"I see. I will be with you in the courtyard at once, Monsieur."
When she came out he was ready to step into a two-seated roadster, hung low and painted a battleship gray. A man in uniform on the front seat drove. Ruth got in, was followed by the secret agent, and they started.
She had much more in her heart and mind; but she doubted the advisability of telling M. Lafrane.
There was what she suspected about Major Henri Marchand. Could she turn suspicion toward the son of her good friend, the countess? And his brother who, it was said, had run away?
Ruth felt that she had already told much that might cause the major trouble. She did not know. She only suspected.
As for Tom Cameron's trouble—and the mystery surrounding him—she did not feel that she could speak to the secret agent about that. Tom's affairs could have nothing to do with the work of this French criminal investigator. No. She hugged to her heart all her anxiety regarding Tom.
As soon as they left the hospital courtyard Ruth found that she was traveling with a chauffeur beside whom Charlie Bragg's reckless driving was tame indeed. Besides, Charlie's lame car could not arrive at such speed as this racing type of automobile was capable of.
By looking over the back of the front seat she obtained a glimpse of the speedometer, and saw the indicator traveling from sixty to seventy. After that she did not wish to look again. She did not want to know if they traveled faster.
The road over which they went was strange to Ruth Fielding. It was by a much shorter way Charlie Bragg had taken her to the field hospital, and over which she had returned.
They began before long to meet farmers' wagons, piled high with household goods, on which sat the strange, sad-eyed children of the war zone, or decrepit old people, often surrounded by their fowls. For even the poorest and most destitute of the French peasants manage to have "poulets."