“What is it, Mademoiselle Ruth?”
“Do you know that man?” Ruth returned, proving herself a true Yankee by answering one question with another.
“The captain? No. I do not know him. There are many captains,” and Henriette laughed.
“He—he looks like somebody I know,” Ruth said hesitatingly. She did not wish to explain her sudden shocked feeling on seeing the man’s face. He looked like the shaven Legrand who, on the ship coming over and in Lyse, had called himself “Professor Perry.”
If this was the crook, who, Ruth believed, had set fire to the business office of the Robinsburg Red Cross headquarters, he had evidently not been arrested in connection with the supply department scandal, of which the matron of the hospital had told her. At least, he was now free. And the little fellow with him! Had not Ruth, less than two hours before, seen José talking with the woman from the chateau at the wayside shrine near Clair?
The mysteries of these two men and their disguises troubled Ruth Fielding vastly. It seemed that the prefect of police at Lyse had not apprehended them. Nor was Mrs. Mantel yet in the toils.
This was a longer way to Lyse by a number of miles than the main road; nevertheless, it was probable that the girls gained time by following the more roundabout route.
It was not yet noon when Henriette stopped at a side entrance to the hospital where Ruth had served her first few weeks for the Red Cross in France. The girl of the Red Mill sprang out, and, asking her friend to wait for her, ran into the building.
The guard remembered her, and nobody stopped her on the way to the reception office, where a record was kept of all the patients in the great building. The girl at the desk was a stranger to Ruth, but she answered the visitor’s questions as best she could.
She looked over the records of the wounded accepted from the battle front or from evacuation hospitals during the past forty-eight hours. There was no such name as Cameron on the list; and, as far as the clerk knew, no American at all among the number.