ollapsed, dying right before her eyes.

"Take the Hoffs' car outside," Fleck directed some of his men, "and
bring up our two cars at once. Carter and I'll guard the prisoners until
you get back. There's a county jail only a few miles away. The sooner we
get them there the better it will be. It won't take any court long to
settle their fate. They got Dean, didn't they?"

"Yes," said Jane, getting up unsteadily from the floor, "I think he's
dead."

Fleck bent to examine the body of his aide, feeling for the pulse.

"Too bad," he murmured. "That last bullet of old Hoff's got him, but he
died in a good cause."

Jane, brushing away the tears that came welling unbidden into her eyes,
turned now for the first time since his surrender to look at Frederic.

She had expected as she looked at him lying there shackled on the floor
to read in his expression humiliation at his plight, grief at the
failure of his effort to aid Germany, possibly reproach for her in
having aided in entrapping him. To her amazement there was nothing of
this in his face.

As he lay there on the floor he was observing her with a tender look of
love, and in his eyes what was still more puzzling was an unmistakable
expression of triumph and happiness.

CHAPTER XVII

SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

Bewildered by the rapidity with which such a succession of terrifying
events had taken place, Jane sank dazedly into a chair, trying her best
to collect her thoughts, as she looked about on the recent scene of
battle. All of the German plotters had been overcome and captured.
There, dead on the floor, lay the arch conspirator, old Otto Hoff, his
clammy face still twisted into a savage expression of malignant,
defiant hate.

And there, too, a martyr to the country's cause, lay Thomas Dean. A sob
of pity rose in Jane's throat as she thought of him, and the great tears
rolled unchecked down her cheeks. He was so young, so brave, so fine.
Why must Death have come to him when there was yet so much he might have
done? With his talent and education, with his wonderful spirit of
self-sacrifice, he might have gone far and high. Regretfully, she
recalled that he had loved her, and with kind pity in her heart she
reproached herself for not having been able to return to this fine,
clean, American youth the affection she had inspired in him.

Thomas Dean, she told herself, was the type of man she should have
loved, a man of her own people, with her own ideals, a man of