Chapter 20

WHAT THE PACKET CONTAINED

“But,” said Jane, “I can’t understand it yet. How did you, a British officer, happen to be living with old Otto Hoff? How did you ever get him to trust you with his terrible secrets?”

Captain Seymour chortled gleefully. Now that he was arrayed in proper British clothes, once more comfortable in the uniform of his regiment and had his monocle in place and was with Jane again, everything looked radiantly different. Even his speech no longer retained its international quality but now was tinctured with London mannerisms.

“Oh, I say,” he replied, “that was a ripping joke on the bally Dutchmen.”

Jane eyed him uncertainly. He seemed almost like a stranger to her in this unfamiliar guise, though for hours she had been eagerly looking forward to his coming.

The exciting developments of the night before still were to her very puzzling. She recalled Frederic’s identification of himself, and after that all was blank. When she had come to she had found herself in a motor being rapidly driven toward New York in the early dawn, with Carter as her escort. He had not been inclined to be at all communicative.

“Let the Captain tell you the story himself,” said Carter. “He knows all the details.”

“But when can I see him?” questioned Jane. “When,” she hesitated, remembering the shameful bonds that had held him, “when will he be free?”

“He’s as free this minute as we are,” Carter explained. “It didn’t take the Chief long to get the bracelets off, after Colonel Brook-White had identified him. There’s a lot for the Captain to do still, but rest assured, he’ll waste no time getting back to the city to see you.”

“I hope not,” sighed the girl.

She was too weary, too weak from the revulsion of feeling that had come on learning that her lover instead of being a dastardly spy was a wonderful hero, to make even a pretense at maidenly modesty. She wanted to see Frederic too much to care what any one thought.

Slipping into her home fortunately without arousing any of her family, she had gone to bed with the intention of getting a rest of an hour or two. Sleep, she was sure, would be impossible, for she felt far too excited and upset. Yet she had not realized how utterly exhausted she was. Hardly had her head touched the pillow before she was lost to everything, and it was long after noon when a maid aroused her to announce that Captain Seymour had ’phoned that he would call at three.

As she dressed to receive him, she was wondering how she should greet him. Blushingly she recalled the impassioned kiss he had pressed on her lips—why it was only yesterday. It had seemed ages and ages ago, so much had intervened. Mingled with a shyness that arose from her vivid memories was also a shade of indignation. Why had he not told her? Did he not trust her? She resolved to punish him for not taking her into his confidence by an air of coldness toward him. Certainly he deserved it.

Yet, when he arrived, so full of animation did he appear to be, that the lofty manner in which she greeted him apparently went unnoticed. He met her with a warm handclasp and anxious inquiries about how she felt after all the exciting events. Too filled with eagerness to know all the details of his adventures she had found it difficult to maintain her pose, and soon was seated cosily beside him, asking him question after question, all the while furtively studying him in his proper rôle. As Frederic Hoff she had thought him wonderfully handsome and masterful. As Captain Sir Frederic Seymour, in his regimental finery, he was simply irresistible.

“A joke?” she repeated. “Do explain, I’m dying to know all about it.”

“It wasn’t half as difficult a job as one might imagine, you know. Our censor chaps at home have got to be quite expert at reading letters, invisible ink and all that sort of thing. Hoff for months had been sending cipher messages to the war office in Berlin. He kept urging them to act on his all-wonderful plan for blowing up New York. They decided finally to try it and notified old Otto they were sending over an officer to supervise the job.”

“What became of him? The officer they sent over?”

“Our people picked him off a Scandinavian boat and locked him up. They took his papers and turned them over to me. Clever, wasn’t it?”

“And you took his name and his papers and came here in his place? Oh, that was a brave, brave thing to do.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Seymour modestly. “I fancy I look a bit like the chap, and I speak the language perfectly.”

“But it was such a terrible risk to take,” cried Jane with a shudder. “Suppose they’d found you out?”

“No danger of that,” laughed Frederic. “Old Otto never had seen the chap who was coming. His real nephew, Frederic Hoff, whose American birth certificate was used, died years ago. Besides I had the German officer’s papers and knew just what his instructions were. The worst of it was when old Otto insisted every night on toasting the Kaiser, and when he kept trying to get me mixed up in his dirty schemes. I had to go through with the former once in a while, but on the latter, I—how do you Americans say it—just stalled along. My orders were to land him only on the big thing—his wonder-workers.”

“But how did you explain to him that British uniform?”

“Now that was really an idea. The old fellow was getting a bit cross and suspicious with me because he thought I wasn’t doing enough while they were getting his ‘wonder-workers’ ready. At one time he was so distrustful of me that he had me followed.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” said Jane quickly. With a thrill she remembered the scene she had witnessed from her window the night K-19, her predecessor on Chief Fleck’s staff, had been murdered. In her relief at discovering that Frederic was no German spy, she had forgotten that for weeks and weeks she had all but believed him guilty of murder. Now, something told her, surely and confidently, that he could explain it all.

“I saw you from my window one night before I met you,” she went on. “A man was following you, and you chased him around the corner.”

“I remember that,” he said; “the poor chap was found dead the next morning. Old Otto killed him. The man had been following me, and I had imagined that he was one of old Otto’s spies and knocked him down. I couldn’t find anything on him to indicate who he was, so just as he was beginning to revive I left him and came on home. It seems old Otto had been watching him trail me. He followed along and shot the man. He gleefully told me about it the next day, the hound. I ought to have given him over to the police, but that would have upset our plans.”

“I see,” said Jane; “what about Lieutenant Kramer? Was he working with old Mr. Hoff?”

“That’s the funny part of it. Here in this country you’ve got so many kinds of secret agents they’re always trampling on each others’ toes. There’s your treasury agents, and your Department of Justice agents, and your army intelligence men and your naval intelligence men—nine different sets of investigators you’ve got, counting the volunteers, so some one told me, and each lot trying to make a record for itself and not taking the others into its confidence. Rather stupid I call it.”

“I should say so,” agreed Jane.

“Here was I watching old Hoff for our government, and Kramer watching me for your navy and Fleck watching both of us. It was a funny jumble.”

“But about that uniform?” Jane persisted.

“When the old man got to ragging me a bit, I felt I must do something to convince him I was all right. I suggested trying to get a British uniform and maybe learning thereby some secrets. It delighted him hugely. Of course I just went down to Colonel Brook-White and got my own uniform, and that was all there was to that.”

“It puzzled Mr. Carter, though, how you got it in and out of the house. He used to open every bundle that came for Mr. Hoff.”

Sir Frederic laughed delightedly.

“I had a messenger who used to bring it back and forth in a big lady’s hat-box. It always was addressed to you, my dear, but the boy had instructions to deliver it to me.”

“Humph,” snapped Jane with mock indignation. “And when did you first find out that I was helping Chief Fleck watch you?”

“I suspected it from the start. Kramer told me how you’d become acquainted with him. Then when I heard you ’phoning Carter about the bookstore I knew for certain.”

“Oh, that’s one thing now I wanted to ask about—those messages Hoff left in the bookstore. Who were they for?”

“Instructions to a German advertising agency on how to word some advertisements that contained a code.”

“Oh, those Dento advertisements?”

“You knew about them?” cried Seymour in astonishment.

“Of course,” said Jane proudly. “I was the one who deciphered them; but what did that girl do with those messages? Carter had a theory that she slipped them under a dachshund’s collar.”

“That theory’s just like Carter,” laughed Frederic—“regular detective stuff. I never heard of any dachshund’s being used. The girl used to slip them into a letter box in her apartment-house hallway. Two minutes later a man would get them and carry them to their destination.”

“The traitors in our navy—the men who signalled old Otto and Lena Kraus about the transports—who were they? They are the scoundrels I’d like to see arrested and shot.”

“Never worry. They’ll all meet their deserts. I can’t tell even you who they are, but I’ve given your Chief Fleck a list of them. They will be quickly rounded up now. What else can I tell you?”

“There’s this,” said Jane, the color rising to her cheeks as she drew forth from its hiding place in the bosom of her gown the packet he had entrusted to her the morning before, its seals still intact.

“What?” he cried in delight. “You kept it safe? You did not open it even when you saw me arrested, when you must have been convinced that I was a spy? Girl, dear girl”—his voice became a caress, and the light of love flamed up in his eyes, “you did trust me then, in spite of everything.”

“I had promised you, and I kept my promise,” faltered Jane, striving for words to explain, though she had been unable to explain her actions even to herself. “I think my heart trusted you all the time, even though my head and eyes made me believe you were what you pretended to be. Even when things looked blackest my heart persisted that you were true.”

“God bless your heart for that,” cried Frederic, as he took the little packet from her hands and began breaking the seals. “Yesterday morning, when old Otto’s plans were ready, I foresaw the danger of the trip ahead of me. I realized I might never come back alive. If they discovered who I was a second too soon it would mean my death. I dared not, for my country’s sake, tell even you what I was doing. My honor was at stake. I dared not drop the slightest hint nor write a single line. The only thing I’d kept about me in the apartment that wasn’t filthy German stuff was what’s in here.”

Slowly he was unwrapping something rolled in tissue paper, as Jane, eager-eyed, looked wonderingly on.

“But,” he went on, “I couldn’t go away from you without leaving some token, some clue. If it happened that I never came back, I wanted you to know—”

He stopped abruptly.

“To know what?” questioned the girl breathlessly.

“To know that I loved you, darling, better than all else save honor,” he said, taking her into his arms. “See the token I left behind for you. It’s an old, old family ring with the Seymour crest. You’ll wear it, girl of mine, won’t you, wear it always.”

Unhesitatingly Jane Strong thrust forth the third finger on her left hand, and instinctively her lips turned upward toward his.

And no matter what might have happened just then in the apartment next door, neither of them would have known anything about it.

THE END