It was Mrs. Quale who arrived on the scene first. She came in a taxi, having received elaborate directions from Chet, who remained at the hotel to watch for the return of the captain. There was one comfortable thing about Mrs. Quale that Patricia had always particularly admired: she seemed to understand things and situations without any explanations. She came in now, took both Patricia's hands in hers, and kissed her quietly.

"You poor child! If I had only known what a tangle you were in, I would not have gone off so thoughtlessly yesterday without first letting you know. I supposed of course your father was with you. I am thankful, at least, that I'm home in time to help you out of the muddle."

That was all, but Patricia realized that whatever she knew or did not know about the affair, it made no difference whatever in her desire to be of help.

She decided to tell her at once about Virginie, and did so while they were standing outside the door of the room where the Belgian girl was. Mrs. Quale had met her casually at the hotel, in company with Patricia, and had always cherished a liking for the lonely, diffident girl. When she had heard all the story, she stood thinking a moment and then said decisively:

"You simply cannot go back to that hotel. It is no place for you after all that has happened. Now, I have a plan, and I shall urge your father to fall in with it. Part of my house is at last habitable—at least three bedrooms and the living-room and kitchen are. I have had old Juno there for a week getting them in order and was going to leave the hotel for them myself in a day or two. I want you all to come with me and make your home there for a time. I do not believe it is either right or safe for you to stay any longer in that public place, especially after what has happened. We'll go right over now, and I'll send word for your father to follow as soon as he arrives. We can go back to the hotel some other time and pack up your belongings."

"Oh, Mrs. Quale, it is lovely of you to propose it!" sighed Patricia. "You don't know what a relief it will be to get away from that place. I could never stand it again after the dreadful hours I spent there last night. But what about Virginie?"

"Never mind about her. Just take me to her now, if you will, and we'll settle about that later."

Virginie still lay on the bed, no longer sobbing or weeping, but with her head buried in the pillow, quiet, hopeless, and inert. She did not even look up as they entered the room. Patricia gently roused her, and she sat up to greet Mrs. Quale in a timid, half-frightened manner. But Mrs. Quale had long since settled in her own mind her plan of action. She sat down on the side of the bed and put one arm protectingly around Virginie.

"Dear," she said softly, "I know your story now, all that you have suffered, all the brave sacrifices you made to save the life, as you supposed, of the father who was no longer living. All that is ended. And now, dear, I am a very lonely woman. I have no children and very few relatives left, and I have always felt a warm interest in you since first I saw you with that unscrupulous woman. I knew that you were not happy. Will you come and make your home with me and be my daughter? I will bring you up as my own. We are two lonely people. I have no daughter, you have no mother. Why should we not be happy together?"

The girl stared at her for a moment almost uncomprehendingly. Then, suddenly, she grasped the meaning and it seemed too wonderful to be true.

"Oh, you—you are too good—too—" Her head went down on the motherly shoulder, and her arms crept around Mrs. Quale's neck. And so Patricia, tears of happiness standing in her own eyes, stole out of the room and left them together.

It was ten o'clock that night before Captain Meade himself arrived, tired, dusty, discouraged, and decidedly bewildered by the change his daughter had made so unexpectedly in her place of residence. Chet had encountered him in the lobby of the hotel and steered him at once to Mrs. Quale's house without any special explanations, as he felt that Patricia was the one best fitted to offer these. And it was not till after he had bathed and had some supper that Patricia, alone with him in the library, ventured to ask what success he had had in his search.

"None at all. Absolutely nothing to show for it!" he replied wearily. "We have raked New York from end to end without success. When we went there originally we were on a good scent—actually had the fellow spotted who we knew without fail must have had the sketch in his possession; but when we finally ran him down, he had nothing of the kind about him nor had he had any opportunity to dispose of it anywhere, so we had to give up that clue. I confess, I'm terribly discouraged."

Patricia smiled cheerfully. "Well, never mind, Daddy. You've had a hard time, but perhaps things aren't as bad as they seem!"

He looked at her wonderingly. "I don't know how they could be much worse!" he exclaimed a little impatiently. "One of the most valuable of the Government's secrets is in the hands of the enemy at this minute."

Patricia lifted a book from the table, took something from it, and laid it on her father's knee.

"I hate to contradict you," she remarked gaily, "but I think the Crimson Patch is at this minute in the possession of the one who has most right to it!"

It was long after midnight. The rest of the household was all asleep, but Patricia still sat with her father by the open fire, for the night had turned chilly. She sat on his knee, her head snuggled comfortably in his coat collar. The ensuing interval, after she had told her story, had been a confusion of telephoning and interviews, not only with Chester Jackson, but also with a mysterious Mr. Brainerd, a curly-haired, light-complexioned, athletic young man with whom her father had been closeted for three quarters of an hour in close conference. Patricia was glad when it was over and they had all gone and left them alone together.

"But, Daddy," she was saying, "there are still a whole lot of things I don't understand about this thing at all. You kept saying, 'We were hunting for it in New York.' Now who is 'we'? I thought you shared this secret with no one."

The captain laughed. "You are right. There's quite a little you've still to learn. 'We' is mainly Mr. Tom Brainerd, whom you saw here to-night. He's a government secret-service man, the best around these parts, and he's been near me for protection ever since we first came to the hotel."

"He has?" cried Patricia. "Why, I never saw him before in my life."

"Oh, yes, you have!" contradicted the captain. "You saw him every day of your life, only you didn't know him. I confess he looked a little different. Mr. Tom Brainerd was no other than your pet spy, poor Peter Stoger, my dear!"

Patricia's jaw dropped and her face was a study in bewilderment. "Then—then he—he wasn't Franz?" she stammered.

"He certainly was not! He elected to come here, disguised as he was, because his countenance in real life is a little too familiar to the German spy-system in general. The manager of the hotel is fortunately a good friend of mine and an ardent patriot, so 'Peter's' task was made easy. But there was a 'Franz' here, though he went by another name, and he, too, was one of the waiters. I do not believe you remember him. He was a short, thin, light-haired young fellow, who had a table at the other end of the dining-room. Curiously enough, both he and Peter rather suspected each other and were constantly watching each other's movements.

"On the day when the sketch disappeared, it happened in this way. When Tom, or rather, Peter, came into the room that evening with the tray containing your supper, he saw to his astonishment, lying carelessly on the table, the very sketch that he understood it was so important to guard. Immediately he saw the necessity of removing it to safety, as he knew that you were not in the secret about it, so he put his tray down on top of it, in apparent ignorance, and when you commanded him to remove the tray, he did so, cleverly concealing and holding the sketch underneath. When he went out of the room he still had it concealed under the tray, but once outside and the door closed, he dropped it to the ground while trying to transfer it to his pocket. It was this unfortunate accident that he feels sure led to its theft. In all probability, Madame Vanderpoel was watching from her nearly closed door and saw the sketch as it fell, and guessed it must be connected in some way with the secret we had been guarding. She immediately found some means to report it to her ally and companion-spy, Franz, and then the trouble began."

"But did Peter—I mean Mr. Brainerd—suspect Madame?" Patricia interrupted eagerly.

"He did not exactly suspect her, for she had done and said nothing of a suspicious nature. She certainly passed herself off very well for just what she wished to seem. She is an exceedingly clever woman. His only uneasiness about her arose from the rather peculiar actions of your little friend, Virginie de Vos. Still, as I say, Brainerd could not seem to connect her with any doubtful matters. Franz he did think was watching him, but even he did nothing to arouse direct suspicion. And, by the way, the 'Hofmeyer' that Chester heard referred to is none other than this precious 'Madame Vanderpoel.' It is, in fact, her real name, for she married, after her first husband died, a German named Hofmeyer. Little Virginie told me this to-night in a short interview I had with her. So there you have the famous two.

"Well, to continue. Peter intended to keep the sketch by him and return it to me at the earliest opportunity. But you know I got back very late that night, and so he thought best to retain it till morning, fearing it would arouse suspicion if he made an attempt to see me at so late an hour. He took the chance of my being a little upset at not finding it. He even thought it possible I might not discover its disappearance that night. Then, during the night, the sketch was stolen from his room; he does not even yet know how, but undoubtedly Franz was the culprit.

"Next morning at breakfast, if you remember, Peter jogged my shoulder with the tray, and I reprimanded him rather sharply. It was a preconcerted signal between us that he had something important to tell me. Later we met, and he told me what had happened and that Franz had disappeared from his accustomed post. We straightway went on a keen hunt after Franz, struck his trail at the railroad station, followed him to New York, pursued him from place to place all day, and finally had him arrested and searched, only to be disappointed in finding he had nothing of the sort on him. He must have got over to Hanford and left it there, or passed the sketch to Madame before she went, or something of the kind. At any rate, we had to let him go the next morning, as we had no evidence on which to hold him. After that, I came back here to find you and Chester had been the best detectives after all!

"The boy actually had the gumption to set the police on the trail of that Hanford crowd when he got back here. They went right out to raid the place. But alas! every one of the birds had flown. Not a trace of them anywhere. Very likely the maid gave the warning after Virginie got away, and they knew that the authorities would be hot-foot after them in a very short time. One consolation is that Madame will be known and spotted wherever she appears, so her usefulness as a German spy is over, in this country at any rate.

"I think that I have made a great mistake in keeping you in the dark about all these things, from the first. I might better have let you into the secret of the importance of the sketch and the fact that our waiter was only a secret-service man in disguise. But I wanted to spare you all worry about the matter, and I thought it would be perhaps safer for you if you knew nothing about my affairs. I see now that I should have done differently. But, at any rate, it has all turned out so well that we won't regret anything."

"But what a trump Chester has been! Did you ever see any one quite so clever?" cried Patricia, enthusiastically. "He is really the one who saved the whole situation."

"Yes, he is really a wonderful chap!" the captain agreed. "He beat Mr. Brainerd at his own job, and has done more for me than I can ever hope to repay. But he shall certainly have his reward, as far as I'm able to accomplish it. He wants to be a detective, but he is cut out for even better things if he only has the education and opportunities. I am going to arrange to have him put in a good school, and later he shall follow any line of work he seems best fitted for. He will certainly make his mark in the world some day."

"Well," murmured Patricia, with a little sigh of content, "Chester and Virginie have certainly lost nothing and gained much by the disappearance of the Crimson Patch, so I feel as if the adventure had been well worth while in every way, even though it did cause us an awful lot of worry!"

The captain reached over to the table and took up the sketch. "It's a simple little thing to have caused such a lot of worry, isn't it!" he said musingly. "It looks as harmless and innocent as any butterfly might seem, fluttering about on a May morning. Yet, it is in reality a very deadly little article, Patricia. I'm only thankful to goodness that its deadliness was so well hidden that those Huns never caught on to it. Its particular usefulness is practically over now, since the work I've been doing is all but complete. But it would have been a terribly dangerous thing had it fallen into the hands of the enemy and they had fathomed its meaning. My work would then have been almost valueless.

"And since you have done so much to aid in keeping this a secret, Patricia, I think the time has come to tell you the meaning of it all. You have earned the right, and all I ask is that you will communicate it to no one till I give you permission. I can trust you, I know.

"I have already told you how, when I was a prisoner in Germany, it occurred to me that if I pretended to have lost some of my wits, through shell-shock, as many have, the ruse might benefit me in a number of ways. I was strong and able-bodied at the time, and the Huns were particularly in need of husky prisoners to do their work, and they much prefer those who show symptoms of not having all their wits about them. I was unusually successful in the device, and was finally set to work in an outer section of one of their airplane factories—of course, under strict guard.

"It was here that I came in contact with a German mechanic, a man of somewhat finer caliber than most of them, to whom I was able to render a rather important service or two. He was ill and in want, and he had a serious grievance against his government. He had invented a certain device of immense importance, and he was trying to get them to accept it and pay him enough to assure him a decent living. The government wanted the device badly enough, but was so foolish as to haggle and bargain with him over the price, offering him scarcely enough to keep him for six months. He was too ill to work and earn a living, but he steadily refused to give up his secret till properly reimbursed.

"At length it came to the point where he knew he had but a little longer to live. Angered, perhaps, that his Fatherland should have been so ungrateful and mean-spirited, and hating to have his discovery, of which he was justly proud, lost to the world, he confided it to me, for I had, some time before, allowed him to know that I was not the stupid creature I seemed. I asked him whether he cared if America made use of it, and he replied: 'I care for nothing now. The Fatherland has proved unworthy. Do with it what you will.'

"Later, as you know, I myself managed to escape and get through to the French lines. And so I arrived home. But, being of a somewhat mechanical turn myself, I came to realize that this device, still incomplete as it was, could be perfected into an instrument of the greatest importance to the aviation arm of the service. I cannot explain to you exactly what it is, nor go into all its workings. It would be much too technical for you to understand.

"But I can tell you this much about it. An aviator in a bombing-plane has had one great, and, till now, almost insuperable difficulty to contend with. The velocity of his machine is such that a released bomb will have for an appreciable time after it is dropped the same horizontal velocity. This means, in simpler language, that the bomb will be carried along for a time in the same direction and at almost the same rate at which the machine is going. Thus, you see that the aviator, if he is intending to drop his bomb on a certain building or object, cannot do so when he is directly over that object, but must calculate in some way at what point to release his bomb before he comes directly over the object, or it will not hit its mark.

"There have been many attempts to overcome this difficulty, but none very successful. The device I have perfected comes more nearly to accuracy than anything yet discovered, and our own Government is only too glad to make use of it.

"And now we come to The Crimson Patch. When the German mechanic gave me his secret, he also furnished me with a drawing or diagram of the instrument. This was absolutely necessary to have, as the invention was so complicated that I could not possibly have carried it in my head. But I realized, also, that it would be extremely dangerous to carry it around with me in the shape in which it was. So I camouflaged the whole thing in a sketch of the Crimson Patch butterfly, and in this form it was safe enough, for I had made a point of sketching at times the various butterflies I had seen while in the prison-camp, and the Germans thought me only a harmless lunatic on the subject. The Crimson Patch was no more to them than any other pretty little sketch I had made."

"But, Daddy," cried Patricia, staring at the paper in his hand, "I can't see a trace of anything like the drawing of a mechanical instrument."

"It is all incorporated in the veining of the wings and shading of the body," he told her. "No one would understand it save myself, for it is so much a matter of lines and scale and angles. But it is all there, I assure you, at least, in its cruder form. Until the machine was completed, I had to have this sketch constantly where I could refer to it, at times I even had to carry it about with me. So you see how important it was, considering the abominable spy-system by which we are surrounded, that it should appear only the innocent thing it seemed.

"Well, now you know the history of the Crimson Patch. It has certainly had, as they say, a checkered career! I would like to keep it always as an interesting souvenir, but it is too dangerous to have about, and the time of its usefulness is past. Only a few days ago, at the place where we are to manufacture this device, it was tried out and proved that it will be a practical success after some necessary alterations are made. Look your last on it, for in a few minutes its existence will be over!"

He held it up before her eyes a moment. Then, slipping her off his knee, he walked over to the fireplace, where a big log was still smouldering. Stirring the fire into a blaze, he tore the sketch into small bits and dropped the fluttering pieces into the flames. Together they watched while the charred fragments turned brown, curled over, blazed for a moment and shriveled into a gray crisp.

Five minutes later the fire died down. The big log rolled over, burying the ashes under its bulk. And so vanished the last trace of the mysterious Crimson Patch.