Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/143

 The orders which she had received from the spy in Chicago had directed her to take up this work of Cynthia Gail's; and only by following these orders could she hope to carry out her plan.

She found far more talk of German agents, and far more certainty of their activities, in Paris than she had heard about in Chicago. The difference was that while in Chicago the presence and the activities of German spies was extraordinary, here it was the everpresent and accepted thing—like the arrival of trains of wounded from the front and air raids upon clear nights. She learned that the Germans undertook no important enterprise without information from their agents in France; she learned that, as in America, these agents were constantly being taken. It was plain to her, therefore, that they could scarcely have any rigid organization or any routine method of reports or intercommunication. They must operate by creating or seizing sudden opportunities.

During the noon hour upon a day in the middle of February, Ruth left the relief rooms, where she had been working, to wander in the winter sunlight by Notre Dame, where bells were ringing for some special mass. She went in and stood in the nave, listening to the chants, when she observed a gentleman of about fifty, evidently a Parisian, go to a pew beyond her and kneel down. She noticed him because she had seen him at least twice before when she was coming out of her office, and he had observed her with keener glance than gentlemen of his apparent station were accustomed to bestow.

She went from the cathedral after a few minutes and wandered up the Rue St. Jacques toward the Sorbonne,