[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.