The countess nodded. "In that's his safety—and has been since before the war. For, know you, Mademoiselle, all France was not asleep during those pre-war years when the hateful Hun was preparing and preparing.
"My husband, Mademoiselle Fielding, was a loyal and a far-sighted man. He did not play politics, and seek to foment trouble for the Republic as so many of our old and noble families did. Now, thank heaven, they are among our most faithful workers for la patrie.
"But, see you, Count Marchand owned a small estate near Merz, which is just over the border in Germany. Sometimes he would go there—sometimes to drink the waters, for there are springs of note, perhaps for the hunting, for there is a great forest near. He would always take Bubu with him.
"And so we taught Bubu to run back and forth between here and there. He carried messages around his neck in those times. Quite simple and plain messages, had he been caught at the frontier and examined.
"It was our Henri who resorted to the hollow tooth, and that since the war began. Bubu had one big tooth with a spot on it. Henri knew an American dentist in Paris. Ah, what cannot these Americans do!" and the countess laughed.
"We took Bubu to Paris and had the decayed spot drilled out. The tooth is sound at the root. The dentist made the hole as large as possible and then we moulded the rubber caps to close it. You see how the messages are sent?"
"Remarkable, Madame!" murmured Ruth. "But?"
"Ah? Who sends the messages from beyond the German lines? Now it is Count Allaire himself," she hastened to explain. "In disguise he went through the lines some weeks ago. The agent who was there came under suspicion of the Germans."
"And he lives at the castle over there in Germany—openly?" gasped Ruth.
"Nay, nay! It is no castle at best," and the countess laughed. "It is by no means as great a place as this. It was a modest little house and is now the comfortable quarters of a fat old Prussian general.