From both Helen and Jennie letters reached the girl of the Red Mill
quite frequently. Ruth saw that always her correspondence was opened and
read by the censor; but that was the fate of all letters that came to
Clair.
"We innocents," said the matron of the hospital, "are thus afflicted
because of the plague of spies--a veritable Egyptian plague!--that infests
this part of my country. Do not be troubled, Mam'zelle Americaine. You
are not singled out as though your friendliness to France was
questioned.
"And yet there may be those working in the guise of the Red Cross who
betray their trust," the woman added. "I hear of such."
"Who are they? Where?" Ruth asked eagerly.
"It is said that at Lyse many of the supplies sent to the Red Cross from
your great and charitable country, Mam'zelle, have been diverted to
private dealers and sold to the citizens. Oh, our French people--some of
them--are hungry for the very luxuries that the _blessés_ should have. If
they have money they will spend it freely if good things are to be
bought."
"At Lyse!" repeated Ruth. "Where I came from?"
"Fear not that suspicion rests on you, _ma chère amie_," cooed the
Frenchwoman. "Indeed, no person in the active service of the Red Cross
at Lyse is suspected."
"Nobody suspected in the supply department?" asked Ruth doubtfully.
"Oh, no! The skirts of all are clear, I understand."
Ruth said no more, but she was vastly worried by what she had heard.
What, really, had taken place at Lyse? If a conspiracy had been
discovered for the robbing of the Red Cross Supply Department, were not
Mrs. Mantel and Legrand and José engaged in it?
Yet it seemed that the woman in black was not suspected. Ruth tried to
learn more of the particulars, but the matron of the Clair hospital did
not appear to know more than she had already stated.
Ruth wrote to Clare Biggars immediately, asking about the rumored
trouble in their department of the Red Cross at Lyse; but naturally
there would be delay before she could receive a reply, even if the
censor allowed the information to go through the mails.
Meanwhile Clair was shaken all through one day and night by increased
artillery fire on the battle front. Never had Ruth Fielding heard the
guns roll so terribly. It was as though a continuous thunderstorm shook
the heavens and the earth.
The Germans tried to drive back the reserves behind the French trenches
with the heaviest barrage fire thus far experienced along this sector,
while they sent forward their shock troops to overcome the thin French
line in the dugouts.
Here and there the Germans gained a footing in the front line of the
French trenches; but always they were driven out again, or captured.
The return barrage from the French guns at last created such havoc among
the German troops that what remained of the latter were forced back
beyond their own front lines.
The casualties were frightful. News of the raging battle came in with
every ambulance to the Clair Hospital. The field hospitals were
overcrowded and the wounded were being taken immediately from the
dressing stations behind the trenches to the evacuation hospitals, like
this of Clair, before being operated upon.
This well-conducted institution, in which Ruth had been busy for so many
weeks, became in a few hours a bustling, feverish place, with only half
enough nurses and fewer doctors than were needed.
Ruth offered herself to the matron and was given charge of one ward for
all of one night, while the surgeons and nurses battled in the operating
room and in the dangerous wards, with the broken men who were brought
in.
Ruth's ward was a quiet one. She had already learned what to do in most
small emergencies. Besides, these patients were, most of them, well on
toward recovery, and they slept in spite of what was going on
downstairs.
On this night Clair was astir and alight. The peril of an air raid was
forgotten as the ambulances rolled in from the north and east. The soft
roads became little better than quagmires for it had rained during a
part of the day.
Occasionally Ruth went to an open window and looked down at the entrance
to the hospital yard, where the lantern light danced upon the glistening
cobblestones. Here the ambulances, one after another, halted, while the
stretcher-bearers and guards said but little; all was in monotone. But
the steady sound of human voices in dire pain could not be hushed.
Some of the wounded were delirious when they were brought in. Perhaps
they were better off.
Nor was Ruth Fielding's sympathy altogether for the wounded soldiers. It
was, as well, for these young men who drove the ambulances--who took
their lives in their hands a score of times during the twenty-four hours
as they forced their ambulances as near as possible to the front to
recover the broken men. She prayed for the ambulance drivers.
Hour after hour dragged by until it was long past midnight. There had
been a lull in the procession of ambulances for a time; but suddenly
Ruth saw one shoot out of the gloom of the upper street and come rushing
down to the gateway of the hospital court.
This machine was stopped promptly and the driver leaned forward, waving
something in his hand toward the sentinel.
"Hey!" cried a voice that Ruth recognized--none other than that of
Charlie Bragg. "Is Miss Fielding still here?"
He asked this in atrocious French, but the sentinel finally understood
him.
"I will inquire, Monsieur."
"Never mind the inquiring business," declared Charlie Bragg. "I've got
to be on my way. I _know_ she's here. Get this letter in to her, will
you? We're taking 'em as far as Lyse now, old man. Nice long roll for
these poor fellows who need major operations."
He threw in his clutch again and the ambulance rocked away. Ruth left
the window and ran down to the entrance hall. The sentinel was just
coming up the steps with the note in his hand. Before Ruth reached the
man she saw that the envelope was stained with blood!
"Oh! Is that for _me_?" the girl gasped, reaching out for it.
"Quite so, Mam'zelle," and the man handed it to her with a polite
gesture.
Ruth seized it, and, with only half-muttered thanks, ran back to her
ward. Her heart beat so for a minute that she felt stifled. She could
not imagine what the note could be, or what it was about.
Yet she had that intuitive feeling of disaster that portends great and
overwhelming events. Her thought was of Tom--Tom Cameron! Who else would
send her a letter from the direction of the battle line?
She sank into her chair by the shaded lamp behind the nurse's screen.
For a time she could not even look at the letter again, with its stain
of blood so plain upon it!
Then she brought it into line with her vision and with the lamplight
streaming upon it. The bloody finger marks half effaced something that
was written upon the face of the envelope in a handwriting strange to
Ruth.
"This was found in tunic pocket of an American--badly wounded--evacuated
to L----. His identification tag lost, as his arm was torn off at elbow,
and no tag around his neck."
This brief statement was unsigned. Some kindly Red Cross worker,
perhaps, had written it. Charlie Bragg must have known that the letter
was addressed to Ruth and offered to bring it to her at Clair, the
American on whom the letter was found having been unconscious.
The flap on the envelope had not been sealed. With trembling fingers the
girl drew the paper forth. Yes! It was in Tom Cameron's handwriting, and
it began: "Dear Ruth Fielding."
In his usual jovial style the letter proceeded. It had evidently been
written just before Tom had been called to active duty in the trenches.
There were no American troops in the battle line, as yet, Ruth well
knew. But their officers, in small squads, were being sent forward to
learn what it meant to be in the trenches under fire.
And Tom had been caught in this sudden attack! Evacuated to Lyse! The
field hospitals, as well as this one at Clair, were overcrowded. It was
a long way to take wounded men to Lyse to be operated upon.
"Operated upon!" The thought made Ruth shudder. She turned sick and
dizzy. Tom Cameron crippled and unconscious! An arm torn off! A cripple
for the rest of his life!
She looked at the bloody fingerprints on the envelope. Tom's blood,
perhaps.
He was being taken to Lyse, where nobody would know him and he would
know nobody! Oh, why had it not been his fate to be brought to this
hospital at Clair where Ruth was stationed?
There was a faint call from one of the patients. It occurred twice
before the girl aroused to its significance.
She must put aside her personal fears and troubles. She was here to
attend to the ward while the regular night nurse was engaged elsewhere.
Because Tom Cameron was wounded--perhaps dying--she could not neglect her
duty here. She went quietly and brought a drink of cool water to the
feverish and restless _blessé_ who had called.