CHAPTER XXIII--RUTH DOES HER DUTY

The query that came sharply to Ruth Fielding's mind was: Without his blanket and off his leash, what would Bubu, the greyhound, look like in the gloaming? The next moment the tall old lady walking by the observant dog's side, raised her hand and nodded to Henriette.

"Oh, Madame!" gasped the French girl, and brought the car to an instant stop.

"I thought it was my little Hetty," the countess said in French, and smiling. "Hast been to Lyse for the good father?"

"Yes, Madame," replied the girl.

"And what news do you bring?"

The voice of the old lady was very kind. Ruth, watching her closely, thought that if the Countess Marchand was a spy for Germany, and was wicked at heart, she was a wonderfully good actress.

She had a most graceful carriage. Her hair, which was snow white, was dressed most becomingly. Her cheeks were naturally pink; yet her throat and under her chin the skin was like old ivory and much wrinkled. She was dressed plainly, although the cape about her shoulders was trimmed with expensive fur.

Henriette replied to her queries bashfully, bobbing her head at every reply. She was much impressed by the lady's attention. Finally the latter looked full at Ruth, and asked:

"Your friend is from the hospital, Hetty?"

"Oh, yes, Madame!" Henriette hastened to say. "She is an _Americaine_. Of the Red Cross."

"I could imagine her nativity," said the countess, bowing to Ruth, and with cordiality. "I traveled much with the count--years ago. All over America. I deem all Americans my friends."

"Thank you, Madame," replied Ruth gravely.

At the moment the stern-faced Bessie came through the little postern gate. She approached the countess and stood for a moment respectfully waiting her mistress' attention.

"Ah, here is the good Bessie," said the countess, and passed the serving woman the loop of the dog's leather leash. "Take him away, Bessie. Naughty Bubu! Do you know, he should be punished--and punished severely. He had slipped his collar again. See his legs? You must draw the collar up another hole, Bessie."

The harsh voice of the old woman replied, but Ruth could not understand what she said. The dog was led away; but Ruth saw that Bessie stared at her, Ruth, curiously--or was it threateningly?

The countess turned again to speak to the two girls. "Old Bessie comes from America, Mademoiselle," she explained. "I brought her over years ago. She has long served me."

"She comes from Mexico, does she not?" Ruth asked quietly.

"Yes. I see you have bright eyes--you are observant," said the countess. "Yes. Mexico was Bessie's birthplace, although she is not all Spanish."

Ruth thought to herself: "I could guarantee that. She is part German. 'Elizabeth'--yes, indeed! And does this lady never suspect what her serving woman may be?"

The countess dismissed them with another kindly word and gesture. Henriette was very much wrought up over the incident.

"She is a great lady," she whispered to Ruth. "Wait till I tell my father and mother how she spoke to me. They will be delighted."

"And this is a republic!" smiled Ruth. Even mild toadyism did not much please this American girl. "Still," she thought, "we are inclined to bow down and worship a less worthy aristocracy at home--the aristocracy of wealth."

Henriette ran her down to the town and to the hospital gate. Ruth was more than tired--she felt exhausted when she got out of the car. But she saw the matron before retiring to her own cell for a few hours' sleep.

"We shall need you, Mademoiselle," the Frenchwoman said distractedly. "Oh! so many poor men are here. They have been bringing them in all day. There is a lull on the front, or I do not know what we should do. The poor, poor men!"

Ruth had to rest for a while, however, although she did not sleep. Her mind was too painfully active.

Her thoughts drummed continually upon two subjects, the mystery regarding Tom Cameron--his letter to her found in another man's pocket. Secondly, the complications of the plot in which the woman in black, the two crooks from America, and the occupants of the chateau seemed all entangled.

She hoped hourly to hear from Tom; but no word came. She wished, indeed, that she might even see Charlie Bragg again; but nobody seemed to have seen him about the hospital of late. The ambulance corps was shifted around so frequently that there was no knowing where he could be found, save at his headquarters up near the front. And Ruth Fielding felt that she was quite as near the front here at Clair as she ever wished to be!

She went on duty before midnight and remained at work until after supper the next evening. She had nothing to do with the severely wounded, of course; but there was plenty to do for those who had already been in the hospital some time, and whom she knew.

Ruth could aid them in simple matters, could read to them, write for them, quiet them if they were nervous or suffering from shell-shock. She tried to forget her personal anxieties in attending to the poor fellows and aiding them to forget their wounds, if for only a little while.

But she climbed to her cell at last, worn out as she was by the long strain, with a determination to communicate with the French police-head in Lyse regarding the men who had robbed the Red Cross supply department.

She wrote the letter with the deliberate intention of laying all the mystery, as she saw it, before the authorities. She would protect the woman in black no longer. Nor did she ignore the possibility of the Countess Marchand and her old serving woman being in some way connected with Legrand and José, the Mexican.

She lay bare the fact that the two men from America had been in a plot to rob the Red Cross at Robinsburg, and how they had accomplished their ends with the connivance (as Ruth believed) of Rose Mantel. She spared none of the particulars of this early incident.

She wrote that she had seen the man, José, in his character of the lame Italian, both on the steamship coming over, in Paris, and again here at Clair talking with the Mexican servant of the Countess Marchand. Legrand, too, she mentioned as being in the neighborhood of Clair, now dressed as a captain of infantry in the French army.

She quite realized what she was doing in writing all this. Legrand, for instance, risked death as a spy in any case if he represented himself as an officer. But Ruth felt that the matter was serious. Something very bad was going on here, she was positive.

The only thing she could not bring herself to tell of was the suspicions she had regarding the identity of the "werwolf," as the superstitious country people called the shadowy animal that raced the fields and roads by night, going to and coming from the battle front.

It seemed such a silly thing--to repeat such gossip of the country side to the police authorities! She could not bring herself to do it. If the occupants of the chateau were suspected of being disloyal, what Ruth had already written, connecting José with Bessie, would be sufficient.

She wrote and despatched this letter at once. She knew it would be unopened by the local censor because of the address upon it. Communications to the police were privileged.

Ruth wondered much what the outcome of this step would be. She shrank from being drawn into a police investigation; but the matter had gone so far now and was so serious that she could not dodge her duty.

That very next day word was sent in to Ruth from the guard at the entrance whom she had tipped for that purpose, that the American ambulance driver, Monsieur Bragg, was at the door.

When Ruth hastened to the court the _brancardiers_ had shuffled in with the last of Charlie's "load" and he was cranking up his car. The latter looked as though it had been through No Man's Land, clear to the Boche "ditches" it was so battered and mud-bespattered. Charlie himself had a bandage around his head which looked like an Afghan's turban.

"Oh, my dear boy! Are you hurt?" Ruth gasped, running down the steps to him.

"No," grunted the young ambulance driver. "Got this as an order of merit. For special bravery in the performance of duty," and he grinned. "Gosh! I can't get hurt proper. I bumped my head on a beam in the park--pretty near cracked my skull, now I tell you! Say! How's your friend?"

"That is exactly what I don't know," Ruth hastened to tell him.

"How's that? Didn't you go to Lyse?"

"Yes. But the man in whose pocket that letter to me was found isn't Tom Cameron at all. It was some one else!"

"What? You don't mean it! Then how did he come by that letter? I saw it taken out of the poor chap's pocket. Johnny Mall wrote the note to you on the outside of it. I knew it was intended for you, of course."

"But the man isn't Tom. I should say, Lieutenant Thomas Cameron."

"Seems to me I've heard of that fellow," ruminated the ambulance driver, removing his big spectacles to wipe them. "But I believe he _is_ wounded. I'm sorry," he added, as he saw the change in Ruth's face. "Maybe he isn't, after all. Is--is this chap a pretty close friend of yours?"

Ruth told him, somewhat brokenly, in truth, just how near and dear to her the Cameron twins were. Telling more, perhaps, in the case of Tom, than she intended.

"I'll see what I can find out about him. He's been in this sector, I believe," he said. "I guess he has been at our headquarters up yonder and I've met him.

"Well, so long," he added, hopping into his car. "Next time I'm back this way maybe I'll have some news for you--_good_ news."

"Oh, I hope so!" murmured Ruth, watching the battered ambulance wheel out of the hospital court.

Henriette Dupay had an errand in the village the next day and came to see Ruth, too. The little French girl was very much excited.

"Oh, my dear Mademoiselle Ruth!" she cried. "What do you think?"

"I could not possibly think--for _you_," smiled Ruth.

"It is so--just as I told you," wailed the other girl. "It always happens."

"Do tell me what you mean? What has happened now?"

"Something bad always follows the seeing of the werwolf. My grandmère says it is a curse on the neighborhood because many of our people neglect the church. Think!"

"Do tell me," begged the American girl.

"Our best cow died," cried Henriette. "Our--ve-ry--best--cow! It is an affliction, Mademoiselle."

Ruth could well understand that to be so, for cows, since the German invasion, have been very scarce in this part of France. Henriette was quite confident that the appearance of the "werwolf" had foretold the demise of "the poor Lally." The American girl saw that it was quite useless to seek to change her little friend's opinion on that score.

"Of course, the thing we saw in the road could not have been the countess' dog?" she ventured.

But Henriette would have none of that. "Why, Bubu's blanket is black," she cried. "And you know the werwolf is all of a white color--and so hu-u-uge!"

She would have nothing of the idea that Bubu was the basis of the countryside superstition. But the French girl had a second exciting bit of news.

"Think you!" she cried, "what I saw coming over to town this ve-ry day, Mademoiselle Ruth."

"Another mystery?"

"Quite so. But yes. You would never, as you say, 'guess.' I passed old Bessie, Madame la Countess' serving woman, riding fast, _fast_ in a motor-car. Is it not a wonder?"

The statement startled Ruth, but she hid her emotion, asking:

"Not alone--surely? You do not mean that that old woman drives the countess' car?"

"Oh, no, Mademoiselle. The countess has no car. This was the strange car you and I saw on the road that day--the one that was stalled in the rut. You remember the tall capitaine--and the little one?"

The shock of the French girl's statement was almost too much for Ruth's self-control. Her voice sounded husky in her own ears when she asked:

"Tell me, Henriette! Are you _sure_? The old woman was riding away with those two men?"

"But yes, Mademoiselle. And they drive fast, fast!" and she pointed east, away from the hospital, and away from the road which led to Lyse.