The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (10 page)

 She gazed off at the beautiful stone arch in the summer sunshine with a gleam of reflection from the water on the gray of its walls, and its feet smothered in living green from the trees and vines that clustered below. It did not seem possible that in a few moments it might be shattered and broken.

 And how were they going to find that powder and stop the danger anyway? Would they perhaps come to the house and make the men tell what they had done? And would it be found out that she had told? Well, what if it was, she had saved his life, and she would be glad. Even if she had to suffer afterwards she had saved his life and saved the bridge, and if anybody came perhaps there would be a chance for her to tell about those guns hidden in the hay and about the aeroplane and the barn telephone and the strange night visitors that came to this little quiet farm, and---oh--the message from the sea! What did that mean? There had been a lot of talk about submarines before she left Chicago. Could that have anything to do with submarines? How dreadful that in so fair a world there had to be such awful things to think about! Why couldn't everybody be brave and kind and helpful to everybody else, and not cross and hard and domineering and cruel?

Hilda's thoughts were interrupted by Mrs. Schwarz's heavy footsteps on the stairs. She hastened to put the dishes away and set the table for supper, expecting a sharp reproof for having been so slow. Instead the woman seemed hardly to notice her. She lumbered over to the door, gazed out down the railroad, then looked at the clock. Hilda wondered if Mrs. Schwarz also was in the secret of the plot, and why she had been crying? Perhaps she did not approve of such terrible things. Perhaps she was afraid of the consequences if they were discovered in their evil plans.

The clock ticked slowly on and it was quarter-past two and then half-past. Schwarz went into the barn a good many times and came out and looked -about. The men kept coming up to the house on one pretext or another until at last Schwarz thundered out a rebuke and told them to go to the far lot and plant potatoes. What did they think, sticking around like that? Did they want to arouse suspicions?

Hilda, as she went to and fro in the kitchen, her heart beating so fast she could scarcely breathe naturally, heard and saw it all: watched the great bridge, and the road down to the station.

It came to be half-past two and then quarter to three, and still the silence of the hills and valley had not been broken by the sound of a train. Schwarz walked gloomily out of the barn chewing a long straw and looking worried. Heinrich came up to the house for a drink and they stood together a moment outside of the kitchen door.

“That freight ever been this late?” asked Heinrich in a low tone.

“Ach, yes! Plenty times!” responded Schwarz, but Hilda thought his tone did not sound reassured.

Then suddenly the air was rent with sound, and out from the cut below the station shrilled clear and loud the signal the girl had learned to watch for:

      -------------------!---------------------!-----------------------!---------------------!-----------------------!

Hilda's heart stood still. She grew white around her lips and things blackened before her eyes. But she must not faint now. She must be strong and ready for whatever came. She must not show by so much as a flutter of an eyelash that she knew aught. Whatever came she must be free from suspicion so that she could get away and tell the Government about those guns and what was threatening.

Outside on the back porch Schwarz and Heinrich stood with suspended breath gazing at one another. Heinrich had the tin dipper half-way to his lips and there he stood, not moving. A gleam of something sinister came into their eyes. Hilda was standing where she could see their profiles without seeming to look. The men were braced as if for a shock.

The train did not stop at the station. It never stopped unless it had freight to take on or off. Today it ran joyously on toward the bridge. Hilda caught her breath and her hand fluttered to her heart for an instant. Had he then decided to disregard her warning? She listened to the train with fascinated ears, and when it almost reached the first arch she closed her eyes for just a second. Now, if anything was going to happen it would soon be over!

But the train did not seem to slacken its pace. It went steadily, happily on, over the doomed rails, on to the bridge. Each second seemed an interminable time to the girl as she watched it furtively through the kitchen window while she ostensibly prepared the vegetables for supper. The bridge looked so large and sure and permanent. Would it all be gone in another second?

But the train swept on with a happy, almost rollicking sound, arch after arch, over the whole bridge., till its last car dragged itself into the distance and the nimble of its going echoed away into silence. Still stood Schwarz and Heinrich as if petrified, looking at one another with accusing eyes, in which were question and suspicion.

The first break in the tenseness of the moment was by Schwarz in a long stream of profanity and accusation, answered by Heinrich in low, angry rumble, protesting that he had done all as ordered and done it aright! They walked away excitedly to the barn. There was no question any more that she had made a mistake. The two men undoubtedly expected that bridge and train to go to destruction.

Hilda drew a long sigh of relief and the tears came into her eyes. Tears of joy because the young man's life was safe. Relief that nothing had happened after all. But what would happen next?

Mrs. Schwarz hovered anxiously from door to window and back again. She seemed scarcely able lo believe her eyes.

Schwarz and Heinrich came out of the barn together. Schwarz was talking violently:

“If I find oud who done id I keel heem, zo!” and he brought down his great hoof, grinding the heel into the path with a crunching sound.

Hilda shuddered as she went about her work. She could almost see herself under that heel. Yet she was not sorry she had done what she had.

The air was tense and electric. At times it seemed to Hilda as if she could not breathe. Then she would remember that she had saved the young man's life and a thrill of gladness would lift her out of her horror for a moment. But how had the miracle been performed? Had they found a way in that short time to remove the danger without giving any outward sign? Or had some natural cause intervened to make the peril ineffective? There came no answer to her questions and the hot summer afternoon dragged on. The men were at work in the garden, each one bending to his task as if utterly unconscious that a railroad lay not far away. Yet now and then one or another would lift his head and give a swift, anxious glance at the landscape and then go on with his task. Schwarz went back and forth from garden to house, from house to barn, from barn to the little red brick house, which Hilda, when she thought of it, always called the powder-house. By and by Schwarz had two men bring wheelbarrow loads of bricks and carry them into this little house. They stayed in there a long time as if they were piling them up in a particular way. When they came out they gathered a lot of tools and took them in the little house. Then they locked the door and stood some bean poles up in front of it, as if the door were not often open.

Presently Hilda heard a sound under the window and, glancing out, saw that Heinrich was wheeling loads of earth to the spot directly under her bedroom window and spreading it smoothly over the little iron lid with the ring in its top. He covered it over about six inches deep and then went away and came back with a load of cabbage plants which he set out carefully at equal distances all over the new ground, watering them and taking as much pains as he did with those down in the other garden. One of the other men brought the plow and harrow and some other farm implements and placed them in front of the barn door and later a big reaper was also drawn up in the group, so that it looked as though that door was seldom used.

About four o'clock in the afternoon a hand car with several workmen came up the track and approached the bridge at a good speed as many another hand car had done in the days since Hilda had come to the truck farm. The car slowed down almost in front of the farm, and the workmen slid off and drove in a few spikes, their great hammers ringing cheerily with a wholesome sound. They stopped three times before they came to the bridge and drove more spikes, and then went on smoothly over the bridge and disappeared. Ten minutes later the afternoon express came down through the opening where the hand car had disappeared, moving at its usual brisk pace, and rumbled pleasantly over the bridge, down the track, past the station and out of sight. Nothing happened! The men relaxed from their energetic farming as soon as its last echo died away and looked at one another questioningly again. There was no question but that they were puzzled. An hour later the up train passed, and still all was well with the bridge.

By the time Hilda had put the supper on the table she was ready to drop with exhaustion and excitement, but she managed to maintain her same dull look when the men came in, even allowing herself to blunder in obeying Mrs. Schwarz's orders, and thereby bringing down upon herself a stream of invectives. The men ate their supper in silence, and with the air of those approaching a supreme moment. They sat down afterward for the evening smoke, but Hilda saw from their glances that they were only waiting for the darkness, to be gone on some important errand.

She hurried through her work and hastened upstairs, gathering her writing materials and sitting on the floor by her window to use the last rays of twilight. She had no time to select her words nicely; the light was fading fast and she had no candle. Indeed, she had learned that it was not desired by the Schwarzes that anybody should have a light in the house at night. They had only one downstairs, and that was early put out. So she wrote, more by the sense of feeling than sight:

“Mr. Stevens:

“I can't write much because it is getting dark, and I have no candle. They won't let me have time to write by day. Besides, they might find out. This place is full of spies. They have a lot of guns under the hay in the barn, and a telephone, and a queer box with a lot of wires that make a noise and a light. I heard them say there is powder and dynamite here, I think maybe in the little brick tool house. They keep something hid in a hole in the ground with an iron lid over it and a big ring in the lid, just under my window. There are cabbages planted on top of it to-day, but the earth was just put there. A man comes sometimes in an aeroplane at night and they talk under my window. They say there are going to be uprisings of Germans in this country pretty soon, and they have a list of places that are going to be blown up. The man is educated and speak both English and German well. This is a terrible place. I have to work very hard, but I don't mind that. I am afraid here. The men are not nice. Will you kindly write my uncle, whose address I give you, to send me money to come back to Chicago? I cannot stay here any longer. They won't let me telegraph, and they read all my letters. Please send my mother word I am well and will write her soon. I am giving her address, too. I am glad nothing happened. I hope you can read this. It is dark, so I must stop.”

She scrawled her initials and folded the paper up in a very small square. Then she fumbled around until she found a threaded needle she bad used in the morning. She tore a bit out of a worn handkerchief and sewed her letter into a compact little bundle not much more than an inch square, fastened it to a string and put it around her neck, dropping it inside her dress. At least the letter was ready if she ever had a chance to deliver it to the messenger. She had her doubts if even that determined young man could run the gauntlet of all those men and get a chance to see her. But time would tell.

She made a careful toilet and lay down to sleep, fully dressed, determined to be ready for whatever might come. But sleep did not come to her excited brain. Throbbing questions raced through her mind, and she lay trying to plan for a morrow whose nature she could not foretell. Wild plans for getting away contended with wilder ones to remain and find out all that these spies were plotting against her country.

The night was very still outside, and the smell of the fresh earth under her window came up with homely quiet perfume to still her tired senses. The house was very still. Mrs. Schwarz had gone to bed. The men slipped in quietly one by one. After whispering in the dining-room a few minutes they went up to their rooms. Whatever their errand had been they had not remained away long. A heavy gloom seemed to have settled over the house.

Hilda must have fallen asleep at last, for she awoke with a start toward morning to bear voices under her window.

For a moment she could not think where she was, so heavy had been her sleep, but then all the day before came back in a flash and she was on the alert at once.

The voices were so low that she could make nothing out. She was not conscious of having heard any aeroplane. She slipped from her bed and stole cautiously across her floor, making slow progress lest the boards should creak. Her eyes were still full of sleep, and she had to rub them to be able to see. There were two dark figures standing below, and the bulging lines of one plainly belonged to Schwarz. He was stooping over, digging at the cabbage plants below her window. He moved one and laid it carefully against the house, pushing away the dirt and disclosing the lid. Silently he lifted it, turned on a pocket flash and the two men descended the ladder. Hilda peered cautiously out the window and watched them. The other man was the man from the air, she was sure, only how had he come? She was sure she would have wakened with the sound of his aeroplane. She heard their cautious footsteps grate along a cement floor and a hollow echo followed them and arose to her ears. After a short time she heard them returning. The visitor was speaking:

“Use the utmost caution! We must not fail again! This has put us back two weeks. It was to have been the signal for the other explosions and burnings. Remember, you occupy a very responsible position. By the way -----”