GLH: The Red Signal. Only More of It.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29RE0blCV84
The spy in his plane that touched down in the dead of night just took off in broad daylight, thus alerting any neighbors that the strange thrumming sound is something they should all gawk at. Hilda just showed a lot of interest and recognition. Luckily, the housewife has other concerns.
“It iss my poy!” she wailed into her apron. “They vill send him avay to var! My only poy! Und there iss no need. He iss too young, und I know he vill get into drubble. He vas exempt. Ve got him exempt on accound of the farm, und now the orders haf come from the Fatherland, und he must go!”
“But what has the Fatherland got to do with him?” asked Hilda puzzled. “This is America. We are Americans. Why don't you tell the Fatherland you don't want him to go?”
Hilda, sweetie, you need to pick up your game yesterday. I told the readers you were all competent and stuff, and look at this mess. What are you doing here? Fortunately, the housewife is called away by her husband. Hilda reflects more on how to get out of there and, since she is alone in the house, writes a letter to her Uncle Otto and rushes down to the letter box to drop it in. She sees faces watching her on the way back, and is confronted about where she's been.
“I've just been down to mail a letter that I wanted to have go this morning. It didn't take me a minute. I mustn't trouble you every time I have a letter to mail,” she explained.
“You don't go down to that station mitout permission! You onderstandt?” he thundered.
Hey, guys, I think he might be German!
There was something belligerent in Schwarz's attitude as he entered the kitchen and strode over to the stove. In his hand he carried an open letter and, he gave her a vicious look as he opened the stove lid and stuffed the letter in, shutting down the lid again and striding out.
She checks that it was her letter, sees her writing before it burns, and decides he must have a station-master's key. She also reflects that it's a federal offense to destroy other people's mail, but fortunately she realizes that he does not care.
So Hilda starts to make plans for flight, which at least makes sense because she's given up on earning their hearts with her labor. She is slowed down by her lack of money. For whatever reason, probably because Grace really likes workers who earn their daily bread, she approaches the Swarzes about her wages:
Sometimes, as she was going about her work, she would try to plan how little she could get along with, and once she summoned courage to ask Mrs. Schwarz how much she was earning a week, but the woman only stared with an ugly laugh and said: “I know nodding about it. Zumetimes I think you do nod earn your salt.”
Followed by:
“Vages!” He roared . “I pay you no vages! It iss enough that I give you a good home. You should pe thankful for that! You are not worth vages!” Hilda, with flaming cheeks, opened her mouth to protest, to say that Uncle Otto had told her there would be good wages, but when she looked into the fierce, cunning eyes of the man, her very soul quaked. Something that would have protested two weeks before had crumpled up within her and she saw herself precipitately retiring to the kitchen from the roaring of his angry tongue.
Then she goes to bed she thinks that American soldiers are going to fight men like this, and wonders if their hearts freeze up when they get near, which just goes to show this story would be different if she'd just packed a gun in her suitcase. There is more dithering that is not running away. She hasn't heard the whistle in a week, but she hears it again that day. She is still not doing anything. Since she is so inert, the story gives up and comes back to her, sending the airman back to come stand under her window and go over all plans and subplans.
After a long time she heard soft footfalls on the grass below and guarded whispers growing gradually into distinct low tones. They were talking about a very particular piece of work that must be done on the morrow. Most careful directions were given by the airman. Certain stones in some bridge were to be drilled, certain other stones removed, so many pounds of dynamite were to be ready. Hilda could make nothing of it at first, but suddenly something was said that made her sure that it was the great stone railroad bridge out there in the valley that they were talking about, and she sat and listened with all her soul. Gradually she began to understand
BAHAHA! Oh, go on.
from their talk that a trainload of powder and munitions was expected to be sent over that bridge soon, en route to France, and that they were planning to blow up the whole thing- bridge, munitions and all. She could not make out, though she listened intently, what time this train was expected to pass, but gathered that it was a special train, and that the time would be announced by telephone later. She wondered at that, for she had nowhere seen a sign of a telephone since she came to the farm.
The visitor handed Schwarz a small piece of paper on which he said was a list of the other plots with their dates, and for which Schwarz was to prepare and collect and deal out the explosives. He told Schwarz to give it to a man named Eisel when he came. Then Schwarz stooped and lifted the big ring in the iron lid under the window , pulled up the lid, turned on his flash torch and disclosed a rude staircase down which the two men disappeared.
So Hilda sits up in her room realizing once again that she is in a nest of spies, and otherwise being a disgrace to Hill heroines. She hears the airman ordering to cover up the ground the next day, and she sees the farmhands and Swarz heading up toward the bridge in the predawn light with picks and shovels. Hilda was going to sneak away herself in the predawn, but now she has a revelation.
All the lethargy of her mind seemed gone. All the weariness and aching of her limbs were forgotten. The days of hard work and sharp words, the nights of tossing on her hard little bed were as if they had not been. She felt young and strong and alive. She was not afraid. Something dearer and bigger than herself was at stake. She was living in a house with spies; very well, she would be a spy, too! She would be an American spy!
Fortunately this realization gives her new depths of resource, or I'd be certain she'd die in minutes. She gets dressed and goes to hang her red scarf out the window. While she's doing that, she sees a note on the ground below. She can't go through the house to get it, because she'd be seen. She can't risk being seen outside, because it is suspicious.
She measured the distance between the window and the ground, examining the window ledge and the smooth side of the house. There was no possibility of climbing down and up again, for even if she reached the ground without a mishap how could she get up again? She canvassed the possibility of tying her bedclothes together and making a rope by which to descend, trying to pull herself up again, but that was too much of a risk. She might get caught midway and then there was no knowing what they might do to her; but certainly they would see to it that she had no further chance of showing her loyalty to the United States. No, she must not risk climbing down. Was 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 decides slinging umbrellas around would probably attract some sort of notice.
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 fishline 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.
See there? See? If I'd told you a day ago that she'd be MacGuyvering ways to pick up litter, you'd have laughed!
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:
Two steps forward, one step back. Whether we miss Bess or not, this is the heroine we have.
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.
She's been here about two weeks, with the original airman's departure somewhere around a week ago.
“You vill pe killed! I know you vill pe killed!” complained the woman and sat staring at the unhandsome selfish piece of flesh that was her son, with eyes of despair, and a hopeless droop to her mouth.
“Oh, rot! Shut up, can't you?” growled the son ungraciously. “It's bad enough to have to go without hearing you go on about it!” and he helped himself to another pork chop and allowed his mother to pour him another cup of coffee.
I kind of like these characters for the easy way in which they smack down all kinds of dramatic goings-on.
Now was as good a time as any to run away and tell somebody and stop this horror before it happened! She could slip unseen around the house and into the bushes on the other side of the track and make the station without Mrs. Schwarz seeing her. There usually was a train about this hour, and it mattered not which way it was going so she got away. She had only a dollar, but she could ride as far as that took her and then telephone to the President at Washington. Perhaps he would know something to do to save the bridge before it was too late. After that she surely could find some place to work until she earned enough to get to her mother. Anyway , she must try, for she could not let such a terrible thing happen and lives be lost perhaps as well as property, and not try to do something.
And she falls behind Bess again for her sheer inability to plan. She will run away! She will stay and write her uncle! She will ask for wages from the people imprisoning her! She will not run away, she has spying to do! And here we are at "she will run away" again.
suddenly a shadow darkened the doorway of the kitchen and her heart stood still with fright. Schwarz loomed before her, his face like a cyclone, his hands and garments grimed with clay, his trousers wet to the knees, his boots caked with red mud. “I have lost some valuable paper!” he roared. “I must find it before the man comes ad noondime. Haf you ben round the hauze dis morning, you?” and he pointed his finger at Hilda with a menacing jab.
Egad! An untimely development!
Hilda trembled and she felt the burning of the paper over her heart, but she shook her head and tried to look apathetic.
And that is how Hilda and the housewife both get shepherded around hunting papers during valuable running-away time. The housewife comes up with a shopping list and sends her out to give it to Mr. Swarz. She hears him shouting in the barn and follows his voice.
Then Hilda pushed open the door arid stepped inside holding up the paper, saying: “Is this the paper you are looking for, Mr. Schwarz?” She stopped, astonished. Schwarz was talking over the telephone! So this was where it was hidden! Down in the corner of a dusty, cluttered barn, behind an old reaper!
But Schwarz turned at her voice and hung up the receiver with a click of rage.
So he grabs the paper from her, shoving her out, looks at it, rips it up, and looks like he's going to hit her. Hilda takes to her heels and thus ends up back in the house washing dishes when she was going to run away half an hour ago. She is about to run away again, but this time the housewife is determined to get the day's work out of her and she fails. But then the workers come back and one says, in German, that the two o clock train will go down with the bridge.
Something gripped Hilda's heart like a vise. Her face turned white and her eyes turned wildly to the clock. She was glad the last dish was carried in and she was out in the kitchen where they could not see her. She felt her senses reeling as if she could not trust them. The two o'clock freight! And it was five minutes of one now!
So naturally she can't run off, because I guess there's no phone at the station and she'll never get word in time. She thinks that she has ten minutes before the train leaves the station with her whistle-blowing engineer on it, and, in a raging hurry to save his life, she grabs a broom, pretends she is going to sweep the porch, and beats it to the barn.
Her feet fairly had wings. When she reached the barn she clutched the door latch and pulled with all her might, but a grim brass lock with a tiny slit of a keyhole seemed to laugh in her face like the Germans she had left behind. She looked fearfully behind her. She heard a chair creak on the bare floor and someone rise and come to the door between the kitchen and dining room. She could see the shadow of skirts passing the door. In panic she slid around the side of the barn. Then the thought of the precious ten minutes going clutched at her throat. She must get into that barn!
Previously we all would have agreed she's way out of her depth.
There was a short ladder reaching up to a sloping roof, and above the roof was a window, it was high, but perhaps she could reach it from the roof. There was much hay bulging from the window, but surely she could force her way around the hay somehow and get down to that telephone!
So she gets her butt up the ladder, which is credited to her thinking of the engineer's strong arms holding her up as she climbs, as if not even her author really thought she could do it alone.
She gained the roof, but it was blistering hot, and hurt her hands and her knees as she crept breathlessly up, slipping back distressingly every now and then. It was only by shutting her eyes and saying to herself, “I must! I must! The time is going fast!” that she at last gained the wall which held the window, and slowly, cautiously drew herself upstanding on the hot slippery peak of the roof. Could she reach the window ledge? It was high, but she put her slender hands bravely on the sill and struggled wildly in her desperation. There was one awful moment when she thought she was going to slip and fall down the roof again, and then a second when she gained a hold, and, panting, stayed a moment, but at last she struggled to the sill. There was no time to wait and gain her breath and be glad. She must creep through the hay and find a way out. She had dropped inside without thinking that perhaps there was no floor beneath her, but mercifully found it not too far for safety. A few feet from the window she found another ladder leading down into the barn, and she clambered down and stood in the darkness groping about to find the telephone.
There! She did something! She did A Thing! It involved thoughtlessly hopping through a window into darkness and she's lucky she didn't land on the rusty old reaper, but that is credited completely to her with no ethereal boyfriends involved.
It seemed ages before a voice answered her and she could ask for the railroad station at the Junction. More eons passed before another voice responded and she could ask if she might speak to Dan Stevens, engineer on No. 5 Freight, quick!
This leads to people on the other end shouting back and forth, and Mrs. Swarz back in the kitchen shouting for her. Hilda wishes she'd told the operator her dire news first, and panics quietly that Mr. Swarz might come looking for her.
“This is Hilda Lessing, the girl whose life you saved. I've found out they are going to blow up your train today, and the big bridge at Platt's Crossing. You mustn't take your train over the bridge! It's your train they're after because you've got some ammunition on board, they think.”
Plots! Sabotage! Murder!
“Not till everything's all safe, little girl, don't you worry! I'll have it investigated. Say, where are you? How can I get to talk to you again? I've got to know more about this. I guess you must have found those spies I told you about.”
“Yes,” said Hilda in a low, frightened voice, “but I can't stay to talk for I hear them coming. I don't think there is any way you could see me. I never get any time off, and they won't let me mail letters. They read them all.”
“H'm. You don't say! Well, I'll find a way to get a letter to you, don't you be afraid. You be looking for it. And you might write me one and have it ready to slip to me on the sly in a hurry. Have it with you all the time. I've got to know about this. You know, if this turns out to be real you have done a big thing for your country. Kid! It's great! I shan't forget.”
This is very perplexing. After having gone to all this trouble to establish that sleeper agents and spy rings are hidden all over the country, ready to blow up bridges, destroy trains, and enslave young girls into domestic labor, Grace's suggested response is: write a letter. No police escort out, no heroic rescue, just letters. She tells him she hears someone coming and she has to go, and she hangs up and takes the ladder toward the loft.
But the ladder was slippery, and her feet and hands were unaccustomed. Schwarz was at the very door, calling back some directions to Heinrich and she was only two-thirds up. She began to tremble and her head swain dizzily. Everything went black before her and for a second she thought she was losing consciousness. Almost her slender hands let go their hold. Then like a whisper of an echo came the words she had scarcely been conscious of hearing as she hung up the receiver, “Take care of yourself, kid! You've been great.” Had he said it or had she only imagined it? Somehow the very thought of those ringing kindly words put heart of life into her, and stimulated her failing sense. With new vigor she grasped the rungs and pulled herself up the last long reach, drawing her body safely out of sight behind the hay, just as Schwarz turned the passkey in the lock and swung open the door.
And that's the second time she's needed an astral boost to climb a ladder. Hilda lies still in the loft while Swarz moves below, unwilling to try for the second ladder out.
Lying in that cramped position Hilda presently became aware that something harder than hay was under and all about her. Sharp hard corners were sticking into her thin shoulders, and her hand was lying against something smooth and cold that struck a chill through her warm flesh.
So once she's aware of this, she sees Swarz working what seems to be a lot of Morse code wires or a flashing telegraph or something, after which he calls, I don't know, Germany and gets the list on the paper read out to him, which nicely undoes Hilda's morning fishing expedition. He leaves, Hilda realizes the funny metal things around her were guns. There is indeed an uprising being planned!
She must try and listen and get some evidence to show. Perhaps the paper she had- but how would that tell the Government any more than it told her? She must find a way to get hold of some papers, or letters. The thought was revolting, for her mother had always brought her up to let other people's things alone, but the country was at stake, and was she not a loyal American?
So having done all this,
To that end, if possible, she must make her way at once back into the Schwarz kitchen and wash those dishes, making the best story for Mrs. Schwarz that she could. She must go at once and work hard and well so that they would approve of her and not suspect her of being a spy against them.
She FREAKING DECIDES TO GO BACK AND WORK HARD SOME MORE. She couldn't plan a tea party. So she starts to climb out of the window, realizes three farm hands and Swarz are out there on the other side of the barn, and drops back in a silent, horrified heap, expecting all kinds of terrible tortures. And then, naturally, the phone starts ringing.
About the same time, from a city twenty miles beyond Platt's Crossing a group of men, several of them belonging to the Secret Service, tumbled hurriedly on a special train, with every track cleared ahead of them, and sped as fast as steam could carry them toward the bridge that spanned the stream at Platt's Crossing.
Those Secret Service agents will never amount to a damn thing. I like to imagine they're just filling out paperwork the whole time, never pausing to look up or acknowledge anything. The engineer has called his father, who is, of course, president of the railroad, and arranged for another train to take the priority top-secret stuff on to its destination, just in case something should go wrong. The special train lets its people out silently, and they go search for sabotage. Meanwhile, Hilda realizes:
Schwarz had not locked that door with a key when he went out of the barn! It must, have locked itself automatically with a night latch when he closed the door! Why couldn't she then open it from the inside? Why couldn't she get out now, quickly, before he came? There might not he another chance for hours.
She checks out the window, opens the door a crack to check that's safe, and breezes out without having to deal with any more ladder-climbing shenanigans. Better yet, the kitchen is clear when she gets in. She barely makes it in before Swarz goes to the barn to get the phone, and promptly goes back to work double time to make it look like she's been there for a while. Hilda frets that maybe no one will find proof and she will be arrested. Everyone muddles around for a bit expecting a trainwreck, but the train just sweeps on through. The men rage. Hilda secretly rejoices. This should all be good stuff, but it's still so fresh off the "I must escape! I must stay here and labor!" split of choices, and so confused about how reporting crimes works, that the reader just skims it impatiently. That said, in a post 9/11 world, it's wonderful to think how anyone could be so muddled about how reporting terrorism works.
Swarz and his men cover the ground under Hilda's window and plant plants. Somehow, this leads to, once again, the airman dropping everything and running out to stand under Hilda's window again to talk about a suitcase:
“Well, we cannot afford to run any risks with that. I think you had better take it over to Adolph tomorrow. You know that contains a lot of incriminating evidence against us. If that should be found we would all be in trouble. This is no place for it now, with suspicion turning this way. That bridge is guarded night and day, and no one can stir in this neighborhood without being watched for a while. You must not even look in that direction. You must go about your business as if you were nothing but farmers, see? So you had better take suitcase over to Adolph as soon as possible. There is no telling but they might come and search your house, and it won't do to have it around. You know all the drawings and sketches of the munitions factories are there, and the map with the ports and big railroad bridges marked, besides the wireless code, and those letters from the Prince. If you should be caught with those it would be all up with you! They would search the place and find the wireless, and then everybody concerned would be under suspicion and very likely arrested.”
I don't know why, at this point, he doesn't just call up the Police Commissioner or someone for these little nighttime chats. Well. Proof we wanted, and proof we now have; the only question is how to get it. We also learn the airman drove this time, and he got lost coming from his car, as if we didn't need any more reasons to think he was a gigantic twerp. You know who else is a gigantic twerp?
But, oh, what a terrible undertaking for an honest girl who had never laid a finger on other people's property! How like a thief she would feel! And what could she do with it if she got it? The young engineer had suggested the Government at Washington; that meant the President, and how could she get it to him without money?
Oh, well, it's a step further in her planning than she's made it so far. She writes a runaway note to remove any suspicions that she fled with evidence, packs her suitcase, realizes she can substitute her suitcase for the other, and then goes down to keep up her usual appearance.
Suddenly, in the midst of her tense thoughts, she became conscious of a figure standing in front of the door, down by the pump; a barefoot boy with an old felt hat on the back of his head. He must have appeared around the corner of the house, and Mrs. Schwarz seemed not yet aware of his presence. Hilda stopped wiping the dish she had in hand to stare at him, but the boy, without an instant's hesitation, lifted a finger to his lips in a swift motion of warning and winked one eye solemnly at her, at the same time putting his hand in his trousers pocket and displaying the corner of a crumpled envelope.
So it appears she is not the only terrible planner. Having found a nest of murdering spies, the engineer sends a small child to run messages in and out. He deserves a note saying "THEY WILL MURDER ME AT DAWN" but what he gets is a moderately useful letter from Hilda. He passes on a railroad-pass, some money, and his mother's address just in case his letter is intercepted. Hilda pins the whole affair inside her dress. Since Grace already mentioned she pinned some other small things in her skirt, it must be getting to be like wearing a gown of hedgehogs. However, she's on a roll. She has suitcases to substitute. She fishes the first out without disturbing anything else.
She turned it about to slip it against the wall where she usually kept her own, and noticed the letters on the end, C. E. R., painted in black. Seizing her pen and the bottle of ink she turned her own suitcase up on end beside the other and copied them; then quickly slipping the stolen one against the wall by the chair she opened her door, listened a moment, and ventured across the hall again.
She barely gets out before Mrs. Swarz comes upstairs and demands to know why the beds aren't made, to which she pretends to be crying and worried about her mother.
The woman turned and went into her own room, but the sound of the closing door was suddenly drowned in the distant rumble of the eleven o'clock train coming on through the cut beyond the station. Hilda, knowing that her time had come if ever, sped to her own room, grabbed the stolen suitcase, with her hat and coat, and rushed down the stairs.
She flings her goodbye note on the table and runs for it. She is chased! By several men! The people on the train think that they're all trying to stop it, and the conductor won't stop because he thinks they'll just hold him up with details and special demands.
On came Hilda, her second wind coming to her now and her head growing cooler with her danger. There was no turning back for her. She had gone too far. She must make that train or die under its wheels. She had an innate sense that such a death would be far preferable to what she would meet if she failed and fell into the hands of the Germans.
She was but a car's length from the platform now, but the train was under good headway and going faster all the time. She looked with calculating eye, coming straight on with bounds like a young deer, and marking well the rear platform of the next to the last car. One more spring, a step or two alongside, and she had caught the handrail with one hand and swung to the lower step, the suitcase in the other hand flung ahead up to the platform...
The dark blue jacket which had been hanging in her left hand slipped away when she took hold of the rail, quivered for an instant against the car and then shivered down under the rails and lay a crumpled, dusty ruin where the girl would have lain if she had missed her footing; but Hilda huddled on the lower step, clinging still to her suitcase and the handrail, panting and dazed from the shock of alighting.
Huzzah! It was a Good Thing and I'll take it. The conductor stopped the train for a minute to yell at her, but when he sees she's safe, he sends it on its way again and Swarz and Co. are left behind waving farm implements. Hilda realizes she's lost her hat and jacket. You know what time it is.
She set about making herself tidy. She could see in the glass of the window that her hair was rumpled, and she smoothed the braids and bound them trimly about her well-shaped head again. She leaned down and rubbed the thick mud from her shoes with a newspaper someone had left on the floor. She set the suitcase well inside the seat, changing around the end that bore the lettering so no one could see it, and spread her scant gingham skirts protectingly over it. Then she looked down at her apron and decided to remove it. She rolled it up neatly, pinning the ends of the belt about the bundle, and realized that she had done all that was possible toward bettering her appearance.
The reflection of her bare head in the window glass troubled her. If she only had a hat! It looked so queer to go travelling bareheaded. Of course, some people did have their hats off now, but when she reached her destination how noticeable she would be! She looked wistfully down the aisle at a girl with a long black braid of hair hanging down her back and a little red and black swagger cap tilted on one side of her head. That was a simple little hat. If she only had something she could make one in a few minutes, but she was without a thing that could help! Nothing but a strange, locked suitcase, supposedly filled with dreadful papers, and an old brown denim kitchen apron rolled up and fastened with two pins! She couldn't very well make a hat out of an apron and two pins. Stay! Couldn't she? How was it she used to fold bits of kindergarten papers and make paper caps for her brother when he was little? Could she remember the trick of it?
She unrolled the apron and began her task, folding it this way and that, experimenting a little, and presently, sure enough, she had a little brown denim cocked hat, the point of which she folded over to one side and slipped under a fold, pinning it firmly. She tucked the apron strings smoothly inside, folding them precisely and pinning them with the other pin. It wasn't a wonderful hat, of course, but it would pass for a hat at a casual glance, and it was really quite becoming to her pretty face when she ventured to fit it on her head.
Grace is very, very proud of this apron-to-hat business and will mention it many more times.
The spy in his plane that touched down in the dead of night just took off in broad daylight, thus alerting any neighbors that the strange thrumming sound is something they should all gawk at. Hilda just showed a lot of interest and recognition. Luckily, the housewife has other concerns.
“It iss my poy!” she wailed into her apron. “They vill send him avay to var! My only poy! Und there iss no need. He iss too young, und I know he vill get into drubble. He vas exempt. Ve got him exempt on accound of the farm, und now the orders haf come from the Fatherland, und he must go!”
“But what has the Fatherland got to do with him?” asked Hilda puzzled. “This is America. We are Americans. Why don't you tell the Fatherland you don't want him to go?”
Hilda, sweetie, you need to pick up your game yesterday. I told the readers you were all competent and stuff, and look at this mess. What are you doing here? Fortunately, the housewife is called away by her husband. Hilda reflects more on how to get out of there and, since she is alone in the house, writes a letter to her Uncle Otto and rushes down to the letter box to drop it in. She sees faces watching her on the way back, and is confronted about where she's been.
“I've just been down to mail a letter that I wanted to have go this morning. It didn't take me a minute. I mustn't trouble you every time I have a letter to mail,” she explained.
“You don't go down to that station mitout permission! You onderstandt?” he thundered.
Hey, guys, I think he might be German!
There was something belligerent in Schwarz's attitude as he entered the kitchen and strode over to the stove. In his hand he carried an open letter and, he gave her a vicious look as he opened the stove lid and stuffed the letter in, shutting down the lid again and striding out.
She checks that it was her letter, sees her writing before it burns, and decides he must have a station-master's key. She also reflects that it's a federal offense to destroy other people's mail, but fortunately she realizes that he does not care.
So Hilda starts to make plans for flight, which at least makes sense because she's given up on earning their hearts with her labor. She is slowed down by her lack of money. For whatever reason, probably because Grace really likes workers who earn their daily bread, she approaches the Swarzes about her wages:
Sometimes, as she was going about her work, she would try to plan how little she could get along with, and once she summoned courage to ask Mrs. Schwarz how much she was earning a week, but the woman only stared with an ugly laugh and said: “I know nodding about it. Zumetimes I think you do nod earn your salt.”
Followed by:
“Vages!” He roared . “I pay you no vages! It iss enough that I give you a good home. You should pe thankful for that! You are not worth vages!” Hilda, with flaming cheeks, opened her mouth to protest, to say that Uncle Otto had told her there would be good wages, but when she looked into the fierce, cunning eyes of the man, her very soul quaked. Something that would have protested two weeks before had crumpled up within her and she saw herself precipitately retiring to the kitchen from the roaring of his angry tongue.
Then she goes to bed she thinks that American soldiers are going to fight men like this, and wonders if their hearts freeze up when they get near, which just goes to show this story would be different if she'd just packed a gun in her suitcase. There is more dithering that is not running away. She hasn't heard the whistle in a week, but she hears it again that day. She is still not doing anything. Since she is so inert, the story gives up and comes back to her, sending the airman back to come stand under her window and go over all plans and subplans.
After a long time she heard soft footfalls on the grass below and guarded whispers growing gradually into distinct low tones. They were talking about a very particular piece of work that must be done on the morrow. Most careful directions were given by the airman. Certain stones in some bridge were to be drilled, certain other stones removed, so many pounds of dynamite were to be ready. Hilda could make nothing of it at first, but suddenly something was said that made her sure that it was the great stone railroad bridge out there in the valley that they were talking about, and she sat and listened with all her soul. Gradually she began to understand
BAHAHA! Oh, go on.
from their talk that a trainload of powder and munitions was expected to be sent over that bridge soon, en route to France, and that they were planning to blow up the whole thing- bridge, munitions and all. She could not make out, though she listened intently, what time this train was expected to pass, but gathered that it was a special train, and that the time would be announced by telephone later. She wondered at that, for she had nowhere seen a sign of a telephone since she came to the farm.
The visitor handed Schwarz a small piece of paper on which he said was a list of the other plots with their dates, and for which Schwarz was to prepare and collect and deal out the explosives. He told Schwarz to give it to a man named Eisel when he came. Then Schwarz stooped and lifted the big ring in the iron lid under the window , pulled up the lid, turned on his flash torch and disclosed a rude staircase down which the two men disappeared.
So Hilda sits up in her room realizing once again that she is in a nest of spies, and otherwise being a disgrace to Hill heroines. She hears the airman ordering to cover up the ground the next day, and she sees the farmhands and Swarz heading up toward the bridge in the predawn light with picks and shovels. Hilda was going to sneak away herself in the predawn, but now she has a revelation.
All the lethargy of her mind seemed gone. All the weariness and aching of her limbs were forgotten. The days of hard work and sharp words, the nights of tossing on her hard little bed were as if they had not been. She felt young and strong and alive. She was not afraid. Something dearer and bigger than herself was at stake. She was living in a house with spies; very well, she would be a spy, too! She would be an American spy!
Fortunately this realization gives her new depths of resource, or I'd be certain she'd die in minutes. She gets dressed and goes to hang her red scarf out the window. While she's doing that, she sees a note on the ground below. She can't go through the house to get it, because she'd be seen. She can't risk being seen outside, because it is suspicious.
She measured the distance between the window and the ground, examining the window ledge and the smooth side of the house. There was no possibility of climbing down and up again, for even if she reached the ground without a mishap how could she get up again? She canvassed the possibility of tying her bedclothes together and making a rope by which to descend, trying to pull herself up again, but that was too much of a risk. She might get caught midway and then there was no knowing what they might do to her; but certainly they would see to it that she had no further chance of showing her loyalty to the United States. No, she must not risk climbing down. Was 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 decides slinging umbrellas around would probably attract some sort of notice.
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 fishline 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.
See there? See? If I'd told you a day ago that she'd be MacGuyvering ways to pick up litter, you'd have laughed!
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:
Two steps forward, one step back. Whether we miss Bess or not, this is the heroine we have.
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.
She's been here about two weeks, with the original airman's departure somewhere around a week ago.
“You vill pe killed! I know you vill pe killed!” complained the woman and sat staring at the unhandsome selfish piece of flesh that was her son, with eyes of despair, and a hopeless droop to her mouth.
“Oh, rot! Shut up, can't you?” growled the son ungraciously. “It's bad enough to have to go without hearing you go on about it!” and he helped himself to another pork chop and allowed his mother to pour him another cup of coffee.
I kind of like these characters for the easy way in which they smack down all kinds of dramatic goings-on.
Now was as good a time as any to run away and tell somebody and stop this horror before it happened! She could slip unseen around the house and into the bushes on the other side of the track and make the station without Mrs. Schwarz seeing her. There usually was a train about this hour, and it mattered not which way it was going so she got away. She had only a dollar, but she could ride as far as that took her and then telephone to the President at Washington. Perhaps he would know something to do to save the bridge before it was too late. After that she surely could find some place to work until she earned enough to get to her mother. Anyway , she must try, for she could not let such a terrible thing happen and lives be lost perhaps as well as property, and not try to do something.
And she falls behind Bess again for her sheer inability to plan. She will run away! She will stay and write her uncle! She will ask for wages from the people imprisoning her! She will not run away, she has spying to do! And here we are at "she will run away" again.
suddenly a shadow darkened the doorway of the kitchen and her heart stood still with fright. Schwarz loomed before her, his face like a cyclone, his hands and garments grimed with clay, his trousers wet to the knees, his boots caked with red mud. “I have lost some valuable paper!” he roared. “I must find it before the man comes ad noondime. Haf you ben round the hauze dis morning, you?” and he pointed his finger at Hilda with a menacing jab.
Egad! An untimely development!
Hilda trembled and she felt the burning of the paper over her heart, but she shook her head and tried to look apathetic.
And that is how Hilda and the housewife both get shepherded around hunting papers during valuable running-away time. The housewife comes up with a shopping list and sends her out to give it to Mr. Swarz. She hears him shouting in the barn and follows his voice.
Then Hilda pushed open the door arid stepped inside holding up the paper, saying: “Is this the paper you are looking for, Mr. Schwarz?” She stopped, astonished. Schwarz was talking over the telephone! So this was where it was hidden! Down in the corner of a dusty, cluttered barn, behind an old reaper!
But Schwarz turned at her voice and hung up the receiver with a click of rage.
So he grabs the paper from her, shoving her out, looks at it, rips it up, and looks like he's going to hit her. Hilda takes to her heels and thus ends up back in the house washing dishes when she was going to run away half an hour ago. She is about to run away again, but this time the housewife is determined to get the day's work out of her and she fails. But then the workers come back and one says, in German, that the two o clock train will go down with the bridge.
Something gripped Hilda's heart like a vise. Her face turned white and her eyes turned wildly to the clock. She was glad the last dish was carried in and she was out in the kitchen where they could not see her. She felt her senses reeling as if she could not trust them. The two o'clock freight! And it was five minutes of one now!
So naturally she can't run off, because I guess there's no phone at the station and she'll never get word in time. She thinks that she has ten minutes before the train leaves the station with her whistle-blowing engineer on it, and, in a raging hurry to save his life, she grabs a broom, pretends she is going to sweep the porch, and beats it to the barn.
Her feet fairly had wings. When she reached the barn she clutched the door latch and pulled with all her might, but a grim brass lock with a tiny slit of a keyhole seemed to laugh in her face like the Germans she had left behind. She looked fearfully behind her. She heard a chair creak on the bare floor and someone rise and come to the door between the kitchen and dining room. She could see the shadow of skirts passing the door. In panic she slid around the side of the barn. Then the thought of the precious ten minutes going clutched at her throat. She must get into that barn!
Previously we all would have agreed she's way out of her depth.
There was a short ladder reaching up to a sloping roof, and above the roof was a window, it was high, but perhaps she could reach it from the roof. There was much hay bulging from the window, but surely she could force her way around the hay somehow and get down to that telephone!
So she gets her butt up the ladder, which is credited to her thinking of the engineer's strong arms holding her up as she climbs, as if not even her author really thought she could do it alone.
She gained the roof, but it was blistering hot, and hurt her hands and her knees as she crept breathlessly up, slipping back distressingly every now and then. It was only by shutting her eyes and saying to herself, “I must! I must! The time is going fast!” that she at last gained the wall which held the window, and slowly, cautiously drew herself upstanding on the hot slippery peak of the roof. Could she reach the window ledge? It was high, but she put her slender hands bravely on the sill and struggled wildly in her desperation. There was one awful moment when she thought she was going to slip and fall down the roof again, and then a second when she gained a hold, and, panting, stayed a moment, but at last she struggled to the sill. There was no time to wait and gain her breath and be glad. She must creep through the hay and find a way out. She had dropped inside without thinking that perhaps there was no floor beneath her, but mercifully found it not too far for safety. A few feet from the window she found another ladder leading down into the barn, and she clambered down and stood in the darkness groping about to find the telephone.
There! She did something! She did A Thing! It involved thoughtlessly hopping through a window into darkness and she's lucky she didn't land on the rusty old reaper, but that is credited completely to her with no ethereal boyfriends involved.
It seemed ages before a voice answered her and she could ask for the railroad station at the Junction. More eons passed before another voice responded and she could ask if she might speak to Dan Stevens, engineer on No. 5 Freight, quick!
This leads to people on the other end shouting back and forth, and Mrs. Swarz back in the kitchen shouting for her. Hilda wishes she'd told the operator her dire news first, and panics quietly that Mr. Swarz might come looking for her.
“This is Hilda Lessing, the girl whose life you saved. I've found out they are going to blow up your train today, and the big bridge at Platt's Crossing. You mustn't take your train over the bridge! It's your train they're after because you've got some ammunition on board, they think.”
Plots! Sabotage! Murder!
“Not till everything's all safe, little girl, don't you worry! I'll have it investigated. Say, where are you? How can I get to talk to you again? I've got to know more about this. I guess you must have found those spies I told you about.”
“Yes,” said Hilda in a low, frightened voice, “but I can't stay to talk for I hear them coming. I don't think there is any way you could see me. I never get any time off, and they won't let me mail letters. They read them all.”
“H'm. You don't say! Well, I'll find a way to get a letter to you, don't you be afraid. You be looking for it. And you might write me one and have it ready to slip to me on the sly in a hurry. Have it with you all the time. I've got to know about this. You know, if this turns out to be real you have done a big thing for your country. Kid! It's great! I shan't forget.”
This is very perplexing. After having gone to all this trouble to establish that sleeper agents and spy rings are hidden all over the country, ready to blow up bridges, destroy trains, and enslave young girls into domestic labor, Grace's suggested response is: write a letter. No police escort out, no heroic rescue, just letters. She tells him she hears someone coming and she has to go, and she hangs up and takes the ladder toward the loft.
But the ladder was slippery, and her feet and hands were unaccustomed. Schwarz was at the very door, calling back some directions to Heinrich and she was only two-thirds up. She began to tremble and her head swain dizzily. Everything went black before her and for a second she thought she was losing consciousness. Almost her slender hands let go their hold. Then like a whisper of an echo came the words she had scarcely been conscious of hearing as she hung up the receiver, “Take care of yourself, kid! You've been great.” Had he said it or had she only imagined it? Somehow the very thought of those ringing kindly words put heart of life into her, and stimulated her failing sense. With new vigor she grasped the rungs and pulled herself up the last long reach, drawing her body safely out of sight behind the hay, just as Schwarz turned the passkey in the lock and swung open the door.
And that's the second time she's needed an astral boost to climb a ladder. Hilda lies still in the loft while Swarz moves below, unwilling to try for the second ladder out.
Lying in that cramped position Hilda presently became aware that something harder than hay was under and all about her. Sharp hard corners were sticking into her thin shoulders, and her hand was lying against something smooth and cold that struck a chill through her warm flesh.
So once she's aware of this, she sees Swarz working what seems to be a lot of Morse code wires or a flashing telegraph or something, after which he calls, I don't know, Germany and gets the list on the paper read out to him, which nicely undoes Hilda's morning fishing expedition. He leaves, Hilda realizes the funny metal things around her were guns. There is indeed an uprising being planned!
She must try and listen and get some evidence to show. Perhaps the paper she had- but how would that tell the Government any more than it told her? She must find a way to get hold of some papers, or letters. The thought was revolting, for her mother had always brought her up to let other people's things alone, but the country was at stake, and was she not a loyal American?
So having done all this,
To that end, if possible, she must make her way at once back into the Schwarz kitchen and wash those dishes, making the best story for Mrs. Schwarz that she could. She must go at once and work hard and well so that they would approve of her and not suspect her of being a spy against them.
She FREAKING DECIDES TO GO BACK AND WORK HARD SOME MORE. She couldn't plan a tea party. So she starts to climb out of the window, realizes three farm hands and Swarz are out there on the other side of the barn, and drops back in a silent, horrified heap, expecting all kinds of terrible tortures. And then, naturally, the phone starts ringing.
About the same time, from a city twenty miles beyond Platt's Crossing a group of men, several of them belonging to the Secret Service, tumbled hurriedly on a special train, with every track cleared ahead of them, and sped as fast as steam could carry them toward the bridge that spanned the stream at Platt's Crossing.
Those Secret Service agents will never amount to a damn thing. I like to imagine they're just filling out paperwork the whole time, never pausing to look up or acknowledge anything. The engineer has called his father, who is, of course, president of the railroad, and arranged for another train to take the priority top-secret stuff on to its destination, just in case something should go wrong. The special train lets its people out silently, and they go search for sabotage. Meanwhile, Hilda realizes:
Schwarz had not locked that door with a key when he went out of the barn! It must, have locked itself automatically with a night latch when he closed the door! Why couldn't she then open it from the inside? Why couldn't she get out now, quickly, before he came? There might not he another chance for hours.
She checks out the window, opens the door a crack to check that's safe, and breezes out without having to deal with any more ladder-climbing shenanigans. Better yet, the kitchen is clear when she gets in. She barely makes it in before Swarz goes to the barn to get the phone, and promptly goes back to work double time to make it look like she's been there for a while. Hilda frets that maybe no one will find proof and she will be arrested. Everyone muddles around for a bit expecting a trainwreck, but the train just sweeps on through. The men rage. Hilda secretly rejoices. This should all be good stuff, but it's still so fresh off the "I must escape! I must stay here and labor!" split of choices, and so confused about how reporting crimes works, that the reader just skims it impatiently. That said, in a post 9/11 world, it's wonderful to think how anyone could be so muddled about how reporting terrorism works.
Swarz and his men cover the ground under Hilda's window and plant plants. Somehow, this leads to, once again, the airman dropping everything and running out to stand under Hilda's window again to talk about a suitcase:
“Well, we cannot afford to run any risks with that. I think you had better take it over to Adolph tomorrow. You know that contains a lot of incriminating evidence against us. If that should be found we would all be in trouble. This is no place for it now, with suspicion turning this way. That bridge is guarded night and day, and no one can stir in this neighborhood without being watched for a while. You must not even look in that direction. You must go about your business as if you were nothing but farmers, see? So you had better take suitcase over to Adolph as soon as possible. There is no telling but they might come and search your house, and it won't do to have it around. You know all the drawings and sketches of the munitions factories are there, and the map with the ports and big railroad bridges marked, besides the wireless code, and those letters from the Prince. If you should be caught with those it would be all up with you! They would search the place and find the wireless, and then everybody concerned would be under suspicion and very likely arrested.”
I don't know why, at this point, he doesn't just call up the Police Commissioner or someone for these little nighttime chats. Well. Proof we wanted, and proof we now have; the only question is how to get it. We also learn the airman drove this time, and he got lost coming from his car, as if we didn't need any more reasons to think he was a gigantic twerp. You know who else is a gigantic twerp?
But, oh, what a terrible undertaking for an honest girl who had never laid a finger on other people's property! How like a thief she would feel! And what could she do with it if she got it? The young engineer had suggested the Government at Washington; that meant the President, and how could she get it to him without money?
Oh, well, it's a step further in her planning than she's made it so far. She writes a runaway note to remove any suspicions that she fled with evidence, packs her suitcase, realizes she can substitute her suitcase for the other, and then goes down to keep up her usual appearance.
Suddenly, in the midst of her tense thoughts, she became conscious of a figure standing in front of the door, down by the pump; a barefoot boy with an old felt hat on the back of his head. He must have appeared around the corner of the house, and Mrs. Schwarz seemed not yet aware of his presence. Hilda stopped wiping the dish she had in hand to stare at him, but the boy, without an instant's hesitation, lifted a finger to his lips in a swift motion of warning and winked one eye solemnly at her, at the same time putting his hand in his trousers pocket and displaying the corner of a crumpled envelope.
So it appears she is not the only terrible planner. Having found a nest of murdering spies, the engineer sends a small child to run messages in and out. He deserves a note saying "THEY WILL MURDER ME AT DAWN" but what he gets is a moderately useful letter from Hilda. He passes on a railroad-pass, some money, and his mother's address just in case his letter is intercepted. Hilda pins the whole affair inside her dress. Since Grace already mentioned she pinned some other small things in her skirt, it must be getting to be like wearing a gown of hedgehogs. However, she's on a roll. She has suitcases to substitute. She fishes the first out without disturbing anything else.
She turned it about to slip it against the wall where she usually kept her own, and noticed the letters on the end, C. E. R., painted in black. Seizing her pen and the bottle of ink she turned her own suitcase up on end beside the other and copied them; then quickly slipping the stolen one against the wall by the chair she opened her door, listened a moment, and ventured across the hall again.
She barely gets out before Mrs. Swarz comes upstairs and demands to know why the beds aren't made, to which she pretends to be crying and worried about her mother.
The woman turned and went into her own room, but the sound of the closing door was suddenly drowned in the distant rumble of the eleven o'clock train coming on through the cut beyond the station. Hilda, knowing that her time had come if ever, sped to her own room, grabbed the stolen suitcase, with her hat and coat, and rushed down the stairs.
She flings her goodbye note on the table and runs for it. She is chased! By several men! The people on the train think that they're all trying to stop it, and the conductor won't stop because he thinks they'll just hold him up with details and special demands.
On came Hilda, her second wind coming to her now and her head growing cooler with her danger. There was no turning back for her. She had gone too far. She must make that train or die under its wheels. She had an innate sense that such a death would be far preferable to what she would meet if she failed and fell into the hands of the Germans.
She was but a car's length from the platform now, but the train was under good headway and going faster all the time. She looked with calculating eye, coming straight on with bounds like a young deer, and marking well the rear platform of the next to the last car. One more spring, a step or two alongside, and she had caught the handrail with one hand and swung to the lower step, the suitcase in the other hand flung ahead up to the platform...
The dark blue jacket which had been hanging in her left hand slipped away when she took hold of the rail, quivered for an instant against the car and then shivered down under the rails and lay a crumpled, dusty ruin where the girl would have lain if she had missed her footing; but Hilda huddled on the lower step, clinging still to her suitcase and the handrail, panting and dazed from the shock of alighting.
Huzzah! It was a Good Thing and I'll take it. The conductor stopped the train for a minute to yell at her, but when he sees she's safe, he sends it on its way again and Swarz and Co. are left behind waving farm implements. Hilda realizes she's lost her hat and jacket. You know what time it is.
She set about making herself tidy. She could see in the glass of the window that her hair was rumpled, and she smoothed the braids and bound them trimly about her well-shaped head again. She leaned down and rubbed the thick mud from her shoes with a newspaper someone had left on the floor. She set the suitcase well inside the seat, changing around the end that bore the lettering so no one could see it, and spread her scant gingham skirts protectingly over it. Then she looked down at her apron and decided to remove it. She rolled it up neatly, pinning the ends of the belt about the bundle, and realized that she had done all that was possible toward bettering her appearance.
The reflection of her bare head in the window glass troubled her. If she only had a hat! It looked so queer to go travelling bareheaded. Of course, some people did have their hats off now, but when she reached her destination how noticeable she would be! She looked wistfully down the aisle at a girl with a long black braid of hair hanging down her back and a little red and black swagger cap tilted on one side of her head. That was a simple little hat. If she only had something she could make one in a few minutes, but she was without a thing that could help! Nothing but a strange, locked suitcase, supposedly filled with dreadful papers, and an old brown denim kitchen apron rolled up and fastened with two pins! She couldn't very well make a hat out of an apron and two pins. Stay! Couldn't she? How was it she used to fold bits of kindergarten papers and make paper caps for her brother when he was little? Could she remember the trick of it?
She unrolled the apron and began her task, folding it this way and that, experimenting a little, and presently, sure enough, she had a little brown denim cocked hat, the point of which she folded over to one side and slipped under a fold, pinning it firmly. She tucked the apron strings smoothly inside, folding them precisely and pinning them with the other pin. It wasn't a wonderful hat, of course, but it would pass for a hat at a casual glance, and it was really quite becoming to her pretty face when she ventured to fit it on her head.
Grace is very, very proud of this apron-to-hat business and will mention it many more times.