Part 18 (1/2)

”And yet there may be those working in the guise of the Red Cross who betray their trust,” the woman added. ”I hear of such.”

”Who are they? Where?” Ruth asked eagerly.

”It is said that at Lyse many of the supplies sent to the Red Cross from your great and charitable country, Mam'zelle, have been diverted to private dealers and sold to the citizens. Oh, our French people-some of them-are hungry for the very luxuries that the _blesses_ should have. If they have money they will spend it freely if good things are to be bought.”

”At Lyse!” repeated Ruth. ”Where I came from?”

”Fear not that suspicion rests on you, _ma chere amie_,” cooed the Frenchwoman. ”Indeed, no person in the active service of the Red Cross at Lyse is suspected.”

”n.o.body suspected in the supply department?” asked Ruth doubtfully.

”Oh, no! The skirts of all are clear, I understand.”

Ruth said no more, but she was vastly worried by what she had heard.

What, really, had taken place at Lyse? If a conspiracy had been discovered for the robbing of the Red Cross Supply Department, were not Mrs. Mantel and Legrand and Jose engaged in it?

Yet it seemed that the woman in black was not suspected. Ruth tried to learn more of the particulars, but the matron of the Clair hospital did not appear to know more than she had already stated.

Ruth wrote to Clare Biggars immediately, asking about the rumored trouble in their department of the Red Cross at Lyse; but naturally there would be delay before she could receive a reply, even if the censor allowed the information to go through the mails.

Meanwhile Clair was shaken all through one day and night by increased artillery fire on the battle front. Never had Ruth Fielding heard the guns roll so terribly. It was as though a continuous thunderstorm shook the heavens and the earth.

The Germans tried to drive back the reserves behind the French trenches with the heaviest barrage fire thus far experienced along this sector, while they sent forward their shock troops to overcome the thin French line in the dugouts.

Here and there the Germans gained a footing in the front line of the French trenches; but always they were driven out again, or captured.

The return barrage from the French guns at last created such havoc among the German troops that what remained of the latter were forced back beyond their own front lines.

The casualties were frightful. News of the raging battle came in with every ambulance to the Clair Hospital. The field hospitals were overcrowded and the wounded were being taken immediately from the dressing stations behind the trenches to the evacuation hospitals, like this of Clair, before being operated upon.

This well-conducted inst.i.tution, in which Ruth had been busy for so many weeks, became in a few hours a bustling, feverish place, with only half enough nurses and fewer doctors than were needed.

Ruth offered herself to the matron and was given charge of one ward for all of one night, while the surgeons and nurses battled in the operating room and in the dangerous wards, with the broken men who were brought in.

Ruth's ward was a quiet one. She had already learned what to do in most small emergencies. Besides, these patients were, most of them, well on toward recovery, and they slept in spite of what was going on downstairs.

On this night Clair was astir and alight. The peril of an air raid was forgotten as the ambulances rolled in from the north and east. The soft roads became little better than quagmires for it had rained during a part of the day.

Occasionally Ruth went to an open window and looked down at the entrance to the hospital yard, where the lantern light danced upon the glistening cobblestones. Here the ambulances, one after another, halted, while the stretcher-bearers and guards said but little; all was in monotone. But the steady sound of human voices in dire pain could not be hushed.

Some of the wounded were delirious when they were brought in. Perhaps they were better off.

Nor was Ruth Fielding's sympathy altogether for the wounded soldiers. It was, as well, for these young men who drove the ambulances-who took their lives in their hands a score of times during the twenty-four hours as they forced their ambulances as near as possible to the front to recover the broken men. She prayed for the ambulance drivers.

Hour after hour dragged by until it was long past midnight. There had been a lull in the procession of ambulances for a time; but suddenly Ruth saw one shoot out of the gloom of the upper street and come rus.h.i.+ng down to the gateway of the hospital court.

This machine was stopped promptly and the driver leaned forward, waving something in his hand toward the sentinel.

”Hey!” cried a voice that Ruth recognized-none other than that of Charlie Bragg. ”Is Miss Fielding still here?”