Ruth Fielding In the Red Cross Part 9

"We need you here. If all our dependable women go to France, how shall we manage here?"

"You would manage very well," Ruth told him. "This should be a training school for the work over there. I know that I can give any intelligent girl such an idea of my work in three weeks that you would never miss me."

"Impossible, Miss Fielding!"

"Quite possible, I a.s.sure you. I want to go. I feel I can do more over there than I can here. A thousand girls who can't go could be found to do what I do here. Approve my application, will you please, Mr. Mayo?"

He did this after some hesitation. "Am I going to lose everybody at once?" he grumbled.

"Why, only poor little me," laughed Ruth Fielding.

"Yours is the seventh application I have O.K.'d. And several others may ask yet. The fire is spreading."

"Oh! Who?"

"We are going to lose Mrs. Mantel for one. I understand that the Red Cross wants her for a much more important work in France."

For a little while Ruth doubted after all if she so much desired to go to France. The fact that Mrs. Mantel was going came as a shock to her mind and made her hesitate. Suppose she should meet the woman in black over there? Suppose her work should be connected with that of the woman whom she so much suspected and disliked?

Then her better sense and her patriotism came to the force. What had she to do with Mrs. Mantel, after all? She was not the woman's keeper. Nor could it be possible that Mrs. Mantel would disturb herself much over Ruth Fielding, no matter where they might meet.

Was Ruth Fielding willing to work for the Red Cross only in ways that would be wholly pleasant and with people of whom she could entirely approve? The girl asked herself this seriously.

She put the thought behind her with distaste at her own narrowness of vision. Born of Yankee stock, she was naturally conservative to the very marrow of her bones. This New England att.i.tude is not altogether a curse; but it sometimes leads one out of broad paths.

Surely the work was broad enough for both her and the woman in black to do what they might without conflict. "I'll do my part; what has Mrs.

Mantel to do with me?" she determined.

Before Ruth had a chance to tell her chum of the application she had put in, Helen wrote her hurriedly that Mr. Cameron's commission was to sail in two days from Boston. Ruth could not leave her work, but she wrote a long letter to her dearest chum and sent it by special delivery to the Boston hotel, where she knew the Camerons would stop for a night.

It really seemed terrible, that her chum and her father should go without Ruth seeing them again; but she did not wish to leave her work while her application for an a.s.signment to France was pending. It might mean that she would lose her chance altogether.

She only told Helen in the letter that she, too, hoped to be "over there" some day soon.

But several days slipped by and her case was not mentioned by Mr. Mayo.

It seemed pretty hard to Ruth. She was ready and able to go and n.o.body wanted her!

The weather chanced to be unpleasant, too, and that is often closely linked up to one's very deepest feelings. Ruth's philosophy could not overcome the effect of a foggy, dripping day. Her usual cheerfulness dropped several degrees.

It drew on toward evening, and the patter of raindrops on the panes grew louder. The glistening umbrellas in the street, as she looked down upon them from the window, looked like many, many black mushrooms. Ruth knew she would have a dreary evening.

Suddenly she heard a door bang on the floor below-a shout and then a crash of gla.s.s. Next--

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

In an instant she was out of her room and at the head of the stairs. It was an old building-a regular firetrap. Mr. Mayo had dashed out of his office and was shouting up the stairs:

"Come down! Down, every one of you! Fire!"

Through the open transom over the door of Mrs. Mantel's office Ruth saw that one end of the room was ablaze.

CHAPTER X-SUSPICIONS

There was a patter of feet overhead and racing down the stairway came half a dozen frightened people. They had been aroused by Mr. Mayo's shout, and they knew that if the flames reached the stairway first they would be driven to the fire escape.

There seemed little danger of the fire reaching the stairs, however; for when Ruth got to the lower hall the door of the burning office had been opened again, and she saw one of the porters squirting the chemical fire extinguisher upon the blaze.

Mr. Legrand had flung open the door, and he was greatly excited. He held his left hand in his right, as though it were hurt.

"Where is Mrs. Mantel?" demanded Mr. Mayo.

"Gone!" gasped Legrand. "Lucky she did. That oil spread all over her desk and papers. It's all afire."

"I was opening a gallon of lubricating oil. It broke and spurted everywhere. I cut myself-see?"

He showed his hand. Ruth saw that blood seemed to be running from the cut freely. But she was more interested in the efforts of the porter.

His extinguisher seemed to be doing very little good.

Ruth heard Mr. Mayo trying to discover the cause of the fire; but Mr.

Legrand seemed unable to tell that. He ran out to a drugstore to have his hand attended to.

Mr. Mayo seized the second extinguisher from the wall. The porter flung his down, at the same time yelling:

"No good! No good, I tell you, Mr. Mayo! Everything's got to go. Those extinguishers must be all wrong. The chemicals have evaporated, or something."

Mr. Mayo tried the one he had seized with no better result. While this was going on Ruth Fielding suddenly remembered something-remembered it with a shock. She had seen the man, Jose, tampering with those same extinguishers some days before.

While a certain spray was puffed forth from the nozzle of the extinguisher, it seemed to have no effect on the flames which were, as the porter declared, spreading rapidly.

Mrs. Mantel's big desk and the file cabinet were all afire. Nothing could save the papers and books.

An alarm had been turned in by somebody, and now the first of the fire department arrived. These men brought in extinguishers that had an effect upon the flames at once. The fire was quite quenched in five minutes more.

Ruth had retreated to Mr. Mayo's office. She heard one of the fire chiefs talking to the gentleman at the doorway.

"What caused that blaze anyway?" the fireman demanded.

"I understand some oil was spilled."

"What kind of oil?" snapped the other.

"Lubricating oil."

"Nonsense! It acted more like benzine or naphtha to me. But you haven't told me how it got lit up?"