CHAPTER XIII

SUSPECTS

The small city—scarcely more than a large village—that Florence found herself entering that morning was, at this season of the year, a place of enchanting beauty. Half hidden by the New England hills, its white homes surrounded by trees and shrubs turned by the hand of a master artist, Nature, into things of flaming red and gold, it seemed the setting for some marvelous production in drama or opera.

“It—it seems so unreal,” she whispered to herself. “The hillside all red, orange and gold, the houses so clean and white. Even the women and children in their bright dresses seem automatic things run by springs and strings.”

Finding herself half-way up a hill, on one side of which a whole procession of very small houses, all just alike, appeared to be struggling, she paused to stare at a sign which read: “Room for rent.”

“How could they rent a room?” she asked herself. “The house is little more than a bird’s nest.”

Consumed by curiosity, she climbed the narrow steps and knocked at the door.

A small lady with prematurely gray hair appeared. “I came to ask about the room,” Florence said in as steady a tone as she could command.

Next instant she found herself in a house that made her feel very large. The hall was narrow, the doors low, the rooms tiny.

“This is the room.” She was led to what seemed the smallest of the four rooms.

“But this is already occupied.” She looked first at the display of simple toilet articles on the dresser, then at the half-filled closet.

“Oh yes, our daughter Verna has it now,” the little lady hastened to explain. “But she—she’s to sleep in our—our general room.”

“The one they use for parlor, living room and dining room,” Florence thought to herself. “How terrible!”

She was about to say politely, “I guess I wouldn’t be interested,” when a young and slender girl of surprising beauty stepped into the doorway.

“Here is Verna now,” her mother said simply.

“Yes, here she is,” some imp appeared to whisper in Florence’s ear, “and you are going to take this room. You will have to now. You are going to buy a small bed and share the room with this beautiful child. You will cast your lot with this little family. You have seen her. It is too late to turn back now.”

Perhaps if he had been a very wise imp he might have added, “This step you are taking now will bring you into grave danger, but that does not matter. You will take the room all the same, and like it.” But the imp, being of a very ordinary sort, did not say this.

Florence _did_ take the room. She _did_ buy herself a very narrow bed and she _did_ share this small room in this canary-cage of a house with the beautiful girl. And, strangest of all, she became very happy about it almost at once.

The life into which she found herself thrown was strange indeed. She had lived in a small mid-western city where there was no mill or factory. She had lived in a great city. In each place she had found companions of her own sort. But here she was thrown at once into a community of small homes owned by people whose incomes had always been small and who looked out upon the world beyond their doors with something akin to awe. To Florence all this was strange.

Her task, that of finding the industrial spy, she believed to be an easy one. In the privacy of his inner office, she said to Danby Force, “Most of these people have lived here all their lives. You could not make a spy of them if you chose. All I have to do is to find out the ones who have been here a short time. It must be one of these.”

“You are probably right,” the young man agreed. “Not so many of them either, perhaps a dozen. I shall see that you have their names tomorrow.”

On the morrow she had the names. And, after that, one by one, in the most casual manner she looked them up. There were, she found, two middle-aged, dark-complexioned sisters named Dvorac, expert weavers who lived in a mere shack at the back of the city. Miriam, the taller of the two, appeared to be the leader. “Might be these,” she told herself. “They resemble the one who escaped.”

There was a little weasel-faced German who excited her suspicion at once. He was an expert electrician of a very special sort. He was in charge of the hundreds of motors that ran the looms and spinning machines. He was, of course, all over the place. “Finest chance in the world,” she told herself. “And he appears to be always prying about, even when nothing seems wrong.” This man’s name was Hans Schneider.

There was a girl too, one about her own age, who came in for her full share of suspicion. She worked in the dyeing room. The very first day Florence caught her slipping out with an ink bottle. The bottle was filled with dyeing fluid. “I only wanted to dye a faded dress,” the girl explained reluctantly. “You’d want to do that too if you hadn’t had a new dress for four years.”

Florence guessed she would. She wanted to accompany the girl home, but did not quite dare. So she suggested that the bottle be taken to the floor supervisor and permission obtained for its removal.

The girl, who called herself Ina Piccalo (a strange combination of names) flashed Florence a look of anger as she obeyed instructions.

“Her eyes are black as night,” Florence told herself. “She’d look stunning in a gown of deep purple and the dye is just that. I’ll be looking for that gown,” she told herself as a moment later, with a flash of her white teeth, Ina passed her, the bottle still in her hand.

This was the only instance in which Florence interfered in any way with the actions of the employees of the mill. She was, to all appearances, only a young welfare worker whose business it was to make everyone happy, with special interest in the children of the city.

This part she played very well. Long hours were spent in the mill’s gymnasium and social house, and upon its playgrounds. Not a week had passed before this stalwart, rosy-cheeked girl was known to every child of the city, and nearly every grown-up as well. “That’s her,” she would hear them whisper as she passed. “That’s the Play Lady.” Yes, she was the Play Lady; but much more than this, she was the Lady Cop, the detective who, she hoped, in time was to free their happy little city from the dark cloud that, all unknown to the greatest number, hung over them.

Yes, this truly _was_ a happy city. Florence grew increasingly conscious of this as the days went by. The mill she found enchanting. The little city with its clean white homes, surrounded by the golden glow of autumn, was indeed a place where one might long to linger.

“Just now,” she said to herself, “I feel that I could love to live here forever.”

This mood, like many another in her strange, wandering life, she knew all too well, would pass. “And I must not allow myself to be lulled into inaction by it all,” she told herself. “There is the spy. I _must_ find the spy. Even now he may be gathering up his stolen secrets and preparing to carry them away to some other city, or even across the sea.”

But how was one to catch a spy? Every moment of each day she was watching, watching, watching. And yet, save for the rather simple matter of Ina Piccalo’s carrying away a bottle of purple dye, nothing unusual had caught her eye.

“I may fail,” she told herself, “fail utterly.” Yet she dared to hope for a turn of the wheel of fortune—“the lucky break” as the smiling Willie VanGeldt would have called it.