indicating a magazine he had put down at her entrance, “that our vice-president says the time is past when we must see no evil, hear no evil, and tell no evil. We must do all three until evil is wiped out. Right now you are in a peculiar position and the only one on whom I can rely.”

“I’ll try not to betray your trust,” she said. “I learned just now that Tini’s friend had been staying at Hotel Carlton over in the city. I’m afraid he’s already left there. He wrote her he had to leave unexpectedly.”

Suddenly the major’s hearty laughter filled the little room. “So he got wise to the fact that he was being watched!”

“Oh—so you already knew he was staying there?”

Major Reed became wary. “We had a line on him.”

“But how?” asked Nancy. “Tini did come in on that next bus the other night. Nobody here had time to get into the village and follow him after he put Tini on the bus.”

“I acted on your information promptly. There’s such a thing as the telephone,” he reminded Nancy.

He made this unsatisfactory explanation with a finality that told her she must inquire no further into his end of the business.

“Have you learned anything else?” he asked.

“Yes. Tini told us she met him in Charleston. He’s a traveling salesman, uses the trains instead of a car. He suggested that Tini join the Army Nurse Corps.”

“So!” Major Reed’s dark eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Mabel Larsen took nurse’s training in the same hospital with her. She said Tini went into it originally because she was crazy about one of the internes. But that may be only gossip, for it does sound mean. I’m afraid Tini isn’t very well liked.”

Major Reed was abstractedly making crosses on a scrap of paper. Finally his pencil stopped, and he looked squarely across at Nancy.

“Has Miss Hoffman done anything to make you feel she has gotten on the inside merely to supply information to our enemies?”

“That’s a stiff question, Major.”

“I know it is. But you’re in a better position to judge of such things than any of the 

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