Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1917 - Feb 1918)

The Little American 39 the heavy hand of the general hammered on the panel. "Quick ! Pull down your hair and struggle with me," whispered Karl. "It is our only chance." The big bulk of the general was flung against the door, and it gave way. Wrathful, he surveyed the struggling man and woman. Then, recognizing the young lieutenant, he burst into a roar of vicious laughter. "A woman — always a woman, my brave lieutenant !" he cried. ''The little spitfire bootblack, eh? Bring her down, Von Austreim. I want to question her." And in his stockinged feet he lumbered downstairs. They followed him to the dining room, where he had summoned his staff around the dining table. As Karl and the girl entered, the general greeted them with a leer. "Wine, women, and war — that's Von Austreim's motto !" he chuckled. Then the brutal grin vanished, and his eyes grew stern. "Now7, girl, some one has been telephoning from here to the French lines. What have you to say? Tell!" "He asks you to tell what you know about a secret telephone," Karl translated. "I refuse to say anything," she answered. Karl looked at her pleadingly, but she shook her head. The colonel bared his teeth. "No answer, eh ! Then take her out and shoot her!" Karl plucked off his helmet and flung his sword at the feet of the colonel. "Order me shot also," he said. "I am done with you and your emperor. I was blind to your system — now, thank God, I see !" The angry officers sprang to attack him, but the colonel waved them aside. "It shall be as the gentleman desires," he said with ironic courtesy. "Ascertain the lady's name, and have it entered on the records that she was shot as a spy ; also that Karl von Austreim was shot for treason. Now take them away." Jules de Destin, at the other end of the phone, had heard Angela scream. Failing to get further message from her, he surmised that she had been discovered. It was useless to hope for mercy from the disciples of schrecklichkeit. He ordered the guns concentrated on the chateau. An avalanche of French shells descended. Karl and Angela were buried with the others in a mass of debris. Suddenly the guns ceased and the girl managed to crawl out from the wreckage, and, supporting Karl, who was badly wounded, led him through the star shells of No Man's Land between the German and French lines. They gained a ruined chapel as a fresh charge of the French swept by in a counter attack that gained them the chateau permanently. Next morning, bringing his battery up, Jules sawr two figures stumbling out of the ruined chapel — the woman he loved and the man he had hated. It was a strange meeting, there by the broken chancel and the broken cross on the devastated plain. Angela, overjoyed at meeting the young Frenchman, hastened to explain what had happened. "Karl is no longer a Prussian," she added. "He gave up his sword to his commander." Jules stared at the man he had hated. Karl nodded dully. 'T didn't understand," he said. "I thought the Fatherland meant " And there he stopped.. There wras a sob in his throat. "Jules, will you protect him — for my sake?" pleaded Angela. "He is badly wounded." "I must advance with my battery," Jules told her. "I will see that you are in safe hands, and I'll send an ambulance for Von Austreim. He will be put in a detention camp, as a matter of course, but I think — yes, I knozv I can