Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge

by G. Harvey Ralphson

"I am looking through the shade of your window and can see that you are listening attentively; so you need not reply. Just continue to listen, and I shall know everything is all right.

"When you leave for America you will be supplied with a message in cipher, prepared by me, for a certain agent of the kaiser. That message will bear the appearance of having been written by a friend of yours to you, but it will contain information in invisible ink for your benefit as a loyal agent of the Allies. This information will be of great value to the Allies, supplying them with material for undermining the Teutonic spy system in England, France, and America, which recently declared war.

"This is all. I merely wished to advise you of what you will find written with invisible ink on the paper that will be placed in your possession when you set out on your return to America."

The tapping ceased. Irving remained like a statue in his chair for several minutes. Then he arose, went to the window and pulled the shade aside. The court was dark, save for a solitary dim light out at the entrance. He could just faintly discern the steel structure of the fire escape near the window.

"That's the way he got up," he half muttered. "He stood there on that landing while he tapped his message. I wonder who he is and how he spotted me. He must be a very clever fellow. I really believe he's what he represented himself to be; and yet, it may possibly be a trap to catch me. However, I don't see what I can do except await developments."

He went to bed and slept better than might have been expected under the circumstances. But he had become so used to critical situations by this time that he felt almost capable of sleeping peacefully on the "edge of the earth" with a torpedo for a pillow.

Next day the mystery of the window-telegraph spy bothered him a good deal, even more than it did immediately after the fellow had "dotted and dashed" his message on the pane of glass.

"I wonder who he was?" he repeated many times. "I wonder if he's somebody I'm in close touch with every day?"

The suggestion caused him to watch narrowly every person in the office with whom he did business for the German government. But the more he watched, the more unsatisfactory the situation became. He continued his furtive outlook several days, but finally admitted to himself that the prospect of his efforts solving the mystery was anything but bright.

Meanwhile the spy's preparations for a new excursion out into a broad field of international espionage were rapidly drawing to a close. The surgeon at the hospital who had performed the skin-grafting operation on his arm pronounced it sufficiently well healed, first, to warrant taking the limb out of the sling, and then, a week later, for the removal of the bandage. There were a few slightly rough places here and there. around the edges of the patch, and one small scar at the lower end of the middle strip of skin where it had been twisted to cause it to lie "right side out" through the middle of the larger patch and make the latter complete by meeting the outer edges that had been undercut and drawn to it.