The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (7 page)

It was growing light now. She knelt breathlessly by the window and slowly played out her line, steadying the ink bottle as it went down to keep it from whirling wide and knocking against the house. She was trembling from head to foot when the bottle with a final whirl settled down firmly on the paper.

For a full minute she let it rest there to make the paste stick and then, with heart beating so loud she felt as if the people in the house must hear it she began slowly to pull the line up, hand over hand. There was a tense moment when the bottle lifted from the ground and the paper wavered slightly as if debating whether it would go or stay. Then it rose steadily with the bottle, inch by inch, until it was within her reach and she put her hand out and grasped it.

 Carefully she wiped off the toothpaste and eagerly scanned the writing. It was in German, interspersed with hieroglyphics. It meant nothing whatever to her:

"Remington, Du Pont, Eddystone, Carnegie, Chester Ship Building----------.”

 Some of the names were indicated by strange marks. There were dates and words that she could not understand. Her face fell in disappointment. There was no help here for the task before her. Almost she flung the hard-won paper back to the ground. Then she remembered it was stained with toothpaste and might betray her. A second thought also reminded her that some wiser head than her own might make something important out of it.

Hastily wrapping it in a clean handkerchief, she fastened it firmly inside her blouse and prepared to respond to Mrs. Schwarz's call to work.

As Hilda threw open the kitchen window by the sink she caught a glimpse of a man disappearing into the door of the little brick hut down the garden path, and a moment later while she stood in the same place filling the teakettle with fresh water she had another fleeting glimpse of a figure in brown jeans, crouched and stealthily stealing out of the door again and down among the bushes carrying something under his left arm. It was all so brief in the dim light of the morning that she was not at all certain whether the man was Heinrich or one of the others, but her thoughts lingered about the little brick hut and she kept a furtive watch for more comings and goings. Several happenings of late had made her sure that the little brick hut was the home of the powder and dynamite that the man of the night had mentioned in his visits. Somehow she felt as if the Great War which until a few days ago had seemed a mere incident of history, so far away and unreal, had suddenly flung its whole terrible problem at her trembling feet, and the fate of the world lay in her hands.

THE very atmosphere seemed fraught with suppressed excitement that morning. Mrs. Schwarz was in the worst of moods. Hilda wondered if she, too, were in the secret, but decided not when she saw how angry she was at Schwarz for not coming to breakfast on time. Later, when Sylvester slouched sullenly down to his morning repast and the mother crooned about him tearfully, she discovered that her perturbation was due to the fact that her son was to leave her that morning for the dread enlistment, and Mrs. Schwarz had no mind or eyes for anything else.

“You vill pe killed! I know you vill pe killed!” complained the woman and sat staring at the unhandsome selfish piece of flesh that was her son, with eyes of despair, and a hopeless droop to her mouth.

“Oh, rot! Shut up, can't you?” growled the son ungraciously. “It's bad enough to have to go without hearing you go on about it!” and he helped himself to another pork chop and allowed his mother to pour him another cup of coffee. Hilda, in the midst of her tumult of mind, rejoiced with a passing relief that the young man was to leave, for although he had not annoyed her openly since the night when Heinrich had defended her there was still a covert fire in his eye when he looked her way that made her always afraid to be left alone in his vicinity.

Sylvester left on the ten o'clock train amid the silent weeping of his mother. None of the men had come to breakfast yet, but ten minutes later the two younger ones came in from the lower part of the garden and sat down to be served. Hilda wondered how they could have been working down there and she not have seen them before; but later when they went back to their work she watched them closely and saw that they only made a detour through the lower part of the garden and chopped away behind the bushes that surrounded the creek. She saw their hats appear once or twice lower down the valley toward the bridge. Were they hiding their tracks in the stream?

 She looked across at the great stone bridge spanning the valley, as strong and gray and massive as the rock itself that cropped out of the mountain, and looking as much a part of the scenery as if it had grown there from the foundation of the world. It seemed incredible that any human being would lay the hand of destruction upon it, would dare to destroy it—or could. It seemed impossible. And yet, she had heard the words clearly under her window, and there were the men at work. They had come back for tools, perhaps. What kind of a looking thing was dynamite? She had heard of it as sticks and balls, but those might only be technical terms. She had never paid much attention to such things, and had not ever asked any questions about explosives. She had a shuddering horror of the subject generally. And now here was this great catastrophe apparently going to be pulled off before her very eyes and she the only one who had knowledge of it to prevent it—she was powerless. She looked furtively across the dining-room to the stolid woman who sat staring out of the door toward the station where her son had departed, weak tears running down the little anxious gutters in her fat cheeks, and neck. She looked repulsive, like Sylvester, as she sat so, with her mouth half open in a pitiful suppressed sob. Hilda decided that she did not know of the work going on at the bridge or if she did it was nothing to her. Perhaps in a general way she knew they were here on this desolate farm for some purpose. Perhaps this was a regular nest of spies, and she was a part of it—she, Hilda Lessing, who had held the big flag in the spring celebration and been at the head of the high school lines as they marched in procession through the streets of Chicago with the whole city swarming close and cheering while they sang the “Star Spangled Banner”—she, to be mixed up with spies, and implicated in this terrible crime! The thought of her own peril came for the first time and sent hot prickles over her flesh, but a wave of patriotism swept all thought of herself away. The bridge must not be destroyed! She must do something to save it. But when? How?

She looked again at the old woman, weeping and oblivious in her doorway. Now was as good a time as any to run away and tell somebody and stop this horror before it happened! She could slip unseen around the house and into the bushes on the other side of the track and make the station without Mrs. Schwarz seeing her. There usually was a train about this hour, and it mattered not which way it was going so she got away. She had only a dollar, but she could ride as far as that took her and then telephone to the President at Washington. Perhaps he would know something to do to save the bridge before it was too late. After that she surely could find some place to work until she earned enough to get to her mother. Anyway, she must try, for she could not let such a terrible thing happen and lives be lost perhaps as well as property, and not try to do something.

She lifted her hands from the dishwater and wiped them on her apron, wondering if she dared risk it to go up to her room for her hat. Perhaps Mrs. Schwarz would hear her and be roused from her stupor of grief. It was well she always kept her bit of money in its little bag around her neck. She would not have to go without that. She turned, deciding that flight was best while the going was good, and then suddenly a shadow darkened the doorway of the kitchen and her heart stood still with fright. Schwarz loomed before her, his face like a cyclone, his hands and garments grimed with clay, his trousers wet to the knees, his boots caked with red mud.

 “I have lost some valuable paper!” he roared. “I must find it before the man comes ad noondime. Haf you ben round the hauze dis morning, you?” and he pointed his finger at Hilda with a menacing jab.

Hilda trembled and she felt the burning of the paper over her heart, but she shook her head and tried to look apathetic.

 “You zure?”

 She shook her head again.

“Vell, then, you sdop vat you do und go hunt mit tne. I mide uv tropped it on de stairs.”

“What sort of a paper was it? " Hilda asked, wondering if it were really the missing paper that crackled under her blouse whenever she moved.

“Shust a paper mit wriding on it. 'Pout zo pig!” and he measured with his hands.

Hilda, conscious of the likeness, turned to hide her face in the dark stairway, and lighting a match went on her search. Below she could hear the roar of the angry man like a beast enraged, and. the placating whine of his gloomy wife.

 “I bust haf it!” he cried. “I tell you I bust haf it pefore de messenger comes. It vas de list for him. Dere iss no udder. No! I do not remember! I did not read id. I did nod haf time! I hal Len bizzy zince. You haf pin gareless. I know you haf! You are sudge a fool apout dat poy going avay! You alvays vas a fool! All vimen are fools!” His voice bellowed all over the house, and Hilda could fairly see the cringing meekness of his sad, fat wife as she roused herself to help him.

He went cursing off down toward the barn, and Mrs. Schwarz, now thoroughly aroused, took up the storm of rage and visited it upon Hilda. She sent the girl looking through all the papers in the trash basket and herself went mauling through a litter in the big old desk in the corner of the dining-room. Presently she appeared in the kitchen door with a piece of paper.

“You run town und dake this to him qvick. I dink dis iss de ride vun!” she said.

 Hilda did not relish the task, but there was nothing for it but to obey. She took the paper and hurried down the path, glancing at it as she went, wondering if perhaps she ought to somehow hide it, too, if it proved to be the list. But no, it was only a list of garden seeds written out, so many bushels of potatoes, so much seed corn and lettuce and cabbages. If it were some queer code, perhaps she could at least remember the articles, and she glanced over them again as she hurried along to the barn, resolved to write them down as soon as she got back to the house, and tell somebody about it as soon as she could get away.

That she might the more clearly fix the words in order on her mind's eye, she slowed her gait just a trifle, and so she came near to the barn and heard Mr. Schwarz talking loudly, violently, pausing and talking again as if he were answering somebody.

“You did not give it to me at all!” she heard in German, excitedly. “I am sure you did not!”

 Then Hilda pushed open the door arid stepped inside holding up the paper, saying: “Is this the paper you are looking for, Mr. Schwarz?”

She stopped, astonished. Schwarz was talking over the telephone! So this was where it was hidden! Down in the corner of a dusty, cluttered barn, behind an old reaper!

But Schwarz turned at her voice and hung up the receiver with a click of rage.

“Got oud of dis!” he yelled, shaking his fist at her. “Got oud of dis! Who dold you you could come indo dis parn? You fool! You idiot! You-----”

Then he clutched at the paper she held and with his other hand shoved her roughly from the barn and closed the door. An instant he paused in his rage to glance at the paper, then tore it in pieces and raised his hand as if to strike her. Hilda sped away up the path and back to the kitchen, watching anxiously from the window till Schwarz went back into the barn again, this time taking the precaution to close and lock the door behind him. Hilda's heart was beating wildly. She put her hands back at their dishwashing while she tried to think what to do. Should she risk running away in plain sight of Mrs. Schwarz with her husband near enough to call, and doubtless the other men not too far away to hear a signal and give chase, or should she wait a little while in the hope that Schwarz would go back to the valley again?

 Schwarz came out of the barn again presently, but he did not return to the house. Instead, he lurched down to the little brick hut, went in a minute, and came out again to sneak around among the bushes and disappear.

 Now was her chance. She would wait till Mrs. Schwarz went out of the kitchen again and then she would take flight. This was no place for her to stay longer. The man would have struck her if she had not been quicker than he and got out of his way.

But Mrs. Schwarz did not go out of the kitchen. She seemed to have decided to visit upon Hilda all that had been put upon herself. She stormed around the kitchen and demanded that the girl should do this and that, called her from one duty to another, raged at her because the first was not finished and never left her for a minute. She was frantically preparing a meal for the men, and between her rages glanced anxiously out whatever door or window she came near, evidently fearing the men would come before the dinner was ready. Hilda saw that she must bide her time or perhaps spoil her chance of escape. For a few minutes things were so thick in the kitchen that she lost the values of things and the possible destruction of the bridge became a thing of the background rather than the immediate foreground. She hurried around silently, trying to think, setting the table like lightning, her own glances following her mistress's out of the windows and doors as she passed them. The screech of a train roused her thoughts again to her responsibility. What if it were this train that bore the doomed load? What if she had waited too long? She held her breath and listened as an express rushed through. A long line of handsome cars filled with people. She looked from the kitchen window and caught her breath as it reached the bridge. One awful second, it had crossed the first arch! The second! The engine was over on the other side! And now the last car left the bridge and rushed on out of sight among the trees. She turned with a sigh of relief, and caught the eye of the woman full upon her.

 “Vat for you stand idle to vatch a drain? You lazy girl! Get you to work. Dem men are coming. Dey vill pe hongty! Dish up the sauer kraut!”