THE AMAZING INTERLUDE (Spy Thriller). Mary Roberts Rinehart

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СКАЧАТЬ he had said to her. But Harvey eluded her. She could not hear his voice. And when she tried to see him it was Harvey of the wide face and the angry eyes of the last days that she saw.

      Morley's comforted her. The man at the door had been there for forty years, and was beyond surprise. He had her story in twenty-four hours, and in forty-eight he was her slave. The elderly chambermaid mothered her, and failed to report that Sara Lee was doing a small washing in her room and had pasted handkerchiefs over the ancient walnut of her wardrobe.

      "Going over, are you?" she said. "Dear me, what courage you've got, miss! They tell me things is horrible over there."

      "That's why I'm going," replied Sara Lee, and insisted on helping to make up the bed.

      "It's easier when two do it," she said casually.

      Mr. Travers put in a fretful twenty-four hours before he came to see her. He lunched at Brooks', and astounded an elderly member of the House by putting her problem to him.

      "A young girl!" exclaimed the M. P. "Why, deuce take it, it's no place for a young girl."

      "An American," explained Mr. Travers uncomfortably. "She's perfectly able to look after herself."

      "Probably a correspondent in disguise. They'll go to any lengths."

      "She's not a correspondent."

      "Let her stay in Boulogne. There's work there in the hospitals."

      "She's not a nurse. She's a—well, she's a cook. Or so she says."

      The M. P. stared at Mr. Travers, and Mr. Travers stared back defiantly.

      "What in the name of God is she going to cook?"

      "Soup," said Mr. Travers in a voice of suppressed irritation. "She's got a little money, and she wants to establish a soup kitchen behind the Belgian trenches on a line of communication. I suppose," he continued angrily, "even you will admit that the Belgian Army needs all the soup it can get."

      "I don't approve of women near the lines."

      "Neither do I. But I'm exceedingly glad that a few of them have the courage to go there."

      "What's she going to make soup out of?"

      "I'm not a cooking expert. But I know her and I fancy she'll manage."

      It ended by the M. P. agreeing to use his influence with the War Office to get Sara Lee to France. He was very unwilling. The spy question was looming large those days. Even the Red Cross had unwittingly spread its protection over more than one German agent. The lines were being drawn in.

      "I may possibly get her to France. I don't know, of course," he said in that ungracious tone in which an Englishman often grants a favor which he will go to any amount of trouble to do. "After that it's up to her."

      Mr. Travers reflected rather grimly that after that it was apparently up to him.

      Sara Lee sat in her room at Morley's Hotel and looked out at the life of London—policemen with chin straps; schoolboys in high silk hats and Eton suits, the hats generally in disreputable condition; clerks dressed as men at home dressed for Easter Sunday church; and men in uniforms. Only a fair sprinkling of these last, in those early days. On the first afternoon there was a military funeral. A regiment of Scots, in kilts, came swinging down from the church of St. Martin in the Fields, tall and wonderful men, grave and very sad. Behind them, on a gun carriage, was the body of their officer, with the British flag over the casket and his sword and cap on the top.

      Sara Lee cried bitterly. It was not until they had gone that she remembered that Harvey had always called the Scots men in women's petticoats. She felt a thrill of shame for him, and no amount of looking at his picture seemed to help.

      Mr. Travers called the second afternoon and was received by August at the door as an old friend.

      "She's waiting in there," he said. "Very nice young lady, sir. Very kind to everybody."

      Mr. Travers found her by a window looking out. There was a recruiting meeting going on in Trafalgar Square, the speakers standing on the monument. Now and then there was a cheer, and some young fellow sheepishly offered himself. Sara Lee was having a mad desire to go over and offer herself too. Because, she reflected, she had been in London almost two days, and she was as far from France as ever. Not knowing, of course, that three months was a fair time for the slow methods then in vogue.

      There was a young man in the room, but Sara Lee had not noticed him. He was a tall, very blond young man, in a dark-blue Belgian uniform with a quaint cap which allowed a gilt tassel to drop over his forehead. He sat on a sofa, curling up the ends of a very small mustache, his legs, in cavalry boots, crossed and extending a surprising distance beyond the sofa.

      The lights were up now, beyond the back drop, the stage darkened. A new scene with a vengeance, a scene laid in strange surroundings, with men, whole men and wounded men and spying men—and Sara Lee and this young Belgian, whose name was Henri and whose other name, because of what he suffered and what he did, we may not know.

      IV

       Table of Contents

      Henri sat on his sofa and watched Sara Lee. Also he shamelessly listened to the conversation, not because he meant to be an eavesdropper but because he liked Sara Lee's voice. He had expected a highly inflected British voice, and instead here was something entirely different—that is, Sara Lee's endeavor to reconcile the English "a" with her normal western Pennsylvania pronunciation. She did it quite unintentionally, but she had a good ear and it was difficult, for instance, to say "rather" when Mr. Travers said "rawther."

      Henri had a good ear too. And the man he was waiting for did not come. Also he had been to school in England and spoke English rather better than most British. So he heard a conversation like this, the gaps being what he lost:

      MR. TRAVERS: —— to France, anyhow. After that ——

      SARA LEE: Awfully sorry to be —— But what shall I do if I do get over? The chambermaid up-stairs —— very difficult.

      MR. TRAVERS: The proper and sensible thing is —— home.

      SARA LEE: To America? But I haven't done anything yet.

      Henri knew that she was an American. He also realized that she was on the verge of tears. He glared at poor Mr. Travers, who was doing his best, and lighted a French cigarette.

      "There must be some way," said Sara Lee. "If they need help—and I have read you Mabel Andrews' letter—then I should think they'd be glad to send me."

      "They would be, of course," he said. "But the fact is—there's been some trouble about spies, and—"

      Henri's eyes narrowed.

      "Spies! And they think I'm a spy?"

      "My dear child," remonstrated Mr. Travers, slightly exasperated, "they're not thinking about you at all. The War Office has never heard of you. It's a general rule."

      Sara Lee was not placated.

      "Let СКАЧАТЬ