Free The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

lost and ruined bridges and unspeakable horrors. Germany deliberately did it! Germany had planned to kill him as if he had been an insect that did not matter! She bowed her head into her trembling hands for a moment and a great shudder passed over her.
    And he had saved her life once! Must she, could she, let this awful thing happen to him?
     She lifted her face with a great resolve. There was strength in her whole body as she threw back her clenched hands and raised her chest. She had been weak, but now she would be strong. She had waited fatally, but it should not be too long! She would do something now! She would fly somewhere and send him word; even if she failed she could rush in front of the train and flag it and tell him the truth. But she must not risk its corning to that. There must be some way to get him word. Would he have left Platt's Crossing yet? The telephone down in the barn! Could she get him before he left?
    She glanced at the clock again. Just ten minutes before his train was due to start. She looked into the dining-room. Everybody was eating, laughing and talking, except Schwarz. He was sullen still. He had not found the paper.
    She stole to the kitchen door with the broom as if she were about to sweep the porch, and slipping out waited to see if her going had been noticed. Then she slipped quickly down the path to the barn door. If anybody got up to come into the kitchen. they would see her straight through the door and down the path. Her feet fairly had wings. When she reached the barn she clutched the door latch and pulled with all her might, but a grim brass lock with a tiny slit of a keyhole seemed to laugh in her face like the Germans she had left behind. She looked fearfully behind her. She heard a chair creak on the bare floor and someone rise and come to the door between the kitchen and dining-room. She could see the shadow of skirts passing the door. In panic she slid around the side of the barn. Then the thought of the precious ten minutes going clutched at her throat. She must get into that barn!

CHAPTER 6
    THE end where she was standing was a blank wall with not even a crack through which she might look. She slipped around behind. Oh, joy! There was a short ladder reaching up to a sloping roof, and above the roof was a window, it was high, but perhaps she could reach it from the roof. There was much hay bulging from the window, but surely she could force her way around the hay somehow and get down to that telephone!
    With her heart in her throat she began fearfully to climb. She had never been on a ladder before in her life, being a city girl, and at another time she would have felt it an adventure just to try to get up to the roof. But before her eyes, as she climbed was the face of the young engineer, and around her there seemed to be his strong arm supporting her for what she had to do.
     She gained the roof, but it was blistering hot, and hurt her hands .and her knees as she crept breathlessly up, slipping back distressingly every now and then. It was only by shutting her eyes and saying to herself, “I must! I must! The time is going fast!” that she at last gained the wall which held the window, and slowly, cautiously drew herself upstanding on the hot slippery peak of the roof. Could she reach the window ledge? It was high, but she put her slender hands bravely on the sill and struggled wildly in her desperation. There was one awful moment when she thought she was going to slip and fall down the roof again, and then a second when she gained a hold, and, panting, stayed a moment, but at last she struggled to the sill. There was no time to wait and gain her breath and be glad. She must creep through the hay and find a way out. She had dropped inside without thinking that perhaps there was no floor beneath her, but mercifully found it not too far for safety. A few feet from the window she found another ladder leading down into the barn, and she clambered down and stood in the darkness