Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross; Doing Her Best For Uncle Sam

CHAPTER XXI – AGAIN THE WERWOLF

Ruth Fielding felt as though she needed a cup of tea more than she ever had before in her life. And Clare Biggars had her own tea service in her room at the pension. Ruth had inquired for Clare and learned that this was a free hour for the Kansas girl. So Ruth and Henriette Dupay drove to the boarding-house; for to get a good cup of tea in one of the restaurants or cafés was impossible.

Her relief at learning the wounded American in the hospital was not Tom Cameron was quite overwhelming at first. Ruth had come out to the car so white of face that the French girl was frightened.

“Oh! Mam’zelle Fielding! It is that you haf los’ your friend?” cried the girl in the stammering English she tried so hard to make perfect.

“I don’t know that,” sighed Ruth. “But, at least, if he is wounded, he was not brought here to this hospital.”

She could not understand how that letter had been found in the pocket of the young man she had seen in the hospital ward. Tom Cameron certainly had written that letter. Ruth would not be free from worry until she had heard again from Tom, or of him.

The pension was not far away, and Ruth made her friend lock the car and come in with her, for Clare was a hospitable soul and it was lunch time. To her surprise Ruth found Clare in tears.

“What is the matter, my dear girl?” cried Ruth, as Clare fled sobbing to her arms the moment she saw the girl of the Red Mill. “What can have happened to you?”

“Everything!” exploded the Kansas girl. “You can’t imagine! I’ve all but been arrested, and the Head called me down dreadfully, and Madame – ”

“Madame Mantel?” Ruth asked sharply. “Is she the cause of your troubles? I should have warned you – ”

“Oh, the poor dear!” groaned Clare. “She feels as bad about it as I do. Why, they took her to the police station, too!”

“You seem to have all been having a fine time,” Ruth said, rather tartly. “Tell me all about it. But ask us to sit down, and do give us a cup of tea. This is Henriette Dupay, Clare, and a very nice girl she is. Try to be cordial – hold up the reputation of America, my dear.”

“How-do?” gulped Clare, giving the French girl her hand. “I am glad Ruth brought you. But it was only yesterday – ”

“What was only yesterday?” asked Ruth, as the hostess began to set out the tea things.

“Oh, Ruth! Haven’t you heard something about the awful thing that happened here? That Professor Perry – ”

“Ah! What about him?” asked Ruth. “You know what I wrote you – that I had heard there was trouble in the Supply Department? You haven’t answered my letter.”

“No. I was too worried. And finally – only yesterday, as I said – I was ordered to appear before the prefect of police.”

“A nice old gentleman with a white mustache.”

“A horrid old man who said the meanest things to dear Madame Mantel!” cried Clare hotly.

Ruth saw that the Western girl was still enamored of the woman in black, so she was careful what she said in comment upon Clare’s story.

All Ruth had to do was to keep still and Clare told it all. Perhaps Henriette did not understand very clearly what the trouble was, but she looked sympathetic, too, and that encouraged Clare.

It seemed that Mrs. Mantel had made a companion of Clare outside of the hospital, and Ruth could very well understand why. Clare’s father was a member of Congress and a wealthy man. It was to be presumed that Clare seemed to the woman in black well worth cultivating.

The Kansas girl had gone with the woman to the café of the Chou-rouge more than once. Each time the so-called Professor Perry and the Italian commissioner, whose name Clare had forgotten – “But that’s of no consequence,” thought Ruth, “for he has so many names!” – had been very friendly with the Red Cross workers.

Then suddenly the professor and the Italian had disappeared. The head of the Lyse hospital had begun to make inquiries into the working of the Supply Department. There had been billed to Lyse great stores of goods that were not accounted for.

“Poor Madame Mantel was heartbroken,” Clare said. “She wished to resign at once. Oh, it’s been terrible!”

“Resign under fire?” suggested Ruth.

“Oh – you understand – she felt so bad that her department should be under suspicion. Of course, it was not her fault.”

“Did the head say that?”

“Why, he didn’t have to!” cried Clare. “I hope you are not suspicious of Madame Mantel, Ruth Fielding?”

“You haven’t told me enough to cause me to suspect anybody yet – save yourself,” laughed Ruth. “I suspect that you are telling the story very badly, my dear.”

“Well, I suppose that is so,” admitted Clare, and thereafter she tried to speak more connectedly about the trouble which had finally engrossed all her thought.

The French police had unearthed, it was said, a wide conspiracy for the diversion of Red Cross supplies from America to certain private hands. These goods had been signed for in Mrs. Mantel’s office; she did not know by whom, but the writing on the receipts was not in her hand. That was proved. And, of course, the goods had never been delivered to the hospital at Lyse.

The receipts must have been forged. The only point made against Mrs. Mantel, it seemed, was that she had not reported that these goods, long expected at Lyse, were not received. Her delay in making inquiry for the supplies gave the thieves opportunity for disposing of the goods and getting away with the money paid for them by dishonest French dealers.

The men who had disposed of the supplies and had pocketed the money (or so it was believed) were the man who called himself Professor Perry and the Italian commissioner.

“And what do you think?” Clare went on to say. “That professor is no college man at all. He is a well-known French crook, they say, and usually travels under the name of Legrand.

“They say he had been in America until it got too hot for him there, and he crossed on the same boat with us – you remember, Ruth?”

“Oh, I remember,” groaned the girl of the Red Mill. “The Italian, too?”

“I don’t know for sure about him. They say he isn’t an Italian, but a Mexican, anyway. And he has a police record in both hemispheres.

“Consider! Madame Mantel and I were seen hobnobbing with them! I know she feels just as I do. I hate to show myself on the street!”

“I wouldn’t feel that way,” Ruth replied soothingly. “You could not help it.”

“But the police – ordering me before that nasty old prefect!” exclaimed the angry girl. “And he said such things to me! Think! He had cabled the chief of police in my town to ask who I was and if I had a police record. What do you suppose my father will say?”

“I guarantee that he will laugh at you,” Ruth declared. “Don’t take it so much to heart. Remember we are in a strange country, and that that country is at war.”

“I never shall like the French system of government, just the same!” declared Clare, with emphasis.

“And – and what about Mrs. Mantel?” Ruth asked doubtfully.

“I am going over to see her now,” Clare said, wiping her eyes. “I am so sorry for her. I believe that horrid prefect thinks she is mixed up in the plot that has cost the Red Cross so much. They say nearly ten thousand dollars worth of goods was stolen, and those two horrid men – Professor Perry and the other – have got away and the French police cannot find them.”

Ruth was secretly much disturbed by Clare’s story. She believed that she knew something about the pair of crooks who were accused – Rose Mantel’s two friends – that might lead to their capture. She was sure Henriette Dupay and she had passed them with their stalled automobile on the road to Lyse that morning.

In addition, she believed the two crooks were connected with those people at the Chateau Marchand, who were supposed to be pro-German. Now she knew what language she had heard spoken by José and the hard-featured Bessie of the chateau, there by the wayside cross. It was Spanish. The woman might easily be a Mexican as well as José.

Should she go to the prefect of police and tell him of these things? It seemed to Ruth Fielding that she was much entangled in a conspiracy of wide significance. The crooks who had robbed the Red Cross seemed lined up with the spies of the Chateau Marchand.

And there was the strange animal – dog, or what-not! – that was connected with the chateau. The werwolf! Whether she believed in such traditional tales or not, the American girl was impressed with the fact that there was much that was suspicious in the whole affair.

Yet she naturally shrank from getting her own fingers caught in the cogs of this mystery that the French police were doubtless quite able to handle in their own way, and all in good time. It was evident that even Mrs. Mantel was not to be allowed to escape the police net. She had not been arrested yet; but she doubtless was watched so closely now that she could neither get away, nor aid in doing further harm.

As for Clare Biggars, she was perfectly innocent of all wrong-doing or intent. And she was quite old enough to take care of herself. Besides, her father would doubtless be warned that his daughter was under suspicion of the French police and he would communicate with the United States Ambassador at Paris. She would be quite safe and suffer no real trouble.

So Ruth decided to return to Clair without going to the police, and, after lunch, having delivered the bags of grain which had filled the tonneau of the car, she and Henriette Dupay drove out of town again.

They were delayed for some time by tire trouble, and the French girl proved herself as good a mechanic as was necessary in repairing the tube. But night was falling before they were halfway home.

Ruth’s thoughts were divided between the conspiracy, in which Mrs. Mantel was engaged, and her worry regarding Tom Cameron. She had filed a telegraph message at the Lyse Hospital to be sent to Tom’s cantonment, where he was training, and hoped that the censor would allow it to go through. For she knew she could not be satisfied that Tom had not been wounded until she heard from him.

The American girl’s nerves had been shot through by the affair of the early morning, when the note from Tom had been brought to her. What had followed since that hour had not served to help her regain her self-control.

Therefore, as Henriette drove the car on through the twilight, following the road by which they had gone to Lyse, there was reason for Ruth suddenly exclaiming aloud, when she saw something in the track ahead:

“Henriette! Look! What can that be? Do you see it?”

“What do you see, Mademoiselle Ruth?” asked the French girl, reducing the speed of the car in apprehension.

“There! That white – ”

“Nom de Dieu!” shrieked Henriette, getting sight of the object in question.

The girl paled visibly and shrank back into her seat. Ruth cried out, fearing the steering wheel would get away from Henriette.

“Oh! Did you see?” gasped the latter.

The white object had suddenly disappeared. It seemed to Ruth as though it had actually melted into thin air.

“That was the werwolf!” continued the French girl, and crossed herself. “Oh, my dear Mademoiselle, something is sure now to happen – something very bad!”

CHAPTER XXII – THE COUNTESS AND HER DOG

RUTH FIELDING had almost instantly identified the swiftly moving object in the road as the same that she had seen weeks before while riding with Charlie Bragg toward Clair. And yet she could not admit as true the assertion made both by the ambulance driver and the excited French girl.

To recognize the quickly disappearing creature as a werwolf – the beast-form of a human being, sold irrevocably to the Powers of Darkness – was quite too much for a sane American girl like Ruth Fielding!

“Why, Henriette!” she cried, “that is nothing but a dog.”

“A wolf, Mademoiselle. A werwolf, as I have told you. A very wicked thing.”

“There isn’t such a thing,” declared Ruth bluntly. “That was a dog – a white or a gray one. And of large size. I have seen it once before – perhaps twice,” Ruth added, remembering the glimpse she had caught of such a creature with Bessie at the chateau gate.

“Oh, it is such bad fortune to see it!” sighed Henriette.

“Don’t be so childish,” Ruth adjured, brusquely. “Nothing about that dog can hurt you. But I have an idea the poor creature may be doing the French cause harm.”

“Oh, Mademoiselle! You have heard the vile talk about the dear countess!” cried Henriette. “It is not so. She is a brave and lovely lady. She gives her all for France. She would be filled with horror if she knew anybody connected her with the spies of les Boches.”

“I thought it was generally believed that she was an Alsatian of the wrong kind.”

“It is a wicked calumny,” Henriette declared earnestly. “But I have heard the tale of the werwolf ever since I was a child – long before this dreadful war began.”

“Yes?”

“It was often seen racing through the country by night,” the girl declared earnestly. “They say it comes from the chateau, and goes back to it. But that the lovely countess is a wicked one, and changes herself into a devouring wolf – ah, no, no, Mademoiselle! It is impossible!

“The werwolf comes and goes across the battle front, it is said. Indeed, it used to cross the old frontier into Germany in pre-war times. Why may not some wicked German woman change herself into a wolf and course the woods and fields at night? Why lay such a thing to the good Countess Marchand?”

Ruth saw that the girl was very much in earnest, and she cast no further doubt upon the occupant of the chateau, the towers of which had been in sight in the twilight for some few minutes. Henriette was now driving slowly and had not recovered from her fright. They came to a road which turned up the hill.

“Where does that track lead?” Ruth asked quickly.

“Past the gates of the chateau, Mademoiselle.”

“You say you will take me to the hospital at Clair before going home,” Ruth urged. “Can we not take this turn?”

“But surely,” agreed Henriette, and steered the car into the narrow and well-kept lane.

Ruth made no explanation for her request. But she felt sure that the object which had startled them both, dog or whatever it was, had dived into this lane to disappear so quickly. The “werwolf” was going toward the chateau on this evening instead of away from it.

There was close connection between the two criminals, who had come from America on the Red Cross steamship, Legrand and José, with whatever was going on between the Chateau Marchand and the Germans. Werwolf, or despatch dog, Ruth was confident that the creature that ran by night across the shell-racked fields was trained to spy work.

Who was guilty at the chateau? That seemed to be an open question.

Henriette’s declaration that it was not the Countess Marchand, strengthened the suspicion already rife in Ruth’s mind that the old servant, Bessie, was the German-lover.

The latter was known to José, one of the crooks from America. She might easily be of the same nationality as José – Mexican. And the Mexicans largely are pro-German.

José and Legrand were already under suspicion of a huge swindle in Red Cross stores. It would seem that if these men would steal, it was fair to presume they would betray the French Government for money.

It was a mixed-up and doubtful situation at best. Ruth Fielding intuitively felt that she had hold of the ends of certain threads of evidence that must, in time, lead to the unraveling of the whole scheme of deceit and intrigue.

It was still light enough on the upland for the girls to see some distance along the road ahead. Henriette drove the car slowly as they approached the wide gateway of the chateau.

Ruth distinguished the flutter of something white by the gate and wondered if it was the “werwolf” or the old serving woman. But when she called Henriette’s attention to the moving object the French girl cried, under her breath:

“Oh! It is the countess! Look you, Mademoiselle Ruth, perhaps she will speak to us.”

“But there’s something with her. It is a dog,” the American girl declared.

“Why that is only Bubu, the old hound. He is always with the countess when she walks out. He is a greyhound – see you? It is foolish, Mademoiselle, to connect Bubu with the werwolf,” and she shrugged her plump shoulders.

Ruth paid more attention to the dog at first than she did to the lady who held the loop of his leash. He wore a dark blanket, which covered most of his body, even to his ears. His legs were long, of course, and Ruth discovered another thing in a moment, while the car rolled nearer.

The thin legs of the slate-colored beast were covered with mud. That mud was not yet dry. The dog had been running at large within the last few minutes, the girl was sure.

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.