GLH: The Red Signal. Only Even More of It Than Before.
Right. Having gone to all this trouble to arrange her wardrobe, Hilda disarranges it in the most stunning move yet of any GLH heroine. Ready?
The conductor was coming back, and Hilda hastened to fumble in her blouse and bring out her precious pass.
How she does this and what it looks like I leave to the reader's imagination. But GLH has already given us as close to Bondish spy/action sequences as she dares tread. Now it is time to bask in a new kind of intrigue: the glamorous lives of people who travel on railroad passes. Are you ready?
“Mighty queer for a girl like that to get on at that station. I never saw her around there before, did you? She doesn't look like the rest of that crew. She's travelling on a pass!”
The brakeman started. “A pass!” he cast a quick, apprising glance down the car again.
Fascinating! Let us all look once more on the possessor of this magnificent thing! But:
He had noticed her pretty face and graceful movements and was nothing loath to have a word with her, but brakemen didn't make a practice of conversing with persons who travelled on passes.
Alas, the presence of the pass sets them firmly apart. It's like an actual, physical class barrier in convenient card form.
Nevertheless, he hovered near Hilda's seat all the way to Philadelphia and was most assiduous about opening and shutting windows when they went through a tunnel, eyeing her appreciatively whenever he passed through the car, which was often.
I half-expected her to whip out the pass and ward him off, like a priest absent-mindedly banishing a lesser vampire thrall. Instead, Hilda is considering her own nemesis: the law.
Wait, what?
She sat with unseeing eyes upon the passing landscape, trying to make herself realize that she was a thief running away from the law, but somehow she could not make it seem real. All the same, being a city-bred girl and knowing the swift ways of modern justice, she knew that Schwarz would probably pursue her with every means at his command, especially if he discovered the loss of his precious suitcase before her own passed out of his keeping.
"Officers! Arrest her! She has stolen every incriminating document I own!"
She would go into the big station and perhaps buy a hat and coat before going to Washington.
Grace really loves to mention that she is wearing a little brown denim trench cap. From a folded apron. Never mind the trains, airplanes, spies, and sabotaged bridges. I think she may have written this book entirely for a scene where a heroine is forced to fold an apron into a hat. Hilda finds out how to get to a train going to Washington and beetles onto it.
Up at the station gates a stout man with a red face and blonde hair was studying each passenger who came through with keen, anxious gaze, and a German woman with a little shawl around her shoulders questioned the conductor as he came up to the gate about a girl who had got on at Platt's Crossing with a suitcase. The conductor told her the girl had been on the train. The brakeman asserted that he was sure of that; she better look in the waiting-room.
She has barely dodged SPIES. More SPIES keep looking about as she continues on. The conclusion we are meant to draw is that the SPY RING has SPIES that they can contact on short notice and send off to train-stations to look for girls with suitcases. If Grace had thought about it, she would have had a spy notice Hilda and decide a desperate girl would never have such an adorable hat. Instead, we get a scene where Hilda decides to sit on her seat in the train and quietly starve, ignored, rather than move and risk drawing attention to herself. So she does that for a good long while.
After a period of wakeful, hungry martyrdom, she finds she has entered PATRIOT HEAVEN. No, really.
There was something about the sight that reminded Hilda of the pictures of the Heavenly City in Pilgrim's Progress, and she caught her breath and sat up very straight. This was Washington. She knew without being told. She had seen pictures, and, anyway, if she hadn't she felt she would have known. I twas different from any other place she had ever seen.
And she stops at the Information desk to ask to see the wiz- I mean, to see the President. She is told how to take a car to the White House.
She got out of the car, walked a few steps, and at last arrived before a great iron gate behind which stood a man in uniform, with two or three soldiers in the background pacing up and down. She put out a timid hand to find the latch, but a gruff voice informed her that no visitors were admitted to the White House now!
I seriously think her plan was to wander around inside knocking on doors asking which way to the Oval Office. Her first step is getting past the gate in wartime:
“Why, I know there's war,” she said timidly. “It's that I came about. I have some very important information, and I must see the President right away. I've come a long distance just on purpose.”
Everyone else trying to see the President has come on accident. But it does not work, and Hilda breaks down and cries. Then she rallies:
“I'm sorry to act so silly,” she said, “but I've been travelling since early this morning, and I haven't had anything to eat. I've simply got to see the President somehow; I suppose there's a way if I only knew how. Couldn't you tell me, please? This is very important. It's about some spies, something I've found out that ought to be known at once. Really, there isn't any time for delay! They are planning some terrible things!”
Fortunately, someone new intervenes. This someone is an authoritative ranking type of officer. I know what he says. You know what he says. This officer is so official his opening line is:
“What's all this?
YES
What's the matter here?” Hilda looked up and saw a tall man in an officer's uniform of olive drab. The man at the gate saluted him promptly and explained:
“Only a young person, captain, who says she has some information about spies, for the President,” he laughed half apologetically. “There's been hundreds here today, and they all had some good excuse to see the President.”
Captain Officer takes in the situation with a keen-eyed glance or whatever Officers do, and agrees to take Hilda into the White House to investigate her claims or story or whatever interests Officers.
Hilda found herself, presently, seated in a great leather chair beside a grave gray-haired man in uniform , who was writing at a desk. He paid no attention to her for some time, going on with his writing, and issuing orders now and then to men in uniform who came and went. There was something about him that convinced her that be was a good man and would know what to tell her to do even if he was not the President.
He sounds like a rude, self-important jerk, but Captain Officer trusts him so I suppose Hilda must do the same. She stands there while he ignores her and then, suddenly, faints, leaving the gray-haired man to turn and catch her, which shows he was secretly paying attention while pretending to ignore her. What a snot. She awakens on a couch with an electric fan blowing air onto her. The white-haired guy introduces himself as a Secret Service agent, and he suggests Hilda eat and sleep and call her friends before giving him her information.
“I have no friends,” she said quietly, “and morning might be too late. Mr. Schwarz might find me by that time and kill me, so I couldn't tell you. He is a terrible man!”
So finally she tells him about the espionage ring and the plot and the man in the airplane, and people in the room stop what they're doing to listen. No word on their thoughts on her hat. Yet.
Instead, we get to see what happened back at the truck farm following - hold it. What is a truck farm? Really, what is it? Is this a shift in industrialization or something? Is it mostly a farm where you ship all your stuff away instead of selling it locally? Do they grow trucks?
Anyway, Hilda's note assures them that she just ran away because she was unhappy, rather than running away because they were all SPIES. Schwarz runs off with Hilda's suitcase to his top-secret appointment. Meanwhile, Hilda's mother and sister step off the train! Oh no! They are running into a nest of SPIES! They see the house and think it can't be it, because Uncle Otto would never let Hilda go to a place like that, and discuss his trustworthiness. Then they go to the house, where Mrs. Schwarz is of the opinion that Hilda is not there, and Hilda's mother is of the opinion that she would like to talk to Hilda, and there is a lot of back and forth about it. While that is going on, the engineer makes a sudden appearance to talk to Hilda's little brother about whether or not that scarf is Hilda's.
All of this is somehow lacking, crammed in sideways as it is. We already know the spies were discovered, so Hilda's brother's finding the trapdoor underfoot, and the engineer digging up the ground and new cabbages for a look at it, is like GLH spending one chapter emptying a box, and the next turning it upside down and shaking it.
Then, of course, they put all the nice little cabbages back like they found them and go off to conclude that Hilda really did leave. They leave too. This does not mean the plot is moving again. First we have to go into a variety of freight train facts: that they are traveling on a freight train, the problems with travelling on freight trains, and little niceties you can arrange to make being stuck on a freight train easier should this happen to you.
Then there is a lot of fuss about German spies! And how to trace people travelling on trains! How do you do this? You have your friend's dad own the railroad, problem solved. Finally they go stay at the engineer's mother's house and the chapter ends.
What a waste of a chapter in a book about GERMAN SPIES!
When Hilda had finished telling her story the men plied her with questions. Did she see a wireless anywhere about? What did the inside of that barn look like? What sort of wires had she spoken of as being stretched on the barn walls and how were they arranged? Just how did the man look who came in an aeroplane and how many times did he come?
When she described him the men nodded to one another. “I guess it's the same chap. He must be in charge of the whole ring in this part of the country.”
They literally did not know this guy was the ringleader until his presence was confirmed at the all-important truck farm.
Such a good supper! Delicacies that she had seldom seen, and plenty of everything. Even the war bread was delicious,
I'm picturing a little tray of hors d'oeuvres and finger desserts, all arranged carefully around a dry crust of hard tack.
and from her long fasting tasted doubly so. Right in the middle of it, before she had even tasted the ice-cream, she remembered the suitcase and, jumping up, she ran over with it to the chief. “I forgot all about this!” she said eagerly, “and it's perhaps the most important thing of all.” She set the suitcase down in their midst and told the story of how she stole it and got away on the train with it.
Ice-cream at the White House seems something that GLH appreciates. You know what? I like that. We should all have our heights of life experience to aim for.
“Well, you certainly are some nervy little girl,” said one of the officers, as he watched her sensitive face light up with her story. “Now, what do you expect to find in that suitcase?”
The chief reached over to take it. “If it contains all the evidence the night visitor suggested it will be the biggest find we've had in this war, Miss Lessing,” he said with his courteous smile. So Hilda stood by, forgetful of her melting cream, while they broke the lock and examined the contents carefully.
I even like that GLH acknowledges the passing of the ice cream. We cannot have everything in life, and Hilda is conscientiously making the sacrifice of ice cream at the White House. Freedom has its price. Sometimes, that means your ice cream at the White House will go all runny and lukewarm.
There was little inside that told her anything. Papers with writing and drawings, of whose importance she could only judge by the look on the faces of the officers and their low exclamations as they passed the papers from one to the other.
"He may be a low-down dirty spy, but damn, can the man draw a pig. Look at this sketch of a piglet sunning itself. Look at the expression in its ears."
“Won't you please look inside the lining?” she said timidly. “That man said some of the most important things were there. He said the suitcase was especially made for the purpose, and that it must be delivered to the captain of the submarine by next Wednesday night. Those were his words.”
They should know that already. Why is it a suitcase, and not a briefcase? Because these men are terrible at
DEBRIEFING
Never mind.
“My dear young lady,” he said earnestly, “I have the honor to inform you that you have performed one of the greatest possible services for your country. These papers give the key to our enemies' plans and will enable us to frustrate them. Without these we might have gone on for months helplessly in the dark. You need have no fear; your information shall certainly be placed in the hands of the President, and I have no doubt he will see you himself and let you know what he thinks of your bravery and patriotism. Your promptness has saved many lives and much property, and may be a key to the ending of this terrible war. And now, I know you must be weary after your long, exciting day, but there are just two or three questions I would like to ask before you go.”
WE WILL END THE WAR AT THIS TRUCK FARM. But now that we've established that they can't question a willing witness worth a damn, we must know what he wishes to clarify. It it what she knows about planes and submarines traipsing into the country?
“Will you tell me once more about your telephoning to the Junction? To whom did you telephone? Daniel Stevens, an engineer? A friend of yours? I see. He had saved your life and you wanted to return the favor. Do you know where this Daniel Stevens lives and what his route is? I wonder if we could reach him by phone tonight?"
I give up.
The conductor was coming back, and Hilda hastened to fumble in her blouse and bring out her precious pass.
How she does this and what it looks like I leave to the reader's imagination. But GLH has already given us as close to Bondish spy/action sequences as she dares tread. Now it is time to bask in a new kind of intrigue: the glamorous lives of people who travel on railroad passes. Are you ready?
“Mighty queer for a girl like that to get on at that station. I never saw her around there before, did you? She doesn't look like the rest of that crew. She's travelling on a pass!”
The brakeman started. “A pass!” he cast a quick, apprising glance down the car again.
Fascinating! Let us all look once more on the possessor of this magnificent thing! But:
He had noticed her pretty face and graceful movements and was nothing loath to have a word with her, but brakemen didn't make a practice of conversing with persons who travelled on passes.
Alas, the presence of the pass sets them firmly apart. It's like an actual, physical class barrier in convenient card form.
Nevertheless, he hovered near Hilda's seat all the way to Philadelphia and was most assiduous about opening and shutting windows when they went through a tunnel, eyeing her appreciatively whenever he passed through the car, which was often.
I half-expected her to whip out the pass and ward him off, like a priest absent-mindedly banishing a lesser vampire thrall. Instead, Hilda is considering her own nemesis: the law.
Wait, what?
She sat with unseeing eyes upon the passing landscape, trying to make herself realize that she was a thief running away from the law, but somehow she could not make it seem real. All the same, being a city-bred girl and knowing the swift ways of modern justice, she knew that Schwarz would probably pursue her with every means at his command, especially if he discovered the loss of his precious suitcase before her own passed out of his keeping.
"Officers! Arrest her! She has stolen every incriminating document I own!"
She would go into the big station and perhaps buy a hat and coat before going to Washington.
Grace really loves to mention that she is wearing a little brown denim trench cap. From a folded apron. Never mind the trains, airplanes, spies, and sabotaged bridges. I think she may have written this book entirely for a scene where a heroine is forced to fold an apron into a hat. Hilda finds out how to get to a train going to Washington and beetles onto it.
Up at the station gates a stout man with a red face and blonde hair was studying each passenger who came through with keen, anxious gaze, and a German woman with a little shawl around her shoulders questioned the conductor as he came up to the gate about a girl who had got on at Platt's Crossing with a suitcase. The conductor told her the girl had been on the train. The brakeman asserted that he was sure of that; she better look in the waiting-room.
She has barely dodged SPIES. More SPIES keep looking about as she continues on. The conclusion we are meant to draw is that the SPY RING has SPIES that they can contact on short notice and send off to train-stations to look for girls with suitcases. If Grace had thought about it, she would have had a spy notice Hilda and decide a desperate girl would never have such an adorable hat. Instead, we get a scene where Hilda decides to sit on her seat in the train and quietly starve, ignored, rather than move and risk drawing attention to herself. So she does that for a good long while.
After a period of wakeful, hungry martyrdom, she finds she has entered PATRIOT HEAVEN. No, really.
There was something about the sight that reminded Hilda of the pictures of the Heavenly City in Pilgrim's Progress, and she caught her breath and sat up very straight. This was Washington. She knew without being told. She had seen pictures, and, anyway, if she hadn't she felt she would have known. I twas different from any other place she had ever seen.
And she stops at the Information desk to ask to see the wiz- I mean, to see the President. She is told how to take a car to the White House.
She got out of the car, walked a few steps, and at last arrived before a great iron gate behind which stood a man in uniform, with two or three soldiers in the background pacing up and down. She put out a timid hand to find the latch, but a gruff voice informed her that no visitors were admitted to the White House now!
I seriously think her plan was to wander around inside knocking on doors asking which way to the Oval Office. Her first step is getting past the gate in wartime:
“Why, I know there's war,” she said timidly. “It's that I came about. I have some very important information, and I must see the President right away. I've come a long distance just on purpose.”
Everyone else trying to see the President has come on accident. But it does not work, and Hilda breaks down and cries. Then she rallies:
“I'm sorry to act so silly,” she said, “but I've been travelling since early this morning, and I haven't had anything to eat. I've simply got to see the President somehow; I suppose there's a way if I only knew how. Couldn't you tell me, please? This is very important. It's about some spies, something I've found out that ought to be known at once. Really, there isn't any time for delay! They are planning some terrible things!”
Fortunately, someone new intervenes. This someone is an authoritative ranking type of officer. I know what he says. You know what he says. This officer is so official his opening line is:
“What's all this?
YES
What's the matter here?” Hilda looked up and saw a tall man in an officer's uniform of olive drab. The man at the gate saluted him promptly and explained:
“Only a young person, captain, who says she has some information about spies, for the President,” he laughed half apologetically. “There's been hundreds here today, and they all had some good excuse to see the President.”
Captain Officer takes in the situation with a keen-eyed glance or whatever Officers do, and agrees to take Hilda into the White House to investigate her claims or story or whatever interests Officers.
Hilda found herself, presently, seated in a great leather chair beside a grave gray-haired man in uniform , who was writing at a desk. He paid no attention to her for some time, going on with his writing, and issuing orders now and then to men in uniform who came and went. There was something about him that convinced her that be was a good man and would know what to tell her to do even if he was not the President.
He sounds like a rude, self-important jerk, but Captain Officer trusts him so I suppose Hilda must do the same. She stands there while he ignores her and then, suddenly, faints, leaving the gray-haired man to turn and catch her, which shows he was secretly paying attention while pretending to ignore her. What a snot. She awakens on a couch with an electric fan blowing air onto her. The white-haired guy introduces himself as a Secret Service agent, and he suggests Hilda eat and sleep and call her friends before giving him her information.
“I have no friends,” she said quietly, “and morning might be too late. Mr. Schwarz might find me by that time and kill me, so I couldn't tell you. He is a terrible man!”
So finally she tells him about the espionage ring and the plot and the man in the airplane, and people in the room stop what they're doing to listen. No word on their thoughts on her hat. Yet.
Instead, we get to see what happened back at the truck farm following - hold it. What is a truck farm? Really, what is it? Is this a shift in industrialization or something? Is it mostly a farm where you ship all your stuff away instead of selling it locally? Do they grow trucks?
Anyway, Hilda's note assures them that she just ran away because she was unhappy, rather than running away because they were all SPIES. Schwarz runs off with Hilda's suitcase to his top-secret appointment. Meanwhile, Hilda's mother and sister step off the train! Oh no! They are running into a nest of SPIES! They see the house and think it can't be it, because Uncle Otto would never let Hilda go to a place like that, and discuss his trustworthiness. Then they go to the house, where Mrs. Schwarz is of the opinion that Hilda is not there, and Hilda's mother is of the opinion that she would like to talk to Hilda, and there is a lot of back and forth about it. While that is going on, the engineer makes a sudden appearance to talk to Hilda's little brother about whether or not that scarf is Hilda's.
All of this is somehow lacking, crammed in sideways as it is. We already know the spies were discovered, so Hilda's brother's finding the trapdoor underfoot, and the engineer digging up the ground and new cabbages for a look at it, is like GLH spending one chapter emptying a box, and the next turning it upside down and shaking it.
Then, of course, they put all the nice little cabbages back like they found them and go off to conclude that Hilda really did leave. They leave too. This does not mean the plot is moving again. First we have to go into a variety of freight train facts: that they are traveling on a freight train, the problems with travelling on freight trains, and little niceties you can arrange to make being stuck on a freight train easier should this happen to you.
Then there is a lot of fuss about German spies! And how to trace people travelling on trains! How do you do this? You have your friend's dad own the railroad, problem solved. Finally they go stay at the engineer's mother's house and the chapter ends.
What a waste of a chapter in a book about GERMAN SPIES!
When Hilda had finished telling her story the men plied her with questions. Did she see a wireless anywhere about? What did the inside of that barn look like? What sort of wires had she spoken of as being stretched on the barn walls and how were they arranged? Just how did the man look who came in an aeroplane and how many times did he come?
When she described him the men nodded to one another. “I guess it's the same chap. He must be in charge of the whole ring in this part of the country.”
They literally did not know this guy was the ringleader until his presence was confirmed at the all-important truck farm.
Such a good supper! Delicacies that she had seldom seen, and plenty of everything. Even the war bread was delicious,
I'm picturing a little tray of hors d'oeuvres and finger desserts, all arranged carefully around a dry crust of hard tack.
and from her long fasting tasted doubly so. Right in the middle of it, before she had even tasted the ice-cream, she remembered the suitcase and, jumping up, she ran over with it to the chief. “I forgot all about this!” she said eagerly, “and it's perhaps the most important thing of all.” She set the suitcase down in their midst and told the story of how she stole it and got away on the train with it.
Ice-cream at the White House seems something that GLH appreciates. You know what? I like that. We should all have our heights of life experience to aim for.
“Well, you certainly are some nervy little girl,” said one of the officers, as he watched her sensitive face light up with her story. “Now, what do you expect to find in that suitcase?”
The chief reached over to take it. “If it contains all the evidence the night visitor suggested it will be the biggest find we've had in this war, Miss Lessing,” he said with his courteous smile. So Hilda stood by, forgetful of her melting cream, while they broke the lock and examined the contents carefully.
I even like that GLH acknowledges the passing of the ice cream. We cannot have everything in life, and Hilda is conscientiously making the sacrifice of ice cream at the White House. Freedom has its price. Sometimes, that means your ice cream at the White House will go all runny and lukewarm.
There was little inside that told her anything. Papers with writing and drawings, of whose importance she could only judge by the look on the faces of the officers and their low exclamations as they passed the papers from one to the other.
"He may be a low-down dirty spy, but damn, can the man draw a pig. Look at this sketch of a piglet sunning itself. Look at the expression in its ears."
“Won't you please look inside the lining?” she said timidly. “That man said some of the most important things were there. He said the suitcase was especially made for the purpose, and that it must be delivered to the captain of the submarine by next Wednesday night. Those were his words.”
They should know that already. Why is it a suitcase, and not a briefcase? Because these men are terrible at
DEBRIEFING
Never mind.
“My dear young lady,” he said earnestly, “I have the honor to inform you that you have performed one of the greatest possible services for your country. These papers give the key to our enemies' plans and will enable us to frustrate them. Without these we might have gone on for months helplessly in the dark. You need have no fear; your information shall certainly be placed in the hands of the President, and I have no doubt he will see you himself and let you know what he thinks of your bravery and patriotism. Your promptness has saved many lives and much property, and may be a key to the ending of this terrible war. And now, I know you must be weary after your long, exciting day, but there are just two or three questions I would like to ask before you go.”
WE WILL END THE WAR AT THIS TRUCK FARM. But now that we've established that they can't question a willing witness worth a damn, we must know what he wishes to clarify. It it what she knows about planes and submarines traipsing into the country?
“Will you tell me once more about your telephoning to the Junction? To whom did you telephone? Daniel Stevens, an engineer? A friend of yours? I see. He had saved your life and you wanted to return the favor. Do you know where this Daniel Stevens lives and what his route is? I wonder if we could reach him by phone tonight?"
I give up.