CHAPTER XVIII

GRACE GETS A CLUE

“Captain, is it proper to ask if the Huns blew up the ammunition dump?” asked Grace next morning upon chancing to meet Captain Boucher on the paved plaza facing the river.

“If you will put your question in a form that I can answer I will do so,” was the smiling reply.

“Was the explosion last evening an accident, sir?” Grace came back at him quick as a flash.

“It was not an accident, Mrs. Gray,” he replied gravely, then burst out laughing. “You are the quickest-witted person I ever knew or heard of. Have you made any headway in the matter I spoke to you about?”

“Do you know a Chinaman, belonging to the labor battalion, who wears a hideous birthmark on his left cheek?” she questioned in reply.

“Can’t say that I do. Why?”

“Merely that I would suggest your making his acquaintance. I think perhaps you may find him worth while.”

“Cultivating or watching?” asked the Intelligence officer, regarding her keenly.

“The latter.”

“Thank you. What is his name?”

“I have not heard. I will find out if you wish.”

The officer nodded.

“Who is Miss Marshall, if I am permitted to ask? I know it seems an impertinence on my part to question an officer, but I want to know,” declared the Overton girl laughing. “I believe that is quite a common excuse with women for asking questions, but it is comprehensive.”

The captain glanced about them and invited Grace to sit down with him on a bench. The air was quite chill, but the view up and down the river was an attractive one.

“What I am about to say is strictly confidential. I am giving it to you for your own guidance, now that you belong to our Intelligence Department.”

“Strange, sir, that I have not heard of that.”

“Yes, you are a member. To return to the subject, Molly Marshall is one of the cleverest operators in the Secret Service.”

“A spy?”

The captain shrugged his shoulders.

“I never liked the word when applied to our own. She is an investigator and a brilliant operator. I shall be glad to have you know her, and assure you that you may trust her fully.”

“Thank you, but I do not believe I should care to trust any one in these confidential matters, unless I knew her pretty well. I should like to meet her, just the same, but she is not to know that I am doing anything in the investigating line, if you will be so good as to keep that fact confidential.”

The captain promised, saying it was not generally customary for Secret Service operators with the army to know each other, as such an acquaintance opened the way for many errors of judgment.

“You are perfectly right in the position you take,” he added. “You possess all the makings of a brilliant operator yourself.”

Grace thanked him.

“As I have said before, I have no aspirations in that direction, at least not beyond the point that I can serve my country. Perhaps my woman’s curiosity in combination with my woman’s intuition is responsible for my being in it to the extent that I am. You will observe that I am not backward about paying my sex compliments. However, it will soon be ended and then we shall all return to our previous lives--if we can. How about you, sir, shall you continue in the Service?”

“I think not.”

Grace rose and, thanking the captain, said she must be on her way to the canteen at Number Two. On her way she encountered a Chinaman and told him if he should see Won Lue to send him to the canteen. Rather to her amazement Won was waiting for her when she arrived there.

Won shook hands with himself and smiled broadly.

“You may be able to help us here to-day, Won. Are you working?”

The Chinaman shook his head negatively. “You savvy plidgin?” he asked.

“No.”

“Me savvy plenty plidgin, a-la. Plidgin all fly away. No more plidgin.”

Grace understood his meaning. The pigeon-flying came to an end when the army reached the Rhine, for there the enemy agents could work more directly and without much danger of being caught. That was what they were doing at that very moment.

“Oh! I knew there was something I wished to ask you. Do you know a Chinaman with a red mark on his left cheek, so?” She ran a hand over her cheek.

Won chuckled delightedly, though what there was in her question to amuse him, Grace could not imagine.

“You savvy Yat Sen? Me savvy Yat Sen plenty much. What me do?”

“Thank you. I savvy Yat Sen, too. Please clean the place, scrub the floors nice and clean before Mrs. Smythe gets here.”

“Me savvy Slith,” volunteered Won with a grimace.

“Why the ‘a-la,’ Won?” asked Elfreda who came in at this juncture.

“That is a Chinese round-off, as it were,” Grace informed her. “Have you seen the supervisor this morning?”

Elfreda said she had not, for Marie had said that Mrs. Smythe went out rather early. Grace suddenly decided to go home, and asked Elfreda to remain at the canteen to meet the supervisor.

“Tell her I was obliged to return to our billet for a few moments,” requested Grace. “She cannot be angrier than she will naturally be, in any event.”

Grace, nodding to Elfreda, hurried away.

“I wonder what that child is up to now?” Miss Briggs muttered. “I have learned one thing about Grace Harlowe, and that is that she seldom does anything that hasn’t a well-defined motive behind it. I suppose that is the proper way to arrange one’s life. She should have been a lawyer.”

Reaching her billet, Grace entered the house quietly and went to her room, apparently without having attracted attention to herself. As she passed the doctor’s rooms she heard voices there. The voices were not loud, but were audible enough to enable her to distinguish those of at least one man and a woman, though it was her impression that there were two men in the room. Now that she was in her own room the voices were borne to her ears even more distinctly than when she had been passing through the hallway.

“I believe Miss Marshall is in there,” muttered the Overton girl after several moments of listening. The conversation was being carried on in German, most of it being understandable to Grace. It was only when they lowered their voices that she failed to catch what was being said. Yet, for all that, she did not know what they were talking about, though at times the inference was suggestive of certain things.

The conversation lasted for several minutes, then Grace heard the doctor approaching the rear of his apartment, heard the bang of what she took to be a trap door, then footsteps descending stairs.

“He is going down to the cellar. I suppose he has a right to do so if he wishes, so why should I object or even be interested? Hark!”

Grace heard what she took to be voices in the cellar, though she was positive that no one had accompanied the owner below.

“I was right. This is a house of mystery. There he comes!”

The German’s tread, as he ascended the stairs on his return to his apartment, she noted, was very light and elastic for a heavy man. His speech too, this morning, was quicker than when she had spoken with him in Mrs. Smythe’s quarters, more incisive, more like that of a German officer than a civilian.

“Perhaps he has been in the service as a surgeon,” murmured Grace in explanation of the difference. “I wish I might get a peep into that room, just for one little minute. Ah!” Grace caught her breath and held it. The German doctor was speaking again, and what he said sent the red blood pounding to Grace Harlowe’s temples.

“I am right or else I am terribly mistaken!” she exclaimed in a troubled voice.