The Apartment Next Door Part 10

"Tell us everything," demanded Fleck. "Where did it happen? Did they run you down purposely?"

"I don't think so; in fact I am sure they didn't. It was entirely accidental."

"Where did it happen? All Dean could remember was that you had picked up their trail about ten miles south of West Point. He could not tell how the accident occurred. He didn't even mention the Hoffs or seem to suspect that they were anywhere near at the time."

"I don't think he saw their car at all," Jane explained. "I caught just a glimpse of it before we were crashed into. We were on a mountain road going down a steep hill when their motor shot out of a deep cut just as we were pa.s.sing."

"What happened then?"

"I must have been stunned for a moment or two. When I regained my senses the Hoffs' car had stopped, and Frederic was backing the car to where the accident had happened. His uncle was storming at him for stopping. He wanted Frederic to go on and leave us there, but Frederic wouldn't do it, and they quarrelled. Frederic won out by pointing out that two bodies lying at the entrance would arouse suspicion."

"At the entrance to what?"

"I don't know. He didn't say. I think I could find the place again."

"We've got to find it," said Carter.

"Indeed we have," Jane agreed, "and quickly, too. I fear we are going to be too late. Old Mr. Hoff seemed to be in terrible haste and spoke of their plans being nearly completed."

"Go on," said Fleck quietly, "tell us the rest."

"Frederic Hoff stayed behind to pick us up, and the old man went off on the motorcycle. I heard them talking about his taking a train at the nearest station."

"What did young Hoff do when he found it was you lying there?"

"He seemed surprised and startled."

"What did he say?"

Jane colored and hesitated. There rose in her mind the picture of his tall figure bending over her, with anguish in his eyes, with expressions of endearment on his lips. She could not, she would not tell them what he had said.

"He asked if I was hurt."

"Is that all?"

Again she blushed and hesitated.

"That's all."

"Did he not seem amazed at finding you there? Did he not ask you to account for your presence there?"

"No," said the girl, firmly, "he didn't."

"Didn't he question you at all?"

"No," she insisted, "he was busy getting Dean into the car. He was unconscious, and it looked as if he was badly hurt."

"Queer, mighty queer," muttered Carter to himself.

"Didn't he ask you who Dean was?" questioned Fleck.

"I explained that he was our chauffeur. He may have known him by sight at any rate."

"Go on."

"We stopped at the house of the first doctor we came to and left Dean there, and then Mr. Hoff brought me on home in the car. At the ferry he put me into a taxi."

"What did you talk about on the trip home?" asked Fleck suspiciously. "Didn't he try to pump you?"

"We hardly talked at all. He seemed concerned only in getting me home without its becoming known that I had been in an accident."

"Is that all?" asked the chief. She could see by his manner that he mistrusted her, that he felt that she was keeping something back.

"We hardly exchanged a dozen words," she insisted.

Fleck shook his head in a puzzled way.

"I can't understand it at all," he said. "Old Otto is a common enough type of German, painstaking, methodical, stupid, stubborn, ready to commit any crime for Prussia, but the young fellow is of far different material. He has brains and daring and initiative. He is far more alert and more dangerous. I cannot understand his finding you there and not trying to discover what you were doing."

"I can't understand that either," Jane admitted.

"There's no doubt in my mind," the chief continued, "that Frederic Hoff is the real conspirator, the head of the plotters."

"Why do you say that?" asked Jane quickly. "What did you find out when you searched the apartment yesterday?"

She felt certain from the manner in which he spoke that he must now have some d.a.m.ning evidence of Frederic Hoff's guilt. He was not in the habit of making decisions without proof.

"We found," said Fleck, his keen eyes fixed on her face as if trying to read her innermost thoughts, "a British officer's uniform hanging in Frederic Hoff's closet, proof positive that he is a dangerous spy."

"And," said Carter, pointing to the two clippings lying on Fleck's desk, "in the old man's waste-paper basket we found those."

Jane picked up the clippings and examined them curiously.

"What are they?" she asked, looking from one to the other; "cipher messages of some sort?"

"We think so," said Carter. "We don't know yet."

"I've noticed these peculiar advertis.e.m.e.nts often," said Jane, studying the clippings, "but I never thought of connecting them with the Hoffs. I wonder--" Fleck and Carter had their heads together and were talking in low tones.

"I wonder," said the chief, "what young Hoff is up to. He must have known the girl was there to spy on him. I can't understand his not quizzing her."

"He's a cagey bird," Carter replied. "They are both of them expert at throwing off shadowers. Both of them know, I think, they are being watched."

"Oh, listen," interrupted Jane, all excitement. "I believe I can read this cipher. The number of letters in the word in big type at the beginning of the advertis.e.m.e.nt is the key. See, this word here is 'remember'--that has eight letters. Read every eighth word in this advertis.e.m.e.nt. I've underlined them."

Fleck took the paper quickly from her hand and he and Carter bent eagerly over it to see if her theory was correct.

REMEMBER.

Please, that our new paste, Dento, will stop decay of your teeth. Sound teeth are pa.s.sports to good health and comfort. No good business man can risk ill health. It is closely allied with failure. The teeth if not watched are quickly gone.

USE DENTO.

A genuine, safe, pleasing paste for the teeth, prepared and sold only by the Auer Dental Company, New York.

"Stop pa.s.sports business, closely watched," repeated Fleck aloud. "That certainly makes sense and fits the facts, too. In the last few days we have drawn the net closely around a gang of supposed Scandinavians who have been busy supplying pa.s.sports to suspicious-looking travelers. Let's see the other advertis.e.m.e.nt."

Excitedly the three of them read it together as Fleck underscored every fourth word.

DON'T.

Forget it is imperative for one and all to use cleansing agents on teeth that leave no bad results. "Ship more of that wonder-working paste immediately. Workers, employers, wives, all ready to commend it. Friday's supply gone," writes a druggist, to whom a big shipment was made last week.

USE DENTO.

A genuine, safe, pleasing paste for the teeth, prepared and sold only by the Auer Dental Company, New York.

"Imperative all agents leave ship. Wonder-workers ready Friday," read Fleck. "That's surely a message, a warning to Germany's agents to get off some ship or ships before they are destroyed. You, Miss Strong, have heard old Otto talk about the wonder-workers, whatever they are, being nearly ready. I guess he means bombs--bombs to blow up American transports. This message says they will be ready Friday."

"And to-morrow's Friday," said Jane.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEALED PACKET.

"Is this Miss Strong?"

Jane, her face blanching, held the receiver in wavering hands for a moment before she could muster courage to answer. She had recognized Frederic Hoff's voice speaking. What could he want with her now?

"It is Miss Strong," she managed to answer.

"This is Frederic Hoff. May I come in for a moment? It is most important."

Again Jane hesitated. Frederic was the last person in the world she felt like seeing just at this moment. Only five minutes before she had arrived home from Chief Fleck's office. She was under orders to hold herself in readiness to start immediately for the scene of yesterday's accident. That this trip, unless their plans miscarried, would inevitably result in the exposure and disgrace of both the Hoffs she felt morally certain. To face on friendly terms the man whose downfall she was plotting, the man who only a few hours before had told her that he loved her, seemed a task far beyond her endurance, a situation too tragic for her to cope with.

Duty, her duty to her country, her honor, her patriotism, her affection for her soldier brother, all bade her mask her feelings and seek one more opportunity of leading Hoff to betray himself in conversation if that were possible. Yet, to her own amazement and horror, her heart protested vigorously against such action. Hara.s.sed as she was by conflicting emotions, worn out by the trying experiences that had been hers the last few days, she realized at last that she was really in love with Hoff. The throb of joy that she had experienced at the sound of his voice, the thrill that came to her each time she saw him, the delight she found in his presence, the fact that despite all the circ.u.mstances, she wanted to be near him, to be with him, convinced her against her will and judgment that her heart was his. In vain she marshalled the d.a.m.ning facts against him. She tried to remember only the expression of murderous hate she had seen on his face the night that her predecessor, the other K-19, had been murdered. She tried to think of him only as a treacherous spy, an enemy of her country forever plotting to destroy Americans, yet she could not. However base and treacherous and low her reason told her Frederic Hoff must be, her refractory heart persisted in beating faster at the prospect of his coming.

Hitherto not much given to self-a.n.a.lysis, she now found herself wondering at herself. What could be the matter with her? Why must she love this rascal? Why could she not fall in love with some decent, clean, patriotic young American, with some man like Thomas Dean? Chauffeur though he was now pretending to be, she knew that he was a college man, well-bred, and traveled. She knew, too, that Dean was in love with her. For him she had a sincere liking, great admiration even, and toward him now she was experiencing that feeling of sympathy a woman always has for the man she cannot love. But her feeling toward Dean, she cla.s.sified as only that of friendship, nothing at all like the pa.s.sionate affection that was rapidly drawing her closer and closer to Hoff.

Dared she see him now? Might not her love for him overcome her high desire to be of service to her country? Might she not be led by her unruly heart into betraying to him the fact that he was in the most imminent peril?

Yet she must see him, she told herself. Perhaps this very day he might be arrested and imprisoned. She might never again have the opportunity of seeing him alone and of talking with him. Into her troubled brain came a daring thought. Perhaps it was not too late, even yet, to turn him from his evil course. Was there, she wishfully wondered, any possibility of her leading him, through his love for her, to forsake his comrades, even to betray them? No, she admitted to herself, that was a preposterous idea. He was too dominating, too forceful, too determined, to be influenced to anything against his will.

"May I come in, please?" he kept insisting over the 'phone.

"Only for a minute," she answered tremulously. "I'm going out soon. I have an engagement."

"I'll come right over. I will not keep you long."

As she awaited his arrival, subconsciously desirous of looking her best in his presence, she stopped almost mechanically before her mirror to adjust her hair, letting him wait for her for a few minutes.

He sprang forward to meet her as she entered the room where he was, his face beaming with delight at the sight of her.

"Jane," he cried, with a volume of meaning in the monosyllable, as seizing her hand, he held it tightly and gazed earnestly into her face.

Bravely she tried to meet his gaze, to read in his face if she could the object of his unexpected visit, but her eyes fell before his, and the hot blood surged into her cheeks. Within her raged a desperate battle between her head and heart. Mingled with her unwelcome quickening of the pulse at his approach and admiration for his audacity in coming to her when he must know that she knew what he was, there was also an overwhelming sense of futile rage that he, a scheming German plotter, dared intrude his presence into an American home.

"I'm glad to see you appear no worse for your accident," he said, releasing her hand at last. "You got home all right, without attracting any one's notice?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, trying to make her reply seem wholly indifferent and disinterested.

"Your chauffeur is all right, too," he went on. "I telephoned this morning. He had already left the doctor's. There's nothing more the matter with him than a broken arm and a scalp wound. That's fortunate, isn't it?"

"Very fortunate," she admitted.

All at once as they stood there there seemed to have arisen between them an invisible, impenetrable barrier. They faced each other wordlessly, each embarra.s.sed by the knowledge of the secret gulf that was between them. Hoff was the first to recover from it.

"Come," he said, "sit down. There is something I wish to say to you,--something of the utmost importance, Jane."

Still struggling with her emotions, Jane allowed him to place a chair for her and seated herself, striving all the while to crush back into her heart the warmth of feeling toward him that always overwhelmed her in his presence, endeavoring to present to him a mask of cold indifference. Yet her curiosity, as well as her affections, had been greatly stirred by his remark. What was it that he was about to say to her? Did he intend, in spite of the insurmountable obstacles between them, dared he, ask her to marry him? Tremblingly she waited for what he had to say.

"Jane," he said, "you know that I love you. I am confident, too, that you love me."

"I don't love you," she forced her unwilling lips to say. "I can't. When our country is at war, when she needs men, brave men, how could any true American girl love any man who stayed at home, who idled about the hotels, who--"

"Girl," his voice grew suddenly stern and commanding, softening a little as he repeated her name, "Jane, dear, let me finish. I love you. There are grave reasons--all-important reasons--why I may not now ask you to be my wife."

"I never could be your wife," she cried desperately, "the wife of a--"

The word died in her throat. She could not bring herself to tell him, the man she loved, the thing she knew he was.

"My Jane," he said, wholly unheeding her impa.s.sioned protest, "you know little yet of what life means in this great world of ours. You, here in your parents' home, sheltered, protected, inexperienced, have not the knowledge nor the means of judging me. You must take me on faith, on the faith of your love for me. For a woman, life holds but two great treasures, two loves--her husband's and her children's. With a man it is different. Love is his, too, but there is something more, something bigger--duty. Here in your country--"

Even in her distress she caught his phrase "here in your country" and turned ghastly white. Always before in talking with her he had spoken of himself as an American. Did he realize, she wondered, that he had at last betrayed himself to her? Was he about to strip the mask from himself and his activities at last, and in the face of it all expect her, Jane Strong, to admit that she loved him?

"Here in your country," he went on placidly, "women forced by economic conditions have been driven from home into business, into politics, into office-holding, even into war activities. Longing for the clinging arms of little children they are striving to forget in a.s.suming some part in the affairs that belong properly to men. But to the true woman love must ever mean more than duty, more than country. Those are words for men. A woman, if she would find happiness, must follow her heart, must forsake all for the man she loves. A woman's duty is only to the man she loves, just as a man's duty is to be true to himself, to his country."

"But," she cried, "you told me you were American, that you were born here?"

"Jane," he persisted, with an impatient gesture, "we will not discuss that now. I love you. You must trust me in spite of everything. I know you will. You must. I can answer no questions. I can make no explanations. I can only say I love you. That must suffice."