Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine

“Oui,” agreed Miss Marshall. “I shall hope to see more of you. Mrs. Smythe has kindly offered to share her apartment with me, and I understand that you are billeted in the same house, so we should have some pleasant chats. I should love to know you better.”

Grace said the sentiment was reciprocated. While they were speaking, the supervisor was taking her revenge on the Chinaman. She was abusing him shamefully, so much so that Grace could stand it no longer.

“Won, you go now. You savvy too much talk,” declared Grace nodding to him.

“Me savvy talk like machine glun, a-la. Me go.”

Grace smiled and handed him the promised gift, whereupon Madame’s rage broke out afresh.

“Girl, how dare you!”

“Won has been working for me, Mrs. Smythe. It is best that he go now. He has worked too faithfully for me to stand by and see him abused, begging your pardon.” Grace signalled to the Chinaman to be gone. He lost no time in leaving the place, giving Grace a sly wink and a grimace as he backed from the doorway. Molly Marshall saved the situation by leading Mrs. Smythe to the rear of the canteen, where she soon had the supervisor laughing. Shortly afterwards the young woman walked out with her, much to Grace’s relief.

“Chad came in here intending to keep her temper, but she lost it,” declared Elfreda.

“It was my fault that she did, Elfreda. Some one has been advising her to behave herself. It is my idea that she went to headquarters to enter a complaint against me this morning, but that she was advised to be good if she wished to remain with the Army of Occupation. Here, Buddy, are you headed in the direction of the Intelligence Department?” she called to a soldier who was passing. He said he could go that way, whereupon Grace asked him to carry a note and leave it there. The note, which she scribbled on a piece of wrapping paper, was addressed to Captain Boucher and read: “Yat Sen,” and was signed, “G. G.”

“More mystery?” questioned Elfreda.

“Oceans of it. Miss Marshall is a good-looking woman, isn’t she?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but I can’t get over my first impression that there is something queer about her. Doesn’t she impress you that way?”

“Considering what I know about her, she does.”

“Eh? What do you know?” demanded Elfreda.

“Do you recall my telling you about a German officer and a woman who, the day I was released on the other side, stood making remarks as I passed – how the woman said, ‘She is as hideous and as ugly no doubt as her soul is black’?”

“Yes.”

“You ask me what I know of Miss Marshall. When I tell you that she is the woman who made that remark, you will understand that I know altogether too much about her.”

“A spy!” gasped Miss Briggs.

Grace nodded.

“Yes, but which way?”

“Captain Boucher informs me that she is an American spy and a brilliant one. It is difficult for me to believe that, in view of what I saw and heard. She at least appears to be playing the game both ways.”

“Have you told Captain Boucher of that?”

“Not yet, but I shall at the first opportunity. I intended to do so, but after what he said to me I decided to wait. He told me further that I might with perfect safety coöperate with Miss Marshall, which I shall not do.”

“Loyalheart, you are wonderful. How you could meet her, as you did after what you knew of her, is beyond me. I could no more have done it than I could fly. I don’t believe she even suspects that you recognized her.”

“I hope not for the sake of the work I have before me. Of course this is between us only, and I wish you would not breathe a word of it or any other confidential matter while we are in our rooms. I suspect those walls have ears.”

Mrs. Smythe did not return to the canteen again that afternoon, being engaged, as Grace surmised, in arranging for a new building to take the place of the one destroyed when the ammunition dump blew up. At six o’clock Grace went home to prepare their supper, leaving Elfreda to wait for their relief at the canteen. There was no effort on Grace’s part this time to enter her home quietly, still she made no noise that she was conscious of, but she had no more than gotten to her room than there came a tap on the door. It was Marie.

Grace welcomed her smilingly.

“I am glad to see you out again. How do you feel?”

“Not very well, Madame. I am sore all over. All Huns are brutes!”

“Do you include the good doctor?”

“Ah, the doctor. He is fine on the outside, but the soul, Madame! Why should one say it when one does not know?”

Grace nodded thoughtfully and asked who was with Mrs. Smythe. Marie informed her that Miss Marshall was taking supper with Madame and talking of the war.

“Madame told me to say to you when you came in that you were to go to the new canteen in the morning. It is near the river on the same street as the old one. You are to be there at six o’clock in the morning. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I believe you have already done something for me. Did you make up the bed and slick up the room?” Grace regarded her smilingly.

“Yes, Madame.”

“Thank you very much. Did Madame go to headquarters this morning?”

Marie nodded and grinned.

“She went to ask them to send you home, but instead they told her she was the one who should be sent home. Was that not glorious? Oo-lá-lá, how I should have loved to hear it and to see the face of Madame.”

“That will do, please, Marie,” rebuked the Overton girl. “She is our superior. Thank you for your kindness about the room.”

Marie smiled and nodded as she backed to the door, then closed it softly behind her. Grace stepped over and locked the door, and pulling the shade down began a thorough examination of the room. First she examined the furniture, then the fireplace, the lighting fixtures and the baseboard that extended all the way around the room.

“All clear,” muttered the girl.

Next, the walls came in for a scrutiny. Not only did she look the walls over, but felt them gingerly with her finger tips. What the result of that search was Grace Harlowe did not even confide to Elfreda Briggs, but she was satisfied that her intuition again had served her well, and was now determined to be more watchful than ever.

Her suspicions were still further confirmed when she heard the voices of Mrs. Smythe and Miss Marshall in conversation with the doctor in his apartment that evening. They were making merry and Madame was actually laughing. When Grace discovered that they were discussing subjects that she knew were of military value she was horrified that Mrs. Smythe could so far forget herself, but what to do about it she did not know. Grace felt that she should take the matter to Captain Boucher, yet she could not quite bring herself to carry tales about the woman she did not like. It looked petty to her, beneath her, so Grace decided to await developments and continue with her work.

That night as she lay wide awake in her bed, she heard the doctor go to the cellar. She heard him fix the furnace for the night; then the sound of distant conversation floated up to her. After a time the doctor came up and the house settled down to silence.

This same thing, so far as the cellar excursion was concerned, continued for three nights. During that time Grace did not get much sleep. Much of the time, after Elfreda went to sleep, Grace spent sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall where she appeared to be resting in profound thought. On the third night she was aroused by an alarm of fire in the street. She did not learn the cause of it until the following morning, when she was informed that the fire had been discovered in the basement of the main barracks, where nearly a thousand American soldiers were sleeping.

Grace asked few questions about this blaze, though in the light of what she already knew she had certain well-founded suspicions. The next night nothing occurred to disturb the Army of Occupation, though Grace Harlowe increased her rapidly enlarging fund of information to an extent that alarmed even her. She saw that she must turn over some of it to the Intelligence Department without delay. Human lives depended upon her doing so. It was too late to do so that night, for to leave the place might upset all her plans were she discovered.

After pondering over the subject from all angles the Overton girl went to bed. How she did wish she might confide in Elfreda Briggs. Grace, however, had learned that in these secret matters there was but one safe course – to keep one’s own counsel. Well-intentioned as those in whom one confided might be, there was always the possibility of a word slipping out, of a facial expression or of an unconsciously antagonistic attitude toward the wrong person.

“Dear Elfreda shall know all that I know after I have completed my work. I must confess to myself that it is the most interesting work I have ever done, this pitting one’s wits against some of the keenest ones in Europe. However, I still have some distance to go before I arrive at my objective.” These thoughts and many others drifted through Grace Harlowe’s mind before she got to sleep.

In the morning she asked Elfreda to report for her at the canteen, as she expected to be late in arriving there. After breakfast, during which the girls discussed nothing beyond their own personal affairs, “Captain” Grace went out, this time by way of the front door, heading straight for the canteen.

The place was not yet open, so, unlocking the door, the Overton girl stepped in and, sitting down, studied the street keenly. What Grace was seeking to determine was whether or not she had been followed. There being no indication that she had been followed she went out, locking the door behind her, and proceeded directly to the headquarters of the Intelligence Department, which was located in the executive building on the river front.