ECHOES FROM THE WILHELMSTRASSE
After leaving the War Offices, Rebener went directly to the nearest
public telephone.
“Hello, Karlbeck,” he called, after satisfying himself by mumbling a
jumble of unintelligible words and numbers that he had the man he
wanted on the wire. “Is Smith there? What? Thames Embankment? What did
you say is the number of that officer? Oh, my old butler, Pat! That’s
all right. Now listen; if I should miss Smith and he comes in, tell
him to call me at my hotel at once. I have made an engagement for
dinner with our man for eight o’clock tonight, but you and H. R. H.
need not be at my rooms until half-past eight. You understand, eh?
Good-bye.”
He strolled out, following Edestone’s course with the air of a man
wishing to enjoy this beautiful spring morning, and approaching the
officer who had interrupted the interview between Edestone and Smith,
he said, with a little twinkle in his eye: “Will you tell me which of
these bridges is called the London Bridge?”
The blue-coated Pat, with Hibernian readiness, caught the humour of
the situation. “Shure, I would gladly, but ‘tis a strhanger I am here
mesilf,” he grinned as he smothered the entire lower part of his face
with his huge paw of a hand, and significantly closed one eye.
“Pat, your fondness for joking will get you into trouble yet. Did
Smith turn Edestone over to you?”
“He did, and I mesilf took him up to the Admiralty where he is
now. 4782, I think they called him, takes him up from there, and will
keep him until he hears from either you or Smith.”
“Where has Smith gone?”
“Shure he’s up at Claridge’s, bein’ shaved by Count von Hottenroth.”
“Now, now, Pat, if you don’t stop that joking of yours I’ll certainly
report you to the Wilhelmstrasse.”
“And they said I was to be the first King of dear old Ireland!” as
with a broad grin on his face he raised his hand as if drinking. “Der
Tag!” he cried, thereby causing several passers-by to laugh at the
idea of a London bobby giving the sacred German toast.
Rebener, leaving him, went directly to his rooms at The Britz where he
was received with the greatest consideration by everybody about the
place. He was shown to the royal suite by the proprietor himself, who
after he had carefully closed the door upon them stood as if waiting
for orders.
“Call Claridge’s on the ‘phone, and tell Smith who is being shaved,”
he smiled at the recollection of Pat’s jest, “to meet me here at
once. I do not want him seen in the hotel, so tell him to come in by
the servants’ entrance, and you bring him up on the service elevator
and in here through my pantry and dining-room.”
The proprietor retired to attend to this, but was soon back, and
Rebener continued his instructions.
“Luckily Edestone invited me to dine with him tonight before I had a
chance to invite him,” he said, “but I will persuade him to come here
and dine with me.”
“So, Mr. Bombiadi,” he turned to the proprietor, “I shall want dinner
here for four at 8:30. See to it yourself, will you, that my guests
are brought through my private entrance, and one especially--you know
who--who will be incognito, must not be recognized. Not that there
could be any objection to these men dining with me here--a common rich
American, who loves to spend his money on princes and things--but by
tonight this man Edestone will be watched by at least twenty men from
Scotland Yard, and they suspect anyone of being a German spy, be he
prince or pauper.”
Their conversation was interrupted at this point by the arrival of
Smith, who came in very much excited. Sniffling and rubbing his nose
with the back of his forefinger, like a nervous cocaine fiend, he
broke out agitatedly:
“Mr. Rebener, I’m getting sick of this job. When I undertook to find
out for you what was going on at the Little Place in the Country, I
was working for Germany as against the world, and anything that I can
do for her I am glad and proud to do, but that Hottenroth talks like a
damn fool. Excuse me, Mr. Rebener, but he don’t want to stop at
anything. He says that if he pulls off this thing the Emperor, when he
gets to London, will make him Duke of Westminster, or something, and
six months from now he will appoint me Governor-General of North
America. I tell you, Mr. Rebener, that fellow is plumb nutty.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Rebener,” interposed the proprietor, “it is true that
Hottenroth is excitable, but he is faithful to the Fatherland and an
humble servant to His Imperial Majesty. He has been in charge of a
fixed post in London for fifteen years. He was one of the very first
to be sent here, and he was in Paris before that. He would die
willingly for the Fatherland, as would I, and if this Schmidt, I mean
Smith, thinks there is any sin too great to be committed for the
Fatherland, he is not worthy of a place among us, and the sooner we
get rid of him the better.” And he looked at the unfortunate Smith in
a way that showed he was willing to do this at any moment.
But Rebener, who had lived all his life in America, and like Smith did
not thoroughly agree with the philosophy of German militarism--before
which everything must bow--hurriedly raised his hand.
“Come, come, you are both getting unnecessarily excited. Don’t let us
try to cross our bridges until we get to them. What did von Hottenroth
have to report?”
“It was not very satisfactory, to tell you the truth, Mr. Rebener,”
said Smith; “they searched through all of his things and they found
nothing but a drawing of a Zeppelin of our 29-M type, with some slight
changes, which Hottenroth said don’t amount to anything, and some
photographs of Mr. Edestone himself, doing some juggling tricks with
heavy dumb-bells and weights, but we learned afterwards from the
porter that an expressman had left two large and heavy trunks marked,
‘A. M. Black and P. S. Stanton,’ at No. 4141 Grosvenor Square East.”
“Well what is the report,” demanded Bombiadi, “on No. 4141 Grosvenor
Square?”
Smith read from a memorandum book: “Lord Lindenberry, who is a
widower, lives there with his mother, the Dowager. The old lady is now
up at their country place, in Yorkshire, and the Marquis went on to
Aldershot last night after having dined with Edestone at Brooks’s and
dropping him at Claridge’s at 12:15 A.M. The house is only partially
opened; there are only a few of the old servants there.”
“And do you think these trunks contain the instrument which you
reported to us from America was always kept in the safe at the Little
Place in the Country?” snapped the hotel proprietor.
“I don’t know,” whined Smith. “Mr. Edestone probably has it with him.”
“Well, we must get hold of it before he shows it to Underhill,”
frowned the proprietor, “that is, if it has not been shown already,
and in that case we must get hold of Edestone himself.”
“Now that is exactly what is troubling me,” Smith’s voice rose
hysterically. “I’m not going to stand for any of that rough stuff,
Mr. Rebener. Mr. Edestone and his father have both been mighty good to
me, and if anything happens to him I’ll blow on the whole lot of you.”
“So?” The proprietor’s pale fat face was convulsed with a look of
hatred and contempt. “Then we are to understand, Smith, that if we
find it necessary to do away with Edestone you wish to go first? You
dirty little half-breed,” he growled in an undertone. “Your mother
must have been an English woman.”
“Here, here, you two fools!” Rebener broke in with sharp authority,
“there is no question of ‘doing away’ with Edestone, as you call
it. What we’re after is the invention and not the man himself, and
we’ll not get it by ‘doing away’ with him. I am, like Smith here,
opposed to murder, even for the Fatherland.”
“But it is not murder, Mr. Rebener,” interrupted the proprietor, “if
thereby we are instrumental in saving thousands of the sons of the
Fatherland.”
“That would not only not save the sons of the Fatherland, but would
put an end to our usefulness, both here in London and in America,
especially if Edestone has already turned the whole thing over to
England. The very first thing for us to do is to find out how the
matter stands. If the Ministry knows nothing, we must work to get him
to Berlin, and then even you fire-eaters may safely trust it to the
Wilhelmstrasse. If it should happen, however, that the British
Government has the invention, His Royal Highness tonight will try to
get enough out of Edestone to enlighten Berlin, and in that way we
shall at least get an even break. That is, always provided that
Edestone has not a lot of the completed articles, whatever they may
be, at the Little Place in the Country. That would put us in bad
again, and it will be up to Count Bernstoff to attend to it from the
New York end.”
“Of course, Mr. Rebener,” said the proprietor, “we can do nothing
until we hear from His Royal Highness, but I am satisfied that he will
say Edestone must not be allowed to go to Downing Street tomorrow to
continue his negotiations, unless in some way we can get hold of this
secret tonight.”
“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll--!” started Rebener angrily, when he was
interrupted by the proprietor, who holding his finger to his lip,
said:
“Please, Mr. Rebener, please! Always remember that the service on
which we are engaged has no soul and a very long arm.” Then dropping
into the persuasive and servile tone of the _maître d’hôtel_: “I
propose, Mr. Rebener, that you allow me to send you up a nice little
lunch, some melon, say, a _salmon mayonnaise_ or a _filet du
sole au vin blanc_ and a _noisette d’agneau_ and a nice little
sweet, and you must try a bottle of our Steinberger Auslese ‘84.
“And Smith,” he turned to the humbler agent, “you had better get in
touch with 4782, who is reporting to His Royal Highness every hour.
His last message was that Edestone is still with Underhill, so you get
down to the Admiralty and report to me here as often as you can.
Edestone will probably lunch quietly alone somewhere, as I know that
all of his friends are at the front, but don’t lose him until you turn
him over to Mr. Rebener tonight at 8 o’clock.” His eyes narrowed as
they followed the skulking figure of the architect out of the room.
“That fellow needs watching,” he muttered to Rebener. “He has lost his
nerve. He is not a true German anyhow. But if he makes a false step,
4782 knows what to do and you can depend upon him to do it. We do not
know who he is, but he is a gentleman, if not a nobleman, and he will
kill or die for his Emperor.”
Smith, in the meantime, had gone down the service stairs and out at
the rear of the hotel. He was thoughtful, and when he was settled in
his taxi, after having directed the chauffeur where to drive, he said
to himself:
“They are going to kill him tonight unless they get that machine, or
else can fix it so that Rockstone doesn’t get it tomorrow, that is if
Underhill hasn’t got it already. I wish I’d never started this
business; I never thought it would go so far, and what do I get out of
it? A German decoration which I can’t wear in America, and God knows I
don’t want to live in Germany, and seventeen dollars a week. I’m not
going to stand for it, and that’s settled.”
Arriving in front of a little restaurant he entered and sat down at a
table near a window looking out on Whitehall Place. The proprietor,
who was another German, came over to him, and while ostensibly
arranging the cloth spoke to him in an undertone in his own language.
“Edestone is still with Underhill,” he said. “The taxi driver on the
stand opposite, the one who looks as if he were asleep, is 4782. In
that way he keeps the head of the line, you see, and when Edestone
comes out, if he doesn’t take that cab, 4782 can follow him until he
alights again, and then he is to telephone His Royal Highness. So you
sit here and have lunch, where you can see what is going on.”
Then, turning to a group of his regular customers at another table,
the jovial host in a loud voice and in perfect English took a violent
pro-Ally part in the war discussion that was going on.