“Ah! What about him?” asked Ruth. “You know what I wrote you—that I had heard there was trouble in the Supply Department? You haven’t answered my letter.”
“No. I was too worried. And finally—only yesterday, as I said—I was ordered to appear before the prefect of police.”
“A nice old gentleman with a white mustache.”
“A horrid old man who said the meanest things to dear Madame Mantel!” cried Clare hotly.
Ruth saw that the Western girl was still enamored of the woman in black, so she was careful what she said in comment upon Clare’s story.
All Ruth had to do was to keep still and Clare told it all. Perhaps Henriette did not understand very clearly what the trouble was, but she looked sympathetic, too, and that encouraged Clare.
It seemed that Mrs. Mantel had made a companion of Clare outside of the hospital, and Ruth could very well understand why. Clare’s father was a member of Congress and a wealthy man. It was to be presumed that Clare seemed to the woman in black well worth cultivating.
The Kansas girl had gone with the woman to the café of the Chou-rouge more than once. Each time the so-called Professor Perry and the Italian commissioner, whose name Clare had forgotten—“But that’s of no consequence,” thought Ruth, “for he has so many names!”—had been very friendly with the Red Cross workers.
Then suddenly the professor and the Italian had disappeared. The head of the Lyse hospital had begun to make inquiries into the working of the Supply Department. There had been billed to Lyse great stores of goods that were not accounted for.
“Poor Madame Mantel was heartbroken,” Clare said. “She wished to resign at once. Oh, it’s been terrible!”