"Look, monsieur," said Hillyard, and he pointed to the little aperture in the coloured gla.s.s of the window. "One can see from the corridor what is going on in this room. That is useful. If a traveller complains--bah, it is the war!" and Hillyard laughed.
M. de Ca.s.saud looked at the window.
"Yes, that is ingenious," he said.
He drained off the water, folded back his sleeve, and plunged his arm into the tank. Then he uttered a little cry. He drew up into the light an oblong metal can, like a sandwich-case, with the edges soldered together to make it water-tight. He slipped it into his pocket and turned again to the window. He looked at it again curiously.
"Yes, that is ingenious," he said softly, like a man speaking to himself. Then he led the way back to his office, looking in at the guard-room on the platform to give an order on the way.
The soldered edges of the case were quickly split asunder and a small package of letters written on very thin paper revealed.
"You will let me take these on with me," pleaded Martin. "You shall have them again. But some of them may want a special treatment of which we have the secret."
M. de Ca.s.saud was doubtful about the propriety of such a procedure.
"After all I found them," Martin urged.
"It would be unusual," said M. de Ca.s.saud. "The regulations, you know----"
Martin Hillyard smiled.
"The regulations, for you and me, my friend, are those we make ourselves."
M. de Ca.s.saud would admit nothing so outrageous to his trained and rather formal mind. But he made a list of these letters and of their addresses as though he was undecided. He had not finished when a sergeant entered and saluted. The attendant of the sleeping-car had been taken to the depot. He had been searched and a pistol had been found upon him. The sergeant laid a very small automatic Colt upon the table and retired. M. de Ca.s.saud took up the little weapon and examined it.
"Do you know these toys, Monsieur Hillyard?" he asked.
"Yes. They are chiefly used against the mosquitoes."
"Oh, they will kill at twenty-five paces," continued the Commissaire; and he looked quickly at Hillyard. "I will tell you something. You ran some risk last night when you explored that water-tank. Yes, indeed! It would have been so easy. The attendant had but to thrust the muzzle of this through the opening of the window, shoot you dead, raise an alarm that he had caught you hiding something, and there was he a hero and you a traitor. Yes, that is why I said to you the little opening in the window was ingenious! Ah, if he had caught you! Yes, if he had caught you!"
Martin was quick to take advantage.
"Then let me have those letters! I will keep my French colleagues informed of everything."
"Very well," said M. de Ca.s.saud, and he suddenly swept the letters across to Hillyard, who gathered them up hastily and b.u.t.toned them away in his pocket before de Ca.s.saud could change his mind.
"It is all very incorrect," said the Commissaire reproachfully.
"Yes, but it is the war," replied Hillyard. "I have the authority of the attendant of the sleeping-car for saying so."
CHAPTER XVI
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
"Now!" said Hillyard.
Fairbairn fetched a couple of white porcelain developing dishes to the table. Hillyard unlocked a drawer in his bureau. They were in the deck-saloon of the _Dragonfly_, steaming southwards from Valencia.
Outside the open windows the brown hill-sides, the uplands of olive trees and the sun-flecked waves slipped by in a magical clear light; and the hiss of the beaded water against the ship"s planks filled the cabin with a rustle as of silk. Hillyard drew a deep breath of excitement as he took out from the drawer the letters he had carried off from M. de Ca.s.saud. He had travelled straight through Barcelona to Valencia with the letters in his pocket, picking up Fairbairn at the Estacion de Francia on the way, and now, in the sunlight and in the secrecy of the open sea, they were to appraise the value of their catch.
They sat at the table and examined them, opening the envelopes with the skill and the care which experience had taught them. For, even though this post-road was henceforth closed it might possibly be worth while to send forward these letters. One or two were apparently family letters for German soldiers, interned at Pampluna; one or two were business communications from firms in Berlin to their agents in Spain; and these seemed genuine enough.
"They may be of value to the War Trade Board," said Fairbairn; and he put them aside for dispatch to London. As he turned back Hillyard cried suddenly:
"Here we are!"
He had come to the last letter of the little heap. He was holding the envelope in front of him and he read out the address:
_"Mr. Jack Williams,_ _"Alfredo Menandez, 6,_ _"Madrid."_
Fairbairn started up, and tugging at his moustache, stared at the envelope over Hillyard"s shoulder.
"By Jove!" he said. "We may have got something."
"Let us see!" returned Hillyard, and he opened the envelope.
As he spread out the letter both men laughed. The date of the month had been corrected by the writer--thus:
8 "_July_ 27th, 1916."
[Transcriber"s note: The original text has a slash through the 7.]
There was no doubt any longer in either of these two men"s minds that hidden away under the commonplaces of a letter of affection was a message of grave importance.
"They are full of clever tricks in Berlin," said Hillyard cheerfully. He could afford to contemplate that cleverness with complacency, for it was now to serve his ends.
There was a German official of high importance living in the Calle Alfredo Menandez, although not at number 6 in that street. The street was a short one with very few numbers in it; and it had occurred to the German official to point out to the postman in that street that if letters came to English names in that street of which the owners could not be discovered, they were probably for the governess of his children, who had a number of English relations moving about Spain, and was accustomed to receive their letters for them, and in any case, five pesetas would be paid for each of them. Shortly after, letters had begun to arrive addressed to English nonexistent people in the quiet little Calle Alfredo Menandez, sometimes from Allied countries, sometimes from Holland, or from Port-Bou over against Cerbere in Spain; and every one of these found its natural way to the house of the German official. The choice of English names had a certain small ingenuity in that, when pa.s.sing through the censorship of Allied countries, they were a little more likely to be taken at their face value than letters addressed to foreigners.
So far so good. But the German high official was a very busy person; and letters might find their way into his hands which were really intended for English persons and not for him at all. Accordingly, to make all clear, to warn him that here indeed was a letter deserving his kind attention, that little trifling alteration in the date was adopted; as though a man writing on the 28th had mislaid the calendar or newspaper and a.s.signed the 27th to the day of writing, and afterwards had discovered his mistake. It was no wonder accordingly that hope ran high in both Fairbairn and Hillyard as they read through this letter; although, upon the face of it, it was nothing but a sentimental effusion from a sister to a brother.
"We have got to clear all this nonsense away first," said Hillyard.
Fairbairn took the letter, and placing it on one of the developing dishes, poured over it a liquid from a bottle.
"That won"t take very long," he said.
Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second of the two white porcelain dishes. He brought out a cruet stand from a cupboard at the side of the stove and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the rim, and rocked the dish that the dilution might be complete. Next he took a new copying-pencil from the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the vinegar and water.
This lead he carefully dissolved with the help of a gla.s.s pestle.
"There! It"s ready," he said.
"I, too," added Fairbairn.
He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of writing paper which was absolutely blank. Not one drop of the black ink which had recorded those sentimental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of notepaper which had accidentally fallen into a basin of water.