Part 25 (2/2)

Then he folded them up and put them carefully in his pocket, and after a few more sentences had been exchanged Tom heard the clink of money and saw Rabig tuck something away in his belt. Then the officer stood up and with a curt nod went away toward the bottom of the hill.

For some minutes more Rabig remained sitting at the foot of the tree.

Then he took money from his belt and counted it carefully. Tom couldn't help wondering whether it consisted of thirty pieces of silver!

In Tom's mind a plan was rapidly forming. He looked through the trees in every direction. No one was in sight. From the slope below came the hum of the camp, but no helmets were visible.

If Rabig had come through the German lines he had done so by means of a pa.s.s. That pa.s.s would take him back just as it had brought him through. He must have it in his pocket now.

Tom measured the distance between himself and the figure sitting beneath him. Then with the litheness of a panther he dropped plump on Rabig's shoulders.

The shock was terrific and knocked the breath from the traitor's body.

He rolled over and over. Tom himself was thrown forward on his hands and knees, but the next moment he had risen and his hands fastened like a vise around Rabig's throat.

CHAPTER XXI

CROSSING THE LINE

Nick Rabig was a young man of powerful build, and under ordinary conditions Tom would have had his work cut out for him. But the surprise and the shock had taken all the fight out of the traitor, and Tom's sinewy hands never relaxed until Rabig's face was purple and he lay limp and gasping. Then Tom improvised a gag and thrust it into the rascal's mouth and rapidly bound his hands and feet.

When he had the miscreant helpless, Tom rose panting to his feet and looked about him. There was no sign that the struggle had attracted attention. Rabig himself had had no time to utter a cry for help.

The renegade had revived sufficiently now to understand what had happened, and his face was a study of conflicting emotions. Rage and hate and fear showed in his features. He recognized Tom, and he knew that his treachery stood discovered. He knew that with the evidence against him he was doomed to stand before a firing squad if he should be taken into the American lines.

Tom looked at him as one might look at a leper.

”You low-down traitor!” he said bitterly. ”You vile scoundrel! I've caught you at last and caught you dead to rights. You're the most contemptible thing that breathes. You're a disgrace to your uniform.

You ought to be wearing a wooden overcoat and you will when Uncle Sam lays his hands on you. I ought to kill you myself this minute.”

His hand clenched the pistol which he had taken from Rabig's pocket, and a look of craven fear came into the traitor's eyes.

”Oh, don't be afraid,” said Tom scornfully. ”I'm not going to do it.

Perhaps you'll suffer more if I let you live than if I killed you.

You're a marked and branded man. You're a man without a country. The very men you've sold yourself to look upon you as a yellow dog.

”Now, Rabig, listen to me,” Tom went on with deadly earnestness. ”I'm going to strip you of the uniform you've disgraced. I'll have to untie your hands for a minute to get the coat over your arms, but I've got the drop on you and if you make the slightest move except to do what I tell you to you're a dead man.”

Rabig was too cowed to do anything but obey, and in a few minutes Tom had stripped him of coat and trousers and put them on himself. He re-bound Rabig's hands tightly. Then he went through the pockets of the coat.

As he had expected he found the pa.s.s that had admitted Rabig to the German lines. Opposite the word ”_Losung_,” which Tom knew meant ”countersign,” was scribbled the word ”Potsdam.”

”I guess this thing that brought you over will take me back,” Tom remarked. ”Now, Rabig, I'm going to leave you here with your German friends. They'll pick you up after a while, though I don't care whether they do or not. I'm going back to the boys of the old Thirty-seventh and tell them just what has happened to Nick Rabig, the traitor. So long, Benedict Arnold.”

With a parting glance of contempt Tom left the traitor and went down the hill with a confidence that he was very far from feeling.

He had the pa.s.s and the countersign, but he was not sure that these would be sufficient. Perhaps an officer would be called by the sentry to make sure that everything was all right. Perhaps the sentry at the point where he should try to pa.s.s the line might be the same one who had let Rabig through, and he might notice the difference in personal appearance. Any one of a dozen things might happen to arouse suspicion.

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