The mind of Dawson has the queerest limitations. He is entirely free from any sense of proportion. If I wrote of those incidents which he pressed upon me, this book would be intolerably dull. He sees no interest in any episode which is not Dawson, Dawson, all the time. The emotion which was aroused in the hearts of Cary and myself by Trehayne's letter caused Dawson no small anxiety. He feared lest in rendering this episode I should turn the limelight upon Trehayne and leave the private of Marines in the shadows. Which is precisely what I have done. From his "sick bed" he sent me a letter explaining that his own honourable weakness of sympathy with an enemy spy was physical, not moral—reprehensible failing induced by lack of sleep. He laboured to convince me that the spirit of Dawson in the full flush of health was of a frightfulness wholly Prussian in its logical completeness. But I smiled, went my own way, and Dawson, when he comes to read this book, can swear as loudly as he pleases.
If I had depended only upon Dawson, I should never have secured the details of the story which I am about to write. It was Froissart who first put me upon the track of it during one of those visits which I paid to him when I was investigatingl'affaireRust. Froissart, in imaginative insight, is as much superior to Dawson as the average Frenchman is to the average Englishman. But in execution he admits sorrowfully that he cannot hold a candle to his brutal secretive English chief. "I have genius," exclaimed Froissart, "of which the sacred dog Dawson has not a particle. I know not whence come his ideas, the most penetrative. It cannot be fromson Espritof which he has none; his brain reposes, without doubt, in his stomach. Yet,ma foi, that man whom I detest and to whom I am a colleague most loyal, is of a practical ingenuity most wonderful. Did you ever learn how he hid the great cruisersIntrepidandTerrificfrom the watching eyes of the Boche, and won, here in England, a glorious victory for the English Navy, eight thousand miles away? I was with him, and at the end, falling upon his bosom in generous admiration, I kissed him on both cheeks. And what was my reward? It was to receive a short-arm blow upon the diaphragm. That man of mud took my wind, as he called it, and I was laid gasping upon the floor. It was in this fashion that he repulsed me—me a Count ofl'ancien regime. I could have his blood."
I soothed Froissart, and extracted enough from him in rapid French spasms—his idiomatic staccato French is often beyond my understanding—to give me a general idea of what Dawson had done. Thereafter I pursued my inquiries, pumping Dawson himself—who, for some reason, did not greatly value the affair—tackling others who knew more than they were always willing to tell, even to me their friend. Yet in many ways, of which it were well not to be particular, I arrived at the full story which I now tell. To my mind it shows Dawson at his best, and Dawson's best is very good indeed.
* * * * *
It was early in November, three months after war had begun. Dawson, to whom had been committed the general supervision of all known enemy spies in London, and who had already put in force that combination of tight net and loose string which I have described, received a summons from his Chief the moment he arrived at his office at the Yard. "You are wanted at the Admiralty," said the Commissioner—"and wanted badly. You are to report at once in the First Lord's private room."
"What is the game?" inquired Dawson. "I have lots to do here which I cannot well leave."
"I don't know. But I have orders to send you, and to relieve you from all other duties. If you want help, you can take Froissart, that French detective who has just been sent to us from Paris as a sort of liaison officer. He is strongly recommended as a first-class man."
"Hum," said Dawson, between whom and his Chief was a very close friendship. "I suppose I must toddle round and see what the little man wants this time. Last month he had secret wireless installations on the brain."
Dawson found the First Lord striding up and down his big room. All round the walls were set great maps bristling with pins to which were attached numbered labels. Each pin represented a ship, and each ship was obedient to an order flashed from the big aerials overhead. Here was the Holy of Holies, the nerve ganglion of the English Navy, and here, striding up and down, the man who could jab the nerve-centre with his finger whenever he pleased. He often pleased. Then he would gloat over the pins as they skipped about the maps.
Chief Inspector Dawson was announced, and stood to attention.
"Ha!" cried the First Lord, "so you are Dawson, the Master of Spies. We need you, Dawson; the country needs you; I need you. You have a great chance this day to show your quality, Dawson. Those of whom I approve, I advance. They become great men. Am I to approve of you?"
Dawson observed that he could not well say until he learned what was wanted of him.
"Ha!" cried the First Lord again, "you are a man of few words. I like those with me who do not talk. When there is talking to be done—well, I can do a little in that line myself. Among my instruments I demand silence."
Dawson said nothing. The First Lord struck a bell; a servant in blue uniform appeared. "Will you please tell his lordship that Chief Inspector Dawson is here, and that I await his presence."
The man retired and presently returned. "His lordship is in his room making out the orders for the Fleet. He bids me say that he is quite at your service."
The First Lord flushed, and glanced hurriedly at Dawson, who stood at attention, stolid, silent, immovable. It would seem that he read nothing in the message.
"The Mountain is old and stiff in his joints," remarked the First Lord playfully. "When he settles into his chair, it would take a bomb to lift him out. We are young and active; we must consider the infirmities of age. Mahomet will go to the Mountain, and you will please to follow."
Mahomet, swinging his long coat-tails, strode out of the room and down a passage, whence they emerged into another room also set about with pin-studded maps.
"Ha!" said the First Lord, "as you would not come to us, we have unbent our dignity and come to you. This is Chief Inspector Dawson."
"So I supposed," growled the grizzled old man, who sat at a big desk upon which was piled many flimsies. It was the great Lord Jacquetot, who for all his French name was English of the English.
"Will you explain to Mr. Dawson what we want of him or shall I?" inquired the First Lord. Lord Jacquetot rose from his chair, showing nothing of the infirmities of age. He approached Dawson, looked over him keenly, and said, "You don't look like a civilian policeman. Where have you served?"
Dawson explained that he had in former days been a Red Marine.
"I thought as much," said Jacquetot. "There is no mistaking the back and shoulders of them. Once a Pongo, always a Pongo." He held out his hand, which Dawson shook diffidently. An ex-private of Marines does not often shake the hand of a First Sea Lord.
Lord Jacquetot walked over to one of the maps and beckoned to Dawson to follow. The First Lord hovered in the background, ready to put in a word at the first opportunity.
"There has been a serious naval disaster in the South Seas," said Jacquetot, "and we must clean up the mess, pretty damn quick. The news came yesterday. Orders were wired at once that two battle-cruisers, theIntrepidandTerrific, should be sent at full speed from Scotland to Devonport to dock, coal, and complete with stores. To keep them outside the enemy's observation, and to avoid any risk of mines or submarines in the Irish Channel, they have been sent far out round the west coast of Ireland. Here they are; we get messages from them every hour." He indicated two pins. Just then a messenger entered and handed to the First Sea Lord a wireless flimsy. Jacquetot read it, slipped a scale along the map, took out the two pins, and shifted them further south. "They are going well," said he; "doing twenty-five knots. They should be off Plymouth Sound by to-morrow evening."
"It is a long way," put in Dawson, deeply interested. "Fifteen hundred miles."
"There or thereabouts. The coast lights are all out, so that they will steer a bit wide. They should do it in sixty hours."
"I gave the order within thirty minutes of getting the news of the disaster," remarked the First Lord, smacking his lips.
Jacquetot made no reply, though his eyes hardened and his mouth drew into a stiff line. It was his province to give Orders to the Fleet.
"Those battle-cruisers," went on Lord Jacquetot, addressing Dawson, "will go into dock at Devonport as soon as they arrive. They will be there forty-eight hours at least. They must be clean ships before they go through the hot tropical water if their speed is to be kept up. They have gun power, but power without speed is useless for the work which they have to do. After leaving England it will be a month before the Squadron, of which they are to form the chief part, will be concentrated in the South Seas. For two days at Devonport, and for four weeks while at sea, there must be the completest secrecy if our plans are to succeed. Without absolute secrecy we shall fail. The Board of Admiralty is responsible for the sea, but not for the land. We can make certain that no news of the despatch of these two cruisers gets out at sea; can you, Mr. Chief Inspector Dawson, undertake that no news gets out on land—that no whisper of their sailing reaches the enemy by means of his spies on land?"
"It is a large order," said Dawson thoughtfully.
"It is a very large order," asserted Lord Jacquetot, frowning.
"But large or small, the thing must be done," broke in the First Lord."If this news gets out, and we fail to come up with the GermanSquadron down south, the effect upon the public will be horrible. TheEnglish people may even lose their perfect, their sublime, faith inME."
"They may lose their faith in the Navy," muttered Jacquetot.
"It is the same thing," said the First Lord.
"Can you let me know more details, my lord?" asked Dawson. "What is the programme? I don't see at present how the arrival, docking, and sailing of the battle-cruisers can possibly be kept secret, but there may be a way if one could only think of it."
"If theIntrepidandTerrificarrive according to programme," said Jacquetot, "they will not come up the Sound till after dark. Then in the small hours they will slip into dock, and no one but the regular dockyard hands will know that they are there. We will haul them out also in the middle of the night, and they will be clear away by daybreak, forty-eight hours after arrival. Coal and other stores are on the spot in plenty, and the shells and cordite for the twelve-inch guns can soon be got down from the Plymouth magazines. The secrecy of the operation seems to me to turn on whether we can trust the dockyard hands."
Dawson shook his head. "I wouldn't plump on that, my lord. There have been enemy agents working in every dockyard in the kingdom for years past, and we haven't spotted all of them. Still, we have our own men working alongside of them—Scotland Yard men engaged from among the shipbuilding trades unions—accounting for every one, so that no man can be away from his post without our knowing and shadowing him. It is not easy to get any information out of the country nowadays. The secret wireless stories are all humbug. Wireless gives itself away at once. If one wants to get news to the enemy, one has to carry it oneself, or hire some one else to carry it. Most of that which goes we allow to go for our own purposes. I am pretty sure that no dockyard hand could get anything away to Holland without our knowledge, so that it doesn't matter whether they are trustworthy or not so long as we're not fools enough to trust them. You may not know it, but I have my own Yard men among your messengers here in this building, and among your clerks too."
"What!" cried the First Lord. "You don't even trust the Admiralty!"
"Least of all," said Dawson grimly. "If I was head of the GermanSecret Service, I would have my own man as your private secretary."
The First Lord sat down gasping. Jacquetot nodded kindly to Dawson, and laughed in his grim old way. "You are the man we want," said he.
"I am not thinking much of the dockyard hands," went on Dawson; "I can look after them. They're all provided for. The danger is in the gossip of a seaport town. I have lived in Portsmouth for years, and Plymouth is just like it. You may take my word for it that the arrival of theTerrificandIntrepidin dock at Devonport will be known all over the Three Towns half an hour after they get there. Their mission will be discussed in every bar, and it won't be difficult to make a pretty useful guess. Here is a disaster in the South Seas—which will be published all over the country by to-morrow morning—and here are two of our fastest battle-cruisers summoned in hot haste from Scotland to be cleaned and loaded for a long voyage. Any child, let alone a longshoreman, could put the two things together. 'So theIntrepidandTerrificare off to the South Seas to biff old Fritz in the eye.' That is what they will say in the Three Towns where there must be hundreds of men—British subjects, too, the swine, and many of them natural born—who would take risks to shove the news through to Holland if they could get enough dirty money for it. Our worst spies are not German, you bet; they are Irish and Scotch and Welsh and English. That's where our difficulties come in. I am not afraid of the dockyards, but the gossip of the Three Towns gives me the creeps."
"Then what can we possibly do?" wailed the First Lord, who saw his prospect of a brilliant coup wilt away like a fair mirage. "The secret will get out, our plans will fail, and MY Administration, my beautiful Administration, will have to stand the racket. How shall I defend myself in the House?"
"That won't matter much to the country," put in Jacquetot bluntly."What matters, is that we should do everything possible to keep thesecret in spite of all the inherent difficulties. Sit down, Mr.Dawson, and do some hard thinking."
"I prefer to stand, my lord. When I want to think I do a bit of sentry-go."
"So do I!" exclaimed the First Lord. "All my most famous speeches were composed while I walked up and down my dressing-room before my—" He broke off hastily, but as neither Jacquetot nor Dawson were listening, he might have completed the sentence without revealing the secrets of his looking-glass.
"May I speak my mind, my lords?" asked Dawson.
"It is what you are here for," replied Jacquetot.
"I always work on certain general principles. They apply here. People will talk; that is certain. If one doesn't want them to talk about something really important, one puts up something else conspicuous, harmless, and exciting to occupy their minds. In your politics" —turning to the First Lord with an air of simplicity—"when you've made a thorough mess of governing England, and don't want to be found out, you set the people fighting about Home Rule for Ireland. I don't mean you, sir, but politicians generally."
"Quite so," said the First Lord, blinking.
"Well, see here. We don't want any talk about theIntrepidandTerrific. So, before they arrive, we must give the people of the Three Towns a real titbit of excitement. Battle-cruisers come to dock in Devonport quite often when they are damaged. Two battle-cruisers which had been mined or submarined, one towing the other, would be a pretty picture in the Sound. It would set all the folk talking for days, and no one would think that two damaged cruisers had anything to do with the South Seas. Everybody would say, 'What cruel luck. If theTerrificandIntrepidhadn't got blown up they would be just right and handy to send down south. As it is—' And then the German agents would somehow get the news to Holland—we would help them all we could in a quiet way—that theIntrepidandTerrific, two fast battle-cruisers, had been nearly lost, and were being patched up at Devonport. The Germans, hearing the glorious news, would hug themselves and say that now was the time for the High Seas Fleet to come out and smash Jellicoe. The last thing in their minds would be any concentration in the south against their own Pacific Squadron. That's how I apply my general principles to this case. Meanwhile, of course, theTerrificandIntrepid, well and sound, would be racing away down to the South Seas and no one in the Three Towns—except the dockyard hands, whom we would look after—and no one at all in Germany, would have a glimmer of the real truth."
While Dawson was thinking aloud in this rather halting, stumbling way, the First Lord and his chief naval colleague were looking hard at one another. The politician, with his quick House-of-Commons wits, jumped to the idea before his slower thinking expert colleague could sort out the two battle-cruisers who were to be mined or submarined from the two which were to speed away south to avenge the recent disaster.
"If the two battle-cruisers are mined or submarined—which God forbid," said Jacquetot, "how can they sail for the south?"
"Need they be the same ships?" inquired Dawson, whose eyes had begun to flash with excitement. "Need they be the same?"
"Don't you see?" interposed the First Lord. "The idea is quite good. I was just about to suggest something of the kind myself when Mr. Dawson anticipated me. That is where the mind with a wide universal training has a great advantage over the narrow intensive intelligence of the professional expert. Even in war. What I propose, what Mr. Dawson here proposes with my full concurrence, is that two severely damaged battle-cruisers, known temporarily as theTerrificandIntrepid, should be brought into the Sound in broad day and displayed before the eyes of the curious in the Three Towns. The real ships will slip in, be docked and coaled, and slip out again. The two others, upon whom public attention has been concentrated, shall be put aground somewhere in the Sound to be salved with great and leisurely ostentation. We will keep them well away from the Hoe, and allow no one whatever to approach them. We will, unofficially, allow the news of their sorry state to get out of country and into the Dutch papers. Meanwhile, as Mr. Dawson says, the realTerrificandIntrepidwill be speeding towards the south, and the saving for the nation's service of my invaluable public reputation for accurate judgment and quick decision. Mr. Dawson's suggestion—I should, perhaps, rather say my own suggestion—shall be laid before the Board at once."
Though the stiff mind of Lord Jacquetot was not very quick to take in a new idea, no man alive was better equipped for practically working out a naval scheme. While the First Lord was assuming that sorely damaged battle-cruisers, or vessels which could be passed off in place of them, needed but his summons to spring from the deeps, Jacquetot had pressed a bell and ordered a messenger to request the immediate presence of the Fourth Sea Lord, within whose province was the whole art and mystery of ship construction. Upon the appearance of this officer the plan was gone over anew, and he was asked whence and within what time he could produce two presentable dummies to do duty in the Sound for the entertainment of the population of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse. There were, said he, two if not three at Portsmouth, constructed out of old cargo tramp hulls for the mystification of the enemy. They had already done duty as newly completed battleships, but with a little alteration to the canvas of their funnels, the lath and plaster of their turrets and conning towers, and the wood of their guns, they might be made into perfect likenesses—at a distance—of theIntrepidandTerrific. The ships' carpenters, he explained, could make the changes while the dummies were coming round to Plymouth. Seated at the desk of Lord Jacquetot he wrote the necessary orders in code, his Chief signed them, and they were put at once on the wires for Portsmouth. The sea-cocks, said the Fourth Lord, would be opened twenty miles from land so that the "Intrepid"might come in sadly down by the bows, and the "Terrific"with a list of twenty degrees, pluckily towing her sorely crippled sister. With a chart of Plymouth Sound before them, the two officers settled the precise spot, sufficiently remote, yet well within sight of the Hoe, at which the two unhappy battle-cruisers should come to rest upon the mud. "It will be a most pathetic spectacle," said the Fourth Lord laughing, "and I will bet a month's pay and allowances that at the distance not a man in the Three Towns will have the smallest suspicion that the genuine copper-bottomedTerrificandIntrepidare not ditched before his blooming eyes." He rose from the table, upon which the chart had been laid, walked over to Dawson and shook him warmly by the hand. "You won't get any credit for the idea," he whispered. "One never does. But it was a damned good notion. What are you going to do now?"
"I am going to Plymouth this afternoon to make sure that the German truth gets over the water to Holland, and that the English truth stays safely behind. If you will all do your part, I will do mine."
"Every man to his trade," said Dawson. "I didn't go into the difficulties of our job to those high folks at the Admiralty, but they are not at all small. You have a head on you, Froissart, though it has the misfortune to be French; set it going on double shifts."
The two men were sitting in a specially reserved first-class compartment in the Paddington-Plymouth express; as companions they were hopelessly uncongenial, yet as colleagues formed a strong combination in which the qualities of the one served to neutralise the defects of the other. Dawson, in spite of his love for the Defence of the Realm Regulations, was still sometimes unconsciously hampered by an ingrained respect for the ordinary law and the rights of civilians; Froissart, like all French detective officers, held the law in contempt, and was by nature and training utterly lawless. The more reputable a suspect, the more remorseless was his pursuit. They were, professionally, a terrible pair who could have been passed through a hair sieve without leaving behind a grain of moral scruple.
Froissart, when he would be at the trouble, understood and spoke English quite well, though with me he used nothing but the raciest of boulevard French. "My friend," said he, "your promise to those Ministers of Marines was rash; for, unless there is the most perfect execution of your scheme and the most sleepless watching of those whom you call dockyard hands—ceux qui travaillent dans les chantiers, ne c'est pas?—the sailing of thesegrands croiseurswill be told to Germany. There are too many who will know. We are uponune folle enterprise—a chase of the wild goose."
"You do not know my system if you think that," remarked Dawson, frowning.
"And if I do not, of whom is the fault?" inquired Froissart blandly; "for, my faith, you never tell what you would be doing."
"A secret," said Dawson sententiously, "is a secret when known to one only. If two know of it there is grave danger. If three, one might as well shout it from the housetops. Therefore I keep my own counsel."
"That is just what I said," cried Froissart triumphantly. "If the secret of thesegrand croiseursis known to one hundred, two hundred,le bon Dieuknows how many hundreds of dockyard hands, one might as well print it in these dull Englishjournaux. You attempt the impossible,mon ami."
"They are Englishmen," proclaimed Dawson, who felt compelled to uphold the character of his countrymen in the presence of a foreigner. "They are patriots. Not a man of them would sell his country."
"I would not bank on their patriotism, my friend, when there is muchBoche gold to be won and much beer to be drunk."
"And who said that I did bank upon it?" cried Dawson testily, forgetting his noble, words of two minutes earlier. "I wouldn't trust one of them out of my sight. I have two dozen of my own men working alongside of those dockyard hands, watching them by night and day. We know if a man drinks two glasses of beer when he used to drink one, and takes home to his wife eighteenpence above his ordinary wage. Do you take me for a fool?"
"You'll be a bigger fool than I take you for if you do not play straight this time with me, and tell me your plans in detail. I have to work with you, and I cannot give service blindfold."
"You are not a bad fellow, Froissart," said Dawson thoughtfully—the name in his mouth became Froy-zart—"and I will tell you here and now more of my mind than I have yet shown even to the great Chief of us all. It will take all your brains—for you have some brains—and all of mine to keep the secret of those battle-cruisers."
* * * * *
In the morning the newspapers published the meagre details of the disaster in the South Seas, and the Three Towns were shaken to their foundations. For when naval ships go down, they take with them crews of whom half have their homes in Devon. The disaster meant that eight hundred families in the West mourned a son or a father. Ever since the days of the Great Queen—whose name in the West is not Victoria, but Elizabeth—Devon has paid in the lives of its best men the price of Admiralty. The Three Towns mourned with a grief made more bitter by the realisation that the disaster was one which never should have happened. Bad slow English ships had been sent against good fast German ships, and had been sunk with all hands without hurt to the enemy. The Three Towns know the speed and power of every fighting ship afloat, British or foreign, as you or I before the war knew the public form of every leading golfer or cricketer. In every bar where sailormen met one another, and met, too, the brothers and fathers of sailormen, the Lords of the Admiralty were weighed and condemned. It is a thing most serious when in the cradles of the Navy, Portsmouth and the Three Towns, faith in the wisdom of Whitehall becomes shaken. One may muzzle the Press, but no muzzle yet devised can close the mouths of sailormen and their friends in dockyard towns.
In the afternoon of the same day, while the news of the disaster was still fresh, there came a whisper, which gained in loudness and in precision of detail as it passed from mouth to ear and from ear to mouth, that the worst had not yet been told. There had been not one, but two disasters. Two battle-cruisers, it was declared, had been sunk in the Channel by German mines or submarines. What were their names? inquired the white-faced women. The names were not yet known, but they would soon come. A little later the severity of the rumour became softened. The battle-cruisers had not, it appeared, been sunk, but severely damaged. They were at that moment on their way to the Sound, crippled sorely, yet afloat. Men groaned. Two battle-cruisers blown up in the Channel; what in God's name were two battle-cruisers doing in the mine-strewn Channel when their proper place was in one of the safe eyries overlooking the North Sea? A plausible explanation was offered. The two battle-cruisers had been coming to Plymouth to take in stores that they might speed away south to avenge those other two cruisers sunk by the Germans as had been told in the morning's papers. If this were indeed true, the news was of the worst; England's prestige afloat was gone. She could not spare two other whole battle-cruisers to proceed upon a mission of vengeance to the South Seas while the Germans' Battle Squadrons in the North Sea ports were still undefeated. Meanwhile the Germans far away to the south could do what they pleased; they could sink and burn our merchant steamers at will. The command of the Pacific had passed from England to Germany, and the White Ensign hung draggled and shamed for all the world to sneer at. The Three Towns almost forgot their personal grief for drowned friends in their horror at the disgrace which had come to their own sacred Service.
It was still light, though late in the afternoon, when the anxious watchers upon the Hoe made out, beyond Drake's Island, two big ships coming in round the western end of the breakwater. Though deep in the water they towered above their escort of destroyers and fast patrol boats. The leading ship was listing badly, her tripod mast with its spotting top hung far over to port, and she was towing stern first a sister ship whose bows were almost hidden under water. The Three Towns, which can recognise the outlines of warships afar off, rapidly pronounced judgment. "That's theIntrepid" they declared, "and the one she's towing is a battle-cruiser of the same class—theTerrificorTremendous. They're both badly holed." "Gawd A'mighty," cried a grizzled longshoreman, who might have sailed with Drake or Hawkins—as no doubt his forbears had done—"look to the list of un! And thicky with her bows down under, being towed by the stern to keep her from swamping entire. If it worn't for them bulk'eads un wouldn't never have made the Sound." It was plain to those who had glasses turned on the damaged ships that they were drawing far too much water to be brought into the Hamoaze and over the sill of the dry dock at Devonport, so that no one felt surprise when the battle-cruisers were seen to pull out of the deep fairway and make towards the shore. The purpose was plain to read. They were to be put aground under Mount Edgcumbe, patched up, and pumped dry, and then would go into dock for repairs. It was a job of weeks, and during all that time the Fleet would be short of two battle-cruisers which might have swept the South Seas clear of the German Ensign. It was cruel luck, and the Three Towns had enough to talk of to keep them occupied for many days. Presently more news came, authentic news, and passed rapidly from mouth to mouth. The vessels were theIntrepid, the flagship of Admiral Stocky, and her sister theTerrific, a pair of fast Dreadnought cruisers. They had, as was surmised, been speeding down from Scotland to dock at Plymouth on their way to clean up the mess made in the far South. They had come safely through the Irish Sea and round the Land's End, but when near their journey's end off Fowey they had run into a patch of mines laid by German submarines. TheTerrifichad had her bow plates ripped into slivers of ragged steel, and the three fore compartments flooded. TheIntrepidhad picked up the wire of a twin mine, got caught badly on the port side, but had luckily escaped to starboard. She had taken her crippled sister in tow, and brought her in safely. Both ships could easily be repaired, but it would take time. The voyage to the South Seas was off. Nothing could have been more convincing than the story which quickly got about; the ships had been seen and recognised by the Three Towns—there was no concealment and no mystery. For once the Silent Navy appeared to be talkative. The hearts of German agents in the Towns swelled with pride and joy. Here was convincing proof of the kindly hand of the Prussian Gott. If the great news could be carried through to the Kaiser and von Tirpitz, there would be much ringing of church bells in the Fatherland. But these English, since the war began, had become very watchful, very suspicious. The problem was: how to get the glad news through.
* * * * *
It was two o'clock in the morning and very dark. The big dry docks at Devonport were deserted except for a few picked hands, not more than two score at the outside, told off on night shift for special duty. Against all workmen who had not been warned for this duty the big gates would be closed for two whole days. There were important jobs awaiting completion, but they must wait. One hundred and twenty men, working in three eight-hour shifts per day—forty at a time—could do all that was needed to theIntrepidandTerrific, and not one man was included who had not served at Devonport for at least ten years. Dawson had been very firm, and the Commander-in-Chief had backed him with full authority. "Don't make any mistake," said Dawson. "Among even one hundred and twenty, though picked in this way, there will be some few who would sell us if they could. One would have to go back more than ten years to weed out all those whom the Germans have corrupted. But out of this lot there should not be more than two or three swine, and I can look after them." He did not say that he had already been in touch with the Scotland Yard officer at Devonport, and had arranged that a dozen out of his precious twenty-four counter-spies should be put among the chosen hundred and twenty. Dawson never did allow his left hand to know the wiles of his right.
Under the thick cover of the autumn night two massive silent forms, which had crept with all lights out into the Sound after their long fast voyage from the northern mists, were warped into dock; the supporting shores were fitted, and the water around them run out. Long before the flagshipIntrepidstood clear and dry on the dock floor, Dawson, in his uniform of a private of Marines—"A Marine can go anywhere and do anything," he would say—had slipped on board and shown the Commander credentials from the Board of Admiralty which made that hardened officer open his eyes. "My word," exclaimed he, "you must be some Marine! Come along quick to the Admiral." So Dawson went, not a little nervous—the moment his foot trod the decks of a King's ship all his assurance dropped off, his old sense of discipline flowed back over him, and an Admiral became a very mighty potentate indeed. Ashore Dawson could face up to the Lord Jacquetot himself; on board ship a two-ring lieutenant was to him a god! He followed the Commander, and was ushered into the Admiral's presence. "What!" cried Stocky, stern in manner always, but very kindly at heart towards those whom he found to be true men. "A private of Marines with plenary powers from the First Lord? Take the papers off him and chuck the damned comedian into the ditch. We have no time here for the First Lord's humour." The Commander drew near and whispered. "What! Authority endorsed by Jacquetot? There is something queer about this. Look here, my fine fellow, who the devil are you? Are you a Marine, or a too clever German spy, or what? Make haste. There is still enough water left over the side to pitch you into without breaking your dirty neck."
Dawson knew his man. He had served in the same ship with Stocky when that officer had been a lieutenant; he had waited upon him in the wardroom. He had felt the rasp of his tongue in old days. He approached, and without saying a word handed the letters given him by the First Lord and Jacquetot, adding his official card. The Admiral read the papers slowly and came at last to the card. Then his frowning brows softened, and he smiled. It was the old smile of Lieutenant Stocky. "Why, it's Dawson who was my servant in the oldOlympus; now Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. That explains all. But why the hell, man, do you dress up as a Marine?"
"Once a Marine, always a Marine," replied Dawson, who felt happier now that the Admiral had recognised him. "I can't keep out of the uniform, sir. Besides, it's very useful when I want to be about the docks."
"My orders," said the Admiral, "are to dock, clean, coal, and be off. I am expecting more detailed instructions, but they have not yet come. These letters say that you will explain the programme here, and that you have been charged with full responsibility for keeping our movements secret. I am to give you all possible assistance. All right. Go ahead. What do you want of us?"
Dawson rapidly told how the two dummy battle-cruisers had come stumbling into the Sound in the afternoon, and how the Three Towns believed that theIntrepidandTerrificwere at that moment lying on the shoals out of service for weeks to come. "No one must guess," he concluded, "that the realIntrepidandTerrificare here safe in dock, that they will go out two days hence in the middle of the night, and dash away south to wipe Fritz's flag off the seas. We have picked the dockyard hands with the greatest care, and have them under watch like mice with cats all about them. If a single one of your officers or men goes out of the dock gates the game will be up and I won't answer for the consequences. Everything rests with you, sir. Will you give orders that no one, no one, not even you yourself, shall leave either of the battle-cruisers while they are in dock—no one, not for a minute."
The Admiral laughed, and the officers in his room respectfully joined in. "So we have been mined and are aground somewhere yonder on the mud surrounded by sorrowing patrols. And the Three Towns are dropping salt tears into their beer. It is a fine game, Dawson. I didn't believe much in Lord Jacquetot's dummies, but they've come in darned useful this time. Are you going to keep Plymouth and Devonport in the dumps for long?"
"Until you've done your work, sir," said Dawson.
"So until then theIntrepidandTerrificwill lie crippled in the Sound for all the world to see and for Fritz to believe. If this very bright scheme is yours, Dawson, we will all drink your health down south as soon as our work has been done. For the credit will be yours rather than ours. I will help you all I can; it is my duty and my very keen desire. A man who can make so brilliant a plan for confounding the enemy's spies is worth a statue of gold. He is even worth the sacrifice of two day's leave while one's ship is in dock. What do you say, gentlemen?"
"I never thought," said the Flag Captain, "that I would willingly spend two days shut up in a smelly dock, but you may count me in, sir. I won't head a mutiny when all leave is refused."
"You shall have your way, Dawson. All leave stopped in both ships. Not a man is to go ashore on any pretence, no matter what the excuse. The mothers of the lower decks may all die—they always do when a ship is in port—but not a man shall leave to bury them. Give the orders in theIntrepid, and ask the captain of theTerrificto be so good as to come aboard."
* * * * *
"So far, good," exclaimed Dawson when he got back to his hotel and found Froissart sitting up for him. "The ships are in and no one is to be allowed ashore. I shall be in a fever till both of them are away again. We are on very thin ice, Froissart. It is lucky that the dockyard is on the Hamoaze, out of sight even of most of Devonport, and far away from Plymouth and Stonehouse. I have seen all the foremen of the dockyard myself, told them the whole trick which we are playing on the Huns, and put them on their mettle to tackle their men. They will pitch it fine and strong on the honour and patriotism of complete silence, but not neglect to throw in a hint of the Defence of the Realm Act and penal servitude. Never threaten an Englishman, Froissart, but always let him know that behind your fine honourable sentiments there is something devilish nasty. Preach as loud as you can about the beauty of virtue, but don't forget to chuck in a description of the fiery Hell which awaits wrongdoers. I don't depend much either on the sentiments or the hints of punishment. I've got every man of that hundred and twenty on my string, and if one of them asks leave, within the next day or two, to go and bury his mother on the East Coast, he shall go—but I shall go with him, and he shall have a jolly little funeral of his own. Every letter which they write will be read, every telegram copied for me, every message by 'phone taken down. They are on my string, Froissart—every man."
"You do everything, Mr. Dawson," grumbled Froissart. "Where do I come in?"
"You have helped me a lot already," replied Dawson handsomely. "You being a foreigner make me talk very simple and plain, and think out my plans so that I can explain them to you. One sees the weak points of a scheme when one has to make it clear to a foreigner. You don't always twig my meaning, Froissart, and sometimes your remarks are a bit foolish; but you mean well, and, for a Frenchman, are quite intelligent. I will say that for you, Froissart—quite intelligent."
"Sacre nom d'un chien—" began Froissart hotly; but Dawson paid no heed. He just went on talking, and Froissart, realising that Dawson could not understand his French, and that he himself could not give words to his feelings in English, relapsed into wrathful silence. Much as I respect and admire Dawson, I should not care to be his subordinate.
"We must keep the cinema show going nice and lively for the Three Towns," went on Dawson. "A big salvage steamer is coming down to-morrow to give an air of verisimilitude to the proceedings. Patrol boats will buzz about the Sound, and the potentates, naval and civil, will gather from all parts. The unfortunate wrecks out at Picklecombe Point will be guarded so that no shore boat can get within half a mile. They won't bear a very close inspection. I hope that none of the guns will break loose and float about the harbour. That would be what you might call a blooming contretemps. I shall be pretty busy all the next two days myself. Though I am a strict teetotaller, I shall get into shore rig and spend my days in the public bars. I must know what the Three Towns are talking about, and whether any suspicion of the truth gets wind. I don't think that it can; at least, for some time. The stage management has been too good. Later on there may be some wonderment because none of the men from theIntrepidandTerrificare allowed ashore. A lot of wives and families must be around here, especially as theIntrepidis a Plymouth ship. Of course it must be given out that they are all needed to help with the salvage operations, and no leave is allowed. You, Froissart, might spend your time reading copies of all telegrams sent out from the Towns. If any German agent wants to get news of the damage to the battle-cruisers over to Holland, he will probably travel up to the East Coast and send a wire on ahead. That is what I hope for. You shall then follow him up, and make smooth the path of crime. Half our trouble will be lost unless we can help the spoof news over to the Kaiser, bless him. The job, at first, will be pretty dull for you, Froissart, and not over lively for me. I hate pubs, yet for two days I must loaf about them, pretending to drink. You can read the telegrams, but you can't understand English well enough to pick up the gossip of the bars. I must do that myself."
"You have stopped all leave on the battle-cruisers—the real ones, I mean—but what about the dockyard men," inquired Froissart. "Are they to be allowed to go to their homes when they come off their shifts?"
"I have thought of that and weighed both sides. It will be safer to let them go home as usual. If we locked them all up in the dockyard till theIntrepidandTerrificwere both safe away, there would be no end of curiosity and gossip. What so very special, people would ask, could be going on in the yard that no one was allowed out for two days. I don't want wives and families and neighbours to come smelling round those dockyard gates. They might see the spotting tops of the cruisers inside. Of course there is a regular forest of masts and gantries showing, and a couple of spotting tops more or less might not be noticed. But my general idea is to concentrate attention on those dear old dummies down at Picklecombe Point. They are the centre of interest, the eye of the picture—the cynosure, as a scholar would say. I am not a bad scholar myself. I passed the seventh standard, and went to school all the time I was in the Red Marines. I was a sergeant, which takes a bit of doing. But see here, Froissart," exclaimed Dawson, looking at his watch, "it is five o'clock, and we must get quick to bed so as to be bright and lively in the morning."
Dawson carried out his programme. Though a strict teetotaller, he passed hours at public houses, especially in the evenings, listening to the talk of the port. It was all about the disaster in the South Seas, the heavy casualties suffered by the Three Towns, and the rotten ill-luck of the avenging battle-cruisers running upon the German mines. Not a whisper could Dawson hear of suspicion that the ships beached under Mount Edgcumbe were other than the genuine article. The salvage steamer with her big arc lights glowing through the darkness had been the last artistic touch which brought complete conviction. Gold-laced officers, including the Commander-in-Chief himself, had been coming and going all day; the acting of the Navy had been perfect. Dawson blessed the four bones of old Jacquetot, who, when he tackles a job, does it very thoroughly indeed. "I should not be surprised," thought he, "if the Mountain, as that young Jackanapes called him, came trotting down here himself just to make the show complete." And sure enough he did, accompanied by the Fourth Sea Lord who had worked out all the convincing details. Dawson was ordered to meet them in the Admiral's quarters of theIntrepid. He went, looking a very different person from the private of Marines of some thirty hours earlier, and had the honour of being invited to luncheon. That lunch was the one scene in the comedy upon which he dwelt in telling the story to me. "Lord Jacquetot," he said, "clinked glasses with me and wished me the best of luck and success. It was as much as he could do, he said, to keep the First Lord from coming down and monkeying the whole affair. Luckily there was a debate in Parliament that he wanted to figure in, and so couldn't get away. Lord Jacquetot said that the First Lord had grabbed the whole scheme as his very own, and forgotten that I had any part in it. I don't mind. The Secret Service never gets any credit for anything. If it did, it wouldn't be Secret very long."
"No credit," I remarked, "and not much cash I expect."
"Little enough, sir," replied Dawson. "I suppose we do the job for the love of it. There's no sport like it. Our real work never gets into the papers or the story-books."
"Never?" I asked slily. "What about that story of mine in theCornhill Magazine, which you still carry about next your heart?"
Dawson changed the subject. He never will appreciate chaff.
At midnight of the day of the luncheon party theIntrepidandTerrific, clean and fully loaded, cleared out of dock and slipped off into the darkness attended by their destroyer escort, whose duty it was to see them safe round Ushant. Eight hours later Dawson came down to breakfast and found that Froissart, satisfied with hispetit dejeunerof coffee and rolls, had already gone out. Dawson felt satisfied with himself, and was confident now that his work in the Three Towns had been well and truly done. The rest could be left to the Navy, and to his Secret Service agents. He sat down to a hearty meal, but was not destined to finish it. First came a messenger from the Officer in charge of the Dockyard, who handed over a sealed note and took a receipt for it. Dawson broke the seal. "Dear Mr. Dawson," he read, "You will be interested to learn that one of the hands engaged upon the work we know of has asked for three days' leave—that he may bury his mother in Essex. She died, he says, at Burnham. I await your views before granting the leave asked for. The man has been in our service for sixteen years, and bears the best of characters."
"Now what do I know of Burnham?" muttered Dawson. "The name seems familiar." He rang the bell, asked for an atlas, and studied carefully the coast of Essex. Burnham stood upon the river Crouch, which Dawson had heard of as a famous resort for motor-boats. His eyes gleamed, and he threw up his head, which had been bent over the map. "The man shall have his leave," murmured he. "But I don't think it will be his mother who is buried."
Just at that moment in came Froissart, looking, as Dawson at once remarked, merry and bright. "It is no wonder," said he, "for see this telegram of which I have just had a copy. It was spotted at once at the Bureau, and the man who despatched it has been shadowed by a police officer." The telegram read, "Coming to-day by South Western. Meet me this evening at usual place." It was addressed to Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex.
Dawson picked up the note which he had received and passed it toFroissart, who read it slowly. "The same place!" cried he.
"Yes," said Dawson slowly, "the same place, and a famous resort for motor-boats. We have not finished yet, my friend, with theIntrepidandTerrific"
Dawson laid the letter and the telegram upon his breakfast-table, and bent his head over them. In a few minutes he had weighed them up, sorted out their relative significance, and spoke. "We have here, Froissart, two distinct people. I am almost sure of that. My man of the dockyard who wants leave to bury his mother in Essex has not yet received permission from his Chief. He would not therefore be telegraphing about his train. He does not know yet whether he will be permitted to go at all. Your man is quite confident that his movements are in no way restricted. As I read between the lines I judge that my man, who knows the actual truth about the docking and sailing of the battle-cruisers, wants to reach the East Coast, whence he has means of transmitting the priceless news to Germany. Your man is of one of the Towns; he has seen the dummy cruisers ashore in the Sound; he believes them to be genuine, and he also wants to transmit the news to his paymasters in Germany, He will be an ordinary German agent. The identity of place whither both wish to go is partly a coincidence, and partly explained by its excellence as a jumping-off place for fast motor-boats, which, during these long autumn nights, could race over to and get back again between sunset and dawn. We have coast watchers always about for the very purpose of stopping such lines of communication. You shall accompany your own man, and make sure that he is allowed to get through. If he does not himself cross, arrest him as soon as his boat has gone. If he does go, watch for his return and arrest him, and his boat and all on board, the moment that they return. In any event the boat and its crew must be seized upon return to Essex. Are you quite clear about what you have to do?"
"Quite," said Froissart. "The spies and their boat must be caught red-handed, but not till after the false news of the mining of the battle-cruisers has been carried to Holland. But how shall we make certain that the sleepless English Navy will not butt in and catch the boat at sea before it gets across to Holland. The Narrow Seas swarm with fast patrols."
"I will provide for that. I will write at once for you a letter to the Inspector of police at Burnham, and enclose copies of my credentials from the Admiralty. I will also wire to Lord Jacquetot in private code. You will find on arrival that the responsible naval authorities of the district will be entirely at your service. That motor-boat with the news of the great spoof shall be shepherded across most craftily, but when it comes to return will find that the way of transgressors is very hard. Get ready and be off, Froissart; we depend upon your skill and discretion. Get a good view of your man—the police will point him out—before he boards the train, and then don't let him out of your sight. Take two plain-clothes officers with you. Run no unnecessary risks of being spotted. You are rather easily recognisable with those shining black eyes and black beard, but no one here has seen you officially, and you should pass unsuspected as a Scotland Yard man. Can I trust you?"
"Mais certainement," said Froissart crossly. "This is simple police work, which I have done a thousand times. I could do it on my head."
"Your train leaves at 10.8; the South Western station. I will give you the letters at once, and then you can start."
Within a quarter of an hour Dawson—his breakfast forgotten—had given Froissart his letters, sent a long telegram by special messenger to the Commander-in-Chief for despatch in code to Jacquetot. Not even to Dawson would the Admiralty entrust its private cypher. Then, as soon as Froissart had disappeared, he called up the Chief of the Dockyard on the telephone and arranged to come at once to his office.
"I had given the easy job to Froissart," he explained to me long afterwards. "It was, as he called it, simple police work. He had, without arousing suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the late-lamented Hagan, and escorted him across in the mail-boat. We have helped false news over to the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport. My job was something much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour."
"Why did you not cut out your difficulties by just stopping him from going to Essex? At a word from you his Chief would have refused leave."
Dawson smiled at me in a fashion which I find intensely aggravating.He has no tact; when he feels superior, he lets one see it plainly.
"The fat would have been in the fire then," exclaimed he. "Suppose he lay low for a day or two, took French leave, and went. I should have been off his track. Shadowing is all very well, but it does not always succeed in a crowded district like the Three Towns. If he had got away without me beside him, the man might have reached Essex and done there what he pleased. Besides, he might have had accomplices unknown to me. No, it was the only possible course to give him leave and follow him up close. Then whatever he did would be under my own eye."
Dawson gulped down a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. "Who is this man of yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us? What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Essex at all? He ought to be a Devon man."
"He isn't, anyway. I have been making close inquiries. Though he has been with us for sixteen years, he did come originally from somewhere in the East. The man is one of the best I have—never drinks, keeps good time, and works hard. He makes big wages, and carries them virtuously home to his wife. He has money in the savings bank, and holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must have wasted the good toil of years. I can't imagine any one less likely to take German gold than this man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your bonnet, Dawson? To a police officer every one is a probable criminal, but some of us now and then are passably honest. I will bet my commission that Maynard is honest."
Dawson sniffed. "The honest men, with the excellent characters and the virtuous wives, are always the most dangerous because least likely to arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard hasn't a second establishment hidden away somewhere in the Three Towns? The upper and middle classes have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working class betters do a bit that way too."
"All right. Have it your own way. We will assume for the sake of security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I grant leave?"
"Yes," said Dawson, "and do it handsomely. Give him four days and run the sympathetic stunt. Offer him a Service pass by the Great Western. Say how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh. Have him up now, and put me somewhere close so that I can take a good look at the swine when he comes in and when he goes out."
The Chief of the Dockyards shrugged his shoulders, placed Dawson in an adjoining room, and summoned Maynard from the yard. The man, who was dressed in the awful dead black of his class when a funeral is in prospect, came up, and Dawson got a full sight of him. Maynard was about thirty-five, well set up—for he had served in the Territorials—and looked what he was, a first-rate workman of the best type. Even Dawson, who trusted no one, was slightly shaken. "I have never seen a man who looked less like a spy," muttered he; "but then, those always make the most dangerous of spies. Why has he a mother in Essex, and why has she died just now? Real mothers don't do these things; they've more sense."
Maynard received his third-class pass, respectfully thanked his Officer for his kindly expressed sympathy—which in his case was quite genuine—and disappeared. Dawson jumped into the room again to take a word of farewell. "I should know him anywhere," he cried. "I am going by the same train in the same carriage. Good-bye."
Maynard reached the Great Western station in good time, and found a carriage which was not overcrowded. He was carrying a small handbag. At the last moment before the train started a prosperous-looking passenger, with "commercial gentleman" written all over him, stepped into the same compartment and seated himself in a vacant seat opposite the bereaved workman. It was Dawson in one of his favourite roles. "There is nothing less like a detective," he would say, "than a middle-aged commercial traveller. They are such genial, unsuspicious, open-handed folk. This comes of wandering about the country at other people's expense."
The 10.15 fast express from the Three Towns to Paddington is an excellent one, and the journey was not more tedious than five hours spent in a train are bound to be. All through the journey Dawson, from behind his stock of papers and magazines, studied Maynard, and became, not, perhaps shaken in his conviction, but certainly puzzled. "He looked," he explained to me, "like a sick and sorrowful man. One who had really lost a beloved mother far away would look just like that. But so might one who had been unfaithful to a trusting wife and was now risking his neck to pour gold into the greedy lap of a frowsy mistress. One must never judge by appearances. A man may look as sick over backing the wrong horse as at losing an only son in the trenches. Human means of expression are limited."
"It takes time to learn that you are not such a beast as you pretend,"I observed. Dawson grinned.
At Paddington Maynard took the Tube to Liverpool Street, and did not observe that his fellow passenger of the brown tweed suit and the fat, self-satisfied, rather oily face followed by the same route. Dawson, who was famished, rejoiced to see Maynard make for the refreshment-room. He could not lunch on the train, since the workman, upon whom he attended, had economically fed himself upon sandwiches put up in a "nosebag."
"No breakfast, no lunch," groaned Dawson. "What a day!" He did his best during five minutes in the refreshment-room at Liverpool Street to fill up the howling void in his person, and then watched Maynard enter a train for Burnham-on-Crouch. In two minutes he had opened up communications with a station Inspector of Police, made himself known, and secured the services of a constable to travel in Maynard's carriage. He did not wish to be seen again himself just at present. He yearned, too, for a first-class compartment and an ample tea-basket. Dawson's brain is a martyr to duty, but his stomach continually rises in rebellion. It was a fast train which would not stop until the Essex coast was reached, so that Dawson did not doubt that his quarry would be upon the platform when he himself got out So he was, and so, too, was a girl in deep mourning who had come to meet him. Dawson was staggered; a girl, also in funeral blacks, upset the picture which he had painted to himself. The man and girl talked together for a few minutes, and then walked slowly arm in arm out of the station towards the village. Dawson picked up his police assistant and followed. He gave no explanation of the reasons for his shadowing of the man Maynard, for he was just beginning to feel uneasy. Slowly the party of four threaded through the pretty little place, bright under the pleasant autumn twilight. Maynard and the girl were in front, Dawson and his policeman followed some fifty yards behind. In a side street, at the door of a small cottage—one of a humble row—the pair of mourners stopped, opened the iron gate, and entered. Dawson waited, watching. He could see through the windows into a little parlour where some half a dozen people, all in deep black, were gathered. Presently, as if they had waited only for the arrival of Maynard—which indeed was the fact—the heavy steps of men clumping down wooden stairs resounded from the open door, and there emerged into the street a coffin borne upon the shoulders of six bearers. The moment that the coffin appeared Dawson realised his blunder. Maynard had really lost his mother, and, like a dutiful son, had come all the way from the Three Towns to bury her! Off flew Dawson's hat, and he nudged the policeman hard in the ribs. "Take off your helmet, you chump," he growled savagely. "Don't you see that it's a funeral." The man, rather dazed—he had been plucked away from Liverpool Street at a moment's notice and sent upon what he thought was police service—did what he was told. The group of mourners formed behind the coffin, which was carried to the cemetery not far off. Still following, with their heads bowed, Dawson and the bewildered policeman attended the funeral, heard the beautiful service read, and the last offices completed. Then they turned away and made for the railway station.
"Why, sir," asked the policeman, looking sideways rather fearfully at his superior officer's stern face—"why, sir, did we come to this place?"
"Why? Haven't you seen?" snapped Dawson. "To attend a funeral, of course."
* * * * *
I have never met that policeman. To have conversed with him and to have sought to chop a way through the tangled recesses of his mind would have gratified me hugely. For, if police constables think at all, in what a bewildered whirl of confused speculation must his poor brain have been occupied during the return journey to London! Dawson tossed him into a compartment of the first train which came along, one of extreme slowness, and then dismissed him into cold space without a scrap of remorse. The humble creature, discharging his station duties with the precision of daily habit, had swung into the overpowering orbit of Chief Inspector Dawson, been caught up, dumped without instructions upon an unknown journey in attendance upon an unknown workman. Then when the train had stopped, he had been spewed out upon a strange country platform, led through strange mean streets, and forced with head bared to the autumn chill of evening, to attend the obsequies of a total stranger. At the end, without a word of explanation, still less of apology, he had been returned as an empty rejected package to the platform at Liverpool Street. Yes, I should dearly love to have met and cross-questioned that policeman, and have listened to the bizarre solution which he had to offer to it all. But most probably, in his stolid, faithful way, he never gave the subject any thought at all. To be tossed about at the whims of superiors was an experience which he would take as composedly as he would those exiguous weekly wages which were the derisory compensation.
Dawson went to the small hotel which he had picked out with Froissart as a convenient rendezvous. There he sat for hours doing nothing, for he was far too wise a man to push his head into another man's business, even though that one were a subordinate and a foreigner. He had failed once; he could not afford, by deputy, to fail a second time. Besides, he knew nothing of the movements of Froissart and his quarry. They had not appeared within the visible horizon of Burnham-on-Crouch, though they had had ample time in which to arrive. I am afraid that his temper got the better of him, and as the night drew on, unsolaced by a word from Froissart, and unrelieved by any literature more engrossing than old railway time-tables and hotel advertisements, he consigned to the Bottomless Pit the Chief of the Devonport Dockyard, the disgustingly virtuous and unenterprising Maynard, and even the harmless soul of his lately buried mother. Dawson in a royal rage is no pleasant spectacle.
It had gone half-past eleven before Froissart came, a boisterous, triumphant Froissart, bragging of his skill and his success in the manner of a born Gascon.
"It was tremendous,mon ami," roared Froissart, unchecked by Dawson's scowls. "I have done the blooming trick: the boat has gone to Holland, and the filthy spy is in the strong lock-up. My vigilance, my astuteness, my resource unfathomable, my flair, my soul of an artist, my patience inexhaustible, my address so firm and yet so delicate, my mastery of the minds of those others less gifted, my—"
"Oh, stow it!" roared Dawson.
"Unfailing insight,mon esprit francais, my genius for the service of police, my unshakable courage and elan, have had their just and inevitable reward. The boat with the message so false has gone to Holland for the German Kaiser to gloat over, and the filthy spy is in the safe lock-up. I took him with my own hands—I, le Comte de Froissart, I bemired my hands by contact with his foul carcase. The boat it flew down the river;ma foi, like a flash of the lightning, going they said thirty knots,presque cinquante kilometres par heure. The gloriousMarine Anglaisewill see that it reaches les Pays Bas, and then when it is of return your sailors so splendid, with sang-froid so perfect, will gobble it up. Just gobble it up. As I will gobble up this cold beef upon your table.Peste, I am of a hunger excruciating. I have not eaten for five, six, ten hours."
Froissart sat down at Dawson's table, where still lay the cold remains of his supper—he had had the decency to reflect that his colleague Froissart might be hungry upon arrival—and fell to eating copiously and loudly. The French are least admirable when they are seen devouring food.
Froissart ate while Dawson writhed. Though his colleague's success would plant laurels upon his own brow—little would he ever say at the Yard of that journey to Burnham and the preposterous funeral—he was jealous, bitterly jealous. I am by special appointment the Boswell of Dawson, yet I do not spare the feelings of my subject. Rather do I go over them with a rake—for the ultimate good of Dawson's variegated soul. He was bitterly jealous, but from natural curiosity yearned to know the details of those feats of which Froissart prated so triumphantly. And all the while, unconscious, heedless of his wrathful exasperated chieftain, Froissart devoured food in immense quantities. It was a disgusting exhibition.
Satisfied at last, Froissart broke away from the table, lit a cigarette, and sat himself down beside Dawson before the fire. It was well past midnight, but to these men regular habits were unknown, and the hours of work and of sleep always indeterminate.
"Now," exclaimed Froissart, "I will tell to you, my friend Dawson, the truehistoireof my exploits so tremendous and unapproachable. I reached the station at Plymouth at ten hours, my spy was upon the platform. I knew him, for those who had kept him under watch had informed me of him. I had with me two police officersen bourgeois, what you call plain clothes, and I distributed them with the acumen of a strategist. It wasun train a couloir. The spy disposed himself in a compartment. I placed one of my officers in the same compartment with him, the other in the compartmentcontigueetowards the engine, myself in thata derriere. He was thus the meat in our sandwich. If he passed into the corridor and walked this way or that he was seen by me or by my man in advance; all his movements while within his own compartment were supervised every moment. So we travelled. He did himself well that spy so atrocious. He partook of hisdejeunerin thebuffet du train, and we all three took ourdejeunerthere also. That was the last meal of which I ate before this my supper here. The journey was without incident, but when he arrived at Waterloo the trouble began. He was not taking risks, that spy. He knew not that he was under watch, but he took not risks. He began to perform a voyage designed to throw any man, except one of the vigilance and resource of Froissart, completely off his track. I was not learned in your Metropolitain before this day, but now I know your Tubes as if a map of them were printed in colours upon my hand. At Waterloo that spy, so astute, burrowed into the earth and entered a train of the railway called Bakerloo, in which he journeyed to Golder's Green. Then he crossed aquaiand returned to the town called Camden. Again he descended, passed through tunnels, and emerging upon anotherquaiproceeded to Highgate. All the while we three followed, not close, but so that he never escaped from under our eyes. At Highgate he turned about and returned to Tottenham Court Road. Thence he departed by another line to the Bank, and, rising in andascenseur, emerged upon the pavements of your City. He looked this way and that, not perceiving us who watched, walked warily to the Lord Maire's station of the Mansion House, boarded the District Railway, and did not alight till Wimbledon. It was easy to follow, but my friend, the billets, the tickets, wereune grande difficulte. I solved the problem of tickets by my genius sosuperbe. We at first tried to take them, butapreswe abandoned the project so hopeless and travelledsans payer. When asked at the barriers or in the lifts, we offered pennies, and the men who collected took them joyfully, asking not whence we came. It wasune procedee tres simple. It is possible that these wayward uncounted pennies dropped into their own pockets. They rejoiced always to receive them. From Wimbledon we returned to Earl's Court, and then, descending by an electric staircase, which moved of itself, again found ourselves in the Tubes. I loved thatescalier electrique; one day I will return and ascend and descend upon it for hours. From Earl's Court we went to Piccadilly Circus; there we made another change for Oxford Circus; there we again got out, and at last, after penetrating the bowels of your London, travelled to Liverpool Street. By this time it had become dark, and the spy's passion for underground travel had spent itself. He crossed the street, descended to the grand station of the Eastern Railway, and took a ticket for Burnham-on-Crouch. Exhausted, but ever vigilant, Froissart and his faithful men took also tickets for Burnham-on-Crouch.
"I will not weary you more with our wanderings, but after many hours, at ten o'clock, we at last arrived at this place. The spy was met upon thequaiby another villain, with whom he held converse, and the pair of them, ignorant that the vengeance of Froissart overshadowed them, marched heedlessly, openly, to the river side and entered a large house of which the gardens ran down to the water. I left there my two faithful but weary ones on watch, and hastened to thesalle de police. There an Inspector and a youngofficier anglais—a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve—were awaiting my arrival with impatience. To them I told my story with the brevity that I now recount it to you. They were intrigued greatly, and thesous-lieutenant struck me violently upon the back and said,ma foi, that I was a 'downy old bird,' It was a complimenttres 'bizarre mais tres aimable.I was, it appeared, an old bird of the downiest plumage. I had noted the name of the house, and the Inspector seized a Directory. 'We have suspected that house for some time,' said he. There is a big boat-house at the bottom of the garden containing a large sea-going motor-boat. The proprietor calls himself English, but does not look like one. He is doubtless a snake, one whom they callnaturalise, a viper whom we English have warmed in our bosoms.' So spake the Inspector. The Sub-Lieutenant whistled. He said only, 'Send for little Tommy; it is a job for him.' A call was sent forth, and there came into the room a scrap of an infant, habited in short pantaloons and a green shirt. The child carried a long pole and stood stiffly at attention. 'Ma foi, do I see before me a Boy Scout?' I asked. 'You do,' replied the Sub-Lieutenant. 'This is little Tommy, the patrol leader of the Owls.' 'Mon Dieu' I cried, 'an Owl!Un Hibou! Is he then stupid as an owl?' I could see that the Tommy so small frowned savagely, but the Sub-Lieutenant laughed. 'You will see presently if he is stupid. I have forty miles of coast to watch, and I do it all with Boy Scouts like this one.' 'Nom d'un chien,' I cried. 'You English are a great people.' 'We are,' agreed the Sub-Lieutenant, 'devilish great.' Tommy grinned.