made from cotton. If we'd stopped all cotton going into Germany from
August, nineteen fourteen, the Germans to-day wouldn't be able to
fire a shot. Isn't that logic?"
"Here are matches," said the host. "Bite the end from that vegetable
and light up."
"I'm not talking through my hat. I was once runner-up at a
Parliamentary Election. If I'd got in, there was £1,000 a year for
me so long as I voted as I was told. I got kicked out, and so
remained passably honest. But you can take it from me, Sir Owen,
there's as much money in politics now as ever there was."
"That's not news. No one ever supposed any man went in for the dirty
game of politics for the good of his health. Why should he?"
"Very well, then. Supposing you were in politics--I don't care on
what side--and you were told that your livelihood depended on your
letting Germany have cotton, wouldn't you let?"
"I'd see Germany in hell first," said Captain Kettle violently.
Mr. Holly Holroyd spread an expostulatory palm. "That's not
answering my question. You merely prove you're no politician.
You're merely a clean Englishman."
"Welshman."
"Well, there are clean Welshmen, too. They're showing themselves in
considerable number since the war started. But there aren't enough,
and they haven't the gift of talk. The politicians have the monopoly
of that, and they shout the rest of the nation down and get their own
way, and earn their graft. They've tons of excuses when you start to
tackle them--and they keep the supply of cotton for Germany going
strong. Good Lord! but for the small matter of a score of tipsy
miners voting the other way, shouldn't I be doing the same thing
myself at this moment."
"I thought you were a celebrated actor?"
"I am. I will show you my press-cutting book to prove it if you
like, but as a man of the world, Sir Owen, you can't imagine I'd be
an actor if I could be anything else?"
"No," Captain Kettle admitted. "That sounds true enough. Have some
whisky and soda?"
Mr. Holroyd helped himself to a moderate peg, and produced a
pocket-book. "But, of course, I have to make a bit as I go along. I
have here a schedule of all the cotton that has gone into European
neutral countries over and above their normal supply. The figures
are surprising. Like to see them?"
"I should not. I hate big figures."
"So do I. I made my living as a chartered accountant for a number of
years, and saw enough of figures to last me the rest of my natural.
But the facts are plain. As we can't tackle our paid politicians on
the spot, neutral countries are the places to stop cotton in.
Private individuals can do it. I know how."
"That would mean a high-class row."
"And are you scared of a row, Sir Owen?"
"By James, no," said Captain Kettle, and then bit on to his cigar and
smoked furiously. He felt that he had been letting out the secret of
his own private weakness to a comparative stranger.
Mr. Holroyd sipped at his whisky, smoked for a minute, then said "Ha,
ha!"
"What the mischief are you sniggering at?" inquired his host.
"Your curiosity, m'lord. You're aching to know how it could be done."
"I am," said Captain Kettle.
It was in company with this queer adventurer then that Captain Kettle
found himself attempting to make the voyage from England to a certain
seaport on the continent of Europe. To his surprise he found himself
stopped at the onset. Whether it was suspicion as to his motive or
official incapacity he could not make out. But one thing was
certain, no permission was forthcoming within a reasonable time to
leave the country.
"I always knew," he commented, "that a Government Department takes
ten days longer than a business office to answer an ordinary letter,
but three weeks is too much. They don't say we've got to stay at
home. They simply sit tight and do nothing. So if they won't give
proper leave, we'll go without leave. I've not been all my life at
sea without knowing sea roads. As you haven't got any shirts of your
own, Mr. Holroyd, Lady Kettle will lend you two of mine, and you can
have my other portmanteau, and, mind, don't forget those--those----"
"Call them chemicals," suggested Mr. Holly Holroyd. "Most embracing
word, chemicals. I called moonlight whisky that when I was brewing
it on the strict Q.T. in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.
And we'll each carry one of the popguns so as to distribute the risk,
as we insurance agents say. Those pop-guns are rather the key to the
situation, Sir Owen. We couldn't replace them in--on the Continent.
I also hope to the Lord we don't get dropped on with them on us. If
any of the authorities over yonder got wise to our little game,
there'd be a hanging in which we should both take a keen, personal
interest."
"Speak for yourself," said Captain Kettle sharply. "I don't allow
any goggle-eyed continental to hang me. I'm not talking through my
hat either--a lot have tried. If you'll excuse me for a minute I'll
just slip up and give Arthur a half dose of Horner's Perfect Cure.
By the way that child has been tucking into unripe gooseberries this
day, his grandmother will be treating him for appendicitis and chill
on the liver to-morrow if I don't get ahead of her with Horner.
Then, if you're packed, we will drive into Grassington and catch the
train."
"Right, and I'll bring down your baggage for you."
"If you could--um--contrive to forget the long package that's laid
across the armchair, I'd be obliged to you."
"Certainly. But I don't quite understand. What's the scheme?"
"Well, you see," said Kettle rather uncomfortably, "it's my
second-best leg. Lady Kettle wants me to take it across for general
wear. It's all right for use on the farm here, but I don't mind
telling you I hate wearing it before a mixed audience. It's so
infernally old-fashioned. If I had forgotten it when my lady met us
at the station, I'm afraid there'd be a domestic scene. If it was
your fault, I don't fancy she'd say much."
It is a pity that a gap must occur in the tale here, and that the
name of the steamboat that carried them, the nationality of the
submarine that held them up _en route_, and most emphatically of all,
the name of the river they steamed up and the port they landed at
must all be rigorously censored. Captain Kettle cocked his cigar at
a fierce angle and looked with a farmer's eye at the rich, flat
pasture lands beyond the river's bank as they steamed along, and he
wrote an ode (in his mind) to the local breed of cow. At the quay he
played second fiddle, as per arrangement, to the flamboyant Mr.
Holroyd. At a subsequent hotel he meekly signed his name (with all
the outward ensigns of shame) "Professor Owen."
"My friend, the Pro-fessor, and I," Mr. Holly Holroyd announced in
that nasal accent which does duty on the continent of Europe for good
United States, "the Professor and I are here on a scientific
investigation for the good of mankind and on behalf of the University
of Ballahassee, Tennessee. A nootral country is necessary for our
researches. We have with us all the necessary chemicals, but will
guarantee they make no smell. Do I make myself clear?"
"Perfectly," said the landlord, who did not understand one word in
ten. "A private sitting-room will be extra."
"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Holroyd. "You do not understand, man. We
cannot work together. We must have a private sitting-room apiece,
and two bedrooms, all, of course, _en suite_."
The landlord perceived the dignity of his customers, and his bows
increased. "I have at your service, sirs, our Ambassadors' suite on
the first _étage_."
"We will try and make that do," Mr. Holroyd condescended. "We were
prepared to be cramped when we came here. In war time one puts up
with war quarters and war privations. We expect even your dinner and
your wines to be bad. But be quick now. We have business to do."
"And who," demanded Captain Kettle three minutes later, "who do you
suppose is going to pay for all this useless splash? I won't."
"And I can't, most excellent, my lord. We'll skip all right when the
time comes. But at the moment it was necessary to impress the
landlord. He'd a most damnable fishy eye. As it is, he'd never
dream of putting the police on to the Ambassadors' suite."
"Hum," said Captain Kettle. "Don't you dream, my lad, of landing me
into anything more like this without getting leave beforehand. Now,
on which part of the river front is the cotton landed?"
"Search me. I know no more about the place than the man in the moon.
But after we have had an elaborate luncheon and grumbled because
there are no ortolans--always have ortolans in Ballahassee,
Professor--I guess we'll have a pasear and take in the town. Aren't
I Amurrican to the life?"
"You sound like an Englishman who has spent one week-end in New York.
And now, my lad, what about those precious chemicals of yours? This
place is bound to be raided the minute we turn our backs, if I know
anything about continental cities."
"You're right, m'lord, all the time. I've brought along a special
set of obscure chemicals and bacteriological specimens for them to
find. For the real stuff we must make a magazine. The question is,
where?"
"That depends on the quantity and the danger of your material. You
must remember you've been so mighty mysterious about it that you've
never shown me so much as a specimen yet."
"Don't you worry about ideas, your Eminence. I'm brimming with them.
The only trouble is cash to carry them out. If only the British
Government were subsidising this expedition I could get on
swimmingly. But under the circumstances, as they don't know about
it, they naturally couldn't. M'lord, could you advance me fifty
guilders? They'll save our necks for the time being. If I don't
turn up to pay, you can screw it out of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer when you get home."
Captain Kettle produced a note. "I don't know what you want it for,"
he observed unpleasantly, "but if it turns out afterwards you've
blown it on a spree, I'll give you something that will keep you
teetotal for a fortnight."
"Most Potent," said Mr. Holroyd, "your honoured trust shall not be
betrayed. I return anon. But, for the Lord's sake, stick here like
glue. The city reeks of German spies, and the moment we both turn
our backs the rooms will be searched down to the bone. With your
lordship's permission, I will now for a while take my leave."
Mr. Holroyd returned in an hour's time carrying a large brown-paper
parcel, which on being opened disclosed a portmanteau of eminently
continental cut. This he proceeded to decorate with the labels of
hotels in Homburg, Vienna, and Monte Carlo, and to the handle he
affixed a rubric which stated that it was the property of an officer
well known in the Kaiser Wilhelm's service (but who was just then, so
the papers said, in Russia), and that it was to be left till called
for. After which he stored within it certain matters, and then
deposited it in an empty bedroom on the opposite side of their
passage.
"There," said he, "if that's found, everyone will think the other
fellow's put it there. The servants in this pub can be estimated in
tons, and they're the most muddling lot I ever struck in all my
travels. No method. I've kept enough samples of our--er--chemicals
in my waistcoat pocket for you to experiment on, m'lord, as you still
seem sceptical."
"I'll have to comb your hair yet," said the little sailor
reflectively. "Now just here, and before we go any further, and
without any frills of talk, kindly say with clearness what it is you
have got."
"Fluxite tabloids and a deferred ignitor."
"What's that?"
"You see, you don't understand. I knew you wouldn't. So I
absolutely must explain, and don't blame me if I get gassy over the
dramatic bits. You've heard of Louvain?"
"I have."
"The Germans burnt it?"
"So I read."
"Oh, they did, all right. They'd a corps of men specially appointed
for the job. Probably been drilling them for that particular
enterprise since 1870. Special uniform and special swear words, all
complete. Their equipment was a box of matches and a haversack of
tabloids like this"--he showed a couple of small black dice balanced
on the back of his hand. "Each tabloid is guaranteed to set fire to
anything, from a kitchen range to a chest of drawers when touched
off. It really is wonderful stuff.
"Very well, then. An intelligent Belgian found a dozen and a half of
this amiable corps hard at work. He helped them, and after a hard
day's work took them to a cellar where there was some good, old
champagne, and filled them up choc-a-block. Then he turned on the
gas and left. Next morning he came and found eighteen good Germans
and took from them their stores of fluxite tabloids for which they
had no further use. He set fire to the cellar they were in, so as
not to cause any unpleasantness with their friends, and got across to
England with the tabloids. As he'd picked up some shrapnel in the
knee on his travels, he handed the tabloids to me, and they're now in
that portmanteau."
"But what's this other thing you talked of--something about deferred
ignition?"
"A mere trifle, m'lord, but being a little thing of my own, I cherish
it. Once I thought I'd be a chemist, and really learned quite a bit
about chemistry before I chucked it. There are lots of substances
which, when mixed together, produce fire, at once or sooner. There
are quite a few which take their time over it; warm up to their work
slowly and thoughtfully in fact; but do it none the less efficiently
for all. My tabloids are the latter sort. I won't trouble you with
their composition. Indeed I may as well go so far as to say that
when I have advertised them well by our present trip--always
supposing we don't get scuppered in the process--I mean to retail the
recipe to the War Office people, if I can wake them out of their
winter sleep. Then I shall be able to repay that fifty guilders I've
soaked you in for, not to mention those two second-best shirts which
Lady Kettle so kindly, but so reluctantly, provided."
"Well," said Captain Kettle, "your stuff may be good and may be bad,
and is probably bad, but anyway I'm not going to be satisfied till I
see it tried. So come out now and we'll find where this cotton is
stored."
They had not to go far in their exploration of that continental
seaport city without finding cotton. Quays, warehouses, streets
even, were piled with cotton bales; trains clattered away with them
over the frontier into Germany as fast as sweating men could load
them; and every minute more bales were discharged from steamers fresh
in from the ocean. Every bale sent into Germany meant death for ten
soldiers of the Allies, but it also meant money for the thrifty
neutral who passed it through his territory, money for the free and
independent Southern States planter, money for the shipper, money for
the broker, money (according to Captain Kettle) for the British
lawyer-politician, money in fact for so many worthy and pushing
people that the mere soldier (who as often as not did not possess a
vote) had naturally to go to the wall.
"My great James!" said Captain Kettle. "Here's a way to carry on
war!"
"Rather surprising, isn't it, we didn't ship them cordite whilst we
were at it, and bag the manufacturing profit as well? It would have
been quite as consistent. Do you know we are being followed?"
"Yes, by a tall party with a kaiser moustache and glasses. He came
on with us as convoy when we left the hotel. He's pointed us out to
four other people that I've seen during our stroll, and probably to
more."
"My compliments on your wits, m'lord. You've seen more than I did.
Are we going into the hotel? It's probably a trap."
"If anybody here wants trouble," said the sailor truculently, "I'm
the man to provide it. Go inside. We'll dine in our rooms, and the
Lord help the Dutchman who tries to interfere."
But there were men in that city as daring as Captain Owen Kettle.
Half-way through dinner an embarrassed waiter announced "Some
visitors, chentlemen," and on his heels there pressed the big German
with the spectacles and the upturned moustaches, and three friends.
They elbowed the waiter out into the passage, and shut the door
behind them.
The big German folded his arms and addressed the sailor, in good
English--"You are a Britisher."
"I have always suspected it," said Kettle dryly.
"And your name is not Professor Owen, but Captain Owen Kettle. We
have met before, as you will remember. And now I am going to settle
up for what I owe you."
"I hear you say it."
"Speak the truth. What do you want here?"
"What the hell's that to you? Get out of this room, one-time, you
crossed-eyed son of dog. There's the door. If you don't use that
you'll be thrown through the window. Understand? I don't like your
face."
Here was a touch of the Kettle of an earlier era. The modern German
always had that kind of emetic effect on him. This specimen,
however, was not the man to take insults calmly. He lugged out a
revolver, and was plainly on the verge of shot. But a large and
heavy water carafe, thrown with the full strength of Kettle's right
arm, caught him fairly on the chest, where it burst like a shell.
The sailor followed up the attack as quickly as he could limp across
the room, wrenched the man's revolver away, and beat the sense out of
him with the butt of it.
Another, advancing to the help of this first, had his legs plucked
violently from beneath him, and his head pounded against the iron
kerb fender till the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
Then Captain Kettle turned his eyes and looked across the room, and
saw the other two intruders ranged against the wall with their hands
above their heads, and Mr. Holly Holroyd menacing them with a most
murderous-looking carving knife and carving fork.
"Aren't I the complete cannibal m'lord?" he asked. "The citizen at
present offering his liver to the knife is so far untouched, but the
ruffian on my fork-hand has a dozen punctures in him for which he is
probably none the better. Congratters on the way you killed your
brace. I suppose we ought to make good Germans of these two, but my
trouble is I can't kill sitters."
"You wait there, my lad," said Captain Kettle, "till I get some
sheets from one of the bedrooms torn into strips, and then I'll show
you how to tie up a man efficiently. It's an art. I'm also going to
make fast my two in case they see fit to come to life again before
they're needed, the dirty Dutch swine. I wonder what I once did to
this party with the unpleasant moustache."
"And now," said Mr. Holroyd when the operation was ended, "we can't
take it for granted that all four of these mummified gentlemen were
orphans. The odds are that at any rate one of them has a dear friend
who'll inquire for him. The only question is, how soon will they
begin to get anxious."
"The answer to that is just under the window. There are a blessed
regiment of them; the place is as German as Hamburg; and though it
would tickle me finely to stay and see it out with them, business is
business, and that cotton is waiting for attention before we can
afford to waste time on pleasure. We must skin out of this spot,
one-time."
"But how, Most Wise? According to you the doors will be guarded."
"Quite so. But the roofs won't be--yet at any rate. Get that
portmanteau with the chemicals, and come along. I mapped out the
course from the square below before we came in."
"Me for the cat-act on the tiles," said Mr. Holroyd cheerfully.
"And don't use that low-down theatre talk, or you'll be getting my
boot into you. I'll not have my ears contaminated. I was on the
edge of composing a pleasant bit of verse then, before you blundered
in and put me off.'"
That retreat across the roofs deserves a chapter to itself, but space
cannot be afforded in this brief memoir. The roofs were high-pitched
and the passage eminently dangerous. Moreover, to have detached
tiles and let these clatter to the street below would have advertised
their passage, and so had to be avoided at all costs. But Holroyd
developed an unexpected activity (which he explained by saying he had
been in the gym eight at Rugby), and Captain Kettle climbed like a
sailor that he was. And in the end, after they had clambered
half-a-mile from the hotel, they found an unoccupied attic, and
entered it to sit down and rest.
Captain Kettle looked with distaste at his soiled knees and grimy
hands and did his best to remedy these with the help of his
pocket-handkerchief. In his sea days he had always been noted for
his personal spruceness, and though he was now the complete farmer,
his tastes in this direction had not changed. I found out once that
a firm in Piccadilly makes a square-topped bowler hat for him
specially.
"Now," said the sailor, "we've created a lot more interest in
ourselves than is wholesome, and I hate advertising anyway. We've
work to do, and we've got to get somewhere quiet to do it. The place
they're likely to hunt for us least in will be a truck or a coach in
a train that's going to start sometime for Germany. Main thing is,
we must pick one that's not going to start too soon, and one also
that commands a view of those cotton bales. D'ye think you can find
all that in the dark?"
"I'm sure I can't."
"Well, I'm sure I can. That's the advantage of a sea education.
Walk delicately down these steps, and if anybody interferes, bottle
him."
They trod like mice down dark and resounding stairways, expecting
alarms at every turn. Doors yawned at them on every landing. From
the third half-pace a rat's eyes gleamed at them and then were
noiselessly eclipsed. But not till they had got to the ground floor
was there a sound of human life. There on the right, a door lay
open, with the room beyond it extravagantly lit with showy electrics.
In a great blue satin arm-chair a blowsy servant girl sprawled and
snored.
Captain Kettle was always a man with neat instincts. "The hussy," he
said. "Lady Kettle has trouble with them just the same. And, of
course, all the lights are on and running to waste. The papers may
preach till they're black in the face, but you'll never get that sort
to practise war-time economy."
Then they went out into the evening streets, mingled coolly with the
stolid crowd, and went their ways without let or hindrance.
The city was old, and its streets wandered as waterside streets do.
On two occasions the dead-reckoning of even Captain Kettle led them
to turn off to a wrong direction, to his own wrath, and to his
friend's amusement. "I love to hear you get mad," Mr. Holroyd
chuckled, "when you miss a simple turning. I, personally, have no
more idea than an unborn Astrakan lamb whether our way is north or
south, or indeed which is north or south."
"Quite so," snapped Kettle. "It is not your job to know. It is
mine. Bear away to starboard, please, and give me a spell with the
portmanteau. If weight means anything, it should contain a powerful
lot of your fire-raisers. I wish to goodness we'd got out earlier,
before the telegraph offices were shut. I want to get another
message through."
"Want to telegraph your report of what we've done up to date to the
War Office?"
"No, sir, not now. I want to wire Lady Kettle not to give Arthur
curd cheesecakes. She always does it if I don't remind her every
time he comes to stay with us, and they always upset him. Then her
ladyship takes it as a reflection on her cooking, and there's a row,
and the girl usually leaves.... No, don't go that way, or you'll
step into a canal. We must walk round the next block before we come
to the railway yards."
To gain a hiding-place, when they came to the chosen ground seemed
impossible. The whole quay-space was lit as bright as day with
sizzling arc-lamps, and work was proceeding at three times normal
speed. The phlegmatic natives were being hustled by Prussians.
Every third man there seemed Prussian, square shouldered, and
capable. To carry on the Great War Germany needed cotton for
explosives, and this was one of the ways she saw that she got it.
But it was to this press and bustle that the two Britons owed
immunity. Everybody was too busy to bother with them. Anybody who
spared them a thought imagined that they were helping Germany.