"Good!" was Rodwell"s reply. "Anybody been looking around?"
"Not a soul to-day, sir. The weather"s been bad, an" the only man we"ve seen is Mr Bennett, from the coastguard station, on his patrol. He was "ere last night and had a drop o" whisky with us."
"Good?" laughed Rodwell. "Keep well in with the coastguard. They"re a fine body, but only a year or so ago the British Admiralty reduced them.
It wasn"t their fault."
"We do keep in with "em," was old Tom Small"s reply, as Rodwell re-entered the room in dry clothes. "I generally give "em a bit o" fish when they wants it, and o" course I"m always on the alert looking out for periscopes that don"t appear," and the shrewd old chap gave vent to a deep guttural laugh.
"Well now, Small, let"s get to work," Rodwell said brusquely. "I"ve got some important matters on hand. Is all working smoothly?"
"Splendidly, sir," answered the younger man. "Nothing could be better.
Signals are perfect to-night."
"Then come along," answered the man who was so universally believed to be a great British patriot; and, turning the handle of the door on the right-hand side of the living-room, he entered a small, close-smelling bedroom, furnished cheaply, as the bedroom of a small struggling fisherman would be. The Smalls were honest, homely folk, the domestic department being carried on by Tom"s younger daughter, Mary, who at the moment happened to be visiting her married sister in Louth.
The son, Ted, having lit a petrol table-lamp--one of those which, filled with spirit, give forth gas from the porous block by which the petrol is absorbed and an intense light in consequence--Lewin Rodwell went to the corner of the room where an old curtain of crimson damask hung before a recess. This he drew aside, when, hanging in the recess, were shown several coats and pairs of trousers--the wardrobe of old Tom Small; while below was a tailor"s sewing-machine on a treadle stand--a machine protected by the usual wooden cover.
The latter he lifted; but beneath, instead of a machine for the innocent needle-and-cotton industry, there was revealed a long electrical tapping-key upon an ebonite base, together with several electrical contrivances which, to the uninitiated, would present a mysterious problem.
A small, neatly-constructed Morse printing machine, with its narrow ribbon of green paper pa.s.sing through beneath a little gla.s.s cover protecting the "inker" from the dust; a cylindrical bra.s.s relay with its gla.s.s cover, and a tangle of rubber-insulated wires had been hidden beneath that square wooden cover, measuring two and a half feet by one.
Behind the sewing-machine stand, and cunningly concealed, there ran a thick cable fully two inches in diameter, which was nothing else but the sh.o.r.e-end of a submarine cable directly connecting the East Coast of England with w.a.n.geroog, the most northerly of the East Frisian Islands, running thence across to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, and on by the land-line, via Hamburg, to Berlin.
The history of that cable was unknown and unsuspected by the British public, who, full of trust of the authorities, never dreamed that there could possibly be any communication from the English sh.o.r.e actually direct into Berlin. Five years before the declaration of war the German Government had approached the General Post Office, offering to lay down a new cable from w.a.n.geroog to Spurn Head, in order to relieve some of the constantly increasing traffic over the existing cables from Lowestoft, Bacton and Mundesley. Long negotiations ensued, with the result that one day the German cable-ship _Christoph_ pa.s.sed the Chequer shoal and, arriving off the Spurn Lighthouse, put in the sh.o.r.e-end, landed several German engineers to conduct the electrical control-tests between ship and sh.o.r.e, and then sailed away back to Germany, paying out the cable as she went.
In due course, after the arranged forty days" tests from w.a.n.geroog to the Spurn, the cable was accepted by the General Post Office, and over it much of the telegraphic traffic between England and Germany had, for the past five years, been conducted.
On the declaration of war, however, telegraph engineers from York had arrived, excavated the cable out of the beach at the Spurn, and effectively cut the line, as all the lines connecting us with German stations had been severed. After that, the British postal authorities contented themselves that no further communication could possibly be established with the enemy, and the public were satisfied with a defiant isolation.
They were ignorant how, ten days after the cables had been cut, old Tom Small, his son and two other men, in trawling for fish not far from the sh.o.r.e, had one night suddenly grappled a long black snaky-looking line, and, after considerable difficulties, had followed it with their grapnels to a certain spot where, with the aid of their winch, they were able to haul it on board in the darkness.
Slimy and covered with weeds and barnacles, that strategic cable had been submerged and lay there, unsuspected, ready for "the Day," for, truth to tell, the Spurn Head-w.a.n.geroog cable had possessed a double sh.o.r.e-end, one of which had been landed upon British soil, while the other had been flung overboard from the German cable-ship four miles from land, while old Tom Small and his son had been established on sh.o.r.e in readiness to perform their part in dredging it up and landing it when required.
So completely and carefully had Germany"s plans been laid for war that Small, once an honest British fisherman, had unsuspectingly fallen into the hands of a certain moneylender in Hull, who had first pressed him, and had afterwards shown him an easy way out of his financial difficulties; that way being to secretly accept the gift of a small trawler, on condition that, any time his services were required by a strange gentleman who would come down from London and bring him instructions, he would faithfully carry them out.
In the middle of the month of August 1914 the mysterious gentleman had arrived, showed him a marked chart of the sea beyond the five-fathoms line at the Sand Haile, and had given him certain instructions, which he had been forced to carry out.
Not without great difficulty had the second sh.o.r.e-end of the cable been brought ash.o.r.e at night just opposite his cottage, and dug into the sand at low water, the end being afterwards carried into the little bedroom in the cottage, where, a few days before, several heavy boxes had arrived--boxes which old Tom afterwards saw contained a quant.i.ty of electric batteries and weird-looking apparatus.
It was then that Lewin Rodwell arrived for the first time, and, among other accomplishments, being a trained telegraph electrician, he had set the instruments up upon the unsuspicious-looking stand of the big old sewing-machine.
Small, who daily realised and regretted the crafty machinations of the enemy in entrapping him by means of the moneylender in Hull, was inclined to go to the police, confess, and expose the whole affair.
Rodwell, with his shrewd intuition, knew this, and in consequence treated father and son with very little consideration.
Even as he stood in the room that night fingering the secret instruments, which he had just revealed by lifting the cover, he turned to the weatherbeaten old man and said, in a hard, sarcastic voice:
"You see the war is lasting longer than you expected, Small--isn"t it?
I suppose you"ve seen all that silly nonsense in the papers about Germany being already at the end of her tether? Don"t you believe it.
In a year"s time we shall have only just started."
"Yes, sir," replied the old fellow, in a thick voice. "But--well, sir, I--I tell you frankly, I"m growing a bit nervous. Mr Judd, from the Chapel Point coastguard, came "ere twice last week and sat with me smokin", as if he were a-tryin" to pump me."
"Nervous, be hanged, Small. Don"t be an idiot!" Rodwell replied quickly. "What can anybody know, unless you yourself blab? And if you did--by Gad! your own people would shoot you as a traitor at the Tower of London--you and your boy too! So remember that--and be very careful to keep a still tongue."
"But I never thought, when that Mr Josephs, up in London, wrote to me sending me a receipt for the money I owed, that I was expected to do all this!" Small protested.
"No, if you had known you would never have done it!" laughed Rodwell.
"But Germany is not like your gallant rule-of-thumb England. She leaves nothing to chance, and, knowing the cupidity of men, she takes full advantage of it--as in your case."
"But I can"t bear the suspense, sir; I feel--I feel, Mr Rodwell--that I"m suspected--that this house is under suspicion--that--"
"Utter bosh! It"s all imagination, Small," Lewin Rodwell interrupted.
"They"ve cut the cable at the Spurn, and that"s sufficient. n.o.body in England ever dreams that the German Admiralty prepared for this war five years ago, and therefore spliced a second end into the cable."
"Well, I tell you, sir, I heartily wish I"d never had anything to do with this affair," grumbled old Tom.
"And if you hadn"t you"d have been in Grimsby Workhouse instead of having six hundred and fifty-five pounds to your credit at the bank in Skegness. You see I know the exact amount. And that amount you have secured by a.s.sisting the enemy. I know mine is a somewhat unpalatable remark--but that"s the truth, a truth which you and your son Ted, as well as your two brothers must hide--if you don"t want to be tried by court-martial and shot as traitors, the whole lot of you."
The old fisherman started at those words, and held his breath.
"We won"t say any more, Tom, on that delicate question," Rodwell went on, speaking in a hard, intense voice. "Just keep a dead silence, all of you, and you"ll have nothing to fear or regret. If you don"t, the punishment will fall upon you; I shall take good care to make myself secure--depend upon that!"
"But can"t we leave this cottage? Can"t we get away?" implored the old fellow who had innocently fallen into the dastardly web so cleverly spun by the enemy.
"No; you can"t. You"ve accepted German money for five years, and Germany now requires your services," was Rodwell"s stern, brutal rejoinder. "Any attempt on your part to back out of your bargain will result in betraying you to your own people. That"s plain speaking! You and your son should think it over carefully together. You know the truth now. When Germany is at war she doesn"t fight in kid-gloves--like your idiotic pigs of English!"
CHAPTER NINE.
TO "NUMBER 70 BERLIN."
Lewin Rodwell, as a powerful and well-informed secret agent, was no amateur.
After the old fisherman had left the close atmosphere of that little room, Rodwell seated himself on a rickety rush-bottomed chair before the sewing-machine stand, beside the bed, and by the bright light of the petrol table-lamp, carefully and with expert touch adjusted the tangle of wires and the polished bra.s.s instruments before him.
The manner in which he manipulated them showed him to be perfectly well acquainted with the due importance of their adjustment. With infinite care he examined the end of the cable, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it from its place, carefully sc.r.a.ping with his clasp-knife the exposed copper wires protruding from the sheath of gutta percha and steel wire, and placing them each beneath the solid bra.s.s binding-screws upon the mahogany base.
"The silly old owl now knows that we won"t stand any more nonsense from him," he muttered to himself, in German, as he did this. "It"s an unsavoury thought that the old fool, in his silly patriotism, might blab to the police or the coastguard. Phew! If he did, things would become awkward--devilish awkward."
Then, settling himself before the instruments, he took from his inner pocket the long, bulky envelope, out of which he drew a sheet of closely-written paper which he spread out upon the little table before him. Afterwards, with methodical exactness, he took out a pencil and a memorandum-block from his side-pocket, arranging them before him.
Again he examined the connections running into the big, heavy tapping-key, and then, grasping the ebonite k.n.o.b of the latter, he ticked out dots and dashes in a manner which showed him to be an expert telegraphist.
"M.X.Q.Q." were the code-letters he sent. "M.X.Q.Q." he clicked out, once--twice--thrice. The call, in the German cable war-code, meant: "Are you ready to receive message?"
He waited for a reply. But there was none. The cable that ran for three hundred miles, or so, beneath the black, storm-tossed waters of the North Sea was silent.
"Curious!" he muttered to himself. "Stendel is generally on the alert.