Rushworth Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet--now flung
upon the screen. And the jackasses got upon their feet with a sound as
though the packed house were tumbling to pieces, and the Orchestra
changed on the final bar of "Rule Britannia!" and the more belligerent
of the two Teutons leaned over the barricade and hissed malignantly, as
wind and strings crashed tumultuously into "God save the King!"
The row broke out in the Promenade as the Royal portrait flashed out and
faded. A German voice swore shrilly, another expostulated, and a woman
screamed and screamed....
"'Ere! What's up, what's up now along o' you, young woman?" demanded a
burly gold-braided Commissionaire, thrusting through the staring crowd
that had gathered. He dragged Lil, still screeching and clawing, from
the windpipe of her dishevelled patron, adding, "Do you call this pretty
be'aviour? I'm ashamed o' you--I am!"
"He hissed.... The ---- hissed the King!" Lil gasped, scarlet and
vituperative and still clawing. "Let me git at 'im! Let me----"
"No, hold her tight! It is a lie! She is drunk!" snarled the German
who had hissed. His necktie, a choice thing in Berlin haberdashery,
much sported on the Unter den Linden, was plucked up by the roots, and a
broad bleeding scratch adorned his flushed and angry features. But at
the suggestion that he should give the offender in charge of the Police,
he melted with his companion into the thinnest of thin air, and Lil did
not spend the night in the cells at Wine Street Police-Station. There
ought to have been a paragraph in the _Daily Teller_ or the _Morning
Wire_, but it was crowded out by the report--in leaded type--of von
Herrnung's death and that of the boy, his volunteer passenger, the only
son of Dr. Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., whose distinguished
share in the Defence of Gueldersdorp would always be remembered, etc.,
etc., even now that the frank, manly, and courageous policy of General
Botha had established permanent and solid ties of friendship between the
Briton and the Boer.
A sudden freak, perhaps a private bet, had induced the deceased officer,
Captain Count von Herrnung of the Prussian Field Flying Service, son of
a distinguished official of the German Imperial Foreign Office, and hero
of the two days' flight from Hanover to Paris in the previous April,--to
essay the crossing to Germany at a late hour, and in the face of a
threatening gale. Another paragraph recorded how the wreck of the
monoplane, "Bird of War" (wrongly described as "the property of
Fanshaw's Flying School"), "had been found by a passenger-steamer of the
Hamburg Line, bound for Newcastle, floating derelict in the North Sea."
A telephone-call followed the ring that had heralded the stroke of
Fate's scimitar on that thick bull-neck of Saxham's. He answered it
through the roaring in his ears of the North Sea waters that had drowned
the boy.
"Are you there?" came in the voice of the friend so toughly tried, so
faithfully trusted. "You have heard the report? Your voice tells me
you have! Hope, man!--hope!--against everything go on hoping!"
The thick slow answer came stumbling over the wire:
"Have I--grounds for hope?"
Came the prompt reply:
"I say yes! Dare to despair, when you hear that from me!"
"God bless you, General!"
"Have you--you have not told her?"
Saxham answered, steadying his twitching lips:
"No!--I thought I should like to keep my wife for another hour or two!"
There was a crisp, sharp order:
"Go to her now, and steel her with this from me--that the aeroplane,
when found, had been thoroughly gutted. The First Officer, who is
English and one of our men, swears positively to this. The 'Gnome'
engine had been taken out of the stirrups, and the gyroscopic
hovering-gear removed wholesale. Do you comprehend that this means--a
pre-arranged thing? Listen!--I'll pound it into you, confound you!
Once--they have been picked up! Twice--they have been picked up! Three
times--they have been picked up! Go to your wife and tell her so from
me!"
The speaker rang off.
But he knew discouragement. The rapid march of events across the page
of History since the Saturday of von Herrnung's flight from Hendon had
elicited a check from Official Headquarters.
Without signing the book that all visitors must sign, and cooling your
heels in the anteroom, you are to be admitted to the private sanctum at
the War Office, Whitehall, and the presence of Britain's Secretary of
State for War. See him, seated square and upright in a high-backed
leather-covered arm-chair behind a big green cloth covered mahogany
desk, a thinnish, wide-shouldered man, with a nose of the beaky type,
brown crisp hair sprinkled with grey receding from tall sunburned
temples, and deep-set smallish blue eyes, a little weakened by much
recent poring over State documents by electric-light.
The British Government found it incompatible with its present line of
Foreign Policy to take steps towards the recovery of the Foulis Papers.
For forty-five years their duplicates had lain in safe-keeping at the
War Office. They were there now. That was the Minister's chief point.
The Foulis War Engine had never been patented--never acquired by the
British War Office. Such distinction or favour as the tenth Earl had
received from Government had been conferred in recognition of the dead
man's gallant services to his country, not as the reward of his
inventive gift. _Ergo_, the British Government could not concern itself
with the theft of the original Plans from Gwyll Castle. To pursue and
arrest the thief was the affair of the Head of the Clanronald family.
If his lordship chose to drop the matter!--the Colonel's celebrated
Parliamentary shrug and smile conveyed the rest.
There was another point still. If the Plans of the War Engine of
Clanronald had once been seen by--alien eyes, the possession of the
formulas did not matter two pence. The cat that had grown grey in the
bag was out of it for good. In the Colonel's opinion--a priceless asset
in the highly delicate condition of International Politics--a more
formidable document than the Foulis Plan was the Note which was even
then being placed by Austria's Representative at Belgrade before the
Serbian Council of Ministers. This, in conjunction with Germany's
deferred answer to our proposal of a Conference of Representatives of
the Great Powers, and the sudden, secret return of the Emperor of
Germany to Berlin--"justifies Admiralty orders that have been issued,"
said the Minister, "directing our First--ahem!---Battle Fleet,
concentrated--as it happens!--at Portland, not to disperse for Manoeuvre
Leave."
The speaker, who had pushed back his chair and crossed his legs, looked
very steadily at Sir Roland as this last sentence very quietly left his
thin lips. Not a muscle twitched in the other's lean, keen face. The
Minister went on:
"Thus I may hope I have made clear to you my view of the situation. As
for the Flying-officer, Count von Herrnung--we may presume him to have
been--for no doubt he is drowned--a military spy. The German General
Staff have a preference for employing men belonging to the higher social
circles for work of this kind. Wonderfully organised, their system of
strategical and political investigation!"
Sir Roland agreed:
"Wonderfully organised, when one goes closely into its
ramifications--tracing and following them to their Headquarters in a
certain underground office at the Wilhelmstrasse! But they fail in one
thing. The kind of operations they contemplate can usually be deduced
from the line of their reconnaissance!"
"And yet in the instance under consideration," hinted the Minister,
"Count von Herrnung's intention of commandeering a machine from the
Hendon Flying Ground seems to have been fairly well disguised!"
"Pardon me!" opposed Sir Roland, with quiet assurance. "He had no such
intention when he arrived at Hendon. His orders were conveyed to him on
the ground! And the haste with which he was got out of England with the
brown satchel proves that his superiors did not dare to delay even for
the precautionary measures, and that no copies nor photographs have been
made of the Foulis MSS. and plans! Take it from me that the cat, if she
has not already got to Germany, remains in the brown bag!"
"And the bag is somewhere in the North Sea. But it may be recovered,"
said the Minister, "with the body of von Herrnung."
The General returned, with a deepening of the lines upon his forehead,
and at the angles of his mobile nostrils:
"It may be recovered, as you say. But _if_ so, it will be found upon
the body of the boy." He added, meeting the question in the tired eyes
of the other man: "Some objection was made by Mr. Sherbrand--the owner
of the now wrecked aeroplane--to von Herrnung's taking the satchel with
him in the pilot's pit. So--Mr. Sherbrand informs me--von Herrnung
strapped it to the safety-belt that secured Saxham in his seat."
A gleam of interest warmed the frostiness of the Ministerial
countenance:
"The boy ... Ah! yes, as I think I mentioned before, I sympathise deeply
with the boy's parents. He is a son of a personal friend of your own, I
understand?"
"Dr. Saxham, sir, late attached to the Medical Staff at Gueldersdorp."
"Saxham--that is the name--and the child is the only one? Most sad and
regrettable. And I think the paragraph in the _Wire_ mentioned--one of
your Boy Scouts?"
"One of my Scouts!" The Chief's bright eyes snapped as he added, "Very
much to the honour of his troop. Very greatly to the credit of the
Organisation--as I mean to prove to him should he happily survive to
return!"
"Indeed? You interest me! Pray tell the story."
It was told, succinctly and crisply. He said quite warmly:
"I could hardly have credited! What pluck and energy! And to dare the
thing--on the strength of a second flight! A boy like that should have
lived! Good-bye, my dear General!"
He added, accompanying the visitor to his door:
"These are pleasant summer evenings to be wasted in London! A shower or
so--and one could do a great deal of execution with the White Coachman
on our Hampshire trout-rivers, sir!"
He spoke like an angler mildly peeved by deprivation of the sport he
loved best, and even paused to tap the glass of a barometer hanging by
the wainscot, on his way back to the writing-table littered with State
papers, in defiance of the thin, shrill summons of the
telephone-bell....
So the General went away, owning to himself that the thing looked
desperate. It was better for England that the Plans of the Foulis War
Engine should lie at the bottom of the North Sea, but what of his
friend, what of his friend's wife?
The keen eyes were unwontedly dim as he reached the wide Turkey-carpeted
landing, and the messenger caught a snatch of _The Flowers o' the
Forest_ whistled in slow time as his hurrying footsteps overtook the
General. Would Sir Roland please to go back, was the gist of the
message. The Minister had something further to communicate.
The War Minister was not alone. Two persons were with him--a tall man
in civilian clothes who stood looking out of the window as one who had
temporarily removed himself out of earshot, the other a slim and dapper
Naval Secretary.
The "something further" proved to be the pith of an Admiralty
communication just imparted. Early that morning a British Submarine on
North Sea Patrol duty (we will call her E-131), upon returning to the
surface to ascertain the cause of defective submergence, had discovered
a brown leather lock-strap to be entangled with her aft diving-plane on
the starboard side. A leather satchel firmly attached to the other end
of the strap was jammed under the plane, and subsequently extricated by
one of the men, from the collapsible.
Perhaps you can imagine the Lieutenant Commander stooping over the
retrieved bit of flotsam, lying under the shaded electric light hanging
over the narrow sliding table that pulled out from under his bunk in the
officer's cabin--a place of privacy again, the steel bulkhead-doors
being shut. For when you submerge they are all thrown wide so that the
Commander's eye may traverse the whole length of an elongated
engine-room, and see what every man is doing at his particular post, in
a single flash.
The Commander's eye was screwed up in the vain endeavour to see under
the flap of the locked satchel. He took up the thing and turned it in
his hands, while the strap, soaked and twisted by sea-water and
engine-power, flapped upon his knees like a long frond of wet seaweed.
"Wonder who cut the strap?" Clumsily, as though by a blunt knife
wielded by a numb hand--it had been hacked through, and the satchel
scratched badly in the process. He went on: "Looks like some rich
American globe-trotter's travelling-satchel. No picking these locks!
One might negotiate 'em with the oxygen flame-puff--if it wasn't for the
risk of damaging the wads of dollar bills that might possibly be inside.
Nothing to be done but rip or cut the leather--and that seems to be made
strengthy with metal, somehow!" He slipped the lean blade of a penknife
between the strongly stitched edges. The satchel proved to be lined
with thin plates of aluminium. "As easy to get inside as the Bank of
England!" he grumbled, and so it proved, if the Bank of England has ever
been negotiated with a bull-head tin-opener.
Inside the leather case lined with aluminium, a little sea-water had
penetrated, patching with damp a small antique portfolio of pearly,
bossy shark-skin exquisitely painted with birds and foliage by some
old-world Japanese master of Art. The quaintly feeble lock, and
corner-guards were of bronze, gold-inlaid with scowling fox-masks, and
the inevitable chrysanthemum.
The Japanese lock gave at a twist of the penknife-blade and then the
portfolio disgorged its loose sheaf of yellowed papers strung together
by a clew of faded silken twist. Drawings to scale and plans: sheets of
manuscript and pages covered with the symbols used in chemical formulas,
scribed in a clear small rounded hand.
"Great Scott!--what's this?"
The ash from the Commander's neglected cigarette fell upon the topside
of the precious manuscript. He blew it reverently off, and dug himself
into the pile:
"H'm, hum!"
"_By Me, Robert Foulis, Seaman, Tenth Earl of Clanronald, G.C.B.,
Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the British Fleet, and Marquis of
Araman, etc., etc. Invented & Conceived Not in Hatred of Mankind, but
in Defence of my Country and the Rights Beloved by Every True
Briton----_"
"Marvellous old cock! And in 1854, when he was eighty if a day, he
offers it for the fifth time to the British Government!"
"Busy, Owner? See you've got inside the prize-packet! My Christmas!
what is it? Miss Araminta's Diary; 'FOUND AFTER FORTY YEARS!' or 'HOW I
BROKE MY ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CURATE!'"
This from a young, exceedingly wet, and dirty Engineer Lieutenant, fresh
from an interview with the damaged diving-plane, and smelling potently
of castor-oil.
The Commander looked up, and strange things were in his eyes.
"You're pretty wide!" He added, speaking partly to the other man inside
the Commander: "Jolly good thing we're on the Home trip. That main
motor gives a lot o' trouble, and--suppose some purblind sailing ship
crashed into us--and sent us to the bottom with THIS aboard. Great Sea
Boots! It makes me crawl all down my back to think of it!"
The Second clattered down the steel ladder and filled the doorway with
his burly personality.
"What makes you crawl? Don't say the leg o' mutton we bought Saturday
from the skipper of that Grimsby trawler has gone back on us! Is that
what the liar means by fresh meat?"
"If I told you, you'd crawl too. Or you'd think it a case of
sunstroke--or D.T. of the deferred kind." The Commander stowed the
papers back in the sharkskin case with gingerly carefulness that
provoked the query whether he thought he had got hold of a new kind of
floating mine, and elicited the retort:
"I don't think!--I know it!"
No one got anything more out of the speaker, who, presently, declining
stewed mutton, whose wholesome savour amply certified to the moral
character of the trawler's skipper, went to the Wireless and dispatched
a pithy message to the Commander of E-131's particular Coast Defence
station, and the news was flashed to Whitehall, to go forth ere long
from thence over the world.
Sir Roland said, with that unwonted cloud dulling his bright eyes, and a
certain huskiness of utterance:
"There's no other solution of the puzzle. Remembering that I had said
to him, '_In an emergency, you might do good service to your country by
destroying this!_' my Scout took the only course open to him--and dumped
the satchel into the sea!"
The Minister admitted with characteristic reticence:
"Whether I concur with your theory or not, I must admit to you that the
report received specifies that the strap had been cut. 'Hacked through'
is the actual expression--and the back of the leather outer case
scratched as though by a knife."
"It is vital that I should examine the strap and see those scratches!"
The Minister answered:
"To-morrow morning by twelve o'clock--I can obtain you an opportunity.
The recovered valise, or wallet, or satchel, will be brought up to the
Admiralty by the officer commanding E-131. She has not yet arrived in
harbour. But the Commander will doubtless receive instructions as soon
as he reports himself." He continued, gracefully ignoring his previous
statement that the Government had decided not to interfere: "In the
absence of the Earl of Clanronald, now yachting in Northern waters, it
is obligatory that the War Office should take the matter in hand."
The very tall stranger had wheeled, and advanced to Sir Roland with a
smile and an outstretched hand of greeting. We know how great a heart
beat in its pulses. Its short, hard grip spoke sympathy and
understanding, though the voice was harsh and the light grey eyes stared
out of the brick-burned, heavily-moustached face with the old sagacious,
indomitable regard. He said after a word or two had passed, the
Admiralty Secretary temporarily occupying the attention of the War
Minister:
"By the way, you will be interested to hear something I have at
first-hand from Clanronald. He has been, as perhaps you know, cruising
with two ancient cronies, Lord Gaynor and Colonel Kaye, in his
steam-yacht _Helga_, along the Danish West Coast of Jutland. He returns
the richer by--what I may term a unique experience!"
Sir Roland said, meeting the Sirdar's eyes with great certainty:
"If I may guess at the nature of the experience, I should hazard that it
was--an attempt in the kidnapping line?"
The other gave his short, gruff laugh:
"You have hit it. They carry a Wireless installation on the _Helga_,
and sparked the story _via_ Cullercoats to Bredingley, who was stopping
a week-end at Doome. The yacht was at anchorage in the outer harbour of
Esbjorg, some twenty-eight kilometres from the frontier of
Danish-Germany. It was midnight. Everybody on board, including the
watch, seems to have been asleep except Clanronald, who was roused by
something scraping the side of the yacht. Presently he heard stealthy
footsteps on deck, and whispering. He was squatting on his bunk with a
brace of loaded revolvers and a Winchester repeating-rifle, when the
intruders opened his cabin door!"
"Did any of them survive the intrusion? If so, Clanronald has--very
much changed!"
The Sirdar returned, with the quirk of a smile lurking under the heavy
moustache whose brown was getting flecked with grey:
"Well--the _Helga_ has recently been re-enamelled, and Clanronald is
faddy on the point of his new paint. Besides"--the quirk deepened into
a laugh--"he thought it would be more useful to take them as live
specimens of the kind of material that goes to make up the crew of a
German submarine."
They looked at each other, laughing. Sir Roland inquired:
"I venture to hope that while Clanronald was about it--he collected the
submarine?"
"Unfortunately, no! And, very regrettably, the collapsible boat in
which the raiders had made their midnight visit was swamped when the two
others--there had been four of them!--jumped into her to make off.
Presumably they could swim and were picked up by the submarine--Undersea
Boat No. 14--according to the testimony of one of the prisoners. The
other of whom--an officer and leader of the foray--took poison, and was
found dead in the cabin that served for his prison-cell. The other, a
mere seaman, is too dazed with terror to be intelligible--according to
Clanronald. But the whole thing is interesting!"
"Hugely and instructively. As shedding," said the General, "a certain
light upon a mystery that baffled the wiseacres in 1913. I refer to the
mysterious disappearance of the engineer-inventor Riesl from his cabin
aboard a Hamburg Line, Leith-bound steamer. With a contract in his
pocket for the supply of crude-oil-consuming marine motor-engines to the
Navy of a Power--other than the German Government!"
"Possibly!--possibly! One never knows what forces are working beneath
the surface." The set, brick-dust face and grave sagacious eyes of the
great soldier seemed to testify to his complete innocence of anything
like a _double-entendre_.
He ended as the War Minister dismissed the secretary from the Admiralty,
and turned again to Sir Roland, saying in his most pompous tones:
"Twelve o'clock to-morrow, then, General. Meanwhile, pray convey to his
parents my admiration--in which I feel the First Lord will concur--of
the remarkable qualities manifested by young Saxham! Astonishing
devotion to duty, and courageous self-reliance! He should have
lived!--he would have made a noble man!"
Came the curt reply:
"He is alive now! I am convinced of it!"
The Minister gave the speaker a glance of incredulity. It was so very
clear to the War Secretary's logical mind that the child and the man
were drowned. But the harsh voice of the great Field Marshal, England's
most faithful friend, who was to succeed him in his place of power,
answered for him:
"One would expect you to stick to your guns, General. Should you prove
right before I sail for Egypt, bring him to see me!"
"I promise that, faithfully, my lord."
They shook hands and parted. It seemed a long week until the morrow
when the secret of Robert Foulis came home to roost at Whitehall. But
it ended, and twelve o'clock brought that keenly-desired opportunity of
examining the cut lock-strap and the empty, knife-scored satchel in the
official sanctum of the First Lord Commissioner for the Admiralty, and
in the presence of that functionary.
"There seems--ah!" the First Lord mounted a pair of gold-rimmed
pince-nez, "to be something in the nature of an address scratched upon
the leather!"
Sir Roland corroborated, after a brief inspection:
"There is, most undoubtedly. And the address is that of the London
Headquarters of our Organisation, No. 1000, Victoria Street."
"Dear me--dear me! Most remarkable! Now here," said the Right Hon.
gentleman, breathing asthmatically and twinkling through the gold-framed
pebbles, "is something not so easily deciphered. A rude symbol,
something like a _fleur-de-lis_ with letters at either side, and a few
other meaningless scrawls!"
"It is not a _fleur-de-lis_," Sir Roland answered, "but a fox-mask, with
the number and signature of my Scout. He belonged to the Fox Patrol,
331st London. Here is his troop-number, 22, and here are his initials,
B.M.S.--Bawne Mildare Saxham. It is perfectly in order! In this way he
would be expected to sign a communication to his fellow-Scout. And the
marks below, I can assure you, are not meaningless. They convey that
there is trouble of a very definite kind. In addition the arrow, here,
taking the top of the satchel for the North as in a map--signifies,
'Road to be followed East.'" He added with a stiffening of the facial
muscles that made the keen face as hard as a mask carved in boxwood:
"And followed it shall be!"