Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross; Doing Her Best For Uncle Sam

CHAPTER X – SUSPICIONS

There was a patter of feet overhead and racing down the stairway came half a dozen frightened people. They had been aroused by Mr. Mayo’s shout, and they knew that if the flames reached the stairway first they would be driven to the fire escape.

There seemed little danger of the fire reaching the stairs, however; for when Ruth got to the lower hall the door of the burning office had been opened again, and she saw one of the porters squirting the chemical fire extinguisher upon the blaze.

Mr. Legrand had flung open the door, and he was greatly excited. He held his left hand in his right, as though it were hurt.

“Where is Mrs. Mantel?” demanded Mr. Mayo.

“Gone!” gasped Legrand. “Lucky she did. That oil spread all over her desk and papers. It’s all afire.”

“I was opening a gallon of lubricating oil. It broke and spurted everywhere. I cut myself – see?”

He showed his hand. Ruth saw that blood seemed to be running from the cut freely. But she was more interested in the efforts of the porter. His extinguisher seemed to be doing very little good.

Ruth heard Mr. Mayo trying to discover the cause of the fire; but Mr. Legrand seemed unable to tell that. He ran out to a drugstore to have his hand attended to.

Mr. Mayo seized the second extinguisher from the wall. The porter flung his down, at the same time yelling:

“No good! No good, I tell you, Mr. Mayo! Everything’s got to go. Those extinguishers must be all wrong. The chemicals have evaporated, or something.”

Mr. Mayo tried the one he had seized with no better result. While this was going on Ruth Fielding suddenly remembered something – remembered it with a shock. She had seen the man, José, tampering with those same extinguishers some days before.

While a certain spray was puffed forth from the nozzle of the extinguisher, it seemed to have no effect on the flames which were, as the porter declared, spreading rapidly.

Mrs. Mantel’s big desk and the file cabinet were all afire. Nothing could save the papers and books.

An alarm had been turned in by somebody, and now the first of the fire department arrived. These men brought in extinguishers that had an effect upon the flames at once. The fire was quite quenched in five minutes more.

Ruth had retreated to Mr. Mayo’s office. She heard one of the fire chiefs talking to the gentleman at the doorway.

“What caused that blaze anyway?” the fireman demanded.

“I understand some oil was spilled.”

“What kind of oil?” snapped the other.

“Lubricating oil.”

“Nonsense! It acted more like benzine or naphtha to me. But you haven’t told me how it got lit up?”

“I don’t know. The porter says he first saw flames rising from the waste basket between the big desk and the file cabinet,” Mr. Mayo said. “Then the fire spread both ways.”

“Well! The insurance adjusters will be after you. I’ve got to report my belief. Looks as though somebody had been mighty careless with some inflammable substance. What were you using oil at all for here?”

“I – I could not tell you,” Mr. Mayo said. “I will ask Mr. Legrand when he comes back.”

But Ruth learned in the morning that Legrand had not returned. Nobody seemed to know where he lived. Mrs. Mantel said he had moved recently, but she did not know where to.

The insurance adjusters did make a pertinent inquiry about the origin of the fire. But nobody had been in the office with Legrand when it started save the porter, and he had already told all he had seen. There was no reason for charging anybody else with carelessness but the missing man.

Save in one particular. Mrs. Mantel seemed horror-stricken when she saw the charred remains of her desk and the file cabinet. The files of cards were completely destroyed. The cards were merely brown husks – those that were not ashes. The records of contributions for six months past were completely burned.

“But you, fortunately, have the ledgers in the safe, have you not, Mrs. Mantel?” the Chief said.

The woman in black broke down and wept. “How careless you will think me, Mr. Mayo,” she cried. “I left the two ledgers on my desk. Legrand said he wished to compare certain figures – ”

“The ledgers are destroyed, too?” gasped the man.

“There are their charred remains,” declared the woman, pointing dramatically to the burned debris where her desk had stood.

There was not a line to show how much had been given to the Red Cross at this station, or who had given it! When Mr. Mayo opened the safe he found less than two thousand dollars in cash and checks and noted upon the bank deposit book; and the month was almost ended. Payment was made to Headquarters of all collections every thirty days.

Mrs. Mantel seemed heartbroken. Legrand did not appear again at the Red Cross rooms. But the woman in black declared that the funds as shown in the safe must be altogether right, for she had locked the safe herself and remembered that the funds were not more than the amount found.

“But we have had some large contributions during the month, Mrs. Mantel,” Mr. Mayo said weakly.

“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Mayo,” the woman declared, her eyes flashing. “Our contributions for some weeks have been scanty. People are getting tired of giving to the Red Cross, I fear.”

Ruth heard something of this discussion, but not all. She did not know what to think about Mrs. Mantel and Legrand. And then, there was José, the man whom she had seen tampering with the fire extinguishers!

Should she tell Mr. Mayo of her suspicions? Or should she go to the office of the fire insurance adjustors? Or should she keep completely out of the matter?

Had Mr. Mayo been a more forceful man Ruth might have given him her confidence. But she feared that, although he was a hard-working official and loyal to the core, he did not possess the quality of wisdom necessary to enable him to handle the situation successfully.

Besides, just at this time, she heard from New York. Her application had been investigated and she was informed that she would be accepted for work with the base supply unit about to sail for France, with the proviso, of course, that she passed the medical examination and would pay her share of the unit’s expenses and for her own support.

She had to tell Mr. Mayo, bid good-bye to her fellow workers, and leave Robinsburg within two hours. She had only three days to make ready before going to New York, and she wished to spend all of that time at the Red Mill.

Chapter XI – SAID IN GERMAN

Ruth Fielding had made preparations for travel many times before; but this venture she was about to undertake was different from her previous flights from the Red Mill.

“Oh, my pretty! Oh, my pretty!” sighed Aunt Alvirah Boggs. “It seems as though this life is just made up of partings. You ain’t no more to home than you’re off again. And how do I know I shall ever set my two eyes on you once more, Ruthie?”

“I’ve always come back so far, Aunt Alvirah – like the bad penny that I am,” Ruth told her cheerfully.

“Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” groaned Aunt Alvirah, sinking into her chair by the sunny window. “No bad penny in your case, my pretty. Your returns air always like that of the bluebird’s in the spring – and jest as much for happiness as they say the bluebird is. What would your Uncle Jabez and me do without you?”

“But it will be only for a few months. I might remain away as long if I returned to Ardmore for my junior year.”

“Ah, but that’s not like going away over to France where there is so much danger and trouble,” the little old woman objected.

“Don’t worry about me, dear,” urged Ruth, with great gentleness.

“We don’t know what may happen,” continued Aunt Alvirah. “A single month at my time o’ life is longer’n a year at your age, my pretty.”

“Oh, I am sure to come back,” Ruth cried.

“We’ll hope so. I shall pray for you, my pretty. But there’ll be fear eatin’ at our hearts every day that you are so far from us.”

Uncle Jabez likewise expressed himself as loath to have her go; yet his extreme patriotism inspired him to wish her Godspeed cheerfully.

“I vum! I’d like to be goin’ with you. Only with Old Betsey on my shoulder!” declared the miller. “You don’t want to take the old gun with you, do you, Niece Ruth?” he added, with twinkling eyes. “I’ve had her fixed. And she ought to be able to shoot a Hun or two yet.”

“I am not going to shoot Germans,” said Ruth, shaking her head. “I only hope to do what I can in saving our boys after the battles. I can’t even nurse them – poor dears! My all that I do seems so little.”

“Ha!” grunted Uncle Jabez. “I reckon you’ll do full and plenty. If you don’t it’ll be the first time in your life that you fall down on a job.”

Which was remarkably warm commendation for the miller to give, and Ruth appreciated it deeply.

He drove her to town himself and put her on the train for New York. “Don’t you git into no more danger over there than you kin help, Niece Ruth,” he urged. “Good-bye!”

She traveled alone to the metropolis, and that without hearing from or seeing any of her fellow-workers at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg. She did wonder much, however, what the outcome of the fire had been.

What had become of Mrs. Rose Mantel, the woman in black? Had she been finally suspected by Mr. Mayo, and would she be refused further work with the organization because of the outcome of the fire? Ruth could not but believe that the conflagration had been caused to cover shortages in the Red Cross accounts.

At the Grand Central Terminal Ruth was met by a very lovely lady, a worker in the Red Cross, who took her home to her Madison Avenue residence, where Ruth was to remain for the few days she was to be in the city.

“It is all I can do,” said the woman smiling, when Ruth expressed her wonder that she should have turned her beautiful home into a clearing house for Red Cross workers. “It is all I can do. I am quite alone now, and it cheers me and gives me new topics of interest to see and care for the splendid girls who are really going over there to help our soldiers.”

Later Ruth Fielding learned that this woman’s two sons were both in France – one in a medical corps and the other in the trenches. She had already given her all, it seemed; but she could not do too much for the country.

The several girls the lady entertained at this time had little opportunity for amusement. The Red Cross ship was to sail within forty-eight hours.

Ruth was able to meet many of the members of her supply unit, and found them a most interesting group. They had come from many parts of the country and had brought with them varied ideas about the work and of what they were “going up against.”

All, however, seemed to be deeply interested in the Red Cross and the burden the war had laid upon them. They were not going to France to play, but to serve in any way possible.

There was a single disturbing element in the bustling hurry of getting under way. At this late moment the woman who had been chosen as chief of the supply unit was deterred from sailing. Serious illness in her family forced her to resign her position and remain to nurse those at home. It was quite a blow to the unit and to the Commissioner himself.

The question, Who will take her place? became the most important thought in the minds of the members of the unit. Ruth fully understood that to find a person as capable as the woman already selected would not be an easy matter.

Until the hour the party left New York for Philadelphia, the port of sail for the Red Cross ship, no candidate had been settled on by the Commissioner to head the supply unit.

“We shall find somebody. I have one person in mind right now who may be the very one. If so, this person will be shipped by a faster vessel and by another convoy than yours,” and he laughed. “You may find your chief in Paris when you get there.”

Ruth wondered to herself if they really would get there. At this time the German submarines were sinking even the steamships taking Red Cross workers and supplies across. The Huns had thrown over their last vestige of humanity.

The ship which carried the Red Cross units joined a squadron of other supply ships outside Cape May. The guard ships were a number of busy and fast sailing torpedo boat destroyers. They darted around the slower flotilla of merchant steamships like “lucky-bugs” on a millpond.

Ruth shared her outside cabin with a girl from Topeka, Kansas – an exceedingly blithe and boisterous young person.

“I never imagined there was so much water in the ocean!” declared this young woman, Clare Biggars. “Look at it! Such a perfectly awful waste of it. If the ocean is just a means of communication between countries, it needn’t be any wider than the Missouri River, need it?”

“I am glad the Atlantic is a good deal wider than that,” Ruth said seriously. “The Kaiser and his armies would have been over in our country before this in that case.”

Clare chuckled. “Lots of the farming people in my section are Germans, and three months ago they noised it abroad that New York had been attacked by submarines and flying machines and that a big army of their fellow-countrymen were landing in this country at a place called Montauk Point – ”

“The end of Long Island,” interposed Ruth.

“And were going to march inland and conquer the country as they marched. They would do to New York State just what they have done to Belgium and Northern France. It was thought, by their talk, that all the Germans around Topeka would rise and seize the banks and arsenals and all.”

“Why didn’t they?” asked Ruth, much amused.

“Why,” said Clare, laughing, too, “the police wouldn’t let them.”

The German peril by sea, however, was not to be sneered at. As the fleet approached the coast of France it became evident that the officers of the Red Cross ship, as well as those of the convoy, were in much anxiety.

There seems no better way to safeguard the merchant ships than for the destroyers to sail ahead and “clear the way” for the unarmored vessels. But a sharp submarine commander may spy the coming flotilla through his periscope, sink deep to allow the destroyers to pass over him, and then rise to the surface between the destroyers and the larger ships and torpedo the latter before the naval vessels can attack the subsea boat.

For forty-eight hours none of the girls of the Red Cross supply unit had their clothing off or went to bed. They were advised to buckle on life preservers, and most of them remained on deck, watching for submarines. It was scarcely possible to get them below for meals.

The strain of the situation was great. And yet it was more excitement over the possibility of being attacked than actual fear.

“What’s the use of going across the pond at such a time if we’re not even to see a periscope?” demanded Clare. “My brother, Ben, who is coming over with the first expedition of the National Army, wagered me ten dollars I wouldn’t know a periscope if I saw one. I’d like to earn that ten. Every little bit adds to what you’ve got, you know.”

It was not the sight of a submarine periscope that startled Ruth Fielding the evening of the next-to-the-last day of the voyage. It was something she heard as she leaned upon the port rail on the main deck, quite alone, looking off across the graying water.

Two people were behind her, and out of sight around the corner of the deckhouse. One was a man, with a voice that had a compelling bark. Whether his companion was a man or a woman Ruth could not tell. But the voice she heard so distinctly began to rasp her nerves – and its familiarity troubled her, too.

Now and then she heard a word in English. Then, of a sudden, the man ejaculated in German:

“The foolish ones! As though this boat would be torpedoed with us aboard! These Americans are crazy.”

Ruth wheeled and walked quickly down the deck to the corner of the house. She saw the speaker sitting in a deck chair beside another person who was so wrapped in deck rugs that she could not distinguish what he or she looked like.

But the silhouette of the man who had uttered those last words stood out plainly between Ruth and the fading light. He was tall, with heavy shoulders, and a fat, beefy face. That smoothly shaven countenance looked like nobody that she had ever seen before; but the barking voice sounded exactly like that of Legrand, Mrs. Rose Mantel’s associate and particular friend!

CHAPTER XII – THROUGH DANGEROUS WATERS

There were a number of people aboard ship whom Ruth Fielding had not met, of course; some whom she had not even seen. And this was not to be wondered at, for the feminine members of the supply unit were grouped together in a certain series of staterooms; and they even had their meals in a second cabin saloon away from the hospital units.

She looked, for some moments, at the huge shoulders of the man who had spoken in German, hoping he would turn to face her. She had not observed him since coming aboard the ship at Philadelphia.

It seemed scarcely possible that this could be Legrand, the man who she had come to believe was actually responsible for the fire in the Robinsburg Red Cross rooms. If he was a traitor to the organization – and to the United States as well – how dared he sail on this ship for France, and with an organization of people who were sworn to work for the Red Cross?

Was he sufficiently disguised by the shaving of his beard to risk discovery? And with that peculiar, sharp, barking voice! “A Prussian drill master surely could be no more abrupt,” thought Ruth.

As the ship in these dangerous waters sailed with few lamps burning, and none at all had been turned on upon the main deck, it was too dark for Ruth to see clearly either the man who had spoken or the person hidden by the wraps in the deck chair.

She saw the spotlight in the hand of an officer up the deck and she hastened toward him. The passengers were warned not to use the little electric hand lamps outside of the cabins and passages. She was not mistaken in the identity of this person with the lamp. It was the purser.

“Oh, Mr. Savage!” she said. “Will you walk with me?”

“Bless me, Miss Fielding! you fill me with delight. This is an unexpected proposal I am sure,” he declared in his heavy, English, but good-humored way.

“‘Fash not yoursel’ wi’ pride,’ as Chief Engineer Douglas would say,” laughed Ruth. “I am going to ask you to walk with me so that you can tell me the name of another man I am suddenly interested in.”

“What! What!” cried the purser. “Who is that, I’d like to know. Who are you so suddenly interested in?”

She tried to explain the appearance of the round-shouldered man as she led the purser along the deck. But when they reached the spot where Ruth had left the individuals both had disappeared.

“I don’t know whom you could have seen,” the purser said, “unless it was Professor Perry. His stateroom is yonder – A-thirty-four. And the little chap in the deck chair might be Signor Aristo, an Italian, who rooms next door, in thirty-six.”

“I am not sure it was a man in the other chair.”

“Professor Perry has nothing to do with the ladies aboard, I assure you,” chuckled the purser. “A dry-as-dust old fellow, Perry, going to France for some kind of research work. Comes from one of your Western universities. I believe they have one in every large town, haven’t they?”

“One what?” Ruth asked.

“University,” chuckled the Englishman. “You should get acquainted with Perry, if his appearance so much interests you, Miss Fielding.”

But Ruth was in no mood for banter about the man whose appearance and words had so astonished her. She said nothing to the purser or to anybody else about what she had heard the strange man say in German. No person who belonged – really belonged– on this Red Cross ship, should have said what he did and in that tone!

He spoke to his companion as though there was a settled and secret understanding between them. And as though, too, he had a power of divination about what the German U-boat commanders would do, beyond the knowledge possessed by the officers of the steamship.

What could a “dry-as-dust” professor from a Western university have in common with the person known as Signor Aristo, who Ruth found was down on the ship’s list as a chef of a wealthy Fifth Avenue family, going back to his native Italy.

It was said the Signor had had a very bad passage. He had kept to his room entirely, not even appearing on deck. Was he a man at all?

The thought came to Ruth Fielding and would not be put away, that this small, retiring person known as Signor Aristo might be a woman. If Professor Perry was the distinguished Legrand what was more possible than that the person Ruth had seen in the deck chair was Mrs. Rose Mantel, likewise in disguise?

“Oh, dear me!” she told herself at last, “I am getting to be a regular sleuth. But my suspicions do point that way. If that woman in black and Legrand robbed the Red Cross treasury at Robinsburg, and covered their stealings by burning the records, would they be likely to leave the country in a Red Cross ship?

“That would seem preposterous. And yet, what more unlikely method of departure? It might be that such a course on the part of two criminals would be quite sure to cover their escape.”

She wondered about it much as the ship sailed majestically into the French port, safe at last from any peril of being torpedoed by the enemy. And Professor Perry had been quite sure that she was safe in any case!

Ruth saw the professor when they landed. The Italian chef she did not see at all. Nor did Ruth Fielding see anybody who looked like Mrs. Rose Mantel.

“I may be quite wrong in all my suspicions,” she thought. “I would better say nothing about them. To cause the authorities to arrest entirely innocent people would be a very wicked thing, indeed.”

Besides, there was so much to do and to see that the girl of the Red Mill could not keep her suspicions alive. This unknown world she and her mates had come to quite filled their minds with new thoughts and interests.

Their first few hours in France was an experience long to be remembered. Ruth might have been quite bewildered had it not been that her mind was so set upon the novel sights and sounds about her.

“I declare I don’t know whether I am a-foot or a-horseback!” Clare Biggars said. “Let me hang on to your coat-tail, Ruth. I know you are real and United Statesy. But these funny French folk —

“My! they are like people out of a story book, after all, aren’t they? I thought I’d seen most every kind of folk at the San Francisco Fair; but just nobody seems familiar looking here!”

Before they were off the quay, several French women, who could not speak a word of English save “’Ello!” welcomed the Red Cross workers with joy. At this time Americans coming to help France against her enemies were a new and very wonderful thing. The first marching soldiers from America were acclaimed along the streets and country roads as heroes might have been.

An old woman in a close-fitting bonnet and ragged shawl – not an over-clean person – took Ruth’s hand in both hers and patted it, and said something in her own tongue that brought the tears to the girl’s eyes. It was such a blessing as Aunt Alvirah had murmured over her when the girl had left the Red Mill.

She and Clare, with several of the other feminine members of the supply unit were quartered in an old hotel almost on the quay for their first night ashore. It was said that some troop trains had the right-of-way; so the Red Cross workers could not go up to Paris for twenty-four hours.

Somebody made a mistake. It could not be expected that everything would go smoothly. The heads of the various Red Cross units were not infallible. Besides, this supply unit to which Ruth belonged really had no head as yet. The party at the seaside hotel was forgotten.

Nobody came to the hotel to inform them when the unit was to entrain. They were served very well by the hotel attendants and several chatty ladies, who could speak English, came to see them. But Ruth and the other girls had not come to France as tourists.

Finally, the girl of the Red Mill, with Clare Biggars, sallied forth to find the remainder of their unit. Fortunately, Ruth’s knowledge of the language was not superficial. Madame Picolet, her French teacher at Briarwood Hall, had been most thorough in the drilling of her pupils; and Madame was a Parisienne.

But when Ruth discovered that she and her friends at the seaside hotel had been left behind by the rest of the Red Cross contingent, she was rather startled, and Clare was angered.

“What do they think we are?” demanded the Western girl. “Of no account at all? Where’s our transportation? What do they suppose we’ll do, dumped down here in this fishing town? What – ”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Ruth laughed. “Don’t lose your temper, my dear,” she advised soothingly. “If nothing worse than this happens to us – ”

She immediately interviewed several railroad officials, arranged for transportation, got the passports of all viséed, and, in the middle of the afternoon, they were off by slow train to the French capital.

“We can’t really get lost, girls,” Ruth declared. “For we are Americans, and Americans, at present, in France, are objects of considerable interest to everybody. We’ll only be a day late getting to the city on the Seine.”

When they finally arrived in Paris, Ruth knew right where to go to reach the Red Cross supply department headquarters. She had it all written down in her notebook, and taxicabs brought the party in safety to the entrance to the building in question.

As the girls alighted from the taxis Clare seized Ruth’s wrist, whispering:

“Why! there’s that Professor Perry again – the one that came over with us on the steamer. You remember?”

Ruth saw the man whose voice was like Legrand’s, but whose facial appearance was nothing at all like that suspected individual. But it was his companion that particularly attracted the attention of the girl of the Red Mill.

This was a slight, dark man, who hobbled as he walked. His right leg was bent and he wore a shoe with a four-inch wooden sole.

“Who is that, I wonder?” Ruth murmured, looking at the crippled man.

“That is Signor Aristo,” Clair said. “He’s an Italian chef I am told.”

Signor Aristo was, likewise, smoothly shaven; but Ruth remarked that he looked much like the Mexican, José, who had worked with Legrand at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg.