“Wow!” ejaculated the young fellow with disgust. “Isn’t that just like a girl? ‘Poor dog,’ indeed!”
“Why! you don’t suppose that a noble dog would want to be a spy?” cried Ruth. “You can scarcely imagine a dog choosing any tricky way through life. It is only men who deliberately choose despicable means to despicable ends.”
“Hold on! Hold on!” cried Charlie Bragg. “Spies are necessary—as long as there is going to be war, anyway. The French have got quite as brave and successful spies beyond the German lines as the Germans have over here; only not so many.”
“Well—I suppose that’s so,” admitted Ruth, sighing. “There must be these terrible things as long as the greater terrible thing, war, exists. Oh! There is the chateau gateway. Drive slower, Mr. Bragg—do, please!”
They mounted a little rise in the road. Above they had seen the walls and towers of the chateau, and had seen them clearly for some time. But now the boundary wall of the estate edged the road, and an arched gateway, with high grilled gates and a small door set into the wall beside the wider opening, came into view.
A single thought had stung Ruth Fielding’s mind, but she did not utter it. It was: Why had none of the German aviators dropped bombs upon the stone towers on the hill? Was it a fact that the enemy deliberately ignored the existence of the chateau—that somebody in that great pile of masonry won its immunity from German bombs by playing the traitor to France and her cause?
Charlie had really reduced the speed of the car until it was now only crawling up the slope of the road. Something fluttered at the postern-gate—a woman’s petticoat.
“There’s the old woman,” said Charlie, “Take a good look at her.”
“You don’t mean the countess?” gasped Ruth.
“Whiskers! No!” chuckled the young fellow. “She’s a servant—or something. Dresses like one of these French peasants about here. And yet she isn’t French!”