The Highflyers
Date: 2014-07-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918 -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Highflyers

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Title: The Highflyers

Author: Clarence Budington Kelland

Release date: July 11, 2014 [eBook #46252]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIGHFLYERS ***

She looked like a glorious, slender boy in the riding breeches and puttees she had thought appropriate for the adventure.

THE HIGHFLYERS
By CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
Author of
“The Source,” “The Hidden Spring,”
“Sudden Jim,” etc.

WITH FRONTISPIECE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers    New York

Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers

The Highflyers
Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America

THE HIGHFLYERS

CHAPTER I

Fred la Mothe was speaking. After a certain number of beverages composed of Scotch whisky, imported soda, and a cube of ice, it was a matter of comparative ease for him to exhibit a notable fluency. After two o’clock in the afternoon Fred was generally fluent.

“‘’Tain’t safe,’ I says to him. And the wind was blowin’ enough to lift the hair out of your head. ‘I wouldn’t go up in the thing for the price of it,’ I says, ‘and, besides, you’re seein’ two of it. Bad enough drivin’ a car when you’re lit up,’ I says, ‘but what these flyin’ machines want is a still day and a man that’s cold sober. You just let it rest on its little perch in the bird-cage.’”

Fred refreshed his parched throat while his four companions waited for the conclusion of the tale. “‘You’ll bust your neck,’ I told him.

“‘Ten to one,’ says he, ‘I round Windmill Point Light and come back without bustin’ my neck. Even money I make it without bustin’ anything,’ says he.

“‘Dinner for four at the Tuller to-night that the least you bust is a leg,’ I says, and the wind whipped the hat off my head and whirled it into a tree.”

Fred stopped, evidently mourning the loss of his hat.

“Well,” said Will Kraemer, impatiently, “what happened? Did he go up?”

“Him?... I paid for that dinner, but, b’lieve me, there were times when I thought I’d have to collect from his estate. Ever see a leaf blowing around in a gale? Well, that’s how he looked out over the lake. Just boundin’ and twirlin’ and twistin’, but he went the distance and came back and landed safe. Got out of the dingus just like he was gettin’ off a Pullman. Patted the thing on the wing like it was a pet chicken. ‘Let’s drive down to the Pontchartrain,’ he says. ‘Likely the crowd’s there.’ Not another darn word. Just that.”

“Trouble with Potter Waite,” said Tom Watts, “is that he just naturally don’t give a damn. If he’s going to pull something he’d as lief pull it in the middle of Woodward Avenue at noon by the village clock as to pull it on the Six Mile Road at midnight.”

“No pussy-footin’ for him,” said Jack Eldredge. “My old man was talking about him the other night. Day after he cleaned up those two taxi-drivers out here in front. ‘Don’t let me hear of you running around with that young Waite,’ he says. ‘He’s a bad actor. You keep off him.’”

“He’s a life-saver,” Fred La Mothe joined in. “When dad lights into me I just mention Potter, and dad forgets me entirely. You ought to hear dad when he really gets to going on Potter.”

“I’m no Sunday-school boy—” said Brick O’Mera.

“Do tell,” gibed Eldredge.

“—but I’ll say Potter is crowdin’ the mourners. I wouldn’t follow his trail a week steady.”

The others waggled their heads acquiescently. Even to their minds Potter Waite traveled at too high speed and with too little thought of public opinion. About that table sat five young men who were as much a result of a condition as outlying subdivisions are the result of a local boom. Of them all, La Mothe came from a family which had known moderate wealth for generations, but it had grown swiftly, unbelievably, during the past few wonderful years, to a great fortune. Of the rest, Kraemer and O’Mera were the sons of machinists who, a dozen years before, would have considered carefully before giving their sons fifteen cents to sit in the gallery at the old Whitney Opera House to see sawmill and pile-driver and fire-engine drama. The automobile had caught them up and poured millions into their laps. Eldredge was the son of a bookkeeper who, fifteen years ago, had drawn fifty dollars at the end of each month for his services. For every dollar of that monthly salary he could now show a million. Watts was the son of a lawyer whom sheer good luck had lifted from a practice consisting of the collection of small debts, and made a stockholder in and adviser to a gigantic automobile concern. And these boys were the sons of those swiftly gotten millions. They had forgotten the old days, just as Detroit, their home city, had forgotten its old drowsiness, its mid-Western quietness and conservatism.

One might compare Detroit to a demure village girl, pleasing, beautiful, growing up with no other thought than to become a wife and mother, when, by chance, some great impresario hears her singing about her work and it is discovered that she has one of the world’s rarest voices. From her the old things and the old thoughts and the old habits of life are gone forever. The world pours wealth and admiration at her feet and her name rings from continent to continent. So with the lovely old city, straggling along the shores of that inland strait. She has become a prima donna among cities. The old identity is gone, replaced by something else, less homely, but mightier, grander. Her population, which, within the memory of boys not out of high-school, numbered less than three hundred thousand souls, was now reported to be thrice that, and, by the optimistic, even more. Her wealth has not doubled or trebled, but multiplied by an unbelievable figure, and she has spent it with unbelievable lavishness.

Where once were cobblestone pavements and horse-cars are countless swarms of automobiles; where once were meadows, pastures, wood-lots, are tremendous plants employing armies of men, covering scores of acres, turning out annual products which bring to the city hundreds of millions of dollars. In the history of the world no city has come into such a fortune as Detroit, nor has there been such universal prosperity, not to employer alone, but to employees, and to the least of employees. It seemed as if the day had arrived when one asked, not where he should get money, but what he should do with his money. So Detroit spent! It built magnificent hotels; it created palaces for its millionaires, and miles upon miles of homes—luxurious, costly homes for those whose handsome salaries passed the dreams of their youth, or whose fortunes, built up by contact with the trade of purveying automobiles to an eager world, had not even been hoped for ten years before. Even the laborer had his home. Why not, when one manufacturer paid to the man who swept his floors the minimum wage of five dollars a day?

That was before the war, before a solemn covenant became a scrap of paper and the world fell sick of its most horrible disease. Then Detroit was rich, was spending lavishly but not insanely. With the coming of war there was a halt, a fright, a retrenchment, a hesitation, for no man knew what the next day might bring. But as the next day brought no disaster, as it became apparent that the coming days were to bring something quite different from disaster, Detroit went ahead gaily.

Then came strangers from abroad, speaking other languages than ours, and men began to whisper that this plant had a ten-million-dollar contract from Russia for shrapnel fuses; this other plant a twenty-million-dollar contract for trucks; this other a fabulous arrangement for manufacturing this or that bit of the devil’s prescription for slaughtering men—and the whispers proved true.

The automobile brought amazingly sudden wealth; munition manufacture added to it with a blinding flash—and Detroit came to know what spending was.

These five young men, sitting in mid-afternoon in the Hotel Pontchartrain bar, were a part of all this; their life was the result of it; the thoughts, or lack of thoughts, in their minds, derived from it inevitably, remorselessly. They were castaways thrown up in a barroom by a golden flood.

To four of them a nickel for candy had been an event; now, without mental anguish, each of them could sign a dinner check which stretched to three figures, or buy a runabout or a yacht, or afford the luxury of acquaintance with the young woman who stood fourth from the end in the front row.

Let them not be chided too harshly. The fault was not theirs wholly, but was the inevitable result of their environment. They played at work, drew salaries—but could spend their afternoons in the Pontchartrain, in the Tuller, on the links or at thé dansant. They knew no responsibility to man, felt but a hazy responsibility to God, and as for their country, they had never thought about its existence.

They talked of the war, were pro-Ally with the exception of Kraemer, whom they baited when the fit was on them. Kraemer had been born on Brady Street. His grandfather was a ’forty-eighter. It was natural that he should see eye to eye with the land from which he derived his blood. Of them all, he alone took the war with seriousness, so they baited him at times, and he raged for their amusement.

They began the sport now.

“If the Kaiser only had the grand duke,” said La Mothe, “he might stand some show. Look what he’s done and what he had to do it with! I don’t figure it’ll last much longer. Everybody’s lickin’ Germany.”

Kraemer banged the table. “You’ll see,” he said, passionately. “The war would be over now if it wasn’t for the neutrality of the United States. This country’s just prolonging the agony. If it wasn’t for the munitions the Allies get from here, we’d be in Paris and London and St. Petersburg. Devil of a neutrality, ain’t it? Look here....”

“Rats!” said O’Mera. “Where’s Potter, anyhow?”

“Haven’t seen him to-day. Ought to be driftin’ in.”

“He’s over at police headquarters,” said a new voice, and Tom Randall beckoned a waiter and sat down at the table.

“Pinched again?” came in chorus.

“No, but he’ll probably get himself pinched before he’s through with it. Know the von Essen girl?”

“Hildegarde, you mean? Sassy one? Swiftest flapper that ever flapped?”

“That’s the darlin’. Well, she drives that runabout of hers down Jefferson again, doin’ nothin’ less than forty-five and makin’ real time in spots. Seems she’s been fined pretty average regular. Well, traffic cop gets her and makes her haul up to the curb and crawls right in beside her. Uh-huh. And off they go to the station, her lookin’ like she could bite off the steerin’-wheel. Well, Potter and I are comin’ along in his car, and we see the excitement and tag after. You know Potter?”

“We do!”

“‘It’s that von Essen kid, isn’t it?’ he says to me, and I agree with him. ‘She’s been caught too regular,’ he says. ‘They’ll be nasty. Better trail along and see if we can help out.’ So we did. Got to the station simultaneous and adjacent to them, and out jumps Potter.

“‘Afternoon, Miss von Essen,’ says he.

“‘Mr. Waite,’ she says, cool as a bisque tortoni.

“‘Pinched?’ says he.

“‘Ask him,’ she says, and jerks her head toward the cop, who is clambering down.

“‘She is,’ says the cop, ‘and this time she gits what’s comin’ to her. She been a dam’ nuisance,’ he says, ‘and this here time I’m goin’ to put her over the jumps. Git out and git inside,’ he says to her.

“Well, Potter sort of edged up to the cop and looks him over and says, ‘I don’t really see why this young lady has to go inside. You can make your complaint, and that about ends your usefulness.’

“‘She stays,’ says the cop, ‘and if I got anything to say about it, she sleeps on a plank.’

“‘You wouldn’t care to do that, would you, Miss von Essen?’ says Potter, with that grin of his, and I made ready to duck, because when he grins that way—”

“We know,” said the boys.

“‘Now you listen to reason,’ says Potter. ‘A police station is no place for a young lady. It doesn’t smell pleasantly. So she doesn’t go in. If bail’s necessary or if anything’s necessary, I’m here for that. But omit the stern policeman part of it.’

“‘Git out and come in,’ says the cop to the girl.

“‘You and I are going in, friend,’ says Potter, and he took hold of the policeman’s arm. ‘We’ll fix this up—not the young lady. Come on,’ says Potter, with his left fist all doubled up and ready.

“The cop knew Potter, so they parleyed, and then they walked under the porch—you know the entrance to the station—and in a couple of minutes out comes Potter, looking sort of sneering and shoving a roll of bills into his pocket.

“‘Seems there was some mistake,’ he says to Miss von Essen. ‘It wasn’t you who broke the speed ordinance; it was I. I’ve arranged the mistake with the officer. Now, for cat’s sake, cut it out. You’ll be breaking into print good one of these days, and there’ll be the devil to pay ... or breaking your neck. You’ll get yourself talked about if you don’t ease off some.’ And,” said Randall, “he hardly knows the girl. Some line of talk for Potter to ladle out!”

“What did she say?”

“Her eyes just glittered at him. She’s a handsome little cat, but I’ll bet she can scratch. ‘Coming from you,’ she says, ‘that advice is thrilling.’ Her engine was still running. She slammed into gear, stepped on the gas, and shot over to Randolph Street.

“Potter looked after her and chuckled. ‘Promising kid,’ he said. ‘You chase along, Tom. They want me inside.’ So here I am. Guess he can take care of himself.”

“Here he comes,” said La Mothe. “Didn’t get locked up, anyhow.”

A tall young man who did not need padding in the shoulders of his coat was making his way between the tables. He wore a plaid cap jauntily on his yellow hair. He was not handsome, but at first glance one was apt to call him handsome—if he were in good humor. You liked his face, except at times when he was alone, or thoughtful. Then it distressed you, for you could not make out the meaning of its expression. Then his blue eyes, which were twinkling now, looked dark and brooding. He had a way of looking dissatisfied—and something worse, more disquieting—something not to be defined. Ordinarily his face was such as to draw men to him, even older men who quite disliked him and used his mode of life as a text for dissertations on what the young man of to-day was coming to.

One thing might be said with safety—he possessed personality. When he was one of a group he dominated it. He was not a boy to leave out of the reckoning.... When one of his “fits,” as his friends called them, was dark upon him, even those who knew him best and regarded themselves as closest to him were a bit uneasy in his company. The most hardy and reckless of them was moved at such times to go away from there, for Potter Waite usually set out on some mad enterprise when that mood was on him. He would set a pace few cared to follow.

“You never know what he’s thinking about,” Kraemer said, frequently. It was true. But you did not know that he was thinking, and that he could think. Also he never followed, he led. For him consequences did not exist. If he set out to do a thing, he did it, and let consequences take care of themselves. And, as the boys complained, he went his reprehensible way with a brass band. The idea of concealing his escapades seemed not to occur to him.

“What’ll you have?” called Randall, whose waiter had come to him.

“A stein, a quart of Scotch, and a bottle of soda,” said Potter.

“What’s that, sir?” said the waiter.

“Deliver it as ordered,” said Potter, with a boyish smile that got him quicker and better service than other men’s tips.

The waiter obeyed and the boys watched with interest. Potter poured a generous half-pint into the stein upon the ice, and filled the stone mug with soda.

“I’m goin’ to git,” said Jack Eldredge. “Somethin’s goin’ to bust loose around here.”

Potter sat back comfortably and sipped from his stein. He appeared unconscious that, from other tables, glances were directed toward him, and that men standing at the bar mentioned his name and pointed him out to companions. He began chatting pleasantly.

“Not pinched, eh?” asked Randall.

“Suppose I’ll get mine in the morning,” Potter said, without interest.

“I’d ’a’ let her take her medicine,” Randall said. “It wasn’t any of your funeral.... Didn’t even say thank you.”

Potter looked at him musingly. “That was the best part of it,” he said, presently. “Sort of proves she’s being natural; not four-flushing like some of these girls. They’d have burbled and kissed my hand—stepped out of character, you know. She didn’t.”

A boy came into the room with an armful of papers. What he called could not be heard distinctly above the din of the place. Potter raised his hand and the boy threw a paper before him. The young man glanced at it, seemed to stiffen. He sat back in his chair while the others watched him, arrested by something in his manner, something portentous.

He stood up and looked from one to the other of them. Then he laid down the paper slowly.

“The Lusitania has been torpedoed,” he said, in a quiet voice, “without warning. Hundreds of Americans are lost—women and children.” He stopped and repeated the last words. “Women and children.” For a moment he stood motionless.... “It means war,” he said.

Every eye was on him. He held them. He stopped them as if they had been so many clocks with their hands pointing to this fateful hour. He made them feel the event.

Nobody spoke. Potter turned very slowly and surveyed the room, then, still very slowly, he walked out of the room without a word or a nod. His stein was left, scarcely touched, before his chair.

CHAPTER II

Potter Waite stood a moment at the curb beside his car, looking at the heart of this great new city. At his right, Cadillac Square stretched broadly away to the County Building’s square tower. Within his memory this handsome space had been a public market, unsightly, evil of odor, reeking with decaying vegetables and the refuse of the meat-stalls. To-day it was overcrowded with parked automobiles. At his left opened the Campus Martius, bisected by the magnificent width of Woodward Avenue. There, on its little irregular plot, squatted the City Hall, shabby, slatternly, forbidding. It seemed, against the background, the palisade, of upreaching sky-scrapers of terra-cotta and brick, to typify that thing we tolerate as municipal government. As was the shabby building to its clean, its magnificent, neighbors, so was the thing it contained—the government of a great city—to the governments of private enterprises which had made that city a place to excite the envious admiration of her sister municipalities.

Potter frowned at the thought. The huge machine of government was made up of such parts, of common councils, of mayors, of state legislatures, of national legislatures, differing only in degree, but wrought of kindred materials. It was this machine with which the country would make war.

“It won’t work,” Potter said to himself. “It hasn’t the stroke or the bore....”

He stood still looking at the teeming Campus, following its currents and cross-currents and eddies with eyes darkened by thought. It was a current worthy to pass between magnificent banks. The sidewalks eddied with never-motionless men and women; with human beings whose errands hurried them on. Potter studied them with interest. Their faces were mobile, alert, intelligent, forceful. There was a capability about each individual; there was something distinct about each atom in the crowd.... Here, after all, was the great machine of government. Here was that from which government derived; here was that which would make war, which would fight the war. Walking down that street was a potential army, and the mothers of a potential army.

It was these who had made possible, who had created, the terra-cotta sky-scrapers; it was these who had made possible that marvelous procession of automobiles which taxed the width of Woodward Avenue; it was these who had made possible the building up of that miracle of industrial life that stretched around the town like fortifications around some European city—but fortifications holding the city safe, not from a foreign invader, but from an economic invader. Factory-fortresses preserving the prosperity of the town.

He continued to eye the crowd, and his eyes became less deep and dark. He raised his head without knowing that he raised it. A feeling of pride was upon him.

“Here’s the thing—the real thing,” he said within himself. “This is the machine; the stroke is there and the bore is there ... if they can be made to see and to understand.”

Potter stepped into his car and drove out Woodward Avenue, and thence down a side-street to that mammoth, unbelievable mass of buildings which all the world, through advertisements, would recognize as the plant of the Waite Motor Car Company. Since the day the first brick was laid, a dozen years before, building had never ceased. The plant had never caught up with itself, had never been able to produce the number of automobiles required of it by the public. As far as the eye reached were clean, splendid structures; the ragged outline at the end, dimly seen, was caused by steel not yet covered by brick, by brick walls rising to wall in new space in which to manufacture yet more thousands of the Waite motor-car.

To all this, to this concrete, visible, tangible fortune, Potter Waite was sole heir. It was not like wealth in stocks, bonds, securities. It was not in promises to pay, in paper standing for something more substantial. It was there. It could be beheld in the mass. Perhaps a hundred millions of dollars actually reared themselves in brick and steel, in splendid, efficient machinery. Potter had grown up with it, was accustomed to it. Unlike the casual passer-by, he was not awed by it.

He leaped from his car and ran up the broad flight of stairs leading to the offices on the second floor.

“Dad in?” he flung at the man who sat behind the information-desk.

“Yes, but he’s occupied, Mr. Waite. I shouldn’t go in.”

Potter strode past. The man rose as though to call him back, and then sat down with a shrug. Potter flung open the door of his father’s office, flung himself through it.

“Dad, have you heard?” he said, abruptly.

Fabius Waite looked up, frowned. “I’m busy. Weren’t you told?” he said.

Potter glanced at the other occupants of the room; recognized Senator Marvel, did not recognize the other. He nodded to the Senator.

“The Germans have torpedoed the Lusitania,” he said. “It was without warning. More than a hundred Americans drowned—women and children ... like rats,” he finished.

The Senator was on his feet. The news had been a sudden, bewildering blow to him. “What’s that? Are you sure? Where did you get it?”

Potter threw a paper on the desk over which the Senator and the stranger crouched with manifest excitement. Not so Fabius Waite. He did not glance at the paper, nor did he seem moved. His broad, clean-shaven, patrician face showed no emotion except, perhaps, a shade of irritation at the others’ reception of the tidings. Potter said to himself that his father would sit outwardly unmoved, unruffled, not in the least disarranged mentally, if word were brought him that the dissolution of the universe had commenced. It was true. Fabius Waite would study the information and determine his course of action before he gave a sign that the most sharp-eyed might read.

“My God!” exclaimed the man whom Potter did not know.

“What’ll it mean?... What will it mean?” the Senator asked, in an awed, frightened voice.

“What can it mean but war?” Potter said.

His father merely glanced at him, not contemptuously, not rebukingly, in fact, not as if Potter were a human being at all, but as if he were some piece of the room’s furniture to which attention had been called.

“When you men are through scrambling over that paper,” he said, quietly, “I’ll look at it myself.” He did not stretch out his hand for the paper, did not seem to suggest that it be given to him, but simply stated a fact. Potter came near to smiling at the alacrity with which Senator and business man abandoned the news sheet and pressed it upon his father. The Senator was a big man in Washington and in Michigan, Potter knew. The stranger looked like a man of importance, yet Fabius Waite dominated them, made their personalities colorless by the simple fact of his presence. He merely sat there—and they were dwarfs beside him.

“The people,” said the Senator, “there’ll be no holding them back. They’ll sweep us into war—as they did with Spain.”

“I heard there were munitions shipped on the Lusitania,” said the stranger.

Fabius Waite paid not the minutest attention to them, but read calmly, appraisingly, from beginning to end what the paper told of the sinking of the Lusitania. When he was done he folded the paper neatly and laid it on his desk.

“There were munitions,” said the Senator, “and people were warned by advertisements in the paper to keep off that boat.”

“What’s the difference?” Potter demanded. “Are we going to let them murder our citizens like this—and put up such an excuse as that?”

“Citizens had no business on the boat,” said the stranger. “They brought it on themselves.”

“There’s got to be war,” said Potter, his eyes traveling uncertainly from Senator to business man—to his father, where they remained. “There’s no other way. What else can be done about such a thing?”

“For one thing,” said Fabius Waite, coolly, “we can stop jabbering and think about it.... You especially, Potter. If you must wag your tongue, go back to the Pontchartrain bar and wag it for the benefit of the gang of loafers you train with.... Senator, what suggests itself to you?”

“I must get to Washington. The Senate doesn’t want war, I can vouch for that.... But the people.... Perhaps the President can hold them.”

“I gather from your words that he’ll be willing to try?”

“He’s the last man in the country to want war.... There’ll be no war. Those German dunder-heads! Do they want to pull the whole world down about their ears?”

“They’re fools,” said the stranger.

“We won’t argue about their wisdom. Whether they were wise or foolish, they seem to have sunk the Lusitania.” Fabius Waite paused. “And when all’s said and done it won’t be the Senate nor the President nor business which determines what we will do about it. It’s the people who will make up their minds. Don’t lose sight of that.”

“Public opinion can be molded.”

“For a while and to an extent.... I believe this thing can be handled so that nothing will come of it. It will take careful handling. You agree with me, do you not, Senator, that neither the people nor the business of the Middle West want war?”

“Certainly I do.”

“I have no doubt you will intimate to the President that you have grave doubts if the Middle West will follow him into war—will back him up in any belligerent attitude he may have in mind to assume.” Fabius Waite’s eyes were on the Senator’s face, and none could tell what thoughts stirred behind them. He did not order, did not direct, did not suggest, but he was imposing his will on this imposing member of an august body as surely and as relentlessly as if he held a revolver at the Senator’s head.

“I feel it my duty to intimate as much to him,” said the Senator.

“There must, of course, be a protest,” said Fabius White. “News that the President is preparing a note to the German government will hold the people in check. I incline to believe they will wait for it to see what the President thinks.... If it should take time to prepare, so much the better. It would give the country time to cool off.”

“The people have seen what war means,” said the Senator. “They’ve seen Belgium and France.... They’ve no stomach for a dose like that. Handle this thing right—let them get over the first shock of it—and the excitement will die down. The people are sheep.... Yes, you’re perfectly right about delay.”

Potter had hurried to his father, his soul a flame of emotion. The flame was being quenched. The boy stood silent, looking from one to the other of these men, hurt, amazed. Just why he had come or what he had expected his father to do he did not know. Impulse had brought him. The word patriotism was not in his vocabulary, as it was not in the vocabularies of millions of Americans on that seventh day of May. But some spring had been touched, something had been set in motion by the news of that atrocity which would be heralded from one end to the other of the Germanic Empire as a splendid feat of arms. The thing was wrong: the evil of it had seared through to the uneasy soul of the boy and had set afoot within him something which he did not understand as yet.... He was not able now to say, “Civis Americanus sum.”

It was not reason that had brought him. It was no conscious surge of loyalty to his country. It was something—something he felt to be right. Perhaps there was a tinge of adventure in it; perhaps his youth heard the rolling of martial drums and saw the unfurling of flags of war.... But he was right and these men were wrong. That he knew.

He wondered at the men. There had been no word of sympathy for the dead; there had been no cry of anger wrung from them by this affront to the honor of the nation; there had been but one thought—dollars. Business came first. The prosperity of dollars and cents filled their minds to the exclusion of all other prosperities. Even the Senator, servant and representative of the people, was not serving and representing the people. He, too, saw only the effect of this thing on business.

“Does everybody think like this?” Potter wondered. It might be so. His friends at the table in the Pontchartrain bar had been surprised at the news, but he considered their actions those of men who had not been shocked or those of men enraged. Perhaps they, too, were of one mind with his father.... Perhaps all the people were of that mind. Perhaps that was the sort of people the American nation had grown to be....

“Dad,” he said, “if Mother had been on board—”

“She wasn’t,” said Fabius Waite. “Senator, this is mighty ticklish, and it will grow more ticklish. This one act can be smoothed over, but many recurrences of it cannot be smoothed over. Isn’t there some machinery to set afoot forbidding American citizens to cross the ocean? That would do it.”

“I wouldn’t care to introduce such a resolution,” said the Senator, “but probably somebody can be got to do it.”

“We’ve a right to travel,” Potter said, hotly. “Didn’t we fight a war about that once? You don’t mean to say, Dad, that you actually would have this country admit that it was afraid to claim its rights.... The world would laugh at us.”

“Let it,” said his father. “Another year or two of this war and this nation will top them all. We’ll be the financial rulers of the world. We’re getting there now, and nothing must happen to set us back.”

“And the world will despise us,” Potter said, bitterly. He was beginning to see more clearly now. He paused. This attitude of mind he was witnessing could not be common to all the people. He would not believe it. “Dad, think bigger. You men are wrong. You can’t head this off. It means war.... It’s got to mean war. And war means armies and cannon and shell—and aeroplanes. We’ve got to have them all. Think, Dad, and you’ll realize it.... Take a telegraph blank, Dad, and write the President. You can help with this plant; every other plant like it can help. Wire the President that this plant is at the disposal of the country for any use the country can put it to.... Tell him you’re with him. Tell him you can make guns or shrapnel-cases or motors for him as well as for England or France or Russia—as you are making them.... And aeroplanes. We’ll need thousands of them.... Give that job to me, Dad. I know aeroplanes—”

“You know mixed drinks and chorus girls and traffic cops,” his father snorted.

“You won’t do it?”

“Don’t be a fool.”

Potter turned and walked out of the room. He stopped at the information-desk. Here sat a man who worked for wages, a common citizen. Here sat the sort of man who made up the bulk of that crowd he had watched on Woodward Avenue.

“Dickson,” he said, “the Germans have sunk the Lusitania and killed a hundred Americans.”

“Awful, wasn’t it? I just heard.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

“Why—we’ll make ’em pay for it, that’s what. We’ll collect damages, millions of dollars.”

“Money?” said Potter.

“You bet, Mr. Waite. Money.”

“Is that all? Will that satisfy you?”

“Isn’t that enough?” asked Dickson, in real surprise. “What more can anybody ask?”

“You don’t want to fight? You don’t think it means war?”

“Great heavens, no! War!... We don’t want any of that in ours. I guess this country won’t mix in any wars. We’ve been seeing what war means. Anyhow, what should we fight for? England and the Allies are going to lick Germany, aren’t they? Well, let them.”

Potter turned on his heel. He had his answer.

Once more he got into his car and whirled down-town. Once more he stopped before the Pontchartrain and entered the bar. His friends were not there, but he sat down at a table and ordered a drink; he ordered another drink—and another....

His eyes were dark and brooding; the restless urge to recklessness was upon him—that smoldering fire which had made him a young man to be looked upon askance by the respectable. His face was set—and he drank.... Fred La Mothe came through the revolving door, saw Potter, studied his face and his attitude for a moment, and then quietly withdrew. He knew the signs, and had no desire to be in Potter’s company from that hour on.

He sat alone at his table, brooding, drinking from time to time. He felt no hunger, did not arise to eat. The lights came on and still he sat. The room was thronged with the early-evening crowd, and Potter glowered at them—and ordered other drinks.

Presently he stirred uneasily; the spirit of unrest, of recklessness was working within him, urged on by liquor. He pushed himself to his feet, and stood, not too steadily, and his eyes seemed to flame as he glared over the crowd. His face seemed to flame, to be kindling from some fire that surged up from depths inside him. His yellow hair, brushed back from his brow, added to the flamelike semblance of him.

He struck the table with his fist and a glass danced over the edge to smash on the floor.

“It’s a hell of a country,” he said, loudly, “and you’re a hell of a lot of men....”

The room fell silent, and every face was turned toward him. He glared into the upturned eyes.

“You’re a lot of crawling, sneaking, penny-chasing rabbits,” he said, distinctly. “Brag and blow—that’s you.... And then somebody kills your wives and babies and you haven’t the guts to kill back again. You’re afraid, the lot of you. You won’t fight. If anybody says war you crawl under the table.... Americans!... I’d rather be an Esquimo.... If anybody slapped your faces you wouldn’t fight.... I’ll show you. I’ll show you what kind of cattle you are.... Now, if there’s a fight in you, come and fight....”

He lunged forward and struck a man, upsetting him against a table. The place was in an uproar. “It’s young Waite—look out. He’s a bad actor.... Call the cops.” Potter swayed forward into the throng at the bar, striking, striking. In a moment he was the center of a maelstrom of shouting, scuffling men—and his laugh rang above their shouts. They struck at him, clutched at him; waiters and bartenders tried to force their way to him. He was pushed back and back, still keeping his feet, still lashing out with his fists, his eyes blazing, his yellow hair rumpled and waving, his reckless laugh dominating the turmoil. His back was against the wall. Before him now was a clear semicircle which none ventured to cross, and he laughed in their faces.

“Fifty to one,” he jeered, “and you’re afraid.”

A couple of policemen shouldered their way through, recognized Potter, and stopped. “Cut it out now, Waite,” said one of them. “Cut it out and come on.”

Potter’s answer was to step forward and strike the officer with all his strength. The other officer did not parley. His night stick was out. He raised it, brought it down on Potter’s yellow hair, and the whole room heard the thud of it.... Potter stood erect the fraction of a second, then the stiffness went out of his body and he sank to the floor a shapeless heap....

The morning papers printed Potter’s picture and news stories of this his most reckless escapade. They also printed moral editorials which, with singular unanimity, pointed out facts concerning young men with too much money, no regard for their citizenship, and mentioned disgracing an honorable name.

CHAPTER III

When the heir to a hundred millions of dollars is arrested in this country for any act less than murder, he does not expect to sleep in a cell. The police do not expect him to sleep in a cell, and the public would be astonished—and a little vexed—if he were compelled to do so. They would be vexed because in the event of his detention, they would be deprived of the pleasure of railing against our institutions and of saying to their neighbors in the street-car that, “a man with enough money can get away with anything.”

“Couldn’t you bring in a kid without usin’ the wood?” the lieutenant at the desk said to the officer who had floored Potter. It did not seem fitting to that lieutenant that a hundred millions of dollars should have its scalp abraided by a night stick.

“Kid, hell!” said the officer. “If you’d ’a’ seen the wallop he handed Tom!”

Potter clung to the edge of the desk, dizzy, swaying, his head not clear between blow and drink.

“Here,” said the lieutenant, “come in here and lay down. Want I should telephone anybody—or git a doctor?”

“No,” said Potter, sinking on the lounge and closing his eyes.

The lieutenant went out and called the superintendent on the telephone. “Got young Waite here,” he said. “He tried to tear the Pontchartrain up by the roots and Kerr had to drop the locust on him a bit. What’ll I do wit’ the kid?”

“Hurt?”

“Didn’t improve him none.”

“Drunk?”

“So-so.”

“Send somebody over to the Tuller with him and have him put to bed.”

It was not for the public to know that the superintendent had two sons who were employed in the Waite Motor Car Company’s plant—for whom he desired fair prospects and promotion.

So Potter slept in an excellent hotel bedroom instead of a cell. He awakened in the morning with a head that was very sore; dressed and went down to the office.

“Your car is out front,” said the clerk. Even that detail had been attended to by a solicitous police force.

At breakfast he read a paper on whose first page he divided honors with the Lusitania. He was not interested in what was said about himself; at first he was not especially interested in what was said about the Lusitania, but as he read his interest grew, changing to hot anger as he read the still incomplete list of the dead. More than one individual was there named with whom Potter had broken bread.

Even in the editorial there was no demand for war; there was astonishment, there was wrath, but it seemed to Potter there was some effort to find an excuse for Germany’s act.... Passengers warned.... Munitions.... Possibility of internal explosion.... Wait for particulars. The attitude of the paper was not quite his father’s attitude, not so frank, but he was able to see it was his father’s attitude disguised for popular consumption. And he was intelligent enough to realize that the finger of that paper was on the public pulse; that, without doubt, the paper was dealing with the situation as the public wanted it dealt with—a public not willing to resent blow with blow.

At the next table a man was saying, “Just because they’ve killed a thousand or so is no reason for us to get into it. War would mean killing another hundred thousand or maybe half a million. Because they’ve killed a thousand, should we let them kill a hundred times as many more? That’s sense.... Make ’em pay for it....”

“What could we do, anyhow?” asked the other. “Might get in with our navy, but there isn’t anything for a navy to do. Couldn’t send an army across three thousand miles of ocean.”

“Right. I’m for the Allies, but my idea is we can help a lot more by staying neutral and sending ’em all the munitions they want.”

“My idea exactly,” agreed the other.

That was it. What could we do? We had no army. Potter had been told that Uruguay had more artillery than the United States. There was no ammunition!... The United States was ready for peace, and the old absurdity about a million squirrel-shooters was gospel in the minds of a hundred millions of people. A million squirrel-shooters armed with what?

Potter got up from the table and went out to his car. He wanted to be alone; he wanted fresh air; he wanted to work off the various uncomfortable sensations that possessed him. He drove recklessly out Jefferson Avenue to the Country Club. At this hour it was deserted save for servants. It would do him good, he thought, to play around alone, without even a caddy, so he donned flannels and shoes, and carried his caddy bag to the first tee.

Somebody else was teeing off—a girl. Potter did not glance at her, but dropped his bag with a clatter and sat down on the bench to wait till she should get out of his way.

“How do you do?” said the young woman.

Potter stood up automatically. “Good morning, Miss von Essen,” he said, without interest.

She turned her back on the ball she had been about to address and walked toward him, slender, graceful, yellow hair blowing out from beneath a tilted tam-o’-shanter. Her face was thin, not especially pretty at first glance, but arresting. The features were distinct, and the expression, even in repose, was one of eagerness—such an expression as one associated with the possession of wit and daring. The expression was akin to pertness, but was not pertness. One knew she could play golf or tennis. One knew she had been a tomboy. One knew she had temper. Her whole appearance and bearing were a perpetual challenge. “Come on,” it seemed to say. “Whatever it is, if there’s a chance to take, let’s do it.” Potter knew she was a girl about whom there had been shakings of the head, not so much because of what she had done as because of what she might do. Conservative mothers preferred some other friend for their daughters—and you felt immediately that Hildegarde von Essen delighted to tantalize such matrons and to set their tongues clacking.

“You gave away something yesterday that you needed yourself,” she said, with directness.

“No,” said Potter, amused as at a pert child. She was only nineteen. “What was it?”

“Advice. ‘You’ll be breaking into print good one of these days, and there’ll be the devil to pay,’” she quoted. “‘You’ll get yourself talked about if you don’t ease off some,’ says you to me.” The effect of it was of a naughty child thrusting out her tongue. “And you take your sanctimonious air right away to the Pontchartrain and drink too much and get into a dis-grace-ful fight, and get arrested, and break into print good. I s’pose,” she said, thoughtfully, “you were jealous—afraid I might steal some advertising and crowd you out.”

Potter laughed, a good, whole-hearted, boyish laugh. The sort of laugh one likes to hear. “It was funny, wasn’t it?” he said.

“Impertinent, I call it,” she said, sharply.

He laughed again. “If you want advice on any subject, you go to an expert, don’t you? Well, I’m an expert on breaking into print and getting myself talked about. My advice is worth something. I ought to charge for it.... Now there’s a notion. How would it do for me to open an office with a sign on the door, Expert Advice on Wild-oats Farming—Years of Experience?”

“You seem proud of it.”

“No, I’m not exactly proud of it. I’m not like little girls who do things for effect.”

She turned her back and marched to her ball, but before she was ready for the stroke she faced him again. “You’re just a naughty little boy throwing paper wads in school,” she said, sweetly, “and you think you’re a grown man being devilish.”

“Eh?” he said, a bit startled. On the face of it she had merely uttered a saucy, childish gibe, but Potter was struck by it. He tucked it away in his mind for future reference. There were elements of shrewdness, of insight, of truth in it.

“I have a puppy who chewed up my best slippers—because he hadn’t anything else to do,” she said.

“Do your friends, by any chance, hint that your tongue is sharp?” he asked.

She made no reply, but her driver whistled viciously through the air in a practice stroke.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “just to show you I’m forgiving I’ll let you play around with me.”

She looked at him an instant. “I’ll give you a stroke a hole,” she said.

“Eh?”

“I’ve seen you play,” she said, calmly.

“Drive,” he said, with a chuckle. “I ought to put up a cup, oughtn’t I?”

“Make it a ride in that aeroplane thing of yours,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see how it felt to fly. Not just go up and come down, but a regular fly.”

“Not a chance. Your father would assassinate me.”

“You haven’t much confidence in your game, have you? To beat a girl who gives you a stroke a hole.”

“We’d both break into print. Can’t you see it in type? ‘Hildegarde von Essen explores the firmament with Potter Waite,’ with some account of your career with number of fines for speeding, and references to myself. Not nice.”

“Fiddlesticks! We shouldn’t have to invite any reporters....”

“But they’d hear about it. They always do.”

“A stroke a hole,” she jeered.

“Very well. Give me a beating and I’ll take you flying.” He felt confident enough, for he played a fair game of golf.

His confidence decreased after the first hole was played. He outdrove her and had the distance of her, but her every stroke was down the center of the course; she never overestimated her strength, and avoided trouble. On the green she holed a twelve-foot putt—and the hole was hers.

He settled down to play his best. The thing became not merely a game of golf between a man and a girl. It seemed to him that more was at stake than victory or defeat in a pastime. He became interested, intensely interested. He wanted to win and he played to win.... And he watched the girl. She interested him. She was so utterly natural, so without pose, yet so very different from the ordinary run of girls, particularly nineteen-year-old girls. There was a tang about her. It was as if one were eating bread and all unexpectedly encountered some unidentified, some palate-intriguing spice. That defined her for Potter. If he had been going to describe her he would have said she was highly spiced.

Potter played better than usual, but at the end of the ninth hole he was two down. They had talked little. Now she sat down.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Not the least,” she said, “but I find I play the last nine better if I sit here a few minutes and get the first nine out of my mind.... Had you any friends on the Lusitania?” She asked the question suddenly.

“Yes,” he said.

“If I were a man—”

“If you were a man—?” he repeated after her.

“I’d enlist. I wouldn’t wait for this country to go to war. I’d go across. A good many boys have gone, haven’t they? I’d go across and be an aviator—or anything they’d let me be....”

“For the Allies? I took it for granted you would be on the other side of the fence.”

“Pro-German!” Her eyes flashed. “I leave that for Father and his cronies. I believe they celebrated last night—actually. My mother wasn’t German,” she said. Potter knew Mrs. von Essen had died two years before. “I know Germans,” she said, presently. “I ought to; I’ve lived among them all my life.... Sometimes I think the whole race is a button short.” Potter was to learn that in her vocabulary “a button short” meant not quite complete mentally. “I like some of them, and I’d even trust some of them, but most of them are arrogant beasts.... I’ve read their books,” she said. “Dad has a lot of them. People used to think they were nice, slow, harmless, fat, good-natured. Maybe some of them are. But I believe that’s what the German government wanted the world to think.” These were unusual words to hear falling from a girl’s lips. She had been thinking. Perhaps that had happened in her life which made her think. “Will we declare war?” she asked, in her sudden way.

“Last night I was sure we would. To-day I’m almost as sure we won’t.”

She nodded. “People don’t realize.... But we’ll be in it,” she said. “No matter how much we try to stay out, they’ll force us in. They’ll sink another Lusitania and another and another, until we have to come in. You’ll see.... Partly because they don’t understand—and partly because that’s the kind they are. You know a German never understands anybody but a German. They can’t. Just before Mother died she said to me, ‘Garde’—she always called me Garde—‘don’t marry a German, honey. Nobody but a German woman should marry a German.’ And Mother ought to know, oughtn’t she? I’d rather marry a Chinaman,” she said, suddenly becoming girlish again.

“If we have war, what will all the Germans in this country do?”

“Talk loudly till war is declared. Then shut up and do sneaky things. Nothing in the open.... I think,” she said, slowly, evidently trying to set aside prejudice and cling to fact—“I think most of them will be loyal. In spite of their talk, I don’t believe most of them would care to live in Germany and in German conditions. That’s why. But there’ll be enough.” She got up quickly and teed her ball. “Let’s go on,” she said.

Hildegarde played the same steady game as before; Potter’s mind was on other things. Somehow he believed this girl was right; that she read the future truly. The sinking of the Lusitania meant war—sooner or later it meant war.... And the country was unready for war. It did not want to get ready for war.... She had spoken about going across to fight with the Allies. He considered that. It was a thing he was to consider for days and weeks to come. But that was a makeshift. He realized it was a makeshift. There must be something better, something more logical than that.

He won a hole and halved a hole in the last nine.

“When do we fly?” she asked, eagerly.

“I shouldn’t have promised.”

“But you did.”

He nodded. “Whenever you wish.”

“Let’s see. Suppose we say next Tuesday.”

“My car is here. Can I drive you home?” he said.

“I was to telephone for my car. Yes, you may.”

A limousine was just entering the grounds of the von Essen place in Grossepoint when Potter and Hildegarde reached the drive.

“There’s Father,” she said, and her lips compressed a trifle.

A big man who looked not unlike Bismarck, and who endeavored to heighten the likeness, alighted and stood beside the car, looking toward them. It was obvious he was waiting for them. Potter stopped his car and lifted his cap. Herman von Essen scowled.

“Since when are you friends with this young man?” he demanded. “Out of that car and into the house. Have you no sense—to be seen in public with this man whose picture is in the papers? For a girl to be with him is to lose her reputation.... And you”—he turned on Potter furiously—“take your car out of my grounds. Never speak with my daughter again. Do you hear? You are a drunken young ruffian.” He launched himself into a tirade of great circumstantiality.

Potter’s eyes were dark with the brooding expression which his friends counted a signal of danger, but he remained motionless, save to turn toward Hildegarde.

“I am sorry, Miss von Essen,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought you. I might have foreseen—”

She smiled. It was not a bright smile, but a reckless smile, as reckless as one of Potter’s own might be.

“Thank you for coming.... I hope we shall be friends.” She did not glance at her father, but walked erectly up the steps and disappeared in the house. Von Essen continued verbally to chastise Potter, who did not look at him. Perhaps he did not dare, fearing the weakness of his self-restraint. The young man threw his car into gear and moved away, leaving von Essen gesticulating behind him.

He drove to his own house, a mile beyond. Before he reached there the brooding darkness was gone from his eyes; they twinkled. He was thinking of Hildegarde.

CHAPTER IV

Detroit was flying high; it was spending as few cities have ever spent. Wealth poured in upon her, and men who, ten years before, had worried when they heard their landlady’s step on the stairs were building palaces in the midst of grounds for which they paid fabulous sums for each foot of frontage. No clerk or school-teacher was too poor to own a lot in a subdivision, laid out with sidewalks and shade trees, miles beyond the city’s limits. Overnight land increased in value, so that fortunate ones who paid ten dollars down on a lot sold their equities within the month at profits of hundreds of dollars. Men bought distant pasture-land for a song and sold it for an opera. The streets were full of tales of this man who had made a hundred thousand dollars, of that man who had cleared sixty thousand, of men by the dozens whose bank-accounts had increased more modestly, but still by thousands. Land that had gone begging at ten dollars a foot was eagerly sought at a hundred dollars.... This was a by-product of that great manufactory of wealth, the automobile.

As for it, and its growing sister, munitions, one believed whatever was told, and the tale fell short of the truth. One manufacturer filled the banks with his deposits, and, when they refused to accept more, was obliged to build his own bank.

When money flows in torrentially it washes away walls of economy. Detroit spent as it earned—lavishly. It was just completing what is perhaps the most magnificent clubhouse in the United States—a million-dollar plaything, the money for which had been raised almost in an hour. It was the new Detroit Athletic Club, outgrowth of that historic and honorable old athletic club which had so long been a landmark on Woodward Avenue when land was cheap and a quarter-mile cinder track and football-field might be maintained in the heart of the city. Five thousand men were found instantly who could afford this luxury.

Magnificent new hotels sprang up miraculously; department stores, surprised in their inadequacy by the multiplication of population, were adding annexes treble the size of the original stores. Everybody owned a motor-car.... The cabaret moved westward and found a welcome in a town once famous for its staidness. The handling of motor traffic became a greater problem for the police than the protection of the city from crime. And yet people scarcely realized what was happening. They took it as a matter of course—and flew high with the city.

Across the ocean another type of highflyer was coming into prominence. One might say the war had passed through its second phase. The first phase was the phase of fighting-men, of armies, of obtaining soldiers with rifles. The second phase was the artillery phase, the high-explosive phase. Each for its months filled the papers and demanded the interest of the world.... Now was approaching the third, the aeroplane phase. It was beginning to overshadow the other two in public estimation. Aeroplanes were no longer contraptions which one went to the country fair to watch performing tricks. They had come into their own. They ranked as a necessity. They had emerged from the cloud of obscurity which hung low over the battle-fields, and men were made to realize that victory in the air meant victory in the fields below....

Potter Waite had thought much of this, had hoped for it, had even ventured to prophesy it. One might say he was deeply interested in highflying of both sorts.

A certain fascination which mechanics held for him since childhood had enabled Potter to finish a turbulent college career with a mechanical-engineering degree. This, or what it represented, he had never put to use except in the way of a pastime. But aeronautics interested him. He was so fortunate as to be rich enough to play with aeroplanes, to fly aeroplanes, to own and experiment with aeroplanes, and there was something about the risk of it, the romance of it, the thrill of it, the novelty and the miracle of it, that fitted well into the recklessness of his unsatisfied nature. So he had been one of the country’s earliest amateur aviators. The part taken by the aeroplane in the Great War had quickened that interest, solidified it. It had become something more than the fad of a rich young man to him.

It was during the week that followed the sinking of the Lusitania that Potter was introduced to a Major Craig, of that then comparatively unknown branch of the United States military machinery known as the Signal Corps. It was at the Country Club, and Potter, who was seldom drawn to an individual, felt something much akin to boyish admiration for the slender, trim, uniformed figure of the young major. Craig was young for a major. He might have been forty, but a well-spent man’s life made him appear younger. He had not the face we have taken as typical of our soldier, but rather the softer, gentler features of the enthusiast—not the sharp, hungry look of the fanatic. He was a man with one compelling interest in life, a man bound to his profession, not by duty, but by love. Something of this was apparent at a glance. It became plain upon acquaintance. There was something about him—not the uniform he wore—but a subtle characteristic which set him apart from the run of men. He was distinct. After half an hour’s chat with him Potter perceived that the major was something wholly outside his experience, and he was interested. He was interested in the major’s conversation, in his appearance, but chiefly in that peculiar something which made Craig different from La Mothe or Kraemer or O’Mera. The others who had gathered about the table wandered off upon the links and left Potter and the major alone.

“You are the Potter Waite who has done something in the flying way, are you not?” asked the major.

“A little.”

“I wish,” said the major, enthusiasm fighting in his eyes, “that there were ten thousand of you.”

“There are people around this town,” Potter said, laughingly, “who wish there were one less.”

The major did not join in Potter’s laugh, but regarded the young man shrewdly, appraisingly—with something of sympathy and understanding in his eyes. He got to his feet abruptly. “I should be obliged, Mr. Waite,” he said, “if you would play around with me.”

Presently they were equipped and walking toward the first tee.

“Mr. Waite,” said the major, “have you ever considered the possibility that this country might be compelled to enter the war?”

“Yes,” said Potter, and the major saw that darkening of his eyes, that sullen, restless, forbidding expression which came at times over the boy’s face.

The major laid his hand on Potter’s arm. “You have been disappointed in us, is that it? You thought the country would flare into righteous rage over the Lusitania and go knight-erranting? Is that it?”

“Didn’t you?” Potter countered, a bit sharply.

“I am not permitted to express opinions,” said the major, simply. “You wanted immediate war because you are young and easily moved. Perhaps because you have not thought deeply what war means. I take it you are impulsive.... Have you asked yourself why you want war? Was it mere resentment? That isn’t an excuse for war. Was it the adventure of it? Or was it possibly something bigger and deeper? What do you think of the United States, anyhow?”

Potter did not reply immediately. What did he think about the United States? He did not know. As a matter of fact, he had done very little thinking about the United States; had rather taken the United States for granted. Somehow he felt embarrassed by the question.

“Do you perhaps love your country?” asked the major.

From another man Potter might have regarded this question as a symptom of mawkish sentimentality. From the major it seemed natural, unaffected, as if the major had the right to ask such a question and have a plain answer. Craig waited for Potter to answer, his face grave, gentle; his bearing sympathetic. Potter felt the sympathy, felt that he and this officer could grow to be friends.

“Why,” said Potter, presently, “I don’t know.”

The major nodded his head. “I’m afraid that’s the way with most of us—we don’t know. We’re thinking about ourselves and our businesses and about making money and passing the time. We have grown unconscious of the country just as we are unconscious of the air we breathe. That’s hardly a state of mind to carry us into war, is it?”

“No,” said Potter.

“Because war requires love of country,” said the major. “Not the love of country that orators talk about on July Fourth, but the kind of love that is willing to prove itself. War, Mr. Waite, means sacrifices such as we do not even dream of. It means that love of country must take place over everything else. Not a stingy loyalty, but a real love—the sort that gives life and everything one possesses to the country. Mr. Waite, if we should go to war to-morrow and your country should come to you and say, ‘I want your life. I want everything you possess in the world—wealth, comfort, place. I need everything to win this war,’ what would you say? Would you give willingly and gladly? I mean what I say literally.”

Potter stopped and faced his companion a moment in silence. “Could you?” he asked.

“I think I could,” said Craig. “I think my country means all that to me.”

“Why?”

“That you will have to find out for yourself. I can’t teach you patriotism, love of country, in half an hour, nor in a course of twenty lessons. I couldn’t teach you to love a woman. Each man must find those things for himself.”

“I suppose so,” said Potter, uneasily, and they walked along together in silence.

“We’ve heard a great deal about military preparedness lately,” said the major, presently. “It’s in my mind that we need another sort of preparedness even more. There is such an emotion as patriotism, Mr. Waite, but it seems to be dormant in this people. A couple of generations of ease and prosperity and peace have lulled it to sleep. We have grown careless of our country, as we sometimes grow careless of our parents. But I believe patriotism is here—more than we need universal military training, more than we need artillery and ammunition and war-ships, we need its awakening. We can never have one sort of preparedness without the other.”

“I had never thought about it,” said Potter.

“Will you think about it, Mr. Waite? And when you have thought about it, see if you don’t find it demanding something of you.... Do you know that an army without aeroplanes is like a blind man in a duel with a man who sees? Think about that. I sha’n’t tell you how many ’planes we have, nor how many trained aviators. It would shock you.”

“I know something about that.”

“But have you realized that if events force us into this war we shall need, not hundreds of ’planes, but thousands—possibly twenty-five thousand?”

Potter was astonished at the number. “Really?” he asked.

“That many will be absolutely necessary, and the best and fastest ’planes that can be had. Where will we get twenty-five thousand of them?”

“God knows,” said Potter.

“Mr. Waite, the War Department is not sleeping. Will it surprise you to know that I came to Detroit solely to have this talk with you?”

“With me?”

“We know all about you, and about every other amateur aviator in the country. All about you,” the major repeated.

“I’m surprised you found it worth your while to come, then,” Potter said, with, a trace of bitterness.

“For instance,” said the major, “we know what happened in your Pontchartrain Hotel the night the Lusitania was sunk.”

Potter flushed angrily, but made no reply.

“The manner of it,” said the major, quietly, “was regrettable. The impulse behind it—and we looked for that impulse—was hoped to be something not regrettable. I came to find out that and other things. I have not come to offer advice, Mr. Waite, merely to get information valuable to our country.... Had you thought you might be valuable?”

“General opinion seems to hold the opposite view.”

It was the major’s turn to remain silent. He watched Potter’s face keenly.

“What do you want of me?” Potter asked, finally.

“What would you do if war came?” countered the major.

“Enlist, I suppose. As an aviator, if I could. I’ve been thinking of going to France, anyhow.”

“That’s adventure,” said the major. “And as for enlisting, would you be most valuable there or here—helping to produce those twenty-five thousand ’planes? Think that over.”

“Do you believe we shall be in it?” asked Potter.

“I don’t know,” said the major. “But I do know that the man who goes ahead as if he were sure we shall will be doing the thing he should do. You, for instance, might think aeroplanes, plan aeroplanes, dream aeroplanes—fighting-’planes.... Shall we play around now?”

They played around, for the most part in silence, for Potter was following the major’s direction to think. In the locker-room and in the shower-baths they did not allude to the matter of their conversation, and when they came out on the piazza of the club they found themselves in the midst of a party of younger members talking the sort of talk that is generally to be heard on country-club piazzas and drinking as if that were the business of their lives.

“Hey, Potter,” called Jack Eldredge, “come over here and meet a pilgrim and a stranger—also state your preference.”

The major touched Potter’s shoulder. “Think it all over,” he said, and turned away.

Potter walked to Eldredge’s table, and Jack presented him to a young man in his early thirties who stood up and shook Potter’s hand warmly.

“Mr. Cantor, Mr. Waite,” said Jack. “Mr. Cantor came this morning from New York. Friend of the Mallards and the Keenes. Goin’ to be around Detroit quite some time—so I put him up here, of course.”

“Mr. Eldredge was very kind indeed,” said Cantor. “I have hoped to meet you, Mr. Waite. I have letters to you from Mr. Welliver and Mr. Brevoort.”

They sat down and Potter observed the stranger. He was dark, smooth of face save for a carefully shaped, slender mustache. His features were rather thin, but quick with intelligence. There was a hint of military training in his shoulders. It appeared he had recently come from abroad, and soon was talking fluently and entertainingly about his experiences on the fringe of the zone of war. Potter wondered what his nationality might be. At first he fancied the accent was of Cambridge, but there was another hint of accent underlaying the careful enunciation of the Cambridge man. Potter made the guess that Cantor had been born to some tongue other than English, but had, probably, been educated in one of the English universities. This supposition was proved later to be correct.

“I represent an investment syndicate,” said Cantor to Potter, presently. “They have sent me over to study the situation here, particularly the automobile industry. I seem to have come to the place to do that thoroughly,” he added, with an attractive smile.

“Detroit suffers with the automobile-manufacturing habit. There’s no cure,” said Eldredge.

“What a fascinating location your city has, Mr. Waite!” said Cantor. “I call to mind no other great city situated directly upon an international boundary-line. You sit in your offices and look into foreign territory—but I presume you are so accustomed to it that you seldom give it a thought.”

“Somehow,” said Potter, “we don’t think of Canada as foreign.”

“No,” said Cantor, “but I can conceive of circumstances which would compel you to think of it as foreign. I understand your government is irritated by certain British actions with regard to your mails and shipping. Might not something disagreeable grow out of that?”

“It might. These are puzzling days, Mr. Cantor. I confess I am bewildered by them. Impossible events happen with startling ease, and inevitable consequences fail to follow amazingly. Yes, I can imagine trouble coming with Great Britain, but somehow it does seem unlikely as long as Germany lays a murder on every mail-bag England plays. You aren’t especially apt to bother with a man who jostles you in a crowd if there is another man trying to hit you with an ax.”

Cantor half shut his eyes and peered into his glass. Presently he looked up to Potter and nodded. “I get your point of view,” he said. “I wonder how many people share it.”

“I’ve given up guessing what the people think.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to see your public opinion veering to favor Germany.”

“Some of our public opinion does favor it. Our German-Americans and such like.”

“A good many of them—millions I understand.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps capable of influencing a majority?”

“I don’t know,” said Potter, and nodded his head, not exactly with satisfaction, but as a man does who fancies he has made a point in an argument. “German public opinion here seems to be organized,” said Potter.

“The German government is efficient. If it has felt the need of fostering your favorable opinion, I think we may say it has taken steps to foster it.”

Potter wondered just where Cantor stood in the matter, but the courteous air of the man, his manner of putting a question, were not those of a man holding to one opinion or the other, but of a seeker after information. He asked questions, but answered none, not even by the expression of his face. He had made no direct statement; had shown neither pleasure nor displeasure with what he had heard. Yet Potter judged him to be a man capable of strong opinions and of taking action in support of them. There was nothing neutral about the man. He was positive, but baffling. He was an individual who would play his cards on the merits of his own hand, Potter thought, and would carry his betting just as far as the value of his cards warranted. Until that point arrived he would not lay down his hand. Potter determined to see what a direct question would produce.

“What do you think of the sinking of the Lusitania?” he asked, abruptly.

Cantor regarded him for an instant with the air of a man who wishes to use care to express himself clearly, and then he replied with such a manner of clarity as made Potter chuckle inwardly.

“The sinking of the Lusitania,” he said, with the positiveness of a man stating an incontrovertible fact, “is a matter without precedent. It is my firm opinion that the German Admiralty considered carefully every effect which might derive from it before ordering the act.”

An ironic rejoinder occurred to Potter—a rejoinder which he would have made regardless of courtesy had his unlovable mood been upon him—but he withheld it now, contenting himself with a smile which Cantor read correctly and answered with a twinkle of his clear eyes. Potter knew that Cantor had weighed his intention to draw a positive statement and rather enjoyed the knowledge that Potter understood fully his evasion of it.

The conversation turned to less momentous affairs, but it seemed as if Cantor could not express fully his admiration for Detroit and for its location. He spoke of the Lakes, of the millions of tons of ore and millions of bushels of wheat traveling past Detroit’s door in the holds of mighty vessels; of vessels which carried northward cargoes of coal to a region where coal was a necessity. He referred to the carriage of passengers by water on steamers of a size and luxury which the stranger perceived with amazement on an inland waterway. He had a word to say about the ship-canals at Sault Sainte Marie and the Welland, and of that minor canal at the mouth of the River St. Clair. Eldredge told him something of the new channel constructed in American waters across Lime Kiln Crossing and Bar Point Shoals below the city, and described how engineers had constructed the mightiest coffer dam in the history of engineering; how they had built dikes miles in length to hold out the waters of the river, pumped dry the areas between, and then sawed their channel out of the dry rock. Cantor was fascinated by it all.

“But,” said he, “those are points of danger, are they not? Suppose that war with England should arrive. Would not your Eastern steel-mills, upon which you must depend for the manufacture of ordnance and munitions, be left helpless if one of these gateways from lake to lake should be closed? Imagine the destruction of the locks at the Soo, for instance? Are they well guarded?”

“Probably,” said Potter, “there is an aged constable with a tin star within calling distance.”

“It is a splendid thing for a country to have the feeling of security that yours holds,” said Cantor, with open admiration that Potter felt, but could not identify, to be derisive.

“Why should we guard them?” Eldredge asked. “We aren’t fighting anybody. Besides, an army never could get to them.”

Potter shot a glance at Eldredge which was tipped with contempt, and Cantor intercepted it and smiled at Potter as one man smiles who shares a bit of humor with another. It was as much as to say, “You and I have more common sense than to say that, haven’t we?”

Cantor drew the conversation away from war again. “You play golf here frequently?” he asked Potter.

“As often as I can manage it.”

“I play a duffer’s game myself, but I hope you will take me on some day. They tell me you are above the average. I shall enjoy watching you—and possibly can pick up some pointers. My approach is miserable—miserable.”

“Easiest stroke in the bag,” said Eldredge.

“No doubt, but there is no easiest stroke for me. In my case they are all difficult, with some worse than the rest.”

“Glad to go around with you any time,” said Potter, and Cantor made it apparent that he was really gratified. He had abilities that way, a manner which seemed, without effusiveness, to express admiration; to show that he was most favorably impressed by a companion.

Either the man was naturally affable or he had set himself with purpose to make friends of those in whose company he found himself at that moment, Potter decided. As for Potter, he did not enter into the conversation, but sat back listening and thinking. Without setting himself deliberately to do so, he studied Mr. Cantor, and was compelled to the conclusion that the stranger was an exceptionally brilliant man; not only that, but a man of personality, dominating personality. The others of the party appeared colorless when set against him. Potter wondered if he himself seemed as colorless as they.

Potter was one who liked or disliked swiftly. Usually, on meeting an individual, he determined instantly and almost automatically whether or not he cared to continue the acquaintance and to admit the stranger to fellowship. He found himself unable to make up his mind about Cantor. That gentleman was too complex to make the judgment of him a matter of a word and a glance.

Potter was disturbed and uneasy. The atmosphere of the club piazza irritated him this afternoon. He could not enter into the spirit of the effort to make dragging time pass endurably, which was the profession of most of the men present. Major Craig had surprised him, had increased the restlessness, the dissatisfaction which so frequently possessed him, and he wanted to go away alone to carry out the major’s direction to think. He got up suddenly.

“I’m off,” he said. “Hope I shall see more of you, Mr. Cantor.”

“I should like to call as soon as convenient,” said Cantor, “to present my letters.”

“We don’t go much on letters of introduction out here,” Potter said, smiling. “A letter of introduction never made anybody like a man he didn’t cotton to, nor dislike a man he took a liking to. Call when you like, and don’t bother with the letters.”

Cantor laughed. “Perhaps you’re right. But I’ve always believed that a man coming to a strange place should come well introduced, if he can. People are suspicious of strangers. I have provided myself with letters because it is important to me that there should be no uncertainties about me.”

“Bring them along, then,” said Potter, who was by nature unfitted to understand how anybody could care much what strangers or acquaintances thought of him.

Potter walked to his car, and in a moment was driving toward the street. A runabout which he recognized at once turned into the grounds and a glance showed him Hildegarde von Essen was driving. She saw him at the same instant, and lifted her hand, drawing over to the side of the drive and stopping. He drew up beside her.

“To-morrow’s Tuesday,” she said.

“Now look here, Miss von Essen, your father—”

“My father’s aunt’s rheumatism!” she said. “Father’s in New York, and you promised.”

“I know I promised, but in the circumstances you ought to let me off. He didn’t exactly welcome me with open arms, and the Lord only knows what he’d do if I took you flying.”

“You promised,” she repeated, stubbornly.

“I know,” he said, with the elaborate pretense of patience one shows to a difficult child, “but—”

“And I’m not afraid of father. To-morrow morning? I’ll be ready as early as you like.”

“Nine-thirty, then,” he said, helplessly, “at the hangar.”

She beamed on him. “You’re a duck, Mr. Waite,” she said, “and I’ll not let father hurt you.”

She drove on and left him looking after her. What a flamelike little thing she was, he thought. What he did not think was—how like she was to himself; how her restlessness matched his; how her recklessness and his recklessness were cut off the same piece. And she was charming in an exciting sort of way. “If she ever cuts loose—” he said to himself.

He drove home and went up to his own rooms to sit down with his pipe and figure matters out. Almost word for word he could repeat what the major had said to him, and he looked for answers to the major’s questions. Did he love his country? What would he do if war came? What ought he to do?... The first was hardest to answer. He had not been accustomed to the idea of love of country, but had been contented with the thought that America was a good-enough place and he was generally satisfied with it. He tried picturing to himself the invasion of Michigan by German troops; the re-enacting of the crime of Louvain upon the city of Detroit. His imagination was vivid, active.... As he created the picture he felt emotion welling up within him, a sense of the unbearableness of what he had imagined, the feeling that he could not endure the happening of such a catastrophe. It was not reason, but heart, that told him there was nothing he would not sacrifice, suffer, endure to prevent it—and then he asked himself why.... It seemed, then, that he did love his country. In that event—what?

CHAPTER V

Hildegarde von Essen sprang boyishly out of her roadster at the door to Potter Waite’s hangar. She looked like a glorious, slender boy in the riding-breeches and puttees she had thought appropriate for the adventure—not like an ordinary boy, but rather like some princeling out of a fairy-tale. There was that air about her—the air of a prince who trafficked with fairies and would ride forth to battle with giants and dragons. Her eyes danced with excitement and anticipation; she was charged with eager life until it seemed to radiate from her and to form a tingling aura about her.

Potter appeared in the doorway and stopped abruptly as his eyes found her. It was the sincerest tribute. He felt as if some potent current had darted out from her to touch him with its mysterious force—almost as if it arrested his heart an instant and made it skip a beat.... That was the way she looked; not dazzlingly beautiful; the effect was not that of beauty, but of something more compelling, more thrilling. It was rather as if Youth in person advanced to meet him—throbbing, eager, glowing Youth; neither masculine nor feminine, but the personification of everything young, ardent, breathless, fearless.

“I’m early,” she said, “but I had to come. I hardly slept all night for thinking about it.”

He advanced, finding that he very much wanted to take her hand, and she looked up into his face and laughed impishly, for it was plain reading to her that she had startled this young man and unsettled his equilibrium.

“Come in,” he said, rather stupidly. “We’ve been tinkering, but we’re nearly ready now, I guess.” He knew it was hardly the thing to say to such a magical creature, but it was the best he could do.

She walked to the machine and patted the tip of its wing. “We’re going to be friends, aren’t we?” she said to it, and smiled up at Potter again. “How do I get in? Where do I sit?” Her voice was eager.

It had been in his mind before she came to try to persuade her against the flight; to show her the inadvisability of it, especially in the face of her father’s attitude toward him. He did not make the effort now. It seemed futile, not to be considered, so he helped her to her place silently. “Ready?” he asked one of the men in overalls who were going fussily about the ’plane, touching wires, testing braces.

“Ready, sir.”

Potter looked at Hildegarde. No trace of fear or nervousness was visible, nor was she calm. Her eyes danced with excitement, her face was alight with gay eagerness. “I don’t suppose I could drive it, could I?” she asked.

“Well, hardly,” Potter said.

“I’d love to. I’m sure I could.”

“This is your excursion,” he said, disregarding her manifest desire to become pilot of the craft. “What part of the earth shall we fly over?”

“It’s to be a good, long fly, you know,” she said. “Not just up and down like those twenty-five-dollars-a-ride things we had here last year. I want to go miles and miles.... Let’s go right across the lake to the Flats and then swing around and come home over Mount Clemens. Can we do that?”

“I have made that circle.”

“What do I do?”

“Sit still and hang on. There’s no promenade-deck to this ship—no orchestra and no dancing.”

“Are you a dancing-man?”

“Far from it. The thé dansant is too dangerous for me. I don’t speak the language.”

“I love to dance,” she said. “I don’t know that the language is more difficult than the one you speak while we dance on the floor above. ‘Waiter, another round of cocktails.’”

Potter climbed up and settled himself in his seat. “You’re not going to quarrel because I don’t like dancing?” he asked.

“I’d forgive you ’most anything this morning. Let’s start. I’m crazy to know how it feels.”

The engine started with a tremendous throbbing roar and the hydro-aeroplane was trundled out on its rails and down the incline to the smooth waters of Lake St. Clair. For an interval it scudded along, neither floating nor flying, like a wild duck frightened and beginning its flight; then the water dropped away, and they were mounting, mounting into the clear, cold spring air.

Potter directed their flight out over the lake, presently veering to the northward and heading toward a small black blot resting distantly on the glittering expanse of water. Hildegarde’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes excited, brilliant. She sat drinking in the sensation of flight, and watching with childish joy and wonder as the lake spread its beautiful panorama beneath and on all sides of them. It seemed but a moment before the distant blot became the familiar light-ship, and, looking ahead, she could see dimly the parallel lines which she knew must be the ship-canal which opened a passage for the largest freighter through the bars and shoals into that channel of the delta of the St. Clair River which has for a generation been a marvelous playground for the Lake region, a playground rising on a ribbon of spiling—a sort of hem binding the raveling edge of the great marsh.

Slow as the ’plane was, compared with those miracles of speed with which the chivalry of the air hold their tournaments in the lists of the sky, it seemed to eliminate time and space. Distances which the swiftest vessel passed laboriously in an hour seemed to withdraw themselves as at a magic word of command. Abreast of the light-ship they passed an up-bound freighter. Its deck seemed a mammoth gridiron as Hildegarde looked down upon it—a gridiron whose cross-bars were battened hatches. It was traveling its fifteen miles an hour on its way to Duluth or Superior—but they left it behind. It dropped away from them almost with the swiftness of a falling stone.

They flew low over the piers, and then mounted. Beneath them lay the familiar, rambling structures of the Old Club. They continued to mount, for Potter wanted to spread before her the great reaches of the delta—a world of close-growing wild rice and reeds, a universe of wild birds, myriad tiny islets, with here and there a strip of land high enough above the water to supply a foothold for wind-bent, scraggling trees. Here and there wound a maze of channels, some navigable by small boats, and to the northward another gleaming river, the North Channel, up which the fleets of the Lakes had been compelled to pass before the construction of the ship-canal.

Before them stretched the interminable line of summer cottages and hotels, untenanted now. To the right and left of it were loneliness, desolation—yet a certain arresting beauty. Hildegarde felt a sudden loneliness.

Potter veered to the left over huge Muscamoot Bay, a bay whose waters were hidden by reeds and rice—a hundred square miles of reeds and rice and shallows. One could wade almost the length and breadth of it. Hildegarde picked out a tiny island in the midst of the waste, and the thought came to her that here one could hide in security if all the world joined in the hunt.

She became aware that the motor no longer roared in perfect rhythm. It seemed to pant and labor, to snort in disgust. It was missing, and she saw that Potter was intent upon it. Suddenly silence fell. Hildegarde had not known that silence could be like this. It was as if the end of all sound in the universe had come, as if life had been extinguished, and they two, soaring in the sky, were alone left of all the teeming millions of the earth’s population....

She was not frightened, but looked at Potter’s face for its expression. It was one of irritation, not of alarm.

“We’ll have to ’plane down while I tinker,” he said. “This is a fine day for something to go wrong.”

“It’ll be fun,” she exclaimed. “Imagine being cast away down there—in an aeroplane!”

“It won’t be such a picnic if I can’t get her going again. Hotels and mechanicians and telephone service are moderately scarce below.”

All the while they were sliding down an invisible hill, swiftly, smoothly. A narrow ribbon of open water lay below them, and Hildegarde imagined Potter to be heading for it as a place of landing.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “there’s a house!”

Potter did not turn his head; he was busy now with the ’plane.

“There are a few scattered in the bay—squatters and summer folks. Muskrat trappers and French fishermen.... Mighty lonesome, I’d say.”

A puff of wind caused the ’plane to swerve and rock. Hildegarde saw Potter suddenly in feverish action. They were swerving away from the ribbon of water, which was now close below, veering toward the island upon which she had been astonished to see a house.... The ’plane would not obey. It swept on and down.... Almost in a winking of the eye the solid land was before them ... a tree.... Hildegarde felt a wrench, a shock, heard a crash, and saw the planes at their right side crumple and shatter as they were sheared off in collision with the willow-tree.... The crippled ’plane careened sickeningly—and there was a frightful shock....

Potter, half blind, dizzy, suffering agonies, crept out of the wreckage. One leg dragged helplessly. There was a wrenching pain inside. Dumbly he looked for Hildegarde. She lay at a little distance—without movement. She was stretched at full length, her face pillowed on her arm as if she had lain down on the grass for a nap. Peacefully, gracefully she lay—but very still. Potter dragged himself toward her, reached her. Then he was conscious that a man was running to them, was stooping over them. He looked up into the man’s face. It was very confusing. He seemed to know the man, yet it was impossible the man should be there....

“How do you do, Cantor?” he said. “Did you—bring—your letters?...”

Then his arms failed him and he slumped downward, his face resting on Hildegarde’s knees.

The man Potter had called Cantor turned the young man over gently, wiped the blood from his face with his handkerchief, and grunted. He opened Potter’s clothing and laid an ear to his breast. The heart was beating feebly.... Hasty examination showed him Hildegarde was alive, too.

“Start the boat,” he called over his shoulder. “Be quick about it.” He lifted Hildegarde and carried her past the house to a tiny dock and handed her aboard a narrow, cabined motor-boat. “Two of you get the man,” he said.

“What will we do with them?” a man asked, in German.

“To the hospital in that town—Mount Clemens,” the man in authority replied, in the same language. “They’re badly hurt. I doubt if he lives to get there.”

“So much the better,” growled the man. “Do you go with us?”

“I remain.... You found them on the shore ten miles from here. Don’t be definite. To-night we’ll get the wreck of this machine across and out of the way.”

“What was he doing here, Herr?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.... The chances are he’ll never regain consciousness. If he does he won’t be able to remember anything.... Make haste, for he’s more valuable alive than dead.”

The motor-boat swung into the channel and sped away. Once in open water, it showed an astonishing gift of speed as it made for the mouth of the Clinton River.

Not as they wound their way up the narrow river, not as they touched the wharf, did Potter or Hildegarde betray a sign of returning consciousness. The man in charge leaped ashore. He had chosen his landing with judgment, for the spot was deserted. For ten minutes he disappeared, returning with two men from a near-by office.

“We found them on the shore ten miles up,” said the man who habitually spoke in German, but whose English was acceptable. “They fell with an aeroplane.”

“Who are they?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t know anything.... We found them, that’s all.”

Presently the authorities who had been telephoned for arrived, and Potter and Hildegarde were lifted gently and carried away. In the haste and excitement the men who had brought them to the spot were not questioned, as they might have been in a city more accustomed to the handling of accidents. As the two inert bodies were carried away the motor-boat quietly moved away from the dock and headed down the river. No one thought to hold it. Presently it disappeared....

At the hospital Potter was quickly identified by the contents of his pockets. There was no clue to Hildegarde’s identity. The news of the accident to his son was telephoned to Fabius Waite, and local correspondents of Detroit papers saw that the story went where it should go. In two hours city reporters were on hand, for the thing promised to be that desirable thing known to newspaper men as a “big story.”

The early editions carried brief accounts of the accident to Potter Waite and an unknown young woman.... Identification came later, and in the morning papers the names of Potter Waite and Hildegarde von Essen were coupled in a manner not likely to give satisfaction to the girl’s father.

Reporters set out to find the smashed aeroplane, but their search was futile. It was not found until noon next day, when a farmer on the shores of Baltimore Bay telephoned that it lay against a tree on his farm, near the shore. Reporters viewed it, and from its position were able to describe accurately how the thing had happened. “Must have been pickled again,” was the consensus of their experienced opinion, and they did not hesitate in their accounts to impart this view to their public. Also the morning papers reported that Potter would not live through the day. Hildegarde was still unconscious, but hopes for her recovery were entertained by the surgeons in charge.

Altogether it was looked upon as the inevitable—and fitting—termination of the reckless career of a vicious and depraved youth. It was an affair to be reveled in by the sensational press. They made an orgy of it.

CHAPTER VI

“Any news of Potter Waite to-day?” Tom Watts asked, as he dropped into a chair at the table which was regarded as the property of the crowd in the Pontchartrain bar.

“No change,” La Mothe said. “Still unconscious or something like that.”

“Anybody seen him? Any of the crowd been out to Mount Clemens?” asked Brick O’Mera.

“No good. They wouldn’t let anybody in. They say he just lies with his eyes half open. When you say he’s alive that ends it. It’s a matter of days, they say.”

“Seems like we ought to do something—this crowd he trained with,” said O’Mera.

“We’ll get together and send him some bang-up flowers,” said Randall. “One of those pillow things, or a horseshoe or something. Most likely they’ll want us for pall-bearers.”

“I sent him a box of cigars and a book,” said Kraemer, seriously.

“Which, being unconscious, he’s enjoyed like the devil,” said La Mothe. “There’s the Teutonic mind for you, fellows. Gets an idea and goes ahead with it regardless.... I suppose if Potter had been an Englishman you’d have sent him cigars with dynamite in ’em.” La Mothe took great joy in baiting Kraemer, for whom, nevertheless, he had a very considerable affection.

“You always send cigars and books to a sick man,” Kraemer said.

“And torpedo vessels—even when there are women and babies on ’em. Women and babies ought to keep off vessels, is that your idea?”

“Of course.... Listen here, you fellows.” His voice changed to the voice of one repeating a lesson learned by heart. Even the wording was not his own. “Germany acted within her rights in sinking the Lusitania, because she gave preliminary notice to all the world by establishing a war zone around England. She gave special notice to travelers before the sailing of the Lusitania. England is to blame for what happened because she used American citizens as human shields to guard ammunition supplies on an English auxiliary cruiser.”

“Hear! Hear!” applauded La Mothe. “Doesn’t he recite beautifully! Who taught you the piece, Wilhelm?”

“I hear the von Essen girl is coming out all right,” said Watts.

“Her father said so at the Harmonie last night,” Kraemer told them. “She’ll be out of the hospital in a couple of weeks. Nothing broken, just shock, and a little concussion.... If Potter doesn’t die von Essen will kill him. He talked like a crazy man.”

“Wonder how she got mixed up with Potter?” Watts said. “She’s only a kid, isn’t she?”

“The speediest kid this town’s seen for a while. Regular little devil. Always up to something. They say she had old von Essen fighting for air most of the time.” La Mothe usually could be trusted to supply the spice. “Natural enough she and Potter should fly in a flock. Same kind of birds.”

“The rate Potter was traveling, he was bound to come a cropper some day,” said Randall, virtuously.

They were already speaking of him in the past tense; Potter Waite, in a couple of weeks, had become something that used to exist.

“You could trust him to make it a gilt-edged, sensational cropper when he got to it,” La Mothe rejoined. “He was one good scout.”

“But peculiar. He was all-fired peculiar,” Kraemer said, seriously. “I never quite understood him.”

“Well, the data’s all in, Wilhelm; there’ll never be any more. Study over it a few years and you may begin to get him.”

“You’ve got to hand it to Potter for one thing,” said Watts; “if he made up his mind to do a thing he would pull it off, hell or high water.”

There was a moment’s silence, a moment’s depression, then La Mothe said, “Seen the new girl that’s dancing at the Tuller?”

Interest quickened. One might almost say that the agile, silken-clad legs of the dancer kicked Potter Waite out of the minds of his friends. Why not? They had pronounced his obituary. He had been and was not. Dancers must dance and cocktails must be mixed and the world must wag on as is its custom, though more important personages than a reckless, headstrong, purposeless boy be removed from the scene.

Two weeks and three days passed over Potter’s unconscious head. He did not know that his mother sat by his bedside through long days and slept in an adjoining room through sleepless, woeful nights. He did not know how much of the priceless time of his busy father was spent in that still room. Had he been conscious he might have understood something of his mother’s agony, for, quiet, simple as she was, she had retained her turbulent son’s affection. Perhaps she understood him. Assuredly she had never abandoned hope for him even when his wildest escapade was bruising her heart. But she had not been strong enough, forceful enough, to restrain him, and, realizing her limitation, she had grieved silently.

In his most alert moment Potter could not have read Fabius Waite’s mind. A tidal wave of business success had carried Fabius far away from his son, into a distant country. For a dozen years they had been growing farther and farther apart, each taking the other for granted, looking upon the other as something that was and could not be blinked. Fabius had no time for his son; Potter had no time for his father. They had no point of contact.... It was natural that Potter should now be unable to see into his father’s heart and comprehend the love that had sprung to life again, the dull ache of self-accusation that would not be assuaged. He could not know that Fabius Waite was saying in his secret soul, “This is my son, my only son, and I have sinned against him.”

“Mother,” said Fabius, that afternoon, and his voice was different from the voice with which he usually spoke, “this is my fault.”

She did not seek to comfort him by a denial. “We have both been to blame,” she said, gently.

Fabius was silent a moment; then he said, fiercely, “I’ve been a hell of a father....”

She laid her hand on his knee and he placed his hand over it. Many years had passed since they had sat with hand touching hand.... The nurse sat looking from the window, her back to the bed. Suddenly a voice, yet not a voice so much as the ghost of a voice, spoke from the pillow. It was not a babble, not a mutter. It was a whisper directed by a mind. “Hello—folks!” it said.

Father and mother were on their feet, bending over the bed. Their son had spoken; his eyes looked up at them, dim, but intelligently; their son whom famous surgeons had told them would never regain consciousness!

“He knows us! He knows us!” his mother whispered.

“Sure,” Potter said. “What ...”

Then he was gone again into that murky region which was not life and which was not death.

“Nurse!” said Fabius Waite, tensely, “he spoke. He recognized us.... What—what does that mean?”

The nurse knew no more than they. It might be a promise held out to them; it might have been his farewell to the world. She could not tell.

“He knew us,” Fabius said to himself again and again. “He knew us.”

So the boy who could not live lived on. Intervals of consciousness came again and again, and lasted longer and longer. The physicians, who would not admit of hopes at first, were compelled—against their wills, it seemed—to give Potter a reluctant chance of recovery.... Another ten days saw him fully conscious—not safe yet, but with chances of safety multiplied. Though doubts existed in the medical mind, none were permitted to exist in the minds of Fabius Waite and his wife. Their son was to be given back to them; they knew it.

Despite fractured bones, despite invisible but awful injuries, Potter not only clung to the life that was in him, but reached out and strengthened his grasp upon it, until even the medical mind was convinced and, with due eye to its reputation, gave to the parents the assurance, “We’ve saved him,” and then expatiated on the miracle wrought by its skill. Two months after the catastrophe Potter Waite was on his snail-like way to recovery.

At first Potter seemed to have little curiosity regarding his accident. He appeared not to remember it or to have any idea why he was in his bed in a hospital. Later he asked questions.

“Somebody was with me,” he said one day. “When we fell ...”

“Hildegarde von Essen,” his mother said.

“Was she—”

“As well as ever,” his mother said, a bit resentfully. “She has been out of the hospital for weeks.”

“That’s ... good,” said Potter.

A day or two later he asked about his ’plane. “What’s become of it?” he wanted to know.

“It’s up on the shore where you—fell,” his mother said.

“The shore?” he repeated. “The shore?... What shore?”

“About ten miles up on Baltimore Bay,” she said.

He thought about that for minutes, and it was apparent he was not satisfied. “It was on an island,” he said. “A little island ... not on Baltimore Bay.... Just back of the Flats.”

“No, son, it was on the mainland. You—you don’t remember.”

He shook his head uneasily, and his eyes were puzzled. “There was an island,” he said, and then let the subject drop as if he were too weary to go on with it.

“Is the war still going on?” he asked, one day.

“Yes.”

“Are we in it?” he asked, after a pause.

“No.”

“We should—be,” he said. “There’s some reason why we should, but I seem to—have forgotten it.”

Day by day he grew stronger; day by day his memory returned to him, and he brooded over his recollections. For hours he would lie with closed eyes—thinking. It was the first quiet he had ever known; the first opportunity ever forced upon him to think. He remembered Major Craig.

“Would you like to read to me?” he asked, one day.

“I’d love to, son. What shall I read?”

“I wish you’d get a history of the United States—the best one there is. I’d like you to read that.”

So his mother sat by his bedside and read to him the history of his country, and when she laid down the book he considered what she had read, and pondered over the significance of it. He had been vaguely familiar with the history of the nation, but only vaguely. Now he was meeting his country for the first time, and groping for an understanding of it. Major Craig had asked him if he loved his country.... He fancied he had answered that question when he imagined it invaded as Belgium had been invaded. Now, day by day, he was learning why he should love his country; what his country meant, why it existed, why it had prospered, what his country was giving to him as one of its citizens. The United States was emerging from chaos in his mind, assuming a distinct entity, a character.... It was a lovable character. As he lay there, listening to the story of its life, Potter Waite was falling in love—he was falling in love with his country and his country’s flag.

His mother understood something of what was passing in his mind. It made her glad, for there was promise in it.... One day, following the completion of the history, she brought a thin little book.

“I’d like to read this to you, son,” she said, and he, not even asking for its name, because he thought to please her, nodded assent. It was a story with a peculiar title. “The Man Without a Country,” his mother said.

She commenced to read, and he lay with eyes closed, his attention not fixed. Presently he opened his eyes, and before half a dozen pages were read he was giving to the reading such attention as he had never given to any narrative before. His eyes did not leave his mother’s face, and there came into them a hungry, troubled look.... His mother’s face became dim, and he realized that he was seeing through a mist. Every word of that wonderful lesson, that text-book of patriotism, was reaching his mind as with rays of white light. At last she finished and looked down at him, and his cheeks were wet. She did not speak. It was he who spoke after a long silence.

“That’s the answer,” he said, and his mother, possessing that marvelous quality, intuition, went quietly out of the room.

It was not long before he was able to sit up. Two weeks past the second month of his confinement, he was well enough to be taken to his home, and there, in his own rooms, he demanded books. Not the books one might suppose, not books to pass the long hours of convalescence lightly, but treatises on the gas-engine, on carburetion, on ignition; highly specialized books on the aeroplane.

“I should think you’d had aeroplane enough,” his father said—a father who was now nearer to him by much than he had been before. “You’re not going to meddle with those things again, I hope.”

“Dad,” said Potter, slowly, “they’re the only thing I’m going to meddle with. They’re my business, and I haven’t any other business.... I’m going to be the man in the United States who knows more about aeroplanes and how to build them than anybody else.... And some day I’m going to build them.”

“Can’t make it a commercial success, son. Nothing in it. If you want to get into business seriously, why, when you’re strong enough, just drop around at the plant. I’ll give you all the business you want.”

“I’m not thinking about commercial success,” said Potter.

“What’s the big idea, then?” his father asked, jocularly.

“Do you believe we can keep out of this war?” Potter countered.

“Certainly. Why not? All we’ve got to do is keep our heads level and mind our own business. Nobody can get to us, and we couldn’t get to anybody. You can’t go to war in this country unless the people want war—and you never saw a people who want war less.”

“They’re educated not to want war,” Potter said, with an access of shrewdness. “Business is educating them, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Germany was helping the education along. The Germans seem to be pretty well organized in a publicity way over here.”

“Well, don’t let the possibility of war bother you. It won’t come.”

“I’m afraid, Dad,” Potter said, “that it will come. If it comes, what shape are we in to fight? Do you realize that we would have to have twenty thousand aeroplanes? That’s one item, but one of the most important. Twenty thousand! An army of millions—and the aeroplane is as vital to the army as the commissariat. That’s fact. You can’t dodge it. And we’ve got to get ready. Not to build an army of men alone. That is simple compared to the other things.... Where would we get twenty thousand aeroplanes if they were necessary suddenly?”

“We wouldn’t,” said Fabius, and he laughed indulgently. “When you’re well, you’ll get these notions out of your head. It’s just your condition, son. It’ll work off.”

“No, Dad. It’s here to stay.... We’ve got about fifty ’planes to-day. Bulgaria’s got more.... Do you care much if this country keeps on?”

“Why, sure! I’m an American. It’s my country, but I guess nobody’s going to monkey with us.” It was the old, absurd notion of military invincibility.

“We’re going to get a mighty unpleasant waking up.... We’ve got to get ready. If we’re ready there’s less likelihood of trouble than if we aren’t. Burglars don’t break into a house when a policeman is standing in front and a bulldog is barking inside.... It’s insurance. But we won’t get ready. Not all of us.” He paused, and something in the level determination that shone from Potter’s eyes impressed his father.

“But one of us will be ready,” Potter said, “and that’s me. I’m going to be ready for the day when the country needs that twenty thousand ’planes. I’m going to know how to build them, and I’m going to know where and how they can be built. Dad, the day’s coming when the main business of the Waite Motor Car Company will be the building of aeroplane engines.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Fabius Waite, and there could be no doubt of his sincerity. Fabius Waite considered himself a good American. He was a good American, but, like millions of other able, sincere, honest, country-loving men in those summer days of the year 1915; those days which were seeing Italy’s entrance to the war, which were witnessing Mackensen’s war-machine crushing the Russians out of Galicia, capturing Przemysl and then Lemberg; wondering if Calais and the Channel ports could be held;—like those other millions Fabius Waite was asleep. Potter’s voice was of one crying in the wilderness. All ears were shut against him.

CHAPTER VII

If every young man could be put in a position where he could do nothing but think for a matter of a couple of months just at that time when he is ready to take up the major business of his life, one may well believe the history of the world would be other and better than it is. Potter Waite was injured early in May. Three months passed before he was able to take the air even in a slowly driven, pillowed limousine. If ever a chance were given a human being to check up on his accounts, take a trial balance, and arrive at definite conclusions with respect to himself, Potter had that chance. Not only had he the opportunity, but a vital consideration had intervened, urging him to wider, deeper, bolder considerations. He thought much about Potter Waite, but the time in which he lived, the world turmoil which surrounded him, the pressure of great events on his own life, compelled him to think about himself with respect to grave, impending affairs and to the requirements of his country, which he had come, in some measure, to know.

This state of affairs developed in him a rare singleness of purpose. From the beginning of time men with rare singleness of purpose have been regarded as monomaniacs, cranks. They have been derided. The world has whispered about them behind its hands and snickered. This was an attitude which Potter was to encounter, first from his father, later from those who had formerly been his cronies.

Fabius Waite became more and more irritated by his son’s absorption in aeronautics, for he was a practical business man, and when he could not see how a profit could be entered in the ledger from a given transaction, he deleted the transaction.

“I’m glad, of course,” he said to Potter, “to see you taking an interest in something—outside the Pontchartrain bar and the chorus of a comic opera—but you’re going over the line with this thing. You’re getting as bad as Old Man Jeffords. I sit in directors’ meeting at the bank with him once a week, and he’ll butt into any sort of a discussion with idiocy about some new postage stamp he’s found in somebody’s attic. I suppose people must have fads and amusements.” He said it as if he did not in the least see why they should have such absurd things. “But they can be carried too far. You’re riding this hobby day and night. Aeroplanes! There’s no money in aeroplanes.”

“I’m not thinking of making money out of them,” said Potter.

“Then why are you monkeying with them? Too much aeroplane, or too much golf, or too much bridge, or too much anything that interferes with a man’s business, is about as bad as too much whisky.”

“But aeroplanes are my business.”

“Fiddlesticks, son! You’ve been sick a long time, and you’ve gotten this notion. Automobiles is your business.”

“I guess we don’t get the same point of view, Dad. You’re interested in one thing and I’m interested in another. Somehow they don’t match up.”

“I should say they didn’t.... I think you and I are better friends than we used to be, son.”

“Yes,” said Potter.

“On the whole, your accident was a good thing for both of us.... I’ve gotten acquainted with you, son, and it’s done me good. You had me going for a while. I thought you were a worthless young cub who would never do anything but squander what I made—and, by Jove! I was going to fix things so you couldn’t! But you’re not. You’ve got the stuff in you to take my place and carry on the business. A few years’ training and you’ll be up to the job. Don’t let any foolishness like this aeronautic stuff side-track you. Why, you’ve got to be a regular darn fanatic about it!”

“I suppose I have, Dad. I guess it needs a fanatic.”

Fabius shook his head with disgust. “I don’t want folks saying my son’s a crank,” he said. “I suppose boys at your age are bound to have enthusiasms, but there’s just one kind of enthusiasm that’s worth a tinker’s dam, and that’s enthusiasm about your business.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, if I disappoint you so much. I expect to come into the business after a while—when the world quiets down. I’ll work there as hard as you want me to, but first I’ve got to do this thing. It’s got to be done. Nobody knows what will happen. You believe in fire insurance, don’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“But you go ahead planning as if there wouldn’t be a fire. You don’t expect a fire.... But you admit the possibility of it?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, try to look at this thing in that way. We don’t know what a year or two years may bring. Germany may be licked or the Allies may be licked, ... or we may be dragged into it. That’s a fire we’ve got to insure against. And I’m going into one line of the insurance business—the aeroplane line. If the fire comes we’ve got to have aeroplanes to put it out. If it doesn’t come, no harm will be done by insuring.... The difference is that I believe it’s coming—and we won’t be ready.”

“All balderdash.”

Potter got up and walked slowly across the room. It was not easy, and his father was making it harder than it ought to be. He thought he understood his position and his reason for assuming it so clearly—that they were so clear no one could fail to agree with him, yet his father utterly failed to comprehend. Potter despaired of making him understand.

“Dad,” he said, “let’s make a bargain. Give me two years. Call it a vacation or call it a course in mechanics or call it whatever you want to. We ought to know where we’re at by that time. At the end of two years I’ll come into the business and do whatever you want me to—but for two years let me go ahead with this thing and don’t interfere with me.... I’ll need some money, too. I’ve got to experiment. The experimenting won’t do any harm. It’ll be with gas-engines. Maybe I’ll turn out something that will be worth money in our business.... just two years—and I’m pretty average young yet.”

His father shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll go you,” he said, with the air of a man compelled against his will. “Two years it is, and then you quit this foolishness and come down to earth.... But it’s dog-gone nonsense.”

One man did not share this common opinion. He was the bearded, ponderous, blinking man of monstrous girth who had brought Potter into the world and fed him pills and potions for his juvenile ailments—Old Doctor Ormond.

“Potter,” said the old gentleman, “you’ve been down for three months. You’ve taken into your system only the things you should have taken into it. You have eaten as God and your stomach intended a man should eat, and drunk as they intended you should drink. You’re going to be well—as well as ever. There won’t be a limp, probably. I can guarantee that there isn’t a drop of alcohol about you. You’re going to start clean. If you’ll take my advice, which probably you won’t, you’ll keep that way. Presbyterians used to say hell was paved with unbaptized infants. I say it’s paved with cocktail-shakers....”

Potter chuckled. “I’ve been thinking about the cocktails,” he said. “I’m afraid I sha’n’t have time for them. And I used to know bartenders by their first names.”

“Do you ever feel a hankering?”

Potter shook his head. “I never did when I had anything else to do.”

“Um!... Have you anything else to do now?”

Potter held up the book on his lap. It was a treatise on carburetion. “Aeroplanes,” he said, shortly.

“Your father said something about that,” said the doctor. “What’s it all about?”

“While I’ve been down and out,” Potter said, slowly, “I’ve discovered that I’ve been a man without a country. I’ve found my country. I’ve thought hard and I believe my country is going to need me.... It can have me. If we get into this war, Doctor, we’re going to need twenty thousand aeroplanes—quick. I’ve a knack that way. By the time this country needs the ’planes I’m going to know more about building them than anybody else this side the water—I’m going to be on the spot—ready.... That’s all there is to it. Dad thinks it’s a fad like stamp-collecting, and that I’m a crank.”

“If it is,” said the fat old practitioner, blinking his eyes, “I wish a hundred millions of us could get bumped on the head and have a similar fad jarred into us. You go to it, son. Stay by it. Don’t let them whisper and ridicule you out of it. Do you know that the greatest automobile manufacturer in the world was once called Crazy Henry by his friends? You don’t hear anybody calling him Crazy Henry now, do you?... And remember this: There’ll always be some to believe in you, and their belief will be worth more to you than the ridicule of all the rest. There’ll be a girl.... And there’ll be a fat old man. Shake, son.” They shook hands gravely. “Now get well—and show ’em.”

The last thought the doctor left with Potter remained. “There’ll always be some to believe in you.... There’ll be a girl.” He wondered if there would be a girl, and if she would believe in him. Naturally there would be a girl sometime; there never had been girls who ranked higher than episodes. He had never seen a girl he wanted as a man should want the girl who is to be his wife. Marriage had been a dim event in the distant future. It was so now. But, he thought, to have such a girl, to give her such a love as he could imagine—and to have her believe in him! That would be something. He pondered it.

Somehow he found himself thinking about Hildegarde von Essen. It was a pleasant exercise. He recalled her as he had seen her that morning when she alighted from her machine at the door of his hangar, radiant, vibrant, boyish—a flame of a girl. That picture had persisted.

They had visited the borderland of death together. That event connected them, would always connect them, by an invisible thread. He would not think of her as he thought of other women, nor she of him. Always the one would be to the other something peculiarly distinct. There was an overpowering intimacy about knocking hand in hand at the door of death.

He wondered how she was, wished he might see her. He had not seen her since that moment when he had crawled to her as she lay so still and graceful, like a lovely boy asleep. That wakened other puzzling memories. The scene was so distinct—the little island, the reaches of the great marsh.... And yet the island and marsh had not existed. They had fallen on the mainland miles from any such island! The ’plane had been found against a tree miles away from it. There had been a man.... Potter was certain he remembered a man, and that the man’s face had been familiar to him, but he could not recall the man’s identity. The whole thing gave him a queer, gasping sensation. It was like thinking on eternity or on limitless space—something inconceivable. He compelled himself to take his mind away from it.

Hildegarde von Essen was away, had been sent away by her enraged father as soon as she was able to travel. First she had gone to an aunt in the Adirondacks, was now with friends on the Maine coast. Potter’s mother had told him this and had told him, too, of the raging call Herman von Essen had made on Fabius Waite, of the arrogant, brutal manner of the man toward the father of a boy whose death was declared inevitable. Fabius Waite had shown von Essen the door almost with violence.

Yes, Potter wanted to see her....

That afternoon a servant brought him a letter. It was from her, the first of her handwriting he had ever seen.

“Dear Potter,” she began, addressing him by his given name, and he did not regard it as forward or provocative. It was merely due to the intimacy of their adventure with death, and natural to him. “I just found out you were able to read letters,” she went on. “You can’t imagine the pains people are at to keep news of you from me. It’s as if I’d tried to elope with you and been caught. You knew father shipped me away. You don’t know how glad I was to know that you are going to be all right again. Somehow I felt to blame.” How abruptly, jerkily she wrote, changing from one subject to another without warning. It was like her, he thought. “I don’t know when I shall be home, but I’m making myself as disagreeable as possible. I don’t think they’ll be able to stand me much longer. Then I’ll come to see you. It was great fun while it lasted. I don’t think I ever enjoyed a morning as much. There are things about it I don’t understand—where we were found, for instance. I thought we fell on an island. Didn’t you? I’ll write again when I can steal time. It’s the least I can do, and we’re pals. Aren’t we? Get well as quickly as you can and we’ll fly again. Is the ’plane fixed?” That was all. It stopped abruptly like that.

She wanted to fly with him again. He chuckled. A little thing like falling out of the sky would not damp her enthusiasm, and fear seemed to have no place in her vocabulary. She was the most utterly daring girl he had ever met, and the most reckless of consequences. He perceived her similarity to himself.

“Mr. La Mothe and Mr. Cantor to see you,” announced a servant.

“Send them up,” Potter directed, fumbling in his memory for the name Cantor, recollecting it was the chap he had met at the Country Club who had letters of introduction to him.

La Mothe and Cantor entered. Potter looked first at Cantor. There was something about the man, something that made his memory itch. He had seen Cantor somewhere, but where? What was there about the man? He noticed that Cantor scrutinized him tensely. It was as if the man were searching for something, something that he was afraid to find.

“Greetings, Potter,” said La Mothe. “You’re looking bang-up for a fellow that was all fitted to a coffin. We were taking up a subscription to send you a floral pillow.... You remember Cantor?”

“Yes,” said Potter, extending his hand. “You’re making quite a stay in Detroit.”

“He’s joined the lodge,” La Mothe remarked. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he squatted. Eh, Cantor?”

“I find Detroit very attractive, especially to a business man,” said Cantor. “I’ve even thought of making it my home.”

“That’s about the best compliment you could pay the city,” said Potter, but in his mind he was saying over and over: “What is it? What is there about him? Where does he fit in?”

“I’ve never had an opportunity to present some letters I have from friends of yours, Mr. Waite. But here they are.”

“From Tom Herkimer and George Striker, eh?” said Potter, glancing over the notes. “They seem to be rather strong for you. I’m not very useful as an acquaintance just now, but as soon as I’m on my feet—”

“As soon as you’re on your feet,” said La Mothe, “he’ll have you chaperoning him through your plant. He’s a regular factory hound. Never saw a man so keen on factories.”

“I’m interested in mill-work and manufacturing efficiency,” said Cantor. “It’s an important part of my business.”

“I’d say it was all of your business,” said La Mothe, with a laugh. “I’ll bet he could draw from memory the plans of half the plants in Detroit.”

Cantor smiled.

“Speaking of plants,” said La Mothe, “things are getting a little thick. I was just talking to Weston, of the Structural Steel. He said they’d put armed guards all around the plant. Found explosives in the coal, and now they’re sorting over every chunk of coal that comes in. They’re making shrapnel-cases, you know.... Kraemer’s friend, the Kaiser, is doing it, I suppose.”

“Dirty business,” Cantor said, easily. “Trouble developed last week in the Delmont Machine Company’s shops. They found somebody had put emery in the bearings.”

“Any war news?” asked Potter.

“Nothing big since Warsaw fell. Looks as if Russia was about done,” La Mothe said.

“The war’s going into its second year,” said Cantor. “Who thought it could last a year?”

“Looks as if we might have a little war of our own one of these days. Mexico’s in need of a cleaning up,” La Mothe said.

“It’s been Germany’s year,” Potter said. “Only for the Marne—”

“It looks as if she couldn’t be beaten,” said Cantor.

“She’s got to be beaten,” Potter replied. “The sort of thing Germany stands for to-day has got to be wiped out—wiped clean off the slate.”

“Hang the war!” La Mothe said, impatiently. “Can’t we talk about anything else? When does the sawbones tell you you can come out and play with the boys, Potter?”

“In a week or two now.”

“We’ll have to pull a party for you. Welcome you back and all that. The crowd’ll be glad to see you around.”

“I’m going to work,” Potter said.

“Whoop!” exclaimed La Mothe. “At what and wherefore?”

“Fred,” Potter said, “I want to talk things over with you and some of the boys. I’m going to need your help—all the fellows who are in the automobile game. I’ve laid around for three months with nothing to do but think, and I’m here to say that the old stuff doesn’t go. We’ve got to take off our coats and get to work.”

“At what?” said La Mothe.

“Aeroplanes,” said Potter.

“I thought you had about all the aeroplane that was coming to you. Why aeroplanes?”

“The country’s going to need them, and Detroit’s got to make the engines. You seemed to be surprised that the war had lasted a year, Mr. Cantor. My idea is that it’s just begun. It’ll spread, and it will spread to us. We’ll be in it.”

“Rats!” said La Mothe; but Potter was aware of Cantor’s close scrutiny, and of an expression on the older man’s face which baffled solution.

“Germany has run wild with the notion of grabbing the world,” Potter said. “If she gets away with Europe we’ll come next.”

“Fat chance. Germany doesn’t want any of our action. Look how she backed down on the submarine stuff.”

“You’ve got the old notion, Fred, that nobody can get at us and that we can lick all creation. If Germany’s hands were free she could land an army on our coast, and before we could start to get ready to fight we’d be licked. We’re like cake in an unlocked cupboard, and Germany’s a hungry boy. We’d be gobbled.”

“Oh, say, Potter—”

“Think it over. The day’ll come when this country will need thousands upon thousands of aeroplanes—all of a sudden. When it comes it’ll be sudden, and we’ll be caught. We won’t have an army, we won’t have equipment—and we won’t have aeroplanes, which will be harder to get than anything else. That’s going to be my business. Getting ready for the aeroplane end of it. And I want you fellows to help.”

“You’ve been laying around too much, Potter. You’ve been sick, that’s what’s the matter with you.”

Potter shrugged his shoulders. “Think about it, anyhow, will you, Fred? Great heavens! you’ve got brains.”

“Much ’bliged,” said Fred. “Cantor, let’s be wiggling on. We’re exciting the invalid. See you again soon, old man,” La Mothe said.

Cantor stood up and extended his hand. “When you’re around again,” he said, “I’m going to bother you. You interest me—about the aeroplanes.... And I want to see your plant. Making munitions, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Potter, “glad to show you around.” He paused, and his eyes darkened. He fixed them on Cantor and said, suddenly, “You weren’t fishing up at the Flats about the time I was hurt, were you—back in the marsh?”

“Flats? No. What are the Flats, Mr. Waite?” Little points of white appeared at the comers of his jaw. Potter noticed them.

“It’s nothing. I guess you got mixed up in a dream of mine.”

“Dreams are queer,” said Cantor, flatly.

“Damn vivid dream, though,” said Potter. “Come again, fellows. My regards to the crowd.”

CHAPTER VIII

Between the date of Potter Waite’s injury and the first of the new year tremendous events occurred at home and abroad, and among the most tremendous, the most hopeful to Potter, and to Americans who loved and feared for their country, was the birth of the thing that came to be known as the Plattsburg Idea. It was the one sign of life in an ocean of lethargy; it showed that there were men not unaffected by sinister manifestations—men who foresaw peril, men who were ready to give their abilities and their lives for the safety of the flag that waved over their prosperity. When history comes to be written the Plattsburg experiment will stand out distinct, significant—a rainbow of promise.

Inert public opinion was preparing to stir. Germany, pursuing her relentless way, chose to irritate a nation which it might have conciliated. It irritated with patent propaganda; her Bernstorffs and Dernbergs filled the public prints with their sophistry, while their paid agents were fomenting industrial unrest and achieving arson and murder. German bombs were discovered on outward-bound vessels; the German torch was applied to factory and mill. Irritation increased, became acute to such a point that Doctor Dumba, who had used his sacred station as ambassador to shield his activities as arch plotter, was dismissed and sent on his disgraced way Vienna-wards. Von Papen and Boy-Ed, red-handed, were whisked away.... The Arabic was sunk. Then it seemed that Germany hesitated on her course. Mr. Wilson patiently indited note upon note, at last wringing from the Imperial German government its solemn promise to refrain from sinking liners without warning. This was heralded and welcomed as a great victory for our diplomacy, and the country breathed more easily. The cloud threatening the thunders and lightnings of war passed around us harmlessly.

But Mr. Roosevelt would not let the country return to its sleep. His alarm-voice rang in its ears, denouncing, demanding, stirring to wakefulness.

The news from abroad had been depressing. For a year the western battle-front had stood stationary, presenting a stalemate. The heralded “big push” had failed, or what one might safely call failed. Russia was being beaten into helplessness with a million prisoners captured since May. Siberia had been stricken.

But Bernstorff and Dumba and Boy-Ed had not been without their value, as Plattsburg had not been without its value. Preparedness was in the air. It was a topic of conversation. It and the blind atrocity of the slaughter of Edith Cavell.... The President’s message in December dealt with preparedness, naval and military, and promised much. Mr. Garrison had a plan.... The inert mass of the people was no longer inert; it stirred, moved, but did not awaken. Perhaps it was vexed by nightmare visitations.... Henry Ford’s heart made his head ridiculous with the squabbling argosy aboard his peace ship.... All these things were straws indicating not only the rising of the wind, but the direction of the wind.... Potter Waite studied and appraised them at their true value.

He studied and weighed the manifestations of public consciousness in Detroit, smug, wealthy, inaccessible Detroit. Detroit was on no exposed coast; Detroit was safe from invasion; Detroit did not share the fears and the excitement of the seaboard, but went on its way manufacturing motor-cars and munitions, stoves and varnish, and piling up its wealth fantastically, spending its wealth but never able to exhaust its income. Submarine sinkings were academic affairs in Detroit; bomb plots, the incitement of labor to violent unrest, the torch of the plotter, were matters that affected her more nearly. There were those in high places who knew that the stealthy eye of Germany’s army of moles was on the city; that they tunneled underneath the city’s feet, sinister, frightful.... But Detroit did not cry for war. She demanded protection in her activities. Her German-Americans were loud in their talk. The hyphen had its definite place among them. Potter watched and saw. Like the East, the Middle-West was moving glacier-like toward a distant point. The moment would come when glacier movement became avalanche rush.

Detroit continued to fly high.

Long before the new year Potter had discarded casts, bandages, crutches; his body was as sound as ever it had been, more perfectly fit than his habits had allowed it to be for years. There had been other changes for the better—changes less easy to detect and to define. One might almost have been justified in saying that he had not gotten well of his injuries, but had been recreated. There is a spiritual rebirth which need not of necessity have anything to do with so-called morals. Any changes apparent in Potter were not due to his taking thought of moral considerations. The only change of heart he had known was with respect to his country: indifference had turned to devotion. The great alteration was that he had acquired an object in life; everything else flowed out of that.

The nature of him was the same. There were the same dynamic possibilities, the same urge to action, the same qualities which had formerly made for unrest, recklessness, restlessness. His dynamo had been creating electricity which must have outlet, and, none being provided, took what freakish, ill-considered outlet it found. The same dynamo was still generating, but its product flowed evenly, with stable force, along wires placed to carry it. What had been turbulent potentialities were harnessed; they had been harnessed by an idea, and that idea was that the needs of his country demanded a certain service of him.

He went about his work not so much enthusiastically as grimly, relentlessly. He was a man driven by an obsession; that obsession was to clear the way against his country’s call for aeroplanes. And Detroit came to the conclusion that he was mad as a March hare. There were those of his friends whose nature it was not to pronounce unpleasant words; these spoke of him as eccentric.

One man, however, seemed to take Potter seriously, and his name was Cantor. After his first call he came frequently to visit, making his desire to cultivate Potter’s friendship plainly apparent. Cantor was, Potter judged, in the neighborhood of thirty-five; a man of wide experience, whose eyes had seen most of the world with a distinctness which enabled him to talk of it as no mere globe-trotter could talk. In spite of a feeling, not so much of suspicion as of questioning, with which Potter regarded Cantor at first, he found himself attracted by the man. This was due, in its inception, doubtless to Cantor’s attitude toward Potter’s object in life. There was no doubt that Cantor accepted Potter’s clearness of vision and was deeply interested in his plans. This, an oasis of belief in a desert of skepticism, went far. Then the man had undoubted charm. He was handsome; his manners were distinguished and wholesome, though a trifle foreign; his brain was acute, active; his wit was a joy. In short, he was an unsurpassed companion for a house-bound man. Potter found himself liking Cantor more and more. He had never possessed a close friend, a chum. It seemed as if Cantor were to be a successful aspirant to that position.

But of all the events of that period the one which had, perhaps, most significance was the return of Hildegarde von Essen. Potter was being, had been, modified by a number of momentous happenings whose effects he was able himself to see. Hildegarde was to modify him without his perceiving it. And it may be asserted that her modification was the most profound, far-reaching of all. It is the intent of Nature that the life of man shall stretch over many years. A third of these years, say twenty-five, are used up in bringing him to man’s stature and in equipping him with mental tools to carry on the trade of living. At the end of this period he stands balanced in the doorway, ready to step out into the jostle. It is usually at this moment that a woman intervenes. The most critical event of any man’s career is the advent of some woman. This point may be argued and combated, but not successfully. It is critical because it is the major point of departure in his journey. The character of this woman touches every instant remaining in the man’s life, either for good or ill. And it is all a matter of chance! Here Nature does not plan. One might almost accuse her of being sardonic. She shuts her eyes, shuffles together a multitude of young men and young women, themselves blindfolded, and then gives the word, “Choose your partners.” Perhaps that is the fun Olympus gets out of godship. It may be the whole thing is some Olympian gamble. Upon this blind scramble depends the future of the race!

The marvel of it is that so many grasp possible partners.

Men are educated to choose a profession or business; they are educated to enter a drawing-room; they are educated to choose a hat or a cravat. But to choose a wife—that choice which is so paramount that one might almost say it is the one choosing of his life, is not a choice of educated reason, but is a blind snatch into a grab-bag. The worst of it is that he cannot refuse to grab. Nature has seen to that. For the perpetuation of the race she has given him sex, and sex may bless him or damn him, she cares little which, so long as she produces another generation. It forces him into the game.

Potter had news of Hildegarde’s return from Hildegarde in person. He was working in the old hangar—the one to which she had come looking like a fairy prince on the day of their disastrous flight. It was now his headquarters, enlarged to accommodate his needs. The building housed a reasonably complete machine-shop, drafting-room, a combination technical library, office, and study, as well as the rebuilt hydro-aeroplane for which it had been constructed originally. Here Potter worked, and here his world was content to leave him alone with his fad. Few visitors came, and these found themselves unwelcome, for Potter was busy. He was designing a motor that would be efficient to drive the battle-planes of his country to victory.

He stood now coatless, eyes protected by a green shade, attention fixed upon his drafting-table. He had not heard the stopping of a motor-car, nor was his concentration interrupted by the unceremonious opening of the door.

“What’s the use pretending you don’t know I’m here?” said Hildegarde.

Potter turned abruptly and found himself without words. He was not content to extend one hand, but must stretch out both, ink-stained though they were, and she took them boyishly.

“I just got home this morning,” she said. “Dad said I couldn’t come and wouldn’t send me any money, so I got a man to pawn some things and ran away. I don’t think the man gave me all the money he got—quite. Dad was furious. He almost busted. As soon as he’d shouted himself into a state of collapse and rushed out of the house I called your house on the telephone. They said you were here, so I got in my car and came—and aren’t you going to say anything?”

“It’s you,” his lips said, stupidly enough, but his eyes must have been more eloquent, for Hildegarde said, with satisfaction, “You are glad to see me.”

He was thinking to himself that his memory was inefficient, for it had not retained so many of the delights of her reality; it had forgotten the way her little ears cuddled into her unruly hair; it had forgotten that daring, challenging glint in her blue eyes; he had forgotten something of that determined line of her brows—a determined line which did not give an expression of severity. He had recalled her general appearance as one of some pertness; it was not pertness, he saw, but keenness. She had seemed a little girl—a rather naughty, wilful, impertinent little girl; that seeming of youth was there, but it was no longer the youth of the little girl with whom one plays house—it was the youth of the girl on the point of womanhood with whom one would desire to keep house. She had been alluring, intriguing, as he remembered her; in reality she was enchanting, compelling, startling. She excited the imagination, not physically, but adventurously. Potter had once compared her to a dancing flame; he approved that comparison. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from studying Hildegarde was that life in her vicinity would be far from uneventful. She was full of dynamic promise.

“I am glad to see you,” he said, letting her hands go with reluctance. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

“How nice! I’ve been thinking about you—wondering how you came out of it ... if your nose was flattened or one leg shorter than the other. Why, you don’t look as if you had been smashed all to pieces.” She laughed gaily.

“I’ll try to limp,” he suggested, “if it will please you.”

She drew her shoulders together and became serious. “I was afraid,” she said. “I couldn’t bear to think you—were not the way you used to be. If you had been crippled—and it was my fault! That’s why I came so quickly. I wanted to know. You see, I didn’t know anything—except that you were alive.”

“On the whole, I think I benefited,” he said.

She looked at him quickly, appraisingly. “Yes,” she said, “you have benefited. You look different, somehow, and better. There was something about you before that made me feel uneasy—not exactly comfortable. Like a panther in a cage.” She laughed lightly at her simile. “You seemed to be pacing up and down and glaring at the world. That is gone.... Yes, and you’ve been behaving yourself, taking better care of yourself.”

“Yes,” he said. “My address is no longer the Pontchartrain bar—and I’ve got a job.”

“That satisfies you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Something happened. Something has made a great change in you. What was it? I’m interested, you know.”

“The thing that happened was the necessity for filling in several months’ time while I lay on my back. It was necessary to think quite a little.”

“What did you think about?”

“The United States of America,” he said, “mainly.”

“I don’t understand. Are you joking?”

“No,” he said, so seriously that she knew he spoke of a momentous thing in his life. “It was the result of the war, I suppose, and of little things which derived from the war. The first thing I discovered was that I was a sort of Nolan—a man without a country. Have you read that book?”

“Yes.”

“I hadn’t done what Nolan did. I’d just neglected my country utterly. I hadn’t bothered with it. Just before I was hurt a man asked me if I loved my country, and that rather started things.... I don’t go around talking this sort of thing to everybody,” he said with sudden reserve.

“Of course not.”

“Have you ever thought much about it?”

“No—I think not. I’ve rather taken the country for granted, except when Dad has bellowed about the fatherland and that sort of thing. Then I’ve been stirred up a little. Irritated, I guess the word is. I haven’t been an out-and-out American, but I haven’t been anything else. That’s all.... Like father, for instance. His father was chased out of Germany in ’forty-eight, and you’d think Dad would have a grudge against it. But he hasn’t. He gets sentimental about Germany. He isn’t an American at all, though he was born here ... and that never seemed right to me.”

Potter nodded. “He’s not alone, of course, and it is a dangerous condition.... Well, the thing that happened to me was that I learned something about the United States, and the first thing I knew I was mighty strong for it.”

“And what are you doing here—with all these drawings and this machinery?”

“Aeroplanes,” he said. “Maybe you can understand what I’m doing. Nobody else seems to.... Doesn’t it seem to you that we’ve got to get into this war?”

“I haven’t thought much about that—not a great deal. But nobody seems to want war.”

“No. We’re smug and satisfied and cocksure. But I think we will be forced into it. We can’t stand everything. And if we go in it will be a tremendous thing—for which we won’t be ready. We’ll be in the position of a man with a hand-saw who is suddenly compelled to cut down a forest. We’ll have to do everything after the thing comes—raise an army and equip it. And we’ll need aeroplanes by the thousands.... That’s what I’m doing—getting ready for the time when we need aeroplanes. That is, I’m doing what I can to help.”

“And you’re not getting much help or sympathy,” she said.

He smiled wryly. “But I’m going ahead, just the same. I hope we never need them. Maybe we can stay out of it, and maybe we will stay out of it—but I’m going to stick to this game until I know. Because,” he said, with a sudden lighting of the face, a glow of enthusiasm from his eyes, “it’s the best thing I can do for the country—and I want to do my best for it.”

She touched his arm lightly and in her eyes was a glow caught from his own. “It’s fine,” she said. “I think I understand. I’m going to understand better. I guess I’ll be an American, too.”

There was a rap on the door, and Potter, thinking it was one of his machinists, called to come in. Cantor entered, hesitated when he saw Hildegarde.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t know you were engaged.”

“Come in, Cantor.... This is Miss von Essen. You know her father, I think.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Cantor, advancing, a graceful, forceful, pleasing figure. “I didn’t know Miss von Essen had returned.” His eyes were fixed upon her boldly, but not offensively—admiringly. “I have heard much of Miss von Essen, and even saw her once at a distance. Since then I have hoped it might be my privilege to be presented to her.”

Even as he spoke he was studying her face intently. He turned a sharp glance upon Potter, and apparently was satisfied. In spite of his well-trained face and manner, he had been unable to conceal a trace of embarrassment, of uneasiness. It had passed unnoticed by Potter. Hildegarde had set it down to her unexpected presence.

“Cantor is about all the company I have here,” Potter said.

“I shall come more frequently now if surprises like this are to be expected.”

Potter turned to Hildegarde. “It was no end good of you to come,” he said, “but really, you know, you shouldn’t.... And you mustn’t come again.”

“I shall,” she said, defiantly, “whenever I want to.”

“I’ll have to lock the door,” Potter laughed. “You know what affection her father has for me, Cantor.”

“Indeed, yes.... But fathers don’t learn everything.”

Potter pressed his lips together, for this hint of something clandestine in his relations with Hildegarde affronted him. He said nothing.

Then the door burst open and Herman von Essen rushed into the room, bristling, panting. He stopped, glared at the little group, and pointed a trembling finger at Hildegarde. “There you are.... I had you watched. I knew you would come here.... It is like you, disgracing yourself. Have you no brains? Rushing here to this man that has made your name common in the whole city.... Out of here, out of here while I attend to him!” He advanced threateningly, but Hildegarde did not move, only eyed him with level contempt. “You,” he raved at Potter, “you entice my daughter!... By God! I’ll show you!...” He advanced again, burly fists doubled, Bismarck-like face purple and distorted by rage.

At the instant when it seemed the furious German would rush upon Potter, Cantor took one step forward and spoke. His voice was incisive, cold, compelling. It cut through von Essen’s rage to his consciousness and halted him. “Von Essen,” said Cantor, “you forget yourself.” That was all. He stood very straight, heels together, shoulders squared—the attitude of an officer facing his company.

Von Essen stopped, and his rage dropped from him as if it had been some false face which could flutter to the ground. He was compelled. Cantor’s cool voice had a surprising, a powerful effect. “I—” he faltered, seeming to grow smaller of stature, to wilt.

“You will take your daughter home,” said Cantor, still in that cool, commanding voice, “and you will treat her as a gentleman treats a lady. Am I understood?”

Von Essen nodded. He was inarticulate.

“See to it,” Cantor said. “Miss von Essen.” He bowed to Hildegarde, and, walking to the door, held it open for her, standing cold and straight while she passed her father and came toward him.

Von Essen followed. He had the appearance of a man suddenly caved in.

Hildegarde paused in the door and turned. “I can’t ask you to pardon him,” she said. “I shall come again.” Then she preceded her father through the door.

Cantor closed it and smiled grimly. “You need have no anxiety over Miss von Essen,” he said.

Potter shook his head. “That gets me,” he said. “How do you do it, Cantor? In another minute I’d have had to thrash that old bounder.... I’m much obliged for the miracle.”

“He needs a little taking down,” Cantor said, contemptuously. “These rich German-Americans get too cocky sometimes. They have to be shown.”

“I’d like to have your formula,” said Potter.

Cantor changed the subject. “How’s the motor coming?”

“Slowly.”

“I haven’t seen the drawings,” Cantor suggested. “I’m interested, you know.”

“I’d like to show them to you,” Potter replied, “but I’m not showing them to anybody. I feel as if it were government work, you know. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Perfectly. I shouldn’t have suggested it.... Just dropped in to ask you to come down to the club to dinner to-night.”

“Thanks. I’ll show up early. Want a game of handball and a shower? Take me on?”

“You’ve been beating me too regularly, but I’ll let you do it again. Maybe La Mothe and O’Mera will be around.”

Cantor walked out. As he got into his car he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

CHAPTER IX

As the door of the hangar closed behind them Herman von Essen seized Hildegarde’s arm roughly and propelled her toward his waiting limousine. He was a burly, powerful man and lifted her almost from the ground. She presented a spectacle similar to that of a naughty little girl being led by the ear; she trotted along on tiptoe with a consciousness that she offered a most undignified spectacle. People fail to reckon with the sense of dignity of the young; it is very strong, and there is no surer way to kindle their fury than to make them appear undignified.

Hildegarde’s cheeks were white, but her eyes, half closed, were cold light flashed in reflection from steel; she bit her lip to restrain a cry of pain. Her father breathed heavily, noisily. She was aware that the chauffeur, out of the corner of his eye, missed nothing of the spectacle.

“Let go my arm!” she said, fiercely.

He only shook her a little and shoved her forward.

“You’re hurting my arm! Let go!”

She wanted to strike him, to scream, to bite and scratch, but she knew she was helpless in his great hands. She knew it was futile to struggle with him or to appeal to him, she knew his rage was the equal of her own in intensity, but she knew it was a brutal rage, a rage which, if further provoked, might relieve itself by some unthinkable action.... He was capable of thrashing her. She knew it, but it was not fear of him that held her passive; it was the effort to maintain some vestige of dignity.

He pushed her to the step of the car and, reaching over her shoulder, jerked open the door.

“My car—is here,” she said.

He did not reply, but shoved her headlong into the limousine. She fell on hands and knees, and he did not help her to arise. She scrambled to her feet and sat in the corner of the seat, pressing as far away from her father as possible, avoiding any contact with him. He shut the door with a slam and was silent except for his noisy breathing.

Both of them looked straight ahead, and no word was spoken during the drive to their home. When the car stopped and the chauffeur opened the door, von Essen lumbered out and stood waiting.

“Get out,” he said, roughly, not offering to assist her.

She stepped out, drawing away from him as she passed, and ran up the steps.

“Wait,” he commanded, and she stopped. He approached her and reached again for her arm, but she avoided him.

“Don’t touch me!... Don’t dare to touch me!” she panted.

“Go to your room,” he ordered. “Don’t leave it without my permission, or I’ll lock you in.... Don’t leave this house again. Don’t step out of the door. If you do—”

She turned and walked away from him. She wanted to run, but would not allow herself to run. She walked slowly, shoulders squared, head up proudly. She did not hurry as she traversed the hall and ascended the stairs, nor as she opened the door of her room. She entered, closed the door gently—and locked it. Then she stood quite still, white and slender, with a look on her face not good to see on the face of a young girl. Her fists were clenched, her arms held tense and straight at her sides. There was no tear or sign of tear in her eyes. She looked not like a living flame now, but like a slender image of steel heated to whiteness.

“I hate him,” she said, slowly, not passionately, but coldly, with calculation. Then she repeated it, “I hate him.... I hate him.”

She took off hat and wraps and let them fall to the floor, then walked across the room to her dressing-table and looked at herself in its mirror. She saw how pinched and white and strained she looked, and bit her lip.... On the dressing-table in a silver frame was a photograph, the photograph of a woman still young. It was a strong face, a gentle face, a face that in some vague way showed that the spirit within had not been satisfied or happy. Hildegarde lifted it in her hands.

“You married him,” she said, in a whisper. “Married him.... You lived with him of your own accord—for years.... How could you? How could you?”

Hildegarde did not know that she herself was the answer to that question. Born within a year of her mother’s marriage, she had tied her mother to that home and to the man who was the father of the child. It had not taken years to disillusion Marcia von Essen with respect to her husband; the first trying hours of marital life had sufficed to show her the sort of man to whom she had given herself, for he had shown her none of that gentleness, that consideration, that tenderness that form so sure a foundation for the coming years. More marriages are wrecked within twenty-four hours of the ceremony than are wrecked in the succeeding twenty-four years. Marcia von Essen’s was one of these.... She might have separated herself from him almost at the beginning of their marriage, but time was not given her to catch her breath and form the resolution when was forced upon her the knowledge that her thought must include a third being. So she remained, and so, for Hildegarde’s sake, she endured the years. “How could you?” Hildegarde asked. The photograph might have replied, “For you, my daughter.”

Hildegarde put down her mother’s picture and sat down on the rounding seat in the bay window. Her posture was girlish, childish; back against the wall, feet on the cushion, she drew her knees under her chin and stared out at the snow-covered lawn, the wealth of shrubs swathed in white, down the slope to the barren expanse of frozen lake. Her thoughts were dangerous thoughts, and to a reckless, turbulent soul thoughts likely to take material shape in rash action.

“I won’t stand it,” she said, in a whisper. “She had to live with him, but I don’t.”

That resolution was made. All that remained was to hit upon the means to carry it out. She would leave her home and her father, but how? And how could she make it certain that he could not follow her and drag her back? For drag her back he would, she knew.

She must have help; she must have a place to go. Arrangements must be made outside that house for her reception, and she could not go out to make them—and she was penniless!

“He’d help me,” she said, suddenly. “He’s got to.” The he was Potter Waite.

It was not with love that she turned to Potter, for she did not love him. She was not a girl given to sudden, unstable infatuations for young men. But she liked him, she trusted him. Events had coupled them in a manner which compelled her to think of him as she thought of no other young man.... She would ask him to help, to find some way, to devise some expedient. Potter was only a means to an end in this affair—he was not the end. She did not plan to elope with this young man; indeed, that idea never entered her hot little head.

She went to her desk and wrote:

“Dear Potter,—I can’t stand it any longer. I sha’n’t live another day with my father. He’s a savage and I’m afraid of him.” She was not in the least afraid of him, but feminine instinct told her this would be an appealing touch. Her hand traveled to the arm her father had clutched and she became conscious that it pained her. She stood up and removed her waist to examine the arm. It was bruised, swollen, rapidly blackening, and the marks of his ruthless fingers were plain. She sat down to write again. “My arm,” she wrote, “is nearly wrenched off, and you can see the mark of every one of his fingers on it. I’m locked in my room. Won’t you help me get away? My room is on the lake side of the house, the corner with the tower. If you’ll help me, come to-morrow night about ten, and be careful. I’ll be watching out of my window for you, and I’ll be all ready. I won’t stand it another day.”

She signed this, sealed it, and affixed a stamp. Then she replaced her waist and concealed the note in her bosom.

“He’ll have sense enough to know what to do.” she told herself.

She tried to read, but could not, and hurled the book across the room angrily. She could do nothing but brood and toy with her anger, keeping it alive and pouring fuel upon its flames. Again she occupied the window-seat and stared out at the wintry landscape.

Dinner hour came, but she did not leave her room. She could not bear the thought of sitting at the same table with her father, of seeing him, of breathing the same air he breathed. Nor did he summon her. She did not expect him to send a tray to her room; that would be a courtesy so utterly foreign to him that she did not even give it a thought. Besides, she was not hungry. She could not have eaten. So she sat and waited—waited for darkness and for that stillness which tells of a sleeping house. When it came she would steal out of her room and out of the house to the near-by mail-box to post her letter to Potter Waite.

Hours went by. The house was very still. Though she opened the door a crack and listened, she could not hear a sound. It was after ten o’clock, and her father was probably at the Harmonie Society drinking beer and smoking those pudgy black cigars without which he was seldom seen. She threw a wrap over her head and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. Very cautiously she passed along the hall, but stopped before she reached the door of the library, for the room was lighted. She drew against the wall and stood very still, listening. Some one was there, for she heard voices.

Step by step she drew nearer, and the voices became more distinct, her father’s voice and the voice of a stranger. She believed it to be a stranger, for she did not recognize it. Both voices were muffled by the walls and hangings, yet she could overhear what was said, if not wholly, at least in major part.

“Boy-Ed and von Papen were clumsy fools,” said the strange voice, “and this man Paul Koenig, that got himself arrested the other day, wasn’t much better. But those things were to be expected. It wasn’t the ridiculous Secret Service of this idiotic country that did it, even then. It was English agents.”

Hildegarde realized suddenly that German was being spoken. It had not surprised her or caught her attention in the beginning, for she was accustomed to hear as much German spoken in that house as English.

“What do you want of me now?” she heard her father ask.

The stranger did not reply directly to the question. “Our men have done pretty good work so far, but we must do much better. Our greatest success has been in holding together the Germans here and in creating in their minds a proper attitude toward the fatherland. You and men like you have been invaluable there. But we must take more vigorous steps. A little has been done. We’ve stirred up a lot of unrest, and we have the pacifists working nicely.” He chuckled. “That I. W. W. organization was made to our order.” He paused a moment, and then said, significantly, “And there is quite a satisfying number of tons of munitions that have exploded here in America—instead of over the trenches occupied by our army.”

“Yes,” said von Essen, “but what do you want of me?”

“More help, of course. You recognize your duty to the fatherland?”

“Naturally,” said von Essen.

“Propaganda and singing societies aren’t going to win this war for us,” said the stranger, flatly. “For one thing, millions of tons of iron ore are coming down these lakes, through the Sault Sainte Marie locks, through the St. Clair ship-canal. That ore makes rifles and cannon and shells for the Allies. It would be a great service to the Emperor to interfere with that traffic, and the surest way is to—er—discontinue the use of the canals. That’s one thing. Then Detroit is manufacturing more and more munitions, and motor-trucks, and other things to help the enemy. There’s a fine bit of work to be done right here. You can be most useful here. You have influence, and a man in your position will go without suspicion. Do you see?”

“I see,” said von Essen, gruffly, “but I’m not going to mix into such matters. I want to see the fatherland win. I’m a German. But I haven’t any intention of getting stood up against a wall and being shot.”

“Nonsense! You’ll be telling me you have scruples against such a thing next. And you haven’t.”

“I haven’t,” said von Essen. “I’d like to see every munition-plant in America blown to hell.”

“Excellent so far.... When this war is over a German is going to be an envied man in this world. Once a man boasted that he was a Roman citizen; after we are through he’ll boast that he’s a German citizen. Our Emperor knows how to reward service—either with money or with honors.”

“I don’t need the Emperor’s money,” said von Essen.

“But the honors, eh? Suppose you should be recalled to the fatherland and ennobled, eh? Made a count, let us say? You have the wealth to support the position.”

“Uh!” grunted von Essen.

“But to wear honors one must earn them. You have been picked because you are the right man. We do not make mistakes. We need you.”

“No,” said von Essen, stubbornly.

“Listen, Herr von Essen,” said the stranger, his voice changing its tone from silkiness to something bordering on arrogance. “Last Thursday you rode to the city in your limousine with Mr. Bradley. I can repeat to you every word of your conversation. It was an unimportant conversation, but I know what was said. I can tell you what you had for dinner two weeks ago, and what you will have to-morrow. I can tell you every movement you have made for months.”

“Well,” said von Essen, uneasily.

“I have not wasted time on you for nothing. I say we need you—and you are going to do what you are told.”

“No. Why should I run risks? I’m willing to help in a reasonable way, but this dynamiting business—”

“Out of several hundred men serving the Emperor in this country, half a dozen have been caught. There is no risk, and there will be great gain. It is not for you to refuse or accept. You have your orders, Herr von Essen.”

“You can’t give me orders. I’m an American citizen—”

“Bosh!... Last week there was an explosion in an armory in a Canadian town not far from here. It did quite a satisfactory bit of damage. I’m sure the Emperor will appreciate it.”

“That armory explosion—did you arrange that?”

“I?... Oh no, Herr von Essen! You did.”

“I! You’re crazy.”

“The records show—our secret records. You have the credit there.... Now, Herr von Essen, will you obey orders?”

“No. What do your secret records matter to me?”

“If I put information in the hands of the clumsy American agents that Herr von Essen is excessively pro-German and that it might be well to inquire where he was the night of that so-called outrage, they might be interested, eh?... And if it was hinted that a search of your premises would unearth a considerable quantity of explosives, and some extremely novel and effective bombs and infernal machines?... I should hate to do that, Herr.”

“But I was not where you say on that night—that Friday night.”

“No, Herr von Essen? Shall I tell you where you were? You were with me. Alone with me, as I took excellent pains to see you would be. Nobody knows where you were but myself—and I would be unable to come to your assistance, of course. I’m afraid there would be evidence directly against you, however. It would look black for you if your chauffeur were to swear that he carried you to a point on the river and saw you meet two other men, and that you had baggage which you carried, oh, so carefully. Eh? And if he saw you cross the river, partly on the ice and partly with boats? It would look bad.”

Hildegarde heard her father burst into a torrent of imprecation, frightened imprecation. She was even sorry for him. Yet she felt a malicious satisfaction. He was trapped, neatly trapped, and he was being made to suffer. She approved of that.

“Well?” demanded the stranger when von Essen became quiet again.

“You couldn’t.... It wouldn’t be safe for you. I should describe you and tell—”

“And how long would you continue to live after that? Give a moment’s thought to that point.”

“Is that explosive in this house?”

“Plenty of it.”

Yon Essen groaned. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you are told. You’ll get over this first nervousness soon—and you’ll quite enjoy yourself. Really, there’s a satisfaction in our work—when it is successful. Are you going to be reasonable?”

Von Essen made some reply unintelligible to Hildegarde, but which evidently was satisfactory to the stranger. “We’ll call it settled, then,” the latter said. “I’m pleased for your sake. You will get your orders in due time. In the mean while, stand ready at all times to obey. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” said von Essen, in a voice from which all arrogance, all courage was gone, “I understand.”

Hildegarde was filled with an intense curiosity to see the man who had tamed and trapped her father. The thing had happened so unexpectedly, and she had followed the conversation with such interest, that she had not had time to consider other than the immediate aspects of it. She did not yet consider her father as a traitor to his country, nor go deeply into the meaning of the words she had overheard. But she did want to see that man. She took a careful step forward, and another. She would peer through the door and then withdraw.

She took one more step; then something descended over her head, a hand covered her mouth, and she was lifted bodily from her feet. There was no sound. Whoever had seized her carried her silently to the stairs, up to the second floor, opened a door, and set her within. The door closed quickly, the key turned on the outside, and she was free and alone. She snatched the cloth from her head. It was her own room!

She placed her hand against the door to steady herself while she collected her senses. Who had seized her? Not her father, not the stranger. It had been no man of her father’s who had done so. It must have been some one in the service of the stranger, but some one employed in the von Essen household; some one familiar with it; some one who knew without hesitation where her own room was. It was startling, terrifying. She tottered across to her bed and threw herself upon it, nerves aflutter. Hildegarde was not given to nerves, but the tenseness of her situation as she had stood listening to her father and the stranger, with its unexpressed threat of danger, then the sudden, stifling, paralyzing climax of her seizure by unseen hands, had been sufficient to shock steadier fortitude than her own.

She did not give way to hysterics; did not whimper with fear as some girls might have done. The strange thing is that she was not afraid. It was not fear she felt so much as bewilderment, a certain dread of the unknown, a sense of something sinister impending.

She lay quietly struggling for self-control, and gradually it came to her. She sat up and looked about her. Then she went to her door and tried it. It was not locked. This was startling, for she had heard distinctly the key turned in the lock. Whoever had placed her in her room had crept back to unlock the door.

She tried to consider the events calmly, first in their bearing upon herself. She had been caught eavesdropping, effectively interrupted, but not more ungently than the circumstances had demanded. She had not been hurt; apparently there was neither desire nor intention to hurt her.... As yet. But she had heard matters not safe to overhear. Possibly her assailant knew how much she had overheard; possibly he had come upon her suddenly and had acted as suddenly. In that event he would not know how long she had been there nor what she knew. That would make for safety. Somehow that phase did not worry her.

Then she reviewed the conversation at which she had been an unseen auditor. Its meaning was plain to her. Her father was in communication with sinister agencies, was now the tool of such agencies. She had known him to be frantically pro-German, but that he had been an active participant in the plots and propaganda which filled the papers and which people were coming to understand daily as more and more of a menace to the well-being of their country, she had not imagined. And now Herman von Essen was to go farther; he was, so to speak, initiated into the inner ring of German intrigue, that inner ring commissioned by a conscienceless power to carry out unspeakable designs against a friendly, unsuspicious people! In short, she was the daughter of a traitor; of the same blood that flowed in the veins of a man plotting treason against the flag under which he had lived and prospered and to which his allegiance had been sworn.... She had hated her father before, she despised him now. She was filled with shame, deep, bitter, biting shame....

She asked herself what ought she to do, what could she do? She hated Germany because she believed it was Germany that had produced her father and his like. Because she had heard disloyal talk from her father’s lips, she had become impetuously, girlishly loyal to the United States.... But in the condition that faced her, what could she do? Where lay her duty? It was a question too complex for her immaturity. She answered it by avoiding it. Her determination was the determination she had reached earlier in the day—to go away. Now her going away took on a new significance. It took on the quality of running away to avoid responsibility, to avoid answering a question to which she could see no answer.

Once more she put on her coat and hat and crept out into the dark hall. The clock had struck midnight. This time she reached the outer door without interruption, shot back its bolt, and stepped out into the night. She ran to the street, fearful lest she should be stopped even now, and felt a great surge of relief as she dropped her note to Potter Waite into the mail-box. Then she turned, and with as great caution made her way back to her room, locked the door—a thing she had never been accustomed to do—and retired.

CHAPTER X

It was mid-afternoon when Hildegarde’s note came to Potter at the hangar. He read it, reread it, and there was no more work for him that day. With the letter in his hands he left his drawing-board and went into his tiny office, where he sat down to consider it. Perhaps not so much to consider the letter as to consider Hildegarde herself.

There was a note in the letter to which he responded instantly—an arousing note, a reckless note, which called to pulsating life that heedlessness of consequences which had always been so characteristic of him. He could see her writing in white heat; could picture her as she sat at her desk with the smolder of rage in her eyes. They two were in perfect sympathy, matching daring with daring, rashness with rashness, unrest with unrest. Both were driven by spirits that scorned repose, and a hunger for untrammeled freedom of action. Fires burned in both of them which threatened constantly to burst all restraints. It required no mental effort on Potter’s part to understand Hildegarde; he had but to look into his own mental mirror and what he saw there reflected her as well.

One point required no consideration—whether or not he would obey her summons. That he would go was natural, inevitable. Had that call come from an utter stranger he would have responded because there was something in him that would have carried him to the spot. But something stronger than this natural urge of adventuresomeness called him to Hildegarde, for regarding her he had reached an ultimate conclusion. As he sat with her letter in his hands he knew it was a conclusion from which he would never waver; that a thing had happened to him which was final; that something within him had taken a stand from which there could be no recession. This conclusion was that Hildegarde von Essen was the woman produced by the ages for him and for him alone. There was an element of fatality in his attitude, some fragment of primitive belief in predestination. She had come into his life, and never could be gotten out of it. He felt, somehow, that nothing could keep them apart.... He loved as he did other things, recklessly, unrestrainedly, perhaps with something of primitive savagery.

Rage mixed with his other emotions. Herman von Essen had handled her ungently; had pawed her about, perhaps, with those huge, unsightly hands of his. The mark of his every finger was on her arm, she said.... Well, he would never do it again. Potter wanted to go to the man and batter him to a pleading mass of blood and bruises. Vaguely he hoped von Essen would discover him when he came for Hildegarde. That would be his opportunity.

The thing that required thought of him was what he should do with her when he had taken her away from her father’s house. The obvious solution did not occur to him at once—because it was so obvious; because, perhaps, it was the thing he so burningly desired.... Suddenly he leaped to his feet, his eyes shining, his soul uplifted with sudden joy. He would marry her; he would take her for his own. That was a solution of all their problems.... In it he neglected to consider her—whether she shared his views of that matter or not. His sense that they were predestined for each other made for that neglect.... He would marry her, and then she would be his to guard, to protect—to love.

Potter was not one to make preparations before the event. In matters which concerned himself he was not given to looking into the future, but to doing the thing as it came to hand, and taking care of the consequences that flowed from it as they should appear. In a vague way he determined what he would do when he had helped Hildegarde to escape from her father’s house. His common-sense told him that such escapades were looked upon askance by a staid and plodding world; his innate chivalry and decency and sportsmanship—and a solicitude for Hildegarde born of his love for her—impressed it upon him that he must take some steps to safeguard her as much as would be possible from the wagging of malicious tongues. Therefore, out of hand, he determined to take her immediately to his own home, to hand her over to his mother, and then to scamper off for license and parson.... It seemed perfectly adequate.

He dined at home. As he was leaving the table he said to his mother: “I’ll be home fairly early—probably before eleven. I wonder if you will wait up for me.... There’s something rather important.”

“Of course, Potter,” she said, no little amazed, for it was the first request of this character she had ever listened to from her son.

He went out to the garage, put extra robes into his car, and drove out into the street. Hours must elapse before he could enter upon his adventure, but he could not put off the starting; he had to be about it. It was said of Potter that he was never late for anything and usually was a little ahead of time—and it was natural that he should be. He could not bear inaction, especially if some event were promised. He had to be moving toward that event, or making himself feel he was moving toward it. So he started at eight o’clock to reach a spot not half a mile away which he knew he must not reach before ten. It was his way.

He drove past the von Essen mansion, turned a mile beyond, and retraced his way. He scrutinized his watch, and it seemed to him he had made no impression whatever on the time that must elapse. For several blocks he drove at a snail’s pace, then he turned again and sped back over the icy pavement at a dangerous speed. Again he consulted his watch.... So for two hours he drove up and down impatient, eager, unable to quiet himself. He must be moving; there could be no repose.

He saw Herman von Essen’s limousine drive away from the house, half determined to follow it and settle accounts with Hildegarde’s father. He was in a state of mind which would permit of wild actions. But he did not follow; instead he applied the brakes savagely, skidded perilously, and headed in the other direction. It was bitterly cold, but he was hardly conscious of it; was conscious of nothing but a seething impatience, a sort of breathless anticipation. Again he looked at his watch, for it seemed as if he had been driving back and forth for days. It was only nine-thirty.

As he passed the von Essen house again he peered at it eagerly. There were few lights, and those dim. The place was quieting down for the night; servants would be in bed, or drowsily waiting for their master’s return. Soon it would be safe to make the attempt.

After another turn or so he halted his car facing toward his own home and at a little distance from the entrance to the von Essen grounds. Snapping on his dimmers, he leaped out and walked across the street to the deeply shaded area midway between street lights. Carefully he looked in either direction; no pedestrians were visible; the street was clear save for a distant automobile approaching from the city. He hesitated a second, then stepped from the walk into the sheltering shrubbery. With caution he dodged from dark spot to dark spot, taking pleasure in his subtle approach with a certain boyishness, a certain pretense—as if he were playing Indian. The snow reached well above his ankles, and at each step its brittle crust crackled and crashed alarmingly, but none seemed to take the alarm.

He rounded the big house in safety and stood under the window Hildegarde had described as her own. There was no light. Potter crept behind a snow-shrouded bush and scrutinized it, rising cautiously to his feet and standing for an instant exposed to view. If Hildegarde were watching alertly, he said to himself, she would surely see him. He waited. In a moment he could hear the window open.

“Potter,” whispered Hildegarde.

“Here,” he said.

She disappeared, but came back presently, holding out something black and bulky. “My bag,” she whispered. “Catch!”

He caught it and deposited it on the snow; then, while he wondered how he was to get her down from her room, she climbed upon the window-sill, lowered herself until she hung by her fingers.

“Careful.” he said, with incautious loudness. “Wait.”

But Hildegarde was driven by the same impatience as himself. There would be no waiting for her, no caution. She loosed her hold and dropped, falling into a little heap in the snow. Potter raised her quickly.

“Hurt?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “of course not.”

He picked up her bag. “My car’s just across the street,” he said, and they walked hurriedly toward it.

As they approached a black blot made by the shadow of a clump or ornamental shrubbery, the dark figure of a man arose, almost from under their feet, and scurried away. Potter’s impulse was to give chase, but Hildegarde clutched his arm.

“What in thunder?” Potter burst out, angrily. “Somebody spying on us.”

“Not on us,” said Hildegarde, bitterly.

“Of course it was on us. He probably saw me sneak into the grounds, and sneaked after to see what I was up to.... I wonder why.”

Hildegarde knew it was not a man who had followed Potter, but was undoubtedly an individual set by sinister interests to keep watch on her father and her father’s house, but she held her peace. It was a thing shameful to her and one she would keep locked in the secret places of her heart. It strengthened her courage and her resolution. She was running away from her father because his proximity was contaminating. “My father,” she was thinking. “He’s a traitor, a plotter.”

They hastened on, and both breathed in relief as Potter assisted Hildegarde into his car. He pressed the starter button and the cold engine started with a staccato, uneven, protesting roar.

“Where are we going?” Hildegarde asked.

Potter shifted gears before he replied; then, of a sudden, it occurred to him that what he had to say presented some difficulties, and was, perhaps, of a nature to startle his companion.

“Garde,” he said, using for the first time the diminutive of her name, “you and I have been through some things together.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said.

“I think they’ve made us better acquainted than—than meeting at a thundering lot of parties and dances and that sort of thing. Don’t you feel that you know me pretty well?”

“Do you think I’d have written that note to you if I didn’t?”

He felt relieved. To be sure she must feel that way. She must think well of him, must have a certain confidence in him, to have summoned him in this emergency.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, a bit anxiously.

“To my house,” he said, and felt her start of astonishment. “I’ll tell you why.” He hesitated, and then blurted out, impetuously: “It’s because I love you, Garde. I want you to marry me. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about me that way, but I’ve been bursting with you.... Yesterday morning when you came into the hangar I—I came pretty close to taking you into my arms right then.... I had to hold back.... The things that have happened to us—doesn’t it seem as if it were intended we should marry?... That’s why I’m taking you home. Mother will be waiting up—”

“Does she know?” Hildegarde asked, suddenly.

“No. I asked her to wait up for me.... I’ll leave you there and tear out after the license and a minister. I can get the license fixed up all right. The clerk is a friend of mine. And I’ll kidnap a minister.”

“Don’t I have anything to say about it?”

He stopped, somewhat aghast. He had overrun his story.

“Won’t you marry me?” he said, eagerly. “I love you.... I’ll make you happy.”

It was all unexpected to Hildegarde. She had not reckoned on this. Not that she had never considered Potter as a possible husband. What girl could have taken so important a part in the happenings of a man’s life without at least considering that outcome? She liked him, liked him exceedingly, but she had not thought further than that. She had regarded him more in the light of an adventure; of an exciting pal, perhaps.... Now she regarded him from a far different point of view. He was asking her to marry him—to turn her running away from home into an elopement. Some girls might have been carried off their feet by the romance of it, but not so Hildegarde. She was not easily swept from her equilibrium.... She was not calm and cool as she considered; she was excited, vibrant with stirred emotions, yet she could think collectedly.

She liked him, she told herself, liked him very well indeed. Perhaps that was love. She doubted it, but then she might be mistaken. At any rate, he would be a bully companion, and he was, she felt, trustworthy; she could marry him with confidence that he would be good to her, gentle with her, chivalrous toward her.... He was rich. That was but a passing thought, but it was present. He was handsome, a husband to exhibit with pride.... And marriage with him would solve her problem. She could depend upon him to hold her safe from her father. He would be a sure refuge in her emergency.... And what other refuge was there? She was penniless. She would be alone in the world.... Unmistakably she liked Potter.

“Are you angry?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Do you mean— Will you marry me? To-night?”

“Yes,” she replied.

One arm sufficed to guide the car, while with the other he crushed her to him, panting, protesting, and kissed her averted cheek.

“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t!” It was a shock to her; it was reality, yet, somehow, she was not affronted, was more startled than displeased.

“You love me,” he insisted. “Let me hear you say it.”

“I—don’t know,” she said. “Everything is so—so confused. Everything is happening—”

“Of course,” he said, gently. “I’ll behave myself.... But you’ve got to love me,” he said, with determination. “We were meant to love each other.”

They ran up the long driveway and stopped at the carriage-door of Potter’s house. He leaped to the step and lifted her out in his arms, and as she felt the strength of them, the promise of protection in them, she was conscious of a pleasant contentment, of something more, perhaps. She looked up into Potter’s face and smiled, nor did she avert her head as he pressed his lips to hers. Yes, perhaps this was love. Certainly she was moved, stirred by this young man. If it were not love itself, she thought, somewhat vaguely, it gave promise of opening into love.

Mrs. Waite was sitting up for her son as she had promised. When Potter and Hildegarde entered the room she arose, surprised, but repressing her surprise.

“Mother,” said Potter, “you know Garde, of course.... We’re going to be married to-night—here. That’s why I asked you to sit up.... I’ll leave her with you while I run out to fetch a parson.”

Hildegarde waited, looking at Mrs. Waite with reserve, expectancy. The older woman stepped forward and took the girl in her arms as her own mother might have done. “My dear,” she said. Then, “Tell me about it, son.”

Potter told all there was to tell, impetuously. His mother watched him tenderly, understandingly, as his face mirrored the emotions that moved within him. She sympathized with her son, loved her son.... And she knew, as she watched him, that he loved this girl, that it was no mere fascination leading him headlong into ill-considered marriage.

“And you,” she said, holding Hildegarde at arm’s-length, “do you love my son?”

Hildegarde looked back into those sympathetic eyes, and spoke honestly. “I—don’t know,” she said.

Mrs. Waite nodded. “No one knows you have carried her away?” she asked Potter.

“No,” he said. “Nobody in the house, anyhow.”

“That is good. Perhaps she can get back as unseen as she came. Because, son, you must take her home again....” She held up her hand as he would have protested with heat. “Listen, children.... I will welcome you as a daughter, Garde,” she said, simply. “You will be very dear to me—if you really want to be my daughter when you have had time to consider.... But you haven’t. You’re marrying Potter because there seems to be no other way out of it.... That is bad, for him and for you.... I hope you can come to love him as he loves you. But whether you love him or not, most of all if you do love him, you must go home. It never does to start wrong; you must start clean.... Let us consider. I’m sure you wouldn’t marry Potter until you know whether you love him.”

“I’d do anything to get away from my father,” Hildegarde said, passionately.

“Potter,” said his mother, “you’ve been a wild boy, but you’ve always been honest with me—and tender with me.... For all that has been said about you, I’ve never heard any one say that you didn’t play fair. People have always said that Potter Waite wasn’t the man to cheat or to take advantage.... You’re not being a good sportsman now. You’re cheating—cheating Garde, cheating yourself, cheating Mr. von Essen.... If you married Garde in this way it would be a story to follow her for years. It would be twisted, falsely told, garbled. You would both know bitter regret over it. And it isn’t necessary.... Hildegarde wants to leave her home. Well, let her leave it without the breath of scandal following. It will mean only a little patience, only a little waiting.... Take her home, son; then go to-morrow to Mr. von Essen, and ask his permission for your marriage.”

“He would refuse,” said Potter.

“If he does,” said Mrs. Waite, firmly, “you may bring Garde back to me whenever you are ready.... He must be given the chance.... But most important of all, son, Garde must be given time to know her mind. To-night she doesn’t love you. She has been honest enough to say so.... I know that hurts, son.... If she doesn’t love you, you must give her a fair chance for happiness—you must win her.... You’re not being a sportsman, son.”

“But, mother—”

“Would you marry a girl who doesn’t love you?”

He hesitated; he was unhappy, disturbed. “No,” he said, “but—”

“But she doesn’t know. Is it right to marry her before she knows?”

Potter looked at Hildegarde appealingly, but she dropped her eyes evasively.... He understood. His mother was right, and Hildegarde interpreted rightly the deep breath which he drew.

“I sha’n’t go home again. You sha’n’t make me.”

“You must, my dear,” said Mrs. Waite. “There is no other place for you to go. You must see that you can’t stay here.... It is impossible for you to go anywhere else.... It won’t be for long, Garde, if you care—not if you love him. But you must go home to-night.”

“I sha’n’t. I’ll never sleep under the same roof with father again.... Oh, you don’t know everything; you don’t know....” She could not finish. She stopped, too proud to beg, feeling her utter helplessness.... There was no place to go if she could not stay here. She was beaten. Fiercely she turned from Mrs. Waite to Potter. “Come,” she said, furiously.

“Won’t you kiss me good night, dear?” Mrs. Waite said, gently.

Garde refused to reply, but flung out of the room, followed by Potter. She would not allow him to help her into the car, and sat in moody silence as he started the engine.

“You don’t have to mind her,” she said, suddenly. “You’re not tied to her apron-strings.... If I’m willing to marry you, that’s my affair.... I sha’n’t go home.... We can go and be married some place.”

“No,” he said, heavily. “Mother was right.... If you loved me—”

She could not say it; even to purchase her freedom from the home she hated, she could not bring herself to declare a love she did not feel. Indeed, at the moment, she believed she hated Potter, hated his mother for her interference.... She was distracted.

“You refuse to marry me?” she demanded.

“I’ll come for you to-morrow. I’ll ask your father for you, and if he won’t give you to me I’ll break in and take you ... if you love me.”

“That’s your final word?” Her voice was sharp, metallic.

He nodded miserably.

She did not speak again until they stood upon the piazza of her own house and she was about to open the door. Suddenly she turned on him, blazing with white fury. “You coward!” she said, hoarsely. “You quitter.... You contemptible quitter.... Oh, how I despise you!”

It seemed as if she could not contain herself. Suddenly she lifted her little hand and struck him across the mouth; then, sobbing with rage, she snatched open the door and disappeared within.

Potter stood rigid, livid.... For a minute, two minutes, he remained without motion; then slowly, very slowly, he turned away from the door and made his way to his motor.

CHAPTER XI

Potter Waite’s outlook upon life had been modified by his accident and by that period of enforced reflection which followed it; it was again modified by the occurrences of the night when he had first helped Hildegarde von Essen to escape from her home and then had compelled her to return to it. His first emotion had been one of seething rage; this was succeeded by a bitter feeling that he had been cheated, and he brooded. He had been cheated because he had given his love to Hildegarde and received in return for it a blow and her scorn. He did not stop to think. He did not consider that she was headstrong, impetuous as himself; he did not consider the suddenness, perhaps the untimeliness, of the proffer of his love. He did not comprehend that Hildegarde’s words and actions were the result of black disappointment; that her anger with him was to have been expected of a girl such as she, frustrated by him in a design which she believed to be vital. Instead of weighing and reflecting he plunged into a sinister mood.

He became morose; the old charm and magnetism seemed to have deserted him, and the men who worked with him wondered what could have happened to their young employer. A great part of his conduct at this time was due to youth—to youth hugging to its bosom and fondling a hurt to its pride. If he had been indifferent to his friends before, he avoided them now, made them feel unwelcome. And he worked.... He drove himself, as a man will drive himself who has riding upon his back the hag of heartburning. There is no bitterness in the world like that of sweetness turned to aloes, and the taste of it was constantly in his mouth.

He threw himself into his work, not with gay enthusiasm, but with the smoldering fanaticism of a Savonarola. There could be no middle ground for him, no moderation. He thought and dreamed aeroplanes before because he loved the work, because he saw the value of the work, and because he believed enthusiastically that his country required the work of him. Now he steeped himself in the atmosphere and technicalities of the aeroplane to crowd Hildegarde von Essen out of his thought. Perhaps now he worked more rigorously, worked merciless hours, but it is doubtful if he worked more valuably.

He went to Washington, where the Signal Corps received him as a friend and gave him hours that were near to pleasantness. Major Craig gave up his time to Potter, encouraging him, inspiring him, congratulating him. Here the attitude was the antithesis of the attitude manifested toward him by those with whom he came into contact in Detroit. He saw all there was to be seen of the Signal Corps’ work and plans and hopes, and was made to feel himself an important factor. The officers who were his companions liked him, but wondered if he returned their liking. This was because Potter was for business and for business alone; he held himself reservedly aloof from the personal side. From Washington, with imperative credentials, he visited such of the aeroplane factories as were worth while and studied what was in them to study. He was thrown into contact with an Englishman of the Royal Flying Corps, recovering from wounds received in air-battle with a German ’plane, and from this man of real experience he learned much of value regarding battle conditions, and what an aeroplane must be capable of to do its duty.

These matters consumed weeks, but the time expended returned its full measure of value.

When he came home again the world was farther ahead by much with its grim business of war; the country itself was in a new stage of its transition, and unrest, together with a growing realization of the duties and perils of the position of the United States, was apparent in the minds of thinking men. Germany’s supreme effort to crush France at Verdun was in progress, but staggering now. The Toledo blade was proving itself able to cope with the sledgehammer. At home there was reason to be depressed. Military preparedness seemed doomed to failure; Secretary Garrison had resigned in protest—and as if in rebuke for our backwardness and shortness of vision, our very borders were desecrated by contemptible Mexican bandits which we were not in a state to punish. Pershing’s futile invasion of Mexico in pursuit of Villa was in progress, and disquieting rumors were filling the country. The country was beginning to seethe with the approaching presidential campaign.... It was spring, and summer drew near.

The talk on the streets, in hotels, in the clubs of Detroit, was all of Mexico now; bets were heard here and there as to whether Pershing would capture Villa, and sporting wiseacres offered odds on the fugitive. When the bearing of European events upon America were discussed the conversation was generally without form and void. The common attitude was that we would not be drawn into it, but why we would not, or how we would be kept out, or what the whole significance of matters might be, nobody seemed to know. There was a deal of bewilderment in those days, not a little smug complacency and asinine confidence in our immunity to such a disease as war. Confused thinking was the rule, and the clearest-headed could but grope and guess and find such comfort as he could in hopes for the best. If ever a nation in the history of the world was perplexed, baffled, had not, in the phrase of the street, the least notion where it was at, then the United States was such a nation in those spring days of 1916.

The nation did not stand where it had stood a year before; there had been advances, imperceptible, perhaps, to one not a close observer of popular phenomena. But opinion against Germany was more solidified; irritation was growing; everywhere you encountered an attitude which seemed to say, “Germany doesn’t want to crowd us too far.” Yet you would have had to search long and carefully to find a man who wanted war. Of course there was Roosevelt, but, then, what else would one expect of Roosevelt?

Detroit, representing the attitude of the Middle West, rather sneered at the seaboard for its nervousness. New York had the jumps, one was told. In New York people were really excited about the situation. Detroit laughed. A thousand miles lay between her and tidewater; she had no reason to sit up nights worrying about the arrival of a hostile fleet. She was safe, knew she was safe, and saw no reason why anybody else should worry. She was safe, and she was growing richer every time the hands circled the clock. New York was never going to bully nor frighten Detroit into any war-hysteria.

Potter was no more certain of future events than the rest; but he was different in this, that he was for insuring our property, as it were. There was a chance, a remote chance, possibly, of the worst happening. Potter was getting ready for that worst—and if it failed to materialize, so much the better.

He was living at the new Detroit Athletic Club, that monument erected to Detroit’s swiftly acquired wealth. His family was away, the Grossepoint house closed. Here at the club he encountered the best of Detroit’s opinion, and the worst; saw the best of that spirit which was making her the marvel city of the continent, and the worst of the consequences of her tidal wave of prosperity. Here about him was a curious blending of the conservatism and gentility of older Detroit, with the new-rich, bombastic, squandering spirit of the day. He saw millionaires whose hands had not yet had time to free themselves of the callouses of toil in the machine-shop, whose manners were the manners of the corner barroom, betting fabulous sums on the rolling of the dice, at poker, at bridge—with opponents who boasted that their ancestors had owned land in Detroit since the coming of Cadillac. He saw boys who had once earned their clothes by carrying papers chumming with boys whose wealth had come down through generations. He saw much that was creditable, splendid, of great promise; he saw some degree of that which was, perhaps, inevitable, but was nevertheless deplorable. He joined but scantily in the life of the club.

He did not see it, did not grasp the fact, but it was impossible that such men, riding on the crest of a gigantic wave of prosperity, should think far beyond themselves and the miracle that had made them what they were. They talked of the Mexican affair academically, as one talks of something in order to have something to talk about. They discussed the war with all the interest they would have shown in a championship prize-fight—and most of them with no deeper interest.... It was a world-spectacle arranged for the United States to sit by and watch—and derive immense profit from.

Here and there, fortunately, were men of broader vision, of abiding patriotism. One great manufacturer was taking a salutary step in insisting that every employee in his mammoth shops should be an American citizen; one was purchasing space in the newspapers of the country to advertise, not automobiles, but preparedness. One man had the very stationery of his firm inscribed with words which not only showed the world where he stood, but urged the world to step forth and do likewise.

Whatever advances had been made toward presenting a solid front, toward coherent thought, were due, not to something moving within, something spontaneous, some natural growth of patriotism, but to Germany. Germany was awakening America; Germany was America’s alarm-clock. Her propaganda, her bomb plots, her labor agitations, her arrogance, and her submarines were doing for America what America seemed unable to do for herself.... Germany, while willing quite another thing, was proving herself a friend to America; she was clumsily, bull-headedly, forcing America to think together and to the point; she was compelling America to think about America.... That way lay the path to patriotism.

Tom Watts and O’Mera sat at table with Potter one evening.

“Potter,” said Tom, “I’m beginning to think there’s something to this rigmarole you’ve been talking. This deal at the Mexican border has shown us up bad.... Something’s got to be done.... It got my goat, by Jove! that’s what it did. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do—I’m going to Plattsburg this summer.”

Potter made no reply.

“It’s fierce, the state we’re in,” Tom went on. “Why, what the devil would happen if some regular nation landed an army on the coast—say a couple of hundred thousand men? By the time we got ready to fight the war’d be over with and we’d be cleaned up plenty.”

“You make me tired,” O’Mera said. “Potter with his aeroplanes, and now you with your Plattsburg.” He looked up and nodded across the room to Cantor. “Your snappy little friend is running around a lot with that man Cantor,” he said to Potter.

“Who do you mean?”

“The von Essen girl.... She wants to go easy with that boy—he plays marbles for keeps.... Rides with him, dances with him, eats with him. None of my damn business.”

“It isn’t,” said Potter, sharply.

O’Mera failed to notice, but launched into anecdotes of Cantor’s adventures with various women, each adventure cited to demonstrate a certain cold-bloodedness in the dealings of the man with the other sex—and a degree of success with the other sex which Potter had not suspected.

“It’s his principal occupation,” O’Mera said; “he has some other one, I guess, but I’m darned if I’ve ever figured it out. Handles money careless, too. Must clean up somehow.”

Cantor merely appeared in the door of the main dining-room, and, after looking around, stepped back into the corridor. Watts drew back his chair.

“Let’s go down and knock the balls around awhile,” he suggested.

“Got a date,” said O’Mera.

“Come on, Potter.... I want to talk to you a bit.”

Potter nodded and got to his feet. They walked between the tables to the door and out into the handsome hallway. Coming toward them from the elevator they saw Cantor and a girl; he had evidently been waiting for her to come up from the ladies’ quarters below. It was Hildegarde von Essen.

Potter stiffened, but did not pause. It was the first time he had seen her since she struck him across the face and flung herself into the house the night her flight was turned into a fiasco. She was unchanged; she was the same slender, daring, challenging, keen creature as before. Something she was saying compelled a laugh from Cantor. Then he saw Potter and smiled with surprise.

“Why, Waite, when did you get back?” he asked, and moved forward with hand outstretched. Potter was walking toward him. Hildegarde’s eyes were upon him; he could feel them, but did not return her look. He dared not. “I’m mighty glad to see you,” Cantor said, as Potter took his hand. “Dined?... Miss von Essen and I are just going to have a bite. Won’t you join us? I’m sure Miss von Essen seconds that.” He turned toward her, and something in her look, her bearing, startled him. She had grown pale, but her eyes glittered; she was staring at Potter savagely.

“Most certainly I do not,” she said, distinctly, and turned her back.

Cantor looked at Potter and lifted his brows. There was the merest hint of a smile, a sardonic smile. “What’s up?” he asked, under his breath. “See you later, then.”

Potter walked down-stairs in grim silence, his two friends eying him wonderingly, neither caring to speak. The Potter Waite they knew was accustomed in such circumstances to prove unpleasant.

“So long,” O’Mera said, hastily, at the foot of the stairs, and disappeared toward the coat-room.

“Guess I won’t play billiards,” Potter said, slowly, to Watts. There was no other word. He turned abruptly away, and Tom gazed after him, wondering what it was all about. “Huh!” he ejaculated. “What in thunder?”

Up-stairs, Cantor was equally nonplussed. Hildegarde walked to their table, drew back her chair, and was about to sit down. Then she pushed the chair away from her passionately, pushed it so that it fell to the floor noisily.

“I don’t want to eat,” she said. “I’m going home.”

“But, Miss von Essen—”

“I’m going home, and I’m going alone.... I’m going now.”

“What is it? What have I done to offend—”

“Nothing,” she said, ungraciously, and began to walk toward the door. He followed her.

“I said I was going alone,” she said, under her breath.

“But—”

She faced him suddenly, flamed out at him. “Go away,” she said. “Have I got to shout at you?... I don’t want you.... I don’t want anybody.... I’m going home.”

“I will see you to your car,” he said. “Careful. People are looking at us.”

She walked rapidly to the elevator; it was as though she tried to run away from him, but he followed closely. They descended, and she disappeared into the dressing-room.

“Miss von Essen’s car,” Cantor said to the doorman.

Presently she reappeared, and was about to leave the club, it appeared, without noticing his presence. He followed her outside and opened the door of her car. She stepped in and flung herself upon the seat. “Home,” she said, but did not look at Cantor. He shrugged his shoulders and closed the door.

He did not go again to the table that had been prepared for himself and Hildegarde, but entered the grill, where he selected a table in a distant corner, where he sat biting his lip.

“She’s in love with him,” he said to himself with the air of a man making a mathematical calculation. “Um!... All the better, perhaps.... Something may be made of it.”

CHAPTER XII

Hildegarde had acquired the habit of stepping softly as she went about her father’s house; of stopping to listen before she turned corners or entered rooms. Every activity of the house she scrutinized with suspicion. She felt that affairs went forward there under the surface which she could only guess at but could not detect. There was a sort of melodrama about her situation that keyed her up. She would never admit it, but, nevertheless, there were times when she really enjoyed herself. There was no air of mystery about the place, but she knew mystery was there. She knew there were servants waiting upon her who were set there to keep watchful eyes upon her father; perhaps they carried on at the same time other and more sinister occupations. Her father seemed to go about his usual pursuits without interruption, but she believed there were interruptions. Every time a fire worked its destruction, every time the papers reported the havoc of an explosion, she wondered if her father’s hand had been in it. But she saw nothing to evidence his guilt. Simply and baldly, she saw nothing. She only felt.

Ever since that night of climaxes she had hoped to discover the identity of the man who had forced her father, not against his honorable scruples, but against his fears, to assume a part in Germany’s secret war against the United States, but his identity was never hinted at by anything that came to her ears or eyes. Once, on some pretext, she had rummaged the basements of the house to see if she could find the explosives whose presence had been hinted at. She found nothing.

She listened for and searched for things she did not want to find. “If I should find something,” she asked herself, “what would I do about it?” There was a problem indeed. One may despise a parent, but, nevertheless, parenthood exists. She loved the memory of her mother, and Herman von Essen had dominated her mother’s life. Possibly her mother had loved him. Surely she had loved him for an interval. Considerations of this sort reared themselves; but perhaps the major consideration was her horror of disgrace—her horror of being shown to the world as the daughter of a man guilty of treachery toward his country. Perhaps she was not the only daughter of German parentage who faced such a problem in those days.

As a natural opposite of her father, she had felt loyalty where he exhibited disloyalty; his attitude toward the United States had compelled her to a love for her country which otherwise might have lain as dormant as it seemed to lie in the majority of men and women about her. But her father quickened it, and she nursed it. It was not in her to do things by halves, and inevitably she became fiercely, flamingly patriotic.... Perhaps girlishly patriotic; patriotic with immature enthusiasm.... She brooded and dreamed. She saw herself frustrating her father’s designs—but always without betraying him. She pictured herself discovering plots, and bringing them to futility with clever counter-plots. She pictured herself in possession of indisputable evidence of her father’s guilt, and would sit painting to herself scenes in which she confronted him with it, compelled him to grovel for mercy, and wrung from him promises to abandon his sinister enterprises. But though she spied with what cleverness for spying was in her, she hit upon nothing tangible. Almost she came to believe there was nothing tangible to discover.

The thing was never absent from her mind. How could it be? One cannot whistle away fear, shame, the sense of impending calamity which has its birth in such certain insecurity as was hers. When a nature, reckless, turbulent, headstrong—and feminine—is moved by such emotions as hatred, terror, black doubt, love of country, all conflicting, a dance, a game of cards, a novel, cannot bring forgetfulness nor ease of mind. It was wearing on her, chafing at those restraints which were naturally irksome to her. Hildegarde was being modified, as Potter had been modified, but the forces that acted upon her were far different from the forces which had worked upon him. To Potter, through enforced idleness, unavoidable thought, had come certainty and sureness of purpose, darkened and made saturnine through these last months by love that had come down about him in ruins. To Hildegarde came only more uncertainty, more anguish of mind. There was no light ahead; nothing was clear before her. The strain she underwent, the constant pressure of suspense, the tenseness of a most singular precariousness, all pulled her this way and that. How the thing would end with her none could say. It would change her; another woman would result, but what sort of woman? The answer depended upon the innate strength of her soul, the sturdiness of such virtues as resided in her.

For weeks after her brief encounter with Potter outside the dining-room of the Athletic Club he insisted upon obtruding himself into her thoughts and multiplying her perplexities. She herself, if she had been given to introspection, could not have told what were her sentiments toward him. She was very angry with him; that persisted. But the meeting with him had given her a shock she did not suspect it would give her. It had upset her. After she declined so sharply to sit at table with him it had seemed to her she had to get away from that spot; had to be alone, could not bear the presence of a human being. She did not want to hide away to think about him; that was the thing she least desired to do. She would have told you she never wanted to see him or be reminded of him again. But she reminded herself of him. There were times when she really believed he had assumed such importance in her considerations because she hated him. That, she fancied, would account for it, for she was forced to acknowledge that he was important. At other times she was not so certain of hatred; vivid recollections of pleasant, glowing moments spent with him would come to her. Again and again she saw the look that was in his eyes at their unexpected meeting. The memory of that look disturbed and accused her, but she would not admit the accusation. Against her will she lived over again her flight from the house; Potter’s offer of love and marriage, and her reception of it.... She would have married him that night—without love; it was not in her at that time to understand why he had acted as he had; why he should have declined to marry her without her love coming to him as a part of the transaction. She liked to fancy herself scorned and affronted, but in her heart she knew she had not been scorned nor affronted. She had accepted Cantor’s attentions because, with a sort of childish petulance, she imagined it would hurt Potter.

Her reason was a double one, perhaps a triple one. Potter was the first consideration; then, second in importance, she must get away from the house, be away from it frequently, be amused, excited. Cantor offered amusement and excitement. She was not so inexperienced that she failed to perceive early in their intimacy that Cantor was not the safest of escorts, that he might, perhaps, prove to be more exciting than amusing, and more dangerous than either. That feature of it rather egged her on. In her state of mind she courted the risks she saw, and dared them. It provided the element of contest her restlessness demanded. She took on Cantor as she would have taken on a game of chess, knowing or suspecting the chances of winning or losing.... And she found him fascinating, a skilled cavalier, a delightful companion—but a watchful, ready companion, not likely to pass over the opportunities of the game. It required all her wit, her ready impertinence, to hold the man at arm’s-length.

On the Fourth of July she drove with Cantor to the Bloomfield Hills Country Club, adjacent to the beautiful little lakes of Oakland County, distant some twenty-odd miles from Detroit. There they lunched and dined and played golf. In the evening there were to be dancing and fireworks, but a sudden mood seized Hildegarde, before the evening’s entertainment was well begun, to go home. She could not account for it herself. Simply she wanted to go home, and wanting to go, she insisted upon being taken. Cantor discovered that there was no arguing with her.

They drove along the country road to Woodward Avenue, and through Birmingham, rapidly spreading Royal Oak, Highland Park, that had grown from a distant country village to a considerable city perched upon Detroit’s very shoulder—on down the broad avenue which had, but a few years before, known neither pavement nor street-car. Through miles upon miles of the most convincing evidences of the city’s miraculous growth they drove—and for the most part in silence. Endless rows of fine residences where, as a little girl, she had seen meadows and wheat-fields, did not now interest her.... She wanted to be alone, alone in the dark. She wanted to crouch in her room and to endeavor to compel her brain to cease from thinking.

As they approached the Boulevard she became conscious of a tremendous glow in the sky toward the west, a glow that seemed to rise, to pulsate, to bound and leap fitfully. Cantor saw it, too, and slackened speed. His lips were drawn; every now and then he moistened them with his tongue, and his eyes glowed with repressed excitement.

“It’s a fire,” said Hildegarde, with interest awakened. There was something about a big fire that fitted into her mood. “Let’s drive across the Boulevard and see.”

“We’ll only get into a mob,” he protested.

“Never mind. We’ll take that chance.”

“But, Miss von Essen, we may get shut off there and held up for hours.”

“You needn’t worry, if I don’t,” she said, sharply.

Cantor appeared more unwilling to obey her than a mere fear of delay could easily account for. One might have said that the region of the fire was one he very obviously wished to avoid, but he obeyed, nevertheless.

As they drew nearer and were able to guess at the locality of the fire Hildegarde said under her breath: “The Waite Motor Company—it is about there. Can that be it?”

“I don’t imagine so,” Cantor said, tensely; “their buildings are fire-proof, I’ve heard.”

“But it is,” Hildegarde insisted. “I’m sure it is. Hurry! It will be a tremendous fire. I want to see it.”

They turned and turned again. Before them lay the great mass of the Waite Motor Company’s plant, silhouetted against an eye-blasting inferno of roaring flame. The fire seemed to be not in the motor-plant, but to the rear of it.... They turned, made their way through crowds of people, avoided reinforcements of fire apparatus, and arrived at a point where the conflagration lay before them.

“It seems to be a lot of sheds and things,” Hildegarde said. Then, speaking to a police officer, she asked what was burning.

“Temporary buildings of the motor company,” he said. “They were put up this spring as warehouses. They tell me they were filled with motor-trucks for the Allies, hundreds of ’em—and with parts and supplies.”

“Fireworks started it, I suppose,” said Cantor, harshly.

“I don’t know.... Maybe so, but there’s a heap of things happening lately that fireworks hain’t got anythin’ to do with. Them Germans....”

“Nonsense!” said Cantor, vehemently.

“It isn’t nonsense,” Hildegarde said, sharply. “They could lay it on the fireworks. That’s why they did it to-day. I—” She stopped short and bit her lip.

An ambulance came forcing its way through the crowd, to be stopped close beside Hildegarde and Cantor.

“Oh,” she said, “some one’s hurt.... See who it is. Please do.” She turned to the policeman. “Won’t you ask who is hurt, please?”

The officer was obliging. He made his way to the ambulance, assisted in making a path for it to proceed, and then returned to the car.

“One of the watchmen,” he said. “Ambulance doctor says he was knocked on the head.... Hurt bad. Says it looks like somebody hit him a nasty lick. Skull’s cracked.”

Hildegarde shuddered. “Murder, too,” she whispered. Then: “I’ve seen all I want.... Let’s go home.”

They drove southward to Jefferson Avenue and eastward to the von Essen residence.... A car preceded them through the entrance and into the grounds. Hildegarde watched it, wondered who it could be. It stopped just before them and a man stepped out; he wavered, staggered, stumbled to the ground, and Hildegarde heard him cry out with pain.

She leaped from Cantor’s car and ran to the man’s side. “Who is it?” she asked, breathlessly. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

The man struggled to his feet, holding one hand with the other, and answered through his teeth, as one speaks who suffers agony.

“It’s Philip, the chauffeur, Miss von Essen. Playing with fireworks and got burnt pretty bad.” He breathed sharply.

“Come into the house quickly,” she said. “Mr. Cantor, take his arm. Help him in.”

As Cantor appeared the man started. “Steady,” Cantor said. “Steady.”

Hildegarde followed them into the house. She was frightened, she was doubtful. There was an odor about the chauffeur’s clothing which was not that of powder, nor was it exactly that of gasolene. She was sure it was kerosene.... What did that mean?

As the man entered the hall he stumbled, cried out breathlessly, and slumped forward in a faint. Cantor and Hildegarde bent over him as Herman von Essen came hurriedly out of the library.

“What’s this? What’s the matter?” he demanded, tensely.

“Nothing to alarm you,” said Cantor. “Your chauffeur got burnt a little with firecrackers, that’s all.”

Hildegarde switched on more lights as her father and Cantor carried the man to a lounge. She could see that his hands were badly burnt, but what was more startling, more significant to her, was that his lips were broken and bleeding and blood dripped from a gash in his scalp, injuries not commonly sustained through carelessness with fireworks.

She peered at her father. Manifestly he was frightened. He seemed to be looking to Cantor in a peculiar manner, not as one looks to a casual guest who is assisting in a minor emergency. Hildegarde wondered at that look. The man jerked convulsively, struggled to sit up.

“Leggo!” he said, hoarsely. “Leggo!” Then he saw and recognized Cantor. “Good job—” he began, and then stopped suddenly, peering craftily at Hildegarde. “Good job it wasn’t anythin’ but a little skyrocket,” he finished.

Hildegarde was standing tense, white. “There’s blood on your coat,” she said, in a choked voice. “Where were you shooting fireworks?” she demanded, and looked from the chauffeur to her father. Her father was still looking at Cantor.

“Go to bed,” said von Essen, roughly. “You’re in the way here.”

“I would go if I were you, Miss von Essen. This isn’t a pleasant sight for you.”

“I don’t suppose that poor watchman in the ambulance was a pleasant sight, either,” she said, her eyes on the chauffeur. The man started erect.

“What’s that?... What you say?... What you mean?”

Cantor’s hand was on his arm, and Hildegarde’s eyes were sharp enough to see that his fingers crushed in savagely.

“Be still! Sit down!” he said, and the man obeyed sullenly.

“Go to bed,” von Essen said, savagely.

Hildegarde was thinking, piecing together the evidence of her eyes and ears.... Cantor.... What had he to do with this? He seemed rightly to be a part of it.... His manner when he spoke to Philip!

“Will you go to bed?” her father said, stepping toward her.

“I’m going,” she said, unsteadily, almost hysterically. Indeed, she laughed unnaturally. “But before I go—I thought you’d like to know about—another great German victory.... They’ve burned part of the Waite Motor Company—and murdered a man.... Murdered a man!...” She turned and ran up the stairs to her room.

When she was out of hearing von Essen turned savagely to his chauffeur, “What made you come here like this, you fool?”

“Where else would he go?” Cantor asked, sharply. “No harm’s done.”

“What’s this about—a murder?” von Essen asked, shakily.

“Their damn watchman jumped me—one of them,” said Philip. “Before I could let him have it he landed on me—twice.... But I got him and got him good.... For God’s sake aren’t you ever going to do anything to stop this pain in my hands?”

Von Essen was shaking flabbily; his arrogance had disappeared; his cheeks were pasty.

“You’ve got the nerve of a rabbit,” Cantor said, sneeringly.

Up-stairs, Hildegarde was listening, listening not to what was being said down-stairs, but to another conversation she had overheard months ago, the conversation between her father and a man she had never been able to identify. She was trying to hear his voice now, trying to bring the sound of it back into her ears so that she could listen to it and compare it with Cantor’s familiar voice.

CHAPTER XIII

The summer and early autumn months of the year 1916 were, perhaps, the least illumined of any period of Potter Waite’s life. It was a period of drudgery without encouragement, of restless, brooding moods, of kicking against the pricks. There were hours when he felt himself and his work to be futile, when there was imminence of his return to the old life of the bar, the cabaret, the club. With the countenance and belief of one person he could have surmounted it all easily; but neither countenance nor belief was to be had of Hildegarde von Essen. If possible, she was farther from him than ever.

If there were one element of brightness, it was his realization of a change that was taking place in his father. Potter watched it with hope, saw the gradual movement of it, and read in it a token that other men of power throughout the nation might be changing as Fabius Waite was changing. Fabius Waite was beginning to think about the United States.

It required a blow touching his own person to jar Fabius from his foundations of Middle-Western security and conservatism, but he was too big a man, too able, too sound at the heart to continue to let the personal consideration sway him. He was a man to be depended on to view affairs in their larger aspects, and to weigh them, not with respect to their bearing upon himself and his concerns, but upon the nation in which he had risen to the summit of prosperity.

The fire in his plant, of demonstrated incendiary origin, gave him the initial impetus. Potter could almost find it in his heart to rejoice at that temporary disaster.

Though the criminals were not apprehended nor identified, Fabius Waite, correctly enough, laid the fire at the door of German plotters, and he expressed himself with less moderation than was his custom.

“It’s an infernal, sneaking business,” he said to Potter, “and a government which not only sanctions, but deliberately buys and pays for, such outrages is not a civilized government. Germany has thrown its decency into the sea.”

“But,” said Potter, to egg his father on, “it’s war. Your trucks were going to fight against Germany. Hadn’t she a right to destroy them?”

“Yes, openly, with cannon, or in a belligerent country. We are not belligerent. We’re serving all the world alike. If they have the idea America will stand for this sort of thing—”

“It makes a lot of difference, father,” said Potter, a trifle impertinently, “whose dog gets kicked.”

“Eh?”

“This thing has been going on for a year or more—but it never touched the Waite Motor Company before.”

“Um!” said Fabius, eying his son and taking up his paper. From time to time during the evening he would lower his paper enough to peer over it at Potter for a moment, and at such times it seemed as if he were about to offer some remark.

From that hour Potter was able to trace a gradual alteration in his father’s attitude toward Germany and toward the war—but most of all toward the United States.

During these months Potter worked not only on the designs for his aeroplane engine, but upon collecting and preserving information of general importance to the manufacturing of complete aeroplanes in enormous quantities. With all the facilities open to a private citizen he made his inquiries. Twenty millions of feet of the finest spruce must be obtained in order that four millions of feet of perfect spruce might be selected and sawed from it for the frames of the aeroplanes. This alone was a gigantic task. He studied the matter of obtaining linen for the wings, millions of yards of it—and the best linen comes from Ireland. It was a commodity of which England could spare little. Perhaps there would appear a substitute. Potter searched for it. Then there was the matter of metal for the engine, and the staggering problem of manufacturing a score of thousands of such engines as Potter knew would be required for fighting-aeroplanes—engines light in weight, perfect in efficiency, capable of developing two hundred, perhaps two hundred and fifty, horse-power. As best he could he attacked these problems, and stood amazed and terrified by the monstrousness of them. It gave him that quivering, frightened sensation one gets from thinking on infinity.

At this time the country was learning an unrelished lesson from the mobilization of our militia for the Mexican border, from the performances of our brace of aeroplanes, and from the apparent doubtful efficiency of our machine-guns. Roosevelt was coming into his own and deserving much of his countrymen by his campaign for preparedness. War was in the air, but war with a country far different from iron Germany. It was a step, unperceived by most, but doubtless clearly perceived by the man in the White House, toward a day of greater preparations. Public prints were demanding that we take half a million men and sweep through Mexico, janitor-like, to effect a cleansing. The Carrizal incident lit a dangerous flame. The arrival of Germany’s undersea merchant-vessel, the Deutschland, caused a wave of admiration for Germany’s persistency and inventiveness to sweep across the country. It was a victory of a sort calculated to arouse honest admiration. The second year of the war had closed with hope, for Verdun was beyond peradventure a gigantic victory for France, and the Somme offense had offered proofs of the possibility of shoving the entrenched German hosts toward their own frontier.... Italy had heightened the hopes at Gorizia, and Rumania had enlisted with the Allies.... November saw the ending of the Presidential campaign with the re-election of Mr. Wilson.

Even before this, Fabius Waite had traveled far. He was able in October, with the appearance of the German submarine U-53 off our coasts, and its entrance into the harbor of Newport.

Fabius Waite struck his table a vehement blow. “It’s a barefaced threat,” he declared. “It’s intimidation.” He went on at length, and Potter chuckled inwardly. To him his father represented public opinion, and by his father he sounded it; his father was to him the pulse of the nation’s thought, and that pulse was beginning to beat hotly.

Potter was seeing much of Cantor, and, though there were moments when he was jealous of the man, for Potter’s nature was a jealous nature, he was glad of Cantor’s company. Hildegarde was never mentioned by either of them. By Potter she was never mentioned at any time, and his friends were quick to learn that mention of her in his presence was apt to cause immediate disagreeable consequences. The sound of her name had a curious effect upon him. As one hardy young man said to Hildegarde herself, “I happened to mention you to Potter Waite to-day, and he acted as if somebody had blown him out—like a lamp, you know.”

“Bother Potter Waite!” she said; then, after a frowning pause, she added, spitefully, “You might keep a lot better company.”

“Oh, Potter’s mild nowadays! Hasn’t been on a tear in a year. Don’t know what’s got into him.... Dotty about patriotism and war and aeroplanes.”

“Why doesn’t he go across and fight, then? I despise conversational courage.”

“He stands well with you, doesn’t he?” the overbold young man said, with a laugh.

The look she gave him somewhat dampened his rashness. She did not speak, but her eyes were enough to nonplus the young gentleman utterly. He made haste to change the subject.

In spite of the seeming obstacle imposed by this young girl, the intimacy between Cantor and Potter not only continued, but increased, but beyond a certain point it did not go—and that point was any disclosure of what Potter was doing or how he was doing it. There, though Cantor veered up to the subject obliquely, Potter became filled with reserves. Cantor was unable to say of his own knowledge whether Potter was working on an aeroplane or a toy piano.

One other point is to be noted. The men who worked with Potter in the hangar were not strangers, not picked-up mechanics, but men whom he had known for years and trusted. Not one of them but was American-born, and though numerous individuals, presenting impeccable recommendations, applied from time to time for work with him, none was placed. His was a small, compact enterprise, and he was able to keep it under his eye. Though he scarcely considered himself of enough importance to attract the attention of the German spy vermin, he took his precautions as though he were of first interest to them. He believed in insurance.

In the latter part of the year Potter was visited more than once by officers wearing the insignia of the Signal Corps, Major Craig among them. To these men, at any rate, he was of importance, not so much, perhaps, for what he was doing at the time as for the potentialities of the future. The heir to the Waite Motor Company’s resources was a man of value.... But as 1916 became venerable and neared its end, they were compelled to admit his present consequence.

“I believe,” said a young captain to Major Craig, “that young Waite in Detroit knows more about aeroplanes, and more about this country’s equipment to produce them, than any other living man.”

“Unquestionably,” said the major. “He has made it his sole business to become that man.”

“Have you seen his engine?”

“No—only drawings; but he has added valuable ideas. He has studied, and I can safely say that his motor will be watched for with considerable impatience. It has qualities.”

“Most enthusiastic man I ever met,” said the captain. “It’s a fetish with him.”

“It’s a religion,” said the major, “and that is something mighty different.” Then: “He worries me sometimes. Something unpleasant has happened.”

Late in November the new engine was assembled, not completed, probably, as it would be manufactured, but perfected to a point where it deserved a trial. Potter prepared for the test and, when all was in readiness, wired Major Craig....

It so happened that on the morning following the day on which the telegram was despatched, Hildegarde von Essen went to the rooms over her father’s garage to carry certain delicacies to Philip’s wife, who was ill. She remained until she heard the car arrive in the garage below, and then, because she did not want to meet the man, be required to talk with him, whom she believed to be a murderer and a plotter, she arose hastily and stepped out upon the stairs. Philip was not alone; a stranger was with him. Involuntarily Hildegarde stopped and listened.

“This’ll be easy,” Philip was saying. “Softest job we’ve tackled—no work and no danger. Just set a charge and beat it.”

“No watchmen? You have rotten luck with watchmen?”

“There’s a man sleeps there, but he’ll be inside. It’s just a wooden shack. Built it for a hangar and then added to it. The boss would like some drawings and papers out of the place, and he’s been after them, but he can’t make the riffle.... He hadn’t expected to get busy so soon, but we got a tip that Waite had wired the Signal Corps to come on to watch a test of the engine. Well—there won’t be any test to speak of. That engine’ll fly without any wings.”

“TNT?” asked the other.

“Sure. That does the business.”

“To-night, eh?... It’s a nice place to work, ’way down on the shore there. Nobody likely to be passing.”

“He must ’a’ picked it on purpose for us,” Philip said, with a laugh.... “Eleven o’clock.”

“You’ll bring the stuff?”

“Naturally. And you be on hand prompt.”

“Who’s running this—von Essen or the boss?”

“What comes from one comes from the other, lately.”

“I’d love to be that watchman,” said the man as he moved toward the door. “He’ll wake up straddling a cloud.”

Hildegarde shuddered. Quietly she stepped back inside the door, stood there trembling a few moments, then opened it noisily and commenced to descend. She nodded to Philip, who looked at her queerly, and walked rapidly to the house.

She did not go to her room, but threw herself in a chair in the library. She could not be said to think for some time; her mind was in chaos. But matters arranged themselves before her after a time with cruel clearness. Her father was plotting deliberately to murder a man, for that is what it amounted to—to murder a watchman faithful at his post. That very night. And the watchman was Potter Waite’s! This attack was to be made upon him, and the labor which had meant so much to him for the past year would be brought to nothing, destroyed by one blast of devilish explosive.

She knew what Potter was doing; remembered those talks with him, his enthusiasm, his awakening to patriotism—and she, too, was a patriot. That work of his must have been of value; he must have achieved much to demand attention from her father and his companions. She was conscious of a glow of pride, and then was furious with herself for feeling pride. What interest had she in Potter Waite—and if she had an interest in him, or in any honest man, what could come of it? There was another decision she had reached: That she could be wife to no honest American. She, the daughter of a traitor, could make no honorable man the father of the grandchildren of a traitor. She had thought of those children—and of their shame, and of generations of shame that would follow them. The stigma would follow from mother to children to children’s children. Nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed since Benedict Arnold sought to betray his country, and his name was remembered, his treachery recalled, where noble men and noble acts had been forgotten. No children of hers should feel the shame that would be their birthright because the blood of Herman von Essen was in their veins. Such a conclusion is a terrible thing for a girl like Hildegarde, vivid with life, entering womanhood, ripe for love and marriage! But it was there, weighing her, overshadowing her, choking her with its noose of blackness.

Her duty was plain—her duty to her country and to decent citizenship; but opposing it was the demand of blood. To give her father over to the law was unthinkable. Had it been thinkable she doubted if she had evidence which would stand the test—her unsupported word.... But she could not see that crime committed, which it lay in her power to avert, and continue to live.... It would make her a party to the crime, an abettor of murder.... She could give warning; she must give warning—but how or to whom? How, without betraying her father?

There was but one answer that she could see—to go herself to Potter Waite, to warn him, to beg him to ask no questions as to the source of her information, to trust to his honor and his chivalry. She was confident she could trust him. In that moment she laid aside the pretense that she despised him—but she did not admit that she loved him. She saw him as a man, an American gentleman, trustworthy, brave, dependable. She rested herself on that quality of dependability; felt she could trust herself to it utterly. She could give warning; put him on his guard, frustrate the plotters—and escape from the complexity without betraying the secret she must not betray.

She dressed for the street, called for her car, which she told Philip she would drive herself, and started toward Potter’s hangar. She did not drive slowly; could not have driven slowly, for there was a certain frenzy upon her, driving her. Her car rushed along the broad street at reckless, headlong speed. Scarcely slackening her speed, she careened into the road that led toward the shore and the hangar, slammed on the brakes at the very door, and sprang out. She did not hesitate at the door, but snatched it open. Potter Waite was in the seat of a newer, smaller aeroplane than the old machine of their adventure.

“Potter,” she cried. “Potter....”

He looked, sprang from the machine, and was before her in an instant, his face glorified, his eyes alight with joy.

“Garde,” he said, exultantly, “you’ve come!... You’ve come back to me!”

She shrank from him, put out her hand as though to hold him away. “No,” she whispered, in sudden terror. “No. Not that.”

“But you’ve come. You’ve come. I’ve dreamed it. I’ve seen you coming through that door.” He stopped suddenly, stepped back, and the glory died upon his face. He needed no words to tell him love had not brought her.

“I had to come,” she cried. “There’s going to be murder—here.... They know your engine is ready—that you wired yesterday.... They’re going to blow it up—”

“What’s that?” he demanded. “How do you know I wired yesterday? Who told you? Nobody knows that but myself.”

“You mustn’t ask.... You must promise. I can tell nothing—nothing except that they’re coming to-night to blow up this place—to steal drawings if they can....”

“Who?”

“German spies.... You must believe me, but you mustn’t ask me how I know. Promise you won’t ask, or try to find out.”

“Not ask!... What do you mean? Tell me again.”

“To-night this building—with your watchman—is to be blown up. Some explosive called TNT.... It’s true. How would I know about your telegram?... You must do something. You must stop it.”

“I’ll stop it,” he said, suddenly erect, menacing. He was not startled, she saw, not afraid. He would be ready. It was so she knew he would meet an emergency. “But you,” he demanded, “how are you in this?”

“You mustn’t ask.... Isn’t it enough that I’ve come to warn you—isn’t that enough?”

“No,” he said, “it is not enough ... if you know these plotters. They are fighting against your country. They are dangerous. If you know them, if you can lead me to them, you must do it. Can’t you see? It doesn’t matter what stands in the way, you must do it.... For your country.”

“No,” she said, in terror. “No.... I’d rather die. I can’t.... I won’t. I came here to warn you, because I trusted you. I’ve done all I can.... You must not ask more.”

“Why?” he asked, sternly.

“I won’t answer anything. I won’t tell you anything more.... Oh, can’t you see?...” She broke out furiously: “I could kill them; I could see them tortured. I’d laugh to see them tortured.... I love my country as well as you do, Potter Waite, and I hate them—but I can’t tell.... I risked everything to warn you—”

“Hildegarde,” he said, stretching his arms out toward her, “was that why you came—was that all? Wasn’t there anything else? Didn’t you think about me?... I’ve waited for some word.... You know you’ve never doubted that I love you.... You’ve had time to think about that night, and to reason. You know I was right.... You can’t be holding that up against me.” Suddenly he was the old reckless, headstrong Potter, ruled by impulse, driven by desire. He crushed her into his arms and held her savagely while he kissed her cold cheeks, her lips, her brow. “You’ve come,” he said, hoarsely, “and you’ve come for keeps.... You’re mine. You know you’re mine.”

She struggled like an entrapped wild thing; but her struggles were futile. All at once she became limp, flexible in his arms; her tense soul became limp, flexible; she had endured to her utmost, and the breaking-point was reached.

“Hold me closer,” she sobbed. “Oh, closer—closer....”

“You came,” he said, and then repeated it over and over again, as if he were suddenly face to face with a divine marvel. “You came.” Then: “Has the time been hard for you? As it has for me?... If it had been you would have come sooner.” He lifted her in his arms and held her as if she were a child, and a warm, sweet feeling of comfort and contentment covered her. She was happy with such happiness as she had never known. “Tell me,” he said in her ear, “tell me that you love me. I want to hear you say it.”

“I love you,” she said, obediently, and as she said it she realized that it was true, had been true, would always be true, as long as life should last.

He laughed boyishly, joyously. “Shall we elope again? Or what shall we do?... You mustn’t leave me long. How soon can you come to me forever?”

Again the darkness descended upon her, the black noose fastened about her throat. How soon could she come to him forever? How soon? She laughed strangely, and answered him with silence, but in the leaden weight of that silence she was saying: “Never.... Never.”

“Put me down,” she said, in a voice that compelled him to obey. When she stood facing him, her knees trembling, a look of such piteousness on her face as made him draw a great breath of solicitude, she looked into his eyes—looked with steadiness. “I can never come to you, Potter,” she said. “Never.”

He laughed. “Don’t joke, sweetheart. I can’t bear that sort of joking now.”

“It’s no—joke,” she said, brokenly. “I—I never want to see you again. You must never try to see me.... Never speak of this. I—oh—I can never marry any man.”

“What?” he asked, sharply.

“I can never marry any man.... You don’t know.... There are terrible things—frightful things.... I am defiled, defiled.... And I love you....”

She turned suddenly and ran from the room, sobbing and panting as she ran. He did not follow her, but looked after her with wide eyes into which horror was making its way.

“Defiled!” he whispered once; then he stood erect, staring straight before him while one might have counted to a hundred slowly. After that he walked to the door of his private room, stepped inside, and shut the door after him.

CHAPTER XIV

It had been with Potter as if he had stood upon a lofty height surveying wonders and had fallen with incredible swiftness through darkness to strike the ground with frightful impetus. He felt the shock of that impact as if his physical body had been in collision instead of his soul.... Defiled! The word was stamped in letters that burnt across his consciousness; his brain groped and fumbled about it as if it were some strange, monstrous thing no intelligence could grasp. Every other created thing was obliterated.

That word stood isolated in the middle of his universe, and his thoughts, mothlike, fluttered about it, singeing their wings in its flame. There was no coherent thought, only dazed consciousness of an awful wound.

There came a rap on his door, which grew insistent. “Come in,” he called, mechanically, and a workman entered.

“Everything’s ready. Maybe you’d like to look her over before you go home.”

“Eh?” said Potter. “What’s that?”

The man repeated. “It’s quitting-time,” he added.

Quitting-time! It had been daylight when he entered his room; now darkness had fallen. He had been unconscious of the unraveling of time.

“Hey, Mort, telegram for the boss,” another voice called from the machine-shop. Mort disappeared and presently placed the little yellow envelope in Potter’s hand. He opened it as an automaton might have opened it.

“Leaving Washington to-day; arrive Detroit in morning,” it said, and was signed “Craig.”

For a brief interval Potter was careless whether Major Craig ever arrived or not. The whole matter seemed blurred, distant, as some vague memory.... Then came a sudden vivid clearness, a cold, painful clearness, akin to that dreadful condition into which arrives a man who cannot sleep. There was a white incandescence about his perceptions; something stark, sharply distinct about realities. He leaped to his feet.

“Call the men here,” he said.

The men came in, surprise showing on their faces.

“Boys,” said Potter, “they’re going to blow us up to-night.”

The men burst into exclamation, interrogation.

“It’s our turn,” Potter said, and there was bitterness in his voice. “German spies.... They’re coming to-night. I’ve been—warned.”

Perhaps he had it in his mind to make a request of them; perhaps he had felt their loyalty to be such as to require no request of him in the circumstances. None was needed.

“God help ’em if they come!” said Mort, savagely, and he spoke for all.

“They were going to send old Angus up with the shop,” Potter said. There was no feeling in his tone now; somehow he was without emotion. “Without a chance for himself,” he added.

“The damn sn’akin’ blaggards!” growled Pat Cassidy. “L’ave it to us, sorr. Gerrman spies, is it?”

“They’re bringing explosives—TNT. Any man that doesn’t like it can go home—and nobody’ll think the worse of him.”

Pat faced the quartet of his fellow-machinists. “Think the worse of him, is it? Is there a man here which the white liver of him wants to run from a thafe of a Gerrman spy?... There is none, sorr. We’re all Amerricuns here, sorr, and, loike Amerricuns, we stand togither....”

“Have you a bit of a flag, now, Mr. Waite?” asked Mort. “Seems like we ought to have one showin’.”

“There’s one in the locker, Mort. Run it up.”

Wisdom would have asked the police for protection. It is not strange that Potter and his men never thought of that. It was they who were being attacked, and they felt themselves well able to manage the defense—that and a little more. It was a thing characteristic not only of them as individuals, but of their Americanism.

“Lights out, except the lamp Angus keeps burning—and keep quiet. I’ll stay here with Angus. The five of you scatter around the place; keep hidden and—”

“Give ’ell to anythink that comes h’along,” said Cockney Tom.

“Exactly,” Potter agreed.

They armed themselves with implements of peace, with huge wrenches, machinists’ hammers, bars, and went out quietly. Presently old Angus, the watchman, arrived. Potter would have sent him home, but the old man felt himself one of them and entitled to his share in the matter. He remained.

Because of the isolated position of the hangar, down on the shore of the lake, it was possible the plotters might make their attempt at any time after the normal hour for the activities of the place to cease had arrived. Hildegarde had not told Potter the hour she had heard named, so there could be no moment during which vigilance could be relaxed. Potter walked softly from window to window, watching, listening. Resolutely he shouldered Hildegarde out of his thoughts; the suspense, the impending danger, made it possible partially to do so. But not wholly. One might say that she stood upon the threshold alertly waiting the slightest relaxation of vigilance to slip in. And slip in she did more than once—to be ejected after a sordid mental scuffle.

Potter’s curious mental state persisted—that white light of clarity which embraced everything. He did not seem to have to reason to reach conclusions; if one could conceive of flames whose temperature was not heat, but frightful cold; if one could conceive of those flames casting their vivid, super-brilliant light so that it froze to ice crystal everything upon which it fell, one might understand his sensations. That and a silence as if the world had been dead a million years—a sense of the dead silence of things in which the dropping of a pin would have wrenched and reverberated around the globe! It had a nightmare quality which lacked only a horrid terror to make it cross the hair-line between reason and unreason....

Old Angus pottered about, a huge Stilson wrench clutched in his hand. The others were invisible. Potter looked at his watch; it was ten minutes past eleven. In a vague way he wondered if it were ten minutes past eleven on that same night or if years had intervened.

He was peering through a window that faced toward the lake. Out of the obscurity of a mist arisen from the lake emerged dark movement, and the movement resolved itself into a black daub that bore resemblance to the shape of a man. It was followed by a second black daub and by a third. Potter watched them, every nerve tense as the strings of a violin. Were they his own men walking about on sentry? He could not tell. He stepped softly to the door at the opposite side of the building, opened it silently, crept out, and made his way with cat-tread around the corner, there to wait, crouching.

The black daubs stole closer. There was not even a whisper. One of them knelt beside the hangar. There was a slight sound—the ignition of a match—a shaded glow—then a tiny splutter.... Potter knew. His guard had been passed; the enemy had set its bomb, had lighted its fuse. He arose and leaped upon the kneeling man, nor did he know that as he leaped he shouted.

The man upon whom he had sprang, surprised though he was, resolved into dynamic action—soundless action. Locked together they rolled over and over. Potter felt the impact as another man leaped upon them—but that other, in the murk of the night and the fog, could not tell friend from foe. Again Potter shouted. There were answering shouts. One antagonist tore away and plunged into the mist; the other, thrusting a savage knee against Potter’s chest, broke the grip of his arms and rolled out of reach. Both sprang to their feet, one in flight, the other in pursuit. But Potter stopped. He remembered. Close beside him spluttered that fuse. He leaped upon it, seized it, hurled the deadly thing toward which that spark was crawling, far in the direction of the lake.... Now he was surrounded by men—his own men.... And then came a mighty cough, as if the universe itself had coughed with all the strength of its hidden forces. There was an instant of light and fire, the impact of an irresistible energy. Stunned, deafened, blinded, Potter was hurled to the ground....

“My Gawd!...” said a voice.

Potter struggled to his feet and stood reeling. “Are you there?... Is any one hurt?” he asked.

The men crowded about him, shaken, trembling. They went inside and stood staring at one another.

“My Gawd!... said Cockney Tom, again.

“They got through us,” Cassidy said, stupidly.

“Most got yuh,” Mort said, and cursed, “and us standin’ around like bats.”

“It’s all right,” Potter said, unsteadily. “It didn’t come off.”

Tom brought lanterns and they went out again into the night. Between the hangar and the lake was a crater such as a dozen men might have dug in a day of hard laboring. They circled it in widening circles. Potter stooped to pick up a hat—and it was wet. At a distance Tom cried aloud, and they gathered about him, awed to silence, for he held out mutely a human arm....

CHAPTER XV

Tears did not sit well on Hildegarde von Essen; one did not expect them of her. Somehow it would have been more congruous to see her emotions using some other outlet—swearing with intent, incisive daintiness or dashing the bric-à-brac on the floor. Yet she was crying, not dismally, with girlish abandon, but with a certain dynamic intensity, a clumsiness, if you will, that bespoke neglect of practice in the accomplishment.

She had returned half an hour ago from Potter’s hangar, from listening to his claim upon her love, from feeling the demand of his arms about her, from a glad moment of surrendering her lips to his lips, and from the blind joy of translating her heart into words.... Thirsting on desert sands, she had seen in mirage a green oasis where welled up a never-failing spring of love; or, rather, it was as if she had seen a veritable oasis, a living spring, and by her own black magic had transformed it to mirage.... She had put away the man she loved and declared herself defiled!

That Potter had put upon that word a construction far different from her own she did not realize. Perhaps it would not have mattered if she had. Could one choose between defilements? It would have been impossible for her to comprehend an obscenity which would have befouled her more than her father’s treachery and treason had done.... And she wept.

It was not in her to love with reserve, mildly, sweetly, as it was not in her to live calmly, staidly, circumspectly. When she gave her love it was with fiery recklessness, holding back nothing, making no compromises ... and that love had been caught in the ruthless spring trap of a horrid reality, caught and tortured and restrained of its freedom. The fire-white cruelty of it was her knowledge that her love could not die.

Hours slipped by, one upon the heels of another, and thwarted love took for its companion fear.... Potter was in danger. She had warned him, but would her warning not bring him within the grasp of a peril he would not otherwise have approached? She knew it would. Potter was not one to leave his battles to other champions; what was his own he would defend. When those men came, bearing awful death in their hands, they would find him there. She could see him waiting.

Then the massive house shuddered, windows rattled, bits of glass tinkled to the floor, and a mighty roar swallowed up the voices of the earth.... Hildegarde uttered no cry, made no movement, but stood erect in the middle of her room, eyes staring, fists clenched. She knew! They had succeeded, the thing was done!... But Potter—had it touched him? Had it mangled, torn, killed him? She had but one thought now—she must know.

She tore open her door, rushed down the stairs and burst into her father’s library. Herman von Essen was standing in the middle of the floor, pasty-faced, unsteady, a man face to face with a vision of horror.

“What was that?” demanded Hildegarde.

Von Essen gulped, started, opened his mouth soundlessly, and then found stammering speech. “I—don’t—know,” he said.

“You lie!” she said, in a voice brittle, metallic.

He stared at her, uncomprehending, and wagged his head vaguely.

“You lie!” she repeated. “You know what it was—you know it was murder!”

“Murder....” he repeated. “No....”

“He was there,” she said. “If you’ve killed him—”

Von Essen shook himself together, peered at her dazedly, seemed to grasp a sinister knowledge in her words. “Who was where?” he snarled. “What are you talking about?”

“Potter Waite was there,” she said.

“Potter Waite!... What do you know—” He stopped, stared at her as if he had not seen her before, and his face grew livid with something menacing—the expression of a rat driven into a corner. He sprang upon her, caught her by the shoulders, shook her brutally. “What do you know?... What do you know?” he repeated, again and again.

She tore herself free, backed away from him. “I know that you are a traitor and a murderer,” she said. “I know what that explosion was.... Don’t touch me! Don’t dare come near me!”

She could not hold him off. His heavy hands clutched her again and drew her face close to his, and in his eyes she saw terror and rage glowing side by side. His voice was a snarl. “You know, do you?... You’ve been spying.... You’ve been listening.” He broke into German, searching the language for epithet and invective. Then, “You know.... Tell me what you know—everything you know.”

“I know,” she panted, “that you’re a traitor to your country, and a murderer.... I know you’re a plotter, a German spy.... I know this house is full of plots—and treason.... Your chauffeur—everybody here is in it.... That watchman at the Waite Motor Company—Philip killed him.... I know that sound was an explosion—your explosion.... And Potter Waite was there.” Her voice rose shrilly, “If you’ve killed him—”

“If I’ve killed him—what?” he said, hoarsely. “What?” He did not wait for her to answer. “What else do you know? Who else do you know?”

“I know you and I know Philip.” Her eyes defied him.

“Who else?”

“No one.”

“Are you lying?... If you lie to me—”

She laughed. “I’d lie to you till I choked with lies,” she said. “I hate you.... I despise you—my own father.... You have done this thing ... this horrible thing.... Benedict Arnold.... And you’ve defiled me—I’m of your blood ... your daughter.... Thank God mother is dead.... Yes, I’d lie to you if I had a reason. If I could only tell the world the lie that you’re not my father! You abominable, squalid traitor.... But I’m not lying to you now.... Oh, I wish I knew more of your kind.”

He roared incoherently and shook her as if she were without weight. “You know, eh?... Well, what do you intend to do about it? I’ll shut your mouth—”

“If—you’ve—killed—Potter—” she gasped.

“I’ll shut your mouth,” he repeated, and flung her into a chair. Then he pulled shut the lofty doors and paced up and down before her, muttering. She did not cower, did not show fear, but crouched there, glaring at him with burning eyes.... Ten minutes passed—fifteen.... Footsteps, unsteady, staggering, sounded in the hall. Knuckles rapped on the door.

“Who’s there?” demanded von Essen, with the catch of awakened terror in his voice.

“Me—Philip.”

Von Essen strode to the doors and flung them open. “Come in,” he snarled. “Come in....”

Philip, face blackened and bloody, stumbled into the room and stood panting.

“What is it?” von Essen demanded in German. “What’s the matter?”

Philip stared at Hildegarde and motioned. Her father turned and scowled at her. “Never mind her. She’s been spying. She knows. We’ll have to shut her mouth.... What’s wrong?”

“We set the bomb—I lighted the fuse.... They were watching the place. Somebody jumped on me. Young Waite. Weimer jumped in and we broke away. The place was full of men.... We ran. Somebody grabbed the bomb and threw it.... Weimer was fifty feet away from me—and it struck right behind him.” Philip shut his eyes and shivered. “They’ll never find a trace of him,” he said, shakily.

Hildegarde sprang toward him. “Was anybody else hurt?... Any of Potter’s men?... Potter?”

“No,” he said. “They chased us—but I got away.”

“Were you followed?” von Essen shouted. “What made you come here?”

“It was safe enough. Nobody saw me.... I couldn’t go far. When I saw that thing land I threw myself flat—but it shook me up bad.... I’ll have to lay up.” He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

Hildegarde closed her eyes. “Potter’s safe!... Potter’s safe!” her heart was singing.

“We’ll get you to bed in a minute,” von Essen said, “but we’ve got to settle with this—this daughter of mine—this spy.”

Philip raised his head. “What about her?”

“She’s found out things.... We’ve got to shut her mouth.”

He caught his daughter roughly by the arm and dragged her to her feet. “You’ve meddled in something—” he began.

“Hold on,” Philip said. “You’re going at it wrong.” He turned to Hildegarde. “Miss von Essen,” he said, “you wouldn’t give your father away, would you? You wouldn’t do that?... How’d you look in court swearing away your own father’s life, eh? Think of that.... And you’ve got friends here? How’d you like to have them know? Get the idea?... We’d be tried for murder, most likely.... Want to go through life with folks pointing at you as a murderer’s daughter?”

“Traitor’s daughter!” she said, between her teeth. Then, “Are you sure Potter Waite is safe—are you sure?”

“I heard his voice shouting behind me.... Nothing touched him.” He watched her face intently, trying to read its expression, to catch some clue. “Now be reasonable.... You don’t want the world to know, eh?... Or Potter Waite to know? How’d you like for him to know your father tried to blow up his place? Wouldn’t like it, would you?” he finished, as he saw her wince.

She fixed her eyes upon her father’s lowering face. “Father,” she said, “if you’ll give it up—if you’ll promise to stop this sort of thing—and be loyal ... or, if you can’t be loyal, to stop helping Germany....”

“Sure he will,” said Philip, winking at von Essen. “We all will, Miss. Tickled to death to promise. We’re about filled up with the business, anyhow.”

“If you had killed Potter—” she said to her father.

“But we didn’t,” Philip said, quickly.

“No—you didn’t.... And he’s my father. I’ve thought of that ... night after night and day after day.... I can’t expose him.... I despise him, but even my country couldn’t ask me to expose him.”

“Huh!...” snorted von Essen.

She drooped pitifully. His brutality, the stress of the moments she had passed through, left her weak, trembling.

“Your mother used to believe in a God,” said von Essen, and there was the hint of a sneer in his voice. “Do you take it from her?”

“I believe,” she said, simply.

He strode to a bookcase, drew out a Bible, over which himself and fellow German dabblers in materialistic philosophy had wrangled, and thrust it before her. “Put your hand on it,” he ordered. “Put your hand on it and swear that you will never repeat to a human being what you know about this business.... Swear!”

She drew back from her father, recoiling from the thing he demanded of her. To her it seemed impious that her father’s hands should touch that book; blackly impious that he should drag it down into the mire of his own unholy purposes.

“No,” she whispered, “not that.... No.”

“Yes, I say.... Swear.”

Philip stepped a pace forward. “Wait,” he said. “You’re going at this like a bull. Have a little sense about it, von Essen.... Listen, Miss von Essen, this thing’s no joke to your father. You’ve scared him, and he ain’t acting right. You listen to me a minute. Here’s how we stand: If you blow on us it’s more ’n likely we dangle at the end of a rope. Just stop a minute and see if you want your father dangling from a rope.... Not so much on account of him, you understand, but on account of—your mother....” He had seen the look on Hildegarde’s face when Herman von Essen had mentioned his wife, and a keen brain lay back of his sharp eyes. “It’s her you got to think of.... If she was alive it would kill her, likely, to know her husband was hung for a spy. Now wouldn’t it? She was a good woman like you....”

“She was good ... good.”

“To be sure.... And folks thinks of her as good. You got her memory to look after, hain’t you? Well?... Wouldn’t folks begin to think things about her if the man she picked out to marry was hung, public-like, and the papers was full of him?”

She moaned and shut her eyes. She saw those papers with their screaming headlines.

“And think of you. After all, he’s your father. Nobody expects a daughter to betray her father, and nobody thinks any better of her if she does.... They’d say your father was a traitor to the country, but that you was a traitor to your own flesh and blood. I know folks, Miss von Essen, and that’s how they’d look at it. They’d point to you and say, ‘There’s the girl that got her father hung.’ And you couldn’t never bear that.... It’s a bad mess any way you look at it, and there hain’t any way out of it for you but to keep quiet.... Jest make believe you don’t know anything. You’d catch it double, Miss. Once for givin’ away your father, and once for bein’ the daughter of a spy that was hung.... Your mother would ’a’ stood by him like it was her duty to do. Bein’ as she’s gone, you’re sort of in her place....”

“Mother,” Hildegarde said, in a voice so low there was almost no sound above a breath. She bowed and touched her lips to the cold leather. “I swear,” she said.... “And now may I go? I’m—so—tired.”

“Let me help you to your room, Miss,” said Philip, but she would not let him touch her, and tottered up the stairs alone.

When she was gone von Essen turned apprehensive eyes upon his chauffeur. Philip shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t need to worry about her,” he said. “That sort of thing means a heap to a woman.... She’s safe.”

CHAPTER XVI

Potter Waite appeared in the morning papers in a new character, and in his new character occupied even more space and bigger headlines than he had ever conquered in the old. Capable reporters had found a story to their liking, and, what was more, a story with extraordinary news value and interest to the public. It was not merely a local story, but one of a sort which some newspaper men call “A. P. stuff.” It is not the duty of a reporter to assist in hiding anybody’s light under a bushel, to minimize heroism or rascality. Quite the contrary. He polishes his hero’s armor; he darkens the shadows about his miscreant.

So Potter was held up to public view as a hero of sorts, and it is characteristic of the public that there were few to run back through the index of memory and drag to light those closed pages of reckless deviltry, of gaudy misbehavior. Potter had won for himself a new character.

Doubtless there were some devout enthusiasts who held him a convert; a captive dragged up the sawdust trail at Billy Sunday’s chariot wheel, for Billy had, since early September, been belaboring the devil and torturing the English language in his huge tabernacle on Grindley Field—once the athletic domain of the parent Detroit Athletic Club. Billy had ranted to the glory of God and the discomfiture of evil, and gone his way, leaving behind him a state which, on its November election-day, voted the abolition of traffic in intoxicants. Perhaps Billy claimed the credit for both Potter’s renovated character and the coming drought. There is some justice in his claim to a fair share in the latter.

Major Craig and his two companions read the papers in the spacious reading-room of the Athletic Club where Potter had put them up, reading with a grain of salt at hand, for military men suspect the utterances of the press, but not underestimating the main fact—that Potter was a fighting-man and had done eagerly what battle was offered him.

“If Waite’s engine has as good stuff in it as he has in himself,” the major said to Captain Ball, “our trip will be worth while.”

“He seemed a capable chap,” said Ball, who had met Potter in Washington, “but offish.”

“Something’s eating the boy,” said the major—and then arose with extended hand as Potter entered.

“Where’s the laurel wreath?” he asked, with a smile.

“My men were so proud of themselves that they had to blab,” Potter said, dismally. “They had to do a bit of bragging.”

“It looks as if they were proud of you—and their bragging was about their boss.”

Potter smiled wryly, “Yes, confound them!”

“It’s a valuable quality—to be able to capture the liking of the men who work for you.”

“They’re good men, mighty good men.”

Potter was shaking hands with Captain Ball and Lieutenant Emmons. “Have you breakfasted?”

“All ready to go with you,” said the major. “They really did no damage?”

“The men are busy replacing broken glass, that’s all.”

Presently they were driving through back streets toward Jefferson Avenue, and out that broad thoroughfare to Potter’s workshop.

“I hope you won’t be disappointed in the looks of my motor,” Potter said. “It’s rough—not finished up and polished like these European aeroplane motors. I planned with the idea of a quick and large production, and cut out all folderols.”

He led the way to the machine, and for a couple of hours the Signal Corps men studied it with technical minuteness and precision. They missed no valve, no bolt, no lock-nut.

“Develops a two-hundred horse-power?” asked Captain Ball.

“A fraction over.”

The room was filled with smoke and fumes from the exhaust of the roaring motor. Potter motioned for doors and windows to be opened.

“The ’plane is a bit clumsy,” he said, “but it will show what the motor can do.... And to-day’s as fine for a flight as we’ve had this fall. Will you trust your neck with me, Major?”

The major climbed into the passenger’s seat without a word. The machine was wheeled out, its propeller began to mangle the air, and the craft dropped the earth with a sort of gentle suddenness. Out over the sparkling lake they sped, attaining greater altitude and wafting miles behind them as with a breath. Beautifully, powerfully, rhythmically the motor labored, and the major’s eyes glowed as his skilled brain took note of the performance, analyzing and appraising it.

Suddenly Potter veered to the northward, taking a course he had followed once before with a quite different passenger—a fairy prince—for companion. In a time unbelievably short they were over the piers and the panorama of the Flats expanded before them. Potter descended, veered again over Muscamoot, flew lower and lower. He was looking for something. A couple of hundred feet above the ground he skimmed—and then he saw. Just at his right lay an island, an island he recognized. Dingy buildings were visible.... There was the channel where he had tried to land his hydroplane—there was the tree against which they had brushed, and the broken branches hung as a testimony to the fact. There was no sign of life.

But Potter was satisfied. He knew that his dream had been no dream. None could convince him now that his ’plane had fallen on the distant shores of Baltimore Bay. He knew! He knew that beneath him lay the spot where he had crashed to earth; he knew that himself, his companion, his machine, had been conveyed, at great expenditure of labor, to a distance.... He knew there must have been a reason, but what reason?

Cantor.... That point was vague. There was no evidence in support of that vague memory. Had Cantor bent over him as he lay? Had he seen the face of the man who had become his close acquaintance on that lonely island enfolded in the heart of a great marsh? If the main fact were true the subordinate fact might be true as well.... The whole matter was outré, bizarre, sinister.

Once more the machine veered, banked skilfully and throbbed cityward. It descended in a not over skilful landing and bounded clumsily until it subsided into motionlessness.

“I brought him back safely,” Potter called to the captain.

“And,” said Major Craig, with quiet satisfaction, “I’ve ridden with a motor.... You’ve got a motor, Mr. Waite.”

“You think so?... You think it will be worth something?”

“Of course this has been no real test, but you’ve shown enough to make a real test necessary. I believe this motor of yours is far and away the best motor for its purpose in America. That’s something. But over there, Mr. Waite, improvements are made overnight that render existing types obsolete. The ’planes of six months ago are antediluvian. The ’planes of a year hence will be—nobody knows what. But you’ve got something, something to work from, anyhow.”

“Speed,” said Captain Ball, succinctly.

“This ’plane doesn’t give the motor a chance,” said Potter. “With one of those little French fighting-machines I think I could show you speed.”

Craig nodded. Then Potter and the officers immersed themselves in technicalities of weight per horse-power, lubrication, machining, high altitude, and such future matters as standardization, possible output, time of manufacture. With these matters the day passed.

They dined at the club. At the table next on their right sat Fred La Mothe and a young man, of recent prosperity, named Roper. Potter called across:

“I hear your father has bought a new Whistler, Fred?”

“He’s all puffed up over it,” Fred said, with a laugh.

Roper was applying himself to a steak. He lifted his face and said, “Whistler, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a new car on me. Where’s it made?”

“The production is very small,” said Fred, without a smile. “Mostly they come from Europe.”

That represented one phase of Detroit, the part of it which had grown so rapidly it had shot past certain stations on the way without so much as a knowledge of their existence. It was producing lopsided men. Roper did not know Whistler, probably had never heard of Meredith, was too busy to understand or care that his speech was crude, sometimes vulgar, always studded with solecisms; yet a great motor company found his knowledge of production in bulk such that it gladly paid him twenty-five thousand dollars a year for the use of it.

“Supposing,” said the major, “that we should need this twenty-five thousand aeroplanes next year. If events should shape themselves so that we were drawn into the war in the spring, how long would it be before we could hope for deliveries?”

“I imagine you are better equipped to answer that than I,” said Potter. “A great deal depends on the start. If a motor were adopted and orders given now, we could probably begin making deliveries in six or seven months—if we were assured the material and the labor—and if factories could be found to equip for their manufacture?”

“Have you any doubts of that?”

“I’ve estimated that the initial cost of equipping my father’s plant to make engines alone will be upward of half a million dollars,” Potter said. “I don’t know how he would feel about going ahead to that extent. Six months ago I would have said he would never consider it. Now I rather believe he would.... Some manufacturers here would jump at the opportunity—from patriotic motives—without a thought of profit. Others would have to be shown where the profit was.”

“Would cost and ten per cent. interest them?”

“If you could get them waked up. You’d have to get them to think less about themselves and more about the country.”

“But don’t you think a change is taking place in public opinion?”

Potter paused before replying. “Yes,” he said. “There has been a change, a slow movement. Right now I wouldn’t even guess how far it had traveled.”

The major leaned back in his chair and gazed at the table-cloth; his companions did not speak. At the next table two men in the prime of their middle age were talking in tones louder than one expects in such a place. But these men were privileged. Both were millionaires; both were manufacturers of automobiles; both had worked, less than twenty years ago, as machinists at the bench. They were big men, rough men, but able men.

“This gin they serve here can’t be touched in town,” said the heavier of the two.

“It’s bully.... Reminds me, are you getting ready for the long thirst, Bob?”

“You can lay a sweet bet on that. I’m planting enough in the cellar to last till the birdies nest again—and I’m looking out for more.... Hey, waiter.”

The waiter approached.

“Call the steward. I want to talk to him.”

Presently the steward appeared.

“Say,” began the millionaire who had summoned him, “how much of this gin you got? Enough to carry you through to May first?” May 1st, 1917, was the date on which the state of Michigan became an arid waste.

“I’ll have a surplus, sir.”

“How much?”

The steward told him.

“Um!... What would that come to?”

The steward figured a moment. “About seven thousand dollars, sir.”

“I’ll take it. Have it delivered—”

“Whoa there!” interrupted his companion. “You’ll take half of it. I want the other half myself.”

“Nothing doing. There ain’t enough to split.... But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll flop the dice with you for it. Winner gets the gin, loser gets the bill.”

The other hammered the table with his palm. “Fetch on your dice,” he said, boisterously.

A box of dice was quickly set before them.

“Best two out of three?” asked Bob.

“Naw.... Let’s have swift action. One flop.”

“All right,” said Bob, rattling the cubes in their box and spreading them on the table with practised hand. “Beat that, my boy.” Three fives, an ace and a four lay exposed. “My gin, I guess,” Bob crowed.

“Not while the old man keeps his strength,” replied his friend. “Just peel your eye and watch this.” He made the cast. A pair of fours was the result. “Oh, hell!” he said, not petulantly, not angrily, but as if it were a duty. He pushed the dice back, and the incident was closed; apparently he brushed it from his mind as he had brushed back the ivory cubes. “Say, I hear Bogel is going to reduce the price of his car a hundred dollars....”

In Detroit in that day men could hazard seven thousand dollars on one cast of the dice without a quickened throb of the pulse. To those two the winning or losing of that sum was a trivial thing, a sort of matching of pennies.

“Did you see that?” Potter asked of the major.

“Yes,” said Major Craig, staring unbelievingly.

“Well, do you think our big men in Detroit are going to interest themselves in anything so dinky as a European war?... That’s the attitude of mind that frightens me, Major. It’s here; it’s all about us. A big, ingrowing selfishness; the ability to squander and the will to squander.... Do you think those men give a tinker’s dam about the United States or what happens to it so long as their ability to throw away thousands is left uninterfered with?”

Major Craig frowned, did not reply at once, but presently said: “It’s Gargantuan; the thing is so big that it almost wins itself dignity—this highflying of your city. I’m not sure it’s so bad; it’s more like boyishness.... There’s nothing mean about it; it’s big, and its bigness bespeaks big men. It’s very American. No other nation could produce it.... No, Mr. Waite, I don’t think this is the thing to worry us. There’s something here, something tremendous, something of marvelous vitality—like an earthquake or Niagara. If it can be harnessed—put to use.”

Potter shook his head.

“It will take a jar and a shock,” the major said, “but I believe the day will come when America will thank God for your spenders, your high-rollers—when they wake up. There’s an openness, an open-handedness, about them.... I believe they’re men.... I believe they will realize what their country requires of them, and when they have come to realize it, the whole world will stand amazed at the things they do.”

Presently the major said: “I will make arrangements for the test of your motor. It will have to be sent on to us. I’ll write you where and when.”

They went up to the major’s room, where they talked more technicalities until a late hour. Potter said good night, and with a feeling of warmth in his soul, a feeling that these men really considered him of value and that he was performing no mean service for his country, he descended to the first floor. The major’s parting words had been: “Stick to it, Mr. Waite. Work over it, study it, keep on as you’ve been going. You are doing a big thing, and your country will owe you its thanks.”

As he stepped out of the elevator he met Cantor, just about to ascend. Cantor hesitated as if he considered joining Potter, but Potter merely spoke and passed on—not with any thought of brusqueness, but because his mind was full, because he wanted no companionship.

Cantor stared after him. “What’s gotten hold of him?” he asked himself.

The sight of Cantor set in motion new thoughts and speculations, thoughts that might grow into suspicions. “The island was there,” Potter said inwardly. “It was no dream. We fell there....” The “we” ushered in Hildegarde von Essen. What warmth of satisfaction he had been experiencing was chilled. Black, brooding, morose shadows took its place—a sort of mental nausea, a shuddering horror of the fact she had stated to him.... Defiled!... That unbelievable, dank, squalid fact!... He saw her as the fairy prince of the day of their flight. It did not seem that life would allow such a glowing, buoyant, fire-pure thing to be touched with evil. It was not a fact that would endure close to her; it was a thing removed from her by an unsurpassable gulf.... Yet it had leaped the gulf and fallen upon her....

She loved him; confessed that she loved him—confessed this black thing to explain why she could not marry him.... His brain burned; it seemed as if he could not endure the reality of it.

Insidiously, unasked, came another fact. Cantor had been her companion; there had been intimacy between them.... Cantor was a man whom report said to be without honor in his dealings with women.... The thoughts had become suspicions, searing suspicions. Never again could he take the hand of Cantor in friendship unless they were cleared away.... If Cantor were the man—But what right had he to act? What was it to him? He found himself hating Cantor with a lurid, blood-lusting hatred. Yet he had only suspicions, vague suspicions.... Added to them was the question of Cantor’s presence on that island and what it signified. What was the man’s business? Who was the man?... These were suspicions Cantor would have labored much to have averted.

CHAPTER XVII

Now came months of labor and of scurrying about the country for Potter Waite; half a dozen trips to Washington interrupted his work in the machine-shop; formalities, futile interviews, unreeling of red tape wasted his time in the capital. It seemed he could get nowhere, could lay his hand on no definite information, perceive nowhere a definite plan for the future or sign of constructing a plan. If the Middle West was dozing, official Washington appeared to him to be walking in its sleep.

He had not seen Hildegarde, for her father had once more sent her away, and she had not been reluctant to go. If travel, fresh contacts, strange people promised to distract her mind from the facts she confronted, she would gladly give them an opportunity to keep their promise. Her mind was a throbbing carbuncle and any poultice was better than no poultice. So she went east, then, with the opening of the new year, she accompanied friends to Palm Beach.

Potter studied his father as a sort of barometer of the reactions of the conservative to world-events growing daily more momentous. It was not a barometer to register suddenly arising storm, Potter believed, yet one morning he was awakened by his father’s knuckles battering his door. Fabius did not wait for Potter’s call to enter, but rushed into the room, waving a newspaper.

“Look at that!” he said, excitedly, hoarsely. Potter had never before seen his father excited. Not even the German note of late January announcing a nation in the throes of rabies, revoking pledges, declaring for unrestricted undersea savagery, had overthrown his calm. Nor had Mr. Wilson’s action in packing off von Bernstorff, ambassador and spy, thrown him off his poise. But now he raged.

“By God!” he exclaimed, “this means war, and war quick! Read it!... Read it!”

Potter read with stunned astonishment the story of Zimmerman’s perfidy—of negotiations with Mexico and Japan for a partition of America. Germany purposed to make a second Poland of America and with lavish generosity made present of three great commonwealths to a country which was not a government; a country not ruled by law and authority, but given over to petty greeds and the marauding bands of exalted bandits. What was promised to Japan none might say—doubtless it was equally lavish.

Potter said nothing.

“I’ll wire the President,” Fabius Waite said, furiously. “He can have my plant. I’ll quit making automobiles if I can turn the whole thing to manufacturing shells or guns.... We’ll need them; we’ve got to have them.... Invade the United States! March up the Mississippi Valley!... We’ll show them, by George! where they’ll march!”

“Dad,” said Potter, “you haven’t believed we would be dragged into this war. Even when relations were broken with Germany you still believed with the great body of the people, that war was not inevitable.... In your judgment, does this really mean war?”

“If it doesn’t,” said Fabius, “then I quit the country and take out citizen’s papers in Timbuctoo. If we lay down under this the country isn’t fit to live in.... You bet it means war.”

Potter’s unspoken thought was, “Thank God for Zimmerman.” Many other thoughtful men were thanking God for Zimmerman that day, for as the day grew older it became apparent that the alarm-clock had done its work. The country was awake, dazed but furious. And if one part of the country might be said to be more furious than another, it was the Middle West—for, a thing hitherto unbelievable—it saw itself threatened by invasion.

“Then,” Potter said, “you’re willing to get your shoulder behind the President?”

“With every man and every machine and every dollar,” said Fabius.

“If you want to help, Dad—if you want to do the biggest thing there is to do—make aeroplanes.”

“Eh?”

“You know what I’ve been doing. You know how important the War Department realizes the aeroplane to be.... And we’ve got to have thousands of them.... The authorities are slow and they muddle, but events will force them to do something.... No plant in the world can so quickly and readily be converted to the manufacture of aeroplane engines as yours.... And I believe I have the motor....”

“Son, if the government backs what you say, my plant is yours. Aeroplanes—we’ll show ’em how to make aeroplanes.... You get busy. Find out what they want. Get definite orders, and we’ll take care of ’em if it costs me five million dollars to do it.”

“Do you feel like these fellows, Dad, who say all we can do in this war, anyhow, is to dig up money and manufacture munitions?”

Fabius Waite struck his left palm with his right fist.

“No,” he said. “If we go in we go in. Don’t let anybody fool you about that. We go in up to the hilt. We fought Spain with a pop-gun. This time Uncle Sam will go to war with a man’s-size six-shooter in each hand and a knife in his boot. Getting into this thing doesn’t mean sending an army to do the fighting for us. It means sending the whole nation to war.... Every one of us. We’ll have to mobilize the biggest army we ever dreamed of, but we’ll have to mobilize everything else, too—and until we get used to this new thing there’s going to be the devil to pay—the very devil to pay. There’ll be a mess. Everybody will be running around in circles.... Just like expanding a ten-thousand-dollar business overnight to take care of a million-dollar order.”

“I’ve got plans ready, Dad, for changing over part of the plant to make my motor—if the government adopts it.”

“Get ’em out. Take it up with the engineers. Go as far as you can, so that the moment the powers in Washington press the button we’ll be ready.”

“I’ve figured the cost of the change at about half a million.”

“Whatever you need I’ll raise.”

“Guess I better run down to Washington.”

“Good idea, and stick to ’em till you get something definite.... You’re after an order. You’re a salesman. Come back with something.”

That night Potter took train for the capital. He discovered on his way that the American people had already declared war. They were outraged. The formality of a declaration remained, but the people had made up their minds. They saw what they had to do, but did not realize the magnitude of it.

In the club car was no other subject of conversation but Zimmerman and his plottings. Throughout the conversation ran a peculiar note of pity for the German—for his intelligence, for the blindness of his psychology.

“It was the one thing they could do,” an elderly gentleman said, “to solidify the country. They picked the way as if they were working for us.... And, by George! it was a darn fine piece of work on somebody’s part to intercept that note!”

Potter managed to get a room in the New Willard, and, after going to his room for the refreshment of a bath, he descended to the dining-room for luncheon. He seated himself at a table and was looking over the card when he heard a voice a table or so away. It was a voice that made him lose interest in cards, in food, in everything but the proximity of the owner of the voice.

“We’ll have to guard everything,” it was saying. “There won’t be a thing we can leave without watching.... I know.... These German spies and German sympathizers.... Oh, I hate myself for the German blood in my veins.”

“Now, Hildegarde, that’s no way to talk. I’m sure your father is as good a citizen as if his ancestors had come over in the Mayflower—”

“Instead of the North German Lloyd,” Hildegarde replied. “This talk of Mr. Wilson’s about our having no quarrel with the German people is wrong. It isn’t just the Kaiser. It’s the breed. We want to forget that sort of nonsense. We’ll find we’re fighting the German people—and what kind we’re fighting. With their crucifixions and massacres and abominations.”

“Hildegarde!”

“Oh, father knows what I think. And it’s true. I’ve lived among them all my life. We used to think they were merely crude, with bad manners.... It wasn’t that.... They’re savage. They never even had a decent veneer of civilization.”

“Well,” said the lady with Hildegarde, “if all German-Americans felt as you do—”

“I’m no German-American. There isn’t any such thing. There are Americans and traitors. You can’t sit on the fence.”

Potter shoved back his chair and stood erect. In his heart was a cramping pain; joy at seeing Hildegarde found place beside reawakened torment.... He could not bear to turn to look at her, yet he could not bear not to look at her. He clutched his chair until his knuckles showed white.... She was not to be resisted. He shoved the chair away and strode to her table.

“Hildegarde!” he said. It was a cry wrung from him as a cry is wrung from a tree in the forest when some mighty tempest twists and rends it, splitting it, tearing into white wound the fibers that surround its heart.

She looked up, drew back, uttered a little cry. For a moment she was silencing herself, saying to herself: “I must be calm. I must keep a hold on myself.... I can’t have a scene here.” Then she arose, smiled brightly a spurious smile, and extended her hand. “Why, Mr. Waite, this is such a surprise!” She turned to her companion. “This is Mr. Waite, from Detroit, Mrs. Roscombe. Mrs. Roscombe and I have worked up here by degrees from Palm Beach. Our last stop was Pinehurst. Such golfing! You’ve been to Pinehurst, of course.” She was talking rapidly, saying anything that came into her head until she could gain full possession of herself.

Mrs. Roscombe stared, then gave Potter her hand. “Of the Waite Motor Company?” she asked.

He nodded.

“What brings you here?” Hildegarde said, fearing a pause. “Oh, to be sure! I know. It’s your motor, isn’t it? How is it getting along? Sit down and tell us all about it.... You haven’t lunched, have you?”

“No,” he said, tonelessly, wondering how she could seem so happy, be so trivial, with that black thing crouching behind her. He was young....

“Sit down, then, and tell me all about Detroit—and everybody. Who’s married whom?...”

“I haven’t seen you for months,” he said, baldly, and Mrs. Roscombe smiled faintly. She had perceived something of the tenseness of the moment and had wondered at it. Now she fancied she knew. She imagined some lover’s misunderstanding, and, dowager-like, saw herself in the beneficent rôle of peace-maker and match-maker. Why not? The son of the Waite Motor Company was a catch worth angling for.

“Do sit down, Mr. Waite,” she said, and motioned to a chair.

He complied stiffly, like a man functioning in his sleep.

“You—you look just the same,” he said.

“You didn’t expect me to age a great deal in four months, did you?”

He was not thinking of age. He was thinking of that other thing, wondering how she could retain that air of boyishness, that outward semblance of joyous virginity? He was astonished that she bore no mark, no scarlet letter.... To him she was lovely, glowing—the slender, daring, boyish-pure fairy prince of his dreams.

“There’s going to be war, isn’t there?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Shall you enlist?... I suppose you can have a commission for the asking.”

“I sha’n’t enlist. I wish I could.... But I’ve work to do here.”

Enlisting was a new thought, but an attractive one. He wished his duty did not lay where it was; that he might go to France and be a part of that Gehenna where, he thought, no man might remember. If a tenth of the stories of battle were true, then a man might find forgetfulness on the field of carnage.

“Your motor, of course. Tell me about it. You know I—I am interested.”

“There’s nothing to tell.... I’m waiting.”

The waiter intervened and their orders were given. Hildegarde kept up a persistent glitter of talk, leaping from topic to topic, flushed, almost panting in her eagerness to avoid the silent moment. Mrs. Roscombe eyed her quizzically and thought that very little of her skill as a match-maker was necessary here.

“We are going driving this afternoon,” she said. “Perhaps Mr. Waite would enjoy a ride about Washington.”

“I—” Potter stopped and looked at Hildegarde. He had no engagement for the afternoon. Not before evening could he see Major Craig, and it might be days before he could manage interviews with the dignitaries who held the fate of his motor in their hands. He wanted to go, wanted to be near her, to hear her voice—to continue to be compelled by her eyes and her manner, by all herself, to disbelieve the frightful thing she had confessed. He could not look at her and believe.

“Do come,” she said, affrightedly.

They finished their luncheon. “The car will be at the door at two,” said Mrs. Roscombe. “It’s nearly that now. We’ll just run up for our wraps.”

They disappeared and Potter waited. Presently Hildegarde appeared.

“Mrs. Roscombe said to get in the car. She’ll be down in a jiffy.”

They waited several jiffies and she did not come. Then a page stepped to the door of the car and extended a note.

“For Miss von Essen,” he said.

Hildegarde opened it, frowned, bit her lip, for she saw through the stratagem. “Mrs. Roscombe says she’s detained. Some one just ’phoned her, and she must stay to meet them. We’re to go on just the same.”

Potter was glad, yet he was frightened. He wanted to be alone with Hildegarde, yet he was terrified at being alone with her. Her sensations were akin to his own. She wanted to be with him, to feel him near her again. Her love for him had not abated, yet now it seemed to flame up to a life it had never before known. It was as if he had been restored to her.

“I’m—glad,” he said, slowly.

“So am I,” she said, breathlessly.

The car started, but where it went or how it went neither of them cared. For minutes they sat silent, each drinking in the knowledge of the other’s presence. It was a heady beverage.

“Hildegarde ...” he began, presently.

She turned her eyes upon him. His face was an accusation; there was yearning there, grief, something else that she could not define, but it hurt her worst of all.

“Yes,” she said.

“You told me you loved me,” he said.

“Don’t ...” she cried.

“You told me you loved me,” he repeated, harshly. “Was it true?”

She would not answer, would not look at him now, but drew away from him fearfully. He took her hand, not gently, and drew her toward him. “Look at me,” he commanded. “I want to see your eyes.... When I see your eyes I—” He was going to say he could not believe, but stopped himself. It would be turning the knife around in her wound.... “Were you telling the truth?”

“It was true,” she said, faintly.

“Do you love me now?”

She tried to take away her hand, but he held it fiercely, bent fiercely toward her. “I don’t love you,” he said, breathlessly. “It’s something more than that.... I can’t tell you what it is, how it feels.... I’ve got to have you. I don’t care what has happened. I don’t care about anything.... You must marry me. Nothing matters but that.”

She was white, felt as if she were stifling. “Let go,” she said, piteously.

“Do you love me?” he demanded.

“I— No!... No!... Stop the car and let me out! Oh, leave me alone! You’re torturing me!”

He was flaming. His restraint was gone and he was but the starving lover fighting a battle to the death for his love.

“Nothing matters,” he repeated. “I don’t care.... Do you love me?”

He drew her closer, careless what eyes might peer through the windows of the limousine. His arm was about her shoulders, her lithe body was strained against his body, and his face was close to hers. She closed her eyes. She did not feel faint, but deliciously helpless. She did not care.... This was the thing she had been waiting for, crying for ... this thing that was forbidden to her. She did not struggle. He kissed her lips again and again, muttering incoherently. She returned his kisses....

Presently she tried to release herself. “We’re in the—street,” she panted. “People can see.”

“Let them see.” It was his old recklessness. “What do we care?... Tell me now. You love me? I want to hear you say it. Say it.”

“I love you,” she said, softly.

“And you’ll marry me? Say that.”

She pushed him away and the life and youth died out of her eyes. Instead of Potter by her side she saw her father; saw him convicted of treason, a thing to be spat upon and reviled.... Her father!... This moment had been sweet—but other moments were impossible, a life of them was hideously impossible. Hers was a blood and heritage she could take to no man. No man’s life should mingle with her life to produce a child who should call his grandfather traitor.

“No!...” she cried, wildly. “You mustn’t ask. I can marry no man. I can never marry.”

“Hildegarde,” he said, his voice tense, vibrant, “listen. I don’t care. You—told me before.... It doesn’t matter. It’s as if nothing had ever happened.... I want you.”

“I can’t marry you,” she said. She clenched herself in a vise-grip of determination, became calmer. She must, she knew, convince Potter of her determination; must convince him that nothing could change her. “Potter, I’d die before I would marry you. You must believe me. It cannot be.... You’re cruel to ask me.... Please, oh, please!”

“Hildegarde!”

She shook her head. “Nothing can change me. See. Look into my eyes if you think you can make me change.”

He looked into her eyes long, beseechingly, then turned away his face. He had seen. Her will was glowing there, unconquerable. He was answered, answered finally.

Minutes after he turned to her again. “I saw,” he said. “But will you tell me this?... I’ve got to know. Who was it? Was Cantor—”

She started. “Cantor?” What did he know about Cantor? Had he discovered something about the man that she herself had been unable to discover? Had he definitely placed Cantor as a German spy, a master of spies?... If so, he must know about her father, too. “Cantor?” she repeated. “What do you know about Mr. Cantor?”

“Nothing. But I must know. Was it he?”

“I can tell you nothing about him,” she said. “But I can warn you. Don’t trust him. If you have anything you value, keep it out of his hands. Don’t let him near your motor.... Keep him away from you.... Don’t trust that man.”

He bowed his head. “You’ve answered me,” he said, in a stifled voice.... So it was Cantor. The man to whom he owed this agony was Cantor.... He ground his teeth. Then he grew gentle with her. “Remember, Hildegarde, that I love you. It isn’t a little love that would be afraid of anything. Nothing would matter to it. Will you remember that, and if ever you change—if anything changes you—will you know that I’m waiting for you?” He lifted her hand and kissed it.

“Let me out, please,” he said. “I—I can’t stay near you.... It’s too much for me.”

“Good-by, Potter,” she said, softly. “I— Oh, how I wish I might come to you!”

The car stopped and Potter alighted. He stood on the curb, looking after Hildegarde, until the car turned a corner and disappeared.

“Cantor,” he said to himself, and whispered the name over and over. “Cantor.... Cantor.... Cantor....” Could Mr. Cantor have sensed the furnace that raged in Potter’s brain it might have caused him certain uneasiness.

Potter walked and walked until he regained some semblance of calmness. Then he turned his footsteps toward the hotel. In the corridor he met numerous men in uniform and vaguely envied them.

“They’re going,” he said. “It’s luck.... Maybe the biggest luck would be to go—and not come back.”

CHAPTER XVIII

It was July before Potter Waite saw Detroit again for more than a few hours. His business lay in Washington, and in Washington he remained. It was his privilege to hear from the gallery the most momentous utterance ever to issue from the New World when Mr. Wilson guided this country down into the abyss of war. Later he met on equal terms with the great automobile minds of the country when they were called together to give to their flag the dearly bought knowledge of motor construction which was their most precious possession. He saw his own motor placed before him, and waited in a sort of white glow of eagerness for what would be the outcome of that herculean labor performed by two men called to give to America the motor needed for her mighty air fleets. That moment when he saw his year’s work had not been in vain was one of the splendid moments of his life, for his motor had been the basis upon which those engineers had worked, and from it they developed the perfect thing.

In July he came home, not empty-handed. The honor of receiving the first contract had been awarded to the Waite Motor Company and Potter carried it, a sacred treasure, buttoned against his breast.

Then began in earnest the conversion of an enormous wing of the Waite Motor Company’s plant to the production of that wonderful and delicate mechanism which was to drive America through the air to victory. It began in secrecy and silence. The part of the plant undergoing the change might have vanished from the world, for all the news that issued from it. It was guarded as the vaults of the national Treasury are not guarded, by a little army of government men trained in the arts of vigilance.

“But,” said the chief of them to Potter, “we can work with a sweet confidence that Germany has her men inside. We’ve investigated every employee to his birth—we think—but I’ll bet my hat more than one spy is planted there.... So we trust nobody.... There are German spies and then there are German spies.”

Potter looked a question.

“Well,” said the chief, “there’s the ordinary spy that the country’s full of. I can catch you one in half an hour if you want him.... And there are the spies who do the real work—and I’d give a year of my life for every one of them I could lay hands on.... The garden variety of spy is a comic-supplement fellow. Tell you how to spot him. Go and stand in a hotel lobby and read a letter. If you feel somebody breathing on the back of your neck, turn around and grab—and you’ve got your man. It’s part of the technique—to breathe on the back of your neck. They’re drilled in it like the army is in the goose step. The German is constructed by nature to be obvious. If he’s a spy he acts like a spy—as he conceives a spy to be.... There was the fellow we caught trying to blow up a mighty important railroad bridge. Lieutenant in the navy. He disguised himself as a bum; let his beard grow and rubbed grime on his hands. Then he took him his little bomb in a suit-case and went out to do his day’s work. Now did he ride to that railroad bridge on a freight, or back in a day coach on a slow train? Not him! He bought a section on the Millionaires’ Special—six days’ beard and all. Of course we spotted him, and I asked him why the devil he boarded that sort of train in such a get-up. He looked me over supercilious and says, says he: ‘I’m a gentleman. You couldn’t expect me to ride second class.’”

Potter laughed. “They’re not all like that, though,” he said.

“You bet they aren’t,” said the chief, with compressed lips. “You had some experience, didn’t you?”

“They tried to blow up the shop,” Potter said, briefly.

“We’ve got to act as if we knew they were going to try to blow up this shop.... Your German-Americans in Detroit have been pretty well-behaved.”

“Yes,” said Potter. “There was any quantity of talk before April sixth. I imagine they’ve quieted down now. Personally I’ve thought it was just talk and a natural sympathy.”

“Ninety per cent. of the Germans in this country wish we would hang the other ten per cent. so they could live in peace. But we can’t forget the other ten per cent. They’re bad, and they mean business. It’s hard to make folks believe it, though. Somehow Americans don’t take spies and that sort of thing seriously. It looks sometimes as if they didn’t take war seriously.”

“Yes,” said Potter. “There wasn’t any big wave of excitement when war was declared. The people took it complacently. They don’t realize.”

“They won’t realize until some morning’s paper is full of lists of the dead.”

“Out here we have a sort of attitude that seems to say, ‘Well, we’ve gone to war, but we aren’t going to get hurt.’”

“It isn’t my job to wake them up. I’ll be busy keeping information from getting out of this place—and gentlemen with bombs from getting in.”

“And my job,” said Potter, gravely, “is to make motors.... To make motors quickly,” he said, his voice coming to life, his eyes awakening to a glow of enthusiasm. “It’s a fine job—the best job in the world. Some day the air of France will be dark with American ’planes, and I’ll have helped. I can almost see it—hundreds and thousands of aeroplanes with their noses pointed toward Berlin, and nothing on God’s footstool to stop them. Enough of them to drive the German out of the air and keep him out.... And then we’ll play with him from the air.... A barrage of American aeroplanes behind the German lines—imagine that!—cutting them off, smashing their communications! All we’ve got to have is enough—and the war’s over.”

The Secret Service man looked at Potter quietly. “You’re not taking this war so placidly,” he said.

Potter did not smile. “It will come,” he said. “Gradually we’re finding out we have a country—and that we love our country. Wait till you see this American people awake and on the job. I don’t take it placidly, because the thing was shoved down my throat. I was kicked awake.” He turned away and went into the office that he occupied now more often twelve hours a day than eight. Here he remained until noon in constant conference with railroad man, engineer, steel representative, or machinery man come to explain delay in delivery or to promise beyond possibility of performance. At noon he drove down-town to the club for lunch.

As he entered the building he saw young Matthews, a frail-bodied millionaire whose hobby was mechanics, gesticulating in the center of an interested group.

Will Kraemer saw Potter and beckoned to him. “Something new,” he said. “The aeroplane joyrider has come.”

“What’s that?”

“Hey, Matthews, tell it to Waite!”

Matthews was more than willing. He was angry, excited, but pleased to be commanding so much attention. “Somebody swiped my hydro,” he said.

“At last Matthews has won a first,” laughed Eldredge. “First aeroplane to be stolen in America.”

“What’s the joke?” Potter wanted to know.

“No joke.... You wouldn’t think it was a joke if you saw my man Mullens. Somebody hit him on the nose with a sledgehammer. Found him tied up in a bundle and dumped in a corner, and blood all over the shop.... This morning. Went down about nine o’clock to sort of look at things. Door was locked. I thought Mullens was off on a bat, and then when I looked inside and saw the machine was gone, I thought he’d gone crazy. He couldn’t fly a kite.... Machine clean gone. Then I heard a miawing in one of the lockers, and there was Mullens, all in, with enough waste stuffed in his mouth to choke an elephant. I yanked him out and turned him loose and asked him what was the answer. He said he was reading the paper about ten last night and somebody hammered on the door. Mullens opened it, and before he could sniff the air he got that wallop on the nose. Next he knew a couple of boys were sitting on him and stuffing waste in his mouth. They stuffed him in the locker-room and shut the door, and then in a couple of hours he heard them run the machine out, start the motor, and breeze off.... And that’s all. Just clean vanished, going straight up, as near as I can find out. Nobody seems to have seen them or heard them. Not a darn trace.... Now wouldn’t that get you?”

“Is this real stuff, Matthews? You aren’t planting any sort of joke?”

“It’s so dam real that I’ll pay a little reward of five thousand bucks to the boy that brings the machine back again,” Matthews said.

“Hard luck,” said Potter. “But why the devil should anybody steal an aeroplane? A white elephant would be as easy to hide, and they couldn’t sell it. Get pinched the minute they tried that. I don’t get the idea.”

“Didn’t somebody steal a jail once?” Eldredge asked.

“Did they leave anything behind?” Potter asked, “anything for the police to smell of and run off on the trail?”

“We haven’t found a burnt match that Mullens couldn’t account for. It was a clean job. They just appeared—and then—” He whistled and waved his hand.

“What do the police have to offer?”

Matthews looked disgusted. “I don’t think they believe I ever had an aeroplane,” he said.

“If ’planes get as common as automobiles,” said O’Mera, who had strolled up, “the police will have to have a flying squadron of Zeppelins outfitted with enormous butterfly-nets. Some game that, eh? Chasing a stolen aeroplane a few thousand feet above ground and snaffling it in a bug-net.”

“You fellows are joshing me,” Matthews complained. “You wouldn’t be so darn funny if somebody had run off with twenty thousand dollars of yours.”

“Maybe the Kaiser’s army of German reservists who were going to seize the country have grabbed it?”

“You fellows make me sick,” Matthews said, walking away in disgust, followed by a laugh.

But Potter did not laugh; the thing was too bizarre, too weighted with sinister possibilities. It was absurd to suppose the enemies of the country had stolen that lone aeroplane, and yet what a weapon an aeroplane would be in their hands!

“What do you think?” Kraemer asked.

Potter shook his head. “It’s past me. But I don’t like it.”

They walked up-stairs together to the dining-room, discussing the thing. At the table Kraemer suddenly changed the subject.

“Potter,” he said, “I want to get into the second officers’ training-camp. It’ll be starting sometime in a month or so.”

“Fine!... Wish I could go, too.”

Kraemer hesitated. “I’m afraid,” he said, “they won’t take me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, our name is German—and Dad was born in Germany.”

Potter looked at the table-cloth. “How does your father feel about it?” he asked.

“Dad’s an American, Potter. You never heard any of this pro-German guff out of him.... The suggestion came from him. He says this is where Americans with German parentage have to fish or cut bait. It’s his notion that we fellows have got to do more than the rest of you with unimpeachable American antecedents. ‘We’ve got to do our duty,’ Dad says, ‘and then we’ve got to double that.’”

“I wish they were all like him,” Potter said.

“I want to go—worse than I’ve ever wanted anything.... Watts is gone and so are La Mothe and Randall. Three of the old crowd.”

“If there’s anything I can do—or father can do—” Potter said.

“It’s damn hard for a fellow to have to prove he’s not a traitor.... How would you feel?”

“Maybe I can help.... Training-camps for aviators are being opened up. I think I can give you a fair start there. How would you like that?”

Kraemer’s eyes glowed. “Potter,” he said, “if you can get me past I’ll—give you my right arm when the country gets through using it.”

A club attendant approached the table. “A man named Givens is asking to see you, sir.... Says he works for you, and it’s important, sir.”

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” Potter said. Then to Kraemer, “I’ll get the papers from the Signal Corps for you so you can apply for admission. Let you know as soon as they show up.”

Standing awkwardly just inside the entrance, uneasy in surroundings of luxury and manifestly apprehensive of club servants in livery, stood a young man with a knee quite torn from his trousers, with a hat that would never again be fit for service, with a face that appeared to have come into contact with emery-paper, and with a general accumulation of dirt on his clothes.

“Why, Givens,” said Potter, “what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“No, sir,” said Givens, “not hurt to speak of, but shook up. I—I knew you would be here, Mr. Waite, so I busted right in. I thought you ought to know right off.”

“Yes,” said Potter, impatiently.

“I’m one of the office messengers,” Givens said. “We use motor-cycles—”

“I know who you are. What has happened?”

“I was to stop at twelve o’clock to get a package of drawin’s or somethin’ from Hammond and Green, the engineers. I got them all right, and started for the plant. Went up Woodward to the Boulevard and across. You know where the Boulevard goes under the railroad? Well, right there a machine came up behind me and bumped me. I went down pretty hard. Sort of knocked out for a minute. When I scrambled up I looked all over for that package, but I couldn’t find it any place. It couldn’t have fell anywhere out of sight, for I was right under the railroad. There wasn’t any sewer openin’s or anythin’.... Somebody must ’a’ swiped it. I hunted good, and then I come down here as fast as I could. The motor-cycle wasn’t hurt any.”

“What was in the package? What drawings?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Potter called an attendant. “Show this man the wash-room and help him brush up,” he said. Then he stepped quickly into a telephone-booth and called the plant.

“Mr. Withers,” he said to the switchboard-operator, and presently the chief of the Waite mechanical engineers answered the telephone.

“This is Potter Waite. What drawings were you getting from Hammond and Green this noon?”

“A set of blue prints of Buildings G and F.”

“A complete set?”

“Yes, showing machinery placed, shafting, conveyers—everything.”

“Thank you,” said Potter, and hung up the receiver.

Givens was waiting, a trifle more presentable.

“You’re sure there’s no chance you overlooked the package anywhere?” Potter asked.

“No, sir. I think it was a plant, Mr. Waite, that’s what. I think them men in that machine knocked me over apurpose to swipe them drawin’s.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you. Better go home and get fixed up. Need a new suit, won’t you? Buy it and give the bill to me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Waite,” Givens said, and limped away.

Potter drove at once to the office. As he entered he met Downs, the Secret Service man, coming down the stairs.

“Come up to the office, please,” Potter said. “Something in your line, I guess.”

Potter closed the door and motioned to a chair. “A messenger bringing drawings of the buildings we’re changing over was knocked down on his way out this noon, and the blue prints taken away from him.” He gave the incident to Downs as Givens had given it to him. “By the way,” he added, “a mighty strange thing happened last night. An aeroplane was stolen.”

“Saw it in the paper,” said Downs.

“I’ve been wondering,” Potter said, “if there was any connection between the two thefts. Seems far-fetched, but these are far-fetched days. Who would steal an aeroplane, and what in thunder would he steal it for?”

“An aeroplane is a mighty useful toy,” said Downs.

“A mighty conspicuous toy.”

“I’m not so sure. Easy to hide in some out-of-the-way place. That machine worries me more than the loss of those blue prints. That’s a sort of warning we ought to be thankful for, though it doesn’t tell us much we didn’t feel pretty sure of. We’re working on the certainty that they’ll try to interfere with this plant, and they’ve verified it for us.... But that aeroplane.... We can watch the employees, and we can do a pretty good job of guarding the plant on the ground, but how in thunder, Mr. Waite, are we going to stop anybody from flying over the top of it some night and dropping a ton or so of explosive on the roof? There’s a German with something pretty close to genius running things hereabouts.... You’ve probably eaten dinner with him,” Downs said, with a chuckle.

“Eh? You mean you suspect some one?”

“I mean that I don’t, worse luck. What I mean is that the fellow who ought to be suspected is probably above suspicion. He’s somebody you know well and meet every day. The kind of man who would have the enterprise to think of stealing an aeroplane is mighty apt to be the man you invite to dinner.”

“You’ll have me suspecting everybody I know.”

“While you are making motors for the Signal Corps,” said Downs, soberly, “that’s exactly what you must do. So far as your work is concerned, treat every living soul as if you knew he was a German spy.”

“It seems as if a thing as big as a hydro-aeroplane ought to be found,” Potter said.

“It’s got to be found,” said Downs. “Not only for the protection of the industrial plants in Detroit, but think of the danger it throws over the ship-canal at the Flats and the channel into Lake Erie. They could even work east as far as the Welland. An aeroplane and a few tons of explosive could come pretty close to bottling up the commerce of the Lakes, Mr. Waite.... And I’ve a notion that’s the big game.... Our ore comes down the Lakes. Stop the ore and you stop the steel-mills. Then what?”

“I guess,” said Potter, slowly, “that we’re really in the war at last.”

“The country will wake up some morning to a dazing realization of it,” Downs said, as one states a fact which he dreads but knows to be inevitable.

CHAPTER XIX

Hildegarde von Essen returned reluctantly to Detroit late in June, some two weeks before Potter Waite, his work in Washington having borne fruit and the fruit been harvested, came to put in motion the gigantic new industry which was to mean so much to his city—and to the whole world. Hildegarde came home with dragging steps and black forebodings. For months she had tried to forget Detroit, forget her father, put from her mind that searing knowledge of her father’s infamy. She had succeeded but poorly. People at Palm Beach had found her eccentric—flighty they had called her. She had been flighty. There was no absurdity she would not attempt in her demand for excitement and restlessness; she caused talk; she attracted few—even of the younger men, for, somehow, they felt uncomfortable in her presence. She was never still, demanded action always, and cared little how outrageous to convention that action might be. And she was changeable. In an instant, without perceptible cause, she would descend from reckless deviltry to somber moroseness. Even her beauty, her compelling magnetism, her known wealth, did not suffice to hold admirers. One young man announced his firm belief that she was a trifle balmy, and that, if she weren’t, he’d be hanged if her gait wasn’t too tricky for him to harness up to her. It was the general opinion. The same opinion prevailed later at Pinehurst, at Old Point, in Washington. Who was there to guess that a young girl was ridden by such an Old Man of the Sea?

Her father forbade her to come home without his permission, and she had not intended to come home until that meeting with Potter Waite in Washington had made Detroit a magnet with a power she could not resist, no matter how much she dug in her little heels and hung back. . . . She must be near him; must be where she could see him, feel his existence. He called to her in his vexed heart and the call was carried to her own heart.... So she went home.

She arrived without warning, and the arrival of her taxicab at her father’s door was the first indication that household had of her coming. The servant who opened the door did not know her; he had appeared during her absence. Other servants were new, and the whole aspect of the house had changed. She did not like it. It held a promise of something not allaying to her terrors. The very air of the house was heavy. As she went up to her room she heard the strange manservant telephone her father, “Your daughter has arrived,” and presently he rapped on her door and said, obsequiously, “It is your father’s wish that you do not leave the house until he arrives.” She had a feeling of being surrounded, watched, shut off from communication with the world.

She went to the telephone herself with intention to speak to some one, some one outside that house, some friend, she cared little whom, but the servant, still obsequious, intervened. “Your father directed, Miss von Essen, that you were not to make use of the telephone.”

She turned without a word and retired to her room. In half an hour Herman von Essen came heavily up the stairs and rapped ungently on her door. He did not wait for her summons to enter, but thrust the door open and confronted her, purple with fury, roaring the instant his eyes beheld her:

“Who told you to come home?... What are you doing here?... I ordered you to stay away with your meddling and spying. How dare you come back without my permission?” He plunged toward her, with gross hands hungering to lay themselves upon her with savage violence.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice brittle and cold like arctic ice. “Don’t dare touch me.... I swore on the Bible, but if you touch me, if you ever touch me with so much as the tip of your finger, I’ll forget it.... I can hang you,” she said, and it seemed to him her eyes leaped into sudden savagery, “and if you drive me too far I’ll do it.... I’ll forget what it means to me—the disgrace and horror of it; I’ll forget you’re my father. Be careful!”

“You would? You would, eh, you cat?... I’ll show you. I’ll cage you.” He was beside himself with anger, yet he was afraid. She saw it and despised him the more.

“Have you kept your promise?” she demanded.

“Promise? What promise? What business is it of yours what I’ve done?”

“It is my business. It was a bargain. Have you kept it? Have you kept clear of these spies? Have you thrown them out of the house? Have you stopped your fires and your explosions and your murders?”

“Yes,” he said.

She stared into his eyes a moment. “I don’t believe you,” she said; “I don’t believe you intended to.” He snarled at her incoherently. “My country is at war,” she said, passionately, “and men like you have forced her into war—you spies and traitors and murderers—your race of murderers. Are you playing fair with me?”

“Yes,” he said. “The war—I’m through with them. I’m an American citizen.”

“If you hadn’t said that I might have believed you. I know what sort of American citizen you are!... You lied to me and got me out of the way.... What’s a lie more or less among Germans?”

“I lied, did I? I’ll show you how I lied.” He was insane with passion. “I did lie.... Did you, a squalling cat of a girl, think you could interfere? This damned country—a cat’s-paw for England.... I’m a German—a German, do you hear? And you’re a German.... We fight for the fatherland.... They think to make war! They think to crush the fatherland!... We’re teaching them a lesson. When the day is come—when the call goes out—then I won’t be a German in America, I’ll be a German in Germany!...” He stopped, his face the color of some unspeakable jungle orchid nourished by steaming, poisonous vapors. He had said too much; his rage had betrayed his tongue, and he looked at her with narrowed, calculating eyes.

“I can ’tend to you,” he said, softly. “I’ll cage you. I’ll keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re—my—father,” she said, slowly, incredulously. It was ghastly, woven of nightmare threads, that this man, whose very physical presence had become revolting, should be one of the authors of her existence. She owed life to him. How gladly would she have blotted out the years to her birth and waned into nothingness, non-existence!

“I’m your father,” he repeated after her. “See you remember it.... You’ve come back where you weren’t wanted; now you’ll stay where you don’t want to stay.... I’ve got my hands on you and I’ll keep them there.... You little fool! There’s no danger in you.” He laughed grossly. “I’ll quarantine you. You’ve caught a secret that’s contagious, and I’ll quarantine you. You sha’n’t leave this house; you sha’n’t see anybody or talk to anybody. I’m not giving you orders. You’ll be watched day and night.... If you think you can get out—try it.”

“Get out of my room!” she cried, and, rushing past him, she threw open the door. She stood crouching, tigerish, and he drew away from her as he passed. In the hall he shook his fist at her.

“Try to get out!” he bellowed. “Try to send a word out of this house!”

She slammed the door, slammed it with all her strength, and locked it. Her one thought was to injure her father—to hurt him physically. She wanted to see him suffering, crying out in agony.... Wild plans for bringing retribution down on his head flashed through her brain.... She could set the house on fire. She could do this or do that.... It was wild, unreasoning rage.

After a time she heard a sound at her door long continued. She snatched it open and found the strange serving-man there on his knees, a basket of tools at his side

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Your father’s orders, Miss. I’m putting a lock on this door.”

“To lock me in?”

“I can’t say, Miss.”

“What else would it be for?”

“I don’t know, Miss.”

“Are you a German spy, too?”

“I? Oh no, Miss. No, indeed, Miss.”

“Wait....” She ran to her dressing-bag and found her well-filled purse. “I need a friend in this house—and I can afford to pay for one. Will you mail a letter for me? Here’s fifty dollars.”

“Fifty dollars?... Is that all you’ve got, Miss?”

“I’ve got two hundred,” she said.

“Give it to me.”

She thought he was hers and placed the money in his hand.

“Is this all? Are you sure this is all you’ve got?”

“Every penny.”

“Very well, Miss. I shall hand it to your father. It might be, Miss, that you’d find somebody you could bribe.... Now, Miss, if you’ll go into your room I’ll finish my work.”

There was something grim, something quiet and determined, about the man. She was afraid of him, for he seemed not so much a man as an automaton, not controlled by human emotions. She made no protest, but re-entered her room and the door closed after her. Presently sounds of work ceased and she tried the door. It was secured from the outside; she was a prisoner.

Her first impulse was to rush to the window from which she had once made her escape to meet Potter Waite. She peered out. Below was a man with a rake in his hand, ostensibly a gardener, but he was quick to see her in the window. Without a smile he tipped his hat—and drew a step closer.

Hours later a rap came on her door.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your dinner, Miss.”

“Take it away,” she said. She would not eat. She would starve herself—starve herself to death. She could do that—and then there would have to be explanations. The body of a young woman starved to death would be something to arouse unpleasant curiosity. Well, she would provide the body.... But she became calmer. Life was not alluring, but what good could her death bring? Besides, she was helpless, and there were ways of forcing one to eat.... She considered the indignity of it, of being tied down by servants and forcibly fed.... No, when breakfast came she would eat....

Later she undressed and went to bed, but she could not sleep. She could not endure that silent darkness, so she got up and put on a gown and crouched in the corner of her window-seat. Outside she could see the black figure of a man pacing up and down....

She was cooler now, almost calm—with the numb calmness of despair. She was a chip caught in the undertow of monstrous events, drawn under, carried into awful depths. She could see no future. For her life was at an end; she could not look past to-morrow. The undertow had drawn her down into the deep places of an ocean of horrors which submerged the earth, and she could never hope again to reach the surface.... She was not frightened, she was horrified and hopeless—and very lonely.... She moved across the room to her dressing-table and took in her hands her mother’s picture, peering into that calm, dignified face, into those remembered eyes, and striving with frantic eagerness to read some message there.... There was no message.

Once more she crouched on the window-seat and propped the photograph on her knees—and there she fell asleep.

She did not deny her breakfast in the morning, nor did she refuse to eat at noon.... Somehow she did not think about escape, did not care to escape. She was better there, shut away from the world. It was peace of a kind. If she escaped, what would she do with liberty? She did not know. But one thing she did know—she would not inform upon her father. She could not. No hatred, no love of country, could force her to do that thing and bring down upon herself that indelible disgrace—to be looked at with sidewise glances, to be pointed at all the remaining days of her life as the daughter of a spy, a traitor....

It was mid-afternoon when the knock of the serving-man aroused her. She knew his knock already, for there was something stealthy, furtive about it.

“Yes,” she said.

“A gentleman to see you, Miss.” She heard him unlocking the outer fastenings of the door.

“Who is it?”

“I was not told to say, Miss. You will find the gentleman in the library.”

“What if I refuse to go down?”

“I should advise against that, Miss.”

She had a vision of herself carried down, kicking, struggling, to be pitched unceremoniously into some man’s presence. It was unendurable.

“Say I will be down in a moment,” she said.

“Thank you, Miss.”

It was not her father, of course, but who could it be who was allowed to see her? She could not imagine, and speculations were futile. In five minutes she was descending the stairs. At the front door stood the new servant, his eyes upon her respectfully. There obviously was to be no chance to avoid the library for an attempt at the out-of-doors. She walked to the library door and stepped inside. Cantor arose and stepped toward her eagerly, hand extended, his winning smile lighting his face.

“Welcome home,” he said. “I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you all these months.”

“How do you do, Mr. Cantor?” she said, unsmiling and somehow unsurprised. She had not expected to see him, yet that it should be he was not astonishing. Indeed, thought she, who else could it have been if—if the thing she had vague reasons for suspecting of this man were true?

“I called on your father this morning,” he said. “He told me you were at home—that you had run in and surprised him. I asked if he thought you would be receiving so soon, and he was so good as to reassure me. I hope I’m not intruding?”

“No,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you. Shall we sit by the window here?” He looked at her and laughed. “Your father seemed to be in a temper.... Actually he was peevish at you. I really don’t think he liked the idea of my coming to call, but I smoothed him down splendidly. He thawed and admitted that you and he had been having a little disagreement.”

“Did he tell you what the disagreement was?” she said, directly.

“No, indeed,” said Cantor, with lifted brows, “but I gather he was really angry with you. Said something about shutting you up and that sort of nonsense out of the Victorian era.”

“If you could see the brand-new lock on my door you wouldn’t call it nonsense.”

“Actually! Well, well, I knew he got pretty savage sometimes, but to lock you in—well, I am astonished. But I’m the prince come to rescue you from the enchantment. Now do you regard me as a particularly steady and trustworthy young man?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” she said.

“I must be,” he said, gaily, “for I suggested taking you for a motor ride, and maybe to dinner some place in the country, and here I am. He was crusty about it for a few minutes, but I convinced him you’d be safe with me.”

“Safe with you.... Yes, you must have convinced him of that. I’m sure he wouldn’t allow me to go out of the house with anybody he didn’t trust fully.” She eyed him without enthusiasm. She was about to add something, but thought better of it. Then: “Do you mean that father has constituted you my escort? Is that it? That I’m to be allowed to go abroad with you—to keep an eye on me?”

“That’s not a pretty way to say it, Miss von Essen.”

“It’s the fact, isn’t it?”

“I shouldn’t say so. If I were describing the thing I’d say that your father thought I was a reasonably decent fellow, and was willing to trust you with me.”

“My father is afraid to allow me at large?”

“Why, he seemed to want to keep you under his eye.”

“For an excellent reason?”

“Undoubtedly he has a reason.”

“If he is afraid I’ll do something if I get out of the house, how does he suppose you can prevent me?... Especially in a public place. Suppose I were to decide I wanted to be alone—to leave you. How would you prevent it?”

“He didn’t appear to worry about that.”

“Don’t you worry about it?”

“Not a bit.”

“Why?”

“Now, Miss von Essen—I’m just the pleasant young man who is allowed to run around with you. I don’t know why I’m allowed, but I’m delighted that it’s so. I’m sure if your father trusted you to me you wouldn’t do anything to get me in bad with him.”

He moved his chair closer and leaned forward. “You haven’t seemed happy with your father?”

“I’m not,” she said, sharply.

“Why don’t you get away from him, then?”

“Well,” she said, with a wry smile, “there’s the new lock, for one thing.”

“I know something that will unlock it.”

“For instance?”

“Marriage.”

She stared at him, quite taken by surprise.

“Exactly,” said he. “You know, Hildegarde, I’ve been attracted by you. You’ve seen that.... You couldn’t help it. I’d have told you before this—that I love you and want you to marry me, but the moment never seemed to come.... But I can tell you now.... You’re unhappy here. Something has gone very wrong.... I offer you a way out—and once married to me, you are free of Herman von Essen—free of him forever.... Won’t you think about it, Hildegarde? I wouldn’t be such a rotten husband, and I’m mighty fond of you.”

“You’re—actually—proposing marriage?”

“I love you,” he said.

Her eyes blazed. “Did you and father think marriage would close my mouth?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You think if I were married to you you would have me safe. Oh, you understand me, all right.... I’m not so blind. You know I’ve suspected you, and now I know. I know.... This proves it. I know who you are.”

“Who am I but myself?”

“You are the man who was in this library talking to father. You are the man who trapped him; who forced him to be a spy and a traitor.... Not that he needed forcing past anything but his cowardice.... You’re a German spy, in command of German spies. You’re the man who plans these explosions and fires and murders—and sets tools to carry out your plans....”

“Nonsense!” said Cantor, with an easy laugh. “You’ve been having nightmare. Why,” he declared, “I’m French! At least I was born in Alsace.... Wherever did you get such a notion?”

“It’s the truth.”

He laughed again. “Of course I can’t prove that I’m not—any more than you can prove that I am.... And meantime I love you very much indeed and am asking you to be my wife.... Now don’t refuse offhand. Take time to consider.... You don’t want to be shut up in your room for months, maybe years. Your father seemed to have the notion of imprisonment for life.” He showed his teeth in a smile that seemed to say he appreciated the humor of the whole thing. “I offer you a way out, and not a hard way.... You can’t dislike me so much, or you wouldn’t have been willing to play around with me the way you have. Just think it over and you’ll see lots of advantages.... Why, we can end this disagreeable situation this afternoon! Throw a few things in a bag and come with me. We’ll be married and telephone your father. He’ll rage, but you’ll be out of his reach.”

She sat silent, bewildered, more terrified by this new development than by her father’s rage and her imprisonment. She was afraid of Cantor’s suavity; she was afraid of his power, afraid of what he and her father might plan and carry through with her as its victim. It was sinister, threatening.... And what she knew of this man did not lead her to think of him as a man who married.... As she was she might lose her life or her reason, but something told her that if she became Cantor’s she would lose her soul.... Potter Waite arose before her, and her love for Potter Waite—her love that could never come to fruition....

She pondered, and her keen, restless brain darted here and there like some small imprisoned animal seeking a way of escape, but everywhere encountering the bars of the cage.... One thing she saw—she must not refuse Cantor with finality. She must leave him uncertain, with hope or reason to believe he might find her malleable in his hands. She must not offend him; she must put him off from day to day for her own safety, hoping for the unexpected to intervene. They hoped to shut her mouth by marriage. She would hold them in suspense and gain what advantage a moment might vouchsafe to her. At any rate, Cantor meant liberties for her; meant that she would be allowed to leave her room, to go about the city with him, to divert herself, to find relief in gaieties and in matching her wits against his.... This she saw.

“Not now—not to-day,” she said. “Wait.... This is a new thought to me.... I don’t know.... Will you go now and let me think. Please go now—and come to-morrow.”

“For my answer?”

“I won’t promise that—but come.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. “To hear is to obey,” he said, gaily. “At least I may hope.”

She found herself alone and tired, so tired. “You can hope,” she said to the vanished Cantor, “but there’s no hope for me—in all the world there’s not a ray of hope.”

CHAPTER XX

In those days it was impossible to carry on a conversation with Potter Waite on any subject but aviation. No matter where the talk started, aeroplanes seized it and flew away with it. He was a man preaching a crusade, and he preached it with an intensity, a fire, a grim fanaticism that caught and carried away his hearers if only for a moment of enthusiasm. He had the gift to make men see, and such singleness of purpose as somewhat nonplussed the careless and irritated them with the itch of accusing uneasiness. He would have had every man, woman, and child in America working to give America wings. He preached a religion, and the creed of it was, “By aeroplanes alone shall ye be saved.”

Men not yet touched by the gradual awakening of the nation avoided him as one infected, for he did not mince words with them, nor choose terms. He was intolerant with the intolerance of youth; impatient, restless, with an impatience and restlessness all his own. He burned. When he talked his hands were never still, and his eyes would grow hotter and hotter with the fires of his purpose until it made one uncomfortable to return their gaze. With men of a certain type he had scant popularity, which he was at no pains to increase. He did not seek opportunities to make himself heard, but if men would talk to him they must listen to what he had to say. Only once did he speak in public, and that was without invitation or premeditation. The occasion was a noonday luncheon of manufacturers in the Board of Commerce dining-room, where they listened to a millionaire manufacturer invited to speak about newly arising problems of labor.

It was a smug talk, with the jingle of dollars playing an obbligato through its length; it was a talk characteristic of the opinion and the lethargy of the day; characteristic of the individualism of the Middle-Westerner. It contained polite references to the war and to the flag and vague reflections as to the high duty of Detroit and Detroit’s wealth to lay some unspecified contribution on the nation’s plate. Probably the speaker imagined himself to be a patriot; his hearers applauded. It was a comfortable speech that caused no unpleasant notions to present themselves, and offered a sort of royal road to patriotic service. Potter listened and scowled and wriggled uneasily in his chair.

When the speaker had emptied his reservoir the chairman invited discussion, and more than one well-fed man of business arose to place his O. K. on the splendid sentiments which had drenched them.... Potter sat on the edge of his chair.

“Our duty lies in production,” a gentleman stood up to remark. “Production will win this war, and that is our part. We must see to it that business goes on as usual. We must raise food for Europe and manufacture supplies for Europe. There is America’s great opportunity, and, as I look about me at the character of this gathering, I see that Detroit can be depended upon to do her part. The country must not be disturbed....” And five minutes of such clarion words. The speaker subsided and Potter leaped to his feet and glared about him.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, intensely, “I’ve sat through an hour of this twaddle, and, by Heaven! I’m sick!” He paused, careless of a hostile movement, of scowls, of whispers. “As I understand these men, we are not going to war beside England and France; we are invited to a comfortable, cozy opportunity to play we’re at war and to milk our allies for our own enrichment. That seems to be the idea expressed here to-day. I’ve even heard the word patriotism mentioned. Why, you fellows don’t know whether you’re living in America or in China, and you don’t care so long as the money keeps coming in. You have the idea America has gone to war as a salesmanship campaign for your merchandise.... You’re ducking and dodging war; you’re side-stepping. You’re talking nonsense about labor.... Do you know what’s going to become of labor—and capital, too. It’s going to Europe with guns in its hands and it’s going to fight. You want a war without fighting. You’re asleep; you’ve drugged yourselves; but you’re in for a waking up. There are men in this room who will lie dead under French soil before another year is gone, men here whose sons and brothers will lie dead or come home ghastly wrecks ... and you’ll be proud and glad it is so. That’s what’s coming. You’ll learn to know America, and you’ll learn what it is to love your country.... If you want to know what war is, let yourselves think about the murdered children, the raped women, the butchered men of Belgium and France.... That’s war, and America is sending her men to give their lives so the children and women at home may not be murdered and violated.... It isn’t a smug, comfortable thought. America is going out to kill a wild beast, and America will be torn by that beast.... Business as usual! Great Heaven! but you should be ashamed of yourselves!... Go home and think. Go home and shake yourselves awake, and then go to work—for your country. And for God’s sake quit making public spectacles of yourselves by talking the kind of nonsense you’ve talked to-day....”

He sat down suddenly amid a dead silence. The room quivered with fury; more than one man sprang to his feet to pour his outraged dignity upon Potter’s head.... But from the other side of the room a big man pushed his way to Potter’s side—a man who long before America entered the war had fought for preparedness and earned his enemies. He put out his hand and said, in his big, strident, rough voice:

“Give ’em hell, boy. You’ve got the idea. Let’s get out of this place. It stinks.”

Potter had been unfair, but he did not know he had been unfair. Those men meant better than they had spoken, and their intentions were good. They had not comprehended yet, that was all—not the greater part of them. But already there was a growing, silent minority who looked ahead and saw—a minority which was getting ready mentally, and which, with an avalanche from the majority, would one day stand up to its duty as Americans with love of America in their hearts.... The time was not distant, for events were lunging forward.

Potter and his friend walked out of the room and into the street. “They’ll say some nasty things about you, Waite,” said the big man, “and rake up old scrapes. Don’t let it worry you. Stick to the gait you’ve struck. You’re tackling a big job, and I like the way you go at it.”

“Aeroplanes—” Potter said, quickly.

But the big man interrupted: “Now, now, keep off me. I know about your aeroplanes. You don’t have to convert me.... How’s it coming, if it’s allowed to ask?”

“Delays and delays. The steel-mills are delayed by the mines; the machine-works are delayed by the steel-mills; the whole of them are messed up by labor shortage, and when they get a machine ready for delivery the railroads catch it in an embargo or run it on a side-track and forget it. But we’re making progress. Maybe by November we’ll get down to brass tacks. If we can only get the necessary machinery for quantity production installed.... I don’t think we’re as bad off as the people who will assemble the ’planes. They’re up against it for spruce and linen.”

“If there’s ever anything I can do—I’ve offered my entire plant to the government, but can’t get any satisfaction. Meantime I’m manufacturing army trucks day and night.”

“If only that herd—” Potter began, angrily.

“They’ll come along, Waite. You’ll see. They’ve traveled quite a distance since April sixth.”

Potter got into his car and drove away. He was seething. His mind was in a tumult, for the noon’s events had excited him, and for months he had been under a strain which was beginning to wear the insulation off his nerves. He lived in a fever; drove himself and everybody else feverishly. At last the energy which had made his youth fertile for the sensational press was finding an outlet, and the burning urge of his restless soul was compelling him to a headlong pace that permitted no rest, no conservation of powers. He was a man driven.

This noon he felt breathless, confused. It was as though something opaque kept flicking back and forth across his eyes, clouding his vision. He could not concentrate; felt he could not bear to step into a room, shut the door, and sit down to a desk. He knew he would be useless, that he would accomplish nothing, so he headed on out Woodward Avenue, not turning east at the Boulevard. He wanted to get away from human beings, to be alone and to quiet himself. The calm of the country drew him, and he longed, without realizing his longing, for the soothing hand of open places and sweet air. He even thought of playing golf—a round of golf would settle him down, and he could make up for it by added hours of work that night.

He passed through Highland Park at a speed which excited the interest of traffic officers. When he left Royal Oak he stepped on the gas pedal with a fierce, breathless enjoyment of the excitement of high speed. Beyond Birmingham, once a distant village, now a suburb of Detroit, he turned westward over the road that led to the Bloomfield Hills Country Club. There he parked his car and, without caddy or companion, strode out upon the links, playing savagely, rapidly.

Only here and there was a player. Potter encountered no one until he was well away from the clubhouse. Then ahead of him he saw a man and girl, with a second man in chauffeur’s livery carrying the caddy bags. He did not glance at them, but played feverishly on until he overtook them sitting on a bench beside the tee.... It was Hildegarde von Essen, Cantor, and Philip, the von Essens’ chauffeur.

It was like a blow. He had last seen Hildegarde in Washington, and there Hildegarde had repeated her confession—that she loved him and could not marry him because she was fit to be no man’s wife. And he had wrung from her, or believed he had wrung from her, the admission that Cantor was the cause of her catastrophe.... And here he found her with the man, chaperoned by a chauffeur, playing golf as casually as if the man had a right to her companionship and friendship; as if he were not something that should be inexpressibly repulsive to her, terrible to contemplate.

Potter stopped fifty feet away from them and glared. It was unthinkable, searing. In his soul he could not believe that relations could have continued, yet what else did the fact indicate? Opaque blurs danced before his eyes; he felt a geyser of passion boiling up within him, a geyser of rage and horror, mingled with the agony of a love such as only a man of his temperament could know.

It was not given to him ever to count costs, to look to the future, to perceive results. Now he had but one thought—that Cantor was there, that he hated Cantor, that the Lord had delivered Cantor into his hands. He strode forward and confronted Hildegarde.

“What does this mean?” he demanded, hoarsely. “You here with this man!... My God! are you proud of this thing?... Defiled! Aren’t you satisfied with that? How you can endure to see him—”

Cantor was on his feet, amazed. “Here, Waite,” he said, “what’s this?”

Hildegarde stood beside him, white, very slender and boyish, an inferno of suffering in her eyes. “Potter.... Mr. Cantor,” she said, in a whisper.

Potter did not look at Cantor, was not ready for Cantor yet. He had first to show his scorn for Hildegarde, his revulsion from the conduct she had chosen for herself.

“It’s hideous,” he said, slowly. “There’s such a thing as shame.... You can go about with this man—when you ought to want to kill him.... This whelp....”

“Potter—what are you saying? What do you know?”

“If you please, Miss von Essen,” said Cantor, stepping between her and Potter. “Now talk to me,” he said, evenly. “What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

Potter looked into Cantor’s eyes an instant before he spoke; then he said, with quiet intensity: “There isn’t much I can do about it, Cantor.... There’s no way of giving you your deserts, but I’m going to do the best I can.... I’m going to thrash you till you whimper. I’m going to hammer you till you crawl on your knees to Miss von Essen and beg her forgiveness—for a thing that can’t be forgiven.... You swine!” He struck suddenly, viciously, and Cantor went down. Before Potter could spring over him something thudded dully on the back of his head, the world seemed upheaving and splitting apart, and he staggered, swayed, and sprawled upon the ground at Hildegarde’s feet.... Philip had struck him down with a driver from the caddy bag.

Hildegarde uttered a single cry and threw herself above Potter, shielding him from the possibility of another blow.

“You sha’n’t!” she cried. “You sha’n’t hurt him! Leave him be.”

Cantor struggled to his feet, his face livid, his mouth cut and bleeding. Hildegarde glared at him, drawing herself closer to Potter, who lay without movement.

“What’s the matter with the fool?” Cantor said, harshly.

“I don’t understand,” she said, “but you sha’n’t touch him. He sha’n’t be harmed.”

Cantor glanced at Philip. “I guess he won’t bother us for a while,” he said. “The wild man!... Is he jealous—is that it?”

She did not reply, but tried to raise Potter’s head to her lap. “Get water,” she said.

Cantor bent over to examine Potter’s head. “He’s all right,” he said. “He’ll wake up in a minute, and when he does—”

“When he does,” she said, “we’ll get him to his car.... Poor boy! It’s been hard—he’s had a hard time.... Oh, Potter, it’s been hard for me, too!...”

“Look here,” Cantor said, ungently. “What about this? Had you any idea this lunatic was planning this sort of thing? What does it mean, anyhow?”

Hildegarde was bewildered herself. What did it mean? What had Potter’s words meant? Did they signify that he knew who Cantor was, had discovered her father’s guilt? She held that fear, but put it away from her. It was something else, something she did not understand.

“It means that he loves me,” she said, piteously.

“It looks as if it meant that you loved him.... Is that it? Have you been making a fool of me?... Tell me.”

“Love him?” she said, with a sudden intensity. “I love him with every breath I draw.” Her voice broke and failed. “But it’s no use—no use.”

Potter stirred, opened his eyes and shut them again, breathed heavily, and struggled to sit up. He peered about him dizzily, saw Cantor bending over him, looking down calculatingly.

“I knew it was you,” Potter said, queerly. “Was the ’plane smashed?... What are you doing here, Cantor? Where’s Miss von Essen?”

“I’m here, Potter,” she said. “Are you hurt? Can you stand? Don’t try to stand. Wait! Let me wet my handkerchief. There’s water over on the green.” She got up and hurried to the putting-green. Potter shook his head. “I thought—” he said, and stopped. “You were there,” he said to himself. “I always thought you were there. I was sure I saw your face.”

In a moment his brain cleared and he remembered. “You dog!” he said, his eyes blazing as he tried to get to his feet.

Cantor pushed him back. “Be quiet,” he said, “or Philip will hand you another lesson. What do you mean, you fool, going around roaring like a lunatic and starting rows?”

“Mean?... She told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That she was—defiled.... That you—”

Cantor laughed. He understood, and, being an opportunist, availed himself of the opportunity. “What’s it to you?” he said. “Miss von Essen can choose her—friends.... What’s there to rave about?... If a pretty girl throws herself at your head, do you call a policeman?”

It was confirmation; the thing was past doubting. Potter got to his feet just as Hildegarde returned with her wetted handkerchief, which she would have applied to his wounded head, but he repulsed her, would not let her touch him, and stood wavering dizzily.

“Just a moment,” he said to Cantor, “and we’ll finish this.”

Cantor smiled grimly. “Philip,” he said, “I haven’t any desire to brawl with this fellow.”

Philip came forward eagerly, the driver ready in his hands.

“Don’t, Potter,” Hildegarde said. “Go away. You don’t know these men. You don’t know—”

“Miss von Essen!” said Cantor, sharply.

“There are two of them.... Go away, please.... And you’re hurt.”

“You won’t fight, man to man?” Potter said.

“Why should I?” Cantor said.

Potter turned and looked at Hildegarde, looked at her as a man looks at a loved face that is vanishing forever out of his life. Then he turned on his heel and walked unsteadily away. He went straight to his car, stopping for nothing, and drove it out into the road. His sensation was as if his mind were alive in a dead body. But the mind was alive, queerly, keenly alive, and, strangely, it was not busied with Hildegarde von Essen, but with Cantor.

He was recalling the day his ’plane had swooped to destruction on that little island in the waste of Muscamoot Bay; he was recalling that moment of consciousness after the fall and how a man had appeared and bent over him.... When he had awakened just now he had fancied for a moment it was that same catastrophe, that he had fallen from his ’plane, and was looking up into the face of the man who had stood above him.... And he knew, he knew past all doubt and disbelief, that the two men were the same. Cantor had been on that island. Cantor had conveyed himself and Hildegarde to the hospital, had moved the wrecked aeroplane to the distant shores of Baltimore Bay.... Cantor had kept hidden his knowledge, and the fact of his presence on that spot.... With a rush came realization of the strangeness of these facts, a bewilderment, a burning curiosity to know what was the meaning of the riddle—and a suspicion of Cantor which demanded investigation and verification.

“Who is this man? What is he doing here? What is his real business? What does he want to conceal on that island?” These were questions which presented themselves and demanded an answer.

CHAPTER XXI

Time is an eel. No matter how you sand your fingers, it wriggles through and is gone. One sets an act for to-morrow, especially if one be laboring as Potter Waite was laboring in those feverish days, and awakes suddenly to find it is next week or next month—and nothing had been done. When every hour of the day is carrying a double freight of necessary things to be done, the urgent thing that is capable of being pushed ahead finds itself moving hopelessly into the future.

When Potter drove to his office from the Bloomfield Hills club he was a man of single purpose, and that purpose was to pry into the affairs of Cantor until they lay upheaved for any man to view. He suspected Cantor, he knew not of what, but of something sinister. It sufficed, in such times, that the man had something to conceal; that the truth of him was not held up to public view.... And Potter hated him.

As with every other man, he had used the word “hate,” but he had never understood it. Now he knew that it had a very special and exact meaning, and he could have defined it with precision—not in words, perhaps, but by acts which speak with an eloquence words can never hope to achieve. One can describe with words a sunset, a hurricane, the eruption of a volcano. But when one is done there is nothing but vowels and consonants arranged in a certain order. They may convey a suggestion, but no more. A printed page, no matter from what master’s hand, remains a printed page. It is not sunset, hurricane, volcano. So with hate. It cannot be stamped upon paper; it can be indicated by conventional signs; but those conventional signs mean nothing but a vague hint to the individual who has not experienced the thing. Potter Waite experienced it. He hated Cantor, and when that is said words have reached their limit in denoting that human emotion which is the reverse of love.

But he did not act. He worked. No man who has not waited through days of construction to see a new mill begin the business of its existence, to see the shafts revolve, carrying with them their multitude of pulleys, communicating energy from the power-plant to the machine of production, does not know impatience. He is looking forward to the day when machines, perfect and exact for their appointed work, shall produce a concrete thing that can be seen and felt. It is not enough to know that each day brings nearer the concrete thing. No man but a mill man, skilled in such matters, knows what delays intervene, what errors creep in, what changes have to be made—and what a pall of anxiety hangs over the whole.... Once there was a mill which started up and ran flawlessly when it was completed. The residence of that mill is in a fairy-tale....

In early September the strain of anxiety was everywhere present in the huge rooms which were to turn out the motor of victory. There was a breathlessness, an apprehension, a realization that something was wrong, and a sense that things more catastrophic were gestating in the womb of the future. Something was wrong. Engineers, superintendents, machinists, were given to sudden ravings. Small things caused a condition of constant irritation; an occasional big thing brought down an avalanche of consternation. Men did not say that something was wrong; they said somebody was wrong. And somebody was wrong.

An atmosphere of suspicion arose like a dank fog, and every man looked askance at his neighbor—for he knew in his heart that that neighbor might be the man; might be spending of nights money that found its way into his pockets from the huge sums Germany was reported to have placed in America to hamper America’s preparations for war. Some man, some men, were hampering the work in that plant; it was a patent fact. Some men who had passed the inspection of government investigators and who wore the guise of honest American working-men had sold their souls to the German devil. Every honest man in that plant knew that when he sat down to eat his lunch at noon he was eating in the presence of traitors and spies.... It was not a condition calculated to soothe.

The work of sabotage was skilfully performed, as if by the black enchantments of an evil magician. Its results were there, but none could say how or by whose hand.

Again and again Potter demanded results of the men of the Secret Service, but they gave no results.

“There must be suspects,” Potter declared, vehemently. “Whom do you suspect?”

“Everybody,” said Downs, who was in command. “I suspect first those men who have the most unimpeachable antecedents. It is a safe rule in these days to suspect the man who is above suspicion. The Germans are thorough. It looks as if they had caused their agents to be born, and reared them for thirty years for this work.... Mr. Waite, the man who is planning and carrying out this business in Detroit is a great man.”

“He’s got you beaten?”

“We’ll get him,” said Downs.

“But meantime he is putting off by months the manufacture and delivery of aeroplanes.”

It was not alone the work done under that roof that went awry. Machines and tools were manufactured for the business of machining motors in a score of plants in Detroit—and they must be tools of a marvelous delicacy and exactitude.... What percentage of them were delivered in a useless condition will never be known, for it was a matter upon which the Signal Corps imposed secrecy.

“There’s an army of spies in Detroit,” a manufacturer declared to Potter. “Every plant is full of them—and how can we prevent it? Detroit was made to their order. Our growth has compelled us to scour the earth for labor, and we have imported labor by the excursion-train. In ten years half a million strangers have come to Detroit.... They haven’t been watched. In some countries, I’m told, the police have the dossier of every citizen. In America the commissioner of police of a great city probably hasn’t the dossier of the chief of the force. My plant is full of spies, your plant is full of spies, and before God I see no remedy for it or protection against it.”

“I was confident of delivering motors in November,” Potter said. “Maybe now I can make deliveries in January.... If that isn’t equal to a victory in a pitched battle, then I’m an imbecile.”

“Nobody realizes it. The Liberty Loan did something toward bringing the war home to our people, but it was only a beginning. Detroit rushed and pawed to make up its quota—but, after all, it was only a pocketbook affair. It brought no suffering, only benefits to most. It introduced the man with fifty dollars to investment. It made men fancy they could be patriots for a fifty-dollar bill. But it was a step toward arousing the people. We’re nearer.”

“When they give their sons—” Potter said.

“It will come closer then. The draft was a big step—and the people’s attitude toward the draft was an eye-opener. I’ve a notion we men who like to think we’re the most important thing in the nation, we wealthy men, don’t really know what the people are thinking about. Maybe they’re more serious than we think? Maybe there’s more genuine love for America in them than we think.... A year ago I would have said an attempt to draft would have brought on a revolution.”

“Thank God for the people!” Potter said.

“But even they won’t feel the war—not when their sons march off to training-camps ... not until the cables bring home lists of the dead. Then America will know it is at war.”

Potter dined at the Detroit Athletic Club that scorching September day which was to see the first draft men in their farewell parade. It was almost a gala occasion. The dining-rooms were crowded with cheerful men, and some of those men were to march in the parade. Most of those whom Potter saw were bent on holiday, wore a holiday expression; many carried a humorous expression. The air was not heavy with foreboding, but light with jest. A spectacle was in preparation for their eyes, and they were in humor to enjoy it.

Men arose and sauntered toward Woodward Avenue. A man at the next table said, jauntily, “Well, it’s about time we ambled over to take a look at the circus.” That was the attitude—a section of the attitude. Potter wondered how far it went, how deep its strata extended, how much of it was genuine. There was a thoughtlessness that offended him.

He went alone to see the spectacle. He did not want companions, but wanted to see, to study, to comprehend. He was going to the laboratory to endeavor to assay the American people.

From a boy he bought a wooden box and stood upon it at the corner of Woodward and Adams avenues. North and south the streets were massed with such a crowd as Detroit had never before turned out. Potter watched the section of it that lay under his eye, and listened for such messages by word of mouth from the public thought as might filter to his ears.

In the park at his left the very trees bore a human fruit. Roofs were densely fringed; every window was filled beyond its capacity—and upon all the pitiless heat beat down. They waited patiently, for the parade, like all parades in Detroit, was delayed in starting. A couple of women fainted—not from emotion, not because loved ones were marching away, but because of weariness and the breathless heat.

Potter studied, but was at a loss for conclusions. The same holiday air was present; the same lack of somber forebodings. Once he saw a woman pass with handkerchief to her eyes, her husband’s arm about her shoulders. She was giving a son. The crowd looked after her and whispered, and grew silent for a moment.... Maybe they did understand, Potter thought. Maybe this holiday air was a pose to conceal a dark care. He could not force himself to believe it.

The crowd surged closer, straining eager eyes up the street, for the parade approached. It came and passed—fraternal orders, Grand Army men, Spanish War veterans, home guard, cadet corps—and the men of the draft.... It was upon the men of the draft that interest centered, and they came rollicking, in straggling, unmilitary lines. They, too, apparently, were bent on holiday, for they jostled, sang, bandied retorts with the crowd, called joyously to acquaintances, and filled the air with straw hats. A humorist had snatched a straw hat from a companion and sent it sailing into the air. In a moment the air was full of straw hats and laughter.... And these men were marching away to be trained in the business of killing their fellow-men!

It was characteristic of America that the draft men had staged their parade with humorous effects. They carried signs and banners upon which were mottoes, and for one legend which was serious, thought-compelling, twenty were flamboyantly farcical. There was a fondness for announcing in rhyme that the Kaiser would be given hell. One man led a goat which was announced to be the Kaiser’s goat.... Potter searched for a downcast face, a tearful eye. It might have been that some were present in that marching line, but he saw none. America was marching to war with a jest on its lips.

“They’ll laugh out of the other side of their mouths,” Potter heard a man remark, and that was the nearest he approached to gloomy prophecies that day.

He went back to his work. He had seen, and he was puzzled. He could not read the meaning of that day’s spectacle, and it hurt and bewildered him. “They don’t take it seriously,” he said to himself. “What does it mean?”

Perhaps if he could have stepped into the homes of those thousands of young men he might have read a different message; perhaps if he could have seen the farewells, heard the words of father or mother to son who was going away from them to fight for the great issue of the right of individual nations to live, he might have perceived matters which were hidden from him. The American does not parade his grief; does not flaunt before the world his serious emotions. Those are for his secret heart; not even, save in great moments, for his immediate family. With a rude joke and a laugh he puts himself on record, and perhaps that record lies. There is but one record that offers verity, but that is a secret record, not open to the investigator. It is printed in the recesses of the heart.

Hildegarde saw the parade, too, saw it from the vantage-point of Cantor’s office window, and watched his face with greater interest than she watched the passing men below. His expression was ironical, almost sneering. He was studying, appraising. Hildegarde said to herself that he was formulating in his mind a report of the thing to be forwarded through devious channels to Berlin. In due time the High Command in Germany would have spread before it Cantor’s well-considered estimate of America’s draft army, and, if his expression were indicative, that report would be pleasing to those in charge of Germany’s military destinies.

She mused on her anomalous position—an American girl, loyal to the last ounce of her blood, in this room with a man whom she knew to be a German secret agent. Somehow the thing did not seem so inexplicable to her, but she considered it thoughtfully. She knew this man to be what he was—but had not a scrap of evidence to bolster up her knowledge. It was her duty to indicate him to the authorities, but she did not point him out—because she was tied to the trade he represented by a cable she could not break.... And she accepted him as a companion because to refuse to do so was to cut herself off from companionship. With this man alone could she move about in the world and snatch such pleasures and forgetfulness as minor excitements commanded.

For a week after that disquieting encounter with Potter Waite at the Bloomfield Hills club she had refused to see Cantor; determined she would never see him, allow him to be her escort or guard again.... But a week of lonely imprisonment forced her to give way. She sent word by the man who brought her food that she would receive Cantor, and he came.

“Does this mean that you’re through playing with me?” he demanded, coldly.

“I have never played with you,” she said.

“You have pretended to consider my offer of marriage.”

“I have considered it.”

“And your answer.”

“I can give you no answer—yet. I—You know I do not love you. But—”

“Marry me and I’ll attend to the love,” he said, grimly. “You suppose you are in love with that lunatic Waite.... Let me tell you that you may as well forget him first as last. If you were the last woman in the world, he would never marry you.”

She flashed out at him in fury. “It wouldn’t matter who or what I was,” she said, “Potter Waite would marry me to-morrow. What do you know about it? You know nothing about such a man as Potter; you have no standards to judge him by.... He’s real, he’s honest. He loves me....”

“He’s a fool.”

“Then you could profit by losing your wits,” she said, sharply. “Suppose we omit Potter Waite from our talk. It gets us nowhere.”

“If you’ll omit him from your thoughts—”

“If only I could.”

“You sent for me,” he said, after a pause. “Why?”

“Because I’m tired of being shut up in a cage.”

“Suppose I refuse to take you out of it—without something more definite in the way of promises?”

“Then I’ll stay shut up.... You may as well understand me one time as another. If I marry you I’ll marry you when I’m ready, and not until I’m ready. I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anybody.... But there are limits to what one can endure. To marry you might be more endurable than not to marry you.... I’ve seen enough of life to realize that. I couldn’t have realized it a year ago. I’m talking frankly to you, Mr. Cantor.”

“I agree with you,” he said, ironically.

“You seem to think I am desirable as a wife. But you don’t love me. You have your reasons for wanting me.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Would you care to tell me what they are?”

“I like excitement,” he said, with a grim laugh. “With you as my wife I would never have to seek it.”

“My father is wealthy. I have social position here.... I suppose, if we are to think about this as barter and sale, that you have something to offset that—besides your presence and—abilities.”

He drew himself up and stared at her. “I—” he began, and checked himself. He had been on the point of a disclosure, she knew, driven by vanity. He shrugged his shoulders. “You would not be the loser,” he said.

“In case you ever leave America,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“In war-times,” she said, “I have read that spies are shot.”

He laughed. “You have that silly idea yet? Well, so long as you don’t prattle about it, no harm is done.... And I’ll see to it you don’t prattle.”

“I’ve thought of offering to marry you if you would release my father. But that idea didn’t appeal. I knew you wouldn’t keep your promise ... so long as he was useful to you.”

“The American family system is a puzzle to me,” he said.

“You arrange these things better—in Germany?”

“You would be impossible in Germany or France or Russia.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am American.... That’s the terrible truth. I’m American, and I have a traitor for a father and a spy of the enemy for a possible husband. Oh,” she said, with a sudden flux of despair, “why should this thing happen to me—to me?”

He offered no sympathy. “Anyhow,” he said, “you have had to send for me.... And I came. I’m patient, and you are worth being patient for.” His eyes glowed as they rested upon her, perceiving her slender, ardent youth, the fire, the ability to live, the reckless charm of her. “Let it rest so. We will go on as before.”

And so it had been. She recalled that conversation now as the music of bands and the voice of the multitude arose to her ears. So it had been—and there was no change. His patience and persistence were unabated; her power of resistance was undiminished.

He turned to her suddenly. “America imagines she can stand up against Germany’s armies with those.” He pointed downward. “And these men of the Middle West and the West are the best you can give. Look at them.”

She looked at the straggling lines of jaunty men, lacking uniform, lacking bearing, lacking everything that goes to make the soldier, but a something which was invisible to her eyes and to Cantor’s eyes, but which is the thing, when all else is judged and weighed, that carries a man steadfastly, unflinchingly, into a hell of carnage.

“A regiment of Prussians would annihilate an army of them,” Cantor said.

“Wait six months, a year,” she retorted. “Then talk.”

“In a year,” he said, “the game will be played out. America’s men don’t signify. Nothing she can do signifies, beyond her money and her munitions.... And those...”

“It’s your business to deal with,” she said, quickly.

He turned around and said, suddenly, “Are you going to marry me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d as soon you didn’t,” he said, significantly.

She stared at him, perplexed; then she comprehended. She was not outraged, was not even angry. The thing she had read in his eyes more than once was not the desire which urges a man to take a wife. Her lips curled. “I suppose the next step would be to use me in your trade,” she said. “Spy literature is full of attractive women used as—shall we say bait?”

His eyes darkened. “If I were interested in such things,” he said, “I’d say you could fit the part.”

“It’s one I’ll never play,” she said, shortly.

“The future is—the future,” he said.

He turned again to the window; left her brooding, frightened, staring toward to-morrow and the cargo of good or ill which to-morrow was freighting toward her.... She had never considered herself as good or bad in the way of morals. She had taken herself for granted, as one who would not be touched by certain things. They had seemed romantic, fictitious.... She realized that they were real; that no one is born into the world shielded from them by some mystic immunity. What other women had been she might be. She was flesh of their flesh, breathing the same air, endowed with the same intelligence, swayed by the same temptations, compelled by the same events.... To what might not overwhelming events compel her?... She shrank from the thought; it was of hideous aspect, and unwholesome. It was an unequal struggle—one slender girl against the covetous forces of evil. If evil fixed its eyes upon her, if malevolent events hustled and jostled her toward their ends, as events had been jostling her—what refuge had she? She was conscious of a strength of resolution, of a righteous aversion, but would their strength prevail against such potence as would be arrayed against them? It was a question she could not answer until the future demanded an answer from her. Only the conflict could make manifest the truth. It lay with her own soul, and she could not inventory her own soul. Nothing but the pressure of the event itself could do that.

Cantor turned to her again. “The parade is over,” he said. “Where shall we go?”

“Home,” she said, in a low tone—a frightened, lonely tone.

“I’ve offended you?”

“No, I’m not offended. I’m not even surprised.”

“Good,” he said. “Suppose, then, we eliminate the idea of marriage. Substitute my suggestion.”

She looked into his eyes with a show of courage, a show of steadiness, but it was bravado. Her soul quaked. For the first time in her brief life squalid evil leered at her from the shadows; she knew it awaited her around the next corner, licking its leering, slavering lips. It lay in wait. One unguarded second, one instant when the protection of that virtue which is breathed into every woman’s soul from the great Mother Soul was drugged by stealth or stunned by brutal blow, and she might be lost.

“Let us go,” she said.

She had carried herself better than she knew. Cantor was left perplexed. She baffled him. He did not know what to think nor what had been the result of his words.

CHAPTER XXII

Through September and October the labor situation grew more and more acute. It was not that labor made unreasonable demands which Potter could not satisfy; it was not class unrest, not the work of professional agitators—it was fear. Some agency was skilfully and systematically frightening the men who worked on the government’s motor. Potter discussed the phenomenon with his father.

“The men are restless,” he said, bitterly. “One day they’re going to walk out in a mob.”

“Can’t you satisfy them?” Fabius Waite said, looking at the problem from the old angle of capital and labor.

“That’s a thing that doesn’t enter into it, father. They’re frightened. They have cause. I’m frightened myself.”

“Well?”

“We’ve been delayed. We should have been delivering in quantities by this date, but what have we done? Not even a miserable dribble of motors has gone out. Not enough to experiment with, enough to play with in a few aviation camps.... But we’ve got to equip an army. Small things have happened, but every one of them is threatening, and the men see and worry about them.”

“Bosh!”

“It’s not bosh, father! These men aren’t soldiers, trained to risk their lives. They are ordinary working-men, trying to support their families. I’m afraid for them. We’re getting along now, in spite of all delays. We’re getting in shape to produce. It’s the moment we are ready that I’m afraid of, the moment when these sabotage tactics have to be thrown in the discard. The man who is organizing this thing knows we will get ready in spite of all he can do.... He’s planning for that day. I’d bet my life on it. When we are ready he’ll be ready—and he’ll strike if we don’t prevent him. The moment it will pay him best to try to destroy this plant is when the plant is completed. That would be the hardest blow he could deliver, and he’s the man to deliver it. Whoever he is, he’s too much for Downs and his men.”

“Get him,” said his father.

“We’ve tried to get him for months, but we’re no nearer than we were. Downs has rounded up spies—subordinates, strong-arm men, and that sort. But they knew nothing. To break up this thing we’ve got to get the man at the top.”

“Well, get him. There’s a way. Nobody is so smart that he can hide all the roads that lead to him.”

“Downs says—”

“The devil with Downs! Go after him yourself. The way for any man to do business is to tackle the big jobs himself and leave the details to hired men. It looks like this was the big job.”

“If a trained Secret Service man falls down on it, how could I hope to do anything?”

“Because you’re not a trained Secret Service man,” said Fabius, grimly. “And because you’ve got to. And when you get him, get him good.”

Potter went back to his office, not in a happy mood. He found a delegation of machinists waiting for him.

“Mr. Waite,” said the spokesman, an oldish man with hard hands and intelligent eyes, “the men got together last night and appointed us to come to talk things over.”

“What things, Lakin?”

“It isn’t what you may be thinking, Mr. Waite. We’re satisfied. Wages and conditions are all right—but we don’t like to work here.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“The men are afraid,” Lakin said, “and I, for one, don’t blame them. Work is plenty, Mr. Waite, and every man can find a dozen places to work where there ain’t danger of his being blown sky-high. That’s the trouble.”

“Where did you get this sky-high notion?”

“The shop is full of it. The men know it. I don’t know how they know it, or who told them, but every man is as sure of it as he is of his own name. Ain’t that so, Jim?”

“It’s a-comin’,” said Jim.

“Who says so?”

“Everybody. The men know the things that have happened, and they say something worse is on the way.... They say it’ll come when the plant’s done.”

“Didn’t set any date, did they?” Potter asked, with a grim smile.

“Pretty close” said Lakin, somberly. “And you can’t expect ’em to hang around, waiting for it. I’m not goin’ to.”

Potter sat back in his chair and considered. Something must be done, and must be done at once. “Lakin,” he said, “hold the men together this noon. I’ve got something to say to them.”

“All right, Mr. Waite, but I don’t b’lieve it’ll do any good.”

At noon Potter went down to the mill-yard, where a multitude of men were expectantly assembled. He stood upon a motor truck and looked about him, and there was a thrill in his heart at the spectacle, a thrill at the thought that he was the general in command of all these men. It gave him a sense of power, a sense of his capability to accomplish.

“Men,” he said, “Lakin told me this morning what ails you. You’re afraid something is going to happen.”

“We know it,” shouted a voice.

“Very well, you know it. I’ll tell you how you know it. It’s because there are spies among you who are making it their business to spread the news, to terrify you. They’ve ruined machinery, caused delays, put every obstacle in our way, and now, when we are almost ready to do business, they’re working on you.”

“They’re goin’ to blow up this plant,” a voice called.

“By God!” said Potter, “they sha’n’t!” He stopped and glared about him. “I say they sha’n’t, and I’ll see to it they don’t!... This plant belongs to our country. It’s working for our country to give her what she needs most.” He spoke in a tone almost of reverence as one referring to a sacred place, a sacred thing. His plant was devoted to a sacred work, and in his heart he had a feeling that heaven itself would intervene between it and disaster.

“Every man of you is an American citizen,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

“You bet.... You’re darn right,” men cried here and there.

“Would you fight for your country? If there was need, would you put on uniforms and go to fight to save this country? Do you love your country?”

There was a silence, a scuffling of feet, an uneasy movement of the mass. “How about it?” Potter demanded. “Would you fight for America?”

“I calc’late we would,” said a man; “I done it in the Spanish War.” His voice was echoed; heads were nodded. “But what’s that got to do with it?” a voice demanded. “We hain’t wanted to fight.”

Potter stepped to the edge of the truck and pointed his finger in their faces. “Not a man of you need go back to work. Every man who wants to can go to the office for his pay....” He turned and pointed up to the flag that stood out in the breeze from the flagstaff above the building. “You’re working under that,” he cried. “We want nobody working under it who is a quitter. What we want here are men.... What if there is danger? Your sons and brothers and friends have gone to face real danger, the danger of the trench and the battlefield.... Are they better men than you? Are you willing to admit that they love that flag more than you? If you do admit it, we don’t want you here.... You’d fight, you say. You want to see your country victorious.... Well, make her victorious. Her victory is tied to this plant and to you. Every man of you is worth a hundred soldiers in France. That’s what you mean to America. Every motor you turn out for an aeroplane is worth a regiment. That’s what your work means.... And you want to lie down, to quit.... Great God! Is that the sort of Americans you are?... Go to the office. Somewhere we’ll find men with guts. This work sha’n’t fail because a German spy has lied in your ears and frightened you.... I’m through with you. You’re willing to let other men do your fighting and face your dangers—and you go home and hide behind your wives when danger is only whispered about. Look at that flag, if you’re not ashamed.... Look at it good, and ask yourselves if you’d rather see the German flag flying there? If you would—go on with this thing. Quit. Take your pay and run. I want fighting-men. I want men who are willing to give their lives for America if she needs them. I don’t want you.... From this minute you don’t work for me, not one of you. From this minute every employee in this plant shall be a volunteer, a man who is willing to fight. This afternoon I move my office into the shop—to be right there when the explosion comes that you’re running away from. If there’s danger I’ll be there to see it with the men in the shop.... I’m going to fight. I want to say that I wanted to fight in France. I wanted to fly an aeroplane over the German lines, but I wasn’t allowed. The War Department ordered me to stay here—and why? Because here is where the war is to be won.... And you’ll have no part in it. Some day your grandchildren will be asking you what you did to help America—and you’ll have to tell them you laid down, that you ran, that you quit in a pinch. That’s all.... The paymaster’s office is open and ready.... You’re fired.” He stopped and glared down at them, and they stood silent, astonished.

“Now,” he shouted, “are there any real Americans among you? I’m calling for volunteers to stick to the job.... Volunteers. Men who will stick to me, hell or high water, dynamite or cyclone. Who’ll stand by America! Who’ll work under that flag!” He pointed upward again. “I’m through. I’ve said all I have to say.... Now then, quitters to the paymaster... volunteers stand forward.”

A man at the far edge began to slink away. Potter watched him in tense anxiety. The men watched him. Was he the first sheep of the flock? Was he the first drop of a deluge? They waited a breathless minute; then a burly man in overalls sprang after the slinker and caught him by the shoulder.

“Git back there!” he shouted. “What the hell you think you’re doing? Git back there, you—”

“Stop,” said Potter. “Let him go if he wants to.”

“He’ll stay,” shouted the big man, “or I’ll see him carried out. He’s a brother of mine. This hain’t your business. It’s mine.... You git back there, Bob.”

Bob slunk back to his place amid jeers and shouts from the men, now in motion, milling like a herd of excited cattle.

“Volunteers!” shouted Potter. “Volunteers step this way!”

Lakin stepped forward and turned to glare at his companions. Another man joined him, and another.... Then the whole throng seemed to surge forward as if swept by a great wind, and as they swept forward they shouted. It was a man’s shout, a shout of victory, a shout of enthusiasm, a shout which told Potter that something had moved in their hearts, and the music of it was very sweet. His face glowed, his eyes burned.

“I thought it was in you,” he said, and his voice was not harsh, as it had been, but clogged with emotion and unsteady. “I had faith in you ... because you were all Americans.... Thank you, men.... The Waite Volunteers.”

Lakin jumped to the truck and shook his fist in their faces. “Cheer, damn you, cheer!” he bawled.... And they cheered.

From that day in Detroit a Waite Volunteer was a man apart; he was different, and conscious of his difference. He was a picked man; he was working, not for wages, but for the flag, and he carried himself with a pride of his own.

“Where d’you work?” a stranger would ask.

“Who? Me?... I’m one of Waite’s men.” Which stood for something and came to mean much.... And of all of them, Potter Waite was proudest. In the years of his life had been no day like this day, nor would be again.... He had found an hour of happiness.

CHAPTER XXIII

Fred la Mothe was giving a party; not a large party, but one which Fred promised himself should be memorable. It was a dual celebration.

“I’m pulling a party at the Tuller to-night,” he told Potter Waite over the telephone. “Double-barreled. To celebrate my birthday and my election as secretary of dad’s concern. Dad admits I’ve come of age; says nobody comes of age until he’s twenty-eight, no matter what the statute in that case made and provided believes. He’s giving me a wad of stock and making me go to work. I guess I’m going to. So this is a farewell performance. Just a dozen of the fellows. You’ll be there?”

“What’s the use?” Potter said. “I’m cold sober these days.”

“Come and watch the rest of us.... Sort us out when it’s time to go home and see that we don’t bust in on the wrong families. There’ll be a taxi for every man.... And I’m planning to shoot off a cabaret stunt that will make Broadway look like a country lane.”

“Nothing doing, Fred.”

“Now look here, you and I have played together since we were kids. This is my big night and it won’t be worth a damn if you aren’t there. Forget your infernal motors for a couple of hours and be a regular fellow again.... I’m asking it as a favor.”

“Well,” said Potter, after a pause, “I’ll drop in for a while to watch the menagerie, but don’t count on my yowling with the rest of the animals.”

“You can be a keeper with a steel prod.”

“O’Mera be there? I hear he’s going to fly.”

“Goes to the ground school next week.... We’ll miss Kraemer and Randall. Kraemer’s here with a brand-new uniform and a commission, but lips that touch liquor can’t touch his’n while he wears it.”

“All right. I’ll show up.”

Potter hung up the receiver and arose from his desk to walk out into the shop. His office was not where it had been, in the administration wing, but occupied a corner of the shop itself. He had kept his promise to the men, and worked side by side with them, surrounded by shafting and belts, by lathes and planers and shapers, and the scraping, clanking, grinding roar of machines that turned out daily more and more work for the government. He glanced about him and was proud. Everywhere were units of motors, parts in all degrees of completion. At last production had commenced on such a scale as he had dreamed of, and now only weeks must elapse before he was turning over to the government a steady flow of motors that would continue day in and day out so long as the war demanded them. It was accomplishment.

From the day he had spoken to the men from the platform of a gray-painted army truck the work had seemed to leap ahead. The men had put in as their share something more than mere wage-earning labor. They had added to it enthusiasm. The spirit with which they worked day after day was splendid, and Potter made it no small part of his duty to see that it did not die out.

There were still annoyances, delays, petty mishaps. The campaign of sabotage had not ceased, but it had been checked, for Potter had now to depend upon an army of watchful, eager eyes, the eyes of every honest working-man, and not the few guardians set by the Signal Corps.... But Potter was not satisfied nor at rest. His foreboding grew as his efforts to lay hands upon the source of the trouble proved futile. He believed something was in preparation, that some blasting catastrophe was being planned and made ready ... which he seemed helpless to avert.

Like all his other days, this one passed too quickly. There were many times when he would have wished to be a Joshua. The machinery went to rest, the army of men filed out noisily, and Potter closed his door for the night. He drove home through the coolly pleasant December air and dressed. At seven o’clock he entered the lobby of the Tuller, where La Mothe stepped forward to greet him.

“The gang’s here,” he said. “Let’s make for the scene of the slaughter.”

There were twelve of them, young men all, not one of whom but carried a name which stood for wealth achieved or personal success. But it was a dozen which could be duplicated more than once in highflying Detroit. They moved in holiday spirit to the private dining-room to which La Mothe directed them, and found their places around a long, flower-laden table. The flowers heaped upon that linen had taken from La Mothe’s pocketbook a sum which would have kept a large family in comfort for a month.

A skilfully set table is a beautiful sight. There is something about the combination of white linen, flowers, silver, and glass which touches a chord in the masculine heart.... Perhaps this bears out the boyish belief that the Chinese place the seat of the emotions in the stomach. Potter’s eye took note of the number and variety of the glasses. Michigan would be afflicted by drought in May, but the drought had not arrived; here was promised a deluge.

The party seated themselves, and as each man lifted his napkin he found under it a cigarette-case of gold, engraved with his monogram.... Such cases, Potter knew, could not be had for a ten-dollar bill; indeed, he doubted if ten such bills would be sufficient. This night La Mothe was not flying near the ground. Financial worries did not seem to hover in his neighborhood. Those cigarette-cases, Potter said to himself, would have maintained a soldier in the field for twelve months.

With the cocktail started the entertainment of which Fred had boasted. A miniature stage with curtain and scenery had been erected at one end of the room, and upon it a performance went forward throughout the dinner. It was there. One might watch it if he chose, or might disregard it for conversation with his neighbor. It was an incident, but not an inexpensive incident. Fred’s idea of a proper cabaret seemed to consist in such sights as the safety of the performers would not permit in a cold room. There was nothing gross. Fred was possessed of too much of the esthetic for that; all was artistically done, skilfully done by performers of no mean grade.... The more perfect the art the less necessary the apparel—that seemed to be the basic rule.

Eldredge sat next Potter; across from him and lower down the table sat O’Mera and Cantor, side by side. Potter had not expected to see Cantor there.... Potter glanced about. There was not a young man present who could not have afforded to give this entertainment or who was amazed at the luxury of it.... He did not glance at Cantor. The sight of the man was hateful to him; the surge of hatred which welled up from his heart held him tense, forgetful of his surroundings, and he sat staring moodily at the table before him. La Mothe perceived his mood and called, jovially:

“Come out of it, Potter. The mourners aren’t due yet. Wait till we have a little poker.”

Potter smiled back, forced himself to cast off the mood, compelled his mind away from Cantor. It was a thing not easy to accomplish. Every time he headed his thoughts away from the man they dodged around and approached from a new angle. He set his teeth and plunged into conversation with Eldredge. It was not an intelligent conversation, and more than once, when Potter gave vague replies or forgot to reply at all, Jack wondered what had gotten into his friend.... He was thinking now of Hildegarde von Essen—thinking bitter, unsavory thoughts. He refused even the lightest of wines, not because he was afraid of the exaltation, but because he knew himself, knew his rash impulsiveness, knew the difficulty he had, sober, to hold himself in hand. Inflamed by stimulant, he could not answer for his conduct, and it would be an ill thing to interrupt La Mothe’s party by flying at Cantor’s throat.

The others were not so cautious. Glasses were filled and emptied. Waiters seemed to fear some calamity if a man were left with an empty glass before him. The party, like all masculine affairs, had been sedate, a trifle strained at the beginning. It was easier now. It was no drunken revel, no orgy, but tongues were set free, wits were kindled, the whole tone was lifted a key, and the signature was never in flats—always sharps.

The time had been when such a party would have revolved around Potter Waite, when he would have given it its tempo—and the others would have found it not easy to follow his time. His presence was always desired, yet it was welcomed with a certain apprehension, for limits known to others did not bound him. Even now the young men in his immediate neighborhood felt a premonition that something reckless would happen. They were doomed to disappointment. The gaiety went on without him, in spite of him. He was not enjoying himself; indeed, he felt out of place and was rather piqued with himself that he should feel out of place. The truth was that in one year he had grown beyond such things; had graduated from that school, and its curriculum had nothing to offer him. Frankly, he was bored when he tried to enter into the spirit of the evening.

But his efforts were not long continued. He sat gravely listening, or covertly watching Cantor and thinking of Hildegarde. It seemed impossible, monstrous, that he should sit peaceable at the same table with that man and restrain his fingers from the man’s throat.

Suddenly he leaned forward and listened. He could not have told why, but the word “aeroplane” had touched his ear. It was a charm to command his attention; it had called to his subconscious self.

“Yes,” O’Mera was saying, “I’m going to have a try at it next week.”

“You’ve picked the only branch worth a man’s while,” Cantor said, and Potter was conscious of wonder at the enthusiasm that flamed an instant in the man’s voice. He had known Cantor well. Cantor had been about his hangar, yet the man had never shown an especial interest in aviation.

“They’ve loaded me up with the notion that I’ve got to work,” O’Mera said. “Maybe so, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be about as easy to drive a ’plane as it is a car.”

Potter glanced sidewise at Cantor, saw his eyes were extraordinarily bright, his usually colorless cheeks were tinged with red. The wine was exhilarating him, stirring his blood to quickened movement and unleashing his tongue. Usually there was an air of reserve, the appearance of weighing each utterance, about him. It was not evident now. Potter set himself to listen.

“You’ll find enough to learn,” Cantor said, and plunged into an explanation of what must be learned and how it must be gone about—an explanation that was thorough, interesting, full of expert information. Potter was astonished. He was something more than astonished, he was filled with a thrilling excitement, the excitement that comes to a man when he feels he is standing at the gate of some climax.

Cantor was explaining such erudite matters as the tail-spin, the nose-dive, looping the loop, and how one gave his machine the spurious appearance of fluttering downward out of control—so to deceive an unwary adversary. He was very clear, very positive. No man, thought Potter, could talk like that who was not a master of the air, who had not been a super-skilled pilot.... What did it mean? Where had Cantor flown? Why had he concealed this ability?

“They tell me,” O’Mera said, “that we’ll get the final touches in France or Italy or Egypt. I hope I go to France. Somehow flying in northern Italy, with Alps sticking up under one, doesn’t sound attractive.”

“It’s not bad,” said Cantor, confidentially, “not really bad. Just fly high enough. What’s the difference what’s under you?”

“You talk as if you flew over the Alps every morning before breakfast,” said O’Mera, with a laugh. “I didn’t know you had even been off the ground.”

“Did I say I had been, eh?” Cantor said, a trifle tipsily. “Did I say I was a flyer? Tell me that? No, I just told you how to fly. Very different thing. Everybody knows how to fly. Books are full of it. I could read it out of books, couldn’t I?”

“I suppose you could,” said O’Mera, a bit belligerently, “but you didn’t say that you did. What you said sounded as if you knew—like it was first hand.”

“Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. What’s the difference, anyhow?” He drained his glass and looked about for the waiter. “You wanted to be told, and I told you. And I told you right.... Who said I was ever up in the air?”

O’Mera shrugged his shoulders. His Irish head was hard, and liquor had a way of battering against it futilely.

“And who said I wasn’t?” Cantor wanted to know.

“Search me,” said O’Mera.

“Well, let me tell you something, O’Mera, something about the Alps.... They can be flown over—because they have been flown over. Yes, sir, right from one side to the other.... And who was the first man that did it? Tell me that.”

“I haven’t the least idea. Ask yourself the answer.”

“What difference does it make—so long as somebody was the first to do it? Somebody had to be first, before there could be a second. First comes first—second comes second.” He emptied another glass and set a cigarette unsteadily in his lips. All the while he peered at O’Mera with supercilious and sardonic humor. “That’s fact—isn’t it?”

“Sounds logical.”

“Over the top—from the plains on one side to the plains on the other.... Who was the first man that did it? You’d like to know.” He lowered his voice confidentially and said in a stage whisper, “You’ll have to ask somebody else.”

Potter knew who was the first man to fly over the Alps. There was little about the history and development of the aeroplane that he did not know. He remembered how the newspapers had heralded that feat and the name of the man who had accomplished it. The man had been a German, an officer; he had been decorated for it by the Kaiser himself. The name of the aviator was Lieutenant Adolf von Arnheim.

Potter was excited. Was it a discovery? His suspicions of Cantor were reawakened, made vivid. He fancied he now had real basis for suspicion, for if his intelligence were not at fault the man had intimated in his tipsy way that he had topped the Alps in an aeroplane, had even seemed to verge upon the boast that it was he who had first accomplished that feat. Potter reviewed the conversation, weighed and valued each word. Did his desire to believe the thing make it appear to be true?... He thought not. He believed he had put a warranted conclusion upon what he had heard, and that Cantor in his bibulous state had been upon the verge of making a revelation.... From that point reasoning walked in a straight path. Either Cantor was lying boastfully or he was the first man to surmount the Alps. If he were the first, then his name was not Cantor, but Adolf von Arnheim, and he was an officer in the Imperial German army!

Potter argued with himself, presented the evidence to himself again and again, and scrutinized with what fairness and calmness was possible. Clearly Cantor had an unusual knowledge of aeronautics, the knowledge which only experience could have given—experience of the most profound and particular study. Cantor did not seem a man likely to gain such knowledge from poring over a text-book.... If, then, Potter accepted the conclusion that Cantor was an aviator, the other conclusion was not so grotesquely remote. It crystallized his suspicion into certainty—a certainty that Cantor deserved scrutiny.

Either the man was a boastful, tipsy liar or he was Lieutenant Adolf von Arnheim, whose tight lips had been betrayed by the fumes of wine.... If he were von Arnheim, then he was a German, an officer—and a spy!

Here were such suspicions as must be put to the test, such conclusions as did not admit of delay in their verification.

The matter spread out before Potter with sinister ramifications. Fact fitted into fact. One of the facts was young Matthews’s vanished aeroplane. Granting that Cantor was a spy and one of Germany’s most skilful men of the air, then the aeroplane would be in his thoughts as a means to bring about his campaign of destruction. In the hands of such a man an aeroplane would be frightfully effective.... Potter’s mind leaped past the basis for his deductions. If Cantor were von Arnheim, then Cantor had stolen Matthews’s aeroplane, and Cantor intended to use it to Germany’s advantage. Germany had sent him there for the purpose.

But suspicion, individual certainty, were futile. Potter had to know. He must identify Cantor as von Arnheim past all dispute, and he must do so quickly, without arousing Cantor’s suspicion.... Cantor unsuspicious was a menace; Cantor with suspicions aroused would be swift-striking lightning. He might not be ready to launch his catastrophe, but let him suspect that he was watched or under investigation and he would act swiftly, terribly.

The last course had been served, the entertainment on the miniature stage was reaching a climax of unclothed vivacity, the room was as full of smoke as the heads of La Mothe’s guests were with the lilting voices of the wine. Excitement had been aroused and demanded to be satisfied. To those young men excitement wore two faces, girls and gambling, and gambling drew the vote.

“Who said poker?” Eldredge called.

“Clear out these tables.... Bring cards and chips and card tables,” La Mothe directed.

“Two tables, six to a table,” Fred said.

Potter made his way to his host. “I’m off, Fred,” he said. “I’m a laboring-man. It’s close to midnight.... Somehow I don’t fit in as well as I used to.”

“Oh, stick to the finish. I’ll guarantee there’ll be a finish.”

“I’ve lost my taste for them,” Potter said. “I’m sober, and you fellows have a sheet to the wind. No.... I’m off.”

La Mothe shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said. “Good night.”

Potter went out quietly, leaving behind a party that would not break up until daylight, a party who would play for the joy of play, with the blue sky as their limit.... The dinner with entertainment and favors had cost La Mothe in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. As matters turned out, it was not such a bad venture in highflying, for when he cashed his chips at five o’clock in the morning he found he had paid for his celebration and had eight hundred dollars surplus to set down on the right side of the ledger.

CHAPTER XXIV

Potter went home, but not to bed. He had arrived at a moment where attention must be focused upon Cantor. Fact after fact had strayed into his storehouse, to be put on a shelf and to be allowed to collect the dust of disuse. Now he dusted them off and placed them on the counter. He had not fancied they would stretch out into such an arresting array. To his mind they were conclusive, yet among them all was not a scrap of the commodity known to courts of the law as evidence. All was suspicion, conjecture—and yet every item was a fact. Potter knew it to be a fact.

First were the facts of that mysterious island in Muscamoot Bay—Cantor’s presence there, the strange conveyance of his aeroplane from the island to the distant mainland. Second were Cantor’s relations with Hildegarde von Essen. These became impressive when set with other facts. Third, the theft of Matthews’s ’plane. Then, in their order, Cantor’s unguarded talk of that evening, the possibility of his oneness with Lieutenant Adolf von Arnheim. And lastly, and very significantly, the fact that Hildegarde von Essen had been the one to warn Potter of the attack upon his hangar—that and her manner at the time, her secretiveness, her reluctance to disclose the source of her information. When Potter put together this last point with the fact of the relations he believed to exist between Hildegarde and Cantor, he knew it was Cantor Hildegarde had shielded by her refusal to answer. She had protected her lover—the man who had compelled her to utter that word “defiled.”

How had Hildegarde come by her knowledge? was a question he asked himself, and, answering it, stabbed himself with the hot iron of anguish. Cantor was not the man to babble. He was not the man to boast loosely to any living creature, most of all a woman. But Cantor had confided in her; that was patent.... But one conclusion was open to Potter, and that was based on the fact, often repeated in literature and in life, that there is one moment when a man will tell a woman anything....

Hildegarde, slender, boyish, brightly flaming Hildegarde, had known that moment. In every man lies sleeping a potential killer of his fellow-man. Your sedate merchant, your clumsy farm laborer, your esthete, your saintly man of God, your mincing dilettante, all have quiescent within them a fury, a madness, a savagery which is capable of placing in their hands the dripping knife of the murderer.... It quickened and flamed in Potter Waite, and he hungered, not for honest combat with an enemy, but to feel that enemy helpless under his hand, that enemy’s throat twisted and crushed beneath his fingers.... For he suffered from the deadliest wrong of which a universe potent of frightful sins is capable—the pure thing he loved with purity had been defiled.

It is a thing for philosophers to ponder upon that humanity is not essentially collective, but individual; it rarely acts in the mass or thinks for the mass. In the mind of man the little outweighs the big, if the little be individual and the big a matter of race or of nation. So Potter lost sight of Cantor in his larger aspects; submerged the menace of the German master-spy in the minor offense of a wrong done by an individual to an individual. Hildegarde von Essen hid from sight the United States of America.

While his rage was in eruption Potter was no patriot laboring in the service of his country, but an individualist of individualists, thirsting for private vengeance. He plotted revenge.... When a man begins to plot he begins to reason; reason and fiery rage cannot dwell side by side in the same brain.... As he thought more rationally it was clear to him that the most agonizing blow he could strike Cantor would be to unmask him, to exhibit him to the world in the loathsome habiliments of plotter, spy, murderer—and to bring his patient, stealthy labors to a fruition of futility.... There lay a vengeance to rejoice in.

His thoughts made headlong plunges; it was his nature to follow them with equal rashness.... Hildegarde von Essen knew Cantor’s secret; it was in her power to make plain the path that led to him. If that were true, she should be compelled to make that path plain so that Potter could follow it—and he would compel her. He would see her, would force his way to her, would make her speak.

He looked at his watch. It was nearing one o’clock. As easy to see her now as another time, he thought, knowing well he would be refused admission to Herman von Essen’s house at whatever hour he applied. Better now, hidden by night. He knew he could reach her. It was rashness, not reason; if he had acted otherwise he had not been Potter Waite, but some differently constituted organism. His decision was made and he acted without hesitation or dubiousness.

Presently he was walking in the direction of the von Essen residence, along the broad road, lonely in its blackness. No other human being seemed to be abroad; he was the sole living atom in a world of murkiness and shadows, and he moved forward swiftly, silently, stealthily. Five minutes brought him to the commencement of Herman von Essen’s grounds. There he stood against a tree, merged in its blackness, and strained his eyes toward the house. It was silent; there was neither light nor motion to be detected. The house itself was invisible, save as a black outline upon a field only less sable. Slowly and silently he advanced toward the house, toward that window which he knew was Hildegarde’s window. His pockets were filled with gravel from the road.

A clump of bushes surrounded a tree which stood close by the house, and he pressed close to them, became a part of them, and peered upward to locate Hildegarde’s window.... A handful of gravel rattled against its glass. He waited. There was no responsive movement within. He tossed another handful of pebbles, this time more forcibly. Again he waited.... He fancied he saw movement, a something in the window that hinted at whiteness. He tossed more pebbles.

The window was raised softly; he knew who had raised it, though he could not see. Nothing was visible but that hint of whiteness.

“What is it?... Who is there?” Hildegarde whispered.

“Potter Waite,” he replied, in a similar voice. “I must see you. I’m coming up.”

“No!” she said. “No!...”

“I’m coming up,” he repeated.

“You mustn’t!... You don’t understand! If they found you—”

He made no reply, but began to scramble up the tree and out upon a limb which climbed upward past the window, not distant from it.

“Open the window wide,” he whispered.

“You mustn’t come in!... I’ll close the window.”

“Then I’ll come through it,” he said, swinging nearer.

“Wait,” she said, and ran to throw a gown about her nightdress. She reappeared. “Please!... Please!” she said, tremulously.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he answered.

She surrendered. “Then quietly ... not a sound. Oh, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

In an instant his knees pressed the window-sill; her hands caught his arm, steadying him, and he was in her room, upon the window-seat where she had crouched on so many ghastly days, through so many harrowing hours.

“Potter,” she said, faintly, “Potter....”

There was fear in her whisper, not for herself, but for him, and there was love, hungry love rejoicing, even at such a moment, in his presence. He did not perceive it, did not touch her, rather held himself at a distance from her. She felt his drawing away and her hands clutched his sleeve again as she whispered his name.

“What is it? Why did you come?... What has happened?”

“Who is Cantor?” he demanded.

She gasped, drew back in her turn, frightened now, not comprehending. “Mr. Cantor?” she said, so faintly he could scarcely hear.

“Is Cantor Adolf von Arnheim?” he said.

“No.... I don’t know.... I never heard of Adolf von Arnheim.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Potter!” she whispered, and the whisper was akin to a cry of pain. She bent toward him, her face close to his face, her eyes seeking his eyes.

“I must know,” he said. “I must know who Cantor is—what he is. I believe you know. That is why I came.”

“That is why you came?” she repeated, dully. That was why he had come. Love had not brought him; he had not been driven to her by his heart. He had come to ask questions about Cantor—that was all. She felt cold, numb.... It was a bitter moment. He said no word of love; he was brusque, even harsh. He did not put his arms about her hungrily, nor give her, against her will, another of those high moments of which she had experienced too few.

“Cantor is a spy,” he said, “a German spy.... I know it. I must have proof.... You know it, too.”

“No,” she said, “I know nothing.”

“Hildegarde,” he said, “whatever you are, whatever you have done, you’re not a traitor.... You can’t be that. You are shielding this man. Knowing what he is doing, you shield him.... You used to talk about America and patriotism....”

“I’m not a traitor!... I’m not a traitor!” she whispered. “I don’t know anything. I can’t tell you anything.” Had the hour struck? she asked herself. Was her father about to be exposed in his perfidy; was she about to step on the world’s stage as the daughter of a spy, a traitor, an inciter to murder? Her brain refused to credit it. The thing was monstrous, impossible.... She had feared it, been certain of its coming, but now she denied it. It could not happen—to her.

“You must tell the truth,” he said, striving to make his voice gentle. “You warned me once.... Your warning was true. If you had not known you couldn’t have warned me.... You know.”

“No!... No!...”

“How did you know they were coming to my shop that night?”

“I can’t tell you.... I sha’n’t tell you.”

“You’re shielding him!”

“No, not him.”

“Do you love that man? Is that why you protect him?” Again the personal element was obtruding. Jealousy showed its face where there should have been only a calm desire to know the truth.

“I hate him! Oh, how I hate him!—more than anything else on earth!”

“But you are with him always ... daily. That doesn’t look like hate.... A girl doesn’t—” He stopped, could not say the thing, could not tell her to her face that a girl like her does not become the mistress of a man she hates.

“You don’t know.... You don’t understand. I can’t help myself. I have to be with him. I have to, I tell you. Can’t you believe me?”

“Why?” he said, briefly.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Do you know what this man is doing? Do you know your country is at war, and this man and his work are more dangerous than an army on the battlefield? Do you know that? Do you know that for years he has plotted and worked against America? That he has burned mills, dynamited bridges, stirred up labor troubles—bought and paid for murders—for Germany? You do know. I know that you know.... And yet you call yourself an American and say you are no traitor.... You’re as bad as he.”

“You mustn’t say that.” Her flaming spirit was awakened to anger, an anger sending her on as headlong a course as his. “I sha’n’t listen to it.... I tell you I hate him.”

“Is he Adolf von Arnheim?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he the man who stole Matthews’s aeroplane?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he the man who plotted to blow up my workshop?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are not telling the truth.”

“I am telling the truth.”

He was silent a moment; then he said, as if dazed by the thought: “I loved you.... I could love you. I thought you were everything good and glowing in the world. I worshiped you.... It was never you I loved, but a girl who never existed, some one I mistook for you; ... some one who never could have become what you have become; ... some one who was honest, not a friend and partner of spies; ... some one who could never have been touched by squalid defilement—”

She reached toward him and clutched both his cheeks with tense fingers, drawing his face toward hers. “Could I help it?” she said, fiercely. “Was it my fault? Could I say to God, I will not have this blood in my veins, and force Him to change it?...”

“German blood,” he said, moodily.

“German blood,” she repeated after him. “Do you think I would keep a drop of it if I could open a vein and let it out? It’s there. I can never get rid of it.”

“But it doesn’t compel you to this. It’s possible to be German and loyal.”

“I tell you I am loyal, Potter Waite—as loyal as you.”

“Who is Cantor?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“And you call yourself loyal.... This minute, if he is awake, he is plotting to blow up the shops where I am making motors for America’s aeroplanes. He’s plotting to blow up and destroy other factories that work for the government.... What if he succeeds?... If he could destroy our plant and half a dozen more it would be a greater victory for Germany than the capture of an American army.... You can stop it. You can tell me what you know—all you know. It will show me how to reach him, for I can’t reach him now.... I know he’s guilty. You can tell me how to prove it.”

“I can’t. I tell you I don’t know.... Suspicion? What is suspicion? You don’t know what you are asking.”

“I’m asking what any American girl, who was true to her country, would give gladly ... unless she loved the man.”

“If Mr. Cantor were a spy and I could give him to you—if I could give him to you without—” She stopped, bit her lips. She had almost said, “without betraying my father.” She went on, hurriedly, “I would let them kill me if I could give him to you.”

“I hope,” he said, bitterly, “that you may never know what it is to love and be forced—forced—to despise the one you love.... You told me you loved me—and lied when you said it.... Even after you had made that confession, after you had told me that thing, I loved you.... I would have taken you and married you and it should never have existed for us.... I could have done that. Even then I didn’t despise you. It hurt—it was a thing I couldn’t think of and live—but I didn’t despise you.... It was only when I saw you with that man, day after day, shameless—only after you made me see that loyalty and truth and decency were not in you, and that you were a traitor to your country—that I despised you. And even now, if I were able to see your eyes, I would doubt it.... How can you be what you are and keep that look in your eyes?...”

“Potter!” she cried. “No!...”

“Who is Cantor?” he said, harshly.

“I can’t tell you.”

“You see?” he said, bitterly. Then his voice changed, became charged with emotion, and the emotion thrilled her, moved her as she had never been moved. “Even now I could love you; I could forget—everything but this. You can’t be bad. Great God! It isn’t possible that you can be altogether what you seem to be. Tell me, Hildegarde.... You can tell me what I must know. It’s your duty. It’s a thing your country demands of you.... It’s your chance. Can’t you see it is your chance—to keep something of your soul alive? Do this thing; be loyal in this—and I can keep on loving you till the end, with the rest blotted out. I will remember only this.... Think, Hildegarde!... Don’t let me go now. Don’t leave this thing as it is....”

She was sobbing, clinging to him childishly. The flame was gone out of her, the light dead; the pertness, the keenness which had been so much of her charm, had vanished, and she was nothing but a broken, wailing child.

“Oh, Potter—don’t—don’t!... Don’t go away! Don’t leave me!... I love you, and I’m afraid! Oh, be good to me! Don’t speak to me so!... Hold me; take me in your arms and hold me—so I can feel safe—so I can know that there is goodness in the world!... I love you!... I love you!”

If she had been clothed in flaming pitch he could not have resisted her; he must have taken her in his arms and strained her against his heart if the very touch of her had eaten the flesh from his bones.... They stood, lips to lips, and the pain of his arms crushing her was very sweet.

He lifted his head. “Tell me,” he said.

She uttered a tiny moan.... It was all a dream. This moment had never existed. Or, if it had existed, she had stolen it from bitter fate to be detected instantly in the theft. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.” She dared not even tell him why she could not, for that would be to tell the thing she must conceal. If he only could know—without knowing. If he only could know that she must act as she did; that her reason for seeming to be what she was was not a squalid reason, was not a reason which would have failed to move the loftiest soul.... If he could but have that knowledge; have it imparted to him by some mystic power!... But he could not.

He pushed her away from him. She was glad she could not see his face, could not be seared by its scorn nor wracked by its agony. He did not speak again, but began silently to creep through the window. She clung to him.

“Potter!” she sobbed. “Not this way! Don’t go this way!”

“Let go,” he said.

Her hands dropped to her sides and she stepped back. In an instant he was swinging above the ground, a swaying blot against the night; in another instant he was gone.... She closed the window and sank upon the seat, her body too frail to endure the crucifixion of her soul....

Potter stood for a moment beneath the window, then moved toward the front of the house, but paused abruptly, for steps approached on the driveway. He pressed himself against a clump of shrubbery and waited. Two men appeared, passed, vanished. The incident gripped Potter, tore his thoughts away from that room above him.... He had come for information; here was a fact. It was a suspicious fact to him that two men should slink down that driveway at two o’clock in the morning. Silently, craftily he followed. He saw them against the garage door, was near enough to hear their low voices.

“He’s gone to bed.”

“Not him. Said he’d wait up. This is the hour we always have to come. He hain’t takin’ no chances of bein’ seen with us.”

“Rap again.”

Potter heard three raps, a pause, then two raps. In a moment the door opened silently and the men stepped inside. The door swung to after them. In a moment a dim fight flowed within, and Potter made his way to a window in the side. Peering through, he could see Philip, the chauffeur, and the two men. The backs of the men were toward him and he could not see their faces. He listened. Faintly their voices reached his ear.

“Pay-day to-morrow night,” said one of the men.

“And see you pay,” Philip said. “Don’t let any of this stick to your fingers.”

“The men that earn it git it,” said the man.

Philip shrugged his shoulders. “So long as we get what we pay for, I don’t care where the money goes.”

“If you’re afraid, you better pay off yourself.”

“Fine chance,” Philip said. “Enough people know me now. So long as we pay through you—and the others—they don’t get to know too much.”

“If they get nabbed they can’t give anybody away but us,” said the man. “Fine for us, isn’t it?”

“They haven’t been nabbed yet.... And say, Harker, I want more for my money out of you. The last week your crowd hasn’t earned its salt. If the Waite plant isn’t better taken care of, we’ll have somebody else in charge.”

“It’s a tough job. That young Waite has the men buffaloed. Now we have to look out for the spotters and for every man in the place. They’re all on the watch. It’s a wonder we pull off as much as we do.”

Philip passed over a number of bills. “Here,” he said. “Now sign the receipt. The boss is systematic.”

Potter could scarcely credit his senses. Here were efficiency and system indeed. He reflected an instant on the peculiarity of the German mind that insisted upon system even in its corps of spies, upon receipts for spy-money, which, doubtless, were properly filed in some inoffensive-appearing office in the city—one day to be transferred to Berlin!

He had come for information, and here was information. One of the men who received money from Philip was a man who received a weekly wage from the Waite Motor Company.... The gang-boss of the spies who were working in the plant. Potter recognized the name, and, as the man turned, recognized the man.... And Philip—von Essen’s chauffeur, the man who had struck him down in Cantor’s behalf that day out in Bloomfield Hills! Philip, apparently paymaster-in-chief for the master spy! It was getting close to headquarters.... Did the trail lead from Philip to Cantor? Could it be followed?

He reflected. Here was no time for headlong action. Now was the moment to exercise guile and restraint. To frighten the subordinate would be to warn the superior. To catch the subordinates would be nothing but a temporary setback; to use the subordinates as stepping-stones to reach the chief would be an achievement. He remained motionless, waiting.

Presently the men stepped out of the garage and stealthily made their way to the street. Potter did not follow. For ten minutes, twenty minutes, he waited, then feeling it would be safe to move, he stepped from his place and crept inch by inch away from the garage. Presently he got to his feet and, dodging from shrub to shrub, reached the street and hastened toward home.

It had been a night of nights; a night of bitter failure, of gnawing suffering; a night of unexpected success. The success did not uplift him. It was there. The facts were in his possession to be made what use of was possible.... He did not continue to consider them for long. The personal grief was stronger than the public benefit. It meant more to him that Hildegarde von Essen was wholly contemptible than that he had it within his power to thwart the plot calculated to destroy the thing his country needed most. In that hour aeroplanes were less to him than one girl....

CHAPTER XXV

Hildegarde did not sleep until her room was light with day; she was exhausted in body, her soul was tried to the limit of its endurance. Mechanically she drew down her shades and crept into bed. It was afternoon when she awakened and dressed herself. She felt strangely calm, almost detached from herself and the events which thickened about her. The agony of the night was gone, replaced by a coldness, a numbness, as if that part of her which suffered had been deadened by a powerful drug. She could even reason with herself, and, reasoning, she reached a determination. She could endure no more—she would endure no more.

Cantor.... She was done with Cantor. Never again would she accept him as companion. She would not need what he had been able to afford—an easy access to the world outside her father’s house. She was done with her father’s house. She was done with Detroit, done with every living soul who knew her. Something assured her that she could escape, and when she had gained her freedom it would be to disappear—to disappear forever. She did not know where she would go, what she would do, but she would go, and, going, she would vanish utterly. Hildegarde von Essen would be abolished and some place another girl would come to life. She even selected a name for that other girl. It was not a German name....

Some one rapped on her door loudly. It was an overbearing, domineering rap, recognized by her as her father’s. It was like him, eloquent of his personality.

“Come out!” he called, roughly.

“What do you want?” she asked, at once on the defensive, quickened to a defensive strength. She was not afraid of him, not afraid of anything. The time for fear had passed.

“Come out!” he repeated.

She unlocked her door and stepped into the hall, facing von Essen. His heavy face was set; his mouth, more brutal than Bismarck’s mouth, was implacable.

“Go down-stairs,” he said.

“What for?”

“Because I tell you to,” he said. “Because I’m through shilly-shallying with you. Cantor is there.... You’ve put him off for months. He wants to marry you, and I want to be rid of you. You are going down to tell him you will marry him.”

She did not reply.

“Do you hear?” he said, roughly.

“Yes,” she said, quietly. “Does he want to marry me?”

Von Essen raised his fist above her. “Don’t fool with me,” he said. “You know he wants to marry you.”

“The last time he mentioned it,” she said, with a quiet that should have warned him of some alarming change in her, “he wanted me—without marriage.”

Von Essen growled incoherently. “Marriage or no marriage, it’s nothing to me.... I’ve given you to him. I’m through with you. If he’ll marry you, so much the better for you.”

“This isn’t Belgium,” she said.

He twisted her about roughly so that she faced the stairs, then he pushed her forward. “Go down!” he said.

She walked with what dignity she could muster, very white, very quiet. She had no sense of being outraged; her father’s manner and conduct toward her did not matter. They did not exist. She walked slowly, head erect, and entered the library. Cantor stood expectant.

He bowed gravely. “Good afternoon,” he said, courteously.

“Here she is,” von Essen bellowed. “I’ve put an end to her tricks. It will be yes or no now—and it won’t be no.”

She looked at him curiously, then turned her eyes upon Cantor. “I understand you’ve changed your offer again,” she said, quietly. “You’re for marrying me once more.”

“I’m for having you however I can get you,” he said, with a smile. “One hesitates to speak of love with a third party present, even if the third party is the father....”

“Love!” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Love means different things to different people.... I want you. For me that is love. I want you so much that I have been patient. I’ve courted you patiently, haven’t I?”

She spoke without volition, automatically, almost as if the words had been caused to issue from her lips by some ventriloquist. “Under what name do you want to marry me? Cantor or Adolf von Arnheim?”

He stiffened into immobility; not even his eyes seemed alive. His face, naturally without color, lost even the tint which it possessed. In an instant he was transformed. He was not the careless, mocking-courteous lover; he was another man, a man of stern military bearing, a man of purpose, a man ruthless in carrying out that purpose. Hildegarde knew she was seeing the true Cantor at last, and she liked him better. She saw him infinitely capable, a man to dare and to accomplish, a man to be trusted by high authority with a mission of life or death. She almost admired him in that moment.

He remained motionless, and she knew he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of his work and what this meant to his work. He had dropped the moment and was weighing keenly, ably, the circumstance, and planning what he must do as a result of it. Somehow she felt he experienced no fear, no emotion of any sort. He merely thought. His reaction was purely intellectual.

“Where did you hear that name?” he asked, presently.

He did not ask it of the woman he loved, but of a woman, any woman, a woman in his power, bound, capable of being made to speak by means not shrunk from by the German mind. She was not an individual to him, not Hildegarde von Essen, but merely a woman who must be dealt with.

“I dreamed it,” she said.

“Where did you hear that name?” he repeated, and moved toward her. She retreated behind a great table, placing it between herself and Cantor. Her father stood uncomprehending, working himself into a passion, his florid face growing red and redder, his breath becoming more labored, the veins upon his forehead standing out with unsavory distinctness.

“I sha’n’t tell you,” she said.

“Whom have you seen? Whom have you talked with?”

“Nobody.”

“Who told you I was Adolf von Arnheim?”

“It’s true, then.”

“If it is suspected, it is the same as if it were true,” he said, and she saw the finality of his logic. For his secure position to be questioned was disaster. It was essential that he remain above suspicion.

“Call Heinrich,” he said to von Essen.

Her father obeyed, and the servant entered the room and stood stiffly at attention.

“Have you allowed Miss von Essen to leave this house?” Cantor demanded.

“No,” said the man.

“You are certain?”

“Certain.”

“Have you admitted any one to see her? Any one?”

“No one has been admitted.”

“Man or woman?”

“No one.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know.”

“Has she been allowed to receive a letter—a message?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know?”

“There are two keys to her door. I have one. Herr von Essen has the other.”

“She has had word from outside, recently, probably yesterday or to-day.”

“It is impossible.”

“It has happened. How could it happen?”

“There is no way. Her door had not been opened by any one but myself and Herr von Essen.”

“Her window?”

“Guarded from the moment she awakes until midnight.”

“But between midnight and morning?”

“It is not guarded. But no one could—”

“Search her room,” said Cantor. “Look for a note, a letter, torn scraps of paper, ashes.”

The man went out. Cantor stood grimly gazing after him.

“What is it?” von Essen asked, with fear. “What has happened?”

“She mentioned a name,” said Cantor. “Not a man in America knew that name was mine—not even von Bernstorff before he went home. But one man in Germany knew it. Adolf von Arnheim was reported killed in battle.... Where did you hear that name?” he said, turning again to Hildegarde.

“I sha’n’t tell.”

“Who else knows what you know? Who told it to you?”

“I sha’n’t tell.”

Her father uttered a sound of fury and stumbled toward her.

“Von Essen,” said Cantor, sharply, “this is my affair.”

He paced up and down the room for ten minutes, and none of the three spoke. Herman von Essen stood panting, glaring at his daughter. Hildegarde leaned upon the table, hands spread far apart, and watched Cantor. Another ten minutes passed. Then Heinrich returned.

“Well?” said Cantor.

The man was shaken. His face was gray, and his fear was of Cantor.

“There was no paper, nothing. I examined the window. There are footprints underneath—in the snow. Some one climbed the tree. There are marks on the window-sill.”

“Were there footprints yesterday?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Johann is sure.”

Cantor waved the man away and approached the table.

“Miss von Essen,” he said, “I have got to know who entered your room last night. I have got to know who says that I am Adolf von Arnheim. It is necessary for me to know, so that I can act. Who was the man?”

She only shook her head.

“What I don’t understand,” Cantor said, as if to himself, “is why you were told.... If they know, why haven’t they acted? What does it mean?”

“If you are suspected,” said von Essen, shaking as though with an ague, his eyes glaring, his face distorted, “I am suspected. If they get you they get me.”

“You!” said Cantor, with unconscious scorn. He was not thinking of his tools then, but of his work. Nobody mattered; he would sacrifice any one for his work, and von Essen knew it. He was terrified.

“I don’t understand it,” Cantor said, puzzled by something outside his peculiar experience. “The Secret Service isn’t climbing into windows to tell secrets to girls.... There’s something else—something I’ve got to understand.”

“You tell him,” bellowed von Essen. “Tell him, I say.”

“No.”

“Do you want to see me hanged? Eh? Is that what you want?”

“Be quiet, von Essen. You’re not caught. Nobody’s caught. We can’t make her speak.” He knew Hildegarde, had studied her shrewdly during the past months, and he was a man trained to assay character.

“I’ll beat her till she speaks,” said von Essen.

“No.... It would do no good. I think it is a trap. I think they have only suspicions. I believe they prompted her to say that name—and tell them what happened. That was it.... They suspect, but that is all.” He paced up and down for another five minutes. “It means I’ve got to act. I wasn’t ready, but this forces me—crowds me. You, von Essen, forget about yourself for a while. They can trace nothing to you. You’re safe.”

“You don’t care,” said von Essen, his voice quivering with rage and terror. “What do you care what happens to me?”

Cantor shrugged his shoulders. “There’s work for you. You know the plan. It must go through to-night. I can’t wait even to get to the office to destroy papers. The office may be watched.... I’m going to act.” His eyes glowed with a sort of enthusiasm. “There shall be surprises for Detroit to-morrow—fine surprises. Factories in ruins, explosives dropped out of the sky—and no one to say how they fell.... I’ll make a circle. There’s no way to follow me and no way to stop me ... no anti-aircraft guns to dodge. I’ll fly low and make sure. They’ve worked a year getting ready to make aeroplanes, and I’ll destroy it all in an hour—and I’ll block their river. When spring comes the ore will be bottled up. I’ve the thing mapped out—first a circle over town, then I’ll see what I can do down-river. I think a bomb or two will block the new ship-channel. There isn’t time to block Lime Kiln crossing. For that we needed time. Then a circle back to the Flats and I’ll destroy the piers and block that channel.... Then to disappear. An aeroplane leaves no trail....”

“And leave us behind to take the consequences,” said von Essen, furiously.

“There’ll be no consequences, you fool, if you keep your head and follow directions. First, watch this girl. Don’t let her out of your sight. Sit in this room and keep her here. Have Heinrich or Philip telephone the office and order every scrap of paper burned. Then tell Philip and the rest to leave—and leave at once. You’ll be safe. Don’t be a fool.... And watch that girl.”

“I’ll watch her,” von Essen said, balefully.

“I’m off, then.... Good-by. I hoped to take you with me, Miss von Essen, but I can’t have a girl on my hands now.... Maybe I’ll come back for you—maybe I can come back.... Good-by—and watch for my little surprises.”

He turned and was gone. In a moment Hildegarde heard the roar of his motor, and, turning, watched him drive at breakneck pace away from the city.... She had heard, and she knew that what she had heard was no idle boasting. She knew Cantor for a determined, capable man. He would do, and was able to do, what he threatened—she was powerless to prevent him.... If she were free, if she could evade her father, she was gripped in a vise. Could she name her father a traitor?... Somehow it was unthinkable. Yet she could not exist and permit this catastrophe to fall upon her city and her country. She stared at Herman von Essen with widened eyes, conscious of no feeling toward him but disgust and hatred.

“You cat!” grated von Essen. “You meddling cat!... See what you’ve done.... I could—” He stopped, panting, his face purple, pulses throbbing visibly in his temples. He flew into a rage, the rage of the trapped animal, a rage that was half terror, and hurled curses upon her.

Here, thought she, was the man she was shielding. Here was her father—traitor, brute, and yet of her blood. For such a man she dared not move to avert the thing that threatened.... A thought pricked its way into her consciousness: Was she keeping silence because of filial duty, because this man was the husband of her mother and joint author of her being, or was she avoiding her duty because she feared its consequences upon herself? Was it because she shrank from the finger of scorn pointing to the daughter of a spy and a traitor, because she could not endure that obloquy?... She considered it. It was an accusation, direct, demanding an answer. She met it squarely, looked into the eyes of it, and knew, knew that she was not guiltless.... Not father, not mother, nor any thing created or uncreated was just reason for her to stand aside and see her country visited with calamity. She saw truly that there are duties which are supreme, which cannot be measured, which outweigh individual considerations, no matter how high, how holy. Her duty was to God, then to America, after that to family and self.... She saw and she submitted.

“I’ll do it,” she said, aloud, unconscious that she spoke aloud.

Her father called Heinrich. “Telephone at once—the office. You know the number. Tell them to destroy everything—every scrap of paper. Then tell them to go—to disappear.... When you have done—go yourself.... Tell Philip.” He stopped, gulped as if his heart were impeding the passage of air to his lungs. “Tell everybody.” His voice rose almost to a scream.

Heinrich disappeared. Presently he rushed into the room. “They didn’t answer.... I couldn’t make them answer,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

He disappeared. Von Essen was not pacing up and down the room now; he was running. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead, yet he was hot, burning. His eyes burned; his head was on fire. His daughter could hear the hoarse gasps of his breathing, could see the labored rise and fall of his great chest. His eyes were more bulging than ever, threatening to start from his head, and the whites of them were tinged with red.... It was frenzy that she saw, a frenzy of fear. Herman von Essen felt the noose about his neck.

Once he rushed toward her, a light not of sanity in his eyes, and she cowered back of her table. But he reeled away, muttering hoarsely.

Some one rapped on the door. Von Essen rushed to it, tore it open. Philip’s wife stood there, a bit of paper in her hand.

“Philip said to give this to you, sir. He rushed in, grabbed some papers in a case, and rushed out.... What is it, sir? I’m frightened.... The way he acted!”

“Out!” roared von Essen. “Out!” He waved his hand wildly in her direction, and she fled.

He snatched open the paper, read it, lifted it above his head in a clenched fist, as if he were shaking it in the face of Heaven. He uttered a sound which was not a cry, not a bellow, not a cry of agony. It was compounded of all three—was hoarse, harsh, piercing. It cut to Hildegarde’s heart with a knife of terror. She watched her father, bound to the spot where she stood as if by the power of some magnet. She could not have moved or spoken.

He seemed to snort—to cough. The sounds were hideous. He lunged forward like a blinded lion, his hands clutching first breast, then throat, then temples. As if he had been stricken by mighty ax, he was no longer erect, was groveling on the floor, his breath issuing in stertorous, wheezing gasps.... Then he was still.

Hildegarde moved along the table an inch at a time, resting on her hands, pushing first one foot, then the other, not lifting them from the floor. Her hands crept along the table, clutching it. She tried to hold back, but she was drawn, dragged. Inch by inch she emerged and approached her father. Presently she stood over him, bent slowly, slowly. Dropped to her knees and looked upon his face. It was purple, almost black, distorted, horrible.... She did not touch him, could not have forced herself to touch him ... but she knew he was dead ... dead!

Mechanically she reached for the paper that had stricken down her father, smoothed it open. It was brief:

They’re hot after me. Look out for yourself.—Philip.

In that first interval she did not cry out for help, did not rush out of the room in search of assistance, but remained kneeling over her father’s body. Horror she experienced, but it faded. Even the reality of that fear-distorted dead face could not make fast the grip of horror.... She breathed deep, and it was a breath of relief. He was dead, her father was dead.... She threw back her head and closed her eyes.... She was glad, glad, glad!... Now she was free. When no help seemed possible, when there was none to intervene, when hope was dead, something had intervened.... She was awed by the thought.... Had God Himself intervened? Was this a manifestation of Divine power? She believed it, and, believing it, was glad.... God ruled the world. In spite of wars and butcheries, of crimes and treacheries, in spite of horrors and catastrophes, God still sat omnipotent in His heaven, all-knowing, all-perceiving, biding His moment.... The world was safe in His keeping....

She was free! Free at last. Free from the dreadful thing which had gripped her, encircled her.... This thing that lay before her had been her father, and he had defiled her, daubed her with the pitch of his own crimes and treacheries.... Well, the defilement was burned away; she felt uplifted, purified, purified by fire sent from heaven, by the flame that had stricken Herman von Essen to death. She was herself, untrammeled at last.... Free!... Free!...

Presently she went to the door and called. There was no answer. She rang; no one responded to the bell. The house was strangely silent.... She waited, called again, and then went in search of help. From room to room she went, calling, but there was none to answer. Not a servant remained. All had fled.... She was alone, alone in the house with that which lay outstretched on the library floor.

CHAPTER XXVI

On this day of all days dignitaries from Washington must appear to inspect the aeroplane accomplishments of the Waite Motor Company. Potter chafed and treated himself to a scorching remark or two, but there was nothing for it but to give them his attention. It meant only delay. No suspicions were aroused and little was to be risked by putting off action for a few hours. But Potter was not one who liked to procrastinate; if he erred, it was toward the other extreme.... At noon he was able to turn the dignitaries over to his father.

With the return of the men to work after their dinner-hour he called his secretary.

“Have a machinist named Harker sent to me. Then find Downs, and bring him here yourself.”

The young man went out, and Potter waited with rising impatience and not without excitement. Angling for spies is a pastime likely to stir the blood.

In fifteen minutes Downs appeared, but not Harker.

“Where’s that man?” Potter demanded.

“I’ll see again, Mr. Waite,” said the secretary. He returned presently to say that the foreman had told Harker to report to Potter, that the man had left his machine to do so, and was not now to be found.

“Find that man,” Potter said, sharply.

“What do you want of me?” Downs asked, when the secretary hastened out to carry Potter’s orders.

“I’ve found the man who bosses the German agents in this plant!”

“This Harker?”

“Yes.”

“And you sent a messenger to tell him to report to you?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Waite, you’re some manufacturer. I’ll admit that, but you’re a hell of a detective.”

“I don’t get you.”

“You might as well have sent him a card saying, ‘I suspect you—Skedaddle.’”

“You think he’s taken fright?”

“I know it.... Your telephone.”

Downs called a number. “Look up the address in your records of a man named Harker,” he said into the receiver. “We want him. He just left the plant here.... Get him.”

He turned to Potter. “Now,” he said, “suppose you let me in on this. It’s rather in my line of work, you know.”

“I suppose I should have come to you at once—but I didn’t. Here’s what I’ve got.... I have reason to suspect that a man named William Cantor is the chief of the German agents in this section. I believe his real name is Adolf von Arnheim, and he is an officer in the German army—an aviator. One of his paymasters is a chauffeur named Philip who works for Herman von Essen. Last night I saw this Philip turn over funds to Harker and another man. There you are.”

“Good work. No time to ask how you got it. Where does this Cantor hang out?”

Potter gave the address of Cantor’s office. “I never did know what his business was.”

“Can we have a car—quick?”

“Come on.”

They hastened out of the main building and to the garage where the company’s officials kept their cars. Potter’s runabout was there. “Pile in,” he said. “Where to?”

“Cantor’s office.”

Potter shot out of the archway and whirled down-town through the clear, chilly December air. He did not stop for corners or traffic officers, but, keeping his knee against the horn button, gave the car all he could give it—and Downs clung to his seat and prayed.

They drew up abruptly before the entrance to the building where Cantor maintained an office, and sprang out. The elevator carried them to the seventh floor.

“The thing is to get in without scaring whoever is there,” said Downs. “In this case the papers filed there are as valuable, more valuable, than the men. We must give them no time to destroy anything.”

Good fortune was with them. As they approached Cantor’s door a man opened it and was about to step into the corridor. Downs stepped forward quickly.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but can you tell me where James W. Rogers’s office is?”

The man stood with the door half opened behind him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I never heard the name.”

By that time Downs was within arm’s reach. He lunged forward, gripped the man, and hurled him backward through the door. Potter leaped after them.

“Shut the door!” snapped Downs from a victor’s perch on the astounded man’s chest. “Help roll him over.” The man was turned on his face and steel circles clinked upon his wrists.

“Who are you?... What does this mean?” the man said, furiously.

“I’m not sure,” said Downs, “till we take a look-see. Maybe it’s just an outrage on a respectable business man. If it is you may expect profuse apologies.”

A huge safe stood open invitingly. Downs pounced upon it, found it full of little drawers, and the drawers laden with papers, with card indices and the like—and all covered with German script. “Um!...” he said. “Read German?”

“Yes,” said Potter.

“I don’t. Talk it, but don’t read to speak of. Have a look.”

Potter unfolded a document, read it, shrugged his shoulders.

“No apologies needed,” he said to the handcuffed man. “These,” he said to Downs, “seem to be reports from agents—reports of their movements.” He examined a card from an adjoining drawer. “These are the agents, all neatly indexed, with the salaries paid,” he said. “The Germans are a systematic and efficient people.”

“They will stick to system,” said Downs, with a chuckle. “It’s a great labor-saver for us.”

“When you find the system,” said Potter, with a chuckle.

“We seem to have the whole bag of tricks. The next thing is to go over this mass of stuff and then have a general round-up.”

“Somebody will be calling here, or coming in—and give the alarm,” said Potter.

“Anybody who sticks his nose in here leaves it here,” Downs snapped.

Suddenly the man lunged forward toward the wall; seemed bent upon butting his head against it, upon grinding his face against it. Potter leaped upon him and hurled him away from the spot.... On the wall was an ordinary electric push-button such as is used to ring a door-bell. What the man had done was evident. His hands had been manacled behind him and were useless. He had pressed the button with his face.

“Where does that alarm sound?” Downs demanded.

“Find out,” said the man, sullenly.

“Some efficiency there,” said Potter, ruefully. “Of course that button was put there for just this emergency—to give the alarm if anything happened here.”

“Some other office in this building,” said Downs. “On a lower floor. That sort of arrangement wouldn’t extend outside this building. Most likely the office directly below this.... I can’t leave this room and this man. You make tracks.”

Potter rushed out of the door and down the stairs, which were close at hand, by good fortune. As his feet touched the sixth floor he saw Philip, the chauffeur, step into an elevator, heard the elevator door crash shut. He shouted, but it did not stop. The alarm had reached Philip and Philip was off to spread the warning.

Another elevator was descending. It stopped on Potter’s signal, and he stepped in. “To the ground floor—quick. Make no stops. Drop her.”

The startled elevator conductor obeyed, flung open the door as he arrived level with the street, and Potter rushed out. He reached the sidewalk just in time to see Philip in an automobile, half a block away. Potter stepped quickly into his own machine and followed. He had no other thought but to overtake Philip. Just what he should do when he overtook him was not a consideration for that moment. Headlong as usual, he counted no costs and let each second care for that second’s concerns. That he had no authority to apprehend Philip did not trouble him in the least. He believed he had the physical ability, and that was all he required.

Philip turned east at the Campus and traversed Cadillac Square to the County building and the intersection of Congress Street. Out this frayed and shabby thoroughfare he continued, not with the speed of one who fancies himself pursued, but as one travels who is upon important errand. Potter maintained a position a hundred feet behind and waited for Philip to stop.

Philip did not stop for a dozen blocks. Then he drew up at the curb before a dingy frame structure housing one of those hand-to-mouth saloons which seem to abound in Detroit, saloons which sell enormous glasses of beer for a nickel, and find difficulty to make both ends meet, to provide food for the family and funds to pay the considerable government license. Into this place Philip hastened.

Potter was at his heels, stepping into a murky room reeking with the odor of stale beer, villainous tobacco, and even more distressing aromas of cookery not guiltless of the taint of garlic. Three men occupied the barroom, the bartender, sprawling over his greasy bar, a stout man dozing in a corner, and Philip.

Upon Potter’s entrance Philip turned and faced the door, and Potter saw surprised recognition in his eyes.

“Well, Philip,” said Potter, “I’ve got you.”

“You have, eh?” said Philip. “What do you mean—got me?”

“When your friend in Cantor’s office pushed the button,” said Potter, “I tagged along after you.” He continued to advance.

“That’s far enough,” Philip said, crouching. “You tagged along, eh? Well, just tag out of that door again.”

“Better come along without a row.”

“If you want to keep your health,” said Philip, crouching, “you’ll beat it and leave me alone.”

Potter turned to the bartender, who no longer sprawled, but eyed him intently.

“This man is a German spy—trying to escape and warn other spies,” Potter said.

“No!” said the bartender, with profound astonishment. “You don’t tell me! Him? Why, I know him! He hain’t no spy—he’s a chauffeur.... You hain’t no spy, be you, Phil?”

“Certainly not. This guy is nutty.... Look here, Mr. Waite, I don’t want you should get hurt. Take your foot in your hand.”

“Are you coming with me?” Potter asked, sharply.

“Not on a Friday. Fridays is unlucky days.” He did not take his eyes off Potter’s face, but stood with a pugilist’s crouch, waiting. Potter sprang toward him, took Philip’s blow upon the side of the head, and closed in. They grappled, whirled about, trampling the floor until the glasses behind the bar danced upon the shelves. Potter was larger, stronger. He succeeded in lifting Philip from his feet and hurling him to the floor, but Philip clung to him, forcing him to sprawl on top of his prisoner. In a moment of fierce energy Potter was kneeling upon Philip’s arms and sitting upon his chest.

The stout man who had dozed in the corner shuffled to his feet and approached leisurely.

“This man is a spy. Help me tie him,” Potter panted.

“For sure,” said the man, stepping behind Potter. Then Potter felt something hard jammed against his ribs. He did not see it, nor could he feel its shape, but he knew what it was.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Vell,” said the stout man, “I t’ink I should take some interest. I t’ink maybe it iss best if you git up und leave the young man alone. For sure. You should get up, und you should shut up. Right off.”

The man’s voice was not raised, not angry or menacing, rather genial, in fact, but the thing pressed against Philip’s ribs was not genial. Nor was it an instrument encouraging one to dispute.

“Git up,” the stout man repeated, and Potter obeyed sullenly.

Philip struggled to his feet, scowling. “I told you to keep out of this,” he said to Potter. “You’re one of them that won’t take advice. You come beggin’ for it, and now you’re gettin’ it.... You boys keep him here an hour—after that I don’t care what becomes of him.... Then you better beat it. The government dicks are wise to us. I guess the circus is over.”

“One hour?” said the stout man.

“That’ll be plenty.”

“He will stay—like goot young man,” said the stout individual, pleasantly. “You go along, mit nottings to worry.”

Philip went first into the rear portion of the house, where the living quarters of the proprietor had their location—judging, at least, from the odor of cookery. He remained five minutes, then reappeared. He had done the telephoning he had come to do.

“Don’t let him make his getaway,” he said, as he went out of the door.

“I t’ink you should better go in der back room,” said the stout man, and Potter obeyed reluctantly.

“How about getting away yourself?” he said. “Doesn’t that interest you?”

“You should worry. In one hour you can go. Den I look out for meinself.”

Potter sat down in a rickety chair, a very disgusted young man. He was a blunderer. From the first he had blundered. And now his blundering promised to bring all his discoveries to nothing. Cantor would escape, others, duly warned, would escape—all, doubtless, to carry on their work elsewhere in the country. So much for rushing into things headlong.... He wondered what Downs was doing. There was but one ray of light in the affair—Cantor’s work was interrupted, his organization broken up. But that was little when compared to what might have been accomplished if he had worked with his intelligence instead of his impulses. It is no pleasant experience for a young man of Potter’s make-up to find himself ridiculous, and he felt he was ridiculous—held a futile prisoner by a stout old German who seemed to regard the whole thing in a humorous light. He scowled and applied a well-selected list of names to himself.

He never knew before how long sixty minutes could be. From time to time his guard peered owlishly at a fat silver watch and announced the passage of time.

“Vell, we wait fifteen minutes already,” he would say, or, “Perty soon we keep company halluf an hour.”

At last the hour came to an end; the stout man replaced his watch in his pocket. “You should go now if you like,” he said. “I got no more use for you here, eh? You run along now, und maybe you keep out of troubles.” Evidently the man did not take him over-seriously, and it enraged Potter. The stout man chuckled. “Und don’t worry apout me, please. Goot-by.”

Potter was accompanied to the door, and the stout man stood by, his right hand concealing something in his pocket, until Potter started his car and drove away. Then he vanished with suddenness.

Potter was at a loss. How should he proceed now? Should he go in search of Downs to report his fiasco, or should he go ahead on some plan of his own? The lesson he had just received was forgotten. He had no stomach to see the look that would come over Downs’s face when he made his report. No, he would do something. He would not come back empty-handed. He would not go back until he had something to show for his afternoon’s work. He had set out to catch Philip, and he would stick to it until he did keep Philip. Such are the ways of head longitude, if one may name it so.

The one place Potter could think of where trace might be had of the man was where he lived—over Herman von Essen’s garage—and he took that as his destination. Ten minutes brought his car to the von Essen driveway and he turned in. His headlights cut through the dusk to the doors of the garage, for the short winter afternoon was speeding toward darkness. As he leaped out of the car he noted that the house was dark and paused a moment to peer from one window to another. No light was visible, and he wondered at it. His objective, however, was the garage, and he hastened toward it. The doors were locked. Through the window he had used the night before he looked in and could make out the presence of both the von Essen cars.

He went to the door that gave on the stairway leading up to Philip’s quarters, rapped, waited, but received no answer. He tried the door. It opened to his turn of the knob, and he climbed the stairs with what stealth he was capable of. He found no door locked. No one was in the rooms, which were in a state of confusion. Their condition was that of rooms hastily ransacked by a tenant snatching what was valuable and most convenient in unexpected flight.

He descended and went to the rear door of the house. No one answered his ring or his knock. He was beginning to be affected by a sense of strangeness, by a certain numbing portent which seemed to weight the very air. The hairs at the back of his neck felt as though they were striving to stand erect, as if a chill breeze were touching them. He retreated from the door and peered at the house, at its lightless windows, its massive blackness against the evening sky. It wore a deserted, forbidding, secretive look; the look of a house concealing something awful within it.

He was alarmed now, and his alarm was for Hildegarde. What did this thing mean? What did it mean to her? Where was she?

Now he rushed to the front of the house, mounted the broad piazza and rang the bell long and repeatedly. Not satisfied with this, he battered the door with his fists. Suddenly the door opened, and Hildegarde stood there outlined against the darkness, a wisp of a thing almost to be blown away by a breeze, he thought.

She uttered a gasp, a sob of relief. “Potter.... I prayed you would come....” She drew him into the house and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER XXVII

“I was alone, alone,” Hildegarde said, tremulously, “and I was afraid.”

“The house is dark,” he said, peering about him. “I could make nobody hear—until you came. Where are the lights?”

“Lights!... I was afraid in the dark, but I dared not light a light.... It would have been awful to light a light.”

“What do you mean? Where are the servants?”

“I don’t know.... Gone.... Let me touch you. Let me feel your arm.... Come, it’s in here.”

He felt her pressing against him, sensed the shuddering of her body as she led him into the library. “There,” she whispered. “On the floor.... There....”

He saw something there, blackly outlined, something that sprawled grotesquely, offensively, something that sprawled motionless and horrible. Again he felt the rising of his hair and the chill of dread, and hesitated. Then he forced himself to step forward, to bend over that sprawling black thing, to light a match. As it flamed Hildegarde uttered a faint scream.

The tiny flame threw a fitful, distorting light on the man that lay there; made his features grotesque, appalling. The bulging, staring eyes seemed to be fastened upon Potter’s eyes.

“God!...” he exclaimed. “Your father!”

“My father,” she repeated.

“You were alone with that? Alone in the dark?”

“It was awful!” she whispered.

“He is dead.”

“Dead.”

“Who—who killed him?” Somehow he dreaded to ask that question.

“God!” she said, simply.

He stood up, grasped her shoulders with firm hands. “Pull yourself together,” he said, harshly. “Don’t go to pieces. What has happened? What does this mean?”

“I’m not going to pieces. I’m calm—but I’m frightened.”

Potter switched on the lights and bent over von Essen, examining him to find what had struck him down.

“There is no wound,” he said, lifting his face. “How did he die?”

“Because,” she said, quietly, “one of us had to die. God chose him.”

He fancied he caught a note of joy in her voice; it startled him, repelled him, so unnatural did it seem.

“Such a father,” she went on with unnatural calm. “His blood was my blood—but I hated him. His touch, the air he breathed, was defilement. I could not have borne it another day.... He had to die.”

“Hildegarde!”

“You think I’m heartless. You think I ought to cry.... Oh, I could sing! I’m free at last. Free of him, free of his defilement. If I could only get his blood out of my veins....”

“What are you saying? What has been going on here? Tell me.”

“He was a spy and a traitor and a murderer.... I discovered it. I knew it—and I couldn’t denounce him. He was my father, don’t you see? My father!... You can’t betray your father to the police. I hated him for it, and I loved my country—but I couldn’t denounce him.”

“Your father a spy? A German agent?”

“Yes.”

This explained much. He fell silent, striving to comprehend something of the tortures she had endured, striving to picture the life she must have led. “You poor child!” he said, softly.

“When you came with questions—I couldn’t answer. You called me a traitor ... and I dared not tell you. He was my father and—and I couldn’t have lived to have people point to me and call me the daughter of a traitor. Could you have borne that?”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“He knew I had discovered what he was.... He locked me in. I’ve been watched day and night. I’ve been a prisoner.”

“Cantor?...”

“Was a guard. I couldn’t explain that.... He wanted me to marry him—to go with him without marriage—and father tried to force me.... He was trying to force me to-day.... And he died.” Suddenly she clutched his arm. “Oh,” she cried, “be quick! Do something!... They were warned!... I did it. I called Cantor Adolf von Arnheim. I had to do something to protect myself....”

“What did he say? Was it true?”

“It was true. It changed him. He forgot me.... He told father he must strike at once—to-night.... It’s going to be to-night. Somehow, by some means, he’s going to do some awful thing. He rushed out.... Then Philip’s wife came with a note ... and when father read it he ... died. It killed him....”

“To-night. Cantor is going to do something to-night. What? What else do you know?”

“Let me think. It was all so terrible.... He has an aeroplane. He is going to blow up factories and channels. In an hour. He said he could do it all in an hour.”

“Where is Cantor? Where did he go?”

“In his car. I don’t know where he went—it was that way”—she pointed—“away from the city.... He said it would be easy, that there was no way to stop him.”

“That way? Toward the lake?”

“Yes.”

Potter stood motionless, thinking as he had never thought before, sometimes thinking aloud.

“He has Matthews’s ’plane,” he said. “He’ll use that—to drop explosives.... He’s been gone hours. He can’t be caught and stopped. Once he reaches that ’plane, there’s no way to stop him. Even if the city was warned, he could do as he wished.... There’s no way to stop him.”

“But you must stop him.... If this thing is done it will be my fault—mine!... Because I didn’t tell.... But now I’ve told.... Oh, Potter, you must do something.... I’m not a traitor.... I love my country. Don’t let me be blamed for this. There’s a way to prevent it—some way.... You must find it.”

“If we knew where the ’plane was—or the explosive stored.” He stopped suddenly, and a surge of joy welled up to his eyes. “I know,” he said. “I know where he must start.... That island, Hildegarde, where we fell.... That’s what the island was for. They made explosive, stored explosive.... There is where he will start.”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Nearly six,” he said.

“He won’t start for hours—until midnight. He’ll be safest then.... Can’t you get there in time?”

“I don’t think a motor-boat could reach that island—the ice in the lake.”

“He’s got to reach it. He can reach it.”

“He’ll have that ’plane hidden on the lake shore. He’ll fly across and take on his explosives.”

“You have an aeroplane, too,” she said, simply.

It was a thought brightly gleaming in the darkness; it was a thought which fitted that man and girl like a garment skilfully made. It called to them and beckoned with its recklessness, the adventure of it, its audacity, its quality of knight-errantry. To be a knightly champion of his country, riding a steed of the air in the lists of the heavens! That was indeed an enterprise in tune with the soul of Potter Waite, in tune with the not less turbulent soul of Hildegarde von Essen.

“Thank you,” he said, presently, his voice vibrant. “It’s worth a try.... I’m sorry,” he said, slowly, “that I didn’t know, didn’t understand. I must have hurt you. I wouldn’t have hurt you for worlds.... Last night I called you a traitor. If saying I am sorry—”

“How could you know?”

“If only the rest—that other thing—were a lie, too.” He ground his teeth, turned from her suddenly. “Good-by,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my ’plane ready.”

“And me? Are you going to leave me here alone—with him?” She motioned toward Herman von Essen. “Oh, you mustn’t!... I can’t stay! Take me with you.”

“No,” he said, “you can’t stay here.... Where can I take you? Minutes are precious.”

“Anywhere—away from here.... I don’t care. Don’t waste time with me.... Let me go with you—to the hangar. I’ll be all right there.”

“Get your wraps.”

She ran out of the room and up the stairs. As she opened her wardrobe door she hesitated an instant—there was only an instant of doubt. Then, quickly, deftly, wasting not a second, she removed her cumbering skirts and clad herself in those riding-breeches which she had worn that day so long ago—the day when she had stamped herself on Potter’s heart as a fairy prince.... She knew what she purposed.... Next she donned a fur-lined coat and driving-cap that covered her ears. She was not calm now, but she was very eager. A tinge of pink appeared in her pallid cheeks. By a little the weight of horror was shifted from her heart, shifted by hope.

Perhaps she was a trifle hysterical; perhaps the long strain with its sudden tragic climax had tried her until she could not see clearly, think straight from cause to effect. But hope had dawned, a hope that, perhaps, has dawned in the hearts of many whose guilt was more real than hers. She had seen a vision. In that vision she had bought herself free—free from guilt and free from defilement.

She descended to Potter. He turned low the light in the library, leaving Herman von Essen where he lay. Hildegarde stood in the door an instant, looking down at the thing that had been her father, drew a deep, gulping breath, and, covering her face, suffered Potter to lead her away.

Neither spoke as the car sped them to the hangar. It was dark, unoccupied. Potter unlocked the door and threw it open for Hildegarde to enter. In an instant he found the switch and turned on the lights.... Before them brooded Potter’s newest aeroplane, wings spread as though something found shelter beneath them. Hildegarde spoke of that. “Like a mother chicken,” she said, pointing, “protecting her brood.... What a brood she is protecting to-night!”

“You must help,” he said, sharply. “Throw off your coat.”

She did so, stood revealed as she had stood revealed that other day, that bountiful spring day. Potter shut his eyes. “Why?” he said, “why—”

She did not answer, and he stood, eyes open now, staring at her. His lips were white, straight, compressed. His throat ached.... How could that thing be true which she had confessed?... Every line of her proclaimed it a lie. The slenderness, the grace, the piquancy and boyish beauty of her asserted her purity, her chastity. He groaned.... They lied. In her nature had created a lie....

He tore away his eyes, began to work with feverish energy, ordering Hildegarde here, ordering her there, and she obeyed quietly, intelligently. Potter tested struts and braces, wires and fastenings, controls and motor. He saw to it there were gasolene and lubricant—as far as was in his power he saw to it that his steed of the air should be at its best, potent to give the most that could be demanded of it that night. He looked at his watch.

“Nearly ten,” he said.

“Is it time to start?”

“Yes.”

“What will you do? How will you find him?”

“I’ll sit down on the road he must follow,” Potter said. “I’ll blockade his island. He won’t get past me.”

“In the darkness—”

He pointed through the window. The moon had arisen, silver-cold, gleaming with the rays of a frozen fire.

“Potter—”

“Yes.”

“I’m going with you.... That is why I wore these clothes.”

“Nonsense!” he said, sharply.

“I’ve got to buy myself free,” she said, intensely. “Can’t you understand?... I’ve done wrong.... I was almost a traitor to my country—that I loved. I knew, and I was afraid to tell. I knew her enemies and her traitors—and I knew what they were attempting to do—but I was afraid to tell.... But I did tell, when it was almost too late.... I’m guilty, Potter. It will be with me always, accusing me, if you don’t let me go.... You must see.... There’ll be danger to-night. I must be in danger. I must risk something, everything. I must show that I am willing to die for my country.... Don’t you understand now? I must be willing to offer myself—and I must offer myself.... It’s a ransom.... Then I can come back—if I do come back—and go away and have peace.”

She stopped, drew nearer to him by a step, and let her eyes plead with him.

Like was pleading with like. Her soul called to a soul that was its complement, its counterpart. It could not but understand. Normal considerations failed; nothing about their situation was normal. Potter himself was uplifted, breathing an ether finer, more rarified, more exhilarating than air.... He was not a plodding man of the workaday world that night, but an eager, restless, headlong-questing soul of high adventure.... He understood her; her mood was clear to him. Why should he refuse to her soul what he was demanding for his own?

He bent over her and kissed her, not with the kiss of a lover, but with the kiss of an ascetic. “Come,” he said.

She thanked him silently. “Now?” she asked.

He nodded.

Together they opened the wide doors. In another moment there burst upon them the thunderous roar of the powerful motor, his motor, his country’s motor that was to carry her to victory in her battle to free the world from hideous blackness.

He helped her to her seat, and mounted to his own. In another moment they were moving out upon their quest.

CHAPTER XXVIII

They mounted swiftly into the face of the moon, higher, ever higher. Beneath them lay a cold world making ready for sleep. Behind them glowed the lights of the city, of the city going about its affairs, unconscious of the calamity that threatened. Richly gowned men and women occupied theater chairs; cafés, restaurants with their gaudy cabarets, were preparing to receive their guests. Lights were blinking out in the homes of working-men and of millionaire as the inmates retired, conscious of security, for the night. In many homes were dancing and gaiety; in other homes—a scattering few—nightly family prayers were being said. As on any other nights, the down-town streets were quick with moving motor-cars, or black with automobiles parked and waiting until their owners should issue from theater, from club, from innocent amusement, or from squalid place of license and artificial joy.

Detroit lay spread out in great panorama, sleeping, spending, each inhabitant flying high or flying low, according to his means and his desires ... all defenseless against the thing that threatened; defenseless save for that frail craft of the air that mounted and mounted on fragile wings until it was but a speck against the illuminated heavens!

Steadily, swiftly it sped to take its place as sentinel at those high gates; to bar the roads of the sky; to ride the clouds a challenger, a champion, a winged guardian, steadfast, courageous, eagerly dauntless....

Potter felt the splendor of it; it uplifted him. Soaring there above the lake, he knew a strange sense of detachment from the fetters of the flesh. He felt, not like a man, liable to weaknesses, ills, death, but like an immortal upon a mission for Olympus. He was not afraid of the issue. He was confident. His exhilaration was not of the sort that makes men shout and sing; it was as if some great, glowing dignity rested upon him, to be worn with worthiness. The fate of a city was in his hands, and he rejoiced to have it there....

On he flew, steadily mounting as to some appointed watch-tower. He would mount to a height from which his view would be limited only by the power of his eyes. Nothing could move upon that lake, or in the air above that lake, that could escape him.

He rejoiced in his motor. It did not falter, it was true; if great events must depend upon a tiny mechanism, then this mechanism was worthy of the responsibility.... Almost alone he had created it and given it to his country. It was right that he should be proud.

He hovered and circled, his eyes ever toward that distant island, ever watching, vigilant. Hildegarde sat as vigilant as he, as thrilled as he. She was almost happy.... How distant seemed the squalid events of her life, the tragedy of the day! She, too, was an immortal, experiencing the privileges of immortality. Her heart was high, her soul was confident. It was a better, a greater thing than mere happiness....

The night was still, clear, cold. Ten thousand feet above the earth the cold was indescribable; it gnawed through their garments, froze the very moisture in their eyes, yet, somehow, they were glad to endure it; to endure was part of the service demanded of them.... So they hovered and watched....

Hildegarde touched Potter’s arm and pointed. His eyes had seen it too—that speck against the luminous dome of the sky. They watched it, uncertain if it were the thing they awaited.... Potter shut off his motor, and the stillness left them aghast. It was unreal, uncanny.... They listened. Faintly, a shade this side of inaudibility, was wafted to them a rhythmic splutter, growing stronger, stronger.... It told its story.

Again the roar of the motor engulfed them, and Potter swerved toward the oncoming speck, flying high, maintaining a position thousands of feet above his unsuspecting prey. Presently the other aeroplane became distinct, a black silhouette, the ghost of an aeroplane traversing a worldless sky.... On it came. But Potter knew he was rushing to meet it with twice the speed of its own approach.... He had not been seen. The roar of Cantor’s motor concealed the fury of Potter’s machine. Now Cantor was below them, almost directly below them.... The moment had arrived!

Potter turned his nose downward, swooping like a preying eagle, and as he volplaned he swerved. He was flying on a level with Cantor’s machine, approaching it from the rear. Hildegarde saw the blue shape of a revolver in Potter’s hand and bent forward, tense, breathless for the event.

Cantor, unconscious that he did not occupy the heavens alone, sped onward with singleness of purpose. He was unaware of danger, unconscious of near-flying menace. Potter did not want it so. He could not attack a man, an unconscious man, from behind. What he wanted was combat, man to man conflict. Even a spy bent on treacherous mission of destruction he could not destroy without warning.

Swiftly his ’plane drew alongside Cantor’s machine, passed it, and as it passed Potter looked at his adversary, saw his wide eyes fixed upon him with unbelieving astonishment. Then Cantor was left behind.

Potter mounted, turned, approached again. Flashes of fire spat out from Cantor’s machine, bullets droned harmlessly by.... It was as Potter wished it. He did not fire himself. He was not ready yet, but passed Cantor, circled again and came up from the rear. He was capable, he knew, of circling Cantor’s machine. For every mile Cantor could traverse Potter traversed two.

Now he drew to a position at the side of Cantor’s ’plane again, wing-tip almost touching wing-tip. He could see Cantor’s face distorted by rage and apprehension; saw Cantor lift his arm, saw the spurt of fire from his revolver. The bullet plowed through Potter’s coat behind his shoulders.... Almost simultaneously he answered the fire with his automatic, once, twice, thrice.... He turned in his seat as he passed, but Cantor was still erect, his machine still under control.

Again he repeated the maneuver. Again Cantor fired at point-blank range—and missed. Once more Potter’s automatic spluttered.... Cantor lurched forward, his machine veered, seemed to wabble in the air—and Potter sped away, mounting, circling. As he returned he saw Cantor’s machine careening crazily; saw it dip, plunge, tip perilously with no intelligence to hold it in control.... Then, suddenly, it pointed its nose downward and plunged.... Potter held his breath. He found himself counting, “One—two—three—four—five—six—”

Not like an arrow, not like a plummet, but like a weighted leaf, the aeroplane fell.... Potter leaned far over to watch. Hildegarde, awed in the face of this happening, peered over also, fascinated.... The ’plane seemed to merge with the earth—with the ice of the lake. Then there was a mighty burst of flame, a gigantic, cataclysmic sound which dwarfed the roar of the motor; which seemed to tear the very air into shreds and to threaten to rock the moon in its distant sky.... Potter’s machine rocked and dipped as the blast of air surged upward.... It righted itself and moved onward, smoothly, peacefully—the sole occupant of the sky.

The bombs with which Cantor had meant to devastate a city had let loose their awful force ... harmlessly to the sleeping city.... There would be no need to look for Cantor, for Cantor’s ’plane. They had vanished, been snuffed out by that awful force, wiped clean from existence as if they had never been.

It was a homing flight now, back to a city saved from a peril of which it had been unconscious, of which the major part of it might forever remain unconscious. The thing was done; the high gates had not been forced; the winged guardian had blocked the roars of the sky....

They were descending now, nearing their place of alighting.... Potter, thankful for the moonlight, pointed for the field, the earth leaped up to meet them, touched them, they bounded along its frozen surface....

Potter lifted Hildegarde from her place, carried her into the hangar, himself stiff, aching with the cold. She lay quiet in his arms, her eyes closed, but she was not unconscious; she was keenly conscious.

“I saw it,” she said, her voice a breath. “I was there. I was a part of it.”

CHAPTER XXIX

Potter lighted a fire quickly and carried Hildegarde before it. He chafed her hands, compelled her to remove her boots, and chafed her feet—and she suffered him to attend her in silence.... She was at peace. She had offered herself, had shared the risks, had almost felt the wind of bullets that passed.... The ways of the human mind are not wholly to be understood. The thing she had done might not have satisfied another, yet she was satisfied. She had paid her ransom, bought her redemption.... She was at peace, and to be at peace was good ... good.

She sat on a chair; Potter knelt beside her. She smiled down at his head; her fingers reached out to touch his hair.

“Potter....” she said, softly.

“Garde....”

He was looking up into her face now with eyes that glowed, glowed with the pride of success, with the happiness that comes only from the consciousness of a great service performed worthily.

“How proud you should be!” she said, gently. “How proud the country will be of you!... To love one’s country—and to be able to do a great thing for one’s country....”

The spirit of the high places was still upon them; they could not think small thoughts, speak puny words. For a time they sat in silence. Then Potter spoke:

“I knew—up there—that you should never leave me,” he said.

She acquiesced; it was a thing that had come to her as well.

“Never,” she said.

“We were created for each other.... Nothing could hold us apart.”

“Nothing.”

“Can anything be greater than love?”

“I don’t know.”

“I believe there is something—something that selects a man and woman and brings them together.... We have been brought together.”

“I felt it—to-night.”

Again silence fell. Her hand rested on his head—it was the only contact of their bodies.

“Hildegarde,” he said, presently, “there is a thing I must mention this once—and then never again. It must never arise between us, in your heart or in my heart.”

“What is it, Potter?”

“You confessed to me once—here in this room—” He hesitated, sought for words in which to clothe the thing, words that would carry no bitterness, no accusation, none of the horror the fact had brought to him. “You said you loved me, but could marry no man.”

“Yes, I said it,” she replied.

“Was it true?”

“It was true—then.”

“Then?... It is not true now?”

“It is not true now.... I was defiled.”

“That was the word.”

“God had burned away the defilement.”

He groped for her meaning; it was hidden from him.

“What do you mean?”

“It was his blood in my veins—the blood of a man who could betray his country.... It defiled me. He was my father, and the fact defiled me. He was loathsome to me, but my life came from him.... How could I marry any man? Could I hand on such an inheritance to the innocent?”

His heart seemed to stop. Did he hear aright? Was this the defilement and the manner of her defilement? He could have cried aloud with joy, for she was as he had thought her. Looking into her face, into her eyes, he had been unable to believe—but the fact of her confession had daunted him.... And this was her confession....

A doubt came. The matter must be placed beyond all doubtings. He believed he understood, but now he must know.

“Your father’s death—” he said.

“I knew God had seen and had taken the matter into His hands. I saw the punishment.... I knew I was free.”

“But Cantor?”

“Cantor?” It was her turn to be puzzled. “What has he to do with it?”

“With your—defilement?”

She did not comprehend; thank God she did not comprehend ... she should never comprehend; never know the black, sordid thing he had believed of her.... He was on his knees before her, his head bowed on her knees.

“Forgive me,” he said, unsteadily. “Forgive me.”

“Forgive you?... For what, Potter?”

“For being only human—with a man’s understanding—when I should have known what no man could have known.”

She laughed softly. “I can forgive that,” she said.

They were warm flesh and blood again; two human beings, man and woman, with human love calling the one to the other. He held out his arms toward her and she came into them, lips pressed lips, and heart beat against heart.

“I was wrong,” he said, presently. “There’s nothing like love.”

“Like our love,” she said.

After a long time he put her away from him gently. “We must go,” he said. “There are things to be done.... I will take you to mother again, and this time you will stay.”

“I’ll make her keep me,” she said.

“Your father—I will attend to what must be done.”

“Yes.”

“What moments we have had in this room!” he said, looking about him lingeringly.

“Bitter and sweet,” she said.

“There shall be no more bitter—only sweet.”

“It will be the sweeter,” she said, with knowledge born of experience.

They went out reluctantly. He placed her in his car and they drove toward his home—their home now.... The house was ablaze with lights. Two cars stood at the curb. Potter entered the driveway, wondering, stopped at the door and alighted. Side by side he entered with Hildegarde.

His father stood in the hall in hat and coat, fresh from the street.

“Dad!” said Potter.

“Son!... Son, where have you been? What has happened? We’ve hunted for you—Downs has hunted for you.... We thought—”

“Where’s mother, Dad?... I want to take—my wife—to her.”

“Your wife? Is that what you’ve been doing? Getting married?”

“Not getting married—getting the wife.... We will be married—”

“In good time,” said Hildegarde, gravely.

Downs appeared in the door of the library, came forward eagerly. “Waite, I’m glad to see you. I’m relieved. We were afraid they had you.”

Potter wanted to ask questions, not to answer them.

“What have you done? Have you got them? Did they get away?”

“We had a mighty successful round-up,” Downs said, “and those papers were worth their weight in diamonds.... We smashed the organization, smashed it flat.... But the man Cantor got away. There’s not a trace of him.”

“No,” said Potter, soberly, “Cantor did not get away.”

“What’s that? Where is he?”

“Let me tell you,” said Hildegarde. “Potter won’t tell it as it ought to be told.” She took up the story, told it vividly, feelingly, so that her hearers saw the things she saw, experienced the things she had experienced, and as she continued Downs and Fabius Waite looked at Potter as at a stranger suddenly set among them, some stranger worthy of deference, of something like awe.

“So,” finished Hildegarde, “Potter met him in the air—and shut the highway to him.... And that was Cantor’s end.”

“Son,” said Fabius Waite, his words vibrant with pride, “I can’t say what I feel.... I’m proud—proud.... The whole country will be proud.”

“The country mustn’t know,” said Potter, looking at Downs.

“Until the war is done,” said Downs. “But there are those who shall know.... My report will go to them. I think you may count on the thanks, the gratitude of the man who lives in the White House.... It was a big job, well done.”

“Can you wait, Downs? I want to take Hildegarde to mother. There’s something I must arrange with you.”

Hildegarde need not have feared for her welcome, not after Potter’s mother looked into her face and heard her say, “This time, Mrs. Waite, I can tell you that I love him.”

Potter hastened back to Downs. “Did those papers name Herman von Essen?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“He is dead.... I found him dead on his library floor. That girl was his daughter—she’s going to be my wife.”

“I understand. You’re entitled to some reward, Mr. Waite, and this is a small one. No one shall ever know. His record will be clean.”

“Thank you,” Potter said. “I’m tired.... Good night.”

“Good night,” said the Secret Service man, and he stood looking after Potter until the young man disappeared up the stairs. “That,” he said to himself, “is America....”

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Table of Contents

- THE HIGHFLYERS
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
- CHAPTER XX
- CHAPTER XXI
- CHAPTER XXII
- CHAPTER XXIII
- CHAPTER XXIV
- CHAPTER XXV
- CHAPTER XXVI
- CHAPTER XXVII
- CHAPTER XXVIII
- CHAPTER XXIX
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE