The Red Signal (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill
there anything she could let down, a bent pin or a hat pin thrown down hard enough to make it go through the paper and pull it up? No, it would slip off before she could draw it up. Her open umbrella? Would it be possible to let it down and sweep up the paper?
She cast an anxious glance toward the sky. The glow was spreading in the east and it would soon be light. There was no telling how soon Schwarz and his companion would return across the meadow and an umbrella travelling up and down the side of the house would be a noticeable object. Besides, it might catch and bump and make a noise against the wall. There were open windows all about. Once sound an alarm and all would be lost. If there were only some small object with sticking plaster on it: something to which the paper would adhere! If she only had a bottle of mucilage or glue she might smear it on something and let it down. The paper was almost beneath the window. Why hadn't she brought with her that little tube of photograph paste instead of giving it to her brother? Was there nothing, nothing she could use? Must she let that paper go uninvestigated when it might contain something of great importance to the country?
She got up and went softly about her room in the dim light, feeling of article after article on the small box that constituted her dressing table and her hand came upon her tube of tooth paste. She drew in her breath exultantly. The very thing! Would the paper stick to it? She would try. She would have to put it on something heavy enough to press the stickiness into the paper and make it adhere. Her hair brush? No, the flat side would not drop down easily. She must have something with a flat bottom. Her ink bottle! That would do.
It was some minutes before she could find strings enough to reach from her window to the ground, but by means of tape and bits of ribbon she at last had her strange fish-line ready, firmly fastened around the neck of the bottle, the other end tied to a chair lest some hasty move should cause her to drop it and she have one more article to fish up. Then she smeared the bottom of the ink bottle generously with toothpaste.
It was growing light now. She knelt breathlessly by the window and slowly played out her line, steadying the ink bottle as it went down to keep it from whirling wide and knocking against the house. She was trembling from head to foot when the bottle with a final whirl settled down firmly on the paper.
For a full minute she let it rest there to make the paste stick and then, with heart beating so loud she felt as if the people in the house must hear it she began slowly to pull the line up, hand over hand. There was a tense moment when the bottle lifted from the ground and the paper wavered slightly as if debating whether it would go or stay. Then it rose steadily with the bottle, inch by inch, until it was within her reach and she put her hand out and grasped it.
Carefully she wiped off the toothpaste and eagerly scanned the writing. It was in German, interspersed with hieroglyphics. It meant nothing whatever to her:
"Remington, Du Pont, Eddystone, Carnegie, Chester Ship Building———.”
Some of the names were indicated by strange marks. There were dates and words that she could not understand. Her face fell in disappointment. There was no help here for the task before her. Almost she flung the hard-won paper back to the ground. Then she remembered it was stained with toothpaste and might betray her. A second thought also reminded her that some wiser head than her own might make something important out of it.
Hastily wrapping it in a clean handkerchief, she fastened it firmly inside her blouse and prepared to respond to Mrs. Schwarz's call to work.
As Hilda threw open the kitchen window by the sink she caught a glimpse of a man disappearing into the door of the little brick hut down the garden path, and a moment later while she stood in the same place filling the teakettle with fresh water she had another fleeting glimpse of a figure in brown jeans, crouched and stealthily stealing out of the door again and down among the bushes carrying something under his left arm. It was all so brief in the dim light of the morning that she was not at all certain whether the man was Heinrich or one of the others, but her thoughts lingered about the little brick hut and she kept a furtive watch for more comings and goings. Several happenings of late had made her sure that the little brick hut was the home of the powder and dynamite that the man of the night had mentioned in his visits. Somehow she felt as if the Great War which until a few days ago had seemed a mere incident of history, so far away and unreal, had suddenly flung its whole terrible problem at her trembling feet, and the fate of the world lay in her hands.
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