ut of hearing.

What was the "immediate business" that was calling them away so
suddenly? She was more than afraid that her incautious use of the phrase
"the fifth book on the second shelf" had betrayed her. What else could
it mean? Why else would they have departed so abruptly?

Mustering up her strength and courage she went once more to the 'phone.

"Hello, hello, is that you, Miss Strong? Some one cut us off," Carter's
voice was impatiently saying.

"Hello, Mr. Carter," she called, "this is Jane Strong speaking. Where
can I see you at once? It's most important."

"I'll be sitting on a bench along the Drive two blocks north of your
house inside of ten minutes."

"I'll meet you there," she answered quickly, with a feeling of relief.

The situation was becoming far too complicated, she felt, for her to
handle alone. Carter would know what to do. If Hoff and Kramer had
learned from her about the trailing of old Hoff, the sooner it was
reported to more experienced operatives than she was the better.

"Don't speak to me when you see me sitting on the bench," warned Carter.
"Just sit down there beside me and wait till I make sure no one is
watching us. I'll speak to you when it's safe."

"I understand," she answered. "Good-by."

As she hastened to don her hat and coat she was almost overwhelmed by a
revulsion of feeling. Two days ago the world about her had seemed a
carefree, pleasant, even if sometimes boresome place. Now she
shudderingly saw it stripped of its mask and revealed for the first time
in all its hideousness, a place of murders and spying and secret
machinations. People about her were no longer more or less interesting
puppets in a play-world. They were vivid actualities, scheming and
planning to thwart and overcome each other. Almost she wished that her
dream had been undisturbed and that she had not been waked up to the
realities. Almost she was tempted to abandon her new-found occupation.

Then, once more, a feeling of patriotic fervor swept over her. She
thought of her brother fighting somewhere in the trenches. She pictured
to herself the other brave soldiers in the great ships in the Hudson.
She remembered the evil plotters with their death-dealing bombs,
striving to bring about a ghastly end for them all before they might
strengthen the lines of the Allies. She thought, too, of those
humanity-defying U-boats, forever at their devilish work, guided to
their prey by crafty, spying creatures rig