Pamela's Night Walk
Pamela went back to Moss Cottage with new courage. The secret, which had
almost overwhelmed her when she had tried to bear it alone, assumed a
different aspect now she shared it with her friends. Captain Harper had
taken the full responsibility of the affair, and as one of His Majesty's
officers she knew he could be trusted. She placed herself entirely in
his hands, and followed his directions implicitly. To keep watch without
arousing her uncle's suspicions was to be her present role. Under cover
of going to tea with the Watsons, she met Captain Harper at Walden, and
learnt from him the Morse code. Once she had mastered that, she was able
to write down some of the wireless messages. To her they were absolutely
unintelligible, for they were in cipher, but she made a faithful record
of what she heard through the receiver, and sent it by David or Anthony
to the young officer.
For the moment Captain Harper acknowledged himself baffled.
"We have the keys to a number of ciphers, but there's one here we don't
understand. It's solely for this reason we're allowing this wireless
apparatus at Moss Cottage to remain where it is. Pamela must use all
her ingenuity to discover the key to the cipher. She's the only person
who has the opportunity of doing so. If we were to arrest Mr. Hockheimer
at once we might or might not find treasonable papers upon him. It is
doubtful if we should learn his secret."
To David and Anthony the affair was of the supremest interest. They
envied Pamela her unique chance of serving her country. They were glad
enough to be employed as carriers, and would take the notes from her
when they met her in the morning, and, according to arrangement, convey
them to Captain Harper. Sometimes they took them direct to the Camp,
after they returned from school, and sometimes they handed them to an
orderly who would be strolling about near the station. As for Pamela,
she lived from day to day in a ferment of expectation, waiting and
watching for her opportunity. And one evening she found it. Mr.
Hockheimer had come, as was his custom, to Moss Cottage, and had set his
niece to listen for messages while he took his ease in the house. For an
hour or more Pamela had sat with the receiver to her ears, but had heard
nothing. At last came the familiar humming. She jotted down the letters,
put the paper safely in her pocket, and ran up the garden to warn her
uncle. That night he had been drinking more heavily than usual. He
lurched in his walk as he approached the stable, and it was with
difficulty that he climbed the ladder. Pamela followed him nervously.
His hands shook as he fitted on the receiver, but he nevertheless took
down the message. Then he paused, and seemed to be calculating
something out on the paper. She crept a little nearer. He was too
muddled to realize her approach. She peeped over his shoulder unnoticed.
In his half-drunken condition he was working out the cipher and writing
it down. She copied it word by word. It was in German.
"U-boot auf Aermelmeere heute Abend. Zeigen Licht auf
Berry Head."
Pamela backed away cautiously towards the ladder. Just as she reached it
her uncle turned round and called to her.
"Give me a hand, Pam! Don't feel--very well to-night," he stammered
thickly. "Got to go out, too. Must go home and get the car. Little store
of petrol they don't know about! And I shan't tell them either!" (He
hinnied at his own joke.) "Give me your hand."
He leaned heavily on his niece, and she helped him down the ladder. She
watched him as he stumbled along the narrow path in the darkness. He
called to her, but she did not follow him to the cottage. Instead, she
went to the palings and scrambled over into the high road. She surmised
that she had surprised a most important secret, one which she felt must
be communicated at once to head-quarters. It was absolutely necessary
that Captain Harper should know of this. By warning him in time she
might prevent some great disaster. She must get to the Camp as quickly
as possible. It was late, long past eleven o'clock (Mr. Hockheimer had
had no compunction in keeping his niece out of bed to mind his
business), and the night was moonless. Pamela shuddered as she thought
of the long, lonely walk before her. Could she find the Camp in the
dark? A sudden inspiration struck her. She would hurry to the Watsons
instead and ask one of the boys to go on a bicycle. She ran almost all
the way along the familiar road to Walden. She found the house shut up
and the family gone to bed, but she made a rat-tat with the knocker that
soon roused them.
"What is it?" cried David out of the window.
"It's I--Pamela! I've brought news!" she gasped.
The Watsons were downstairs directly. They listened breathlessly to the
story she had to tell. David and Anthony hurried to the outhouse for
their bicycles, and set off at once for the Camp to find Captain Harper.
Who could say how much might depend on their speed?
Pamela watched them go with a feeling of intense relief. Her part of the
business was finished; she had now set the machinery in motion that
would accomplish the rest. The reaction after the intense strain was so
great that she burst into tears.
"I must go home!" she sobbed. "Mother will think I am lost!"
"Daphne and I will go with you. I can't let you walk back alone at this
time of night," said Mrs. Watson kindly. "If you'll take my advice,
dear, you'll tell your mother everything now. She ought to know."
Pamela's friends escorted her to the door of Moss Cottage and left her
there. What explanation she gave to her mother they never knew. They
feared there was great unpleasantness in store for the Reynolds, for Mr.
Hockheimer was sure to be arrested, and the fact that it must be through
his niece's instrumentality only seemed to make matters worse. David and
Anthony returned with the news that they had roused Captain Harper at
the Camp, and that after reading the message he had ridden off
immediately upon his motor bicycle. They went to bed wondering what
would be happening while they slept.
The boys looked out for Pamela next morning on the road to the station,
but she was not there. The train for once went without her. They spent
an agitated day at school and hurried back from Netherton that afternoon
at topmost speed. They found Captain Harper in the garden at Walden. He
looked very grave.
"Do you know what that message was you brought me?" he asked.
"Translated into English it meant, 'U-boat in Channel to-night. Show
light on Berry Head.' I hear a certain important vessel had an extremely
narrow escape last night. The wireless apparatus at Moss Cottage has
been taken down already. The police went up there this morning."
"And Mr. Hockheimer?"
Captain Harper knocked the end off his cigarette before he answered.
"Mr. Hockheimer has gone to settle his great account. He and his car
were found in the river at Chadwick this morning. The road turns at a
very sharp angle there on to the bridge, and it is thought that in the
darkness he missed his way and went over the bank. There is not a shadow
of doubt that he was going to give signals to the enemy. We had long
suspected him as a spy, and part of my business down here had been to
watch him. In the circumstances this has been the most merciful thing
that could have happened. For the sake of the Reynolds we are hushing
the matter up. There is no need for it to be bruited about the
neighbourhood. Your family are the only people who have any knowledge of
the affair. I can trust you to keep it from going further."
"On our honour!" the boys assured him.
The "sad fatality at Chadwick Bridge" made a sensation in the local
newspapers. An inquest was held on Mr. Hockheimer, and a verdict of
"Death from misadventure" returned. Though many people in the
neighbourhood may have had their suspicions as to the nature of his
errand on that dark night, no evidence of an incriminating nature was
brought before the coroner. He was buried at Lyngates in the Reynolds's
family vault, where his wife had been carried two years before. He had
left no will, and the question of who was to inherit the Lyngates
property might be a matter for Chancery to settle. By the advice of the
old solicitor who had managed the estate for many years, Mrs. Reynolds
and Pamela took temporary possession of the Hall until a claim could be
set up on their behalf. At the time of Squire Reynolds's death it had
been the current gossip of the village that some later will than the
one proved must be in existence. If such a will had been made, however,
it had never been found. The only possible clue seemed to be the letter
that David and Anthony had found inside the Latin dictionary, which had
fallen into the hands of Mr. Hockheimer, and had been so strangely
rescued from destruction by Captain Harper when masquerading as
Spring-heeled Jack. The latter reported that at the time he had examined
the half-burnt sheet, anticipating that it might contain treasonable
correspondence, but had been unable to make sense of it. In accordance
with instructions he had handed it over to his Colonel, and he supposed
it would now be filed in the Secret Service Department. Red tape might
prevent repossession of the original, but he was using his influence to
obtain a copy. After considerable delay a reply came from the War Office
to the effect that the paper in question appeared to have been partially
burnt, but that the remaining fragment ran as follows:--
bitter thoughts against you, but
love for your country has
are, and I am ready to acknowledge your
to see them, should they ever come to
gones shall be bygones now. I am
in your favour, and shall put it
is sure to be found,
both die, they will be provided
[Illustration: WHO COULD SAY HOW MUCH MIGHT DEPEND ON THEIR SPEED?]
"I'm afraid it's no use in a court of law, Pamela," said Captain Harper,
as he showed her the copy of the paper. "It's the merest scrap. By
imagining the missing words we might make it into something like this;
but imagination won't give it legal value. Here's what I fancy it may
have been:"
I own I held hard and / bitter thoughts against you, but
now I feel that your / love for your country has
shown me what you / are, and I am ready to acknowledge your
wife and child, and / to see them, should they ever come to
England. By / gones shall be bygones now. I am
making a new will / in your favour, and shall put it
in a place where it / is sure to be found,
so that should we / both die, they will be provided
for. /
"If this surmise is correct," continued Captain Harper, "and there
really was a new will, it may possibly be hidden somewhere at the Hall."
"We've searched everywhere," said Pamela sadly. "Two lawyer's clerks
have been here and gone through every morsel of paper in the house, and
turned out every drawer and cupboard. I think myself that perhaps Uncle
Fritz may have found it and destroyed it. Mother and I spend all our
spare time looking, but we never have any luck. I don't think we're
lucky people. We seem just to have misfortune after misfortune. It has
always been like this all our lives."
"Cheer up! It's a long lane that has no turning," comforted Captain
Harper. "I advise you to show this paper to your solicitor, though I'm
afraid it's nothing to go by."
Pamela's affairs did indeed seem to have reached a crisis. Her fortunes
were much discussed in the neighbourhood, and general opinion decided
that she would have difficulty in establishing legally her right to what
undoubtedly ought to be hers. Several naturalized German relations of
Mr. Hockheimer had put in counter-claims for the estate. There was
likely to be a long and expensive lawsuit before the case was settled.
Then one day a wonderful thing occurred--an utterly unexpected and
marvellous thing, but one that--thank God!--has happened in other
families since the war began. The postwoman who delivered the letter did
not know that it differed from other letters; she popped it through the
slit in the front door and rang the bell as usual, and went on her way,
all unsuspecting what news she had left behind her. Yet when Mrs.
Reynolds saw the handwriting on the envelope she gave a little sharp cry
and fainted away. Pamela did not go to school that day nor the next. She
wrote to Avelyn to explain her absence. The latter read the letter twice
before her amazed brain could really grasp its contents.
"MY DEAR AVE,
"I hardly know how to tell you our good luck. Daddy is alive! He
wasn't killed at Mons after all. He was taken prisoner and never
reported. He was kept most fearfully strictly in a fortress and
allowed no news of the outside world. He and a companion spent
eighteen months making a tunnel out of their cell, and after
simply thrilling adventures they escaped, and swam a river and
got into Swiss territory. He's coming home, and Mother and I are
going up to London to meet him. We're almost off our heads!
"Will you please tell Miss Thompson this is why I'm not at
school? We start for town to-morrow morning.
"Much love from
"PAM."
It was indeed a most happy ending to all the troubles of poor Mrs.
Reynolds and Pamela. By the will which had already been proved, Captain
Reynolds inherited his father's estate, which had only passed to the
daughter Dora in default of a male heir. He was soon able to settle up
the legal side of the matter and to obtain formal possession of the
whole property.
"I've made my own will now, and left everything safely tied up for you
and your Mother before I go out to the front again," he told his
daughter.
"Oh, Daddy! must you leave us and go back to France?" wailed Pamela.
"Every hour I spent in that fortress, Pam, made me all the more resolved
to help to fight this war to the finish. Would you want me to shirk and
fail my country? I know you better than that. Tell me again what you
told me in 1914."
And Pamela stood up straight, and with a light in her eyes repeated:
"Though it tear and break my heart
I let you go.
When the Motherland is calling,
Be it so!
Let my own poor need and grief
Be set aside,
That justice and the right
May now abide.
"God put courage and true might
In your arm!
May His mercy keep your life
Safe from harm!
Every hour my earnest prayer
Shall be this:
May we meet and greet again
With a kiss."