p, and raised the lower sash. He
counted on the thick-headed sentry wasting some precious seconds in
trying to force the door, and he was right. As it happened, before the
man thought of looking in through the platform window Dalroy had not
only lowered the other window behind him but dropped from the sill to
the pavement between the wall and a covered van which stood there.

Now he was free--free as any Briton could be deemed free in
Aix-la-Chapelle at that hour, one man among three army corps, an unarmed
Englishman among a bitterly hostile population which recked naught of
France or Belgium or Russia, but hated England already with an almost
maniacal malevolence.

And Irene Beresford, that sweet-voiced, sweet-faced English girl, was a
prisoner at the mercy of a "big blonde brute," a half-drunken, wholly
enraged Prussian Junker. The thought rankled and stung. It was not to be
borne. For the first time that night Dalroy knew what fear was, and in a
girl's behalf, not in his own.

Could he save her? Heaven had befriended him thus far; would a kindly
Providence clear his brain and nerve his spirit to achieve an almost
impossible rescue?

The prayer was formless and unspoken, yet it was answered. He had barely
gathered his wits after that long drop of nearly twelve feet into the
station yard before he was given a vague glimpse of a means of
delivering the girl from her immediate peril.

CHAPTER II

IN THE VORTEX

The van, one among a score of similar vehicles, was backed against the
curb of a raised path. At the instant Dalroy quitted the window-ledge a
railway employe appeared from behind another van on the left, and was
clearly bewildered by seeing a well-dressed man springing from such an
unusual and precarious perch.

The new-comer, a big, burly fellow, who wore a peaked and lettered cap,
a blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots, and carried a lighted hand-lamp,
looked what, in fact, he was--an engine-cleaner. In all likelihood he
guessed that any one choosing such a curious exit from a waiting-room
was avoiding official scrutiny. He hurried forward at once, holding the
lamp above his head, because it was dark behind the row of vans.

"Hi, there!" he cried. "A word with you, _Freiherr_!" The title, of
course, was a bit of German humour. Obviously, he was bent on
investigating matters. Dalroy did not run. In the street without he
heard the tramp of marching troops, the jolting of wagons, the clatter
of h