Meanwhile public indignation ran high, the investigation of the dock
master's books, papers, and accounts proceeded _in camera_, and all
England waited breathlessly for the result to be made known.
Thus matters stood when on Thursday night at half-past seven
o'clock--exactly one week after the discovery of that packet on the
body of the drowned man--an amazing thing happened, a thing which
smacked almost of magic, and put to shame all that had gone before
in the way of mystery, surprise, and terror.
The wildest storm that had been known on that coast for years had
been raging steadily ever since daybreak and was raging still. A
howling wind, coming straight over the Channel from France, was
piling ink-black seas against an ink-black shore, and all the devils
of the pit seemed to be loose in the noisy darkness.
In the suspended dock master's house the Admiral Superintendent,
Sir Charles Fordeck, together with his private secretary, Mr. Paul
Grimsdick, and the auditor, Mr. Alexander MacInery, who had been
continuing their investigations since morning, were now coming
within sight of the work's end--the only occupants of a locked and
guarded room, outside of which a sentry was posted, while round
about the house in the stormy outer darkness other guards patrolled
ceaselessly. Over the books Sir Charles and the auditor bent at
one end of the room; at the other Paul Grimsdick tapped on his
typewriter and made transcripts from the shorthand notes beside
him. It was at this instant, just when the clock on the mantel was
beginning to chime the half-hour after seven, that such a crash
of thunder ripped out of the heavens that the very earth seemed to
tremble with the force of it, and the three men fairly jumped in
their seats.
"Gad! that was a stunner, if you like!" exclaimed Sir Charles with a
laugh. "Something went down that time, or I miss my guess."
Something had "gone down"--gone down in black and white, too, at
that--and before another half-hour had passed the mystery and the
appalling nature of that something was made known to him and to his
two companions.
The operator at the central telegraph office, sitting beside a
silent instrument with the key open deciphering a message which
a moment before had come through, jumped as they had jumped when
that crash of thunder sounded; then without hint or warning up
spoke the open instrument, beginning a sentence in the middle and
chopping it off before it was half done.
"Hullo! that deflected something--crossed communication or I'm a
Dutchman!" he said, and bent over to "take it." In another moment he
got more of a shock than twenty thunderbolts could possibly have
given him. For, translated, that interrupted communication ran thus:
"... and eight-inch guns. The floating conning tower's lateral
plates of ..."
And there, as abruptly as it began, the communication left off.
"Good God! There's another damned German spy at it!" exclaimed
the operator, jumping from his seat and grabbing for his hat.
"Gawdermity, Hawkins, take this instrument and watch for more.
Somebody's telegraphin' naval secrets from the dockyard, and the
storm's 'tapped' a wire somewhere and sent the message to us!"
Then he flung himself out into the storm and darkness and ran and
ran and ran.
But the mystery of the thing was all the greater when the facts came
to be examined. For those two parts of sentences were found to be
verbatim copies of the shorthand notes which Mr. Paul Grimsdick
had just taken down. These notes had never left the sight of the
three men in the guarded room of that guarded house for so much
as one second since they were made. No one but they had passed
either in or out of that room during the whole seven days of the
inquiry. There was no telegraph instrument in the room--in the
house--or within any possible reach from it. Yet somebody in that
building--somebody who could only know the things by standing in
that room and copying them, for never once had they been spoken of
by word of mouth--some invisible, impalpable, superhuman body was
wiring State secrets from it. How? And to whom?
Naturally, this state of affairs set the whole country by the ears
and evoked a panicky condition which was not lessened by the Press'
frothing and screaming.
Thus matters stood on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second of
May, and thus they still stood on the morning of the twenty-third,
when the telephone rang and Dollops rushed into Cleek's bedroom
crying excitedly and disjointedly:
"Mr. Narkom, sir. Ringing up from his own house. Wants you in a
hurry. National case, he says, and not a minute to lose."
Cleek was out of bed and at the instrument in a winking; but he had
no more than spoken the customary "Hello!" into the receiver, when
the superintendent's voice cut in cyclonically and swept everything
before it in a small tornado of excited words.
"Call of the Country, dear chap!" he cried. "That infernal dockyard
business at Portsmouth. Sir Charles Fordeck just sent through a call
for you. Rush like hell! Don't stop for anything! Train it over to
Guildford if you have to charter a special. Meet you there--in the
Portsmouth Road--with the limousine--at seven-thirty. We'll show
'em--by God, yes! Good-bye!"
Then "click!" went the instrument as the communication was cut off,
and away went Cleek, like a gunshot, on a wild rush for his clothes.
The sun was but just thrusting a crimson arc into view in the
transfigured east when he left the house--on a hard run; for part
at least of the way must be covered afoot, and the journey was
long--but by four o'clock it was almost as bright as midday, and the
possibility of securing a conveyance for the rest of the distance was
considerably increased by that fact; by five, he _had_ secured one,
and by seven he was in the Portsmouth Road at Guildford munching the
sandwiches Dollops had thoughtfully slipped into his pocket and
keeping a sharp lookout for the coming of the red limousine.
It swung up over the rise of the road and came panting toward him at
a nerve-racking pace while it still lacked ten minutes of being the
appointed half-hour, and so wild was the speed at which Lennard, in
his furious interest, was making it travel that Cleek could think
of nothing to which to liken it but a red streak whizzing across a
background of leaf-green with splatters of mud flying about it and an
owl-eyed demon for pilot.
It pulled up with a jerk when it came abreast of him, but so
great was Lennard's excitement, so deep seated his patriotic
interest in the business he had in hand, he seemed to begrudge
even the half-minute it took to get his man aboard; and before
you could have turned around twice the car was rocketing on again at
a demon's pace.
"Gad! but he's full of it, the patriotic beggar!" said Cleek with
a laugh, as he found himself deposited in Narkom's lap instead of
on the seat beside him, so sudden was the car's start the instant
he was inside. "It might give our German friends pause, don't you
think, Mr. Narkom, if they could get an insight into the spirit of
the race as a fighting unit?"
"It'll give 'em hell if they run up against it--make no blooming
error about that!" rapped out the superintendent too "hot in the
choler" to be choice of words. "It's a nasty little handful to fall
foul of when its temper is up; and this damned spy business, done
behind a mask of friendship in times of peace----Look here, Cleek!
If it comes to the point, just give me a gun with the rest. I'll
show the Government that I can lick something beside insurance stamps
for my country's good--by James, yes!"
"Just so," said Cleek, with one of his curious, crooked smiles.
He was used to these little patriotic outbursts on the part of Mr.
Narkom whenever the German bogey was dragged out by the Press. "But
let us hope it will not come to that. It would be an embarrassment
of riches so far as our friends the editors are concerned, don't
you think, to have two wars on their hands at the same time? And
I see by papers that the long-threatened Mauravanian revolution
has broken out at last. In short, that our good friend Count Irma
has made his escape from Sulberga, put himself at the head of the
Insurgents, and is organizing a march on the capital----"
Here he pulled himself up abruptly, as if remembering something, and,
before Mr. Narkom could put in a word, launched into the subject of
the case in hand and set him thinking and talking of other things.