“Not——” Bob checked himself on the verge of an indignant retort. “We won’t forget your children, anyway. Go back into the house now. What time will Franz get home? Tell me the truth. It will be best for him.”
“Not before night, he said. Oh, mein Herr, what will happen to us?” Trudchen shook her head as she tried to wipe the tears from her eyes. “It is hard to live poor and without hope. Herr von Eckhardt promised us wealth.”
“Have you known him long?” asked Bob.
“Yes, many years, for Franz was his game-keeper before the war. Our little farm was on his estate in the Reichsland. And during the war Franz was his soldier-servant. Oh, are you going away now? What are you going to do?”
“Nothing, just now,” said Bob, his forbearance at an end and longing only for solitude in which to think over what he had discovered. “Good-bye, Frau, and don’t despair.” He fairly ran away from the shed and across the clearing.
It was not an hour after midnight when he reentered the hospital, but he slept so little between then and daybreak that his tired face struck Lucy with dismay when she saw him at breakfast time. He put her off with evasions, unwilling to confide in her just then, lest in her anxiety she should oppose his plan. He had risen with the dawn, found Miller, the Hospital Corps man who had accompanied him and Alan from Archangel, and sent him into the forest on guard.
“I’ll have you excused here,” he told him. “Go to the clearing every hour all day. If you see any men gathered there come back and tell my sister. Say I told you to, and that she must notify Headquarters in Coblenz.”
He never guessed Lucy’s own schemes nor her absence from the hospital, when, shortly after her departure, he obtained leave of absence to visit his father and drove to Coblenz in General Gordon’s car. He had the chauffeur drop him at Larry’s lodgings and dismissed the car. But the lodgings were empty, for Larry had that moment left in response to Lucy’s call. Bob decided there was no time to lose looking for his friend, or for General Gordon either. He saw the pale, wintry sun already sinking, and knew that twilight was not far off. He must discover Elizabeth’s rendezvous now if at all.
Naturally he had no inkling of Elizabeth’s agreement to cross the river to meet her husband. He knew no more than what the German woman had told him of her next meeting with Franz, the day he had surprised her on the Embankment. He followed, for want of a better plan, the same road by which he and Larry had gone that day. Walking fast, he came out before long by the river and began sauntering along one of the terraces, glancing about him for any sign of a familiar figure.
The silver ripples of the broad river shone in the late sunlight, and occasional boats glided along its current. There were promenaders on the Embankment, but, though Bob wandered along for a quarter of a mile, he saw nothing of either Franz or Elizabeth. Yet he hated to give up the search. After having, the night before, wrested Franz’ secret from him, he could not get over the feeling that to-day was to see the whole mystery revealed.