When Grace awakened it was late in the night. Her trench watch told her it was half after twelve o’clock. Grace listened a few moments to make certain that she was alone, then got out of bed. Standing on her feet hurt her all over. She had been more shaken than she thought. The girl groped her way about the room, feeling before each step, and finally finding that for which she was in search, her clothing. What she hoped to find was her flash lamp, but it was not there. The lamp had been taken away. Plainly they did not propose to leave her the means of signalling.
Trying the door, it was found to be locked, as she had expected it would be, but the windows were neither barred nor locked. Grace cautiously threw one open and looked eagerly out. The moon, somewhere back of her to the eastward, was in the sky and lighted up the valley before her, though none of the light penetrated the room. Before her lay a village, two villages in fact, but it was the one on the opposite side of the river that most interested her, and Grace studied its outlines in the moonlight for some time.
“I believe that is Coblenz,” she muttered. “This building is a castle and I am up in the air for certain. There is no necessity to bar these windows, for they know I can’t get down from here unless I fall down. I wonder why they wish to keep me a prisoner?”
Grace pondered over this for some time, going over all that had been said to her by the German woman and what she had heard the man and woman say to each other in their own language.
“It seems to resolve itself to this,” she decided. “Some one of the name of Rosa von Blum has warned them that an important woman was in a drifting balloon headed their way. Now this Rosa person must be somewhere in the American lines. It is my idea that this Rosa is a man. That would be just like a Hun scheme. Perhaps the word came by the pigeon route. The more I think of the pigeon incident the more convinced am I that a Chinaman is mixed up with it. Won Lue is the key to that mystery, and with that key I shall yet unravel the pigeon mystery. So much for that. To-morrow morning they will get another pigeon message unless some one shoots down all three of the birds, and that message will tell them who I am. The war being ended will they dare take their revenge on me now for exposing Madame de Beaupre and André? They will! Trust a Hun not to have sense enough to realize that he too will have to pay the price.”
Grace pondered for a long time.
“I am glad I woke up and have had time to think this matter over. I shall know how to conduct myself to-morrow when they speak my name. Of one thing I am glad. I am facing Coblenz, and sooner or later I may be able to attract the attention of some one who will be interested in what I have to say, though they will probably move me to some other less convenient room before the Americans arrive. Our troops should be at the Rhine to-morrow afternoon. To-night they will be but twelve miles from here, and even now an advance guard may be in the city. At least there are American intelligence officers there. I wonder where they have stowed the major away?” She sighed and concluded to go back to bed, knowing that she would be in need of all her strength for what might be before her on the morrow.
Grace got in gingerly, for bending her body hurt her. She floundered about for a moment, and rolling to the back of the bed came in contact with something hard that lay at the edge of the bed next to the wall. Her fingers closed over the object. She uttered an exclamation. The object was her flash light that undoubtedly had slipped from her pocket when they first placed her on the bed before undressing her.
“It works,” she whispered excitedly, and was out of the bed without thought of her aches and pains. “Only a chance, but it is worth while,” she muttered, giving a series of quick flashes with the lamp thrust out to the edge of the window casing.
This was the flash signal indicating that she was about to send a message.