Ruth Fielding at the War Front Part 11

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed the girl. "Is everybody suspected of spying?

I think it has become a craze."

"We do not know whom to suspect," he said. "Our closest friends may be enemies. We cannot tell."

"But, Doctor Monteith, who are in this district save our soldiers and the French inhabitants?" asked Ruth.

"True. But there may be a traitor among us. Indeed, it is believed that there has been," and Ruth winced and looked away from him. "As for our allies here--well, all of them may not be above earning German gold. And they would think it was not as though they were betraying their own countrymen. There are only United States soldiers in this sector now, as you say, Miss Fielding."

"I cannot imagine people being so wicked," sighed the girl.

"No matter how it is done, or who does it, the enemy is getting information about our troops and condition, as the last two attacks have proved. So take care where you go, Miss Fielding, and what you do," he added earnestly.

She promised, and went away with her pa.s.s. It was late afternoon and her duties were over for the day. She would not be needed at the supply hut until morning. And, indeed, the girl she was breaking in was already mastering the details of the work. Ruth could soon go back to her own work at Clair.

She walked nimbly out of the compound gate, making sure that she was following a road that led away from the front. n.o.body halted her.

Indeed, she was soon pa.s.sing through a little valley that seemed as peaceful and quiet as though there was no such thing as war in the world.

The path she followed was plainly but a farm track. It wound between narrow fields that had not been plowed the season before--not even by cannon-shot. Somehow the big sh.e.l.ls had flown over this little valley.

The sun was setting, and the strip of western sky above the hills was tinged with his golden glories. Already pale twilight lay in the valley. But in this lat.i.tude the twilight would long remain. She did not hasten her steps, nor did she soon turn back toward the field hospital.

She saw a cottage half hidden behind a hedge of evergreens. It stood in a small square of muddy garden. There was a figure at work in this patch--the tall, stoop-shouldered figure of a man. He was digging parsnips that had been left out for the frost to sweeten.

He used the mattock slowly and methodically. With the cottage as a background, and the muddy bit of garden, the picture he made was typical of the country and the people who inhabited it.

Suddenly she realized that she recognized the ragged blue smock and the old droop-brimmed hat he wore. It was Nicko, the chocolate vender.

This must be his place of abode.

Ruth hesitated. She had felt some shrinking from the man before; now she realized she was afraid of him. He had not seen her and she stood back and watched him.

Of a sudden another man appeared from around the corner of the cottage.

Ruth was more than glad, then, that she had not shown herself. She turned to retrace her steps.

Then she looked again at this new figure in the picture. She almost spoke aloud in her amazement. The newcomer was dressed exactly as Nicko was dressed--the same blue and ragged smock, shapeless trousers, wooden shoes, and with a hat the twin of the one the first Nicko wore.

Indeed, it was a second Nicko who stood there in the bit of garden before the laborer's cot.

But amazement and suspicion did not hold her to the spot for long. She did not wish to be discovered by the pair. She was confident now that there was something altogether wrong with Nicko the chocolate peddler--and his double!

Out of view of the cottage she hurried her steps. Through the gloaming she sped up the path in the valley toward the high-road on which faced the hospital stockade.

Her thoughts were in a tangle of doubt. Yet one clear thread of determination she held. She must give her confidence to somebody--she must relate her suspicions to some person who was in authority.

Not the medical chief of staff at this field hospital. Nor did she wish to go to the commanding officer of this sector, whoever he might be. Indeed, she almost feared to talk with any American officer, for Tom Cameron seemed to be entangled in this web of deceit and treachery into which she believed she had gained a look.

There was a man whom she could trust, however; one who would know exactly what to do, she felt sure. And it would be his business to examine into the mystery. The moment she returned to Clair Ruth would get into communication with this individual.

Thus thinking, she hurried on and had almost reached the highway when something made her look back. Not a sound; for even the sleepy birds had stopped twittering and there was no rustle of night wind in the bare shrubbery about her.

But mysteriously she was forced to turn her head. She looked down the path over which her feet had sped from the laborer's cot. There was something behind her!

Ruth did not scream. A form came up the track swiftly and at first she saw it so indistinctly that she had no idea what it really was. Had she been spied by the men in the garden, and was one of them following her?

She trembled so that she could not walk. She crouched back against the hedge, watching fearfully the on-rush of the phantom-like apparition coming so swiftly up the path.

CHAPTER XI

THE FLYING MAN

While yet the silent figure was some rods away Ruth Fielding realized that it was no human being. It was not one of the men she had seen in the garden of Nicko's cottage.

This creature came too swiftly up the path and skimmed the ground too closely. A light-colored object--swift, silent and threatening of aspect.

The girl shrank against the hedge, and the next instant--with a rush of pa.s.sage that stirred the air all about her--the Thing was gone! It was again that strange and incomprehensible apparition of the werwolf!

If it was Bubu, the greyhound she had seen at the Chateau Marchand, he was much lighter in color than when he appeared pacing beside his mistress on the chateau lawns. The phantom had dashed past so rapidly that, in the gathering dusk, Ruth could make out little of its real appearance.

Headed toward the battle lines, it had disappeared within seconds. The girl, her limbs still trembling, followed in haste to the highway.

Already the creature had been swallowed up in the shadows.

She went on toward the hospital gateway and had scarcely recovered her self-control when she arrived there. Altogether, her evening's experience had been most disconcerting.

The two men, dressed alike and apparently of the same height and shambling manner, whom she had seen in Nicko's garden, worried her quite as much--indeed, worried her even more than the sight of the mysterious creature the peasants called the werwolf.

More than ever was she determined to take into her confidence somebody who would be able to explain the mystery of it all. At least, he would be able to judge if what made her so anxious was of moment.

And Tom Cameron's disappearance, too! Ruth's worry of mind regarding her old friend propped her eyes open that night.

In the morning she went over the stock shelves again with the girl she had trained, and finally announced to Mrs. Strang that she felt she must return to Clair. After all, she had been a.s.signed to the job there and must not desert it.

An ambulance was going down to Clair with its burden of wounded men, and Ruth was a.s.signed to the seat beside the driver. He chanced to be "Cub" Holdness, one of the ambulance drivers to whom Ruth had been introduced by Charlie Bragg at Mother Gervaise's cottage the night of her trip up to the field hospital.

Holdness was plainly delighted to have the girl with him for the drive to Clair. He was a Philadelphia boy, and he confessed to having had no chance to drive a girl--even in an ambulance--since coming over.

"I had one of those 'reckless roadsters' back home," he sighed. "Dad said every time his telephone rang he expected it was me calling from some outlying police station for him to come and bail me out for overspeeding.

"And there was a bunch of girls I knew who were just crazy to have me take 'em for a spin out around Fairmount Park and along the speedways.

Just think, Miss Fielding, of the difference between those times and these," and he nodded solemnly.

"I should say there was a difference," laughed Ruth, trying to appear in good spirits. "Don't you get dreadfully tired of all these awful sights and sounds?"

"No. Excitement keeps us keyed up, I guess," he replied. "You know, there is almost always something doing."

"I should say there was!"

She saw that while he talked he did not for a moment forget that he was driving three sorely wounded men. He eased the ambulance over the rough parts of the road and around the sharp turns with infinite skill.