For, after giving the boxes to Ruth, the German who played the
beggar would not search further; that delivery of the passport and
the orders to her was proof that he believed she was the girl he
sought. She had only to follow the orders given and she would be
accepted by other German agents as one of themselves! She would
pretend to them that she was going as a German spy into France in
order that she could go, an American spy, into Germany! For that was
what her orders read.
“You will report in person via Switzerland!” they said.
What a tremendous thing had been given her to do! What risks to run;
what plans to make; what stratagems to scheme and to outwit! Upon
her--her who an hour ago had been among the most futile and
inconsiderable in all the world of war--now might hang the fate of
the great moment if she did not fail, if she dared to do without
regard to herself to the uttermost! She must do it alone, if she was
to do it at all! She could not tell anyone! For the Germans who had
entrusted this to her might be watching her. If she went to the
American Secret Service, the Germans almost surely would know; and
that would end any chance of their continuing to believe her their
agent. No; if she was to do it, she must do it of herself; and she
was going to do it!
This money, which she recounted, freed her at once from all bonds
here. She speculated, of course, about whose it had been. She was
almost sure it had not been Cynthia Gail’s; for a young girl upon an
honest errand would not have carried so great an amount in cash. No;
Ruth had heard of the lavishness with which the Germans spent money
in America and of the extravagant enterprises they hazarded in the
hope of serving their cause in some way; and she was certain that
this had been German money and that its association with the
passport had not begun until the passport fell into hostile hands.
The money, consequently, was Ruth’s spoil from the enemy; she would
send home two thousand dollars to free her from her obligation to
her family for more than two years while she would keep the
remainder for her personal expenses.
The passport too was recovered from the enemy; yet it had belonged
to that girl, very like Ruth, who lay dead and unrecognized since
this had been taken from her. There came to Ruth, accordingly, one
of those weak, peacetime shocks of horror at the idea of leaving
that girl to be put away in a nameless grave. As if one more
nameless grave, amid the myriads of the war, made a difference!
Ruth gazed into the eyes of the girl of the picture; and that girl’s
words, which had seemed only a commonplace of the letter, spoke
articulate with living hope. “Even I may be given my great moment to
grasp!”
What could she care for a name on her grave?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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