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.'"