Clearing the Air
“Has he gone to get the police, do you think?” said Davies, grimly.
“I don’t think so,” said I. “Let’s go aboard before that Customs fellow
buttonholes us.”
A diminished row of stolid Frisians still ruminated over the
_Dulcibella_. Friend Grimm was visible smoking on his forecastle. We
went on board in silence.
“First of all, where exactly is Memmert?” I said.
Davies pulled down the chart, said “There,” and flung himself at full
length on a sofa.
The reader can see Memmert for himself. South of Juist, _[See Map B]_
abutting on the Ems delta, lies an extensive sandbank called Nordland,
whose extreme western rim remains uncovered at the highest tides; the
effect being to leave a C-shaped island, a mere paring of sand like a
boomerang, nearly two miles long, but only 150 yards or so broad, of
curiously symmetrical outline, except at one spot, where it bulges to
the width of a quarter of a mile. On the English chart its nakedness
was absolute, save for a beacon at the south; but the German chart
marked a building at the point where the bulge occurs. This was
evidently the depôt. “Fancy living there!” I thought, for the very name
struck cold. No wonder Grimm was grim; and no wonder he was used to
seek change of air. But the advantages of the site were obvious. It was
remarkably isolated, even in a region where isolation is the rule; yet
it was conveniently near the wreck, which, as we had heard, lay two
miles out on the Juister Reef. Lastly, it was clearly accessible at any
state of the tide, for the six-fathom channel of the Ems estuary runs
hard up to it on the south, and thence sends off an eastward branch
which closely borders the southern horn, thus offering an anchorage at
once handy, deep, and sheltered from seaward gales.
Such was Memmert, as I saw it on the chart, taking in its features
mechanically, for while Davies lay there heedless and taciturn, a
pretence of interest was useless. I knew perfectly well what was
between us, but I did not see why I should make the first move; for I
had a grievance too, an old one. So I sat back on my sofa and jotted
down in my notebook the heads of our conversation at the inn while it
was fresh in my memory, and strove to draw conclusions. But the silence
continuing and becoming absurd, I threw my pride to the winds, and my
notebook on the table.
“I say, Davies,” I said, “I’m awfully sorry I chaffed you about
Fräulein Dollmann.” (No answer.) “Didn’t you see I couldn’t help it?”
“I wish to Heaven we had never come in here,” he said, in a hard voice;
“it comes of landing _ever_.” (I couldn’t help smiling at this, but he
wasn’t looking at me.) “Here we are, given away, moved on, taken in
charge, arranged for like Cook’s tourists. I couldn’t follow your
game—too infernally deep for me, but——” That stung me.
“Look here,” I said, “I did my best. It was you that muddled it. Why
did you harp on ducks?”
“We could have got out of that. Why did you harp on everything
idiotic—your letter, the Foreign Office, the _Kormoran_, the wreck,
the——?”
“You’re utterly unreasonable. Didn’t you see what traps there were? I
was driven the way I went. We started unprepared, and we’re jolly well
out of it.”
Davies drove on blindly. “It was bad enough telling all about the
channels and exploring——”
“Why, you agreed to that yourself!”
“I gave in to you. We can’t explore any more now.”
“There’s the wreck, though.”
“Oh, hang the wreck! It’s all a blind, or he wouldn’t have made so much
of it. There are all these channels to be——”
“Oh, hang the channels! I know we wanted a free hand, but we’ve got to
go to Norderney some time, and if Dollmann’s away——”
“Why did you harp on Miss Dollmann?” said Davies.
We had worked round, through idle recrimination, to the real point of
departure. I knew Davies was not himself, and would not return to
himself till the heart of the matter was reached.
“Look here,” I said, “you brought me out here to help you, because, as
you say, I was clever, talked German, and—liked yachting (I couldn’t
resist adding this). But directly you really _want_ me you turn round
and go for me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean all that, really,” said Davies; “I’m sorry—I was
worried.”
“I know; but it’s your own fault. You haven’t been fair with me.
There’s a complication in this business that you’ve never talked about.
I’ve never pressed you because I thought you would confide in me.
You——”
“I know I haven’t,” said Davies.
“Well, you see the result. Our hand was forced. To have said nothing
about Dollmann was folly—to have said he tried to wreck you was equal
folly. The story we agreed on was the best and safest, and you told it
splendidly. But for two reasons I had to harp on the daughter—one
because your manner when they were mentioned was so confused as to
imperil our whole position. Two, because your story, though the safest,
was, at the best, suspicious. Even on your own showing Dollmann treated
you badly—discourteously, say: though you pretended not to have seen
it. You want a motive to neutralise that, and induce you to revisit him
in a friendly way. I supplied it, or rather I only encouraged von
Brüning to supply it.”
“Why revisit him, after all?” said Davies.
“Oh, come——”
“But don’t you see what a hideous fix you’ve put me in? How caddish I
feel about it?”
I did see, and I felt a cad myself, as his full distress came home to
me. But I felt, too, that, whosesoever the fault, we had drifted into a
ridiculous situation, and were like characters in one of those tiresome
plays where misunderstandings are manufactured and so carefully
sustained that the audience are too bored to wait for the _dénouement._
You can do that on the stage; but we wanted our _dénouement._
“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but I wish you had told me all about it.
Won’t you now? Just the bare, matter-of-fact truth. I hate sentiment,
and so do you.”
“I find it very difficult to tell people things,” said Davies, “things
like this.” I waited. “I did like her—very much.” Our eyes met for a
second, in which all was said that need be said, as between two of our
phlegmatic race. “And she’s—separate from him. That was the reason of
all my indecisions.” he hurried on. “I only told you half at Schlei. I
know I ought to have been open, and asked your advice. But I let it
slide. I’ve been hoping all along that we might find what we want and
win the game without coming to close quarters again.”
I no longer wondered at his devotion to the channel theory, since,
built on conviction, it was thus doubly fortified.
“Yet you always knew what might happen,” I said. “At Schlei you spoke
of ‘settling with’ Dollmann.”
“I know. When I thought of him I was mad. I made myself forget the
other part.”
“Which recurred at Brunsbüttel?” I thought of the news we had there.
“Yes.”
“Davies, we must have no more secrets. I’m going to speak out. Are you
sure you’ve not misunderstood her? You say—and I’m willing to assume
it—that Dollmann’s a traitor and a murderer.”
“Oh, hang the murder part!” said Davies, impatiently. “What does _that_
matter?”
“Well, traitor. Very good; but in that case I suspect his daughter. No!
let me go on. She was useful, to say the least. She encouraged
you—you’ve told me that—to make that passage with them.”
“Stop, Carruthers,” said Davies, firmly. “I know you mean kindly; but
it’s no use. I believe in her.”
I thought for a moment.
“In that case,” I said, “I’ve something to propose. When we get out of
this place let’s sail straight away to England.” “(There, Commander von
Brüning,” I thought, “you never can say I neglected your advice.”)
“No!” exclaimed Davies, starting up and facing me. “I’m hanged if we
will. Think what’s at stake. Think of that traitor—plotting with
Germans. My God!”
“Very good,” I said. “I’m with you for going on. But let’s face facts.
We _must_ scotch Dollmann. We can’t do so without hurting _her_.”
“Can’t we _possibly_?”
“Of course not; be sensible, man. Face that. Next point; it’s absurd to
hope that we need not revisit them—it’s ten to one that we must, if
we’re to succeed. His attempt on you is the whole foundation of our
suspicions. And we don’t even know for certain who he _is_ yet. We’re
committed, I know, to going straight to Norderney now; but even if we
weren’t, should we do any good by exploring and prying? It’s very
doubtful. We know we’re watched, if not suspected, and that disposes of
nine-tenths of our power. The channels? Yes, but is it likely they’ll
let us learn them by heart, if they’re of such vital importance, even
if we are thought to be _bona fide_ yachtsmen? And, seriously, apart
from their value in war, which I don’t deny, are they at the root of
this business? But we’ll talk about that in a moment. The point now is,
what shall we do if we meet the Dollmanns?”
Beads of sweat stood on Davies’s brow. I felt like a torturer, but it
could not be helped. “Tax him with having wrecked you? Our quest would
be at an end! We must be friendly. You must tell the story you told
to-day, and chance his believing it. If he does, so much the better; if
he doesn’t, he won’t dare say so, and we still have chances. We gain
time, and have a tremendous hold on him—_if_ we’re friendly.” Davies
winced. I gave another turn to the screw. “Friendly with them _both,_
of course. You were before, you know; you liked her very much—you must
seem to still.”
“Oh, stop your infernal logic.”
“Shall we chuck it and go to England?” I asked again, as an inquisitor
might say, “Have you had enough?” No answer. I went on: “To make it
easier, you _do_ like her still.” I had roused my victim at last.
“What the devil do you mean, Carruthers? That I’m to trade on my liking
for her—on her innocence, to—good God! what _do_ you mean?”
“No, no, not that. I’m not such a cad, or such a fool, or so ignorant
of you. If she knows nothing of her father’s character and likes
you—and you like her—and you are what you are—oh Heavens! man, face it,
realise it! But what I mean is this: is she, _can_ she be, what you
think? Imagine his position if we’re right about him; the vilest
creature on God’s earth—a disgraceful past to have been driven to
this—in the pay of Germany. I want to spare you misery.” I was going to
add: “And if you’re on your guard, to increase our chances.” But the
utter futility of such suggestions silenced me. What a plan I had
foreshadowed! An enticing plan and a fair one, too, as against such
adversaries; turning this baffling cross-current to advantage as many a
time we had worked eddies of an adverse tide in these difficult seas.
But Davies was Davies, and there was an end of it; his faith and
simplicity shamed me. And the pity of it, the cruelty of it, was that
his very qualities were his last torture, raising to the acutest pitch
the conflict between love and patriotism. Remember that the latter was
his dominant life-motive, and that here and now was his chance—if you
would gauge the bitterness of that conflict.
It was in its last throes now. His elbows were on the table, and his
twitching hands pressed on his forehead. He took them away.
“Of course we must go on. It can’t be helped, that’s all.”
“And you believe in her?”
“I’ll remember what you’ve said. There may be some way out. And—I’d
rather not talk about that any more. What about the wreck?”
Further argument was futile. Davies by an effort seemed to sweep the
subject from his thoughts, and I did my best to do the same. At any
rate the air was cleared—we were friends; and it only remained to
grapple with the main problem in the light of the morning’s interview.
Every word that I could recollect of that critical conversation I
reviewed with Davies, who had imperfectly understood what he had not
been directly concerned in; and, as I did so, I began to see with what
cleverness each succeeding sentence of von Brüning’s was designed to
suit both of two contingencies. If we were innocent travellers, he was
the genial host, communicative and helpful. If we were spies, his
tactics had been equally applicable. He had outdone us in apparent
candour, hiding nothing which he knew we would discover for ourselves,
and contriving at the same time both to gain knowledge and control of
our movements, and to convey us warnings, which would only be
understood if we were guilty, that we were playing an idle and perilous
game, and had better desist. But in one respect we had had the
advantage, and that was in the version Davies had given of his
stranding on the Hohenhörn. Inscrutable as our questioner was, he let
it appear not only that the incident was new to him, but that he
conjectured at its sinister significance. A little cross-examination on
detail would have been fatal to Davies’s version; but that was where
our strength lay; he dared not cross-examine for fear of suggesting to
Davies suspicions which he might never have felt. Indeed, I thought I
detected that fear underlying his whole attitude towards us, and it
strengthened a conviction which had been growing in me since Grimm’s
furtive midnight visit, that the secret of this coast was of so
important and delicate a nature that rather than attract attention to
it at all, overt action against intruders would be taken only in the
last resort, and on irrefragable proofs of guilty intention.
Now for our clues. I had come away with two, each the germ of a
distinct theory, and both obscured by the prevailing ambiguity. Now,
however, as we thumbed the chart and I gave full rein to my fancy, one
of them, the idea of Memmert, gained precision and vigour every moment.
True, such information as we had about the French wreck and his own
connection with it was placed most readily at our disposal by von
Brüning; but I took it to be information calculated only to forestall
suspicion, since he was aware that we already associated him with
Dollmann, possibly also with Grimm, and it was only likely that in the
ordinary course we should learn that the trio were jointly concerned in
Memmert. So much for the facts; as for the construction he wished us to
put on them, I felt sure it was absolutely false. He wished to give us
the impression that the buried treasure itself was at the root of any
mystery we might have scented. I do not know if the reader fully
appreciated that astute suggestion—the hint that secrecy as to results
was necessary owing both to the great sum at stake and the flaw in the
title, which he had been careful to inform us had passed through
British hands. What he meant to imply was, “Don’t be surprised if you
have midnight visitors; Englishmen prowling along this coast are
suspected of being Lloyd’s agents.” An ingenious insinuation, which, at
the time it was made, had caused me to contemplate a new and much more
commonplace solution of our enigma than had ever occurred to us; but it
was only a passing doubt, and I dismissed it altogether now.
The fact was, it either explained everything or nothing. As long as we
held to our fundamental assumption—that Davies had been decoyed into a
death-trap in September—it explained nothing. It was too fantastic to
suppose that the exigencies of a commercial speculation would lead to
such extremities as that. We were not in the South Sea Islands; nor
were we the puppets of a romance. We were in Europe, dealing not only
with a Dollmann, but with an officer of the German Imperial Navy, who
would scarcely be connected with a commercial enterprise which could
conceivably be reduced to forwarding its objects in such a fashion. It
was shocking enough to find him in relations with such a scoundrel at
all, but it was explicable if the motive were imperial—not so if it
were financial. No; to accept the suggestion we must declare the whole
quest a mare’s nest from beginning to end; the attempt on Davies a
delusion of his own fancy, the whole structure we had built on it,
baseless.
“Well,” I can hear the reader saying, “why not? You, at any rate, were
always a little sceptical.”
Granted; yet I can truthfully say I scarcely faltered for a moment.
Much had happened since Schlei Fiord. I had seen the mechanism of the
death-trap; I had lived with Davies for a stormy fortnight, every hour
of which had increased my reliance on his seamanship, and also,
therefore, on his account of an event which depended largely for its
correct interpretation on a balanced nautical judgement. Finally, I had
been unconsciously realising, and knew from his mouth to-day, that he
had exercised and acted on that judgement in the teeth of personal
considerations, which his loyal nature made overwhelming in their
force.
What, then, was the meaning of Memmert? At the outset it riveted my
attention on the Ems estuary, whose mouth it adjoins. We had always
rather neglected the Ems in our calculations; with some excuse, too,
for at first sight its importance bears no proportion to that of the
three greater estuaries. The latter bear vessels of the largest tonnage
and deepest draught to the very quays of Hamburg, Bremerhaven, and the
naval dockyard of Wilhelmshaven; while two of them, the Elbe and the
Weser, are commerce carriers on the vastest scale for the whole empire.
The Ems, on the other hand, only serves towns of the second class. A
glance at the chart explains this. You see a most imposing estuary on a
grander scale than any of the other three taken singly, with a length
of thirty miles and a frontage on the North Sea of ten miles, or
one-seventieth, roughly, of the whole seaboard; encumbered by outlying
shoals, and blocked in the centre by the island of Borkum, but
presenting two fine deep-water channels to the incoming vessel. These
roll superbly through enormous sheets of sand, unite and approach the
mainland in one stately stream three miles in breadth. But then comes a
sad falling off. The navigable fairway shoals and shrinks, middle
grounds obstruct it, and shelving foreshores persistently deny it that
easy access to the land that alone can create great seaboard cities.
All the ports of the Ems are tidal; the harbour of Delfzyl, on the
Dutch side, dries at low water, and Emden, the principal German port,
can only be reached by a lock and a mile of canal.
But this depreciation is only relative. Judged on its merits, and not
by the standard of the Elbe, it is a very important river. Emden is a
flourishing and growing port. For shallow craft the stream is navigable
far into the interior, where, aided by tributaries and allied canals
(notably the connection with the Rhine at Dortmund, then approaching
completion), it taps the resources of a great area. Strategically there
was still less reason for underrating it. It is one of the great
maritime gates of Germany; and it is the westernmost gate, the nearest
to Great Britain and France, contiguous to Holland. Its great forked
delta presents two yawning breaches in that singular rampart of islets
and shoals which masks the German seaboard—a seaboard itself so short
in proportion to the empire’s bulk, that, as Davies used to say, “every
inch of it must be important.” Warships could force these breaches, and
so threaten the mainland at one of its few vulnerable points. Quay
accommodation is no object to such visitors; intricate navigation no
deterrent. Even the heaviest battleships could approach within striking
distance of the land, while cruisers and military transports could
penetrate to the level of Emden itself. Emden, as Davies had often
pointed out, is connected by canal with Wilhelmshaven on the Jade, a
strategic canal, designed to carry gunboats as well as merchandise.
Now Memmert was part of the outer rampart; its tapering sickle of sand
directly commanded the eastern breach; it _must_ be connected with the
defence of this breach. No more admirable base could be imagined;
self-contained and isolated, yet sheltered, accessible—better than
Juist and Borkum. And supposing it were desired to shroud the nature of
the work in absolute secrecy, what a pretext lay to hand in the wreck
and its buried bullion, which lay in the offing opposite the fairway!
On Memmert was the depôt for the salvage operations. Salvage work, with
its dredging and diving, offered precisely the disguise that was
needed. It was submarine, and so are some of the most important
defences of ports, mines, and dirigible torpedoes. All the details of
the story were suggestive: the “small local company”; the “engineer
from Bremen” (who, I wondered, was he?); the few shares held by von
Brüning, enough to explain his visits; the stores and gear coming from
Wilhelmshaven, a naval dockyard.
Try as I would I could not stir Davies’s imagination as mine was
stirred. He was bent on only seeing the objections, which, of course,
were numerous enough. Could secrecy be ensured under pretext of salving
a wreck? It must be a secret shared by many—divers, crews of tugs,
employees of all sorts. I answered that trade secrets are often
preserved under no less difficult conditions, and why not imperial
secrets?
“Why the Ems and not the Elbe?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I replied, “the Elbe, too, holds similar mysteries.” Neuerk
Island might, for all we knew, be another Memmert; when cruising in
that region we had had no eyes for such things, absorbed in a
preconceived theory of our own. Besides, we must not take ourselves too
seriously. We were amateurs, not experts in coast defence, and on such
vague grounds to fastidiously reject a clue which went so far as this
one was to quarrel with our luck. There was a disheartening corollary
to this latter argument that in my new-born zeal I shut my eyes to. As
amateurs, were we capable of using our clue and gaining exact knowledge
of the defences in question? Davies, I knew, felt this strongly, and I
think it accounted for his lukewarm view of Memmert more than he was
aware. He clung more obstinately than ever to his “channel theory”,
conscious that it offered the one sort of opportunity of which with his
peculiar gifts he was able to take advantage. He admitted, however,
that it was under a cloud at present, for if knowledge of the coastwise
navigation were a crime in itself we should scarcely be sitting here
now. “It’s something to do with it, anyhow!” he persisted.