The Outdoor Girls in Army Service; Or, Doing Their Bit for the Soldier BoysHope, Laura Lee
History
The Outdoor Girls in Army Service; Or, Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys
Hope, Laura Lee
Adventure stories; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile fiction
"But what did he do?" demanded Mollie impatiently. "You haven't
gotten to the point yet."
"Well," Allen continued, while Betty put a sympathetic arm about her
friend and snuggled close, "all the time we were wondering down in
our hearts why Will didn't enlist--although we never doubted he had
good reasons," he added hastily, "he was really working harder,
spending more time and energy for the government than we ever thought
of spending. There's one important thing we forgot--that Will was a
secret service man!"
"Oh!" cried Betty, her eyes gleaming in the firelight, "now, I know I
guessed right!"
"What did you guess?" asked Allen, remembering to marvel, even in
that moment of excitement, how very becoming firelight was to Betty!
"Out with it."
"Why," said Betty, leaning forward eagerly, "after Amy told us that
she had met Will and the soldiers half way to the spot where we found
the spy, I seemed to see the whole thing as plainly as if some one
had told it to me.
"I remembered Will's special interest in the spy the first time we
met Adolph Hensler on Pine Island--then how, soon after we saw him
here again, Will wrote Grace that he was coming on. That would seem
as though he were hot on his trail--"
"He was," said Allen, while the others hung on every word.
"Well, the rest is simple," said Betty. "I suppose that Will kept on
shadowing him till he got what he wanted. He was on his way to
capture the spy, while we were hanging on to the door, praying for
help. Oh, it all fits together like parts of a puzzle!"
"You're a wonder, Betty!" said Allen, while the others drew a deep
breath, trying to take it all in. "But there was one little bit, or
rather, I should say, big bit, of cleverness on Will's part that
neither you nor anybody else could guess at. You remember the code
letter we picked up that night on Pine Island?"
"Yes," they cried eagerly.
"Well, Will had the code deciphered and found out who wrote the
document. It proved, by the way, that Adolph Hensler is one of the
most dangerous and most wanted German spies in this country."
"And what else?" cried Mollie, who could never wait for the end of a
story.
"The clever part of it," Allen continued, leaning forward, very
handsome and eager in the firelight, "was Will's copying of the
handwriting on the envelope."
"Sure," chuckled Roy. "I told him I wouldn't be surprised to see him
start a life of crime any time now."
"Surely no experienced forger could have done it better," Allen
agreed whimsically, while the girls waited with unconcealed
impatience. "Anyway, he wrote a short note--a decoy--to Adolph in
this handwriting, requesting an interview at the very spot where you
girls came upon him."
"Oh!" cried Betty, in dismay. "Then it would have been better if we'd
left him alone. We took a chance of spoiling all Will's well-laid
plans."
"How could it have been better?" asked Allen. "Will started out to
capture him and found you girls had beat him to it, that's all."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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