"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What"s your plan?"
In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous indignation.
"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you suppose for one minute I will allow--"
His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he said. "We"ll find some place where uncle can"t hear us."
Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even a.s.sisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been playing hob with my map?"
For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a glance, he signified the waiter.
"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club asked us to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that"s where you can buy petrol."
The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an a.s.sured and happy countenance, he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced carefully about him and then, a.s.sured he was alone, leaned eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
In his mind"s eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!"
At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear, of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these the sea was empty.
By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver of the char a banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well known and well liked.
Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table, its bra.s.s work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard.
"They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: "Will meet you to-morrow at the Crystal Palace." On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of this afternoon"s papers, he will insert the final advertis.e.m.e.nt. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will know the moment has come!"
As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf b.a.l.l.s.
"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at their posts.
They are fiddling while England falls!"
Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It was nine o"clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms, and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere Leute?" he demanded.
"You"ll "ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I am a trifle "ard of "earing."
The soldier addressed him in English.
"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years, recalled its name with difficulty.
"Have you seen any of our people?"
With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights, and remain indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, thank"ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May I lock in the pigs first, sir?"
One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had better pack up and go home."
"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We"ll close It."
They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the b.u.t.ts of their rifles on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the occasion.
"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come tumbling into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young fellow, my lad, or--"
The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents, interrupted her sharply.
"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
If you into the street go, we will shoot!"
He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
"You a.s.s!" muttered the tall German. "Get out!"
As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and gla.s.s, then silence, and an instant later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back to the car."
But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.