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CHAPTER XXVI
FOLLOWED

Irving walked on as if nothing unusual had occurred to disturb his peace of mind, and yet nothing more disquieting perhaps had ever moved the quakings of fear within him. If the man who had followed him could have looked into the face of the young second lieutenant in khaki as the latter passed the cafe, undoubtedly he would have seen there an expression of countenance exceedingly interesting to him.

The day was now rapidly drawing to a close, and the damp April atmosphere, chilly enough when the sun was at its zenith, was becoming cold toward night. Irving had no overcoat. He had worn only a flying-coat and "cover all," aside from his ordinary fair-weather garments, on the night of his ascent in an aeroplane and descent with a parachute, but he was not particularly uncomfortable even under present conditions. Still, he felt that it would be much more pleasant within four walls of a first class hotel, even though, as he suspected, the management was burning coal under war emergency limitations. So he hurried on, and did not slacken his pace until he was back at the hostelry.

About a square from the hotel he turned and looked down the street to see if the middle-aged man in citizen's clothes was still following him. Yes, there he was, 200 feet back, sauntering with a long stride, which rendered it possible for him to keep pace with the spy without an appearance of haste. As the latter entered the lobby and walked toward the elevator, he said to himself:

"I'll have to bluff it through. I'm not going to pretend ignorance of the fact that I've been followed. But I mustn't appear to be afraid of being watched. I must present the matter in a different light."

He knocked on the door of Vollmer's room, but received no response. Then he went to his own room to wait until his guide returned.

"I'll have to wait for him before I can get any supper," he mused. "I'm in a peculiar situation, and don't know exactly where I'm at. I think I'll have to have a plain talk with him tonight, much as I hate to rest any of my fortunes on his questionable goodwill."

Lieut. Vollmer returned at about 6 o'clock and announced without any formal greeting that they would go out to supper. Irving picked up his hat from the bed where he had thrown it on entering the room and signified his readiness to go at once.

He was eager to begin conversation on the subject that interested him most, but decided that he must await a favorable opportunity. His companion had relapsed again into unsociable aloofness, and the walk of three squares to the cafe where they had their luncheon was made without the passing of a word between them.

The meal, too, was eaten almost as quietly. Irving made a few attempts to draw his companion into conversation, hoping to lead up gradually to the subject that was weighing rather heavily on his mind, but he failed utterly. At last just as they were about to leave the restaurant, the young German lieutenant altered the aspect of affairs very much by saying:

"I'm going to leave you to your own devices now, Hessenburg. For anything you want, get in touch with the baron; he'll give instructions for taking care of you. They'll probably give you an army uniform and send you to the front to fight for the fatherland. I'm on a leave of absence and am going home to stay there until my leave expires."

Irving was stunned by this announcement from his uncongenial guide, who was about to leave him unceremoniously in the lurch. He did not know how to reply and so made no attempt to do so aside from the utterance of a few conventionalities, such as, "I hope you'll enjoy your furlough," and "I thank you for the courtesies you have shown me."

Lieut. Vollmer did not return with Irving to the hotel, but gave him a limp handshake out on the sidewalk, tossed a careless "aufwiedersehn" at him and sauntered away. The deserted spy went back to his room and passed an uncomfortable night, tormented with so many doubts of conflicting nature that he soon found himself in a very nervous condition. After he had lain awake an hour or two trying to clear up the obscurities in his mind, he decided that the course of thinking that he had permitted to sway him would result disastrously even if there was no reason for him to feel apprehensive of the outlook.

"I must throw this out of my mind and get a good night's rest," he told himself. "If my nerves are all shot to pieces tomorrow, it'll be folly for me to attempt to get any satisfaction from the government officials. They'll see there's something wrong, dead sure. I'm proving myself a mighty poor spy, and ought to have stayed in the Canadian trenches. Of course, I must expect to run into the most dangerous situations and depend on my wits, bluff, and nerve-yes NERVE-to get me out. What if I am under suspicion? If they have no goods on me, I'm safe enough so long as I don't convict myself by a guilty manner. I must be mistaken in my suspicion that they have found something wrong in that cubist art message. They'd 'ave arrested me right away if they'd discovered the change. I'll probably find everything all right tomorrow when I talk with the baron. Why, he may even decorate me with an iron cross. Hope it won't be too heavy to carry around, that's all. Or maybe they need all the iron to make shells with and will give me a leather cross-no, they need that for shoes; or a rubber cross-no, they need that to make rubber heels so they can pussy-foot out in No-Man's-Land. There! I've got my nerves in better shape; think I can go to sleep now, but I do wonder why that middle-aged man in civilian clothes was following me. I wonder if he wore rubber heels."

That was the way Irving managed to induce sleep an hour or two before midnight. He adopted the method very systematically and determinedly, and it worked. But his slumber was not as undisturbed as he would have had it, for he dreamed the most violent and mysterious of dreams enlivened and peopled with aeroplanes and booming cannon and minnenwerfers and parachutes and rubber-heeled secret service men who followed him so softly, gently, stealthily that it seemed as if even the thunder of battle was being toned down to zephyrs of inconsequential ghostly conflict.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE SPY'S DECISION

Irving arose at daybreak next morning. In spite of his uneasy night, he was much refreshed and felt confident that he had good command of his nerves. This was an important reassurance, and the young spy decided that he would not let it get away from him.

"I'll tie it down with a string of self-confidence and a knot of determination," he told himself resolutely.

This way of putting the idea amused him a little and added to his strength of purpose.

"First of all, how about breakfast?" he asked himself as he combed his hair with a pocket comb which he carried with him and regarded the puzzled wrinkling of his brow in the wash-room mirror.

"Well," he added, as he returned the comb to its case-and the case to his pocket, "I guess I'll have to go without breakfast. Not a very comfortable idea, either, but there seems to be no way out of it. That fellow Vollmer seemed to take a malicious delight in forgetting every one of my comforts. I wish I had something to do between now and 9 or 10 o'clock. I don't like to stroll around any more than is necessary in this uniform."

But there seemed to be nothing for him to do except remain in his room and wait for his wristwatch to tick several thousand seconds. It seemed, too, as if all of these ticks hammered away right in the center of his brain, always striking on the same pin-point spot and irritating his nervous system almost beyond endurance. At 8:30 o'clock he decided to wait no longer and grabbed his hat and hastened from the hotel. Without making particular note of his surroundings, he set out at a brisk pace for the building that contained the intelligence offices which he had visited the day before.

Meanwhile he had forgotten all about the middle-aged man in civilian clothes who had followed him through the streets. It had not occurred to him that the fellow might return to the hotel and continue his espionage next day. He had presumed that the man would make a report to his superiors and the affair would be taken up again in some other manner if, indeed, there should be any resumption at all of the investigation.

"If I'm suspected of being a British spy, they'll probably arrest me when I report back at the baron's office," he mused before leaving the hotel.

After walking a square or two, Irving slowed his pace considerably, realizing that it was still early and that he probably would have to wait an hour or more for "the baron" after his arrival at the latter's office if he continued to walk as rapidly as he had started. To "kill" a little of the surplus time ahead of him, therefore, he stopped and looked into several shop windows, the last being an "eat shop," which teased his appetite not a little and caused him to feel that he could chew a piece of army meat of the consistency of leather, or rubber, with a good deal of relish at that moment.

The suggestion contained in the word rubber, for which there seemed to be no appropriate reason in connection with a steaming breakfast, revived his burlesque musings of the night before as he was drifting away into a nervous slumber. The semi-dream pictures in his mind of a government sleuth on rubber heels brought him back to his startling experience of the previous day so suddenly that he turned almost involuntarily and gazed in the direction from which he had come.

If he had been a person of superstitious susceptibility wandering through a country cemetery in the ghostly moonlight, he could not have been more apprehensively thrilled by what he saw. Half a square up the street was the mysterious middle-aged man in civilian clothes who had followed him from the intelligence building to the hotel.

"Gee! I must hustle along and get to the baron's office as soon as possible," he decided as he quickened his steps. "I must bluff this thing through as I never bluffed before. I must put the matter up to him and find out what it means."

He hurried on more rapidly than the pace with which he started from the hotel and did not slow up again until he reached the building in Wilhelmstrasse for which he was headed.

He decided not to pretend to be ignorant of the fact that he was being followed; indeed, he would have retraced his steps and accosted his shadower if it had not seemed probable that such a course would have been futile. So, just as he was passing through the pillared entrance, he turned and looked again up the street.

Yes, there he was, 150 feet away, sauntering along as if his greatest object in life was the sniffing of the damp April ozone. One look was enough, and the shadowed spy entered the building and walked up the flagstone stairway.

"I'm going to find out who that fellow is and what he's up to if such a thing is possible," he resolved. "I'm going to put it up to the baron right now and if I'm under suspicion I'll soon find out and, I hope, drive the suspicion away."

The young spy was now exhibiting real qualities necessary to make a successful army secret service man.

CHAPTER XXVIII
MAKING PROGRESS WITH THE BARON

Irving entered "the baron's" outer office and asked to see the big intelligence official. To his surprise, that secret service dignitary was in, and the caller was requested to wait a few minutes until he was at leisure.

"Even the nobility are getting up early to help win the war," Irving ruminated as he waited. "Well, that shows a good trait of character-if they only had a good cause to fight for. I wonder if they really think they have. I don't see how they can."

Presently he was informed by an office girl that "the baron" would see him, and he entered the latter's private office. The big, usually mild-eyed official looked at him rather sharply, he thought, but he resolved not to be overawed by his dominating personality.

"I am here," he began, rather abruptly, but with a bow of seeming respect, "to find out what is to become of me. I feel lost in this big city. Lieut. Vollmer left me last night and informed me that if I wanted anything, I should apply to you. In the first place, I should like to have some breakfast."

"The baron" seemed to be amused by this speech. He did not, however, indicate any particular concern over the hungry condition of the spy, who had proved himself a daring and spectacular hero "in the service of the fatherland." But he smiled and answered in reassuring tones:

"No breakfast? Ach himmel! You shall have all you can eat, and by the time you have finished your breakfast, you'll realize how futile is the English blockade."

"What kind of plans have you for me?" Irving asked, deeming it of no advantage to enter into a discussion of conditions in Germany with a man who undoubtedly would express only the most optimistic views. "I'm getting impatient, I can't stand it to be idle. I want something to do."

"What do you want to do?" asked "the baron."

"Whatever I'm best fitted for. I hoped I'd been successful enough in the venture just completed to warrant your keeping me in something of the same line."

"Do you want to go back to Canada?"

"I'd thought some of that, but it doesn't seem practicable," Irving replied. "You see, I'm an enlisted soldier now and would be sent back to the front if I returned. But it seems to me that I might do some good work in the United States."

"Yes, that's true, you might," "the baron" admitted, meditatively. "I'll think that over."

"Meanwhile," Irving continued, "I'd like to get rid of this uniform. It causes me no end of inconvenience. I'm constantly expecting to be stopped on the street and questioned."

"Have you been stopped yet?"

"No, but I've been followed. I'd have gone out and walked around some last evening, but was followed all the way from here to the hotel. The same man followed me from the hotel here this morning."

"The baron" appeared to be genuinely surprised at this statement.

"I don't understand that," he said. "What kind of looking man was it that followed you?"

"He was middle-aged and dressed in civilian clothes."

"I'll find out about this," "the baron" announced, pressing a button on his desk.

An office messenger between 60 and 70 years old entered.

"Is Schoensiegel or Blau out there?" inquired "the baron."

"Blau is," replied the messenger.

"Send him in."

The messenger went out and a minute later an individual who might have passed for an ordinary plain-clothes man of the police force entered.

"Blau," said the intelligence official, "this is Mr. Hessenburg, one of our friends from America-Canada. He was with the Canadian army at the front and broke away to bring us some important information. He's been here only a couple of days, but has been followed on the street by someone, not under orders from this office. I want you to go outside and wait until he leaves, and then find out who it is that's following him and why he's doing it. Maybe some other department or the police are laboring under a misapprehension as to our friend's identity."

"Gans gewiss, Herr Hauptmann," said Blau, bowing himself out of the room and indicating acceptance of his commission. The conversation was resumed between the spy and "the baron."

"I'll provide you with a uniform and make you an attache of this office for the present," the latter announced. "Later I'll take up your suggestion for keeping you in this branch of the service and see what I can do. The skill and daring of your achievements thus far deserves recognition, I can say that much at least."

Irving was reassured and encouraged by these words. He was convinced that "the baron" entertained no doubt regarding the genuineness of his representations.

"Why not give me employment that will enable me to advance my efficiency for further spy work?" the boy suggested.

"That's a good idea," declared the intelligence official with a look of professional animation in his eyes. "I think I'll do that. As soon as you get your uniform, report at this office and I'll have you assigned to your new duties. Meanwhile I'll put you on the payroll and give you an order for a month's salary in advance. Your bill at the hotel has been taken care of, but from now on you'll pay that yourself. Lieut. Vollmer was guilty of an inexcusable oversight when he left you without money for your meals and other incidentals. I thought that was being taken care of."

Irving thanked "the baron" for the interest shown in his welfare. Then he took up the subject on which he had expected to make his strongest play with the intelligence official.

"I want to speak to you now," he said, "about a matter that perhaps I should have brought to your attention sooner. It's about the message on my arm. I don't know what's in that message, but it may be that Canadian officials have taken steps to render worthless the information I brought to you. Would it be possible for them to render it of no value to you if they knew the contents of the message I brought?"

The keen interest that "the baron" manifested instantly in these suggestions indicated to Irving that he could hardly have broached a subject that would command closer attention.

CHAPTER XXIX
ORDERS FOR MONEY AND CLOTHES

"It would not only be possible for the Canadian officials to nullify the value to us of the message you brought, but that is exactly what they would do if they found out the contents of that message."

This is the reply "the baron" gave to the question put to him by Irving at the close of the preceding chapter. The spy put the question in accord with a suggestion made by Col. Evans in the course of his instructions behind the Canadian lines. The intent of this move was to obviate suspicion that he had delivered a fake message when discovery was made that the information it contained did not answer its professed purpose.

"Have you any reason to believe that they discovered the nature of the information you brought in that message?" asked the high Prussian official after he had answered the spy's question.

"I'm afraid I have," the latter replied. "Why didn't they arrest you?"

"Because they didn't know where to find me. I was lost somewhere in the Canadian army. They probably had no way of identifying me. However, they must have made a search for me when they learned what had been going on-maybe they're searching yet."

"Do you know what they learned that a message of this kind was being brought over here?"

"I know enough to feel that there is grave danger that they made such a discovery."

"How did you find that out?"

"This way: One of the boys in the company to which I belonged received a letter from his cousin in Canada that told almost the whole story, and I read the letter. That cousin told a long story about his going to Toronto to visit some friends and getting sick while there. He was taken to a hospital-our hospital, by the way-and while he was convalescing, he strolled out in the hall and saw the tattooing operation on my arm. The two men who were doing the work saw him standing there and gazing through the glass door, and they rushed out, collared him, and dragged him into the laboratory. But he satisfied them that he was merely a curious onlooker and they let him go.

"However, they had him watched, and after he left the hospital he was followed everywhere he went. He communicated with government officials and a week or two later the hospital was raided. This is all the information the letter contained, but it is possible that they compelled somebody to reveal the contents of the message that was tattooed on my arm."

"Very possible," agreed "the baron," leaning forward with a look of hard and harsh concern in his eyes. "And where were you in the meantime?"

"On my way on a transport for England. The spy in the hospital, I suppose, did not observe me very closely. Fortunately I had my coat off and perhaps he did not identify me as a soldier. At any rate, I was not interfered with, and I am here."

"No doubt of that," returned the intelligence official rather absently; "and you brought the message. Well, all we can do is remember the circumstances you have just related and take them into consideration if developments don't prove satisfactory. I'm glad you told me about this, for it may prevent a lot of confusion. It wouldn't be well for you to venture back into Canada with that picture on your arm. You'd be picked up as a deserter, and the intelligence officers wouldn't be very slow finding out that you were the fellow they've been hunting for ever since the raid on that Toronto hospital. As a matter of fact, I doubt if you can be of much use to us in any of the countries of our allied enemies with that thing on your arm."

"I have an idea to remedy that," said Irving with a smile that suggested something of a novelty in his mind.

"What is that?" asked "the baron."

"Peel this picture off and graft some new skin in its place."

The intelligence official laughed, but he was interested as well as amused.

"That isn't a bad idea at all," he said. "On the whole I am inclined to take you seriously. You seem to have a scientific turn of mind, and that always appeals to an intelligent German. I'm going to put you to work under the direction of a man who will give you a thorough tryout, and we'll find out what you're good for. You seem to be ambitious and intelligent and have a good record behind you. Go ahead now and show us what you're worth."

This announcement and the accompanying instruction delighted the spy beyond measure. If his recent experiences had not schooled him in the very wise habit of self-restraint, his first joyful impulse might have got him into trouble.

"Just wait a minute and I'll fix you up with an order for some money and some clothes," said "the baron" after a few moments of silence.

He picked up a pen and busied himself filling out a form and writing a note on a letterhead of the department. These he folded and placed hi separate envelopes. The envelopes he addressed and handed to the spy.

"There, that's all today, I think," he said. "Whatever you need hereafter will be taken care of by Mr. Herrmann. Inquire outside and you'll be directed where to go to have this order cashed."

Irving thanked him and left the office. Ten minutes later he was outside the building with a comfortable roll of bank-bills in his pocket. As he started up the street with directions in his mind for reaching the quartermaster's office, he saw Blau on the opposite sidewalk and was reminded of the instruction given that intelligence operative to shadow the young spy's shadower.