Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross; Doing Her Best For Uncle Sam

She looked, for some moments, at the huge shoulders of the man who had spoken in German, hoping he would turn to face her. She had not observed him since coming aboard the ship at Philadelphia.

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 Fielding was troubled by her most recent discovery. Yet she was in no mind to take Clare into her confidence – or anybody else.

She was cautious. With nothing but suspicions to report to the Red Cross authorities, what could she really say? What, after all, do suspicions amount to?

If the man calling himself Professor Perry was really Legrand, and the Italian chef, Signor Aristo the lame man, was he who had been known as Mr. José at the Robinsburg Red Cross headquarters, her identification of them must be corroborated. How could she prove such assertions?

It was a serious situation; but one in which Ruth felt that her hands were tied. She must wait for something to turn up that would give her a sure hold on these people whom she believed to be out and out crooks.

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

Ruth’s daily tasks did not often bring her into contact with the chief of her unit. This was a very large hospital – one of the most extensive base hospitals in France. There were thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies in Ruth’s single department.

At present the American Red Cross at this point was caring for French and Canadian wounded. As the American forces came over, were developed into fighting men, and were brought back from the battlefield hospitals as grands blessés, as the French call the more seriously wounded, this base would finally handle American wounded only.

Ruth went through some of the wards in her spare hours, for she had become acquainted with several of the nurses coming over. The appeal of the helpless men (some of them blinded) wrenched the tender heart of the girl of the Red Mill as nothing she had ever before experienced.

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.”