The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (14 page)

She followed the passengers from the train, her head feeling light and dazed as if she were in a dream. At a desk labeled “Information” and draped in flags in the center of the wonderful marble station, Hilda asked the way to the White House, and was told to take a certain car out in front of the station.

There were long rosy lights over the city as she emerged from the station portal and stood waiting for the car. There in front of her, only a seeming stone's throw from where she stood, was the great Capitol Building that had graced the outside of her geography, and been framed in photograph and hung in her school-room, and which had seemed almost as wonderful and unreal to her all her life as heaven itself.

She had asked the conductor to let her off at the White House, and it seemed but a very few minutes before he touched her arm and pointed kindly which way she was to go. She got out of the car, walked a few steps, and at last arrived before a great iron gate behind which stood a man in uniform, with two or three soldiers in the background pacing up and down. She put out a timid hand to find the latch, but a gruff voice informed her that no visitors were admitted to the White House now! “The country was at war!”

Hilda's hand flew to her heart in alarm, and she stood still ready to cry. To have come so far on so important an errand, and not to be admitted! What should she do? But she had not come all this way to give up so easily! She lifted her white face to the big officer.

“Why, I know there's war,” she said timidly. “It's that I came about. I have some very important information, and I must see the President right away. I've come a long distance just on purpose.”

“Well, you can't get in here without a permit! You'll have to go away and get a permit! There's hundreds of people every day trumping up excuses to see the President, and I can't let anybody in.”

Great tears came unbidden into Hilda's eyes and she suddenly sagged down on the suitcase and dropped her face in her hands.

“Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, feeling that she could not stand up another minute.

“Say, look here, lady,” said the officer peering over the grating with concern. “Don't carry on like that! Why can't you be reasonable? Don't you see I've got my orders?”

But Hilda sat still, her slender shoulders shaking with the sobs that, much to her chagrin, had mastered her for the moment. She was nervously unstrung. But it was only for a moment. She brushed away the tears and lifted a very determined little face to the man at the gate.

“I'm sorry to act so silly,” she said, “but I've been travelling since early this morning, and I haven't had anything to eat. I've simply got to see the President somehow; I suppose there's a way if I only knew how. Couldn't you tell me, please? This is very important. It's about some spies, something I've found out that ought to be known at once. Really, there isn't any time for delay! They are planning some terrible things!”

The officer looked perplexed but shook his head. Suddenly a voice just behind her startled Hilda. “What's all this? What's the matter here?” Hilda looked up and saw a tall man in an officer's uniform of olive drab. The man at the gate saluted him promptly and explained:

“Only a young person, captain, who says she has some information about spies, for the President,” he laughed half apologetically. “There's been hundreds here to-day, and they all had some good excuse to see the President.”

The soldier eyed the girl sharply as she rose and stood before him eagerly repeating her plea, the weariness and tears all gone for the moment, and only a sense of her mission upon her now.

“There might be something to it, you know,” said the soldier, turning to the officer at the gate. “Where did you say you came from?”

“I'd rather not tell anything about it until I find the President. I don't know you, you know,” she added naively, “and I don't think I ought to tell anybody but him. Couldn't you show me how to find him?”

“Well, how do you know but I'm the President?” asked the soldier with a smile of amusement.

“Hilda looked up keenly, and a quick color came into her face. She knew he was ridiculing her, but there was a kindly twinkle in his eye.

“Why, I've seen his picture,” she answered smiling. “I'm sure I should know him. You're not the President. Please take me to him.”

“Well, I can't take you to him, for it wouldn't be possible just now, but I can take you to someone who will hear what you have to say and will tell the President all about it if it is anything he needs to know. Come this way!” and the gate swung open at his motion, the blue-coated officer standing aside and saluting with an “All right, Captain! Just as you say, Captain!” and Hilda walked on beside him. He reached out to take the suitcase, but she shook her head.

“Thank you, no. I'd rather carry it myself,” she said with a faint smile, and he smiled indulgently back at her. Somehow there was something about Hilda that made him think her story might be true. And yet, there were so many people with all sorts of ruses!

Hilda found herself, presently, seated in a great leather chair beside a grave gray-haired man in uniform, who was writing at a desk. He paid no attention to her for some time, going on with his writing, and issuing orders now and then to men in uniform who came and went. There was something about him that convinced her that be was a good man and would know what to tell her to do even if he was not the President. Anyway, she was in Washington, and the White House was close at hand. She wasn't sure whether she was actually in it or only in an outer building in the same grounds, but it was really the White House, for it was just like the one in the pictures. And if they were so very particular about keeping people out of the grounds on account of the war, they surely wouldn't have a man about the place to whom it would be unsafe to tell everything. The sense of relief and of having at last reached a place where she could unburden her terrible secret and get rid of the responsibility made her feel dizzy. All at once the big white room with its white ceiling and many leather chairs began to whirl around curiously and get in the way of her seeing the man. She gave a little gasp and relaxed against the back of a chair. The gray-haired soldier tinned suddenly and caught her as she fell.

WHEN Hilda came back to consciousness she was lying on the other side of the room among leather pillows on a deep leather couch and someone was holding a glass of something to her lips. A big electric fan was moving over her and the kindly gray-haired soldier was standing near and asking if she felt better.

Hilda was much ashamed that she had shown. her weakness and tried to sit up, protesting that she was all right now, but her white face and trembling body belied her words. The officer told her to stay where she was for a while and asked if there was anything be could get for her, or did she wish him to send for her friends. Then Hilda fully came to her senses and sat up in spite of his protests, looking wildly about for her suitcase. What if someone had stolen it from her while she was unconscious! But it was over by the desk safe and sound where she had been sitting, and an orderly, at a word from his chief, brought it to her.

“Thank you,” said Hilda, much relieved and resting her head back again. “It isn't my own, that's why I'm so worried, and I think it's very important. I brought it for the President to see. Could you please send word to him that I am here? Tell him I came a long distance to tell him something terrible that some spies are going to do very soon. I heard them talking about it under my window. I had to start away very early and I've had no chance to eat anything. It was a long time and very hot, and I guess that is why I felt dizzy. I'm sure I never fainted before.”

The soldier explained to her that the President was away from the Executive Mansion for several hours, and that in any case it would be impossible for her to see him until her mission was fully known.

“I am the one who would have charge of this matter. It comes under the Secret Service,” he said kindly, and drawing back his coat showed her his gleaming badge.

Hilda, drew a sigh of relief. She remembered that the young engineer had mentioned Secret Service. Why had she not thought of it before?

“You can tell me whatever you would tell the President,” said the officer. “But first you should have something to eat.”

He gave an order for a tray to be brought.

“Perhaps, however, you would prefer to have me send for your friends, and let you get a good night's rest? Then you can come and see me in the morning if you really have something important to tell,” he said pleasantly.

Hilda sat up promptly with a flush in her white cheeks. She had not come all this way to get a good night's rest.

“I have no friends,” she said quietly, “and morning might be too late. Mr. Schwarz might find me by that time and kill me, so I couldn't tell you. He is a terrible man!” She shuddered at the remembrance of his face when she had suddenly appeared in the barn the day before.

“He is working for the German Government and he doesn't care what he does,” she went on “They are planning to have a big German uprising just as soon as there is a victory in France. They have guns and rifles stored in a great many places, and they are plotting to blow up a. lot of munition plants and shipyards and factories. They almost blew up a bridge yesterday just to wreck a trainload of munitions, and they'll do it again as soon as they get a chance. There isn't a minute to Something has got to be done about it.”

Her eyes were shining and she was talking excitedly. The other men in the room stopped talking to listen; and at a motion. from their chief, came over and sat down nearby. They all looked at her keenly. At last they were willing to listen!

“How do you know this man is working for the German Government?” asked the chief.

“Because a man that came in an aeroplane at night several times stood under my window and talked about it, giving him orders. He said ‘The Fatherland is depending on you,' just in those words. And he told him all about the uprising, and what he was to do. He talked very freely, because -they thought I didn't understand German.”

The chief suddenly touched a bell for his secretary and drew up his chair ready for business.

“Will you please begin at the beginning and tell everything.” he said. “Who are you, where do you come from, and how did you happen to be near this man Schwarz?”

So Hilda sat up and began to tell her story to an interested audience.

Meanwhile, back at Platt's Crossing, several things had been happening.

As the train swept away from the station bearing Hilda and her precious suitcase, Schwarz stood helpless with rage and bellowed invectives of the vilest kind after her. He swore at the men and ordered them to do so many unreasonable things that they got out of his way entirely, lest he might in his wrath do them some personal injury.

Schwarz raged up to the house and began roaring at his wife for having let the girl out of her sight. The poor woman protested in vain that it had not been her fault, and finally discovered and produced Hilda's note, which did somewhat to assuage the underlying fears in Schwarz's heart, lest Hilda had seen and heard more at the farm than would be wise to have reported to the world at large. He sat down weakly at last in a dining-room chair and took the note in his two trembling hands, relieved to be assured that the girl had gone to her mother.

“Weak, silly fool!” he muttered, and then began afresh with a new set of horrible adjectives for Hilda and his wife and the whole of womankind in general, in which after a few turns he included Uncle Otto Lessing for having landed such a good- for-nothing upon him.

Suddenly the dining-room clock cleared its throat with a preparatory whirr and began to strike the noon hour, and simultaneously there arose a distant roar of an oncoming train.

Schwarz started to his feet livid with anger again and turned upon his long-suffering wife:

“Dat drain! I must it dake! Dat sood-gase inter de ped! Ged him quig!”

Like a mad man he stormed up the stairs with his fat, weeping wife puffing behind and getting in his way. He swept boxes and other impediments out of his way, pulled forth the suitcase without a glance at it, and stamped down the stairs again, pushing Mrs. Schwarz aside as if she had been another box.

The train was roaring distinctly now, just crossing the bridge, and Schwarz waited not for hat or coat, but all as he was in his shirt-sleeves with his yellow-gray hair bristling in the breeze, went lumbering over the plowed ground to the station, carrying Hilda's suitcase. A little way behind him wallowed Mrs. Schwarz, faithful to the last, tears running down her flabby cheeks, her under lip still quivering from the fray, and in her hand Schwarz's best coat and hat. She took the hardest, shortest way across the plowed ground and made slow progress, arriving too late to be of service, and Schwarz took his hatless way to “Adolph's” in no wise improved in temper by the state of his attire.

Three-quarters of an hour later the express slowed down at Platt's Crossing and let out two passengers, a slender little wisp of a woman in black and a small boy. The train took scant leave of them and hurried on its way. The two strangers stood bewildered and looked about them.

They cast one glance up at Schwarz's house, deserted now as the men were in at dinner, and then turned away. That was not at all the place of their expectation.

“I thought your uncle said it was right by the station,” said the woman, “but I don't see any place around here that could possibly be it. He said it was a very large, handsome place. Let us walk back down the track a little way. We passed two nice-looking farm houses. It must be one of those. It is strange there isn't anybody around to ask.”