“One what?” Ruth asked.
“University,” chuckled the Englishman. “You should get acquainted with Perry, if his appearance so much interests you, Miss Fielding.”
But Ruth was in no mood for banter about the man whose appearance and words had so astonished her. She said nothing to the purser or to anybody else about what she had heard the strange man say in German. No person who belonged—really belonged—on this Red Cross ship, should have said what he did and in that tone!
He spoke to his companion as though there was a settled and secret understanding between them. And as though, too, he had a power of divination about what the German U-boat commanders would do, beyond the knowledge possessed by the officers of the steamship.
What could a “dry-as-dust” professor from a Western university have in common with the person known as Signor Aristo, who Ruth found was down on the ship’s list as a chef of a wealthy Fifth Avenue family, going back to his native Italy.
It was said the Signor had had a very bad passage. He had kept to his room entirely, not even appearing on deck. Was he a man at all?
The thought came to Ruth Fielding and would not be put away, that this small, retiring person known as Signor Aristo might be a woman. If Professor Perry was the distinguished Legrand what was more possible than that the person Ruth had seen in the deck chair was Mrs. Rose Mantel, likewise in disguise?
“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!