Chapter III: Part 3

"It would strike me all right."

"Suppose you were given a credential that would effect admittance for you into high official circles--would you go there and attempt to obtain information that might be available, because of your credential?"

"Yes, sir," Irving replied firmly.

"What do you think of that stunt of tattooing a message in the form of a freak art production on the arm of Lieut. Tourtelle?"

Irving smiled.

"Of course," he said, "it was clever and under ordinary circumstances ought to have been successful; but I'd rather not go through life with a thing like that on my arm. It might brand me as a freak, if not something worse."

"I don't blame you," returned the colonel, but as he spoke a peculiar shrewdness lighted his eyes, causing the boy to wonder a little. Then he added: "Still, it might be possible for one to submit to such nonsense if thereby he might advance a great and worthy cause."

"Sure, that's quite possible," Irving agreed; "but I don't see how Tourtelle, or Hessenburg, can claim any such motive."

"No, but if he had done it for his own country, the British empire, to advance the cause of human freedom, what then?"

"Well, in spite of the ridiculous appearance of the picture on his arm, I'd say he ought to be proud to keep it there. I would. I think I'd be proud to show it. It would be something to show and tell about to--to--my great-great-grandchildren when I got old, you see," Irving finished with a really illuminating smile.

"I think I've quizzed you far enough on this subject," Col. Evans announced at this point, throwing off the manner of vagueness that had hitherto characterized a good deal of his conversation, and speaking with unmistakable directness. "I'm now going to ask you to consent to have that cubist picture tattooed on your arm."

Irving looked in astonishment at the commanding officer of the regiment, being scarcely able to believe his ears. Surely the proposition was nonsensical. And, yet, this was no occasion for nonsense. But the boy's wondering conjectures were interrupted by the officer, who was adding to his last announcement.

"After the art work on your arm is finished," he said, "I'm going to send you into Germany to find out some things we want to know."

"Yes?" Irving responded, with a rising inflection that carried with it a suggestion of an interrogation.

"Yes," the officer continued; "I want you to take the place of the spy whose tattooed arm had to be amputated."

*CHAPTER XVII*

*PARACHUTE PRACTICE*

Private Ellis looked hard into vacancy and thought just as hard for half a minute; then he said:

"I get you, I think, Col. Evans, all except one point; and that, I suppose, would come to me all right if I knew the contents of that tattooed message."

"No, you wouldn't," the colonel returned quickly. "It wouldn't do you a bit of good."

"I'd know whether it's important," Irving insisted.

"I can tell you that much," was the officer's reassurance; "and then you're no better off. It's of vast importance and would be of incalculable value to our enemies if it fell into their hands."

"Then there's only one explanation of your proposition," Irving concluded. "You will change the dots and dashes so that they will convey information different from that originally intended."

"Good!" exclaimed the colonel. "You'll do all right. Are you willing to undertake it?"

"I am," said Irving.

"Very well. So far so good. Now I'm going to test your nerve some more. Look out, for this is going to be a corker. If you drop, you'll drop hard."

"I'm waiting," said the boy, with a kind of gritty grin.

"All right. Would you dare make a descent with a parachute from an altitude of several thousand feet?"

This was a tester, indeed. Irving knew it the instant the last word of the question left the colonel's lips, but he did not flinch.

"Of course, I ought to have some preparation for such a feat," he replied. "I've never been up in an aeroplane."

"To be sure," Col. Evans agreed, with a vigorous nod. "You'll get all the schooling necessary. You'll start out on the venture well equipped. I'm going to send you to the aviation field near brigade headquarters, and there you'll learn to do your umbrella stunt. Then you'll come back here and go through some more preliminaries. The work of a spy, you see, is just as much of a science as the handling of an army."

That ended the interview, and an hour or two later Irving started in an automobile for the aviation field with a note from the colonel to the flying commander. There he was placed under an expert, and his schooling in the art of dropping from lofty heights began.

Private Ellis did not clearly understand just how all this program was to be carried out, but he had no doubt that Col. Evans had a complete plan in mind and that the missing details would fit in well with what had already been revealed to him. So he went about his new work confident that the outlook for success was good.

His training at the aviation field lasted a week. During that time he made half a dozen descents by parachute from various altitudes. The last descent was from a height of 3,000 feet. By this time the experience had become almost as commonplace a thriller as coasting on a long toboggan slide or "dipping the dips" at an up-to-date amusement park. He had never dreamed that descending with a parachute could become so matter-of-course a performance.

"I understand now how circus people can look on their death-defying stunts without being awe-struck with their own daring," he mused after he had floated down the fourth time at the rate of three-and-a-half feet a second. "Just think of it: a good swift sprinter would run a hundred yards in about one-third the time that I take to fall thirty-five feet. This is quite a revelation of physical science to me."

Irving was by nature a very observing youth. His instructor was something more than a mere bird-man, for he had studied aviation as a mathematical, as well as a physical, science. He showed the boy how to figure out the rate of falling after being given the diameter of a standard-made parachute and the weight of the aeronaut.

The parachute with which the young spy-student got his experience as a diver from the sky was one of several supplied for experimental work following reports that the enemy had perfected a similar device which had proved successful as a life saver in air battles. But the experiments of Allied aviators had not proved sufficiently successful to warrant providing all air fighters with "high-dive umbrellas." Descents could be made with reasonable assurance of safety from aeroplanes flying in good order, but if a pilot lost control of his machine the chances were small that he or his companion gunner or bomb dropper would be able to leap free from the struts and other framework with a parachute.

Irving would have liked to learn to pilot an aeroplane, but there was not time enough for him to take up that study. Indeed, before half the week had elapsed he decided he could like no occupation better than that of an aviator. He saw several expeditions start out to meet the enemy at the front, and also saw them return, followed by the announcement on two occasions that several of the British and Canadian flyers who had gone out to meet the foe, full of confidence in their own prowess, would return no more. They had been either shot down or forced to descend within the enemy's lines.

Nothing was said at the aviation field regarding the reason for the training that was being given to Private Ellis. No questions were asked and Irving did not volunteer any information. At last the instructor stated to the boy that he had completed his course and had learned his lessons well, and that he was now at liberty to seek further directions from the colonel. He accordingly returned to the latter's dugout.

Col. Evans asked him a number of questions, and then said:

"I want you to return to the field hospital and get some more information from that spy, Tourtelle, or Hessenburg. And in getting your information, remember that you are to impersonate him on the other side of the Rhine. Now, this is going to be a test of your spy-intelligence. Let's see how well equipped you can return here after your next interview with him. Do you get me, or must I give you some tips?"

"Don't give me any tips, but let me show you what I can do," Irving replied. "If I fall down on this mission, you'll know I'm not the fellow for the job."

"All right," said the colonel. "I've telephoned for Lieut. Osborne to come here and accompany you again. But this time, remember, you are to do the quizzing, and the lieutenant is to report to me how efficiently you went at it."

"I'm glad to be put on my own responsibility, sir, before I drop down from the clouds into the midst of the enemy," the boy said grimly.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*STUDYING TO BE A SPY*

An hour later Lieut. Osborne arrived at the colonel's headquarters, and he and Private Ellis started at once for the field hospital. There they found Hessenburg, alias Tourtelle, much improved physically, but not a little nervous regarding his own rather precarious prospects. Instead of being an officer helping to direct, in his small way, the battle against the autocratic presumption of a great military power, he was something more than an ordinary prisoner of war--a trapped spy, who had conspired with others for the downfall of his own country. With seemingly genuine repentance, he exhibited much eagerness to give all the information possible in order to induce leniency for himself from a court-martial.

"I am instructed by Col. Evans to make this statement to you as coming from him," Irving announced early in the interview: "He desires all the information you can give him regarding your program that was to have been followed if you had succeeded in making your way beyond the enemy lines. He has certain plans in view, the success of which will depend largely on the correctness of your information. If you should misinform him, through us, those plans undoubtedly would fail. Moreover, if any enemy spy should get a tip through you or anybody else, that the information supplied by you was being used to attain important ends, those ends probably would never be reached.

"What we must have from you, therefore, is the truth, and the whole truth. To insure his receiving this, Col. Evans has asked me to inform you that the only thing that can save you is the success of his plan. If the plan fails, he will assume that the blame is yours and you will be shot."

Irving paused a moment, and Hessenburg seized the opportunity offered to interpose thus:

"You mean to say that he will have me shot for something for which I'm not the least responsible?"

"Not at all," Irving replied. "You will be shot for being a spy, which has already been proved against you. But if you're careful to tell us the truth, even though I don't cover some of it with my questions, your chances to escape that penalty are good."

"I understand," said the spy. "Fire away. I'll do the best I can."

The three were seated about a small table in a small room selected for the purpose. The door was closed. Irving drew a note-book and pencil from his pockets and prepared to jot down reminders of the information received by him.

"First," he said, "we'll all talk in low tones to prevent, if possible, anybody's overhearing us. Now, begin by telling me what was the extent of your acquaintance with spies in Canada and their system of operations."

"My acquaintance with those people and their affairs was very limited," Hessenburg replied. "I can't even say that my uncle was, or is, a spy, although it would be natural to suspect him. Government agents watched him pretty closely, and it's possible that he didn't actually do anything that would call for his arrest. But I'm pretty certain he knew a good deal more than I did. I think he knew all about my affair and approved of it. To tell the truth, I believe that it was through him that the spy organization learned that my sympathies were treasonable and decided to approach me on the subject of making a spy agent out of me.

"It was the man with whiskers at the hospital who first broached the subject to me: You seem to have a pretty complete report of that affair. That man was a physician, and I got acquainted with him while making business trips to the hospital for my uncle. He learned that I was an art student, and one thing led to another, until he knew I wanted England and France to be defeated and was willing to do anything I could secretly to bring that about. After that it didn't take him long to persuade me to be the bearer of a tattooed message on my arm into Germany. The other fellow who helped tattoo the message was the artist, an architectural draftsman with considerable skill at free-hand drawing."

"What are their names?" asked Irving.

"Dr. Adolph Marks and Jacob L. Voltz."

"What is your uncle's name?"

"Ferdinand J. Hessenburg."

"What does the 'J' stand for?"

"Johan."

Irving put a long string of questions of this kind, and thus obtained much detailed information regarding the spy and his family connections and home surroundings, also concerning the art school he attended in Toronto. He made copious notes of the answers, so that the process of questioning the confessed enemy agent was necessarily much slower than it otherwise would have been.

"I'm up against one difficulty that I'd like to clear away," the inquisitor mused in the course of his examination of the wounded "second looie"; "and that is the fact that this fellow is an artist and I am not. Suppose when I get over in Berlin, some wise fellow, full of information from Canada, should ask me to paint a cubist picture. What would I do? I must find out if there's any danger of my being asked to do anything of that sort to test my identity."

He continued his questioning thus:

"Did those two men who tattooed that picture on your arm know that you were an art student?"

"Oh, sure," Hessenburg replied. "That's how they happened to suggest the art method of conveying the message."

"And how about your credentials, your identification when you got into Germany? How were the German officials to know who you were, that you weren't a fake?"

"By the message itself."

"You think your instructors believed that was enough?"

"Yes, they said so. We had that question up for discussion. I raised it myself."

"How did you raise it?"

"I wanted them to get word to Berlin by another route to look out for me, but they said that would involve a danger that they were trying to avoid by the tattoo method. If they tried to get a wireless code message to Berlin, it might be intercepted and deciphered, and then a thorough search would be made for me."

Irving was much relieved by this statement. There was no reason to suspect Hessenburg of trying to deceive him in this regard. The spy could have no grounds to suspect that his inquisitor was planning to take his place and carry an altered copy of the cubist message to the war lords of the enemy.

"I guess I'm safe enough in that regard," he told himself. Then he added aloud:

"You think they have no information regarding you in Berlin?"

"Yes--I don't see why they should. I was informed that the contents of the message would be all the credential I'd need, that it would make me so popular among the high-ups that I could have anything I asked for."

"But they wouldn't tell you what was in the message?"

"I didn't ask. I knew better. The plan we were working on was directly opposed to my knowing the information I was to carry."

The quizzing of Hessenburg continued half an hour longer, and Irving and the lieutenant started back for the colonel's headquarters.

"Did I omit any questions I should have asked?" the spy-student inquired after they had ridden a short distance.

"You did fine," Lieut. Osborne replied. "I couldn't think of another question that I would have asked."

*CHAPTER XIX*

*LAST PREPARATIONS*

The next move in Irving's program of preparation for spy work in Germany had to do with the tattooing of an altered copy of the cubist art message on his arm. The alterations were made by the cryptologist who had deciphered the original message. He made the changes after consulting with intelligence officials, who prepared a system of dots and dashes that ostensibly conveyed valuable information. This "information," however, was not only misleading, but it was of such character that the deception could hardly be discovered before the lapse of months and possibly a year or more.

By the time the spy-student had "completed his course of study" the material, instruments, and artist were ready for the pictorial operation. The instruments had been supplied by a surgeon, the artist had been discovered after a search by telephone communication with the various official headquarters of the regiment, and the material, some pure aniline dye, had been found in a moving laboratory, or automobile chemical outfit, maintained for surgical, sanitation, pure food, and pure water purposes for the army.

The artist, aided by a surgeon, and the dye and some sharp-pointed needles, did the work. It was a long and tedious task, and many rests were required for the users of the dye-dipped needles in order to keep their nerves steady and their judgment sure in the delicate workmanship. After it was finished, the boy compared it with the salt-preserved original, and decided that the result could hardly have been more satisfactory for the desired purpose.

Then Irving had another session with Col. Evans, who gave him his final instructions.

"I haven't given you much of an idea yet what we want you to find out for us at Berlin, or wherever you can get the information," said the commander of the regiment. "We know, of course, that there is an extensive enemy spy organization in both Canada and the United States, and while we are able to get a few of those fellows now and then, still they're pretty smart as a rule, and we feel that we have only scratched the surface. We want their names, or the name of every leader of consequence among them. That's what we're sending you into Germany for. You must realize, therefore, that the mission on which you are being sent is one of no small consequence. The highest officers in the army have been acquainted with the plan and not only concurred in it, but offered suggestions for its improvement and perfection.

"You have learned from Hessenburg what you are to do when you land on German soil. You will probably be taken to Berlin or some important German military point, and there your message will be read. You will be a hero in the minds of the highest commanders and will undoubtedly be granted any favor you ask. My suggestion is that you ask to be assigned for study to qualify you for the most confidential and important work in the enemy secret service. Tell them you wish to return to America as a leader in the work and call their attention to the fact that, as you have become pretty thoroughly Americanized, or Canadianized, and lost most of the foreign appearance and accent of your father, you can pass successfully as a loyal citizen of the dominion. Then work your way into the confidence of those who are directing the spy system of our enemies and get at their records. Get the names of all the leaders you can find. You may be able to do this openly, for your own information when you return to take up more important work in Canada and the United States. Give special attention to the spy activities in the United States, for we want to show that the pro-German agents in that country are violating its policy of neutrality.

"Now, let me tell you frankly why we have selected you for this work in spite of your youth. Any man,--I won't call you a boy, for from now on you must be a man in every sense of the word,--any man who can put together the twos and twos you summed up after your experience with Hessenburg, or Tourtelle, and after reading your cousin's letter, is a natural-born investigator. The average person would have been confused by that evidence; he would not have had the nerve to form the conclusions you formed. I'm not saying this to flatter you. If you feel in the least flattered, you had better say so at once, and give up the whole scheme, for there is great danger of your failing and being shot. Let me tell you why:

"The man who has one second's time to entertain a conceited or self-conscious thought, devotes just that much time to the undermining of his own strength. Get me?"

"Absolutely," Irving replied. "I've told myself that many times, although not in those words."

"Now," continued the colonel, "I believe you told me that you had studied German at school?"

"Yes, I had one year of it."

"And Hessenburg said he knew only a little of the language?"

"Yes."

"Does he know any Austrian?"

"No. His uncle and his father, although Austrians by birth, lived mostly in Germany until they emigrated."

"Good. You will not be under suspicion because of your ignorance of the German language. Still, it would be well for you to be able to make yourself understood and to understand others from the moment you get into that country. So I'm going to put you under an instructor for a few days."

In accord with this announcement, Private Ellis talked nothing but German for a week with an orderly of German parentage who had enlisted with the Canadian army to help "get the kaiser." By the end of that time he felt as if he could hold his own, conversationally, at anything from a kaffee klatsch to a Berliner royal turnverein, and announced that he was ready to make his "high dive" into the land of the enemy.

*CHAPTER XX*

*"SECOND LOOIE ELLIS"*

Meanwhile activities at the front had been progressing in a decisive manner, although familiarity with the progress and its significance was restricted to an exclusive class, consisting of certain officers and an army of industrious workers, who might be classed as the moles of modern warfare.

The latter were the engineers and workmen whose occupation at times was a good deal like that of a miner. It had been their duty to tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, until you'd think the whole of the country in this vicinity must be a system of underground passages that would almost rival the catacombs of Rome.

This tunneling, or sapping, was one of the most important forms of strategy in the war. Undoubtedly in future years, remnants of many of these underground passages, preserved for their value as historical curiosities, will be inspected by thousands of tourists visiting the scenes of the world's greatest conflict.

Vimy Ridge, near the end of the historic fight at that long elevation of earth, was a veritable human anthill. The work of opposing armies in their efforts to undermine each other is an exceedingly interesting, if terrible, operation, and Vimy Ridge furnished an excellent illustration of this.

Early in the fight for possession of the hill the tunneling began. At the beginning of this narrative, when Private Irving Ellis and "Second Looie Tourtelle" were scouting in No Man's Land, this boring of the elongated mole on the earth's surface was as much of a fencing contest as a sword battle between two seventeenth century Frenchmen. The Germans held the hill, had taken possession of it and intrenched themselves on the eastern slope as one of the strongholds of their advanced positions in France. The Canadians and the British in attempting to dislodge the invaders, found themselves at a considerable disadvantage. There seemed to be only one way to overcome this difficulty without a great slaughtering of the forces of the Allies. This was by boring under the hill, mining it with trinitrotoluol, touching off the explosive with electric sparks and blowing the fortified mound into Kingdom Come.

Who first started the undermining process may never be known, unless both kept records of dates and doings along this line. It is probable, however, that it was begun by the Canadians, for the opposing army had not as great incentive for haste as had the Allies. Moreover, they did not have to go back so far to start their tunnels, and their subterranean operations were more of defensive than offensive character.

Statements from authoritative sources since the close of the war indicate that this tunneling contest was somewhat of a "diving" nature. It was a contest of depth as well as progress. The Allied engineers began operations at a certain level and went forward. As they advanced they listened. It was like an American Indian putting his ear to the ground to listen for the approach of distant enemy horsemen, or a physician examining the chest of a patient with a stethoscope for "unfriendly" sounds in the heart and lungs. The engineers carried a sort of subterranean stethoscope to detect the approach of enemy tunnelers. The instant they heard sounds of Prussian engineers boring their way to meet the sappers of the Allies, they stopped operations and went back to a new starting point and began over again, this time on a lower level. This process was repeated many times, the Prussians ever planning to get near enough to the Canadian sappers to enable them to stop their subterranean operations with high explosives, and the Allied tunnelers purposing to plant enough trinitrotoluol under Vimy Ridge to blow it sky-high.

Meanwhile, Private Irving Ellis, in preparation for the greatest event of his young career, was oblivious to all these activities, which were destined to culminate in one of the biggest sensations of the war. He knew in a vague way that something was going on under the ground at the front. He had heard more or less reliable trench gossip to this effect and had enough real information to assure him that there was something behind it. Moreover, it was reasonable, to one of modern warfare training, to suspect very extensive sapping activities in positions of this kind. However, he would have been greatly astonished if an intimation had come to him of how his own preparations for a plunge from the skies were converging in point of time with the preparations of the Canadians for blowing up Vimy Ridge.

At last the occasion arrived for the carefully planned departure by night of the "boche spy" with his tattooed message camouflaged in a "spasm of cubist art," as it was characterized by the architectural draftsman who helped copy it on Irving's left forearm. The latter sat in the rear seat of the aeroplane from which he had taken his lessons in dropping from the sky and which was specially fitted up with an elaborate parachute mechanism of the latest and most approved development.

Apparently it was an important occasion in aircraft activities aside from Irving's scheduled stunt, for a large squadron of machines was preparing for flight at the same time. Probably a big raid was about to be made on the boche lines or some important ammunition or supply station of the enemy, the boy reasoned. But no information was volunteered to him on this subject and he asked none, for it had nothing to do with his affair. He was merely to watch for his opportunity, pick his own time for taking "French leave," signal the pilot by an agreed touch on the shoulder, "put up his umbrella," and depart.

Irving had more than one good cause to feel elated at the manner in which circumstances had shaped themselves for an all-around success of his venture up to the present time. And not the least of these was the presentation to him, a few hours before his flight over the boche lines, of a second lieutenant's commission. Accompanying this was a note from Col. Evans wishing him the "best of good fortune," and concluding thus:

"You will take your leave in the same rank that Hessenburg might have taken his, namely, as a second lieutenant, if your shrewd interpretation of developing events had not intervened. If you have any reasonable degree of success in this big venture of yours--and I'm sure you will--I'll guarantee you a first lieutenancy, and it will take only a continued exhibition of the good sense and judgment that I have seen in you up to date to bring you eventually a captain's commission."

"It's 'Second Looie Ellis' now," Irving mused, as he took his seat in the rear cockpit, strapped himself in, buckled about his waist, chest and shoulders the parachute harness, and waited for the pilot to start the motor that would send them away off on a wild night trip through the air over a wilder scene of human slaughter and with one of the wildest spy-plans in view that ever put thrills into the records of international secret service agents.

*CHAPTER XXI*

*THE BLOWING UP OF VIMY RIDGE*

The aeroplane in which Lieut. Ellis made his "get-away" flight was equipped with two machine guns, one for the pilot and one for the gunner in the rear cockpit. While practicing the art of parachute descent, Irving also acquired some practical knowledge of the use of a machine gun in the air, not with the idea of engaging an enemy plane in battle, but in order that he might put up an appearance of being skilled in sky fighting if it became advisable for him to make such pretense in order to avert suspicion as to the motive of his "escape." In other words, he must be careful not to create a suspicion that there was collusion between him and the pilot.

The parachute was folded compactly and deposited in a cylindrical chamber behind the rear seat. The mechanism by means of which this aero life-preserver was put in operation may be described as follows: Directly in front of the parachute container was a device which, when put in action, effected the release of the giant "umbrella." In front of this device was a compressed-air reservoir. Within easy reach of the person occupying the rear seat was a ratchet-lever, which, when pulled, threw the seat back to an angle of about forty-five degrees and jerked open the compressed-air reservoir. The opening of this reservoir put the release machinery into action, and this in turn threw out of the containing chamber the compactly folded parachute, which automatically, on being released, spread out and encompassed a great volume of resisting atmosphere. This powerful resistance, acting like a hurricane in a tent, caused the occupant of the rear cockpit to be jerked along the slanting back of his seat out into the vast expanse of empty space.

One great beauty of this device, when used for exhibition purpose, was the fact that if it failed to work, the aviator retained his seat as comfortably as if nothing had happened. As a life-saver, of course, this peculiarity had little or no value, inasmuch as a flyer in distress would be lost if the parachute failed to pull him out of his seat.

Before each of his experiments, Irving had tested the "sky-umbrella" with a dummy heavier than himself in order to be certain that there was no danger of ripping the silken cloth. A slight tear produced by the strain on the parachute while he was being dragged from his seat might become larger during the descent and cause him to fall with sufficient shock to seriously injure or kill him. This was really the only considerable danger in the whole performance, but it was one that needed to be guarded against very carefully.

Up flew the aeroplane with graceful sweep and joined the flock of two score other "night birds" that were starting out on a raid. The flight to the front lines was quickly made and without incident of note. In fact, not an enemy plane arose in the air to oppose the attacking squadron until the leading flyers were directly over No Man's Land, brilliantly illuminated with the fireworks of battle, and then something happened that must have thrilled every aviator who witnessed it, accustomed though he was almost daily to thrills that make the life of a soldier on land or a Jackie of the navy seem like a tame existence in comparison.

Suddenly there was an upheaval of earth almost directly below him, followed by another and another in quick succession; then a regular concert of upheavals in almost a straight line, and a very long line at that, evidently, even to a pair of eyes looking down from a great height in the air. There was a magnitude in the scene that could not be mistaken, although the ridge of land that was visible only a few moments before looked like little more than an elongated anthill.

"My goodness!" Irving exclaimed, though the noise of the motor and the propeller and the rush of air about him made it impossible for him to hear himself. "My goodness! they've actually blown up Vimy Ridge."

The machine swept on with the flock of mechanical war-birds, on over No Man's Land and past the enemy front lines. Meanwhile Irving gazed down, fascinated by the scene far, far below. It was a scene of the most diminutive dwarfs now. The trenches looked like little more than pen scratches on a dim-colored sheet, certainly not more than chalk marks, of no particular color, on a "faded blackboard." And the people--the soldiers! Yes, he could see them now, in large numbers. They looked like ants--no, let's not understate it,--they looked like mice, small mice, however; and they arose--on the Canadian side--out of the "chalk marks" and dashed forward, a very short distance, it seemed, only a few inches or feet at the most, but they chopped off their steps so short that they appeared just to creep along. Irving was astonished at the clearness of the night scene under the battle's illumination.

But they made it finally, up the side of the hill, if indeed any hill remained, and into the crater--Irving could see an altered condition following the trinitrotoluol explosions, and concluded that there must be a long, a very long, crater--miles of it--in the place of Vimy Ridge. They were cheering like mad--Irving knew it, though he could not hear a voice. Yes, into the crater they went, a myriad of insects, or wee animals,--they had possession of it--the enemy seemed not to offer any resistance. They were whipped, thoroughly--they knew it. Tons and tons of high explosive planted under that ridge had blown it to the sky.

"No, it didn't, either," Irving mused with a smile of "altitude amusement." "It was only a flash in the pan. Not a pebble came half as high as we are, and the sky is hundreds of miles--umph! How much higher is it? My! if the world could only get up here and look at itself, I wonder if things wouldn't go a little differently. No, I'm afraid not! There'd always be somebody then trying to grab a bigger slice of the moon than he's entitled to.

"But what am I thinking about? My head must be getting giddy. That won't do a bit. I'm on very serious business. The bombing planes are hovering over the rear line trenches and dropping their flower-pots on 'em. The anti-aircraft guns are getting busy, too. There went one right ahead of us. They're getting our range. And here comes a fleet of German planes to meet us. Well, it won't be safe to wait very long, and it won't be fair to my pilot. Just as soon as we get well beyond that third trench there, I'll take my plunge."

Irving set himself fixedly as if about to make a mighty leap or a pistol-shot start in a foot race. As a matter of fact, he was going to do nothing of the kind. Only a sort of passive effort was required of him, and yet, his nerves had never been more tense. He put his right hand on the release lever and leaned forward, his left hand almost touching the pilot, and looked down over the side of the car, then off toward the approaching enemy squadron, then at the camouflaged positions of the belching anti-aircraft guns, then here and there at the exploding shells in the midst of the invading fleet, then back again at the ground scene directly below.

Suddenly he leaned farther forward and slapped his hand smartly on the pilot's shoulder. The latter nodded and turned the nose of the sky machine downward. This was Irving's cue. He leaned back and pulled the release lever as far as it would go.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES*

The "escape" was successful in every respect. The boy rocked to and fro all the way down, like a cork on a billowy sea. Down, down he went, the scene continuing, in the glare of innumerable lights of the battle, almost as bright as day. Irving could see clearly where he was going, although it was just beyond the zone of blazing activities. Between the chosen landing place and the fighting terrain was a small belt of timber, but the surroundings were lighted so brilliantly that the general character and lay of the land could be determined even from a height of several thousand feet.

Reinforcements were being rushed forward from points farther in the rear. Irving could see a wave of men advancing toward the lighted area. It looked as if attempts were being made to retake the hill, or what was left of it. Undoubtedly the enemy had lost heavily as a result of the volcanic explosions and the need of reserves was pressing at the front.

Irving landed right in the midst of a company of advancing men. The lieutenant called a halt and remained long enough to make inquiry as to the meaning of the parachute descent. The boy replied in fairly good German that he was a spy in the service of the emperor, and asked to be directed to regimental, divisional or army headquarters. The officer assigned a sergeant to accompany the "arrival from the sky" and, after a tramp of more than an hour over a highway on which they had to dodge camions and autos and motorcycles and troops almost as watchfully as one must dodge heavy traffic in a warehouse district in a large city, they arrived at a small town where they found a brigadier general's headquarters in what had formerly been the chief municipal building of the place.

Lieutenant Ellis was taken in charge here by an intelligence attache, who, observing the Canadian uniform worn by the boy, questioned him as to his identity and mission. Irving was greatly pleased, as the conversation progressed, to find that he understood almost everything his inquisitor said and could answer intelligibly all the questions put to him. The conversation, freely translated into English, was as follows:

"Who are you?"

"My name is Hessenburg. I am a second lieutenant in the Canadian army. But I am a Prussian sympathizer and the bearer of a message from agents of Emperor William working secretly for him on the other side of the Atlantic ocean."

"To whom is the message addressed?"

"I don't know. It is in cipher."

"Then how are you going to find the person to whom it should be delivered?"

"I was informed that any high officer in the German army, from brigadier general up, could tell me what to do the instant he heard my story."

"How did you get past the Canadian and German lines without being captured; or did you surrender in battle?"

"No, although that was my plan at first. I managed to get into the air service temporarily and dropped with a parachute, from an aeroplane in the midst of a big battle after we got over on this side."

The intelligence attache uttered a guttural something that sounded like an oath. From the tone and facial expression accompanying it, Irving mentally translated the ejaculation into the much milder, "You don't say so!"

"That's true," interposed the sergeant who accompanied Irving from the scene of his descent. "I saw him come down. The lieutenant of my company ordered me to bring him here."

"If all this is true, I suppose you'll have to see the general," the attache concluded. "Just wait here and I'll find out how long you'll have to wait. You say your message is important?"

"I haven't read it," the spy answered; "but I was informed that it was very important. I think you'd better help me get it to him as soon as possible."

The attache left Irving and his companion seated on a long bench in the orderly room and entered the adjutant's office. A few minutes later he came out again and announced that the message was "on its way to the general" and an order to "come in" would probably come out in a short time.

The "short time" was more than two hours, however. The brigadier general had been napping. Ordinarily his night repose might fittingly have been called sleep, but the taking of Vimy Ridge rendered any such peaceful term inappropriate. It is probable, indeed, that there were naps for few German officers of whatever rank, attached to that sector, on the night of the great battle on the Canadian front. At any rate, this officer was one of the few, and he awoke at break of day. One of the first matters brought to his attention was the arrival of a spy from America with an important message.

"Bring him in," he ordered.

A minute later Irving was standing before a very burly and very fierce looking individual in the uniform of a high commanding officer and saluting him with an appearance of self-confidence, in spite of a most provoking nervousness that unexpectedly seized him.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*OFF FOR BERLIN*

Irving Ellis recovered his composure and his nervousness left him in full control of his faculties as he answered the first question put to him by the brigadier general. It was a very simple question, thus:

"You are Second Lieutenant Hessenburg of the Canadian army?"

"I am."

"But a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm?"

"No, I am not," Irving replied. "I'm a subject of Great Britain, for my father was naturalized in Canada. But my sympathies are over here and when I am old enough, you'll find my citizenship where it ought always have been."

"There, I got a little truth into my bunch of lies," Irving interpolated to himself. "My citizenship will be where it always ought to have been, and was, and is, and always will be, as long as I live--in the United States. I spoke with a double tongue and satisfied my own conscience at the end. Oh, I can see that I'm going to be some prevaricator before this adventure is finished. Really, it never occurred to me before, but a spy must have the biggest imagination on earth to be successful. However, it's a good cause, that's some consolation."

Before the boy finished this soliloquy, the brigadier general was asking another question:

"And you were sent here by some of our agents in Canada?"

"Yes."

"With a message?"

"Yes."

"Let me see it."

Irving took off his coat and rolled up his left shirtsleeve, exposing to view the "cubist art" tattooing recently pricked into the skin with sharp pointed needles and aniline dye. The brigadier general gazed at it with deep interest two or three times; then looked into the spy's face and said:

"You're all right. You must go to Berlin at once."

He contemplated the hieroglyphic oddity a minute longer and then said:

"My curiosity is keen to know how you got over here."

"I flew over," Irving replied.

"How could you manage that? Were you in the air service?"

"Yes, during the last few weeks. I was out with a pilot last night and slipped away with a parachute in the heat of the battle."

It was the brigadier general's turn now to utter something of the explosive character of an oath. As Irving's schooling and recent drill in the Teutonic tongue did not comprehend such ultra-rhetorical figures of speech, he did not get the full significance of the expletive.

But it was evident that the officer's outburst was anything but an expression of anger. Admiration popped into his eyes and spoke out of them in "violent harmony" with his oath. But this overflowing endorsement of the spy's activities was suddenly interrupted by a change of manner that caused Irving a little uneasiness as a new thought took possession of the burly military man's mind.

"What do you suppose they think about you now over in the Canadian lines? They're onto you now, aren't they? If we want you to return on another mission over there, you've spoiled the game by your manner of escape, haven't you? How could you explain it if they put you on the grill?"

"That'll be very easy," Irving replied. "I waited for the right conditions. We got into a fight with a couple of German planes and it was looking pretty bad for us. Then a shell from an anti-aircraft gun exploded so near to us that it seemed impossible for us to have escaped serious damage. Well, two seconds later I saw the pilot was having trouble with his engine; so I concluded it was time for me to take my departure."

The look of gleeful admiration returned to the officer's face.

"You handled it well, very well," he said, with a disagreeable, gloating laugh.

Irving's sentiments, however, were of much different nature. He was thoroughly disgusted with his own "string of falsehoods," as he characterized the stories he had told to the intelligence attache and the brigadier general.

"I know very well that a spy is a personified fib, pure and simple," he told himself with a reflective compression of his lips. "I don't think it's any worse than that, and I don't think the stories I told were any worse than fibs. A spy is just a misrepresentation walking around on two feet. If he doesn't tell a single fib, it's his business to make the enemy think he's something he isn't. If he does this for a bad cause, he's a bad man; if he does it for a worthy cause, he's a good man, not because he fibs, but because of the cause he misrepresents. So long as he doesn't misrepresent the cause, he ought to be all right. Still, the world will admire him more if he's smart enough to get what he wants without telling any downright li--fibs like the ones I told. I'm going to see if I can't get along hereafter without fibbing."

Irving worked this reasoning out in his mind as the conversation with the officer proceeded. He was much relieved also on finding that he was able to answer all succeeding questions without resorting to any gross misstatements of facts. At last the brigadier general closed the interview by saying:

"I'll excuse you for the time being. Meanwhile I'll communicate with my superior officers and you'll wait under orders of the adjutant for instructions from me."

Irving returned to the orderlies' room. He had not eaten breakfast and informed an officer of the hungry condition of his stomach. This resulted in his being turned over to an orderly who conducted him to the officers' mess, where he was served with a very good meal.

"I guess I'm in right," he mused. "They give me the best feed and show me considerable attention. The auspices are good. Hope I can keep things coming my way, and I'll get what I'm after."

About an hour after breakfast, the adjutant summoned Irving into his office and spoke to him, thus:

"We have just received orders to send you to Berlin. Are you ready to go?"

"I haven't any luggage to pack," the spy answered.

"You will be supplied with what you need," the adjutant continued. "You will also be accompanied by a young lieutenant who is recovering from wounds received at the front and who has been granted home leave for a month or two. He lives in Berlin. He will be here soon and go with you to the train."

An hour later Irving was on a troop train, speeding away to the northeast, away from the still thundering battle front and toward the objective city of his secret-service aims, hopes, plans and patriotic ambition.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*IN BERLIN*

Berlin!

The name was well worth the exclamation. If Irving did not utter it aloud, he thought it in the "tone of voice" in which it appears here.

He had ridden more than half of the preceding day, all night and well into another day with a companion in whom he was able to find little of sympathetic interest. The fellow, an infantry lieutenant, about 30 years old, was a cold-eyed, emotionless individual and about as cruelly boastful Prussian as one would care to meet. There was no fate too frightful for an English soldier in his opinion, and all other Allies fighting on the side of the British ought to be reduced to vassalage and forced to pay tribute to the House of Hohenzollern.

Irving tried for a while to engage in intelligent conversation with him, but at last found this impossible and decided to encourage him along the line of least resistance with the view of obtaining as much information from him as his prejudiced mind was capable of giving. By discounting every thing uttered with a burst of passion or with sneer of contempt or tone of bravado and by watching for inadvertent admissions, Irving gleaned enough to convince him that the central allies were not nearly as confident of winning the war as they wished the outside world to believe.

Lieutenant Ellis was a good enough spy not to confine his observations to the one supreme purpose of obtaining a list of enemy agents in Canada and the United States. He saw at once, after landing with his parachute in the boche lines, that he could be of great service to the cause for which the Allies were fighting by gathering a fund of information regarding the man power, supplies, ammunition and the general attitude of the people in the kaiser's country. By the time he reached Berlin, he felt considerably compensated for the uncongeniality of his traveling companion during the trip.

They took a horse-cab--there were no automobile taxis in evidence--and were driven at a very sleepy gait to a high-class hotel in Friederichstrasse. The horse behind which they rode looked as if he might have had a full meal of oats and corn some time before the war. There was little in the scenes through which they passed that impressed Irving as bearing any indications of the ravages of war, except perhaps the scarcity of automobiles and the lack of that spick-and-span condition for which the streets of Berlin had long been famous. The boy spy was unable to discover any quality of excellence at all superior to that of Buffalo, N.Y., in general appearance.

The hotel he found well furnished, decorated and supplied with rugs. The rooms taken by Irving and his companion were all that a "particular," if not fastidious, guest would demand. True, a girl operated the elevator, but the young spy had learned, through letters from his cousin, that Canadian girls went much farther than this in their patriotic efforts, sharing not a little in the heavy labors of munition shops and the general industries.

Irving's companion, whose name was Fritz Vollmer, spoke a few words to the clerk in an undertone, and the clerk nodded knowingly, as if to indicate that everything was all right.

"An old friend o' mine," Lieut. Vollmer remarked as they walked toward the elevator. "I just told him you were all right in spite of your uniform, that you'd been a spy over in the enemy's country and hadn't had time to change your clothes since you got through the lines. You won't be bothered about room rent or any other expenses here. Those will be taken care of. You're not to change your uniform until after you've had a session at intelligence headquarters."

"When will that be?" Irving inquired.

"This afternoon some time," was the answer. "I'll go over and make arrangements and then come back and go with you. Meanwhile we'll go out and have some lunch."