"Oh, dear me!" she told herself at last, "I am getting to be a regular sleuth. But my suspicions do point that way. If that woman in black and Legrand robbed the Red Cross treasury at Robinsburg, and covered their stealings by burning the records, would they be likely to leave the country in a Red Cross ship?
"That would seem preposterous. And yet, what more unlikely method of departure? It might be that such a course on the part of two criminals would be quite sure to cover their escape."
She wondered about it much as the ship sailed majestically into the French port, safe at last from any peril of being torpedoed by the enemy. And Professor Perry had been quite sure that she was safe in any case!
Ruth saw the professor when they landed. The Italian chef she did not see at all. Nor did Ruth Fielding see anybody who looked like Mrs. Rose Mantel.
"I may be quite wrong in all my suspicions," she thought. "I would better say nothing about them. To cause the authorities to arrest entirely innocent people would be a very wicked thing, indeed."
Besides, there was so much to do and to see that the girl of the Red Mill could not keep her suspicions alive. This unknown world she and her mates had come to quite filled their minds with new thoughts and interests.
Their first few hours in France was an experience long to be remembered.
Ruth might have been quite bewildered had it not been that her mind was so set upon the novel sights and sounds about her.
"I declare I don"t know whether I am a-foot or a-horseback!" Clare Biggars said. "Let me hang on to your coat-tail, Ruth. I know you are real and United Statesy. But these funny French folk--
"My! they are like people out of a story book, after all, aren"t they? I thought I"d seen most every kind of folk at the San Francisco Fair; but just n.o.body seems familiar looking here!"
Before they were off the quay, several French women, who could not speak a word of English save ""Ello!" welcomed the Red Cross workers with joy.
At this time Americans coming to help France against her enemies were a new and very wonderful thing. The first marching soldiers from America were acclaimed along the streets and country roads as heroes might have been.
An old woman in a close-fitting bonnet and ragged shawl-not an over-clean person-took Ruth"s hand in both hers and patted it, and said something in her own tongue that brought the tears to the girl"s eyes.
It was such a blessing as Aunt Alvirah had murmured over her when the girl had left the Red Mill.
She and Clare, with several of the other feminine members of the supply unit were quartered in an old hotel almost on the quay for their first night ash.o.r.e. It was said that some troop trains had the right-of-way; so the Red Cross workers could not go up to Paris for twenty-four hours.
Somebody made a mistake. It could not be expected that everything would go smoothly. The heads of the various Red Cross units were not infallible. Besides, this supply unit to which Ruth belonged really had no head as yet. The party at the seaside hotel was forgotten.
n.o.body came to the hotel to inform them when the unit was to entrain.
They were served very well by the hotel attendants and several chatty ladies, who could speak English, came to see them. But Ruth and the other girls had not come to France as tourists.
Finally, the girl of the Red Mill, with Clare Biggars, sallied forth to find the remainder of their unit. Fortunately, Ruth"s knowledge of the language was not superficial. Madame Picolet, her French teacher at Briarwood Hall, had been most thorough in the drilling of her pupils; and Madame was a Parisienne.
But when Ruth discovered that she and her friends at the seaside hotel had been left behind by the rest of the Red Cross contingent, she was rather startled, and Clare was angered.
"What do they think we are?" demanded the Western girl. "Of no account at all? Where"s our transportation? What do they suppose we"ll do, dumped down here in this fishing town? What--"
"Whoa! Whoa!" Ruth laughed. "Don"t lose your temper, my dear," she advised soothingly. "If nothing worse than this happens to us--"
She immediately interviewed several railroad officials, arranged for transportation, got the pa.s.sports of all viseed, and, in the middle of the afternoon, they were off by slow train to the French capital.
"We can"t really get lost, girls," Ruth declared. "For we are Americans, and Americans, at present, in France, are objects of considerable interest to everybody. We"ll only be a day late getting to the city on the Seine."
When they finally arrived in Paris, Ruth knew right where to go to reach the Red Cross supply department headquarters. She had it all written down in her notebook, and taxicabs brought the party in safety to the entrance to the building in question.
As the girls alighted from the taxis Clare seized Ruth"s wrist, whispering:
"Why! there"s that Professor Perry again-the one that came over with us on the steamer. You remember?"
Ruth saw the man whose voice was like Legrand"s, but whose facial appearance was nothing at all like that suspected individual. But it was his companion that particularly attracted the attention of the girl of the Red Mill.
This was a slight, dark man, who hobbled as he walked. His right leg was bent and he wore a shoe with a four-inch wooden sole.
"Who is that, I wonder?" Ruth murmured, looking at the crippled man.
"That is Signor Aristo," Clair said. "He"s an Italian chef I am told."
Signor Aristo was, likewise, smoothly shaven; but Ruth remarked that he looked much like the Mexican, Jose, who had worked with Legrand at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg.
CHAPTER XIII-THE NEW CHIEF
Ruth Fielding was troubled by her most recent discovery. Yet she was in no mind to take Clare into her confidence-or anybody else.
She was cautious. With nothing but suspicions to report to the Red Cross authorities, what could she really say? What, after all, do suspicions amount to?
If the man calling himself Professor Perry was really Legrand, and the Italian chef, Signor Aristo the lame man, was he who had been known as Mr. Jose at the Robinsburg Red Cross headquarters, her identification of them must be corroborated. How could she prove such a.s.sertions?
It was a serious situation; but one in which Ruth felt that her hands were tied. She must wait for something to turn up that would give her a sure hold on these people whom she believed to be out and out crooks.
Ruth accompanied the remainder of the "left behind" party of workers into the building, and they found the proper office in which to report their arrival in Paris. The other members of the supply unit met the delayed party with much hilarity; the joke of their having been left behind was not soon to be forgotten.
The hospital units, better organized, and with their heads, or chiefs, already trained and on the spot, went on toward the front that very day.
But Ruth"s battalion still lacked a leader. They were scattered among different hotels and pensions in the vicinity of the Red Cross offices, and spent several days in comparative idleness.
It gave the girls an opportunity of going about and seeing the French capital, which, even in wartime, had a certain amount of gayety. Ruth searched out Madame Picolet, and Madame was transported with joy on seeing her one-time pupil.
The Frenchwoman held the girl of the Red Mill in grateful remembrance, and for more than Ruth"s contribution to Madame Picolet"s work among the widows and orphans of her dear poilus. In "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall," Madame Picolet"s personal history is narrated, and how Ruth had been the means of aiding the lady in a very serious predicament is shown.
"Ah, my dear child!" exclaimed the Frenchwoman, "it is a blessing of _le bon Dieu_ that we should meet again. And in this, my own country! I love all Americans for what they are doing for our poor poilus. Your sweet and volatile friend, Helen, is here. She has gone with her father just now to a southern city. And even that mischievous Mam"zelle Stone is working in a good cause. She will be delight" to see you, too."
This was quite true. Jennie Stone welcomed Ruth in the headquarters of the American Women"s League with a scream of joy, and flew into the arms of the girl of the Red Mill.
The latter staggered under the shock. Jennie looked at her woefully.
"_Don"t_ tell me that work agrees with me!" she wailed. "_Don"t_ say that I am getting fat again! It"s the cooking."
"What cooking? French cooking will never make you fat in a hundred years," declared Ruth, who had had her own experiences in the French hotels in war times. "Don"t tell me that, Jennie.
"I don"t. It"s the diet kitchen. I"m in that, you know, and I"m tasting food all the time. It-it"s _dreadful_ the amount I manage to absorb without thinking every day. I know, before this war is over, I shall be as big as one of those British tanks they talk about."
"My goodness, girl!" cried Ruth. "You don"t have to make a tank of yourself, do you? Exercise--"
"Now stop right there, Ruth Fielding!" cried Jennie Stone, with flashing eyes. "You have as little sense as the rest of these people. They tell me to exercise, and don"t you know that every time I go horseback riding, or do anything else of a violent nature, that I have to come right back and eat enough victuals to put on twice the number of pounds the exercise is supposed to take off? Don"t-tell-me! It"s impossible to reduce and keep one"s health."
Jennie was doing something besides putting on flesh, however. Her practical work in the diet kitchen Ruth saw was worthy, indeed.