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CHAPTER XVIII
GRACE GETS A CLUE
“CAPTAIN, is it proper to ask if the Huns blew up the ammunition dump?” asked Grace next morning upon chancing to meet Captain Boucher on the paved plaza facing the river.
“If you will put your question in a form that I can answer I will do so,” was the smiling reply.
“Was the explosion last evening an accident, sir?” Grace came back at him quick as a flash.
“It was not an accident, Mrs. Gray,” he replied gravely, then burst out laughing. “You are the quickest-witted person I ever knew or heard of. Have you made any headway in the matter I spoke to you about?”
“Do you know a Chinaman, belonging to the labor battalion, who wears a hideous birthmark on his left cheek?” she questioned in reply.
“Can’t say that I do. Why?”
“Merely that I would suggest your making his acquaintance. I think perhaps you may find him worth while.”
“Cultivating or watching?” asked the Intelligence officer, regarding her keenly.
“The latter.”
“Thank you. What is his name?”
“I have not heard. I will find out if you wish.”
The officer nodded.
“Who is Miss Marshall, if I am permitted to ask? I know it seems an impertinence on my part to question an officer, but I want to know,” declared the Overton girl laughing. “I believe that is quite a common excuse with women for asking questions, but it is comprehensive.”
The captain glanced about them and invited Grace to sit down with him on a bench. The air was quite chill, but the view up and down the river was an attractive one.
“What I am about to say is strictly confidential. I am giving it to you for your own guidance, now that you belong to our Intelligence Department.”
“Strange, sir, that I have not heard of that.”
“Yes, you are a member. To return to the subject, Molly Marshall is one of the cleverest operators in the Secret Service.”
“A spy?”
The captain shrugged his shoulders.
“I never liked the word when applied to our own. She is an investigator and a brilliant operator. I shall be glad to have you know her, and assure you that you may trust her fully.”
“Thank you, but I do not believe I should care to trust any one in these confidential matters, unless I knew her pretty well. I should like to meet her, just the same, but she is not to know that I am doing anything in the investigating line, if you will be so good as to keep that fact confidential.”
The captain promised, saying it was not generally customary for Secret Service operators with the army to know each other, as such an acquaintance opened the way for many errors of judgment.
“You are perfectly right in the position you take,” he added. “You possess all the makings of a brilliant operator yourself.”
Grace thanked him.
“As I have said before, I have no aspirations in that direction, at least not beyond the point that I can serve my country. Perhaps my woman’s curiosity in combination with my woman’s intuition is responsible for my being in it to the extent that I am. You will observe that I am not backward about paying my sex compliments. However, it will soon be ended and then we shall all return to our previous lives – if we can. How about you, sir, shall you continue in the Service?”
“I think not.”
Grace rose and, thanking the captain, said she must be on her way to the canteen at Number Two. On her way she encountered a Chinaman and told him if he should see Won Lue to send him to the canteen. Rather to her amazement Won was waiting for her when she arrived there.
Won shook hands with himself and smiled broadly.
“You may be able to help us here to-day, Won. Are you working?”
The Chinaman shook his head negatively. “You savvy plidgin?” he asked.
“No.”
“Me savvy plenty plidgin, a-la. Plidgin all fly away. No more plidgin.”
Grace understood his meaning. The pigeon-flying came to an end when the army reached the Rhine, for there the enemy agents could work more directly and without much danger of being caught. That was what they were doing at that very moment.
“Oh! I knew there was something I wished to ask you. Do you know a Chinaman with a red mark on his left cheek, so?” She ran a hand over her cheek.
Won chuckled delightedly, though what there was in her question to amuse him, Grace could not imagine.
“You savvy Yat Sen? Me savvy Yat Sen plenty much. What me do?”
“Thank you. I savvy Yat Sen, too. Please clean the place, scrub the floors nice and clean before Mrs. Smythe gets here.”
“Me savvy Slith,” volunteered Won with a grimace.
“Why the ‘a-la,’ Won?” asked Elfreda who came in at this juncture.
“That is a Chinese round-off, as it were,” Grace informed her. “Have you seen the supervisor this morning?”
Elfreda said she had not, for Marie had said that Mrs. Smythe went out rather early. Grace suddenly decided to go home, and asked Elfreda to remain at the canteen to meet the supervisor.
“Tell her I was obliged to return to our billet for a few moments,” requested Grace. “She cannot be angrier than she will naturally be, in any event.”
Grace, nodding to Elfreda, hurried away.
“I wonder what that child is up to now?” Miss Briggs muttered. “I have learned one thing about Grace Harlowe, and that is that she seldom does anything that hasn’t a well-defined motive behind it. I suppose that is the proper way to arrange one’s life. She should have been a lawyer.”
Reaching her billet, Grace entered the house quietly and went to her room, apparently without having attracted attention to herself. As she passed the doctor’s rooms she heard voices there. The voices were not loud, but were audible enough to enable her to distinguish those of at least one man and a woman, though it was her impression that there were two men in the room. Now that she was in her own room the voices were borne to her ears even more distinctly than when she had been passing through the hallway.
“I believe Miss Marshall is in there,” muttered the Overton girl after several moments of listening. The conversation was being carried on in German, most of it being understandable to Grace. It was only when they lowered their voices that she failed to catch what was being said. Yet, for all that, she did not know what they were talking about, though at times the inference was suggestive of certain things.
The conversation lasted for several minutes, then Grace heard the doctor approaching the rear of his apartment, heard the bang of what she took to be a trap door, then footsteps descending stairs.
“He is going down to the cellar. I suppose he has a right to do so if he wishes, so why should I object or even be interested? Hark!”
Grace heard what she took to be voices in the cellar, though she was positive that no one had accompanied the owner below.
“I was right. This is a house of mystery. There he comes!”
The German’s tread, as he ascended the stairs on his return to his apartment, she noted, was very light and elastic for a heavy man. His speech too, this morning, was quicker than when she had spoken with him in Mrs. Smythe’s quarters, more incisive, more like that of a German officer than a civilian.
“Perhaps he has been in the service as a surgeon,” murmured Grace in explanation of the difference. “I wish I might get a peep into that room, just for one little minute. Ah!” Grace caught her breath and held it. The German doctor was speaking again, and what he said sent the red blood pounding to Grace Harlowe’s temples.
“I am right or else I am terribly mistaken!” she exclaimed in a troubled voice.
CHAPTER XIX
A VOICE AND A FACE
“I MUST see who leaves this house!” decided the Overton girl, glancing about her perplexedly. “The window!”
Quietly raising it she crawled through, then pulled it down with the least possible noise. A path that led past the side of the house extended back to the next street. Out through this Grace ran, then down one block and out to the main street, where she took up a position in a shop across the way, from whose windows she could command a good view of the front of the house in which she and Elfreda lived.
Grace kept her vigil for the better part of an hour, but no one emerged. She was getting restive, and the shop people now and then regarded her curiously.
“This will never do,” thought Grace. “I am making myself too conspicuous. I believe I will move to the next shop.” She did so, stopping at a place several doors below. Grace had been there but a few moments when the door of the doctor’s house opened and Doctor Klein stepped out and walked rapidly down the street in her direction. He halted when opposite the store and strode across toward it. She saw him heading, as she thought, for the shop, and boldly stepped out.
“Ah, Madame Gray,” greeted the doctor. “I observed you waiting in the store and I came right over. Perhaps you were waiting for me?”
“Perhaps I was.” She smiled pleasantly. “I would ask how the maid Marie is.”
“Sleeping when I saw her last. I too have been indisposed and have been sleeping for the last two hours,” volunteered the doctor, his keen, twinkling eyes regarding her shrewdly.
Grace smiled, but not by the slightest expression of face or eyes did she show that she knew him to be telling an untruth.
“The maid is suffering from shock, nothing more. She should be able to resume her duties before the day is done.”
“I am glad to hear that, Doctor. I am going on to the canteen. Are you going in that direction?”
The doctor smiled, bowed, and, taking the outside of the walk, stepped briskly along beside her. They chatted of the occupation by the American troops, Grace taking the opportunity to say she hoped the inhabitants would not take advantage of the leniency of the invaders lest the Americans put heavy restrictive measures upon them that might prove burdensome.
“Our people are kindly disposed, but they are quite likely to be savage when imposed upon or deceived,” she added.
“Ah! They are like my own countrymen, whose hearts are tender, Frau Gray, but those hearts are breaking to-day. We are very sad and full of humility. Yes, I have said that we were wrong, but that is not the fault of the German people. It is Wilhelm and his war lords who should be blamed.”
“Oh, Doctor, you forget! Did you not have an army in the field?”
“Most certainly.”
“And they were Germans, several millions of them. Is it not so?”
He bowed profoundly.
“Then why blame it all on the man who, like a coward, has run away and left you to work out your own salvation? The German nation – the whole nation – was behind the Kaiser in this wicked war – wicked so far as Germany was concerned. If I may say so without offense, the trouble – one of the shortcomings, I should say – with your people is that they are not good sportsmen. They are unsportsmanlike losers. Instead of standing up like men and confessing that they were wrong and that they are whipped, they prate about the spirit of Germany being unbroken, and then whimper like spoiled children because the victor says they must pay for breaking his windows!”
“You are very severe on my people.”
“Herr Doctor, I have been on the western front, up on the lines, for many months, and I have seen much, too much ever to permit me to grow sentimental about ‘the poor German nation that had nothing to do with the war,’ that was opposed to the war, and refused to fight, but let the Kaiser fight it out all by himself.” Grace laughed, and her laugh took the sting out of her words, but they went home to the heart of the Herr Doctor, and his face reddened.
“I have admitted that our rulers were in error; I do not admit that the German people were at fault. They were forced into the war,” he answered stiffly.
“And forced out of it,” retorted Grace. “Pardon me, but I should not have said so much. When I hear Germans glibly throwing off their own responsibility for the wounding and killing of several million men I am inclined to be irritable. Suppose we drop the subject and not refer to it again. When did you leave the service, Doctor?”
“I – I – why, what made you think I had been in the service?” he parried.
“Your walk. You have been in the German army. At times you forget yourself and lapse into the goose-step. There I go again. That was too personal. I ask your pardon.”
“You are a keen woman, Frau Gray. I served my time in the army when a young man, as all good Germans have done – ”
Grace interrupted him with a merry laugh.
“Thank you for the compliment. Thank you for admitting the truth of all that I have said about the German people. Of course there is nothing personal, unless one chooses to assume it, in what I have said. We part on the best of terms, do we not, Herr Doctor?” urged Grace, pausing and extending her hand.
Doctor Klein bowed stiffly over it. He appeared to be somewhat dazed over her rapid-fire conversation.
Grace backed away and saluted. She was answered by the stiff military salute of the German officer. The doctor flushed as he realized that he had again been caught napping by a woman. The Overton girl smiled a guileless happy smile, and turning she walked rapidly away.
“Our fine doctor, clever as he thinks he is, has been checkmated,” she chuckled. “But watch your step, Grace Harlowe. When he thinks it over in his methodical German way he will be furious.”
Grace hurried on to her canteen, well satisfied with her morning’s work, but more perplexed than ever. She had been favored by a kind fate in meeting the doctor, had turned his attempted flanking movement into a defeat and had made him appear ridiculous. That was quite sufficient for one morning, yet Grace could not understand why only the doctor had emerged from the house, finally deciding that perhaps the other had gone out by the route that she herself had taken in leaving the house, through the yard in the rear.
When Grace reached the canteen, she found Elfreda very busy assisting in serving a crowd of doughboys, and Won Lue, wearing a happy smile, working like a beaver, assisting. She paused to observe for a moment or so, then stepped in.
“Has the supervisor not been in yet?” she asked.
Elfreda shook her head.
“I wonder why?”
“I shouldn’t worry my head about it were I in your place,” returned Miss Briggs briefly. “Miss Cahill and Miss O’Leary were here a few moments ago inquiring for you. They are located about four miles from here and find themselves very lonely. Miss Cahill said the only compensation about it is that they do not have to listen to the supervisor’s unpleasant remarks all day long. I am glad she has left us alone this morning. Anything doing over at the quarters?”
“Quiet. I walked down most of the way with the doctor and we had a delightful chat. That is, I enjoyed it. I am not so certain about his enjoyment.”
“Poor Doctor! Here, Buddy, don’t try to play tricks on me. I am a lawyer at home, and I am likely to use my legal knowledge to advantage if you try to slip a bar of chocolate in your pocket when you think I am not looking. Come across, please.”
The doughboy did so shamefacedly, while his companions laughed uproariously.
“Here! I don’t believe in taking candy from babies. Here are two pieces for you because you have promised to be good. This army has the biggest sweet tooth in the world,” she said, handing two bars of chocolate to the discomfited doughboy.
“I – I’m sorry,” muttered the doughboy.
“That is all right, Buddy. I was just making conversation, and you happened to furnish the makings. When you wish any more and haven’t the money to buy, come in just the same. If I am here you will get it, and if I am not ask for Mrs. Gray. She is even easier than I am.”
Grace, talking to a group of soldiers, overheard and smiled to herself. She was proud of Elfreda. The war had done wonders for the young lawyeress; it had made her more tolerant of her fellow man; it had filled her heart with a human sympathy that she had never known before; it had made her a womanly woman, at the same time sharpening her wits. Elfreda would turn her back on war and return to her profession a better and bigger woman mentally than when she had joined the colors. Grace’s heart was full of gladness as these thoughts filtered through her mind.
“You savvy Missie Slith?” questioned a voice in her ear.
“Yes, I savvy her, Won. What about her?”
“Me savvy Missie Slith.” Won chuckled and shook hands with himself. Grace regarded him half amusedly, then turned to her customers.
All at once the Overton girls found themselves alone, so far as customers were concerned. The doughboys had remained as long as they could find an excuse for remaining, for they were happy to be able to talk to two bright, good-looking American girls, the “girls from God’s country,” as they expressed it, but they were careful not to outstay their welcome. Had they known it both girls were just as eager to talk with the soldiers as the soldiers were to talk with them.
“Now that we aren’t busy, tell me about the doctor,” urged Elfreda.
Grace perched herself on the counter with her back to the door and told the story of her walk with the German physician, but failed to mention what had occurred in the house. She did admit that she was waiting in the shop to see who came out of the house, and mentioned the doctor’s bold move in going directly to the store. Grace was convinced, after her talk with the physician, that he did not know that she had been in the house. It was probable, as she reasoned it out, that he must have seen her enter the second store, if not the first.
“That was fine. I could not have given it to him straighter myself,” declared Miss Briggs mischievously. “You made him dizzy, I’ll warrant. I know just how you did it. You could talk a deaf and dumb man to death, I really believe. Why were you so curious about seeing who came out of the house?”
“Just a little idea that I had in mind. I – ” The expression on her companion’s face caused Grace to pause. Elfreda’s face had suddenly assumed a strained expression, the lines had hardened ever so little and the eyes had narrowed.
It was not necessary for “Captain” Grace to turn around facing the door to see who or what had so changed her companion.
“Girl, you will please get down from the counter!” commanded the cold voice of Mrs. Chadsey Smythe, though it was a more restrained tone than she had ever employed in speaking to Grace.
“You are right, Mrs. Smythe. It is not a dignified position,” answered Grace laughingly, hopping down from the counter.
“Why bother her? She seems to be enjoying it so much,” urged a voice that was pleasing. “I know I should be perched up there all the time were I on duty here.”
Grace suddenly felt the color mounting to her cheeks. She had not yet turned about to face the newcomers, but the Overton girl knew that voice, and at the same time knew that she must control herself before she faced the owner of it. When she finally did turn, after a meaningless word or two to Elfreda to aid the process of control, Grace presented a smiling face and laughing eyes that offered no trace of recognition as she looked into the eyes of the woman who accompanied Mrs. Smythe.
“You will kindly remain standing while on duty after this,” added the supervisor. “Are all of our supplies here, none missing?”
“Yes, Mrs. Smythe, all that were sent over last evening from the wreck.” Grace was wondering what had come over Mrs. Smythe that she was exercising so much self-control. Ordinarily in the circumstances the supervisor would have worked herself into a towering rage. Then wonder of wonders! Mrs. Smythe introduced her companion.
“This is Mrs. Gray. Miss Marshall, Mrs. Gray.” It was done sourly and resentfully, but it was better than Grace Harlowe had any reason to expect of her immediate superior.
Grace extended a hand and greeted the young woman smilingly.
“I am glad to meet you,” she said, but as she said it “Captain” Grace again saw this same face beside that of a German officer on the other side of the Rhine, and heard these smiling lips utter the words: “She is as hideous and as ugly as no doubt her soul is black.”
CHAPTER XX
IN A MAZE OF MYSTERIES
“I HEAR you have been having a most unpleasant time, Mrs. Gray,” volunteered Molly Marshall. “Between falling from the skies and being made a prisoner by the enemy you have had, I should consider, enough thrills to satisfy any one.”
“C’est la guerre (it is war),” answered Grace smiling and shrugging her shoulders.
“Oui,” agreed Miss Marshall. “I shall hope to see more of you. Mrs. Smythe has kindly offered to share her apartment with me, and I understand that you are billeted in the same house, so we should have some pleasant chats. I should love to know you better.”
Grace said the sentiment was reciprocated. While they were speaking, the supervisor was taking her revenge on the Chinaman. She was abusing him shamefully, so much so that Grace could stand it no longer.
“Won, you go now. You savvy too much talk,” declared Grace nodding to him.
“Me savvy talk like machine glun, a-la. Me go.”
Grace smiled and handed him the promised gift, whereupon Madame’s rage broke out afresh.
“Girl, how dare you!”
“Won has been working for me, Mrs. Smythe. It is best that he go now. He has worked too faithfully for me to stand by and see him abused, begging your pardon.” Grace signalled to the Chinaman to be gone. He lost no time in leaving the place, giving Grace a sly wink and a grimace as he backed from the doorway. Molly Marshall saved the situation by leading Mrs. Smythe to the rear of the canteen, where she soon had the supervisor laughing. Shortly afterwards the young woman walked out with her, much to Grace’s relief.
“Chad came in here intending to keep her temper, but she lost it,” declared Elfreda.
“It was my fault that she did, Elfreda. Some one has been advising her to behave herself. It is my idea that she went to headquarters to enter a complaint against me this morning, but that she was advised to be good if she wished to remain with the Army of Occupation. Here, Buddy, are you headed in the direction of the Intelligence Department?” she called to a soldier who was passing. He said he could go that way, whereupon Grace asked him to carry a note and leave it there. The note, which she scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper, was addressed to Captain Boucher and read: “Yat Sen,” and was signed, “G. G.”
“More mystery?” questioned Elfreda.
“Oceans of it. Miss Marshall is a good-looking woman, isn’t she?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I can’t get over my first impression that there is something queer about her. Doesn’t she impress you that way?”
“Considering what I know about her, she does.”
“Eh? What do you know?” demanded Elfreda.
“Do you recall my telling you about a German officer and a woman who, the day I was released on the other side, stood making remarks as I passed – how the woman said, ‘She is as hideous and as ugly no doubt as her soul is black’?”
“Yes.”
“You ask me what I know of Miss Marshall. When I tell you that she is the woman who made that remark, you will understand that I know altogether too much about her.”
“A spy!” gasped Miss Briggs.
Grace nodded.
“Yes, but which way?”
“Captain Boucher informs me that she is an American spy and a brilliant one. It is difficult for me to believe that, in view of what I saw and heard. She at least appears to be playing the game both ways.”
“Have you told Captain Boucher of that?”
“Not yet, but I shall at the first opportunity. I intended to do so, but after what he said to me I decided to wait. He told me further that I might with perfect safety coöperate with Miss Marshall, which I shall not do.”
“Loyalheart, you are wonderful. How you could meet her, as you did after what you knew of her, is beyond me. I could no more have done it than I could fly. I don’t believe she even suspects that you recognized her.”
“I hope not for the sake of the work I have before me. Of course this is between us only, and I wish you would not breathe a word of it or any other confidential matter while we are in our rooms. I suspect those walls have ears.”
Mrs. Smythe did not return to the canteen again that afternoon, being engaged, as Grace surmised, in arranging for a new building to take the place of the one destroyed when the ammunition dump blew up. At six o’clock Grace went home to prepare their supper, leaving Elfreda to wait for their relief at the canteen. There was no effort on Grace’s part this time to enter her home quietly, still she made no noise that she was conscious of, but she had no more than gotten to her room than there came a tap on the door. It was Marie.
Grace welcomed her smilingly.
“I am glad to see you out again. How do you feel?”
“Not very well, Madame. I am sore all over. All Huns are brutes!”
“Do you include the good doctor?”
“Ah, the doctor. He is fine on the outside, but the soul, Madame! Why should one say it when one does not know?”
Grace nodded thoughtfully and asked who was with Mrs. Smythe. Marie informed her that Miss Marshall was taking supper with Madame and talking of the war.
“Madame told me to say to you when you came in that you were to go to the new canteen in the morning. It is near the river on the same street as the old one. You are to be there at six o’clock in the morning. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I believe you have already done something for me. Did you make up the bed and slick up the room?” Grace regarded her smilingly.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Thank you very much. Did Madame go to headquarters this morning?”
Marie nodded and grinned.
“She went to ask them to send you home, but instead they told her she was the one who should be sent home. Was that not glorious? Oo-lá-lá, how I should have loved to hear it and to see the face of Madame.”
“That will do, please, Marie,” rebuked the Overton girl. “She is our superior. Thank you for your kindness about the room.”
Marie smiled and nodded as she backed to the door, then closed it softly behind her. Grace stepped over and locked the door, and pulling the shade down began a thorough examination of the room. First she examined the furniture, then the fireplace, the lighting fixtures and the baseboard that extended all the way around the room.
“All clear,” muttered the girl.
Next, the walls came in for a scrutiny. Not only did she look the walls over, but felt them gingerly with her finger tips. What the result of that search was Grace Harlowe did not even confide to Elfreda Briggs, but she was satisfied that her intuition again had served her well, and was now determined to be more watchful than ever.
Her suspicions were still further confirmed when she heard the voices of Mrs. Smythe and Miss Marshall in conversation with the doctor in his apartment that evening. They were making merry and Madame was actually laughing. When Grace discovered that they were discussing subjects that she knew were of military value she was horrified that Mrs. Smythe could so far forget herself, but what to do about it she did not know. Grace felt that she should take the matter to Captain Boucher, yet she could not quite bring herself to carry tales about the woman she did not like. It looked petty to her, beneath her, so Grace decided to await developments and continue with her work.
That night as she lay wide awake in her bed, she heard the doctor go to the cellar. She heard him fix the furnace for the night; then the sound of distant conversation floated up to her. After a time the doctor came up and the house settled down to silence.
This same thing, so far as the cellar excursion was concerned, continued for three nights. During that time Grace did not get much sleep. Much of the time, after Elfreda went to sleep, Grace spent sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall where she appeared to be resting in profound thought. On the third night she was aroused by an alarm of fire in the street. She did not learn the cause of it until the following morning, when she was informed that the fire had been discovered in the basement of the main barracks, where nearly a thousand American soldiers were sleeping.
Grace asked few questions about this blaze, though in the light of what she already knew she had certain well-founded suspicions. The next night nothing occurred to disturb the Army of Occupation, though Grace Harlowe increased her rapidly enlarging fund of information to an extent that alarmed even her. She saw that she must turn over some of it to the Intelligence Department without delay. Human lives depended upon her doing so. It was too late to do so that night, for to leave the place might upset all her plans were she discovered.
After pondering over the subject from all angles the Overton girl went to bed. How she did wish she might confide in Elfreda Briggs. Grace, however, had learned that in these secret matters there was but one safe course – to keep one’s own counsel. Well-intentioned as those in whom one confided might be, there was always the possibility of a word slipping out, of a facial expression or of an unconsciously antagonistic attitude toward the wrong person.
“Dear Elfreda shall know all that I know after I have completed my work. I must confess to myself that it is the most interesting work I have ever done, this pitting one’s wits against some of the keenest ones in Europe. However, I still have some distance to go before I arrive at my objective.” These thoughts and many others drifted through Grace Harlowe’s mind before she got to sleep.
In the morning she asked Elfreda to report for her at the canteen, as she expected to be late in arriving there. After breakfast, during which the girls discussed nothing beyond their own personal affairs, “Captain” Grace went out, this time by way of the front door, heading straight for the canteen.
The place was not yet open, so, unlocking the door, the Overton girl stepped in and, sitting down, studied the street keenly. What Grace was seeking to determine was whether or not she had been followed. There being no indication that she had been followed she went out, locking the door behind her, and proceeded directly to the headquarters of the Intelligence Department, which was located in the executive building on the river front.
