CHAPTER IV
AT the end of ten days the excitement and horror occasioned by the blowing up of the Reynolds plant had succumbed to the great American curse: indifference. Amateur secret service men brazenly proclaiming themselves, went about more actively than ever, showing their badges and looking up clues at the same time, doing more harm than good, for while professional intelligence men were compelled to accept them as liabilities, the grateful aliens quite properly regarded them as assets.
The burning of two grain warehouses in Chicago, the wrecking of a train loaded with motor trucks, three dock fires in Brooklyn, and the partially suppressed account of an explosion on board a man-of-war in home waters, provided the public with its daily supply of pessimism. Scores of alien suspects were seized, examined and interned. Others were caught with “the goods,” so to speak, and were flung into prison to await, in most cases, the minimum penalty for maximum intentions. But at no time was the finger of accusing Justice levelled at any one of the men or women who made the wheels go round.
Late in the afternoon of a cold, blustering day a young man presented himself at the Carstairs home. He was a smart-looking, upstanding chap in the uniform of a captain of Infantry. The new butler announced that Miss Hansbury was at home and was expecting Captain Steele.
You would go far before finding a manlier, handsomer fellow than this young American soldier. Lithe, and tall, and graceful, he was every inch a man and a thoroughbred. Only a few months before, he had given up a splendid position down town, with a salary that few young men commanded and prospects that even fewer entertained, and eagerly offered himself, heart and soul, to the army that was to lift his country out of the pit of commercialism and give it a place among the proud.
He had won his sword and his shoulder straps with the ease of one who earnestly strives, and at the same time he had conquered in an enterprise sweetly remote from the horrors of war. Louise Hansbury, beautiful and gifted, was wearing the emblem of surrender on the third finger of her left hand.
He was to dine with the Carstairs that evening; as a privileged person, he came long ahead of the other guests of the evening. There was to be a distinguished company. A Cabinet officer, a prominent Southern Senator, an Admiral of the Navy, a Foreign Ambassador, to say nothing of more than one potentate in the realm of finance. And women whose names were not more widely-known than their deeds in these days of great endeavour,—women who had put aside frivolity and selfishness and social gluttony for the cold, hard business of making the country safe.
Mrs. Carstairs, herself, was the chairman of one of the most important of the Relief Organizations controlled and operated exclusively by women; far from being a mere figure-head, she was an active, zealous worker, an inspiration to her associates.
One of the guests of the evening was to be an Italian Countess whose labours in the war hospitals of her native land had made her one of the most conspicuous women in all Europe.