Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine

“It is my opinion that you have too many motives,” whispered Miss Briggs in reply. “My head is swimming already. Well, here we are home again,” she added out loud. “I’m sick of war and everybody in it. Suppose we have some chow and forget war.”

“For the present, yes.”

They chatted over their meal, which was served on their center table, on a white table cloth, with real silver and china which had been supplied by the owner of the house. It was really homelike, so different from what these two loyal girls had been accustomed to since they had been on the western war front, and they gave themselves up to the fullest possible enjoyment of the moment.

“Have you heard from Tom recently?” asked Elfreda.

“I had a letter from him two days ago. He tells me that he expects to be ordered away on some military mission soon. What it is or where, I do not know, but he says perhaps it may be possible for me to go with him provided it is not too confidential a mission,” she added in a lower tone. “You see officers’ wives are not supposed to be able to keep a secret.”

“I know one who is,” declared Elfreda in a half whisper. “There are others who know it, too.”

“Meaning?” inquired Grace.

“Oh, most any old person,” returned Elfreda. “I had a letter from Anne this morning. She says she is just dying from loneliness, that she hasn’t seen her husband in ages, and that unless this war ends pretty soon she is either coming out to see us or desert. Jessica Brooks, she says, had a visit from Reddy when he last had shore leave. She wishes to know if any one has heard from Hippy, who she said, a flier told her, had had a bad fall.”

“I don’t believe the report is correct,” declared Grace. “We would have heard of it through Nora, who isn’t very far from here. Does Anne say anything about the girls of the unit in Paris?”

“She said she had heard from them through Arline Thayer, whose letter was mostly made up of remarks laudatory of our daughter Yvonne. Grace Harlowe, I believe I am actually getting jealous of that child, and I don’t see how you can be so passive.”

“I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, dear. I love that dear little golden-haired darling more than I ever loved anything in my life, outside of my dear mother and Tom, and I am looking forward with every fiber of my being to the day when we three shall be together in our beautiful Haven Home. I hope she will be happy there.”

“She will be, Loyalheart. Don’t worry about that. I wonder if the doctor has come in?” she asked in a whisper.

“He came in as we were sitting down to our mess.”

“You must have ears in the back of your head. I never saw anything like you in all my experience.”

Grace got up and stretched herself, placed a finger against her cheek and faced the end of the room.

“Have you heard the rumor, Elfreda? It is said that the American artillery is trained on the Germans, and that some hot-headed officers are planning to shoot up our friends across the Rhine one of these nights.”

“No? You don’t say!” cried Elfreda, speaking loudly enough to be heard in the next room. “I hope they will not do anything like that.”

“So do I, but it appears to be a possibility.”

Grace winked at Elfreda and changed the subject. After the dishes were washed and put away the two girls sat down to study their German, which they had been studying for some time. Since coming to the Rhine Grace had taken advantage of every opportunity to speak German, feeling certain that it would prove to be a good investment. Her knowledge of the language was destined to be very useful to her in the near future.

They turned in shortly after nine o’clock, Elfreda to go to sleep, Grace to lie awake and think. Before getting into bed she had whispered to Miss Briggs not to be alarmed if she were awakened suddenly in the night with a feeling that something was wrong in the room.

“That something will be only unimportant little I. I may be walking in my sleep for several nights to come.”

After ages of effort to keep heavy eyelids from falling, Grace was rewarded by hearing the trap raised in the adjoining room and light footsteps descending the cellar stairs. The Overton girl crept under the bed at the sound of the opening trap, and ere the footsteps had reached the cellar she had pulled aside the carpet just far enough for her purposes, removed the cardboard and pressed her ear to the hole in the floor. Every sound down there was almost as audible to her as if she had been in the cellar.

“Now for the test of my plan,” she told herself.

Significant sounds were borne to her ears, then a human voice, speaking in a low guarded tone, drifted up through the hole in the floor. What she heard amazed even Grace Harlowe. She learned too that one mouse had walked into the trap that had been cleverly set for it.

CHAPTER XXII

“CAPTAIN” GRACE DECIDES TO ACT

WHEN finally Grace Harlowe had replaced the carpet and crawled out, her face wore a serious look. She stood in the middle of the floor for a long time, thinking over what her resourcefulness had produced in the way of definite information.

“I shall at last have to take Elfreda into my confidence. The time to act is at hand,” she muttered. “This is bigger than even I, with all my suspicions, dreamed. The Intelligence captain surely will have a good laugh at my expense when I tell him what I have discovered.” Grace grinned mirthlessly and returned to bed and went to sleep.

“I have something to tell you this morning, Elfreda,” she whispered at the breakfast table. “Don’t ask me now. I haven’t decided where or when, but I shall think it over between now and the time we finish breakfast. Remember, the walls have ears. To-night something will be doing.”

Elfreda looked at her curiously, but Grace merely kissed her and proceeded to put the breakfast on the table. After finishing, Grace said she thought their best plan was to stroll down to the river, where they would be certain to be alone.

On the same seat where she had talked with Captain Boucher, Grace told her companion all that she had learned up to that moment. Elfreda’s amazement was for the moment beyond words.

“I never dreamed of anything so terrible as this. What brutes!”

“We knew that before, dear. Time is precious. No telling what they may not be up to next. The propaganda plan is in full swing. While I do not believe the uprising will amount to much, it will at least cause the loss of some American lives, but if we save only one American life we shall have justified our existence. I shall probably see Captain Boucher some time to-day and plan for him to verify all that I have told you, by the evidence of his own ears.”

“What about Miss Marshall? Do you believe she is in this plot?”

“The evidence of my eyes and ears tells me that she is, that she is a German spy, but my woman’s intuition is directly the opposite. If one were guided by intuitions one would make fewer mistakes. The trouble is that we fight that intuition and try to reason with it. I am a great believer in impressions that come to the human mind, apparently out of nowhere. I know that had I followed mine I should have been better off. In a way it is an advantage to be blind and deaf and dumb,” she added smilingly, while Miss Briggs regarded her with a curious light in her eyes. “I wish I might get in communication with the captain without the necessity of going to headquarters. I suspect that we are being watched, at least that I am. Keep your eyes open to-day, Elfreda. That’s all for now.”

Grace rose and the two girls proceeded to the canteen, which they opened and began preparing for the day’s work. They knew that the supervisor would not arrive until late in the forenoon, if then, for she was, as a rule, a late sleeper. They had not been there long before Grace discovered the grinning face of Won Lue at the door. She nodded to him to enter.

“You savvy Missie Slyth?” he asked, bowing and smirking.

“Not yet, Won.”

“You savvy Yat Sen?” he next questioned, eyeing her shrewdly.

Grace nodded.

“I want you to take a letter to headquarters for me. You savvy no one must know?”

“Me savvy plenty, la.”

Grace nodded and penciled a line to the Intelligence officer as follows:

“Important that I see you to-day. Do not wish to go to headquarters. Can you arrange to meet me elsewhere? Answer by messenger. He is perfectly reliable, but send no verbal messages, please.

“G. G.”

The answer came back in about an hour, the captain directing her to meet him accidentally on the river front where they met before. The hour was to be two o’clock. Grace informed Miss Briggs, directing her to say, in case Madame should come in and inquire for her, that she had gone for a walk, but would return soon. Grace set out a few minutes before the hour named and went by a roundabout way to the river front, strolling along aimlessly, hesitating now and then as if uncertain where she had better go.

This aimless wandering finally brought her to the Rhine, and eventually Grace sank down on a bench and began studying her German grammar. She saw the captain approaching, but did not look up, for there were many persons, German and American, strolling along, enjoying the view. Doughboys arm in arm with rosy-cheeked frauleins passed and repassed, prospective war brides, many of them; women going to the river to wash their rough clothing, and dignified Germans with chins elevated, marching back and forth with a suggestion of the goose-step in their stride.

The captain was nearly past her, when he appeared suddenly to have discovered the Overton girl. He halted and saluted.

“Why, good morning, Mrs. Gray,” he exclaimed.

“You must be a late riser, sir,” chided Grace. “It is now well into the afternoon. Won’t you sit down, if I may be so bold as to ask an officer to sit down beside me?” The conversation had been carried on in tones loud enough to be heard by any one passing.

“There is a man down near the water’s edge who appears to be interested in us. I would suggest that we seem to be indulging only in airy persiflage,” suggested the Overton girl, raising her voice in a merry laugh, the captain bowing and smiling to keep up the illusion.

Grace opened her German book and pointed to the page, speaking in a low tone.

“I observe that the mouse walked into the trap,” she said.

“What mouse do you refer to?”

“The mouse that is now on his way to a certain building near Paris known as the American prison.” Grace laughed merrily.

“Yat Sen! How did you know?”

“Got it out of the air, sir.”

“Thanks to you we caught him. The screws in the hinges of the cellar window, we discovered in advance, had been loosened so that all one had to do was to pull the window out. There was no short-circuit about this affair. The man crept in and actually started a fire in the rubbish down there. The men we had planted there pounced upon him, but they had a time getting the fire out without calling for assistance, which we did not wish them to do. We tried to make him confess.”

“A waste of time,” observed Grace.

“Yes. Chinamen lose the power of speech absolutely when you try to drag information from them. The situation is really serious. It is those back of such cut-throats as Yat Sen that we wish to get. You have done a very great service to us, but you began at the wrong end. It isn’t the little man that we are after, it is the head and brains of the plot against the Army of Occupation.”

“I think it can be arranged to put that information into your hands too, sir.”

“If you can do that you ought to be promoted to the rank of General. You have discovered something! Gordon said you would. Tell me. We mustn’t sit here long.” They were keeping up a semblance of merry chatter through the conversation.

“You know where we are living, Captain?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you to visit us secretly to-night, when I think I may be able to give you the evidence you are in search of. Of course it may require more than one visit to place you in possession of all the facts, but with what I can tell you should be fully prepared to act.”

“Mrs. Gray, do you mean to tell me that you have discovered those who are directly at the bottom of the plot here against the Allies?”

“Perhaps, sir. Please listen. You know where the Schutzenstrasse is, the street to the rear of our billet?”

He nodded.

“An alley leads from that directly to our house, but the alley may be under observation from the rear street. I would suggest, therefore, that you get into a rear yard somewhere to the east or west of that alley and follow along until you reach our billet. Our room will be dark, but I shall be at the window to let you in through it. Miss Briggs will be with me. The utmost caution must be observed, you must not speak a loud word while in our apartment; even a whisper may be overheard. I think it would be advisable for you to remove your shoes before you climb in through the window, as you might scrape the side of the house with them and give alarm.”

The Intelligence officer regarded her narrowly.

“Were I not in possession of more or less information as to your past performances, I might wonder if you were all there,” declared the officer, tapping his own head.

“Perhaps I am not,” laughed Grace. “This evening should prove whether I am or not,” answered the Overton girl laughingly. “I am making a peculiar request, but we are dealing with peculiar people, shrewd, unscrupulous – desperate people. I think you had better come in at ten o’clock. You will have to wait a couple of hours, and perhaps I shall have to secrete you. You will not be over-comfortable, but I promise you that you will consider it well worth while, if things develop as I am expecting them to. May I depend upon you, sir?”

“You may, Mrs. Gray.”

“I would suggest that this matter be kept absolutely confidential between us. Miss Briggs knows that I am going to invite you to visit us, and it will be best that no other human being, outside of yourself, knows about it. I have come to the point where I am afraid to trust any one.”

“Your wishes in the matter shall be observed. I thank you, Mrs. Gray,” answered the captain rising. “Happy to have come up with you,” he said in a louder tone. “One of these days we will make up a party for a sail on the river. You will find it well worth while.”

The captain strolled away and Grace resumed her study of the language that she had come to loathe. The Overton girl was on the verge of a great achievement, but from her attitude of indifference to all outside influences, and the absorption in her book that she was showing, one would not have imagined that she was planning the most important coup that had fallen to the lot of the American Secret Service since the beginning of the war, so far as its activity with the army was concerned.

Grace remained seated for half an hour longer, then started back to the canteen to take up her day’s work for the doughboys.

CHAPTER XXIII

A DESPERATE PLOT REVEALED

ELFREDA had been informed of the proposed visit and carefully instructed by her companion as to her part in it. The girls spent a quiet evening until ten o’clock, when Grace got up and pinned her blouse on the wall, then put out the light and raised the shade. Peering out she saw a shadowy figure outlined in the darkness. After observing it keenly for a moment the Overton girl cautiously raised the window, that she had greased in the grooves to prevent squeaking. No sooner had she done so than the figure moved forward quickly.

The visitor was Captain Boucher, in his stockinged feet. He peered up into the face of Grace Harlowe, and climbed into the room with no more disturbance than a cat would have made. Not a word had been spoken. Grace lowered the window and stood motionless gazing out into the darkness, which vigil she kept for several moments, then pulled down the shade and lighted a candle.

“Take a seat,” whispered Grace. “Should any one knock, crawl under the bed, and be sure to take your shoes with you. They wouldn’t look well standing out in the middle of our room.”

The captain nodded and glanced curiously at the blouse pinned up on the wall, but Grace pretended not to have observed his exhibition of curiosity. She handed him a book, beckoned him to a chair, whereupon she and Elfreda sat down and began chatting in their ordinary tone, discussing their German study. Captain Boucher now and then would lay down his book, to listen and observe the faces of the two girls, which he found an interesting study, especially Grace’s with its rapidly changing expression that left one in a state of bewilderment as to what particular emotion was predominant.

A slight sound as of some one opening a door in the front room was heard. Grace’s head turned ever so little, and though the expression on her face did not change, attentiveness and intelligence swam instantly into her eyes. The captain, observing, bent his own ears to the sound that had arrested Grace Harlowe’s attention. She glanced at her watch, nodded to Elfreda, and greatly to the amazement of her caller, got down and crawled under the bed.

Grace emerged, a moment later, her face flushed, her hair in slight disorder, and smiled radiantly at the visitor. She offered no explanation to the captain, but nodding to Elfreda, the latter began speaking of the girls of the Overton unit. It was half after eleven when Grace, hearing movement again in the front room, got up and went over to the captain. Leaning over him she placed her lips close to his ear.

“You will please crawl under the bed,” she whispered. “You will find the carpet drawn back, and by groping you will find a hole in the floor, made by the auger that you so kindly loaned to me. Place your ear to the hole and listen. Do not move and be sure to control your breathing to the limit. Have a handkerchief ready in case you find you have to cough or sneeze. I think you will hear something interesting. Afterwards I will supply any points that may be required to explain any remarks you may hear and not understand. Do not come out or move until I snap my finger. Here! You forgot your shoes,” she reminded him, picking up and handing them to him. The captain flushed and accepted the shoes and the rebuke with a profound bow.

The Overton girls watched him with interest, and both were obliged to admit that the captain was very agile. He wriggled under and out of sight without making a sound, then all was silence. Listening as intently as she might she failed to hear his breathing.

Grace then removed the blouse from the wall.

“Let’s turn in, Elfreda. I’m terribly sleepy,” yawned Grace.

Putting out the light the two girls threw themselves on the bed, and apparently went to sleep. There was a long wait, without a sound coming from the man under the bed.

Grace heard the trap raised, though she had not heard any one walking. She snapped her fingers once, receiving a similar signal from the man on watch at the auger hole. Silence settled over the house until perhaps five minutes later the Overton girls heard the drone of a far-away voice. It came from the cellar, and the chief of the Army Intelligence Department was listening to every word that the voice uttered.

Grace Harlowe found herself wishing that she might see the expression on the face of Captain Boucher at that moment.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TRAP IS SPRUNG

IT must have been fully half an hour later when Grace Harlowe’s straining ears told her that the conversation was ended. Hearing footsteps on the stairs she snapped her fingers sharply.

“Quietly, Elfreda!” she warned, slipping out to the floor about the time that Captain Boucher rose from the floor before her. “Any luck?” she whispered.

“I should say so. I must speak with you. Go to headquarters directly and I will meet you there. Two blocks below here on the Schutzenstrasse you will find a drosky. The driver is one of our operators. Hand him this card and tell him to take you to the office. If you get there before I do, tell the orderly to summon General Gordon in my name for an immediate conference.”

The Overton girls slipped into their blouses, after which Grace crawled under the bed and replaced the carpet. This done she opened the window, all this without making a sound likely to attract attention. Elfreda climbed out first, followed by the captain, then Grace herself. The window was lowered and three persons were swallowed up in the darkness of the night, the captain going to the left, the girls to the right.

Grace and Elfreda found the carriage and quickly reached headquarters, where Grace delivered her message. General Gordon came in about the time that Captain Boucher arrived, and looked his amazement at finding the Overton girls there.

“What’s wrong, Boucher?” he demanded.

“Nothing except that our very good friend, Mrs. Gray, has run down the plotters. I haven’t all of the story yet, but I have this evening listened to one of them giving the plans for blowing up the second ammunition dump and sacrificing the town for the sake of smoking the Americans out. This includes a desperate attempt to fire the barracks so that many men must perish. It’s damnable!”

Captain Boucher then related briefly all that had occurred that evening.

“This man Klein must be arrested immediately. How did you know that we had caught Yat Sen, Mrs. Gray?” he demanded, turning to the demure figure of the Overton girl.

“I heard the doctor reporting it over the telephone in the cellar. The telephone evidently leads across the river. He reports every night at about the same time. It was from overhearing him that I was able to warn you about the proposed firing of Barracks Number Two.”

“Now that the matter is in my mind, will you tell me why you had your tunic pinned to the wall?” questioned Captain Boucher.

“There is a dictaphone behind the wallpaper at that point, with an opening through the paper so small that one never would notice it.”

“I thought so. How did you chance to discover it?”

“I looked for it.”

The two officers exchanged meaning glances.

“How did you come to suspect the doctor?” continued the captain.

“He was too suave to be genuine. Then, too, I presume my intuition had something to do with it. Little things, expressions on faces, mannerisms, all these things always did make an impression on me.” Grace then went on to relate conversations that she had heard when the doctor was talking at the cellar telephone.

“The doctor in his conversation this evening referred to some person as the Babbler. Do you know whom he meant?”

“Mrs. Smythe.”

“Is it possible?” exclaimed the captain.

“I am not at all surprised,” interjected the general. “She must go, even if she succeeds in clearing herself.”

Grace hastened to urge that no suspicion be directed at Mrs. Smythe, who, she declared, was a vain woman who had been used by the German spies because they knew how to appeal to her vanity. In this way they obtained information that the supervisor did not realize she was giving.

“You speak of spies. I heard references made to at least one this evening. Do you suspect any others?” asked the captain.

“I know one other, sir. That one is the supervisor’s maid, Marie Debussy!”

“Are you positive?” asked the general.

“I am, sir. I have heard conversations between her and the doctor. I have seen her acting suspiciously and in conference with men that I was certain were enemy officers, and I have heard her holding telephone conversations that connected her with plots against our men.”

“I wonder who she can be?” marveled the captain.

“Who she is? She is Rosa von Blum, the famous German agent.”

Both officers started, and stared at her in amazement.

“I presume you also would like to know who this other spy, that you call Doctor Klein, is. He is Captain Carl Schuster of the German Secret Service, a man who, I have heard said, is perhaps the cleverest of the Imperial operators. You no doubt wonder how I have obtained this information. It was quite simple, not due to any unusual ability or cleverness on my part. I did not know definitely until last night, when he said upon opening the telephone conversation, ‘This is Carl! No, Carl Schuster – B One!’ I then knew. The revelation of Rosa von Blum’s identity occurred in a somewhat similar manner.”

“This is most remarkable!” exclaimed Captain Boucher.