ing all we can to help win
the war, and in the apartment next door the people will be plotting and
scheming to help Germany win, and it is only by accident we find out
about it. Take my own father and mother. They haven't the slightest
suspicion of the people next door. They would hardly believe me if I
told them the Hoffs were German spies. They see them every day in the
elevator. Young Mr. Hoff has been in our apartment several times. My
mother has met him and talked with him. I was just thinking how amazed
and horrified she will be when she hears about it and learns what I have
been doing."

"You are perfectly right," said Fleck soberly. "We are entirely too
careless here in America about our acquaintances and neighbors. We know
that we are decent and respectable, and we're apt to take it for
granted that everybody else is. We don't mind our neighbors' business
enough. Nobody in a New York apartment house ever bothers to know who
his neighbors are or what their business is, so long as they present a
respectable appearance. I know New York people who live on the same
floor with two ex-convicts and have lived there for three years without
suspecting it. We should have here in America some system of
registration as they have in Germany. Tenants and travelers ought to be
required to file reports with the police, giving their occupation and
other details. If that plan were in use here enemy spies would lack most
of the opportunities we have been giving them."

"Yes," said Dean, "you are right. I've lived in Germany. Over there a
crook of any sort can hardly move without the police knowing it. Their
system certainly has its good points."

"It surely has," Fleck agreed. "If the Prussians' character were only
equal to their intelligence they would be the most wonderful people in
the world, but they are rotten clear through. They have no conception
of honor as we understand it. Only the other day I read of a Prussian
officer who led his men in an attack on a chateau, guiding them by plans
of the place he had made himself while being entertained in the chateau
as a guest before the war."

"Don't you think any of them have a sense of honor?" asked Jane in a
troubled tone.

Her mind had reverted, as she found it frequently doing, to Frederic
Hoff and the sealed packet he had entrusted to her. He had professed to
love her and had demanded that she trust him. Was it, she wondered, all
a base pretense on his part? Was he--for