“Don’t speak to me when you see me sitting on the bench,” warned Carter. “Just sit down there beside me and wait till I make sure no one is watching us. I’ll speak to you when it’s safe.” “I understand,” she answered. “Good-by.” As she hastened to don her hat and coat she was almost overwhelmed by a revulsion of feeling. Two days ago the world about her had seemed a carefree, pleasant, even if sometimes boresome place. Now she shudderingly saw it stripped of its mask and revealed for the first time in all its hideousness, a place of murders and spying and secret machinations. People about her were no longer more or less interesting puppets in a play-world. They were vivid actualities, scheming and planning to thwart and overcome each other. Almost she wished that her dream had been undisturbed and that she had not been waked up to the realities. Almost she was tempted to abandon her new-found occupation. Then, once more, a feeling of patriotic fervor swept over her. She thought of her brother fighting somewhere in the trenches. She pictured to herself the other brave soldiers in the great ships in the Hudson. She remembered the evil plotters with their death-dealing bombs, striving to bring about a ghastly end for them all before they might strengthen the lines of the Allies. She thought, too, of those humanity-defying U-boats, forever at their devilish work, guided to their prey by crafty, spying creatures right here in New York, more than likely by the very people next door. With her pretty lips set in a resolute line she left the house and walked rapidly north. Come what may she would go on with it. Her country needed her, and that was all-sufficient. CHAPTER VI THE MISSING MESSAGE After Jane left Carter at the drug-store, he did not cross immediately to the bookshop opposite. His detective work was not of that sort. He strolled leisurely around the corner long enough to give some directions to his two aides waiting there and then, moving across the street, paused in front of the window of books as if something there had attracted his attention. All the while he was keeping a sharp eye for any person who looked as if they might be connected in any way with old Hoff. Satisfied that his entrance was unobserved he strolled casually in and began looking over the volumes in the lending library. The lone clerk in the store—a young woman—at first volunteered some suggestions, but as they went unheeded she returned to her work of posting up the accounts.