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diff --git a/old/56036-8.txt b/old/56036-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a16270d..0000000 --- a/old/56036-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7563 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inside the Lines, by -Earl Derr Biggers and Robert Welles Ritchie - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Inside the Lines - -Author: Earl Derr Biggers - Robert Welles Ritchie - -Release Date: November 23, 2017 [EBook #56036] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE THE LINES *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - - - - - -[Frontispiece: "You must accept my word."] - - - - - INSIDE THE LINES - - - _By_ - - EARL DERR BIGGERS - - AND - - ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE - - - _Founded on Earl Derr Biggers' - Play of the Same Name_ - - - - INDIANAPOLIS - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - COPYRIGHT 1915 - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - - - - PRESS OF - BRAUNWORTH & CO. - BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS - BROOKLYN. N. Y. - - - - - CONTENTS - - CHAPTER - - I Jane Gerson, Buyer - II From the Wilhelmstrasse - III Billy Capper at Play - IV 32 Queen's Terrace - V A Ferret - VI A Fugitive - VII The Hotel Splendide - VIII Chaff of War - IX Room D - X A Visit to a Lady - XI A Spy in the Signal Tower - XII Her Country's Example - XIII Enter, a Cigarette - XIV The Captain Comes to Tea - XV The Third Degree - XVI The Pendulum of Fate - XVII Three-Thirty A. M. - XVIII The Trap Is Sprung - XIX At the Quay - - - - -INSIDE THE LINES - - - -CHAPTER I - -JANE GERSON, BUYER - -"I had two trunks--two, you ninny! Two! _Ou est l'autre?_" - -The grinning customs guard lifted his shoulders to his ears and spread -out his palms. "_Mais, mamselle----_" - -"Don't you '_mais_' me, sir! I had two trunks--_deux troncs_--when I -got aboard that wabbly old boat at Dover this morning, and I'm not -going to budge from this wharf until I find the other one. Where _did_ -you learn your French, anyway? Can't you understand when I speak your -language?" - -The girl plumped herself down on top of the unhasped trunk and folded -her arms truculently. With a quizzical smile, the customs guard looked -down into her brown eyes, smoldering dangerously now, and began all -over again his speech of explanation. - -"_Wagon-lit?_" She caught a familiar word. "_Mais oui_; that's where -I want to go--aboard your wagon-lit, for Paris. _Voilà!_"--the girl -carefully gave the word three syllables--"_mon ticket pour Paree!_" -She opened her patent-leather reticule, rummaged furiously therein, -brought out a handkerchief, a tiny mirror, a packet of rice papers, and -at last a folded and punched ticket. This she displayed with a -triumphant flourish. - -"_Voilà! Il dit_ 'Miss Jane Gerson'; that's me--_moi-meme_, I mean. -And _il dit 'deux troncs'_; now you can't go behind that, can you? -Where is that other trunk?" - -A whistle shrilled back beyond the swinging doors of the station. Folk -in the customs shed began a hasty gathering together of parcels and -shawl straps, and a general exodus toward the train sheds commenced. -The girl on the trunk looked appealingly about her; nothing but bustle -and confusion; no Samaritan to turn aside and rescue a fair traveler -fallen among customs guards. Her eyes filled with trouble, and for an -instant her reliant mouth broke its line of determination; the lower -lip quivered suspiciously. Even the guard started to walk away. - -"Oh, oh, please don't go!" Jane Gerson was on her feet, and her hands -shot out in an impulsive appeal. "Oh, dear; maybe I forgot to tip you. -Here, _attende au secours_, if you'll only find that other trunk before -the train----" - -"Pardon; but if I may be of any assistance----" - -Miss Gerson turned. A tallish, old-young-looking man, in a gray lounge -suit, stood heels together and bent stiffly in a bow. Nothing of the -beau or the boulevardier about his face or manner. Miss Gerson -accepted his intervention as heaven-sent. - -"Oh, thank you ever so much! The guard, you see, doesn't understand -good French. I just can't make him understand that one of my trunks is -missing. And the train for Paris----" - -Already the stranger was rattling incisive French at the guard. That -official bowed low, and, with hands and lips, gave rapid explanation. -The man in the gray lounge suit turned to the girl. - -"A little misunderstanding, Miss--ah----" - -"Gerson--Jane Gerson, of New York," she promptly supplied. - -"A little misunderstanding, Miss Gerson. The customs guard says your -other trunk has already been examined, passed, and placed on the -baggage van. He was trying to tell you that it would be necessary for -you to permit a porter to take this trunk to the train before time for -starting. With your permission----" - -The stranger turned and halloed to a porter, who came running. Miss -Gerson had the trunk locked and strapped in no time, and it was on the -shoulders of the porter. - -"You have very little time, Miss Gerson. The train will be making a -start directly. If I might--ah--pilot you through the station to the -proper train shed. I am not presuming?" - -"You are very kind," she answered hurriedly. - -They set off, the providential Samaritan in the lead. Through the -waiting-room and on to a broad platform, almost deserted, they went. A -guard's whistle shrilled. The stranger tucked a helping hand under -Jane Gerson's arm to steady her in the sharp sprint down a long aisle -between tracks to where the Paris train stood. It began to move before -they had reached its mid-length. A guard threw open a carriage door, -in they hopped, and with a rattle of chains and banging of buffers the -Express du Nord was off on its arrow flight from Calais to the capital. - -The carriage, which was of the second class, was comfortably filled. -Miss Gerson stumbled over the feet of a puffy Fleming nearest the door, -was launched into the lap of a comfortably upholstered widow on the -opposite seat, ricochetted back to jam an elbow into a French -gentleman's spread newspaper, and finally was catapulted into a vacant -space next to the window on the carriage's far side. She giggled, -tucked the skirts of her pearl-gray duster about her, righted the chic -sailor hat on her chestnut-brown head, and patted a stray wisp of hair -back into place. Her meteor flight into and through the carriage -disturbed her not a whit. - -As for the Samaritan, he stood uncertainly in the narrow cross aisle, -swaying to the swing of the carriage and reconnoitering seating -possibilities. There was a place, a very narrow one, next to the fat -Fleming; also there was a vacant place next to Jane Gerson. The -Samaritan caught the girl's glance in his indecision, read in it -something frankly comradely, and chose the seat beside her. - -"Very good of you, I'm sure," he murmured. "I did not wish to -presume----" - -"You're not," the girl assured, and there was something so fresh, so -ingenuous, in the tone and the level glance of her brown eyes that the -Samaritan felt all at once distinctly satisfied with the cast of -fortune that had thrown him in the way of a distressed traveler. He -sat down with a lifting of the checkered Alpine hat he wore and a stiff -little bow from the waist. - -"If I may, Miss Gerson--I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service." - -"Oh!" The girl let slip a little gasp--the meed of admiration the -feminine heart always pays to shoulder straps. "Signal service; that -means the army?" - -"His majesty's service; yes, Miss Gerson." - -"You are, of course, off duty?" she suggested, with the faintest -possible tinge of regret at the absence of the stripes and buttons that -spell "soldier" with the woman. - -"You might say so, Miss Gerson. Egypt--the Nile country is my station. -I am on my way back there after a bit of a vacation at home--London I -mean, of course." - -She stole a quick side glance at the face of her companion. A -soldier's face it was, lean and school-hardened and competent. Lines -about the eyes and mouth--the stamp of the sun and the imprint of the -habit to command--had taken from Captain Woodhouse's features something -of freshness and youth, though giving in return the index of inflexible -will and lust for achievement. His smooth lips were a bit thin, Jane -Gerson thought, and the out-shooting chin, almost squared at the -angles, marked Captain Woodhouse as anything but a trifler or a flirt. -She was satisfied that nothing of presumption or forwardness on the -part of this hard-molded chap from Egypt would give her cause to regret -her unconventional offer of friendship. - -Captain Woodhouse, in his turn, had made a satisfying, though covert, -appraisal of his traveling companion by means of a narrow mirror inset -above the baggage rack over the opposite seat. Trim and petite of -figure, which was just a shade under the average for height and -plumpness; a small head set sturdily on a round smooth neck; face the -very embodiment of independence and self-confidence, with its brown -eyes wide apart, its high brow under the parting waves of golden -chestnut, broad humorous mouth, and tiny nose slightly nibbed upward: -Miss Up-to-the-Minute New York, indeed! From the cocked red feather in -her hat to the dainty spatted boots Jane Gerson appeared in Woodhouse's -eyes a perfect, virile, vividly alive American girl. He'd met her kind -before; had seen them browbeating bazaar merchants in Cairo and riding -desert donkeys like strong young queens. The type appealed to him. - -The first stiffness of informal meeting wore away speedily. The girl -tactfully directed the channel of conversation into lines familiar to -Woodhouse. What was Egypt like; who owned the Pyramids, and why didn't -the owners plant a park around them and charge admittance? Didn't he -think Rameses and all those other old Pharaohs had the right idea in -advertising--putting up stone billboards to last all time? The -questions came crisp and startling; Woodhouse found himself chuckling -at the shrewd incisiveness of them. Rameses an advertiser and the -Pyramids stone hoardings to carry all those old boys' fame through the -ages! He'd never looked on them in that light before. - -"I say, Miss Gerson, you'd make an excellent business person, now, -really," the captain voiced his admiration. - -"Just cable that at my expense to old Pop Hildebrand, of Hildebrand's -department store, New York," she flashed back at him. "I'm trying to -convince him of just that very thing." - -"Really, now; a department shop! What, may I ask, do you have to do -for--ah--Pop Hildebrand?" - -"Oh, I'm his foreign buyer," Jane answered, with a conscious note of -pride. "I'm over here to buy gowns for the winter season, you see. -Paul Poiret--Worth--Paquin; you've heard of those wonderful people, of -course?" - -"Can't say I have," the captain confessed, with a rueful smile into the -girl's brown eyes. - -"Then you've never bought a Worth?" she challenged. "For if you had -you'd not forget the name--or the price--very soon." - -"Gowns--and things are not in my line, Miss Gerson," he answered -simply, and the girl caught herself feeling a secret elation. A man -who didn't know gowns couldn't be very intimately acquainted with -women. And--well-- - -"And this Hildebrand, he sends you over here alone just to buy pretties -for New York's wonderful women?" the captain was saying. "Aren't you -just a bit--ah--nervous to be over in this part of the world--alone?" - -"Not in the least," the girl caught him up. "Not about the alone part, -I should say. Maybe I am fidgety and sort of worried about making good -on the job. This is my first trip--my very first as a buyer for -Hildebrand. And, of course, if I should fall down----" - -"Fall down?" Woodhouse echoed, mystified. The girl laughed, and struck -her left wrist a smart blow with her gloved right hand. - -"There I go again--slang; 'vulgar American slang,' you'll call it. If -I could only rattle off the French as easily as I do New Yorkese I'd be -a wonder. I mean I'm afraid I won't make good." - -"Oh!" - -"But why should I worry about coming over alone?" Jane urged. "Lots of -American girls come over here alone with an American flag pinned to -their shirt-waists and wearing a Baedeker for a wrist watch. Nothing -ever happens to them." - -Captain Woodhouse looked out on the flying panorama of straw-thatched -houses and fields heavy with green grain. He seemed to be balancing -words. He glanced at the passenger across the aisle, a wizened little -man, asleep. In a lowered voice he began: - -"A woman alone--over here on the Continent at this time; why, I very -much fear she will have great difficulties when the--ah--trouble comes." - -"Trouble?" Jane's eyes were questioning. - -"I do not wish to be an alarmist, Miss Gerson," Captain Woodhouse -continued, hesitant. "Goodness knows we've had enough calamity -shouters among the Unionists at home. But have you considered what you -would do--how you would get back to America in case of--war?" The last -word was almost a whisper. - -"War?" she echoed. "Why, you don't mean all this talk in the papers -is----" - -"Is serious, yes," Woodhouse answered quietly. "Very serious." - -"Why, Captain Woodhouse, I thought you had war talk every summer over -here just as our papers are filled each spring with gossip about how -Tesreau is going to jump to the Feds, or the Yanks are going to be -sold. It's your regular midsummer outdoor sport over here, this -stirring up the animals." - -Woodhouse smiled, though his gray eyes were filled with something not -mirth. - -"I fear the animals are--stirred, as you say, too far this time," he -resumed. "The assassination of the Archduke Ferd----" - -"Yes, I remember I did read something about that in the papers at home. -But archdukes and kings have been killed before, and no war came of it. -In Mexico they murder a president before he has a chance to send out -'At home' cards." - -"Europe is so different from Mexico," her companion continued, the -lines of his face deepening. "I am afraid you over in the States do -not know the dangerous politics here; you are so far away; you should -thank God for that. You are not in a land where one man--or two or -three--may say, 'We will now go to war,' and then you go, willy-nilly." - -The seriousness of the captain's speech and the fear that he could not -keep from his eyes sobered the girl. She looked out on the -sun-drenched plains of Pas de Calais, where toy villages, hedged -fields, and squat farmhouses lay all in order, established, seeming for -all time in the comfortable doze of security. The plodding manikins in -the fields, the slumberous oxen drawing the harrows amid the beet rows, -pigeons circling over the straw hutches by the tracks' side--all this -denied the possibility of war's corrosion. - -"Don't you think everybody is suffering from a bad dream when they say -there's to be fighting?" she queried. "Surely it is impossible that -folks over here would all consent to destroy this." She waved toward -the peaceful countryside. - -"A bad dream, yes. But one that will end in a nightmare," he answered. -"Tell me, Miss Gerson, when will you be through with your work in -Paris, and on your way back to America?" - -"Not for a month; that's sure. Maybe I'll be longer if I like the -place." - -Woodhouse pondered. - -"A month. This is the tenth of July. I am afraid---- I say, Miss -Gerson, please do not set me down for a meddler--this short -acquaintance, and all that; but may I not urge on you that you finish -your work in Paris and get back to England at least in two weeks?" The -captain had turned, and was looking into the girl's eyes with an -earnest intensity that startled her. "I can not tell you all I know, -of course. I may not even know the truth, though I think I have a bit -of it, right enough. But one of your sort--to be caught alone on this -side of the water by the madness that is brewing! By George, I do not -like to think of it!" - -"I thank you, Captain Woodhouse, for your warning," Jane answered him, -and impulsively she put out her hand to his. "But, you see, I'll have -to run the risk. I couldn't go scampering back to New York like a -scared pussy-cat just because somebody starts a war over here. I'm on -trial. This is my first trip as buyer for Hildebrand, and it's a case -of make or break with me. War or no war, I've got to make good. -Anyway"--this with a toss of her round little chin--"I'm an American -citizen, and nobody'll dare to start anything with me." - -"Right you are!" Woodhouse beamed his admiration. "Now we'll talk -about those skyscrapers of yours. Everybody back from the States has -something to say about those famous buildings, and I'm fairly burning -for first-hand information from one who knows them." - -Laughingly she acquiesced, and the grim shadow of war was pushed away -from them, though hardly forgotten by either. At the man's prompting, -Jane gave intimate pictures of life in the New World metropolis, -touching with shrewd insight the fads and shams of New York's denizens -even as she exalted the achievements of their restless energy. - -Woodhouse found secret amusement and delight in her racy nervous -speech, in the dexterity of her idiom and patness of her -characterizations. Here was a new sort of for him. Not the languid -creature of studied suppression and feeble enthusiasm he had known, but -a virile, vivid, sparkling woman of a new land, whose impulses were as -unhindered as her speech was heterodox. She was a woman who worked for -her living; that was a new type, too. Unafraid, she threw herself into -the competition of a man's world; insensibly she prided herself on her -ability to "make good"--expressive Americanism, that,--under any -handicap. She was a woman with a "job"; Captain Woodhouse had never -before met one such. - -Again, here was a woman who tried none of the stale arts and tricks of -coquetry; no eyebrow strategy or maidenly simpering about Jane Gerson. -Once sure Woodhouse was what she took him to be, a gentleman, the girl -had established a frank basis of comradeship that took no reckoning of -the age-old conventions of sex allure and sex defense. The -unconventionality of their meeting weighed nothing with her. Equally -there was not a hint of sophistication on the girl's part. - -So the afternoon sped, and when the sun dropped over the maze of spires -and chimney pots that was Paris, each felt regret at parting. - -"To Egypt, yes," Woodhouse ruefully admitted. "A dreary deadly 'place -in the sun' for me. To have met you, Miss Gerson; it has been -delightful, quite." - -"I hope," the girl said, as Woodhouse handed her into a taxi, "I hope -that _if_ that war comes it will find you still in Egypt, away from the -firing-line." - -"Not a fair thing to wish for a man in the service," Woodhouse -answered, laughing. "I may be more happy when I say my best wish for -you is that _when_ the war comes it will find you a long way from -Paris. Good-by, Miss Gerson, and good luck!" - -Captain Woodhouse stood, heels together and hat in hand, while her taxi -trundled off, a farewell flash of brown eyes rewarding him for the -military correctness of his courtesy. Then he hurried to another -station to take a train--not for a Mediterranean port and distant -Egypt, but for Berlin. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -FROM THE WILHELMSTRASSE - -"It would be wiser to talk in German," the woman said. "In these times -French or English speech in Berlin----" she finished, with a lifting of -her shapely bare shoulders, sufficiently eloquent. The waiter speeded -his task of refilling the man's glass and discreetly withdrew. - -"Oh, I'll talk in German quick enough," the man assented, draining his -thin half bubble of glass down to the last fizzing residue in the stem. -"Only just show me you've got the right to hear, and the good fat -bank-notes to pay; that's all." He propped his sharp chin on a hand -that shook slightly, and pushed his lean flushed face nearer hers. An -owlish caution fought the wine fancies in his shifting lynx eyes under -reddened lids; also there was admiration for the milk-white skin and -ripe lips of the woman by his side. For an instant--half the time of a -breath--a flash of loathing made the woman's eyes tigerish; but at once -they changed again to mild bantering. - -"So? Friend Billy Capper, of Brussels, has a touch of the spy fever -himself, and distrusts an old pal?" She laughed softly, and one slim -hand toyed with a heavy gold locket on her bosom. "Friend Billy Capper -forgets old times and old faces--forgets even the matter of the Lord -Fisher letters----" - -"Chop it, Louisa!" The man called Capper lapsed into brusk English as -he banged the stem of his wineglass on the damask. "No sense in raking -that up again--just because I ask you a fair question--ask you to -identify yourself in your new job." - -"We go no further, Billy Capper," she returned, speaking swiftly in -German; "not another word between us unless you obey my rule, and talk -this language. Why did you get that message through to me to meet you -here in the Café Riche to-night if you did not trust me? Why did you -have me carry your offer to--to headquarters and come here ready to -talk business if it was only to hum and haw about my identifying -myself?" - -The tenseness of exaggerated concentration on Capper's gaunt face began -slowly to dissolve. First the thin line of shaven lips flickered and -became weak at down-drawn corners; then the frown faded from about the -eyes, and the beginnings of tears gathered there. Shrewdness and the -stamp of cunning sped entirely, and naught but weakness remained. - -"Louisa--Louisa, old pal; don't be hard on poor Billy Capper," he -mumbled. "I'm down, girl--away down again. Since they kicked me out -at Brussels I haven't had a shilling to bless myself with. Can't go -back to England--you know that; the French won't have me, and here I -am, my dinner clothes my only stock in trade left, and you even having -to buy the wine." A tear of self-pity slipped down the hard drain of -his cheek and splashed on his hand. "But I'll show 'em, Louisa! They -can't kick me out of the Brussels shop like a dog and not pay for it! -I know too much, I do!" - -"And what you know about the Brussels shop you want to sell to -the--Wilhelmstrasse?" the woman asked tensely. - -"Yes, if the Wilhelmstrasse is willing to pay well for it," Capper -answered, his lost cunning returning in a bound. - -"I am authorized to judge how much your information is worth," his -companion declared, leveling a cold glance into Capper's eyes. "You -can tell me what you know, and depend on me to pay well, or--we part at -once." - -"But, Louisa"--again the whine--"how do I know you're what you say? -You've flown high since you and I worked together in the Brussels shop. -The Wilhelmstrasse--most perfect spy machine in the world! How I'd -like to be in your shoes, Louisa!" - -She detached the heavy gold locket from the chain on her bosom, with a -quick twist of slim fingers had one side of the case open, then laid -the locket before him, pointing to a place on the bevel of the case. -Capper swept up the trinket, looked searchingly for an instant at the -spot the woman had designated, and returned the locket to her hand. - -"Your number in the Wilhelmstrasse," he whispered in awe. "Genuine, no -doubt. Saw the same sort of mark once before in Rome. All right. -Now, listen, Louisa. What I'm going to tell you about where Brussells -stands in this--this business that's brewing will make the German -general staff sit up." The woman inclined her head toward Capper's. -He, looking not at her but out over the rich plain of brocades, -broadcloths and gleaming shoulders, began in a monotone: - -"When the war comes--the day the war starts, French artillerymen will -be behind the guns at Namur. The English----" - -The Hungarian orchestra of forty strings swept into a wild gipsy chant. -Dissonances, fierce and barbaric, swept like angry tides over the -brilliant floor, of the café. Still Capper talked on, and the woman -called Louisa bent her jewel-starred head to listen. Her face, the -face of a fine animal, was set in rapt attention. - -"You mark my words," he finished, "when the German army enters Brussels -proof of what I'm telling you will be there. Yes, in a pigeonhole of -the foreign-office safe those joint plans between England and Belgium -for resisting invasion from the eastern frontier. If the Germans -strike as swiftly as I think they will the foreign-office Johnnies will -be so flustered in moving out they'll forget these papers I'm telling -you about. Then your Wilhelmstrasse will know they've paid for the -truth when they paid Billy Capper." - -Capper eagerly reached for his glass, and, finding it empty, signaled -the waiter. - -"I'll buy this one, Louisa," he said grandiloquently. "Can't have a -lady buying me wine all night." He gave the order. "You're going to -slip me some bank-notes to-night--right now, aren't you, Louisa, old -pal?" Capper anxiously honed his cheeks with a hand that trembled. -The woman's eyes were narrowed in thought. - -"If I give you anything to-night, Billy Capper, you'll get drunker than -you are now, and how do I know you won't run to the first English -secret-service man you meet and blab?" - -"Louisa! Louisa! Don't say that!" Great fear and great yearning sat -in Capper's filmed eyes. "You know I'm honest, Louisa! You wouldn't -milk me this way--take all the info I've got and then throw me over -like a dog!" Cold scorn was in her glance. - -"Maybe I might manage to get you a position--with the Wilhelmstrasse." -She named the great secret-service office under her breath. "You can't -go back to England, to be sure; but you might be useful in the Balkans, -where you're not known, or even in Egypt. You have your good points, -Capper; you're a sly little weasel--when you're sober. Perhaps----" - -"Yes, yes; get me a job with the Wilhelmstrasse, Louisa!" Capper was -babbling in an agony of eagerness. "You know my work. You can vouch -for me, and you needn't mention that business of the Lord Fisher -letters; you were tarred pretty much with the same brush there, Louisa. -But, come, be a good sport; pay me at least half of what you think my -info's worth, and I'll take the rest out in salary checks, if you get -me that job. I'm broke, Louisa!" His voice cracked in a sob. -"Absolutely stony broke!" - -She sat toying with the stem of her wineglass while Capper's clasped -hands on the table opened and shut themselves without his volition. -Finally she made a swift move of one hand to her bodice, withdrew it -with a bundle of notes crinkling between the fingers. - -"Three hundred marks now, Billy Capper," she said. The man echoed the -words lovingly. "Three hundred now, and my promise to try to get a -number for you with--my people. That's fair?" - -"Fair as can be, Louisa." He stretched out clawlike fingers to receive -the thin sheaf of notes she counted from her roll. "Here comes the -wine--the wine I'm buying. We'll drink to my success at landing a job -with--your people." - -"For me no more to-night," the woman answered. "My cape, please." She -rose. - -"But, I say!" Capper protested. "Just one more bottle--the bottle I'm -buying. See, here it is all proper and cooled. Marks the end of my -bad luck, so it does. You won't refuse to drink with me to my good -luck that's coming?" - -"Your good luck is likely to stop short with that bottle, Billy -Capper," she said, her lips parting in a smile half scornful. "You -know how wine has played you before. Better stop now while luck's with -you." - -"Hanged if I do!" he answered stubbornly. "After these months of hand -to mouth and begging for a nasty pint of ale in a common pub--leave -good wine when it's right under my nose? Not me!" Still protesting -against her refusal to drink with him the wine he would pay for -himself--the man made that a point of injured honor--Capper grudgingly -helped place the cape of web lace over his companion's white shoulders, -and accompanied her to her taxi. - -"If you're here this time to-morrow night--and sober," were her -farewell words, "I may bring you your number in the--you understand; -that and your commission to duty." - -"God bless you, Louisa, girl!" Capper stammered thickly. "I'll not -fail you." - -He watched the taxi trundle down the brilliant mirror of Unter den -Linden, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. Then he turned back to the -world of light and perfume and wine--the world from which he had been -barred these many months and for which the starved body of him had -cried out in agony. His glass stood brimming; money crinkled in his -pocket; there were eyes for him and fair white shoulders. Billy -Capper, discredited spy, had come to his own once more. - - -The orchestra was booming a rag-time, and the chorus on the stage of -the Winter Garden came plunging to the footlights, all in line, their -black legs kicking out from the skirts like thrusting spindles in some -marvelous engine of stagecraft. They screeched the final line of a -Germanized coon song, the cymbals clanged "Zam-m-m!" and folk about the -clustered tables pattered applause. Captain Woodhouse, at a table by -himself, pulled a wafer of a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced -at its face and looked back at the rococo entrance arches, through -which the late-comers were streaming. - -"Henry Sherman, do you think Kitty ought to see this sort of thing? -It's positively indecent!" - -The high-pitched nasal complaint came from a table a little to the -right of the one where Woodhouse was sitting. - -"There, there, mother! Now, don't go taking all the joy outa life just -because you're seeing something that would make the minister back in -Kewanee roll his eyes in horror. This is Germany, mother!" - -Out of the tail of his eye, Woodhouse could see the family group -wherein Mrs. Grundy had sat down to make a fourth. A blocky little man -with a red face and a pinky-bald head, whose clothes looked as if they -had been whipsawed out of the bolt; a comfortably stout matron wearing -a bonnet which even to the untutored masculine eye betrayed its -provincialism; a slim slip of a girl of about nineteen with a face like -a choir boy's--these were the American tourists whose voices had -attracted Woodhouse's attention. He played an amused eavesdropper, all -the more interested because they were Americans, and since a certain -day on the Calais-Paris express, a week or so gone, he'd had reason to -be interested in all Americans. - -"I'm surprised at you, Henry, defending such an exhibition as this," -the matron's high complaint went on, "when you were mighty shocked at -the bare feet of those innocent Greek dancers the Ladies' Aid brought -to give an exhibition on Mrs. Peck's lawn." - -"Well, mother, that was different," the genial little chap answered. -"Kewanee's a good little town, and should stay proper. Berlin, from -what I can see, is a pretty bad big town--and don't care." He pulled a -heavy watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. "Land's sakes, -mother; seven o'clock back home, and the bell's just ringing for -Wednesday-night prayer meeting! Maybe since it's prayer-meeting night -we might be passing our time better than by looking at -this--ah--exhibition." - -There was a scraping of chairs, then: - -"Henry, I tell you he does look like Albert Downs--the living image!" -This from the woman, sotto voce. - -"Sh! mother! What would Albert Downs be doing in Berlin?" The -daughter was reproving. - -"Well, Kitty, they say curiosity once killed a cat; but I'm going to -have a better look. I'd swear----" - -Woodhouse was slightly startled when he saw the woman from America -utilize the clumsy subterfuge of a dropped handkerchief to step into a -position whence she could look at his face squarely. Also he was -annoyed. He did not care to be stared at under any circumstances, -particularly at this time. The alert and curious lady saw his flush of -annoyance, flushed herself, and joined her husband and daughter. - -"Well, if I didn't know Albert Downs had a livery business which he -couldn't well leave," floated back the hoarse whisper, "I'd say that -was him setting right there in that chair." - -"Come, mother, bedtime and after--in Berlin," was the old gentleman's -admonition. Woodhouse heard their retreating footsteps, and laughed in -spite of his temporary chagrin at the American woman's curiosity. He -was just reaching for his watch a second time when a quick step sounded -on the gravel behind him. He turned. A woman of ripe beauty had her -hand outstretched in welcome. She was the one Billy Capper had called -Louisa. Captain Woodhouse rose and grasped her hand warmly. - -"Ah! So good of you! I've been expecting----" - -"Yes, I'm late. I could not come earlier." Salutation and answer were -in German, fluently spoken on the part of each. - -"You will not be followed?" Woodhouse asked, assisting her to sit. She -laughed shortly. - -"Hardly, when a bottle of champagne is my rival. The man will be well -entertained--too well." - -"I have been thinking," Woodhouse continued gravely, "that a place -hardly as public as this would have been better for our meeting. -Perhaps----" - -"You fear the English agents? Pah! They have ears for keyholes only; -they do not expect to use them in a place where there is light and -plenty of people. You know their clumsiness." Woodhouse nodded. His -eyes traveled slowly over the bold beauty of the woman's face. - -"The man Capper will do for the stalking horse--a willing nag," went on -the woman in a half whisper across the table. "You know the ways of -the Wilhelmstrasse. Capper is what we call 'the target.' The English -suspect him. They will catch him; you get his number and do the work -in safety. We have one man to draw their fire, another to accomplish -the deed. We'll let the English bag him at Malta--a word placed in the -right direction will fix that--and you'll go on to Alexandria to do the -real work." - -"Good, good!" Woodhouse agreed. - -"The Wilhelmstrasse will give him a number, and send him on this -mission on my recommendation; I had that assurance before ever I met -the fellow to-night. They--the big people--know little Capper's -reputation, and, as a matter of fact, I think they are convinced he's a -little less dangerous working for the Wilhelmstrasse than against it. -At Malta the arrest--the firing squad at dawn--and the English are -convinced they've nipped something big in the bud, whereas they've only -put out of the way a dangerous little weasel who's ready to bite any -hand that feeds him." - -Woodhouse's level glance never left the eyes of the woman called -Louisa; it was alert, appraising. - -"But if there should be some slip-up at Malta," he interjected. "If -somehow this Capper should get through to Alexandria, wouldn't that -make it somewhat embarrassing for me?" - -"Not at all, my dear Woodhouse," she caught him up, with a little pat -on his hand. "His instructions will be only to report to So-and-so at -Alexandria; he will not have the slightest notion what work he is to do -there. You can slip in unsuspected by the English, and the trick will -be turned." - -For a minute Woodhouse sat watching the cavortings of a dancer on the -stage. Finally he put a question judiciously: - -"The whole scheme, then, is----" - -"This," she answered quickly. "Captain Woodhouse--the real Woodhouse, -you know--is to be transferred from his present post at Wady Halfa, on -the Nile, to Gibraltar--transfer is to be announced in the regular way -within a week. As a member of the signal service he will have access -to the signal tower on the Rock when he takes his new post, and that, -as you know, will be very important." - -"Very important!" Woodhouse echoed dryly. - -"This Woodhouse arrives in Alexandria to await the steamer from Suez to -Gib. He has no friends there--that much we know. Three men of the -Wilhelmstrasse are waiting there, whose business it is to see that the -real Woodhouse does not take the boat for Gib. They expect a man from -Berlin to come to them, bearing a number from the Wilhelmstrasse--the -man who is to impersonate Woodhouse and as such take his place in the -garrison on the Rock. There are two others of the Wilhelmstrasse at -Gibraltar already; they, too, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of -'Woodhouse' from Alexandria. Capper, with a number, will start from -Berlin for Alexandria. Capper will never arrive in Alexandria. You -will." - -"With a number--the number expected?" the man asked. - -"If you are clever en route--yes," she answered, with a smile. "Wine, -remember, is Billy Capper's best friend--and worst enemy." - -"Then I will hear from you as to the time and route of departure for -Alexandria?" - -"To the very hour, yes. And, now, dear friend----" - -Interruption came suddenly from the stage. The manager, in -shirt-sleeves and with hair wildly rumpled over his eyes, came prancing -out from the wings. He held up a pudgy hand to check the orchestra. -Hundreds about the tables rose in a gust of excitement, of questioning -wonder. - -"_Herren!_" The stage manager's bellow carried to the farthest arches -of the Winter Garden. "News just published by the general staff: -Russia has mobilized five divisions on the frontier of East Prussia and -Galicia!" - -Not a sound save the sharp catching of breath over all the acre of -tables. Then the stage manager nodded to the orchestra leader, and in -a fury the brass mouths began to bray. Men climbed on table tops, -women stood on chairs, and all--all sang in tremendous chorus: - -"_Deutschland, Deutschland üeber alles!_" - - - - -CHAPTER III - -BILLY CAPPER AT PLAY - -The night of July twenty-sixth. The scene is the table-cluttered -sidewalk before the Café Pytheas, where the Cours St. Louis flings its -night tide of idlers into the broader stream of the Cannebière, -Marseilles' Broadway--the white street of the great Provençal port. -Here at the crossing of these two streets summer nights are incidents -to stick in the traveler's mind long after he sees the gray walls of -the Château d'If fade below the steamer's rail. The flower girls in -their little pulpits pressing dewy violets and fragrant clusters of -rosebuds upon the strollers with persuasive eloquence; the mystical -eyes of hooded Moors who see everything as they pass, yet seem to see -so little; jostling Greeks, Levantines, burnoosed Jews from Algiers and -red-trousered Senegalese--all the color from the hot lands of the -Mediterranean is there. - -But on the night of July twenty-sixth the old spirit of indolence, of -pleasure seeking, flirtation, intriguing, which was wont to make this -heart of arc-light life in Marseilles pulse languorously, was gone. -Instead, an electric tenseness was abroad, pervading, infectious. -About each sidewalk table heads were clustered close in conference, and -eloquent hands aided explosive argument. Around the news kiosk at the -Café Pytheas corner a constant stream eddied. Men snatched papers from -the pile, spread them before their faces, and blundered into their -fellow pedestrians as they walked, buried in the inky columns. Now and -again half-naked urchins came charging down the Cannebière, waving -shinplaster extras above their heads--"_L'Allemagne s'arme! La guerre -vient!_" Up from the Quai marched a dozen sailors from a torpedo boat, -arms linked so that they almost spanned the Cannebière. Their -red-tasseled caps were pushed back at cocky angles on their black -heads, and as they marched they shouted in time: "_A Berlin! -Hou--hou!_" - -The black shadow of war--the first hallucinations of the great -madness--gripped Marseilles. - -For Captain Woodhouse, just in from Berlin that evening, all this -swirling excitement had but an incidental interest. He sat alone by -one of the little iron tables before the Café Pytheas, sipping his -_boc_, and from time to time his eyes carelessly followed the eddying -of the swarm about the news kiosk. Always his attention would come -back, however, to center on the thin shoulders of a man sitting fifteen -or twenty feet away with a wine cooler by his side. He could not see -the face of the wine drinker; he did not want to. All he cared to do -was to keep those thin shoulders always in sight. Each time the -solicitous waiter renewed the bottle in the wine cooler Captain -Woodhouse nodded grimly, as a doctor might when he recognized the -symptoms of advancing fever in a patient. - -So for two days, from Berlin across to Paris, and now on this third day -here in the Mediterranean port, Woodhouse had kept ever in sight those -thin shoulders and that trembling hand beyond the constantly crooking -elbow. Not a pleasant task; he had come to loathe and abominate the -very wrinkles in the back of that shiny coat. But a very necessary -duty it was for Captain Woodhouse to shadow Mr. Billy Capper until--the -right moment should arrive. They had come down on the same express -together from Paris. Woodhouse had observed Capper when he checked his -baggage, a single shoddy hand-bag, for _La Vendée_, the French line -ship sailing with the dawn next morning for Alexandria and Port Said -via Malta. Capper had squared his account at the Hotel Allées de -Meilhan, for the most part a bill for absinth frappés, after dinner -that night, and was now enjoying the night life of Marseilles in -anticipation, evidently, of carrying direct to the steamer with him as -his farewell from France all of the bottled laughter of her peasant -girls he could accommodate. - -The harsh memories of how he had been forced to drink the bitter lees -of poverty during the lean months rode Billy Capper hard, and this -night he wanted to fill all the starved chambers of his soul with the -robust music of the grape. So he drank with a purpose and -purposefully. That he drank alone was a matter of choice with Capper; -he could have had a pair of dark eyes to glint over a goblet into his -had he wished--indeed, opportunities almost amounted to embarrassment. -But to all advances from the fair, Billy Capper returned merely an -impolite leer. He knew from beforetime that he was his one best -companion when the wine began to warm him. So he squared himself to -his pleasure with an abandoned rakishness expressed in the set of his -thin shoulders and the forward droop of his head. - -Woodhouse, who watched, noted only one peculiarity in Capper's conduct: -The drinker nursed his stick, a plain, crook-handled malacca, with a -tenderness almost maternal. It never left his hands. Once when Capper -dropped it and the waiter made to prop the stick against a near-by -chair, the little spy leaped to his feet and snatched the cane away -with a growl. Thereafter he propped his chin on the handle, only -removing this guard when he had to tip his head back for another draft -of champagne. - -Eleven o'clock came. Capper rose from the table and looked owlishly -about him. Woodhouse quickly turned his back to the man, and was -absorbed in the passing strollers. When he looked back again Capper -was slowly and a little unsteadily making his way around the corner -into the Cannebière. Woodhouse followed, sauntering. Capper began a -dilatory exploration of the various cafés along the white street; his -general course was toward the city's slums about the Quai. Woodhouse, -dawdling about tree boxes and dodging into shadows by black doorways, -found his quarry easy to trail. And he knew that each of Capper's -sojourns in an oasis put a period to the length of the pursuit. The -time for him to act drew appreciably nearer with every tipping of that -restless elbow. - -Midnight found them down in the reek and welter of the dives and -sailors' frolic grounds. Now the trailer found his task more -difficult, inasmuch as not only his quarry but he himself was marked by -the wolves. Dances in smoke-wreathed rooms slackened when Capper -lurched in, found a seat and ordered a drink. Women with cheeks -carmined like poppies wanted to make predatory love to him; dock rats -drew aside and consulted in whispers. When Capper retreated from an -evil dive on the very edge of the Quai, Woodhouse, waiting by the -doors, saw that he was not the only shadower. Close against the dead -walls flanking the narrow pavement a slinking figure twisted and -writhed after the drunkard, now spread-eagling all over the street. - -Woodhouse quickened his pace on the opposite sidewalk. The street was -one lined with warehouses, their closely shuttered windows the only -eyes. Capper dropped his stick, laboriously halted, and started to go -back for it. That instant the shadow against the walls detached itself -and darted for the victim. Woodhouse leaped to the cobbles and gained -Capper's side just as he dropped like a sack of rags under a blow from -the dock rat's fist. - -"Son of a pig! This is my meat; you clear out!" The humped black -beetle of a man straddling the sprawling Capper whipped a knife from -his girdle and faced Woodhouse. Quicker than light the captain's right -arm shot out; a thud as of a maul on an empty wine butt, and the Apache -turned a half somersault, striking the cobbles with the back of his -head. Woodhouse stooped, lifted the limp Capper from the street -stones, and staggered with him to the lighted avenue of the Cannebière, -a block away. He hailed a late-cruising fiacre, propped Capper in the -seat, and took his place beside him. - -"To _La Vendée_, Quai de la Fraternité!" Woodhouse ordered. - -The driver, wise in the ways of the city, asked no questions, but -clucked to his crow bait. Woodhouse turned to make a quick examination -of the unconscious man by his side. He feared a stab wound; he found -nothing but a nasty cut on the head, made by brass knuckles. With the -wine helping, any sort of a blow would have put Capper out, he -reflected. - -Woodhouse turned his back on the bundle of clothes and reached for the -malacca stick. Even in his coma its owner grasped it tenaciously at -midlength. Without trying to disengage the clasp, Woodhouse gripped -the wood near the crook of the handle with his left Hand while with his -right he applied torsion above. The crook turned on hidden threads and -came off in his hand. An exploring forefinger in the exposed hollow -end of the cane encountered a rolled wisp of paper. Woodhouse pocketed -this, substituted in its place a thin clean sheet torn from a card-case -memorandum, then screwed the crook on the stick down on the secret -receptacle. By the light of a match he assured himself the paper he -had taken from the cane was what he wanted. - -"Larceny from the person--guilty," he murmured, with a wry smile of -distaste. "But assault--unpremeditated." - -The conveyance trundled down a long spit of stone and stopped by the -side of a black hull, spotted with round eyes of light. The driver, -scenting a tip, helped Woodhouse lift Capper to the ground and prop him -against a bulkhead. A bos'n, summoned from _La Vendée_ by the cabby's -shrill whistle, heard Woodhouse's explanation with sympathy. - -"Occasionally, yes, m'sieu, the passengers from Marseilles have these -regrets at parting," he gravely commented, accepting the ticket -Woodhouse had rummaged from the unconscious man's wallet and a crinkled -note from Woodhouse's. Up the gangplank, feet first, went the new -agent of the Wilhelmstrasse. The one who called himself "captain in -his majesty's signal service" returned to his hotel. - -At dawn, _La Vendée_ cleared the harbor for Alexandria via Malta, -bearing a very sick Billy Capper to his destiny. Five hours later the -Castle liner, _Castle Claire_, for the Cape via Alexandria and Suez -direct, sailed out of the Old Port, among her passengers a Captain -Woodhouse. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -32 QUEEN'S TERRACE - -Many a long starlit hour alone on the deck of the _Castle Claire_ -Captain Woodhouse found himself tortured by a persistent vision. Far -back over the northern horizon lay Europe, trembling and breathless -before the imminent disaster--a great field of grain, each stalk -bearing for its head the helmeted head of a man. Out of the east came -a glow, which spread from boundary to boundary, waxed stronger in the -wind of hate. Finally the fire, devastating, insensate, began its -sweep through the close-standing mazes of the grain. Somewhere in this -fire-glow and swift leveling under the scythe of the flame was a girl, -alone, appalled. Woodhouse could see her as plainly as though a cinema -was unreeling swift pictures before him--the girl caught in this vast -acreage of fire, in the standing grain, with destruction drawing nearer -in incredible strides. He saw her wide eyes, her streaming hair--saw -her running through the grain, whose heads were the helmeted heads of -men. Her hands groped blindly and she was calling--calling, with none -to come in aid. Jane Gerson alone in the face of Europe's burning! - -Strive as he would, Woodhouse could not screen this picture from his -eyes. He tried to hope that ere this, discretion had conquered her -resolution to "make good," and that she had fled from Paris, one of the -great army of refugees who had already begun to pour out of the gates -of France when he passed through the war-stunned capital a few days -before. But, no; there was no mistaking the determination he had read -in those brown eyes that day on the express from Calais. "I couldn't -go scampering back to New York just because somebody starts a war over -here." Brave, yes; but hers was the bravery of ignorance. This little -person from the States, on her first venture into the complex life of -the Continent, could not know what war there would mean; the terror and -magnitude of it. And now where was she? In Paris, caught in its -hysteria of patriotism and darkling fear of what the morrow would bring -forth? Or had she started for England, and become wedged in the jam of -terrified thousands battling for place on the Channel steamers? Was -her fine self-reliance upholding her, or had the crisis sapped her -courage and thrown her back on the common helplessness of women before -disaster? - -Captain Woodhouse, the self-sufficient and aloof, whose training had -been all toward suppression of every instinct save that in the line of -duty, was surprised at himself. That a little American inconnu--a -"business person," he would have styled her under conditions less -personal--should have come into his life in this definite way was, to -say the least, highly irregular. The man tried to swing his reason as -a club against his heart--and failed miserably. No, the fine brave -spirit that looked out of those big brown eyes would not be argued out -of court. Jane Gerson was a girl who was _different_, and that very -difference was altogether alluring. Woodhouse caught himself going -over the incidents of their meeting. Fondly he reviewed scraps of -their conversation on the train, lingering on the pat slang she used so -unconsciously. - -Was it possible Jane Gerson ever had a thought for Captain Woodhouse? -The man winced a little at this speculation. Had it been fair of him -when he so glibly practised a deception on her? If she knew what his -present business was, would she understand; would she approve? Could -this little American ever know, or believe, that some sorts of service -were honorable? - -Just before the _Castle Claire_ raised the breakwater of Alexandria -came a wireless, which was posted at the head of the saloon -companionway: - - -"Germany declares war on Russia. German flying column reported moving -through Luxemburg on Belgium." - - -The fire was set to the grain. - -Upon landing, Captain Woodhouse's first business was to go to a hotel -on the Grand Square, which is the favorite stopping place of officers -coming down from the Nile country. He fought his way through the -predatory hordes of yelling donkey boys and obsequious dragomans at the -door, and entered the palm-shaded court, which served as office and -lounge. Woodhouse paused for a second behind a screen of palm leaves -and cast a quick eye around the court. None of the loungers there was -known to him. He strode to the desk. - -"Ah, sir, a room with bath, overlooking the gardens on the north -side--very cool." The Greek clerk behind the desk smiled a welcome. - -"Perhaps," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he turned the register -around to read the names of the recent comers. On the first page he -found nothing to interest him; but among the arrivals of the day before -he saw this entry: "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service; Wady Halfa." -After it was entered the room number: "210." - -Woodhouse read right over the name and turned another page a bit -impatiently. This he scanned with seeming eagerness, while the clerk -stood with pen poised. - -"Um! When is the first boat out for Gibraltar?" Woodhouse asked. - -"Well, sir, the _Princess Mary_ is due to sail at dawn day after -to-morrow," the Greek answered judiciously. "She is reported at Port -Said to-day, but, of course, the war----" - -Woodhouse turned away. - -"But you wish a room, sir--nice room, with bath, overlooking----" - -"No." - -"You expected to find a friend, then?" - -"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the -blinding square. - -He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the -bedlam crowd filling a side street. With sure sense of direction, he -threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the -higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate. There he -turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered -pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the -occasional discriminating tourist. Maitre Mouquère was proud of the -anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves -as he would a plague. In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the -world of Alexandria. - -Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer. -After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the -day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his -room. There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the -Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor -hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights. Then he took carriage to -the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh. What South Kensington -is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to -Alexandria--the suburb of homes. There pretty villas lie in the lap of -the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off -Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms--the one beauty spot in all the -hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander. - -Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded -shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high -wall. On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset. By the -light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it: - - EMIL KOCH, M.D., - 32 Queen's Terrace. - - -He threw back his shoulders with a sudden gesture, which might have -been taken for that of a man about to make a plunge, and rang the bell. -The heavy wooden gate, filling all the space of the arch, was opened by -a tall Numidian in house livery of white. He nodded an affirmative to -Woodhouse's question, and led the way through an avenue of flaming -hibiscus to a house, set far back under heavy shadow of acacias. On -every hand were gardens, rank foliage shutting off this walled yard -from the street and neighboring dwellings. The heavy gate closed -behind the visitor with a sharp snap. One might have said that Doctor -Koch lived in pretty secure isolation. - -Woodhouse was shown into a small room off the main hall, by its -furnishings and position evidently a waiting-room for the doctor's -patients. The Numidian bowed, and disappeared. Alone, Woodhouse rose -and strolled aimlessly about the room, flipped the covers of magazines -on the table, picked up and hefted the bronze Buddha on the onyx -mantel, noted, with a careless glance, the position of the two windows -in relation to the entrance door and the folding doors, now shut, which -doubtless gave on the consultation room. As he was regarding these -doors they rolled back and a short thickset man, with a heavy mane of -iron-gray hair and black brush of beard, stood between them. He looked -at Woodhouse through thick-lensed glasses, which gave to his stare a -curiously intent bent. - -"My office hours are from two to four, afternoons," Doctor Koch said. -He spoke in English, but his speech was burred by a slight heaviness on -the aspirants, reminiscent of his mother tongue. The doctor did not -ask Woodhouse to enter the consultation room, but continued standing -between the folding doors, staring fixedly through his thick lenses. - -"I know that, Doctor," Woodhouse began apologetically, following the -physician's lead and turning his tongue to English. "But, you see, in -a case like mine I have to intrude"--it was "haf" and "indrude" as -Woodhouse gave these words--"because I could not be here during your -office hours. You will pardon?" - -Doctor Koch's eyes widened just perceptibly at the hint of a Germanic -strain in his visitor's speech--just a hint quickly glossed over. But -still he remained standing in his former attitude of annoyance. - -"Was the sun, then, too hot to bermit you to come to my house during -regular office hours? At nights I see no batients--bositively none." - -"The sun--perhaps," Woodhouse replied guardedly. "But as I happened -just to arrive to-day from Marseilles, and your name was strongly -recommended to me as one to consult in a case such as mine----" - -"Where was my name recommended to you, and by whom?" Doctor Koch -interrupted in sudden interest. - -Woodhouse looked at him steadily. "In Berlin--and by a friend of -yours," he answered. - -"Indeed?" The doctor stepped back from the doors, and motioned his -visitor into the consultation room. - -Woodhouse stepped into a large room lighted by a single green-shaded -reading lamp, which threw a white circle of light straight down upon a -litter of thin-bladed scalpels in a glass dish of disinfectant on a -table. The shadowy outlines of an operating chair, of high-shouldered -bookcases, and the dull glint of instruments in a long glass case were -almost imperceptible because of the centering of all light upon the -glass dish of knives. Doctor Koch dragged a chair out from the -shadows, and, carelessly enough, placed it in the area of radiance; he -motioned Woodhouse to sit. The physician leaned carelessly against an -arm of the operating chair; his face was in the shadow save where -reflected light shone from his glasses, giving them the aspect of -detached eyes. - -"So, a friend--a friend in Berlin told you to consult me, eh? Berlin -is a long way from Ramleh--especially in these times. Greater -physicians than I live in Berlin. Why----" - -"My friend in Berlin told me you were the only physician who could help -me in my peculiar trouble." Imperceptibly the accenting of the -aspirants in Woodhouse's speech grew more marked; his voice took on a -throaty character. "By some specialists my life even has been set to -end in a certain year, so sure is fate for those afflicted like myself." - -"So? What year is it, then, you die?" Doctor Koch's strangely -detached eyes--those eyes of glass glowing dimly in the shadow--seemed -to flicker palely with a light all their own. Captain Woodhouse, -sitting under the white spray of the shaded incandescent, looked up -carelessly to meet the stare. - -"Why, they give me plenty of time to enjoy myself," he answered, with a -light laugh. "They say in 1932----" - -"Nineteen thirty-two!" Doctor Koch stepped lightly to the closed -folding doors, trundled them back an inch to assure himself nobody was -in the waiting-room, then closed and locked them. He did similarly by -a hidden door on the opposite side of the room, which Woodhouse had not -seen. After that he pulled a chair close to his visitor and sat down, -his knees almost touching the other's. He spoke very low, in German: - -"If your trouble is so serious that you will die--in 1932, I must, of -course, examine you for--symptoms." - -For half a minute the two men looked fixedly at each other. -Woodhouse's right hand went slowly to the big green scarab stuck in his -cravat. He pulled the pin out, turned it over in his fingers, and by -pressure caused the scarab to pop out of the gold-backed setting -holding it. The bit of green stone lay in the palm of his left hand, -its back exposed. In the hollowed back of the beetle was a small -square of paper, folded minutely. This Woodhouse removed, unfolded and -passed to the physician. The latter seized it avidly, holding it close -to his spectacled eyes, and then spreading it against the light as if -to read a secret water mark. A smile struggled through the jungle of -his beard. He found Woodhouse's hand and grasped it warmly. - -"Your symptom tallies with my diagnosis, Nineteen Thirty-two," he began -rapidly. "Five days ago we heard from--the Wilhelmstrasse--you would -come. We have expected you each day, now. Already we have got word -through to our friends at Gibraltar of the plan; they are waiting for -you." - -"Good!" Woodhouse commented. He was busy refolding the thin slip of -paper that had been his talisman, and fitting it into the back of the -scarab. "Woodhouse--he is already at the Hotel Khedive; saw his name -on the register when I landed from the Castle this morning." Now the -captain was talking in familiar German. - -"Quite so," Doctor Koch put in. "Woodhouse came down from Wady Halfa -yesterday. Our man up there had advised of the time of his arrival in -Alexandria to the minute. The captain has his ticket for the _Princess -Mary_, which sails for Gibraltar day after to-morrow at dawn." - -Number Nineteen Thirty-two listened to Doctor Koch's outlining of the -plot with set features; only his eyes showed that he was acutely alive -to every detail. Said he: - -"But Woodhouse--this British captain who's being transferred from the -Nile country to the Rock; has he ever served there before? If he has, -why, when I get there--when I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal -service--I will be embarrassed if I do not know the ropes." - -"Seven years ago Woodhouse was there for a very short time," Doctor -Koch explained. "New governor since then--changes all around in the -personnel of the staff, I don't doubt. You'll have no trouble." - -Silence between them for a minute, broken by the captain: - -"Our friends at Gib--who are they, and how will I know them?" - -The doctor bent a sudden glance of suspicion upon the lean face before -him. His thick lips clapped together stubbornly. - -"Aha, my dear friend; you are asking questions. In my time at Berlin -the Wilhelmstrasse taught that all orders and information came from -above--and from there only. Why----" - -"I suppose in default of other information I may ask the governor to -point out the Wilhelmstrasse men," Woodhouse answered, with a shrug. -"I was told at Berlin I would learn all that was necessary to me as I -went along, therefore, I supposed----" - -"Come--come!" Doctor Koch patted the other's shoulder, with a heavy -joviality. "So you will. When you arrive at Gib, put up at the Hotel -Splendide, and you will not be long learning who your friends are. I, -for instance, did not hesitate overmuch to recognize you, and I am -under the eyes of the English here at every turn, even though I am a -naturalized English citizen--and of undoubted loyalty." He finished -with a booming laugh. - -"But Woodhouse; you have arranged a way to have him drop out of sight -before the _Princess Mary_ sails? There will be no confusion--no -slip-up?" - -"Do not fear," the physician reassured. "Everything will be arranged. -His baggage will leave the Hotel Khedive for the dock to-morrow night; -but it will not reach the dock. Yours----" - -"Will be awaiting the transfer of tags at the Cap de -Liberté--Mouquère's little place," the captain finished. "But the man -himself--you're not thinking of mur----" - -"My dear Nineteen Thirty-two," Doctor Koch interrupted, lifting -protesting hands; "we do not use such crude methods; they are -dangerous. The real Captain Woodhouse will not leave Alexandria--by -sea, let us say--for many months. Although I have no doubt he will not -be found in Alexandria the hour the _Princess Mary_ sails. The papers -he carries--the papers of identity and of transfer from Wady Halfa to -Gibraltar--will be in your hands in plenty of time. You----" - -The doctor stopped abruptly. A hidden electric buzzer somewhere in the -shadowed room was clucking an alarm. Koch pressed a button at the side -of the operating chair. There was a sound beyond closed doors of some -one passing through a hallway; the front door opened and closed. - -"Some one at the gate," Doctor Koch explained. "Cæsar, my playful -little Numidian--and an artist with the Bedouin dagger is Cæsar--he -goes to answer." - -Their talk was desultory during the next minutes. The doctor seemed -restless under the suspense of a pending announcement as to the late -visitor. Finally came a soft tapping on the hidden door behind -Woodhouse. The latter heard the doctor exchange whispers with the -Numidian in the hallway. Finally, "Show him into the waiting-room," -Koch ordered. He came back to where the captain was sitting, a puzzled -frown between his eyes. - -"An Englishman, Cæsar says--an Englishman, who insists on seeing -me--very important." Koch bit the end of one stubby thumb in hurried -thought. He suddenly whipped open the door of one of the instrument -cases, pulled out a stethoscope, and hooked the two little black -receivers into his ears. Then he turned to Woodhouse. - -"Quick! Off with your coat and open your shirt. You are a patient; I -am just examining you when interrupted. This may be one of these -clumsy English secret-service men, and I might need your alibi." The -sound of an opening door beyond the folding doors and of footsteps in -the adjoining room. - -"You say you are sleepless at night?" Doctor Koch was talking English. -"And you have a temperature on arising? Hm'm! This under your tongue, -if you please"--he thrust a clinical thermometer between Woodhouse's -lips; the latter already had his coat off, and was unbuttoning his -shirt. Koch gave him a meaning glance, and disappeared between the -folding doors, closing them behind him. - -The captain, feeling much like a fool with the tiny glass tube -sprouting from his lips, yet with all his faculties strained to -alertness, awaited developments. If Doctor Koch's hazard should prove -correct and this was an English secret-service man come to arrest him, -wouldn't suspicion also fall on whomever was found a visitor in the -German spy's house? Arrest and search; examination of his scarab -pin--that would not be pleasant. - -He tried to hear what was being said beyond the folding doors, but -could catch nothing save the deep rumble of the doctor's occasional -bass and a higher, querulous voice raised in what might be argument. -Had he dared, Woodhouse would have drawn closer to the crack in the -folding doors so that he could hear what was passing; every instinct of -self-preservation in him made his ears yearn to dissect this murmur -into sense. But if Doctor Koch should catch him eavesdropping, -embarrassment fatal to his plans might follow; besides, he had a -feeling that eyes he could not see--perhaps the unwinking eyes of the -Numidian, avid for an excuse to put into practise his dexterity with -the Bedouin dagger--were on him. - -Minutes slipped by. The captain still nursed the clinical thermometer. -The mumble and muttering continued to sound through the closed doors. -Suddenly the high whine of the unseen visitor was raised in excitement. -Came clearly through to Woodhouse's ears his passionate declaration: - -"But I tell you you've got to recognize me. My number's Nineteen -Thirty-two. My ticket was stolen out of the head of my cane somewhere -between Paris and Alexandria. But I got it all right--got it from the -Wilhelmstrasse direct, with orders to report to Doctor Emil Koch, in -Alexandria!" - -Capper! Capper, who was to be betrayed to the firing squad in Malta, -after his Wilhelmstrasse ticket had passed from his possession. Capper -on the job! - -Woodhouse hurled every foot pound of his will to hear into his ears. -He caught Koch's gruff answer: - -"Young man, you're talking madness. You're talking to a loyal British -subject. I know nothing about your Wilhelmstrasse or your number. If -I did not think you were drunk I'd have you held here, to be turned -over to the military as a spy. Now, go before I change my mind." - -Again the querulous protestation of Capper, met by the doctor's -peremptory order. The captain heard the front door close. A long -wait, and Doctor Koch's black beard, with the surmounting eyes of thick -glass, appeared at a parting of the folding doors. Woodhouse, the tiny -thermometer still sticking absurdly from his mouth, met the basilisk -stare of those two ovals of glass with a coldly casual glance. He -removed the thermometer from between his lips and read it, with a -smile, as if that were part of playing a game. Still the ghastly stare -from the glass eyes over the bristling beard, searching--searching. - -"Well," Woodhouse said lightly, "no need of an alibi evidently." - -Doctor Koch stepped into the room with the lightness of a cat, walked -to a desk drawer at one side, and fumbled there a second, his back to -his guest. When he turned he held a short-barreled automatic at his -hip; the muzzle covered the shirt-sleeved man in the chair. - -"Much need--for an alibi--from you!" Doctor Koch croaked, his voice dry -and flat with rage. "Much need, Mister Nineteen Thirty-two. Commence -your explanation immediately, for this minute my temptation is -strong--very strong--to shoot you for the dog you are." - -"Is this--ah, customary?" Woodhouse twiddled the tiny mercury tube -between his fingers and looked unflinchingly at the small round mouth -of the automatic. "Do you make a practise of consulting a--friend with -a revolver at your hip?" - -"You heard--what was said in there!" Koch's forehead was curiously -ridged and flushed with much blood. - -"Did you ask me to listen? Surely, my dear Doctor, you have provided -doors that are sound-proof. If I may suggest, isn't it about time that -you explain this--this melodrama?" The captain's voice was cold; his -lips were drawn to a thin line. Koch's big head moved from side to -side with a gesture curiously like that of a bull about to charge, but -knowing not where his enemy stands. He blurted out: - -"For your information, if you did not overhear: An Englishman comes -just now to address me familiarly as of the Wilhelmstrasse. He comes -to say he was sent to report to me; that his number in the -Wilhelmstrasse is nineteen thirty-two--nineteen thirty-two, remember; -and I am to give him orders. Please explain that before I pull this -trigger." - -"He showed you his number--his ticket, then?" Woodhouse added this -parenthetically. - -"The man said his ticket had been stolen from him some time after he -left Paris--stolen from the head of his cane, where he had it -concealed. But the number was nineteen thirty-two." The doctor voiced -this last doggedly. - -"You have, of course, had this man followed," the other put in. "You -have not let him leave this house alone." - -"Cæsar was after him before he left the garden gate--naturally. -But----" - -Woodhouse held up an interrupting hand. - -"Pardon me, Doctor Koch; did you get this fellow's name?" - -"He refused to give it--said I wouldn't know him, anyway." - -"Was he an undersized man, very thin, sparse hair, and a face showing -dissipation?" Woodhouse went on. "Nervous, jerky way of -talking--fingers to his mouth, as if to feel his words as they come -out--brandy or wine breath? Can't you guess who he was?" - -"I guess nothing." - -"The _target_!" - -At the word Louisa had used in describing Capper to Woodhouse, Koch's -face underwent a change. He lowered his pistol. - -"Ach!" he said. "The man they are to arrest. And you have the number." - -"That was Capper--Capper, formerly of the Belgian office--kicked out -for drunkenness. One time he sold out Downing Street in the matter of -the Lord Fisher letters; you remember the scandal when they came to -light--his majesty, the kaiser's, Kiel speech referring to them. He is -a good stalking horse." - -Koch's suspicion had left him. Still gripping the automatic, he sat -down on the edge of the operating chair, regarding the other man -respectfully. - -"Come--come, Doctor Koch; you and I can not continue longer at -cross-purposes." The captain spoke with terse displeasure. "This man -Capper showed you nothing to prove his claims, yet you come back to -this room and threaten my life on the strength of a drunkard's bare -word. What his mission is you know; how he got that number, which is -the number I have shown you on my ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse--you -understand how such things are managed. I happen to know, however, -because it was my business to know, that Capper left Marseilles for -Malta aboard _La Vendée_ four days ago; he was not expected to go -beyond Malta." - -Koch caught him up: "But the fellow told me his boat didn't stop at -Malta--was warned by wireless to proceed at all speed to Alexandria, -for fear of the _Breslau_, known to be in the Adriatic." Woodhouse -spread out his hands with a gesture of finality. - -"There you are! Capper finds himself stranded in Alexandria, knows -somehow of your position as a man of the Wilhelmstrasse--such things -can not be hid from the underground workers; comes here to explain -himself to you and excuse himself for the loss of his number. Is there -anything more to be said except that we must keep a close watch on him?" - -The physician rose and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his -back. The automatic bobbed against the tails of his long coat as he -walked. After a minute's restless striding, he broke his step before -the desk, jerked open the drawer, and dropped the weapon in it. Back -to where Woodhouse was sitting he stalked and held out his right hand -stiffly. - -"Your pardon, Number Nineteen Thirty-two! For my suspicion I -apologize. But, you see my position--a very delicate one." Woodhouse -rose, grasped the doctor's hand, and wrung it heartily. - -"And now," he said, "to keep this fellow Capper in sight until the -_Princess Mary_ sails and I aboard her as Captain Woodhouse, of Wady -Halfa. The man might trip us all up." - -"He will not; be sure of that," Koch growled, helping Woodhouse into -his coat and leading the way to the folding doors. "I will have Cæsar -attend to him the minute he comes back to report where Capper is -stopping." - -"Until when?" the captain asked, pausing at the gate, to which Koch had -escorted him. - -"Here to-morrow night at nine," the doctor answered, and the gate shut -behind him. Captain Woodhouse, alone under the shadowing trees of -Queen's Terrace, drew in a long breath, shook his shoulders and started -for the station and the midnight train to Alexandria. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -A FERRET - -Consider the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on -the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria. Even to the guard, -unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their -possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of -clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the -sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate -for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing. -But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in -them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate -has its victim pushed into a corner. So submerged was Capper under the -flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other -two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station--a tall, -quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his -white livery. The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class -carriage behind the one in which Capper rode. - -Here was Capper--poor old Hardluck Billy Capper--floored again, and -just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor -strain of self-pity under the brown bowler. A failure once more, and -through no fault of his own. No, no! Hadn't he been ready to deliver -the goods? Hadn't he come all the way down here from Berlin, faithful -to his pledge to Louisa, the girl in the Wilhelmstrasse, ready and -willing to embark on that important mission of which he was to be told -by Doctor Emil Koch? And what happens? Koch turns him into the street -like a dog; threatens to have him before the military as a spy if he -doesn't make himself scarce. Koch refuses even to admit he'd ever -heard of the Wilhelmstrasse. Clever beggar! A jolly keen eye he's got -for his own skin; won't take a chance on being betrayed into the hands -of the English, even when he ought to see that a chap's honest when he -comes and tells a straight story about losing that silly little bit of -paper with his working number on it. What difference if he can't -produce the ticket when he has the number pat on the tip of his tongue, -and is willing to risk his own life to give that number to a stranger? - -Back upon the old perplexity that had kept Capper's brain on strain -ever since the first day aboard _La Vendée_--who had lifted his ticket, -and when was it done? The man recalled, for the hundredth time, his -awakening aboard the French liner--what a horror that first morning -was, with the ratty little surgeon feeding a fellow aromatic spirits of -ammonia like porridge! Capper, in this mood of detached review, saw -himself painfully stretching out his arm from his bunk to grasp his -stick the very first minute he was alone in the stateroom; the crooked -handle comes off under his turning, and the white wisp of paper is -stuck in the hollow of the stick. Blank paper! - -Safe as safe could be had been that little square of paper Louisa had -given him with his expense money, from the day he left Berlin -until--when? To be sure, he had treated himself to a little of the -grape in Paris and, maybe, in Marseilles; but his brain had been clear -every minute. Oh, Capper would have sworn to that! The whole business -of the disappearance of his Wilhelmstrasse ticket and the substitution -of the blank was simply another low trick the Capper luck had played on -him. - -The train rushed through the dark toward the distant prickly coral bed -of lights, and the whirligig of black despair churned under the brown -bowler. No beginning, no end to the misery of it. Each new attempt to -force a little light of hope into the blackness of his plight fetched -up at the same dead wall--here was Billy Capper, hired by the -Wilhelmstrasse, after having been booted out of the secret offices of -England and Belgium--given a show for his white alley--and he couldn't -move a hand to earn his new salary. Nor could he go back to Berlin, -even though he dared return with confession of the stolen ticket; -Berlin was no place for an Englishman right now, granting he could get -there. No, he was in the backwash again--this time in this beastly -half-caste city of Alexandria, and with--how much was it now?--with a -beggarly fifteen pounds between himself and the beach. - -Out of the ruck of Capper's sad reflections the old persistent call -began to make itself heard before ever the train from Ramleh pulled -into the Alexandria station. That elusive country of fountains, -incense and rose dreams which can only be approached through the neck -of a bottle spread itself before him alluringly, inviting him to -forgetfulness. And Capper answered the call. - -From the railroad station, he set his course through narrow villainous -streets down to the district on Pharos, where the deep-water men of all -the world gather to make vivid the nights of Egypt. Behind him was the -faithful shadow, Cæsar, Doctor Koch's man. The Numidian trailed like a -panther, slinking from cover to cover, bending his body as the big cat -does to the accommodations of the trail's blinds. - -Once Capper found himself in a blind alley, turned and strode out of it -just in time to bump heavily into the unsuspected pursuer. Instantly a -hem of the Numidian's cloak was lifted to screen his face, but not -before the sharp eyes of the Englishman had seen and recognized it. A -tart smile curled the corners of Capper's mouth as he passed on down -the bazaar-lined street to the Tavern of Thermopylæ, at the next -corner. So old Koch was taking precautions, eh? Well, Capper, for -one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances? - -The Tavern of Thermopylæ was built for the Billy Cappers of the -world--a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better -than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the -stranger's money. Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as -one could find from Port Said to Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of -their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor. Greeks, Levantines, -Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's -stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the -African back country--all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old -Testament police records was represented there. - -Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a -deserted corner of the smoke-filled room. There was music, of sorts, -and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues -jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship -to those who needed company with their drink. But Billy Capper ignored -the music and closed his ears to the sirens; he knew who was his best -cup companion. - -The thin green blood of the wormwood drip-dripped down on to the ice in -Capper's glass, coloring it with a rime like moss. He watched it, -fascinated, and when he sipped the cold sicky-sweet liquor he was eager -as a child to see how the pictures the absinth drew on the ice had been -changed by the draft. Sip--sip; a soothing numbness came to the -tortured nerves. Sip--sip; the clouds of doubt and self-pity pressing -down on his brain began to shred away. He saw things clearly now; -everything was sharp and clear as the point of an icicle. - -He reviewed, with new zest, his recent experiences, from the night he -met Louisa in the Café Riche up to his interview with Doctor Koch. -Louisa--that girl with the face of a fine animal and a heart as cold as -carved amethyst; why had she been so willing to intercede for Billy -Capper with her superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse and procure him a -number and a mission to Alexandria? For his information regarding the -Anglo-Belgian understanding? But she paid for that; the deal was -fairly closed with three hundred marks. Did Louisa go further and list -him in the Wilhelmstrasse out of the goodness of her heart, or for old -memory's sake? Capper smiled wryly over his absinth. There was no -goodness in Louisa's heart, and the strongest memory she had was how -nearly Billy Capper had dragged her down with him in the scandal of the -Lord Fisher letters. - -How the thin green blood of the wormwood cleared the mind--made it leap -to logical reasoning! - -Why had Louisa instructed him to leave Marseilles by the steamer -touching at Malta when a swifter boat scheduled to go to Alexandria -direct was leaving the French port a few hours later? Was it that the -girl intended he should get no farther than Malta; that the English -there should---- - -Capper laughed like the philosopher who has just discovered the -absolute of life's futility. The ticket--his ticket from the -Wilhelmstrasse which Louisa had procured for him; Louisa wanted that -for other purposes, and used him as the dummy to obtain it. She wanted -it before he could arrive at Malta--and she got it before he left -Marseilles. Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the -Double 0 on the wheel--fate's percentage in every game; she could not -know the _Vendée_ would be warned from lingering at Malta because of -the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria, -after all. - -The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical -exactness of deduction. As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached -and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the -blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria--the -poor deluded body of a dupe. With this certitude of logic came the -beginnings of resolve. Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by -the absinth to focus, was this new determination. Capper nursed it, -elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing -himself in the new light of a humble hero. It was near morning, and -the Tavern of Thermopylæ was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his -score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to -his hotel. His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and -acutely sober. - -"Very drunk, master," was the report Cæsar, the Numidian, delivered to -Doctor Koch at the Ramleh villa. The doctor, believing Cæsar to be a -competent judge, chuckled in his beard. Cæsar was called off from the -trail. - -Across the street from Doctor Koch's home on Queen's Terrace was the -summer home of a major of fusileers, whose station was up the Nile. -But this summer it was not occupied. The major had hurried his family -back to England at the first mutterings of the great war, and he -himself had to stick by his regiment up in the doubtful Sudan country. -Like Doctor Koch's place, the major's yard was surrounded by a high -wall, over which the fronds of big palms and flowered shrubs draped -themselves. The nearest villa, aside from the Kochs' across the -street, was a hundred yards away. At night an arc light, set about -thirty feet from Doctor Koch's gate, marked all the road thereabouts -with sharp blocks of light and shadow. One lying close atop the wall -about the major's yard, screened by the palms and the heavy branches of -some night-blooming ghost flower, could command a perfect view of -Doctor Koch's gateway without being himself visible. - -At least, so Billy Capper found it on the night following his visit to -the German physician's and his subsequent communion with himself at the -Tavern of Thermopylæ. Almost with the falling of the dark, Capper had -stepped off the train at Ramleh station, ferried himself by boat down -the canal that passed behind the major's home, after careful -reconnoitering, discovered that the tangle of wildwood about the house -was not guarded by a watchman, and had so achieved his position of -vantage on top of the wall directly opposite the gateway of No. 32. He -was stretched flat. Through the spaces between the dry fingers of a -palm leaf he could command a good view of the gate and of the road on -either side. Few pedestrians passed below him; an automobile or two -puffed by; but in the main, Queen's Terrace was deserted and Capper was -alone. It was a tedious vigil. Capper had no reliance except his -instinct of a spy familiar with spy's work to assure that he would be -rewarded for his pains. Some sixth sense in him had prompted him to -come thither, sure in the promise that the night would not be misspent. -A clock somewhere off in the odorous dark struck the hour twice, and -Capper fidgeted. The hard stone he was lying on cramped him. - -The sound of footsteps on the flagged walk aroused momentary interest. -He looked out through his screen of green and saw a tall well-knit -figure of a man approach the opposite gate, stop and ring the bell. -Instantly Capper tingled with the hunting fever of his trade. In the -strong light from the arc he could study minutely the face of the man -at the gate--smoothly shaven, slightly gaunt and with thin lips above a -strong chin. It was a striking face--one easily remembered. The gate -opened; beyond it Capper saw, for an instant, the white figure of the -Numidian he had bumped into at the alley's mouth. The gate closed on -both. - -Another weary hour for the ferret on the wall, then something happened -that was reward enough for cramped muscles and taut nerves. An -automobile purred up to the gate; out of it hopped two men, while a -third, tilted over like one drunk, remained on the rear seat of the -tonneau. One rang the bell. The two before the gate fidgeted -anxiously for it to be opened. Capper paid not so much heed to them as -to the half-reclining figure in the machine. It was in strong light. -Capper saw, with a leap of his heart, that the man in the machine was -clothed in the khaki service uniform of the British army--an officer's -uniform he judged by the trimness of its fitting, though he could not -see the shoulder straps. The unconscious man was bareheaded and one -side of his face was darkened by a broad trickle of blood from the -scalp. - -When the gate opened, there were a few hurried words between the -Numidian and the two who had waited. All three united in lifting an -inert figure from the car and carrying it quickly through the gate. -Consumed with the desire to follow them into the labyrinth of the -doctor's yard, yet not daring, Capper remained plastered to the wall. - - -Captain Woodhouse, sitting in the consultation room with the doctor, -heard the front door open and the scuffle of burdened feet in the hall. -Doctor Koch hopped nimbly to the folding doors and threw them back. -First, the Numidian's broad back, then, the bent shoulders of two other -men, both illy dressed, came into view. Between them they carried the -form of a man in officer's khaki. Woodhouse could not check a -fluttering of the muscles in his cheeks; this was a surprise to him; -the doctor had given no hint of it. - -"Good--good!" clucked Koch, indicating that they should lay their -burden on the operating chair. "Any trouble?" - -"None in the least, Herr Doktor," the larger of the two white men -answered. "At the corner of the warehouse near the docks, where it is -dark--he was going early to the _Princess Mary_, and----" - -"Yes, a tap on the head--so?" Koch broke in, casting a quick glance -toward where Captain Woodhouse had risen from his seat. A shrewd -appraising glance it was, which was not lost on Woodhouse. He stepped -forward to join the physician by the side of the figure on the -operating chair. - -"Our man, Doctor?" he queried casually. - -"Your name sponsor," Koch answered, with a satisfied chuckle; "the -original Captain Woodhouse of his majesty's signal service, formerly -stationed at Wady Halfa." - -"Quite so," the other answered in English. Doctor Koch clapped him on -the shoulder. - -"Perfect, man! You do the Englishman from the book. It will fool them -all." - -Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. Koch cackled on, as -he began to lay out sponge and gauze bandages on the glass-topped table -by the operating chair: - -"You see, I did not tell you of this because--well, that fellow -Capper's coming last night looked bad; even your explanation did not -altogether convince. So I thought we'd have this little surprise for -you. If you were an Englishman you'd show it in the face of this--you -couldn't help it. Eh?" - -"Possibly not," the captain vouchsafed. "But what is your plan, -Doctor? What are you going to do with this Captain Woodhouse to insure -his being out of the way while I am in Gibraltar. I hope no -violence--unless necessary." - -"Nothing more violent than a violent headache and some fever," Koch -answered. He was busy fumbling in the unconscious man's pockets. From -the breast pocket of the uniform jacket he withdrew a wallet, glanced -at its contents, and passed it to the captain. - -"Your papers, Captain--the papers of transfer from Wady Halfa to -Gibraltar. Money, too. I suppose we'll have to take that, also, to -make appearances perfect--robbery following assault on the wharves." - -Woodhouse pocketed the military papers in the wallet and laid it down, -the money untouched. The two white aids of Doctor Koch, who were -standing by the folding doors, eyed the leather folder hungrily. Koch, -meanwhile, had stripped off the jacket from the Englishman and was -rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. That done, he brought down -from the top of the glass instrument case a wooden rack containing -several test tubes, stoppled with cotton. One glass tube he lifted out -of the rack and squinted at its clouded contents against the light. - -"A very handy little thing--very handy." Koch was talking to himself -as much as to Woodhouse. "A sweet little product of the Niam Niam -country down in Belgian Kongo. Natives think no more of it than they -would of a water fly's bite; but the white man is----" - -"A virus of some kind?" the other guessed. - -"Of my own isolation," Doctor Koch answered proudly. He scraped the -skin on the victim's arm until the blood came, then dipped an ivory -spatula into the tube of murky gelatine and transferred what it brought -up to the raw place in the flesh. - -"The action is very quick, and may be violent," he continued. "Our -friend here won't recover consciousness for three days, and he will be -unable to stand on his feet for two weeks, at least--dizziness, -intermittent fever, clouded memory; he'll be pretty sick." - -"But not too sick to communicate with others," Woodhouse suggested. -"Surely----" - -"Maybe not too sick, but unable to communicate with others," Doctor -Koch interrupted, with a booming laugh. "This time to-morrow night our -friend will be well out on the Libyan Desert, with some ungentle -Bedouins for company. He's bound for Fezzan--and it will be a long way -home without money. Who knows? Maybe three months." - -Very deftly Koch bound up the abrasion on the Englishman's arm with -gauze, explaining as he worked that the man's desert guardians would -have instructions to remove the bandages before he recovered his -faculties. There would be nothing to tell the luckless prisoner more -than that he had been kidnaped, robbed and carried away by tribesmen--a -not uncommon occurrence in lower Egypt. Koch completed his work by -directing his aids to strip off the rest of the unconscious man's -uniform and clothe him in a nondescript civilian garb that Cæsar -brought into the consultation room from the mysterious upper regions of -the house. - -"Exit Captain Woodhouse of the signal service," the smiling doctor -exclaimed when the last button of the misfit jacket had been flipped -into its buttonhole, "and enter Captain Woodhouse of the -Wilhelmstrasse." Turning, he bowed humorously to the lean-faced man -beside him. He nodded his head at Cæsar; the latter dived into a -cupboard at the far end of the room and brought out a squat flask and -glasses, which he passed around. When the liquor had been poured, -Doctor Koch lifted his glass and squinted through it with the air of a -gentle satyr. - -"Gentlemen, we drink to what will happen soon on the Rock of -Gibraltar!" All downed the toast gravely. Then the master of the -house jerked his head toward the unconscious man on the operating -chair. Cæsar and the two white men lifted the limp body and started -with it to the door, Doctor Koch preceding them to open doors. The -muffled chug-chugging of the auto at the gate sounded almost at once. - -The doctor and Number Nineteen Thirty-two remained together in the -consultation room for a few minutes, going over, in final review, the -plans that the latter was to put into execution at the great English -stronghold on the Rock. The captain looked at his watch, found the -hour late, and rose to depart. Doctor Koch accompanied him to the -gate, and stood with him for a minute under the strong light from the -near-by arc. - -"You go direct to the _Princess Mary_?" he asked. - -"Direct to the _Princess Mary_," the other answered. "She is to sail -at five o'clock." - -"Then God guard you, my friend, on--your great adventure." They -clasped hands, and the gate closed behind the doctor. - -A shadow skipped from the top of the wall about the major's house -across the road. A shadow dogged the footsteps of the tall well-knit -man who strode down the deserted Queen's Terrace toward the tiled -station by the tracks. A little more than an hour later, the same -shadow flitted up the gangplank of the _Princess Mary_ at her berth. -When the big P. & O. liner pulled out at dawn, she carried among her -saloon passengers one registered as "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. -Service," and in her second cabin a "William Capper." - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A FUGITIVE - -"No, madam does not know me; but she must see me. Oh, I know she will -see me. Tell her, please, it is a girl from New York all alone in -Paris who needs her help." - -The butler looked again at the card the visitor had given him. Quick -suspicion flashed into his tired eyes--the same suspicion that had all -Paris mad. - -"Ger-son--Mademoiselle Ger-son. That name, excuse me, if I say -it--that name ees----" - -"It sounds German; yes. Haven't I had that told me a thousand times -these last few days?" The girl's shoulders drooped limply, and she -tried to smile, but somehow failed. "But it's my name, and I'm an -American--been an American twenty-two years. Please--please!" - -"Madam the ambassador's wife; she ees overwhelm wiz woark." The butler -gave the door an insinuating push. Jane Gerson's patent-leather boot -stopped it. She made a quick rummage in her bag, and when she withdrew -her hand, a bit of bank paper crinkled in it. The butler pocketed the -note with perfect legerdemain, smiled a formal thanks and invited Jane -into the dark cool hallway of the embassy. She dropped on a -skin-covered couch, utterly spent. Hours she had passed moving, foot -by foot, in an interminable line, up to a little wicket in a steamship -office, only to be told, "Every boat's sold out." Other grilling hours -she had passed similarly before the express office, to find, at last, -that her little paper booklet of checks was as worthless as a steamship -folder. Food even lacked, because the money she offered was not -acceptable. For a week she had lived in the seething caldron that was -Paris in war time, harried, buffeted, trampled and stampeded--a chip on -the froth of madness. This day, the third of August, found Jane Gerson -summoning the last remnants of her flagging nerve to the supreme -endeavor. Upon her visit to the embassy depended everything: her -safety, the future she was battling for. But now, with the first -barrier passed, she found herself suddenly faint and weak. - -"Madam the ambassador's wife will see you. Come!" The butler's voice -sounded from afar off, though Jane saw the gleaming buckles at his -knees very close. The pounding of her heart almost choked her as she -rose to follow him. Down a long hall and into a richly furnished -drawing-room, now strangely transformed by the presence of desks, -filing cabinets, and busy girl stenographers; the click of typewriters -and rustle of papers gave the air of an office at top pressure. The -butler showed Jane to a couch near the portières and withdrew. From -the tangle of desks at the opposite end of the room, a woman with a -kindly face crossed, with hand extended. Jane rose, grasped the hand -and squeezed convulsively. - -"You are----" - -"Yes, my dear, I am the wife of the ambassador. Be seated and tell me -all your troubles. We are pretty busy here, but not too busy to -help--if we can." - -Jane looked into the sympathetic eyes of the ambassador's wife, and -what she found there was like a draft of water to her parched soul. -The elder woman, smiling down into the white face, wherein the large -brown eyes burned unnaturally bright, saw a trembling of the lips -instantly conquered by a rallying will, and she patted the small hand -hearteningly. - -"Dear lady," Jane began, almost as a little child, "I must get out of -Paris, and I've come to you to help me. Every way is closed except -through you." - -"So many hundreds like you, poor girl. All want to get back to the -home country, and we are so helpless to aid every one." The lady of -the embassy thought, as she cast a swift glance over the slender -shoulders and diminutive figure beneath them, that here, indeed, was a -babe in the woods. The blatant, self-assured tourist demanding -assistance from her country's representative as a right she knew; also -the shifty, sloe-eyed demi-vierge who wanted no questions asked. But -such a one as this little person---- - -"You see, I am a buyer for Hildebrand's store in New York." Jane was -rushing breathlessly to the heart of her tragedy. "This is my very -first trip as buyer, and--it will be my last unless I can get through -the lines and back to New York. I have seventy of the very last gowns -from Poiret, from Paquin and Worth--you know what they will mean in the -old town back home--and I must--just simply must get them through. You -understand! With them, Hildebrand can crow over every other gown shop -in New York. He can be supreme, and I will be--well, I will be made!" - -The kindly eyes were still smiling, and the woman's heart, which is -unchanged even in the breast of an ambassador's wife, was leaping to -the magic lure of that simple word--gowns. - -"But--but the banks refuse to give me a cent on my letter of credit. -The express office says my checks, which I brought along for -incidentals, can not be cashed. The steamship companies will not sell -a berth in the steerage, even, out of Havre or Antwerp or -Southampton--everything gobbled up. You can't get trunks on an -aeroplane, or I'd try that. I just don't know where to turn, and so -I've come to you. You must know some way out." - -Jane unconsciously clasped her hands in supplication, and upon her -face, flushed now with the warmth of her pleading, was the dawning of -hope. It was as if the girl were assured that once the ambassador's -wife heard her story, by some magic she could solve the difficulties. -The older woman read this trust, and was touched by it. - -"Have you thought of catching a boat at Gibraltar?" she asked. "They -are not so crowded; people haven't begun to rush out of Italy yet." - -"But nobody will honor my letter of credit," Jane mourned. "And, -besides, all the trains south of Paris are given up to the -mobilization. Nobody can ride on them but soldiers." The lady of the -embassy knit her brows for a few minutes while Jane anxiously scanned -her face. Finally she spoke: - -"The ambassador knows a gentleman--a large-hearted American gentleman -here in Paris--who has promised his willingness to help in deserving -cases by advancing money on letters of credit. And with money there is -a way--just a possible way--of getting to Gibraltar. Leave your letter -of credit with me, my dear; go to the police station in the district -where you live and get your pass through the lines, just as a -precaution against the possibility of your being able to leave -to-night. Then come back here and see me at four o'clock. -Perhaps--just a chance----" - -Hildebrand's buyer seized the hands of the embassy's lady ecstatically, -tumbled words of thanks crowding to her lips. When she went out into -the street, the sun was shining as it had not shone for her for a -dreary terrible week. - -At seven o'clock that night a big Roman-nosed automobile, long and low -and powerful as a torpedo on wheels, pulled up at the door of the -American embassy. Two bulky osier baskets were strapped on the back of -its tonneau; in the rear seat were many rugs. A young chap with a -sharp shrewd face--an American--sat behind the wheel. - -The door of the embassy opened, and Jane Gerson, swathed in veils, and -with a gray duster buttoned tight about her, danced out; behind her -followed the ambassador, the lady of the embassy and a bevy of girls, -the volunteer aids of the overworked representative's staff. Jane's -arms went about the ambassador's wife in an impulsive hug of gratitude -and good-by; the ambassador received a hearty handshake for his "God -speed you!" A waving of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the -car leaped forward. Jane Gerson leaned far over the back, and, through -cupped hands, she shouted: "I'll paint Hildebrand's sign on the Rock of -Gibraltar!" - -Over bridges and through outlying faubourgs sped the car until the -Barrier was gained. There crossed bayonets denying passage, an officer -with a pocket flash pawing over pass and passport, a curt dismissal, -and once more the motor purred its speed song, and the lights of the -road flashed by. More picket lines, more sprouting of armed men from -the dark, and flashing of lights upon official signatures. On the -heights appeared the hump-shouldered bastions of the great outer forts, -squatting like huge fighting beasts of the night, ready to spring upon -the invader. Bugles sounded; the white arms of search-lights swung -back and forth across the arc of night in their ceaseless calisthenics; -a murmuring and stamping of many men and beasts was everywhere. - -The ultimate picket line gained and passed, the car leaped forward with -the bound of some freed animal, its twin headlights feeling far ahead -the road to the south. Behind lay Paris, the city of dread. -Ahead--far ahead, where the continent is spiked down with a rock, -Gibraltar. Beyond that the safe haven from this madness of the -millions--America. - -Jane Gerson stretched out her arms to the vision and laughed shrilly. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE HOTEL SPLENDIDE - -Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Gibraltar's -Waterport Street, was alone in his office, busy over his books. The -day was August fifth. The night before the cable had flashed word to -General Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock, that England -had hurled herself into the great war. But that was no concern of Mr. -Joseph Almer except as it affected the hotel business; admittedly it -did bring complications there. - -A sleek well-fed Swiss he was; one whose neutrality was publicly as -impervious as the rocky barriers of his home land. A bland eye and a -suave professional smile were the ever-present advertisements of -urbanity on Joseph Almer's chubby countenance. He spoke with an accent -that might have got him into trouble with the English masters of the -Rock had they not known that certain cantons in Switzerland occupy an -unfortunate contiguity with Germany, and Almer, therefore, was hardly -to be blamed for an accident of birth. From a window of his office, he -looked out on crooked Waterport Street, where all the world of the -Mediterranean shuffled by on shoes, slippers and bare feet. Just -across his desk was the Hotel Splendide's reception room--a sad -retreat, wherein a superannuated parlor set of worn red plush tried to -give the lie to the reflection cast back at it by the dingy gold-framed -mirror over the battered fireplace. Gaudy steamship posters and -lithographs of the Sphinx and kindred tourists' delights were the -walls' only decorations. Not even the potted palm, which is the hotel -man's cure-all, was there to screen the interior of the -office-reception room from the curious eyes of the street, just beyond -swinging glass doors. Joseph Almer had taken poetic license with the -word "splendide"; but in Gibraltar that is permissible; necessary, in -fact. Little there lives up to its reputation save the Rock itself. - -It was four in the afternoon. The street outside steamed with heat, -and the odors that make Gibraltar a lasting memory were at their prime -of distillation. The proprietor of the Splendide was nodding over his -books. A light footfall on the boards beyond the desk roused him. A -girl with two cigar boxes under her arm slipped, like a shadow, up to -the desk. She was dressed in the bright colors of Spain, -claret-colored skirt under a broad Romany sash, and with thin white -waist, open at rounded throat. A cheap tortoise-shell comb held her -coils of chestnut hair high on her head. Louisa of the Wilhelmstrasse; -but not the same Louisa--the sophisticated Louisa of the Café Riche and -the Winter Garden. A timid little cigar maker she was, here in -Gibraltar. - -"Louisa!" Almer's head bobbed up on a suddenly stiffened neck as he -whispered her name. She set her boxes of cigars on the desk, opened -them, and as she made gestures to point the worthiness of her wares, -she spoke swiftly, and in a half whisper: - -"All is as we hoped, Almer. He comes on the _Princess Mary_--a -cablegram from Koch just got through to-day. I wanted----" - -"You mean----" Almer thrust his head forward in his eagerness, and his -eyes were bright beads. - -"Captain Woodhouse--our Captain Woodhouse!" The girl's voice trembled -in exultation. "And his number--his Wilhelmstrasse number--is--listen -carefully: Nineteen Thirty-two." - -"Nineteen Thirty-two," Almer repeated, under his breath. Then aloud: -"On the _Princess Mary_, you say?" - -"Yes; she is already anchored in the straits. The tenders are coming -ashore. He will come here, for such were his directions in -Alexandria." Louisa started to move toward the street door. - -"But you," Almer stopped her; "the English are making a round-up of -suspects on the Rock. They will ask questions--perhaps arrest----" - -"Me? No, I think not. Just because I was away from Gibraltar for six -weeks and have returned so recently is not enough to rouse suspicion. -Haven't I been Josepha, the cigar girl, to every Tommy in the garrison -for nearly a year? No--no, señor; you are wrong. These are the purest -cigars made south of Madrid. Indeed, señor." - -[Illustration: "Haven't I been Josepha for nearly a year?"] - -The girl had suddenly changed her tone to one of professional -wheedling, for she saw three entering the door. Almer lifted his voice -angrily: - -"Josepha, your mother is substituting with these cigars. Take them -back and tell her if I catch her doing this again it means the cells -for her." - -The cigar girl bowed her head in simulated fright, sped past the -incoming tourists, and lost herself in the shifting crowd on the -street. Almer permitted himself to mutter angrily as he turned back to -his books. - -"You see, mother? See that hotel keeper lose his temper and -tongue-lash that poor girl? Just what I tell you--these foreigners -don't know how to be polite to ladies." - -Henry J. Sherman--"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"--mopped his bald pink -dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer. -Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare -Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long -back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to -need little invitation to be precipitated into a crying spell. Her -daughter Kitty, a winsome little slip, stood behind her, arms about the -mother's neck, and her hands stroking the maternal cheeks. - -"There--there, mother; everything'll come out right," Kitty vaguely -assured. Mrs. Sherman, determined to have no eye for the cloud's -silver lining, rocked back and forth on the sofa and gave voice to her -woe: - -"Oh, we'll never see Kewanee again. I know it! I know it! With -everybody pushing and shoving us away from the steamers--everybody -refusing to cash our checks, and all this fighting going on somewhere -up among the Belgians----" The lady from Kewanee pulled out the -stopper of her grief, and the tears came copiously. Mr. Sherman, who -had made an elaborate pretense of studying a steamer guide he found on -the table, looked up hurriedly and blew his nose loudly in sympathy. - -"Cheer up, mother. Even if this first trip of ours--this 'Grand -Tower,' as the guide-books call it--has been sorta tough, we had one -compensation anyway. We saw the Palace of Peace at the Hague before -the war broke out. Guess they're leasing it for a skating rink now, -though." - -"How can you joke when we're in such a fix? He-Henry, you ne-never do -take things seriously!" - -"Why not joke, mother? Only thing you can do over here you don't have -to pay for. Cheer up! There's the _Saxonia_ due here from Naples some -time soon. Maybe we can horn a way up her gangplank. Consul says----" - -Mrs. Sherman looked up from her handkerchief with withering scorn. - -"Tell me a way we can get aboard any ship without having the money to -pay our passage. Tell me that, Henry Sherman!" - -"Well, we've been broke before, mother," her spouse answered cheerily, -rocking himself on heels and toes. "Remember when we were first -married and had that little house on Liberty Street--the newest house -in Kewanee it was; and we didn't have a hired girl, then, mother. But -we come out all right, didn't we?" He patted his daughter's shoulder -and winked ponderously. "Come on, girls and boys, we'll go look over -those Rock Chambers the English hollowed out. We can't sit in our room -and mope all day." - -The gentleman who knew Kewanee was making for the door when Almer, the -suave, came out from behind his desk and stopped him with a warning -hand. - -"I am afraid the gentleman can not see the famous Rock Chambers," he -purred. "This is war time--since yesterday, you know. Tourists are -not allowed in the fortifications." - -"Like to see who'd stop me!" Henry J. Sherman drew himself up to his -full five feet seven and frowned at the Swiss. Almer rubbed his hands. - -"A soldier--with a gun, most probably, sir." - -Mrs. Sherman rose and hurried to her husband's side, in alarm. - -"Henry--Henry! Don't you go and get arrested again! Remember that -last time--the Frenchman at that Bordeaux town." Sherman allowed -discretion to soften his valor. - -"Well, anyway"--he turned again to the proprietor--"they'll let us see -that famous signal tower up on top of the Rock. Mother, they say from -that tower up there, they can keep tabs on a ship sixty miles away. -Fellow down at the consulate was telling me just this morning that's -the king-pin of the whole works. Harbor's full of mines and things; -electric switch in the signal tower. Press a switch up there, and -everything in the harbor--Blam!" He shot his hands above his head to -denote the cataclysm. Almer smiled sardonically and drew the Illinois -citizen to one side. - -"I would give you a piece of advice," he said in a low voice. "It -is----" - -"Say, proprietor; you don't charge for advice, do you?" Sherman -regarded him quizzically. - -"It is this," Almer went on, unperturbed: "If I were you I would not -talk much about the fortifications of the Rock. Even talk -is--ah--dangerous if too much indulged." - -"Huh! I guess you're right," said Sherman thoughtfully. "You see--we -don't know much about diplomacy out where I come from. Though that -ain't stopping any of the Democrats from going abroad in the Diplomatic -Service as fast as Bryan'll take 'em." - -Interruption came startlingly. A sergeant and three soldiers with guns -swung through the open doors from Waterport Street. Gun butts struck -the floor with a heavy thud. The sergeant stepped forward and saluted -Almer with a businesslike sweep of hand to visor. - -"See here, landlord!" the sergeant spoke up briskly. "Fritz, the -barber, lives here, does he not?" Almer nodded. "We want him. Find -him in the barber shop, eh?" - -The sergeant turned and gave directions to the guard. They tramped -through a swinging door by the side of the desk while the Shermans, -parents and daughter alike, looked on, with round eyes. In less than a -minute, the men in khaki returned, escorting a quaking man in white -jacket. The barber, greatly flustered, protested in English strongly -reminiscent of his fatherland. - -"Orders to take you, Fritz," the sergeant explained not unkindly. - -"But I haf done nothing," the barber cried. "For ten years I haf -shaved you. You know I am a harmless old German." The sergeant -shrugged. - -"I fancy they think you are working for the Wilhelmstrasse, Fritz, and -they want to have you where they can keep their eyes on you. Sorry, -you know." - -The free-born instincts of Henry J. Sherman would not be downed longer. -He had witnessed the little tragedy of the German barber with growing -ire, and now he stepped up to the sergeant truculently. - -"Seems to me you're not giving Fritz here a square deal, if you want to -know what I think," he blustered. "Now, in my country----" The -sergeant turned on him sharply. - -"Who are you--and what are you doing in Gib?" he snapped. A moan from -Mrs. Sherman, who threw herself in her daughter's arms. - -[Illustration: "Who are you?" snapped the sergeant.] - -"Kitty, your father's gone and got himself arrested again!" - -"Who am I?" Sherman echoed with dignity. "My name, young fellow, is -Henry J. Sherman, and I live in Kewanee, Illynoy. I'm an American -citizen, and you can't----" - -"Your passports--quick!" The sergeant held out his hand imperiously. - -"Oh, that's all right, young fellow; I've got 'em, all right." -Kewanee's leading light began to fumble in the spacious breast pocket -of his long-tailed coat. As he groped through a packet of papers and -letters, he kept up a running fire of comment and exposition: - -"Had 'em this afternoon, all right. Here; no, that's my letter of -credit. It would buy Main Street at home, but I can't get a ham -sandwich on it here. This is--no; that's my only son's little girl, -Emmaline, taken the day she was four years old. Fancy little girl, eh? -Now, that's funny I can't--here's that list of geegaws I was to buy for -my partner in the Empire Mills, flour and buckwheat. Guess he'll have -to whistle for 'em. Now don't get impatient, young fellow. This---- -Land's sakes, mother, that letter you gave me to mail, in -Algy-kiras---- Ah, here you are, all proper and scientific enough as -passports go, I guess." - -The sergeant whisked the heavily creased document from Sherman's hand, -scanned it hastily, and gave it back, without a word. The outraged -American tucked up his chin and gave the sergeant glare for glare. - -"If you ever come to Kewanee, young fellow," he snorted. "I'll be -happy to show you our new jail." - -"Close in! March!" commanded the sergeant. The guard surrounded the -hapless barber and wheeled through the door, their guns hedging his -white jacket about inexorably. Sherman's hands spread his coat tails -wide apart, and he rocked back and forth on heels and toes, his eyes -smoldering. - -"Come on, father"--Kitty had slipped her hand through her dad's arm, -and was imparting direct strategy in a low voice--"we'll take mother -down the street to look at the shops and make her forget our troubles. -They've got some wonderful Moroccan bazaars in town; Baedeker says so." - -"Shops, did you say?" Mrs. Sherman perked up at once, forgetting her -grief under the superior lure. - -"Yes, mother. Come on, let's go down and look 'em over." Sherman's -good humor was quite restored. He pinched Kitty's arm in compliment -for her guile. "Maybe they'll let us look at their stuff without -charging anything; but we couldn't buy a postage stamp, remember." - -They sailed out into the crowded street and lost themselves amid the -scourings of Africa and south Europe. Almer was alone in the office. - -The proprietor fidgeted. He walked to the door and looked down the -street in the direction of the quays. He pulled his watch from his -pocket and compared it with the blue face of the Dutch clock on the -wall. His pudgy hands clasped and unclasped themselves behind his back -nervously. An Arab hotel porter and runner at the docks came swinging -through the front door with a small steamer trunk on his shoulders, and -Almer started forward expectantly. Behind the porter came a tall -well-knit man, dressed in quiet traveling suit--the Captain Woodhouse -who had sailed from Alexandria as a passenger aboard the _Princess -Mary_. - -He paused for an instant as his eyes met those of the proprietor. -Almer bowed and hastened behind the desk. Woodhouse stepped up to the -register and scanned it casually. - -"A room, sir?" Almer held out a pen invitingly. - -"For the night, yes," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he signed the -register. Almer's eyes followed the strokes of the pen eagerly. - -"Ah, from Egypt, Captain? You were aboard the _Princess Mary_, then?" - -"From Alexandria, yes. Show me my room, please. Beastly tired." - -The Arab porter darted forward, and Woodhouse was turning to follow him -when he nearly collided with a man just entering the street door. It -was Mr. Billy Capper. - -Both recoiled as their eyes met. Just the faintest flicker of -surprise, instantly suppressed, tightened the muscles of the captain's -jaws. He murmured a "Beg pardon" and started to pass. Capper -deliberately set himself in the other's path and, with a wry smile, -held out his hand. - -"Captain Woodhouse, I believe." Capper put a tang of sarcasm, -corroding as acid, into the words. He was still smiling. The other -man drew back and eyed him coldly. - -"I do not know you. Some mistake," Woodhouse said. - -Almer was moving around from behind the desk with the soft tread of a -cat, his eyes fixed on the hard-bitten face of Capper. - -"Hah! Don't recognize the second-cabin passengers aboard the _Princess -Mary_, eh?" Capper sneered. "Little bit discriminating that way, eh? -Well, my name's Capper--Mr. William Capper. Never heard the name--in -Alexandria; what?" - -"You are drunk. Stand aside!" Woodhouse spoke quietly; his face was -very white and strained. Almer launched himself suddenly between the -two and laid his hands roughly on Capper's thin shoulders. - -"Out you go!" he choked in a thick guttural. "I'll have no loafer -insulting guests in my house." - -"Oh, you won't, won't you? But supposing I want to take a room -here--pay you good English gold for it. You'll sing a different tune, -then." - -"Before I throw you out, kindly leave my place." By a quick turn, -Almer had Capper facing the door; his grip was iron. The smaller man -tried to walk to the door with dignity. There he paused and looked -back over his shoulder. - -"Remember, Captain Woodhouse," he called back. "Remember the name -against the time we'll meet again. Capper--Mr. William Capper." - -Capper disappeared. Almer came back to begin profuse apologies to his -guest. Woodhouse was coolly lighting a cigarette. Their eyes met. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -CHAFF OF WAR - -Dinner that evening in the faded dining-room of the Hotel Splendide was -in the way of being a doleful affair for the folk from Kewanee, aside -from Captain Woodhouse, the only persons at table there. Woodhouse, -true to the continental tradition of exclusiveness, had isolated -himself against possible approach by sitting at the table farthest from -the Shermans; his back presented an uncompromising denial of -fraternity. As for Mrs. Sherman, the afternoon's visit to the bazaars -had been anything but a solace, emphasizing, as it did, their grievous -poverty in the midst of a plenty contemptuous of a mere letter of -credit. Henry J. was wallowing in the lowest depths of nostalgia; he -tortured himself with the reflection that this was lodge night in -Kewanee and he would not be sitting in his chair. Miss Kitty -contemplated with melancholy the distress of her parents. - -A tall slender youth with tired eyes and affecting the blasé slouch of -the boulevards appeared in the door and cast about for a choice of -tables. Him Mr. Sherman impaled with a glance of disapproval which -suddenly changed to wondering recognition. He dropped his fork and -jumped to his feet. - -"Bless me, mother, if it isn't Willy Kimball from old Kewanee!" -Sherman waved his napkin at the young man, summoning him in the name of -Kewanee to come and meet the home folks. The tired eyes lighted -perceptibly, and a lukewarm smile played about Mr. Kimball's effeminate -mouth as he stepped up to the table. - -"Why, Mrs. Sherman--and Kitty! And you, Mr. Sherman--charmed!" He -accepted the proffered seat by the side of Kitty, receiving their -hearty hails with languid politeness. With the sureness of English -restraint, Mr. Willy Kimball refused to become excited. He was of the -type of exotic Americans who try to forget grandpa's corn-fed hogs and -grandma's hand-churned butter. His speech was of Rotten Row and his -clothes Piccadilly. - -"Terrible business, this!" The youth fluttered his hands feebly. "All -this harrying about and peeping at passports by every silly officer one -meets. I'm afraid I'll have to go over to America until it's all -over--on my way now, in fact." - -"Afraid!" Sherman sniffed loudly, and appraised Mr. Kimball's -tailoring with a disapproving eye. "Well, Willy, it would be too bad -if you had to go back to Kewanee after your many years in Paris, -France; now, wouldn't it?" - -Kimball turned to the women for sympathy. "Reserved a compartment to -come down from Paris. Beastly treatment. Held up at every city--other -people crowded in my apartment, though I'd paid to have it alone, of -course--soldier chap comes along and seizes my valet and makes him join -the colors and all that sort----" - -"Huh! Your father managed to worry along without a val-lay, and he was -respected in Kewanee." This in disgust from Henry J. - -Kitty flashed a reproving glance at her father and deftly turned the -expatriate into a recounting of his adventures. Under her unaffected -lead the youth, who shuddered inwardly at the appellation of "Willy," -thawed considerably, and soon there was an animated swapping of -reminiscences of the Great Terror--hours on end before the banks and -express offices, dodging of police impositions, scrambling for steamer -accommodations--all that went to compose the refugee Americans' great -epic of August, 1914. - -Sherman took pride in his superior adventures: "Five times arrested -between Berlin and Gibraltar, and what I said to that Dutchman on the -Swiss frontier was enough to make his hair curl." - -"Tell you what, Willy: you come on back to Kewanee with us, and mother -and you'll lecture before the Thursday Afternoon Ladies' Literary -Club," Sherman boomed, with a hearty blow of the hand between Willy's -shoulder blades. "I'll have Ed Porter announce it in advance in the -_Daily Enterprise_, and we'll have the whole town there to listen. -'Ezra Kimball's Boy Tells Thrilling Tale of War's Alarms.' That's the -way the head-lines'll read in the _Enterprise_ next week." - -The expatriate shivered and tried to smile. - -"We'll let mother do the lecturing," Kitty came to his rescue. "'How -to Live in Europe on a Letter of Discredit.' That will have all the -gossips of Kewanee buzzing, mother." - -The meal drew to a close happily in contrast to its beginning. Mrs. -Sherman and her daughter rose to pass out into the reception room. -Sherman and Kimball lingered. - -"Ah-h, Willy----" - -"Mr. Sherman----" - -Both began in unison, each somewhat furtive and shamefaced. - -"Have you any money?" The queries were voiced as one. For an instant -confusion; then the older man looked up into the younger's face--a bit -flushed it was--and guffawed. - -"Not a postage stamp, Willy! I guess we're both beggars, and if mother -and Kitty didn't have five trunks between them this Swiss holdup man -who says he's proprietor of this way-station hotel wouldn't trust us -for a fried egg." - -"Same here," admitted Kimball. "I'm badly bent." - -"They can't keep us down--us Americans!" Sherman cheered, taking the -youth's arm and piloting him out into the reception room. "We'll find -a way out if we have to cable for a warship to come and get us." - -Just as Sherman and Kimball emerged from the dining-room, there was a -diversion out beyond the glass doors on Waterport Street. A small cart -drew up; from its seat jumped a young woman in a duster and with a -heavy automobile veil swathed under her chin. To the Arab porter who -had bounded out to the street she gave directions for the removal from -the cart of her baggage, two heavy suit-cases and two ponderous osier -baskets. These latter she was particularly tender of, following them -into the hotel's reception room and directing where they should be put -before the desk. - -The newcomer was Jane Gerson, Hildebrand's buyer, at the end of her -gasoline flight from Paris. Cool, capable, self-reliant as on the -night she saw the bastions of the capital's outer forts fade under the -white spikes of the search-lights, Jane strode up the desk to face the -smiling Almer. - -"Is this a fortress or a hotel?" she challenged. - -"A hotel, lady, a hotel," Almer purred. "A nice room--yes. Will the -lady be with us long?" - -"Heaven forbid! The lady is going to be on the first ship leaving for -New York. And if there are no ships, I'll look over the stock of coal -barges you have in your harbor." She seized a pen and dashed her -signature on the register. The Shermans had pricked up their ears at -the newcomer's first words. Now Henry J. pressed forward, his face -glowing welcome. - -"An American--a simon-pure citizen of the United States--I thought so. -Welcome to the little old Rock!" He took both the girl's hands -impulsively and pumped them. Mrs. Sherman, Kitty and Willy Kimball -crowded around, and the clatter of voices was instantaneous: "By auto -from Paris; goodness me!" "Not a thing to eat for three days but rye -bread!" "From Strassburg to Luneville in a farmer's wagon!" Each in a -whirlwind of ejaculation tried to outdo the other's story of hardship -and privation. - -The front doors opened again, and the sergeant and guard who had -earlier carried off Fritz, the barber, entered. Again gun butts -thumped ominously. Jane looked over her shoulder at the khaki-coated -men, and confided in the Shermans: - -"I think that man's been following me ever since I landed from the -ferry." - -"I have," answered the sergeant, stepping briskly forward and saluting. -"You are a stranger on the Rock. You come here from----" - -"From Paris, by motor, to the town across the bay; then over here on -the ferry," the girl answered promptly. "What about it?" - -"Your name?" - -"Jane Gerson. Yes, yes, it sounds German, I know. But that's not my -fault. I'm an American--a red-hot American, too, for the last two -weeks." - -The sergeant's face was wooden. - -"Where are you going?" - -"To New York, on the _Saxonia_, just as soon as I can. And the British -army can't stop me." - -"Indeed!" The sergeant permitted himself a fleeting smile. "From -Paris by motor, eh? Your passports, please." - -"I haven't any," Jane retorted, with a shade of defiance. "They were -taken from me in Spain, just over the French border, and were not -returned." - -The sergeant raised his eyebrows in surprise not unmixed with irony. -He pointed to the two big osier baskets, demanding to know what they -contained. - -"Gowns--the last gowns made in Paris before the crash. Fashion's last -gasp. I am a buyer of gowns for Hildebrand's store in New York." - -Ecstatic gurgles of pleasure from Mrs. Sherman and her daughter greeted -this announcement. They pressed about the baskets and regarded them -lovingly. - -The sergeant pushed them away and tried to throw back the covers. - -"Open your baggage--all of it!" he commanded snappishly. - -Jane, explaining over her shoulder to the women, stooped to fumble with -the hasps. - -"Seventy of the darlingest gowns--the very last Paul Poiret and Paquin -and Worth made before they closed shop and marched away with their -regiments. You shall see every one of them." - -"Hurry, please, my time's limited!" the sergeant barked. - -"I should think it would be--you're so charming," Jane flung back over -her shoulder, and she raised the tops of the baskets. The other women -pushed forward with subdued coos. - -The sergeant plunged his hand under a mass of colored fluffiness, -groped for a minute, and brought forth a long roll of heavy paper. -With a fierce mien, he began to unroll the bundle. - -"And these?" - -"Plans," Hildebrand's buyer answered. - -"Plans of what?" The sergeant glared. - -"Of gowns, silly! Here--you're looking at that one upside down! This -way! Now isn't that a perfect dear of an afternoon gown? Poiret -didn't have time to finish it, poor man! See that lovely basque -effect? Everything's _moyen age_ this season, you know." - -Jane, with a shrewd sidelong glance at the flustered sergeant, rattled -on, bringing gown after gown from the baskets and displaying them to -the chorus of smothered screams of delight from the feminine part of -her audience. One she draped coquettishly from her shoulders and did -an exaggerated step before the smoky mirror over the mantelpiece to -note the effect. - -"Isn't it too bad this soldier person isn't married, so he could -appreciate these beauties?" She flicked a mischievous eye his way. -"Of course he can't be married, or he'd recognize the plan of a gown. -Clean hands, there, Mister Sergeant, if you're going to touch any of -these dreams! Here, let me! Now look at that _musquetaire_ -sleeve--the effect of the war--military, you know." - -The sergeant was thoroughly angry by this time, and he forced the -situation suddenly near tragedy. Under his fingers a delicate girdle -crackled suspiciously. - -"Here--your knife! Rip this open; there are papers of some sort hidden -here." He started to pass the gown to one of his soldiers. Jane -choked back a scream. - -"No, no! That's crinoline, stupid! No papers----" She stretched -forth her arms appealingly. The sergeant humped his shoulders and put -out his hand to take the opened clasp-knife. - -A plump doll-faced woman, who possessed an afterglow of prettiness and -a bustling nervous manner, flounced through the doors at this juncture -and burst suddenly into the midst of the group caught in the imminence -of disaster. - -"What's this--what's this?" She caught sight of the filmy creation -draped from the sergeant's arm. "Oh, the beauty!" This in a whisper -of admiration. - -"The last one made by Worth," Jane was quick to explain, noting the -sergeant's confusion in the presence of the stranger, "and this officer -is going to rip it open in a search for concealed papers. He takes me -for a spy." - -Surprised blue eyes were turned from Jane to the sergeant. The latter -shamefacedly tried to slip the open knife into his blouse, mumbling an -excuse. The blue eyes bored him through. - -"I call that very stupid, Sergeant," reproved the angel of rescue. -Then to Jane---- - -"Where are you taking all these wonderful gowns?" - -"To New York. I'm buyer for Hildebrand's, and----" - -"But, Lady Crandall, this young woman has no passports--nothing," the -sergeant interposed. "My duty----" - -"Bother your duty! Don't you know a Worth gown when you see it? Now -go away! I'll be responsible for this young woman from now on. Tell -your commanding officer Lady Crandall has taken your duty out of your -hands." She finished with a quiet assurance and turned to gloat once -more over the gowns. The sergeant led his command away with evident -relief. - -Lady Crandall turned to include all the refugees in a general -introduction of herself. - -"I am Lady Crandall, the wife of the governor general of Gibraltar," -she said, with a warming smile. "I just came down to see what I could -do for you poor stranded Americans. In these times----" - -"An American yourself, I'll gamble on it!" Sherman pushed his way -between the littered baskets and seized Lady Crandall's hands. "Knew -it by the cut of your jib--and--your way of doing things. I'm Henry J. -Sherman, from Kewanee, Illynoy--my wife and daughter Kitty." - -"And I'm from Iowa--the red hills of ole Ioway," the governor's wife -chanted, with an orator's flourish of the hands. "Welcome to the Rock, -home folks!" - -Hands all around and an impromptu old-home week right then and there. -Lady Crandall's attention could not be long away from the gowns, -however. She turned back to them eagerly. With Jane Gerson as her -aid, she passed them in rapturous review, Mrs. Sherman and Kitty -playing an enthusiastic chorus. - -A pursy little man with an air of supreme importance--Henry Reynolds he -was, United States Consul at Gibraltar--catapulted in from the street -while the gown chatter was at its noisiest. He threw his hands above -his head in a mock attitude of submissiveness before a highwayman. - -"'S all fixed, ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with a showman's -eloquence. "Here's Lady Crandall come to tell you about it, and she's -so busy riding her hobby--gowns and millinery and such--she has -forgotten. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts." - -"Credit to whom credit is due, Mister Consul," she rallied. "I'm not -stealing anybody's official thunder." The consul wagged a forefinger -at her reprovingly. With impatience, the refugees waited to hear the -news. - -"Well, it's this way," Reynolds began. "I've got so tired having all -you people sitting on my door-step I just had to make arrangements to -ship you on the _Saxonia_ in self-defense. _Saxonia's_ due here from -Naples Thursday--day after to-morrow; sails for New York at dawn Friday -morning. Lady Crandall, here--and a better American never came out of -the Middle West--has agreed to go bond for your passage money; all your -letters of credit and checks will be cashed by treasury agents before -you leave the dock at New York, and you can settle with the steamship -people right there. - -"No, no; don't thank me! There's the person responsible for your -getting home." The consul waved toward the governor's lady, who -blushed rosily under the tumultuous blessings showered on her. -Reynolds ducked out the door to save his face. The Shermans made their -good nights, and with Kimball, started toward the stairs. - -"Thursday night, before you sail," Lady Crandall called to them, "you -all have an engagement--a regular American dinner with me at the -Government House. Remember!" - -"If you have hash--plain hash--and don't call it a rag-owt, we'll eat -you out of house and home," Sherman shouted as addendum to the others' -thanks. - -"And you, my dear"--Lady Crandall beamed upon Jane--"you're coming -right home with me to wait for the _Saxonia's_ sailing. Oh, no, don't -be too ready with your thanks. This is pure selfishness on my part. I -want you to help plan my fall clothes. There, the secret's out. But -with all those beautiful gowns, surely Hildebrand will not object if -you leave the pattern of one of them in an out-of-the-way little place -like this. Come on, now, I'll not take no for an answer. We'll pack -up all these beauties and have you off in no time." - -[Illustration: Lady Crandall beamed upon Jane.] - -Jane's thanks were ignored by the capable packer who smoothed and -straightened the confections of silk and satin in the osier hampers. -Lady Crandall summoned the porter to lift the precious freight to the -back of her dogcart, waiting outside. Almer, perturbed at the -kidnaping of his guest, came from behind the desk. - -"You will go to your room now?" he queried anxiously. - -"Not going to take it," Jane answered. "Have an invitation from Lady -Crandall to visit the State House, or whatever you call it." - -"But, pardon me. The room--it was rented, and I fear one night's -lodging is due. Twenty shillings." - -Jane elevated her eyebrows, but handed over a bill. - -"Ah, no, lady. French paper--it is worthless to me. Only English -gold, if the lady pleases." Almer's smile was leonine. - -"But it's all I've got; just came from France, and----" - -"Then, though it gives me the greatest sorrow, I must hold your luggage -until you have the money changed. Excuse----" - -Captain Woodhouse, who had dallied long over his dinner for lack of -something else to do, came out of the dining-room just then, saw a -woman in difficulties with the landlord, and instinctively stepped -forward to offer his services. - -"Beg pardon, but can I be of any help?" - -Jane turned. The captain's heart gave a great leap and then went cold. -Frank pleasure followed the first surprise in the girl's eyes. - -"Why, Captain Woodhouse--how jolly!--To see you again after----" - -She put out her hand with a free gesture of comradeship. - -Captain Woodhouse did not see the girl's hand. He was looking into her -eyes coldly, aloofly. - -"I beg your pardon, but aren't you mistaken?" - -"Mistaken?" The girl was staring at him, mystified. - -"I'm afraid I have not had the pleasure of meeting you," he continued -evenly. "But if I can be of service--now----" - -She shrugged her shoulders and turned away from him. - -"A small matter. I owe this man twenty shillings, and he will not -accept French paper. It's all I have." - -Woodhouse took the note from her. - -"I'll take it gladly--perfectly good." He took some money from his -pocket and looked at it. Then, to Almer: "I say, can you split a -crown?" - -"Change for you in a minute, sir--the tobacco shop down the street." -Almer pocketed the gold piece and dodged out of the door. - -Jane turned and found the deep-set gray eyes of Captain Woodhouse fixed -upon her. They craved pardon--toleration of the incident just passed. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -ROOM D - -Woodhouse hurried to Jane Gerson's side and began to speak swiftly and -earnestly: - -"You are from the States?" - -A shrug was her answer. The girl's face was averted, and in the -defiant set of her shoulders Woodhouse found little promise of pardon -for the incident of the minute before. He persisted: - -"This war means nothing to you--one side or the other?" - -"I have equal pity for them both," she answered in a low voice. - -"We are living in dangerous times," he continued earnestly. "I tell -you frankly, were the fact that you and I had met before to become -known here on the Rock the consequences would be -most--inconvenient--for me." Jane turned and looked searchingly into -his face. Something in the tone rather than the words roused her quick -sympathy. Woodhouse kept on: - -"I am sorry I had to deny that former meeting just now--that meeting -which has been with me in such vivid memory. I regret that were you to -allude to it again I would have to deny it still more emphatically." - -"I'm sure I shan't mention it again," the girl broke in shortly. - -"Perhaps since it means so little to you--your silence--perhaps you -will do me that favor, Miss Gerson." - -"Certainly." Woodhouse could see that anger still tinged her speech. - -"May I go further--and ask you to--promise?" A shadow of annoyance -creased her brow, but she nodded. - -"That is very good of you," he thanked her. "Shall you be long on the -Rock?" - -"No longer than I have to. I'm sailing on the first boat for the -States," she answered. - -"Then I am in luck--to-night." Woodhouse tried to speak easily, though -Jane Gerson's attitude was distant. "Meeting you again--that's luck." - -"To judge by what you have just said it must be instead a great -misfortune," she retorted, with a slow smile. - -"That is not fair. You know what I mean. Don't imagine I've really -forgotten our first meeting under happier conditions than these. I -know I'm not clever--I can't make it sound as I would--but I've thought -a great deal of you, Miss Gerson--wondering how you were making it in -this great war. Perhaps----" - -Almer returned at this juncture with the change, which he handed to -Woodhouse. He was followed in by Lady Crandall, who assured Jane her -hampers were securely strapped to the dog-cart. Jane attempted an -introduction. - -"This gentleman has just done me a service, Lady Crandall. May I -present----" - -"So sorry. You don't know my name. My clumsiness. Captain -Woodhouse." The man bridged the dangerous gap hurriedly. Lady -Crandall acknowledged the introduction with a gracious smile. - -"Your husband is Sir George----" he began. - -"Yes, Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock. And you----" - -"Quite a recent comer. Transferred from the Nile country here. Report -to-morrow." - -"All of the new officers have to report to the governor's wife as -well," Lady Crandall rallied, with a glance at Jane. "You must come -and see me--and Miss Gerson, who will be with me until her boat sails." - -Woodhouse caught his breath. Jane Gerson, who knew him, at the -governor's home! But he mastered himself in a second and bowed his -thanks. Lady Crandall was moving toward the door. Her ward turned and -held out a hand to Woodhouse. - -"So good of you to have straightened out my finances," she said, with a -smile in which the man hoped he read full forgiveness for his denial of -a few minutes before. "If you're ever in America I hope----" He -looked up quickly. "I hope somebody will be as nice to you. Good -night." - -Woodhouse and Almer were alone in the mongrel reception room. The hour -was late. Almer began sliding folding wooden shutters across the back -of the street windows. Woodhouse lingered over the excuse of a final -cigarette, knowing the moment for his rapprochement with his fellow -Wilhelmstrasse spy was at hand. He was more distraught than he cared -to admit even to himself. The day's developments had been startling. -First the stunning encounter with Capper there on the very Rock that -was to be the scene of his delicate operations--Capper, whom he had -thought sunk in the oblivion of some Alexandrian wine shop, but who had -followed him on the _Princess Mary_. The fellow had deliberately cast -himself into his notice, Woodhouse reflected; there had been menace and -insolent hint of a power to harm in his sneering objurgation that -Woodhouse should remember his name against a second meeting. -"Capper--never heard the name in Alexandria, eh?" What could he mean -by that if not that somehow the little ferret had learned of his visit -to the home of Doctor Koch? And that meant--why, Capper in Gibraltar -was as dangerous as a coiled cobra! - -Then the unexpected meeting with Jane Gerson, the little American he -had mourned as lost in the fury of the war. Ah, that was a joy not -unmixed with regrets! What did she think of him? First, he had been -forced coldly to deny the acquaintance that had meant much to him in -moments of recollection; then, he had attempted a lame explanation, -which explained nothing and must have left her more mystified than -before. In fact, he had frankly thrown himself on the mercy of a girl -on whom he had not the shadow of claim beyond the poor equity of a -chance friendship--an incident she might consider as merely one of a -day's travel as far as he could know. He had stood before her caught -in a deceit, for on the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten ride -from Calais to Paris he had represented himself as hurrying back to -Egypt, and here she found him still out of uniform and in a hotel in -Gibraltar. - -Beyond all this, Jane Gerson was going to the governor's house as a -guest. She, whom he had forced, ever so cavalierly, into a promise to -keep secret her half knowledge of the double game he was playing, was -going to be on the intimate ground of association with the one man in -Gibraltar who by a crook of his finger could end suspicion by a firing -squad. This breezy little baggage from New York carried his life -balanced on the rosy tip of her tongue. She could be careless or she -could be indifferent; in either case it would be bandaged eyes and the -click of shells going home for him. - -It was Almer who interrupted Woodhouse's troubled train of thought. - -"Captain Woodhouse will report for signal duty on the Rock to-morrow, I -suppose?" he insinuated, coming down to where Woodhouse was standing -before the fireplace. He made a show of tidying up the scattered -magazines and folders on the table. - -"Report for signal duty?" the other echoed coldly. "How did you know I -was to report for signal duty here?" - -"In the press a few weeks ago," the hotel keeper hastily explained. -"Your transfer from the Nile country was announced. We poor people -here in Gibraltar, we have so little to think about, even such small -details of news----" - -"Ah, yes. Quite so." Woodhouse tapped back a yawn. - -"Your journey here from your station on the Nile--it was without -incident?" Almer eyed his guest closely. The latter permitted his -eyes to rest on Almer's for a minute before replying. - -"Quite." Woodhouse threw his cigarette in the fireplace and started -for the stairs. - -"Ah, most unusual--such a long journey without incident of any kind in -this time of universal war, with all Europe gone mad." Almer was -twiddling the combination of a small safe set in the wall by the -fireplace, and his chatter seemed only incidental to the absorbing work -he had at hand. "How will the madness end, Captain Woodhouse? What -will be the boundary lines of Europe's nations in--say, 1932?" - -Almer rose as he said this and turned to look squarely into the other's -face. Woodhouse met his gaze steadily and without betraying the -slightest emotion. - -"In 1932--I wonder," he mused, and into his speech unconsciously -appeared that throaty intonation of the Teutonic tongue. - -"Don't go yet, Captain Woodhouse. Before you retire I want you to -sample some of this brandy." He brought out of the safe a short squat -bottle and glasses. "See, I keep it in the safe, so precious it is. -Drink with me, Captain, to the monarch you have come to Gibraltar to -serve--to his majesty, King George the Fifth!" - -Almer lifted his glass, but Woodhouse appeared wrapped in thought; his -hand did not go up. - -"I see you do not drink to that toast, Captain." - -"No--I was thinking--of 1932." - -"So?" Quick as a flash Almer caught him up. "Then perhaps I had -better say, drink to the greatest monarch in Europe." - -"To the greatest monarch in Europe!" Woodhouse lifted his glass and -drained it. - -Almer leaned suddenly across the table and spoke tensely: "You -have--something maybe--I would like to see. Some little relic of -Alexandria, let us say." - -Woodhouse swept a quick glance around, then reached for the pin in his -tie. - -"A scarab; that's all." - -In the space of a breath Almer had seen what lay in the back of the -stone beetle. He gripped Woodhouse's hand fervently. - -"Yes--yes, Nineteen Thirty-two! They have told me of your coming. A -cablegram from Koch only this afternoon said you would be on the -_Princess Mary_. The other--the real Woodhouse--there will be no -slips; he will not----" - -"He is as good as a dead man for many months," Woodhouse interrupted. -"Not a chance of a mistake." He slipped easily into German. -"Everything depends on us now, Herr Almer." - -"Perhaps the fate of our fatherland," Almer replied, cleaving to -English. Woodhouse stepped suddenly away from the side of the table, -against which he had been leaning, and his right hand jerked back to a -concealed holster on his hip. His eyes were hot with suspicion. - -"You do not answer in German; why not? Answer me in German or by----" - -"_Ach_! What need to become excited?" Almer drew back hastily, and -his tongue speedily switched to German. "German is dangerous here on -the Rock, Captain. Only yesterday they shot a man against a wall -because he spoke German too well. Do you wonder I try to forget our -native tongue?" - -Woodhouse was mollified, and he smiled apologetically. Almer forgave -him out of admiration for his discretion. - -"No need to suspect me--Almer. They will tell you in Berlin how for -twenty years I have served the Wilhelmstrasse. But never before such -an opportunity--such an opportunity. Stupendous!" Woodhouse nodded -enthusiastic affirmation. "But to business, Nineteen Thirty-two. This -Captain Woodhouse some seven years ago was stationed here on the Rock -for just three months." - -"So I know." - -"You, as Woodhouse, will be expected to have some knowledge of the -signal tower, to which you will have access." Almer climbed a chair on -the opposite side of the room, threw open the face of the old Dutch -clock there, and removed from its interior a thin roll of blue drafting -paper. He put it in Woodhouse's hands. "Here are a few plans of the -interior of the signal tower--the best I could get. You will study -them to-night; but give me your word to burn them before you sleep." - -"Very good." Woodhouse slipped the roll into the breast pocket of his -coat. Almer leaned forward in a gust of excitement, and, bringing his -mouth close to the other's ear, whispered hoarsely: - -"England's Mediterranean fleet--twenty-two dreadnaughts, with cruisers -and destroyers--nearly a half of Britain's navy, will be here any day, -hurrying back to guard the Channel. They will anchor in the straits. -Our big moment--it will be here then! Listen! Room D in the signal -tower--that is the room. All the electric switches are there. From -Room D every mine in the harbor can be exploded in ten seconds." - -"Yes, but how to get to Room D?" Woodhouse queried. - -"Simple. Two doors to Room D, Captain; an outer door like any other; -an inner door of steel, protected by a combination lock like a vault's -door. Two men on the Rock have that combination: Major Bishop, chief -signal officer, he has in it his head; the governor-general of the -Rock, he has it in his safe." - -"We can get it out of the safe easier than from Major Bishop's head," -Woodhouse put in, with a smile. - -"Right. We have a friend--in the governor's own house--a man with a -number from the Wilhelmstrasse like you and me. At any moment in the -last two months he could have laid a hand on that combination. But we -thought it better to wait until necessity came. When the fleet arrives -you will have that combination; you will go with it to Room D, and -after that----" - -"The deluge," the other finished. - -"Yes--yes! Our country master of the sea at last, and by the work of -the Wilhelmstrasse--despised spies who are shot like dogs when they're -caught, but die heroes' deaths." The hotel proprietor checked himself -in the midst of his rhapsody, and came back to more practical details: - -"But this afternoon--that man from Alexandria who called you by name. -That looked bad--very bad. He knows something?" - -Woodhouse, who had been expecting the question, and who preferred not -to share an anxiety he felt himself best fitted to cope with alone, -turned the other's question aside: - -"Never met him before in my life to my best recollection. My name he -picked up on the _Princess Mary_, of course; I won a pool one day, and -he may have heard some one mention it. Simply a drunken brawler who -didn't know what he was doing." - -Almer seemed satisfied, but raised another point: - -"But the girl who has just left here; am I to have no explanation of -her?" - -"What explanation do you want?" the captain demanded curtly. - -"She recognized you. Who is she? What is she?" - -"Devilish unfortunate," Woodhouse admitted. "We met a few weeks ago on -a train, while I was on my way to Egypt, you know. Chatted -together--oh, very informally. She is a capable young woman from the -States--a 'buyer' she calls herself. But I don't think we need fear -complications from that score; she's bent only on getting home." - -"The situation is dangerous," urged Almer, wagging his head. "She is -stopping at the governor's house; any reference she might make about -meeting you on a train on the Continent when you were supposed to be at -Wady Halfa on the Nile----" - -"I have her promise she will not mention that meeting to anybody." - -"_Ach_! A woman's promise!" Almer's eyes invoked Heaven to witness a -futile thing. "She seemed rather glad to see you again; I----" - -"Really?" Woodhouse's eyes lighted. - -The Splendide's proprietor was pacing the floor as fast as his fat legs -would let him. "Something must be done," he muttered again and again. -He halted abruptly before Woodhouse, and launched a thick forefinger at -him like a torpedo. - -"You must make love to that girl, Woodhouse, to keep her on our side," -was his ultimatum. - -Woodhouse regarded him quizzically, leaned forward, and whispered -significantly. - -"I'm already doing it," he said. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -A VISIT TO A LADY - -Turning to consider the never-stale fortunes of one of fate's bean -bags---- - -Mr. Billy Capper, ejected from the Hotel Splendide, took little umbrage -at such treatment; it was not an uncommon experience, and, besides, a -quiet triumph that would not be dampened by trifles filled his soul. -Cheerfully he pushed through the motley crowd on Waterport Street down -to the lower levels of the city by the Line Wall, where the roosts of -sailors and warrens of quondam adventurers off all the seven seas made -far more congenial atmosphere than that of the Splendide's hollow -pretense. He chose a hostelry more commensurate with his slender purse -than Almer's, though as a matter of fact the question of paying a hotel -bill was furthest from Billy Capper's thoughts; such formal -transactions he avoided whenever feasible. The proprietor of the San -Roc, where Capper took a room, had such an evil eye that his new guest -made a mental note that perhaps he might have to leave his bag behind -when he decamped. Capper abhorred violence--to his own person. - -Alone over a glass of thin wine--the champagne days, alas! had been too -fleeting--Capper took stock of his situation and conned the -developments he hoped to be the instrument for starting. To begin -with, finances were wretchedly bad, and that was a circumstance so near -the ordinary for Capper that he shuddered as he pulled a gold guinea -and a few silver bits from his pocket, and mechanically counted them -over. Of the three hundred marks Louisa--pretty snake!--had given him -in the Café Riche and the expense money he had received from her the -following day to cover his expedition to Alexandria for the -Wilhelmstrasse naught but this paltry residue! That second-cabin -ticket on the _Princess Mary_ had taken the last big bite from his -hoard, and here he was in this black-and-tan town with a quid and -little more between himself and the old starved-dog life. - -But--and Capper narrowed his eyes and sagely wagged his head--there'd -be something fat coming. When he got knee to knee with the -governor-general of the Rock, and told him what he, Billy Capper, knew -about the identity of Captain Woodhouse, newly transferred to the -signal service at Gibraltar, why, if there wasn't a cool fifty pounds -or a matter of that as honorarium from a generous government Billy -Capper had missed his guess; that's all. - -"I say, Governor, of course this is very handsome of you, but I didn't -come to tell what I know for gold. I'm a loyal Englishman, and I've -done what I have for the good of the old flag." - -"Quite right, Mr. Capper; quite right. But you will please accept this -little gift as an inadequate recognition of your loyalty. Your name -shall be mentioned in my despatches home." - -Capper rehearsed this hypothetical dialogue with relish. He could even -catch the involuntary gasp of astonishment from the governor when that -responsible officer in his majesty's service heard the words Capper -would whisper to him; could see the commander of the Rock open a drawer -in his desk and take therefrom a thick white sheaf of bank-notes--count -them! Then--ah, then--the first train for Paris and the delights of -Paris at war-time prices. - -The little spy anticipated no difficulty in gaining audience with the -governor. Before he had been fifteen minutes off the _Princess Mary_ -he had heard the name of the present incumbent of Government House. -Crandall--Sir George Crandall; the same who had been in command of the -forts at Rangoon back in '99. Oh, yes, Capper knew him, and he made no -doubt that, if properly reminded of a certain bit of work Billy Capper -had done back in the Burmese city, Sir George would recall him--and -with every reason for gratefulness. To-morrow--yes, before ever Sir -George had had his morning's peg, Capper would present himself at -Government House and tell about that house on Queen's Terrace at -Ramleh; about the unconscious British officer who was carried there and -hurried thence by night, and the tall well-knit man in conference with -Doctor Koch who was now come to be a part of the garrison of the Rock -under the stolen name of Woodhouse. - -Capper had his dinner, then strolled around the town to see the sights -and hear what he could hear. Listening was a passion with him. - -For the color and the exotic savor of Gibraltar on a hot August night -Capper had no eye. The knife edge of a moon slicing the battlements of -the old Moorish Castle up on the heights; the minor tinkle of a guitar -sounding from a vine-curtained balcony; a Riffian muleteer's singsong -review of his fractious beast's degraded ancestry--not for these -incidentals did the practical mind under the battered Capper bowler -have room. Rather the scraps of information and gossip passed from one -blue-coated artilleryman off duty, to another over a mug of ale, or the -confidence of a sloe-eyed dancer to the guitar player in a tavern; this -was meat for Capper. Carefully he husbanded his gold piece, and -judiciously he spent his silver for drink. He enjoyed himself in the -ascetic spirit of a monk in a fast, believing that the morrow would -bring champagne in place of the thin wine his pitiful silver could -command. - -Then, of a sudden, he caught a glimpse of Louisa--Louisa of the -Wilhelmstrasse. Capper's heart skipped, and an involuntary impulse -crooked his fingers into claws. - -The girl was just coming out of a café--the only café aspiring to -Parisian smartness Gibraltar boasts. Her head was bare. Under an arm -she had tucked a stack of cigar boxes. Had it not been that a steady -light from an overhead arc cut her features out of the soft shadow with -the fineness of a diamond-pointed tool, Capper would have sworn his -eyes were playing him tricks. But Louisa's features were unmistakable, -whether in the Lucullian surroundings of a Berlin summer garden or here -on a street in Gibraltar. Capper had instinctively crushed himself -against the nearest wall on seeing the girl; the crowd had come between -himself and her, and she had not seen him. - -All the weasel instinct of the man came instantly to the fore that -second of recognition, and the glint in his eyes and baring of his -teeth were flashed from brute instinct--the instinct of the -night-prowling meat hunter. All the vicious hate which the soul of -Billy Capper could distil flooded to his eyes and made them venomous. -Slinking, dodging, covering, he followed the girl with the cigar boxes. -She entered several dance-halls, offered her wares at the door of a -cheap hotel. For more than an hour Capper shadowed her through the -twisting streets of the old Spanish town. Finally she turned into a -narrow lane, climbed flagstone steps, set the width of the lane, to a -house under the scarp of a cliff, and let herself in at the street -door. Capper, following to the door as quickly as he dared, found it -locked. - -The little spy was choking with a lust to kill; his whole body trembled -under the pulse of a murderous passion. He had found Louisa--the girl -who had sold him out--and for her private ends, Capper made no doubt of -that. Some day he had hoped to run her down, and with his fingers -about her soft throat to tell her how dangerous it was to trick Billy -Capper. But to have her flung across his path this way when anger was -still at white heat in him--this was luck! He'd see this Louisa and -have a little powwow with her even if he had to break his way into the -house. - -Capper felt the doorknob again; the door wouldn't yield. He drew back -a bit and looked up at the front of the house. Just a dingy black wall -with three unlighted windows set in it irregularly. The roof projected -over the gabled attic like the visor of a cap. Beyond the farther -corner of the house were ten feet of garden space, and then the bold -rock of the cliff springing upward. A low wall bounded the garden; -over its top nodded the pale ghosts of moonflowers and oleanders. - -Capper was over the wall in a bound, and crouching amid flower -clusters, listening for possible alarm. None came, and he became -bolder. Skirting a tiny arbor, he skulked to a position in the rear of -the house; there a broad patch of illumination stretched across the -garden, coming from two French windows on the lower floor. They stood -half open; through the thin white stuff hanging behind them Capper -could see vaguely the figure of a girl seated before a dressing mirror -with her hands busy over two heavy ropes of hair. Nothing to do but -step up on the little half balcony outside the windows, push through -into the room, and--have a little powwow with Louisa. - -An unwonted boldness had a grip on the little spy. Never a person to -force a face-to-face issue when the trick could be turned behind -somebody's back, he was, nevertheless, driven irresistibly by a furious -anger that took no heed of consequences. - -With the light foot of a cat, Capper straddled the low rail of the -balcony, pushed back one of the partly opened windows, and stepped into -Louisa's room. His eyes registered mechanically the details--a heavy -canopied bed, a massive highboy of some dark wood, chairs supporting -carelessly flung bits of wearing apparel. But he noted especially that -just as he emerged from behind one of the loose curtains a white arm -remained poised over a brown head. - -"Stop where you are, Billy Capper!" The girl's low-spoken order was as -cold and tense as drawn wire. No trace of shock or surprise was in her -voice. She did not turn her head. Capper was brought up short, as if -he felt a noose about his neck. - -Slowly the figure seated before the dressing mirror turned to face him. -Tumbling hair framed the girl's face, partly veiling the yellow-brown -eyes, which seemed two spots of metal coming to incandescence under -heat. Her hands, one still holding a comb, lay supinely in her lap. - -"I admit this is a surprise, Capper," Louisa said, letting each word -fall sharply, but without emphasis. "However, it is like you to -be--unconventional. May I ask what you want this time--besides money, -of course?" - -Capper wet his lips and smiled wryly. He had jumped so swiftly to -impulse that he had not prepared himself beforehand against the moment -when he should be face to face with the girl from the Wilhelmstrasse. -Moreover, he had expected to be closer to her--very close -indeed--before the time for words should come. - -"I--I saw you to-night and followed you--here," he began lamely. - -"Flattering!" She laughed shortly. - -"Oh, you needn't try to come it over me with words!" Capper's teeth -showed in a nasty grin as his rage flared back from the first -suppression of surprise. "I've come here to have a settlement for a -little affair between you and me." - -"Blackmail? Why, Billy Capper, how true to form you run!" The -yellow-brown eyes were alight and burning now. "Have you determined -the sum you want or are you in the open market?" - -Capper grinned again, and shifted his weight, inadvertently advancing -one foot a little nearer the seated girl as he did so. - -"Pretty quick with the tongue--as always," he sneered. "But this time -it doesn't go, Louisa. You pay differently this time--pay for selling -me out. Understand!" Again one foot shifted forward a few inches by -the accident of some slight body movement on the man's part. Louisa -still sat before her dressing mirror, hands carelessly crossed on her -lap. - -"Selling you out?" she repeated evenly. "Oh! So you finally did -discover that you were elected to be the goat? Brilliant Capper! How -long before you made up your mind you had a grievance?" - -The girl's cool admission goaded the little man's fury to frenzy. His -mind craved for action--for the leap and the tightening of fingers -around that taunting throat; but somehow his body, strangely detached -from the fiat of volition as if it were another's body, lagged to the -command. Violence had never been its mission; muscles were slow to -accept this new conception of the mind. But the man's feet followed -their crafty intelligence; by fractions of inches they moved forward -stealthily. - -"You wouldn't be here now," Louisa coldly went on, "if you weren't -fortune's bright-eyed boy. You were slated to be taken off the boat at -Malta and shot; the boat didn't stop at Malta through no fault of ours, -and so you arrived at Alexandria--and became a nuisance." One of the -girl's hands lifted from her lap and lazily played along the edge of -the rosewood standard which supported the mirror on the dressing table. -It stopped at a curiously carved rosette in the rococo scroll-work. -Capper's suspicious eye noted the movement. He sparred for time--the -time needed by those stealthy feet to shorten the distance between -themselves and the girl. - -"Why," he hissed, "why did you give me a number with the Wilhelmstrasse -and send me to Alexandria if I was to be caught and shot at Malta? -That's what I'm here to find out." - -"Excellent Capper!" Her fingers were playing with the convolutions of -the carved rosette. "Intelligent Capper! He comes to a lady's room at -night to find the answer to a simple question. He shall have it. He -evidently does not know the method of the Wilhelmstrasse, which is to -choose two men for every task to be accomplished. One--the 'target,' -we call him--goes first; our friends whose secrets we seek are allowed -to become suspicious of him--we even give them a hint to help them in -their suspicion. They seize the 'target,' and in time of war he -becomes a real target for a firing squad, as you should have been, -Capper, at Malta. Then when our friends believe they have nipped our -move in the bud follows the second man--who turns the trick." - -Capper was still wrestling with that baffling stubbornness of the body. -Each word the girl uttered was like vitriol on his writhing soul. His -mind willed murder--willed it with all the strength of hate; but still -the springs of his body were cramped--by what? Not cowardice, for he -was beyond reckoning results. Certainly not compassion or any saving -virtue of chivalry. Why did his eyes constantly stray to that white -hand lifted to allow the fingers to play with the filigree of wood on -the mirror support? - -"Then you engineered the stealing of my number--from the hollow under -the handle of my cane--some time between Paris and Alexandria?" he -challenged in a whisper, his face thrust forward between hunched -shoulders. - -"No, indeed. It was necessary for you to have--the evidence of your -profession when the English searched you at Malta. But the loss of -your number is not news; Koch, in Alexandria, has reported, of course." - -The girl saw Capper's foot steal forward again. He was not six feet -from her now. His wiry body settled itself ever so slightly for a -spring. Louisa rose from her chair, one hand still resting on the -wooden rosette of the mirror standard. She began to speak in a voice -drained of all emotion: - -"You followed me here to-night, Billy Capper, imagining in your poor -little soul that you were going to do something desperate--something -really human and brutal. You came in my window all primed for murder. -But your poor little soul all went to water the instant we faced each -other. You couldn't nerve yourself to leap upon a woman even. You -can't now." - -She smiled on him--a woman's flaying smile of pity. Capper writhed, -and his features twisted themselves in a paroxysm of hate. - -"I have my finger on a bell button here, Capper. If I press it men -will come in here and kill you without asking a question. Now you'd -better go." - -Capper's eyes jumped to focus on a round white nib under one of the -girl's fingers there on the mirror's standard. The little ivory button -was alive--a sentient thing suddenly allied against him. That -inanimate object rather than Louisa's words sent fingers of cold fear -to grip his heart. A little ivory button waiting there to trap him! -He tried to cover his vanished resolution with bluster, sputtering out -in a tense whisper: - -"You're a devil--a devil from hell, Louisa! But I'll get you. They -shoot women in war time! Sir George Crandall--I know him--I did a -little service for him once in Rangoon. He'll hear of you and your -Wilhelmstrasse tricks, and you'll have your pretty back against a wall -with guns at your heart before to-morrow night. Remember--before -to-morrow night!" - -Capper was backing toward the open window behind him. The girl still -stood by the mirror, her hand lightly resting where the ivory nib was. -She laughed. - -"Very well, Billy Capper. It will be a firing party for two--you and -me together. I'll make a frank confession--tell all the information -Billy Capper sold to me for three hundred marks one night in the Café -Riche--the story of the Anglo-Belgian defense arrangements. The same -Billy Capper, I'll say, who sold the Lord Fisher letters to the -kaiser--a cable to Downing Street will confirm that identification -inside of two hours. And then----" - -"And your Captain Woodhouse--your cute little Wilhelmstrasse captain," -Capper flung back from the window, pretending not to heed the girl's -potent threat; "I know all about him, and the governor'll know, -too--same time he hears about you!" - -"Good night, Billy Capper," Louisa answered, with a piquant smile. -"And au revoir until we meet with our backs against that wall." - -Capper's head dropped from view over the balcony edge; there was a -sound of running feet amid the close-ranked plants in the garden, then -silence. - -The girl from the Wilhelmstrasse, alone in the house save for the bent -old housekeeper asleep in her attic, turned and laid her head--a bit -weakly--against the carved standard, where in a florid rosette showed -the ivory tip of the hinge for the cheval glass. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -A SPY IN THE SIGNAL TOWER - -Government House, one of the Baedeker points of Gibraltar, stands amid -its gardens on a shelf of the Rock about mid-way between the Alameda -and the signal tower, perched on the very spine of the lion's back -above it. Its windows look out on the blue bay and over to the red -roofs of Algeciras across the water on Spanish territory. Tourists -gather to peek from a respectful distance at the mossy front and quaint -ecclesiastic gables of Government House, which has a distinction quite -apart from its use as the home of the governor-general. Once, back in -the dim ages of Spain's glory, it was a monastery, one of the oldest in -the southern tip of the peninsula. When the English came their -practical sense took no heed of the protesting ghosts of the monks, but -converted the monastery into a home for the military head of the -fortress--a little dreary, a shade more melancholy than the accustomed -manor hall at home, but adequate and livable. - -Thither, on the morning after his arrival, Captain Woodhouse went to -report for duty to Major-general Sir George Crandall, Governor of the -Rock. Captain Woodhouse was in uniform--neat service khaki and pith -helmet, which became him mightily. He appeared to have been molded -into the short-skirted, olive-gray jacket; it set on his shoulders with -snug ease. Perhaps, if anything, the uniform gave to his features a -shade more than their wonted sternness, to his body just the least -addition of an indefinable alertness, of nervous acuteness. It was -nine o'clock, and Captain Woodhouse knew it was necessary for him to -pay his duty call on Sir George before the eleven o'clock assembly. - -As the captain emerged from the straggling end of Waterport Street, and -strode through the flowered paths of the Alameda, he did not happen to -see a figure that dodged behind a chevaux-de-frise of Spanish bayonet -on his approach. Billy Capper, who had been pacing the gardens for -more than an hour, fear battling with the predatory impulse that urged -him to Government House, watched Captain Woodhouse pass, and his eyes -narrowed into a queer twinkle of oblique humor. So Captain Woodhouse -had begun to play the game--going to report to the governor, eh? The -pale soul of Mr. Capper glowed with a faint flicker of admiration for -this cool bravery far beyond its own capacity to practise. Capper -waited a safe time, then followed, chose a position outside Government -House from which he could see the main entrance, and waited. - -A tall thin East Indian with a narrow ascetic face under his closely -wound white turban, and wearing a native livery of the same spotless -white, answered the captain's summons on the heavy knocker. He -accepted the visitor's card, showed him into a dim hallway hung with -faded arras and coats of chain mail. The Indian, Jaimihr Khan, gave -Captain Woodhouse a start when he returned to say the governor would -receive him in his office. The man had a tread like a cat's, -absolutely noiseless; he moved through the half light of the hall like -a white wraith. His English was spoken precisely and with a curious -mechanical intonation. - -Jaimihr Khan threw back heavy double doors and announced, "Cap-tain -Wood-house." He had the doors shut noiselessly almost before the -visitor was through them. - -A tall heavy-set man with graying hair and mustache rose from a broad -desk at the right of a large room and advanced with hand outstretched -in cordial welcome. - -"Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service. Welcome to the Rock, -Captain. Need you here. Glad you've come." - -Woodhouse studied the face of his superior in a swift glance as he -shook hands. A broad full face it was, kindly, intelligent, perhaps -not so alert as to the set of eyes and mouth as it had been in younger -days when the stripes of service were still to be won. General Sir -George Crandall gave the impression of a man content to rest on his -honors, though scrupulously attentive to the routine of his position. -He motioned the younger man to draw a chair up to the desk. - -"In yesterday on the _Princess Mary_, I presume, Captain?" - -"Yes, General. Didn't report to you on arrival because I thought it -would be quite tea time and I didn't want to disturb----" - -"Right!" General Crandall tipped back in his swivel chair and -appraised his new officer with satisfaction. "Everything quiet on the -upper Nile? Germans not tinkering with the Mullah yet to start -insurrection or anything like that?" - -"Right as a trivet, sir," Woodhouse answered promptly. "Of course -we're anticipating some such move by the enemy--agents working in from -Erythrea--holy war of a sort, perhaps, but I think our people have -things well in hand." - -"And at Wady Halfa, your former commander----" The general hesitated. - -"Major Bronson-Webb, sir," Woodhouse was quick to supply, but not -without a sharp glance at the older man. - -"Yes--yes; Bronson-Webb--knew him in Rangoon in the late -nineties--mighty decent chap and a good executive. He's standing the -sun, I warrant." - -Captain Woodhouse accepted the cigarette from the general's extended -case. - -"No complaint from him at least, General Crandall. We all get pretty -well baked at Wady, I take it." - -The governor laughed, and tapped a bell on his desk. Jaimihr Khan was -instantly materialized between the double doors. - -"My orderly, Jaimihr," General Crandall ordered, and the doors were -shut once more. The general stretched a hand across the desk. - -"Your papers, please, Captain. I'll receipt your order of transfer and -you'll be a member of our garrison forthwith." - -Captain Woodhouse brought a thin sheaf of folded papers from his breast -pocket and passed it to his superior. He kept his eyes steadily on the -general's face as he scanned them. - -"C. G. Woodhouse--Chief Signal Officer--Ninth Grenadiers--Wady -Halfa----" General Crandall conned the transfer aloud, running his -eyes rapidly down the lines of the form. "Right. Now, Captain, when -my orderly comes----" - -A subaltern entered and saluted. - -"This is Captain Woodhouse." General Crandall indicated Woodhouse, who -had risen. "Kindly conduct him to Major Bishop, who will assign him to -quarters. Captain Woodhouse, we--Lady Crandall and I--will expect you -at Government House soon to make your bow over the teacup. One of Lady -Crandall's inflexible rules for new recruits, you know. Good day, sir." - -Woodhouse, out in the free air again, drew in a long breath and braced -back his shoulders. He accompanied the subaltern over the trails on -the Rock to the quarters of Major Bishop, chief signal officer, under -whom he was to be junior in command. But one regret marked his first -visit to Government House--he had not caught even a glimpse of the -little person calling herself Jane Gerson, buyer. - -But he had missed by a narrow margin. Piloted by Lady Crandall, Jane -had left the vaulted breakfast room for the larger and lighter library, -which Sir George had converted to the purpose of an office. This room -was a sort of holy of holies with Lady Crandall, to be invaded if the -presiding genius could be caught napping or lulled to complaisance. -This morning she had the important necessity of unobstructed light--not -a general commodity about Government House--to urge in defense of -profanation. For her guest carried under her arm a sheaf of plans--by -such sterling architects of women's fancies as Worth and Doeuillet, and -the imp of envy would not allow the governor's wife to have peace until -she had devoured every pattern. She paused in mock horror at the -threshold of her husband's sanctum. - -"But, George, dear, you should be out by this time, you know," Lady -Crandall expostulated. "Miss Gerson and I have something--oh, -tremendously important to do here." She made a sly gesture of -concealing the bundle of stiff drawing paper she carried. General -Crandall, who had risen at the arrival of the two invaders, made a show -at capturing the plans his wife held behind her back. Jane bubbled -laughter at the spectacle of so exalted a military lion at play. The -general possessed himself of the roll, drew a curled scroll from it, -and gravely studied it. - -"Miss Gerson," he said with deliberation, "this looks to me like a plan -of Battery B. I am surprised that you should violate the hospitality -of Government House by doing spy work from its bedroom windows." - -"Foolish! You've got that upside down for one thing," Lady Crandall -chided. "And besides it's only a chart of what the lady of Government -House hopes soon to wear if she can get the goods from Holbein's, on -Regent Street." - -"You see, General Crandall, I'm attacking Government House at its -weakest point," Jane laughed. "Been here less than twelve hours, and -already the most important member of the garrison has surrendered." - -"The American sahib, Reynolds," chanted Jaimihr Khan from the double -doors, and almost at once the breezy consul burst into the room. He -saluted all three with an expansive gesture of the hands. - -"Morning, Governor--morning, Lady Crandall, and same to you, Miss -Gerson. Dear, dear; this is going to be a bad day for me, and it's -just started." The little man was wound up like a sidewalk top, and he -ran on without stopping: - -"General Sherman might have got some real force into his remarks about -war if he'd had a job like mine. Miss Gerson--news! Heard from the -_Saxonia_. Be in harbor some time to-morrow and leave at six sharp -following morning." Jane clapped her hands. "I've wired for -accommodations for all of you--just got the answer. Rotten -accommodations, but--thank Heaven--I won't be able to hear what you say -about me when you're at sea." - -"Anything will do," Jane broke in. "I'm not particular. I want to -sail--that's all." - -The consul looked flustered. - -"Um--that's what I came to see you about, General Crandall." He jerked -his head around toward the governor with a birdlike pertness. "What -are you going to do with this young lady, sir?" Jane waited the answer -breathlessly. - -"Why--um--really, as far as we're concerned," Sir George answered -slowly, "we'd be glad to have her stop here indefinitely. Don't you -agree, Helen?" - -"Of course; but----" - -"It's this way," the consul interrupted Lady Crandall. "I've arranged -to get Miss Gerson aboard, provided, of course, you approve." - -"You haven't got a cable through regarding her?" the general asked. -"Her passports--lost--lot of red tape, of course." - -"Not a line from Paris even," Reynolds answered. "Miss Gerson says the -ambassador could vouch for her, and----" - -"Indeed he could!" Jane started impulsively toward the general. "It -was his wife arranged my motor for me and advanced me money." - -General Crandall looked down into her eager face indulgently. - -"You really are very anxious to sail, Miss Gerson?" - -"General Crandall, I'm not very good at these please-spare-my-lover -speeches," the girl began, her lips tremulous. "But it means a lot to -me--to go; my job, my career. I've fought my way this far, and here I -am--and there's the sea out there. If I can't step aboard the -_Saxonia_ Friday morning it--it will break my heart." - -Gibraltar's master honed his chin thoughtfully for a minute. - -"Um--I'm sure I don't want to break anybody's heart--not at my age, -miss. I see no good reason why I should not let you go if nothing -happens meanwhile to make me change my mind." He beamed good humor on -her. - -"Bless you, General," she cried. "Hildebrand's will mention you in its -advertisements." - -"Heaven forbid!" General Crandall cried in real perturbation. - -Jane turned to Lady Crandall and took both her hands. - -"Come to my room," she urged, with an air of mystery. "You know that -Doeuillet evening gown--the one in blue? It's yours, Lady Crandall. -I'd give another to the general if he'd wear it. Now one fitting -and----" - -Her voice was drowned by Lady Crandall's: "You dear!" - -"Be at the dock at five A.M. Friday to see you and the others off, Miss -Gerson," Reynolds called after her. "Must go now--morning crowd of -busted citizens waiting at the consulate to be fed. Ta-ta!" Reynolds -collided with Jaimihr Khan at the double doors. - -"A young man who wishes to see you, General Sahib. He will give no -name, but he says a promise you made to see him--by telephone an hour -ago." - -"Show Mr. Reynolds out, Jaimihr!" the general ordered. "Then you may -bring the young man in." - -Mr. Billy Capper, who had, in truth, telephoned to Government House and -secured the privilege of an interview even before the arrival of -Woodhouse to report, and had paced the paths of the Alameda since, -blowing hot and cold on his resolutions, followed the soft-footed -Indian into the presence of General Crandall. The little spy was near -a state of nervous breakdown. Following the surprising and unexpected -collapse of his plan to do a murder, he had spent a wakeful and -brandy-punctuated night, his brain on the rack. His desire to play -informer, heightened now a hundred-fold by the flaying tongue of -Louisa, was almost balanced by his fears of resultant consequences. -Cupidity, the old instinct for preying, drove him to impart to the -governor-general of Gibraltar information which, he hoped, would be -worth its weight in gold; Louisa's promise of a party _à deux_ before a -firing squad, which he knew in his heart she would be capable of -arranging in a desperate moment, halted him. After screwing up his -courage to the point of telephoning for an appointment, Capper had -wallowed in fear. He dared not stay away from Government House then -for fear of arousing suspicion; equally he dared not involve the girl -from the Wilhelmstrasse lest he find himself tangled in his own mesh. - -At the desperate moment of his introduction to General Crandall, Capper -determined to play it safe and see how the chips fell. His heart -quailed as he heard the doors shut behind him. - -"Awfully good of you to see me," he babbled as he stood before the -desk, turning his hat brim through his fingers like a prayer wheel. - -General Crandall bade him be seated. "I haven't forgotten you did me a -service in Burma," he added. - -"Oh, yes--of course," Capper managed to answer. "But that was my job. -I got paid for that." - -"You're not with the Brussels secret-service people any longer, then?" - -The question hit Capper hard. His fingers fluttered to his lips. - -"No, General. They--er--let me go. Suppose you heard that--and a lot -of other things about me. That I was a rotter--that I drank----" - -"What I heard was not altogether complimentary," the other answered -judiciously. "I trust it was untrue." - -Capper's embarrassment increased. - -"Well, to tell the truth, General Crandall--ah--I did go to pieces for -a time. I've been playing a pretty short string for the last two -years. But"--he broke off his whine in a sudden accession of -passion--"they can't keep me down much longer. I'm going to show 'em!" - -General Crandall looked his surprise. - -"General, I'm an Englishman. You know that. I may be down and out, -and my old friends may not know me when we meet--but I'm English. And -I'm loyal!" Capper was getting a grip on himself; he thought the -patriotic line a safe one to play with the commander of a fortress. - -"Yes--yes. I don't question that, I'm sure," the general grunted, and -he began to riffle some papers on his desk petulantly. - -Capper pressed home his point. "I just want you to keep that in mind, -General, while I talk. Just remember I'm English--and loyal." - -The governor nodded impatiently. - -Capper leaned far over the desk, and began in an eager whisper: - -"General, remember Cook--that chap in Rangoon--the polo player?" The -other looked blank. "Haven't forgotten him, General? How he lived in -Burma two years, mingling with the English, until one day somebody -discovered his name was Koch and that he was a mighty unhealthy chap to -have about the fortifications. Surely----" - -"Yes, I remember him now. But what----" - -"There was Hollister, too. You played billiards in your club with -Hollister, I fancy. Thought him all right, too--until a couple of -secret-service men walked into the club one day and clapped handcuffs -on him. Remember that, General?" - -The commander exclaimed snappishly that he could not see his visitor's -drift. - -"I'm just refreshing your memory, General," Capper hastened to -reassure. "Just reminding you that there isn't much difference between -a German and an Englishman, after all--if the German wants to play the -Englishman and knows his book. He can fool a lot of us." - -"Granted. But I don't see what all this has to do with----" - -"Listen, General!" Capper was trembling in his eagerness. "I'm just -in from Alexandria--came on the _Princess Mary_. There was an -Englishman aboard, bound for Gib. Name was Captain Woodhouse, of the -signal service." - -"Quite right. What of that?" General Crandall looked up suspiciously. - -"Have you seen Captain Woodhouse, General?" - -"Not a half hour ago. He called to report." - -"Seemed all right to you--this Woodhouse?" Capper eyed the other's -face narrowly. - -"Of course. Why not?" - -"Remember Cook, General! Remember Hollister!" Capper warned. - -General Crandall exploded irritably: "What the devil do you mean? What -are you driving at, man?" - -The little spy leaped to his feet in his excitement and thrust his -weasel face far across the desk. - -"What do I mean? I mean this chap who calls himself Woodhouse isn't -Woodhouse at all. He's a German spy--from the Wilhelmstrasse--with a -number from the Wilhelmstrasse! He's on the Rock to do a spy's work!" - -[Illustration: "He's a German spy."] - -"Pshaw! Why did Brussels let you go?" General Crandall tipped back in -his seat and cast an amused glance at the flushed face before him. - -Capper shook his head doggedly. "I'm not drunk, General Crandall. I'm -so broke I couldn't get drunk if I would. So help me, I'm telling -God's truth. I got it straight----" - -Capper checked his tumult of words, and did some rapid thinking. How -much did he dare reveal! "In Alexandria, General--got it there--from -the inside, sir. Koch is the head of the Wilhelmstrasse crowd -there--the same Cook you knew in Rangoon; he engineered the trick. The -wildest dreams of the Wilhelmstrasse have come true. They've got a man -in your signal tower, General--in your signal tower!" - -General Crandall, in whom incredulity was beginning to give way to the -first faint glimmerings of conviction as to the possibility of truth in -the informer's tale, rallied himself nevertheless to combat an -aspersion cast on a British officer. - -"Suppose the Germans have a spy in my signal tower or anywhere here," -he began argumentatively. "Suppose they learn every nook and corner of -the Rock--have the caliber and range of every gun in our defense; they -couldn't capture Gibraltar in a thousand years." - -"I don't know what they want," Capper returned, with the injured air of -a man whose worth fails of recognition. "I only came here to warn you -that your Captain Woodhouse is taking orders from Berlin." - -"Come--come, man! Give me some proof to back up this cock-and-bull -story," General Crandall snapped. He had risen, and was pacing -nervously back and forth. - -Capper was secretly elated at this sign that his story had struck home. -He stilled the fluttering of his hands by an effort, and tried to bring -his voice to the normal. - -"Here it is, General--all I've got of the story. The real Woodhouse -comes down from somewhere up in the Nile--I don't know where--and puts -up for the night in Alexandria to wait for the _Princess Mary_. No -friends in the town, you know; nowhere to visit. Three Wilhelmstrasse -men in Alexandria, headed by that clever devil Cook, or Koch, who calls -himself a doctor now. Somehow they get hold of the real Woodhouse and -do for him--what I don't know--probably kill the poor devil. - -"General, I saw with my own eyes an unconscious British officer being -carried away from Koch's house in Ramleh in an automobile--two men with -him." Capper fixed the governor with a lean index finger dramatically. -"And I saw the man you just this morning received as Captain Woodhouse -leave Doctor Koch's house five minutes after that poor devil--the real -Woodhouse--had been carried off. That's the reason I took the same -boat with him to Gibraltar, General Crandall--because I'm loyal and it -was my duty to warn you." - -"Incredible!" - -"One thing more, General." Capper was sorely tempted, but for the -minute his wholesome fear of consequences curbed his tongue. -"Woodhouse isn't working alone on the Rock; you can be sure of that. -He's got friends to help him turn whatever trick he's after--maybe in -this very house. They're clever people, you can mark that down on your -slate!" - -"Ridiculous!" The keeper of the Rock was fighting not to believe now. -"Why, I tell you if they had a hundred of their spies inside the -lines--if they knew the Rock as well as I do they could never take it." - -Capper rose wearily, the air of a misunderstood man on him. - -"Perhaps they aren't trying to capture it. I know nothing about that. -Well--I've done my duty--as one Englishman to another. I hope I've -told you in time. I'll be going now." - -General Crandall swung on him sharply. "Where are you going?" he -demanded. - -Capper shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. Now was the minute he'd been -counting on--the peeling of crackling notes from a fat bundle, the -handsome words of appreciation. Surely General Crandall was ripe. - -"Well, General, frankly--I'm broke. Haven't a shilling to bless myself -with. I thought perhaps----" Capper shot a keen glance at the older -man's face, which was partly turned from him. The general appeared to -be pondering. He turned abruptly on the spy. - -"A few drinks and you might talk," he challenged. - -Capper grinned deprecatively. "I don't know, General--I might," he -murmured. "I've been away from the drink so long that----" - -"Where do you want to go?" General Crandall cut him off. "Of course, -you don't want to stay here indefinitely." - -"Well--if I had a bit of money--they tell me everybody's broke in -Paris. Millionaires--and everybody, you know. You can get a room at -the Ritz for the asking. That would be heaven for me--if I had -something in my pocket." - -"You want to go to Paris, eh?" General Crandall stepped closer to -Capper, and his eyes narrowed in scorn. - -"If it could be arranged, yes, General." Capper was spinning the brim -of his bowler between nervous fingers. He did not dare meet the -other's glance. - -"Demmit, Capper! You come here to blackmail me! I've met your kind -before. I know how to deal with your ilk." - -"So help me, General, I came here to tell you the truth. I want to go -to Paris--or anywhere away from here; I'll admit that. But that had -nothing to do with my coming all the way here from Alexandria--spending -my last guinea on a steamer ticket--to warn you of your danger. I'm an -Englishman and--loyal!" Capper was pleading now. All hope of reward -had sped and the vision of a cell with subsequent investigations into -his own record appalled him. General Crandall sat down at his desk and -began to write. - -"I don't know--at any rate, I can't have you talking around here. -You're going to Paris." - -Capper dropped his hat. At a tap of the bell, Jaimihr Khan appeared at -the doors, so suddenly that one might have said he was right behind -them all the time. General Crandall directed that his orderly be -summoned. When the subaltern appeared, the general handed him a sealed -note. - -"Orderly, turn this gentleman over to Sergeant Crosby at once," he -commanded, "and give the sergeant this note." Then to Capper: "You -will cross to Algeciras, where you will be put on a train for Madrid. -You will have a ticket for Paris and twenty shillings for expense en -route. You will be allowed to talk to no one alone before you leave -Gibraltar, and under no circumstances will you be allowed to -return--not while I am governor-general, at least." - -Capper, his face alight with new-found joy, turned to pass out with the -orderly. He paused at the doorway to frame a speech of thanks, but -General Crandall's back was toward him. "Paris!" he sighed in rapture, -and the doors closed behind him. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -HER COUNTRY'S EXAMPLE - -"Do you know, my dear, Cynthia Maxwell is simply going to die with envy -when she sees me in this!" - -The plump little mistress of Government House, standing before a -full-length mirror, in her boudoir, surveyed herself with intense -satisfaction. Her arms and neck burst startlingly from the clinging -sheath of the incomparable Doeuillet gown that was Jane Gerson's -douceur for official protection; in the flood of morning light pouring -through the mullioned windows Lady Crandall seemed a pink and -white--and somewhat florid--lily in bloom out of time. Hildebrand's -buyer, on her knees and with deft fingers busy with the soft folds of -the skirt, answered through a mouthful of pins: - -"Poor Cynthia; my heart goes out to her." - -"Oh, it needn't!" Lady Crandall answered, with a tilting of her -strictly Iowa style nose. "The Maxwell person has made me bleed more -than once here on the Rock with the gowns a fond mama sends her from -Paris. But, honestly, isn't this a bit low for a staid middle-aged -person like myself? I'm afraid I'll have trouble getting my precious -Doeuillet past the censor." Lady Crandall plumed herself with secret -joy. - -Jane looked up, puzzled. - -"Oh, that's old Lady Porter--a perfect dragon," the general's wife -rattled on. "Poor old dear; she thinks the Lord put her on the Rock -for a purpose. Her own collars get higher and higher. I believe if -she ever was presented at court she'd emulate the old Scotch lady who -followed the law of décolleté, but preserved her self-respect by -wearing a red flannel chest protector. You must meet her." - -"I'm afraid I won't have time to get a look at your dragon," Jane -returned, with a little laugh, all happiness. "Now that Sir George has -promised me I can sail on the _Saxonia_ Friday----" - -"You really must----" The envious eyes of Lady Crandall fell on the -pile of plans--potent Delphic mysteries to charm the heart of -woman--that lay scattered about upon the floor. - -Jane sat back on her heels and surveyed the melting folds of satin with -an artist's eye. - -"If you only knew--what it means to me to get back with my baskets full -of French beauties! Why, when I screwed up my courage two months ago -to go to old Hildebrand and ask him to send me abroad as his buyer--I'd -been studying drawing and French at nights for three years in -preparation, you see--he roared like the dear old lion he is and said I -was too young. But I cooed and pleaded, and at last he said I could -come--on trial, and so----" - -"He'll purr like a pussy-cat when you get back," Lady Crandall put in, -with a pat on the brown head at her knees. - -"Maybe. If I can slip into New York with my little baskets while all -the other buyers are still over here, cabling tearfully for money to -get home or asking their firms to send a warship to fetch them--why, I -guess the pennant's mine all right." - -The eternal feminine, so strong in Iowa's transplanted stock, prompted -a mischievous question: - -"Then you won't be leaving somebody behind when you sail--somebody who -seemed awfully nice and--_foreigny_ and all that? All our American -girls find the moonlight over on this side infectious. Witness me--a -'finishing trip' abroad after school days--and see where I've -finished--on a Rock!" Lady Crandall bubbled laughter. A shrewd -downward sweep of her eye was just in time to catch a flush mounting to -Jane's cheeks. - -"Well, a Mysterious Stranger has crossed my path," Jane admitted. "He -was very nice, but mysterious." - -"Oh!" A delighted gurgle from the older woman. "Tell me all about -it--a secret for these ancient walls to hear." - -Jane was about to reply when second thought checked her tongue. Before -her flashed that strange meeting with Captain Woodhouse the night -before--his denial of their former meeting, followed by his curious -insistence on her keeping faith with him by not revealing the fact of -their acquaintance. She had promised--why she had promised she could -no more divine than the reason for his asking; but a promise it was -that she would not betray his confidence. More than once since that -minute in the reception room of the Hotel Splendide Jane Gerson had -reviewed the whole baffling circumstance in her mind and a growing -resentment at this stranger's demand, as well as at her own compliance -with it, was rising in her heart. Still, this Captain Woodhouse was -"different," and--this Jane sensed without effort to analyze--the -mystery which he threw about himself but served to set him apart from -the common run of men. She evaded Lady Crandall's probing with a shrug -of the shoulders. - -"It's a secret which I myself do not know, Lady Crandall--and never -will." - -Back to the o'erweening lure of the gown the flitting fancy of the -general's lady betook itself. - -"You--don't think this is a shade too young for me, Miss Gerson?" -Anxiety pleaded to be quashed. - -"Nonsense!" Jane laughed. - -"But I'm no chicken, my dear. If you would look me up in our family -Bible back in Davenport you'd find----" - -"People don't believe everything they read in the Bible any more," Jane -assured her. "Your record and Jonah's would both be open to doubt." - -"You're very comforting," Lady Crandall beamed. Her maid knocked and -entered on the lady's crisp: "Come!" - -"The general wishes to see you, Lady Crandall, in the library." - -"Tell the general I'm in the midst of trying on----" Lady Crandall -began, then thought better of her excuse. She dropped the shimmering -gown from her shoulders and slipped into a kimono. - -"Some stuffy plan for entertaining somebody or other, my dear"--this to -Jane. "The real burden of being governor-general of the Rock falls on -the general's wife. Just slip into your bonnet, and when I'm back -we'll take that little stroll through the Alameda I've promised you for -this morning." She clutched her kimono about her and whisked out of -the room. - -General Crandall, just rid of the dubious pleasure of Billy Capper's -company, was pacing the floor of the library office thoughtfully. He -looked up with a smile at his wife's entrance. - -"Helen, I want you to do something for me," he said. - -"Certainly, dear." Lady Crandall was not an unpleasing picture of ripe -beauty to look on, in the soft drape of her Japanese robe. Even in his -worry, General Crandall found himself intrigued for the minute. - -"There's a new chap in the signal service--just in from Egypt--name's -Woodhouse. I wish you would invite him to tea, my dear." - -"Of course; any day." - -"This afternoon, if you please, Helen," the general followed. - -His wife looked slightly puzzled. - -"This afternoon? But, George, dear, isn't that--aren't -you--ah--rushing this young man to have him up to Government House so -soon after his arrival?" She suddenly remembered something that caused -her to reverse herself. "Besides, I've asked him to dinner--the dinner -I'm to give the Americans to-morrow night before they sail." - -General Crandall looked his surprise. - -"You didn't tell me that. I didn't know you had met him." - -"Just happened to," Lady Crandall cut in hastily. "Met him at the -Hotel Splendide last night when I brought Miss Gerson home with me." - -"What was Woodhouse doing at the Splendide?" the general asked -suspiciously. - -"Why, spending the night, you foolish boy. Just off the _Princess -Mary_, he was. I believe he did Miss Gerson some sort of a -service--and I met him in that way--quite informally." - -"Did Miss Gerson--a service--hum!" - -"Oh, a trifling thing! It seemed she had only French money, and that -cautious Almer fellow wouldn't accept it. Captain Woodhouse gave her -English gold for it--to pay her bill. But why----" - -"Has Miss Gerson seen him since?" General Crandall asked sharply. - -"Why, George, dear, how could she? We haven't been up from the -breakfast table an hour." - -"Woodhouse was here less than an hour ago to pay his duty call and -report," he explained. "I thought perhaps he might have met our guest -somewhere in the garden as he was coming or going." - -"He did send her some lovely roses." Lady Crandall brightened at this, -to her, patent inception of a romance; she doted on romances. "They -were in Miss Gerson's room before she was down to breakfast." - -"Roses, eh? And they met informally at the Splendide only last night." -Suspicion was weighing the general's words. "Isn't that a bit sudden? -I say, do you think Miss Gerson and this Captain Woodhouse had met -somewhere before last night?" - -"I hardly think so--she on her first trip to the Continent and he -coming from Egypt. But----" - -"No matter. I want him here to tea this afternoon." The general -dismissed the subject and turned to his desk. His lady's curiosity -would not be so lightly turned away. - -"All these questions--aren't they rather absurd? Is anything wrong?" -She ran up to him and laid her hands on his shoulders. - -"Of course not, dear." He kissed her lightly on the brow. "Now run -along and play with that new gown Miss Gerson gave you. I imagine -that's the most important thing on the Rock to-day." - -Lady Crandall gave her soldier-husband a peck on each cheek, and -slapped back to her room. When he was alone again, General Crandall -resumed his restless pacing. Resolution suddenly crystallized, and he -stepped to the desk telephone. He called a number. - -"That you, Bishop? ... General Crandall speaking.... Bishop, you were -here on the Rock seven years ago? ... Good! ... Pretty good memory for -names and faces, eh? ... Right! ... I want you to come to Government -House for tea at five this afternoon.... But run over for a little -talk with me some time earlier--an hour from now, say. Rather -important.... You'll be here.... Thank you." - -General Crandall sat at his desk and tried to bring himself down to the -routine crying from accumulated papers there. But the canker Billy -Capper had implanted in his mind would not give him peace. -Major-general Crandall was a man cast in the stolid British mold; years -of army discipline and tradition of the service had given to his -conservatism a hard grain. In common with most of those in high -command, he held to the belief that nothing existed--nothing could -exist--which was not down in the regulations of the war office, made -and provided. For upward of twenty-five years he had played the hard -game of the service--in Egypt, in Burma, on the broiling rocks of Aden, -and here, at last, on the key to the Mediterranean. During all those -years he had faithfully pursued his duty, had stowed away in his mind -the wisdom disseminated in blue-bound books by that corporate paragon -of knowledge at home, the war office. But never had he read in -anything but fluffy fiction of a place or a thing called the -Wilhelmstrasse, reputed by the scriveners to be the darkest closet and -the most potent of all the secret chambers of diplomacy. The -regulations made no mention of a Wilhelmstrasse, even though they -provided the brand of pipe clay that should brighten men's pith helmets -and stipulated to the ounce an emergency ration. Therefore, to the -official military mind at least, the Wilhelmstrasse was non-existent. - -But here comes a beach-comber, a miserable jackal from the back alleys -of society, and warns the governor-general of the Rock that he has a -man from the Wilhelmstrasse--a spy bent on some unfathomable -mission--in his very forces on the Rock. He says that an agent of the -enemy has dared masquerade as a British officer in order to gain -admission inside the lines of Europe's most impregnable fortress, -England's precious stronghold, there to do mischief! - -General Crandall's tremendous responsibility would not permit him to -ignore such a warning, coming even from so low a source. Yet the man -found himself groping blindly in the dark before the dilemma presented; -he had no foot rule of precept or experience to guide him. - -His fruitless searching for a prop in emergency was broken by the -appearance of Jane Gerson in the door opening from Lady Crandall's -rooms to the right of the library. The girl was dressed for the -out-of-doors; in her arms was a fragrant bunch of blood-red roses, -spraying out from the top of a bronze bowl. The girl hesitated and -drew back in confusion at seeing the room occupied; she seemed eager to -escape undetected. But General Crandall smilingly checked her flight. - -"I--I thought you would be out," Jane stammered, "and----" - -"And the posies----" the general interrupted. - -"Were for you to enjoy when you should come back." She smiled easily -into the man's eyes. "They'll look so much prettier here than in my -room." - -"Very good of you, I'm sure." General Crandall stepped up to the rich -cluster of buds and sniffed critically. Without looking at the girl, -he continued: "It appears to me as though you had already made a -conquest on the Rock. One doesn't pick these from the cliffs, you -know." - -"I should hardly call it a conquest," Jane answered, with a sprightly -toss of her head. - -"But a young man sent you these flowers. Come--confess!" The -general's tone was bantering, but his eyes did not leave the piquant -face under the chic summer straw hat that shaded it. - -"Surely. One of your own men--Captain Woodhouse, of the signal -service." Jane was rearranging the stems in the bowl, apparently ready -to accept what was on the surface of the general's rallying. - -"Woodhouse, eh? You've known him for a long time, I take it." - -"Since last night, General. And yet some people say Englishmen are -slow." She laughed gaily and turned to face him. His voice took on a -subtle quality of polite insistence: - -"Surely you met him somewhere before Gibraltar." - -"How could I, when this is the first time Captain Woodhouse has been -out of Egypt for years?" - -"Who told you that?" The general was quick to catch her up. The girl -felt a swift stab of fear. On the instant she realized that here was -somebody attempting to drive into the mystery which she herself could -not understand, but which she had pledged herself to keep inviolate. -Her voice fluttered in her throat as she answered: - -"Why, he did himself, General." - -"He did, eh? Gave you a bit of his history on first meeting. -Confiding chap, what! But you, Miss Gerson--you've been to Egypt, you -say?" - -"No, General." - -Jane was beginning to find this cross-examination distinctly painful. -She felt that already her pledge, so glibly given at Captain -Woodhouse's insistence, was involving her in a situation the -significance of which might prove menacing to herself--and one other. -She could sense the beginnings of a strain between herself and this -genial elderly gentleman, her host. - -"Do you know, Miss Gerson"--he was speaking soberly now--"I believe you -and Captain Woodhouse have met before." - -"You're at liberty to think anything you like, General--the truth or -otherwise." Her answer, though given smilingly, had a sting behind it. - -"I'm not going to think much longer. I'm going to _know_!" He clapped -his lips shut over the last word with a smack of authority. - -"Are you really, General Crandall?" The girl's eyes hardened just -perceptibly. He took a turn of the room and paused, facing her. The -situation pleased him no more than it did his breezy guest, but he knew -his duty and doggedly pursued it. - -"Come--come, Miss Gerson! I believe you're straightforward and sincere -or I wouldn't be wasting my time this way. I'll be the same with you. -This is a time of war; you understand all that implies, I hope. A -serious question concerning Captain Woodhouse's position here has -arisen. If you have met him before--as I think you have--it will be to -your advantage to tell me where and when. I am in command of the Rock, -you know." - -He finished with an odd tenseness of tone that conveyed assurance of -his authority even more than did the sense of his words. His guest, -her back to the table on which the roses rested and her hands bracing -her by their tense grip on the table edge, sought his eyes boldly. - -"General Crandall," she began, "my training in Hildebrand's store -hasn't made me much of a diplomat. All this war and intrigue makes me -dizzy. But I know one thing: this isn't my war, or my country's, and -I'm going to follow my country's example and keep out of it." - -General Crandall shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the girl's -defiance. - -"Maybe your country may not be able to do that," he declared, with a -touch of solemnity. "I pray God it may. But I'm afraid your -resolution will not hold, Miss Gerson." - -"I'm going to try to make it, anyway," she answered. - -Gibraltar's commander, baffled thus by a neutral--a neutral fair to -look on, in the bargain--tried another tack. He assumed the fatherly -air. - -"Lady Crandall and I have tried to show you we were friends--tried to -help you get home," he began. - -"You've been very good to me," Jane broke in feelingly. - -"What I say now is spoken as a friend, not as governor of the Rock. If -it is true that you have met Woodhouse before--and our conversation -here verifies my suspicion--that very fact makes his word worthless and -releases you from any promise you may have made not to reveal this and -what you may know about him. Also it should put you on your guard--his -motives in any attentions he may pay you can not be above suspicion." - -"I think that is a personal matter I am perfectly capable of handling." -Jane's resentment sent the flags to her cheeks. - -General Crandall was quick to back-water: "Yes, yes! Don't -misunderstand me. What I mean to say is----" - -He was interrupted by his wife's voice calling for Jane from the -near-by room. Anticipating her interruption, he hurried on: - -"For the present, Miss Gerson, we'll drop this matter. I said a few -minutes ago I intended shortly to--_know_. I hope I won't have to -carry out that--threat." - -Jane was withdrawing one of the buds from the jar. At his last word, -she dropped it with a little gasp. - -"Threat, General?" - -"I hope not. Truly I hope not. But, young woman----" - -She stooped, picked up the flower, and was setting it in his buttonhole -before he could remonstrate. - -"This one was for you, General," she said, and the truce was sealed. -That minute, Lady Crandall was wafted into the room on the breeze of -her own staccato interruption. - -"What's this--what's this! Flirting with poor old George--pinning a -rose on my revered husband when my back's turned? Brazen miss. I'm -here to take you off to the gardens at once, where you can find -somebody younger--and not near so dear--to captivate with your tricks. -At once, now!" - -She had her arm through Jane's and was marching her off. An exchange -of glances between the governor and Hildebrand's young diplomat of the -dollar said that what had passed between them was a confidence. - -Jaimihr Khan announced Major Bishop to the general a short time later. -The major, a rotund pink-faced man of forty, who had the appearance of -being ever tubbed and groomed to the pink of parade perfection, saluted -his superior informally, accepted a cigarette and crossed his plump -legs in an easy chair near the general's desk. General Crandall folded -his arms on his desk and went direct to his subject: - -"Major, you were here on the Rock seven years ago, you say?" - -"Here ten years, General. Regular rock scorpion--old-timer." - -"Do you happen to recall this chap Woodhouse whom I sent to you to -report for duty in the signal tower to-day? Has transfer papers from -Wady Halfa." - -"Haven't met him yet, though Captain Carson tells me he reported at my -office a little more than an hour ago--see him after parade. -Woodhouse--Woodhouse----" The major propped his chin on his fingers in -thought. - -"His papers--army record and all that--say he was here on the Rock for -three months in the spring of nineteen-seven," General Crandall urged, -to refresh the other's memory. - -Major Bishop stroked his round cheeks, tugged at one ear, but found -recollection difficult. - -"When I see the chap--so many coming and going, you know. Three -months--bless me! That's a thin slice out of ten years." - -"Major, I'm going to take you into my confidence," the senior officer -began; then he related the incident of Capper's visit and repeated the -charge he had made. Bishop sat aghast at the word "spy." - -"Woodhouse will be here to tea this afternoon," continued Crandall. -"While you and I ask him a few leading questions, I'll have Jaimihr, my -Indian, search his room in barracks. I trust Jaimihr implicitly, and -he can do the job smoothly. Now, Bishop, what do you remember about -nineteen-seven--something we can lead up to in conversation, you know?" - -The younger man knuckled his brow for a minute, then looked up brightly. - -"I say, General, Craigen was governor then. But--um--aren't you a -bit--mild; this asking of a suspected spy to tea?" - -"What can I do?" the other replied, somewhat testily. "I can't clap an -officer of his majesty's army into prison on the mere say-so of a -drunken outcast who has no proof to offer. I must go slowly, Major. -Watch for a slip from this Woodhouse. One bad move on his part, and he -starts on his way to face a firing squad." - -Bishop had risen and was slowly pacing the room, his eyes on the walls, -hung with many portraits in oils. - -"Well, you can't help admiring the nerve of the chap," he muttered, -half to himself. "Forcing his way on to the Rock--why, he might as -well put his head in a cannon's mouth." - -"I haven't time to admire," the general said shortly. "Thing to do is -to act." - -"Quite right. Nineteen-seven, eh? Um----" - -He paused before the portrait of a young woman in a Gainsborough hat -and with a sparkling piquant face. "By George, General, why not try -him on Lady Evelyn? There's a fair test for you, now!" - -"You mean Craigen's wife?" The general looked up at the portrait -quizzically. "Skeleton's bones, Bishop." - -"Right; but no man who ever saw her could forget. I know I never can. -Poor Craigen!" - -"Good idea, though," the older man acquiesced. "We'll trip him on Lady -Evelyn." - -Jaimihr Khan appeared at the double doors. "The general sahib's -orderly," he announced. The young subaltern entered and saluted. - -"That young man, General Crandall, the one Sergeant Crosby was to -escort out of the lines to Algeciras----" - -"Well, what of him? He's gone, I hope." - -"First train to Madrid, General; but he left a message for you, sir, to -be delivered after he'd gone, he said." - -"A message?" General Crandall was perplexed. - -"As Sergeant Crosby had it and gave it to me to repeat to you, sir, it -was, 'Arrest the cigar girl calling herself Josepha. She is one of the -cleverest spies of the Wilhelmstrasse.'" - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -ENTER, A CIGARETTE - -Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Waterport -Street, was absorbed, heart and soul, in a curious task. He was -emptying the powder from two-grain quinine capsules on to a sheet of -white letter paper on his desk. - -It was noon of Wednesday, the day following the arrival of Captain -Woodhouse. Almer was alone in the hotel's reception room and office -behind the dingy glass partially enclosing his desk. His -alpaca-covered shoulders were close to his ears; and his bald head, -with its stripes of plastered hair running like thick lines of latitude -on a polished globe, was held far forward so as to bring his eyes on -the work in hand. Like some plump magpie he appeared, turning over -bits of china in a treasure hole. - -A round box of the gelatine cocoons lay at his left hand; it had just -been delivered by an Arab boy, quick to pick up the street commission -for a tuppence. Very methodically Almer picked the capsules from the -box one by one, opened them, and spilled the quinine in a little heap -under his nose. He grunted peevishly when the sixth shell had been -emptied. The seventh capsule brought an eager whistle to his lips. -When he had jerked the concentric halves apart, very little powder fell -out. Instead, the thin, folded edges of a pellet of rice paper -protruded from one of the containers. This Almer had extracted in an -instant. He spread it against the black back of a ledger and read the -very fine script written thereon. This was the message: - - -"Danger. An informer from Alexandria has denounced our two friends to -Crandall. You must warn; I can not." - - -The spy's heart was suddenly drained, and the wisp of paper in his hand -trembled so that it scattered the quinine about in a thin cloud. Once -more he read the note, then held a match to it and scuffed its feathery -ash with his feet into the rug beneath his stool. The fortitude which -had held Joseph Almer to the Rock in the never-failing hope that some -day would bring him the opportunity to do a great service for the -fatherland came near crumbling that minute. He groaned. - -"Our friends," he whispered, "Woodhouse and Louisa--trapped!" - -The warning in the note left nothing open to ambiguity for Almer; there -were but four of them--"friends" under the Wilhelmstrasse fellowship of -danger--there in Gibraltar: Louisa, the man who passed as Woodhouse, -and whose hand was to execute the great coup when the right moment -came, himself, and that other one whose place was in Government House -itself. From this latter the note of warning had come. How desperate -the necessity for it Almer could guess when he took into reckoning the -dangers that beset any attempt at communication on the writer's part. -So narrow the margin of safety for this "friend" that he must look at -each setting sun as being reasonably the last for him. - -Almer did not attempt to go behind the note and guess who was the -informer that had lodged information with the governor-general. He had -forgotten, in fact, the incident of the night before, when the -blustering Capper called the newly arrived Woodhouse by name. The -flash of suspicion that attached responsibility to the American girl -named Gerson was dissipated as quickly as it came; she had arrived by -motor from Paris, not on the boat from Alexandria. His was now the -imperative duty to carry warning to the two suspected, not to waste -time in idle speculation as to the identity of the betrayer. There was -but one ray of hope in this sudden pall of gloom, and that Almer -grasped eagerly. He knew the character of General Crandall--the -phlegmatic conservatism of the man, which would not easily be jarred -out of an accustomed line of thought and action. The general would be -slow to leap at an accusation brought against one wearing the stripes -of service; and, though he might reasonably attempt to test Captain -Woodhouse, one such as Woodhouse, chosen by the Wilhelmstrasse to -accomplish so great a mission, would surely have the wit to parry -suspicion. - -Yes, he must be put on his guard. As for Louisa--well, it would be too -bad if the girl should have to put her back against a wall; but she -could be spared; she was not essential. After he had succeeded in -getting word of his danger to Woodhouse, Almer would consider saving -Louisa from a firing squad. The nimble mind of Herr Almer shook itself -free from the incubus of dread and leaped to the exigency of the -moment. Calling his head waiter to keep warm the chair behind the -desk, Almer retired to his room, and there was exceedingly busy for -half an hour. - -The hour of parade during war time on Gibraltar was one o'clock. At -that time, six days a week, the half of the garrison not actually in -fighting position behind the great guns of the defense marched to the -parade grounds down by the race track and there went through the -grilling regimen that meant perfection and the maintenance of a -hair-trigger state of efficiency. Down from the rocky eminences where -the barracks stood, marched this day block after block of olive-drab -fighting units--artillerymen for the most part, equipped with the rifle -and pack of infantrymen. No blare of brass music gave the measure to -their step; bandsmen in this time of reality paced two by two, -stretchers carried between them. All the curl and snap of silken -banners that made the parade a moving spectacle in ordinary times was -absent; flags do not figure in the grim modern business of warfare. -Just those solid blocks of men trained to kill, sweeping down on to the -level grounds and massing, rank on rank, for inspection and the -trip-hammer pound-pound-pound of evolutions to follow. Silent integers -of power, flexing their muscles for the supreme test that any morning's -sun might bring. - -Mr. Henry J. Sherman stood with his wife, Kitty and Willy -Kimball--Kimball had developed a surprising interest in one of these -home folks, at least--under the shade of the row of plane trees -fringing the parade grounds. They tried to persuade themselves that -they were seeing something worth while. This pleasing fiction wore -thin with Mr. Sherman before fifteen minutes had passed. - -"Shucks, mother! The boys at the national-guard encampment down to -Galesburg fair last year made a better showing than this." He pursed -out his lips and regarded a passing battalion with a critical eye. - -"Looked more like soldiers, anyway," mother admitted. "Those floppy, -broad-brimmed hats our boys wear make them look more--more romantic, -I'd say." - -"But, my dear Mrs. Sherman"--Willy Kimball flicked his handkerchief -from his cuff and fluttered it across his coat sleeve, where dust had -fallen--"the guards back in the States are play soldiers, you know; -these chaps, here--well, they are the real thing. They don't dress up -like picture-book soldiers and show off----" - -"Play soldiers--huh!" Henry J. had fire in his eye, and the pearl -buttons on his white linen waistcoat creaked with the swelling of a -patriot's pride. "You've been a long time from home, Willy. Perhaps -you've forgotten that your own father was at Corinth. Guess you've -overlooked that soldiers' monument in Courthouse Square back in little -old Kewanee. They were 'play soldiers,' eh?--those boys who marched -away with your dad in sixty-one. Gimme a regiment of those old boys in -blue, and they could lick this whole bunch of----" - -"Father!" Kitty had flipped her hand over her parent's mouth, her eyes -round with real fear. "You'll get arrested again, talking that way -here where everybody can hear you. Remember what that hotel man said -last night about careless remarks about military things on the Rock? -Be good, father." - -"There, there!" Sherman removed the monitory hand and patted it -reassuringly. "I forgot. But when I get aboard the _Saxonia_ and well -out to sea, I'm going to just bust information about what I think of -things in general over here in this Europe place--their Bottycelly -pictures and their broken-down churches and--and---- Why, bless my -soul! The little store buyer and that Iowa girl who's married to the -governor here!" - -The patriot stopped short in his review of the Continent's -delinquencies to wave his hat at Lady Crandall and Jane Gerson, who -were trundling down under the avenue of planes in a smart dog-cart. -Lady Crandall answered his hail with a flourish of her whip, turned her -horse off the road, and brought her conveyance to a stop by the group -of exiles. Hearty greetings passed around. The governor's wife showed -her unaffected pleasure at the meeting. - -"I thought you wouldn't miss the parade," she called down from her high -seat. "Only thing that moves on the Rock--these daily reviews. -Brought Miss Gerson down here so when she gets back to New York she can -say she's seen the defenders of Gibraltar, if not in action, at least -doing their hard training for it." - -"Well, I don't mind tellin' you," Sherman began defiantly, "I think the -national guard of Illynoy can run circles around these Englishmen when -it comes to puttin' up a show. Now, Kitty, don't you try to drive a -plug in your dad's sentiments again; Mrs. Crandall's all right--one of -us." A shocked look from his daughter. "Oh, there I go again, -forgettin'. Lady Crandall, I mean. Excuse me, ma'am." - -"Don't you dare apologize," the governor's wife playfully threatened -Mr. Sherman with her whip. "I love the sound of good, old-fashioned -'Missis.' Just imagine--married five years, and nobody has called me -'Mrs. Crandall' until you did just now. 'Wedded, But Not a Missis'; -wouldn't that be a perfectly gorgeous title for a Laura Jean novel? -Miss Gerson, let's hop out and join these home folks; they're my kind." - -The burst of laughter that greeted Lady Crandall's sally was not over -before she had leaped nimbly from her high perch, Henry J. gallantly -assisting. Jane followed, and the coachman from his little bob seat in -the back drove the dog-cart over the road to wait his mistress' -pleasure. The scattered blocks of olive-gray on the field had -coalesced into a solid regiment now, and the long double rank of men -was sweeping forward like the cutting arm of a giant mower. The party -of Americans joined the sparse crowd of spectators at the edge of the -field, the better to see. Jane Gerson found herself chatting with -Willy Kimball and Kitty Sherman a little apart from the others. A -light touch fell on her elbow. She turned to find Almer, the hotel -keeper, smiling deferentially. - -"Pardon--a thousand pardons for the intrusion, lady. I am Almer, of -the Hotel Splendide." - -"You haven't remembered something more I owe you," Jane challenged -bruskly. - -"Oh, no, lady!" Almer spread out his hands. "I happened to see you -here watching the parade, and I remembered a trivial duty I have which, -if I may be so bold as to ask, you may discharge much more quickly than -I--if you will." - -"I discharge a duty--for you?" The girl did not conceal her -puzzlement. Almer's hand fumbled in a pocket of his flapping alpaca -coat and produced a plain silver cigarette case, unmonogrammed. She -looked at it wonderingly. - -"Captain Woodhouse--you met him at my hotel last night, lady. He left -this lying on his dresser when he quit his room to go to barracks -to-day. For me it is difficult to send a messenger with it to the -barracks--war time, lady--many restrictions inside the lines. I came -here hoping perhaps to see the captain after the parade. But you----" - -"You wish me to give this to Captain Woodhouse?" Jane finished, a -flicker of annoyance crossing her face. "Why me?" - -"You are at Government House, lady. Captain Woodhouse comes to -tea--all newcomers to the garrison do that. If you would be so -good----" - -Jane took the cigarette case from Almer's outstretched hand. Lady -Crandall had told her the captain would be in for tea that afternoon. -It was a small matter, this accommodation, as long as Almer did not -insinuate--as he had not done--any impertinence; imply any over -eagerness on her part to perform so minor a service for the officer. -Almer bowed his thanks and lost himself in the crowd. Jane turned -again to where Kitty and Kimball were chatting. - -"A dun for extra service the landlord forgot last night, I'll wager," -the youth greeted her. - -"Oh, no, just a little present," Jane laughed back at him, holding up -the silver case. "With Almer's compliments to Captain Woodhouse, who -forgot it when he gave up his room to-day. I've promised to turn it -over to the captain and save the hotel man a lot of trouble and red -tape getting a messenger through to the captain's quarters." - -"By Jove!" Kimball's tired eyes lighted up with a quick flash of -smoker's yearning. "A life-saver! Came away from my room without my -pet Egyptians--Mr. Sherman yelling at me to hurry or we'd miss this -slow show and all that. I'm going to play the panhandler and beg one -of your captain friend's smokes. He must be a good sort or you -wouldn't be doing little favors for him, Miss Gerson. Come, now; in -your capacity as temporary executrix will you invest one of the -captain's cigarettes in a demand of real charity?" - -Keen desire was scarcely veiled under Kimball's fiction of light -patter. Smilingly the girl extended the case to him. - -"Just to make it businesslike, the executrix demands your note -for--um--sixty days, say. 'For one cigarette received, I promise to -pay----'" - -"Given!" He pulled a gold pencil from his pocket and made a pretense -of writing the form on his cuff. Then he lit his borrowed cigarette -and inhaled it gratefully. - -"Your captain friend's straight from Egypt; I don't have to be told -that," Willy Kimball murmured, in polite ecstasy. "At Shepard's, in -Cairo, you'll get such a cigarette as this, and nowhere else in a -barren world. The breath of the acanthus blossom--if it really has a -breath--never heard." - -"Back in Kewanee the Ladies' Aid Society will have you arrested," Kitty -put in mischievously. "They're terribly wrought up over -cigarettes--for minors." - -Kimball cast her a glance of deep reproach. As he lifted the cigarette -to his lips for a second puff, Jane's eyes mechanically followed the -movement. Something caught and held them, wonder-filled. - -On the side of the white paper cylinder nearest her a curious brown -streak appeared--by the merest freak of chance her glance fell on it. -As she looked, the thin stain grew darker nearest the fresh ash. The -farther end of the faint tracing moved--yes, moved, like a threadworm -groping its way along a stick. - -"Now what are they all doing out there?" Kitty Sherman was asking. -"All those men running top speed with their guns carried up so high." - -"Bayonet charge," Kimball answered. "Nothing like the real thing, of -course." - -Jane Gerson was watching the twisting and writhing of that filament of -brown against the white. An invisible hand was writing in brown ink on -the side of the cigarette--writing backward and away from the burning -tip. It lengthened by seconds--"and Louisa to Crandall." - -So the letters of silver nitrate formed themselves under her eyes. -Kimball took the cigarette from his lips and held it by his side for a -minute. He and Kitty were busy with each other's company for the time, -ignoring Jane. She burned with curiosity and with excitement mounting -like the fire of wine to her brain. Would he never put that cigarette -to his lips again, so she could follow the invisible pen! So fleeting, -so evanescent that worm track on the paper, wrought by fire and by fire -to be consumed. A mystery vanishing even as it was aborning! After -ages, the unconscious Kimball set the cigarette again in his lips. - - - "--nformer has denounced you and Louisa-t- - --play your game and he will be slow to----" - - -Again the cigarette came away in Kimball's hand. Acting on impulse she -did not stop to question, Jane struck it from the young man's -outstretched hand and set her foot on it as it fell in the dust. - -"Oh, I'm clumsy!" She fell lightly against Kimball's shoulder and -caught herself in well-simulated confusion. "Standing tiptoe to see -what that man on a horse is going to do--lost my balance. And--and -your precious cigarette--gone!" - -The anguish in Jane Gerson's voice was not play. It was real--terribly -real. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -THE CAPTAIN COMES TO TEA - -Jane Gerson, alone for the first time since the incident of the -cigarette on the parade ground a few hours back, sat before a narrow -window in her room at Government House, fighting a great bewilderment. -The window opened on a varied prospect of blooming gardens and -sail-flecked bay beyond. But for her eyes the riot of color and clash -of contrast between bald cliff and massed green had no appeal. Her -hands locked and unlocked themselves on her lap. The girl's mind was -struggling to coordinate scattered circumstances into a comprehensible -whole, to grapple with the ethical problem of her own conduct. - -What she knew, or thought she knew--and what she should do--those were -the two saber points of the dilemma upon which she found herself -impaled. - -Could there now be any doubt of what she felt to be the truth? First, -she had met Captain Woodhouse on the Express du Nord--an officer in the -English army, by his own statement, returning from leave in England to -his post in Egypt. Then, the encounter of last night at the Hotel -Splendide, Captain Woodhouse first denying his identity, then admitting -it under the enforced pledge that she should not reveal the former -meeting. Captain Woodhouse, not in Egypt, but at Gibraltar, and, as -she had soon learned, there with papers of transfer from an Egyptian -post to the garrison of the Rock. Following this surprise had come -General Crandall's dogged examination of that morning--his blunt -declaration that a serious question as to the captain's position at -Gibraltar had arisen, and his equally plain-spoken threat to have the -truth from her concerning her knowledge of the suspected officer. - -To cap all, the message on the cigarette! An informer--she guessed the -prefix to the unfinished word--had denounced "you and Louisa" to -General Crandall. To whom the pronoun referred was -unmistakable--Almer's eagerness to insure Captain Woodhouse's receiving -the cigarette case plainly defined that. As to "Louisa," involved with -Woodhouse, the girl from Hildebrand's was sensible only of a passing -flash of curiosity, made a bit more piquant, perhaps, by a little dart -of jealousy, hardly comprehended as such. A hotel keeper warns an -officer in the Gibraltar garrison that he has been denounced, but in -the same message adjures him to "play your own game." That was the -single compelling fact. - -Jane Gerson flushed--in anger, or was it through guilt?--when she found -her lips framing the word "spy"! - -Now she understood why General Crandall had put her on the grill--why -he, informed, had leaped to the significance of the gift of roses and -deduced her previous acquaintance with their donor. Her host was not, -after all, the possessor of magical powers of mind reading. He was, -instead, just the sober, conscientious protector of the Rock on whom -rested responsibility for the lives of its defenders and the -maintenance of England's flag there. His duty was to catch--and -shoot--spies. - -Shoot spies! The girl's heart contracted at the thought. No, no! She -would not--she could not reveal to the governor the knowledge she had. -That would be to send death to a man as surely as if hers was the -finger at the trigger. - -Jane Gerson was on her feet now, pacing the room. Over and over again -she told herself that this man who had come into her life, obliquely -enough, had no claim on her; had brought nothing to her but distress. -He had deceived her even, and then, when caught in the deception, had -wrested from her a promise that she would help him continue further -deception against others. Against her will he had made her a party to -some deep and audacious plot, whose purpose she could not guess, but -which must be but a part of the huge mystery of war. - -And soon this Captain Woodhouse was to come to his trial--the purpose -of his invitation to tea that afternoon flashed clear as white light. -Soon she would be in the same room with him; would be forced to witness -the spinning of the web set to trap him. He would come unwarned, -unsuspecting. He might leave that room under guard and with guns at -his back--guns soon to be leveled at his heart. Yet she, Jane Gerson, -possessed the power to save him--as the warning of the cigarette surely -would be saving, once a clever man were put on his guard by it. - -Would she speak--and betray General Crandall, her kindly host? Would -she lock her lips and see a man walk blindfolded to his death? - - -A few minutes before five o'clock, Major Bishop was announced at -Government House and received by General Crandall in the library. -Before Jaimihr Khan, who had preceded the visitor through the double -doors from the hall, could retire, his master stopped him. - -"One minute, Jaimihr! Have a seat, Bishop; glad you've come a bit -early. Come here, Jaimihr!" - -The tall reedlike figure of the Indian glided to General Crandall's -side. His thin ascetic features were set in their usual mold of -unseeing detachment; only his dark eyes showed animation. - -"Yes, my General," he said, as he stopped before the Englishman. - -"I have a little commission for you, Jaimihr," General Crandall began, -weighing his words with care. "The utmost discretion--you understand?" - -"The utmost. I understand." Jaimihr Khan's lips moved ever so -slightly, and his eyes looked steadily ahead. - -"In the course of a few minutes, Captain Woodhouse, of the signal -service, will be here to tea," the general began. The Indian repeated -mechanically: "Cap-tain Wood-house." - -"As soon as you have ushered him into this room, you will go as quickly -as you can to the West Barracks. His room will be No. 36, on the -second gallery. You will enter his room with a key I shall give you -and search it from end to end--everything in it. Anything that is of a -suspicious nature--you understand, Jaimihr, what that might be--you -will bring here to me at once." - -"It shall be done, General Sahib." - -"No one, officer or man, must suspect your errand. No one must see you -enter or leave that room." - -"No one," the Indian repeated. - -General Crandall went to a wall safe set by the side of the double -doors, turned the combination, and opened it. He took from a drawer -therein a bunch of keys, selected one, and passed it to Jaimihr Khan. - -"The utmost care, remember!" he warned again. - -"Is it likely I should fail you this time, General Sahib, when so many -times I have succeeded?" - -"Make the search complete." General Crandall ignored his servant's -question. "But return as quickly as you can. I shall keep Captain -Woodhouse here until you do so. You must report to me before he leaves -this house." - -"When the moment arrives, your servant shall fly, General Sahib," the -Indian replied, and withdrew. - -"I say, General, you have a great deal of faith in your Indian," Bishop -ventured, accepting a cigarette from his superior's case. "Rather a -delicate commission you've given him." - -"Absolute faith, yes. Been with me five years--picked him up in -Rangoon--have tried him many times, and found him loyal as any officer -in the service." General Crandall put in his words enough emphasis to -carry slight rebuke for the other's implied criticism. But the pursy -little major was too sure of the fine terms of personal friendship -between himself and his superior to feel embarrassment. - -"About that girl, General--that cigar girl, Josepha, concerning whom -your beach-comber friend sent that warning this morning from the safe -ground of Spain----" - -"Obvious thing would have been to clap her in a cell," the governor -answered. "But I have not, for the very good reason that if there's -anything in this fellow's accusations against her, as well as against -Woodhouse, the game will be to keep her watched and give our captain an -opportunity to communicate with her. Minute he does that--why, we've -got our proof against both." - -"Then I take it you've put a trailer on the girl?" - -"At eight o'clock to-night I'll know where she's been every hour of the -day," the general returned confidently. "She can't leave the town -without being arrested. Now, as to our plan for Woodhouse's -reception--this affair of Craigen's wife; we might as well agree on -points, so that----" He heard his wife's voice in the room off the -library, and broke off abruptly. "Confound it; the women are coming! -Just step into my room with me, and we'll go over this little matter, -Major." - -General Crandall held open a small door at the left of his desk and -followed Bishop through. Lady Crandall and Jane entered the library -almost at the same time. - -"This tea of George's is preposterous," the lady of Government House -was grumbling. "Said we must have this man from Egypt here at once." - -"If you were English, no tea could be preposterous," Jane countered, -with a brave attempt at lightness. She felt each passing moment a -weight adding to the suspense of the inevitable event. - -"Well, I'm going to get it through with just as soon as I can," Lady -Crandall snapped. Then Jaimihr Khan threw open the double doors and -announced: "Cap-tain Wood-house, my lady!" - -"Show him up!" she commanded; then in complaint to Jane: "Now where do -you suppose that husband of mine went? Just like him to suggest a tea -and forget to make an appearance." - -Captain Woodhouse appeared between the opened doors in khaki and trim -puttees. He stood very straight for an instant, his eyes shooting -rapidly about the room. Lady Crandall hurried forward to greet him, -and his momentary stiffness disappeared. The girl behind her followed -slowly, almost reluctantly. Woodhouse grasped her extended hand. - -"It was good of you to send the flowers," she murmured. The man smiled -appreciation. - -"Do you know," he said, "after I sent them I thought you'd consider me -a bit--prompt." - -"I am learning something every day--about Englishmen," Jane managed to -answer, with a ghost of a smile. - -"Always something good, I hope," Woodhouse was quick to retort, his -eyes eagerly trying to fathom the cause of the girl's restraint. - -Lady Crandall, who had been vainly ringing for Jaimihr Khan, excused -herself on the necessity of looking after the tea things. Jane -experienced a quick stab of dread at finding herself alone with this -man. Unexpected opportunity was urging a decision which an hour of -solitude in her room had failed to bring. Yet she trembled, appalled -and afraid to speak, before the very magnitude of the moment's -exigency. "A spy--a spy!" whispered austere duty. "He will die!" her -heart cried in protest. - -"Miss Gerson, it's good to see you again and know by your handclasp you -have forgiven me for--for what was very necessary at the moment--last -night--our meeting in the Splendide." Captain Woodhouse was standing -before her now, his grave eyes looking down into hers. The girl caught -a deep note of sincerity and something else--something vibrantly -personal. Yet her tongue would not be loosed of its burden. - -"A very pretty speech," she answered, with attempted raillery. "I -shall think of it on the boat going home." - -"I say, I wish you weren't always in that horrid state of mind--on your -way home mentally," Captain Woodhouse challenged. - -"I shall be so in reality day after to-morrow, I hope," she replied. -"Away from all this bewildering war and back in comfortable little New -York." The man seemed genuinely grieved at her announcement. - -"New York must be worth while; but I imagine you have nothing -picturesque--nothing old there. I'll wager you haven't a single -converted monastery like Government House in all your city." - -"Not many things in New York have been converted," she answered, with a -smile. "Our greatest need is for a municipal evangelist." - -False--all false, this banter! She knew it to be, and so she believed -he must read it. And the man--his ease of manner was either that of -innocence or of supreme nerve, the second not less to be admired than -the first. Could it be that behind his serious eyes, now frankly -telling her what she dared not let herself read in them, lay duplicity -and a spy's cunning? - -"I fancy you New Yorkers suffer most from newness--newness right out of -the shop," she heard him saying. "But the old things are the best. -Imagine the monks of a long-ago yesterday toasting themselves before -this ancient fireplace." He waved toward the massive Gothic mantel -bridging a cavernous fireplace. An old chime bell, green with -weathering, hung on a low frame beside the firedogs. - -"You're mistaken; that's manufactured antiquity," Jane caught him up. -"Lady Crandall told me last night that fireplace is just five years -old. One of the preceding governor's hobbies, it was." - -Woodhouse caught at her answer with a quick lifting of the brows. He -turned again to feast his eyes on the girl's piquant face, even more -alluring now because of the fleeting color that left the cheeks with a -tea rose's coldness. - -"Miss Gerson, something I have done or said"--the man was laboring -after words--"you are not yourself, and maybe I am respon----" - -She turned from him with a slight shudder. Her hand was extended in -mute appeal for silence. He waited while his eyes followed the heaving -of her shoulders under the emotion that was racking her. Suddenly she -faced him again, and words rushed from her lips in an abandon of terror: - -"Captain Woodhouse, I know too much--about you and why you are here. -Oh, more than I want to! Accident--bad luck, believe me, it is not my -seeking that I know you are a--a----" - -He had started forward at her outburst, and now he stood very close to -her, his gray eyes cold and unchanging. - -"Say it--say the word! I'm not afraid to hear it," he commanded -tensely. She drew back from him a little wildly, her hands fluttering -up as if to fend him off. - -"You--you are in great danger this minute. You were brought here this -afternoon to be trapped--exposed and made----" - -"I was fully aware of that when I came, Miss Gerson," he interrupted. -"The invitation, coming so suddenly--so pressing--I think I read it -aright." - -"But the promise you made me give last night!" Sudden resentment -brushed aside for the instant the girl's first flood of sympathy. -"That has involved me with you. Oh, that was unfair--to make me -promise I would not allude to--to our first meeting!" - -"Involved you?" He closed one of her hands in his as if to calm her -and force more rational speech. "Then you have been----" - -"Questioned by General Crandall--about you," she broke in, struggling -slightly to free her hand. "Questioned--and even bullied and -threatened." - -"And you kept your promise?" The question was put so low Jane could -hardly catch it. She slowly nodded. - -"Miss Gerson, you will never have cause to regret that you did." -Woodhouse pressed her hand with almost fierce intenseness, then let it -go. Her face was flaming now under the stress of excitement. She knew -tears stood in her eyes, and was angered at their being there; he might -mistake them. Woodhouse continued, in the same suppressed tone: - -"You were on the point of using a word a minute ago, Miss Gerson, which -was hard for you to voice because you thought it an ugly word. You -seemed sure it was the right word to fit me. You only hesitated out -of--ah--decency. Yet you kept faith with me before General Crandall. -May I hope that means----" - -"You may hope nothing!" Quick rebellion at what she divined to be -coming flamed in Jane's eyes. "You have no right to hope for more from -me than what you forced by promise. I would not be saying what I have -to you if--if I did not feel I--that your life----" - -"You misunderstood," he broke in stiffly. "I was on the point of -saying I hoped you would not always believe me a----" - -"Not believe!" Her hand went to the broad ribbon belt she wore and -brought out the silver cigarette case. This she passed to him with a -swift gesture. - -"Almer, the Hotel Splendide man, gave me this to-day at parade, urging -that I deliver it to you." She was speaking hurriedly. "By a -miracle--the strangest circumstance in the world--I learned the message -this cigarette case was to carry to you. Oh, no, innocently enough on -my part--it came by a chance I must not take the time to explain." - -"A message from--Almer to me?" Woodhouse could not conceal the start -her words gave him. He took a step toward her eagerly. - -"Yes, a message. You must have it to protect yourself. The message -was this: - - -"Informer has denounced you and Louisa to----" - - -Her voice died in her throat. Over Captain Woodhouse's shoulder she -saw a door open. General Crandall and a short fat man in officer's -uniform entered the library. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -THE THIRD DEGREE - -"Good afternoon, Captain Woodhouse." - -General Crandall came forward and shook the captain's hand cordially. -"Miss Gerson, Major Bishop, of my staff." - -Jane acknowledged the introduction. Major Bishop advanced to the -meeting with Woodhouse expectantly. With an air of ill-assumed ease, -the governor made them known to each other. - -"Major Bishop, your new man in the signal tower, Captain Woodhouse, -from Wady Halfa. Captain, do you happen to remember the major? Was a -captain when you were here on the Rock--captain in the engineers." - -"I'm afraid we never met," Woodhouse began easily. "I was here such a -short time. Expected to meet Major Bishop when I reported at his -office this morning, but he was over at the wireless station, his aid -told me." - -"Right, Captain!" Bishop chirped, shaking his subordinate's hand. -"I--ah--imagine this is the first time we've met." He put the least -shade of emphasis on the verb. - -Woodhouse met his eyes boldly. Lady Crandall, bustling in at this -minute, directed a maid where to wheel the tea wagon, while Jane went -to assist her with the pouring. The men soon had their cups, and the -general and major contrived to group themselves with Woodhouse sitting -between them. Sir George, affecting a gruff geniality, launched a -question: - -"Rock look familiar to you, Captain?" - -"After a fashion, yes," Woodhouse answered slowly. "Though three -months is so short a time for one to get a lasting impression." - -"Nonsense!" the general reproved gustily. "Some places you see once -you never forget. This old Rock is one of them; eh, Bishop?" - -"I don't know," the chunky little officer replied. "The powers back -home never give me a chance to get away and forget." There was a pause -as the men sipped their tea. Woodhouse broke the silence: - -"Man can be stationed in worse places than Gibraltar." - -"If you mean Egypt, I agree with you," Crandall assented. "There six -years." - -"Were you, General? What station?" Woodhouse was coolly stirring his -tea, emphatically at his ease. Jane, her back to the men as she fussed -over the tea wagon, filled her own cup with hot water inadvertently. -She tried to laugh over the mistake, but her fingers trembled as she -poured the water back into the kettle. - -"Not on the lazy old Nile, as you were--lucky dog!" the general -returned. "Out on the yellow sands--at Arkowan--a place in the sun, -never fear!" - -The women had their cups now, and joined the men, sitting a little -behind. Jane caught a shrewd sidewise glance from the general--a -glance that sought a quick and sure reading of her emotions. She -poised her cup as if expecting a question and the glance turned aside. -But it had warned the girl that she was not altogether a passive factor -in the situation. She set a guard over her features. - -"Let me see, Captain Woodhouse"--it was little Bishop who took up the -probe--"you must have been here in the days when Craigen was -governor--saw your papers have it that you were here three months in -nineteen seven." - -"Yes, Craigen was governor then," Woodhouse answered guardedly. - -"You never saw him, General." Bishop turned to Sir George. "Big, -bluff, blustering chap, with a voice like the bull of Bashan. -Woodhouse, here, he'll recognize my portrait." - -Woodhouse smiled--secret disdain for the clumsy trap was in that smile. - -"I'm afraid I do not," he said. "Craigen was considered a small, -almost a delicate, man." He had recognized the bungling emphasis laid -by Bishop on the Craigen characteristics, and his answer was pretty -safely drawn by choosing the opposites. Bishop looked flustered for an -instant, then admitted Woodhouse was right. He had confused Sir David -Craigen with his predecessor, he said in excuse. - -"I fancy I ought to remember the man. I had tea in this very room with -him several times," Woodhouse ventured. He let his eyes rove as if in -reminiscence. "Much the same here--as--except, General Crandall, I -don't recall that fireplace." He indicated the heavy Gothic ornament -on the opposite side of the room. - -Jane caught her breath under the surge of secret elation. The resource -of the man so to turn to advantage a fact that she had carelessly given -him in their conversation of a few moments back! The girl saw a -flicker of surprise cross General Crandall's face. Lady Crandall broke -in: - -"You have a good memory, after all, Captain Woodhouse. That fireplace -is just five years old." - -"Um--yes, yes," her husband admitted. "Clever piece of work, though. -Likely to deceive anybody by its show of antiquity." - -General Crandall called for a second slice of lemon in his cup. He was -obviously sparring for another opening, but was impressed by the -showing the suspected man was making. Bishop pushed the inquisition -another step: - -"Did you happen to be present, Captain, at the farewell dinner we gave -little Billy Barnes? I think it must have been in the spring you were -here." - -"There were many dinners, Major Bishop." Woodhouse was carefully -selecting his words, and he broke his sentences with a sip from his -cup. "Seven years is a long time, you know. We had much else to think -about in Egypt than old dinners elsewhere." - -Bishop appeared struck by an inspiration. He clapped his cup into its -saucer with a sudden bang. - -"Hang it, man, you must have been here in the days of Lady Evelyn. -Remember her, don't you?" - -"Would I be likely to forget?" the captain parried. Out of the tail of -his eye he had a flash of Jane Gerson's white face, of her eyes seeking -his with a palpitant, hunted look. The message of her eyes brought to -him an instant of grace in sore trial. - -"Seven years of Egypt--or of a hotter place--couldn't make a man forget -her!" The major was rattling on for the benefit of those who had not -come under the spell of the charmer. "Sir David Craigen's wife, and as -lovely a woman as ever came out from England. Every man on the Rock -lost his heart that spring. Woodhouse, even in three months' time you -must have fallen like the rest of us." - -"I'd rather not incriminate myself." Woodhouse smiled sagely as he -passed his cup to Lady Crandall to be refilled. - -"Don't blame you," Bishop caught him up. "A most outrageous flirt, and -there was the devil to pay. Broken hearts were as thick on the Rock -that year as strawberries in May, including poor Craigen's. And after -one young subaltern tried to kill himself--you'll remember that, -Woodhouse--Sir David packed the fair charmer off to England. Then he -simply ate his heart out and--died." - -"What an affecting picture!" Jane commented. "One lone woman capturing -the garrison of Gibraltar!" - -General Crandall rose to set his cup on the tea wagon. With the most -casual air in the world, he addressed himself to Woodhouse: - -"When Sir David died, many of his effects were left in this house to -await their proper owner's disposition, and Lady Craigen has -been--er--delicate about claiming them. Among them was the portrait of -Lady Craigen herself which still hangs in this room. Have you -recognized it, Captain?" - -Woodhouse, whose mind had been leaping forward, vainly trying to divine -the object of the Lady Evelyn lead, now knew, and the knowledge left -him beyond his resources. He recognized the moment of his unmasking. -But the man's nerve was steady, even in extremity. He rose and turned -to face the rear wall of the library, against the tapestry of which -hung four oil portraits in their deep old frames of heavy gold. Three -of these were of women. A fourth, also the likeness of a woman, hung -over the fireplace. Chances were four to one against blind choice. - -As Woodhouse slowly lifted his eyes to the line of portraits, he -noticed that Jane had moved to place the broad tent shade of a floor -lamp on its tall standard of mahogany between herself and the other two -men so that her face was momentarily screened from them. She looked -quickly at the portrait over the mantel and away again. Woodhouse, -knowing himself the object of two pairs of hostile eyes, made his -survey deliberately, with purpose increasing the tension of the moment. -His eyes ranged the line of portraits on the rear wall, then turned to -that one over the fireplace. - -"Ah, yes, a rather good likeness, eh, Major?" He drawled his -identification with a disinterested air. - -Crandall's manner underwent instant change. His former slightly -strained punctiliousness gave way to naturalness and easy spirits. One -would have said he was advocate for a man on trial, for whom the jury -had just pronounced, "Not proven." Scotch verdict, yes, but one -acceptable enough to the governor of Gibraltar. The desk telephone -sounded just then, and General Crandall answered. After listening -briefly, he gave the orders, "Dress flags!" and hung up the receiver. - -"'Fleet's just entering the harbor,' signal tower reports," he -explained to the others. "Miss Gerson, if you care to step here to the -window you'll see something quite worth while." - -Jane, light-hearted almost to the point of mild hysteria at the -noticeable relaxation of strain denoting danger passed, bounded to a -double French window giving on a balcony and commanding a view of all -the bay to the Spanish shore. She exclaimed, in awe: - -"Ships--ships! Hundreds of them! Why, General, what----" - -"The Mediterranean fleet, young woman, bound home to protect the -Channel against the German high-seas fleet." Deep pride was in the -governor's voice. His eyes kindled as they fell on the distant pillars -of smoke--scores of them mounting straight up to support the blue on -their blended arches. Captain Woodhouse could scarcely conceal the -start General Crandall's announcement gave him. He followed the others -to the window more slowly. - -"Wirelessed they'd be in ten hours ago," the governor explained to his -wife. "Rear-admiral won't make his official call until morning, -however. In these times he sticks by his flagship after five o'clock." - -"Wonderful--wonderful!" Bishop turned in unfeigned enthusiasm to -Woodhouse, behind him. "There is the power--and the pride--of England. -Sort of thrills a chap, eh?" - -"Rather!" Woodhouse replied. - -"Well, must get down to the quay to receive any despatches that may -come ashore," the major exclaimed. "Gad, but it gives me a little -homesick tug at the heart to see these grim old dogs of war. They -represent that tight little island that rules the waves." - -"Ah, London--London--the big, old town where they pull the strings that -make us dance!" General Crandall, leaning against the window frame, -his eyes on the incoming fleet, voiced the chronic nostalgia of the man -in the service. - -"The town for me!" Woodhouse exclaimed with fervor. "I'm sick for the -sight of her--the sounds of her--the smells of her: the orange peel and -the asphalt and the gas coming in over Vauxhall Bridge." - -Bishop turned on him admiringly. - -"By George, that does hit it off, old man--no mistake!" - -Jane was out on the balcony now with field glasses she had picked up -from the governor's desk. She called back through the curtains, -summoning Woodhouse to come and pick out for her the flagship. When he -had joined her, Bishop stepped quickly to his superior's side. - -"What do you think, General? By George, it seems to me it would need -an Englishman to give one that sniff of London this chap just got off." - -"Exactly," the general caught him up crisply. "And an Englishman's -done it--Rudyard Kipling. Any German who can read English can read -Kipling." - -"But what do you think, General? Chap strikes me as genuine--that -portrait of Lady Evelyn clenched things, I take it." - -"Confound it! We haven't absolutely proved anything, pro or con," -General Crandall grumbled, in perplexity. "Thing'll have to be decided -by the Indian--what he finds, or doesn't find--in Woodhouse's room. -Let you know soon as I hear." - -Bishop hurried to make his adieux to Lady Crandall and her guest, and -was starting for the doors when Woodhouse, stepping in from the -balcony, offered to join him. The governor stopped him. - -"By the way, Captain, if you'll wait for me a minute I should like your -company down the Rock." - -Bishop had gone, and the general, taking Woodhouse's agreement for -granted, also left the room. - -Woodhouse, suddenly thrown back on his guard, could find nothing to do -but assent. But when Lady Crandall excused herself on the score of -having to dress for dinner, he welcomed compensation in being alone -with the girl who had gone with him steadfastly, unflinchingly, through -moments of trial. She stood before the curtains screening the balcony, -hesitant, apparently meditating flight. To her Woodhouse went, in his -eyes an appeal for a moment alone which would not be denied. - -"You were--very kind to me," he began, his voice very low and broken. -"If it had not been--for your help, I would have----" - -"I could not see you--see you grope blindly--and fail." She turned her -head to look back through the opened glass doors to the swiftly moving -dots in the distance that represented the incoming battle fleet. - -"But was there no other reason except just humanity to prompt you?" He -had possessed himself of one of her hands now, and his eyes compelled -her to turn her own to meet their gaze. "Once when they--were trying -to trip me, I caught a look from your eyes, and--and it was more -than--than pity." - -"You are presuming too much," the girl parried faintly; but Woodhouse -would not be rebuffed. - -"You must hear me," he rushed on impetuously. "This is a strange time -for me to say this, but you say you are going--going away soon. I may -not have another opportunity--hear me! I am terribly in earnest when I -tell you I love you--love you beyond all believing. No, no! Not for -what you have done for me, but for what you are to me--beloved." - -She quickly pulled her hand free from his grasp and tried to move to -the door. He blocked her way. - -"I can not have you go without a word from you," he pleaded. "Just a -word to tell me I may----" - -"How can you expect--that--I--knowing what I do----" She was stumbling -blindly, but persisted: "You, who have deceived others, are deceiving -them now--how can I know you are not deceiving me, too?" - -"I can not explain." He dropped his head hopelessly, and his voice -seemed lifeless. "It is a time of war. You must accept my word that I -am honest--with you." - -She slowly shook her head and started again for the double doors. -"Perhaps--when you prove that to me----." He took an eager step toward -her. "But, no, you can not. I will be sailing so soon, and--and you -must forget." - -"You ask the impossible!" Woodhouse quickly seized her hand and raised -it to his lips. As he did so, the double doors opened noiselessly and -Jaimihr Khan stood between them, sphinx-like. - -Jane, startled, withdrew her hand, and without a farewell glance, ran -across the library and through the door to Lady Crandall's room. -Jaimihr Khan, with a cold glance at Woodhouse, moved silently to the -door of General Crandall's room and knocked. - -"It is I--Jaimihr Khan," he answered to the muffled hail from within. -"Yes, General Sahib, I will wait." - -He turned and looked toward Woodhouse. The latter had taken a -cigarette from the case Almer had sent him through Jane, and was -turning it over in his hand curiously. The Indian, treading like a -hunting cat, began lighting candles. His tour of the room brought him -to the captain's side, and there he stood, motionless, until Woodhouse, -with a start, observed him. - -"Cap-tain Wood-house has been most in-discreet," he said, in his -curious mechanical way of speech. - -Woodhouse turned on him angrily. - -"What do you mean?" he snapped. - -"Is it that they have ceased to teach discretion--at the -Wilhelmstrasse?" The Indian's face was a mask. - -"I know nothing about the Wilhelmstrasse," the white man answered, in a -voice suddenly strained. - -"Then it is veree, veree foolish for the captain to leave in his room -these plans." Jaimihr Khan took from his girdle a thin roll of blue -prints--the plans of the signal tower and Room D which Almer had given -Woodhouse the night before. He held them gingerly between slender -thumb and forefinger. - -Woodhouse recoiled. - -"The general sahib has sent me to search the cap-tain's room," the even -voice of Jaimihr Khan ran on. "Behold the results of my journey!" - -Woodhouse sent a lightning glance at the door leading to the governor's -room, then stepped lightly away from the Indian and regarded him with -hard calculating eyes. - -"What do you propose to do--with those plans?" - -"What should I do?" The white shoulders of the Indian went up in a -shrug. "They will stand you before a wall, Cap-tain Wood-house. And -fire. It is the price of in-discretion at a time like this." - -Woodhouse's right hand whipped back to his holster, which hung from his -sword belt, and came forward again with a thick, short-barreled weapon -in it. - -"Give me those plans, you yellow hound!" - -"Shoot!" Jaimihr Khan smiled. "Add one in-discretion to another. -Shoot, my youthful fool!" - -The door to General Crandall's room opened, and the general, in uniform -evening dress, stepped into the library. Woodhouse swiftly slipped his -revolver behind his back, though keeping it ready for instant use. - -"All ready, Captain. Smoke." The general extended his cigarette case -toward Woodhouse. - -The latter smilingly declined, his eyes all the while on the Indian, -who stood by the corner of the general's desk. Between the sleek brown -hands a tiny blue roll of paper was twisting into a narrower wisp under -the careless manipulation of thin fingers. - -"Well, Jaimihr," Crandall briskly addressed the servant, "have you -completed the errand I sent you on?" - -"Yes, General Sahib." The brown fingers still caressed the plans of -the signal tower. - -"Have you anything to report?" The general had his cigarette in his -mouth and was pawing his desk for a match. Jaimihr Khan slowly lifted -the tip of the paper wisp in his fingers to the flame of a candle on -the end of the desk, then held the burning tip to his master's -cigarette. - -[Illustration: Jaimihr Khan held the tip to his master's cigarette.] - -"Nothing, General Sahib." - -"Very good. Come, Woodhouse; sorry to have kept you waiting." The -general started for the double doors. Woodhouse followed. He passed -very close to the Indian, but the latter made no sign. His eyes were -on the burning wisp of paper between his fingers. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -THE PENDULUM OF FATE - -The next day, Thursday, was one of hectic excitement for Gibraltar. -Focus of the concentrated attention of town and Rock was the battle -fleet, clogging all the inner harbor with its great gray hulks. -Superdreadnaughts, like the standing walls of a submerged Atlantis, lay -close to the quays, barges lashed alongside the folded booms of their -torpedo nets. Behind them, battle cruisers and scouts formed a -protecting cordon. Far out across the entrance to the harbor, the -darting black shapes of destroyers on constant guard were shuttles -trailing their threads of smoke through the blue web of sea and sky. -Between fleet and shore snorting cockleshells of launches established -lanes of communication; khaki of the Rock's defenders and blue of the -fleet's officers met, passed, and repassed. In wardroom and club -lounge glasses were touched in pledges to the united service. The high -commander of the Mediterranean fleet paid his official visit to the -governor of Gibraltar, and the governor, in, turn, was received with -honors upon the quarterdeck of the flagship. But under the superficial -courtesies of fanfare and present arms the stern business of coaling -fleet progressed at high tension. It was necessary that all of the -fighting machines have their bunkers filled by noon of the following -day. Every minute that the Channel up under the murky North Sea fogs -lay without full strength of her fleet protection was added danger for -England. - -That morning, Captain Woodhouse went on duty in the signal tower. -Major Bishop, his superior, had summoned him to his office immediately -after breakfast and assigned him to his tasks there. Sufficient proof, -Woodhouse assured himself, with elation, that he had come through the -fire in General Crandall's library, tested and found genuine. Through -this pretext and that, he had been kept off duty the day before, denied -access to the slender stone tower high up on the Rock's crest which was -the motor center of Gibraltar's ganglia of defense. - -The small office in which Woodhouse was installed was situated at the -very top of the tower--a room glassed on four sides like the lantern -room of a lighthouse, and provided with telescope, a telephone -switchboard, range finders, and all the complicated machinery of -gunfire control. On one side were trestle boards supporting charts of -the ranges--figured areas representing every square yard of water from -the nearer harbor below out to the farthest reaching distance of the -monster disappearing guns. A second graphic sheet showed the harbor -and anchorages and the entrance to the straits; this map was thickly -spotted with little, red, numbered dots--the mines. Sown like a turnip -field with these deadly capsules of destruction were all the waters -thereabouts; their delicate tendrils led under water and through -conduits in the Rock up to this slender spire called the signal tower. -As he climbed the winding stairway to his newly assigned post, -Woodhouse had seen painted on a small wooden door just below the room -he was to occupy the single white letter "D." - -Room D--where the switches were, where a single sweep of the hand could -loose all the hidden death out there in the crowded harbor--it lay -directly below his feet. - -Captain Woodhouse's duties were not arduous. He had as single -companion a sergeant of the signal service, whose post was at the -window overlooking the harbor. The sergeant read the semaphore message -from the slender signal arm on the flagship's bridge--directions for -the coal barges' movements, businesslike orders to be transmitted to -the quartermaster in charge of the naval stores ashore, and such -humdrum of routine. These Woodhouse recorded and forwarded to their -various destinations over the telephone. - -He had much time for thought--and much to think about. - -Yesterday's scene in the library of Government House--his grilling by -the two suspicious men, when a false answer on his part would have been -the first step toward a firing squad. Yes, and what had followed -between himself and the little American--the girl who had protected and -aided him--ah, the pain of that trial was hardly less poignant than had -been the terror of the one preceding it. She had asked him to prove to -her that he was not what she thought him. Before another day was past -she would be out of his life and would depart, believing--yes, -convinced--that the task he had set himself to do was a dishonorable -one. She could not know that the soldiers of the Hidden Army have -claim to heroism no less than they who join battle under the sun. But -he was to see Jane Gerson once more; Woodhouse caught at this -circumstance as something precious. To-night at Government House Lady -Crandall's dinner to the refugee Americans on the eve of their -departure would offer a last opportunity. How could he turn it to the -desire of his heart? - -One more incident of a crowded yesterday gave Woodhouse a crust for -rumination--the unmasking Jaimihr Khan, the Indian, had elected for -himself at that critical minute when it lay in his power to betray the -stranger in the garrison. The captain reviewed the incident with great -satisfaction--how of a sudden the wily Indian had changed from an enemy -holding a man's life in his hand to that "friend in Government House," -of whose existence the cautious Almer had hinted but whose identity he -had kept concealed. Almer had said that this "friend" could lay his -hand on the combination to Room D in the signal tower when the proper -moment arrived. Now that he knew Jaimihr Khan in his true stripe, -Woodhouse made no doubt of his ability to fulfill Almer's prophecy. - -And the proper moment would be this night! To-night, on the eve of the -great fleet's sailing, what Woodhouse had come to Gibraltar to do must -be accomplished or not at all. - -The man's nerves were taut, and he rose to step to the bayward window, -there to look down on the embattled splendor of England's defense. -Steel forts ranged all in rows, awaiting but the opportunity to loose -their lightnings of obliteration against the ships of an enemy. -Cardboard ships! Shadows of dreams! In Room D, just below his feet, a -hand on the switches--a downward push, and then---- - - -Lady Crandall's dinner in Government House was in full tide of -hilarity. Under the heavy groined ceiling the spread table with its -napery and silver was the one spot of light in the long shadowed -dining-room. Round it sat the refugees--folk who had eaten black bread -and sausage and called that a meal; who had dodged and twisted under -the careless scourge of a war beyond their understanding and -sympathies, ridden in springless carts, been bullied and hectored by -military martinets and beggared by panicky banks. Now, with the first -glimpse of freedom already in sight and under the warming influence of -an American hostess' real American meal, they were swept off their feet -by high spirits almost childlike. Henry J. Sherman, Kewanee's vagrant -son returning from painful pilgrimage, sat at the right of Lady -Crandall; his pink face was glowing with humor. To Consul Reynolds, -who swore he would have to pay for thus neglecting his consulate for so -much as two hours, had fallen the honor of escorting Mrs. Sherman to -table. Willy Kimball, polished as to shirt bosom and sleek hair, had -eyes and ears for none but the blithe Kitty. Next to General Crandall -sat Jane Gerson, radiant in a dinner gown of tricky gauze overlaid on -silk. At her right was Captain Woodhouse, in proper uniform dinner -coat faced with red and gold. Of the whole company, Woodhouse alone -appeared constrained. The girl by his side had been cool in her -greeting that evening; to his conversational sallies she had answered -with indifference, and now at table she divided her favors between -General Crandall and the perky little consul across the table. It -seemed to Woodhouse that she purposely added a lash of cruelty to her -joy at the approaching departure on the morrow. - -"Oh, you must all listen to this!" Kitty Sherman commanded the -attention of the table, with a clapping of hands. "Go ahead, Will; he -had the funniest accident--tell them about it." - -Young Kimball looked conscious and began to stammer. - -"You're getting us all excited, Willy," Henry J. boomed from the -opposite side of the table. "What happened?" - -"Why--ah--really quite ridiculous, you know. Hardly a matter -to--ah--talk about." Willy fumbled the rose in the lapel of his jacket -and searched for words. "You see, this morning I was thinking very -hard about what I would do when I got back to Kewanee--oh, quite -enthusiastic I am about the little town, now--and I--well, I mean to -say, I got into my bath with my wrist watch on." - -Shouts of laughter added to the youth's confusion. Sherman leaned far -across the table and advised him in a hoarse whisper: - -"Buy a dollar Ingersoll, Willy. It floats!" - -"Well, you might give him one of yours, father," Kitty put in, in quick -defense. "Anybody who'd carry two watches around----" - -"Two watches?" Lady Crandall was interested. - -Henry J. beamed expansively, pulled away his napkin, and proudly lifted -from each waistcoat pocket a ponderous watch, linked by the thick chain -passing through a buttonhole. - -"This one"--he raised the right-hand time-piece--"tells the time of the -place I happen to be in--changed it so often I guess the works'll never -be the same again. But this one is my pet. Here's Kewanee time--not -touched since we pulled out of the C., B. & Q. station on the twentieth -of last May." He turned the face around for the others to read. "Just -three in the afternoon there now. Old Ed Porter's got the _Daily -Enterprise_ out on the street, and he's tilted back in his office -chair, readin' the _Chicago Tribune_ that's just got in on the two-five -train. The boys at the bank are goin' out to the country club for -golf--young Pete Andrews wearin' the knickerbockers his wife cut down -from his old overcoat; sort of a horse-blanket pattern, you might say. -The town's just dozin' in the afternoon sun and--and not givin' a hang -whether Henry J. Sherman and family gets back or not." - -"You're an old dear!" Lady Crandall bubbled. "Some day Kewanee will -erect a statue to you." - -The talk turned to art, and the man from Kewanee even had the stolid -general wiping the tears from his eyes by his description and criticism -of some of the masters his wife had trotted him around to admire. - -"Willy, you'll be interested to know we got a painter in Kewanee now," -Henry J. cried. "'Member young Frank Coales--old Henry Coales' son? -Well, he turned out to be an artist. Too bad, too; his folks was fine -people. But Frank was awfully headstrong about art. Painted a war -picture about as big as that wall there. Couldn't find a buyer right -away, so he turned it over to Tim Burns, who keeps the saloon on Main -Street. Been busy ever since, sorta taking it out in trade, you might -say." - -Table talk was running at a gay rate when Mrs. Sherman, who had sent -frequent searching glances at Captain Woodhouse over the nodding buds -of the flower piece in the center of the board, suddenly broke out: - -"Ah, Captain Woodhouse, now I remember where I've seen you before! I -thought your face was familiar the minute I set my eyes on you this -evening." - -Jaimihr Khan, who stood behind the general's chair, arms folded and -motionless, swiftly lifted one hand to his lips, but immediately -mastered himself again. General Crandall looked up with a sharp -crinkle of interest between his eyes. Captain Woodhouse, unperturbed, -turned to the Kewanee dowager. - -"You have seen me before, Mrs. Sherman?" - -"I am sure of it," the lady announced, with decision. The other diners -were listening now. - -"Indeed! And where?" Woodhouse was smiling polite attention. - -"Why, at the Winter Garden, in Berlin--a month ago!" Mrs. Sherman was -hugely satisfied with her identification. She appealed to her husband -for confirmation. "Remember, father, that gentleman I mistook for -Albert Downs, back home, that night we saw that--er--wicked -performance?" - -"Can't say I do," Sherman answered tolerantly. - -Woodhouse, still smiling, addressed Mrs. Sherman: - -"Frightfully sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Sherman, but I was not in -Berlin a month ago. I came here from Egypt, where I had been several -years." Woodhouse heard Jane at his elbow catch her breath. - -"See, mother, there you go on your old hobby of recognizin' folks," -Sherman chided. Then, to the others: "Why, she's seen all Kewanee -since she came here to Europe. Even got a glimpse of the Methodist -minister at Monte Carlo." - -"I have never been in Berlin in my life, Mrs. Sherman," Woodhouse was -adding. "So, of course----" - -"Well, I suppose I am wrong," the lady admitted. "But still I could -swear." - -The governor, who had kept a cold eye on his subordinate during this -colloquy, now caught Woodhouse's glance. The captain smiled frankly. - -"Another such unexpected identification, General, and you'll have me in -the cells as a spy, I dare say," he remarked. - -"Quite likely," Crandall answered shortly, and took up his fork again. -A maid stepped to Lady Crandall's chair at this juncture and whispered -something. The latter spoke to Woodhouse: - -"You're wanted on the telephone in the library, Captain. Very -important, so the importunate person at the other end of the wire -informs the maid." - -Woodhouse looked his confusion. - -"Probably that silly ass at the quay who lost a bag of mine when I -landed," he apologized, as he rose. "If you'll pardon me----" - -Woodhouse passed up the stairs and into the library. He was surprised -to find Jaimihr Khan standing by the telephone, his hand just in the -act of setting the receiver back on the hook. The Indian stepped -swiftly to the double doors and shut them behind the captain. - -"A thousand pardons, Cap-tain"--he spoke hurriedly--"the cap-tain will -stand near the telephone. They may come from the dining-room at any -minute." - -"What is all this?" Woodhouse began. "I was called on the telephone." - -"A call I had inspired, Cap-tain. It was necessary to see you--at once -and alone." - -"Tactless! With the general suspecting me--you heard what that woman -from America said at the table--she has eyes in her head!" - -"I think he still trusts you, Cap-tain," the Indian replied. "And -to-night we must act. The fleet sails at noon to-morrow." - -"We?" Woodhouse was on his guard at once. "What do you mean by 'we'?" - -Jaimihr Khan smiled at the evasion. - -"Yesterday in this room, Cap-tain, I burned a roll of plans----" - -"Which I had good reason to wish saved," Woodhouse caught him up. - -"No matter; I burned them--at a moment when you were--in great peril, -Cap-tain." - -"Burned them, yes--perhaps to trap me further." - -The Indian made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, excellent discretion!" -he cried in suppressed exasperation. "But we waste time that is -precious. To-night----" - -"Before another word is spoken, let me have your card--your -Wilhelmstrasse number," Woodhouse demanded. - -"I carry no card. I am more discreet than--some," the other answered -insinuatingly. - -"No card? Your number, then?" - -Jaimihr Khan brought his lips close to the white man's ear and -whispered a number. - -"Is that not correct?" he asked. - -Woodhouse nodded curtly. - -"And now that we are properly introduced," Jaimihr began, with a -sardonic smile, "may I venture a criticism? Your pardon, Cap-tain; but -our critics, they help us to per-fection. Since when have men who come -from the Wilhelmstrasse allowed themselves to make love in -drawing-rooms?" - -"You mean----" - -"You and the young woman from America--when I found you together here -yesterday----" - -"That is my affair," was Woodhouse's hot response. - -"The affair on which we work--this night--that is my affair, be veree -sure!" There was something of menace in the Indian's tone. - -Woodhouse bowed to his demand for an explanation. "That young woman, -as it happens, must be kept on our side. She saw me in France, when -Captain Woodhouse was supposed to be in Egypt." - -"Ah, so?" Jaimihr inclined his head with a slight gesture craving -pardon. "For that reason you make a conquest. I did not un-derstand." - -"No matter. The fleet sails at noon." - -"And our moment is here--to-night," Jaimihr whispered in exultation. -"Not until to-day did they admit you to the tower, Cap-tain. How is it -there?" - -"A simple matter--with the combination to the door of Room D." - -With a single stride the Indian was over before the door of the wall -safe. He pointed. - -"The combination of the inner door--it is in a special compartment of -that safe, protected by many wires. Before dawn I cut the wires--and -come to you with the combination." - -"At whatever hour is best for you," Woodhouse put in eagerly. - -"Let us say three-thirty," Jaimihr answered. "You will be waiting for -me at the Hotel Splendide with--our friends there. I shall come to you -there, give you the combination, and you shall go through the lines to -the signal tower." - -"There must be no slip," Woodhouse sternly warned. - -"Not on my part, Cap-tain--count on that. For five years I have been -waiting--waiting. Five years a servant--yes, my General; no, my -General; very good, my General." The man's voice vibrated with hate. -"To-morrow, near dawn--the English fleet shattered and ablaze in the -harbor--the water red, like blood, with the flames. Then, by the -breath of Allah, my service ends!" - -Voices sounded in the hallway outside the double doors. Jaimihr Khan, -a finger to his lips, nodded as he whispered: "Three-thirty, at the -Splendide." He faded like a white wraith through the door to General -Crandall's room as the double doors opened and the masculine faction of -the dinner party entered. Woodhouse rose from a stooping position at -the telephone and faced them. To the general, whose sharp scrutiny -stabbed like thin knives, he made plausible explanation. The beggar -who lost his bag wanted a complete identification of it--had run it -down at Algeciras. - -"I understand," Crandall grunted. - -When the cigars were lit, General Crandall excused himself for a -minute, sat at his desk, and hurriedly scratched a note. Summoning -Jaimihr, he ordered that the note be despatched by orderly direct to -Major Bishop and given to no other hands. Woodhouse, who overheard his -superior officer's command, was filled with vague apprehension. What -Mrs. Sherman had said at table--this hurried note to Bishop; there was -but one interpretation to give to the affair--Crandall's suspicions -were all alive again. Yet at three-thirty--at the Hotel Splendide---- - -But when Crandall came back to join the circle of smokers, he was all -geniality. The women came in by way of Jane Gerson's room; they had -been taking a farewell peek at her dazzling stock of gowns, they said, -before they were packed for the steamer. - -"There was one or two I just had to see again," Mrs. Sherman explained -for the benefit of all, "before I said good-by to them. One of them, -by Madam Paquin, father, I'm going to copy when we get home. I'll be -the first to introduce a Paquin into little Kewanee." - -"Well, don't get into trouble with the minister, mother," Henry J. -warned. "Some of the French gowns I've seen on this trip certainly -would stir things up in Kewanee." - -Jaimihr served the coffee. Woodhouse tried to maneuver Jane into a -tête-à-tête in an angle of the massive fireplace, but she outgeneraled -him, and the observant Mrs. Sherman cornered him inexorably. - -"Tell me, Captain Woodhouse," she began, in her friendly tones, "you -said a while ago the general might mistake you for a spy. Don't you -have a great deal of trouble with spies in your army in war time? -Everybody took us for spies in Germany, and in France they thought poor -Henry was carrying bombs to blow up the Eiffel Tower." - -"Perhaps I can answer that question better than Captain Woodhouse," the -general put in, rising and striding over to where Mrs. Sherman kept the -captain prisoner. "Captain Woodhouse, you see, would not be so likely -to come in touch with those troublesome persons as one in command of a -post, like myself." The most delicate irony barbed this speech, lost -to all but the one for whom it was meant. - -"Oh, I know I'm going to hear something very exciting," Mrs. Sherman -chortled. "Kitty, you'd better hush up Willy Kimball for a while and -come over here. You can improve your mind better listening to the -general." - -Crandall soon was the center of a group. He began, with sober -directness. - -"Well, in the matter of spies in war time, Mrs. Sherman, one is struck -by the fact of their resemblance to the plague--you never can tell when -they're going to get you or whence they came. Now here on the Rock I -have reason to believe we have one or more spies busy this minute." - -Jane Gerson, sitting where the light smote her face, drew back into the -shadow with a swift movement of protectiveness. Woodhouse, who -balanced a dainty Satsuma coffee cup on his knee, kept his eyes on his -superior's face with a mildly interested air. - -"In fact," Crandall continued evenly, "I shouldn't be surprised if -one--possibly two spies--should be arrested before the night is over. -And the point about this that will interest you ladies is that one of -these--the one whose order for arrest I have already given--is a -woman--a very clever and pretty woman, I may add, to make the story -more interesting." - -"And the other, whose arrest may follow, is an accomplice of hers, I -take it, General!" Woodhouse put the question with easy indifference. -He was stirring his coffee abstractedly. - -"Not only the accomplice, but the brains for both, Captain. A deucedly -clever person, I'm frank to admit." - -"Oh, people! Come and see the flagship, signaling to the rest of the -fleet with its funny green and red lights!" It was Jane who had -suddenly risen and stood by the curtains screening the balcony windows. -"They look like little flowers opening and shutting." - -The girl's diversion was sufficient to take interest momentarily from -General Crandall's revelation. When all had clustered around the -windows, conversation skipped to the fleet, its power, and the men who -were ready to do battle behind its hundreds of guns. Mrs. Sherman was -disappointed that the ships did not send up rockets. She'd read -somewhere that ships sent up rockets, and she didn't see why these -should prove the exception. Interruption came from Jaimihr Khan, who -bore a message for Consul Reynolds. The fussy little man ripped open -the envelope with an air of importance. - -"Ah, listen, folks! Here we have the latest wireless from the -_Saxonia_. 'Will anchor about two--sail six. Have all passengers -aboard by five-thirty.'" Excited gurgles from the refugees. "That -means," Reynolds wound up, with a flourish, "everybody at the docks by -five o'clock. Be there myself, to see you off. Must go now--lot of -fuss and feathers getting everybody fixed." He paused before Jane. - -"You're going home at last, young lady," he chirped. - -"That depends entirely on Miss Gerson herself." It was the general who -spoke quietly but emphatically. - -Reynolds looked at him, surprised. - -"Why, I understood it was all arranged----" - -"I repeat, it depends entirely on Miss Gerson." - -Woodhouse caught the look of fear in Jane's eyes, and, as they fell for -the instant on his, something else--appeal. He turned his head -quickly. Lady Crandall saved the situation. - -"Oh, that's just some more of George's eternal red tape. I'll snip it -when the time comes." - -The consul's departure was the signal for the others. They crowded -around Lady Crandall and her husband with voluble praise for the -American dinner and thanks for the courtesy they had found on the Rock. -Woodhouse, after a last despairing effort to have a word of farewell -with Jane, which she denied, turned to make his adieu to his host and -hostess. - -"No hurry, Captain," Crandall caught him up. "Expect Major Bishop in -every minute--small matter of official detail. You and he can go down -the Rock together when he leaves." - -Woodhouse's mind leaped to the meaning behind his superior's careless -words. The hastily despatched note--that was to summon Bishop to -Government House; Crandall's speech about the two spies and the arrest -of one of them--Louisa, he meant--and now this summary order that he -wait the arrival of Bishop--would the second arrest be here in this -room? The man who carried a number from the Wilhelmstrasse felt the -walls of the library slowly closing in to crush him; he could almost -hear the whisper and mutter of the inexorable machine moving them -closer--closer. Be alone with the man whose word could send bullets -into his heart! - -"A very pleasant dinner--Lady Crandall's," Woodhouse began, eager to -lighten the tenseness of the situation. - -"Yes, it seemed so." Crandall offered the younger man his cigarette -case, and, lighting a smoke himself, straddled the hearth, his eyes -keenly observant of Woodhouse's face. - -"Rather odd, Americans. But jolly nice." The captain laughed in -reminiscence of the unspoiled Shermans. - -"I thought so--I married one," Crandall retorted. - -The ear of Woodhouse's mind could hear more plainly now the grinding of -the cogs; the immutable power of fate lay there. - -"Oh--er--so you did. Very kind she has been to me. I got very little -of this sort of thing at Wady Halfa." - -"By the way, Woodhouse"--Crandall blew a contemplative puff toward the -ceiling--"strange Mrs. Sherman should have thought she saw you at -Berlin." - -"Odd mistake, to be sure," Woodhouse admitted, struggling to put ease -into his voice. "The lady seems to have a penchant, as her husband -says, for finding familiar faces." - -"Major Bishop!" Jaimihr Khan announced at the double doors. The major -in person followed immediately. His greeting to Woodhouse was -constrained. - -"Woodhouse will wait for you to go down the Rock with him," Crandall -explained to the newcomer. "Captain, excuse us for a minute, while we -go into my room and run over a little matter of fleet supplies. Must -check up with the fleet before it sails in the morning." Woodhouse -bowed his acquiescence and saw the door to the general's room close -behind the twain. - -He was not long alone. Noiselessly the double doors opened and Jaimihr -Khan entered. Woodhouse sprang to meet him where he stood poised for -flight just inside the doors. - -"The woman's prattle of Berlin----" the Indian whispered. - -"Yes, the general's suspicions are all aroused again." - -"Listen! I saw the note he sent to Bishop. The major is to be set to -watch you to-night--all night. A false step and you will be under -arrest." Jaimihr's thin face was twisted in wrath. "One man's life -will not stand in our way now." - -"No," Woodhouse affirmed. - -"Success is veree near. When Bishop goes with you down the Rock----" - -"Yes, yes! What?" - -"The pistol screams, but the knife is dumb. Quick, Cap-tain!" With a -swift movement of his hand the Indian passed a thin-bladed dirk to the -white man. The latter secreted the sheathed weapon in a pocket of his -dinner jacket. He nodded understanding. - -"One man's life--nothing!" Jaimihr breathed. - -"It shall be done," Woodhouse whispered. - -Jaimihr faded through the double doors like a spirit in a medium's -cabinet. He had seen what the captain was slower to notice. The door -from Jane Gerson's room was opening. The girl stepped swiftly into the -room, and was by Woodhouse's side almost before he had seen her. - -"I could not--go away--without--without----" - -"Miss Gerson--Jane!" He was beside her instantly. His hand sought and -found one of hers and held it a willing prisoner. She was trembling, -and her eyes were deep pools, riffled by conflicting currents. Her -words came breathlessly: - -"I was not myself--I tried to tell myself you were deceiving me -just--just as a part of this terrible mystery you are involved in. But -when I heard General Crandall tell you to wait--that and what he said -about the spies--I knew you were again in peril, and--and----" - -"And you have come to me to tell me as good-by you believe I am honest -and that you care--a little?" Woodhouse's voice trembled with -yearning. "When you think me in danger, then you forget doubts and -maybe--your heart----" - -"Oh, I want to believe--I want to!" she whispered passionately. "Every -one here is against you. Tell me you are on the level--with me, at -least." - -"I am--with you." - -"I--believe," she sighed, and her head fell near his shoulder--so near -that with alacrity Captain Woodhouse settled it there. - -"When this war is over, if I am alive," he was saying rapturously, "may -I come to America for you? Will you--wait?" - -"Perhaps." - -The door to General Crandall's room opened. They sprang apart just as -Crandall and Bishop entered the library. The former was not blind to -the situation; he darted a swift glance into the girl's face and read -much there. - -"Ready, Captain?" Bishop chirped, affecting not to notice the momentary -confusion of the man and the girl. - -Woodhouse gave Jane's hand a lingering clasp; mutely his eyes adjured -her to remember her plighted troth. In another minute he was gone. - -The general and his guest were alone. Jane Gerson was bidding him good -night when he interrupted, somewhat gruffly: - -"Well, young woman, have you made up your mind? Do you sail in the -morning--or not?" - -"I made up my mind to that long ago," she answered briskly. "Of course -I sail." - -"Then you're going to tell me what I want to know. Sensible girl!" He -rubbed his hands in satisfaction. - -"What is it you want to know, General Crandall?" This almost -carelessly from her. - -"When did you meet Woodhouse before--and where?" - -"How do you know I met him before?" She attempted to parry, but -Crandall cut her short with a gesture of impatience: - -"Please don't try that tack again. Answer those two questions, and you -sail in the morning." - -Jane Gerson's eyes grew hard, and she lifted her chin in defiance. - -"And if I refuse----" - -"Why should you?" Crandall affected surprise not altogether unfelt. - -"No matter--I do!" The challenge came crisp and sharp-cut as a new -blade. Gibraltar's governor lost his temper instanter; his face -purpled. - -"And I know why!" he rasped. "He's got round you--made love to -you--tricked you! I'd swear he was kissing you just the minute I came -in here. The German cad! Good lord, girl; can't you see how he's -using you?" - -"I'm afraid I can't." - -Crandall advanced toward her, shaking a menacing finger at her. - -"Let me tell you something, young woman: he's at the end of his rope. -Done for! No use for you to stand up for him longer. He's under guard -to-night, and a woman named Josepha, his accomplice--or maybe his -dupe--is already under arrest, and to-morrow, when we examine her, -she'll reveal his whole rotten schemes or have to stand against a wall -with him. Come, now! Throw him over. Don't risk your job, as you -call it, for a German spy who's tricked you--made a fool of you. -Why----" - -"General Crandall!" Her face was white, and her eyes glowed with anger. - -"I--I beg your pardon, Miss Gerson," he mumbled. "I am exasperated. A -fine girl like you--to throw away all your hopes and ambitions for a -spy--and a bounder! Can't you see you're wrong?" - -"General Crandall, some time--I hope it will be soon--you will -apologize to me--and to Captain Woodhouse--for what you are saying -to-night." Her hands clenched into fists, whereon the knuckles showed -white; the poise of her head, held a little forward, was all combative. - -"Then you won't tell me what I want to know?" He could not but read -the defiance in the girl's pose. - -"I will tell you nothing but good-by." - -"No, by gad--you won't! I can be stubborn, too. You shan't sail on -the _Saxonia_ in the morning. Understand?" - -"Oh, shan't I? Who will dare stop me?" - -"I will, Miss Gerson. I have plenty of right--and the power, too." - -"I'll ask you to tell that to my consul--on the dock at five to-morrow -morning. Until then, General Crandall, au revoir." - -The door of the guest room shut with a spiteful slam upon the master of -Gibraltar, leaving him to nurse a grievance on the knees of wrath. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -THREE-THIRTY A.M. - -Joseph Almer and Captain Woodhouse sat in the darkened and heavily -blinded office-reception room of the Hotel Splendide. All the hotel -had long since been put to bed, and the silence in the rambling house -was audible. The hands of the Dutch clock on the wall were pointing to -the hour of three-thirty. - -Strain was on both the men. They spoke in monosyllables, and only -occasionally. Almer's hand went out from time to time to lift a squat -bottle of brandy from the table between them and pour a tiny glass -brimful; he quaffed with a sucking noise. Woodhouse did not drink. - -"It is three-thirty," the latter fretted, with an eye on the mottled -clock dial. - -"He will come," Almer assured. A long pause. - -"This man Jaimihr--he is thoroughly dependable?" The man in uniform -put the question with petulant bruskness. - -"It is his passion--what we are to do to-night--something he has lived -for--his religion. Nothing except judgment day could---- Hah!" - -The sharp chirp of a telephone bell, a dagger of sound in the silence, -broke Almer's speech. He bounded to his feet; but not so quickly as -Woodhouse, who was across the room in a single stride and had the -receiver to his ear. - -"Well, well! Yes, this is the one you name." Woodhouse turned to -Almer, and his lips framed the word Jaimihr. "Yes, yes; all is -well--and waiting. Bishop? He is beyond interference--coming down the -Rock--I did the work silently. What's that?" Woodhouse's face was -tensed in strain; his right hand went to a breast pocket and brought -out a pencil. With it he began making memoranda on the face of a -calendar by his side. - -"Seven turns--ah, yes--four to the left--correct." His writing hand -was moving swiftly. "Press, one to the right. Good! I have it, and -am off at once. Good-by!" - -Woodhouse finished a line of script on the calendar face, hung up the -receiver. He carefully tore the written notes from the calendar and -put them into his pocket. - -"Jaimihr says he has work to do at Government House and can not come -down." Woodhouse turned to Almer and explained in rapid sentences. -"But he's given me the combination--to Room D--over the wire, and now -I'm off!" - -Almer was all excitement now. He hovered lovingly about Woodhouse, -patting him on the shoulder, giving him his helmet, mothering him with -little cooing noises. - -"Speed quickly, Nineteen Thirty-two! Up the Rock to the signal tower, -Nineteen Thirty-two, to do the deed that will boom around the world. -The switches--one pull, my brother, and the fatherland is saved to -triumph over her enemies, victorious!" - -"Right, Almer!" Woodhouse was moving toward the door. "In eight -minutes history will be made. The minute you hear the blast, start for -Spain. I will try to escape, but I doubt----" - -A knock came at the barred front door--one knock, followed by three. -Both men were transfixed. Almer, first to recover his calmness, -motioned Woodhouse through the door to the dining-room. When his -companion had disappeared, he stepped to the door and cautiously asked: -"Who knocks?" - -An answer came that caused him to shoot back the bolts and thrust out -his head. A message was hurriedly whispered into his ear. The -Splendide's proprietor withdrew his head and slipped the bolt home -again. His face was a thundercloud as he summoned Woodhouse; his -breath came in wheezy gasps. - -"My Arab boy comes to the door just now to tell me of Louisa's fate; -she has been arrested," he said. - -"Come, Almer! I am going to the signal tower--there is still time for -us to strike." - -Out on to Waterport Street leaped Woodhouse, and the door closed behind -him. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -THE TRAP IS SPRUNG - -Jane Gerson, tossing on her pillows, heard the mellow bell of a clock -somewhere in the dark and silent house strike three. This was the -fifth time she had counted the measured strokes of that bell as she -lay, wide-eyed, in the guest chamber's canopied bed. An eternity had -passed since the dinner guests' departure. Her mind was racing like -some engine gone wild, and sleep was impossible. Over and over again -she had conned the events of the evening, always to come at the end -against the impasse of General Crandall's blunt denial: "You shan't -sail in the morning." In her extremity she had even considered flight -by stealth--the scaling of walls perhaps, and a groping through dark -streets to the wharf, there to smuggle herself somehow on a tender and -so gain the _Saxonia_. But her precious gowns! They still reposed in -their bulky hampers here in Government House; to escape and leave them -behind would be worse than futile. The governor's fiat seemed absolute. - -Urged by the impulse of sheer necessity to be doing something--the bed -had become a rack--the girl rose, lit a taper, and began to dress -herself, moving noiselessly. She even packed her traveling bag to the -last inch and locked it. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, hands -helplessly folded in her lap. What to do next? Was she any better off -dressed than thrashing in the bed? Her yearning called up a picture of -the _Saxonia_, which must ere this be at her anchorage, since the -consul said she was due at two. In three short hours tenders would -puff alongside; a happy procession of refugees climb the gangway--among -them the Shermans and Willy Kimball, bound for their Kewanee; the -captain on the bridge would give an order; winches would puff, the -anchor heave from the mud, the big boat's prow slowly turn -westward--oceanward--toward New York! And she, a prisoner caught by -the mischance of war's great mystery, would have to watch that -diminishing column of smoke fade against the morning's blue--disappear. - -Inspiration seized her. It would be something just to see the -_Saxonia_, now lying amid the grim monsters of the war fleet. From the -balcony of the library, just outside the door of her room, she could -search the darkness of the harbor for the prickly rows of lights -marking the merchant ship from her darker neighbors. The general's -marine glasses lay on his desk, she remembered. To steal out to the -balcony, sweep the harbor with the glasses, and at last hit on the ship -of deliverance--for all but her; to do this would be better than -counting the hours alone. She softly opened the door of her room. -Beyond lay the dim distances of the library, suddenly become vast as an -amphitheater; in the thin light filtering through the curtains -screening the balcony appeared the lumpy masses of furniture and vague -outlines of walls and doors. She closed the door behind her, and stood -trembling; this was somehow like burglary, she felt--at least it had -the thrill of burglary. - -The girl tiptoed around a high-backed chair, groped her way to the -general's desk, and fumbled there. Her hand fell upon the double tubes -of the binoculars. She picked them up, parted the curtains, and -stepped through the opened glass doors to the balcony. Not a sound -anywhere but the faint cluck and cackle of cargo hoists down in the -harbor. Jane put the glasses to her eyes, and began to sweep the -light-pointed vista below the cliff. Scores of pin-prick beams of -radiance marked the fleet where it choked the roadstead--red and white -beetles' eyes in the dark. She swung the glasses nearer shore. Ah, -there lay the _Saxonia_, with her three rows of glowing portholes near -the water; the binoculars even picked out the double column of smoke -from her stacks. Three brief hours and that mass of shadow would be -moving--moving---- - -A noise, very slight, came from the library behind the opened doors. -The marine glasses remained poised in the girl's hands while she -listened. Again the noise--a faint metallic click. - -She hardly breathed. Turning ever so slowly, she put one hand between -the curtains and parted them so that she could look through into the -cavernous gloom behind her. - -A light moved there--a clear round eye of light. Behind it was the -faintest suggestion of a figure at the double doors--just a blur of -white, it was; but it moved stealthily, swiftly. She heard a key turn -in a lock. Then swiftly the eye of light traveled across the library -to the door leading to General Crandall's room. There it paused to cut -the handle of the door and keyhole beneath out of darkness. A brown -hand slipped into the clear shaft of whiteness, put a key into the -keyhole, and softly turned it. The same was done for the locks of Lady -Crandall's door, on the opposite side of the library, and for the one -Jane had just closed behind her--her own door. Than the circle of -light, seeming to have an intelligence all its own, approached the -desk, flew swiftly to a drawer and there paused. Once more the brown -hand plunged into the bore of light; the drawer was carefully opened, -and a steel-blue revolver reflected bright sparks from its barrel as it -was withdrawn. - -Jane, hardly daring to breathe, and with the heavy curtains gathered -close so that only a space for her eyes was left open, watched the orb -of light, fascinated. It groped under the desk, found a nest of -slender wires. There was a "Snick--snick!" and the severed ends of the -wires dropped to the floor. The burnished dial of the wall safe, set -near the double doors, was the next object to come under the restless -searching eye. While light poured steadily upon the circular bit of -steel, delicate fingers played with it, twisting and turning this way -and that. Then they were laid upon the handle of the safe door, and it -swung noiselessly back. A tapering brown hand, white-sleeved, fumbled -in a small drawer, withdrew a packet of papers and selected one. - -Jane stepped boldly into the room. - -"Sahibah!" The white club of the electric flash smote her full in the -face. - -"What are you doing at that safe, Jaimihr Khan?" Jane spoke as steadily -as she could, though excitement had its fingers at her throat, and all -her nerves were twittering. She heard some sharply whistled foreign -word, which might have been a curse. - -"Something that concerns you not at all, Sahibah," the Indian answered, -his voice smooth as oil. He kept the light fair on her face. - -"I intend that it shall concern me," the girl answered, taking a step -forward. - -"Veree, veree foolish, Sahibah!" Jaimihr whispered, and with catlike -stride he advanced to meet her. "Veree foolish to come here at this -time." - -Jane, frozen with horror at the man's approach, dodged and ran swiftly -to the fireplace, where hung the ancient vesper bell. The flash light -followed her every move--picked out her hand as it swooped down to -seize a heavy poker standing in its rack beside the bell. - -"Sahibah! Do not strike that bell!" The warning came sharp and cold -as frost. Her hand was poised over the bell, the heavy stub of the -poker a very few inches away from the bell's flare. - -"To strike that bell might involve in great trouble one who is veree -dear to you, Sahibah. Let us talk this over most calmly. Surely you -would not desire that a friend--a veree dear friend----" - -"Who do you mean?" she asked sharply. - -"Ah--that I leave to you to guess!" Jaimihr Khan's voice was silken. -"But certainly you know, Sahibah. A friend the most important----" - -Then she suddenly understood. The Indian was referring to Captain -Woodhouse thus glibly. Anger blazed in her. - -"It isn't true!" - -"Sahibah, I am sorry to con-tradict." Jaimihr Khan had begun slowly to -creep toward her, his body crouching slightly as a stalking cat's. - -"I'll prove it isn't true!" she cried, and brought the poker down on -the bell with a sharp blow. Like a tocsin came its answering alarm. - -"A thousand devils!" The Indian leaped for the girl, but she evaded -him and ran to put the desk between herself and him. He had snapped -off the torch at the clang of the bell, and now he was a pale ghost in -the gloom--fearsome. Hissing Indian curses, he started to circle the -desk to seize her. - -"Open this door! Open it, I say!" It was the general's voice, -sounding muffled through the panels of his door; he rattled the knob -viciously. Jane tried to run to the door, but the Indian seized her -from behind, threw her aside, and made for the double doors. There his -hand went to a panel in the wall, turned a light switch, and the -library was on the instant drenched with light. Jaimihr Khan threw -before the door of the safe the bundle of papers he was clutching when -Jane discovered him and which he had gripped during the ensuing tense -moments. Then he stepped swiftly to the general's door and unlocked it. - -General Crandall, clad only in trousers and shirt, burst into the room. -His eyes leaped from the Indian to where Jane was cowering behind his -desk. - -"What the devil is this?" he rasped. Jane opened her mouth to answer, -but the Indian forestalled her: - -"The sahibah, General--I found her here before your opened safe----" - -"Good God!" General Crandall's eyes blazed. He leaped to the safe, -knelt and peered in. "A clever job, young woman!" - -Jane, completely stunned by the Indian's swift strategy, could hardly -speak. She held up a hand, appealing for a hearing. General Crandall -eyed her with chilling scorn, then turned to his servant. - -"You have done well, Jaimihr." - -"It--it isn't true!" Jane stammered. The governor took a step toward -her almost as if under impulse to strike her, but he halted, and his -lips curled in scorn. - -"By gad, working with Woodhouse all the time, eh? And I thought you a -simple young woman he had trapped--even warned you against him not six -hours ago. What a fool I've been!" Jane impulsively stretched forth -her arms for the mercy of a hearing, but the man went on implacably: - -"I said he was making a fool of you--and all the time you were making -one of me. Clever young woman. I say, that must have been a great -joke for you--making a fool of the governor of Gibraltar. You make me -ashamed of myself. And my servant--Jaimihr here; it is left to him to -trap you while I am blind. Bah! Jaimihr, my orderly--at once!" The -Indian smiled sedately and started for the double doors. Jane ran -toward the general with a sharp cry: - -"General--let me explain----" - -"Explain!" He laughed shortly. "What can you say? You come into my -house as a friend--you betray me--you break into my safe--with -Woodhouse, whom I'd warned you against, directing your every move. -Clever--clever! Jaimihr, do as I tell you. My orderly at once!" - -Jane threw herself between the Indian and the doors. - -"One moment--before he leaves the room let me tell you he lies? Your -Indian lies. It was I who found him here--before that safe!" - -"A poor story," the general sniffed. "I expected better of you--after -this." - -"The truth, General Crandall. I couldn't sleep. I came out here to -the balcony to try to make out if the _Saxonia_ was in the bay. He -came into the room while I was behind these curtains, locked the doors, -and opened the safe." - -"It won't go," the general cut in curtly. - -"It's the truth--it's got to go!" she cried. - -Jaimihr, at a second nod from his master, was approaching the double -doors. Jane, leaping in front of them, pushed the Indian back. - -"General Crandall, for your own sake--don't let this Indian leave the -room. You may regret it--all the rest of your life. He still has a -paper--a little paper--he took from that safe. I saw him stick it in -his sash." - -"Nonsense!" - -"Search him!" The girl's voice cracked in hysteria; her face was dead -white, with hectic burning spots in each cheek. "I'm not pleading for -myself now--for you. Search him before he leaves this room!" - -Jaimihr put strong hands on her arms to force her away from the door. -His black eyes were laughing down into hers. - -"Let me ask him a question first, General Crandall--before he leaves -this room." - -The governor's face reflected momentary surprise at this change of -tack. "Quickly then," he gruffly conceded. Jaimihr Khan stepped back -a pace, his eyes meeting the girl's coldly. - -"How did you come into the room--when you found me here?" she -challenged. The Indian pointed to the double doors over her shoulder. -She reached behind her, grasped the knob, and shook it. "Locked!" she -announced. - -"Why not?" Jaimihr asked. "I locked them after me." - -"And the general's door was locked?" - -"Yes--yes!" Crandall broke in impatiently. "What's this got to do -with----" - -"Did you lock the general's door?" she questioned the Indian. - -"No, Sahibah; you did." - -"And I suppose I locked the door to Lady Crandall's room and my door?" - -"If they, too, are locked--yes, Sahibah." - -"Then why"--Jane's voice quavered almost to a shriek--"why had I failed -to lock the double doors--the doors through which you came?" - -The Indian caught his breath, and darted a look at the general. The -latter, eying him keenly, stepped to his desk and pressed a button. - -"Very good; remain here, Jaimihr," he said. Then to Jane: "I will have -him searched, as you wish. Then both of you go to the cells until I -sift this thing to the bottom." - -"General! You wouldn't dare!" She stood aghast. - -"Wouldn't I, though? We'll see whether--" A sharp click sent his head -jerking around to the right. Jaimihr Khan, at the door to the -general's room, was just slipping the key into his girdle, after having -turned the lock. His thin face was crinkled like old sheepskin. - -"What the devil are you doing?" Crandall exploded. - -"If the general sahib is waiting for that bell to be answered--he need -not wait longer--it will not be answered," Jaimihr Khan purred. - -"What's this--what's this!" - -"The wires are cut." - -"Cut! Who did that?" The general started for the yellow man. Jaimihr -Khan whipped a blue-barreled revolver out of his broad sash and leveled -it at his master. - -"Back, General Sahib! I cut them. The sahibah's story is true. It -was she who came in and found me at the safe." - -"My God! You, Jaimihr--you a spy!" The general collapsed weakly into -a chair by the desk. - -"Some might call me that, my General." Jaimihr's weapon was slowly -swinging to cover both the seated man and the girl by the doors. "No -need to search that drawer, General Sahib. Your pistol is pointing at -you this minute." - -"You'll pay for this!" Crandall gasped. - -"That may be. One thing I ask you to remember. If one of you makes a -move I will kill you both. You are a gallant man, my General; is it -not so? Then remember." - -Crandall started from his chair, but the uselessness of his bare hands -against the snub-nosed thing of blue metal covering him struck home. -He sank back with a groan. Keeping them both carefully covered, -Jaimihr moved to the desk telephone at the general's elbow. He took -from his sash a small piece of paper--the one he had saved from the -packet of papers taken from the safe--laid it on the edge of the desk, -and with his left hand he picked up the telephone. An instant of tense -silence, broken by the wheezing of the general's breath, then---- - -"Nine-two-six, if you please. Yes--yes, who is this? Ah, yes. It is -I, Jaimihr Khan. Is all well with you? Good! And Bishop? Slain -coming down the Rock--good also!" - -Crandall groaned. The Indian continued his conversation unperturbed. - -"Veree good! Listen closely. I can not come as I have promised. -There is--work--for me here. But all will be well. Take down what I -shall tell you." He read from the slip of paper on the desk. "Seven -turns to the right, four to the left--press! Two more to the -left--press! One to the right. You have that? Allah speed you. Go -quickly!" - -[Illustration: "There is--work--for me here."] - -"Room D!" Crandall had leaped from his chair. - -"Correct, my General--Room D." Jaimihr smiled as he stepped away from -the telephone, his back against the double doors. The sweat stood -white on Crandall's brow; his mouth worked in jerky spasms. - -"What--what have you done?" he gasped. - -"I see the general knows too well," came the Indian's silken response. -"I have given the combination of the inner door of Room D in the signal -tower to a--friend. He is on his way to the tower. He will be -admitted--one of the few men on the Rock who could be admitted at this -hour, my General. One pull of the switches in Room D--and where will -England's great fleet be then?" - -"You yellow devil!" Crandall started to rush the white figure by the -doors, but his flesh quailed as the round cold muzzle met it. He -staggered back. - -"We are going to wait, my General--and you, American Sahibah, who have -pushed your way into this affair. We are going to wait--and -listen--listen." - -The general writhed in agony. Jane, fallen into a chair by the far -edge of the desk, had her head buried in her arms, and was sobbing. - -"And we are going to think, my General," the Indian's voice purled on. -"While we wait we shall think. Who will General Crandall be after -to-night--the English sahib who ruled the Rock the night the English -fleet was blown to hell from inside the fortress? How many widows will -curse when they hear his name? What----" - -"Jaimihr Khan, what have I ever done to you!" The governor's voice -sounded hardly human. His face was blotched and purple. - -"Not what you have done, my General--what the English army has done. -An old score, General--thirty years old. My father--he was a prince in -India--until this English army took away his throne to give it to a -lying brother. The army--the English army--murdered my father when he -tried to get it back--called it mutiny. Ah, yes, an old score; but by -the breath of Allah, to-night shall see it paid!" - -The man's eyes were glittering points of white-hot steel. All of his -thin white teeth showed like a hound's. - -"You dog!" The general feebly wagged his head at the Indian. - -"Your dog, my General. Five years your dog, when I might have been a -prince. My friend goes up the Rock--step--step--step. Closer--closer -to the tower, my General. And Major Bishop--where is he? Ah, a knife -is swift and makes no noise----" - -"What a fool I've been!" Crandall rocked in his chair, and passed a -trembling hand before his eyes. Sudden rage turned his bloodshot eyes -to where the girl was stretched, sobbing, across the desk. "Your -man--the man you protected--it is he who goes to the signal tower, -girl!" - -"No--no; it can't be," she whispered between the rackings of her throat. - -"It is! Only a member of the signal service could gain admittance into -the tower to-night. Besides--who was it went with Bishop down the Rock -after the dinner to-night? And I--I sent Bishop with him--sent him to -his death. He was tricking you all the time. I told you he was. I -warned you he was playing with you--using you for his own rotten -ends--using you to help kill forty thousand men!" - -It needed not the sledge-hammer blows of the stricken Crandall to -batter Jane Gerson's heart. She had read too clearly the full story -Jaimihr Khan's sketchy comments had outlined. She knew now Captain -Woodhouse, spy. The Indian was talking again, his words dropping as -molten metal upon their raw souls. - -"Forty thousand men! A pleasant thought, my General. Eight minutes up -the Rock to the tower when one moves fast. And my friend--ah, he moves -veree--veree fast. Eight minutes, and four have already passed. Watch -the windows--the windows looking out to the bay, General and Sahibah. -They will flame--like blood. Your hearts will stop at the great noise, -and then----" - -A knock sounded at the double doors behind Jaimihr. He stopped short, -startled. All listened. Again came the knock. Without turning his -eyes from the two he guarded, Jaimihr asked: "Who is it?" - -"Woodhouse," came the answer. - -Jane's heart stopped. Crandall sat frozen in his seat. Jaimihr turned -the key in the lock, and the doors opened. In stepped Captain -Woodhouse, helmeted, armed with sword and revolver at waist. He stood -facing the trio, his swift eye taking in the situation at once. -Crandall half rose from his seat, his face apoplectic. - -"Spy! Secret killer of men!" he gasped. - -Woodhouse paid no heed to him, but turned to Jaimihr. - -"Quick! The combination," he said. "Over the phone--afraid I might -not have it right--stopped here on my way to the tower--be there in -less than three minutes if you can hold these people." - -"Everything is all right?" Jaimihr asked suspiciously. - -"You mean Bishop? Yes. Quick, the combination!" - -Jaimihr picked the slip of paper containing the formula from the edge -of the desk with his disengaged left hand and passed it to Woodhouse. - -The latter stretched out his hand, grasped the Indian's with a -lightning move, and threw it over so that the latter was off his -balance. In a twinkling Woodhouse's left hand had wrenched the -revolver from Jaimihr's right and pinioned it behind his back. The -whole movement was accomplished in half a breath. Jaimihr Khan knelt -in agony, and in peril of a broken wrist, at the white man's feet, -disarmed, harmless. Woodhouse put a silver whistle to his lips and -blew three short blasts. - -A tramp of feet in the hallway outside, and four soldiers with guns -filled the doorway. - -"Take this man!" Woodhouse commanded. - -The Indian, in a frenzy, writhed and shrieked: - -"Traitor! English spy! Dog of an unbeliever!" - -The soldiers jerked him to his feet and dragged him out; his ravings -died away in the passage. - -Woodhouse brought his hand up in a salute as he faced General Crandall. - -"The other spy, Almer, of the Hotel Splendide, has just been arrested, -sir. Major Bishop has taken charge of him and has lodged him in the -cells." - -A high-pitched scream sounded behind Lady Crandall's door, and a -pounding on the panels. Jane Gerson, first to recover from the shock -of surprise, ran to unlock the door. Lady Crandall, in a dressing -gown, burst into the library and flung herself on her husband. - -"George--George! What does all this mean--yells--whistling----" - -General Crandall gave his wife a pat on the shoulder and put her aside -with a mechanical gesture. He took a step toward Woodhouse, who still -stood stiffly before the opened doors; the dazed governor walked like a -somnambulist. - -"Who--who the devil are you, sir?" he managed to splutter. - -"I am Captain Cavendish, General." Again the hand came to stiff salute -on the visor of the pith helmet. "Captain Cavendish, of the signal -service, stationed at Khartum, but lately detached for special service -under the intelligence office in Downing Street." - -The man's eyes jumped for an instant to seek Jane Gerson's face--found -a smile breaking through the lines of doubt there. - -"Your papers to prove your identity!" Crandall demanded, still in a fog -of bewilderment. - -"I haven't any, General Crandall," the other replied, with a faint -smile, "or your Indian, Jaimihr Khan, would have placed them in your -hands after the search of my room yesterday. I've convinced Major -Bishop of my genuineness, however--after we left your house and when -the moment for action arrived. A cable to Sir Ludlow-Service, in the -Downing Street office, will confirm my story. Meanwhile I am willing -to go under arrest if you think best." - -"But--but I don't understand, Captain--er--Cavendish. You posed as a -German--as an Englishman." - -"Briefly, General, a girl secretly in the pay of the Downing Street -office--Louisa Schmidt,--Josepha, the cigar girl, whom you ordered -locked up a few hours ago--is the English representative in the -Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. She learned of a plan to get a German spy in -your signal tower a month before war was declared, reported it to -London, and I was summoned from Khartum to London to play the part of -the German spy. At Berlin, where she had gone from your own town of -Gibraltar to meet me, she arranged to procure me a number in the -Wilhelmstrasse through the agency of a dupe named Capper----" - -"Capper! Good Lord!" Crandall stammered. - -"With the number I hurried to Alexandria. Woodhouse--Captain -Woodhouse, from Wady Halfa--a victim, poor chap, to the necessities of -our plan, fell into the hands of the Wilhelmstrasse men there, and I -gained possession of his papers. The Germans started him in a robber -caravan of Bedouins for the desert, but I provided against his getting -far before being rescued, and the German agents there were all rounded -up the day I sailed as Woodhouse." - -"And you came here to save Gibraltar--and the fleet from German spies?" -Crandall put the question dazedly. - -"There were only two, General--Almer and your servant, Jaimihr. We -have them now. You may order the release of Louisa Schmidt." - -"The captain has overlooked one other--the most dangerous one of all, -General Crandall." Jane stepped up to where the governor stood and -threw back her hands with an air of submission. "Her name is Jane -Gerson, of New York, and she knew all along that this gentleman was -deceiving you--she had met him, in fact, three weeks before on a -railroad train in France." - -The startled eyes of Gibraltar's master looked first at the set -features of the man, then to the girl's flushed face. Little lines of -humor crinkled about the corners of his mouth. - -"Captain Cavendish--or Woodhouse, make this girl a prisoner--your -prisoner, sir!" - -[Illustration: "Your prisoner, sir."] - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -AT THE QUAY - -Five o'clock at the quay, and already the new day was being made -raucous by the bustle of departure--shouts of porters, tenders' -jangling engine bells, thump of trunks dropped down skidways, -lamentations of voyagers vainly hunting baggage mislaid. Out in the -stream the _Saxonia_--a clean white ship, veritable ark of refuge for -pious Americans escaping the deluge. - -In the midst of a group of his countrymen Henry J. Sherman stood, feet -wide apart and straw hat cocked back over his bald spot. He was -narrating the breathless incidents of the night's dark hour: - -"Yes, sir, a soldier comes to our rooms about three-thirty o'clock and -hammers on our door. 'Everybody in this hotel's under arrest,' he -says. 'Kindly dress as soon as possible and report to Major Bishop in -the office.' And we not five hours before the guests of General and -Lady Crandall at Government House. What d'you think of that for a -quick change? - -"Well, gentlemen, we piled down-stairs--with me minus a collar button -and havin' to hold my collar down behind with my hand. And what do we -find? This chap Almer, with a face like a side of cream cheese, -standing in the middle of a bunch of soldiers with guns; another bunch -of soldiers surroundin' his Arab boy, who's as innocent a little fellah -as ever you set eyes on; and this Major Bishop walkin' up and down, all -excited, and sayin' something about somebody's got a scheme to blow up -the whole fleet out there. Which might have been done, he says, if it -wasn't for that fellah Woodhouse we'd had dinner with just that very -evening." - -"Who's some sort of a spy. I knew it all the time, you see." Mrs. -Sherman was quick to claim her share of her fellow tourists' attention. -"Only he's a British spy set to watch the Germans. Major Bishop told -me that in confidence after it was all over--said he'd never met a man -with the nerve this Captain Woodhouse has." - -"Better whisper that word 'spy' soft," Henry J. admonished sotto voce. -"We're not out of this plagued Europe yet, and we've had about all the -excitement we can stand; don't want anybody to arrest us again just the -minute we're sailin'. But, as I was sayin', there we all stood, -foolish as goats, until in comes General Crandall, followed by this -Woodhouse chap. 'Excuse me, people, for causing you this little -inconvenience,' the general says. 'Major Bishop has taken his orders -too literal. If you'll go back to your rooms and finish dressin' I'll -have the army bus down here to take you to the quay. The Hotel -Splendide's accommodations have been slightly disarranged by the arrest -of its worthy proprietor.' So back we go, and--by cricky, mother, here -comes the general and Mrs. Crandall now!" - -Henry J. broke through the ring of passengers, and with a waving of his -hat, rushed to the curb. A limousine bearing the governor, his lady -and Jane Gerson, and with two bulky hampers strapped to the baggage -rack behind, was just drawing up. - -"Why, of course we're down here to see you off--and bid you Godspeed to -little old Kewanee!" Lady Crandall was quick to anticipate the -Shermans' greetings. General Crandall, beaming indulgently on the -group of homegoers, had a hand for each. - -"Yes--yes," he exclaimed. "After arresting you at three o'clock we're -here to give you a clean ticket at five. Couldn't do more than -that--what? Regrettable occurrence and all that, but give you -something to tell the stay-at-homes about when you get back to--ah----" - -"Kewanee, Illynoy, General," Sherman was quick to supply. "No town -like it this side the pearly gates." - -"No doubt of it, Sherman," Crandall heartily agreed. "A quiet place, -I'll wager. Think I'd relish a touch of your Kewanee after--ah--life -on Gibraltar." - -Jane Gerson, who had been standing in the car, anxiously scanning the -milling crowd about the landing stage, caught sight of a white helmet -and khaki-clad shoulders pushing through the nearer fringes of -travelers. She slipped out of the limousine unseen, and waited for the -white helmet to be doffed before her. - -"I was afraid maybe----" the girl began, her cheeks suddenly flaming. - -"Afraid that, after all, it wasn't true?" the man she had found in -war's vortex finished, his gray eyes compelling hers to tell him their -whole message. "Afraid that Captain Cavendish might be as vile a -deceiver as Woodhouse? Does Cavendish have to prove himself all over -again, little girl?" - -"No--no!" Her hands fluttered into his, and her lips were parted in a -smile. "It's Captain Woodhouse I want to know--always; the man whose -pledged word I held to." - -"It must have been--hard," he murmured. "But you were -splendid--splendid!" - -"No, I was not." Tears came to dim her eyes, and the hands he held -trembled. "Once--in one terrible moment this morning--when Jaimihr -told us you were going to the signal tower--when we waited--waited to -hear that awful noise, my faith failed me. I thought you----" - -"Forget that moment, Jane, dearest. A saint would have denied faith -then." - -They were silent for a minute, their hearts quailing before the -imminent separation. He spoke: - -"Go back to the States now; go back and show this Hildebrand person -you're a wonder--a prize. Show him what I've known more and more -surely every moment since that meeting in Calais. But give him fair -warning; he's going to lose you." - -"Lose me?" she echoed. - -"Inevitably. Listen, girl! In a year my term of service is up, and if -the war's over I shall leave the army, come to the States to you, -and--and--do you think I could become a good American?" - -"If--if you have the proper teacher," the girl answered, with a flash -of mischief. - -"All aboard for the _Saxonia_!" It was Consul Reynolds, fussed, -perspiring, overwhelmed with the sense of his duty, who bustled up to -where the Shermans were chatting with Lady Crandall and the general. -Reynolds' sharp eye caught an intimate tableau on the other side of the -auto. "And that means you, Miss Step-lively New York," he shouted, -"much as I hate to--ah--interrupt." - -Jane Gerson saw her two precious hampers stemming a way through the -crowd on the backs of porters, bound for the tender's deck. She could -not let them out of her sight. - -"Wait, Jane!" His hands were on her arms, and he would not let her go. -"Will you be my teacher? I want no other." - -"My terms are high." She tried to smile, though trembling lips belied -her. - -"I'd pay with my life," he whispered in a quick gust of passion. -"Here's my promise----" - -He took her in his arms, and between them passed the world-old pledge -of man and girl. - - - -THE END - - - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Inside the Lines, by -Earl Derr Biggers and Robert Welles Ritchie - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE THE LINES *** - -***** This file should be named 56036-8.txt or 56036-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/6/0/3/56036/ - -Produced by Al Haines -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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