Ruth could see dull eyes in a big, stupid face. The man said
something with the inflection of a question. She could not make out
the words, but obviously he was asking if anyone was alive under the
car. So Ruth answered. The face disappeared; and she heard
consultation. Soon several men tramped in the water and thrust
timbers under the side of the car and tilted it. Large, rough hands
reached under and caught Ruth and pulled her out.
She sank limp when the hands released her, gently enough, and laid
her upon the sloping bank above the stream. The man who had rescued
her had four companions, all of them Russians. They engaged
themselves immediately in dragging out Captain von Forstner and then
exploring under the car. But they found no one else. Ruth discovered
the driver lying a rod or so beyond her and farther up the slope.
Plainly he had been thrown out and the car had crushed him. The
Russians had seen him before they had come to the car, and when Ruth
made signs to them to go to the man they shook their heads,
repeating a sentence which meant--she had no doubt--that the man was
dead. They repeated the same words about von Forstner.
Ruth struggled up, dizzily, to find herself battered and with
muscles bruised and strained; but she had escaped without broken
bones or disabling injury. A German soldier, armed with a rifle,
joined the group of Russians about Ruth. Evidently he was a guard
who had been at some distance when the car went from the road.
“You are much injured, _gnädiges Fräulein_?” the soldier asked her
solicitously and respectfully.
“Only a little,” Ruth replied, collecting strength again and
regaining clearness of thought.
When the Russians first had come to her aid she had thought of them
as helping her, as an American against the Germans; but now she was
cool enough to realize how absurd that idea was. These peasant
slaves were not moved by any political emotions and, if they had
been, they were incapable of recognizing her as an American and the
possessor of any particular sympathy for them. She was to them a
lady--a companion of a master who undoubtedly had mistreated them;
but when they had found that master helpless they had been below any
instincts of revenge upon him. They had considered his misfortune a
lucky chance given them to perform some service which could win them
favor, and now that the master was dead they sought that favor from
the mistress.
And much the same considerations governed the German guard. It was
plain from his manner of address to her that he could not have
witnessed the accident to the car, or at least he could not have
observed that she had caused it. She was to him a friend of
Hauptmann von Forstner, who had passed riding beside Herr
Hauptmann--a lady, of the class of persons with whom Herr Hauptmann
associated and whose authority at all times and in all matters the
private soldier was accustomed to accept.
The authority which Ruth thus possessed was extremely local, of
course; its realms might not run beyond the little leafy valley of
the brook, and it surely was temporary; but locally and for the
instant it was hers.
“You desire, _gnädiges Fräulein_,” the soldier asked her, “that I
stay here and send one of them,” he indicated the Russians, “with
word to the manor or that I go?”
“You go,” Ruth directed, struggling up to her feet. “I am quite
strong again and you can do nothing for Herr Hauptmann.”
“No, _gnädiges Fräulein_, I can do nothing for Herr Hauptmann,” the
soldier agreed. Of himself he was doubtful whether he should yet
leave his _gnädiges Fräulein_, but he had been commanded, so he
went.
The Russians had withdrawn a little; and after the German soldier
was gone Ruth stood alone, gazing down at von Forstner’s body. She
had killed von Forstner and his servant. She had killed them in
self-defense and by an act which might have destroyed her as well as
them, yet horror shrank her as she saw them lying dead--horror which
first had seized her at the idea of individually dealing in death
that day long ago when she stood with Gerry in the parlor of the
_pension_ upon the Rue des Saints Pères, and when he had told her
that the French had taken Louis de Trevenac upon her information,
and were to execute him.
If she had killed these men solely to save herself, she must cast
herself down beside them. But she had not! That sudden, mad deed
which she had just performed--and in the consequences of which she
was just beginning to be involved--sprang not from self-defense. It
was not sense of escape from personal violation which at this moment
chiefly swayed her; it was a sensation of requital, in petty part,
for the savageries of that sweep through Belgium of which she had
heard four years ago; requital for the _Lusitania_; for Poland and
Serbia; for the bombing of Paris and for that long-range gun whose
shells she had seen bursting; for Grand’mère Bergues’ daughter and
for the other refugees upon the Mirevaux road; for the French girls
and women in slavery only a mile from here; for....
She raised her hands to her hair, which was wet, as she was wet all
over; she arranged her hair and her clothing as decently as she
could. A motor car was coming upon the road from the manor. It
stopped directly above, and the soldier and a man in civilian
clothes got out; the driver of the car remained in his seat and
maneuvered to turn the car about in the narrow road.
The man in civilian clothes, who came down the slope toward the
stream, was forty or forty-five years old, Ruth thought. He was a
large man, florid-faced and mustached, with the bearing not of
servant but of a subordinate--an overseer of some sort, Ruth
guessed, or perhaps a resident manager of the estate.
“Good morning, _gnädiges Fräulein_,” he saluted Ruth, breathless
from his haste and agitation. “I am Dittman,” he made himself known.
“What a terrible accident has occurred! Herr Hauptmann is dead, they
say; and Josef, too!” He gave barely a glance toward the body of the
chauffeur, but knelt at once beside von Forstner’s.
“They are both dead,” Ruth said quietly. It was plain that von
Forstner had been Dittman’s master and that Dittman, for the moment
at least, accepted Ruth as a friend of von Forstner’s, as the
soldier had.
“What shall I order done?” Dittman appealed to Ruth, rising.
“Take Hauptmann von Forstner’s body to the house, of course,” Ruth
directed. “Who is at the house?” she inquired.
“Besides the servants, this morning only Herr Adler.”
“Who is Herr Adler?”
“Why, he is Hauptmann von Forstner’s secretary.”
“Then why did he not himself come at once?”
“Word arrived that Herr Hauptmann was dead,” Dittman explained.
“Herr Adler did not think that you would require him here, _gnädiges
Fräulein_. Since Herr Hauptmann was dead it was more necessary than
ever for Herr Adler to remain at the house. Oberst-Lieutenant von
Fallenbosch communicates by telephone at this time in the morning;
immediately he must be informed.”
“Of course,” Ruth said.
She was aware that Dittman was observing her more and more
curiously, not so much because of her questions and of her ignorance
of the household affairs of Captain von Forstner, she thought, as
because of her accent. Dittman apparently was not surprised that the
lady companion of his master did not know about Adler; and even the
fact that she spoke German with an undisguisable foreign accent did
not stir suspicion, but only curiosity. Ruth apparently had taken
the right tone with this puffing underling by offering no
explanations whatever about herself and by demanding them of others.
“You are wet, _gnädiges Fräulein_,” he reminded her solicitously. “I
brought the motor car for you. If you will proceed I shall see to
all things for Herr Hauptmann.”
“Hauptmann von Forstner carried upon himself certain papers for
which I now must be responsible,” Ruth returned to Dittman.
“Ah, yes; of course, _gnädiges Fräulein_.”
“You may obtain them for me.”
Dittman knelt again, obediently, and carefully and methodically went
through von Forstner’s pockets. A few minutes before, when Ruth had
been alone but for the Russian slaves, she had realized that she
ought to obtain the papers in those pockets, but her revulsion at
making the search had halted her. Now that proved altogether
fortunate. Her fate here hung upon little things; and one of those
trifles which supported her, undoubtedly, was that she had waited
for this Dittman before allowing disturbance of any of von
Forstner’s effects.
Dittman gathered together everything from the pockets--money, keys,
penknife, cigarette case, revolver, and memorandum book, besides two
thick packets of folded papers; and he offered all to Ruth, who
accepted only the packets and the memorandum book. Dittman assisted
her to climb the slope to the waiting car.
“My bags, Dittman,” Ruth said to her escort when she was seated.
They had been held fairly well away from the water by the position
of the wrecked car; and there was more than a chance that the
leather had kept dry some of the clothing within. Ruth did not know
what lay before her but she could meet it better in fresh garments.
Dittman ordered one of the Russians to bring up her bags and place
them in the car.
As it sped away to the south Ruth sat back alone in the rear seat.
Evidently she had been expected at the manor house; from the border
or, perhaps, from Basel or from Lucerne Captain von Forstner had
warned his household that he was bringing her with him. Had he
described to his inferiors the relationship of his companion to him?
Almost surely he had not. If they had arrived together, in the
manner planned by von Forstner, his servants swiftly enough could
have arrived at their own conclusions; but now that von Forstner was
dead--accidentally, as all believed--matters lay so that his
servants might judge the nature of her association with their master
by the manner in which Ruth bore herself.
Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch, who communicated by telephone at
this time in the morning, suggested perilous complications, but
perils were all about her now, in any case. The bold course upon
which she was embarked was--if you thought about it--safer, in
reality, than any other.
So Ruth steadied herself as the car, clearing the woods, ran beside
open acres to a huge and old German manor house set baldly upon a
slope above the stream. A man was walking upon the terrace before
the door; he sighted the car and started quickly to meet it, but as
the car sped up he returned to the terrace and stood upon the lower
step at the edge of the drive. He was a short, broadly built but
nervous little man, upwards of thirty, spectacled, and with thick
hair cropped somewhat after the military fashion; but he was not in
uniform and his bearing was that of student or professional man,
rather than of the military.
When the car stopped he did not wait for the driver or one of the
servants, who now had come out upon the terrace, but he himself
opened the door and stood back quickly, staring at Ruth anxiously
and rubbing together his fat red hands.
“Herr Adler?” Ruth asked as she stood up.
“Yes, _gnädiges Fräulein_. You have come from the captain?”
Her drenched condition was witness to the fact, and Ruth observed
that, besides, his little eyes sought the packets of papers and the
memorandum book which she held.
“I have come from America and more recently from France,” Ruth said,
stepping down. They were alone now as Adler walked with her across
the terrace. “I have come from Lucerne with Captain von Forstner.”
“Yes, _gnädiges Fräulein_, I know; I know. And he is dead, they tell
me. It is true that he is dead?”
“He is dead,” Ruth confirmed. And she saw that the fact of von
Forstner’s death bore far different consequences to Adler than to
Dittman. The secretary was charged now with responsibilities which
had been his master’s; it was these, more than the physical accident
of von Forstner’s death, which overwhelmed and dismayed him. “But I
have recovered his reports and personal memoranda,” Ruth assured.
“Yes; yes. That is very fortunate.”
“Which I shall go over with you as quickly as I can change to dry
clothes, Herr Adler,” she continued. She did not know whether the
secretary had been about to make demand for his master’s papers; if
he had, she had anticipated him. “Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch
has telephoned?” Ruth asked.
“Ten minutes ago, _gnädiges Fräulein_.”
“Of course you told him that Captain von Forstner is dead.”
“Of course.”
“Well, what is he to do?”
“He is coming here at once.”
“That’s good,” Ruth managed, steadily enough. “Where was he when he
telephoned.”
“At Offenburg, _gnädiges Fräulein_.”
“Then he will arrive in about an hour?”
“At noon, he said. But first there is much,” Adler’s nervousness
increased, “much to be made ready for him.”
“I will not delay,” Ruth promised.
They had entered the hall--a large, dark hall with a wide, black
stairway rising at the side.
“I shall send your bags instantly to your room, _gnädiges
Fräulein_,” Adler assured. He halted, giving her over to a maid
servant for guidance. “Show Fräulein Brun to her apartment,” Adler
ordered. “I shall send stimulant,” he added.
So she was Fräulein Brun and she had been expected here! Captain von
Forstner had sent word that he was bringing her and had ordered her
apartment prepared; and his advices, even to Adler, had ended with
that.
Ruth followed the maid into a bedroom and boudoir, where, a moment
later, her bags were brought. Examination proved that they had
served to keep her packed clothing dry; and, with the maid’s
assistance, Ruth took off her soaked garments. The maid took down
her hair and brushed it out to dry; another maid appeared with the
stimulant which Adler had promised and also with hot broth and
biscuit. Ruth took this gladly and felt stronger. She let herself
relax, half dressed, in a chair while the maid fanned and brushed
her hair. From the window she saw a car coming to the manor with von
Forstner’s body; a few moments later she heard the feet of bearers
pass her room door. They appeared to take him into apartments just
beyond--those which had been his own, undoubtedly. Ruth instructed
the maid to do her hair and she would finish dressing.
Dismissing the maid, she remained alone in the room. She had kept
with her the papers which von Forstner had carried, and while she
had been under observation she had refrained from examining them.
Now she opened the packets and found that those papers which had
lain inside were almost dry; and swiftly spreading them before her
she saw that they appeared to be typewritten observations upon
economic matters of the character which a neutral Norwegian
gentleman might make. They must be, in fact--Ruth knew--cipher
memoranda of very different matters; they would probably not contain
any summaries, for von Forstner could carry all summaries in his
head. He would have committed to writing only details and
items--some of them petty, taken by themselves, but others of more
importance. They would have to do with conditions in France, but
while meant for German information their contents must carry quite
as important advices for the allies, for they would betray the
particular locations with which the Germans were concerning
themselves and thereby disclose the front of the next attack.
Ruth sorted the pages over swiftly and, finding that their texts
fell under nine heads, she removed the twenty-eight pages which were
under five of these heads; the other twenty-three pages she restored
to the two packets. She thrust the removed pages under her corset;
and, carrying the others in their wet packets, she left the room.
Descending the wide, black stairs, she found Adler pacing the
hallway as he had paced the terrace.
He led her into a large, high, dark paneled, mullion-windowed room
where old armor and battle maces stood upon the black walls above
modern office filing cases and with an ancient carved table topped
with glass and desk blotter; before this was an ordinary swivel
chair. Adler motioned Ruth to this as he put out his hand for the
packets.
“The reports now, please, _gnädiges Fräulein_!” Adler asked. “A
transcription immediately must be ready for Oberst-Lieutenant von
Fallenbosch! He will not find it like talking with Hauptmann von
Forstner; but we must do what we can!”
Ruth handed him the packets and she sat down in the swivel chair
while, on the other side of the glass table top, Adler spread out
the sheets. Their number appeared to satisfy him; at least he
questioned nothing, but, having the pages in order, he unlocked a
small, flat drawer and took out three paper stencils. The apertures
through the paper differed, Ruth saw, with each stencil. Adler laid
them in order over the first three sheets, and, bending, read to
himself the words which remained in sight under the stencils. Ruth
could not see what he read nor the brief transcript he made with
pencil upon a pad. He shifted the stencils to the next three sheets,
read the result again, made his transcript, and again shifted.
Adler came to the end and gazed up at Ruth. The other women whom
Hauptmann von Forstner had invited to Lauengratz and who had used
those apartments above evidently had been of unquestionable loyalty,
for the secretary, when he gazed up at this guest of his dead
master, did not challenge her. He sought information to prepare
himself for the visit of Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch, not half
an hour away.
“Besides these, _gnädiges Fräulein_,” he appealed anxiously, “did
Herr Hauptmann make no verbal mention of other matters?”
Ruth shook her head. “Personal matters between him and myself,” she
said. “But he did not go into the reports of others with me at all.
In fact, he would not even receive my report; since I was coming
into Germany I could make it myself to Oberst-Lieutenant
Fallenbosch. That would be safer, he said.”
This true recital threw Adler into gesturing despair. “Exactly; it
is precisely what he would do! It is safest; it is most discreet to
put nothing, or as little as possible, upon paper. That is always
his obsession! So discreet! When I say to him it is not always safer
he laughs or tells me to mind my own business! Discretion! It is
because he is so obsessed by it that he directs our secret service
for the district. ‘Have merely an ordered mind, a good memory,
Adler,’ he always says to me, ‘and nothing will be misplaced,
nothing will get astray, nothing will be obtained by others.’
“‘Yes, Herr Hauptmann,’ I say, ‘but suppose something happen to that
ordered mind and that good memory! What then?’ Ah! He laughs at me
and pats me on the back so indulgently. But where is that ordered
mind; where now is that memory to which the most important things
may be committed? Well, he is away from the trouble,” the secretary
raged in his dismay. “He can hear nothing which Oberst-Lieutenant
von Fallenbosch may say of him. But I--I will get it.... Yet you can
make your report to him. At least, that much may be added. You have
come from where, Fräulein Brun? Which front?” he beseeched
hopefully.
“From Picardy,” Ruth said. “I had the honor to be assigned to Roisel
and to attach myself, particularly, to the British Fifth Army.”
“Ah! I salute you, _gnädiges Fräulein_, and your comrades for the
wonderful work you have done. But the importance of that is past,
Fräulein Brun! Since then where have you been?”
“My duty, as I interpreted it, was to retreat with the British; so I
was swept back with them to Compiègne. Since then, as I explained to
Herr Hauptmann, passport difficulties detained me in Paris.”
“Then all from Reims to Soissons is in Herr Hauptmann’s ordered
mind! It is, as all the most essential would be, in his ‘good
memory’! And, by the latest, today the report was to start to great
headquarters!”
The secretary jerked about from Ruth and hurried back and forth
across the room, head down and clapping his hands loudly together in
his despair; and Ruth, watching him, sat stark. The importance of
the Picardy front was past, he had said--that front where, in the
tremendous assaults of March, the Germans had thrust their great
salient between Amiens and Paris and where all the allies were
working, day and night, strengthening their lines against a new
attack! The Flanders front, where still the German armies were
hurling themselves toward the channel? Adler did not even mention
that. The “most essential” was the front from Reims to Soissons, all
quiet now and one which--so far as Ruth knew--the allies expected to
remain quiet and where they yet were unprepared for a great attack.
But there the next tremendous assault must be coming; and it was so
near that, by the latest, today report of conditions upon that front
was to start to great headquarters! Well, whatever was written about
that front Ruth had now in the papers folded tight against her body
and what von Forstner had entrusted to his ordered mind was lost
forever! Keenly she watched Adler while, still striking his hands
together in his helplessness, he strode swiftly up and down.
He spun about to her suddenly, and for an instant Ruth believed he
was about to challenge her. But the secretary could not yet reach
suspicion of the comrade of his Herr Hauptmann and for whom
Hauptmann von Forstner had instructed rooms to be made ready beside
his own and who herself had completed the journey to Lauengratz
alone and of her own will and bearing Herr Hauptmann’s papers.
“You removed these yourself from Herr Hauptmann’s body?”
“No; Dittman procured them for me. I was somewhat injured myself,
you see,” she explained her neglect. “And a little faint, at first.”
“Of course; of course! But Dittman is a thick skull! He might not
have suspected where Herr Hauptmann might have concealed the most
important memoranda!” Adler livened with hope. “And there were
Russians, I understand, who first found you and dragged out Herr
Hauptmann. They are mere brutes, incapable of understanding
anything. Nevertheless they may have meddled. I shall send and see
and at once myself examine the body of Herr Hauptmann!”
He turned about and gazed at his papers; he swept them together and
into a drawer. The stencils, by which he had read the ciphers, went
with them. “You will remain here, _gnädiges Fräulein_,” he half
commanded, half requested, and he hastened from the room.
Ruth delayed only the instant necessary to make certain that he had
gone upstairs. Suspicion which now turned upon Dittman and upon the
Russians swiftly must approach her; moreover, the hour of arrival of
Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch was almost here. By her stroke of
boldness and of luck she had succeeded in temporarily overreaching
the secretary whom she had found so unbalanced by the death of his
superior. But she could not possibly hope to dupe von Fallenbosch.
She must fail with him as miserably as she had failed with von
Forstner. And to attempt with him and to fail involved, now, not
only her own destruction but delivery into German hands of that most
essential information which she had intercepted, and loss to the
allies of the knowledge of German plans.
She opened the drawer which Adler had just closed and she took out
the sheets of von Forstner’s reports and the stencils. She went out
into the hall and, finding it empty, she passed quickly to a door on
the side of the house which, she believed, was not commanded from
the windows of the room where Captain von Forstner’s body lay. In
that direction, also, the forest lay nearer to the house; Ruth went
out and walked toward the trees. An impulse to run almost controlled
her, but she realized that she must be in sight of servants, who
might not question her strolling out away from the house in the warm
spring sunshine but who would immediately report anything which
resembled flight. So she went slowly until she reached the forest;
then she ran--wildly and breathlessly.
She found a path, well marked and much used and easy to run upon.
Other paths, almost overgrown, opened into it here and there. Ruth
ran by the first few of these; then, choosing arbitrarily, she took
one of the disused ways which twisted north--she noticed--through
denser thickets of budding oaks and beeches; it ascended, too,
bending back and forth up a mountainside which brought the darker
boughs of the black firs drooping about her while, underfoot, the
ground alternately became stony bare and soft with velvety cushions
of pine needles.
She stopped at last, exhausted and gasping; her pulses were pounding
so in her head that she scarcely could hear, and the forest on every
side limited sight. But so far as she could see and as well as she
could hear there was no alarm of anyone following her. It seemed
absolutely still on the mountainside except for the movement of the
noon breeze in the tree tops; now from somewhere far away and off to
the right she heard the ring of an ax and, after a minute, the fall
of a tree; now the sound of the ax again.