THE SECRET OF THE CRIMSON PATCH
It was Mrs. Quale who arrived on the scene first. She came in a taxi,
having received elaborate directions from Chet, who remained at the
hotel to watch for the return of the captain. There was one comfortable
thing about Mrs. Quale that Patricia had always particularly admired:
she seemed to understand things and situations without any explanations.
She came in now, took both Patricia's hands in hers, and kissed her
quietly.
"You poor child! If I had only known what a tangle you were in, I would
not have gone off so thoughtlessly yesterday without first letting you
know. I supposed of course your father was with you. I am thankful, at
least, that I'm home in time to help you out of the muddle."
That was all, but Patricia realized that whatever she knew or did not
know about the affair, it made no difference whatever in her desire to
be of help.
She decided to tell her at once about Virginie, and did so while they
were standing outside the door of the room where the Belgian girl was.
Mrs. Quale had met her casually at the hotel, in company with Patricia,
and had always cherished a liking for the lonely, diffident girl. When
she had heard all the story, she stood thinking a moment and then said
decisively:
"You simply cannot go back to that hotel. It is no place for you after
all that has happened. Now, I have a plan, and I shall urge your father
to fall in with it. Part of my house is at last habitable—at least three
bedrooms and the living-room and kitchen are. I have had old Juno there
for a week getting them in order and was going to leave the hotel for
them myself in a day or two. I want you all to come with me and make
your home there for a time. I do not believe it is either right or safe
for you to stay any longer in that public place, especially after what
has happened. We'll go right over now, and I'll send word for your
father to follow as soon as he arrives. We can go back to the hotel some
other time and pack up your belongings."
"Oh, Mrs. Quale, it is lovely of you to propose it!" sighed Patricia.
"You don't know what a relief it will be to get away from that place. I
could never stand it again after the dreadful hours I spent there last
night. But what about Virginie?"
"Never mind about her. Just take me to her now, if you will, and we'll
settle about that later."
Virginie still lay on the bed, no longer sobbing or weeping, but with
her head buried in the pillow, quiet, hopeless, and inert. She did not
even look up as they entered the room. Patricia gently roused her, and
she sat up to greet Mrs. Quale in a timid, half-frightened manner. But
Mrs. Quale had long since settled in her own mind her plan of action.
She sat down on the side of the bed and put one arm protectingly around
Virginie.
"Dear," she said softly, "I know your story now, all that you have
suffered, all the brave sacrifices you made to save the life, as you
supposed, of the father who was no longer living. All that is ended. And
now, dear, I am a very lonely woman. I have no children and very few
relatives left, and I have always felt a warm interest in you since
first I saw you with that unscrupulous woman. I knew that you were not
happy. Will you come and make your home with me and be my daughter? I
will bring you up as my own. We are two lonely people. I have no
daughter, you have no mother. Why should we not be happy together?"
The girl stared at her for a moment almost uncomprehendingly. Then,
suddenly, she grasped the meaning and it seemed too wonderful to be
true.
"Oh, you—you are too good—too—" Her head went down on the motherly
shoulder, and her arms crept around Mrs. Quale's neck. And so Patricia,
tears of happiness standing in her own eyes, stole out of the room and
left them together.
* * * * *
It was ten o'clock that night before Captain Meade himself arrived,
tired, dusty, discouraged, and decidedly bewildered by the change his
daughter had made so unexpectedly in her place of residence. Chet had
encountered him in the lobby of the hotel and steered him at once to
Mrs. Quale's house without any special explanations, as he felt that
Patricia was the one best fitted to offer these. And it was not till
after he had bathed and had some supper that Patricia, alone with him in
the library, ventured to ask what success he had had in his search.
"None at all. Absolutely nothing to show for it!" he replied wearily.
"We have raked New York from end to end without success. When we went
there originally we were on a good scent—actually had the fellow spotted
who we knew without fail must have had the sketch in his possession; but
when we finally ran him down, he had nothing of the kind about him nor
had he had any opportunity to dispose of it anywhere, so we had to give
up that clue. I confess, I'm terribly discouraged."
Patricia smiled cheerfully. "Well, never mind, Daddy. You've had a hard
time, but perhaps things aren't as bad as they seem!"
He looked at her wonderingly. "I don't know how they could be much
worse!" he exclaimed a little impatiently. "One of the most valuable of
the Government's secrets is in the hands of the enemy at this minute."
Patricia lifted a book from the table, took something from it, and laid
it on her father's knee.
"I hate to contradict you," she remarked gaily, "but I think the Crimson
Patch is at this minute in the possession of the one who has most right
to it!"
* * * * *
It was long after midnight. The rest of the household was all asleep,
but Patricia still sat with her father by the open fire, for the night
had turned chilly. She sat on his knee, her head snuggled comfortably in
his coat collar. The ensuing interval, after she had told her story, had
been a confusion of telephoning and interviews, not only with Chester
Jackson, but also with a mysterious Mr. Brainerd, a curly-haired,
light-complexioned, athletic young man with whom her father had been
closeted for three quarters of an hour in close conference. Patricia was
glad when it was over and they had all gone and left them alone
together.
"But, Daddy," she was saying, "there are still a whole lot of things I
don't understand about this thing at all. You kept saying, '_We_ were
hunting for it in New York.' Now who is '_we_'? I thought you shared
this secret with no one."
The captain laughed. "You are right. There's quite a little you've still
to learn. 'We' is mainly Mr. Tom Brainerd, whom you saw here to-night.
He's a government secret-service man, the best around these parts, and
he's been near me for protection ever since we first came to the hotel."
"He _has_?" cried Patricia. "Why, I never saw him before in my life."
"Oh, yes, you have!" contradicted the captain. "You saw him every day of
your life, only you didn't know him. I confess he looked a little
different. Mr. Tom Brainerd was no other than your pet spy, poor Peter
Stoger, my dear!"
Patricia's jaw dropped and her face was a study in bewilderment.
"Then—then he—he wasn't Franz?" she stammered.
"He certainly was _not_! He elected to come here, disguised as he was,
because his countenance in real life is a little too familiar to the
German spy-system in general. The manager of the hotel is fortunately a
good friend of mine and an ardent patriot, so 'Peter's' task was made
easy. But there was a 'Franz' here, though he went by another name, and
he, too, was one of the waiters. I do not believe you remember him. He
was a short, thin, light-haired young fellow, who had a table at the
other end of the dining-room. Curiously enough, both he and Peter rather
suspected each other and were constantly watching each other's
movements.
"On the day when the sketch disappeared, it happened in this way. When
Tom, or rather, Peter, came into the room that evening with the tray
containing your supper, he saw to his astonishment, lying carelessly on
the table, the very sketch that he understood it was so important to
guard. Immediately he saw the necessity of removing it to safety, as he
knew that you were not in the secret about it, so he put his tray down
on top of it, in apparent ignorance, and when you commanded him to
remove the tray, he did so, cleverly concealing and holding the sketch
underneath. When he went out of the room he still had it concealed under
the tray, but once outside and the door closed, he dropped it to the
ground while trying to transfer it to his pocket. It was this
unfortunate accident that he feels sure led to its theft. In all
probability, Madame Vanderpoel was watching from her nearly closed door
and saw the sketch as it fell, and guessed it must be connected in some
way with the secret we had been guarding. She immediately found some
means to report it to her ally and companion-spy, Franz, and then the
trouble began."
"But did Peter—I mean Mr. Brainerd—suspect Madame?" Patricia interrupted
eagerly.
"He did not exactly suspect her, for she had done and said nothing of a
suspicious nature. She certainly passed herself off very well for just
what she wished to seem. She is an exceedingly clever woman. His only
uneasiness about her arose from the rather peculiar actions of your
little friend, Virginie de Vos. Still, as I say, Brainerd could not seem
to connect her with any doubtful matters. Franz he _did_ think was
watching him, but even _he_ did nothing to arouse direct suspicion. And,
by the way, the 'Hofmeyer' that Chester heard referred to is none other
than this precious 'Madame Vanderpoel.' It is, in fact, her real name,
for she married, after her first husband died, a German named Hofmeyer.
Little Virginie told me this to-night in a short interview I had with
her. So there you have the famous two.
"Well, to continue. Peter intended to keep the sketch by him and return
it to me at the earliest opportunity. But you know I got back very late
that night, and so he thought best to retain it till morning, fearing it
would arouse suspicion if he made an attempt to see me at so late an
hour. He took the chance of my being a little upset at not finding it.
He even thought it possible I might not discover its disappearance that
night. Then, during the night, the sketch was stolen from his room; he
does not even yet know how, but undoubtedly Franz was the culprit.
"Next morning at breakfast, if you remember, Peter jogged my shoulder
with the tray, and I reprimanded him rather sharply. It was a
preconcerted signal between us that he had something important to tell
me. Later we met, and he told me what had happened and that Franz had
disappeared from his accustomed post. We straightway went on a keen hunt
after Franz, struck his trail at the railroad station, followed him to
New York, pursued him from place to place all day, and finally had him
arrested and searched, only to be disappointed in finding he had nothing
of the sort on him. He must have got over to Hanford and left it there,
or passed the sketch to Madame before she went, or something of the
kind. At any rate, we had to let him go the next morning, as we had no
evidence on which to hold him. After that, I came back here to find you
and Chester had been the best detectives after all!
"The boy actually had the gumption to set the police on the trail of
that Hanford crowd when he got back here. They went right out to raid
the place. But alas! every one of the birds had flown. Not a trace of
them anywhere. Very likely the maid gave the warning after Virginie got
away, and they knew that the authorities would be hot-foot after them in
a very short time. One consolation is that Madame will be known and
spotted wherever she appears, so her usefulness as a German spy is over,
in this country at any rate.
"I think that I have made a great mistake in keeping you in the dark
about all these things, from the first. I might better have let you into
the secret of the importance of the sketch and the fact that our waiter
was only a secret-service man in disguise. But I wanted to spare you all
worry about the matter, and I thought it would be perhaps safer for you
if you knew nothing about my affairs. I see now that I should have done
differently. But, at any rate, it has all turned out so well that we
won't regret anything."
"But what a trump Chester has been! Did you ever see any one quite so
clever?" cried Patricia, enthusiastically. "He is really the one who
saved the whole situation."
"Yes, he is really a wonderful chap!" the captain agreed. "He beat Mr.
Brainerd at his own job, and has done more for me than I can ever hope
to repay. But he shall certainly have his reward, as far as I'm able to
accomplish it. He wants to be a detective, but he is cut out for even
better things if he only has the education and opportunities. I am going
to arrange to have him put in a good school, and later he shall follow
any line of work he seems best fitted for. He will certainly make his
mark in the world some day."
"Well," murmured Patricia, with a little sigh of content, "Chester and
Virginie have certainly lost nothing and gained much by the
disappearance of the Crimson Patch, so I feel as if the adventure had
been well worth while in every way, even though it did cause us an awful
lot of worry!"
The captain reached over to the table and took up the sketch. "It's a
simple little thing to have caused such a lot of worry, isn't it!" he
said musingly. "It looks as harmless and innocent as any butterfly might
seem, fluttering about on a May morning. Yet, it is in reality a very
deadly little article, Patricia. I'm only thankful to goodness that its
deadliness was so well hidden that those Huns never caught on to it. Its
particular usefulness is practically over now, since the work I've been
doing is all but complete. But it would have been a terribly dangerous
thing had it fallen into the hands of the enemy and they had fathomed
its meaning. My work would then have been almost valueless.
"And since you have done so much to aid in keeping this a secret,
Patricia, I think the time has come to tell you the meaning of it all.
You have earned the right, and all I ask is that you will communicate it
to no one till I give you permission. I can trust you, I know.
"I have already told you how, when I was a prisoner in Germany, it
occurred to me that if I pretended to have lost some of my wits, through
shell-shock, as many have, the ruse might benefit me in a number of
ways. I was strong and able-bodied at the time, and the Huns were
particularly in need of husky prisoners to do their work, and they much
prefer those who show symptoms of not having all their wits about them.
I was unusually successful in the device, and was finally set to work in
an outer section of one of their airplane factories—of course, under
strict guard.
"It was here that I came in contact with a German mechanic, a man of
somewhat finer caliber than most of them, to whom I was able to render a
rather important service or two. He was ill and in want, and he had a
serious grievance against his government. He had invented a certain
device of immense importance, and he was trying to get them to accept it
and pay him enough to assure him a decent living. The government wanted
the device badly enough, but was so foolish as to haggle and bargain
with him over the price, offering him scarcely enough to keep him for
six months. He was too ill to work and earn a living, but he steadily
refused to give up his secret till properly reimbursed.
"At length it came to the point where he knew he had but a little longer
to live. Angered, perhaps, that his Fatherland should have been so
ungrateful and mean-spirited, and hating to have his discovery, of which
he was justly proud, lost to the world, he confided it to me, for I had,
some time before, allowed him to know that I was not the stupid creature
I seemed. I asked him whether he cared if America made use of it, and he
replied: 'I care for nothing now. The Fatherland has proved unworthy. Do
with it what you will.'
"Later, as you know, I myself managed to escape and get through to the
French lines. And so I arrived home. But, being of a somewhat mechanical
turn myself, I came to realize that this device, still incomplete as it
was, could be perfected into an instrument of the greatest importance to
the aviation arm of the service. I cannot explain to you exactly what it
is, nor go into all its workings. It would be much too technical for you
to understand.
"But I can tell you this much about it. An aviator in a bombing-plane
has had one great, and, till now, almost insuperable difficulty to
contend with. The velocity of his machine is such that a released bomb
will have for an appreciable time after it is dropped the same
horizontal velocity. This means, in simpler language, that the bomb will
be carried along for a time in the same direction and at almost the same
rate at which the machine is going. Thus, you see that the aviator, if
he is intending to drop his bomb on a certain building or object, cannot
do so when he is directly over that object, but must calculate in some
way at what point to release his bomb before he comes directly over the
object, or it will not hit its mark.
"There have been many attempts to overcome this difficulty, but none
very successful. The device I have perfected comes more nearly to
accuracy than anything yet discovered, and our own Government is only
too glad to make use of it.
"And now we come to The Crimson Patch. When the German mechanic gave me
his secret, he also furnished me with a drawing or diagram of the
instrument. This was absolutely necessary to have, as the invention was
so complicated that I could not possibly have carried it in my head. But
I realized, also, that it would be extremely dangerous to carry it
around with me in the shape in which it was. So I camouflaged the whole
thing in a sketch of the Crimson Patch butterfly, and in this form it
was safe enough, for I had made a point of sketching at times the
various butterflies I had seen while in the prison-camp, and the Germans
thought me only a harmless lunatic on the subject. The Crimson Patch was
no more to them than any other pretty little sketch I had made."
"But, Daddy," cried Patricia, staring at the paper in his hand, "I can't
see a trace of anything like the drawing of a mechanical instrument."
"It is all incorporated in the veining of the wings and shading of the
body," he told her. "No one would understand it save myself, for it is
so much a matter of lines and scale and angles. But it is all there, I
assure you, at least, in its cruder form. Until the machine was
completed, I had to have this sketch constantly where I could refer to
it, at times I even had to carry it about with me. So you see how
important it was, considering the abominable spy-system by which we are
surrounded, that it should appear only the innocent thing it seemed.
"Well, now you know the history of the Crimson Patch. It has certainly
had, as they say, a checkered career! I would like to keep it always as
an interesting souvenir, but it is too dangerous to have about, and the
time of its usefulness is past. Only a few days ago, at the place where
we are to manufacture this device, it was tried out and proved that it
will be a practical success after some necessary alterations are made.
Look your last on it, for in a few minutes its existence will be over!"
He held it up before her eyes a moment. Then, slipping her off his knee,
he walked over to the fireplace, where a big log was still smouldering.
Stirring the fire into a blaze, he tore the sketch into small bits and
dropped the fluttering pieces into the flames. Together they watched
while the charred fragments turned brown, curled over, blazed for a
moment and shriveled into a gray crisp.
Five minutes later the fire died down. The big log rolled over, burying
the ashes under its bulk. And so vanished the last trace of the
mysterious Crimson Patch.
THE END
_By AUGUSTA HUIELL SEAMAN_
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SEVEN KEYHOLES
BLUEBONNET BEND
THE BOARDED-UP HOUSE
THE CRIMSON PATCH
THE DRAGON'S SECRET
THE EDGE OF RAVEN POOL
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
MELISSA-ACROSS-THE-FENCE
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SIX
SALLY SIMMS ADVENTURES IT
THE SAPPHIRE SIGNET
THE SECRET OF TATE'S BEACH
THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL
THREE SIDES OF PARADISE GREEN
THE SLIPPER POINT MYSTERY
TRANQUILLITY HOUSE
VOICE IN THE DARK
THE VANDERLYN SILHOUETTE
THE MYSTERY AT LINDEN HALL
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Moved advertisement "_By AUGUSTA HUIELL SEAMAN_" from beginning to
end of volume.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Crimson Patch, by Augusta Huiell Seaman