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Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine
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CHAPTER I--ON THE MARCH TO THE RHINE 11 Grace Harlowe looks for Hun treachery. “What I have seen has chilled my very soul.” The supervisor gives her orders. Elfreda sees a danger signal. “For the love of Heaven, stop it!” A mighty crash and a plunge into the river.
CHAPTER II--“GRACE HARLOWE, TROUBLE-MAKER” 25 Mrs. Chadsey Smythe gets a chilly bath. “Arrest that woman!” Won Lue makes his bow. Grace gets a warning. Overton girls billeted in a cellar. Keeping house under difficulties. Summoned before a superior officer.
CHAPTER III--THE IRON HAND 38 Grace resents an imputation on her honor. A serious accusation. “The woman is an impertinent creature!” “Captain” Grace is accused of trying to drown her superior. Grace Harlowe’s dismissal demanded. The Overton girl stands on her rights.
CHAPTER IV--A TIMELY MEETING 44 The mystery of three birds. J. Elfreda comes to grief. Grace meets her friend the general. How “Captain” Grace got even. The supervisor hears some unpleasant truths. “Ridiculous!” exclaims General Gordon.
CHAPTER V--GRACE WINS AND IS SORRY 55 “I don’t know what you are talking about, but I agree with you.” Overton girls have supper behind a smoke screen. An obliging Chinaman. Grace lays down the law to Mrs. Smythe. “My orders are that you get out of my sight instantly!”
CHAPTER VI--MESSING WITH A BRIGADIER 64 Overton girls left to walk. A grilling hike. The general is not deceived. An invitation to visit cloudland. “Captain” Grace gives the intelligence officer some real intelligence. “Watch the skies in the early morning.”
CHAPTER VII--OFFICERS GET A SHOCK 76 Grace tells of the flights of enemy war pigeons. Captain Boucher asks for the Overton girl’s assistance. Army officers prove charming hosts. The Chinaman is on guard. “Captain” Grace uses a cobblestone for a door-knocker. Military police come up on a run.
CHAPTER VIII--HUNLAND IS REACHED AT LAST 86 “Captain” Grace barred from her billets. A soldier policeman offers to break in the door. The girls make their beds in an army truck. Leading a gypsy life. Overton women placed under arrest. Grace and Elfreda smash the door of their prison.
CHAPTER IX--AN IRATE OFFICER 97 On the enemy’s threshhold. The intelligence captain smooths the way. Grace cooks mess at headquarters. “Bacon in the chest and potatoes in the woodbox.” Signed up for a voyage in the skies. Making their beds in the kitchen.
CHAPTER X--GRACE TAKES THE SKY ROUTE 105 Taking no chances with the Hun. “Good luck, and don’t fall out.” Elfreda has no desire to go skyward on a bubble. Grace dons a flier’s harness. Lifted cloudward by the big “sausage.” “One balloonatic in the family is enough.”
CHAPTER XI--ROUGH GOING IN CLOUDLAND 116 The swaying basket arouses Grace’s apprehension. Hearing miraculously restored. The Overton girl eats her luncheon three thousand feet above the earth. “Haul in, you idiots!” The balloon begins to buck. “We are adrift!” announces the major.
CHAPTER XII--A LEAP FROM THE SKIES 128 The runaway balloon soars high. “We are in a fix!” A cheerful outlook. Clouds blot out the earth. Grace and her companion are buffeted back and forth by the winds. Victims of Hun bullets. Grace Harlowe is suspended between earth and sky.
CHAPTER XIII--“CAPTAIN” GRACE INVADES GERMANY 137 The major shakes the Overton girl loose. How it feels to fall a mile through space. The officer floats into view like a giant spider. “My, but the earth does look good.” Grace partially wrecks a German vineyard.
CHAPTER XIV--A GUEST OF THE HUNS 146 Grace Harlowe awakens in an unfamiliar place and overhears an enlightening conversation. The German woman seeks information. “Captain” Grace finds herself a prisoner in a German castle. Signals for assistance. A night prowler in her room.
CHAPTER XV--AN INTERRUPTED INTERVIEW 159 The inquisitive frau gets a terrible fright. “You shall suffer for this!” Morning brings more trouble. Discovered! A Hun threat. A demonstration of Hun “kultur.” Safe in the American lines. The intelligence officer is aroused.
CHAPTER XVI--ELFREDA HAS A SUSPICION 170 Yvonne names the yellow cat. How Hippy cured Nora’s admirer. Molly Marshall open to suspicion. Billeted in a German home. “There’s a real mystery for you.” An explosion wrecks the canteen.
CHAPTER XVII--THE TREACHERY OF THE HUN 182 Grace rescues the major. The ammunition dump furnishes fireworks. Mrs. Smythe is shaken with fear. “Captain” Grace refuses to obey an order. “Something queer about that man.” The Overton girl has bad dreams.
CHAPTER XVIII--GRACE GETS A CLUE 193 “You are the quickest-witted person I ever knew.” “Captain” Grace “savvies” Yat Sen. The voice from the cellar. The doctor has a visitor. A house of mystery. “I am right or else I am terribly wrong,” mutters Grace Harlowe.
CHAPTER XIX--A VOICE AND A FACE 200 “I must see who comes out of that house.” Grace shatters the doctor’s argument. “The Germans are unsportsmanlike losers.” Checkmated! Rebuked by the supervisor. Grace meets a suspected person and smiles a gentle greeting.
CHAPTER XX--IN A MAZE OF MYSTERIES 211 Won “savvies” too much talk. Playing the game both ways. Molly leads the supervisor from the canteen. Complaint is lodged against “Captain” Grace. Suspicions confirmed. The Overton girl makes a discovery. Grace gives a warning and borrows an auger.
CHAPTER XXI--A MOUSE IN THE TRAP 224 Grace bores a hole through the floor of her room. The German maid refuses a tip. When conversation ran wild. “Planning to shoot up our friends across the Rhine.” Grace Harlowe is amazed at what she overhears.
CHAPTER XXII--“CAPTAIN” GRACE DECIDES TO ACT 233 Elfreda is taken into the secret. “I never dreamed of anything so terrible as this.” Grace suspects that she is being watched. The intelligence officer gets an unusual invitation. The mine is laid.
CHAPTER XXIII--A DESPERATE PLOT REVEALED 242 Captain Boucher makes his call through a window. “Should any one knock, crawl under the bed.” The intelligence officer forgets his boots. A strange scene in the Overton girls’ quarters.
CHAPTER XXIV--THE TRAP IS SPRUNG 246 A signal that was instantly obeyed. Ordered to headquarters. Army officers get a genuine surprise. Grace Harlowe reveals a deep-laid Hun plot. The fight and the capture in the Overton girls’ billets. Heroes who work in the shadows.
GRACE HARLOWE WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY ON THE RHINE
“Never was a truer word spoken,” agreed J. Elfreda Briggs. “Chad of her own sweet self is considerable of a load.” Miss Briggs reached back and threw open the door of the army automobile, to be ready for their passenger who had not yet appeared. “Baggage, some would characterize her,” added the girl.
“She is our superior, Elfreda,” reminded Grace. “One always must preserve a certain respect for one’s superior, else discipline in the army will quickly go to pieces. While Mrs. Smythe plainly is not all that we wish she were, she is our superior officer whom we must both respect and obey.”
“Ever meet her?” questioned Elfreda.
“Once. I was not favorably impressed with her, though I did not see enough of her to form an opinion worth while. That she was fat and rather fair, I recall quite distinctly.”
“Know anything about her, Grace?”
“Nothing beyond the fact that she is said to be the wife of a wealthy Chicago meat-packer, and that Mrs. Meat Packer wishes every one to know that she is a rich woman and an influential one.”
“She must be to get here, Grace. What I cannot understand is how she ever got into army welfare work, especially how she came to be assigned to join out with this American Third Army’s march to the Rhine.”
“Perhaps influence, perhaps her money; perhaps a little of both,” nodded Grace. “You know as much about it as I do.”
“And that much, little as it is, is too much,” declared J. Elfreda Briggs. “I should characterize her as an inordinately vain woman, one of the newly rich, who, clothed with a little authority, would be a mighty uncomfortable companion. The girls at the hospital who have worked under her say she is a regular martinet. How does it come that she has been unloaded on us?”
“I am sure I do not know, J. Elfreda. I do not even know with whom she came through last night when we started out on our march to the Rhine. I was ordered to pick her up and take her through in our automobile to-day, together with two other women who accompany her. However, this march to the River Rhine having only just begun, we haven’t yet settled down to a routine.”
“Neither has the enemy,” observed Elfreda.
Grace nodded reflectively.
“He has signed the armistice, but knowing the Hun as I do, I know that, if he thinks he can safely do so, he will play a scurvy trick on us. I hardly think we shall be attacked, however, but, J. Elfreda, take my word for it, there are many deep and dark Hun plots being hatched in this victorious army at this very moment,” she declared.
“What do you mean?”
“Hun treachery, Elfreda.”
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