Ruth of the U. S. A.

by Edwin Balmer

Ruth placed it under her pillow with the other paper and the passport and the money; she unlocked her door and went out, locking it behind her; descending to the first floor, she obtained the yesterday’s paper and brought it back to her room. She found readily the account of a wreck on Sunday evening when a train had crashed through a street car. It had proved very difficult to identify certain of the victims; and one had not been identified at all; she had been described only as a young girl, well dressed, fur toque, blue coat with dark fur collar.

The magic of this money and the passport had faded quite away; the chain of vital, mortal occurrences which had brought them to Ruth Alden was becoming evident.

There had been, first of all, an American girl named Cynthia Gail of Decatur, Illinois, young like Ruth but without responsibilities, loyal and ardent to play her part in the war. She had applied for overseas work; the government therefore had investigated her, approved her and issued her a passport and permitted her to make all arrangements for the journey to France and for work there. She had left her home in Decatur and had come alone, probably, to Chicago, arriving not later than Saturday. She apparently had been alone in the city on Sunday evening after Lieutenant George Byrne had returned to Camp Grant; also it was fairly certain that she had no intimate friends in Chicago as she had been stopping at a hotel. On Sunday evening she had been on the car which was struck by the train.

This much was positive; the next circumstances had more of conjecture; but Ruth could reason them out.

Someone among those who first went to the wreck found Cynthia Gail dead and found her passport upon her. This person might have been a German agent who was observing her; much more probably he was simply a German sympathizer who was sufficiently intelligent to appreciate at once the value of his find. At any rate, someone removed the passport and letter and other possessions which would identify Cynthia Gail; and that someone either acted promptly for himself and for Germany or brought his discoveries to others who acted very energetically. For they must immediately have got in touch with people in Decatur who supplied them with the information on the page of instructions; and they also must have made investigation of Cynthia Gail’s doings in Chicago.

The Germans thereupon found that they possessed not merely a passport but a most valuable post and an identity to use for their own purposes. If they could at once substitute one of their own people for Cynthia Gail—before inquiry for Cynthia Gail would be made or knowledge of her loss arise—this substitute would be able to proceed to France without serious suspicion; she would be able to move about with considerable freedom, probably, in the districts of France where Americans were holding the lines and could gather and forward information of all sorts of the greatest value to the Germans. They simply must find a German girl near enough like Cynthia Gail and clever and courageous enough to forge her signature, assume her place in her family, and in general play her rôle.

It was plain that the Germans who obtained the passport knew of some German girl upon whom they could depend; but they could not—or did not dare to attempt to—communicate directly with her. Ruth knew vaguely that hundreds of Germans, suspected of hostile activities, silently had disappeared. She knew that the American secret service constantly was causing the arrest of others and keeping many more under observation. It was certain, therefore, that communication between enemy agents in Chicago must have been becoming difficult and dangerous; moreover, Ruth had read that it was a principle of the German spy organization to keep its agents ignorant of the activities of others in the same organization; so it seemed quite probable that the people who had possession of Cynthia Gail’s passport knew that there was a German girl in the city who might play Cynthia’s part but that they could not locate her. Yet they were obliged to find her, and to do it quickly, so that she could take up the rôle of Cynthia Gail before inquiries would be made.

What better way of finding a girl in Chicago than posting yourself as a beggar on State Street between the great stores? It was indeed almost certain that if the girl they sought was anywhere in the city, sooner or later she would pass that spot. Obviously the two Germans who had mixed with the crowd on State Street also had been searching for their German confederate; they had mistaken Ruth for her; and one of them had somehow signaled the beggar to accost her.

This had come to Ruth, therefore, not because she was chosen by fate; it simply had happened to her, instead of to another of the hundreds of girls who had passed down State Street that morning, because she chanced to possess a certain sort of hair and eyes, shape of nose and chin, and way of carrying her head not unique at all but, in fact, very like two other girls—one who had been loyal and eager as she, but who now lay dead and another girl who had been sought by enemy agents for their work, but who had not been found and who, probably, would not now be found by them.

For, after giving the boxes to Ruth, the German who played the beggar would not search further; that delivery of the passport and the orders to her was proof that he believed she was the girl he sought. She had only to follow the orders given and she would be accepted by other German agents as one of themselves! She would pretend to them that she was going as a German spy into France in order that she could go, an American spy, into Germany! For that was what her orders read.