on it nights. The Boches put a barrage right behind it and sent over troops who did a lot of damage.

“Believe me! You don’t know to what lengths these German spies and German-lovers go. You don’t know who is true and who is false about you. And the most ingenious schemes they have,” added Charlie.

“They have tried secret wireless right here—within two miles. But the radio makes too much noise and is sure to be spotted at last. In one place telegraph wires were carried for several miles through the bed of a stream and the spy on this side walked about with the telegraph instrument in his pocket. When he got a chance he went to the hut near the river bank, where the ends of the wire were insulated, and tapped out his messages.

“And pigeons! Don’t say a word. They’re flying all the time, and sometimes they are shot and the quills found under their wings. I tell you spies just swarm all along this front.”

“Then,” Ruth said, ruminatingly, “it must have been a dog we saw that night.”

“The werwolf?” asked Charlie, with a grin.

“That is nonsense. It is a dog trained to run between the spy on this side and somebody behind the German lines. Poor dog!”

“Wow!” ejaculated the young fellow with disgust. “Isn’t that just like a girl? ‘Poor dog,’ indeed!”

“Why! you don’t suppose that a noble dog would want to be a spy?” cried Ruth. “You can scarcely imagine a dog choosing any tricky way through life. It is only men who deliberately choose despicable means to despicable ends.”

“Hold on! Hold on!” cried Charlie Bragg. “Spies are necessary—as long as there is going to be war, anyway. The French have got quite as brave and successful spies beyond the German lines as the Germans have over here; only not so many.”

“Well—I suppose that’s so,” admitted Ruth, sighing. “There must be these terrible things as long as the greater terrible thing, war, exists. Oh! There is the chateau gateway. Drive slower, Mr. Bragg—do, please!”

They mounted a little rise in the road. Above they had seen the walls and towers of the chateau, and had seen them clearly for some time. But now the boundary wall of the estate edged the road, and an arched gateway, with high grilled gates and a small door set into the wall beside the wider opening, came into view.

A single thought had stung Ruth Fielding’s mind, but she did not utter it. It was: Why had none of the German aviators dropped bombs upon the stone towers on the hill? Was it a fact that the enemy deliberately ignored the existence of the chateau—that somebody in that great pile of masonry won its immunity from German bombs by playing the traitor to France and her cause?

Charlie had really reduced the speed of the car until it was now only crawling up the slope of the road. Something fluttered at the postern-gate—a woman’s petticoat.

“There’s the old woman,” said Charlie, “Take a good look at her.”

“You don’t mean the countess?” gasped Ruth.

“Whiskers! No!” chuckled the young fellow. “She’s a servant—or something. Dresses like one of these French peasants about here. And yet she isn’t French!”

“You have seen her before, then,” murmured Ruth.

“Twice. There! Look at her mustache, will you? She looks like a grenadier.”

The woman at the gate was a tall, square-shouldered woman, with a hard, lined and almost masculine countenance. She stared with gloomy look as the Red Cross ambulance rolled by. Ruth caught Charlie’s arm convulsively.

“Oh! what was that?” she again whispered, looking back at the woman in the gateway.

“What was what?” he asked.

“That—something white—behind her—inside the gate! Why, Mr. Bragg! was it a dog?”

“The werwolf,” chuckled the young chauffeur.