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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46348
   :PG.Title: Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge
   :PG.Released: 2014-07-20
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: George \H. Ralphson
   :DC.Title: Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1919
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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OVER THERE WITH THE CANADIANS AT VIMY RIDGE
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      Cover art

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      :alt: THE CANADIANS WERE MASTERFUL FIGHTERS IN THE EARLY STAGES OF THE WAR. (The Canadians at Vimy Ridge)

      THE CANADIANS WERE MASTERFUL FIGHTERS
      IN THE EARLY STAGES OF THE WAR.
      (The Canadians at Vimy Ridge)

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      OVER THERE

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      WITH
      THE CANADIANS
      AT
      VIMY RIDGE

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      *By*

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      CAPT. GEORGE H. RALPHSON

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      Author of
      OVER THERE WITH PERSHING'S HEROES AT CANTIGNY,
      OVER THERE WITH THE DOUGHBOYS AT ST. MIHIEL,
      OVER THERE WITH THE MARINES AT CHATEAU THIERRY

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      M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
      CHICAGO NEW YORK 

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      Copyright, 1919
      M. A. DONOHUE & CO.
      CHICAGO

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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I  `Shells and Minnenwerfer`_
II  `Irving's Idea`_
III  `In No Man's Land`_
IV  `"Kamerad!"`_
V  `The Turtle Is Wounded`_
VI  `A Little History`_
VII  `Tourtelle Apologizes`_
VIII  `Cubist Art`_
IX  `Bob's Letter`_
X  `Dots and Dashes`_
XI  `Irving Tells the Sergeant`_
XII  `Quizzing a Spy`_
XIII  `Tourtelle Admits`_
XIV  `Tourtelle's Story`_
XV  `Irving an Orderly`_
XVI  `A Startling Announcement`_
XVII  `Parachute Practice`_
XVIII  `Studying to Be a Spy`_
XIX  `Last Preparations`_
XX  `"Second Looie Ellis"`_
XXI  `The Blowing Up of Vimy Ridge`_
XXII  `Behind the German Lines`_
XXIII  `Off for Berlin`_
XXIV  `In Berlin`_
XXV  `The Reading of the Cryptogram`_
XXVI  `Followed`_
XXVII  `The Spy's Decision`_
XXVIII  `Making Progress with the Baron`_
XXIX  `Orders for Money and Clothes`_
XXX  `Before Breakfast`_
XXXI  `At Work in the Spy Office`_
XXXII  `A Startling Recognition`_
XXXIII  `A Surprising Offer`_
XXXIV  `Skin Grafting`_
XXXV  `The Tapping on the Window`_
XXXVI  `A Revelation`_
XXXVII  `The Submarines`_
XXXVIII  `"Kamerad!" Again`_
XXXIX  `"Accidents Will Happen"`_





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.. _`SHELLS AND MINNENWERFER`:

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   Over There with the Canadians
   at
   Vimy Ridge

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   CHAPTER I

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   SHELLS AND MINNENWERFER

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"Look out!  There she comes."

These words were whispered, for it
would have been a serious military offense if
the speaker had lifted his voice to a resonant
tone in addressing his companion.  Both were
in khaki uniform, and had helmets on their
heads.  They had been crouching in a
camouflaged pit out in No Man's Land in the Vimy
Ridge sector of the western battle front in
Prance.

It was dusk of evening, a mist-laden dusk,
quite as serviceable for secret movements as
the darkness under a clear sky.  One could not
see an object as large as a man twenty yards
away because of the fog.

All day it had been raining, just a slow
drizzle, but nevertheless, a good deal of water had
fallen, and the chief characteristic of the
trenches was mud.  "Second Looie" George
Tourtelle and Private Irving Ellis had been
sent out through the communication trench to
the listening post, in which they were crouched
when Irving whispered the words "Look out!
There she comes!"

There was really no need of his offering any
such warning to his companion, for the latter
could hear the whistle of the approaching shell
just as well as he, but there was also no call
for the punishment that the second lieutenant
administered.  The shell passed harmlessly
over their heads and exploded behind the front
line trenches of the Canadian company, of
which the occupants of the spy pit were
members, and almost simultaneously with the
explosion, Lieut. Tourtelle struck Irving a sharp
blow in the face with the back of his hand.

"There!" he said viciously, with apparently
no effort to subdue the tone of his voice in
accord with the strict precautionary rules of such
positions.  "See that you keep your thoughts
to yourself hereafter or I'll send you back to
report to the captain."

Irving was astonished, as well as angered at
this treatment.  He was sure there was no call
even for a reprimand, whereas the officer had
spoken in tones quite loud enough for the enemy
to hear fifty, or possibly a hundred, yards away.
In fact, he was sure that if the "second looie"
had any reflection in him at all, he must have
experienced a thrill of apprehension very soon
afterward lest the sound of his voice had been
heard by some of his superior officers in the
front trenches.  If so, an inquiry into its
meaning most certainly would follow.

Of course,-Irving resented the uncalled-for
exhibition of brutality just exhibited by
Lieut. Tourtelle, but he had too much military sense
to show his resentment by look or act.  Instead,
he decided to take his punishment and the
accompanying rebuke as provocative of a little
self-discipline and to profit from the experience,
in spite of the injustice that went with it.

"I never did like that fellow from the first
day I met him," Private Ellis told himself,
grinding his teeth with rage under the first
impulse of revenge.  "Now I know him to be the
very sort I thought he was.  Nobody but a
coward would do what he did.  He knows he'd
never dare to meet me on even terms.  I'd clean
him up so thoroughly there wouldn't be
anything for a minnenwerfer to smell if one came
along and dropped onto the spot where he ought
to be.  Goodness! there's one now."

The "minnie" referred to in Irving's
soliloquy lighted right in the communication trench
not more than 200 feet from the outlook pit in
which the officer and the private were stationed.
The explosion threw up a mass of earth,
several bucketfuls of which came down into the pit
as if from a giant pepper-box.  One stone about
the size of two fists struck Irving on his left
shoulder, and for several minutes the boy
feared some of the bones were broken or the
joint dislocated.

But it proved to be only a bruiser and
presently the young soldier was using his arm
confidently, although with considerable pain.  In
the excitement that followed almost immediately
after the explosion of this shell, he
forgot the injury, although under ordinary
circumstances, every movement of his left arm
must have been more or less painful.

There was no shriek of warning preceding
the next explosion fifty feet to the right, such
as had called forth the whispered "look out"
from Private Ellis that was rebuked with a
blow of the hand and an equally unmilitary
reprimand from the second lieutenant.  But it
was much more mighty in force and sound.  It
tore up the ground almost, it seemed, to the
very edge of the pit in which the outpost was
located.  Strange enough, too, not nearly as
much of the upheaved earth fell back into the
pit as had fallen there after the explosion of
the first shell.  Irving felt that he knew the
reason.

"That was a minnie dead sure," he told himself
with a shudder.  "I like the others much
better.  You know when they're coming and
maybe can dodge 'em.  But a minnie never
gives any warning.  They've spotted this
outpost and the next one'll probably wipe us out.
We'll never know what hit us."

Evidently something of this sort was going
on in the mind of Lieut. Tourtelle, for suddenly
he darted back through the communication
trench toward the front line.

"That's funny," Irving muttered under his
breath.  "He's ducked without giving any
order to me.  What'll I do--stick?  I feel like
sticking just to show him that I'm made of
different stuff.  But no, I guess I hadn't better.
He's just mean enough to report that he
ordered me back, but I disobeyed his order."





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.. _`IRVING'S IDEA`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   IRVING'S IDEA

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Private Ellis had not been back in the
front line trench long before he had good
cause to congratulate himself for resisting
the temptation to offer himself as an example
of bravery in the face of the cowardly actions
of the second lieutenant.  A second minnenwerfer
dropped unannounced right into the pit
they had just left and the size of the
bowl-shaped listening post was increased many
times.

"Now, if I were an officer and in position to
make suggestions, I'd advise that that pit be
remanned in about half an hour," Irving
mused.  "The boches, no doubt, have a report
of the success of their last shot, and will
naturally assume that the place has been put out of
commission as a lookout, and the occupants reduced
to their original elements.  I believe that
hole in the ground is just as serviceable as it
ever was to play peek-a-boo at Heinie."

Lieut. Tourtelle was in the trench within a
few feet of Irving and the latter would have
made an effort to get the proposition to him if
it had not been for the experience he had had
with the insufferable nature of the officer in the
listening pit.

"I wish it weren't against orders to whisper
in the front trenches--that is, when you have
something of importance to communicate to the
higher-up," the boy continued to himself.
"I'd really like to go out there and try it
again."

At this moment someone took hold of his arm--the
sore one, as the pain in his shoulder
reminded him--and gave it a pull.  This was as
much as to say, "Follow me."  He obeyed, and
soon reached the communication trench that
connected the first and second line trenches.
His leader, a first lieutenant named Osborne,
led the way through this trench back to the
second line.  During the passage, Irving became
conscious of the fact that others were following
along behind.  What was up, young Ellis
wondered.  It was not time for him to be relieved,
for he had been in the trenches only about
fifteen hours.

He was not long kept in doubt.  Immediately
on their arrival at the second line, Lieut. Osborne
gathered them together--one officer and
five privates--and gave the following
instructions in low tones:

"I want you boys to go out beyond the barbed
wire and see what you can find out.  Remember
your stock instructions.  Don't get into any
fights.  If you meet anybody, retreat.  We
want to find the location of any patrols of theirs
out in No Man's Land.  Look out for evidences
of their work laying mines, repairing barbed
wire, sinking listening pits, or anything of the
sort.  Then get back as soon as possible,
keeping your bearings and the locations of your
discoveries well in mind.  If any 'very lights' go
up, you must lie or stand still, or remain
unwaveringly in your positions and attitudes
until they go out, unless the light is directly
between you and our trenches.  In that case, you
must duck and make the best of your way back
under a hail of bullets, for you'll be seen.  You
will be armed only with pistols, hand grenades,
and trench knives.  Use the bombs or pistols
only to save yourselves from death or capture.
Remember it is information we want from you,
not scalps.  You will be under charge of Second
Lieutenant Tourtelle."

Irving's heart went "way down" in his hob-nailed
shoes at this latter announcement.  He
had had no idea who his companions during
this patrol excursion were to be, for the night
had fallen heavy and it was difficult for those
in the group to recognize identities in one
another's dimly silhouetted forms.  The last
information handed to them was almost enough
to cause Private Ellis to do something desperate.
As a substitute for the impulse he did the
thing that had been uppermost in his mind most
of the time since he left the listening post out
in No Man's Land.

"Lieutenant," he said; "may I offer a
suggestion which, it seems to me, would be of
service to us right now?"

"Certainly, Ellis," the officer responded
encouragingly.  "What is it?"

"It seems to me that that pit that was
increased to the size of a small volcano crater
since Lieut. Tourtelle and I left it could be used
with almost perfect safety now," the boy said
eagerly.  "The boches won't be expecting
anybody to use it now.  They, no doubt, think
they've settled the question of its usefulness for
all time to come.  Now, if you'd send a couple
of machine guns out there with some men to
operate them, we could report back at that
point to them and they could do quick execution.
After they'd done their work, they could
run back to our front line and the boches 'u'd
have a merry time dropping some more minnies
into an empty bowl."

Lieut. Osborne was quick to see the value of
the suggestion.

"That's a good idea, Ellis," he said in tone
of hearty approval, "and I'm going to do that
very thing.  Lieut. Tourtelle, see that these men
are supplied with pistols, grenades and trench
knives, or persuasion sticks, as they prefer,
while I get the machine gunners."





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.. _`IN NO MAN'S LAND`:

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   CHAPTER III


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   IN NO MAN'S LAND

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Private Ellis felt fully compensated
for the treatment he had received from the
second lieutenant by the recognition and
adoption of his suggestion to utilize the
"minnenwerfered listening pit" for the purpose for
which it was originally intended.  Fully an
hour had elapsed since this pit had been
converted into a miniature crater, and not another
explosion had taken place in the vicinity.  It
seemed, indeed, that he had not erred in his
surmise that the enemy had checked up the
results of their firing and concluded that any
more shells dropped at this point would be a
waste of ammunition.

But Irving was not without misgiving as the
party started out through the communication
trench for their patrolling and machine gun
battery headquarters out in No Man's Land.
The fact that Lieut. Tourtelle had been put in
command of this expedition dampened his
spirits and caused him to fear disaster.  He
fought hard against this apprehension.  It had
been too dark for him to discern from the
"second looie's" countenance how that officer
received the adoption of Private Ellis' suggestion,
but he was certain it was not accepted with
the best of grace.  He could well picture in his
mind a darkening of the countenance of "the
turtle," a clenching of his hands, and a dogged
sullenness of demeanor as the ill-natured officer
contemplated the favor shown the boy whom he
evidently hated for no good reason whatever.

Irving renamed the second lieutenant "the
turtle" in a kind of subconscious way.  It was
not done with malice aforethought.  The term
just came to his mind, like a flash, and was
inspired, no doubt, by the contemptible conduct
of the "shave-tail," as flippant military fancy
has dubbed the "second looie," and by the play
of idea suggested in the spelling of his name.

The communication trench was partly a tunnel.
From the front line as far as the barbed-wire
entanglements it was just a plain trench,
seven or eight feet deep.  Then it became a
subterranean passage with about two feet of earth
overhead, continuing thus until beyond the wire
belt, when it opened overhead again.  When the
patrol reached the spot where the first
"minnie" exploded, they found it necessary to
proceed with special caution, for the passage was
blocked there on both sides of the crater with
heaps of earth.  However, they managed to
pass this place safely, and presently were in
the listening pit that had recently been very
much increased in capacity with minnenwerfer aid.

A period of waiting and listening followed
the arrival at this "crater."  Not a word was
uttered, not even a whisper.  Everybody gave
the keenest attention of which his senses were
capable to everything that offered stimulation
to eye or ear.  However, their careful looking
and listening was unrewarded with aught save
what appeared to be the most unwarlike silence
and inactivity in the immediate vicinity.  Now
and then in the distance could be heard the
thunder of heavy cannon or the nasty spit-snap
of machine guns.

Conditions appearing to be satisfactory,
Lieut. Tourtelle gave the agreed signal, which
consisted of placing one hand on the left
shoulder of each of the scouts, and the latter climbed
up over the sloping embankment at several
points in the big cup and crept cautiously out
over No Man's Land.

By this time the fog had lifted, and stars
were beginning to peep out through rifts in the
cloud-swept sky.  Added to the muddiness of
the ground, the chill of the atmosphere rendered
life in this sector exceedingly uncomfortable.

Each member of this patrol went alone out
over the rising slope of land that lay between
the front line trenches of the Canadians and
the common enemy of the Allies.  They either
crouched low or crawled on all fours.  Each
scout was assigned to a section of the territory
as clearly defined as possible in order that there
might be no crossing of paths or mistaking one
another for members of a boche patrol.

Irving took a course to the right, advancing
with a cautious, low crouch.  His instructions
were to proceed about 100 yards along a line
parallel to the trenches and then advance
toward the enemy line to see what he could
discover.

He proceeded the distance stipulated southward
as nearly as he could estimate over a
half-mud and half-sod surface and then found
himself close to a thicket of low bushes, the extent
of which he knew to be not very great, for he
had observed this feature of the terrain in the
daylight.  He decided that he ought to examine
these bushes carefully, but realized that he
must not take much time for the investigation,
as each member of the patrol had been limited
to half an hour in which to gather material for
his report.

Private Ellis, therefore, decided to make a
detour around the bushes, listening meanwhile
for any sound of moving bodies among the
leaves and twigs.  The detection of such sounds
would be ample reason for sweeping the patch
with machine gun bullets.

He made almost the entire circuit without
detecting the faintest noise that could command
the respect of his suspicion, and was about to
turn around and creep back toward the enemy
lines, when a bunch of "very lights," fired
from boche pistols, threw their brilliance over
the scene.  The unwelcome illumination was
prolonged in a manner that Irving had not
witnessed before.  The lights floated down
slowly, being suspended in the air by small
parachute arrangements that opened out with
the increasing resistance of the air.

But something else startled the boy even
more than these lights.  Instinctively he
remained stock still in the crouching position in
which the illumination caught him.  But right
in front of him, not more than twenty feet away
were the figures of two soldiers.  They were
standing erect and facing each other.  One of
the faces was turned well toward Private Ellis,
who could hardly smother an exclamation of
astonishment as he recognized him.

It was Lieut. Tourtelle!

"What in the world does he think he's
doing?" Irving questioned to himself.  "He
doesn't seem to be very anxious to protect
himself.  He hasn't a pistol, knife or bomb in his
hand."

The lights went out, and presently a new
cause for wonder came to the ears of the
crouching boy.

"Kamerad!"

Could he believe his senses?  No, he wouldn't.
It came to him very clearly, that utterance,
from the spot where Lieut. Tourtelle stood.
And yet, this was impossible.  It must surely
have been the enemy soldier who uttered the
word of friendly greeting.





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.. _`"KAMERAD!"`:

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   CHAPTER IV


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   "KAMERAD!"

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"That's a piece of boche treachery as sure
as I'm a Yank fighting with the Canadians,"
was Irving's speedy conclusion after
witnessing the scene exposed by the lights and
hearing the salute which he decided must have
come from the enemy scout.  "That's the way
they work it!  They're noted for treachery of
that very sort."

"Kamerad!"

The salute was repeated, scarcely above a
whisper, but clear enough for Irving to hear it
distinctly.  And with the utterance of that word
another thrill of apprehension, doubt, confusion,
electrified the mind and body of the listening
scout, who had not been discovered by Tourtelle
and the boches when the lights illuminated
the field, undoubtedly, because he happened to
be crouching close to a bush large enough to
cast a shadow about him.

"My!" exclaimed the boy under his breath;
"I'd 'ave sworn that word came from the very
spot where Tourtelle was standing.  They can't
'ave changed positions so quickly.  And yet, I
must be mistaken.  Common sense tells me it
must 'ave been the boche who gave that salute.
I wonder what's the matter with my hearing.

"But I'll have to go to that miserable 'shave-tail's'
rescue if the other fellow plays a trick on
him.  I think I'll get close and see what's
going on."

Irving crept cautiously toward the spot
where he had seen the second lieutenant when
the lights blazed forth.  The distance was so
short that he fancied he ought to have been able
to see both the officer and the enemy scout from
his position near the bush.  The boche, unless
he had moved since the lights went out, was a
similar distance away from the watcher and
about twenty-five feet to Private Ellis' right.

In a few seconds Irving reached approximately
the spot where he had seen Lieut. Tourtelle,
when the "very lights" illuminated the
vicinity, and was surprised and just a little
worried on failing to find him still there.  Then
he began to look around him to see if his eyes
could not pierce the surrounding darkness far
enough to discover the form of the officer.  His
search was interrupted by another startling
incident.

Something struck the calf of his right leg a
rather severe blow, and the boy gripped his
trench-knife in one hand and his pistol in the
other, ready to defend himself if attacked.
Nothing further of disturbing nature followed
immediately, and Irving stooped down to
examine the object that had struck him.  It was a
short, stout club of the kind known in No Man's
Land as a "persuader stick," which can be
used effectively, like a policeman's billy, in the
dark.

"Who in the world threw that?--not the
boche, surely," the boy muttered.  "It's like
the one I've seen in 'the turtle's' possession;
but what could he want to throw it back here for?"

"Kamerad!"

"There it goes again," buzzed through Irving's
head.  "I don't believe it's a trap set for
me, but maybe it is for the 'looie,' and he may
be just fool enough to fall for it.  I owe it
to--to--Uncle Sam to save him, if I can, though
I'm afraid Uncle Sam 'u'd be better off
without 'im."

Private Ellis put his knife and pistol away,
gripped his club, and advanced toward the spot
whence the last "kamerad" seemed to have
come.  As he moved ahead slowly he became
conscious gradually that a dark object stood
before him a few yards away.  Would he be
able to determine whether it was friend or foe?
He was in doubt on this question and determined
to exercise the greatest care and caution.

He moved around in a semi-circular path to
the other side of the object that had attracted
his attention.  But he had scarcely done this
when the presence of another and similar
obstruction to his vision caused him to stop and
remain motionless.

This object was moving slowly and with
seeming caution toward the other one.  His
attitude and manner were not clear because of
the darkness, so that Irving could not interpret
his purpose from any such indication.

"Kamerad!"

This time there could be no mistake from
whom of the two scouts the salute came.  It
was from the one who apparently had thrown
his "persuader stick" away, the one who was
nearer the spot where he had seen Lieut. Tourtelle
during the illumination.

"What's he doing--surrendering?"

Irving might have suspected that the officer
in charge of this patrol was working a "boche
trick" on a boche if it had not been for the fact
that he had thrown his stick away.  But this
act made it appear that a panic had seized him
and he was signaling his desire to surrender
because he feared to enter into mortal combat
with the enemy scout.

"Why doesn't he retreat if he's afraid to
fight?" Irving wondered.  "He could do that
with perfect grace, for he's under orders not
to fight unless he has to.  But he seems to be
advancing right toward Heinie without any
reason for doing it.  Maybe he's going to shove
a pistol in that fellow's face, but it looks to me
more as if he's lost 'is senses from fright.
Anyway, I'm goin' to help 'im just for the sake of
Uncle Sam.  I'll hit that boche a tap on the
head that'll make 'im see the Star Spangled
Banner."

The boy with the club quickened his steps
silently, for he was skilled with the "moccasin
tread" even on hobnails.  Moreover, the softness
of the wet earth was in his favor.  In about
a minute he had stolen around behind the
boche, who was advancing cautiously toward
the "kamerad saluter."

He was morally certain that the soldier now
within ten feet of him was an enemy, but he
resolved to be very careful lest he attack one
of his own comrades.  So he continued to
approach with the utmost caution, hoping to
identify the fellow by an inspection of his uniform.
In the darkness this was an exceedingly difficult
thing to do, for there is a general similarity in
the make of the uniforms of soldiers of most
nations, so that when silhouetted they differ
very little to any but a keenly observing expert.

But Irving was not forced to depend alone
upon his vision in the darkness of the night to
verify his identification of the two patrol
scouts.  There was another salute in low tone,
and this time an answer was given.

"Kamerad!"

"Was willst du, hund?"

Crack!

The "persuader stick" in the hand of the
Yank swung with sharp impact against the
head of the boche just under his helmet.  The
"Canadian-hund" hater dropped in his tracks.





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.. _`THE TURTLE IS WOUNDED`:

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   CHAPTER V


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   "THE TURTLE" IS WOUNDED

.. vspace:: 2

The next instant Lieut. Tourtelle turned
and scuttled away as fast as he could
scuttle.  Irving's first impulse was to follow
him, but he checked it.

However, knowing well the pyramid fashion
in which boche patrols work in No Man's Land,
the boy governed his next actions with caution
that took this into consideration.  The man he
had just put hors de combat may have been
the "apex" of such a "pyramid," which is a
very treacherous sort of trap.  It is the game
of the "apex" to retreat and induce a lone
enemy scout to follow him if possible.  A short
distance on toward the boche trenches, perhaps
twenty or thirty feet apart, the distance
depending upon the darkness of the night, are
two more Heinies, who close in behind like
a pair of pincers as the intended victim passes
the line of their positions.  Still a little farther
on are two other soldiers, the "cornerstones"
of the "pyramid," who also close in upon the
victim just as the attack is made.  His capture
is inevitable.

Irving did not purpose to be caught in any
such trap; so he moved away twenty or thirty
feet from the scene of his victorious exploit
and waited and watched for developments.

They were not long coming.  Apparently the
Yank's suspicion of a "pyramid trick" was
not in error.  Apparently also the other
component parts of the man-trap had heard the
crack of Private Ellis's club on the head of
the "apex" of the "pyramid," for they soon
were gathered around the unconscious form of
their comrade and muttering a torrent of
"hund curses."

"Gee!  I must get back in a hustle and we'll
get those Huns," was Irving's next thought.
"No doubt they'll carry that fellow to their
trench, and necessarily they'll go pretty slow."

He scuttled back to the listening pit even
more rapidly, if possible, than "the turtle"
had scuttled, and soon was with his comrade
scouts.

"Is everybody here?" he asked in a whisper.

"Yes, you're the last one out," Lieut. Tourtelle
replied in, Irving fancied, a sneering tone.

"Then sweep that section right over
there"--indicating with his right hand.  "There are
several boches 200 yards in that direction carrying
in a comrade that I cracked on the head."

The other scouts had returned with information
of interest to the machine gunners,
and presently the "typewriters" were rattling
away with a hail of steel-jacketed messages.
Cries and groans from several quarters of the
arc swept by the guns indicated the effectiveness
of the firing.  Irving was rewarded for
his evening's work by hearing several evidences
of hits from the neighborhood of the scene of
his adventure.

After the firing, there was a quick retreat to
the Canadian front line.  They got back before
the Heinies were able to collect their wits and
concentrate an answering fire upon the pit
which undoubtedly they thought they had
recently converted into a combined shambles and
tomb.

This last statement is true, but misleading.
The patrol did not get back without some
punishment.  One machine gun of the enemy got
busy just before the scouts leaped back into
their trench.  Again we are misleading.  One
of the returning scouts did not leap into the
trench--he fell.  It was Lieut. Tourtelle.

Irving sprang to his aid, lifting the officer to
his feet and supporting him thus.  But his
efforts were of little use.  The wounded man
had fainted.

Another soldier offered assistance, and
together they carried him to a lighted dugout.
There speedy first-aid remedies brought the
wounded soldier back to consciousness, but it
was evident that he was severely injured.

A telephone call in the dugout soon brought
a team of stretcher bearers, and in a short time
Lieut. Tourtelle was being conveyed to a Red
Cross ambulance.

Next day Irving's left shoulder was so sore
that he was unable to use the arm.  He tried
to conceal his embarrassment, but it was
observed by Sergt. MacDonald, who reported it
to Lieut. Osborne.  Then followed an
examination, which proved that the young
American's shoulder was discolored and swollen as
a result of the wound he received following the
explosion of minnenwerfer No. 1 near the
listening pit early in the evening, and he was
ordered behind the lines for treatment.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A LITTLE HISTORY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A LITTLE HISTORY

.. vspace:: 2

Irving was not confined to an invalid's
couch at the hospital behind the Canadian
lines.  His left arm was put in a sling and his
shoulder bandaged in hot cloths, frequently
changed.  It was found that the stone that
struck him had strained and bruised the
muscles and ligaments severely, so that the
subsequent use of the arm had brought about a
condition resembling results of a bad sprain.

He was in the hospital a little over a week,
and although he was not subjected to any of
the heroic treatment that is administered to
many of the wounded, yet the exciting thrills
that had filled his short experience in trench
and No Man's Land with "lots of pep and
pepper" had a very fitting sequel in his hospital
sojourn, very much unlike the usual wearisome
wait of the wounded.

As we have intimated, Private Irving Ellis
was an American of the United States brand.
His home was in Buffalo, N.Y.  His father
was a ship captain employed by a company that
operated a line of passenger and freight
steamers on the Great Lakes.  As a result the boy
grew up a "fresh water tar."  He worked with
his father on the latter's boat most of the time
during the summer vacations after he reached
his teens.

The steamer of which Mr. Ellis had charge
touched at several Canadian as well as United
States ports.  In one of these lived an uncle of
Irving's, John Douglas, and the latter's family.

Mr. Ellis had married a Scotch Canadian
bride, and as both families lived near Lake
Erie, there was frequent visiting between them
back and forth across the mid-water line.

As a result, Irving's best chum of his schoolboy
days was his cousin, Bob Douglas.  They
were about the same age, and both were fond
of life on the lake.  Bob also was given work
under Mr. Ellis's command in the summer when
he became old enough to be of service on board.

Soon after England declared war against
Germany, Canada began the organization of an
army to aid her mother country in the great
fight, and Bob was one of the first to enlist.
On the day of his enlistment he wrote a long
letter full of fiery patriotism to his cousin over
in the United States, and perhaps you can
imagine the sensation this communication created
in the family of the steamboat captain.

But no, you can't, for the big sensation was
not immediate.  Of course, there was a good
deal of excitement among Irving's brothers and
sisters--two boys and two girls, all younger
than he.  Cousin Bob was a real hero in their
minds, and Irving envied him.  The violation
of the Belgian treaty, the storming of Liege
and the invasion of France across the Belgian
frontier were still fresh in the minds of the
people everywhere.  The "scrap of paper"
was still waving like a red flag in the face of
popular demand for the inviolability of
international honor.

Well, two days later, Irving electrified the
family circle at the breakfast table with the
announcement that he wished to enlist.
Nobody protested; nobody approved.  In fact,
Mr. Ellis had paved the way for his oldest son's
wish by expressing the opinion that the United
States would be drawn into the war before it
was over.  Even the younger children were so
imbued with a sense of the seriousness of the
great struggle as a result of things they had
heard father, mother, and older brother say,
that they just looked awed when Irving's
announcement came.

Mr. and Mrs. Ellis had too good sense of the
logic of things to start an argument to dissuade
their son from his unexpected desire.  They
rather decided upon a plan of silence, which
put an end to discussion of the war in their
household.  The radical change that suddenly
transformed the family conversations was
almost grewsome in its emptiness; the
substitution of silence for talk frequently became
embarrassing.  But there was one thing that
did not stop; that was the arrival of letters
from Bob.  They came almost with every mail,
and Irving devoured them eagerly.

At last the boy was able to stand the embarrassing
silence no longer, for the desire to take
part in the great struggle against the hosts of
a hated military power was growing every day.
Mr. and Mrs. Ellis saw the inevitable coming.
They knew that they would not forbid their
son to enlist when once they were convinced of
his deep-seated desire to do so.  They could
sacrifice their son for a great cause just as well
as for country.

"Father, mother, I want to go," the boy said
one day.

It was an isolated statement, that would have
been Greek to one not intimately familiar with
the campaign of silence that had preceded.  The
consent was given in silence and the subject
was not discussed again until Irving began to
make preparations for his departure.

He went to Canada and enlisted.  Partly
through a deliberately planned purpose and
partly by good fortune, he was able to get into
the regiment with which his cousin was
training and a few months later was aboard a
transport on a zig-zag, submarine-dodging course
for England.  After their arrival in France,
Irving because of his training in certain
technical lines was put in the engineering service,
but shortly before the occurrence of the events
already related herein, he succeeded in getting
a transfer back to his regiment on the plea
that he wished to do some real fighting.

Then for the first time he learned that his
cousin had been severely wounded and sent
back to Canada incapacitated for further
service several months before.  This information
came in a letter from Bob written at home.
Two weeks later, while Irving was in the
hospital recovering from the injury he received in
the listening pit in No Man's Land, another
letter came from his cousin, communicating a
seemingly innocent but strange bit of news
which was destined to have an important
bearing on Private Ellis's future experiences as
a soldier.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TOURTELLE APOLOGIZES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   TOURTELLE APOLOGIZES

.. vspace:: 2

But something remarkable and of great
importance, affecting Irving's soldier
career, took place between the time when he
entered the hospital and the time when he
received the second letter from his cousin at
home.  The deep significance of the event did
not develop at once, but the novelty of the thing
kept the attention of interest upon it until the
real meaning was uncovered.  From that time
on the young American soldier's war experiences
were a succession of thrills, surprises,
and dangerously interesting work.

The field hospital to which he was taken
consisted in part of a group of farm buildings that
might have served as the nucleus of a village a
short distance behind the rear battle line.
Everything was slow and uninteresting to him
during his first two days at this place.  Then
came the first incident in the chain of events
that was to mean so much to Private Ellis as
an American fighter in France.

He received a message from one of the guards
patrolling the grounds that a wounded officer
in one of the buildings wished to see him.  No
explanation as to why he had been sent for
was given by the bearer of the message.  The
head nurse of the building would direct him
to the man who wished to see him, he was
informed.

Wondering a little who the officer could be
and what was the nature of his interest in him,
Irving hastened to answer the call.  He was
conducted by a nurse upstairs in a former rural
residence and into a small room, little larger
than a closet and occupied by a single patient
on an army cot.

On the way he ran over, in his mind, the list
of officers with whom he could claim anything
in the nature of a personal acquaintance and
found it very small.  Moreover, he had not
known that any of these had been wounded.
In this review of acquaintances of both
commissioned and non-commissioned rank,
however, he missed one who should not have been
disregarded, although their intimacy had been
of anything but friendly nature.  This officer
he found lying on the cot in the little room
which he now entered.  It was Second
Lieut. Tourtelle.

The surprise became almost startling when
Irving saw the face of the "shavetail" brighten
up with a look of apparent eagerness as he
recognized the caller.  The nurse withdrew
immediately and the American soldier was left
alone with his strange "comrade enemy" of
No Man's Land.

"Hello, Ellis," the "second looie" greeted,
extending his right hand to his visitor and
making an effort to smile pleasantly.  "I sent
for you because I wanted to have a talk with
you.  Sit down on the edge of the cot.  Sorry
there's no chair here, but I'm not the housekeeper."

This latter "breath of levity" didn't sound
bad at all, and Irving began to have a vague
suspicion that there might be an intelligent side
to the nature of this young officer who had
behaved so brutally toward him.  However, he
indicated that he preferred to stand and waited
patiently for Tourtelle to continue.

"I called you to ask you to do me a favor,"
the wounded officer continued; "but first I want
to apologize for the way I treated you.  I won't
attempt to explain why I did it because I don't
know.  But I acted like a bum scoundrel and
ought to have been reported for it.  The fact
that you made no complaint against me shows
that you're a real man and makes me feel
ashamed of myself."

Irving was rather embarrassed by this
unexpected speech on the part of his supposed
"comrade-enemy."  He could not well reject
the profession of humility, and yet he was
uncertain just how to take it.  Lieut. Tourtelle
apparently desired to convey the impression
that he was suffering from pangs of deep
regret, but although the "pangs" twisted the
muscles of his countenance the visitor was
unable to convince himself as to the depth of
the patient's mental suffering.

"I hope you will forgive me, Ellis," the
injured soldier said after a few moments'
silence.  "I had a spell of very bad temper that
night and have regretted nay actions ever since.
If there's anything I can do to make it right,
I'll do it."

This seemed to be as much as any reasonable
person could ask under the circumstances; so
Irving replied:

"I'm sure I don't bear you any ill will under
the circumstances, lieutenant.  I admit I was
pretty much offended by what you did, but I'm
sure, after what you've just said, I can let
bygones be bygones.  We must remember that
we are fighting a common enemy and it is
ridiculous for us to be fighting one another.  We
ought rather to be helping one another."

"That's an excellent idea," Tourtelle declared.
"Now what would you say if I should
ask you to do something for me?  Would you
resent it?"

"I couldn't very well, after the principle I
just laid down," Irving answered with the
shadow of a smile; "provided it were reasonable,"
he added.

"Oh, I don't see how there's anything unreasonable
in it," the officer replied quickly.  "The
only thing is, you may think it a very odd
request, freakish perhaps.  But I think I can
explain it satisfactorily.  First, let me enlist
your sympathy a little by informing you that
my wound is more severe than was thought at
first.  I'm going to lose my left arm.  One of
the doctors told me today that it would have
to be amputated between the elbow and the shoulder."

"That's too bad," Irving said with evidence
of fellow feeling for the second lieutenant.  "If
there were anything I could do to save your
arm for you I'd surely do it.  But what's the
matter?"

"A bad compound fracture and gangrene.
The doctor said he'd have to cut it off today
or my whole system might be poisoned.  But
here's the favor I want you to do for me:

"When the doctor told me my arm would
have to be cut off, I asked him if it would be
possible to save the limb, so I could take it back
home with me."

Irving interrupted this statement with a
start of surprise.

"That's what the doctor did when I suggested
the idea to him," Tourtelle continued,
noting the effect of his suggestion.  "He wanted
to know why I wished to save the arm, and I
replied that it was for two reasons: first,
because I thought it would make an excellent
souvenir; second, because it was tattooed in a
very artistic manner and I don't want to lose
the art.  I'm of an artistic temperament, and
it would break my heart more to lose that bit of
tattooing on my arm than to lose the arm and
keep the art."

"I think I get you," said Irving with a smile.
"You want me to put the arm in alcohol and
preserve it, tattooing and all?"

"That's a clever inference, but not quite to
the point," Tourtelle commented without much
change of expression on his face.  "The doctor
offered a substitute suggestion, and that's what
I'm going to put to you now."

The patient paused a moment or two, and
Irving waited expectantly for the next development
in the strange narrative of novel events.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CUBIST ART`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   CUBIST ART

.. vspace:: 2

"Yes, I am of an artistic temperament,"
Lieut. Tourtelle continued in a sort of
dreamy way, which tended rather to give his
audience-of-one "the creeps" than to "soften
his soul," as art is supposed to do.

"If he's an artist, he ought to be painting
kaisers, crown princes, Hindenburgs, and
Ludendorfs with horns on their heads and
arrow-tipped tails," he thought grimly.  "But maybe
he means it all right.  Perhaps he really
believes he has artistic temperament, but hasn't
sized himself up right.  A few years ago I
thought I could write poetry, but found I
couldn't even write an acceptable advertisement
in verse for sentimental candy or floating
soap.  I'll humor 'im a while and see what's on
'is mind."

Tourtelle's mind was wandering now, either
with a purpose in view or because of a real
genius delusion.  He rambled along thus:

"I made a study of art ever since I was old
enough to daub with a little box of colors and
a paint brush.  When I was old enough to
attempt something better than a smear, I went
to an art school and there made quite a hit with
the professors with some of my novel ideas.
Then when that craze of the cubists and the
futurists swept the country a few years ago, I
took it up and made quite a hit with some of
my paintings.  One painting in particular, a
cubist production representing a basket of eggs
spilling down a stairway, was regarded as a
student masterpiece.  The praise I received
over that work intoxicated me, I guess, for I
caused a copy of it to be tattooed on my arm
by a fellow student.

"Well, the original was lost and I had only
the copy on my arm.  So, you see, I became
very fond of that copy, as the original was
acknowledged to be worthy of exhibition along
with masterpieces of well known painters.  By
the way, you remember something of that cubist
craze a few years ago, don't you?"

"Yes," Irving replied, "I remember something
about it.  There was a good deal about it
in the magazines.  I suppose I recall it because
it was so perfectly crazy.  Those artists seemed
to take great delight in making a human being
look as if he had gone through a threshing
machine and afterwards raided a hornet's nest."

"You've got the idea exactly--I mean the layman's
idea," said the self-styled cubist
enthusiastically.  "And I don't blame you, in a way.
But if you could only have got an artist's view
of the idea, you'd look at life a good deal
differently.  But that's neither here nor there.  Oh,
yes, it is, too--I forgot myself on the moment.
It's here--on my arm--and I want to save it.
Now, this is what the doctor told me to do.  He
told me to peel off the skin where the tattooing
is, as soon as the arm is sawed off.  That is, he
didn't tell me to do it myself, for I'd be in no
condition to perform such an operation on my
amputated limb.  He meant that's the way it
should be done.  But I don't believe he'd ever
look after the job himself.  He'd cut the arm
off while I'm under the influence of ether, and
that 'u'd be the last I'd ever see of it, including
the miniature copy of my painting.

"So I decided to get somebody else to look
after the matter, and that's what I called you
here for.  It isn't much of a job.  All you have
to do is to cut the skin around the tattooing and
peel it off, then pack it in salt to preserve it.
The doctor said it would peel off easily and that
salt packing would keep the skin and the
tattooed colors in good condition.  The nurse got
me a little box and some salt, so everything is
ready as soon as the doctor comes along with
his saw."

"When is he coming?" Irving inquired.

"Sometimes this afternoon, he said," Tourtelle
replied.  "What do you think about it,
Ellis?  Will you do me the favor?"

"Sure," the private answered with a smile.
"I'm sorry you're going to lose your arm, but
I'll take care of your cubist art for you with
pleasure.  I'm really very curious to see what
it looks like."

"I'd roll up my sleeve and show you, but
I'm afraid I'd hurt my arm," the "second
looie" said in response.

"Oh, no," Irving returned hurriedly, "I
wouldn't have you do that for anything.  But
I'll kind o' hang around until the surgeon
comes.  If I'm not here right on the dot, the
nurse'll be able to find me without much
trouble."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BOB'S LETTER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   BOB'S LETTER

.. vspace:: 2

Irving almost forgot that there had ever
been any difficulty between him and
Lieut. Tourtelle in contemplation of the novel service
he had promised to perform.  Perhaps his
remembrance of that trouble had been smothered
by his curiosity as to the character of this
tattooed copy of a "Basket of Eggs Spilling Down
Stairs."

The surgeon came at 3 o'clock in the
afternoon and got busy at once.  However, before
administering the ether, he acknowledged an
introduction to Private Ellis and promised to
"skin the tattoo off the arm" after the
amputation and turn it over to its delegated
caretaker.

Irving was permitted to be present during
the operation.  He watched with a good deal
of curiosity for a first vision of the cubist art
on the patient's arm, and was not at all
disappointed.  It surely was a clever piece of
work, from the point of view of a votary of this
sort of art.  This was the conclusion of all who
saw the operation, and it was the general
subject of conversation until the arm was removed.

The surgeon took more interest in the
subject now than he had taken at any time
previously.  This doubtless was due to the special
preparations made by the patient for the
preservation of the tattooed skin.  While the
ether was being administered by a nurse, he
bared the wounded arm and examined the
"copy of quaint art" with interest.

"What does he call this picture?" the
"military sawbones" asked as he gazed at the
seemingly unmethodical arrangement of distorted
"cubes" of all sorts of shapes and angles.

The patient was not yet unconscious,
although the nurse was dropping ether into the
mask covering his mouth and nose.  In a low
dreamy voice he answered the question thus:

"It's 'The Basket of Eggs Spilling Down
Stairs.'"

The surgeon and the two attending nurses
laughed at this answer.

"His mind is wandering under the anæsthetic,"
said the surgeon.

"No, it isn't," Irving interposed.  "He told
you the same thing he told me.  You see, he's
a cubist.  That's his idea of art.  That
tattooing on his arm is a copy of a picture painted
by him when he was a student in an art school.
That's the story he told me this morning."

The expression on the surgeon's face went
through a motion-picture metamorphosis while
the boy onlooker was making his statement.
First it indicated a kind of professional
resentment at the contradiction; then followed a wave
of incredulity, succeeded by an enigmatical
smirk.  As he cast a glance of still-smirking
amusement at young Ellis, the latter interpreted
it to mean that he questioned the sanity
of the patient.

"If I were to perform this operation in the
manner that cubists execute their art, he'd
probably want to sue me for malpractice," said
the scientific man as he finished preparation
for the use of the knife.

The operation was quickly performed, and
the surgeon obligingly peeled off the portion
of skin containing the cubist tattooing and
handed it to Irving.  The latter proceeded at
once to pack it in the box of salt provided for
the purpose, and said to the nurse in charge:

"I'll lay it here on the bed beside his pillow,
so that he'll find it when he wakes up.  Will
you please call his attention to it?"

The nurse promised to do as requested, and
Irving left the building and heard nothing more
of the incident for several days.  At last his
shoulder recovered from its lameness and he
was ordered back to the front.

Before returning to the trenches, however,
he received a letter from his cousin, Bob, that
stirred in him a thrill of excitement that no
sensational activities of battle could have
aroused.  The affair thus revealed over a
distance of thousands of miles confronted Irving
with what seemed at first a most remarkable
coincidence.  But the boy was unable to accept
it as such without first making an inquiry about
certain suspicious circumstances.  He
suspected at once that something was doing that
ought to be laid before army officials for
investigation.

"I'm getting along first rate, Irving," Bob
wrote.  "My wounds have all healed.  I was
pretty badly shot to pieces.  One of the bones of
my left leg was pretty much shattered.  They
thought, at first they'd have to amputate the
limb, but it was saved, thank goodness, although
the knee will always be stiff.  I had half a
dozen shell and machine gun wounds in my
body, too, though fortunately all of them were
well removed from vital spots.  But, although
these injuries were as bad as one would
care to receive, all of them together were not
nearly as dangerous or uncomfortable as the
dose of gas I got.  Believe me, Irving, I don't
want any more of that.  If you want my
opinion of it, I'll tell you I think it's more cruel
than submarine warfare where they sink
passenger ships without warning.  The doctors
thought for a while that I was going to have
the 'con,' but I'm about over the effects of my
dose now."

"Well, while I was convalescing, I had to
have some amusement--I mean after I was
able to be up and around, but hardly strong
enough to shovel snow.  Say, we've had some
awful heavy snow storms this winter.  Regular
blizzards, with snow over your shoetops when
you're standing on your head.  That's snowing
some, isn't it?

"Well, about the time I was able to get
around without doing myself any harm--the
gas effects kept me pretty weak quite a while,--I
went up to Toronto to visit some friends.  I
was invited up there by one of the boys who
was gassed at the same time I was.  He and
others had organized a 'Gas club,' consisting
of fellows who had been gassed in the war.
Grewsome idea, wasn't it?  But it took
famously.  They wanted me to join, and I went
up there and was initiated.

"Well, while I was up there, I saw considerable
outdoor life.  Several of us went hunting
on snowshoes one day, and that capped the
climax of my physical exertions.  I ought to
have been more careful, for I was not strong
enough yet for such life.  Well, I became ill on
the way, and the boys got me to a hospital in
the outskirts of the city and a physician
examined me.  The doctor said there was nothing
serious the matter with me, only over-exertion
in my weakened condition, so I did not notify
father and mother.

"Two days later the doctor said I was in
good enough condition to leave the hospital,
but advised me to go straight home and not try
any more such vigorous exercise until I was
in condition to return to the trenches.  This
was in the evening, and I decided to remain
in the hospital until morning.  I was sitting
up when the doctor called, and after he left I
went out into the hall to find a telephone to call
up my friend and tell him of my plan to return
home next day.

"The building is an old brick structure that
undoubtedly would have been condemned for
hospital purposes if the interior woodwork had
not been of the best material and well put
together.  However, the layout was decidedly
old-fashioned and confusing to one accustomed to
modern architecture.  Anyway, I got lost, so
to speak, in the hall while trying to find my
way to the stairway.

"I found a stairway, but soon realized that
it was not the one I wanted, and was about to
turn back, when something caught my attention
and held it for several minutes.  I was on
a kind of half-floor landing before an entrance
into a low rear addition, and from that position
found myself gazing into a laboratory in which
something very strange was going on.  Three
men were in the room, one of them little more
than a boy and in the khaki uniform of a
soldier; the other two in civilian clothes.  In the
upper half of the door were two glass panels,
through which I could see very clearly, and the
transom over the door was swung partly open.

"There was something peculiar about the
two older men which almost fascinated me.
Both had a decidedly foreign look.  One was
smooth-shaven, except for a heavy kaiser
mustache; the other, the older of these two, wore
a full beard.

"The young fellow in khaki was seated on
a chair, with his left arm bared above the elbow,
resting on a table.  The other two men were
working over the arm in a most studious
manner.  Over them was a brilliant calcium light
which illuminated their work.  I could see the
arm very plainly and it took me only a minute
or two to determine what the two older men
were doing to it.

"They were tattooing the arm, and a most
remarkable kind of tattooing it was.  They
were extremely careful with their work and
progressed slowly.  Judging from the care they
took and the slowness with which they
progressed, they must have worked on that arm
several days.  Also, spread out before them,
was a small sheet of white paper, to which they
referred frequently.

"It is hard to describe to you the appearance
of the result of their work, but I'll send you a
copy of the original they were working from
and explain how I got it.  I think you'll agree
with me that it looks more like a piece of
kindergarten patchwork than anything else
imaginable.

"While I was gazing in a kind of fascination
at the strange scene, the man with the kaiser
mustache turned suddenly and saw me.  His
next movement was just as sudden and much
more astonishing.  He sprang to the door, flung
it open, and before I could realize what was
taking place he had seized me by the arm and
was dragging me into the laboratory.  I
struggled to prevent him from getting me inside,
but, because of my weakened condition, was
unsuccessful.  My next impulse was to cry out
for help, but the situation seemed to me so
ridiculous that I decided I would only make
myself look foolish by so doing.  This hospital
was surely a highly respectable institution, I
reasoned, and the misunderstanding of which I
was a victim would soon be cleared up.
Perhaps these men thought I was a spying
meddler bent on some malicious mischief.

"After they got me inside--for the other
men sprang to my captor's assistance--they
closed and locked the door, also the transom,
and began to quiz me as to what I was doing
out in the hall.  I was too sore at their
treatment of me to give an explanation and
demanded what they meant by their actions.  I
saw that they were very uneasy about
something and that made me bolder.  It soon
dawned upon me that they had been doing
something that they wanted to keep secret.
That resolved me to get back at them with
interest, and while they were busy with their
excited demands, I got my wits together to
devise some sort of trick that would show them
it wasn't quite so easy to browbeat me as they
seemed to imagine.

"All three of them huddled together right
in front of me and rained questions at me
excitedly.  This suited me first rate as soon
as I had decided what to do.  I wasn't afraid
of any desperate violence on their part; the
place was too public for that.  I retreated slowly
to the table at which they had been working
and leaned back resting my hands on it.  They
never caught on to what I was up to, but pressed
close to me with their excited questions.  I met
these with noncommittal replies, and at the
same time got one hand closer and closer to
the mysterious slip of paper on the table.  It
was not more than six inches long and three
wide, and I figured that if I could get one hand
on it I might crumple it in my fist without their
observing what I was doing.  After I had been
dragged into the room, I saw the young fellow
hurriedly draw down the sleeve of his shirt
over the tattooed portion of his forearm.  He
seemed so nervous while doing this that my
suspicion of something wrong became very
acute; and yet, the mystery could hardly have
been more baffling.

"Well, I got my hand on the paper and crumpled
it in my fist, and they never got onto my
trick, at least, not until I got out of that room
and away from them.  I was now ready to
answer their questions.  I told them I was a
patient in the hospital and was just trying to
find my way to the office and started down the
wrong stairway--that was all there was to it.
I then demanded that they release me at once
or I would make serious trouble for them.
They asked me my name, and I told them.  Then
the bearded man left the laboratory, and I
presume he went to the office to make inquiry about
me, for he came back in a few minutes and
reported that he guessed I was all right.  But
they held a whispered conversation in
German--I caught enough of their words to be sure
of that--and then told me I might go.  But
before the door was unlocked, the bearded man
apologized, as nearly as I can remember, in
the following words:

"I hope you will forgive our rough
conduct, but we are engaged in very important
government work, and when we saw you
looking through the glass at us and apparently
listening to our conversation, we presumed you
were a German spy.  You have satisfied us that
you are all right, and we recommend that, as
you love your country and wish to aid us to
win the war, you keep this affair strictly to
yourself."

"I was astonished and more confused than
ever.  That statement convicted them of
something on the face of it, but of what I
could not conjecture.  The idea that a
responsible secret agent of the government should
make such a speech as that under any
circumstances was simply ridiculous.  I was mighty
sure they were not doing work for the
government.  They were trying to cover something
up, but what I could make no rational guess.

"I decided not to remain in the hospital any
longer than it would take to get my few
belongings together and pay my bill.  I was afraid
they would discover the loss of the paper I had
stolen.  Well, I got out of that place so rapidly
that I had everybody staring at me who beheld
my movements.

"I went to a hotel, but I am dead sure I was
followed.  In the morning when I went down
to breakfast I was conscious of being watched.
I telephoned to my friend, but while in the
booth I glanced about with apparent
unconcern and caught one of my shadowers looking
in my direction over the top of a newspaper
from a seat in the hotel lobby.  I met my friend,
but said nothing to him about my adventure.
I wanted to get back home as soon as possible.
I wasn't in condition physically to undergo any
great strain.

"At last I was on the train and speeding
toward home, but hadn't covered more than
half of the journey when I discovered that
one of my shadowers was making the journey
with me.  He got off when I got off and for
several days had a room in one of our local
hotels.  I talked the matter over with father
and we came to the conclusion that I had fallen
into a nest of the kaiser's spies.  We examined
the paper I had taken from the table in the
laboratory of the Toronto hospital and I made
a copy of it.  Then we went to the chief of
police and I told nay story to him.  He said the
matter ought to be taken up with government
officials and asked me to let him show the
mysterious paper in my possession to them.  I had
expected this, and gave him the paper.

"A few days later I read in a newspaper
that the hospital had been raided by government
agents.  Also, I saw nothing more of the
fellow who had followed me from Toronto after
I made my report to the chief of police.

"Now, what do you think of all this?  Isn't
it some adventure?  I'm sending to you, just
for your amusement, a copy of the drawing on
the paper that I stole from the hospital
laboratory.  Can you make anything out of it?  It
may afford you some diversion during long,
dreary watches in camp, trench or dugout."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DOTS AND DASHES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   DOTS AND DASHES

.. vspace:: 2

Not more than a minute after reading this
letter and examining the slip of paper
that accompanied it, Irving said to himself:

"This drawing is very similar to the cubist
tattooing on the arm of Lieut. Tourtelle."

He studied over the matter a little more and
then added:

"I believe that both were made from the
same copy, or original."

A little more puzzling over the problem
caused him to supplement thus:

"It looks very much as if Tourtelle and the
soldier who bared his arm over the table in
the hospital laboratory are one and the same
person."

The suggestion startled the boy as a realization
of the logical sequence flashed in his mind.

"Gee whillikens!" he exclaimed.  "That
means that his story about being an art student
and about the tattooing of that picture on his
arm by one of his fellow students is a fake.  But
why should he have faked it?  Why wouldn't
the truth have served his purpose just as well?"

Irving was at battalion headquarters,
awaiting orders, which were expected to come after
sundown, to move forward into the trenches.
While reading the letter he was seated on the
log of a tree that had been literally uprooted
by a concentrated shell fire at this point a week
or two before.  Nobody else was interested in
what he was doing and he was too much
preoccupied to feel much interest in anybody right
now except the mysterious Lieut. Tourtelle and
his equally mysterious "amputation souvenir."

"Now," continued the boy, resuming his
reasoning soliloquy, "if he told me a fake story
about being an art student and having one of
his fellow students copy one of his pictures on
his arm, what was the motive?  He wanted to
deceive me, of course, but why?  I'll have to
leave that question unanswered for the present,
I'm afraid.  If I could get at his real reason
for wanting that picture tattooed on his arm,
I might feel some encouragement in trying to
get at his motive in deceiving me.  There's no
doubt the picture on his arm is practically the
same as the copy on this paper.  I shouldn't
wonder if they were the same size, drawn with
precisely the same dimensions.  Supposed to
represent a basket of eggs spilling down stairs.
What a ridiculous title.  I'm sure I'd have
hard work picking out the basket and the
smashed eggs.  It looks to me almost as if
someone had pinned this paper up on a wall and
fired a lot of eggs at it--and hit it, too, every
crack.  After all, it's the best title to a cubist
art picture I ever heard of.  I remember our
teacher gave us a talk about that kind of art
and showed us some copies of cubist paintings
in magazines at the time when everybody was
gossiping--yes, that's the word--about cubist
art.  And we surely had a lot of fun over it.

"Tourtelle told me that another student
tattooed that picture on his arm.  Bob's
description of the scene in the hospital laboratory
makes that 'second looie' look very much like
a liar.  I take it from this letter that both of
those men were pretty well advanced in years.
Art students as a rule are younger people.
Moreover, students wouldn't act so strangely
just because they suspected somebody of
secretly watching them at their work.  Then,
again, Bob says the government raided that
hospital.  What for?  Enemy agents, of course;
there could be no other reason.  And this raid
followed Bob's report of his experience to the
police.  Plain as daylight.  And yet, what
possible connection can there be between enemy
spies and cubist art?  I give it up."

Irving would have liked to make a report of
some kind concerning the web of strange events
that clung in confusing tangle to the mystery
of the ridiculous tattooing recently peeled from
the amputated arm of Lieut. Tourtelle, but the
more he studied over the matter, the more
probable it appeared to him that such action on his
part would be unwise.  His conclusions must of
necessity be exceedingly vague.  He could not
figure out a motive in any way explaining the
apparently eccentric ideas and actions of the
"hobby ridden second lieutenant."  Yes, that
phrase characterized Tourtelle exactly when
the spy suspicion contained in Bob's letter was
dismissed, and undoubtedly the average officer,
unless he be of a very suspicious nature, would
take that view of it.

"I'd be laughed at if I made a report of
this affair without being able to place my finger
on anything more definite than I seem to be able
to single out now," he concluded.  "So I guess
I'll have to keep this thing to myself or else
whittle my wits to a sharper point than I have
been able to whittle them thus far."

About an hour after nightfall Irving returned
to the front line trenches together with
seventy-five or a hundred other soldiers who
constituted a relief shift, to take the place of a
like number of tried and muscle-cramped boys
whose capacity for efficient service was in need
of recuperation.  The sector was quiet on this
occasion and the relief exchange was effected
without notable incident.  In fact, conditions
were such that it was considered safe to permit
most of the soldiers to sleep under ground of
sentries here and there along the trenches and
in listening posts out in No Man's Land.

But Irving did not "sleep a wink," although
general conditions were favorable for sleep in
the dugout where he wrapped himself in a
blanket and attempted to follow the reposeful
example of half a dozen comrades with little
on their minds save the ordinary routine of
bloody battle in the past and prospect of much
more fight and blood in the future.  No
mystery racked their minds, and they rested
peacefully enough.  With Private Ellis, however, it
was different, and in a very few minutes after
he lay down a plausible solution of the puzzle
that had been teasing him for several hours
popped into his brain with startling suddenness
and rendered sleep about as impossible to
him as peaceful surrender was to outraged
Belgium.

After the excitement of the first thrill was
over, Irving was unable to trace the process by
which he arrived at his conclusion.  After all,
"process" is too slow a word to use in this
relation.  "The first thing he knew," his mind
had jumped from the rough pen sketch of the
cubist art drawing in his pocket to the tattooed
copy as he had seen it on Tourtelle's arm.  A
moment later he found himself almost weirdly
interested in the recollection of a marked
difference in these two copies which had not
impressed him before.

Then came a new thrill of eagerness, followed
by incredulity, then eagerness and incredulity
battling for supremacy, over a suspicion that
would not be downed in spite of its almost
laughable character.  Could it be possible?
Yes, no, yes, no--back and forth the contradictions
swung.  But one thing was certain; Irving
recalled it distinctly: In the maze of
configurations of "distorted cubes" were myriads
of dots and dashes, dots and dashes.  What
could they mean?  If the theory which forced
itself upon him was correct there was only one
reasonable solution of the whole mystery.

The boy in the dugout could scarcely contain
his excitement as the seemingly logical
explanation of the mystery "dotted and dashed"
itself into a position of settled conviction in his
mind.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IRVING TELLS THE SERGEANT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   IRVING TELLS THE SERGEANT

.. vspace:: 2

"Dots and dashes, dots and dashes, dots
and dashes," kept running through Irving's mind.

He took Bob's letter from his pocket and
drew from the envelope the paper containing
his cousin's copy of "The Basket of Eggs
Spilling Down Stairs."

"Bob drew this in a hurry, or at least he had
no appreciation of the value of minute details
which, I believe, are more important than a
thousand baskets of eggs," the young soldier mused
as he gazed at the cleverly drawn, but rather
inaccurate, copy in the light of the trench lamp.
"He disregarded most of those clots and dashes,
except in a few places, thinking, I suppose, that
continuous lines would do just as well.  And he
was right so far as the picture is concerned.
In fact, I believe those dots and dashes that
were on Tourtelle's arm detracted from the art
of the artist, if I may pose as an art critic; but
for the purpose intended they are absolutely
essential.

"Now, I wish I could get hold of an officer
who would listen to me and maybe I could start
an investigation that would result in something
worth while.  But Sergt. Wilson, who messes
in here, is out with some other men in a listening
post and I'm sure it would be better to approach
the lieutenant through him.  That means I've
got to wait here probably until morning before
I can get this great weight of responsibility off
my mind."

And that was exactly what he did.  He lay
there thinking over and over again the events
of his own and his cousin's adventures
concerning Lieut. Tourtelle.  There was no use of his
attempting to slumber, and it was not long
before he gave up the idea entirely.  However,
he was in no great need of sleep, inasmuch as
he had almost reveled in the luxury of rest ever
since he was ordered to the field hospital for
treatment of his shoulder.

Through all the rest of the night, Irving
continued to review and analyze the strange case
of "freak art."  And perhaps it was fortunate
that he had ample opportunity to do this, for
it is quite possible that otherwise he would
not have had certain important points
sufficiently in mind to make a strong and
convincing case when at last he found opportunity to
make his report.

"It seems to me those dots and dashes explain
Tourtelle's anxiety to keep that tattooing
on his arm," the boy mused.  "Now, if he's a
spy, he was putting over just a clever 'con
game' when he sent for me and begged my
forgiveness and then asked me to do him a favor.
After all, I've got to admit that that fellow is
pretty smooth.  No, I don't think he overdid
it at all.  I did think it a little strange when he
followed his plea for forgiveness with a request
that I do him a favor.  But the favor was so
simple, although unusual enough, goodness
knows, and there appeared to be so little
opportunity for him to trick me into something I
wouldn't like to do, that it seemed foolish for
me to hesitate.  It looks now as if he tricked
not only me, but the surgeon and nurses, too.
I wonder what that surgeon would say if he
knew that a spy had made clever use of him to
prevent a very deep enemy plot from going to
pieces at a time when the bottom was about to
drop out of it.  He'd be a lot sorer, I bet, than
he was when I contradicted him after he said
Tourtelle's mind was wandering under the
anæsthetic.

"'A Basket of Eggs Spilling Down Stairs'--that's
some name for a painting.  I wonder
what's behind it.  Now, it's just possible that
that name's written somewhere in cipher in the
picture, and maybe a key goes with it and that
key applied to the name will produce the
message he's carrying to the enemy.  I suppose
he'll watch his opportunity and--

"My goodness!"

Irving uttered this exclamation aloud and
the sound of his voice awoke one of the sleepers
in the dugout, who asked what was the matter.
The soliloquist replied "nothing," that he had
merely startled himself with a "bright idea,"
whereupon the awakened soldier grumbled,
"You're a nut," and rolled over and went to
sleep again.

"I wonder if the sergeant will call me a nut,
too, when I tell him my story," Irving reflected
a little apprehensively.  "In spite of the way
everything fits into everything else as logically
as can be, the whole account is bound to sound
a good deal like a fairy story.  Sometimes I
feel like giving it up and casting the whole
affair out of my mind, but--but--I can't.  Now,
that idea that made me burst out like a 'nut,' as
that soldier called me, fits in just as pat as can
be with all he rest.  It looks, it looks, yes, sir,
it looks just as if Tourtelle was trying to
surrender out in No Man's Land the other night
when we were scouting there together.  I don't
know how I can prove it, but it's plain enough
to me, unless my whole theory falls down, and I
don't see how it can."

At last, shortly before the break of day,
reliefs were sent to the various sentry posts,
and Sergt. Wilson returned to the dugout with
several other men.  Irving seized the first
available opportunity to tell the "non com" that he
had some important information that he wished
to "get off his mind," and they withdrew to
one side of the underground room to talk the
matter over.

In a few minutes Private Ellis had Sergt. Wilson
interested by his simple, direct method
of presenting his subject.  In fifteen minutes,
the boy had finished his narrative and turned
over his cousin's letter to the officer to read.
The latter pored with intense interest over not
only the epistle but the accompanying copy of
the mysterious "Basket of Eggs Spilling Down
Stairs."  Presently he said:

"You've got something very important here,
Ellis.  I'm going to see Lieut. Osborne right
away.  I think you had better come along.
Unless I'm badly mistaken this matter will get to
the major in a very short time and something
important will be doing."

The sergeant climbed up out of the dugout
into the trench, and Irving followed, and soon
they were making their way to another similar
excavation which was the headquarters of
Lieut. Osborne.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`QUIZZING A SPY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   QUIZZING A SPY

.. vspace:: 2

Sergt. Wilson's prediction that Private
Ellis's spy story would go to the major of
the battalion was more than realized.  Affairs
moved rapidly from the time when the
non-commissioned officer got a clear idea of the
importance of the situation.  He and Irving
made a rapid transit from their trench cave
to the dugout where Lieut. Osborne was
stationed, and there the story was repeated.  The
lieutenant was interested at once and took the
matter up with the captain.  The latter
instructed the lieutenant to remain at the
telephone until he could communicate with his
superior officers.

There followed a wait of rather nervous
expectancy for Irving.  It really was not more
than half an hour, although it seemed much
longer to the young soldier who made the
original complaint.  At last, however, came a ring
of the muffled telephone bell, and Lieut. Osborne
lifted the receiver to his ear.  He listened
a minute or two, then hung up the receiver and
said:

"Ellis, you and I are ordered to proceed to
the hospital and confront this young spy of
yours with the fact that we have the goods on
him.  The captain communicated with the
major, and the major with the colonel; so, you
see, your story has gone up to the head of the
regiment.  Sergt. Wilson, I am going to leave
you here in my place while I'm gone.  I hope to
be back before nightfall.  If I'm delayed longer
than I expect to be, I'll communicate with you
by 'phone.  Ellis, we'll start at once.  The
colonel has ordered an automobile to be ready
to meet us at the nearest relief station back of
the lines.  Come on."

In a few minutes the officer and the private
were racing through the nearest communication
trench, which was deep, sinuous and well
camouflaged, on past the second and third lines
to the relief station just beyond a small inn
covered with a growth of trees and a thicket of
tall bushes.  The promised automobile was
waiting for them, and they were soon speeding
away toward the field hospital which, in the
last hour, as a result of Private Ellis's story,
had become a center of very serious interest in
a strange admixture of an elaborate spy system
and "high art."

Lieut. Osborne and his companion were both
apprehensive lest they find the second
lieutenant in condition so weakened that it would be
inadvisable to subject him to the strain of a
"third degree."  They discussed this possibility
on the way, and the officer decided that he
would broach the subject gently in order to
avoid the danger of defeating their purpose
through a physical and mental collapse of the
patient.

But Lieut. Tourtelle proved to have
withstood the shock of the operation much better
than might have been expected.  They found
him looking really bright and vigorous.
Apparently he had had the best of care and had
rested well.  Nevertheless, Lieut. Osborne
called a nurse aside and asked her to administer
a stimulant to him, as he had important
business with the patient under instructions from
the commander of the regiment.  The nurse did
as requested without arousing any suspicion in
the "cubist art spy."

"This is quite a surprise to receive a visit
from a superior officer under such
circumstances, and I'm sure it's very much
appreciated," Tourtelle remarked after he had
answered several questions put by Lieut. Osborne
regarding his condition and the attention he
was receiving.

"The occasion fully warrants our coming to
see you," the superior officer replied in a
purposely peculiar tone of voice.  Tourtelle noticed
it and looked inquiringly at Lieut. Osborne.

"Private Ellis told me about that art souvenir
that was peeled off your arm and I have
come to see it," continued the leader of the
"visiting expedition."

Tourtelle shot a furtive, searching glance at
each of his callers.  These glances did not
escape the observation of either the officer or
the private, for both were looking for evidence
of this sort; but they were well on their guard
and did not betray, by the slightest expression,
any evidence of what was going on in their minds.

"Of course you have it here," Lieut. Osborne
continued in tone of assurance.  "Ellis tells me
he laid it by the side of your pillow and asked
the nurse to call your attention to it after you
came out from the effects of the anæsthetic."

Plainly enough Tourtelle was struggling
within himself over something, and his
visitors did not have much trouble convincing
themselves what it was.  But finally he settled
the problem tentatively in favor of the evident
inevitable and replied:

"Yes, of course, I have it here, only I hate to
unpack it; but if your curiosity over a freak
idea is uncontrollable, I must submit.  I'm very
jealous over that affair, because the average
person is utterly incapable of appreciating it
and would only laugh at me."

"Oh, you needn't be afraid of our doing
anything of the kind," returned the lieutenant
reassuringly.  "We're deeply interested, both
of us."

"You must be profoundly interested if you
can leave your places at the battle front just to
inspect a sample of what most people would
call freak art.  You didn't call a truce and sign
an armistice just for this, did you?"

The lieutenant realized by this time, as
Irving had realized before, that he was dealing
with a young fellow of no puny intelligence.
Tourtelle, although signifying willingness to
do as requested, was evidently fencing with
weapons of jest and banter, intended to be
accepted as conversational pleasantry.  He
made no motion as yet to produce the box
containing the tattooed section of skin packed in
salt.

"No," the visiting officer replied quietly;
"but I'm sure you won't disappoint me after
I've gone to the trouble to get permission from
the colonel to come here and see that remarkable
curiosity that Ellis says you possess.  Where
is it?--under your pillow?"

Lieut. Osborne made a move as if to reach
under the pillow.  The patient made no motion
to object; he maintained a passiveness of
manner which the inspecting officer accepted as an
admission as to the whereabouts of the article
of interest.  The next moment the box was
produced from its "hiding place," for Irving and
the lieutenant were certain that when Tourtelle
put it under the pillow his purpose was
primarily to conceal it from inquisitive eyes.

The officer opened the box and poured the
contents out on a paper lying on the floor.  Then
he picked out the "cubist parchment" and
gazed at it with deep interest.

"By the way, Lieut. Tourtelle," he said after
an inspection lasting a minute or two, "would
you mind telling me what these dots and dashes
mean in this work of art?  They look to me
like letters of the Morse telegraph code."

As he spoke he looked sharply at the soldier
on the cot, whose face in an instant became an
interesting study of struggling effort to appear
calm and curious and only superficially
concerned.  Irving realized, however, that
Lieut. Osborne was getting down to business without
any preliminary foolishness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TOURTELLE ADMITS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   TOURTELLE ADMITS

.. vspace:: 2

"Nonsense," replied Tourtelle, with
remarkable calmness, after what must
have been a desperate effort at self-control.
"Nothing of the kind.  I drew the original
picture and I don't know the first thing about
telegraphy."

"But it's here," Lieut. Osborne insisted.
"I've had a course in wireless and can read the
code like a book.  Let me read some of it to
you--'h-e-f-c-k-a-w-r-t-m-c-a-a-b-l'--and so on,
all around every one of these cubes."

"Is that so?" exclaimed the patient, rising
slightly on his remaining elbow, but falling
back.  "Let me see it.  I never noticed that.
Bickett must have put one over on me if you're
right.  Bickett was the student who tattooed
the picture on my arm."

"Where was that tattooing done?" asked
Lieut. Osborne.

"In our room in Montreal," replied Tourtelle,
without hesitation.  "He and I roomed
together and attended art school."

"You're sure it wasn't in a laboratory of a
hospital in Toronto?" was the inquisitor's next
query.

This was too much for the bedridden "second
looie."  He opened his mouth as if to speak,
but his jaw dropped and remained in its
lowered position half a minute as if paralyzed.
At last, however, he managed to find his voice
again, but it came with a succession of
stammers.

"Wh--wh--why," he said, with a brave
enough effort to transform confusion into
astonishment.  "Wh--wh--what do you mean?  I--I
don't understand you.  You talk like a sphinx.
I hope you're not questioning my word.  I can't
understand what your motive can be.  But
maybe you're making sport of me.  If I told
you that I was born in--in New Brunswick,
would you try to make out it was in Saskatchewan?"

"Not unless the fellow who was seized out
in the hall and dragged into the laboratory
should appear suddenly and contradict your
statement," the investigating officer answered.
"By the way, did you know the hospital was
raided by government agents a few days after
the tattooing operation?"

By this time, Tourtelle, who must have realized
the gravity of the situation, had summoned
all the nerve needed to provide him with a bold
front to meet the emergency.  He just sat and
stared blankly at his visitors.

"Why don't you answer?" Lieut. Osborne demanded.

"Because I haven't the faintest idea what
you're driving at," Tourtelle replied, with well
assumed mystification.  "But I'm sure of one
thing, or rather one of two things, and that is
that either somebody has put you on a very bum
steer, or you have got things very badly twisted.
You'll have to straighten matters out some way
or else stop this line of questioning, for I don't
know how to answer you except by denying
absolutely more than half you say."

"Now, see here, Tourtelle," returned the visiting
officer severely; "this camouflage of yours
has gone far enough.  I came here to get from
you an admission of the main truth and some
additional information.  I already have all the
proof needed to convict you of being a spy.
Unless you do what I ask you to do, undoubtedly
you will be courtmartialed and shot.  Now,
the question is, do you want to save yourself
from such a fate?"

"That is a grave accusation," Tourtelle
answered icily.  "At any rate, I'll listen to the
evidence you have against me.  Suppose you
tell me what it is."

"It's right here in this," Lieut. Osborne
replied, unhesitatingly, holding up the section
of skin containing the tattooed outlines of
strange art.  "You have here a message of
secret information for someone on the other
side of the Rhine.  I want to know whom it is
for and the substance of the message."

"But how do you figure that I could get it
into the hands for whom it is intended,
admitting for the sake of argument that you are
correct in your inference?" the soldier on the bed
inquired.

"By surrendering to our enemy at the first
opportunity," was the answer.  "That's what
you tried to do out in No Man's Land the
night you were wounded."

This was a new startler for the wounded spy,
as was evident from the expression on his
countenance.  After a few moments of undoubtedly
painful meditation, he continued:

"Again, just for the sake of argument, how
could I be certain that you would keep your
word after promising to save my life if I acted
according to your instruction?"

"All you have is my word for it and your
own common sense.  If you give us some
valuable information that could not have been
obtained otherwise, it stands to reason--doesn't
it?--that we'd forget that you'd been a spy,
particularly so if the value of your information
was greater than your menace as a spy."

"All right, I'll admit I'm a spy," said
Tourtelle, a little doggedly; "but I'm not going to
tell you anything until I have more authoritative
assurance that I'll not be courtmartialed."

"I don't mean to assure you that you won't
be courtmartialed," Lieut. Osborne answered,
hastily.  "I mean that I will intercede for you.
Moreover, there is no evidence that can be
produced against you except through Private Ellis
and me.  We have the information, and will
either produce it or keep it under cover as we
see fit."

"But suppose I really have no information
of great value; suppose I'm merely a bearer
of a cipher message, which I can't read and
don't even know the person to whom it is
addressed--what then?"

"I don't ask anything impossible," the
inquisitor replied.  "All I want is a
straight-forward story from you, with all details.  If
you keep anything back or lie to me, I'm very
likely to find it out, and then you'll fare worse
than if you refused point blank to enter into
an agreement with me."

"All right," said Tourtelle, "I suppose I
may as well give in, for you seem to have some
real information, although I can't understand
where or how you got it.  Anyway, here's my story:





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TOURTELLE'S STORY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   TOURTELLE'S STORY

.. vspace:: 2

"I must first tell you who I am,"
Lieut. Tourtelle began, after some moments'
deliberation.  Ordinarily his countenance was
almost expressionless, for he belonged to a
certain type of pulseless-souled humanity that
talks little with the face, except through that
orifice where the tongue wig-wags the signals
of the mind.  But on this occasion, he looked
not only serious, but seriously concerned over
his predicament.  Before he got farther with
his introduction, however, Lieut. Osborne
interrupted him with this warning:

"I want to urge you, Tourtelle, to be very
careful to tell the truth and the whole truth,
because you are surely going to get yourself
into trouble if you don't.  We know a good
deal more than I have told you, and I promise
you that I have some information on which I
can catch you if you tell me any lies."

"You needn't be afraid of my lying to you,"
the spy returned quickly; "for, to tell the truth,
I'm sick of this whole business.  I wish I'd
never got into it, and if I succeed in getting out
with a whole skin, I'll admit I'm glad you
caught me.

"I've done a whole lot of thinking since I
agreed to put this thing over or try to put it
over.  There's a lot of difference between
sitting still and dreaming how you love your
father's fatherland before he emigrated, and
plotting in the midst of your fellow countrymen
to help a lot of tyrants whom you've never seen
on the other side o' the world.  I didn't think
of that until I got up to my neck in this
business and found it almost impossible to get out.

"You see, my father was an Austrian, and
my mother was from Alsace-Lorraine.  Both
of them died when I was five or six years old
and I was adopted by a brother of my father,
also an Austrian, of course.  By the way, my
name is not Tourtelle and never was.  That
was just a bit of camouflage, so that I might
pass as being of French descent.  My real name
is Hessenburg.  My uncle was most bitterly
anti-British in this war, and is yet.  He was a
man of considerable means and position in the
business world, was a member of the board
of directors of that hospital in Toronto where
my arm was tattooed.  Yes, that hospital was
a hotbed of spies, and I'm glad they raided it.

"I wasn't taken into the confidence of the
high-ups in the spy organization in Canada, but
I know it was a big one.  I suppose they thought
I was too young to be trusted with any more
information than was necessary to make me
useful.  And for that reason, you see, they did
not translate to me the message that was
tattooed on my arm, and they didn't give me the
key to work out the cipher.  Besides, I'm no
telegrapher.  You'll understand, therefore,
that they didn't pick much of an expert to
carry their message."

"Didn't you know that there were telegraphic
characters in that picture on your
arm?" asked Lieut. Osborne.

"Yes, or rather I suspected it pretty
strongly," was the reply.

"And you don't know what the message is?"

"No, I don't."

"Haven't you any idea?"

"Well, yes, I have an idea, but it's pretty
vague.  I overheard a little of a conversation
not intended for my ears, and from that I got
the notion, or perhaps it's only a suspicion,
that the message contains the British naval or
aeronautical wireless code."

"At any rate, it's of great importance,"
suggested Lieut. Osborne.

"Oh, there's no doubt about that," Tourtelle,
or Hessenburg, assured.

"Are you an artist?" was the inquisitor's
next question.

"Yes, I am; that is, I was an art student,
and the story I told Ellis about making a hit
with a cubist painting is true.  That's what
started the scheme of tattooing a picture
message on my arm."

"Who suggested it?"

"One of the fellows who did the work.  He
was something of an artist as well as a chemist.

"The fellow with whiskers?"

"Yes," replied the spy.  "I see you have had
a pretty thorough report of that affair."

"We have.  Did you know that the boy who
was seized in the hall and dragged into the
laboratory left with the pen-and-ink sketch of
your painting crumpled up in his hand?"

"No.  Is that what became of it?  One of
the men suggested that he must have stolen it,
but I didn't think he was right."

"Did you know they put detectives on his track?"

"No.  Did they?"

"That's what they did.  And that is probably
the reason why the hospital was raided
a few days later.  If they hadn't followed him,
the boy probably would have passed the matter
up and dismissed it from his mind.  But he
became restlessly curious and reported the
affair to the police."

"Hm!"  Tourtelle grunted at this elucidation.

"Do you mean for me to understand that
you have no idea whom this message is for?"
asked Lieut. Osborne, indicating the section of
skin illuminated with cubist art.

"That's exactly what I mean," the cubist spy
replied.

"But what were you supposed to do after
you got over into Germany?"

"Seek out an army officer and tell him my
story.  Any officer, I was told, would know at
once what to do with me."

"Do you speak German?"

"Not much, nor Austrian, either.  I studied
German at school and learned enough to be
able to make myself understood on the other
side of the Rhine."

"Come on, Ellis," said Lieut. Osborne, rising
suddenly.  "We've got all we want now.  I'll
report to the colonel and probably in a day or
two Tourtelle will hear from us again.  I'm
going to take this cubist souvenir with me."

In the course of the conversation he had
repacked the section of tattooed skin in the
salt, and as he arose to leave he put the box in
one of his overcoat pockets.  Irving followed
him out of the building, and soon they were
speeding back over the road by which they had
reached the field hospital.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IRVING AN ORDERLY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   IRVING AN ORDERLY

.. vspace:: 2

"We will go direct to Col. Evans'
headquarters," Lieut. Osborne announced
shortly after the return trip had been begun.
"He asked me to report back to him as soon
as possible."

The trip was soon made.  The colonel's
headquarters were less than a mile behind the rear
line trenches, and the road to this point was
in fairly good condition.

Irving felt a deep interest in this visit aside
from the bearing it had on the matter under
investigation.  He had never seen a colonel's
headquarters and was curious to know what
appearance such a place might present.

He was not greatly surprised to find it a
dugout, although he had not pictured it such
in his mind.  The first suggestion that had
offered itself to him was that the head of the
regiment probably had stationed himself in the
palatial residence or chateau of some wealthy
fugitive civilian.  However, when the truth
appeared to him with the most commonplace
simplicity, he decided that it was the very
thing that he ought to have expected.

The dugout was a two-room affair in the
side of a hill on the outskirts of a small village.
The hill was covered with fruit trees and berry
vines, affording an excellent camouflage.  One
of the rooms was occupied by the colonel and
the other by his orderlies.  The walls and roof
were of concrete, thick enough to resist heavy
bombing from the air.  Other attaches of this
headquarters were housed in several homes of
the otherwise deserted village.

The commander of the regiment received the
visitors in his elaborately furnished living
room, bedroom and dining room.  Lieut. Osborne
began at once a rapid account of the
interview he had had with Second Lieut. Tourtelle,
or Hessenburg.  The colonel listened
attentively, every now and then casting a sharp
and sometimes lingering glance at Private
Ellis, who had all he could do to suppress the
anxious eagerness he felt relative to impending
developments.  Naturally, as he had rather
dubiously offered the original information that
led up to the partial disclosure of extensive spy
activities, he felt as if his whole future
depended upon the full success of the investigation.

Lieut. Osborne opened the box containing
the tattooed message and took it out of its salt
packing.  Col. Evans examined it curiously
while the reporting officer explained all he
knew about it, calling attention to the
telegraphic dots and dashes running around the
numerous "cubes."

"We ought to get somebody who is skilled
in cryptographic work busy on this at once,"
said the colonel.  "I've been in communication
with the brigadier general's headquarters and
suggested that to them, and now that I have
this in my possession, I'm going to urge it
stronger.  I'll get them on the wire again."

They were seated at a table at one side of
the room, and as he spoke, the regiment
commander cranked the telephone box at his right
and lifted the receiver to his ear.  The
conversation was short, for the intelligence
department at the brigade headquarters had been
busy on the colonel's suggestion and already
had found an expert qualified to probe the
mystery of the cubist cryptogram.  He would
start at once for the regimental headquarters.

"Just wait here till our cryptologist
arrives," said the colonel, after reporting the
result of his conversation over the telephone;
"and maybe he'll be able to clear up matters
so that we may begin to see bottom."

The expert, Lieut. Gibbons, attached to the
divisional commander's intelligence staff,
arrived half an hour later, and the spy story had
to be told all over again for his benefit, while
he examined curiously the "freak-art
camouflaged message."

"I may be able to work this out in a few
hours, and then again, it may take several
days," he said.  "I'd better take it with me
back to headquarters and work on it there and
report back results as soon as I get them."

The colonel assented to this and the expert
prepared to depart with the cubist cryptogram
in his possession.  Then the regimental
commander turned to the officer and the private
and said:

"Lieutenant, you will return to your
company.  I will call on you when I wish to
communicate with you again on this matter.
Private Ellis, you will remain here.  I can use
another orderly, and, besides, I'd like to have
you close at hand in case of further developments
in this spy investigation.  By the way,
can you operate a motorcycle?"

"Yes, sir," Irving replied.

"Good.  You can be useful at once.  I have
some papers that I want delivered to the
brigadier general.  You may follow Lieut. Gibbons'
automobile and learn the way.  He goes past
the brigadier general's headquarters."

A motorcycle was soon produced and Irving,
after a hurried examination of it, announced
that he understood it thoroughly.  A minute
later he was in the saddle and "lickety-chugging"
along after the intelligence official's
automobile.

And meanwhile there was buzzing in his
brain this new wonder with eager expectation:

"What was the real purpose of Col. Evans in
keeping him at headquarters"?  Was that officer
likely to have further army detective work for
him to do?

Already he was beginning to feel like a
government secret service man, and he longed to
be of further service to his country and the
cause of world freedom in this romantic line.

He little dreamed how far beyond the scope
of his saner imagination his patriotic longing
was to be realized.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT

.. vspace:: 2

Three days later Col. Evans summoned
Irving into his dugout office and said to
him: "Well, the cubist cryptogram has been read."

The officer smiled with a kind of grim
exultation as he spoke.  Then he added:

"And it contained very important information."

"I'm glad of it," the boy answered simply,
although he felt almost as if he would burst
with a "hurrah!" that threatened to explode
within him.

"Of course you are," the commander concurred.
"And I suppose you'd like to know
what's in it."

"Naturally," Irving replied; "but I doubt
very much if you are going to tell me."

"Why?"

"Because, in the first place, it's none of my
business as a private; and, secondly, I presume
it is information of a character that the war
department wishes to keep secret."

"Right you are, Ellis.  That's the main
reason I put the matter up to you.  I wanted to
find out what you thought of it.  But there's
another reason why you shouldn't know the
contents of that message, and I'll tell you that
later.  Meanwhile, I have another important
matter that I want to quiz you on.  Do you
want to go back to the trenches?"

"I'm perfectly willing to go back if that is
the best thing I can do," Irving answered
readily.  "But I'll say this, that if there's any
other place where I can be of greater service,
I prefer to be sent there.  It's a question of
service pure and simple with me.  Naturally,
I have my selfish preferences, but I manage to
suppress them."

"Have you any idea where you could be of
greater service than in the trenches?" asked
the colonel.

"I'll answer your question in this way: I'm
sure that the time I spent helping to run down
a dangerous spy was put to much better
purpose than it would have been if spent in the
trenches, although I think I did some good
work out in No Man's Land in front of the
trenches.  But, of course, there's no more of
that kind of work left for me to do."

"Are you sure about that?"

Irving looked curiously at the putter of this
question, considered a moment or two, and then
replied:

"No, I'm not; but I don't know of anything more."

"Suppose some more of that kind of work
should be found, would you like to do it?"

"Surely."

"Irrespective of the size of the task or the
danger?"

"I don't know how I could find anything
much more dangerous than that skirmish in
No Man's Land," Irving replied slowly.  "The
other part of your question I don't wish to
answer rashly.  Tell me the task, and I'll tell
you if it's too big for me."

"That's the very answer I wanted you to
make," said the colonel, almost eagerly.  "Now,
suppose we should ask you to go over into
Germany on an important spy mission, how
would that strike you?"

This was something Irving was not looking
for, and he was so astonished that he did not
answer for several moments.  Then he said:

"It would strike me all right."

"Suppose you were given a credential that
would effect admittance for you into high
official circles--would you go there and attempt
to obtain information that might be available,
because of your credential?"

"Yes, sir," Irving replied firmly.

"What do you think of that stunt of tattooing
a message in the form of a freak art
production on the arm of Lieut. Tourtelle?"

Irving smiled.

"Of course," he said, "it was clever and
under ordinary circumstances ought to have
been successful; but I'd rather not go through
life with a thing like that on my arm.  It might
brand me as a freak, if not something worse."

"I don't blame you," returned the colonel,
but as he spoke a peculiar shrewdness lighted
his eyes, causing the boy to wonder a little.
Then he added: "Still, it might be possible
for one to submit to such nonsense if thereby
he might advance a great and worthy cause."

"Sure, that's quite possible," Irving agreed;
"but I don't see how Tourtelle, or Hessenburg,
can claim any such motive."

"No, but if he had done it for his own country,
the British empire, to advance the cause
of human freedom, what then?"

"Well, in spite of the ridiculous appearance
of the picture on his arm, I'd say he ought to
be proud to keep it there.  I would.  I think
I'd be proud to show it.  It would be something
to show and tell about to--to--my great-great-grandchildren
when I got old, you see," Irving
finished with a really illuminating smile.

"I think I've quizzed you far enough on this
subject," Col. Evans announced at this point,
throwing off the manner of vagueness that had
hitherto characterized a good deal of his
conversation, and speaking with unmistakable
directness.  "I'm now going to ask you to
consent to have that cubist picture tattooed on
your arm."

Irving looked in astonishment at the
commanding officer of the regiment, being scarcely
able to believe his ears.  Surely the proposition
was nonsensical.  And, yet, this was no occasion
for nonsense.  But the boy's wondering
conjectures were interrupted by the officer, who
was adding to his last announcement.

"After the art work on your arm is finished,"
he said, "I'm going to send you into Germany
to find out some things we want to know."

"Yes?" Irving responded, with a rising
inflection that carried with it a suggestion of an
interrogation.

"Yes," the officer continued; "I want you
to take the place of the spy whose tattooed arm
had to be amputated."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PARACHUTE PRACTICE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   PARACHUTE PRACTICE

.. vspace:: 2

Private Ellis looked hard into vacancy
and thought just as hard for half a
minute; then he said:

"I get you, I think, Col. Evans, all except
one point; and that, I suppose, would come to
me all right if I knew the contents of that
tattooed message."

"No, you wouldn't," the colonel returned
quickly.  "It wouldn't do you a bit of good."

"I'd know whether it's important," Irving
insisted.

"I can tell you that much," was the officer's
reassurance; "and then you're no better off.
It's of vast importance and would be of incalculable
value to our enemies if it fell into their hands."

"Then there's only one explanation of your
proposition," Irving concluded.  "You will
change the dots and dashes so that they will
convey information different from that
originally intended."

"Good!" exclaimed the colonel.  "You'll  do
all right.  Are you willing to undertake it?"

"I am," said Irving.

"Very well.  So far so good.  Now I'm going
to test your nerve some more.  Look out, for
this is going to be a corker.  If you drop, you'll
drop hard."

"I'm waiting," said the boy, with a kind of
gritty grin.

"All right.  Would you dare make a descent
with a parachute from an altitude of several
thousand feet?"

This was a tester, indeed.  Irving knew it
the instant the last word of the question left the
colonel's lips, but he did not flinch.

"Of course, I ought to have some preparation
for such a feat," he replied.  "I've never
been up in an aeroplane."

"To be sure," Col. Evans agreed, with a vigorous
nod.  "You'll  get all the schooling necessary.
You'll start out on the venture well
equipped.  I'm going to send you to the
aviation field near brigade headquarters, and there
you'll learn to do your umbrella stunt.  Then
you'll come back here and go through some
more preliminaries.  The work of a spy, you
see, is just as much of a science as the handling
of an army."

That ended the interview, and an hour or two
later Irving started in an automobile for the
aviation field with a note from the colonel to
the flying commander.  There he was placed
under an expert, and his schooling in the art
of dropping from lofty heights began.

Private Ellis did not clearly understand just
how all this program was to be carried out,
but he had no doubt that Col. Evans had a
complete plan in mind and that the missing details
would fit in well with what had already been
revealed to him.  So he went about his new
work confident that the outlook for success was good.

His training at the aviation field lasted a
week.  During that time he made half a dozen
descents by parachute from various altitudes.
The last descent was from a height of 3,000
feet.  By this time the experience had become
almost as commonplace a thriller as coasting
on a long toboggan slide or "dipping the dips"
at an up-to-date amusement park.  He had
never dreamed that descending with a
parachute could become so matter-of-course a
performance.

"I understand now how circus people can
look on their death-defying stunts without
being awe-struck with their own daring," he
mused after he had floated down the fourth
time at the rate of three-and-a-half feet a
second.  "Just think of it: a good swift sprinter
would run a hundred yards in about one-third
the time that I take to fall thirty-five feet.  This
is quite a revelation of physical science to me."

Irving was by nature a very observing youth.
His instructor was something more than a mere
bird-man, for he had studied aviation as a
mathematical, as well as a physical, science.
He showed the boy how to figure out the rate
of falling after being given the diameter of a
standard-made parachute and the weight of the
aeronaut.

The parachute with which the young spy-student
got his experience as a diver from the
sky was one of several supplied for experimental
work following reports that the enemy
had perfected a similar device which had
proved successful as a life saver in air battles.
But the experiments of Allied aviators had not
proved sufficiently successful to warrant
providing all air fighters with "high-dive
umbrellas."  Descents could be made with reasonable
assurance of safety from aeroplanes flying in
good order, but if a pilot lost control of his
machine the chances were small that he or his
companion gunner or bomb dropper would be
able to leap free from the struts and other
framework with a parachute.

Irving would have liked to learn to pilot an
aeroplane, but there was not time enough for
him to take up that study.  Indeed, before half
the week had elapsed he decided he could like
no occupation better than that of an aviator.
He saw several expeditions start out to meet
the enemy at the front, and also saw them
return, followed by the announcement on two
occasions that several of the British and
Canadian flyers who had gone out to meet the foe,
full of confidence in their own prowess, would
return no more.  They had been either shot
down or forced to descend within the enemy's
lines.

Nothing was said at the aviation field regarding
the reason for the training that was being
given to Private Ellis.  No questions were
asked and Irving did not volunteer any
information.  At last the instructor stated to the
boy that he had completed his course and had
learned his lessons well, and that he was now
at liberty to seek further directions from the
colonel.  He accordingly returned to the
latter's dugout.

Col. Evans asked him a number of questions,
and then said:

"I want you to return to the field hospital
and get some more information from that spy,
Tourtelle, or Hessenburg.  And in getting your
information, remember that you are to impersonate
him on the other side of the Rhine.  Now,
this is going to be a test of your spy-intelligence.
Let's see how well equipped you can return
here after your next interview with him.  Do
you get me, or must I give you some tips?"

"Don't give me any tips, but let me show
you what I can do," Irving replied.  "If I fall
down on this mission, you'll know I'm not the
fellow for the job."

"All right," said the colonel.  "I've
telephoned for Lieut. Osborne to come here and
accompany you again.  But this time, remember,
you are to do the quizzing, and the
lieutenant is to report to me how efficiently you
went at it."

"I'm glad to be put on my own responsibility,
sir, before I drop down from the clouds into
the midst of the enemy," the boy said grimly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`STUDYING TO BE A SPY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   STUDYING TO BE A SPY

.. vspace:: 2

An hour later Lieut. Osborne arrived at the
colonel's headquarters, and he and Private
Ellis started at once for the field hospital.
There they found Hessenburg, alias Tourtelle,
much improved physically, but not a little
nervous regarding his own rather precarious
prospects.  Instead of being an officer helping to
direct, in his small way, the battle against the
autocratic presumption of a great military
power, he was something more than an
ordinary prisoner of war--a trapped spy, who had
conspired with others for the downfall of his
own country.  With seemingly genuine repentance,
he exhibited much eagerness to give all
the information possible in order to induce
leniency for himself from a court-martial.

"I am instructed by Col. Evans to make this
statement to you as coming from him," Irving
announced early in the interview: "He desires
all the information you can give him regarding
your program that was to have been followed
if you had succeeded in making your way
beyond the enemy lines.  He has certain plans in
view, the success of which will depend largely
on the correctness of your information.  If you
should misinform him, through us, those plans
undoubtedly would fail.  Moreover, if any
enemy spy should get a tip through you or
anybody else, that the information supplied by
you was being used to attain important ends,
those ends probably would never be reached.

"What we must have from you, therefore, is
the truth, and the whole truth.  To insure his
receiving this, Col. Evans has asked me to
inform you that the only thing that can save
you is the success of his plan.  If the plan fails,
he will assume that the blame is yours and you
will be shot."

Irving paused a moment, and Hessenburg
seized the opportunity offered to interpose thus:

"You mean to say that he will have me shot
for something for which I'm not the least
responsible?"

"Not at all," Irving replied.  "You will be
shot for being a spy, which has already been
proved against you.  But if you're careful to
tell us the truth, even though I don't cover some
of it with my questions, your chances to escape
that penalty are good."

"I understand," said the spy.  "Fire away.
I'll do the best I can."

The three were seated about a small table
in a small room selected for the purpose.  The
door was closed.  Irving drew a note-book and
pencil from his pockets and prepared to jot
down reminders of the information received
by him.

"First," he said, "we'll all talk in low tones
to prevent, if possible, anybody's overhearing
us.  Now, begin by telling me what was the
extent of your acquaintance with spies in
Canada and their system of operations."

"My acquaintance with those people and
their affairs was very limited," Hessenburg
replied.  "I can't even say that my uncle was,
or is, a spy, although it would be natural to
suspect him.  Government agents watched him
pretty closely, and it's possible that he didn't
actually do anything that would call for his
arrest.  But I'm pretty certain he knew a good
deal more than I did.  I think he knew all about
my affair and approved of it.  To tell the truth,
I believe that it was through him that the spy
organization learned that my sympathies were
treasonable and decided to approach me on the
subject of making a spy agent out of me.

"It was the man with whiskers at the hospital
who first broached the subject to me: You
seem to have a pretty complete report of that
affair.  That man was a physician, and I got
acquainted with him while making business
trips to the hospital for my uncle.  He learned
that I was an art student, and one thing led to
another, until he knew I wanted England and
France to be defeated and was willing to do
anything I could secretly to bring that about.
After that it didn't take him long to persuade
me to be the bearer of a tattooed message on
my arm into Germany.  The other fellow who
helped tattoo the message was the artist, an
architectural draftsman with considerable skill
at free-hand drawing."

"What are their names?" asked Irving.

"Dr. Adolph Marks and Jacob L. Voltz."

"What is your uncle's name?"

"Ferdinand J. Hessenburg."

"What does the 'J' stand for?"

"Johan."

Irving put a long string of questions of this
kind, and thus obtained much detailed
information regarding the spy and his family
connections and home surroundings, also concerning
the art school he attended in Toronto.  He
made copious notes of the answers, so that the
process of questioning the confessed enemy
agent was necessarily much slower than it
otherwise would have been.

"I'm up against one difficulty that I'd like
to clear away," the inquisitor mused in the
course of his examination of the wounded
"second looie"; "and that is the fact that this
fellow is an artist and I am not.  Suppose when
I get over in Berlin, some wise fellow, full of
information from Canada, should ask me to
paint a cubist picture.  What would I do?  I
must find out if there's any danger of my being
asked to do anything of that sort to test my
identity."

He continued his questioning thus:

"Did those two men who tattooed that
picture on your arm know that you were an art
student?"

"Oh, sure," Hessenburg replied.  "That's
how they happened to suggest the art method
of conveying the message."

"And how about your credentials, your
identification when you got into Germany?  How
were the German officials to know who you
were, that you weren't a fake?"

"By the message itself."

"You think your instructors believed that
was enough?"

"Yes, they said so.  We had that question
up for discussion.  I raised it myself."

"How did you raise it?"

"I wanted them to get word to Berlin by
another route to look out for me, but they said
that would involve a danger that they were
trying to avoid by the tattoo method.  If they
tried to get a wireless code message to Berlin,
it might be intercepted and deciphered, and
then a thorough search would be made for me."

Irving was much relieved by this statement.
There was no reason to suspect Hessenburg of
trying to deceive him in this regard.  The spy
could have no grounds to suspect that his
inquisitor was planning to take his place and
carry an altered copy of the cubist message to
the war lords of the enemy.

"I guess I'm safe enough in that regard,"
he told himself.  Then he added aloud:

"You think they have no information
regarding you in Berlin?"

"Yes--I don't see why they should.  I was
informed that the contents of the message
would be all the credential I'd need, that it
would make me so popular among the high-ups
that I could have anything I asked for."

"But they wouldn't tell you what was in the
message?"

"I didn't ask.  I knew better.  The plan we
were working on was directly opposed to my
knowing the information I was to carry."

The quizzing of Hessenburg continued half
an hour longer, and Irving and the lieutenant
started back for the colonel's headquarters.

"Did I omit any questions I should have
asked?" the spy-student inquired after they
had ridden a short distance.

"You did fine," Lieut. Osborne replied.  "I
couldn't think of another question that I would
have asked."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LAST PREPARATIONS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   LAST PREPARATIONS

.. vspace:: 2

The next move in Irving's program of
preparation for spy work in Germany
had to do with the tattooing of an altered copy
of the cubist art message on his arm.  The
alterations were made by the cryptologist who
had deciphered the original message.  He made
the changes after consulting with intelligence
officials, who prepared a system of dots and
dashes that ostensibly conveyed valuable
information.  This "information," however, was
not only misleading, but it was of such character
that the deception could hardly be discovered
before the lapse of months and possibly a
year or more.

By the time the spy-student had "completed
his course of study" the material, instruments,
and artist were ready for the pictorial
operation.  The instruments had been supplied by a
surgeon, the artist had been discovered after a
search by telephone communication with the
various official headquarters of the regiment,
and the material, some pure aniline dye, had
been found in a moving laboratory, or automobile
chemical outfit, maintained for surgical,
sanitation, pure food, and pure water purposes
for the army.

The artist, aided by a surgeon, and the dye
and some sharp-pointed needles, did the work.
It was a long and tedious task, and many rests
were required for the users of the dye-dipped
needles in order to keep their nerves steady and
their judgment sure in the delicate workmanship.
After it was finished, the boy compared
it with the salt-preserved original, and decided
that the result could hardly have been more
satisfactory for the desired purpose.

Then Irving had another session with Col. Evans,
who gave him his final instructions.

"I haven't given you much of an idea yet
what we want you to find out for us at Berlin,
or wherever you can get the information," said
the commander of the regiment.  "We know,
of course, that there is an extensive enemy spy
organization in both Canada and the United
States, and while we are able to get a few of
those fellows now and then, still they're pretty
smart as a rule, and we feel that we have only
scratched the surface.  We want their names,
or the name of every leader of consequence
among them.  That's what we're sending you
into Germany for.  You must realize, therefore,
that the mission on which you are being
sent is one of no small consequence.  The
highest officers in the army have been acquainted
with the plan and not only concurred in it, but
offered suggestions for its improvement and
perfection.

"You have learned from Hessenburg what
you are to do when you land on German soil.
You will probably be taken to Berlin or some
important German military point, and there
your message will be read.  You will be a hero
in the minds of the highest commanders and
will undoubtedly be granted any favor you ask.
My suggestion is that you ask to be assigned
for study to qualify you for the most
confidential and important work in the enemy secret
service.  Tell them you wish to return to
America as a leader in the work and call their
attention to the fact that, as you have become pretty
thoroughly Americanized, or Canadianized,
and lost most of the foreign appearance and
accent of your father, you can pass successfully
as a loyal citizen of the dominion.  Then work
your way into the confidence of those who are
directing the spy system of our enemies and
get at their records.  Get the names of all the
leaders you can find.  You may be able to do
this openly, for your own information when
you return to take up more important work in
Canada and the United States.  Give special
attention to the spy activities in the United
States, for we want to show that the pro-German
agents in that country are violating its
policy of neutrality.

"Now, let me tell you frankly why we have
selected you for this work in spite of your
youth.  Any man,--I won't call you a boy, for
from now on you must be a man in every sense
of the word,--any man who can put together
the twos and twos you summed up after your
experience with Hessenburg, or Tourtelle, and
after reading your cousin's letter, is a natural-born
investigator.  The average person would
have been confused by that evidence; he would
not have had the nerve to form the conclusions
you formed.  I'm not saying this to flatter you.
If you feel in the least flattered, you had better
say so at once, and give up the whole scheme,
for there is great danger of your failing and
being shot.  Let me tell you why:

"The man who has one second's time to
entertain a conceited or self-conscious thought,
devotes just that much time to the undermining
of his own strength.  Get me?"

"Absolutely," Irving replied.  "I've told
myself that many times, although not in those
words."

"Now," continued the colonel, "I believe you
told me that you had studied German at
school?"

"Yes, I had one year of it."

"And Hessenburg said he knew only a little
of the language?"

"Yes."

"Does he know any Austrian?"

"No.  His uncle and his father, although
Austrians by birth, lived mostly in Germany
until they emigrated."

"Good.  You will not be under suspicion
because of your ignorance of the German
language.  Still, it would be well for you to be
able to make yourself understood and to
understand others from the moment you get into that
country.  So I'm going to put you under an
instructor for a few days."

In accord with this announcement, Private
Ellis talked nothing but German for a week
with an orderly of German parentage who had
enlisted with the Canadian army to help "get
the kaiser."  By the end of that time he felt
as if he could hold his own, conversationally, at
anything from a kaffee klatsch to a Berliner
royal turnverein, and announced that he was
ready to make his "high dive" into the land
of the enemy.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"SECOND LOOIE ELLIS"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   "SECOND LOOIE ELLIS"

.. vspace:: 2

Meanwhile activities at the front had
been progressing in a decisive manner,
although familiarity with the progress and its
significance was restricted to an exclusive class,
consisting of certain officers and an army of
industrious workers, who might be classed as
the moles of modern warfare.

The latter were the engineers and workmen
whose occupation at times was a good deal like
that of a miner.  It had been their duty to
tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, until you'd think the whole
of the country in this vicinity must be a system
of underground passages that would almost
rival the catacombs of Rome.

This tunneling, or sapping, was one of the
most important forms of strategy in the war.
Undoubtedly in future years, remnants of
many of these underground passages, preserved
for their value as historical curiosities,
will be inspected by thousands of tourists visiting
the scenes of the world's greatest conflict.

Vimy Ridge, near the end of the historic
fight at that long elevation of earth, was a
veritable human anthill.  The work of opposing
armies in their efforts to undermine each other
is an exceedingly interesting, if terrible,
operation, and Vimy Ridge furnished an excellent
illustration of this.

Early in the fight for possession of the hill
the tunneling began.  At the beginning of this
narrative, when Private Irving Ellis and
"Second Looie Tourtelle" were scouting in No
Man's Land, this boring of the elongated mole
on the earth's surface was as much of a fencing
contest as a sword battle between two
seventeenth century Frenchmen.  The Germans held
the hill, had taken possession of it and
intrenched themselves on the eastern slope as one
of the strongholds of their advanced positions
in France.  The Canadians and the British in
attempting to dislodge the invaders, found
themselves at a considerable disadvantage.  There
seemed to be only one way to overcome this
difficulty without a great slaughtering of the
forces of the Allies.  This was by boring under
the hill, mining it with trinitrotoluol, touching
off the explosive with electric sparks and
blowing the fortified mound into Kingdom Come.

Who first started the undermining process
may never be known, unless both kept records
of dates and doings along this line.  It is
probable, however, that it was begun by the
Canadians, for the opposing army had not as great
incentive for haste as had the Allies.  Moreover,
they did not have to go back so far to
start their tunnels, and their subterranean
operations were more of defensive than offensive
character.

Statements from authoritative sources since
the close of the war indicate that this tunneling
contest was somewhat of a "diving" nature.
It was a contest of depth as well as progress.
The Allied engineers began operations at a
certain level and went forward.  As they advanced
they listened.  It was like an American Indian
putting his ear to the ground to listen for the
approach of distant enemy horsemen, or a
physician examining the chest of a patient with a
stethoscope for "unfriendly" sounds in the
heart and lungs.  The engineers carried a sort
of subterranean stethoscope to detect the
approach of enemy tunnelers.  The instant they
heard sounds of Prussian engineers boring
their way to meet the sappers of the Allies, they
stopped operations and went back to a new
starting point and began over again, this time on a
lower level.  This process was repeated many
times, the Prussians ever planning to get near
enough to the Canadian sappers to enable them
to stop their subterranean operations with high
explosives, and the Allied tunnelers purposing
to plant enough trinitrotoluol under Vimy Ridge
to blow it sky-high.

Meanwhile, Private Irving Ellis, in
preparation for the greatest event of his young
career, was oblivious to all these activities,
which were destined to culminate in one of the
biggest sensations of the war.  He knew in a
vague way that something was going on under
the ground at the front.  He had heard more
or less reliable trench gossip to this effect and
had enough real information to assure him that
there was something behind it.  Moreover, it
was reasonable, to one of modern warfare
training, to suspect very extensive sapping
activities in positions of this kind.  However,
he would have been greatly astonished if an
intimation had come to him of how his own
preparations for a plunge from the skies were
converging in point of time with the preparations
of the Canadians for blowing up Vimy Ridge.

At last the occasion arrived for the carefully
planned departure by night of the "boche spy"
with his tattooed message camouflaged in a
"spasm of cubist art," as it was characterized
by the architectural draftsman who helped
copy it on Irving's left forearm.  The latter
sat in the rear seat of the aeroplane from which
he had taken his lessons in dropping from the
sky and which was specially fitted up with an
elaborate parachute mechanism of the latest
and most approved development.

Apparently it was an important occasion in
aircraft activities aside from Irving's
scheduled stunt, for a large squadron of machines
was preparing for flight at the same time.
Probably a big raid was about to be made on
the boche lines or some important ammunition
or supply station of the enemy, the boy
reasoned.  But no information was volunteered to
him on this subject and he asked none, for it
had nothing to do with his affair.  He was
merely to watch for his opportunity, pick his
own time for taking "French leave," signal the
pilot by an agreed touch on the shoulder, "put
up his umbrella," and depart.

Irving had more than one good cause to feel
elated at the manner in which circumstances
had shaped themselves for an all-around
success of his venture up to the present time.  And
not the least of these was the presentation to
him, a few hours before his flight over the boche
lines, of a second lieutenant's commission.
Accompanying this was a note from Col. Evans
wishing him the "best of good fortune," and
concluding thus:

"You will take your leave in the same rank
that Hessenburg might have taken his, namely,
as a second lieutenant, if your shrewd
interpretation of developing events had not
intervened.  If you have any reasonable degree of
success in this big venture of yours--and I'm
sure you will--I'll guarantee you a first
lieutenancy, and it will take only a continued
exhibition of the good sense and judgment that
I have seen in you up to date to bring you
eventually a captain's commission."

"It's 'Second Looie Ellis' now," Irving
mused, as he took his seat in the rear cockpit,
strapped himself in, buckled about his waist,
chest and shoulders the parachute harness, and
waited for the pilot to start the motor that
would send them away off on a wild night trip
through the air over a wilder scene of human
slaughter and with one of the wildest spy-plans
in view that ever put thrills into the records of
international secret service agents.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BLOWING UP OF VIMY RIDGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BLOWING UP OF VIMY RIDGE

.. vspace:: 2

The aeroplane in which Lieut. Ellis made
his "get-away" flight was equipped with
two machine guns, one for the pilot and one for
the gunner in the rear cockpit.  While practicing
the art of parachute descent, Irving also
acquired some practical knowledge of the use
of a machine gun in the air, not with the idea
of engaging an enemy plane in battle, but in
order that he might put up an appearance of
being skilled in sky fighting if it became
advisable for him to make such pretense in order
to avert suspicion as to the motive of his
"escape."  In other words, he must be careful
not to create a suspicion that there was
collusion between him and the pilot.

The parachute was folded compactly and
deposited in a cylindrical chamber behind the
rear seat.  The mechanism by means of which
this aero life-preserver was put in operation
may be described as follows: Directly in front
of the parachute container was a device which,
when put in action, effected the release of the
giant "umbrella."  In front of this device was
a compressed-air reservoir.  Within easy reach
of the person occupying the rear seat was a
ratchet-lever, which, when pulled, threw the
seat back to an angle of about forty-five degrees
and jerked open the compressed-air reservoir.
The opening of this reservoir put the release
machinery into action, and this in turn threw
out of the containing chamber the compactly
folded parachute, which automatically, on
being released, spread out and encompassed a
great volume of resisting atmosphere.  This
powerful resistance, acting like a hurricane in
a tent, caused the occupant of the rear cockpit
to be jerked along the slanting back of his seat
out into the vast expanse of empty space.

One great beauty of this device, when used
for exhibition purpose, was the fact that if it
failed to work, the aviator retained his seat as
comfortably as if nothing had happened.  As
a life-saver, of course, this peculiarity had little
or no value, inasmuch as a flyer in distress
would be lost if the parachute failed to pull
him out of his seat.

Before each of his experiments, Irving had
tested the "sky-umbrella" with a dummy
heavier than himself in order to be certain that
there was no danger of ripping the silken
cloth.  A slight tear produced by the strain on
the parachute while he was being dragged from
his seat might become larger during the descent
and cause him to fall with sufficient shock to
seriously injure or kill him.  This was really
the only considerable danger in the whole
performance, but it was one that needed to be
guarded against very carefully.

Up flew the aeroplane with graceful sweep
and joined the flock of two score other "night
birds" that were starting out on a raid.  The
flight to the front lines was quickly made and
without incident of note.  In fact, not an enemy
plane arose in the air to oppose the attacking
squadron until the leading flyers were directly
over No Man's Land, brilliantly illuminated
with the fireworks of battle, and then
something happened that must have thrilled every
aviator who witnessed it, accustomed though
he was almost daily to thrills that make the life
of a soldier on land or a Jackie of the navy
seem like a tame existence in comparison.

Suddenly there was an upheaval of earth
almost directly below him, followed by another
and another in quick succession; then a regular
concert of upheavals in almost a straight line,
and a very long line at that, evidently, even to
a pair of eyes looking down from a great height
in the air.  There was a magnitude in the scene
that could not be mistaken, although the ridge
of land that was visible only a few moments
before looked like little more than an elongated
anthill.

"My goodness!" Irving exclaimed, though
the noise of the motor and the propeller and the
rush of air about him made it impossible for
him to hear himself.  "My goodness! they've
actually blown up Vimy Ridge."

The machine swept on with the flock of
mechanical war-birds, on over No Man's Land
and past the enemy front lines.  Meanwhile
Irving gazed down, fascinated by the scene far,
far below.  It was a scene of the most diminutive
dwarfs now.  The trenches looked like little
more than pen scratches on a dim-colored sheet,
certainly not more than chalk marks, of no
particular color, on a "faded blackboard."  And
the people--the soldiers!  Yes, he could see
them now, in large numbers.  They looked like
ants--no, let's not understate it,--they looked
like mice, small mice, however; and they
arose--on the Canadian side--out of the "chalk
marks" and dashed forward, a very short
distance, it seemed, only a few inches or feet at
the most, but they chopped off their steps so
short that they appeared just to creep along.
Irving was astonished at the clearness of the
night scene under the battle's illumination.

But they made it finally, up the side of the
hill, if indeed any hill remained, and into the
crater--Irving could see an altered condition
following the trinitrotoluol explosions, and
concluded that there must be a long, a very long,
crater--miles of it--in the place of Vimy
Ridge.  They were cheering like mad--Irving
knew it, though he could not hear a voice.  Yes,
into the crater they went, a myriad of insects,
or wee animals,--they had possession of it--the
enemy seemed not to offer any resistance.
They were whipped, thoroughly--they knew
it.  Tons and tons of high explosive planted
under that ridge had blown it to the sky.

"No, it didn't, either," Irving mused with
a smile of "altitude amusement."  "It was
only a flash in the pan.  Not a pebble came half
as high as we are, and the sky is hundreds of
miles--umph!  How much higher is it?  My! if
the world could only get up here and look at
itself, I wonder if things wouldn't go a little
differently.  No, I'm afraid not!  There'd
always be somebody then trying to grab a bigger
slice of the moon than he's entitled to.

"But what am I thinking about?  My head
must be getting giddy.  That won't do a bit.
I'm on very serious business.  The bombing
planes are hovering over the rear line trenches
and dropping their flower-pots on 'em.  The
anti-aircraft guns are getting busy, too.  There
went one right ahead of us.  They're getting
our range.  And here comes a fleet of German
planes to meet us.  Well, it won't be safe to
wait very long, and it won't be fair to my pilot.
Just as soon as we get well beyond that third
trench there, I'll take my plunge."

Irving set himself fixedly as if about to make
a mighty leap or a pistol-shot start in a foot
race.  As a matter of fact, he was going to do
nothing of the kind.  Only a sort of passive
effort was required of him, and yet, his nerves
had never been more tense.  He put his right
hand on the release lever and leaned forward,
his left hand almost touching the pilot, and
looked down over the side of the car, then off
toward the approaching enemy squadron, then
at the camouflaged positions of the belching
anti-aircraft guns, then here and there at the
exploding shells in the midst of the invading
fleet, then back again at the ground scene
directly below.

Suddenly he leaned farther forward and
slapped his hand smartly on the pilot's
shoulder.  The latter nodded and turned the nose of
the sky machine downward.  This was Irving's
cue.  He leaned back and pulled the release
lever as far as it would go.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES

.. vspace:: 2

The "escape" was successful in every
respect.  The boy rocked to and fro all
the way down, like a cork on a billowy sea.
Down, down he went, the scene continuing, in
the glare of innumerable lights of the battle,
almost as bright as day.  Irving could see
clearly where he was going, although it was
just beyond the zone of blazing activities.
Between the chosen landing place and the fighting
terrain was a small belt of timber, but the
surroundings were lighted so brilliantly that the
general character and lay of the land could be
determined even from a height of several
thousand feet.

Reinforcements were being rushed forward
from points farther in the rear.  Irving could
see a wave of men advancing toward the lighted
area.  It looked as if attempts were being made
to retake the hill, or what was left of it.
Undoubtedly the enemy had lost heavily as a result
of the volcanic explosions and the need of
reserves was pressing at the front.

Irving landed right in the midst of a
company of advancing men.  The lieutenant called
a halt and remained long enough to make
inquiry as to the meaning of the parachute
descent.  The boy replied in fairly good
German that he was a spy in the service of the
emperor, and asked to be directed to regimental,
divisional or army headquarters.  The officer
assigned a sergeant to accompany the "arrival
from the sky" and, after a tramp of more than
an hour over a highway on which they had to
dodge camions and autos and motorcycles and
troops almost as watchfully as one must dodge
heavy traffic in a warehouse district in a large
city, they arrived at a small town where they
found a brigadier general's headquarters in
what had formerly been the chief municipal
building of the place.

Lieutenant Ellis was taken in charge here by
an intelligence attache, who, observing the
Canadian uniform worn by the boy, questioned
him as to his identity and mission.  Irving was
greatly pleased, as the conversation
progressed, to find that he understood almost
everything his inquisitor said and could answer
intelligibly all the questions put to him.  The
conversation, freely translated into English,
was as follows:

"Who are you?"

"My name is Hessenburg.  I am a second
lieutenant in the Canadian army.  But I am a
Prussian sympathizer and the bearer of a
message from agents of Emperor William working
secretly for him on the other side of the
Atlantic ocean."

"To whom is the message addressed?"

"I don't know.  It is in cipher."

"Then how are you going to find the person
to whom it should be delivered?"

"I was informed that any high officer in the
German army, from brigadier general up,
could tell me what to do the instant he heard
my story."

"How did you get past the Canadian and
German lines without being captured; or did
you surrender in battle?"

"No, although that was my plan at first.  I
managed to get into the air service temporarily
and dropped with a parachute, from an aeroplane
in the midst of a big battle after we got
over on this side."

The intelligence attache uttered a guttural
something that sounded like an oath.  From the
tone and facial expression accompanying it,
Irving mentally translated the ejaculation into
the much milder, "You don't say so!"

"That's true," interposed the sergeant who
accompanied Irving from the scene of his
descent.  "I saw him come down.  The
lieutenant of my company ordered me to bring him
here."

"If all this is true, I suppose you'll have to
see the general," the attache concluded.  "Just
wait here and I'll find out how long you'll have
to wait.  You say your message is important?"

"I haven't read it," the spy answered; "but
I was informed that it was very important.  I
think you'd better help me get it to him as soon
as possible."

The attache left Irving and his companion
seated on a long bench in the orderly room and
entered the adjutant's office.  A few minutes
later he came out again and announced that
the message was "on its way to the general"
and an order to "come in" would probably
come out in a short time.

The "short time" was more than two hours,
however.  The brigadier general had been
napping.  Ordinarily his night repose might
fittingly have been called sleep, but the taking of
Vimy Ridge rendered any such peaceful term
inappropriate.  It is probable, indeed, that
there were naps for few German officers of
whatever rank, attached to that sector, on the
night of the great battle on the Canadian front.
At any rate, this officer was one of the few,
and he awoke at break of day.  One of the first
matters brought to his attention was the arrival
of a spy from America with an important message.

"Bring him in," he ordered.

A minute later Irving was standing before
a very burly and very fierce looking individual
in the uniform of a high commanding officer
and saluting him with an appearance of
self-confidence, in spite of a most provoking
nervousness that unexpectedly seized him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`OFF FOR BERLIN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   OFF FOR BERLIN

.. vspace:: 2

Irving Ellis recovered his composure
and his nervousness left him in full control
of his faculties as he answered the first
question put to him by the brigadier general.  It
was a very simple question, thus:

"You are Second Lieutenant Hessenburg of
the Canadian army?"

"I am."

"But a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm?"

"No, I am not," Irving replied.  "I'm a
subject of Great Britain, for my father was
naturalized in Canada.  But my sympathies
are over here and when I am old enough, you'll
find my citizenship where it ought always
have been."

"There, I got a little truth into my bunch of
lies," Irving interpolated to himself.  "My
citizenship will be where it always ought to
have been, and was, and is, and always will be,
as long as I live--in the United States.  I spoke
with a double tongue and satisfied my own
conscience at the end.  Oh, I can see that I'm
going to be some prevaricator before this
adventure is finished.  Really, it never occurred
to me before, but a spy must have the biggest
imagination on earth to be successful.  However,
it's a good cause, that's some consolation."

Before the boy finished this soliloquy, the
brigadier general was asking another question:

"And you were sent here by some of our
agents in Canada?"

"Yes."

"With a message?"

"Yes."

"Let me see it."

Irving took off his coat and rolled up his left
shirtsleeve, exposing to view the "cubist art"
tattooing recently pricked into the skin with
sharp pointed needles and aniline dye.  The
brigadier general gazed at it with deep interest
two or three times; then looked into the spy's
face and said:

"You're all right.  You must go to Berlin
at once."

He contemplated the hieroglyphic oddity a
minute longer and then said:

"My curiosity is keen to know how you got
over here."

"I flew over," Irving replied.

"How could you manage that?  Were you
in the air service?"

"Yes, during the last few weeks.  I was out
with a pilot last night and slipped away with
a parachute in the heat of the battle."

It was the brigadier general's turn now to
utter something of the explosive character of
an oath.  As Irving's schooling and recent drill
in the Teutonic tongue did not comprehend
such ultra-rhetorical figures of speech, he did
not get the full significance of the expletive.

But it was evident that the officer's outburst
was anything but an expression of anger.
Admiration popped into his eyes and spoke out
of them in "violent harmony" with his oath.
But this overflowing endorsement of the spy's
activities was suddenly interrupted by a
change of manner that caused Irving a little
uneasiness as a new thought took possession of
the burly military man's mind.

"What do you suppose they think about you
now over in the Canadian lines?  They're onto
you now, aren't they?  If we want you to return
on another mission over there, you've spoiled
the game by your manner of escape, haven't
you?  How could you explain it if they put you
on the grill?"

"That'll be very easy," Irving replied.  "I
waited for the right conditions.  We got into
a fight with a couple of German planes and it
was looking pretty bad for us.  Then a shell
from an anti-aircraft gun exploded so near to
us that it seemed impossible for us to have
escaped serious damage.  Well, two seconds
later I saw the pilot was having trouble with
his engine; so I concluded it was time for me
to take my departure."

The look of gleeful admiration returned to
the officer's face.

"You handled it well, very well," he said,
with a disagreeable, gloating laugh.

Irving's sentiments, however, were of much
different nature.  He was thoroughly disgusted
with his own "string of falsehoods," as he
characterized the stories he had told to the
intelligence attache and the brigadier general.

"I know very well that a spy is a personified
fib, pure and simple," he told himself with a
reflective compression of his lips.  "I don't
think it's any worse than that, and I don't
think the stories I told were any worse than
fibs.  A spy is just a misrepresentation
walking around on two feet.  If he doesn't tell a
single fib, it's his business to make the enemy
think he's something he isn't.  If he does this
for a bad cause, he's a bad man; if he does it
for a worthy cause, he's a good man, not because
he fibs, but because of the cause he misrepresents.
So long as he doesn't misrepresent the
cause, he ought to be all right.  Still, the world
will admire him more if he's smart enough to
get what he wants without telling any downright
li--fibs like the ones I told.  I'm going to
see if I can't get along hereafter without fibbing."

Irving worked this reasoning out in his mind
as the conversation with the officer proceeded.
He was much relieved also on finding that he
was able to answer all succeeding questions
without resorting to any gross misstatements
of facts.  At last the brigadier general closed
the interview by saying:

"I'll excuse you for the time being.
Meanwhile I'll communicate with my superior
officers and you'll wait under orders of the
adjutant for instructions from me."

Irving returned to the orderlies' room.  He
had not eaten breakfast and informed an officer
of the hungry condition of his stomach.  This
resulted in his being turned over to an orderly
who conducted him to the officers' mess, where
he was served with a very good meal.

"I guess I'm in right," he mused.  "They
give me the best feed and show me considerable
attention.  The auspices are good.  Hope
I can keep things coming my way, and I'll get
what I'm after."

About an hour after breakfast, the adjutant
summoned Irving into his office and spoke to
him, thus:

"We have just received orders to send you
to Berlin.  Are you ready to go?"

"I haven't any luggage to pack," the spy
answered.

"You will be supplied with what you need,"
the adjutant continued.  "You will also be
accompanied by a young lieutenant who is
recovering from wounds received at the front
and who has been granted home leave for a
month or two.  He lives in Berlin.  He will be
here soon and go with you to the train."

An hour later Irving was on a troop train,
speeding away to the northeast, away from the
still thundering battle front and toward the
objective city of his secret-service aims, hopes,
plans and patriotic ambition.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IN BERLIN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN BERLIN

.. vspace:: 2

Berlin!

The name was well worth the exclamation.
If Irving did not utter it aloud, he
thought it in the "tone of voice" in which it
appears here.

He had ridden more than half of the preceding
day, all night and well into another day
with a companion in whom he was able to find
little of sympathetic interest.  The fellow, an
infantry lieutenant, about 30 years old, was a
cold-eyed, emotionless individual and about as
cruelly boastful Prussian as one would care to
meet.  There was no fate too frightful for an
English soldier in his opinion, and all other
Allies fighting on the side of the British ought
to be reduced to vassalage and forced to pay
tribute to the House of Hohenzollern.

Irving tried for a while to engage in intelligent
conversation with him, but at last found
this impossible and decided to encourage him
along the line of least resistance with the view
of obtaining as much information from him as
his prejudiced mind was capable of giving.
By discounting every thing uttered with a burst
of passion or with sneer of contempt or tone
of bravado and by watching for inadvertent
admissions, Irving gleaned enough to convince
him that the central allies were not nearly as
confident of winning the war as they wished
the outside world to believe.

Lieutenant Ellis was a good enough spy not
to confine his observations to the one supreme
purpose of obtaining a list of enemy agents in
Canada and the United States.  He saw at once,
after landing with his parachute in the boche
lines, that he could be of great service to the
cause for which the Allies were fighting by
gathering a fund of information regarding the
man power, supplies, ammunition and the
general attitude of the people in the kaiser's
country.  By the time he reached Berlin, he felt
considerably compensated for the uncongeniality
of his traveling companion during the trip.

They took a horse-cab--there were no
automobile taxis in evidence--and were driven at
a very sleepy gait to a high-class hotel in
Friederichstrasse.  The horse behind which
they rode looked as if he might have had a
full meal of oats and corn some time before the
war.  There was little in the scenes through
which they passed that impressed Irving as
bearing any indications of the ravages of war,
except perhaps the scarcity of automobiles and
the lack of that spick-and-span condition for
which the streets of Berlin had long been
famous.  The boy spy was unable to discover
any quality of excellence at all superior to that
of Buffalo, N.Y., in general appearance.

The hotel he found well furnished, decorated
and supplied with rugs.  The rooms taken by
Irving and his companion were all that a
"particular," if not fastidious, guest would demand.
True, a girl operated the elevator, but the
young spy had learned, through letters from
his cousin, that Canadian girls went much
farther than this in their patriotic efforts,
sharing not a little in the heavy labors of
munition shops and the general industries.

Irving's companion, whose name was Fritz
Vollmer, spoke a few words to the clerk in an
undertone, and the clerk nodded knowingly,
as if to indicate that everything was all right.

"An old friend o' mine," Lieut. Vollmer
remarked as they walked toward the elevator.
"I just told him you were all right in spite of
your uniform, that you'd been a spy over in the
enemy's country and hadn't had time to change
your clothes since you got through the lines.
You won't be bothered about room rent or any
other expenses here.  Those will be taken care
of.  You're not to change your uniform until
after you've had a session at intelligence
headquarters."

"When will that be?" Irving inquired.

"This afternoon some time," was the answer.
"I'll go over and make arrangements and then
come back and go with you.  Meanwhile we'll
go out and have some lunch."

In spite of Lieut. Vollmer's supercilious
ways and boastful language, the young boche
officer evinced a deep personal interest in his
companion.  But undoubtedly the reason for
this was the daring and romantic record that
the young spy had behind him.  And this
record necessarily obtruded itself so conspicuously
in Irving's affairs right now that the
vainglorious Teuton could not subordinate it
even when picturing his own "high
excellence."  Therefore Lieut. Vollmer's uncontrollable
admiration for the venturesome youth whom he
was companioning was just a result of the
over-awed condition of his own mind.

They went out to a cafe in Friederichstrasse
and ate a very modest luncheon for which
Vollmer paid fifteen marks.  Then they returned
to the hotel, and Irving remained in his room
while Vollmer went to Wilhelmstrasse to
announce the arrival of "the spy" and make
arrangements for presenting him to the proper
official.  The boy would have been glad to go
out and stroll through the streets of the capital
of the great war-making nation, but hesitated
to do this because he feared that his Canadian
uniform might get him into needless difficulty.

An hour later Fritz returned and announced
that he had found the proper official to receive
the spy's message.  That official, he said, was
eager to meet the kaiser's daring agent, and
would he please return with Lieut. Vollmer at
once?

Irving assented, and together they left the
hotel.  On the way the Prussian officer thrilled
the spy with patriotic fervor which he was able
to suppress only with great difficulty by
informing him that the United States had
declared war against Germany a few days before.

"America will bitterly rue the day she took
that action," Lieut. Vollmer declared vengefully.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE READING OF THE CRYPTOGRAM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE READING OF THE CRYPTOGRAM

.. vspace:: 2

It was a rather imposing structure with
gray-stone front that Irving and his
companion entered in Wilhelmstrasse as the
headquarters of the globe-encircling spy
system of the terrible German empire.  They
walked through the doorway and passed down
the cavernous corridor, with its innumerable
ramifications of mystery, secrecy, penetration.
All of these ramifications were by no means
physical and evident to the inquisitive eyes of
the visitor from across the sea.  Most of them,
nearly all, in fact, were pictured in the brain
of Lieut. Ellis, who saw visions of thousands
of communicating branches reaching out into
every part of the civilized world.

The names of Bernstorf, Von Papen, Boy-Ed,
and other former leading agents of the
kaiser in the United States flashed through his
mind, and he was curious to know what sort of
men directed their activities from central
headquarters.  It was not long before his curiosity
was rewarded with visual evidence.

Lieut. Ellis and Lieut. Vollmer walked up a
broad flight of flagstone steps to the second
floor and into the waiting room of a large suite
of offices.  There they were met by a girl of
freshman high-school age, who evidently
served in the capacity of office boy.

"Have the office boys all been drafted for
military service?" Irving asked himself as his
companion answered the girl's questions.

They were directed to wait a few minutes,
which they accordingly did, and in a quarter of
an hour were ushered into the presence of a
mild-eyed man whose least prepossessing
characteristic was the undependability of the
mildness of his gaze.  Irving had not been long in
the room with him before he realized that the
fellow's "gentleness" was a carefully
cultivated "attribute," schemed, plotted, and
devised to qualify him for the shrewdest and most
subtle of government secret service.  He was
a large man of good proportions, with a
mustache that stood out like a tooth-brush parted
in the middle and a very fair and well rounded
face.  Although he might have passed for
thirty-five years of age, Irving subsequently
learned that he was nearly ten years older.  He
answered to the title of "the baron," addressed
familiarly by Lieut. Vollmer.

"Here he is," said the latter, who seemed to
think this was all the introduction needed.

Irving bowed, and "the baron" bowed.
There was no shaking of hands between them.

"Very well," said the intelligence official,
indicating thereby that the announcer's duty
was performed and that he might now retire.
Vollmer did as suggested by the manner of the
receiving nobleman, and Irving and his
world-plotting host were alone.

"I have heard your story from Lieut. Vollmer,"
"the baron" began.  "He said you had
a message tattooed on your arm.  Let me see it."

Irving took off his coat, rolled up his shirt
sleeve and exhibited for inspection the "cubist
art cryptogram" on his left forearm.  The
official gazed at it closely a minute or two; then
said:

"Just wait a minute and I'll have it read."

He lifted a telephone receiver to his ear and
called out a local number through the transmitter.
Presently he was talking to the desired
department.

"Send Kiehler and Joe Weber in here," he said.

Three minutes later two middle-aged men
entered.  Neither of them was of striking
appearance.  In fact, each had a rather stolid
look, but it was not long before Irving realized
that there was some real mechanical, if not
imaginative, ability underneath their apparent
stupidity.

"Take this young man into your office and
read that cipher message on his arm," ordered
"the baron."

The two cryptogram readers bowed and one
of them requested Irving to follow.  They left
the office and proceeded to another on the top
floor of the building.

It was a very light suite of rooms that Irving
now found himself in.  One room particularly
was supplied with the best of daylight illumination
through a skylight overhead.  It reminded
Irving of an architectural drafting room.  Half
a dozen men were seated at as many desks
working as diligently over record and
manuscript material before them as so many college
students "cramming" for a trigonometry or
chemistry exam.  Irving was conducted to an
unoccupied desk in a remote corner of the room
and there he and his two companions sat down
and the consultation began.

The two cryptologists, however, had little to
say.  They seemed to have little interest in
Irving save as to the cipher message he had
brought for them to translate.  They exhibited
no surprise when the boy spy rolled up his
sleeve and disclosed the manner in which he
had conveyed his message.  They seemed to
have become so accustomed to the discovery of
unusual things that nothing could astonish
them.  Stolidity of manner was a term that
fitted them exactly, but certainly not unqualified
stolidity.  Irving felt almost as if their
eyes burned right into his arm.

They worked diligently for more than an
hour over the boy's bared arm, frequently
jotting down characters on tabs of paper before
them.  At last they finished and informed him
that he might go.

"Go where?" Irving inquired.

Without answering, one of the men picked
up the receiver of a telephone and put it to his
ear.  He gave a number to the operator and
soon he was talking to someone.  The waiting
boy was sure that the person "at the other end"
was "the baron."

"Go back to the hotel and remain there for
instructions," the man at the 'phone said
presently, as he hung up the receiver.

Irving left the building, intending to take a
cab to the hotel.  He had scarcely reached the
street, however, when it suddenly occurred to
him that he had no money with him.

"I'll have to walk," he mused.  "Well, it
isn't very far and I can make it easy before
suppertime.  But I wonder if I'll get through
with this uniform.  Well, I'll use my nerve and
see what happens."

He started out briskly, but observed as he
went that he attracted attention from a good
many persons on the street, some of them
soldiers.  Undoubtedly it was his nerve that got
him through, but he could not avoid several
times turning his head with whatever
nonchalance he could command and stealing
glances to the right and left and behind.  After
looking back two or three times, he became
curious regarding the purpose of a middle-aged
man in civilian clothes whom he had observed
in front of the intelligence building as he came
out of the main entrance.

"I wonder if that fellow is following me?"
he said to himself, a little nervously.

He walked a few squares farther, then
stopped and looked into a tailor show-window.
He remained there several minutes, really
interested in the display and the prices.  With
a kind of meditative look, he glanced down the
street, but could see nothing of his supposed
shadower.  Then he moved on again, turned a
corner, walked half a square, and suddenly
faced about as if he had made a mistake in his
direction and must retrace his steps.

The middle-aged man in civilian clothes, who
was not more than a hundred feet away, turned
almost as suddenly as the boy in Canadian
khaki had turned and entered a cafe that he
seemed about to pass.

"I'm being followed," muttered the spy with
a real chill of alarm.  "I wonder what's up.
Have they found something wrong with that
message?  Did those cryptogram readers
discover that the message had been tampered
with?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FOLLOWED`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   FOLLOWED

.. vspace:: 2

Irving walked on as if nothing unusual had
occurred to disturb his peace of mind, and
yet nothing more disquieting perhaps had ever
moved the quakings of fear within him.  If the
man who had followed him could have looked
into the face of the young second lieutenant in
khaki as the latter passed the cafe, undoubtedly
he would have seen there an expression of
countenance exceedingly interesting to him.

The day was now rapidly drawing to a close,
and the damp April atmosphere, chilly enough
when the sun was at its zenith, was becoming
cold toward night.  Irving had no overcoat.
He had worn only a flying-coat and "cover all,"
aside from his ordinary fair-weather garments,
on the night of his ascent in an aeroplane and
descent with a parachute, but he was not
particularly uncomfortable even under present
conditions.  Still, he felt that it would be much
more pleasant within four walls of a first class
hotel, even though, as he suspected, the
management was burning coal under war emergency
limitations.  So he hurried on, and did
not slacken his pace until he was back at the
hostelry.

About a square from the hotel he turned and
looked down the street to see if the middle-aged
man in citizen's clothes was still following him.
Yes, there he was, 200 feet back, sauntering
with a long stride, which rendered it possible
for him to keep pace with the spy without an
appearance of haste.  As the latter entered
the lobby and walked toward the elevator, he
said to himself:

"I'll have to bluff it through.  I'm not going
to pretend ignorance of the fact that I've been
followed.  But I mustn't appear to be afraid
of being watched.  I must present the matter
in a different light."

He knocked on the door of Vollmer's room,
but received no response.  Then he went to his
own room to wait until his guide returned.

"I'll have to wait for him before I can get
any supper," he mused.  "I'm in a peculiar
situation, and don't know exactly where I'm at.
I think I'll have to have a plain talk with him
tonight, much as I hate to rest any of my
fortunes on his questionable goodwill."

Lieut. Vollmer returned at about 6 o'clock
and announced without any formal greeting
that they would go out to supper.  Irving
picked up his hat from the bed where he had
thrown it on entering the room and signified
his readiness to go at once.

He was eager to begin conversation on the
subject that interested him most, but decided
that he must await a favorable opportunity.
His companion had relapsed again into unsociable
aloofness, and the walk of three squares
to the cafe where they had their luncheon was
made without the passing of a word between them.

The meal, too, was eaten almost as quietly.
Irving made a few attempts to draw his
companion into conversation, hoping to lead up
gradually to the subject that was weighing
rather heavily on his mind, but he failed
utterly.  At last just as they were about to leave
the restaurant, the young German lieutenant
altered the aspect of affairs very much by
saying:

"I'm going to leave you to your own devices
now, Hessenburg.  For anything you want, get
in touch with the baron; he'll give instructions
for taking care of you.  They'll probably give
you an army uniform and send you to the front
to fight for the fatherland.  I'm on a leave of
absence and am going home to stay there until
my leave expires."

Irving was stunned by this announcement
from his uncongenial guide, who was about to
leave him unceremoniously in the lurch.  He
did not know how to reply and so made no
attempt to do so aside from the utterance of a
few conventionalities, such as, "I hope you'll
enjoy your furlough," and "I thank you for
the courtesies you have shown me."

Lieut. Vollmer did not return with Irving
to the hotel, but gave him a limp handshake out
on the sidewalk, tossed a careless "aufwiedersehn"
at him and sauntered away.  The
deserted spy went back to his room and passed
an uncomfortable night, tormented with so
many doubts of conflicting nature that he soon
found himself in a very nervous condition.
After he had lain awake an hour or two trying
to clear up the obscurities in his mind, he
decided that the course of thinking that he had
permitted to sway him would result disastrously
even if there was no reason for him to
feel apprehensive of the outlook.

"I must throw this out of my mind and get
a good night's rest," he told himself.  "If my
nerves are all shot to pieces tomorrow, it'll be
folly for me to attempt to get any satisfaction
from the government officials.  They'll see
there's something wrong, dead sure.  I'm
proving myself a mighty poor spy, and ought to
have stayed in the Canadian trenches.  Of
course, I must expect to run into the most
dangerous situations and depend on my wits, bluff,
and nerve--yes NERVE--to get me out.  What
if I am under suspicion?  If they have no goods
on me, I'm safe enough so long as I don't
convict myself by a guilty manner.  I must be
mistaken in my suspicion that they have found
something wrong in that cubist art message.
They'd 'ave arrested me right away if they'd
discovered the change.  I'll probably find
everything all right tomorrow when I talk with the
baron.  Why, he may even decorate me with an
iron cross.  Hope it won't be too heavy to carry
around, that's all.  Or maybe they need all the
iron to make shells with and will give me a
leather cross--no, they need that for shoes;
or a rubber cross--no, they need that to make
rubber heels so they can pussy-foot out in
No-Man's-Land.  There!  I've got my nerves in
better shape; think I can go to sleep now, but
I do wonder why that middle-aged man in
civilian clothes was following me.  I wonder
if he wore rubber heels."

That was the way Irving managed to induce
sleep an hour or two before midnight.  He
adopted the method very systematically and
determinedly, and it worked.  But his slumber
was not as undisturbed as he would have had
it, for he dreamed the most violent and
mysterious of dreams enlivened and peopled with
aeroplanes and booming cannon and minnenwerfers
and parachutes and rubber-heeled
secret service men who followed him so softly,
gently, stealthily that it seemed as if even the
thunder of battle was being toned down to
zephyrs of inconsequential ghostly conflict.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SPY'S DECISION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SPY'S DECISION

.. vspace:: 2

Irving arose at daybreak next morning.
In spite of his uneasy night, he was much
refreshed and felt confident that he had good
command of his nerves.  This was an important
reassurance, and the young spy decided that he
would not let it get away from him.

"I'll tie it down with a string of self-confidence
and a knot of determination," he told
himself resolutely.

This way of putting the idea amused him a
little and added to his strength of purpose.

"First of all, how about breakfast?" he
asked himself as he combed his hair with a
pocket comb which he carried with him and
regarded the puzzled wrinkling of his brow in
the wash-room mirror.

"Well," he added, as he returned the comb
to its case-and the case to his pocket, "I guess
I'll have to go without breakfast.  Not a very
comfortable idea, either, but there seems to be
no way out of it.  That fellow Vollmer seemed
to take a malicious delight in forgetting every
one of my comforts.  I wish I had something
to do between now and 9 or 10 o'clock.  I don't
like to stroll around any more than is necessary
in this uniform."

But there seemed to be nothing for him to do
except remain in his room and wait for his
wristwatch to tick several thousand seconds.
It seemed, too, as if all of these ticks hammered
away right in the center of his brain, always
striking on the same pin-point spot and
irritating his nervous system almost beyond
endurance.  At 8:30 o'clock he decided to wait no
longer and grabbed his hat and hastened from
the hotel.  Without making particular note of
his surroundings, he set out at a brisk pace for
the building that contained the intelligence
offices which he had visited the day before.

Meanwhile he had forgotten all about the
middle-aged man in civilian clothes who had
followed him through the streets.  It had not
occurred to him that the fellow might return
to the hotel and continue his espionage next
day.  He had presumed that the man would
make a report to his superiors and the affair
would be taken up again in some other manner
if, indeed, there should be any resumption at
all of the investigation.

"If I'm suspected of being a British spy,
they'll probably arrest me when I report back
at the baron's office," he mused before leaving
the hotel.

After walking a square or two, Irving slowed
his pace considerably, realizing that it was still
early and that he probably would have to wait
an hour or more for "the baron" after his
arrival at the latter's office if he continued to
walk as rapidly as he had started.  To "kill"
a little of the surplus time ahead of him,
therefore, he stopped and looked into several shop
windows, the last being an "eat shop," which
teased his appetite not a little and caused him
to feel that he could chew a piece of army meat
of the consistency of leather, or rubber, with
a good deal of relish at that moment.

The suggestion contained in the word rubber,
for which there seemed to be no appropriate
reason in connection with a steaming breakfast,
revived his burlesque musings of the night
before as he was drifting away into a nervous
slumber.  The semi-dream pictures in his mind
of a government sleuth on rubber heels brought
him back to his startling experience of the
previous day so suddenly that he turned almost
involuntarily and gazed in the direction from
which he had come.

If he had been a person of superstitious
susceptibility wandering through a country
cemetery in the ghostly moonlight, he could not
have been more apprehensively thrilled by
what he saw.  Half a square up the street was
the mysterious middle-aged man in civilian
clothes who had followed him from the
intelligence building to the hotel.

"Gee!  I must hustle along and get to the
baron's office as soon as possible," he decided
as he quickened his steps.  "I must bluff this
thing through as I never bluffed before.  I
must put the matter up to him and find out
what it means."

He hurried on more rapidly than the pace
with which he started from the hotel and did
not slow up again until he reached the building
in Wilhelmstrasse for which he was headed.

He decided not to pretend to be ignorant of
the fact that he was being followed; indeed, he
would have retraced his steps and accosted his
shadower if it had not seemed probable that
such a course would have been futile.  So,
just as he was passing through the pillared
entrance, he turned and looked again up the
street.

Yes, there he was, 150 feet away, sauntering
along as if his greatest object in life was the
sniffing of the damp April ozone.  One look
was enough, and the shadowed spy entered the
building and walked up the flagstone stairway.

"I'm going to find out who that fellow is and
what he's up to if such a thing is possible," he
resolved.  "I'm going to put it up to the baron
right now and if I'm under suspicion I'll soon
find out and, I hope, drive the suspicion away."

The young spy was now exhibiting real qualities
necessary to make a successful army secret
service man.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MAKING PROGRESS WITH THE BARON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   MAKING PROGRESS WITH THE BARON

.. vspace:: 2

Irving entered "the baron's" outer office
and asked to see the big intelligence official.
To his surprise, that secret service dignitary
was in, and the caller was requested to wait a
few minutes until he was at leisure.

"Even the nobility are getting up early to
help win the war," Irving ruminated as he
waited.  "Well, that shows a good trait of
character--if they only had a good cause to fight for.
I wonder if they really think they have.  I don't
see how they can."

Presently he was informed by an office girl
that "the baron" would see him, and he entered
the latter's private office.  The big, usually
mild-eyed official looked at him rather sharply,
he thought, but he resolved not to be overawed
by his dominating personality.

"I am here," he began, rather abruptly, but
with a bow of seeming respect, "to find out what
is to become of me.  I feel lost in this big city.
Lieut. Vollmer left me last night and informed
me that if I wanted anything, I should apply to
you.  In the first place, I should like to have
some breakfast."

"The baron" seemed to be amused by this
speech.  He did not, however, indicate any
particular concern over the hungry condition of
the spy, who had proved himself a daring and
spectacular hero "in the service of the
fatherland."  But he smiled and answered in
reassuring tones:

"No breakfast?  Ach himmel!  You shall
have all you can eat, and by the time you have
finished your breakfast, you'll realize how
futile is the English blockade."

"What kind of plans have you for me?"
Irving asked, deeming it of no advantage to
enter into a discussion of conditions in
Germany with a man who undoubtedly would
express only the most optimistic views.  "I'm
getting impatient, I can't stand it to be idle.
I want something to do."

"What do you want to do?" asked "the baron."

"Whatever I'm best fitted for.  I hoped I'd
been successful enough in the venture just
completed to warrant your keeping me in
something of the same line."

"Do you want to go back to Canada?"

"I'd thought some of that, but it doesn't
seem practicable," Irving replied.  "You see,
I'm an enlisted soldier now and would be sent
back to the front if I returned.  But it seems
to me that I might do some good work in the
United States."

"Yes, that's true, you might," "the baron"
admitted, meditatively.  "I'll think that over."

"Meanwhile," Irving continued, "I'd like
to get rid of this uniform.  It causes me no end
of inconvenience.  I'm constantly expecting to
be stopped on the street and questioned."

"Have you been stopped yet?"

"No, but I've been followed.  I'd have gone
out and walked around some last evening, but
was followed all the way from here to the hotel.
The same man followed me from the hotel here
this morning."

"The baron" appeared to be genuinely surprised
at this statement.

"I don't understand that," he said.  "What
kind of looking man was it that followed you?"

"He was middle-aged and dressed in civilian
clothes."

"I'll find out about this," "the baron"
announced, pressing a button on his desk.

An office messenger between 60 and 70 years
old entered.

"Is Schoensiegel or Blau out there?" inquired
"the baron."

"Blau is," replied the messenger.

"Send him in."

The messenger went out and a minute later
an individual who might have passed for an
ordinary plain-clothes man of the police force
entered.

"Blau," said the intelligence official, "this is
Mr. Hessenburg, one of our friends from
America--Canada.  He was with the Canadian
army at the front and broke away to bring us
some important information.  He's been here
only a couple of days, but has been followed on
the street by someone, not under orders from
this office.  I want you to go outside and wait
until he leaves, and then find out who it is that's
following him and why he's doing it.  Maybe
some other department or the police are laboring
under a misapprehension as to our friend's
identity."

"Gans gewiss, Herr Hauptmann," said Blau,
bowing himself out of the room and indicating
acceptance of his commission.  The conversation
was resumed between the spy and "the baron."

"I'll provide you with a uniform and make
you an attache of this office for the present,"
the latter announced.  "Later I'll take up your
suggestion for keeping you in this branch of
the service and see what I can do.  The skill and
daring of your achievements thus far deserves
recognition, I can say that much at least."

Irving was reassured and encouraged by
these words.  He was convinced that "the
baron" entertained no doubt regarding the
genuineness of his representations.

"Why not give me employment that will
enable me to advance my efficiency for further
spy work?" the boy suggested.

"That's a good idea," declared the intelligence
official with a look of professional animation
in his eyes.  "I think I'll do that.  As
soon as you get your uniform, report at this
office and I'll have you assigned to your new
duties.  Meanwhile I'll put you on the payroll
and give you an order for a month's salary in
advance.  Your bill at the hotel has been taken
care of, but from now on you'll pay that
yourself.  Lieut. Vollmer was guilty of an
inexcusable oversight when he left you without money
for your meals and other incidentals.  I thought
that was being taken care of."

Irving thanked "the baron" for the interest
shown in his welfare.  Then he took up the
subject on which he had expected to make his
strongest play with the intelligence official.

"I want to speak to you now," he said,
"about a matter that perhaps I should have
brought to your attention sooner.  It's about
the message on my arm.  I don't know what's
in that message, but it may be that Canadian
officials have taken steps to render worthless
the information I brought to you.  Would it
be possible for them to render it of no value
to you if they knew the contents of the
message I brought?"

The keen interest that "the baron" manifested
instantly in these suggestions indicated
to Irving that he could hardly have broached
a subject that would command closer attention.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ORDERS FOR MONEY AND CLOTHES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   ORDERS FOR MONEY AND CLOTHES

.. vspace:: 2

"It would not only be possible for the
Canadian officials to nullify the value to us of
the message you brought, but that is exactly
what they would do if they found out the
contents of that message."

This is the reply "the baron" gave to the
question put to him by Irving at the close of the
preceding chapter.  The spy put the question in
accord with a suggestion made by Col. Evans in
the course of his instructions behind the
Canadian lines.  The intent of this move was to
obviate suspicion that he had delivered a fake
message when discovery was made that the
information it contained did not answer its
professed purpose.

"Have you any reason to believe that they
discovered the nature of the information you
brought in that message?" asked the high
Prussian official after he had answered the spy's
question.

"I'm afraid I have," the latter replied.
"Why didn't they arrest you?"

"Because they didn't know where to find me.
I was lost somewhere in the Canadian army.
They probably had no way of identifying me.
However, they must have made a search for me
when they learned what had been going on--maybe
they're searching yet."

"Do you know what they learned that a message
of this kind was being brought over here?"

"I know enough to feel that there is grave
danger that they made such a discovery."

"How did you find that out?"

"This way: One of the boys in the company
to which I belonged received a letter from his
cousin in Canada that told almost the whole
story, and I read the letter.  That cousin told
a long story about his going to Toronto to visit
some friends and getting sick while there.  He
was taken to a hospital--*our* hospital, by the
way--and while he was convalescing, he strolled
out in the hall and saw the tattooing operation
on my arm.  The two men who were doing the
work saw him standing there and gazing
through the glass door, and they rushed out,
collared him, and dragged him into the laboratory.
But he satisfied them that he was merely
a curious onlooker and they let him go.

"However, they had him watched, and after
he left the hospital he was followed everywhere
he went.  He communicated with government
officials and a week or two later the hospital was
raided.  This is all the information the letter
contained, but it is possible that they compelled
somebody to reveal the contents of the message
that was tattooed on my arm."

"Very possible," agreed "the baron," leaning
forward with a look of hard and harsh
concern in his eyes.  "And where were you in the
meantime?"

"On my way on a transport for England.
The spy in the hospital, I suppose, did not
observe me very closely.  Fortunately I had my
coat off and perhaps he did not identify me as
a soldier.  At any rate, I was not interfered
with, and I am here."

"No doubt of that," returned the intelligence
official rather absently; "and you brought the
message.  Well, all we can do is remember the
circumstances you have just related and take
them into consideration if developments don't
prove satisfactory.  I'm glad you told me about
this, for it may prevent a lot of confusion.  It
wouldn't be well for you to venture back into
Canada with that picture on your arm.  You'd
be picked up as a deserter, and the intelligence
officers wouldn't be very slow finding out that
you were the fellow they've been hunting for
ever since the raid on that Toronto hospital.
As a matter of fact, I doubt if you can be of
much use to us in any of the countries of our
allied enemies with that thing on your arm."

"I have an idea to remedy that," said Irving
with a smile that suggested something of a
novelty in his mind.

"What is that?" asked "the baron."

"Peel this picture off and graft some new
skin in its place."

The intelligence official laughed, but he was
interested as well as amused.

"That isn't a bad idea at all," he said.  "On
the whole I am inclined to take you seriously.
You seem to have a scientific turn of mind, and
that always appeals to an intelligent German.
I'm going to put you to work under the
direction of a man who will give you a thorough
tryout, and we'll find out what you're good for.
You seem to be ambitious and intelligent and
have a good record behind you.  Go ahead now
and show us what you're worth."

This announcement and the accompanying
instruction delighted the spy beyond measure.
If his recent experiences had not schooled him
in the very wise habit of self-restraint, his first
joyful impulse might have got him into trouble.

"Just wait a minute and I'll fix you up with
an order for some money and some clothes,"
said "the baron" after a few moments of silence.

He picked up a pen and busied himself filling
out a form and writing a note on a letterhead of
the department.  These he folded and placed hi
separate envelopes.  The envelopes he
addressed and handed to the spy.

"There, that's all today, I think," he said.
"Whatever you need hereafter will be taken
care of by Mr. Herrmann.  Inquire outside and
you'll be directed where to go to have this order
cashed."

Irving thanked him and left the office.  Ten
minutes later he was outside the building with
a comfortable roll of bank-bills in his pocket.
As he started up the street with directions in
his mind for reaching the quartermaster's
office, he saw Blau on the opposite sidewalk and
was reminded of the instruction given that
intelligence operative to shadow the young spy's
shadower.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEFORE BREAKFAST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEFORE BREAKFAST

.. vspace:: 2

Irving dismissed from his mind for the
time being the mystery concerning the
middle-aged man in civilian clothes who had
followed him through the streets on two
occasions.  His fears regarding the incident were
dispelled, for he felt that Blau, the intelligence
operative on the opposite side of the street,
would take care of that matter very efficiently.
Everything was coming his way now, and he
in his mission than he had felt at any other time
walked alone; with greater confidence of success
since landing with his parachute.

It was a ten minute walk to the quartermaster's
headquarters.  At the entrance of the
building, his curiosity concerning the game of
"shadow chase shadow" which he presumed to
be going on behind him was aroused by a
sudden reverting of his mind to the subject, and
he turned and looked down the street by which
he had come.  There was Blau, half a square
away, but the "middle-aged man in civilian
clothes" was not in sight.

"I wonder if he got onto the fact that
somebody was directed to watch him," Irving mused.
"But that ought not to have stopped him.  He
had nothing to fear from an agent of another
department if he was engaged in legitimate
government business."

The spy delivered his requisition for a
soldier's uniform and was given in turn an order
on the supply house and directions how to reach
it.  Then he left the building and took a car for
the place where he was to get his suit.

Blau took the same car, but the "shadow" he
had been ordered to "shadow" was not there
unless he had disguised himself so successfully
that Irving was unable to recognize him.  The
operative appeared to be somewhat puzzled,
too, but he made no sign of recognition to the
soldier in enemy uniform, and the latter
maintained a like pretense of unacquaintance.

An hour later the spy was clad in a first
lieutenant's uniform and on his way back to the
hotel.  Blau kept within hailing distance of
him, but his shadowing seemed to be futile, for
the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" had
not appeared in any recognizable guise or
disguise.  Indeed, Irving was certain that nobody
except the operative had followed him since he
came out of the quartermaster's office and
started for the store-rooms.

The applicant for an army uniform was
required to enlist for service in the army before
it could be supplied.  Irving was not surprised
at this, but he was very much surprised by the
kind of uniform given him.  It bore the
insignia of a first lieutenant's rank.

"That's certainly generous on the baron's
part," he said to himself.  "I don't understand
it.  I didn't read his note to the quartermaster,
nor the quartermaster's order.  Maybe they
would have afforded some explanation.  Maybe
I shall have to earn my rank and meanwhile
will go about like an automobile for which a
license has not been issued but bears a tag
'license applied for.'  Maybe that's my case
here--first lieutenant's commission applied for.  It
looks kind of irregular, but I suppose 'the
baron' knows his business.  Anyway, mine is a
special case all around, however one looks at it."

When he filled out his enlistment papers, of
course Irving signed the name of Adolph
Hessenburg, late of Toronto, Canada, and on
the "history sheet" that he had to fill out he
entered data given him by the boy of the
original tattooed cubist-art message.  Then he was
granted the use of a room where he discarded
his Canadian uniform and put on his new
Prussian military disguise.

He felt that he was disguised now as he at
no time had hoped to be since planning his spy
expedition into the heart of the kaiser's
kingdom.  He surely must have the full confidence
of the Prussian officials with whom he had come
into contact, or he would not have been elevated
to the military rank and position of trust that
now were virtually his.

Irving was particularly pleased with the ease
he had experienced in picking up the idioms
of the German language.  He had an excellent
memory and scarcely a word or a phrase that
was taught to him at school or behind the
Canadian lines, or that he had heard since landing
with a parachute on territory held by the
Prussian armies, had failed to make a lasting
impression on his mind.  Moreover, he was very
quick to put ideas together and in that way get
their associated significance; so that he
skillfully "figured out" the meaning of not a few
words that he had never heard before they were
used in conversation with him by "the baron"
and other persons with whom he came in
contact.  And he was almost as quick and skillful
in his use of those same words for the
expression of his own ideas.

After leaving the quartermaster's supply
depot, Irving visited a haberdashery and
bought several suits of underwear, shirts,
collars, and socks, and then returned to the hotel.
As he entered his room and deposited his
bundles on the bed a funny thing happened.

He stopped short--true, he could not have
gone much farther without falling over the bed,
but nevertheless there was a decided "shortness"
to his "stop."

"My goodness!" he exclaimed, clapping his
hand to his appetite region.  "I haven't had any
breakfast yet."

Which being a sufficiently thrilling climax
for the closing of a chapter, we will carry the
reader over in suspense to the next.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT WORK IN THE SPY OFFICE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT WORK IN THE SPY OFFICE

.. vspace:: 2

Irving laughed and felt hungrier than ever.
The humorous relaxation afforded him great
relief from the nervousness of his morning's
activities, which had been associated enough
with doubt and apprehension to make a coward
run and a brave man extremely cautious.

"Well, that's a good one," the young pseudo-boche
lieutenant continued in soliloquy.  "Here
it's nearly 2 o'clock and I haven't eaten my
breakfast, and meanwhile I'd forgotten all
about it.  And I'm as hungry as a bear.  I
wonder if the British blockade has left enough food
in the kaiser's kingdom, to fill up the vacuum
inside of me.  I think I'll go and find out.
That'll be worth-while information to carry
back to the Canadian commanders."

So out he went to a restaurant two squares
away, where he had small difficulty in getting
all he wanted to eat, the only qualification
being that he had to pay prices so out of proportion
to his income that he instinctively began
to figure out the financial problem of how to
make his salary carry him through to the end
of the month.

"I'm starting out too swell," he concluded
after several minutes' reckoning.  "I'll have to
eat at cheaper restaurants and get a cheaper
room.  That makes me think I don't know how
much my room at the hotel is going to cost me;
but it's bound to be pretty steep.  Anyway, I
don't care, so long as I can pull through on my
salary.  I don't want to carry any of this money
with me when I go back to the other side of
No-Man's Land."

Irving did not ask how much the hotel was
charging for his room.  He merely announced
that he would check out that evening after
engaging quarters in a comfortable rooming
house in a semi-residence district near the
Tiergarten.  Economy was not the only motive that
caused him to make this move.  Being now in
German uniform, he reasoned that he might be
able to throw off of his trail the "middle-aged
man in civilian clothes" who had been shadowing
him, if he changed his living address also.
As a further precaution he made this change
late in the evening.

Next morning he reported for duty at the
office of "Mr. Herrmann" as he had been
instructed by "the baron" to do.  Mr. Herrmann
proved to be in charge of a suite of offices in the
intelligence building in which were employed
more than a hundred persons, most of them
men, varying in ages from 20 to 70.  Irving, for
want of detailed information regarding their
duties, classed them all as clerks, stenographers
and typists at first glance, and this in general
was a very good classification, although many
of them performed special work that entitled
them to ranking positions of greater dignity.
And he had not been employed there more than
two or three days when he learned that half of
them held such ranking positions together with
salaries proportionate to the grades of work
they did.

"Can you operate a typewriter?" asked
Mr. Herrmann after conducting the new employe
through one large and several smaller
work-rooms under his superintendence.

"With two fingers," Irving replied with a smile.

"Learned it at home, eh?  Well, you won't
need a lot of speed.  I understand your
education in German is not very far advanced."

"Not very far," the spy replied.

"Can you read the script?"

"Yes, I can work it out.  I know the letters,
but they come to me rather slowly."

"You'll make it all right after a few days'
practice.  I'm going to set you at work first
copying some translated cipher messages."  (The
boy's heart began to thump eagerly, but
the thumping became a weaker reflex pattering
as the superintendent continued.)  "They
don't amount to much.  We get masses of
indifferent material from numerous sources, but
we keep it all carefully cataloged, indexed,
and cross-indexed several times.  Any little
insignificant item of information may be worth
a good deal to us at any time.  That's one secret
of the great value of the German spy system.
Now I'll leave you with this budget of
communications and let you work it out with your
own intelligence.  That's one way we have of
finding out what a man is worth."

Irving longed to ask him how he protected
such an intricate system of concentrated
information from leaks that might be of value to the
enemy, but wisely refrained.

"I'll find that out by keeping my eyes and
ears open," he told himself.  "I mustn't ask
any questions except such as bear directly on
my duties and are calculated to promote my
efficiency."

He sat down at the desk assigned to him and
was soon diligently, eagerly at work.  His
eagerness, however, was a well-camouflaged
secret.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A STARTLING RECOGNITION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A STARTLING RECOGNITION

.. vspace:: 2

For two weeks Irving continued his work in
the record offices of the great German
espionage system.  His experiences there
during this time were without special incident,
except that they evolved before his mind a
continuous motion picture of scientific detail far
more intricate, comprehensive, and deep-reaching
than he could ever have imagined.

There could be no doubt that "the baron,"
Mr. Herrmann, and the staff of experts, clerks,
stenographers, and typists looked upon the
"parachute hero" as a bona fide fatherland
loyalist.  The story of his "camouflaged
escape" by parachute from an enemy aeroplane
to deliver a cryptic-code message that he
carried all the way from America had circulated
among them, and the glee with which they
commented on his skill and success indicated the
intense feeling with which they, one and all,
regarded the cause for which the Teutonic race
was fighting--the supremacy of the empire
founded by Prince Bismarck.  Irving discovered
also another important human factor in
this relation, namely, that the initiated
members of the great spy organization of the central
powers could discuss among themselves the
secrets of their system without becoming in the
least gossipy; hence, the danger of their
inadvertently dropping hints of important state
matters never intended for "outside ears" was
small indeed.

A more secretive group of employes it would
be difficult to imagine.  Moreover, their secrets
seemed to be grouped in sections and degrees.
And the most peculiar feature of the whole
system, perhaps, was the fact that few instructions
were given, defining these sections and degrees.
Irving received none himself, and in all the
time he was connected with the bureau he
learned of nobody else who had been told what,
or what not, to do or say in this regard.

"Here seems to be another instance of the
requirement of instinctive understanding," he
told himself a good many times.  "They seem
to give me credit of being an extremely
intelligent fellow.  Well, I hope I exceed their
estimate of me.  If I do, they may find it necessary
co revise their system somewhat."

The degrees of secrecy Irving learned in the
course of a week or more were of a graduated
character.  For instance, he soon discovered
that he might talk about his own work to any
and all other members of the force, but all of
them outside of his class would not discuss their
work with him.  After he was advanced to the
next higher grade of work he found, as he had
already had reason to suspect, that there were
two degrees of the great spy system within the
"circumscribed freedom" of his intelligence.
This "freedom" was circumscribed by a
prohibition, forbidding him to discuss any spy
subject to anybody outside the office except on
special direction from superior authority.

Irving progressed rapidly in his work.  He
exhibited such ready comprehension of details
and purposes that he was soon marked by the
entire office force as a "coming man" in the
government secret service.  Undoubtedly his
spectacular method of transit from the
Canadian to the German lines helped materially to
boost along his growing reputation, but it would
also be unfair to put too much emphasis on this
feat of daring and skill.  Irving really deserved
much credit for innate ability.

In his efforts to create a general feeling of
satisfaction and confidence in order to ward off
any suspicions which might arise regarding his
purpose and motives, the young spy did a good
many things that almost caused in him a
rebellious boiling over of patriotic sentiment.  He
did much to perfect a filing system that had
been neglected because of illness of the man
previously in charge, and offered a number of
suggestions for certain other efficiency
improvements which brought forth complimentary
notice from Superintendent Herrmann.
But all the time, while doing these things,
Irving kept in mind the big purpose of his mission
which outmeasured so greatly in importance
his services to the enemy that his feelings of
self-reproach for the aid he was incidentally
giving the kaiser's spy machine were short-lived.

Evidently it was the purpose of Mr. Herrmann
to advance his spy pupil as rapidly as
possible.  Undoubtedly he was under orders to
do this from "the baron."  Although the
reason for this method of procedure had not been
stated in so many words, the understanding
seemed to be clear enough that it was the
purpose of the department to send him back to
America equipped for very important work at
an early date.

Three weeks after he entered the office he
began to accumulate the information for which
he had been sent.  He then was given access to
the card-index system of the great world-spy
organization.  It was like a city-library
catalog, with references to files of interminable
data buried away in metal boxes in a large
vault.

In his work with this catalog and files he was
associated with a man whose countenance was
strangely familiar to him from the first.  He
tried to assume that there was merely a
resemblance in the face of this man to that of some
other man he had known on the Canadian front
or at home, but such assumption failed to
satisfy him.  He could not drive away the feeling
that he had met this fellow somewhere since he
dropped from the sky with a parachute behind
the German battle lines, but although he
studied over the matter for hours while busy
with his work he was unable by such efforts to
solve the mystery.

The solution came during a period of
relaxation, as the solution of many mysteries come.
On the third day since his last advancement in
the service, while making entries on certain
catalog cards, there recurred to him a mental
picture of his experiences with the unidentified
man who had shadowed him through the streets
while he was still in Canadian uniform.  Two
weeks before he had dismissed this incident
from his mind, being convinced that the man
had given up his quest, whatever it was.

But the returned picture did not rest long
peacefully in his mind.  It was followed closely
by a thrill that almost made him drop the card
that he held in his hand.  He looked quickly,
almost involuntarily, at his associate worker,
who was bent over a task at his desk.

Irving knew at once that he was not mistaken.
Before him was the "middle-aged man in
civilian clothes" who had shadowed him more
than three weeks before from the intelligence
building to the hotel where he was living and to
other places in the city.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A SURPRISING OFFER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SURPRISING OFFER

.. vspace:: 2

Emil Strauss was the name of Irving's
coworker in the card index room.  One
could hardly say that he was either an agreeable
or a disagreeable fellow.  He had little to
say.  It was generally understood that he was
very efficient in his work and ranked as one of
the leading, if not the leading, experts in the
department.

Strauss was not a typical Teuton in appearance.
Irving thought he looked as much like an
Irishman as a German, that he might have
passed for either or a Swede.  He was of
medium height, somewhat slender of build, and
had a smooth, round face, out of which shone
two piercing black eyes--that is, they shone
and pierced when the camouflage of heavy
eyelashes and eyebrows was lifted.  Otherwise one
would have noticed almost everything else
about him first.

There was no doubt in Irving's mind as to
his identification, but he caught not even a
surreptitious glance of recognition from the fellow
at any time.  He attended strictly and diligently
to his own business, and the spy did likewise
from the moment of his recognition of the
man.  He was determined his new associate
should see no evidences of uneasiness in him as
a result of this development.

Three days elapsed after Irving's last
advancement to the card-catalog division, and
still the conversations between him and his
working companion were of the "yea, yea, nay,
nay" character.  Finally, however, the boy
decided to attempt to draw Strauss into
conversation.  He did this by reference to humorous
incidents in the war as brought out in cartoons
and pointed paragraphs in Berlin newspaper
and magazines.

He was somewhat surprised, and pleased
also, to note that the "middle-aged man in
civilian clothes" did not meet his advances with
coldness or indifference.  The fellow proved,
indeed, to be much more polite than it had at
first seemed possible.  He appeared to enjoy
Irving's palaver, for the youth was something
of a wit, but preferred to listen rather than talk
himself.  Finally, however, he grew more
communicative and manifested something of
interest in his associate's personal affairs.

"They're telling some great stories about
you around here," he said one day as they were
preparing to go out for lunch.  It was the first
time they had quit work for the noon hour at
the same time.  Usually Irving went first and
his companion went out after he returned,
although Strauss was virtually "his own boss"
and came and went as he chose.

"Yes, they're a bunch of gossips around
here," Irving replied with a deprecating smile.
"And you know what magnified stories gossips
turn out when their tongues get busy."

Strauss smiled mysteriously and said:

"Oh, for that matter we are all gossips, even
the quietest of us sometimes.  All you have to
do is to get us off on the subjects that we are
well informed about and you'll soon find out
how our tongues can wag at both ends."

"It's pretty hard for me to imagine your
tongue wagging at both ends," Irving returned
with more meaning in his mind than he
expressed in his tone of voice.

"Why?"

"Because you seem to enjoy listening more
than talking."

"I am engaged in a secret business," Strauss
explained, lifting his shaggy brows slightly and
darting a sharp glance at the other.

"Yes, so am I," Irving returned quickly.
"But I like to talk."

"So I observe," said Strauss with veiled
significance, which the boy did not try to
penetrate.

"Just to be sociable," the spy added by way
of explanation and to prevent the conversation
from lagging.

But Strauss did not appear to be so talkatively
eager.  They were in the locker and wash
room during most of this exchange of words,
and nothing further was said between them
until they were outside the building.  The catalog
expert then spoke first.

"Where do you eat?" he asked.

"Oh, any place," Irving replied.  "I've been
in two or three restaurants around here.
There's a good one down in the next block."

"That suits me," said Strauss.

They walked along in silence half a square,
and then the boy's mysterious companion put
to him the most inquisitive query that the spy
had listened to from this man since he became
acquainted with him:

"When do you expect to go back to America?"

"Good!" Irving said to himself.  "Sounds
as if he's going to open up.  Maybe I'll get
something out of him after all."

He little dreamed how much that something
was going to be.

"I don't know," he answered aloud.  "I
haven't received any orders yet."

"You'd better begin to find out then," was
the expert's advice uttered in tones of startling
sharpness.  "I suppose you know it's up to you
to decide that matter yourself."

"Oh, yes, I suppose so," Irving replied with
a matter-of-factness of manner, which was
anything but expressive of what was going on
in his mind.  The fact is, he was a little
disturbed by the last remark of his companion.

"I'll have to undergo a surgical operation
before I start back," he added.

"What's that?" inquired Strauss.  "Were
you wounded?"

"No," Irving replied.  "But I must get rid
of a mark of identification and go back as
another person."

Strauss nodded a stoical sign of interest.
They were now at the entrance of the
restaurant for which they were headed, and the
conversation ceased until they were seated at a
table in one corner of the room and well
removed from other lunchers.  After they had
been served they resumed their discussion of
Irving's proposed operation in subdued tones.

"It must be a curious growth on your body
that you should have to remove it in order to
avoid identification," Strauss remarked as he
spread a "knife-end" of war-time "butter" on
a piece of black bread.

"No, it isn't a growth," Irving replied.  "It's
that cubist art picture on my arm."

"Oh, I see," Strauss grunted.  "But," he
added, "I don't just see how an operation there
is going to do you much good.  What are you
going to have done--have your arm cut off?"

"No--have the skin peeled off."

"Ach," grunted the card-catalog expert.
"That will leave a scar."

"Not if I have some other skin grafted in
its place."

"Quite an idea.  Where do you expect to get
the other skin to graft there?"

"From some part of my body," Irving replied.

"Ja wo-ohl," said the other slowly, with a
suggestion of doubt in his voice not contained
in the phrase.  "But that would leave a scar on
your body, and if some sharp fellow tried to
identify you as the person who brought that
tattooed message ever here the scar might help
him to explain the disappearance of the
picture on your arm."

"Yes, that's true," Irving agreed.  "But the
chance of anything of that sort is small.
Anyway, I'd have to find somebody who would give
me a section of his skin four inches by two."

"There are thousands of patriotic Germans
who are willing to give their lives for their
country," reasoned the expert.  "It ought not
to be hard to find somebody who would give a
few inches of skin."

"You are very logical," the spy observed.
"Perhaps there's somebody in our office who
would make such a sacrifice for his country."

"I'll do it myself," declared Strauss quickly.

In view of the fact that the latter appeared a
few weeks previously to have regarded him
with very grave suspicion, Irving had to admit
to himself after this offer that the spy-cataloger
was more of a mystery than ever.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SKIN GRAFTING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   SKIN GRAFTING

.. vspace:: 2

"Your offer is very kind," Irving said with
emphasis intended to express warmth of
feeling.

"No--patriotic," Strauss declared.

"No doubt of that," the spy admitted; "but
a man can be patriotic and kind at the same
time, can he not?"

"Yes, but this is all patriotism."

"Very well, I'll accept your offer," Irving
announced.  "But I doubt if Mr. Herrmann
will allow it.  You are a very valuable man in
the office, and the operation would surely make
it necessary for you to lay off a few days.  He'll
probably insist that an office boy or clerk or
stenographer make the patriotic sacrifice in
your stead."

"That'll suit me--just so there is no delay in
finding someone who's willing," Strauss replied.

Irving proved to be correct in his prophecy
of the probable attitude of the superintendent
toward the proposition.  Mr. Herrmann
objected strenuously for the reason suggested by
the spy and he took it on himself to find a
person who would supply the skin to be grafted.
Two days later he reported success and
preparations for the operation were begun.

But everybody connected with these preliminaries
had an important lesson to learn regarding
the proper method for a layman to
approach a matter of science.  None of them, of
course, knew anything, except in a very
general way, about skin grafting.  Irving had
assumed that it was a simple process, and, as a
matter of fact, it is, if we accept the principle
of the simplicity of all things.  But what
startled him most was the simplicity of the
error he had fallen into.

Mr. Herrmann gave Irving a note to the
superintendent of one of the city hospitals and
directed him to go there and make arrangements
for the operation.  He was authorized
to state that a young soldier who had lost one
of his legs in the first battle of the Marne had
promised to furnish the needed four-by-two
inches of skin to replace the tattooed
integument on his arm.

The spy did as instructed and was turned
over to a member of the surgical staff.  The
latter listened to the boy's story and his
suggestions and then inquired:

"At what college of physicians and surgeons
did you get your degree?"

Irving no doubt flushed like a schoolboy.  He
realized that the member of the hospital staff
was laughing at him, and this confused him
more than a veiled suspicion that he was a
Canadian spy would have done.

"The college I graduated from was that of
mother's home remedies," he replied.

"I thought so," nodded the surgeon with a
smile.  "Let me see--you are in the intelligence
department, are you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Doing important work, aren't you?'

"I believe so."

"Work that requires sharp wit?"

"Supposedly."

"Well, sharp wits never assume anything
without some information to back them up.
Your ideas of skin grafting are a good deal
like a child's.  In the first place we shan't need
anybody to supply any skin.  Sorry to
disappoint the young patriot with really
commendable spirit of loyalty."

Irving looked his surprise.

"You'll supply all the skin we need," the
surgeon continued.

"But it is important that there be no scars,"
Irving insisted.

"There won't be any, or so slight that they'll
be hardly noticeable," was the surgeon's
reassuring reply.  "Let me explain the process to
an unscientific keen wit of the government's
intelligence department."

The surgeon lifted the spy's bared arm with
his left hand and began his explanation,
indicating with one finger now and then the
various moves necessary as he described the
process.

"With a razor," he said, "we will cut an
outline around this hideous art of yours.  Then
we'll peel off the atrocity and cremate it over
an alcohol flame.  Next we'll  peel a strip of the
same length and three-fourths of an inch wide
just below here, leaving the upper end of the
strip attached and twisting it around so that
it will lie midway between the edges of the raw
space where the tattooing was.  Then we'll cut
under the skin along both sides to loosen it an
inch or more back and draw the loosened skin
to the piece in the center and make a hair
suture.  The reason we must run a strip of skin
over the middle of the raw area is because this
area will be too wide for stretching the skin at
the sides over it.  Skin that is stretched too
tight will die.  The narrow raw place produced
by the peeling of the strip down over the wrist
can be covered by pulling together the edges of
the skin on both sides after running the razor
back under it a short distance.  Quite different
from the process you imagined, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Irving admitted.

"I bet you thought all that was necessary was
to peel off a piece of skin and lay it on the raw
place after this cubist art picture had been
removed.  Isn't that true?"

"Maybe--something of the kind.  I hadn't
thought it out in detail," Irving replied.

"Of course, you hadn't.  You'd have been too
scientific for a secret service operative,
wouldn't you?"

"Can't secret service people be scientific?"
Irving inquired.

"What do you think about it?" asked the
surgeon.  "You ought to know more about it
than I do.  But I'll tell you what my frank and
unscientific opinion in the matter is."

"What is it?"

"That government secret service is 1 per cent
information and 99 per cent bluff."

"That's a little strong on the side of the
bluff," said the spy, smiling.

"But there's something to it?"

"Yes."

"Now you need this much science to prevent
your bluff from getting you into trouble.  When
you attempt to bluff a scientific man be sure not
to bluff along the line of his knowledge and the
line of your ignorance.  By the way, when do
you want that operation performed?

"The sooner the better," Irving replied.

"How about now?"

This almost took the boy's breath away, but
after a few minutes he answered:

"That's all right, I suppose, but I'd better
call up my office first and tell the boss what's
doing."

"Very well; here's a telephone.  Call him up."

Irving did so and in a few minutes had
authority to "go ahead and have it over as soon
as possible."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TAPPING ON THE WINDOW`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TAPPING ON THE WINDOW

.. vspace:: 2

Irving slept under an anæsthetic during
the operation.  He objected at first to the
administration of ether, but the surgeon insisted.

"I don't want you to make any trouble," he
insisted.  "Remember you're not a scientific
youth and might do something ridiculous.  If
I'm going to perform this operation you must
take orders and obey them."

That settled it; Irving acquiesced.  When
he recovered consciousness he found himself in
a hospital bed with his left arm bandaged and
feeling a good deal like a limb of a tree, or
anything else with a like degree of life.  He
remained in bed until the next morning, when
his arm was put in a sling and he was permitted
to move about as he pleased, although directed
to remain in the hospital.  Two days later he
was allowed to leave the institution, but was
instructed to return daily for examination and
redressing of the graft.

He returned at once to the intelligence office
and reported the success of the operation.  The
chief surgeon had informed him that his arm
might be taken out of the sling in about a week.

During this period Irving was in the office
much of the time, although he was able to be of
little service with the use of only one arm.  Still,
he found it possible to add a good deal to his
knowledge of the system of which the government
was planning to make him an important
agent, and this was, on the whole, quite
satisfactory to him.

The youthful spy's plans for carrying out his
mission for the British government had been
developing rapidly since he became a member
of the staff in the German intelligence office.
And not a little of this development had been
quite unforeseen by him.  His original plans,
therefore, underwent considerable change as
time and experience advanced.

For instance, he decided not to attempt to
make a list of names of leading enemy agents
in the United States and Canada to take back
with him.  This had been his original purpose.
He now regarded it as unwise, unsafe.  He
would depend on his memory to retain a store
of information of this kind.  So he watched and
examined and probed and memorized, going
over the information he had accumulated many
times in his leisure hours in order to keep it
fixed and unmistakable in his mind.

"I think I could go back to school and memorize
history dates as I never did before," he
told himself one evening about a week after
the skin-grafting operation.  "Gee!  I never
realized I had such a memory.  I can run off a
string of dope as long as the tune the old cow
died on, just like saying the ABC's."

Irving had forgotten the "tune the old cow
died on," but the expression stuck in his mind
as a relic of nursery days.

One of the divisions of service in the
intelligence department that interested the spy
particularly was the telegraphic division.  It came
as an intermediate grade in his course of
instruction, and he was required to learn to read
the ticking of the telegraph instrument.
Fortunately, a few years before, he had learned the
alphabet while amusing himself with an
amateur wireless outfit, and it now required
comparatively little time for him to develop a fair
degree of proficiency as a key-listener.

"You can never tell when it'll be greatly to
your advantage to be able to read the telegraph
instrument," Mr. Herrmann explained.  "In
fact, that may be one of your most important
occupations in America--tapping wires, for
instance."

Indeed, the spy caught a number of messages
of incalculable importance while pursuing his
studies in this division and made careful note
of them in his mental repository.

About a week later he had a novel "telegraphic"
experience, which, in turn, was to
have an important bearing on his fortunes as a
spy in the enemy's country.  The affair took
place in the rooming house where he was living.
While he endeavored to get out in the evening,
as a rule, and mingle with citizens of all sorts
and descriptions, in order to absorb as much
general information as possible, still he retired
almost every night in good season, and not
infrequently went early to his room to study,
rehearse, memorize and plan.  In this manner he
endeavored to improve every opportunity to
make his excursion a success.

He had just finished one of these solitary
sessions in which several leading newspapers
and magazines played an important part, and
was about to lay them aside and prepare for
bed, when his attention was attracted by a faint
tapping sound.  At first he gave little heed to
it, presuming, in a semi-conscious way, that it
was occasioned by a continuous breath of air
and a tiny, loose pendant of some sort in the
exterior construction work of the house.  But
it continued in a strangely familiar way and
seemed to grow a little louder very gradually.

Suddenly, Irving sat up straight and listened
rigidly.  Anyone observing him in this attitude
could not have failed to be impressed with the
feeling that an alarm of some character was
thrilling his every nerve center.

"My goodness!" was the exclamation that
smothered itself within him.  "What in the
world can that mean?  Yes, no, yes--somebody
is trying to communicate with me.  He's using
the telegraphic signal.  He's asking me to
answer, to indicate in some way that I am getting
his message.  He says he's a friend.  He knows
I'm a British spy.  But maybe it's a trap to
catch me.  What shall I do?  If he's a friend
he surely ought to know better than to expect
me to make such an admission.  But he says he
has important information.  What--what in
the world shall I do?  I may be in very great
danger.  Here is certainly the test of my life."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A REVELATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A REVELATION

.. vspace:: 2

"I have an important message for you.  I
am a French spy.  I must get this message
to you.  Answer me in some way.  Heave a
big yawn or clear your throat and I'll know you
hear me and get what I'm saying.  I merely
want to make sure you are what I think you
are.  I don't dare reveal myself to you for fear
that I may be mistaken and you'd turn me over
to the government."

These words were tapped off, alphabetically,
with a small instrument, probably a pencil, on
the window overlooking a court inclosed by the
building on three sides.  After a pause of half
a minute, following the appeal just recorded,
the dot-and-dash tapping continued thus:

"I am looking through the shade of your
window and can see that you are listening
attentively; so you need not reply.  Just
continue to listen, and I shall know everything is
all right.

"When you leave for America you will be
supplied with a message in cipher, prepared by
me, for a certain agent of the kaiser.  That
message will bear the appearance of having
been written by a friend of yours to you, but it
will contain information in invisible ink for
your benefit as a loyal agent of the Allies.  This
information will be of great value to the Allies,
supplying them with material for undermining
the Teutonic spy system in England, France,
and America, which recently declared war.

"This is all.  I merely wished to advise you
of what you will find written with invisible ink
on the paper that will be placed in your
possession when you set out on your return to
America."

The tapping ceased.  Irving remained like a
statue in his chair for several minutes.  Then
he arose, went to the window and pulled the
shade aside.  The court was dark, save for a
solitary dim light out at the entrance.  He
could just faintly discern the steel structure of
the fire escape near the window.

"That's the way he got up," he half
muttered.  "He stood there on that landing while
he tapped his message.  I wonder who he is and
how he spotted me.  He must be a very clever
fellow.  I really believe he's what he
represented himself to be; and yet, it may possibly
be a trap to catch me.  However, I don't see
what I can do except await developments."

He went to bed and slept better than might
have been expected under the circumstances.
But he had become so used to critical situations
by this time that he felt almost capable of
sleeping peacefully on the "edge of the earth" with
a torpedo for a pillow.

Next day the mystery of the window-telegraph
spy bothered him a good deal, even more
than it did immediately after the fellow had
"dotted and dashed" his message on the pane
of glass.

"I wonder who he was?" he repeated many
times.  "I wonder if he's somebody I'm in close
touch with every day?"

The suggestion caused him to watch
narrowly every person in the office with whom he
did business for the German government.  But
the more he watched, the more unsatisfactory
the situation became.  He continued his furtive
outlook several days, but finally admitted to
himself that the prospect of his efforts solving
the mystery was anything but bright.

Meanwhile the spy's preparations for a new
excursion out into a broad field of international
espionage were rapidly drawing to a close.  The
surgeon at the hospital who had performed the
skin-grafting operation on his arm pronounced
it sufficiently well healed, first, to warrant
taking the limb out of the sling, and then, a week
later, for the removal of the bandage.  There
were a few slightly rough places here and there.
around the edges of the patch, and one small
scar at the lower end of the middle strip of skin
where it had been twisted to cause it to lie
"right side out" through the middle of the
larger patch and make the latter complete by
meeting the outer edges that had been undercut
and drawn to it.

All things considered, Irving was well
pleased with the course of events during his
sojourn in the German capital.  Although a
number of situations had developed with rather
dangerous aspect, he had pulled through all of
them with apparent success.  While he was
still reporting daily at the hospital for the
dressing of his arm his lieutenancy commission
was acted upon in the war office and was
delivered to him through Mr. Herrmann.

At last the day arrived for a windup of the
young spy's affairs in the intelligence offices,
and he was summoned into the presence of "the
baron" and Superintendent Herrmann.  A
third man also was present to receive the young
espionage student.  He wore a navy uniform
and was introduced as Capt. Bartholf of the
submarine service.

"You will go with Capt. Bartholf on board
his boat," "the baron" announced, addressing
"Lieut. Hessenburg."  "He will land you on
the coast of Spain and from there you will go
to a German consul and devise a method for
getting you to Mexico and from there into the
United States.

"By the way," the high intelligence official
remarked, suddenly interrupting himself and
addressing Superintendent Herrmann; "how
about that letter that was being prepared for
Lieut. Hessenburg to take along?"

"I'll see," replied Herrmann, as he started
for the door.

"Bring Strauss in with you," "the baron"
called after him.  "I may want to ask him some
questions."

"Strauss!"

The name echoed in Irving's brain with a
succession of significant thrills.  What did
Strauss have to do with the preparation of the
letter he was to take with him?  Was it possible--?

He did not finish the sentence in words, but
the idea was there and remained uppermost in
his mind during the remainder of the session
in "the baron's" office.  Presently Herrmann
returned, accompanied by the card-catalog
expert, who carried an envelope of ordinary
business-correspondence size in one hand.  This
envelope he laid on the desk in front of the
intelligence chief.

The latter picked it up, looked keenly at
Strauss and asked with like sharpness of voice:

"This paper was prepared entirely by you,
was it?"

"Yes," the cataloger answered.

"And it has been in no other person's hands
at any time since you began work on it?"

"No."

"And you vouch for the accuracy and
thoroughness of its preparation?"

"Yes."

"That's all.  You may retire."

Strauss left the room.  "The baron" turned
to Irving, handed him the letter, and said:

"This innocent looking missive is of vast
importance.  It is addressed in cipher to a very
important person in America who is high in the
confidence of the United States government.
You have learned how to read this cipher and
will work it out for yourself.  That is all.
Good-by.  I wish you a continuation of the success
that has been yours in a remarkable degree
heretofore."

Irving took "the baron's" offered hand and
then left the office accompanied by Capt. Bartholf.
As he went the name of Strauss
continued to ring in his head, together with this
startling conviction:

The catalog expert was the French spy who
had tapped the "telegraph message" on his
window at the rooming house!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SUBMARINES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SUBMARINES

.. vspace:: 2

Lieut. Ellis of the Canadian army, alias
Lieut. Hessenburg of the German army,
had quite enough to think about as he left the
office of "the baron" in company with the
submarine commander.  Out in the reception room
the latter took leave of him, saying, "Meet me
at the Kaiserhof at 9 o'clock tomorrow
morning"; then the youthful spy, with a
counter-spying commission from the enemy, went to his
desk and began to make arrangements for his
departure.

Mr. Herrmann selected from the office force
a former soldier who had lost one arm, and to
him Irving made a brief statement of the work
he had been doing so that his successor might
continue where he had left off.  For a short
time he debated in his mind whether to go to
those of his fellow workmen with whom he had
been more intimately associated and bid them
farewell, but he decided that this would not be
in harmony with the "community conduct" of
the officials and employes of the bureau.  In
fact, he had observed little in the association of
the office that had suggested real community
life.  Everybody connected with the intelligence
bureau seemed either to have been born
with a cold furtiveness of manner or to have
developed an espionage attitude of this sort in
the atmosphere of the greatest spy system the
world had ever known.

However, he disliked very much to leave the
place for the last time without passing at least
an "aufwiedersehen" to the one person there
who he felt certain was a friend of the great
cause of human liberty for which the allied
nations were fighting.  But Strauss seemed
disposed to ignore him if possible.  He passed
several times near the expert's desk, but the latter
pored more diligently than ever over his work.
Once Irving caught his eye and attempted to
pass him a look of intelligent meaning, but
Strauss turned away quickly, and Irving left
the building without saying good-by to one of
the occupants.

"A very cold-blooded business," he told
himself.  "My!  I'm glad to be out of there.  I'm
afraid I'm not built along cold enough lines
for a spy even in behalf of a great and
meritorious cause.  That fellow Strauss is an ideal
spy.  He must be the best any nation ever
produced.  He certainly has worked himself into
a powerful position of confidence with the
enemy.  But that was some chance he took when
he tapped that message on my window.  I
wonder if he expected me to discover who he was
after he told me he was the fellow that prepared
the letter that was to be given to me.  And
when he assured the baron that nobody else had
had the letter in his possession, nobody else
remained for me to suspect.  Well, he must know
now that I spotted him; but he surely exhibited
extremely wise caution when he refused to
recognize even a significant look from me.
Good-by, Mr. Strauss, or whatever your name is.  You
were too shrewd to let me shake your hand, and
cold judgment tells me you were right.  I hope
after the war is over I may take a trip to
Europe and look you up.  But, judging from the
way you looked at me, or avoided looking at
me, I'm afraid you'd take advantage of the
opportunity to give me a calling down such as few
people have ever received.  I'd probably feel
the knives of your sarcasm making ridiculous
mince meat out of me."

Next morning, promptly at the appointed
hour, Irving was at the information desk of
the Kaiserhof, asking for Capt. Bartholf.  The
latter was in his room waiting for the young
intelligence officer.  Two hours later,
arrangements having been made for the transfer of
baggage, the captain and the lieutenant were
on board a train and headed for one of the
principal submarine ports of the German coast.

The trip was uneventful, except that it
afforded Irving an opportunity to make a study
of the character of an official representative of
the policy of ruthlessness of the military
government of Germany.  Capt. Bartholf was a fit
exponent of this policy and exceedingly
efficient because of the intelligence with which he
could disguise the barbarous nature of his
ideas.  Hours before they reached the port of
their destination, the spy was convinced that
an enemy who fell into the clutches of this
sub-sea commander might as well toss hope to the
fishes.

"I don't believe he'd take a prisoner if he
could help it," Irving mused as a climax to his
conclusions.  "I'd never surrender to a man
like him if I knew in advance what kind of
fellow he was.  It'd be a finish fight even
though there were no hope in it for me."

They arrived at the seaport in the evening
and took rooms at a hotel.  Two days they
remained in this city.  The captain explained the
delay by saying that he was awaiting orders
to start on a raiding cruise.  Finally the orders
arrived, and he announced that they would go
on board at once.

Half an hour later they were at the docks,
where a dozen U-boats were lined up, some of
them taking in provisions and oil, or
undergoing inspection and minor repairs.  Irving's
eyes were busy with new objects of interest at
this submarine harbor, for he had never before
seen an undersea craft.  Eagerly he took in
the scene, regarding the various objects with
more than the calculating interest of an
international spy; and while in the act of boarding
the vessel in which he was about to take his
first submarine trip, he almost forgot, as the
romantic thrill of the experience went through
him, that he was surrounded by enemies in
whose hands his life would be worth only a
volley of rifle balls if his real identity were
revealed to them.





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.. _`"KAMERAD!" AGAIN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   "KAMERAD!" AGAIN

.. vspace:: 2

"Shut off the power."

Irving was in the conning tower with
Capt. Bartholf and Lieut. Voltz of U-31 when
the latter, who was at the periscope, gave the
foregoing order through the speaking tube.

They had been out all night and half the
preceding day, running much of the time on the
surface of the ocean in order to make the best
possible speed.  Irving had not a clear idea
where they were, but presumed that they must
have passed a considerable distance beyond the
western end of the English channel.

Lieut. Voltz gazed again into the glass of
the periscope after giving his order to the
engineer.  He had had his hand on the lever at
his right and with this had turned the periscope
tube so that his eye could sweep the horizon.
Now, however, he had discovered something,
and he no longer moved the lever except
occasionally little more than a hair's breadth in
order to keep the object of interest in view.
After a few moments of further careful
examination and reference to the telemeter
attachment to determine the distance away of the
discovered object, he called again into the
speaking tube.

"Go down four fathoms."

Then turning to Capt. Bartholf, he said:

"There are two vessels about five knots a
little south of west from here.  One is probably
a convoy."

"Run about three knots closer and take
another peep," the captain ordered.  "Did 17
and the 23 sight them also?"

"I think so.  Seventeen just went under."

Irving understood this question and answer
to refer to two other U-boats that accompanied
No. 31 on this trip.  Meanwhile the latter
submerged to the depth ordered by Lieut. Voltz.

Twenty minutes later the periscope was
again a few feet out of the water with the
lieutenant's eye glued to the glass and his right
hand working the lever.

"Let me have a look," said the commander.

He gazed a minute into the glass and then said:

"I'm going to try to get that convoy first
and then the other, which appears to be a
hospital ship."

Irving shuddered.

The order was again given to submerge.  The
lieutenant seemed to be doing all the work of
lookout, pilot and operating master, for he was
busy at the steering wheel, periscope, and
speaking tube almost simultaneously much of
the time.  All these were within easy reach from
one position.  The "sub" arose several times
near enough to the surface to enable the
lieutenant or the captain to take a peep at the
prospective prey, and then down again it would go.
At last, under direction from the captain, the
lieutenant gave this order through the speaking tube:

"Have the men slide a torpedo into one of
the forward tubes."

Eager to witness this operation, Irving
sprang to the stairway and was soon down on
the lower deck.  There he saw several members
of the crew remove the safety attachment from
the nose of a sixteen-foot phosphor-bronze
torpedo, which was seventeen or eighteen inches
in diameter, and slide it into a tunnel-like hole
in the midst of a maze of operating machinery.
A minute or two later the order was given to
"shoot," and out it went, under initial
propulsion from a compressed air engine.

Then the order to submerge was given again,
and away they went southward at full speed
under three fathoms of water.  Ten minutes
afterward the periscope peeped up over the
surface of the sea once more, and Capt. Bartholf
had his eye glued eagerly to the glass.

A moment later he gave a yelp of delight,
and Irving knew that a hit had been scored.

"We've hit 'em both fine!" the commanding
officer exclaimed.  "One of the other boats
must have fired a torpedo about the same time
we did.  Both of those ships are going down."

It was not regarded safe to show the hulks
of the submarines above the water yet,
however, for fear lest the convoy hit one or more
of them with a shell as a last living act of
revenge.  But they did not have to wait long,
however, for the doomed vessels sank rapidly.

Then all three submarines showed themselves
on the surface and Irving was delighted to
observe that apparently all of the sailors,
soldiers and nurses that had been on the hospital
ship and the convoy were now in lifeboats,
which were being rowed with frantic
desperation away from the U-boat-infested spot.

"Follow them up and let's see what they look
like," Capt. Bartholf ordered, with a kind of
gloating glee.

All three captains seemed to be of like mind,
for all three U-boats took the same course and
ran up close to the crowded lifeboats.  Several
officers and members of the crew of each of the
submarines appeared on the outer deck to view
the results of their uncontested victory.

Suddenly there came from one of the boats a
call that thrilled and chilled Irving with a sense
of awed familiarity.

"Kamerad!"

Where had he heard that cry in that tone of
voice before?  He could not decide on the
moment, and yet he was apprehensive of an
unpleasant discovery.

The captain of U-31 determined to investigate
and ordered the lifeboat from which the
hail proceeded to come alongside.  The
occupants could do nothing more sensible than obey.
As it approached a young man with an empty
left sleeve arose and repeated his appealing cry,
and Irving almost dropped in his tracks.

The one-armed fellow was Adolph Hessenburg,
alias Tourtelle, the former Canadian
lieutenant of the tattooed cubist art
cryptogram.  Undoubtedly he was being sent to
England to be held there for a determination of his
fate after information had been received
regarding the success or failure of his
substitute spy's mission within the German lines.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   "ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN"

.. vspace:: 2

If anybody had observed the precipitation
with which Irving dived down the hatchway
of U-31 a moment or two after he recognized
the "cubist art spy," there is no doubt that
the observer would have been impressed with
the mystery of the proceeding.  As it was, all
of his boche companions on the outer deck
were too much interested in seeking an
explanation of the "kamerad" cry from the midst
of a boatload of enemy soldiers and sailors to
give attention to anything less than the
explosion of a bomb on their own vessel.

Irving meanwhile picked up a sou'wester
that he found on the lower deck, put it over
his head so that it partly covered, shaded, and
hence considerably disguised his face, and then
returned to the outer deck.  True, the weather
was not stormy, but the air was chilly and the
"cloudburst hood" added considerably to his
comfort.

The real Hessenburg had been assisted on
board and was being questioned by Captain
Bartholf.  Irving heard the latter ask him his
name, and then suddenly something happened
which the trembling spy has ever since declared
undoubtedly saved his life and some very
important information for the Allies.

What caused the sudden lurch of the
submarine was not subsequently disclosed.
Possibly one of the men below, accidentally or
thoughtlessly moved a lever or wheel that
resulted in a momentary spasm of mechanical
action.  At any rate, all on the outer deck were
dancing around for several seconds to preserve
their balance, and one of them was not as
successful as the others.  That was Hessenburg,
who was thrown violently against the low railing
so that he struck his head on one of the iron
standards or posts.

Evidently he was seriously injured, for he
did not attempt to rise.  The pallor of his face
and the glassy look in his eyes indicated that
he had fainted.  He was carried below and
restoratives were administered to him, but
these did not bring back more than barely
enough life to reassure his caretakers that the
concussion on his head was probably not fatal.

.. vspace:: 1

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The run from the scene of the sinking of the
British hospital ship and convoy to the Spanish
coast was made in about eighteen hours, and
before noon of the day following, Irving was
landed on a bleak and desolate spot on the Bay
of Biscay.  Meanwhile, he had thankfully
observed the slowness with which the former
"cubist art spy" recovered.  Although he found
it necessary several times to be at the bedside
of the patient, the latter showed no signs of
recognition; indeed, he at no time before Irving
was put ashore indicated that he had fully
recovered from the stupor which followed the
shock of his fall.

The story of how Irving found his way to a
Spanish settlement and subsequently got in
touch with a British consulate and thence again
with the Canadian army is of little interest
compared with the thrilling events heretofore
narrated.  Suffice it to say that in due time
success met his efforts to get back with the
Canadians, who retained unshakable possession
of Vimy Ridge, and that the information he
was able to turn over to his superior officers
brought him recognition and honors from very
high sources.




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.. vspace:: 4

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   BOYS' COPYRIGHTED BOOKS

.. vspace:: 2

Printed from large, clear type on a superior quality of paper,
embellished with original illustrations by eminent artists, and
bound in a superior quality of book binders' cloth, ornamented
with illustrated covers, stamped in colors from unique and
appropriate dies, each book wrapped in a glazed paper wrapper
printed in colors.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   ARMY BOYS SERIES

.. class:: center bold

   By Major Andrew S. Burley

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--Uncle Sam's Army Boys on the Rhine, or, Bob Hamilton
in the Argonne Death Trap.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--Uncle Sam's Army Boys in Italy, or, Bob Hamilton Under
Fire in the Piave District.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--Uncle Sam's Army Boys in Khaki Under Canvas, or, Bob
Hamilton and the Munition Plant Plot

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Uncle Sam's Army Boys with Old Glory in Mexico, or, Bob
Hamilton Along Pershing's Trail.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   NAVY BOYS SERIES

.. class:: center bold

   By Jasper Martin--Gunner's Mate

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--Uncle Sam's Navy Boys with the Submarine Chasers, or, On
Patrol Duty in the North Sea.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--Uncle Sam's Navy Boys Afloat, or, The Raid Along the
Atlantic Seaboard.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--Uncle Sam's Navy Boys in Action, or, Running Down Enemy
Commerce Destroyers.

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Uncle Sam's Navy Boys with the Marines, or, Standing Like
a Rock at Chateau Thierry.



.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   OVER THERE SERIES

.. class:: center bold

   By Capt. Geo. H. Ralphson

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--Over There With the Marines at Chateau Thierry.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--Over There With the Canadians at Vimy Ridge.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--Over There With the Doughboys at St. Mihiel.

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Over There With Pershing's Heroes at Cantigny.


.. vspace:: 3

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   Popular Copyrights

.. vspace:: 1

Here you will find the best works of the most popular authors,
the choice late fiction books that have had big sales at high
prices.  Former prices were $1.50 to $1.60 per volume.  The
books are well made, printed right from the original high price
plates, and each contains jacket in colors.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   LIST PRICE, 75 CENTS

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Adventures of Captain Kettle.  Cutliffe Hyne
Alias "The Night Wind".  Varick Vanardy
Apaches of New York.  Alfred Henry Lewis
Around the World With Josiah Allen's Wife.  Marietta Holley
Arsene Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes.  Maurice LeBlanc
Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar.  Maurice LeBlanc
Bat.  Edward Marshall
Battle (The).  Cleveland Moffett
Black Motor Car (The).  Harris Burland
Broadway Jones.  George M. Cohan and Edward Marshall
By Right of Conquest.  Arthur Hornblow
Call of the Heart (The).  L. N. Way
Champion.  John Collin Dane
Chorus Lady (The).  John W. Harding
The Country Boy (The).  Homer Davenport
Crag Nest.  T. C. DeLeon
Devota.  Augusta Evans Wilson
Diamond From the Sky (The).  Roy L. McCardell.
Double Cross (The).  Gilson Willetts
Easiest Way (The).  Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow.
End of the Game (The).  Arthur Hornblow
Faro Nell and Her Friends.  Alfred Henry Lewis
Garrison's Finish.  W. B. M. Ferguson
Gertrude Elliott's Crucible.  Mrs. George Sheldon Downs
Girl Question (The).  John W. Harding
Girls of Silver Spur Ranch.  Grace McGowan Cook and Anne McQueen
Greater Joy (The).  Margaret Blake
Her Heart's Gift.  Oliver Kent
Her Right Divine.  Oliver Kent
Honor of His House (The).  Andrew Soutar
House by the Lock (The).  Mrs. C. N. Williamson
In Old Kentucky.  Edward Marshall
Inspiration.  Carol Gordon
International Spy (The).  Allen Upward
Jess of the River.  T. C. DeLeon
Katherine's Sheaves.  Mrs. George Sheldon Downs
Kindling.  Charles Kenyon and Arthur Hornblow
King of the Camorra.  From the Italian of E. Serao
Land of the Frozen Suns.  Bertrand W. Sinclair
Man's Code (A).  W. B. M. Rerguson
Mask (The).  Arthur Hornblow
Master of Fortune (A).  Cutliffe Hyne
Matthew Ferguson.  Margaret Blake
Modern Heloise (The).  Alfred Buchanan
Mrs. Linthicum and Mary Jane.  Charlotte Hay Meredith
My Lady Cinderella.  Mrs. C. N. Williamson
Nation Famous New York Murders.  Alfred Henry Lewis
New England Folks.  Eugene W. Fresbrey
Night Wind's Promise (The).  Varick Vanardy
Old Homestead (The).  Novelized from the Great Play
Paid in Full.  John W. Harding
Price (The).  George Broadhurst, Arthur Hornblow
Quo Vadis.  Henryk Sienkiewicz
Raw Gold.  Bertrand W. Sinclair
Real Boys.  Judge Henry A. Shute
Redeemed.  Mrs. George Sheldon Downs
Return of the Night Wind.  Varick Vanardy
Rogue's Heiress (The).  Tom Gallon
Round Up (The).  John Murray and M. M. Miller
Silver King (The).  Alfred Wilson Barrett
Sins of Society.  Cecil Raleigh
Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer.  Cyrus Townsend Brady
Souls of Men (The).  Martha M. Stanley
Story of Paul Jones (The).  Alfred Henry Lewis
Spendthrift (The).  Porter Emerson Browne and Edward Marshall
St. Elmo.  Augusta Evans Wilson
Step by Step.  Mrs. George Sheldon Downs
Strongheart.  F. R. Burton
Surry of Eagle's Nest.  John Esten Cooke
Sweet Danger.  Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Talker (The).  Marion Fairfax and Arthur Hornblow
Thoroughbred (The).  Edith MacVane
Three Daughters of the Confederacy.  Cyrus Townsend Brady
Time, Place and the Girl (The).  John W. Harding
Traffic in Souls.  Eustace Hale Ball
True Detective Stories.  A. L. Drummond
Voice of the Heart (The).  Margaret Blake
Warrens of Virginia (The).  George Cary Eggleston
Wasp (The).  Theodore Goodridge Roberts
Watch-Dog (The).  Arthur Hornblow
White Rose of Memphis (The).  W. C. Falkner
Wolf (The).  Eugene Walter
Writing on the Wall.  Edward Marshall


.. vspace:: 3

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center bold

   By

.. class:: center x-large bold

   Mrs. George Sheldon Downs

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   Katherine's Sheaves

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   A Great Novel With a Great Purpose

.. vspace:: 1

Katherine's Sheaves is altogether delightful, a charming piece
of fiction, a beautiful romance.  One must admire the book for its
characterization, its brilliant pictures of life, and its dramatic
situations, but still more for its philosophy and wisdom.

The story is a dramatic one, abounding in strong situations.

The plot is well conceived and carried out, the style easy and
the characters likable.

.. class:: center bold

12mo, Cloth, Illustrated.  Popular Edition, 75 cents.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   Step by Step

.. vspace:: 1

Judged as a story pure and simple, "STEP BY STEP," is
altogether delightful.  But it is not merely a charming piece of
fiction.  Ethical in its nature, the underlying thought shows
throughout the lofty purpose and high ideals of the author, and
exhales a wholesome atmosphere, while the element of romance
pervading it is both elevated and enriched by its purity and
simplicity.

.. class:: center bold

   12mo, Cloth, Illustrated.  Popular Edition, 75 cents.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   Gertrude Elliot's Crucible

.. vspace:: 1

It is a readable story, clean, wholesome, and high in moral
tone--optimistic and constructive.

It has an alluring plot, and is well and skillfully worked out.
The incidents are dramatic, and therefore always striking, and
the entire romance will hold the attention of the reader.

.. class:: center bold

   12mo, Cloth, Illustrated.  Popular Edition, 75 cents.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   Redeemed

.. vspace:: 1

Dealing with divorce--the most vital problem in the world
today--this book tells how a pure-minded woman is divorced
from her Husband, upon a flimsy pretext, because he wishes to
marry again.  How he suffers when he learns that he has thrown
away the true disinterested love of a noble woman and how he
craves that love again, makes a vivid, forceful story of an
intensely modern significance.

.. class:: center bold

12mo, Cloth, Illustrated.  Popular Edition, 75 cents.


.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 3

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   Late Rebound Fiction

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By H. G. WELLS

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH.
WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN.
RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT.
BEALBY.
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD.
WHAT IS COMING.
ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN AT WAR.
GOD, THE INVINCIBLE KING.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON, Author of "Graustark," Etc.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

FROM THE HOUSETOPS.
GREEN FANCY.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By THOMAS DIXON, Jr.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

FALL OF A NATION.  The sequel to "Birth of a Nation."


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By A. H. MAHER

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By ALICE BROWN

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

THE PRISONER.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent bold

   By JEFFERY FARNOL.  Author of "The Broad Highway."

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

OUR ADMIRABLE BETTY.
THE DEFINITE OBJECT.


.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

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   BOYS' COPYRIGHTED BOOKS

.. vspace:: 1

Printed from large, clear type on a superior quality of paper,
embellished with original illustrations by eminent artists, and bound
in a superior quality of book binders' cloth, ornamented with
illustrated covers, stamped in colors from unique and appropriate dies,
each book wrapped in a glazed paper wrapper printed in colors.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   MOTOR BOAT BOYS SERIES

.. class:: center

   By Louis Arundel

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--The Motor Club's Cruise Down the Mississippi; or, The Dash
for Dixie.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--The Motor Club on the St. Lawrence River; or, Adventures
Among the Thousand Islands.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--The Motor Club on the Great Lakes; or, Exploring the Mystic
Isle of Mackinac.

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Motor Boat Boys Among the Florida Keys; or, The Struggle for
the Leadership.

.. vspace:: 1

\5.--Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast; or, Through Storm and Stress.

.. vspace:: 1

\6.--Motor Boat Boys' River Chase.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   THE BIRD BOYS SERIES

.. class:: center

   By John Luther Langworthy

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--The Bird Boys; or, The Young Sky Pilots' First Air Voyage.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--The Bird Boys on the Wing; or, Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--The Bird Boys Among the Clouds; or, Young Aviators in a Wreck.

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Bird Boys' Flight; or, A Hydroplane Round-up.

.. vspace:: 1

\5.--Bird Boys' Aeroplane Wonder; or, Young Aviators on a Cattle Ranch.


.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center bold

   CANOE AND CAMPFIRE SERIES

.. class:: center

   By St. George Rathborne

.. vspace:: 1

\1.--Canoe Mates in Canada; or, Three Boys Afloat on the
Saskatchewan.

.. vspace:: 1

\2.--Young Fur Takers; or, Traps and Trails in the Wilderness.

.. vspace:: 1

\3.--The House Boat Boys; or, Drifting Down to the Sunny South.

.. vspace:: 1

\4.--Chums in Dixie; or, The Strange Cruise in the Motor Boat.

.. vspace:: 1

\5.--Camp Mates in Michigan; or, With Pack and Paddle in the Pine
Woods.

.. vspace:: 1

\6.--Rocky Mountain Boys; or, Camping in the Big Game Country.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center bold white-space-pre-line

   \M. \A. DONOHUE & CO.
   701-733 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago

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.. pgfooter::