Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "You must accept my word."]

  INSIDE THE LINES

  _By_

  EARL DERR BIGGERS

  AND

  ROBERT WELLES RITCHIE

  _Founded on Earl Derr Biggers'
  Play of the Same Name_

  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS

  COPYRIGHT 1915
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN. N. Y.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I Jane Gerson, Buyer
  II From the Wilhelmstrasse
  III Billy Capper at Play
  IV 32 Queen's Terrace
  V A Ferret
  VI A Fugitive
  VII The Hotel Splendide
  VIII Chaff of War
  IX Room D
  X A Visit to a Lady
  XI A Spy in the Signal Tower
  XII Her Country's Example
  XIII Enter, a Cigarette
  XIV The Captain Comes to Tea
  XV The Third Degree
  XVI The Pendulum of Fate
  XVII Three-Thirty A. M.
  XVIII The Trap Is Sprung
  XIX At the Quay

INSIDE THE LINES

CHAPTER I

JANE GERSON, BUYER

"I had two trunks--two, you ninny!  Two!  _Ou est l'autre?_"

The grinning customs guard lifted his shoulders to his ears and spread
out his palms.  "_Mais, mamselle----_"

"Don't you '_mais_' me, sir!  I had two trunks--_deux troncs_--when I
got aboard that wabbly old boat at Dover this morning, and I'm not
going to budge from this wharf until I find the other one.  Where _did_
you learn your French, anyway?  Can't you understand when I speak your
language?"

The girl plumped herself down on top of the unhasped trunk and folded
her arms truculently.  With a quizzical smile, the customs guard looked
down into her brown eyes, smoldering dangerously now, and began all
over again his speech of explanation.

"_Wagon-lit?_"  She caught a familiar word.  "_Mais oui_; that's where
I want to go--aboard your wagon-lit, for Paris.  _Voilà!_"--the girl
carefully gave the word three syllables--"_mon ticket pour Paree!_"
She opened her patent-leather reticule, rummaged furiously therein,
brought out a handkerchief, a tiny mirror, a packet of rice papers, and
at last a folded and punched ticket.  This she displayed with a
triumphant flourish.

"_Voilà!  Il dit_ 'Miss Jane Gerson'; that's me--_moi-meme_, I mean.
And _il dit 'deux troncs'_; now you can't go behind that, can you?
Where is that other trunk?"

A whistle shrilled back beyond the swinging doors of the station.  Folk
in the customs shed began a hasty gathering together of parcels and
shawl straps, and a general exodus toward the train sheds commenced.
The girl on the trunk looked appealingly about her; nothing but bustle
and confusion; no Samaritan to turn aside and rescue a fair traveler
fallen among customs guards.  Her eyes filled with trouble, and for an
instant her reliant mouth broke its line of determination; the lower
lip quivered suspiciously.  Even the guard started to walk away.

"Oh, oh, please don't go!"  Jane Gerson was on her feet, and her hands
shot out in an impulsive appeal.  "Oh, dear; maybe I forgot to tip you.
Here, _attende au secours_, if you'll only find that other trunk before
the train----"

"Pardon; but if I may be of any assistance----"

Miss Gerson turned.  A tallish, old-young-looking man, in a gray lounge
suit, stood heels together and bent stiffly in a bow.  Nothing of the
beau or the boulevardier about his face or manner.  Miss Gerson
accepted his intervention as heaven-sent.

"Oh, thank you ever so much!  The guard, you see, doesn't understand
good French.  I just can't make him understand that one of my trunks is
missing.  And the train for Paris----"

Already the stranger was rattling incisive French at the guard.  That
official bowed low, and, with hands and lips, gave rapid explanation.
The man in the gray lounge suit turned to the girl.

"A little misunderstanding, Miss--ah----"

"Gerson--Jane Gerson, of New York," she promptly supplied.

"A little misunderstanding, Miss Gerson.  The customs guard says your
other trunk has already been examined, passed, and placed on the
baggage van.  He was trying to tell you that it would be necessary for
you to permit a porter to take this trunk to the train before time for
starting.  With your permission----"

The stranger turned and halloed to a porter, who came running.  Miss
Gerson had the trunk locked and strapped in no time, and it was on the
shoulders of the porter.

"You have very little time, Miss Gerson.  The train will be making a
start directly.  If I might--ah--pilot you through the station to the
proper train shed.  I am not presuming?"

"You are very kind," she answered hurriedly.

They set off, the providential Samaritan in the lead.  Through the
waiting-room and on to a broad platform, almost deserted, they went.  A
guard's whistle shrilled.  The stranger tucked a helping hand under
Jane Gerson's arm to steady her in the sharp sprint down a long aisle
between tracks to where the Paris train stood.  It began to move before
they had reached its mid-length.  A guard threw open a carriage door,
in they hopped, and with a rattle of chains and banging of buffers the
Express du Nord was off on its arrow flight from Calais to the capital.

The carriage, which was of the second class, was comfortably filled.
Miss Gerson stumbled over the feet of a puffy Fleming nearest the door,
was launched into the lap of a comfortably upholstered widow on the
opposite seat, ricochetted back to jam an elbow into a French
gentleman's spread newspaper, and finally was catapulted into a vacant
space next to the window on the carriage's far side.  She giggled,
tucked the skirts of her pearl-gray duster about her, righted the chic
sailor hat on her chestnut-brown head, and patted a stray wisp of hair
back into place.  Her meteor flight into and through the carriage
disturbed her not a whit.

As for the Samaritan, he stood uncertainly in the narrow cross aisle,
swaying to the swing of the carriage and reconnoitering seating
possibilities.  There was a place, a very narrow one, next to the fat
Fleming; also there was a vacant place next to Jane Gerson.  The
Samaritan caught the girl's glance in his indecision, read in it
something frankly comradely, and chose the seat beside her.

"Very good of you, I'm sure," he murmured.  "I did not wish to
presume----"

"You're not," the girl assured, and there was something so fresh, so
ingenuous, in the tone and the level glance of her brown eyes that the
Samaritan felt all at once distinctly satisfied with the cast of
fortune that had thrown him in the way of a distressed traveler.  He
sat down with a lifting of the checkered Alpine hat he wore and a stiff
little bow from the waist.

"If I may, Miss Gerson--I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service."

"Oh!"  The girl let slip a little gasp--the meed of admiration the
feminine heart always pays to shoulder straps.  "Signal service; that
means the army?"

"His majesty's service; yes, Miss Gerson."

"You are, of course, off duty?" she suggested, with the faintest
possible tinge of regret at the absence of the stripes and buttons that
spell "soldier" with the woman.

"You might say so, Miss Gerson.  Egypt--the Nile country is my station.
I am on my way back there after a bit of a vacation at home--London I
mean, of course."

She stole a quick side glance at the face of her companion.  A
soldier's face it was, lean and school-hardened and competent.  Lines
about the eyes and mouth--the stamp of the sun and the imprint of the
habit to command--had taken from Captain Woodhouse's features something
of freshness and youth, though giving in return the index of inflexible
will and lust for achievement.  His smooth lips were a bit thin, Jane
Gerson thought, and the out-shooting chin, almost squared at the
angles, marked Captain Woodhouse as anything but a trifler or a flirt.
She was satisfied that nothing of presumption or forwardness on the
part of this hard-molded chap from Egypt would give her cause to regret
her unconventional offer of friendship.

Captain Woodhouse, in his turn, had made a satisfying, though covert,
appraisal of his traveling companion by means of a narrow mirror inset
above the baggage rack over the opposite seat.  Trim and petite of
figure, which was just a shade under the average for height and
plumpness; a small head set sturdily on a round smooth neck; face the
very embodiment of independence and self-confidence, with its brown
eyes wide apart, its high brow under the parting waves of golden
chestnut, broad humorous mouth, and tiny nose slightly nibbed upward:
Miss Up-to-the-Minute New York, indeed!  From the cocked red feather in
her hat to the dainty spatted boots Jane Gerson appeared in Woodhouse's
eyes a perfect, virile, vividly alive American girl.  He'd met her kind
before; had seen them browbeating bazaar merchants in Cairo and riding
desert donkeys like strong young queens.  The type appealed to him.

The first stiffness of informal meeting wore away speedily.  The girl
tactfully directed the channel of conversation into lines familiar to
Woodhouse.  What was Egypt like; who owned the Pyramids, and why didn't
the owners plant a park around them and charge admittance?  Didn't he
think Rameses and all those other old Pharaohs had the right idea in
advertising--putting up stone billboards to last all time?  The
questions came crisp and startling; Woodhouse found himself chuckling
at the shrewd incisiveness of them.  Rameses an advertiser and the
Pyramids stone hoardings to carry all those old boys' fame through the
ages!  He'd never looked on them in that light before.

"I say, Miss Gerson, you'd make an excellent business person, now,
really," the captain voiced his admiration.

"Just cable that at my expense to old Pop Hildebrand, of Hildebrand's
department store, New York," she flashed back at him.  "I'm trying to
convince him of just that very thing."

"Really, now; a department shop!  What, may I ask, do you have to do
for--ah--Pop Hildebrand?"

"Oh, I'm his foreign buyer," Jane answered, with a conscious note of
pride.  "I'm over here to buy gowns for the winter season, you see.
Paul Poiret--Worth--Paquin; you've heard of those wonderful people, of
course?"

"Can't say I have," the captain confessed, with a rueful smile into the
girl's brown eyes.

"Then you've never bought a Worth?" she challenged.  "For if you had
you'd not forget the name--or the price--very soon."

"Gowns--and things are not in my line, Miss Gerson," he answered
simply, and the girl caught herself feeling a secret elation.  A man
who didn't know gowns couldn't be very intimately acquainted with
women.  And--well--

"And this Hildebrand, he sends you over here alone just to buy pretties
for New York's wonderful women?" the captain was saying.  "Aren't you
just a bit--ah--nervous to be over in this part of the world--alone?"

"Not in the least," the girl caught him up.  "Not about the alone part,
I should say.  Maybe I am fidgety and sort of worried about making good
on the job.  This is my first trip--my very first as a buyer for
Hildebrand.  And, of course, if I should fall down----"

"Fall down?" Woodhouse echoed, mystified.  The girl laughed, and struck
her left wrist a smart blow with her gloved right hand.

"There I go again--slang; 'vulgar American slang,' you'll call it.  If
I could only rattle off the French as easily as I do New Yorkese I'd be
a wonder.  I mean I'm afraid I won't make good."

"Oh!"

"But why should I worry about coming over alone?" Jane urged.  "Lots of
American girls come over here alone with an American flag pinned to
their shirt-waists and wearing a Baedeker for a wrist watch.  Nothing
ever happens to them."

Captain Woodhouse looked out on the flying panorama of straw-thatched
houses and fields heavy with green grain.  He seemed to be balancing
words.  He glanced at the passenger across the aisle, a wizened little
man, asleep.  In a lowered voice he began:

"A woman alone--over here on the Continent at this time; why, I very
much fear she will have great difficulties when the--ah--trouble comes."

"Trouble?"  Jane's eyes were questioning.

"I do not wish to be an alarmist, Miss Gerson," Captain Woodhouse
continued, hesitant.  "Goodness knows we've had enough calamity
shouters among the Unionists at home.  But have you considered what you
would do--how you would get back to America in case of--war?"  The last
word was almost a whisper.

"War?" she echoed.  "Why, you don't mean all this talk in the papers
is----"

"Is serious, yes," Woodhouse answered quietly.  "Very serious."

"Why, Captain Woodhouse, I thought you had war talk every summer over
here just as our papers are filled each spring with gossip about how
Tesreau is going to jump to the Feds, or the Yanks are going to be
sold.  It's your regular midsummer outdoor sport over here, this
stirring up the animals."

Woodhouse smiled, though his gray eyes were filled with something not
mirth.

"I fear the animals are--stirred, as you say, too far this time," he
resumed.  "The assassination of the Archduke Ferd----"

"Yes, I remember I did read something about that in the papers at home.
But archdukes and kings have been killed before, and no war came of it.
In Mexico they murder a president before he has a chance to send out
'At home' cards."

"Europe is so different from Mexico," her companion continued, the
lines of his face deepening.  "I am afraid you over in the States do
not know the dangerous politics here; you are so far away; you should
thank God for that.  You are not in a land where one man--or two or
three--may say, 'We will now go to war,' and then you go, willy-nilly."

The seriousness of the captain's speech and the fear that he could not
keep from his eyes sobered the girl.  She looked out on the
sun-drenched plains of Pas de Calais, where toy villages, hedged
fields, and squat farmhouses lay all in order, established, seeming for
all time in the comfortable doze of security.  The plodding manikins in
the fields, the slumberous oxen drawing the harrows amid the beet rows,
pigeons circling over the straw hutches by the tracks' side--all this
denied the possibility of war's corrosion.

"Don't you think everybody is suffering from a bad dream when they say
there's to be fighting?" she queried.  "Surely it is impossible that
folks over here would all consent to destroy this."  She waved toward
the peaceful countryside.

"A bad dream, yes.  But one that will end in a nightmare," he answered.
"Tell me, Miss Gerson, when will you be through with your work in
Paris, and on your way back to America?"

"Not for a month; that's sure.  Maybe I'll be longer if I like the
place."

Woodhouse pondered.

"A month.  This is the tenth of July.  I am afraid----  I say, Miss
Gerson, please do not set me down for a meddler--this short
acquaintance, and all that; but may I not urge on you that you finish
your work in Paris and get back to England at least in two weeks?"  The
captain had turned, and was looking into the girl's eyes with an
earnest intensity that startled her.  "I can not tell you all I know,
of course.  I may not even know the truth, though I think I have a bit
of it, right enough.  But one of your sort--to be caught alone on this
side of the water by the madness that is brewing!  By George, I do not
like to think of it!"

"I thank you, Captain Woodhouse, for your warning," Jane answered him,
and impulsively she put out her hand to his.  "But, you see, I'll have
to run the risk.  I couldn't go scampering back to New York like a
scared pussy-cat just because somebody starts a war over here.  I'm on
trial.  This is my first trip as buyer for Hildebrand, and it's a case
of make or break with me.  War or no war, I've got to make good.
Anyway"--this with a toss of her round little chin--"I'm an American
citizen, and nobody'll dare to start anything with me."

"Right you are!"  Woodhouse beamed his admiration.  "Now we'll talk
about those skyscrapers of yours.  Everybody back from the States has
something to say about those famous buildings, and I'm fairly burning
for first-hand information from one who knows them."

Laughingly she acquiesced, and the grim shadow of war was pushed away
from them, though hardly forgotten by either.  At the man's prompting,
Jane gave intimate pictures of life in the New World metropolis,
touching with shrewd insight the fads and shams of New York's denizens
even as she exalted the achievements of their restless energy.

Woodhouse found secret amusement and delight in her racy nervous
speech, in the dexterity of her idiom and patness of her
characterizations.  Here was a new sort of for him.  Not the languid
creature of studied suppression and feeble enthusiasm he had known, but
a virile, vivid, sparkling woman of a new land, whose impulses were as
unhindered as her speech was heterodox.  She was a woman who worked for
her living; that was a new type, too.  Unafraid, she threw herself into
the competition of a man's world; insensibly she prided herself on her
ability to "make good"--expressive Americanism, that,--under any
handicap.  She was a woman with a "job"; Captain Woodhouse had never
before met one such.

Again, here was a woman who tried none of the stale arts and tricks of
coquetry; no eyebrow strategy or maidenly simpering about Jane Gerson.
Once sure Woodhouse was what she took him to be, a gentleman, the girl
had established a frank basis of comradeship that took no reckoning of
the age-old conventions of sex allure and sex defense.  The
unconventionality of their meeting weighed nothing with her.  Equally
there was not a hint of sophistication on the girl's part.

So the afternoon sped, and when the sun dropped over the maze of spires
and chimney pots that was Paris, each felt regret at parting.

"To Egypt, yes," Woodhouse ruefully admitted.  "A dreary deadly 'place
in the sun' for me.  To have met you, Miss Gerson; it has been
delightful, quite."

"I hope," the girl said, as Woodhouse handed her into a taxi, "I hope
that _if_ that war comes it will find you still in Egypt, away from the
firing-line."

"Not a fair thing to wish for a man in the service," Woodhouse
answered, laughing.  "I may be more happy when I say my best wish for
you is that _when_ the war comes it will find you a long way from
Paris.  Good-by, Miss Gerson, and good luck!"

Captain Woodhouse stood, heels together and hat in hand, while her taxi
trundled off, a farewell flash of brown eyes rewarding him for the
military correctness of his courtesy.  Then he hurried to another
station to take a train--not for a Mediterranean port and distant
Egypt, but for Berlin.

CHAPTER II

FROM THE WILHELMSTRASSE

"It would be wiser to talk in German," the woman said.  "In these times
French or English speech in Berlin----" she finished, with a lifting of
her shapely bare shoulders, sufficiently eloquent.  The waiter speeded
his task of refilling the man's glass and discreetly withdrew.

"Oh, I'll talk in German quick enough," the man assented, draining his
thin half bubble of glass down to the last fizzing residue in the stem.
"Only just show me you've got the right to hear, and the good fat
bank-notes to pay; that's all."  He propped his sharp chin on a hand
that shook slightly, and pushed his lean flushed face nearer hers.  An
owlish caution fought the wine fancies in his shifting lynx eyes under
reddened lids; also there was admiration for the milk-white skin and
ripe lips of the woman by his side.  For an instant--half the time of a
breath--a flash of loathing made the woman's eyes tigerish; but at once
they changed again to mild bantering.

"So?  Friend Billy Capper, of Brussels, has a touch of the spy fever
himself, and distrusts an old pal?"  She laughed softly, and one slim
hand toyed with a heavy gold locket on her bosom.  "Friend Billy Capper
forgets old times and old faces--forgets even the matter of the Lord
Fisher letters----"

"Chop it, Louisa!"  The man called Capper lapsed into brusk English as
he banged the stem of his wineglass on the damask.  "No sense in raking
that up again--just because I ask you a fair question--ask you to
identify yourself in your new job."

"We go no further, Billy Capper," she returned, speaking swiftly in
German; "not another word between us unless you obey my rule, and talk
this language.  Why did you get that message through to me to meet you
here in the Café Riche to-night if you did not trust me?  Why did you
have me carry your offer to--to headquarters and come here ready to
talk business if it was only to hum and haw about my identifying
myself?"

The tenseness of exaggerated concentration on Capper's gaunt face began
slowly to dissolve.  First the thin line of shaven lips flickered and
became weak at down-drawn corners; then the frown faded from about the
eyes, and the beginnings of tears gathered there.  Shrewdness and the
stamp of cunning sped entirely, and naught but weakness remained.

"Louisa--Louisa, old pal; don't be hard on poor Billy Capper," he
mumbled.  "I'm down, girl--away down again.  Since they kicked me out
at Brussels I haven't had a shilling to bless myself with.  Can't go
back to England--you know that; the French won't have me, and here I
am, my dinner clothes my only stock in trade left, and you even having
to buy the wine."  A tear of self-pity slipped down the hard drain of
his cheek and splashed on his hand.  "But I'll show 'em, Louisa!  They
can't kick me out of the Brussels shop like a dog and not pay for it!
I know too much, I do!"

"And what you know about the Brussels shop you want to sell to
the--Wilhelmstrasse?" the woman asked tensely.

"Yes, if the Wilhelmstrasse is willing to pay well for it," Capper
answered, his lost cunning returning in a bound.

"I am authorized to judge how much your information is worth," his
companion declared, leveling a cold glance into Capper's eyes.  "You
can tell me what you know, and depend on me to pay well, or--we part at
once."

"But, Louisa"--again the whine--"how do I know you're what you say?
You've flown high since you and I worked together in the Brussels shop.
The Wilhelmstrasse--most perfect spy machine in the world!  How I'd
like to be in your shoes, Louisa!"

She detached the heavy gold locket from the chain on her bosom, with a
quick twist of slim fingers had one side of the case open, then laid
the locket before him, pointing to a place on the bevel of the case.
Capper swept up the trinket, looked searchingly for an instant at the
spot the woman had designated, and returned the locket to her hand.

"Your number in the Wilhelmstrasse," he whispered in awe.  "Genuine, no
doubt.  Saw the same sort of mark once before in Rome.  All right.
Now, listen, Louisa.  What I'm going to tell you about where Brussells
stands in this--this business that's brewing will make the German
general staff sit up."  The woman inclined her head toward Capper's.
He, looking not at her but out over the rich plain of brocades,
broadcloths and gleaming shoulders, began in a monotone:

"When the war comes--the day the war starts, French artillerymen will
be behind the guns at Namur.  The English----"

The Hungarian orchestra of forty strings swept into a wild gipsy chant.
Dissonances, fierce and barbaric, swept like angry tides over the
brilliant floor, of the café.  Still Capper talked on, and the woman
called Louisa bent her jewel-starred head to listen.  Her face, the
face of a fine animal, was set in rapt attention.

"You mark my words," he finished, "when the German army enters Brussels
proof of what I'm telling you will be there.  Yes, in a pigeonhole of
the foreign-office safe those joint plans between England and Belgium
for resisting invasion from the eastern frontier.  If the Germans
strike as swiftly as I think they will the foreign-office Johnnies will
be so flustered in moving out they'll forget these papers I'm telling
you about.  Then your Wilhelmstrasse will know they've paid for the
truth when they paid Billy Capper."

Capper eagerly reached for his glass, and, finding it empty, signaled
the waiter.

"I'll buy this one, Louisa," he said grandiloquently.  "Can't have a
lady buying me wine all night."  He gave the order.  "You're going to
slip me some bank-notes to-night--right now, aren't you, Louisa, old
pal?"  Capper anxiously honed his cheeks with a hand that trembled.
The woman's eyes were narrowed in thought.

"If I give you anything to-night, Billy Capper, you'll get drunker than
you are now, and how do I know you won't run to the first English
secret-service man you meet and blab?"

"Louisa!  Louisa!  Don't say that!"  Great fear and great yearning sat
in Capper's filmed eyes.  "You know I'm honest, Louisa!  You wouldn't
milk me this way--take all the info I've got and then throw me over
like a dog!"  Cold scorn was in her glance.

"Maybe I might manage to get you a position--with the Wilhelmstrasse."
She named the great secret-service office under her breath.  "You can't
go back to England, to be sure; but you might be useful in the Balkans,
where you're not known, or even in Egypt.  You have your good points,
Capper; you're a sly little weasel--when you're sober.  Perhaps----"

"Yes, yes; get me a job with the Wilhelmstrasse, Louisa!"  Capper was
babbling in an agony of eagerness.  "You know my work.  You can vouch
for me, and you needn't mention that business of the Lord Fisher
letters; you were tarred pretty much with the same brush there, Louisa.
But, come, be a good sport; pay me at least half of what you think my
info's worth, and I'll take the rest out in salary checks, if you get
me that job.  I'm broke, Louisa!"  His voice cracked in a sob.
"Absolutely stony broke!"

She sat toying with the stem of her wineglass while Capper's clasped
hands on the table opened and shut themselves without his volition.
Finally she made a swift move of one hand to her bodice, withdrew it
with a bundle of notes crinkling between the fingers.

"Three hundred marks now, Billy Capper," she said.  The man echoed the
words lovingly.  "Three hundred now, and my promise to try to get a
number for you with--my people.  That's fair?"

"Fair as can be, Louisa."  He stretched out clawlike fingers to receive
the thin sheaf of notes she counted from her roll.  "Here comes the
wine--the wine I'm buying.  We'll drink to my success at landing a job
with--your people."

"For me no more to-night," the woman answered.  "My cape, please."  She
rose.

"But, I say!" Capper protested.  "Just one more bottle--the bottle I'm
buying.  See, here it is all proper and cooled.  Marks the end of my
bad luck, so it does.  You won't refuse to drink with me to my good
luck that's coming?"

"Your good luck is likely to stop short with that bottle, Billy
Capper," she said, her lips parting in a smile half scornful.  "You
know how wine has played you before.  Better stop now while luck's with
you."

"Hanged if I do!" he answered stubbornly.  "After these months of hand
to mouth and begging for a nasty pint of ale in a common pub--leave
good wine when it's right under my nose?  Not me!"  Still protesting
against her refusal to drink with him the wine he would pay for
himself--the man made that a point of injured honor--Capper grudgingly
helped place the cape of web lace over his companion's white shoulders,
and accompanied her to her taxi.

"If you're here this time to-morrow night--and sober," were her
farewell words, "I may bring you your number in the--you understand;
that and your commission to duty."

"God bless you, Louisa, girl!" Capper stammered thickly.  "I'll not
fail you."

He watched the taxi trundle down the brilliant mirror of Unter den
Linden, a sardonic smile twisting his lips.  Then he turned back to the
world of light and perfume and wine--the world from which he had been
barred these many months and for which the starved body of him had
cried out in agony.  His glass stood brimming; money crinkled in his
pocket; there were eyes for him and fair white shoulders.  Billy
Capper, discredited spy, had come to his own once more.

The orchestra was booming a rag-time, and the chorus on the stage of
the Winter Garden came plunging to the footlights, all in line, their
black legs kicking out from the skirts like thrusting spindles in some
marvelous engine of stagecraft.  They screeched the final line of a
Germanized coon song, the cymbals clanged "Zam-m-m!" and folk about the
clustered tables pattered applause.  Captain Woodhouse, at a table by
himself, pulled a wafer of a watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced
at its face and looked back at the rococo entrance arches, through
which the late-comers were streaming.

"Henry Sherman, do you think Kitty ought to see this sort of thing?
It's positively indecent!"

The high-pitched nasal complaint came from a table a little to the
right of the one where Woodhouse was sitting.

"There, there, mother!  Now, don't go taking all the joy outa life just
because you're seeing something that would make the minister back in
Kewanee roll his eyes in horror.  This is Germany, mother!"

Out of the tail of his eye, Woodhouse could see the family group
wherein Mrs. Grundy had sat down to make a fourth.  A blocky little man
with a red face and a pinky-bald head, whose clothes looked as if they
had been whipsawed out of the bolt; a comfortably stout matron wearing
a bonnet which even to the untutored masculine eye betrayed its
provincialism; a slim slip of a girl of about nineteen with a face like
a choir boy's--these were the American tourists whose voices had
attracted Woodhouse's attention.  He played an amused eavesdropper, all
the more interested because they were Americans, and since a certain
day on the Calais-Paris express, a week or so gone, he'd had reason to
be interested in all Americans.

"I'm surprised at you, Henry, defending such an exhibition as this,"
the matron's high complaint went on, "when you were mighty shocked at
the bare feet of those innocent Greek dancers the Ladies' Aid brought
to give an exhibition on Mrs. Peck's lawn."

"Well, mother, that was different," the genial little chap answered.
"Kewanee's a good little town, and should stay proper.  Berlin, from
what I can see, is a pretty bad big town--and don't care."  He pulled a
heavy watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it.  "Land's sakes,
mother; seven o'clock back home, and the bell's just ringing for
Wednesday-night prayer meeting!  Maybe since it's prayer-meeting night
we might be passing our time better than by looking at
this--ah--exhibition."

There was a scraping of chairs, then:

"Henry, I tell you he does look like Albert Downs--the living image!"
This from the woman, sotto voce.

"Sh!  mother!  What would Albert Downs be doing in Berlin?"  The
daughter was reproving.

"Well, Kitty, they say curiosity once killed a cat; but I'm going to
have a better look.  I'd swear----"

Woodhouse was slightly startled when he saw the woman from America
utilize the clumsy subterfuge of a dropped handkerchief to step into a
position whence she could look at his face squarely.  Also he was
annoyed.  He did not care to be stared at under any circumstances,
particularly at this time.  The alert and curious lady saw his flush of
annoyance, flushed herself, and joined her husband and daughter.

"Well, if I didn't know Albert Downs had a livery business which he
couldn't well leave," floated back the hoarse whisper, "I'd say that
was him setting right there in that chair."

"Come, mother, bedtime and after--in Berlin," was the old gentleman's
admonition.  Woodhouse heard their retreating footsteps, and laughed in
spite of his temporary chagrin at the American woman's curiosity.  He
was just reaching for his watch a second time when a quick step sounded
on the gravel behind him.  He turned.  A woman of ripe beauty had her
hand outstretched in welcome.  She was the one Billy Capper had called
Louisa.  Captain Woodhouse rose and grasped her hand warmly.

"Ah!  So good of you!  I've been expecting----"

"Yes, I'm late.  I could not come earlier."  Salutation and answer were
in German, fluently spoken on the part of each.

"You will not be followed?" Woodhouse asked, assisting her to sit.  She
laughed shortly.

"Hardly, when a bottle of champagne is my rival.  The man will be well
entertained--too well."

"I have been thinking," Woodhouse continued gravely, "that a place
hardly as public as this would have been better for our meeting.
Perhaps----"

"You fear the English agents?  Pah!  They have ears for keyholes only;
they do not expect to use them in a place where there is light and
plenty of people.  You know their clumsiness."  Woodhouse nodded.  His
eyes traveled slowly over the bold beauty of the woman's face.

"The man Capper will do for the stalking horse--a willing nag," went on
the woman in a half whisper across the table.  "You know the ways of
the Wilhelmstrasse.  Capper is what we call 'the target.'  The English
suspect him.  They will catch him; you get his number and do the work
in safety.  We have one man to draw their fire, another to accomplish
the deed.  We'll let the English bag him at Malta--a word placed in the
right direction will fix that--and you'll go on to Alexandria to do the
real work."

"Good, good!" Woodhouse agreed.

"The Wilhelmstrasse will give him a number, and send him on this
mission on my recommendation; I had that assurance before ever I met
the fellow to-night.  They--the big people--know little Capper's
reputation, and, as a matter of fact, I think they are convinced he's a
little less dangerous working for the Wilhelmstrasse than against it.
At Malta the arrest--the firing squad at dawn--and the English are
convinced they've nipped something big in the bud, whereas they've only
put out of the way a dangerous little weasel who's ready to bite any
hand that feeds him."

Woodhouse's level glance never left the eyes of the woman called
Louisa; it was alert, appraising.

"But if there should be some slip-up at Malta," he interjected.  "If
somehow this Capper should get through to Alexandria, wouldn't that
make it somewhat embarrassing for me?"

"Not at all, my dear Woodhouse," she caught him up, with a little pat
on his hand.  "His instructions will be only to report to So-and-so at
Alexandria; he will not have the slightest notion what work he is to do
there.  You can slip in unsuspected by the English, and the trick will
be turned."

For a minute Woodhouse sat watching the cavortings of a dancer on the
stage.  Finally he put a question judiciously:

"The whole scheme, then, is----"

"This," she answered quickly.  "Captain Woodhouse--the real Woodhouse,
you know--is to be transferred from his present post at Wady Halfa, on
the Nile, to Gibraltar--transfer is to be announced in the regular way
within a week.  As a member of the signal service he will have access
to the signal tower on the Rock when he takes his new post, and that,
as you know, will be very important."

"Very important!" Woodhouse echoed dryly.

"This Woodhouse arrives in Alexandria to await the steamer from Suez to
Gib.  He has no friends there--that much we know.  Three men of the
Wilhelmstrasse are waiting there, whose business it is to see that the
real Woodhouse does not take the boat for Gib.  They expect a man from
Berlin to come to them, bearing a number from the Wilhelmstrasse--the
man who is to impersonate Woodhouse and as such take his place in the
garrison on the Rock.  There are two others of the Wilhelmstrasse at
Gibraltar already; they, too, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of
'Woodhouse' from Alexandria.  Capper, with a number, will start from
Berlin for Alexandria.  Capper will never arrive in Alexandria.  You
will."

"With a number--the number expected?" the man asked.

"If you are clever en route--yes," she answered, with a smile.  "Wine,
remember, is Billy Capper's best friend--and worst enemy."

"Then I will hear from you as to the time and route of departure for
Alexandria?"

"To the very hour, yes.  And, now, dear friend----"

Interruption came suddenly from the stage.  The manager, in
shirt-sleeves and with hair wildly rumpled over his eyes, came prancing
out from the wings.  He held up a pudgy hand to check the orchestra.
Hundreds about the tables rose in a gust of excitement, of questioning
wonder.

"_Herren!_"  The stage manager's bellow carried to the farthest arches
of the Winter Garden.  "News just published by the general staff:
Russia has mobilized five divisions on the frontier of East Prussia and
Galicia!"

Not a sound save the sharp catching of breath over all the acre of
tables.  Then the stage manager nodded to the orchestra leader, and in
a fury the brass mouths began to bray.  Men climbed on table tops,
women stood on chairs, and all--all sang in tremendous chorus:

"_Deutschland, Deutschland üeber alles!_"

BILLY CAPPER AT PLAY

The night of July twenty-sixth.  The scene is the table-cluttered
sidewalk before the Café Pytheas, where the Cours St. Louis flings its
night tide of idlers into the broader stream of the Cannebière,
Marseilles' Broadway--the white street of the great Provençal port.
Here at the crossing of these two streets summer nights are incidents
to stick in the traveler's mind long after he sees the gray walls of
the Château d'If fade below the steamer's rail.  The flower girls in
their little pulpits pressing dewy violets and fragrant clusters of
rosebuds upon the strollers with persuasive eloquence; the mystical
eyes of hooded Moors who see everything as they pass, yet seem to see
so little; jostling Greeks, Levantines, burnoosed Jews from Algiers and
red-trousered Senegalese--all the color from the hot lands of the
Mediterranean is there.

But on the night of July twenty-sixth the old spirit of indolence, of
pleasure seeking, flirtation, intriguing, which was wont to make this
heart of arc-light life in Marseilles pulse languorously, was gone.
Instead, an electric tenseness was abroad, pervading, infectious.
About each sidewalk table heads were clustered close in conference, and
eloquent hands aided explosive argument.  Around the news kiosk at the
Café Pytheas corner a constant stream eddied.  Men snatched papers from
the pile, spread them before their faces, and blundered into their
fellow pedestrians as they walked, buried in the inky columns.  Now and
again half-naked urchins came charging down the Cannebière, waving
shinplaster extras above their heads--"_L'Allemagne s'arme!  La guerre
vient!_"  Up from the Quai marched a dozen sailors from a torpedo boat,
arms linked so that they almost spanned the Cannebière.  Their
red-tasseled caps were pushed back at cocky angles on their black
heads, and as they marched they shouted in time: "_A Berlin!
Hou--hou!_"

The black shadow of war--the first hallucinations of the great
madness--gripped Marseilles.

For Captain Woodhouse, just in from Berlin that evening, all this
swirling excitement had but an incidental interest.  He sat alone by
one of the little iron tables before the Café Pytheas, sipping his
_boc_, and from time to time his eyes carelessly followed the eddying
of the swarm about the news kiosk.  Always his attention would come
back, however, to center on the thin shoulders of a man sitting fifteen
or twenty feet away with a wine cooler by his side.  He could not see
the face of the wine drinker; he did not want to.  All he cared to do
was to keep those thin shoulders always in sight.  Each time the
solicitous waiter renewed the bottle in the wine cooler Captain
Woodhouse nodded grimly, as a doctor might when he recognized the
symptoms of advancing fever in a patient.

So for two days, from Berlin across to Paris, and now on this third day
here in the Mediterranean port, Woodhouse had kept ever in sight those
thin shoulders and that trembling hand beyond the constantly crooking
elbow.  Not a pleasant task; he had come to loathe and abominate the
very wrinkles in the back of that shiny coat.  But a very necessary
duty it was for Captain Woodhouse to shadow Mr. Billy Capper until--the
right moment should arrive.  They had come down on the same express
together from Paris.  Woodhouse had observed Capper when he checked his
baggage, a single shoddy hand-bag, for _La Vendée_, the French line
ship sailing with the dawn next morning for Alexandria and Port Said
via Malta.  Capper had squared his account at the Hotel Allées de
Meilhan, for the most part a bill for absinth frappés, after dinner
that night, and was now enjoying the night life of Marseilles in
anticipation, evidently, of carrying direct to the steamer with him as
his farewell from France all of the bottled laughter of her peasant
girls he could accommodate.

The harsh memories of how he had been forced to drink the bitter lees
of poverty during the lean months rode Billy Capper hard, and this
night he wanted to fill all the starved chambers of his soul with the
robust music of the grape.  So he drank with a purpose and
purposefully.  That he drank alone was a matter of choice with Capper;
he could have had a pair of dark eyes to glint over a goblet into his
had he wished--indeed, opportunities almost amounted to embarrassment.
But to all advances from the fair, Billy Capper returned merely an
impolite leer.  He knew from beforetime that he was his one best
companion when the wine began to warm him.  So he squared himself to
his pleasure with an abandoned rakishness expressed in the set of his
thin shoulders and the forward droop of his head.

Woodhouse, who watched, noted only one peculiarity in Capper's conduct:
The drinker nursed his stick, a plain, crook-handled malacca, with a
tenderness almost maternal.  It never left his hands.  Once when Capper
dropped it and the waiter made to prop the stick against a near-by
chair, the little spy leaped to his feet and snatched the cane away
with a growl.  Thereafter he propped his chin on the handle, only
removing this guard when he had to tip his head back for another draft
of champagne.

Eleven o'clock came.  Capper rose from the table and looked owlishly
about him.  Woodhouse quickly turned his back to the man, and was
absorbed in the passing strollers.  When he looked back again Capper
was slowly and a little unsteadily making his way around the corner
into the Cannebière.  Woodhouse followed, sauntering.  Capper began a
dilatory exploration of the various cafés along the white street; his
general course was toward the city's slums about the Quai.  Woodhouse,
dawdling about tree boxes and dodging into shadows by black doorways,
found his quarry easy to trail.  And he knew that each of Capper's
sojourns in an oasis put a period to the length of the pursuit.  The
time for him to act drew appreciably nearer with every tipping of that
restless elbow.

Midnight found them down in the reek and welter of the dives and
sailors' frolic grounds.  Now the trailer found his task more
difficult, inasmuch as not only his quarry but he himself was marked by
the wolves.  Dances in smoke-wreathed rooms slackened when Capper
lurched in, found a seat and ordered a drink.  Women with cheeks
carmined like poppies wanted to make predatory love to him; dock rats
drew aside and consulted in whispers.  When Capper retreated from an
evil dive on the very edge of the Quai, Woodhouse, waiting by the
doors, saw that he was not the only shadower.  Close against the dead
walls flanking the narrow pavement a slinking figure twisted and
writhed after the drunkard, now spread-eagling all over the street.

Woodhouse quickened his pace on the opposite sidewalk.  The street was
one lined with warehouses, their closely shuttered windows the only
eyes.  Capper dropped his stick, laboriously halted, and started to go
back for it.  That instant the shadow against the walls detached itself
and darted for the victim.  Woodhouse leaped to the cobbles and gained
Capper's side just as he dropped like a sack of rags under a blow from
the dock rat's fist.

"Son of a pig!  This is my meat; you clear out!"  The humped black
beetle of a man straddling the sprawling Capper whipped a knife from
his girdle and faced Woodhouse.  Quicker than light the captain's right
arm shot out; a thud as of a maul on an empty wine butt, and the Apache
turned a half somersault, striking the cobbles with the back of his
head.  Woodhouse stooped, lifted the limp Capper from the street
stones, and staggered with him to the lighted avenue of the Cannebière,
a block away.  He hailed a late-cruising fiacre, propped Capper in the
seat, and took his place beside him.

"To _La Vendée_, Quai de la Fraternité!" Woodhouse ordered.

The driver, wise in the ways of the city, asked no questions, but
clucked to his crow bait.  Woodhouse turned to make a quick examination
of the unconscious man by his side.  He feared a stab wound; he found
nothing but a nasty cut on the head, made by brass knuckles.  With the
wine helping, any sort of a blow would have put Capper out, he
reflected.

Woodhouse turned his back on the bundle of clothes and reached for the
malacca stick.  Even in his coma its owner grasped it tenaciously at
midlength.  Without trying to disengage the clasp, Woodhouse gripped
the wood near the crook of the handle with his left Hand while with his
right he applied torsion above.  The crook turned on hidden threads and
came off in his hand.  An exploring forefinger in the exposed hollow
end of the cane encountered a rolled wisp of paper.  Woodhouse pocketed
this, substituted in its place a thin clean sheet torn from a card-case
memorandum, then screwed the crook on the stick down on the secret
receptacle.  By the light of a match he assured himself the paper he
had taken from the cane was what he wanted.

"Larceny from the person--guilty," he murmured, with a wry smile of
distaste.  "But assault--unpremeditated."

The conveyance trundled down a long spit of stone and stopped by the
side of a black hull, spotted with round eyes of light.  The driver,
scenting a tip, helped Woodhouse lift Capper to the ground and prop him
against a bulkhead.  A bos'n, summoned from _La Vendée_ by the cabby's
shrill whistle, heard Woodhouse's explanation with sympathy.

"Occasionally, yes, m'sieu, the passengers from Marseilles have these
regrets at parting," he gravely commented, accepting the ticket
Woodhouse had rummaged from the unconscious man's wallet and a crinkled
note from Woodhouse's.  Up the gangplank, feet first, went the new
agent of the Wilhelmstrasse.  The one who called himself "captain in
his majesty's signal service" returned to his hotel.

At dawn, _La Vendée_ cleared the harbor for Alexandria via Malta,
bearing a very sick Billy Capper to his destiny.  Five hours later the
Castle liner, _Castle Claire_, for the Cape via Alexandria and Suez
direct, sailed out of the Old Port, among her passengers a Captain
Woodhouse.

CHAPTER IV

32 QUEEN'S TERRACE

Many a long starlit hour alone on the deck of the _Castle Claire_
Captain Woodhouse found himself tortured by a persistent vision.  Far
back over the northern horizon lay Europe, trembling and breathless
before the imminent disaster--a great field of grain, each stalk
bearing for its head the helmeted head of a man.  Out of the east came
a glow, which spread from boundary to boundary, waxed stronger in the
wind of hate.  Finally the fire, devastating, insensate, began its
sweep through the close-standing mazes of the grain.  Somewhere in this
fire-glow and swift leveling under the scythe of the flame was a girl,
alone, appalled.  Woodhouse could see her as plainly as though a cinema
was unreeling swift pictures before him--the girl caught in this vast
acreage of fire, in the standing grain, with destruction drawing nearer
in incredible strides.  He saw her wide eyes, her streaming hair--saw
her running through the grain, whose heads were the helmeted heads of
men.  Her hands groped blindly and she was calling--calling, with none
to come in aid.  Jane Gerson alone in the face of Europe's burning!

Strive as he would, Woodhouse could not screen this picture from his
eyes.  He tried to hope that ere this, discretion had conquered her
resolution to "make good," and that she had fled from Paris, one of the
great army of refugees who had already begun to pour out of the gates
of France when he passed through the war-stunned capital a few days
before.  But, no; there was no mistaking the determination he had read
in those brown eyes that day on the express from Calais.  "I couldn't
go scampering back to New York just because somebody starts a war over
here."  Brave, yes; but hers was the bravery of ignorance.  This little
person from the States, on her first venture into the complex life of
the Continent, could not know what war there would mean; the terror and
magnitude of it.  And now where was she?  In Paris, caught in its
hysteria of patriotism and darkling fear of what the morrow would bring
forth?  Or had she started for England, and become wedged in the jam of
terrified thousands battling for place on the Channel steamers?  Was
her fine self-reliance upholding her, or had the crisis sapped her
courage and thrown her back on the common helplessness of women before
disaster?

Captain Woodhouse, the self-sufficient and aloof, whose training had
been all toward suppression of every instinct save that in the line of
duty, was surprised at himself.  That a little American inconnu--a
"business person," he would have styled her under conditions less
personal--should have come into his life in this definite way was, to
say the least, highly irregular.  The man tried to swing his reason as
a club against his heart--and failed miserably.  No, the fine brave
spirit that looked out of those big brown eyes would not be argued out
of court.  Jane Gerson was a girl who was _different_, and that very
difference was altogether alluring.  Woodhouse caught himself going
over the incidents of their meeting.  Fondly he reviewed scraps of
their conversation on the train, lingering on the pat slang she used so
unconsciously.

Was it possible Jane Gerson ever had a thought for Captain Woodhouse?
The man winced a little at this speculation.  Had it been fair of him
when he so glibly practised a deception on her?  If she knew what his
present business was, would she understand; would she approve?  Could
this little American ever know, or believe, that some sorts of service
were honorable?

Just before the _Castle Claire_ raised the breakwater of Alexandria
came a wireless, which was posted at the head of the saloon
companionway:

"Germany declares war on Russia.  German flying column reported moving
through Luxemburg on Belgium."

The fire was set to the grain.

Upon landing, Captain Woodhouse's first business was to go to a hotel
on the Grand Square, which is the favorite stopping place of officers
coming down from the Nile country.  He fought his way through the
predatory hordes of yelling donkey boys and obsequious dragomans at the
door, and entered the palm-shaded court, which served as office and
lounge.  Woodhouse paused for a second behind a screen of palm leaves
and cast a quick eye around the court.  None of the loungers there was
known to him.  He strode to the desk.

"Ah, sir, a room with bath, overlooking the gardens on the north
side--very cool."  The Greek clerk behind the desk smiled a welcome.

"Perhaps," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he turned the register
around to read the names of the recent comers.  On the first page he
found nothing to interest him; but among the arrivals of the day before
he saw this entry: "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service; Wady Halfa."
After it was entered the room number: "210."

Woodhouse read right over the name and turned another page a bit
impatiently.  This he scanned with seeming eagerness, while the clerk
stood with pen poised.

"Um!  When is the first boat out for Gibraltar?" Woodhouse asked.

"Well, sir, the _Princess Mary_ is due to sail at dawn day after
to-morrow," the Greek answered judiciously.  "She is reported at Port
Said to-day, but, of course, the war----"

Woodhouse turned away.

"But you wish a room, sir--nice room, with bath, overlooking----"

"No."

"You expected to find a friend, then?"

"Not here," Woodhouse returned bruskly, and passed out into the
blinding square.

He strode swiftly around the statue of Mehemet Ali and plunged into the
bedlam crowd filling a side street.  With sure sense of direction, he
threaded the narrow alleyways and by-streets until he had come to the
higher part of the mongrel city, near the Rosetta Gate.  There he
turned into a little French hotel, situated far from the disordered
pulse of the city's heart; a sort of pension, it was, known only to the
occasional discriminating tourist.  Maitre Mouquère was proud of the
anonymity his house preserved, and abhorred poor, driven Cook's slaves
as he would a plague.  In his Cap de Liberté one was lost to all the
world of Alexandria.

Thither the captain's baggage had been sent direct from the steamer.
After a glass with Maitre Mouquère and a half hour's discussion of the
day's great news, Woodhouse pleaded a touch of the sun, and went to his
room.  There he remained, until the gold of sunset had faded from the
Mosque of Omar's great dome and all the city from Pharos and its harbor
hedge of masts to El Meks winked with lights.  Then he took carriage to
the railroad station and entrained for Ramleh.  What South Kensington
is to London and the Oranges are to New York, Ramleh is to
Alexandria--the suburb of homes.  There pretty villas lie in the lap of
the delta's greenery, skirted by canals, cooled by the winds off
Aboukir Bay and shaded by great palms--the one beauty spot in all the
hybrid product of East and West that is the present city of Alexander.

Remembering directions he had received in Berlin, Woodhouse threaded
shaded streets until he paused before a stone gateway set in a high
wall.  On one of the pillars a small brass plate was inset.  By the
light of a near-by arc, Woodhouse read the inscription on it:

  EMIL KOCH, M.D.,
    32 Queen's Terrace.

He threw back his shoulders with a sudden gesture, which might have
been taken for that of a man about to make a plunge, and rang the bell.
The heavy wooden gate, filling all the space of the arch, was opened by
a tall Numidian in house livery of white.  He nodded an affirmative to
Woodhouse's question, and led the way through an avenue of flaming
hibiscus to a house, set far back under heavy shadow of acacias.  On
every hand were gardens, rank foliage shutting off this walled yard
from the street and neighboring dwellings.  The heavy gate closed
behind the visitor with a sharp snap.  One might have said that Doctor
Koch lived in pretty secure isolation.

Woodhouse was shown into a small room off the main hall, by its
furnishings and position evidently a waiting-room for the doctor's
patients.  The Numidian bowed, and disappeared.  Alone, Woodhouse rose
and strolled aimlessly about the room, flipped the covers of magazines
on the table, picked up and hefted the bronze Buddha on the onyx
mantel, noted, with a careless glance, the position of the two windows
in relation to the entrance door and the folding doors, now shut, which
doubtless gave on the consultation room.  As he was regarding these
doors they rolled back and a short thickset man, with a heavy mane of
iron-gray hair and black brush of beard, stood between them.  He looked
at Woodhouse through thick-lensed glasses, which gave to his stare a
curiously intent bent.

"My office hours are from two to four, afternoons," Doctor Koch said.
He spoke in English, but his speech was burred by a slight heaviness on
the aspirants, reminiscent of his mother tongue.  The doctor did not
ask Woodhouse to enter the consultation room, but continued standing
between the folding doors, staring fixedly through his thick lenses.

"I know that, Doctor," Woodhouse began apologetically, following the
physician's lead and turning his tongue to English.  "But, you see, in
a case like mine I have to intrude"--it was "haf" and "indrude" as
Woodhouse gave these words--"because I could not be here during your
office hours.  You will pardon?"

Doctor Koch's eyes widened just perceptibly at the hint of a Germanic
strain in his visitor's speech--just a hint quickly glossed over.  But
still he remained standing in his former attitude of annoyance.

"Was the sun, then, too hot to bermit you to come to my house during
regular office hours?  At nights I see no batients--bositively none."

"The sun--perhaps," Woodhouse replied guardedly.  "But as I happened
just to arrive to-day from Marseilles, and your name was strongly
recommended to me as one to consult in a case such as mine----"

"Where was my name recommended to you, and by whom?" Doctor Koch
interrupted in sudden interest.

Woodhouse looked at him steadily.  "In Berlin--and by a friend of
yours," he answered.

"Indeed?"  The doctor stepped back from the doors, and motioned his
visitor into the consultation room.

Woodhouse stepped into a large room lighted by a single green-shaded
reading lamp, which threw a white circle of light straight down upon a
litter of thin-bladed scalpels in a glass dish of disinfectant on a
table.  The shadowy outlines of an operating chair, of high-shouldered
bookcases, and the dull glint of instruments in a long glass case were
almost imperceptible because of the centering of all light upon the
glass dish of knives.  Doctor Koch dragged a chair out from the
shadows, and, carelessly enough, placed it in the area of radiance; he
motioned Woodhouse to sit.  The physician leaned carelessly against an
arm of the operating chair; his face was in the shadow save where
reflected light shone from his glasses, giving them the aspect of
detached eyes.

"So, a friend--a friend in Berlin told you to consult me, eh?  Berlin
is a long way from Ramleh--especially in these times.  Greater
physicians than I live in Berlin.  Why----"

"My friend in Berlin told me you were the only physician who could help
me in my peculiar trouble."  Imperceptibly the accenting of the
aspirants in Woodhouse's speech grew more marked; his voice took on a
throaty character.  "By some specialists my life even has been set to
end in a certain year, so sure is fate for those afflicted like myself."

"So?  What year is it, then, you die?"  Doctor Koch's strangely
detached eyes--those eyes of glass glowing dimly in the shadow--seemed
to flicker palely with a light all their own.  Captain Woodhouse,
sitting under the white spray of the shaded incandescent, looked up
carelessly to meet the stare.

"Why, they give me plenty of time to enjoy myself," he answered, with a
light laugh.  "They say in 1932----"

"Nineteen thirty-two!"  Doctor Koch stepped lightly to the closed
folding doors, trundled them back an inch to assure himself nobody was
in the waiting-room, then closed and locked them.  He did similarly by
a hidden door on the opposite side of the room, which Woodhouse had not
seen.  After that he pulled a chair close to his visitor and sat down,
his knees almost touching the other's.  He spoke very low, in German:

"If your trouble is so serious that you will die--in 1932, I must, of
course, examine you for--symptoms."

For half a minute the two men looked fixedly at each other.
Woodhouse's right hand went slowly to the big green scarab stuck in his
cravat.  He pulled the pin out, turned it over in his fingers, and by
pressure caused the scarab to pop out of the gold-backed setting
holding it.  The bit of green stone lay in the palm of his left hand,
its back exposed.  In the hollowed back of the beetle was a small
square of paper, folded minutely.  This Woodhouse removed, unfolded and
passed to the physician.  The latter seized it avidly, holding it close
to his spectacled eyes, and then spreading it against the light as if
to read a secret water mark.  A smile struggled through the jungle of
his beard.  He found Woodhouse's hand and grasped it warmly.

"Your symptom tallies with my diagnosis, Nineteen Thirty-two," he began
rapidly.  "Five days ago we heard from--the Wilhelmstrasse--you would
come.  We have expected you each day, now.  Already we have got word
through to our friends at Gibraltar of the plan; they are waiting for
you."

"Good!" Woodhouse commented.  He was busy refolding the thin slip of
paper that had been his talisman, and fitting it into the back of the
scarab.  "Woodhouse--he is already at the Hotel Khedive; saw his name
on the register when I landed from the Castle this morning."  Now the
captain was talking in familiar German.

"Quite so," Doctor Koch put in.  "Woodhouse came down from Wady Halfa
yesterday.  Our man up there had advised of the time of his arrival in
Alexandria to the minute.  The captain has his ticket for the _Princess
Mary_, which sails for Gibraltar day after to-morrow at dawn."

Number Nineteen Thirty-two listened to Doctor Koch's outlining of the
plot with set features; only his eyes showed that he was acutely alive
to every detail.  Said he:

"But Woodhouse--this British captain who's being transferred from the
Nile country to the Rock; has he ever served there before?  If he has,
why, when I get there--when I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal
service--I will be embarrassed if I do not know the ropes."

"Seven years ago Woodhouse was there for a very short time," Doctor
Koch explained.  "New governor since then--changes all around in the
personnel of the staff, I don't doubt.  You'll have no trouble."

Silence between them for a minute, broken by the captain:

"Our friends at Gib--who are they, and how will I know them?"

The doctor bent a sudden glance of suspicion upon the lean face before
him.  His thick lips clapped together stubbornly.

"Aha, my dear friend; you are asking questions.  In my time at Berlin
the Wilhelmstrasse taught that all orders and information came from
above--and from there only.  Why----"

"I suppose in default of other information I may ask the governor to
point out the Wilhelmstrasse men," Woodhouse answered, with a shrug.
"I was told at Berlin I would learn all that was necessary to me as I
went along, therefore, I supposed----"

"Come--come!"  Doctor Koch patted the other's shoulder, with a heavy
joviality.  "So you will.  When you arrive at Gib, put up at the Hotel
Splendide, and you will not be long learning who your friends are.  I,
for instance, did not hesitate overmuch to recognize you, and I am
under the eyes of the English here at every turn, even though I am a
naturalized English citizen--and of undoubted loyalty."  He finished
with a booming laugh.

"But Woodhouse; you have arranged a way to have him drop out of sight
before the _Princess Mary_ sails?  There will be no confusion--no
slip-up?"

"Do not fear," the physician reassured.  "Everything will be arranged.
His baggage will leave the Hotel Khedive for the dock to-morrow night;
but it will not reach the dock.  Yours----"

"Will be awaiting the transfer of tags at the Cap de
Liberté--Mouquère's little place," the captain finished.  "But the man
himself--you're not thinking of mur----"

"My dear Nineteen Thirty-two," Doctor Koch interrupted, lifting
protesting hands; "we do not use such crude methods; they are
dangerous.  The real Captain Woodhouse will not leave Alexandria--by
sea, let us say--for many months.  Although I have no doubt he will not
be found in Alexandria the hour the _Princess Mary_ sails.  The papers
he carries--the papers of identity and of transfer from Wady Halfa to
Gibraltar--will be in your hands in plenty of time.  You----"

The doctor stopped abruptly.  A hidden electric buzzer somewhere in the
shadowed room was clucking an alarm.  Koch pressed a button at the side
of the operating chair.  There was a sound beyond closed doors of some
one passing through a hallway; the front door opened and closed.

"Some one at the gate," Doctor Koch explained.  "Cæsar, my playful
little Numidian--and an artist with the Bedouin dagger is Cæsar--he
goes to answer."

Their talk was desultory during the next minutes.  The doctor seemed
restless under the suspense of a pending announcement as to the late
visitor.  Finally came a soft tapping on the hidden door behind
Woodhouse.  The latter heard the doctor exchange whispers with the
Numidian in the hallway.  Finally, "Show him into the waiting-room,"
Koch ordered.  He came back to where the captain was sitting, a puzzled
frown between his eyes.

"An Englishman, Cæsar says--an Englishman, who insists on seeing
me--very important."  Koch bit the end of one stubby thumb in hurried
thought.  He suddenly whipped open the door of one of the instrument
cases, pulled out a stethoscope, and hooked the two little black
receivers into his ears.  Then he turned to Woodhouse.

"Quick!  Off with your coat and open your shirt.  You are a patient; I
am just examining you when interrupted.  This may be one of these
clumsy English secret-service men, and I might need your alibi."  The
sound of an opening door beyond the folding doors and of footsteps in
the adjoining room.

"You say you are sleepless at night?" Doctor Koch was talking English.
"And you have a temperature on arising?  Hm'm!  This under your tongue,
if you please"--he thrust a clinical thermometer between Woodhouse's
lips; the latter already had his coat off, and was unbuttoning his
shirt.  Koch gave him a meaning glance, and disappeared between the
folding doors, closing them behind him.

The captain, feeling much like a fool with the tiny glass tube
sprouting from his lips, yet with all his faculties strained to
alertness, awaited developments.  If Doctor Koch's hazard should prove
correct and this was an English secret-service man come to arrest him,
wouldn't suspicion also fall on whomever was found a visitor in the
German spy's house?  Arrest and search; examination of his scarab
pin--that would not be pleasant.

He tried to hear what was being said beyond the folding doors, but
could catch nothing save the deep rumble of the doctor's occasional
bass and a higher, querulous voice raised in what might be argument.
Had he dared, Woodhouse would have drawn closer to the crack in the
folding doors so that he could hear what was passing; every instinct of
self-preservation in him made his ears yearn to dissect this murmur
into sense.  But if Doctor Koch should catch him eavesdropping,
embarrassment fatal to his plans might follow; besides, he had a
feeling that eyes he could not see--perhaps the unwinking eyes of the
Numidian, avid for an excuse to put into practise his dexterity with
the Bedouin dagger--were on him.

Minutes slipped by.  The captain still nursed the clinical thermometer.
The mumble and muttering continued to sound through the closed doors.
Suddenly the high whine of the unseen visitor was raised in excitement.
Came clearly through to Woodhouse's ears his passionate declaration:

"But I tell you you've got to recognize me.  My number's Nineteen
Thirty-two.  My ticket was stolen out of the head of my cane somewhere
between Paris and Alexandria.  But I got it all right--got it from the
Wilhelmstrasse direct, with orders to report to Doctor Emil Koch, in
Alexandria!"

Capper!  Capper, who was to be betrayed to the firing squad in Malta,
after his Wilhelmstrasse ticket had passed from his possession.  Capper
on the job!

Woodhouse hurled every foot pound of his will to hear into his ears.
He caught Koch's gruff answer:

"Young man, you're talking madness.  You're talking to a loyal British
subject.  I know nothing about your Wilhelmstrasse or your number.  If
I did not think you were drunk I'd have you held here, to be turned
over to the military as a spy.  Now, go before I change my mind."

Again the querulous protestation of Capper, met by the doctor's
peremptory order.  The captain heard the front door close.  A long
wait, and Doctor Koch's black beard, with the surmounting eyes of thick
glass, appeared at a parting of the folding doors.  Woodhouse, the tiny
thermometer still sticking absurdly from his mouth, met the basilisk
stare of those two ovals of glass with a coldly casual glance.  He
removed the thermometer from between his lips and read it, with a
smile, as if that were part of playing a game.  Still the ghastly stare
from the glass eyes over the bristling beard, searching--searching.

"Well," Woodhouse said lightly, "no need of an alibi evidently."

Doctor Koch stepped into the room with the lightness of a cat, walked
to a desk drawer at one side, and fumbled there a second, his back to
his guest.  When he turned he held a short-barreled automatic at his
hip; the muzzle covered the shirt-sleeved man in the chair.

"Much need--for an alibi--from you!" Doctor Koch croaked, his voice dry
and flat with rage.  "Much need, Mister Nineteen Thirty-two.  Commence
your explanation immediately, for this minute my temptation is
strong--very strong--to shoot you for the dog you are."

"Is this--ah, customary?"  Woodhouse twiddled the tiny mercury tube
between his fingers and looked unflinchingly at the small round mouth
of the automatic.  "Do you make a practise of consulting a--friend with
a revolver at your hip?"

"You heard--what was said in there!"  Koch's forehead was curiously
ridged and flushed with much blood.

"Did you ask me to listen?  Surely, my dear Doctor, you have provided
doors that are sound-proof.  If I may suggest, isn't it about time that
you explain this--this melodrama?"  The captain's voice was cold; his
lips were drawn to a thin line.  Koch's big head moved from side to
side with a gesture curiously like that of a bull about to charge, but
knowing not where his enemy stands.  He blurted out:

"For your information, if you did not overhear: An Englishman comes
just now to address me familiarly as of the Wilhelmstrasse.  He comes
to say he was sent to report to me; that his number in the
Wilhelmstrasse is nineteen thirty-two--nineteen thirty-two, remember;
and I am to give him orders.  Please explain that before I pull this
trigger."

"He showed you his number--his ticket, then?" Woodhouse added this
parenthetically.

"The man said his ticket had been stolen from him some time after he
left Paris--stolen from the head of his cane, where he had it
concealed.  But the number was nineteen thirty-two."  The doctor voiced
this last doggedly.

"You have, of course, had this man followed," the other put in.  "You
have not let him leave this house alone."

"Cæsar was after him before he left the garden gate--naturally.
But----"

Woodhouse held up an interrupting hand.

"Pardon me, Doctor Koch; did you get this fellow's name?"

"He refused to give it--said I wouldn't know him, anyway."

"Was he an undersized man, very thin, sparse hair, and a face showing
dissipation?" Woodhouse went on.  "Nervous, jerky way of
talking--fingers to his mouth, as if to feel his words as they come
out--brandy or wine breath?  Can't you guess who he was?"

"I guess nothing."

"The _target_!"

At the word Louisa had used in describing Capper to Woodhouse, Koch's
face underwent a change.  He lowered his pistol.

"Ach!" he said.  "The man they are to arrest.  And you have the number."

"That was Capper--Capper, formerly of the Belgian office--kicked out
for drunkenness.  One time he sold out Downing Street in the matter of
the Lord Fisher letters; you remember the scandal when they came to
light--his majesty, the kaiser's, Kiel speech referring to them.  He is
a good stalking horse."

Koch's suspicion had left him.  Still gripping the automatic, he sat
down on the edge of the operating chair, regarding the other man
respectfully.

"Come--come, Doctor Koch; you and I can not continue longer at
cross-purposes."  The captain spoke with terse displeasure.  "This man
Capper showed you nothing to prove his claims, yet you come back to
this room and threaten my life on the strength of a drunkard's bare
word.  What his mission is you know; how he got that number, which is
the number I have shown you on my ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse--you
understand how such things are managed.  I happen to know, however,
because it was my business to know, that Capper left Marseilles for
Malta aboard _La Vendée_ four days ago; he was not expected to go
beyond Malta."

Koch caught him up: "But the fellow told me his boat didn't stop at
Malta--was warned by wireless to proceed at all speed to Alexandria,
for fear of the _Breslau_, known to be in the Adriatic."  Woodhouse
spread out his hands with a gesture of finality.

"There you are!  Capper finds himself stranded in Alexandria, knows
somehow of your position as a man of the Wilhelmstrasse--such things
can not be hid from the underground workers; comes here to explain
himself to you and excuse himself for the loss of his number.  Is there
anything more to be said except that we must keep a close watch on him?"

The physician rose and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his
back.  The automatic bobbed against the tails of his long coat as he
walked.  After a minute's restless striding, he broke his step before
the desk, jerked open the drawer, and dropped the weapon in it.  Back
to where Woodhouse was sitting he stalked and held out his right hand
stiffly.

"Your pardon, Number Nineteen Thirty-two!  For my suspicion I
apologize.  But, you see my position--a very delicate one."  Woodhouse
rose, grasped the doctor's hand, and wrung it heartily.

"And now," he said, "to keep this fellow Capper in sight until the
_Princess Mary_ sails and I aboard her as Captain Woodhouse, of Wady
Halfa.  The man might trip us all up."

"He will not; be sure of that," Koch growled, helping Woodhouse into
his coat and leading the way to the folding doors.  "I will have Cæsar
attend to him the minute he comes back to report where Capper is
stopping."

"Until when?" the captain asked, pausing at the gate, to which Koch had
escorted him.

"Here to-morrow night at nine," the doctor answered, and the gate shut
behind him.  Captain Woodhouse, alone under the shadowing trees of
Queen's Terrace, drew in a long breath, shook his shoulders and started
for the station and the midnight train to Alexandria.

CHAPTER V

A FERRET

Consider the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on
the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria.  Even to the guard,
unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their
possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of
clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the
sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate
for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing.
But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in
them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate
has its victim pushed into a corner.  So submerged was Capper under the
flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other
two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station--a tall,
quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his
white livery.  The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class
carriage behind the one in which Capper rode.

Here was Capper--poor old Hardluck Billy Capper--floored again, and
just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor
strain of self-pity under the brown bowler.  A failure once more, and
through no fault of his own.  No, no!  Hadn't he been ready to deliver
the goods?  Hadn't he come all the way down here from Berlin, faithful
to his pledge to Louisa, the girl in the Wilhelmstrasse, ready and
willing to embark on that important mission of which he was to be told
by Doctor Emil Koch?  And what happens?  Koch turns him into the street
like a dog; threatens to have him before the military as a spy if he
doesn't make himself scarce.  Koch refuses even to admit he'd ever
heard of the Wilhelmstrasse.  Clever beggar!  A jolly keen eye he's got
for his own skin; won't take a chance on being betrayed into the hands
of the English, even when he ought to see that a chap's honest when he
comes and tells a straight story about losing that silly little bit of
paper with his working number on it.  What difference if he can't
produce the ticket when he has the number pat on the tip of his tongue,
and is willing to risk his own life to give that number to a stranger?

Back upon the old perplexity that had kept Capper's brain on strain
ever since the first day aboard _La Vendée_--who had lifted his ticket,
and when was it done?  The man recalled, for the hundredth time, his
awakening aboard the French liner--what a horror that first morning
was, with the ratty little surgeon feeding a fellow aromatic spirits of
ammonia like porridge!  Capper, in this mood of detached review, saw
himself painfully stretching out his arm from his bunk to grasp his
stick the very first minute he was alone in the stateroom; the crooked
handle comes off under his turning, and the white wisp of paper is
stuck in the hollow of the stick.  Blank paper!

Safe as safe could be had been that little square of paper Louisa had
given him with his expense money, from the day he left Berlin
until--when?  To be sure, he had treated himself to a little of the
grape in Paris and, maybe, in Marseilles; but his brain had been clear
every minute.  Oh, Capper would have sworn to that!  The whole business
of the disappearance of his Wilhelmstrasse ticket and the substitution
of the blank was simply another low trick the Capper luck had played on
him.

The train rushed through the dark toward the distant prickly coral bed
of lights, and the whirligig of black despair churned under the brown
bowler.  No beginning, no end to the misery of it.  Each new attempt to
force a little light of hope into the blackness of his plight fetched
up at the same dead wall--here was Billy Capper, hired by the
Wilhelmstrasse, after having been booted out of the secret offices of
England and Belgium--given a show for his white alley--and he couldn't
move a hand to earn his new salary.  Nor could he go back to Berlin,
even though he dared return with confession of the stolen ticket;
Berlin was no place for an Englishman right now, granting he could get
there.  No, he was in the backwash again--this time in this beastly
half-caste city of Alexandria, and with--how much was it now?--with a
beggarly fifteen pounds between himself and the beach.

Out of the ruck of Capper's sad reflections the old persistent call
began to make itself heard before ever the train from Ramleh pulled
into the Alexandria station.  That elusive country of fountains,
incense and rose dreams which can only be approached through the neck
of a bottle spread itself before him alluringly, inviting him to
forgetfulness.  And Capper answered the call.

From the railroad station, he set his course through narrow villainous
streets down to the district on Pharos, where the deep-water men of all
the world gather to make vivid the nights of Egypt.  Behind him was the
faithful shadow, Cæsar, Doctor Koch's man.  The Numidian trailed like a
panther, slinking from cover to cover, bending his body as the big cat
does to the accommodations of the trail's blinds.

Once Capper found himself in a blind alley, turned and strode out of it
just in time to bump heavily into the unsuspected pursuer.  Instantly a
hem of the Numidian's cloak was lifted to screen his face, but not
before the sharp eyes of the Englishman had seen and recognized it.  A
tart smile curled the corners of Capper's mouth as he passed on down
the bazaar-lined street to the Tavern of Thermopylæ, at the next
corner.  So old Koch was taking precautions, eh?  Well, Capper, for
one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances?

The Tavern of Thermopylæ was built for the Billy Cappers of the
world--a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better
than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the
stranger's money.  Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as
one could find from Port Said to Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of
their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor.  Greeks, Levantines,
Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's
stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the
African back country--all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old
Testament police records was represented there.

Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a
deserted corner of the smoke-filled room.  There was music, of sorts,
and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues
jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship
to those who needed company with their drink.  But Billy Capper ignored
the music and closed his ears to the sirens; he knew who was his best
cup companion.

The thin green blood of the wormwood drip-dripped down on to the ice in
Capper's glass, coloring it with a rime like moss.  He watched it,
fascinated, and when he sipped the cold sicky-sweet liquor he was eager
as a child to see how the pictures the absinth drew on the ice had been
changed by the draft.  Sip--sip; a soothing numbness came to the
tortured nerves.  Sip--sip; the clouds of doubt and self-pity pressing
down on his brain began to shred away.  He saw things clearly now;
everything was sharp and clear as the point of an icicle.

He reviewed, with new zest, his recent experiences, from the night he
met Louisa in the Café Riche up to his interview with Doctor Koch.
Louisa--that girl with the face of a fine animal and a heart as cold as
carved amethyst; why had she been so willing to intercede for Billy
Capper with her superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse and procure him a
number and a mission to Alexandria?  For his information regarding the
Anglo-Belgian understanding?  But she paid for that; the deal was
fairly closed with three hundred marks.  Did Louisa go further and list
him in the Wilhelmstrasse out of the goodness of her heart, or for old
memory's sake?  Capper smiled wryly over his absinth.  There was no
goodness in Louisa's heart, and the strongest memory she had was how
nearly Billy Capper had dragged her down with him in the scandal of the
Lord Fisher letters.

How the thin green blood of the wormwood cleared the mind--made it leap
to logical reasoning!

Why had Louisa instructed him to leave Marseilles by the steamer
touching at Malta when a swifter boat scheduled to go to Alexandria
direct was leaving the French port a few hours later?  Was it that the
girl intended he should get no farther than Malta; that the English
there should----

Capper laughed like the philosopher who has just discovered the
absolute of life's futility.  The ticket--his ticket from the
Wilhelmstrasse which Louisa had procured for him; Louisa wanted that
for other purposes, and used him as the dummy to obtain it.  She wanted
it before he could arrive at Malta--and she got it before he left
Marseilles.  Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the
Double 0 on the wheel--fate's percentage in every game; she could not
know the _Vendée_ would be warned from lingering at Malta because of
the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria,
after all.

The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical
exactness of deduction.  As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached
and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the
blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria--the
poor deluded body of a dupe.  With this certitude of logic came the
beginnings of resolve.  Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by
the absinth to focus, was this new determination.  Capper nursed it,
elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing
himself in the new light of a humble hero.  It was near morning, and
the Tavern of Thermopylæ was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his
score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to
his hotel.  His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and
acutely sober.

"Very drunk, master," was the report Cæsar, the Numidian, delivered to
Doctor Koch at the Ramleh villa.  The doctor, believing Cæsar to be a
competent judge, chuckled in his beard.  Cæsar was called off from the
trail.

Across the street from Doctor Koch's home on Queen's Terrace was the
summer home of a major of fusileers, whose station was up the Nile.
But this summer it was not occupied.  The major had hurried his family
back to England at the first mutterings of the great war, and he
himself had to stick by his regiment up in the doubtful Sudan country.
Like Doctor Koch's place, the major's yard was surrounded by a high
wall, over which the fronds of big palms and flowered shrubs draped
themselves.  The nearest villa, aside from the Kochs' across the
street, was a hundred yards away.  At night an arc light, set about
thirty feet from Doctor Koch's gate, marked all the road thereabouts
with sharp blocks of light and shadow.  One lying close atop the wall
about the major's yard, screened by the palms and the heavy branches of
some night-blooming ghost flower, could command a perfect view of
Doctor Koch's gateway without being himself visible.

At least, so Billy Capper found it on the night following his visit to
the German physician's and his subsequent communion with himself at the
Tavern of Thermopylæ.  Almost with the falling of the dark, Capper had
stepped off the train at Ramleh station, ferried himself by boat down
the canal that passed behind the major's home, after careful
reconnoitering, discovered that the tangle of wildwood about the house
was not guarded by a watchman, and had so achieved his position of
vantage on top of the wall directly opposite the gateway of No. 32.  He
was stretched flat.  Through the spaces between the dry fingers of a
palm leaf he could command a good view of the gate and of the road on
either side.  Few pedestrians passed below him; an automobile or two
puffed by; but in the main, Queen's Terrace was deserted and Capper was
alone.  It was a tedious vigil.  Capper had no reliance except his
instinct of a spy familiar with spy's work to assure that he would be
rewarded for his pains.  Some sixth sense in him had prompted him to
come thither, sure in the promise that the night would not be misspent.
A clock somewhere off in the odorous dark struck the hour twice, and
Capper fidgeted.  The hard stone he was lying on cramped him.

The sound of footsteps on the flagged walk aroused momentary interest.
He looked out through his screen of green and saw a tall well-knit
figure of a man approach the opposite gate, stop and ring the bell.
Instantly Capper tingled with the hunting fever of his trade.  In the
strong light from the arc he could study minutely the face of the man
at the gate--smoothly shaven, slightly gaunt and with thin lips above a
strong chin.  It was a striking face--one easily remembered.  The gate
opened; beyond it Capper saw, for an instant, the white figure of the
Numidian he had bumped into at the alley's mouth.  The gate closed on
both.

Another weary hour for the ferret on the wall, then something happened
that was reward enough for cramped muscles and taut nerves.  An
automobile purred up to the gate; out of it hopped two men, while a
third, tilted over like one drunk, remained on the rear seat of the
tonneau.  One rang the bell.  The two before the gate fidgeted
anxiously for it to be opened.  Capper paid not so much heed to them as
to the half-reclining figure in the machine.  It was in strong light.
Capper saw, with a leap of his heart, that the man in the machine was
clothed in the khaki service uniform of the British army--an officer's
uniform he judged by the trimness of its fitting, though he could not
see the shoulder straps.  The unconscious man was bareheaded and one
side of his face was darkened by a broad trickle of blood from the
scalp.

When the gate opened, there were a few hurried words between the
Numidian and the two who had waited.  All three united in lifting an
inert figure from the car and carrying it quickly through the gate.
Consumed with the desire to follow them into the labyrinth of the
doctor's yard, yet not daring, Capper remained plastered to the wall.

Captain Woodhouse, sitting in the consultation room with the doctor,
heard the front door open and the scuffle of burdened feet in the hall.
Doctor Koch hopped nimbly to the folding doors and threw them back.
First, the Numidian's broad back, then, the bent shoulders of two other
men, both illy dressed, came into view.  Between them they carried the
form of a man in officer's khaki.  Woodhouse could not check a
fluttering of the muscles in his cheeks; this was a surprise to him;
the doctor had given no hint of it.

"Good--good!" clucked Koch, indicating that they should lay their
burden on the operating chair.  "Any trouble?"

"None in the least, Herr Doktor," the larger of the two white men
answered.  "At the corner of the warehouse near the docks, where it is
dark--he was going early to the _Princess Mary_, and----"

"Yes, a tap on the head--so?"  Koch broke in, casting a quick glance
toward where Captain Woodhouse had risen from his seat.  A shrewd
appraising glance it was, which was not lost on Woodhouse.  He stepped
forward to join the physician by the side of the figure on the
operating chair.

"Our man, Doctor?" he queried casually.

"Your name sponsor," Koch answered, with a satisfied chuckle; "the
original Captain Woodhouse of his majesty's signal service, formerly
stationed at Wady Halfa."

"Quite so," the other answered in English.  Doctor Koch clapped him on
the shoulder.

"Perfect, man!  You do the Englishman from the book.  It will fool them
all."

Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders in deprecation.  Koch cackled on, as
he began to lay out sponge and gauze bandages on the glass-topped table
by the operating chair:

"You see, I did not tell you of this because--well, that fellow
Capper's coming last night looked bad; even your explanation did not
altogether convince.  So I thought we'd have this little surprise for
you.  If you were an Englishman you'd show it in the face of this--you
couldn't help it.  Eh?"

"Possibly not," the captain vouchsafed.  "But what is your plan,
Doctor?  What are you going to do with this Captain Woodhouse to insure
his being out of the way while I am in Gibraltar.  I hope no
violence--unless necessary."

"Nothing more violent than a violent headache and some fever," Koch
answered.  He was busy fumbling in the unconscious man's pockets.  From
the breast pocket of the uniform jacket he withdrew a wallet, glanced
at its contents, and passed it to the captain.

"Your papers, Captain--the papers of transfer from Wady Halfa to
Gibraltar.  Money, too.  I suppose we'll have to take that, also, to
make appearances perfect--robbery following assault on the wharves."

Woodhouse pocketed the military papers in the wallet and laid it down,
the money untouched.  The two white aids of Doctor Koch, who were
standing by the folding doors, eyed the leather folder hungrily.  Koch,
meanwhile, had stripped off the jacket from the Englishman and was
rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt.  That done, he brought down
from the top of the glass instrument case a wooden rack containing
several test tubes, stoppled with cotton.  One glass tube he lifted out
of the rack and squinted at its clouded contents against the light.

"A very handy little thing--very handy."  Koch was talking to himself
as much as to Woodhouse.  "A sweet little product of the Niam Niam
country down in Belgian Kongo.  Natives think no more of it than they
would of a water fly's bite; but the white man is----"

"A virus of some kind?" the other guessed.

"Of my own isolation," Doctor Koch answered proudly.  He scraped the
skin on the victim's arm until the blood came, then dipped an ivory
spatula into the tube of murky gelatine and transferred what it brought
up to the raw place in the flesh.

"The action is very quick, and may be violent," he continued.  "Our
friend here won't recover consciousness for three days, and he will be
unable to stand on his feet for two weeks, at least--dizziness,
intermittent fever, clouded memory; he'll be pretty sick."

"But not too sick to communicate with others," Woodhouse suggested.
"Surely----"

"Maybe not too sick, but unable to communicate with others," Doctor
Koch interrupted, with a booming laugh.  "This time to-morrow night our
friend will be well out on the Libyan Desert, with some ungentle
Bedouins for company.  He's bound for Fezzan--and it will be a long way
home without money.  Who knows?  Maybe three months."

Very deftly Koch bound up the abrasion on the Englishman's arm with
gauze, explaining as he worked that the man's desert guardians would
have instructions to remove the bandages before he recovered his
faculties.  There would be nothing to tell the luckless prisoner more
than that he had been kidnaped, robbed and carried away by tribesmen--a
not uncommon occurrence in lower Egypt.  Koch completed his work by
directing his aids to strip off the rest of the unconscious man's
uniform and clothe him in a nondescript civilian garb that Cæsar
brought into the consultation room from the mysterious upper regions of
the house.

"Exit Captain Woodhouse of the signal service," the smiling doctor
exclaimed when the last button of the misfit jacket had been flipped
into its buttonhole, "and enter Captain Woodhouse of the
Wilhelmstrasse."  Turning, he bowed humorously to the lean-faced man
beside him.  He nodded his head at Cæsar; the latter dived into a
cupboard at the far end of the room and brought out a squat flask and
glasses, which he passed around.  When the liquor had been poured,
Doctor Koch lifted his glass and squinted through it with the air of a
gentle satyr.

"Gentlemen, we drink to what will happen soon on the Rock of
Gibraltar!"  All downed the toast gravely.  Then the master of the
house jerked his head toward the unconscious man on the operating
chair.  Cæsar and the two white men lifted the limp body and started
with it to the door, Doctor Koch preceding them to open doors.  The
muffled chug-chugging of the auto at the gate sounded almost at once.

The doctor and Number Nineteen Thirty-two remained together in the
consultation room for a few minutes, going over, in final review, the
plans that the latter was to put into execution at the great English
stronghold on the Rock.  The captain looked at his watch, found the
hour late, and rose to depart.  Doctor Koch accompanied him to the
gate, and stood with him for a minute under the strong light from the
near-by arc.

"You go direct to the _Princess Mary_?" he asked.

"Direct to the _Princess Mary_," the other answered.  "She is to sail
at five o'clock."

"Then God guard you, my friend, on--your great adventure."  They
clasped hands, and the gate closed behind the doctor.

A shadow skipped from the top of the wall about the major's house
across the road.  A shadow dogged the footsteps of the tall well-knit
man who strode down the deserted Queen's Terrace toward the tiled
station by the tracks.  A little more than an hour later, the same
shadow flitted up the gangplank of the _Princess Mary_ at her berth.
When the big P. & O. liner pulled out at dawn, she carried among her
saloon passengers one registered as "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig.
Service," and in her second cabin a "William Capper."

CHAPTER VI

A FUGITIVE

"No, madam does not know me; but she must see me.  Oh, I know she will
see me.  Tell her, please, it is a girl from New York all alone in
Paris who needs her help."

The butler looked again at the card the visitor had given him.  Quick
suspicion flashed into his tired eyes--the same suspicion that had all
Paris mad.

"Ger-son--Mademoiselle Ger-son.  That name, excuse me, if I say
it--that name ees----"

"It sounds German; yes.  Haven't I had that told me a thousand times
these last few days?"  The girl's shoulders drooped limply, and she
tried to smile, but somehow failed.  "But it's my name, and I'm an
American--been an American twenty-two years.  Please--please!"

"Madam the ambassador's wife; she ees overwhelm wiz woark."  The butler
gave the door an insinuating push.  Jane Gerson's patent-leather boot
stopped it.  She made a quick rummage in her bag, and when she withdrew
her hand, a bit of bank paper crinkled in it.  The butler pocketed the
note with perfect legerdemain, smiled a formal thanks and invited Jane
into the dark cool hallway of the embassy.  She dropped on a
skin-covered couch, utterly spent.  Hours she had passed moving, foot
by foot, in an interminable line, up to a little wicket in a steamship
office, only to be told, "Every boat's sold out."  Other grilling hours
she had passed similarly before the express office, to find, at last,
that her little paper booklet of checks was as worthless as a steamship
folder.  Food even lacked, because the money she offered was not
acceptable.  For a week she had lived in the seething caldron that was
Paris in war time, harried, buffeted, trampled and stampeded--a chip on
the froth of madness.  This day, the third of August, found Jane Gerson
summoning the last remnants of her flagging nerve to the supreme
endeavor.  Upon her visit to the embassy depended everything: her
safety, the future she was battling for.  But now, with the first
barrier passed, she found herself suddenly faint and weak.

"Madam the ambassador's wife will see you.  Come!"  The butler's voice
sounded from afar off, though Jane saw the gleaming buckles at his
knees very close.  The pounding of her heart almost choked her as she
rose to follow him.  Down a long hall and into a richly furnished
drawing-room, now strangely transformed by the presence of desks,
filing cabinets, and busy girl stenographers; the click of typewriters
and rustle of papers gave the air of an office at top pressure.  The
butler showed Jane to a couch near the portières and withdrew.  From
the tangle of desks at the opposite end of the room, a woman with a
kindly face crossed, with hand extended.  Jane rose, grasped the hand
and squeezed convulsively.

"You are----"

"Yes, my dear, I am the wife of the ambassador.  Be seated and tell me
all your troubles.  We are pretty busy here, but not too busy to
help--if we can."

Jane looked into the sympathetic eyes of the ambassador's wife, and
what she found there was like a draft of water to her parched soul.
The elder woman, smiling down into the white face, wherein the large
brown eyes burned unnaturally bright, saw a trembling of the lips
instantly conquered by a rallying will, and she patted the small hand
hearteningly.

"Dear lady," Jane began, almost as a little child, "I must get out of
Paris, and I've come to you to help me.  Every way is closed except
through you."

"So many hundreds like you, poor girl.  All want to get back to the
home country, and we are so helpless to aid every one."  The lady of
the embassy thought, as she cast a swift glance over the slender
shoulders and diminutive figure beneath them, that here, indeed, was a
babe in the woods.  The blatant, self-assured tourist demanding
assistance from her country's representative as a right she knew; also
the shifty, sloe-eyed demi-vierge who wanted no questions asked.  But
such a one as this little person----

"You see, I am a buyer for Hildebrand's store in New York."  Jane was
rushing breathlessly to the heart of her tragedy.  "This is my very
first trip as buyer, and--it will be my last unless I can get through
the lines and back to New York.  I have seventy of the very last gowns
from Poiret, from Paquin and Worth--you know what they will mean in the
old town back home--and I must--just simply must get them through.  You
understand!  With them, Hildebrand can crow over every other gown shop
in New York.  He can be supreme, and I will be--well, I will be made!"

The kindly eyes were still smiling, and the woman's heart, which is
unchanged even in the breast of an ambassador's wife, was leaping to
the magic lure of that simple word--gowns.

"But--but the banks refuse to give me a cent on my letter of credit.
The express office says my checks, which I brought along for
incidentals, can not be cashed.  The steamship companies will not sell
a berth in the steerage, even, out of Havre or Antwerp or
Southampton--everything gobbled up.  You can't get trunks on an
aeroplane, or I'd try that.  I just don't know where to turn, and so
I've come to you.  You must know some way out."

Jane unconsciously clasped her hands in supplication, and upon her
face, flushed now with the warmth of her pleading, was the dawning of
hope.  It was as if the girl were assured that once the ambassador's
wife heard her story, by some magic she could solve the difficulties.
The older woman read this trust, and was touched by it.

"Have you thought of catching a boat at Gibraltar?" she asked.  "They
are not so crowded; people haven't begun to rush out of Italy yet."

"But nobody will honor my letter of credit," Jane mourned.  "And,
besides, all the trains south of Paris are given up to the
mobilization.  Nobody can ride on them but soldiers."  The lady of the
embassy knit her brows for a few minutes while Jane anxiously scanned
her face.  Finally she spoke:

"The ambassador knows a gentleman--a large-hearted American gentleman
here in Paris--who has promised his willingness to help in deserving
cases by advancing money on letters of credit.  And with money there is
a way--just a possible way--of getting to Gibraltar.  Leave your letter
of credit with me, my dear; go to the police station in the district
where you live and get your pass through the lines, just as a
precaution against the possibility of your being able to leave
to-night.  Then come back here and see me at four o'clock.
Perhaps--just a chance----"

Hildebrand's buyer seized the hands of the embassy's lady ecstatically,
tumbled words of thanks crowding to her lips.  When she went out into
the street, the sun was shining as it had not shone for her for a
dreary terrible week.

At seven o'clock that night a big Roman-nosed automobile, long and low
and powerful as a torpedo on wheels, pulled up at the door of the
American embassy.  Two bulky osier baskets were strapped on the back of
its tonneau; in the rear seat were many rugs.  A young chap with a
sharp shrewd face--an American--sat behind the wheel.

The door of the embassy opened, and Jane Gerson, swathed in veils, and
with a gray duster buttoned tight about her, danced out; behind her
followed the ambassador, the lady of the embassy and a bevy of girls,
the volunteer aids of the overworked representative's staff.  Jane's
arms went about the ambassador's wife in an impulsive hug of gratitude
and good-by; the ambassador received a hearty handshake for his "God
speed you!"  A waving of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs, and the
car leaped forward.  Jane Gerson leaned far over the back, and, through
cupped hands, she shouted: "I'll paint Hildebrand's sign on the Rock of
Gibraltar!"

Over bridges and through outlying faubourgs sped the car until the
Barrier was gained.  There crossed bayonets denying passage, an officer
with a pocket flash pawing over pass and passport, a curt dismissal,
and once more the motor purred its speed song, and the lights of the
road flashed by.  More picket lines, more sprouting of armed men from
the dark, and flashing of lights upon official signatures.  On the
heights appeared the hump-shouldered bastions of the great outer forts,
squatting like huge fighting beasts of the night, ready to spring upon
the invader.  Bugles sounded; the white arms of search-lights swung
back and forth across the arc of night in their ceaseless calisthenics;
a murmuring and stamping of many men and beasts was everywhere.

The ultimate picket line gained and passed, the car leaped forward with
the bound of some freed animal, its twin headlights feeling far ahead
the road to the south.  Behind lay Paris, the city of dread.
Ahead--far ahead, where the continent is spiked down with a rock,
Gibraltar.  Beyond that the safe haven from this madness of the
millions--America.

Jane Gerson stretched out her arms to the vision and laughed shrilly.

CHAPTER VII

THE HOTEL SPLENDIDE

Mr. Joseph Almer, proprietor of the Hotel Splendide, on Gibraltar's
Waterport Street, was alone in his office, busy over his books.  The
day was August fifth.  The night before the cable had flashed word to
General Sir George Crandall, Governor-general of the Rock, that England
had hurled herself into the great war.  But that was no concern of Mr.
Joseph Almer except as it affected the hotel business; admittedly it
did bring complications there.

A sleek well-fed Swiss he was; one whose neutrality was publicly as
impervious as the rocky barriers of his home land.  A bland eye and a
suave professional smile were the ever-present advertisements of
urbanity on Joseph Almer's chubby countenance.  He spoke with an accent
that might have got him into trouble with the English masters of the
Rock had they not known that certain cantons in Switzerland occupy an
unfortunate contiguity with Germany, and Almer, therefore, was hardly
to be blamed for an accident of birth.  From a window of his office, he
looked out on crooked Waterport Street, where all the world of the
Mediterranean shuffled by on shoes, slippers and bare feet.  Just
across his desk was the Hotel Splendide's reception room--a sad
retreat, wherein a superannuated parlor set of worn red plush tried to
give the lie to the reflection cast back at it by the dingy gold-framed
mirror over the battered fireplace.  Gaudy steamship posters and
lithographs of the Sphinx and kindred tourists' delights were the
walls' only decorations.  Not even the potted palm, which is the hotel
man's cure-all, was there to screen the interior of the
office-reception room from the curious eyes of the street, just beyond
swinging glass doors.  Joseph Almer had taken poetic license with the
word "splendide"; but in Gibraltar that is permissible; necessary, in
fact.  Little there lives up to its reputation save the Rock itself.

It was four in the afternoon.  The street outside steamed with heat,
and the odors that make Gibraltar a lasting memory were at their prime
of distillation.  The proprietor of the Splendide was nodding over his
books.  A light footfall on the boards beyond the desk roused him.  A
girl with two cigar boxes under her arm slipped, like a shadow, up to
the desk.  She was dressed in the bright colors of Spain,
claret-colored skirt under a broad Romany sash, and with thin white
waist, open at rounded throat.  A cheap tortoise-shell comb held her
coils of chestnut hair high on her head.  Louisa of the Wilhelmstrasse;
but not the same Louisa--the sophisticated Louisa of the Café Riche and
the Winter Garden.  A timid little cigar maker she was, here in
Gibraltar.

"Louisa!"  Almer's head bobbed up on a suddenly stiffened neck as he
whispered her name.  She set her boxes of cigars on the desk, opened
them, and as she made gestures to point the worthiness of her wares,
she spoke swiftly, and in a half whisper:

"All is as we hoped, Almer.  He comes on the _Princess Mary_--a
cablegram from Koch just got through to-day.  I wanted----"

"You mean----"  Almer thrust his head forward in his eagerness, and his
eyes were bright beads.

"Captain Woodhouse--our Captain Woodhouse!"  The girl's voice trembled
in exultation.  "And his number--his Wilhelmstrasse number--is--listen
carefully: Nineteen Thirty-two."

"Nineteen Thirty-two," Almer repeated, under his breath.  Then aloud:
"On the _Princess Mary_, you say?"

"Yes; she is already anchored in the straits.  The tenders are coming
ashore.  He will come here, for such were his directions in
Alexandria."  Louisa started to move toward the street door.

"But you," Almer stopped her; "the English are making a round-up of
suspects on the Rock.  They will ask questions--perhaps arrest----"

"Me?  No, I think not.  Just because I was away from Gibraltar for six
weeks and have returned so recently is not enough to rouse suspicion.
Haven't I been Josepha, the cigar girl, to every Tommy in the garrison
for nearly a year?  No--no, señor; you are wrong.  These are the purest
cigars made south of Madrid.  Indeed, señor."

[Illustration: "Haven't I been Josepha for nearly a year?"]

The girl had suddenly changed her tone to one of professional
wheedling, for she saw three entering the door.  Almer lifted his voice
angrily:

"Josepha, your mother is substituting with these cigars.  Take them
back and tell her if I catch her doing this again it means the cells
for her."

The cigar girl bowed her head in simulated fright, sped past the
incoming tourists, and lost herself in the shifting crowd on the
street.  Almer permitted himself to mutter angrily as he turned back to
his books.

"You see, mother?  See that hotel keeper lose his temper and
tongue-lash that poor girl?  Just what I tell you--these foreigners
don't know how to be polite to ladies."

Henry J. Sherman--"yes, sir, of Kewanee, Illynoy"--mopped his bald pink
dome and glared truculently at the insulting back of Joseph Almer.
Mrs. Sherman, the lady of direct impulses who had contrived to stare
Captain Woodhouse out of countenance in the Winter Garden not long
back, cast herself despondently on the decrepit lounge and appeared to
need little invitation to be precipitated into a crying spell.  Her
daughter Kitty, a winsome little slip, stood behind her, arms about the
mother's neck, and her hands stroking the maternal cheeks.

"There--there, mother; everything'll come out right," Kitty vaguely
assured.  Mrs. Sherman, determined to have no eye for the cloud's
silver lining, rocked back and forth on the sofa and gave voice to her
woe:

"Oh, we'll never see Kewanee again.  I know it!  I know it!  With
everybody pushing and shoving us away from the steamers--everybody
refusing to cash our checks, and all this fighting going on somewhere
up among the Belgians----"  The lady from Kewanee pulled out the
stopper of her grief, and the tears came copiously.  Mr. Sherman, who
had made an elaborate pretense of studying a steamer guide he found on
the table, looked up hurriedly and blew his nose loudly in sympathy.

"Cheer up, mother.  Even if this first trip of ours--this 'Grand
Tower,' as the guide-books call it--has been sorta tough, we had one
compensation anyway.  We saw the Palace of Peace at the Hague before
the war broke out.  Guess they're leasing it for a skating rink now,
though."

"How can you joke when we're in such a fix?  He-Henry, you ne-never do
take things seriously!"

"Why not joke, mother?  Only thing you can do over here you don't have
to pay for.  Cheer up!  There's the _Saxonia_ due here from Naples some
time soon.  Maybe we can horn a way up her gangplank.  Consul says----"

Mrs. Sherman looked up from her handkerchief with withering scorn.

"Tell me a way we can get aboard any ship without having the money to
pay our passage.  Tell me that, Henry Sherman!"

"Well, we've been broke before, mother," her spouse answered cheerily,
rocking himself on heels and toes.  "Remember when we were first
married and had that little house on Liberty Street--the newest house
in Kewanee it was; and we didn't have a hired girl, then, mother.  But
we come out all right, didn't we?" He patted his daughter's shoulder
and winked ponderously.  "Come on, girls and boys, we'll go look over
those Rock Chambers the English hollowed out.  We can't sit in our room
and mope all day."

The gentleman who knew Kewanee was making for the door when Almer, the
suave, came out from behind his desk and stopped him with a warning
hand.

"I am afraid the gentleman can not see the famous Rock Chambers," he
purred.  "This is war time--since yesterday, you know.  Tourists are
not allowed in the fortifications."

"Like to see who'd stop me!"  Henry J. Sherman drew himself up to his
full five feet seven and frowned at the Swiss.  Almer rubbed his hands.

"A soldier--with a gun, most probably, sir."

Mrs. Sherman rose and hurried to her husband's side, in alarm.

"Henry--Henry!  Don't you go and get arrested again!  Remember that
last time--the Frenchman at that Bordeaux town."  Sherman allowed
discretion to soften his valor.

"Well, anyway"--he turned again to the proprietor--"they'll let us see
that famous signal tower up on top of the Rock.  Mother, they say from
that tower up there, they can keep tabs on a ship sixty miles away.
Fellow down at the consulate was telling me just this morning that's
the king-pin of the whole works.  Harbor's full of mines and things;
electric switch in the signal tower.  Press a switch up there, and
everything in the harbor--Blam!"  He shot his hands above his head to
denote the cataclysm.  Almer smiled sardonically and drew the Illinois
citizen to one side.

"I would give you a piece of advice," he said in a low voice.  "It
is----"

"Say, proprietor; you don't charge for advice, do you?" Sherman
regarded him quizzically.

"It is this," Almer went on, unperturbed: "If I were you I would not
talk much about the fortifications of the Rock.  Even talk
is--ah--dangerous if too much indulged."

"Huh!  I guess you're right," said Sherman thoughtfully.  "You see--we
don't know much about diplomacy out where I come from.  Though that
ain't stopping any of the Democrats from going abroad in the Diplomatic
Service as fast as Bryan'll take 'em."

Interruption came startlingly.  A sergeant and three soldiers with guns
swung through the open doors from Waterport Street.  Gun butts struck
the floor with a heavy thud.  The sergeant stepped forward and saluted
Almer with a businesslike sweep of hand to visor.

"See here, landlord!" the sergeant spoke up briskly.  "Fritz, the
barber, lives here, does he not?"  Almer nodded.  "We want him.  Find
him in the barber shop, eh?"

The sergeant turned and gave directions to the guard.  They tramped
through a swinging door by the side of the desk while the Shermans,
parents and daughter alike, looked on, with round eyes.  In less than a
minute, the men in khaki returned, escorting a quaking man in white
jacket.  The barber, greatly flustered, protested in English strongly
reminiscent of his fatherland.

"Orders to take you, Fritz," the sergeant explained not unkindly.

"But I haf done nothing," the barber cried.  "For ten years I haf
shaved you.  You know I am a harmless old German."  The sergeant
shrugged.

"I fancy they think you are working for the Wilhelmstrasse, Fritz, and
they want to have you where they can keep their eyes on you.  Sorry,
you know."

The free-born instincts of Henry J. Sherman would not be downed longer.
He had witnessed the little tragedy of the German barber with growing
ire, and now he stepped up to the sergeant truculently.

"Seems to me you're not giving Fritz here a square deal, if you want to
know what I think," he blustered.  "Now, in my country----"  The
sergeant turned on him sharply.

"Who are you--and what are you doing in Gib?" he snapped.  A moan from
Mrs. Sherman, who threw herself in her daughter's arms.

[Illustration: "Who are you?" snapped the sergeant.]

"Kitty, your father's gone and got himself arrested again!"

"Who am I?" Sherman echoed with dignity.  "My name, young fellow, is
Henry J. Sherman, and I live in Kewanee, Illynoy.  I'm an American
citizen, and you can't----"

"Your passports--quick!" The sergeant held out his hand imperiously.

"Oh, that's all right, young fellow; I've got 'em, all right."
Kewanee's leading light began to fumble in the spacious breast pocket
of his long-tailed coat.  As he groped through a packet of papers and
letters, he kept up a running fire of comment and exposition:

"Had 'em this afternoon, all right.  Here; no, that's my letter of
credit.  It would buy Main Street at home, but I can't get a ham
sandwich on it here.  This is--no; that's my only son's little girl,
Emmaline, taken the day she was four years old.  Fancy little girl, eh?
Now, that's funny I can't--here's that list of geegaws I was to buy for
my partner in the Empire Mills, flour and buckwheat.  Guess he'll have
to whistle for 'em.  Now don't get impatient, young fellow.  This----
Land's sakes, mother, that letter you gave me to mail, in
Algy-kiras---- Ah, here you are, all proper and scientific enough as
passports go, I guess."

The sergeant whisked the heavily creased document from Sherman's hand,
scanned it hastily, and gave it back, without a word.  The outraged
American tucked up his chin and gave the sergeant glare for glare.

"If you ever come to Kewanee, young fellow," he snorted.  "I'll be
happy to show you our new jail."

"Close in!  March!" commanded the sergeant.  The guard surrounded the
hapless barber and wheeled through the door, their guns hedging his
white jacket about inexorably.  Sherman's hands spread his coat tails
wide apart, and he rocked back and forth on heels and toes, his eyes
smoldering.

"Come on, father"--Kitty had slipped her hand through her dad's arm,
and was imparting direct strategy in a low voice--"we'll take mother
down the street to look at the shops and make her forget our troubles.
They've got some wonderful Moroccan bazaars in town; Baedeker says so."

"Shops, did you say?"  Mrs. Sherman perked up at once, forgetting her
grief under the superior lure.

"Yes, mother.  Come on, let's go down and look 'em over."  Sherman's
good humor was quite restored.  He pinched Kitty's arm in compliment
for her guile.  "Maybe they'll let us look at their stuff without
charging anything; but we couldn't buy a postage stamp, remember."

They sailed out into the crowded street and lost themselves amid the
scourings of Africa and south Europe.  Almer was alone in the office.

The proprietor fidgeted.  He walked to the door and looked down the
street in the direction of the quays.  He pulled his watch from his
pocket and compared it with the blue face of the Dutch clock on the
wall.  His pudgy hands clasped and unclasped themselves behind his back
nervously.  An Arab hotel porter and runner at the docks came swinging
through the front door with a small steamer trunk on his shoulders, and
Almer started forward expectantly.  Behind the porter came a tall
well-knit man, dressed in quiet traveling suit--the Captain Woodhouse
who had sailed from Alexandria as a passenger aboard the _Princess
Mary_.

He paused for an instant as his eyes met those of the proprietor.
Almer bowed and hastened behind the desk.  Woodhouse stepped up to the
register and scanned it casually.

"A room, sir?" Almer held out a pen invitingly.

"For the night, yes," Woodhouse answered shortly, and he signed the
register.  Almer's eyes followed the strokes of the pen eagerly.

"Ah, from Egypt, Captain?  You were aboard the _Princess Mary_, then?"

"From Alexandria, yes.  Show me my room, please.  Beastly tired."

The Arab porter darted forward, and Woodhouse was turning to follow him
when he nearly collided with a man just entering the street door.  It
was Mr. Billy Capper.

Both recoiled as their eyes met.  Just the faintest flicker of
surprise, instantly suppressed, tightened the muscles of the captain's
jaws.  He murmured a "Beg pardon" and started to pass.  Capper
deliberately set himself in the other's path and, with a wry smile,
held out his hand.

"Captain Woodhouse, I believe."  Capper put a tang of sarcasm,
corroding as acid, into the words.  He was still smiling.  The other
man drew back and eyed him coldly.

"I do not know you.  Some mistake," Woodhouse said.

Almer was moving around from behind the desk with the soft tread of a
cat, his eyes fixed on the hard-bitten face of Capper.

"Hah!  Don't recognize the second-cabin passengers aboard the _Princess
Mary_, eh?" Capper sneered.  "Little bit discriminating that way, eh?
Well, my name's Capper--Mr. William Capper.  Never heard the name--in
Alexandria; what?"

"You are drunk.  Stand aside!"  Woodhouse spoke quietly; his face was
very white and strained.  Almer launched himself suddenly between the
two and laid his hands roughly on Capper's thin shoulders.

"Out you go!" he choked in a thick guttural.  "I'll have no loafer
insulting guests in my house."

"Oh, you won't, won't you?  But supposing I want to take a room
here--pay you good English gold for it.  You'll sing a different tune,
then."

"Before I throw you out, kindly leave my place."  By a quick turn,
Almer had Capper facing the door; his grip was iron.  The smaller man
tried to walk to the door with dignity.  There he paused and looked
back over his shoulder.

"Remember, Captain Woodhouse," he called back.  "Remember the name
against the time we'll meet again.  Capper--Mr. William Capper."

Capper disappeared.  Almer came back to begin profuse apologies to his
guest.  Woodhouse was coolly lighting a cigarette.  Their eyes met.

CHAPTER VIII

CHAFF OF WAR

Dinner that evening in the faded dining-room of the Hotel Splendide was
in the way of being a doleful affair for the folk from Kewanee, aside
from Captain Woodhouse, the only persons at table there.  Woodhouse,
true to the continental tradition of exclusiveness, had isolated
himself against possible approach by sitting at the table farthest from
the Shermans; his back presented an uncompromising denial of
fraternity.  As for Mrs. Sherman, the afternoon's visit to the bazaars
had been anything but a solace, emphasizing, as it did, their grievous
poverty in the midst of a plenty contemptuous of a mere letter of
credit.  Henry J. was wallowing in the lowest depths of nostalgia; he
tortured himself with the reflection that this was lodge night in
Kewanee and he would not be sitting in his chair.  Miss Kitty
contemplated with melancholy the distress of her parents.

A tall slender youth with tired eyes and affecting the blasé slouch of
the boulevards appeared in the door and cast about for a choice of
tables.  Him Mr. Sherman impaled with a glance of disapproval which
suddenly changed to wondering recognition.  He dropped his fork and
jumped to his feet.

"Bless me, mother, if it isn't Willy Kimball from old Kewanee!"
Sherman waved his napkin at the young man, summoning him in the name of
Kewanee to come and meet the home folks.  The tired eyes lighted
perceptibly, and a lukewarm smile played about Mr. Kimball's effeminate
mouth as he stepped up to the table.

"Why, Mrs. Sherman--and Kitty!  And you, Mr. Sherman--charmed!"  He
accepted the proffered seat by the side of Kitty, receiving their
hearty hails with languid politeness.  With the sureness of English
restraint, Mr. Willy Kimball refused to become excited.  He was of the
type of exotic Americans who try to forget grandpa's corn-fed hogs and
grandma's hand-churned butter.  His speech was of Rotten Row and his
clothes Piccadilly.

"Terrible business, this!"  The youth fluttered his hands feebly.  "All
this harrying about and peeping at passports by every silly officer one
meets.  I'm afraid I'll have to go over to America until it's all
over--on my way now, in fact."

"Afraid!"  Sherman sniffed loudly, and appraised Mr. Kimball's
tailoring with a disapproving eye.  "Well, Willy, it would be too bad
if you had to go back to Kewanee after your many years in Paris,
France; now, wouldn't it?"

Kimball turned to the women for sympathy.  "Reserved a compartment to
come down from Paris.  Beastly treatment.  Held up at every city--other
people crowded in my apartment, though I'd paid to have it alone, of
course--soldier chap comes along and seizes my valet and makes him join
the colors and all that sort----"

"Huh!  Your father managed to worry along without a val-lay, and he was
respected in Kewanee."  This in disgust from Henry J.

Kitty flashed a reproving glance at her father and deftly turned the
expatriate into a recounting of his adventures.  Under her unaffected
lead the youth, who shuddered inwardly at the appellation of "Willy,"
thawed considerably, and soon there was an animated swapping of
reminiscences of the Great Terror--hours on end before the banks and
express offices, dodging of police impositions, scrambling for steamer
accommodations--all that went to compose the refugee Americans' great
epic of August, 1914.

Sherman took pride in his superior adventures: "Five times arrested
between Berlin and Gibraltar, and what I said to that Dutchman on the
Swiss frontier was enough to make his hair curl."

"Tell you what, Willy: you come on back to Kewanee with us, and mother
and you'll lecture before the Thursday Afternoon Ladies' Literary
Club," Sherman boomed, with a hearty blow of the hand between Willy's
shoulder blades.  "I'll have Ed Porter announce it in advance in the
_Daily Enterprise_, and we'll have the whole town there to listen.
'Ezra Kimball's Boy Tells Thrilling Tale of War's Alarms.'  That's the
way the head-lines'll read in the _Enterprise_ next week."

The expatriate shivered and tried to smile.

"We'll let mother do the lecturing," Kitty came to his rescue.  "'How
to Live in Europe on a Letter of Discredit.'  That will have all the
gossips of Kewanee buzzing, mother."

The meal drew to a close happily in contrast to its beginning.  Mrs.
Sherman and her daughter rose to pass out into the reception room.
Sherman and Kimball lingered.

"Ah-h, Willy----"

"Mr. Sherman----"

Both began in unison, each somewhat furtive and shamefaced.

"Have you any money?"  The queries were voiced as one.  For an instant
confusion; then the older man looked up into the younger's face--a bit
flushed it was--and guffawed.

"Not a postage stamp, Willy!  I guess we're both beggars, and if mother
and Kitty didn't have five trunks between them this Swiss holdup man
who says he's proprietor of this way-station hotel wouldn't trust us
for a fried egg."

"Same here," admitted Kimball.  "I'm badly bent."

"They can't keep us down--us Americans!" Sherman cheered, taking the
youth's arm and piloting him out into the reception room.  "We'll find
a way out if we have to cable for a warship to come and get us."

Just as Sherman and Kimball emerged from the dining-room, there was a
diversion out beyond the glass doors on Waterport Street.  A small cart
drew up; from its seat jumped a young woman in a duster and with a
heavy automobile veil swathed under her chin.  To the Arab porter who
had bounded out to the street she gave directions for the removal from
the cart of her baggage, two heavy suit-cases and two ponderous osier
baskets.  These latter she was particularly tender of, following them
into the hotel's reception room and directing where they should be put
before the desk.

The newcomer was Jane Gerson, Hildebrand's buyer, at the end of her
gasoline flight from Paris.  Cool, capable, self-reliant as on the
night she saw the bastions of the capital's outer forts fade under the
white spikes of the search-lights, Jane strode up the desk to face the
smiling Almer.

"Is this a fortress or a hotel?" she challenged.

"A hotel, lady, a hotel," Almer purred.  "A nice room--yes.  Will the
lady be with us long?"

"Heaven forbid!  The lady is going to be on the first ship leaving for
New York.  And if there are no ships, I'll look over the stock of coal
barges you have in your harbor."  She seized a pen and dashed her
signature on the register.  The Shermans had pricked up their ears at
the newcomer's first words.  Now Henry J. pressed forward, his face
glowing welcome.

"An American--a simon-pure citizen of the United States--I thought so.
Welcome to the little old Rock!"  He took both the girl's hands
impulsively and pumped them.  Mrs. Sherman, Kitty and Willy Kimball
crowded around, and the clatter of voices was instantaneous: "By auto
from Paris; goodness me!"  "Not a thing to eat for three days but rye