Lewin Rodwell, as a powerful and well-informed secret agent, was no
amateur.
After the old fisherman had left the close atmosphere of that little
room, Rodwell seated himself on a rickety rush-bottomed chair before the
sewing-machine stand, beside the bed, and by the bright light of the
petrol table-lamp, carefully and with expert touch adjusted the tangle
of wires and the polished brass instruments before him.
The manner in which he manipulated them showed him to be perfectly well
acquainted with the due importance of their adjustment. With infinite
care he examined the end of the cable, unscrewing it from its place,
carefully scraping with his clasp-knife the exposed copper wires
protruding from the sheath of gutta percha and steel wire, and placing
them each beneath the solid brass binding-screws upon the mahogany base.
"The silly old owl now knows that we won't stand any more nonsense from
him," he muttered to himself, in German, as he did this. "It's an
unsavoury thought that the old fool, in his silly patriotism, might blab
to the police or the coastguard. Phew! If he did, things would become
awkward--devilish awkward."
Then, settling himself before the instruments, he took from his inner
pocket the long, bulky envelope, out of which he drew a sheet of
closely-written paper which he spread out upon the little table before
him. Afterwards, with methodical exactness, he took out a pencil and a
memorandum-block from his side-pocket, arranging them before him.
Again he examined the connections running into the big, heavy
tapping-key, and then, grasping the ebonite knob of the latter, he
ticked out dots and dashes in a manner which showed him to be an expert
telegraphist.
"M.X.Q.Q." were the code-letters he sent. "M.X.Q.Q." he clicked out,
once--twice--thrice. The call, in the German cable war-code, meant:
"Are you ready to receive message?"
He waited for a reply. But there was none. The cable that ran for
three hundred miles, or so, beneath the black, storm-tossed waters of
the North Sea was silent.
"Curious!" he muttered to himself. "Stendel is generally on the alert.
Why doesn't he answer?"
"M.X.Q.Q." he repeated with a quick, impatient touch. "M.X.Q.Q."
Then he waited, but in vain.
"Surely the cable, after the great cost to the Empire, has not broken
down just at the very moment when we want it!" he exclaimed, speaking in
German, as was his habit when excited.
Again he sent the urgent call beneath the waters by the only direct
means of communication between Britain's soil and that of her bitter
enemy.
But in Tom Small's stuffy little bedroom was a silence that seemed
ominous. Outside could be heard the dull roar of the sea, the salt
spray coming up almost to the door. But there was no answering click
upon the instruments.
The electric current from the rows of batteries hidden in the cellar was
sufficient, for he had tested it before he had touched the key.
"Tom," he shouted, summoning the old fisherman whom he had only a few
moments before dismissed.
"Yes, sir," replied the old fellow gruffly, as he stalked forward again,
in his long, heavy sea-boots.
"The cable's broken down, I believe! What monkey-tricks have you been
playing--eh?" he cried angrily.
"None, sir. None, I assure you. Ted tested at five o'clock this
evening, as usual, and got an acknowledgment. The line was quite all
right then."
"Well, it isn't now," was Rodwell's rough answer, for he detected in the
old man's face a secret gleaming satisfaction that no enemy message
could be transmitted.
"I believe you're playing us false, Small!" cried Rodwell, his eyes
flashing angrily. "By Gad! if you have dared to do so you'll pay dearly
for it--I warn you both! Now confess!"
"I assure you, sir, that I haven't. I was in here when Ted tested, as
he does each evening. All was working well then."
The younger man, a tall, big-limbed, fair-haired toiler of the sea, in a
fisherman's blouse of tanned canvas like his father, overhearing the
conversation, entered the little room.
"It was all right at five, sir. I made a call, and got the answer."
"Are you sure it was answered--quite sure?" queried the man from London.
"Positive, sir."
"Then why in the name of your dear goddess Britannia, who thinks she
rules the waves, can't I get a reply now?" demanded Rodwell furiously.
"How can I tell, sir? I got signals--good strong signals."
"Very well. I'll try again. But remember that you and your father are
bound up to us. And if you've played us false I shall see that you're
both shot as spies. Remember you won't be the first. There's
Shrimpton, up at Gateshead, Paulett at Glasgow, and half a dozen more in
prison paying the penalty of all traitors to their country. The British
public haven't yet heard of them. But they will before long--depend
upon it. The thing was so simple. Germany, before the war, held out
the bait for your good King-and-country English to swallow. That you
English--or rather a section of you--will always swallow the money-bait
we have known ever so long ago."
"Mr Rodwell, you needn't tell us more than we know," protested the old
fisherman. "You and your people 'ave got the better of us. We know
that, to our cost, so don't rub it in."
"Ah! as long as you know it, that's all right," laughed Rodwell. "When
the invasion comes, as it undoubtedly will, very soon, then you will be
looked after all right. Don't you or your son worry at all. Just sit
tight, as this house is marked as the house of friends. Germany never
betrays a friend--never!"
"Then they do intend to come over here?" exclaimed the old fisherman
eagerly, his eyes wide-open in wonderment.
"Why, of course. All has been arranged long ago," declared the man whom
the British public knew as a great patriot. "The big expeditionary
force, fully fit and equipped, has been waiting in Hamburg, at Cuxhaven
and Bremerhaven, ever since the war began--waiting for the signal to
start when the way is left open across the North Sea."
"That will never be," declared the younger man decisively.
"Perhaps not, if you have dared to tamper with the cable," was Rodwell's
hard reply.
"I haven't, I assure you," the young man declared. "I haven't touched
it."
"Well, I don't trust either of you," was Rodwell's reply. "You've had
lots of money from us, yet your confounded patriotism towards your
effete old country has, I believe, caused you to try and defeat us.
You've broken down the cable--perhaps cut the insulation under the
water. How do I know?"
"I protest, Mr Rodwell, that you should insinuate this!" cried old Tom.
"Through all this time we've worked for you, and--"
"Because you've been jolly well paid for it," interrupted the other.
"What would you have earned by your paltry bit of fish sent into
Skegness for cheap holiday-makers to eat?--why, nothing! You've been
paid handsomely, so you needn't grumble. If you do, then I have means
of at once cutting your supplies off and informing the Intelligence
Department at Whitehall. Where would you both be then, I wonder?"
"We could give you away also!" growled Ted Small.
"You might make charges. But who would believe you if you--a
fisherman--declared that Lewin Rodwell was a spy--eh? Try the game if
you like--and see!"
For a few moments silence fell.
"Well, sir," exclaimed Ted's father. "Why not call up again? Perhaps
Mr Stendel may be there now."
Again Rodwell placed his expert hand upon the tapping-key, and once more
tapped out the call in the dot-and-dash of the Morse Code.
For a full minute all three men waited, holding their breath and
watching the receiver.
Suddenly there was a sharp click on the recorder. "Click--click, click,
click!"
The answering signals were coming up from beneath the sea.
"B.S.Q." was heard on the "sounder," while the pale green tape slowly
unwound, recording the acknowledgment.
Stendel was there, in the cable-station far away on the long, low-lying
island of Wangeroog--alert at last, and ready to receive any message
from the secret agents of the All Highest of Germany.
"B.S.Q.--B.S.Q."--came up rapidly from beneath the sea. "I am here.
Who are you?" answered the wire rapidly, in German.
Lewin Rodwell's heart beat quickly when he heard the belated reply to
his impatient summons. He had fully believed that a breakdown had
occurred. And if so, it certainly could never be repaired.
But a thrill of pleasure stirred him anew when he saw that his harsh and
premature denunciation of the Smalls had been unwarranted, and the cable
connection--so cunningly contrived five years before, was working as
usual from shore to shore.
Cable-telegraphy differs, in many respects, from ordinary
land-telegraphy, especially in the instruments used. Those spread out
before Rodwell were, indeed, a strange and complicated collection, with
their tangled and twisted wires, each of which Rodwell traced without
hesitation.
In a few seconds his white, well-manicured and expert hand was upon the
key again, as the Smalls returned to their living-room, and he swiftly
tapped out the message in German:
"I am Rodwell. Are you Stendel? Put me through Cuxhaven direct to
Berlin: Number Seventy: very urgent."
"Yes," came the reply. "I am Stendel. Your signals are good. Wait,
and I will put you through direct to Berlin."
The "sounder" clicked loudly, and the clockwork of the tape released,
causing the narrow paper ribbon to unwind.
"S.S." answered Rodwell, the German war-code letters for "All right.
Received your message and understand it."
Then he took from his pocket his gold cigarette-case, which bore his
initials in diamonds on the side, and selecting a cigarette, lit it and
smoked while waiting for the necessary connections and relays to be made
which would enable him to transmit his message direct to the
general headquarters of the German Secret Service in the
Koeniger-gratzerstrasse, in Berlin.
In patience he waited for a full ten minutes in that close little room,
watching the receiving instrument before him. The angry roar of the
wintry sea could be heard without, the great breakers rolling in upon
the beach, while every now and then the salt spindrift would cut sharply
across the little window, which rattled in the gusty wind.
Click--click--click! The long letter T repeated three times. Then a
pause, and the call "M.X.Q.Q.--J.A.J.70."
By the prefix, Rodwell knew that he was "through," and actually in
communication with the headquarters of the German espionage throughout
the world; that marvellously alert department from which no secret of
state, or of hostile army or navy was safe; the department formed and
controlled by the great Steinhauer, who had so many times boasted to
him, and perhaps with truth, that at the Koeniger-gratzerstrasse they
knew more of England than even the English themselves knew.
True, the British public will never be able to realise one hundredth
part of what Germany has done by her spy-system, or of the great
diplomatic and military successes which she has achieved by it. Yet we
know enough to realise that for years no country and no walk of life--
from the highest to the lowest--has been free from the ubiquitous,
unscrupulous and unsuspected secret agents of whom Lewin Rodwell was a
type.
In Germany's long and patient preparation for the world-war, nothing in
the way of espionage was too large, or too small for attention. The
activity of her secret agents in Berlin had surely been an object-lesson
to the world. Her spies swarmed in all cities, and in every village;
her agents ranked among the leaders of social and commercial life, and
among the sweepings and outcasts of great communities. The wealthiest
of commercial men did not shrink from acting as her secret agents. She
was not above employing beside them the very dregs of the community. No
such system had ever been seen in the world. Yet the benefits which our
enemies were deriving from it, now that we were at war, were
incalculable.
By every subtle and underhand means in her power, Germany had prepared
for her supreme effort to conquer us, and, as a result of this it was
that Lewin Rodwell that night sat at the telegraph-key of the Berlin
spy-bureau actually established on British soil.
He waited until the call had been repeated three times with the secret
code-number of the Koeniger-gratzerstrasse, namely: "Number 70 Berlin."
Then, putting out his cigarette, he drew his chair forward until his
elbows rested upon the table, and spreading out the closely-written
document before him, tapped out a signal in code.