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

CHAPTER XX – MANY THINGS HAPPEN

Ruth reached the farmhouse just as the family was sitting down to breakfast. The house and outbuildings of the Dupays were all connected, as is the way in this part of France. No shell had fallen near the buildings, which was very fortunate, indeed.

Henriette’s father was a one-armed man. He had lost his left arm at the Marne, and had been honorably discharged, to go back to farming, in order to try to raise food for the army and for the suffering people of France. His two sons and his brothers were still away at the wars, so every child big enough to help, and the women of the family as well, aided in the farm work.

No petrol could be used to drive cars for pleasure; but Henriette sometimes had to go for supplies, or to carry things to market, or do other errands connected with the farm work. Ruth hoped that the French girl would be allowed to help her.

The hospitable Dupays insisted upon the American girl’s sitting down to table with them. She was given a seat on the bench between Henriette and Jean, a lad of four, who looked shyly up at the visitor from under heavy brown lashes, and only played with his food.

It was not the usual French breakfast to which Ruth Fielding had become accustomed – coffee and bread, with possibly a little compote, or an egg. There was meat on the table – a heavy meal, for it was to be followed by long hours of heavy labor.

“What brings you out so early after this awful night?” Henriette whispered to her visitor.

Ruth told her. She could eat but little, she was so anxious about Tom Cameron. She made it plain to the interested French girl just why she so desired to follow on to Lyse and learn if it really was Tom who had been wounded, as the message on the blood-stained envelope said.

“I might start along the road and trust to some ambulance overtaking me,” Ruth explained. “But often there is a wounded man who can sit up riding on the seat with the driver – sometimes two. I could not take the place of such an unfortunate.”

“It would be much too far for you to walk, Mademoiselle,” said the mother, overhearing. “We can surely help you.”

She spoke to her husband – a huge man, of whom Ruth stood rather in awe, he was so stern-looking and taciturn. But Henriette said he had been a “laughing man” before his experience in the war. War had changed many people, this French girl said, nodding her head wisely.

“The venerable Countess Marchand,” pointing to the chateau on the hill, “had been neighborly and kind until the war came. Now she shut herself away from all the neighbors, and if a body went to the chateau it was only to be confronted by old Bessie, who was the countess’ housekeeper, and her only personal servant now.”

“Old Bessie,” Ruth judged, must be the hard-featured woman she had seen at the chateau gate and, on this particular morning, talking to the lame man at the wayside cross.

The American girl waited now in some trepidation for Dupay to speak. He seemed to consider the question of Ruth’s getting to Lyse quite seriously for some time; then he said quietly that he saw no objection to Henriette taking the sacks of grain to M. Naubeck in the touring car body instead of the truck, and going to-day to Lyse on that errand instead of the next week.

It was settled so easily. Henriette ran away to dress, while a younger brother slipped out to see that the car was in order for the two girls. Ruth knew she could not offer the Dupays any remuneration for the trouble they took for her, but she was so thankful to them that she was almost in tears when she and Henriette started for Lyse half an hour later.

“The main road is so cut up and rutted by the big lorries and ambulances that we would better go another way,” Henriette said, as she steered out of the farm lane into the wider road.

They turned away from Lyse, it seemed to Ruth; but, after circling around the hill on which the chateau stood, they entered a more traveled way, but one not so deeply rutted.

A mile beyond this point, and just as the motor-car came down a gentle slope to a small stream, crossed by a rustic bridge, the two girls spied another automobile, likewise headed toward Lyse. It was stalled, both wheels on the one side being deep in a muddy rut.

There were two men with the car – a small man and a much taller individual, who was dressed in the uniform of a French officer – a captain, as Ruth saw when they came nearer.

The little man stepped into the woods, perhaps for a sapling, with which to pry up the car, before the girls reached the bottom of the hill. At least, they only saw his back. But when Ruth gained a clear view of the officer’s face she was quite shocked.

“What is the matter?” Henriette asked her, driving carefully past the stalled car.

Ruth remained silent until they were across the bridge and the French girl had asked her question a second time, saying:

“What is it, Mademoiselle Ruth?”

“Do you know that man?” Ruth returned, proving herself a true Yankee by answering one question with another.

“The captain? No. I do not know him. There are many captains,” and Henriette laughed.

“He – he looks like somebody I know,” Ruth said hesitatingly. She did not wish to explain her sudden shocked feeling on seeing the man’s face. He looked like the shaven Legrand who, on the ship coming over and in Lyse, had called himself “Professor Perry.”

If this was the crook, who, Ruth believed, had set fire to the business office of the Robinsburg Red Cross headquarters, he had evidently not been arrested in connection with the supply department scandal, of which the matron of the hospital had told her. At least, he was now free. And the little fellow with him! Had not Ruth, less than two hours before, seen José talking with the woman from the chateau at the wayside shrine near Clair?

The mysteries of these two men and their disguises troubled Ruth Fielding vastly. It seemed that the prefect of police at Lyse had not apprehended them. Nor was Mrs. Mantel yet in the toils.

This was a longer way to Lyse by a number of miles than the main road; nevertheless, it was probable that the girls gained time by following the more roundabout route.

It was not yet noon when Henriette stopped at a side entrance to the hospital where Ruth had served her first few weeks for the Red Cross in France. The girl of the Red Mill sprang out, and, asking her friend to wait for her, ran into the building.

The guard remembered her, and nobody stopped her on the way to the reception office, where a record was kept of all the patients in the great building. The girl at the desk was a stranger to Ruth, but she answered the visitor’s questions as best she could.

She looked over the records of the wounded accepted from the battle front or from evacuation hospitals during the past forty-eight hours. There was no such name as Cameron on the list; and, as far as the clerk knew, no American at all among the number.

“Oh, there must be!” gasped Ruth, wringing her hands. “Surely there is a mistake. There is no other hospital here for him to be brought to, and I am sure this person was brought to Lyse. They say his arm is torn off at the elbow.”

A nurse passing through the office stopped and inquired in French of whom Ruth was speaking. The girl of the Red Mill explained.

“I believe we have the blessé in my ward,” this nurse said kindly. “Will you come and see, Mademoiselle? He has been quite out of his head, and perhaps he is an American, for he has not spoken French. We thought him English.”

“Oh, let me see him!” cried Ruth, and hastened with her into one of the wards where she knew the most serious cases were cared for.

Her fears almost overcame the girl. Her interest in Tom Cameron was deep and abiding. For years they had been friends, and now, of late, a stronger feeling than friendship had developed in her heart for Tom.

His courage, his cheerfulness, the real, solid worth of the young fellow, could not fail to endear him to one who knew him as well as did Ruth Fielding. If he had been shot down, mangled, injured, perhaps, to the very death!

How would Helen and their father feel if Tom was seriously wounded? If Ruth found him here in the hospital, should she immediately communicate with his twin sister in Paris, and with his father, who had doubtless reached the States by this time?

Her mind thus in a turmoil, she followed the nurse into the ward and down the aisle between the rows of cots. She had helped comfort the wounded in this very ward when she worked in this hospital; but she looked now for no familiar face, save one. She looked ahead for the white, strained countenance of Tom Cameron against the coarse pillow-slip.

The nurse stopped beside a cot. Oh, the relief! There was no screen around it! The occupant was turned with his face away from the aisle. The stump of the uplifted arm on his left side, bandaged and padded, was uppermost.

“Tom!” breathed the girl of the Red Mill, holding back just a little and with a hand upon her breast.

It was a head of black hair upon the pillow. It might easily have been Tom Cameron. And in a moment Ruth was sure that he was an American from the very contour of his visage – but it was not Tom!

“Oh! It’s not! It’s not!” she kept saying over and over to herself. And then she suddenly found herself sitting in a chair at the end of the ward and the nurse was saying to her:

“Are you about to faint, Mademoiselle? It is the friend you look for?”

“Oh, no! I sha’n’t faint,” Ruth declared, getting a grip upon her nerves again. “It is not my friend. Oh! I cannot tell you how relieved I am.”

“Ah, yes! I know,” sighed the Frenchwoman. “I have a father and a brother in our army and after every battle I fear until I hear from them. I am glad for your sake it is another than your friend. And yet —he will have friends who suffer, too – is it not?”

CHAPTER XXI – AGAIN THE WERWOLF

Ruth Fielding felt as though she needed a cup of tea more than she ever had before in her life. And Clare Biggars had her own tea service in her room at the pension. Ruth had inquired for Clare and learned that this was a free hour for the Kansas girl. So Ruth and Henriette Dupay drove to the boarding-house; for to get a good cup of tea in one of the restaurants or cafés was impossible.

Her relief at learning the wounded American in the hospital was not Tom Cameron was quite overwhelming at first. Ruth had come out to the car so white of face that the French girl was frightened.

“Oh! Mam’zelle Fielding! It is that you haf los’ your friend?” cried the girl in the stammering English she tried so hard to make perfect.

“I don’t know that,” sighed Ruth. “But, at least, if he is wounded, he was not brought here to this hospital.”

She could not understand how that letter had been found in the pocket of the young man she had seen in the hospital ward. Tom Cameron certainly had written that letter. Ruth would not be free from worry until she had heard again from Tom, or of him.

The pension was not far away, and Ruth made her friend lock the car and come in with her, for Clare was a hospitable soul and it was lunch time. To her surprise Ruth found Clare in tears.

“What is the matter, my dear girl?” cried Ruth, as Clare fled sobbing to her arms the moment she saw the girl of the Red Mill. “What can have happened to you?”

“Everything!” exploded the Kansas girl. “You can’t imagine! I’ve all but been arrested, and the Head called me down dreadfully, and Madame – ”

“Madame Mantel?” Ruth asked sharply. “Is she the cause of your troubles? I should have warned you – ”

“Oh, the poor dear!” groaned Clare. “She feels as bad about it as I do. Why, they took her to the police station, too!”

“You seem to have all been having a fine time,” Ruth said, rather tartly. “Tell me all about it. But ask us to sit down, and do give us a cup of tea. This is Henriette Dupay, Clare, and a very nice girl she is. Try to be cordial – hold up the reputation of America, my dear.”

“How-do?” gulped Clare, giving the French girl her hand. “I am glad Ruth brought you. But it was only yesterday – ”

“What was only yesterday?” asked Ruth, as the hostess began to set out the tea things.

“Oh, Ruth! Haven’t you heard something about the awful thing that happened here? That Professor Perry – ”

“Ah! What about him?” asked Ruth. “You know what I wrote you – that I had heard there was trouble in the Supply Department? You haven’t answered my letter.”

“No. I was too worried. And finally – only yesterday, as I said – I was ordered to appear before the prefect of police.”

“A nice old gentleman with a white mustache.”

“A horrid old man who said the meanest things to dear Madame Mantel!” cried Clare hotly.

Ruth saw that the Western girl was still enamored of the woman in black, so she was careful what she said in comment upon Clare’s story.

All Ruth had to do was to keep still and Clare told it all. Perhaps Henriette did not understand very clearly what the trouble was, but she looked sympathetic, too, and that encouraged Clare.

It seemed that Mrs. Mantel had made a companion of Clare outside of the hospital, and Ruth could very well understand why. Clare’s father was a member of Congress and a wealthy man. It was to be presumed that Clare seemed to the woman in black well worth cultivating.

The Kansas girl had gone with the woman to the café of the Chou-rouge more than once. Each time the so-called Professor Perry and the Italian commissioner, whose name Clare had forgotten – “But that’s of no consequence,” thought Ruth, “for he has so many names!” – had been very friendly with the Red Cross workers.

Then suddenly the professor and the Italian had disappeared. The head of the Lyse hospital had begun to make inquiries into the working of the Supply Department. There had been billed to Lyse great stores of goods that were not accounted for.

“Poor Madame Mantel was heartbroken,” Clare said. “She wished to resign at once. Oh, it’s been terrible!”

“Resign under fire?” suggested Ruth.

“Oh – you understand – she felt so bad that her department should be under suspicion. Of course, it was not her fault.”

“Did the head say that?”

“Why, he didn’t have to!” cried Clare. “I hope you are not suspicious of Madame Mantel, Ruth Fielding?”

“You haven’t told me enough to cause me to suspect anybody yet – save yourself,” laughed Ruth. “I suspect that you are telling the story very badly, my dear.”

“Well, I suppose that is so,” admitted Clare, and thereafter she tried to speak more connectedly about the trouble which had finally engrossed all her thought.

The French police had unearthed, it was said, a wide conspiracy for the diversion of Red Cross supplies from America to certain private hands. These goods had been signed for in Mrs. Mantel’s office; she did not know by whom, but the writing on the receipts was not in her hand. That was proved. And, of course, the goods had never been delivered to the hospital at Lyse.

The receipts must have been forged. The only point made against Mrs. Mantel, it seemed, was that she had not reported that these goods, long expected at Lyse, were not received. Her delay in making inquiry for the supplies gave the thieves opportunity for disposing of the goods and getting away with the money paid for them by dishonest French dealers.

The men who had disposed of the supplies and had pocketed the money (or so it was believed) were the man who called himself Professor Perry and the Italian commissioner.

“And what do you think?” Clare went on to say. “That professor is no college man at all. He is a well-known French crook, they say, and usually travels under the name of Legrand.

“They say he had been in America until it got too hot for him there, and he crossed on the same boat with us – you remember, Ruth?”

“Oh, I remember,” groaned the girl of the Red Mill. “The Italian, too?”

“I don’t know for sure about him. They say he isn’t an Italian, but a Mexican, anyway. And he has a police record in both hemispheres.

“Consider! Madame Mantel and I were seen hobnobbing with them! I know she feels just as I do. I hate to show myself on the street!”

“I wouldn’t feel that way,” Ruth replied soothingly. “You could not help it.”

“But the police – ordering me before that nasty old prefect!” exclaimed the angry girl. “And he said such things to me! Think! He had cabled the chief of police in my town to ask who I was and if I had a police record. What do you suppose my father will say?”

“I guarantee that he will laugh at you,” Ruth declared. “Don’t take it so much to heart. Remember we are in a strange country, and that that country is at war.”

“I never shall like the French system of government, just the same!” declared Clare, with emphasis.

“And – and what about Mrs. Mantel?” Ruth asked doubtfully.

“I am going over to see her now,” Clare said, wiping her eyes. “I am so sorry for her. I believe that horrid prefect thinks she is mixed up in the plot that has cost the Red Cross so much. They say nearly ten thousand dollars worth of goods was stolen, and those two horrid men – Professor Perry and the other – have got away and the French police cannot find them.”

Ruth was secretly much disturbed by Clare’s story. She believed that she knew something about the pair of crooks who were accused – Rose Mantel’s two friends – that might lead to their capture. She was sure Henriette Dupay and she had passed them with their stalled automobile on the road to Lyse that morning.

In addition, she believed the two crooks were connected with those people at the Chateau Marchand, who were supposed to be pro-German. Now she knew what language she had heard spoken by José and the hard-featured Bessie of the chateau, there by the wayside cross. It was Spanish. The woman might easily be a Mexican as well as José.

Should she go to the prefect of police and tell him of these things? It seemed to Ruth Fielding that she was much entangled in a conspiracy of wide significance. The crooks who had robbed the Red Cross seemed lined up with the spies of the Chateau Marchand.

And there was the strange animal – dog, or what-not! – that was connected with the chateau. The werwolf! Whether she believed in such traditional tales or not, the American girl was impressed with the fact that there was much that was suspicious in the whole affair.

Yet she naturally shrank from getting her own fingers caught in the cogs of this mystery that the French police were doubtless quite able to handle in their own way, and all in good time. It was evident that even Mrs. Mantel was not to be allowed to escape the police net. She had not been arrested yet; but she doubtless was watched so closely now that she could neither get away, nor aid in doing further harm.

As for Clare Biggars, she was perfectly innocent of all wrong-doing or intent. And she was quite old enough to take care of herself. Besides, her father would doubtless be warned that his daughter was under suspicion of the French police and he would communicate with the United States Ambassador at Paris. She would be quite safe and suffer no real trouble.

So Ruth decided to return to Clair without going to the police, and, after lunch, having delivered the bags of grain which had filled the tonneau of the car, she and Henriette Dupay drove out of town again.

They were delayed for some time by tire trouble, and the French girl proved herself as good a mechanic as was necessary in repairing the tube. But night was falling before they were halfway home.

Ruth’s thoughts were divided between the conspiracy, in which Mrs. Mantel was engaged, and her worry regarding Tom Cameron. She had filed a telegraph message at the Lyse Hospital to be sent to Tom’s cantonment, where he was training, and hoped that the censor would allow it to go through. For she knew she could not be satisfied that Tom had not been wounded until she heard from him.

The American girl’s nerves had been shot through by the affair of the early morning, when the note from Tom had been brought to her. What had followed since that hour had not served to help her regain her self-control.

Therefore, as Henriette drove the car on through the twilight, following the road by which they had gone to Lyse, there was reason for Ruth suddenly exclaiming aloud, when she saw something in the track ahead:

“Henriette! Look! What can that be? Do you see it?”

“What do you see, Mademoiselle Ruth?” asked the French girl, reducing the speed of the car in apprehension.

“There! That white – ”

“Nom de Dieu!” shrieked Henriette, getting sight of the object in question.

The girl paled visibly and shrank back into her seat. Ruth cried out, fearing the steering wheel would get away from Henriette.

“Oh! Did you see?” gasped the latter.

The white object had suddenly disappeared. It seemed to Ruth as though it had actually melted into thin air.

“That was the werwolf!” continued the French girl, and crossed herself. “Oh, my dear Mademoiselle, something is sure now to happen – something very bad!”

CHAPTER XXII – THE COUNTESS AND HER DOG

RUTH FIELDING had almost instantly identified the swiftly moving object in the road as the same that she had seen weeks before while riding with Charlie Bragg toward Clair. And yet she could not admit as true the assertion made both by the ambulance driver and the excited French girl.

To recognize the quickly disappearing creature as a werwolf – the beast-form of a human being, sold irrevocably to the Powers of Darkness – was quite too much for a sane American girl like Ruth Fielding!

“Why, Henriette!” she cried, “that is nothing but a dog.”

“A wolf, Mademoiselle. A werwolf, as I have told you. A very wicked thing.”

“There isn’t such a thing,” declared Ruth bluntly. “That was a dog – a white or a gray one. And of large size. I have seen it once before – perhaps twice,” Ruth added, remembering the glimpse she had caught of such a creature with Bessie at the chateau gate.

“Oh, it is such bad fortune to see it!” sighed Henriette.

“Don’t be so childish,” Ruth adjured, brusquely. “Nothing about that dog can hurt you. But I have an idea the poor creature may be doing the French cause harm.”

“Oh, Mademoiselle! You have heard the vile talk about the dear countess!” cried Henriette. “It is not so. She is a brave and lovely lady. She gives her all for France. She would be filled with horror if she knew anybody connected her with the spies of les Boches.”

“I thought it was generally believed that she was an Alsatian of the wrong kind.”

“It is a wicked calumny,” Henriette declared earnestly. “But I have heard the tale of the werwolf ever since I was a child – long before this dreadful war began.”

“Yes?”

“It was often seen racing through the country by night,” the girl declared earnestly. “They say it comes from the chateau, and goes back to it. But that the lovely countess is a wicked one, and changes herself into a devouring wolf – ah, no, no, Mademoiselle! It is impossible!

“The werwolf comes and goes across the battle front, it is said. Indeed, it used to cross the old frontier into Germany in pre-war times. Why may not some wicked German woman change herself into a wolf and course the woods and fields at night? Why lay such a thing to the good Countess Marchand?”

Ruth saw that the girl was very much in earnest, and she cast no further doubt upon the occupant of the chateau, the towers of which had been in sight in the twilight for some few minutes. Henriette was now driving slowly and had not recovered from her fright. They came to a road which turned up the hill.

“Where does that track lead?” Ruth asked quickly.

“Past the gates of the chateau, Mademoiselle.”

“You say you will take me to the hospital at Clair before going home,” Ruth urged. “Can we not take this turn?”

“But surely,” agreed Henriette, and steered the car into the narrow and well-kept lane.

Ruth made no explanation for her request. But she felt sure that the object which had startled them both, dog or whatever it was, had dived into this lane to disappear so quickly. The “werwolf” was going toward the chateau on this evening instead of away from it.