The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (24 page)

Softly she stole across the room and pulled the mattress from the bed, punching it carefully. Yes, it was straw. Straw would burn! But she ought to have more than that. She dragged it to the broken window and stood it up against the shade so that it leaned against the window frame. Then she gathered an armful of pamphlets from the box and began methodically twisting them as she had been taught to do in kindling a fire. All the time her heart was beating wildly, and she kept her glance out of the window as much as possible without actually getting in front of it. She heard footsteps coming rapidly down the street, and looking out again she saw a soldier coming hurriedly up the steps leading to the house in which she was confined. Her heart leaped for joy for the instant and she forgot to guard against being seen from the window. Surely a soldier wearing the United States uniform would help her! She paused to think what she should do, and the front door slammed loudly and she heard the old familiar voice of Sylvester, calling loudly from the hallway below for his mother!

Her heart froze within her. Her body stiffened with fright. She stood still before the unbroken window with clasped hands and lifted eyes, praying aloud in her despair:

“Oh, God! Help me quick!”

Round the corner and down the street dashed an automobile and stopped suddenly in front of 2217. Four men got out and went up the steps. One stayed in the car. A face vanished from the dark of the room in the region of the front window and a message flashed over a wire—a wire that had been set in the dark of the night and never noticed among all the other wires the next day.

“That little devil in the third story has broken loose. She's standing at the window now. Better gag her quick and bind her well—curse her! They're after us! They're at the door now! I'm going to beat it, and you'd better get out while the getting is good, but mind you, bring the girl with you! I'll warrant you she's at the bottom of this, and we'll take our time and pay her well when we get to sea! Tell Mrs. Schwarz I'll hold her responsible for that girl. If she don't bring her I'll drown her in the middle of the ocean! So long! I’ll meet you down by the river at the appointed time.”

The telephone was in the cellar. The man hung up the receiver, pulled a soap box over it, opened a board door beside him and stepping through it drew it shut after him and fastened it. The four men above, grown tired of knocking, applied a pass key and stepped within the house. Hilda, her hands still folded, her lips still murmuring a prayer, her eyes wide, stood watching in the window. There were noises below stairs. Hurried, heavy steps corning up, but she was not listening to them. She was watching, holding the three matches now in her trembling hand, waiting to make sure who these men were. Slowly, stealthily the door of 2219 opened a crack and a face looked out. The man in the car was watching his comrades, one of whom was just within the doorway of 2217, but Hilda at the window saw the white of that haunting face and held her breath. The door swung open swiftly, a man came out, shut it carelessly and swung off the steps, walking briskly away with only a casual glance at the man in the car. It was he! He had somehow got into the house next door and was escaping! Nobody would notice him! He would get away again!

Regardless of what might happen to herself, regardless of her poor hands, she flung herself wildly against that window and beat frenziedly at the glass with her bare hands:

“Stop him! Stop him!” she shouted as if inspired. “That's the man you are after! He's a German spy! Get him quick!”

The man in the car gave a quick, comprehending glance upward even as he set himself in immediate action. Three sharp blasts on a whistle he gave and his car shot off down the street after the rapidly retreating Captain, who slithered around a corner and was out of sight. The four men dashed instantly from the house and started in pursuit. Hilda could not be sure whether or not they heard what she said, but they looked up as they ran and seemed to listen. A second more and they were all gone, and she was aware of stamping feet coming up the stairs close by her door. Her time had come!

Dropping upon her knees beside the holocaust she had prepared she took the three matches in her trembling fingers and selecting the most propitious looking one, looked around for something to strike it upon. Suppose it did not light? Suppose she broke it before it lighted? Suppose all three were water-soaked with lying by that cake of soap! Sylvester was already at her door rattling with the key and shouting to his mother that he could not open it. “Oh, God!” she cried and drew the first match swiftly across the carpet.

DANIEL STEVENS had been gassed and taken prisoner after some daring feat of engineering in one of the big fights of the winter. By some gracious turn of events he had escaped after several months and returned to his company, but his superiors, after examining him carefully, and hearing his account of all he had suffered, sent him home on a furlough to recover his strength and grow fit.

The cable which he supposed he had sent his mother as soon as he was back in the lines, by the hand of one of his comrades, never reached her on account of some little mistake in the address. The comrade had written it down wrong. Stevens was sent to the hospital that night, and from there to a ship just starting, and so he had decided to surprise his people by dropping down upon them unexpectedly. He rested comfortably in the thought that of course they had received the cable that he was back in the lines again all safe. So long as they were not worrying he would just surprise them, and then his mother wouldn't have the anxiety of dreaming about possible submarines.

During the voyage he busied himself with a certain little leather book in which he bad set down a record every day since he had been captured. They were the records of his inmost soul, and he meant to read them some day to someone—but not yet. It was a good way to feel as though he were with those he loved, this writing down intimate thoughts that he might some time tell them. It kept him from dwelling upon some of the horrors through which he had passed, some of the things he wanted to forget. There were times when these things seemed to surge and roll over his soul like a consuming fire. At such times he had come to feel that there was only one thing that would save him from insanity and that was the thought of God over all guiding and controlling, and leading man up to some greater height where he might see his sin and know its remedy. For the first time in his life he saw the soul sickness of the world, and its great need of a God. He heard men on every side saying that there was no God, because He allowed such horrible things to happen; but he did not feel that way. And when he went among the boys who were going over the top he found among many of them a strong faith in the God who was to lead them over, and stay with them should it happen that they never came back. All the time he had been in the German prison camp he had had a feeling that God was with him, managing the whole thing, and he need not be worried. He realized that it was a strange state of mind for him to be in, for he had never taken much interest in religion, beyond attending his mother to church when she asked it. Now he had a real vital belief in God, not a mere theory that he had been taught and taken for granted without putting into practice, but something to live by and something to die by. There had been a night when he lay under the stars, weak and sick and unable even to crawl, with German guards a few feet away and live wires and machine guns on every side, and realized that he was in the hands of the enemy, with no one to help him. And then, whether awake or asleep, he knew not, he had a vision of One who came to him and spoke in the words he had learned long ago when he was a child: “Fear thou not for I am with thee, be not dismayed for I am thy God. For I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee by the right hand of my righteousness.”

It came to him with a wonderful surprise, for what had he ever done to deserve this of God? If this had come from some ambassador of the United States Government now, he might have understood it, for he had been faithful and zealous for his country, and had not spared himself. But for God he had never cast a thought that was in any way serious or personal. His whole life thus far would have been lived no differently if there had been no God, so far as he could see looking back on it now. How strange that he had not realized before what a mistake he had made, what a lot he was missing, how ill-prepared he was to go out to meet death, knowing nothing of God nor how to die, save with physical bravery! He knew that he must go home and somehow convey to his friends this message, this new gospel that he had learned out there on the battlefields. As he thought about it he felt shy of speaking of it to his mother and father. They had always shared each other's thoughts, yet they had never told him of this. They had spoken most intimately of the deeper things of life, yet there had never been a God in any of their talk. Only on the Sabbath, when they went to church, had they recognized God, and that in a far-off, sort of patronizing way. Not that they meant to patronize, either; but perhaps they had never known Him and felt Him the way he had done in that German prison camp alone with God and his enemies. '

There was just one person, when he thought about it, that it seemed as if he could talk with on this subject, and that was Hilda Lessing. She had seemed to take life so deeply and earnestly. She was herself seeking after the meaning of things. Her letters showed that; her beautiful, growing letters, sweet revelations of herself. He had three of them that had accumulated at his post while he was a prisoner, and he carried them with him continually and read them often till he almost had them by heart. She had said she was praying that God would be with him and protect him, and somehow it seemed as if his vision must have been a sort of answer to her prayer. It seemed to him that he could tell her and she would understand. But he was afraid that his sweet, sane mother and his practical father might give him a troubled look and wonder if the gas had affected his mind just a little. He couldn't bear that now. It was too wonderful and sacred. He shrank from being misunderstood. Sometimes in his long meditations he half wished the folks at home could have a day or two at the front, just that their eyes might be opened and they might understand when the boys came home. It was hard to think that the ones you loved wouldn't understand —that they would expect you to go on and live the same as if the war had never been, and forget God. That was the sin that had brought the war on the world—forgetting God. The Germans had had to pay the heaviest price in the end because the Germans had started forgetting God. The great German universities had set the ball for forgetting rolling round the world, until everywhere the people had come to forget God. Now they must learn to come back and understand Him and be teachable. He would talk it all over with Hilda, and he would deeply disappointed if Hilda didn't understand his feelings in the matter.

He was impatient over the landing in New York and the two-hour train ride home. It seemed longer than all the rest of the whole long trail. And when the train finally pulled into West Philadelphia and he hurried out, the thought thrilled through and through him, “Home again! Home again!”

He took a taxi and lost no time in getting to his father's house. As he had hoped his father and mother were both there, his father having just come from the office, a weary, anxious look upon his face. There had been no word yet from all his inquiries at Washington about the boy in France. Strange that things should get so mixed up that their particular boy should seem to be utterly lost. If he was alive he surely would not leave them in this agony! The father was pacing up and down the library, and the mother looking out of the window, trying to keep a cheerful face above a heavy heart, when the door opened and the boy walked in upon them, with his old joyous ring in his voice: “Mother! Dad!” and was folded in their arms.

Half no hour later they were still sitting on the big leather couch, the son in the middle an arm around each. He hadn't even taken off his over-coat yet, and his trench cap was lying on the floor where he had dropped it when he stooped to take mother in his arms. There was so much to tell, and so much to ask, and they hadn't really begun yet. When the servant tapped at the door with a letter that had just been sent over from the office marked. “Haste!” and “Important!” the father frowned and was for throwing the letter aside. What could be of importance now that his son who had been dead was come home and was alive again.

It was the boy that caught sight of the writing on the envelope of many stamps, the same writing that had cheered his lonely sight in far away France many times, the writing whose every curve and line had become dear to him through long familiarity.

“Why, dad! What's that? It’s Hilda Lessing's writing. Open up and let's see what's the matter. Hilda never says important unless it is.

“Never?” said his mother playfully. “You speak as if you had known her always. Never is a long time, son.”

“Well, I have,” said the boy half impatiently as his father tore open the envelope with an indulgent smile upon his face. But his father's expression grew serious as he read the letter.

“Why! Why!” he exclaimed, and, throwing down the letter he sprang to the telephone and called up the detective's office.

Dan caught up the letter as it fell and read, springing to his feet with a cry:

“Where's the car, dad? At the garage? I’ll have it at the door in two seconds! You'll come?”

The man nodded.

“But, son!” said his mother. “You're not going away now, when you've just come—and when you're—sick, you know—” 

“I'm no baby, mother! I've got to go! Hilda' been kidnapped! She needs me. I've got the letter, dad!” and the erstwhile “invalided-home” dashed out of the room and away for the car.

SLOWLY, feebly the match burst into a flame, fizzled weakly and went out! Hilda caught her breath. Mrs. Schwarz was coming up the stairs now with the American behind her, swearing loudly. There was no time to be wasted. She took the second match and struck it sharply. The head broke off without a spark, and there was now only the meanest little old half match available. She nerved herself to do her best with it. She took the match carefully, held it close, struck with it firmly, and held her breath till it flickered up into a flame and blazed bright up the length of the stick. The moment was tense till it caught the first piece of paper, and then she drew her breath, and held another paper above the first and so on until the whole little pile was blazing and the edge of the tick began to scorch and curl and then blazed into a roar. It was started at last. In a moment more it would reach the window-frame and then it would be seen. Somebody surely would pass, would see it and call the fire company! Would they get there before the door was broken in? She could hear the Schwarzes consulting outside in angry whispers. Schwarz himself was there. Sylvester, too, although they were hurrying him away. They had smelled the smoke and he, an American soldier in uniform, must not be found there if anything happened. He must get back at once to his barracks and know nothing about the affair. His father sent the other man down for a crowbar. They had decided to break in the door.