nor in the Army, and I don't scrap with women. I leave that for you
politicians, sir. I've felt more uncomfortable than you can think,
sir, at the idea of having shot her."
"Quite regardless of the trifle that for a good hour she was trying
her best to murder you. Highly quixotic, I'm sure. Pity you're not
a bachelor, and could end the tale with the usual wedding-bells. I
suppose, by the way, she was supremely beautiful?"
"She'd a figure like a pear, and one of the homeliest faces I ever
saw. But that doesn't make her any the less woman, sir, or excuse me
for filling her with shot-corns."
"Ah," said Carnforth thoughtfully, "I wonder if your lady friend is
also a friend of mine. Pear-shaped figure, and an ugly face you say.
Pince-nez, by any chance?"
"Plain steel-rimmed spectacles, sir."
"We're getting warmer. A round pug-nose, and a good flourishing
black moustache, eh?"
"Her nose might be as you say. As regards the other matter, sir, I
should never dream of noticing such a thing on a lady."
Mr. Martin Carnforth hit the edge of the billiard-table and hurt his
hand. "I bet a thousand acres of grouse-moor to a keg of sourkraut I
know the lady's name and late address. We're getting into deep
waters. Did you ever come across Hermann Vogelheimer?"
"I did, sir, half-a-dozen years ago, and wonder I didn't leave my
mark on him."
"Oh, what was the trouble?"
"He asked me how much I gave for my K.C.B., the swine."
"And you got furious, and told him such things weren't bought and
sold in this country?"
"I don't know how you guessed, Mr. Carnforth, but that is about what
I did say, except that I added he was a dirty German Jew, and told
him pretty accurately how he'd been bred and where he'd go to later."
"How like you. Well, Captain, he's Sir Hermann Vogelheimer, baronet,
to-day, and on paper a pukka Englishman, in spite of the trifle of
his accent, and if you call him either German or Jew in public he'll
bring an action for libel. I know how much he gave for the title,
because I worked the deal myself, as it happened. Our Party funds
were dead low just then, and something desperate had to be done. We
were past decency at the moment. I remember, when I had to fill in
what the beast had done for the country, the only thing I could find
to his credit was that he had once given a clock to a mechanics'
institute--and I suppressed the detail that he had previously sold
them the building site at an exorbitant profit.
"Now, this man had a sort of governess-secretary person called
Fräulein Berta Schauer in his household up to the beginning of the
war. Since then she has been living about the country on her own,
with enough money at her command to make her interesting. You quite
take me? She'd no money before the war, or we'll say spent none.
Now she's lots, and is very, very kind to soldiers, military doctors,
and young subalterns in want of a dinner. Incidentally she is so
much like your heroine of the moor, that the coincidence is, to say
the least of it--damn that billiard-table, I've smashed my knuckles
again."
"We could, of course," suggested Captain Kettle thoughtfully, "haul
this Vogelheimer out of his bed some night, and hang him quietly from
a tree in his garden if you think fit, sir. I suppose it would be no
use giving information to the Government. They'd know he'd parted
with money in the past, and would only bleed him for more, and the
spy business would not be touched."
Carnforth grinned. "You've a delightfully clear opinion about
politicians, Captain. I wouldn't go so far as to agree with you that
the Government would proceed to blackmail our man if they had the
chance, but I fancy they're mindful of past favours. Anyway, he
isn't interned, and a child can see he ought to be. But, of course,
that's the ordinary rule. We only intern poor Germans, and those who
don't subscribe to our Party funds. Moreover, you are going a bit
too fast. We've no evidence that the immaculate Sir Hermann is
running this spy game, and as he is one of the most capable men in
Great Britain at this minute, it's heavy odds we don't find any
evidence. But if we keep a watchful eye on your shot-pocked Fräulein
Schauer----"
"You'll excuse me, Mr. Carnforth, sir, but I don't scrap with women,
and I've done that one more damage than I care about already. With
your leave, I'm going to drop the whole business. I'll just take
another cigar with me for before breakfast, and now I'll turn in."
Carnforth watched his guest as he stumped up the stairs at the other
side of the hall. "Go to sleep by all means for the present, and
I'll get busy. Later, if you're wanted, and the intrusive petticoat
is wafted away from your modest sight, you'll help most efficiently.
I never came across a man who hated Germans--or Dutchmen, as you will
persist in calling them--more efficiently. You might not make a good
minister, but if they had you in the Cabinet you'd have a big value
in killing off the dangerous ones. Um! I hate travelling at night,
but I fancy a fifty--no, it'll be a seventy-mile motor run will have
its uses just now. Nice work for a middle-aged gentleman after a
hard day's grouse shooting. Well, I shall probably breakfast a bit
late, that's all."
The apologetic butler who came into Captain Kettle's room at five
o'clock next morning was rather surprised to find any guest in the
house rouse so suddenly into perfect wakefulness. He was unused to
the habits of sailors, but being the complete butler he did not
flicker so much as the eyebrow of surprise. He said with stolid and
perfect courtesy, "The Master telephones, sir, that he would be
obliged if you would meet him at Fordham as soon as you can get
there. It is about eighty miles. If you have any doubt about going,
I was to mention that without your help there will be three ships of
the British Navy sunk within four hours' time. I shall have our big
Napier ready for you, sir, by the time you are dressed."
"Always pleased to give the Navy a leg up," said the mariner briskly.
"Just hand me that wooden leg out of the portmanteau, will you? No,
not the one I wore yesterday. Now go and get that car. I'll be at
the front door as soon as it is round."
The big car hurtled out coastwards through the end of the autumn
night, and quickened as dawn made the roads more clear. The driver
flicked out his electrics and turned to his passenger. "If you're
not nervous, Sir Owen, I can open her up a bit now."
"I am always nervous with these beastly road-engines," Captain Kettle
admitted, "when I'm not conning them myself, but push her along, my
lad. The tune of this car up to now has fitted in with 'Greenland's
Icy Mountains,' and I suppose you'll hit it up now to the air of the
'Turkish Patrol,' and that will spoil the rhythm of some poetry I was
making. But don't mind that. I'm not the man to let pleasure stand
in the way of business."
They met Carnforth half-a-dozen miles outside Fordham, the big grey
car drawn up at a crossroads inn advertising his whereabouts. It was
six-thirty in the morning, and he was eating ham and eggs and
drinking beer. Also he was in dress clothes, unshaven, and the worse
for wear.
"You look as if you have been climbing trees, sir," said Captain
Kettle, with all a tidy man's disgust for the dishevelled.
"It was walls and a fall-pipe, and I've broken all my nails and the
knee of one of my trousers. You needn't turn up your nose at my
frugal meal; it's supper for me, not breakfast. Have some?"
"Thank you, sir, I think I will. Your man has scared me so with the
pace he's driven, I'm hungry enough to eat two breakfasts. But I
expected to meet you at the coast, sir. Your message mentioned
something about giving a leg up to the Navy."
"All in good time. I suppose you don't know anything about wireless?
A bit since your day, eh?"
The little sailor drew himself up stiffly. "I keep myself up to
date, sir. I take in every issue of the _Syren and Shipping_ and the
_Patent Medicine Recorder_ and read through every word of both,
advertisements included. And as it happened, for my last Christmas
holiday, I took a run across the Western Ocean in a boat fitted with
wireless to see how it worked. A Mr. McTodd, a retired sea-going
engineer of my acquaintance, was interested in her as a shareholder,
and gave me every facility. He came too. He----" Captain Kettle
was evidently on the brink of disclosures, but bit them off with a
firm lip. "He and I came home by different boats."
"Well, there's wireless and wireless, and I fancy the instalment I'm
nosing after isn't the usual sort. I put the Home Office on to an
instalment like it once before. They (after I began to get nasty)
discovered it wasn't their job, and handed me on to the Post Office.
The Post Office went to sleep over it for three weeks, and then when
I roused them by methods I wouldn't like to describe to you, said
they'd taken tests and proved that no wireless messages had been sent
or received from the area under discussion. I didn't believe them.
But they'd wasted two months of valuable time, and when their final
report came, my birds had got frightened and bolted. Now we can't
afford to be hung up like that again. This is business, and one
can't expect business from a Government office."
"I've known the Board of Trade get busy quick enough, sir," said
Kettle rather bitterly. "Is this wireless you're after some new
patent?
"I can only guess, but I've a notion it's an improvement on a type
that was talked about in the text-books before the Marconi sort was
heard of."
"You're rather vague, sir."
"I am. But I'm open to bet seven years' penal servitude to nothing
I'm right."
Captain Kettle looked puzzled. "I don't take you, sir."
"What I'm going to do within the next half-hour--and what you can
chip in at if you like--will be put down as armed burglary of Sir
Hermann Vogelheimer's house, if I'm wrong. If we're right, and save
a nice little squadron of British ships, probably nothing will be
said about the method. We shan't be thanked anyway. Here are a few
more details," said Carnforth, and gave them. "Question is, are you
going to risk coming?"
Captain Kettle tried to look disturbed and failed. "It seems to me
more than a one-man job, sir, and I think perhaps it would be better
I should come and stand by in case of trouble, especially as you can
guarantee I shan't see Miss Schauer. It would be most embarrassing
to meet that lady with my shot-corns still making her feel sore.
I've brought along that automatic you lent me yesterday, though I
must say my old Hopkins-Allen .380 feels more homelike."
At this point unfortunately a gap occurs in history. Captain Kettle
refuses to fill it. Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., for sound reasons, I
cannot get at. I suppose the pair of them raided the house of Sir
Hermann Vogelheimer in broad daylight and made that Teutonic baronet
squeal. I say I suppose they did this, because when I suggested it
Captain Kettle surreptitiously licked his lips. But he provided no
details, either for publication or for anything else. As a side
issue, I did get an inkling once of the method Vogelheimer used for
signalling. We were talking of wireless, and I said it was odd that
the heat-ray method had never been developed.
"That's all you know about it, my lad," Kettle snapped. "Get a
multiple arc with plenty of juice at the back of it, filter out the
light with a screen, and you can send messages down a heat ray that a
telephonic nerve can pick up thirty miles away. That's the way
Vogel----"
"Who did you say?"
"No one. But the thing's been done. That you can take from me.
I've seen it." And he then proceeded to give me a precis of his last
week's sermon to the Wharfedale Particular Methodists by way of
changing the subject.
A gap, as I say, mutilates the sequence, and I can only take up
events again on a particularly unpleasant timber-laden barquentine of
Swedish register somewhere in the North Sea. The unfortunate vessel
advertised herself to the waters at large as a derelict. Her crew
had been driven from her by Germans, and a bomb had done its best to
sink her. But a lading of timber buoyed her up, and she floated
dismantled, bulwarkless, and waterlogged, as a menace to shipping,
and a gossiping spot for gulls.
In spite of latitude and longitude given, and elaborate calculations
for current drift and wind drift, Captain Kettle spent a whole day
searching the grey rollers of the North Sea before he found her, and
one man had a leg smashed in the subsequent transhipment of the
three-inch gun.
Where the gun came from I do not know, but suspect Carnforth. Mr.
Martin Carnforth, M.P., had been in the gun-running business before,
as has been recorded, and presumably knew where to procure weapons
when needed, even though officially such a thing was not to be got
for love or money by anyone outside the two Services. Anyway, there
the gun was; the latest thing; firing from a shoulder-piece and
delicately balanced by recoil cylinders; fitted with an ample shield;
and capable, with efficient loading, of getting off twenty unpleasant
shells per minute. Most of the barquentine's deckload had survived
its wartime experiences, and Kettle's first orders were directed to
digging a gunpit out of this.
When the tender steamed away, there were three of them left besides
himself, to wit, Carnforth and two other grouse-shooters, one a
supercilious barrister, and the other a florid stockbroker, and the
three instinctively dropped under the little sailor's orders. They
tore at the deals till their hands bled, and their wrists were full
of splinters; they sweated at augers; they strained at spanners; they
worked with panting fury till they had got their gun bolted down,
with its slim store of shells laid handy.
For a minute they stood round, thawing their stiff muscles, and
admiring their work.
"Filthy life sailors must lead," commented the barrister.
"By James, you're right," said Captain Kettle, "and they deserve a
sight more consideration than they get."
"Well," said the stockbroker, "here's hoping there's soon a slump in
submarines; I say, Captain, haven't we earned a drink?"
The cabin aft was afloat, the forecastle the same, and the galley, a
green-painted wooden box, clamped down to the decks by an iron strap,
was the only place of shelter. A shrewd rain-laden breeze was
blowing from the eastward, and the water-logged derelict behaved like
a half-tide rock. Her four inhabitants were bone-weary, sodden wet,
icily cold. But only two could shelter in the galley at a time, and
that without fire. Captain Kettle ordained that there should be
always two on watch, and he forbade the showing of smoke or any other
ensign of human occupancy.
The three-inch gun was shrouded from the gaze of the gulls and others
by the tattered and sodden remains of a main-topmast staysail. This
flapped about artistically between wind and water, and would appear
to the inquirer (when one arrived) as the piece of genuine wreckage
it really was. The gunpit and this erratic canvas also gave some
shelter to the officer and man of the watch, but as the North Sea
ebbed and flowed through the floor of the pit, or gushed in (when it
felt inclined) over its edges, the place, as a sentry-box was not
without its inconveniences.
"I don't mind eating soaked biscuit and sardine," said Carnforth,
"but even my stomach refuses sea-water and whisky. Can't you screw
her round head to wind, somehow, Captain? This wallowing in the
trough is the very devil. Incidentally, it will make me sea-sick
soon."
"But it looks natural, and that's what we needed. Believe me, sir,
these Dutchmen spot the least thing nowadays that's suspicious.
They're getting the savvy of white men. Mind you don't get a clip on
the head from one of the hanks of that staysail, Mr. Carnforth.
Duck, sir. By James, that one nearly flicked your brains out. You
should take care. You must remember, sir, that if these Dutch
submarines come up, as arranged, you'll be needed presently, and it's
shirking your duty if you get killed beforehand."
The autumn night wore through, cold, windy, and bitter, but, with a
niggard dawn, the wind eased, and grey pallisades of rain hedged the
derelict into a narrow circus of sullenly rolling water. Gulls mewed
at them from the ruined fore-top.
Captain Kettle rubbed his wet hands appreciatively. "Perfect
weather, isn't it, Mr. Carnforth? You'd like more sporting shooting,
I know. But with this thickness they'll have to come close so as to
pick up their mark, and we can pot them with our gun like sitting
rabbits. I'm not like you, sir; I'm not out for sport just now; what
I want is to make a big bag of good Germans. The only thing I can't
understand is why this floating wreck should be set out as a
rendezvous. A sailor, if he wanted to make an appointment in the
middle of the North Sea, would just give a latitude and longitude."
Carnforth chuckled. "But you see neither the eminent Sir Hermann nor
his lady friend that we agree to call Miss Schauer are sailors."
"You never mentioned, sir," said Kettle disgustedly, "that the lady
was in it."
"Forgot," said Carnforth, with complete absence of truth. "You're so
shy of petticoats, most eminent Captain, I thought you'd wriggle out
of the job if you knew. Gee! Look! That chap's coming down on top
of us."
A black Norwegian collier, with stump top-masts, poked her ugly
dray-horse bows out of the grey sea mist, and bore down stolidly and
squarely on to them. The derelict was helpless. There did not seem
a possibility that she could escape destruction. And the chances
were a hundred to one that if she were hit she would scrape the
bottom off the collier and take her to the North Sea floor in convoy.
Even the sea-fowl got scared, and flew away.
The mountainous bows, yawning wildly to the seas, made for them as if
drawn by a wire, and the nerve of Martin Carnforth, M.P., gave way.
He leapt to his feet and tried to shout a warning. But with a cat's
quickness Kettle's knees were against his shoulder-blades, and
Kettle's cold, wet right hand clapped hard over his mouth, and Martin
Carnforth, M.P., flopped back into the sea-water at the bottom of the
gun-pit.
The staysail bellied and snapped above them, and the look-out on the
collier (who then for the first time woke up) saw only a timber-laden
derelict, deserted even by the sea-birds. He made swift outcry, and
the mechanism, human and mechanical, on the bridge responded. The
clumsy bows, ducking and curtsying, took a slow sheer to port, and
missed the barquentine's splintering sides by a short fathom.
The ponderous stern bore in to starboard and grazed the derelict's
quarter. The water from her condenser sluiced along the deck-load.
The popple of her wake set the barquentine dancing like a cork till
she had pulled out through the palings of the rain, and vanished on
the trail of her own inconsiderable affairs.
"Beg your pardon, sir," said Captain Kettle, getting off his friend's
head.
"Don't mention it. Gee! Those other two chaps in the galley must
have nerves! They never let up a whimper. I'm getting jumpy. Must
be growing old."
"The other two gentlemen are both asleep, sir. The thin, superior
one's head had slid off (when I looked in the galley last) on to a
piece of beef that hadn't been fresh for a fortnight, and the
stockbroker must be a Tynesider from the homely way he's snuggled
down amongst the coals. Well, sir, we don't count near squeaks at
sea. There aren't enough log-books made to enter them up. I wish
you'd finish what you were saying about Vogelheimer when that
coal-boat broke you off."
"The Admiralty have been allowed to pick up an ordinary wireless
which let out that a German cruiser squadron was to rendezvous where
we are now, preparatory to a raid on Scarboro'. It was judged,
rightly enough, that some British ships would be sent to attend to
them. Vogelheimer sent all this news down his own heat-ray wireless
(that we thickheaded British can't tap), and I guess it was picked up
by a German submarine thirty miles out at sea. I'm not sure about
that, you understand; but it was received by somebody, because I
heard it acknowledged myself whilst I was in the room. And then, as
you know, we got spotted, and you had your little interview with
Vogelheimer when he rushed out on to the leads to see who his callers
were. I can guarantee I smashed their wireless most efficiently,
and, though the operator bolted----"
"The operator, sir?"
"Well, it was your shot-marked friend. Lord, Captain, you did pepper
her, to judge by the marks! She ran like an animated pear when she
saw me--thought I'd another shot-gun, I suppose. And as I guessed
she was too scared to pull up this side of a hundred miles, I let her
go. Other things were too pressing. And besides, I knew your
sentiments."
"I don't consider you've treated me fairly in this matter, sir."
Carnforth grinned. "I haven't. You see, I wanted to use you, and,
knowing your scruples, I just circumnavigated them most
unscrupulously. I've got you out here. British cruisers are
probably coming, though I hope they change their minds or miss their
way, but German submarines are going to turn up within the next hour
or so, for an absolute certainty. We shall probably get scuppered
ourselves before lunch-time, but if we send plenty of Germans before
us into the Shades, I shan't mind that much. It will be a more
decent ending than most Members of Parliament acquire."
"Yes, sir, quite so, and you and the other two gentlemen may die as
arranged. But, by James! I'm not out in the wet old North Sea to
get killed. You'll see I shall do all that's needful, and get home
again to Lady Kettle as promised to her. If you go into these little
affairs with an appointment with your wife in your pocket-book, when
you've carried them through successfully you keep that appointment,
and go round the garden with her quite pleasantly, and see the roses
that have grown since you've been away, and arrange the date when
you'll dig the potatoes and put them in a pie. There was something
that made me feel a bit like former times, Mr. Carnforth, that I saw
just inside the main companion."
"What was that?"
"An accordion, sir--the Old Man's, possibly, or perhaps Mr. Mate's.
It was coming unstuck with the wet, and every other note was dumb.
But it would be very pleasant to squeeze music out of an accordion
again. You see, sir, since we've been prosperous and had the
harmonium in the house, Lady Kettle says accordions are low. She
won't try to play the bigger machine herself, and I can't learn, and
my daughter, Mrs. Hunter, that had such splendid lessons on it from
the master in Skipton, is seldom with us nowadays. So you see, we
get no music except what that little cat from down the dale pumps out
in chapel on Sundays. She always plays the hymns I hate, and when I
try to get her to put through one with a lift on it, she's always pat
with an excuse.---- My great James, sir, stand-by! There's another
steamboat coming--a big fellow and in a hurry, by the sound of his
propeller. Down under the staysail, sir--down under the staysail, I
say--or you'll get another thick ear!"
It was no black-painted collier this time that bore down upon them,
but a vast steel ship, painted, it seemed, to the very tint of the
rain-mists themselves. She was unsubstantial, and yet solid; a ghost
ship, and yet grinning with guns; carrying no man in open sight, yet
awake enough to train a score of ugly muzzles on the barquentine in
case of accident.
She was twenty thousand tons of hate embodied in hardened steel, and
she slid in and out of their narrow, rain-swept horizon at the pace
of an ordinary train. Captain Kettle peered at her from under the
flapping edge of the staysail, and tugged perplexedly at his red
torpedo beard.
"My great James! Mr. Carnforth, what kind of a mess have we here?
That duck's not Dutch any more than she's English."
"French, she looked to me."
"French all over. I never saw anything more French in my life. But
what's she doing out here?"
"Skipper felt he'd like a cod steak for breakfast, so they just
slipped across to the Dogger for an evening's fishing."
"You've a great imagination, sir. I suppose you need it in
Parliament. But upon my sam, although the explanation's sheer
foolishness, I can't think of a better. Unless----"
"Well? Unless what?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Unless our pear-shaped friend has got another move on her were you
going to say?"