These letters and the journal of a young American girl travelling in
Europe came to me under circumstances as strange as they themselves
were unusual. Some of the letters were written on heavy blue
stationery without monogram or heading; some bore the names of various
continental hostelries: many were written on the embossed paper of the
United States Embassy at Rome. All were faded with age and were
without envelopes, definite dates, or identifying signatures.
They came into my possession in the following manner. I was in Paris
on leave that terrible Good Friday night of 1918, when the spring
drive was on. The Red Cross had ordered me to start for the front next
morning with some other nurses, and we were to leave at an early hour,
so I had paid my hotel bill, packed my bag, and gone to bed,
partly-clad, as was the custom in those exciting times.
But I had hardly got settled for sleep when the shrieking siren
announced an air raid. My room was on the top floor, and offered too
good a target, so I jumped out of bed, slipped into my uniform, seized
my bag, and ran out into the hall. It was in darkness, save for
flashes from pocket-torches. Half-dressed people were hurrying through
the corridor and groping their way down the staircase to the cellar
for safety.
As I passed an open door, I heard a woman call loudly, “Oh, won’t
somebody come and help me?” I went in to find, as I turned my
flashlight about the room, a pretty, golden-haired lady, an American,
with big deep blue eyes, struggling to get into a black dress. One of
her arms was in a sling and she was having trouble. She looked ill and
weak, but seemed a perfectly plucky and determined little person. I
slipped her heavy coat over her shoulders, wondering, at the time,
where I had seen her before. As we started for the door, she
remembered something she had left, and said, “Wait--take this,”
putting a small morocco bag into my hands, while she ran back to find
something she wanted.
“Hurry!” I begged, for the air raid was a bad one and I was alarmed.
“I will, I will,” she assured me. “You go down and I will join you in
a minute.”
“We’ll meet in the hotel cellar,” I answered.
Barely had I reached the first floor when there was a terrific crash;
the front door flew open and several panic-stricken people rushed in
from the street, seeking shelter. A bomb had struck near by.
Forgetting the woman upstairs (but still carrying the bags, hers and
my own) I ran out to see if I could be of any use to those who had
been hurt. Someone remarked as I passed, “Crazy American--imagine
going out now!”
Airplanes were buzzing overhead; searchlights were meeting in the sky
while anti-aircraft guns banged away. Bombs were bursting and shrapnel
was falling. It was the worst raid I had seen. “‘Crazy American’ was
right,” I told myself, and ducked into a low entrance marked “Cave.”
It led into a wine-cellar, and a number of people were already there,
all as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. The walls were lined
with dusty bottles and the place was dimly lighted by candles stuck
round here and there. Some of the people sat at tables playing cards,
while others, wrapped in blankets, were making themselves comfortable
on mattresses that lay about. The crashes continued, so I stayed there
till the dawn crept into a small window before I ventured back to the
hotel.
The building was still standing, but a great jagged opening had been
ripped through the upper stories. A watchman was on guard. Several
people had been killed, he said. The ambulance and police had come and
gone. The guests had scattered. It was clear that the owner of the
little bag was not there, and I had no time to search for her. The sun
was rising, and I was under orders to be at the railway station to
take a train that would leave in fifteen minutes. So I jumped into the
Metro and set off on my journey to the front, taking the stranger’s
bag with me.
During the days that followed, so busy that we could not believe
anything lay outside our crowded wards, I forgot both property and
owner. Only when I reached Paris several months later did I make an
effort to discover her. After consulting the police and the American
Embassy officials without result, I decided to break open the lock and
see if there was any clue inside to her identity.
The bag proved to be full of papers which I felt obliged to read. What
might they contain?--romance, scandals, and maybe military secrets?
There was a clipping about a mysterious Russian Prince masquerading
under the name of Kosloff, and a Red Cross badge and some secret
service insignia. Did these badges belong to the blonde lady herself
or to the Prince, or to her friend, the diplomat mentioned in the
letters? Well, we will see. I searched the lists of American Embassy
officials for the diplomat, but without success; I discovered that
their names were legion, and the Prince, too, I was unable to trace.
The difficulties lay in the fact that all the letters were signed with
nicknames--and with the death of so many people in the war and the
length of time which had evidently passed since they were written,
most of the avenues of identification had been blocked.
Nevertheless I put notices in several of the Paris papers asking for
information regarding a little fair-haired American woman who had
disappeared from the Grande Hotel du Nord during the night of the air
raid, leaving a black morocco bag in charge of a stranger. The only
three letters which I received in answer were as follows:
Dear Madame,
In reply to your advertisement in _Le Matin_, I would say that
I think I saw the woman you refer to at the Café Russe on the
Rue des Capuchins one evening in February. She was dining with
a big blonde foreigner whom she addressed as Prince. Catching
a word or two of their conversation that implied they knew
more of the military situation than ordinary civilians should,
my suspicions were aroused so when they left, I followed them.
The man evidently noticed me and knew my game, for he put the
lady in a taxi, telling the driver to go to the Grande Hotel
du Nord, and then led me a chase, round corners and down alley
ways, finally dodging into a crowded music hall where I lost
him.
She was so charming that I could not believe her guilty, and
yet, her companion awakened deep distrust in me. I have often
wondered if by chance she were a member of our own American
secret service and he a German spy. I never saw her again,
though if I did, I should know her at once. Since the hotel
you mentioned was her destination, it may be that your lady
and mine are one and the same. This is all the information I
am able to give you, but I hope that even this faintest of
clues may lead you a little farther in your search. I beg to
remain
Very truly yours,
T---- F----.
Captain of ---- Regiment,
---- Division of Infantry.
The second reply came from an American Y. M. C. A. worker who wrote:
I think that I talked with the little lady described in the
_Paris Herald_ while I was travelling by train from Amiens to
Paris. She was in my compartment and carried a black morocco
bag, like the one mentioned. She was dressed as a Salvation
Army girl, but I could get nothing from her about her work or
where she had been stationed, and though at the time this
impressed me only as ordinary discretion, yet when I ran across
her later in Paris, and found her wearing the Y. uniform, I
stopped and spoke to her, and asked her if she had left off
being a Sally, and why. She pretended not to know what I was
talking about, and assured me she had never been anything but a
Y. worker, and that she had never seen me before to her
knowledge.
I was convinced that she remembered me perfectly, for all her
denials, and looked her up only to find that no one answering
to her description was either on the Y. books or on the
Salvation Army’s. The only surmise possible is that she was in
disguise for some reason. With apologies for troubling you
with this trifling information, I am
Sincerely,
S---- B----.
* * * * *
The last letter was even more unsatisfactory, and came from a clerk in
the Grande Hotel du Nord. Translated, it runs as follows:
Madame,
I have seen your notice in the papers about the woman very
fair-haired and petite, who disappeared from our hotel during
the disaster of Good Friday night. She had arrived that
evening. I remember thinking it was very late for a pretty
woman to come alone, but as she was tired and her arm was in a
sling, I admitted her without looking at her papers, although
I took them to my room to go over in the morning. They were
destroyed in the fire caused by the bomb, so I can give you no
more information.