Chapter IV: Part 4

In spite of Lieut. Vollmer's supercilious ways and boastful language, the young boche officer evinced a deep personal interest in his companion. But undoubtedly the reason for this was the daring and romantic record that the young spy had behind him. And this record necessarily obtruded itself so conspicuously in Irving's affairs right now that the vainglorious Teuton could not subordinate it even when picturing his own "high excellence." Therefore Lieut. Vollmer's uncontrollable admiration for the venturesome youth whom he was companioning was just a result of the over-awed condition of his own mind.

They went out to a cafe in Friederichstrasse and ate a very modest luncheon for which Vollmer paid fifteen marks. Then they returned to the hotel, and Irving remained in his room while Vollmer went to Wilhelmstrasse to announce the arrival of "the spy" and make arrangements for presenting him to the proper official. The boy would have been glad to go out and stroll through the streets of the capital of the great war-making nation, but hesitated to do this because he feared that his Canadian uniform might get him into needless difficulty.

An hour later Fritz returned and announced that he had found the proper official to receive the spy's message. That official, he said, was eager to meet the kaiser's daring agent, and would he please return with Lieut. Vollmer at once?

Irving assented, and together they left the hotel. On the way the Prussian officer thrilled the spy with patriotic fervor which he was able to suppress only with great difficulty by informing him that the United States had declared war against Germany a few days before.

"America will bitterly rue the day she took that action," Lieut. Vollmer declared vengefully.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*THE READING OF THE CRYPTOGRAM*

It was a rather imposing structure with gray-stone front that Irving and his companion entered in Wilhelmstrasse as the headquarters of the globe-encircling spy system of the terrible German empire. They walked through the doorway and passed down the cavernous corridor, with its innumerable ramifications of mystery, secrecy, penetration. All of these ramifications were by no means physical and evident to the inquisitive eyes of the visitor from across the sea. Most of them, nearly all, in fact, were pictured in the brain of Lieut. Ellis, who saw visions of thousands of communicating branches reaching out into every part of the civilized world.

The names of Bernstorf, Von Papen, Boy-Ed, and other former leading agents of the kaiser in the United States flashed through his mind, and he was curious to know what sort of men directed their activities from central headquarters. It was not long before his curiosity was rewarded with visual evidence.

Lieut. Ellis and Lieut. Vollmer walked up a broad flight of flagstone steps to the second floor and into the waiting room of a large suite of offices. There they were met by a girl of freshman high-school age, who evidently served in the capacity of office boy.

"Have the office boys all been drafted for military service?" Irving asked himself as his companion answered the girl's questions.

They were directed to wait a few minutes, which they accordingly did, and in a quarter of an hour were ushered into the presence of a mild-eyed man whose least prepossessing characteristic was the undependability of the mildness of his gaze. Irving had not been long in the room with him before he realized that the fellow's "gentleness" was a carefully cultivated "attribute," schemed, plotted, and devised to qualify him for the shrewdest and most subtle of government secret service. He was a large man of good proportions, with a mustache that stood out like a tooth-brush parted in the middle and a very fair and well rounded face. Although he might have passed for thirty-five years of age, Irving subsequently learned that he was nearly ten years older. He answered to the title of "the baron," addressed familiarly by Lieut. Vollmer.

"Here he is," said the latter, who seemed to think this was all the introduction needed.

Irving bowed, and "the baron" bowed. There was no shaking of hands between them.

"Very well," said the intelligence official, indicating thereby that the announcer's duty was performed and that he might now retire. Vollmer did as suggested by the manner of the receiving nobleman, and Irving and his world-plotting host were alone.

"I have heard your story from Lieut. Vollmer," "the baron" began. "He said you had a message tattooed on your arm. Let me see it."

Irving took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeve and exhibited for inspection the "cubist art cryptogram" on his left forearm. The official gazed at it closely a minute or two; then said:

"Just wait a minute and I'll have it read."

He lifted a telephone receiver to his ear and called out a local number through the transmitter. Presently he was talking to the desired department.

"Send Kiehler and Joe Weber in here," he said.

Three minutes later two middle-aged men entered. Neither of them was of striking appearance. In fact, each had a rather stolid look, but it was not long before Irving realized that there was some real mechanical, if not imaginative, ability underneath their apparent stupidity.

"Take this young man into your office and read that cipher message on his arm," ordered "the baron."

The two cryptogram readers bowed and one of them requested Irving to follow. They left the office and proceeded to another on the top floor of the building.

It was a very light suite of rooms that Irving now found himself in. One room particularly was supplied with the best of daylight illumination through a skylight overhead. It reminded Irving of an architectural drafting room. Half a dozen men were seated at as many desks working as diligently over record and manuscript material before them as so many college students "cramming" for a trigonometry or chemistry exam. Irving was conducted to an unoccupied desk in a remote corner of the room and there he and his two companions sat down and the consultation began.

The two cryptologists, however, had little to say. They seemed to have little interest in Irving save as to the cipher message he had brought for them to translate. They exhibited no surprise when the boy spy rolled up his sleeve and disclosed the manner in which he had conveyed his message. They seemed to have become so accustomed to the discovery of unusual things that nothing could astonish them. Stolidity of manner was a term that fitted them exactly, but certainly not unqualified stolidity. Irving felt almost as if their eyes burned right into his arm.

They worked diligently for more than an hour over the boy's bared arm, frequently jotting down characters on tabs of paper before them. At last they finished and informed him that he might go.

"Go where?" Irving inquired.

Without answering, one of the men picked up the receiver of a telephone and put it to his ear. He gave a number to the operator and soon he was talking to someone. The waiting boy was sure that the person "at the other end" was "the baron."

"Go back to the hotel and remain there for instructions," the man at the 'phone said presently, as he hung up the receiver.

Irving left the building, intending to take a cab to the hotel. He had scarcely reached the street, however, when it suddenly occurred to him that he had no money with him.

"I'll have to walk," he mused. "Well, it isn't very far and I can make it easy before suppertime. But I wonder if I'll get through with this uniform. Well, I'll use my nerve and see what happens."

He started out briskly, but observed as he went that he attracted attention from a good many persons on the street, some of them soldiers. Undoubtedly it was his nerve that got him through, but he could not avoid several times turning his head with whatever nonchalance he could command and stealing glances to the right and left and behind. After looking back two or three times, he became curious regarding the purpose of a middle-aged man in civilian clothes whom he had observed in front of the intelligence building as he came out of the main entrance.

"I wonder if that fellow is following me?" he said to himself, a little nervously.

He walked a few squares farther, then stopped and looked into a tailor show-window. He remained there several minutes, really interested in the display and the prices. With a kind of meditative look, he glanced down the street, but could see nothing of his supposed shadower. Then he moved on again, turned a corner, walked half a square, and suddenly faced about as if he had made a mistake in his direction and must retrace his steps.

The middle-aged man in civilian clothes, who was not more than a hundred feet away, turned almost as suddenly as the boy in Canadian khaki had turned and entered a cafe that he seemed about to pass.

"I'm being followed," muttered the spy with a real chill of alarm. "I wonder what's up. Have they found something wrong with that message? Did those cryptogram readers discover that the message had been tampered with?"

*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.

*CHAPTER XXX*

*BEFORE BREAKFAST*

Irving dismissed from his mind for the time being the mystery concerning the middle-aged man in civilian clothes who had followed him through the streets on two occasions. His fears regarding the incident were dispelled, for he felt that Blau, the intelligence operative on the opposite side of the street, would take care of that matter very efficiently. Everything was coming his way now, and he in his mission than he had felt at any other time walked alone; with greater confidence of success since landing with his parachute.

It was a ten minute walk to the quartermaster's headquarters. At the entrance of the building, his curiosity concerning the game of "shadow chase shadow" which he presumed to be going on behind him was aroused by a sudden reverting of his mind to the subject, and he turned and looked down the street by which he had come. There was Blau, half a square away, but the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" was not in sight.

"I wonder if he got onto the fact that somebody was directed to watch him," Irving mused. "But that ought not to have stopped him. He had nothing to fear from an agent of another department if he was engaged in legitimate government business."

The spy delivered his requisition for a soldier's uniform and was given in turn an order on the supply house and directions how to reach it. Then he left the building and took a car for the place where he was to get his suit.

Blau took the same car, but the "shadow" he had been ordered to "shadow" was not there unless he had disguised himself so successfully that Irving was unable to recognize him. The operative appeared to be somewhat puzzled, too, but he made no sign of recognition to the soldier in enemy uniform, and the latter maintained a like pretense of unacquaintance.

An hour later the spy was clad in a first lieutenant's uniform and on his way back to the hotel. Blau kept within hailing distance of him, but his shadowing seemed to be futile, for the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" had not appeared in any recognizable guise or disguise. Indeed, Irving was certain that nobody except the operative had followed him since he came out of the quartermaster's office and started for the store-rooms.

The applicant for an army uniform was required to enlist for service in the army before it could be supplied. Irving was not surprised at this, but he was very much surprised by the kind of uniform given him. It bore the insignia of a first lieutenant's rank.

"That's certainly generous on the baron's part," he said to himself. "I don't understand it. I didn't read his note to the quartermaster, nor the quartermaster's order. Maybe they would have afforded some explanation. Maybe I shall have to earn my rank and meanwhile will go about like an automobile for which a license has not been issued but bears a tag 'license applied for.' Maybe that's my case here--first lieutenant's commission applied for. It looks kind of irregular, but I suppose 'the baron' knows his business. Anyway, mine is a special case all around, however one looks at it."

When he filled out his enlistment papers, of course Irving signed the name of Adolph Hessenburg, late of Toronto, Canada, and on the "history sheet" that he had to fill out he entered data given him by the boy of the original tattooed cubist-art message. Then he was granted the use of a room where he discarded his Canadian uniform and put on his new Prussian military disguise.

He felt that he was disguised now as he at no time had hoped to be since planning his spy expedition into the heart of the kaiser's kingdom. He surely must have the full confidence of the Prussian officials with whom he had come into contact, or he would not have been elevated to the military rank and position of trust that now were virtually his.

Irving was particularly pleased with the ease he had experienced in picking up the idioms of the German language. He had an excellent memory and scarcely a word or a phrase that was taught to him at school or behind the Canadian lines, or that he had heard since landing with a parachute on territory held by the Prussian armies, had failed to make a lasting impression on his mind. Moreover, he was very quick to put ideas together and in that way get their associated significance; so that he skillfully "figured out" the meaning of not a few words that he had never heard before they were used in conversation with him by "the baron" and other persons with whom he came in contact. And he was almost as quick and skillful in his use of those same words for the expression of his own ideas.

After leaving the quartermaster's supply depot, Irving visited a haberdashery and bought several suits of underwear, shirts, collars, and socks, and then returned to the hotel. As he entered his room and deposited his bundles on the bed a funny thing happened.

He stopped short--true, he could not have gone much farther without falling over the bed, but nevertheless there was a decided "shortness" to his "stop."

"My goodness!" he exclaimed, clapping his hand to his appetite region. "I haven't had any breakfast yet."

Which being a sufficiently thrilling climax for the closing of a chapter, we will carry the reader over in suspense to the next.

*CHAPTER XXXI*

*AT WORK IN THE SPY OFFICE*

Irving laughed and felt hungrier than ever. The humorous relaxation afforded him great relief from the nervousness of his morning's activities, which had been associated enough with doubt and apprehension to make a coward run and a brave man extremely cautious.

"Well, that's a good one," the young pseudo-boche lieutenant continued in soliloquy. "Here it's nearly 2 o'clock and I haven't eaten my breakfast, and meanwhile I'd forgotten all about it. And I'm as hungry as a bear. I wonder if the British blockade has left enough food in the kaiser's kingdom, to fill up the vacuum inside of me. I think I'll go and find out. That'll be worth-while information to carry back to the Canadian commanders."

So out he went to a restaurant two squares away, where he had small difficulty in getting all he wanted to eat, the only qualification being that he had to pay prices so out of proportion to his income that he instinctively began to figure out the financial problem of how to make his salary carry him through to the end of the month.

"I'm starting out too swell," he concluded after several minutes' reckoning. "I'll have to eat at cheaper restaurants and get a cheaper room. That makes me think I don't know how much my room at the hotel is going to cost me; but it's bound to be pretty steep. Anyway, I don't care, so long as I can pull through on my salary. I don't want to carry any of this money with me when I go back to the other side of No-Man's Land."

Irving did not ask how much the hotel was charging for his room. He merely announced that he would check out that evening after engaging quarters in a comfortable rooming house in a semi-residence district near the Tiergarten. Economy was not the only motive that caused him to make this move. Being now in German uniform, he reasoned that he might be able to throw off of his trail the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" who had been shadowing him, if he changed his living address also. As a further precaution he made this change late in the evening.

Next morning he reported for duty at the office of "Mr. Herrmann" as he had been instructed by "the baron" to do. Mr. Herrmann proved to be in charge of a suite of offices in the intelligence building in which were employed more than a hundred persons, most of them men, varying in ages from 20 to 70. Irving, for want of detailed information regarding their duties, classed them all as clerks, stenographers and typists at first glance, and this in general was a very good classification, although many of them performed special work that entitled them to ranking positions of greater dignity. And he had not been employed there more than two or three days when he learned that half of them held such ranking positions together with salaries proportionate to the grades of work they did.

"Can you operate a typewriter?" asked Mr. Herrmann after conducting the new employe through one large and several smaller work-rooms under his superintendence.

"With two fingers," Irving replied with a smile.

"Learned it at home, eh? Well, you won't need a lot of speed. I understand your education in German is not very far advanced."

"Not very far," the spy replied.

"Can you read the script?"

"Yes, I can work it out. I know the letters, but they come to me rather slowly."

"You'll make it all right after a few days' practice. I'm going to set you at work first copying some translated cipher messages." (The boy's heart began to thump eagerly, but the thumping became a weaker reflex pattering as the superintendent continued.) "They don't amount to much. We get masses of indifferent material from numerous sources, but we keep it all carefully cataloged, indexed, and cross-indexed several times. Any little insignificant item of information may be worth a good deal to us at any time. That's one secret of the great value of the German spy system. Now I'll leave you with this budget of communications and let you work it out with your own intelligence. That's one way we have of finding out what a man is worth."

Irving longed to ask him how he protected such an intricate system of concentrated information from leaks that might be of value to the enemy, but wisely refrained.

"I'll find that out by keeping my eyes and ears open," he told himself. "I mustn't ask any questions except such as bear directly on my duties and are calculated to promote my efficiency."

He sat down at the desk assigned to him and was soon diligently, eagerly at work. His eagerness, however, was a well-camouflaged secret.

*CHAPTER XXXII*

*A STARTLING RECOGNITION*

For two weeks Irving continued his work in the record offices of the great German espionage system. His experiences there during this time were without special incident, except that they evolved before his mind a continuous motion picture of scientific detail far more intricate, comprehensive, and deep-reaching than he could ever have imagined.

There could be no doubt that "the baron," Mr. Herrmann, and the staff of experts, clerks, stenographers, and typists looked upon the "parachute hero" as a bona fide fatherland loyalist. The story of his "camouflaged escape" by parachute from an enemy aeroplane to deliver a cryptic-code message that he carried all the way from America had circulated among them, and the glee with which they commented on his skill and success indicated the intense feeling with which they, one and all, regarded the cause for which the Teutonic race was fighting--the supremacy of the empire founded by Prince Bismarck. Irving discovered also another important human factor in this relation, namely, that the initiated members of the great spy organization of the central powers could discuss among themselves the secrets of their system without becoming in the least gossipy; hence, the danger of their inadvertently dropping hints of important state matters never intended for "outside ears" was small indeed.

A more secretive group of employes it would be difficult to imagine. Moreover, their secrets seemed to be grouped in sections and degrees. And the most peculiar feature of the whole system, perhaps, was the fact that few instructions were given, defining these sections and degrees. Irving received none himself, and in all the time he was connected with the bureau he learned of nobody else who had been told what, or what not, to do or say in this regard.

"Here seems to be another instance of the requirement of instinctive understanding," he told himself a good many times. "They seem to give me credit of being an extremely intelligent fellow. Well, I hope I exceed their estimate of me. If I do, they may find it necessary co revise their system somewhat."

The degrees of secrecy Irving learned in the course of a week or more were of a graduated character. For instance, he soon discovered that he might talk about his own work to any and all other members of the force, but all of them outside of his class would not discuss their work with him. After he was advanced to the next higher grade of work he found, as he had already had reason to suspect, that there were two degrees of the great spy system within the "circumscribed freedom" of his intelligence. This "freedom" was circumscribed by a prohibition, forbidding him to discuss any spy subject to anybody outside the office except on special direction from superior authority.

Irving progressed rapidly in his work. He exhibited such ready comprehension of details and purposes that he was soon marked by the entire office force as a "coming man" in the government secret service. Undoubtedly his spectacular method of transit from the Canadian to the German lines helped materially to boost along his growing reputation, but it would also be unfair to put too much emphasis on this feat of daring and skill. Irving really deserved much credit for innate ability.

In his efforts to create a general feeling of satisfaction and confidence in order to ward off any suspicions which might arise regarding his purpose and motives, the young spy did a good many things that almost caused in him a rebellious boiling over of patriotic sentiment. He did much to perfect a filing system that had been neglected because of illness of the man previously in charge, and offered a number of suggestions for certain other efficiency improvements which brought forth complimentary notice from Superintendent Herrmann. But all the time, while doing these things, Irving kept in mind the big purpose of his mission which outmeasured so greatly in importance his services to the enemy that his feelings of self-reproach for the aid he was incidentally giving the kaiser's spy machine were short-lived.

Evidently it was the purpose of Mr. Herrmann to advance his spy pupil as rapidly as possible. Undoubtedly he was under orders to do this from "the baron." Although the reason for this method of procedure had not been stated in so many words, the understanding seemed to be clear enough that it was the purpose of the department to send him back to America equipped for very important work at an early date.

Three weeks after he entered the office he began to accumulate the information for which he had been sent. He then was given access to the card-index system of the great world-spy organization. It was like a city-library catalog, with references to files of interminable data buried away in metal boxes in a large vault.

In his work with this catalog and files he was associated with a man whose countenance was strangely familiar to him from the first. He tried to assume that there was merely a resemblance in the face of this man to that of some other man he had known on the Canadian front or at home, but such assumption failed to satisfy him. He could not drive away the feeling that he had met this fellow somewhere since he dropped from the sky with a parachute behind the German battle lines, but although he studied over the matter for hours while busy with his work he was unable by such efforts to solve the mystery.

The solution came during a period of relaxation, as the solution of many mysteries come. On the third day since his last advancement in the service, while making entries on certain catalog cards, there recurred to him a mental picture of his experiences with the unidentified man who had shadowed him through the streets while he was still in Canadian uniform. Two weeks before he had dismissed this incident from his mind, being convinced that the man had given up his quest, whatever it was.

But the returned picture did not rest long peacefully in his mind. It was followed closely by a thrill that almost made him drop the card that he held in his hand. He looked quickly, almost involuntarily, at his associate worker, who was bent over a task at his desk.

Irving knew at once that he was not mistaken. Before him was the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" who had shadowed him more than three weeks before from the intelligence building to the hotel where he was living and to other places in the city.

*CHAPTER XXXIII*

*A SURPRISING OFFER*

Emil Strauss was the name of Irving's coworker in the card index room. One could hardly say that he was either an agreeable or a disagreeable fellow. He had little to say. It was generally understood that he was very efficient in his work and ranked as one of the leading, if not the leading, experts in the department.

Strauss was not a typical Teuton in appearance. Irving thought he looked as much like an Irishman as a German, that he might have passed for either or a Swede. He was of medium height, somewhat slender of build, and had a smooth, round face, out of which shone two piercing black eyes--that is, they shone and pierced when the camouflage of heavy eyelashes and eyebrows was lifted. Otherwise one would have noticed almost everything else about him first.

There was no doubt in Irving's mind as to his identification, but he caught not even a surreptitious glance of recognition from the fellow at any time. He attended strictly and diligently to his own business, and the spy did likewise from the moment of his recognition of the man. He was determined his new associate should see no evidences of uneasiness in him as a result of this development.

Three days elapsed after Irving's last advancement to the card-catalog division, and still the conversations between him and his working companion were of the "yea, yea, nay, nay" character. Finally, however, the boy decided to attempt to draw Strauss into conversation. He did this by reference to humorous incidents in the war as brought out in cartoons and pointed paragraphs in Berlin newspaper and magazines.

He was somewhat surprised, and pleased also, to note that the "middle-aged man in civilian clothes" did not meet his advances with coldness or indifference. The fellow proved, indeed, to be much more polite than it had at first seemed possible. He appeared to enjoy Irving's palaver, for the youth was something of a wit, but preferred to listen rather than talk himself. Finally, however, he grew more communicative and manifested something of interest in his associate's personal affairs.

"They're telling some great stories about you around here," he said one day as they were preparing to go out for lunch. It was the first time they had quit work for the noon hour at the same time. Usually Irving went first and his companion went out after he returned, although Strauss was virtually "his own boss" and came and went as he chose.

"Yes, they're a bunch of gossips around here," Irving replied with a deprecating smile. "And you know what magnified stories gossips turn out when their tongues get busy."

Strauss smiled mysteriously and said:

"Oh, for that matter we are all gossips, even the quietest of us sometimes. All you have to do is to get us off on the subjects that we are well informed about and you'll soon find out how our tongues can wag at both ends."