before her but she could meet it better in fresh garments. Dittman ordered one of the Russians to bring up her bags and place them in the car.
As it sped away to the south Ruth sat back alone in the rear seat. Evidently she had been expected at the manor house; from the border or, perhaps, from Basel or from Lucerne Captain von Forstner had warned his household that he was bringing her with him. Had he described to his inferiors the relationship of his companion to him? Almost surely he had not. If they had arrived together, in the manner planned by von Forstner, his servants swiftly enough could have arrived at their own conclusions; but now that von Forstner was dead—accidentally, as all believed—matters lay so that his servants might judge the nature of her association with their master by the manner in which Ruth bore herself.
Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch, who communicated by telephone at this time in the morning, suggested perilous complications, but perils were all about her now, in any case. The bold course upon which she was embarked was—if you thought about it—safer, in reality, than any other.
So Ruth steadied herself as the car, clearing the woods, ran beside open acres to a huge and old German manor house set baldly upon a slope above the stream. A man was walking upon the terrace before the door; he sighted the car and started quickly to meet it, but as the car sped up he returned to the terrace and stood upon the lower step at the edge of the drive. He was a short, broadly built but nervous little man, upwards of thirty, spectacled, and with thick hair cropped somewhat after the military
