The Apartment Next Door - William Andrew Johnston (top 10 novels to read .TXT) 📗

us the rest."

"Frederic Hoff stayed behind to pick us up, and the old man went off on the motorcycle. I heard them talking about his taking a train at the nearest station."

"What did young Hoff do when he found it was you lying there?"

"He seemed surprised and startled."

"What did he say?"

Jane colored and hesitated. There rose in her mind the picture of his tall figure bending over her, with anguish in his eyes, with expressions of endearment on his lips. She could not, she would not tell them what he had said.

"He asked if I was hurt."

"Is that all?"

Again she blushed and hesitated.

"That's all."

"Did he not seem amazed at finding you there? Did he not ask you to account for your presence there?"

"No," said the girl, firmly, "he didn't."

"Didn't he question you at all?"

"No," she insisted, "he was busy getting Dean into the car. He was unconscious, and it looked as if he was badly hurt."

"Queer, mighty queer," muttered Carter to himself.

"Didn't he ask you who Dean was?" questioned Fleck.

"I explained that he was our chauffeur. He may have known him by sight at any rate."

"Go on."

"We stopped at the house of the first doctor we came to and left Dean there, and then Mr. Hoff brought me on home in the car. At the ferry he put me into a taxi."

"What did you talk about on the trip home?" asked Fleck suspiciously. "Didn't he try to pump you?"

"We hardly talked at all. He seemed concerned only in getting me home without its becoming known that I had been in an accident."

"Is that all?" asked the chief. She could see by his manner that he mistrusted her, that he felt that she was keeping something back.

"We hardly exchanged a dozen words," she insisted.

Fleck shook his head in a puzzled way.

"I can't understand it at all," he said. "Old Otto is a common enough type of German, painstaking, methodical, stupid, stubborn, ready to commit any crime for Prussia, but the young fellow is of far different material. He has brains and daring and initiative. He is far more alert and more dangerous. I cannot understand his finding you there and not trying to discover what you were doing."

"I can't understand that either," Jane admitted.

"There's no doubt in my mind," the chief continued, "that Frederic Hoff is the real conspirator, the head of the plotters."

"Why do you say that?" asked Jane quickly. "What did you find out when you searched the apartment yesterday?"

She felt certain from the manner in which he spoke that he must now have some damning evidence of Frederic Hoff's guilt. He was not in the habit of making decisions without proof.

"We found," said Fleck, his keen eyes fixed on her face as if trying to read her innermost thoughts, "a British officer's uniform hanging in Frederic Hoff's closet, proof positive that he is a dangerous spy."

"And," said Carter, pointing to the two clippings lying on Fleck's desk, "in the old man's waste-paper basket we found those."

Jane picked up the clippings and examined them curiously.

"What are they?" she asked, looking from one to the other; "cipher messages of some sort?"

"We think so," said Carter. "We don't know yet."

"I've noticed these peculiar advertisements often," said Jane, studying the clippings, "but I never thought of connecting them with the Hoffs. I wonder--" Fleck and Carter had their heads together and were talking in low tones.

"I wonder," said the chief, "what young Hoff is up to. He must have known the girl was there to spy on him. I can't understand his not quizzing her."

"He's a cagey bird," Carter replied. "They are both of them expert at throwing off shadowers. Both of them know, I think, they are being watched."

"Oh, listen," interrupted Jane, all excitement. "I believe I can read this cipher. The number of letters in the word in big type at the beginning of the advertisement is the key. See, this word here is 'remember'--that has eight letters. Read every eighth word in this advertisement. I've underlined them."

Fleck took the paper quickly from her hand and he and Carter bent eagerly over it to see if her theory was correct.

REMEMBER

Please, that our new paste, Dento, will
stop decay of your teeth. Sound teeth
are passports to good health and comfort.
No good business man can risk ill health.
It is closely allied with failure. The
teeth if not watched are quickly gone.


USE DENTO

A genuine, safe, pleasing paste for the
teeth, prepared and sold only by the
Auer Dental Company, New York.

"Stop passports business, closely watched," repeated Fleck aloud. "That certainly makes sense and fits the facts, too. In the last few days we have drawn the net closely around a gang of supposed Scandinavians who have been busy supplying passports to suspicious-looking travelers. Let's see the other advertisement."

Excitedly the three of them read it together as Fleck underscored every fourth word.

DON'T

Forget it is imperative for one and all
to use cleansing agents on teeth that
leave no bad results. "Ship more of
that wonder-working paste immediately.
Workers, employers, wives, all ready to
commend it. Friday's supply gone,"
writes a druggist, to whom a big shipment
was made last week.


USE DENTO

A genuine, safe, pleasing paste for the
teeth, prepared and sold only by the
Auer Dental Company, New York.

"Imperative all agents leave ship. Wonder-workers ready Friday," read Fleck. "That's surely a message, a warning to Germany's agents to get off some ship or ships before they are destroyed. You, Miss Strong, have heard old Otto talk about the wonder-workers, whatever they are, being nearly ready. I guess he means bombs--bombs to blow up American transports. This message says they will be ready Friday."

"And to-morrow's Friday," said Jane.

CHAPTER XIII THE SEALED PACKET

"Is this Miss Strong?"

Jane, her face blanching, held the receiver in wavering hands for a moment before she could muster courage to answer. She had recognized Frederic Hoff's voice speaking. What could he want with her now?

"It is Miss Strong," she managed to answer.

"This is Frederic Hoff. May I come in for a moment? It is most important."

Again Jane hesitated. Frederic was the last person in the world she felt like seeing just at this moment. Only five minutes before she had arrived home from Chief Fleck's office. She was under orders to hold herself in readiness to start immediately for the scene of yesterday's accident. That this trip, unless their plans miscarried, would inevitably result in the exposure and disgrace of both the Hoffs she felt morally certain. To face on friendly terms the man whose downfall she was plotting, the man who only a few hours before had told her that he loved her, seemed a task far beyond her endurance, a situation too tragic for her to cope with.

Duty, her duty to her country, her honor, her patriotism, her affection for her soldier brother, all bade her mask her feelings and seek one more opportunity of leading Hoff to betray himself in conversation if that were possible. Yet, to her own amazement and horror, her heart protested vigorously against such action. Harassed as she was by conflicting emotions, worn out by the trying experiences that had been hers the last few days, she realized at last that she was really in love with Hoff. The throb of joy that she had experienced at the sound of his voice, the thrill that came to her each time she saw him, the delight she found in his presence, the fact that despite all the circumstances, she wanted to be near him, to be with him, convinced her against her will and judgment that her heart was his. In vain she marshalled the damning facts against him. She tried to remember only the expression of murderous hate she had seen on his face the night that her predecessor, the other K-19, had been murdered. She tried to think of him only as a treacherous spy, an enemy of her country forever plotting to destroy Americans, yet she could not. However base and treacherous and low her reason told her Frederic Hoff must be, her refractory heart persisted in beating faster at the prospect of his coming.

Hitherto not much given to self-analysis, she now found herself wondering at herself. What could be the matter with her? Why must she love this rascal? Why could she not fall in love with some decent, clean, patriotic young American, with some man like Thomas Dean? Chauffeur though he was now pretending to be, she knew that he was a college man, well-bred, and traveled. She knew, too, that Dean was in love with her. For him she had a sincere liking, great admiration even, and toward him now she was experiencing that feeling of sympathy a woman always has for the man she cannot love. But her feeling toward Dean, she classified as only that of friendship, nothing at all like the passionate affection that was rapidly drawing her closer and closer to Hoff.

Dared she see him now? Might not her love for him overcome her high desire to be of service to her country? Might she not be led by her unruly heart into betraying to him the fact that he was in the most imminent peril?

Yet she must see him, she told herself. Perhaps this very day he might be arrested and imprisoned. She might never again have the opportunity of seeing him alone and of talking with him. Into her troubled brain came a daring thought. Perhaps it was not too late, even yet, to turn him from his evil course. Was there, she wishfully wondered, any possibility of her leading him, through his love for her, to forsake his comrades, even to betray them? No, she admitted to herself, that was a preposterous idea. He was too dominating, too forceful, too determined, to be influenced to anything against his will.

"May I come in, please?" he kept insisting over the 'phone.

"Only for a minute," she answered tremulously. "I'm going out soon. I have an engagement."

"I'll come right over. I will not keep you long."

As she awaited his arrival, subconsciously desirous of looking her best in his presence, she stopped almost mechanically before her mirror to adjust her hair, letting him wait for her for a few minutes.

He sprang forward to meet her as she entered the room where he was, his face beaming with delight at the sight of her.

"Jane," he cried, with a volume of meaning in the monosyllable, as seizing her hand, he held it tightly and gazed earnestly into her face.

Bravely she tried to meet his gaze, to read in his face if she could the object of his unexpected visit, but her eyes fell before his, and the hot blood surged into her cheeks. Within her raged a desperate battle between her head and heart. Mingled with her unwelcome quickening of the pulse at his approach and admiration for his audacity in coming to her when he must know that she knew what he was, there was also an overwhelming sense of futile rage that he, a scheming German plotter, dared intrude his presence into an American home.

"I'm glad to see you appear no worse for your accident," he said, releasing her hand at last. "You got home all right, without attracting any one's notice?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, trying to make her reply seem wholly indifferent and disinterested.

"Your chauffeur is all right, too," he went on. "I telephoned this morning. He had already left the doctor's. There's nothing more the matter with him than a broken arm and a scalp wound. That's fortunate, isn't it?"

"Very fortunate," she admitted.

All at once as they stood there there seemed to have arisen between them an invisible, impenetrable barrier. They faced each other wordlessly, each embarrassed by the knowledge of the secret gulf that was between them. Hoff was the first to recover from it.

"Come," he said, "sit down. There is something I wish to say to you,--something of the utmost importance, Jane."

Still struggling with her emotions, Jane allowed him to place a chair for her and seated herself, striving all the while to crush