“The work of grafters, Captain Lasselles, with a woman as a tool. But I yet don’t see just how it was that she worked it. My Secretary of State, General Carruthers, and I have been at work for weeks and we could not catch the exact fraud,” made answer my Gouverneur Faulkner with a cold sternness.
“I was warned in Paris that beautiful American women were very much interested in the placing of war contracts, Monsieur le Gouverneur. I fled upon a tug boat from the ship that I escape some for whom I had letters of introduction which I could not ignore.”
“It was your Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, whom that Madam Whitworth sought upon the ship, Roberta,” I said to myself.
“I think women are alike the world over, Captain, and the discussion of them and their mental and moral processes is—fruitless,” answered my Gouverneur Faulkner as he again took up his pencil.
“When it happened to me to find the fragment of the letter to the lady of America from my false lieutenant, I had a deep distress that tenderness for the sufferings of poor France should fail to be in even one American woman’s heart. And now I am in deep concern. Where am I to obtain the good strong mules by which to transport through fields heavy with mud the food to my poor boys in their trenches?”
“Right here, Captain, I feel reasonably sure. I think I see a way to give you what you want at a better figure; and from it no man shall reap more than a just wage for honest work. As the Governor of the State of Harpeth, I can give you at least that assurance.” And as he spoke my Gouverneur Faulkner looked the Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, in the eyes with a fine honesty that carried with it the utmost of conviction.
“I give thanks to le bon Dieu,” I said with words that were very soft in my throat, but at which I observed the mouth of that Gouverneur Faulkner to again become as one straight line of coldness.
“Indeed, thanks to le bon Dieu, Mademoiselle,” made courteous answer to me my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles. “But how will you accomplish that purpose. Monsieur le Gouverneur?”
“As soon as I’ve done with these figures I’ll have in Jim, your jailer, and then you’ll hear some things about the American mountain mule that you never heard before, I believe.” As he spoke, my Gouverneur Faulkner proceeded with making figures with his pencil, a fine glow of eagerness added to that of rage in his eyes very deep under their brows. “Now, I’ll go and call in Jim,” he said after a few minutes of waiting, and left the room in which I was then alone with my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, who came to me with outstretched hands.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Roberta,” he exclaimed, “I am in a debt of gratitude to you for bringing this great gentleman, your friend, to my rescue and also to the solving of this very strange situation concerning these contracts. Indeed have you accomplished the mission for which you enlisted: your ‘Friends for France.’ But before procedure I must ask you, little lady, why it was that you made a vanishment from that hotel of Ritz-Carlton in New York. I sought you. I sought out that Monsieur Peter Scudder to inquire for you. Behold, he also is in sorrow over the loss of you and had for me a strange news of a cup of tea thrown in the face of that Mr. Raines of Saint Louis by a member of your family who had departed immediately into the south of America. I said to myself, ‘The beautiful child does not know that your heart is in anxiety for her,’ and immediately I intended to seek you in the city, to which the very fine lady, who had reported that ‘tea fight’ as she so spoke of it to her paper, directed me after my finding of her. It is a great ease to my unhappy heart to find you in the care of a family and friends. I make compliments on your costume of the ride. I also observed the custom of attire masculine to be on those plains of the great West where I sought the wheat.”