"Some Revelations of Spies and Spying" (continued 2)

“No doubt that is true enough,” I replied; “but for the present we must take even the risk of leaving Bonnier alone. I want absolute evidence that Cauvin’s money comes from Germany, even though he actually gets it from a secret source in England. It is not enough for me to prove either that Bonnier is selling secrets or that Cauvin is buying them. I want to prove that Cauvin’s money is German, and I am going to do it. Bonnier can wait; if we get Cauvin we are tolerably sure to obtain sufficient evidence to lay Bonnier by the heels at any time. In fact, we can remove him quietly as soon as Cauvin is out of the way. I shall leave for England to-morrow.”

This I did, and twenty-four hours later I was in London. I decided first to investigate Cauvin’s supposed motor invention, and made my way to the office of a well-known patent agent in Chancery Lane. He had done some business before for me and greeted me warmly. I knew him so thoroughly that I did not hesitate to tell him exactly what I was after.

“But, my dear Sant,” he said, “if this supposed invention is being kept as a secret to stagger the motoring world, it is not likely to have been patented yet by either Cauvin or anyone else. Depend upon it, if there is anything in it, it is being manufactured secretly, and will not be patented until it is absolutely ready for the market. To patent it now would simply be setting every motor expert in the country at work on similar lines. You know the patent lists are watched with the keenest scrutiny. My clerk is looking into the matter, and we shall soon know whether Cauvin has patented anything.”

This was a surprise for me. I could not, of course, however much I might suspect him, absolutely rule out of my calculations the possibility that even Cauvin might have hit upon some lucky idea, as so many inventors have done, without knowing much of the technicalities of the subject. I did not forget that the safety-pin was the invention of a lazy workman. And I knew that if I took any active steps against Cauvin and made a mistake—if by some miraculous chance his sudden wealth was honestly acquired—the consequences would be serious.

“Well,” I said, when we had been assured that no patent of any kind had been taken out by Cauvin, “what am I to do? I can’t go to every big motor engineer in England and ask him if he is manufacturing a secret device invented by Jules Cauvin.”

My friend thought for a few moments. “I think you had better see L—,” he said at last. “If there is anything big in hand some kind of whisper of it is sure to have got about, and he would be the first to hear. I will telephone him at once; we shall catch him in his office on the Viaduct.”

A few minutes later we were in Holborn in L—’s office; he was one of the magnates of the motoring world. I explained the position.

“You can make your mind easy on that point,” he said emphatically. “There is nothing going in the trade to-day big enough to produce the amount of money your man is evidently receiving. If there were, I must have heard of it; it could not be kept secret. You remember the Marx carburettor? Well, we knew for six months that it was coming, though every effort was made to keep it secret. What we did not know was the exact secret; but you know how it took the market by storm.”

This, even though it were only negative evidence, seemed to establish conclusively the fact that Cauvin’s money, whatever might be its source, was not derived from the motor trade. I made up my mind that this much at least was certain.

Next day I travelled down to old-world Chester, where I very speedily discovered that there was in Whitefriars no house numbered 118, and no trace of any person named Wheatley, while the aged vicar of St. Mary’s knew nothing of the marriage of “Captain James Easterbrook.”

Everything was fictitious—everything, that is, except the silver-printed wedding card and the clinging perfume of stag-leaved geranium.

What did the bogus card indicate? Why had Jules Cauvin’s unknown correspondent gone to the trouble of having it printed? And why, in defiance of all social custom, had it been scented with such a perfume as that of the stag-leaved geranium? I felt tolerably sure that here lay the key of the mystery, and that when I laid my hand on the sender of that mysterious card I should be very near indeed to the knowledge of the real source of the strange sequence of events which had raised the good-for-nothing son of an obscure French postman to a dazzling position in the world of society.

Such was the problem I had to solve. And the key to it was just one bogus wedding card impregnated with the slowly dying odour of geranium. I cursed my luck as I reflected on the magnitude of the issues at stake and the paucity of the tools with which I had to work. For if “Captain James Easterbrook” was unknown in Chester, the home of his supposed bride, what was my chance of penetrating his disguise? Yet, somehow or other, we must succeed. That Cauvin was receiving money from England I was absolutely convinced, and I was determined to take this chance—the best we had had—of locating the real men behind the Hidden Hand in England.

Next day I left Chester by a very early train for London. When we reached Rugby I bought a copy of The Times, and the first thing that caught my eye was a cryptically worded message at the head of the personal column. It conveyed to me the startling news that Madame Gabrielle had been recognised by some alien agent of whom she was highly suspicious, had left the Grosvenor Hotel in her alarm, and had returned to Paris!

Chapter Seven.

The Elusive Van Rosen.

Evidently something very serious had happened.

My first impulse was to hasten to the Grosvenor Hotel, engage a room there, and try to discover something of the cause which had brought about Madame Gabrielle’s sudden flight. Perhaps my anxiety for her safety operated more powerfully than I ought to have allowed. In our business personalities are nothing; it is the end that counts.

A moment’s reflection showed me that in taking this course I should simply be playing into the enemy’s hands. I was too well known. I hoped that my presence in England was not suspected by the German agents, and if I ventured to stay at the Grosvenor they would certainly very soon have me under close observation.

By using the official telephone between London and Paris I managed to get into communication with Madame Gabrielle at her flat in the Boulevard Péreire, and soon learnt the reason for her flight. Van Rosen had discovered her, and was watching her closely.

Here, indeed, was an antagonist worthy of my steel! I had long known—and so far as his abilities went, had respected—van Rosen as one of the cleverest agents of the Königgrätzer-strasse. He was able to pose as an Englishman—a rare accomplishment in a German—for he had been educated at Haileybury, and had been in England off and on since his youth. He was now living in a north-western suburb, where he posed as Mr George Huggon-Rose, a solicitor who had retired from practice. Only British apathy made this possible. A moment’s investigation would have shown that the man could not have been what he pretended, for no such retired solicitor as Mr George Huggon-Rose was known to the Law Society.

As a matter of fact, it was through this very slip on his part that I had “spotted” van Rosen. We had suddenly lost sight of him a year or two before, and try as we would—for we knew that wherever he might be he would be dangerous—we could not locate him. The accident which led to his discovery was curious. I had been spending a few days in North London, and one morning stopped at the railway bookstall to buy a paper. As I approached the stall a tall, gentlemanly looking man, who had been chatting with the clerk, turned away and entered the train. Something about him struck me as strangely familiar.

“Who is that gentleman?” I asked the man at the stall.

“Oh,” he replied, “that’s Mr Huggon-Rose. He used to be a solicitor in the City, but he retired and has been living here for a year or two.”

But I was not quite satisfied; some odd memory, in which I felt sure Mr Huggon-Rose was concerned, haunted me all the way to town, and I could not shake it off. I had only seen van Rosen once, though I had had a good deal of experience, and it was not surprising that I failed to recognise him. When I got up to town I consulted the Law List, but could find no trace of Mr Huggon-Rose.

Then I became more suspicious, and before many days were over I had succeeded in definitely identifying Mr Huggon-Rose with one of the Kaiser’s cleverest spies. Thus the mystery of van Rosen’s disappearance was solved by his own slip. If, when I looked up the Law List, I had found Mr Huggon-Rose’s name and address duly set out, I should probably have thought I had been deceived by some chance resemblance and wasted no more time on the matter. How true it is that trifles make the sum of life!

The position now was plainly serious: van Rosen’s presence in London boded no good. The man was as unscrupulous as he was clever. The British contra-espionage department knew him well and had been greatly chagrined at losing sight of him. Afterwards, in consequence of my report to Hecq, he had been kept under close observation; but we had never been able to secure sufficient proof to justify his arrest, strong though our suspicions were. He had evidently been walking very warily since the outbreak of war. Unfortunately he had adopted that easiest of all cloaks of the German spy, and had become a naturalised Englishman just before war broke out. But the adage “Once a German always a German” applied with special force to van Rosen.

After speaking with Madame Gabrielle I had a long chat with Hecq over the private wire, and together we mapped out a pretty comprehensive plan of campaign, in which both Aubert and Madame Gabrielle had very definite parts to play.

Then the mysterious scented wedding card claimed my full attention, for I was determined to sift its secret to the bottom. First, I paid a visit to Somerset House, where I very thoroughly searched the records of recent marriages. These showed me that no marriage had taken place between persons named Wheatley and Easterbrook. A certain Agnes Wheatley had been born in June, 1894, at Mina Road, Old Kent Road, in the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, and there were records of two James Easterbrooks. One was James Stanley Easterbrook, born in Lord Street, Southport, in 1881; the other, James Henry Charlton Easterbrook, had first seen the light of day in the village of Forteviot, Perthshire, in 1870. The Army List, of course, failed to show any Captain James Easterbrook, of the Royal Fusiliers.

All this did not carry me much farther. The father of the Southport Easterbrook was apparently a prosperous Blackburn tradesman; but that of the man born in Scotland was vaguely set down as of “no occupation,” a curious entry for a Scottish village, where practically everybody would be likely to live by the labour of his hands, and where one would hardly expect to find persons of leisured independence. The fact worried me. But an inquiry at Forteviot showed that there had been no Easterbrooks in the village for many years, and no one seemed to recollect anything about them.

In order to conceal myself from the astute van Rosen, I had taken rooms in a cheap boarding-house, full of old ladies, in Guilford Street, Bloomsbury, and, equipped with a silver discharge badge and a set of “faked” Army papers, posed as an invalided soldier recovering his health before taking up work. I was thus able to disarm the inquisitive prying of my fellow-boarders, and I am afraid I gave them some highly remarkable “information” about the war and my share in it! If one is engaged in spying or contra-espionage work one must be ever ready to combat silly suspicions that give rise to endless gossip and to evade unfriendly and malicious comment.

The enigma of the wedding card worried me incessantly. That the prosperous Jules Cauvin was one of the puppets of Potsdam, and also that he had betrayed France, I felt morally convinced. Hecq, indeed, held documentary evidence of Cauvin’s friendship with the Austrian millionaire spy, Herr Jellinck. I knew, almost with certainty, that the perfumed wedding card was intended to convey a message of some kind, since in every particular it was clearly shown to be a bogus document. Yet without more direct evidence Cauvin, had we ventured to arrest him, must have slipped out of the clutches of the law. For, after all, mere friendship or acquaintance with a spy, however suspicious, does not prove the guilt of espionage.

Inquiries made by the British Special Branch soon showed that none of the Easterbrooks in the British Army could by any possibility be connected with the “Captain Easterbrook” of the wedding card.

Within a week I established the fact that Agnes Wheatley had died before she reached the age of ten years. Therefore, she could not have been the mysterious bride to whose “wedding” Jules Cauvin and his wife had been invited. I was thus thrown back on the two Easterbrooks, and for the next few days, if I may use the term, I breakfasted, lunched, and dined on Easterbrooks! And helping in my quest were some of the smartest men of the British Special Branch.

Six weeks went by—weeks of feverish activity and incessant patient investigation. That mysterious wedding card, with its pungent odour of stag-leaved geranium, hypnotised me, and I could think of nothing else. And everything began to seem so hopeless that even the Scotland Yard men, most unrelenting and unwearying searchers-out of hidden mysteries, began to get depressed and to fancy they were hopelessly beaten.

Van Rosen, of course, was under constant surveillance. Whether he suspected it or not I do not know, but for the time being he seemed to have entirely abandoned his usual business. He went about quite openly, and I often wondered whether he was tacitly defying us. Probably his work was so far advanced that he could afford to wait, and hoped to disarm suspicion by the very openness of everything he did. Had there been any real necessity we could, of course, have arrested him on some charge or another, but we still hoped that by giving him plenty of latitude we should sooner or later stumble on some valuable information.

Chapter Eight.

“One of the Naturalised.”

The weeks slipped by.

We seemed no nearer gaining our object, and I found myself wondering at times whether, indeed, I was not engaged on a wild-goose chase. Poring over everything that was known of Jules Cauvin, I sometimes found myself ridiculing my own suspicions. Still, that mysterious card forced itself on my attention. Cauvin’s friendship with Jellinck, his known association with Miassoyedeff, shot as a spy in Russia, his sudden and inexplicable wealth, all convinced me in the long run that there was a deep secret to be fathomed. I had the chain of evidence nearly complete, but one link was missing—the source of Cauvin’s wealth and the identity of the mysterious individual from whom he drew unstinted funds.

Three weeks more passed. The Special Branch at Scotland Yard was becoming disheartened. I myself was losing hope, and Hecq was obviously growing restive. Then the tide turned. One of the Special Branch, apparently by the merest accident, discovered the printer of the bogus card.

This was a discovery indeed! I hastened to interview the printer—the proprietor of a small jobbing business named James in the Uxbridge Road.

“The cards,” he told me, “were ordered by Mr Easterbrook for the wedding of his son, the Captain Easterbrook referred to. Mr Easterbrook lives in Lancaster Gate,” and, referring to his order book, he gave me the address, for which I thanked him.

“Did you perfume the cards before you printed them?” I asked him carelessly. I had kept the most important question till the last.

“Perfume them!” he snorted, glaring at me through his spectacles. “Why, of course not—we don’t scent invitation cards to weddings!”

I knew that well, but I was glad to get the fact verified. And now for Mr Easterbrook and the captain! I was in high spirits, for I felt that at length I was getting near the heart of the mystery.

Going direct to Lancaster Gate, I soon found the Easterbrooks’ house, a large, handsome building overlooking Hyde Park. A few local inquiries soon told me all I wanted to know, and shortly after I was conveying my news to Hecq over the Paris telephone. For once the phlegmatic little man was shaken out of his habitual reserve, and his voice, when he had heard my news, fairly trembled with excitement. At last we were at close grips with our mysterious foe.

Next day, Madame Gabrielle, whom I sent for again, and Aubert were installed in rooms in an obscure house in Bayswater. I spent the evening with them, and together we evolved a plan of operations which, I confess, required considerable “bounce”—I do not like the expression “daring” when it has to be applied to one’s self.

By this time I had cut myself adrift from our excellent colleagues of the Special Branch, fearing lest van Rosen and his friends might get on my track. So far, apparently, he had not located me, for, though I kept the sharpest possible look out, assisted by a clever detective who habitually assumed different disguises for the purpose, I could find no evidence whatever that I was being “shadowed.” Madame Gabrielle, Aubert, and myself were also working apart, though I was directing the general plan of operations.

Following up the trail I had struck in the Uxbridge Road, I soon secured some astounding facts regarding Mr Essendine Easterbrook, of Lancaster Gate. He was actually a native of Frankfort, who, after a brief but amazingly successful career in the City as a promoter of rubber companies, had amassed a big fortune and retired from the game of finance. He had become naturalised in 1909, and, profiting by the Briton’s amazing indulgence to aliens of every kind, had changed his name from Essendine Wilhelm Estbruck to Essendine William Easterbrook. Very few people, I found out, had any idea of his real origin and of his German parentage and nationality.

Now Mr “Easterbrook” had no son. He had, however, an English wife, and his wealth had won for them a position in London Society. They had frequently, before the war, entertained at their handsome house the wily director of propaganda, von Kuhlmann, who was then living in London, and also a certain Max Garlick. But, try as I would, I completely failed to establish any sort of connection between the Easterbrooks and Mr Huggon-Rose.

The name of Garlick, however, told me a lot. Garlick had been the German Secret Police Councillor in France, for the Departments of the Nord, the Pas de Calais, the Somme, and the Ardennes. He was an ex-naval lieutenant, and two years before the war broke out was appointed to the arduous, but lucrative, office of Polizeirath for London, establishing his office nearly opposite the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street, Westminster. This mouchard, in order to disguise his true occupation, was in the habit of putting in a few hours’ work daily at a desk in the London offices of the Hamburg-Amerika line in Cockspur Street. That Essendine Easterbrook, the “father” of the non-existent “captain,” had been the friend of Max Garlick was quite sufficient to show his connection with the enemy, for Garlick had been the head of the “actives” in England.

We then set to work to obtain more inside evidence. Aubert, on my instructions, watched carefully, and soon made an opportunity of getting into the confidence of Mrs Easterbrook’s English maid, a young woman named Dean. He found out without much trouble that she was not greatly attached to her mistress, who, in spite of her gushing manners in Society, was harsh and domineering towards those in her employ, and was totally incapable of winning either respect or affection.

Dean had been engaged from a local registry office in the neighbourhood, a fact which materially facilitated our plans.

I had a long interview with the young woman. She had a sweetheart serving in the Army, who had seen a good deal of German methods and had told the girl enough of the sufferings of the conquered French and Belgian populations to fill her with an intense hatred of Germans and Everything German. Directly I informed her that she had been working for a naturalised German her indignation knew no bounds, and she willingly gave me a lot of valuable information. She declared, moreover, that she would not remain in the place another day. This, too, was exactly what was wanted. I impressed upon her the necessity of keeping absolutely silent on the subject of her employers’ real character, and set about the task of getting her place filled with a nominee of my own.

This, of course, could be no other than the resourceful Madame Gabrielle, who, laying aside, as she often did, her wedding ring, registered her name at the registry office as a French maid. A handsome douceur to the excellent registry keeper and some highly satisfactory references, carefully prepared for the occasion, accomplished what we wanted, and in the course of a week I had the satisfaction of knowing that the Easterbrook household was under the close surveillance of one of my smartest assistants, who posed as Mademoiselle Darbour, and was quite certain to miss no opportunity that might present itself to her.

We soon obtained further information about Mr Easterbrook. He was evidently a wealthy man in reality, as well as appearance, owning, in addition to the Lancaster Gate house, a big estate in Derbyshire, a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a Villa at Cabbé Roquebrune, above Cap Martin, not far from Cauvin’s Villa des Fleurs at Mentone. Moreover, he dabbled in yachting after a fashion, more, I suspected, for purposes of social advertisement than from any love of a sport which makes but a slight appeal to Germans.

We were, of course, living on the edge of a powder magazine, and the position of Madame Gabrielle, alone in the very camp of the enemy, was especially perilous. At any moment one or all of us might be recognised by the alert agents of van Rosen, and I was beginning to know enough of the true position of Mr Easterbrook to realise that the desperate men with whom we had to deal would stick at nothing to rid themselves of danger if once they divined our identity and purpose. For Madame Gabrielle I was especially anxious, and more than once I debated seriously whether I was justified in allowing a woman to run so grave a risk. For Aubert and myself, of course, such a question naturally did not arise; risk was a part of our profession, and we accepted it just as we accepted a wet day. However, we were playing for a great stake, and I finally decided to play the game out to a finish.

A month passed. The reports I received from Madame Gabrielle, working inside the house, and from the painstaking Aubert, who let nothing outside escape him, were full of interest.

Mr Easterbrook, formerly Herr Essendine Estbruck, native of Frankfort, remained entirely unsuspicious that he was under the eye of one of the keenest secret agents in Europe. It was important that he should remain in ignorance, and I prepared a little plan which I felt sure would be so completely reassuring to him that it would throw him completely off his guard, and yet put him in such a position that he would find it almost impossible to resist the temptation, carefully arranged by us, to betray the country of his adoption.

It so happened that an important post had become vacant in a certain Government department dealing with a large number of confidential plans. I found out from Madame Gabrielle that, as a matter of fact, Easterbrook had for a long time been working strenuously to secure a Government appointment—honorary, of course, since money was no object to him, except as a means to an end. I have no doubt whatever that his motives were twofold. The first was, by securing official recognition, to remove any suspicion that might cling to him in consequence of his enemy origin; the second, I have just as little doubt, was to secure better opportunities of playing the spy. I made up my mind to oblige him in both particulars, but to arrange the dénouement myself.

I went to the Minister concerned, and revealed my plan. When I had fully explained to him what we knew and how much we suspected he realised the gravity of the situation, and, though my request was entirely irregular, he consented to what I asked.

A week later a paragraph in the London papers announced that Mr Essendine Easterbrook had been appointed a controller in a certain department of the Admiralty. There were a few cavillings in some quarters, on account of Easterbrook’s origin, but to the general public the position did not seem to be one of great importance, and little notice was taken of the appointment. As a matter of fact the position was a bogus one, created for the occasion, and everything connected with it had been arranged by the astute Special Branch with the sole design of entrapping Mr Essendine Easterbrook and the intermediary, whoever it might be, between the German agents in England and Jules Cauvin. For the wedding card had proved beyond doubt that Easterbrook and Cauvin were in close communication.

Chapter Nine.

The Secret of the Perfume.

Mr Easterbrook soon found himself comfortably ensconced in a large room, and surrounded by a staff, every single member of which, though he little suspected it, was in the direct employ of the Special Branch. Few suspects have ever been subjected to such microscopic scrutiny. He literally could not make a single movement unobserved. He was constantly shadowed in and out of his office by agents who were relieved every few hours; inside his house Madame Gabrielle was incessantly on the watch. And in the meantime we prepared for him the trap which proved his undoing.

One day Mr Easterbrook found awaiting his attention a number of copies of an “urgent” and “strictly confidential” memorandum which gave in elaborate detail the plan of a naval operation which for sheer dare-devilry was enough to take one’s breath away. Needless to say, it was “spoof” from beginning to end. But it was spoof so thoroughly plausible in its conception, and so artistically worked out in its wealth of detail, that it might well have deceived someone far better versed than Herr Estbruck in naval matters. I had the privilege of going over it with the distinguished naval officers who drew it up, and I can hear to-day the roars of laughter with which it was received by the company of experts gathered to listen to the elaborate joke. Of course the men who really knew detected the imposture at once; to the novice the plan looked like the details of a gigantic attack on one of Germany’s strongest naval bases.

Now we calculated deliberately that Easterbrook, getting hold of the bogus plan, would be unable to resist the temptation to communicate it to Germany. To him, we knew, it must appear of stupendous importance. It was too elaborate for him to attempt to memorise the details, and far too long to give him a chance of copying it unobserved. Moreover, we decided to convince him, if possible, that he could purloin a copy without risk.

Now with confidential documents of importance, every single copy must be accounted for. The printing is done under the closest supervision; the exact number of sheets of paper required is issued; every official who receives a copy signs for it and gets a receipt when he parts with it. Mr Easterbrook had been well drilled in the routine. We had made him especially careful by inducing him on one occasion carelessly to sign for four copies of a document when he only received three, and the trouble we raised about the “missing” copy must have made him determined to count his copies in future. We relied on that to catch him and his associates.

Early one morning a messenger laid upon Mr Easterbrook’s desk four copies of the naval plans.

“Please sign for three copies of Number 27162 A.B., Mr Easterbrook,” said the lad, laying the book before him.

A keen-eyed watcher saw Mr Easterbrook glance at the heading of the document which lay before him. Clever though he was, he was unable to repress a start of astonishment as the amazing title, carefully designed for the occasion, caught his eye. A moment later he had recovered himself, counted his copies of the paper, and, glancing at the book, signed for three. The bait was swallowed!

I must now hark back to Madame Gabrielle to make clear the chain of events which followed. The sprightly Frenchwoman soon found out that beneath an unprepossessing exterior her employer concealed an extremely amorous disposition. Exerting the full power of her fascinating personality, she soon began to exercise a considerable influence over the financier, and was able at length to solve the problem of the mysterious perfume.

A few hours after the secret “plans” had been laid before him, Easterbrook made a clandestine arrangement to dine with Madame Gabrielle at a restaurant in Soho the next evening.

“I have to go out of town to-night,” he said. “I don’t want to write, but if you get by to-morrow’s post a plain sheet of paper scented with geranium I shall be there. If it is scented with violet you will know I have been detained and cannot come.”

So the secret was out at last! The wedding card had been a signal to Cauvin that all was well. Had it been scented with violet it would have indicated danger. As will be seen, we had little difficulty in guessing the purpose of Easterbrook’s absence from his house that night!

We calculated that, finding he had been debited with three copies of the “plans,” whereas he actually received four, Easterbrook would calmly pocket one of them and return to the proper department the three for which he had signed. Events proved that we were right. In the afternoon, at the usual time, he left the office. Three minutes later we ascertained that the fourth copy of the “plans” was not in his desk. He had taken it with him, and it was easy to guess his purpose.

From that moment his doom was sealed. We could have arrested him at once, of course, but we wanted to know by what means those plans were to be dispatched to Germany. If we could only find that out one finger of the Hidden Hand would assuredly be lopped off for good.

On leaving the office Easterbrook made for a public telephone office, where, as it happened, three boxes stood side by side. As he entered the one, an agent of the Special Branch entered the one farthest from him. The boxes were of the threepence-in-the-slot pattern, and the trifling delay caused by dropping in the three pennies gave the detective his opportunity. Ringing up the operator at the Exchange, he demanded, in the name of the police, that Easterbrook’s conversation should be “tapped.” The operator promptly “plugged” him on to the line Easterbrook was using, so that he was able to listen, quite unknown to Easterbrook, to the conversation which followed.

“Is that 7257 North?” Easterbrook began. “I want to speak to Mr Huggon-Rose,” he went on. “That you, Rose? This is Easterbrook. Will you come down to Piccadilly and have some dinner with me? I am just arranging a yachting trip, and perhaps you would like to make one of the party. All right. Be at Scott’s at seven o’clock. Good-bye.” And he rang off.

Seven o’clock found Easterbrook and Huggon-Rose dining comfortably at Scott’s. Four men of the Special Branch, immaculately attired and apparently mere men-about-town, were seated at different tables near them. Easterbrook and his guest talked yachting ostentatiously, and many maps and papers were handed backward and forward. One of these, the lynx-eyed watchers noted, passed from Easterbrook to Huggon-Rose and was not returned. It was the confidential paper! Another link in our chain had been forged!

At half-past ten the two conspirators rose to leave. At the door of the restaurant they brushed past a man in seafaring dress, quite obviously a Dutch sailor, and, swiftly though it was done, one of our watchers saw a folded paper slip from Huggon-Rose’s hand into that of the Dutchman. He made off at once, closely shadowed by two of our men, while Easterbrook and Huggon-Rose walked away together, evidently looking for a taxicab, none too numerous at that hour.

Just as a cab drew up to the kerb I arrived on the scene. I had been kept closely informed of what was going on and had been waiting in a neighbouring restaurant in order to be present at the arrest of the two plotters. Incautiously I approached too near, and in the light of a street-lamp van Rosen caught sight of me. He recognised me instantly. With a snarl of rage he turned on me, and his hand shot to his hip-pocket. Then he recovered his self-possession and entered the taxi with Easterbrook. No doubt he reflected that a shot at me would not help him, and, it should be noted, neither man had any incriminating document on him. The “plans” were in possession of the Dutch sailor, and until they were secured we had to hold our hands. But one quarry was safe now.

The taxi soon deposited the two men at Easterbrook’s house, which was immediately closely surrounded. Half an hour later Madame Gabrielle, hatless and showing every sign of a struggle, slipped from a side door.

Breathlessly she explained that van Rosen, catching sight of her as he was going to his room on the first floor, had recognised her at once and had attacked her furiously. Why he did not shoot her I never could understand. Physically Madame Gabrielle was a match for him; she was a superb gymnast and in hard training, whereas van Rosen had been leading a dissipated life and was in thoroughly poor condition. A brief struggle had ended in Madame Gabrielle throwing him heavily by a simple wrestling trick, and, knowing that she must get away at all cost, she had rushed down the back stairway and got into the street.

A moment or two later a servant left the house and posted some letters in the pillar-box a few yards away. The letters were recovered later, and one of them, a postcard, was found to be addressed to Jules Cauvin. It was in a feminine handwriting, and bore neither the date nor the address of the writer. It read:

“My dear Jules,—Henri will return home to-morrow. He has immensely enjoyed his visit, and his health has greatly improved.

“Yours,

“Marie.”

Innocent enough, but—the card was perfumed with violets! Clearly enough its purpose was to let Cauvin know that danger was in the air.

We were expecting every moment the news that the Dutch sailor had been arrested with the incriminating documents in his possession. That would have been the signal for the arrest of Easterbrook and van Rosen. But the arrest was not to be made.

Far away to the east we heard the low boom of a gun. Another and another followed; then came the crash of high explosives, and we realised that an air raid was in progress. Nearer and nearer came the sounds of guns and bombs.

Suddenly I picked up the drone of an aerial motor directly overhead, and a few seconds later came an appalling crash that seemed to shake the very earth. I saw a red blaze flash out over Easterbrook’s house, and after that everything was a blank.

I came to my senses to find myself in Charing Cross Hospital. And when I feebly opened my eyes the first object to catch my sight was Armand Hecq, seated at my bedside placidly reading a book. Hearing my gasp of astonishment, he turned to me.

“Ah, mon cher Gerald, so you are awake at last,” he said cheerily. “How are you feeling?”

“Very shaky,” I whispered. “What has happened? Ah, yes, I remember now,” I said, as a flood of recollections swept over me. “Is it all right? Have you got van Rosen and Easterbrook?”

“Everything is quite satisfactory, my dear Gerald,” replied Hecq. “I will tell you all about it when you are stronger.”

But, weak though I was, I could not bear the suspense. “Tell me at once. Monsieur Hecq, I beg of you, or I shall never rest.” And Hecq, choosing the lesser of two evils, decided to unburden himself.

“Van Rosen and Easterbrook are both dead,” he said. “The bomb which rendered you unconscious struck Easterbrook’s house and killed them both. Mrs Easterbrook is terribly injured, but is alive, and will probably recover. Madame Gabrielle is quite safe, and Aubert, who was watching near you, was sheltered from the explosion by a projecting wall and was only badly shaken. He telephoned me at once, and I fortunately caught a train which was just leaving, and here I am. You have been unconscious for a day and a half.”

“What about the Dutch sailor?” I managed to gasp out in my astonishment.

“Oh,” replied Hecq, “we got him all right, with the plan in his possession. He has made a clean breast of everything. The plans were to have been photographed down to microscopic size and the films taken over to Cauvin sewn into his clothing. Two of my men are on their way to arrest Cauvin at once.”

But Cauvin proved too quick for us. As the agents of the Sûreté approached his house he must have recognised them and realised that the game was up. Directly they intimated to him that he was under arrest he snatched a revolver from his pocket and shot himself before their eyes. I have no doubt the result would have been the same if he had received the violet-scented card, which now, with the bogus invitation to the Easterbrook wedding, remains one of my cherished mementoes of one of the most fascinating of the many mysteries I have helped to unravel.

Thus by the hands of the Huns themselves the public were spared an astounding scandal, and the Allies were rid of three ingenious scoundrels engaged in a clever and insidious campaign. After Easterbrook’s death we were able to unravel the whole conspiracy. Easterbrook and van Rosen were two of the fingers of the Hidden Hand in England. They operated by means of banking accounts in various names, handling large sums placed freely at their disposal by other wealthy naturalised “Britons,” who proved in their own persons the truth of the adage coined in 1914 by a naturalised Hun—“Once a German, always a German.” Most of them were laid by the heels, and now, behind barricades of barbed wire in remote parts of the country, have leisure to repent the day when they matched their cunning against the skill of the International Secret Service Bureau of the Allies.

Chapter Ten.

The Mystery of Blind Heinrich.

“Blind Heinrich!”

Without any conscious effort of memory on my part, these words flashed suddenly into my mind, as, six weeks or so after the events just related, I sat lazily in Armand Hecq’s private room in the Boulevard des Capucines, turning over our latest problem in my mind, while I waited for the astute chief, who was busy investigating a report which had just been brought in by one of his numerous financial clients—in other words, by one of the numerous expert agents whom he kept constantly busy up and down Europe, at the task of countering the villainous work of the spy bureau in Berlin.

“I wonder whether he is mixed up in the affair,” I mused; rapidly working out a new train of thought to which the old scoundrel’s name had given rise. So intent was I that I did not notice Hecq’s entrance. His quick eye noticed my absorption.

“A penny for your thoughts, mon cher Gerald,” he laughed.

“Well,” I said with a smile, “I was pretty far away, I admit. The fact is, I was wondering whether Blind Heinrich is taking any part in the game?”

The director of the International Secret Service of the Allies raised his brows and stared at me across the big, littered writing-table. Behind him a tape machine was clicking out its message, just as it should in a well-ordered financier’s office. He was evidently surprised.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed in English, which he spoke to perfection. “I never thought of him! My dear Gerald, old Heinrich is an extremely wily bird; and if he is mixed up in this business we shall have all our work cut out. Remember how he wriggled out of our hands in the Gould affair, when we thought we had him safely netted?”

The Gould affair! I should think I did remember it! I took a part in tracing and arresting the spy, Frederick Adolphus Gould, who lived near Chatham, and who, a few months before the war, was sent to prison for five years for attempted espionage. The case was a bad one. For years “Gould” had posed, like so many of his unscrupulous countrymen, as a good, patriotic John Bull Englishman, unable to speak German, expressing hatred of Germany and the Kaiser, and warning us that wax would come. Yet, after his arrest, I had gone to Germany very much incognito to make inquiries, and found that exceedingly patriotic “Englishman” was the son of a certain Baron von S—, that he had been born in Berlin in 1851, had fought in the Franco-German War, and had been awarded the customary Iron Cross!

Now one of “Gould’s” closest friends in England had been a certain Norwegian named Heinrich Kristensten, a half-blind violinist who lived at Hampstead. Some strange facts came to light in the course of our inquiries, but the afflicted musician forestalled us by very cleverly coming forward and denouncing his whilom friend—not, however, before he saw that Gould was quite hopelessly entangled in the net which had been spread for him by the British Secret Service. His action, of course, was quite in accord with German practice. Seeing that the game was up, so far as Gould was concerned, he saved himself on the principle that one loss was better than two. His name had leaped spontaneously into my mind in connection with the latest problem upon which we were engaged—the mysterious manner in which, despite the rigid British censorship, details of the damage done in London by the raiding Gothas were so quickly and so accurately transmitted to Berlin. That they were so transmitted we knew, for the German papers promptly published them. And obviously, if severely censored matters of this kind were leaking out, there was some channel of information open of which we were unaware. We had to find and close it.

Now, as is well known, every wireless message which passes from the outer world to Berlin, or from Berlin to the outer world, is picked up and decoded at our wireless stations. The news was, we knew, not sent by wireless. Yet it was clear the Wilhelmstrasse got early information, not only as to where the bombs were dropped, but the extent of the damage done, both points on which they could not obtain the slightest information from the English papers. These details were published by the German and Swiss papers, and, allowing for Berlin’s invariable exaggeration of its own prowess, they were remarkably full and accurate. The task before me was to find out how the news was transmitted, and it was one, I confess, which fairly bristled with difficulties.

“Heinrich, being a neutral, has lately been showing a great interest in the welfare of blinded British soldiers,” I remarked to Hecq. “If he were a friend of Gould’s, why should he do this?”

“For some reason of his own,” said Hecq, “possibly to avert suspicion. We know pretty well that he was very deep in it with Gould and had received money from him. Perhaps you will recollect that he admitted it, explaining that it was a loan, and indeed we found his I.O.U. in Gould’s desk, made out, no doubt, ‘to lend artistic verisimilitude to a bald and otherwise unconvincing narrative,’ as your Gilbert has it. You know he said his daughter had been ill, and that in consequence he was short of money. That was too weak; we knew well enough that Heinrich made a good deal out of his fiddle, as his bank balance showed. He was not short of money at all, and I have not the least doubt that the ‘loan’ was for value received in the shape of information or assistance, perhaps both.”

“Yes, I remember now,” I said, reflecting deeply.

Three weeks went by. I was tired and run down, and decided to snatch a fortnight with Doris in Worcestershire before embarking upon a task which was likely to be arduous, if not actually dangerous. Greatly strengthened by my sojourn in delightful Worcestershire, I was back in town, keenly interested in the work I had in hand.

One evening I had been down to Hertford, and was returning by the Great Eastern Railway to Liverpool Street, when, just before ten o’clock, the train pulled up abruptly at Stratford, all lights were instantly extinguished, and I was swept into an excited throng of several hundreds of refugees in the subway beneath the line. There, amid a motley gathering, largely composed of panic-stricken foreign Jews, I was compelled to remain for over three hours, listening to the venomous barking of the anti-aircraft guns and the occasional rending, ear-splitting crash of a high explosive bomb.

It was the first time I had seen the alien under air-raid conditions, though I had heard a good deal about him; and as I watched the cowardly wretches my whole mind was revolted at the thought that a large proportion of these quivering masses of jelly, for in their fright they were little else, had been welcomed to British citizenship under the imbecile naturalisation system. No one blamed them for being frightened: the Englishwomen and children of the working classes, huddled in the shelters, were quite obviously frightened, and small wonder. But if they were frightened, they were brave, and they kept their self-control even when the infernal racket overhead was at its worst. I had seldom seen a better proof of the essential superiority of the Briton over the harpies who prey upon him, and as I watched I felt proud that, cosmopolitan as I am, I had good English blood in my veins.

At ten o’clock next morning I went to Whitehall, where exact of all the damage done by the Gothas was placed freely at my disposal. From the secret reports I made certain extracts for future use.

Five days later.

As I sat in my flat in Curzon Street, my man, Burton, brought in copies of the General Anzeiger für Elberfeld-Barmen, the Berlin Borsen Courier, and the Tageblatt, all of which had been sent me by special messenger from Whitehall.

I opened them, and in both the General Anzeiger and the Tageblatt were exultant articles on the success of the air raid upon the metropolitan area a few nights before. They were, of course, luridly “written up,” but they contained a great deal of perfectly accurate information, as I knew by the secret reports shown to me directly after the raid.

How could the enemy know? Of course, the blazing accounts of the terror and panic supposed to have been created in London could have been written up anywhere. But how was it that not only were the localities in which the bombs had fallen accurately specified, but in several instances details were given of the exact damage to certain buildings? By no possibility could the latter information have been the result of an effort of Teutonic imagination. The enemy knew; proof of it was there in cold print. How did the news reach the Wilhelmstrasse so quickly?

It was certainly not by wireless, for every message was picked up and decoded by our own stations. That the news had not passed through the great German wireless stations of Norddeich, at the north of the Elbe, or Nauen, near Berlin, was certain. Here was a pretty problem set for solution.

As I sat alone in my room that evening, having dined at my club and returned to the enjoyment of slippers, a novel, and a good cigar, I reflected on the task I had in hand. I realised, of course, that my suspicions of Blind Heinrich might be entirely unfounded, but I had at the moment nothing better to go upon, and I decided that, in view of his known association with Gould, whether he was mixed up with the matter we now had in hand or not, a close watch upon him might provide some facts of interest.

Upon my arrival in London from Paris, I had sought out Blind Heinrich, who was now living in a boarding-house in Hereford Road, Bayswater, close to Westbourne Grove. In the same house was now living a dainty little woman, a Belgian refugee, who was in very straitened circumstances. According to her own story, she had become separated from her husband, a rich merchant of Brussels, before going on board a boat at Ostend, during the terrible flight from Belgium in 1914. Since then she had been unable to obtain the slightest information about him, and did not know even whether he was alive or dead.

For nearly three years, she related, she had remained in terrible anxiety, which was rapidly wrecking her nerves and her life. As a refugee, a pitiful victim of the catastrophe which had befallen her beloved country, she was existing upon English charity. She called herself Madame Taymans, and her old address in happier days was in the Rue de Namur in Brussels. But her real name was—Gabrielle Soyez!

Few women in the world could so perfectly adapt themselves to the ever-changing demands of the Secret Service as Madame Soyez. In her present circumstances she was absolutely at home, for she had been educated in part at a convent near Gembloux, and could assume the Belgian accent to perfection. It was an easy matter, therefore, for her to pass for what she pretended to be.

In Hereford Road the Frenchwoman had established herself on my instruction for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye upon the quiet, long-haired, half-blind violinist, who, to all appearances, was eking out only a meagre existence, and whose clothes were of that shabby-genteel brand which usually betrays respectable poverty. But we knew enough of Heinrich’s affairs to be convinced that the shabby-genteel rôle was deliberately assumed for purposes of deception. A splendid musician and a born teacher, Heinrich could command his own terms, and, as a matter of fact, he made a good deal of money. More than this, he was well known in high circles of Society, where his teaching abilities gave him the entrée to a large number of the best houses. And, of course, no one ever suspected that the half-blind old fiddler, crawling from house to house in the aristocratic quarters in which he found most of his pupils, was in reality the alert and dangerous agent of the enemy which subsequent events revealed him to be.

Chapter Eleven.

An Air Raid on London.

One night of brilliant moonlight, I had just come in from a visit to a theatre and was glancing through the evening papers before turning in, when my telephone bell rang. On replying, I found the caller was Madame Gabrielle, and in consequence of the cryptic message she gave me I abandoned the idea of going to bed and remained keenly on the alert. For a full hour nothing occurred. Then I heard the air raid warnings for which I had been waiting and soon after the guns, distant at first, but gradually drawing nearer, began to boom out their defiance of the aerial invaders.

For nearly two hours the raid continued at brief intervals, as squadron after squadron of Gothas came hurtling through the night sky on their mission of hate. As soon as the “All clear” signal was given, I hurried out and made my way rapidly to Harrington Street, a quiet thoroughfare at the back of Cadogan Square, with dark, old-fashioned houses, each with the deep basement and flight of steps to the front door so characteristic of a period of architecture which we may hope has passed away for ever.

One of these houses was my objective, and I soon found it, for its door was painted in a light shade, quite different from the hue of sombre respectability which characterised all its neighbours in the gloomy street. It was noticeable that while nearly every house in the street showed lights—the inmates had not yet got over their scare and could be heard volubly discussing the alarms and excursions of the night—this particular house was in total darkness and was as silent as the grave.

I soon located a deep doorway from which I, myself unseen, could keep a close watch on the dark and silent house, and commenced my vigil.

Presently a man wearing a long light overcoat turned from the square into Harrington Street, and, sauntering leisurely along, ascended the steps of the house I was watching, and let himself in with a latchkey. Five minutes later a second man passed close to where I was standing—luckily my doorway was in deep shadow and he did not notice me—and also entered the house. Two others followed in quick succession. One of them I instantly recognised by his gait. It was Blind Heinrich!

For four hours I kept surveillance, and during that time no fewer than seven men arrived, each letting himself in with his latchkey. It was evident we had found out the meeting-place of some highly doubtful individuals, whose obvious familiarity with the locality, coupled with the strange hours at which they arrived, indicated quite clearly that some nefarious scheme was afoot. It was evident, too, that the old Norwegian belonged to the gang. And I began to feel assured that our suspicions as to his real character were well founded.

It would have been difficult to find a better place for the meeting, for Harrington Street, though readily accessible, led to nowhere in particular, and was as quiet a thoroughfare as any in London. No one would notice the arrival at intervals of the men, policemen rarely visited the street, and after midnight it was entirely deserted save for the occasional arrival home of some belated resident.

It was not until five o’clock in the morning that the last man arrived in a taxi, which, however, did not come along the street, but deposited him at the corner of the Square. A quarter of an hour later they began to come out singly, at intervals of about five minutes, dispersing in different directions. There was no sign, however, of Heinrich Kristensten.

“Well, mon cher Gerald,” said Madame Gabrielle, as she sat with me in my flat in Curzon Street, soon after breakfast the same morning. “You see they receive warning of coming air raids and meet directly after. Who are they?”

“Enemy spies, beyond any possibility of doubt,” I replied. “Our course is clear now. When the next raid is made we must follow them individually and learn each man’s identity. I will make all the arrangements. Meanwhile, do you continue as you are and keep an eye on the blind fiddler.”

Madame Gabrielle returned to Hereford Road to continue her watch. For my own part, I set to work, and very soon discovered that the mysterious house in Harrington Street was unoccupied and was to let furnished. In the guise of a possible tenant I went over it thoroughly, but could see nothing suspicious, except that I ascertained that the caretaker was an old compatriot of Heinrich’s. The owner, who had left London and was now residing on the South Coast, was well known and his loyalty was beyond dispute. It then became evident that the caretaker was cognisant of the secret meeting, if, indeed, he was not closely concerned in the business, whatever it might be, that brought these men together in an empty house at dead of night so soon after a raid, when most honest people would be only too anxious to get to bed as promptly as possible.

It was obviously necessary that we should learn all we could about the identity of the men who met in the empty house in Harrington Street, and I was soon in touch with the Special Branch, and made all the necessary arrangements for shadowing our suspects.

Four nights later another raid took place. As soon as the Gothas were gone we were all swiftly at our posts. So thoroughly was the house surrounded that a mouse could hardly have gone in or out undetected. Yet there was no sign of a watcher, and anyone going to the house would certainly be in blissful ignorance of the fact that he was under the close scrutiny of the keen eyes of the Secret Service. There is very little clumsy “shadowing” about the Special Branch!

But we watched in vain. No meeting was held, or if it was it was held elsewhere. The blind musician, it is true, left his room in Bayswater, but he never reached Harrington Street. The house remained all night silent and apparently deserted.

I wondered whether the gang had by any chance discovered our activities and taken alarm. I was not very deeply concerned about it, apart from the chagrin which the delay caused me. Blind Heinrich, at any rate, could hardly escape us, and, if the gang had for any reason changed its place of meeting, I had little doubt that we should soon discover it. But who had blundered? I felt certain that it was not Madame Gabrielle, and I did not think it could be myself.

One morning I received a note from the clever little Frenchwoman, asking me to take tea with her at Hereford Road that afternoon, and adding: “I have something to show you.”

Of course I went, and we had tea together in the big drawing-room which she used in common with the other guests in the boarding-house. Several of the old ladies who lived in the house were present.

Just as we had finished our tea, Madame exclaimed: “Do excuse me, m’sieur! I have forgotten my handkerchief.”

Rising, she left me. When she returned she was carrying a work-bag of blue brocaded silk, which she placed upon her lap as she reseated herself. In her hand also she had an evening paper which she handed to me with a casual remark that I might like to look at it while she got her work ready.

I knew well enough that this was for the benefit of the other people in the room, who, as usual, were keenly interested in any friends of a pretty woman, and were scrutinising me pretty carefully. I knew, too, that Gabrielle had some further motive in her mind. Accordingly, I leaned back in my chair and read the paper diligently.

A moment later I noticed Madame Gabrielle telegraphing me in our “finger Morse.”

“Look carefully at the book showing in the mouth of my work-bag,” she signalled, “and get a copy at once. It belongs to Heinrich, and I have just borrowed it from his room. He may be back at any moment—he has only just gone out—and I must replace it at once.”

She had casually left the mouth of her work-bag open. It revealed the title-page of an open book, published, as I saw, about seven years before. The title was Royal Love Letters. I had never heard of the volume, but I made a note of its title.

Madame Gabrielle, with an excuse, quitted the room for a few moments, taking the book with her in her bag. On her return she began talking pleasantly about general subjects, but she was listening keenly, I could see. Soon we heard the front door slam, and a heavy shuffling tread crossed the hall and went up the stairs.

“Blind Heinrich,” she telegraphed; “I was only just in time. He is terribly watchful, and would certainly have noticed if the book had not been on the table where he left it. I often wonder whether he is as blind as he pretends to be. You had better go; if he comes in here for tea, it is quite possible he may recognise you.” A quarter of an hour later we were walking along Westbourne Grove together, and Gabrielle told me the history of the mysterious book. For several days, she said, she had been following Heinrich, who had suddenly developed an amazing interest in second-hand bookstalls. He had gone into shop after shop in various parts of London, asked a single question apparently, and come out again. At length she had managed to overhear him ask at one shop for a copy of Royal Love Letters. The shopkeeper had not the volume in stock, and, as the request was such a peculiar one for a man of Heinrich’s temperament, Madame Gabrielle determined to run risks and follow him daily. He entered six more shops, making the same request at each, and at length, in a dingy little by-lane in Soho, managed, to his evident glee, to get what he wanted, and carried it back to Hereford Road with obvious satisfaction.

“Why that particular book, and why so much trouble to get it?” said Madame Gabrielle. “What do you make of it, Mr Sant?”

I made nothing of it, except that there seemed to be good reasons why I should get a copy at once. If Royal Love Letters interested Heinrich Kristensten so deeply, it might well be that it would not be wholly without interest for me.

My first care was to ring up Hecq on the official telephone and give him full particulars respecting Heinrich’s sudden interest in an obscure and practically unknown volume published and forgotten seven years ago. It was quite clear that this was a hint we could not ignore, but I confess I failed to see how it helped us. But I was soon to learn more; Hecq’s quick brain had seen a possibility which I had overlooked.

At seven next morning, before I was out of bed, my telephone rang, and Hecq once more spoke to me.

“I have been searching the papers, Sant,” he said, “and I have found out something that will interest you. Listen carefully. In the Petit Parisien five days ago there was an advertisement for the recovery of a lady’s gold trinket. I have it here. I’ll read it to you,” and he read:

Perdus Ou Trouvés. Perdu Mét. Opéra Breloque Or. Vialet 28 Marigny R. 100.

“Yes,” I said, “I hear you. But what has that to do with me?”

“Listen,” said Hecq. “There is nobody named Vialet at that address; we found that out at once. I have had nearly fifty of my people examining every advertisement in the Paris papers issued just before Heinrich began to display an interest in Royal Love Letters. Now we have found out that the advertisement I have just read to you conveys in cryptogrammic form the message, ‘Buy Royal Love Letters.’ It would take too long to explain it, but the paper containing that advertisement would be on sale in London the very day on which, according to Madame Gabrielle, Heinrich began to haunt the second-hand bookstalls on his peculiar quest. Rather curious, is it not?”

Curious it certainly was, and once more I found myself confronted with a further enigma. Why on earth should the book be advertised in cryptogrammic form in a French newspaper? How did Heinrich come to see the advertisement, and how did he know the key to the code? No doubt the paper had accepted the innocent-looking advertisement without the slightest suspicion that it was anything but the genuine announcement it purported to be. It was impossible to overlook the coincidence between the appearance of the advertisement and Blind Heinrich’s sudden deep interest in a forgotten book.

Next day I started out in search of a copy of Royal Love Letters. Of course I failed to get one: it had been out of print for years, as it had been published privately and comparatively few copies had been printed. However, I sent wires to some twenty provincial dealers in second-hand books, and at noon next day had a reply from a dealer in Birmingham, offering me a copy for four and sixpence. I wired the money, and next morning received the shabby little volume. Little did I realise what a dividend my investment of four shillings and sixpence was going to pay me!

On reading the book through, I found it was merely a monograph on the published love letters of various royal personages. It was as dull as the proverbial ditch-water, and I was not surprised at the difficulty both Heinrich and myself had experienced in securing copies: the wonder was that any had escaped the fire or the waste-paper basket. But the very fact made Heinrich’s interest in the book the more suspicious. It conveyed nothing to me, it is true, about Gotha raids on London, but did it convey anything to Heinrich, or was it the means of conveying anything from him to someone else?

I called up Madame Gabrielle on the ’phone, and after she had arrived and examined the volume, we went out to lunch at the Ritz. Across the table I told her of the curious advertisement in the Petit Parisien, whereupon she exclaimed:

“Why, Kristensten reads that paper regularly. I often see him with it. He goes down practically every column of it with his big reading-glass!”

“That settles two points, anyhow,” I said. “The first is that he uses that paper for receiving, and perhaps for sending messages. The second is that he knows the spy-cipher used in drawing up the advertisement. I am beginning to feel that this out-of-print and forgotten book will, if we watch carefully, supply us with a very interesting line to follow.”

And, ringing up Hecq, I told him about the latest development. He was keenly alive to the possibilities of the new situation.

Chapter Twelve.

The Secret of the Ribbon.

Our new discovery seemed to me so remarkable that I lost no time in impressing upon Madame Gabrielle the imperative necessity of the closest possible scrutiny of Blind Heinrich’s actions. I was more than anxious that we should not lose sight of him for an instant, and that I should be kept fully informed of his every action. For by this time I was firmly convinced that, through some medium which we had yet to discover, he was in some way keeping up communication with the more active agents of the enemy. And if we could but discover the channel through which the stream of communications flowed, it would not be long, I felt sure, before we had the key to the mystery in our hands.

Suddenly, and without any obvious reason, Heinrich completely changed his habits. Hitherto always on the move, he took to remaining indoors all day, hardly ever going out except for a short stroll in the evening. He met no one and apparently spoke scarcely a word to anybody. What his numerous pupils thought of his sudden neglect of them I cannot say. But it was clear enough that something important must have occurred to induce him thus suddenly to abandon what was, professedly at any rate, his sole means of livelihood.

I was discussing him—he was almost invariably our sole topic of conversation nowadays—with Madame Gabrielle as she sat in my room one morning.

“I cannot conceive of any reason,” I said, “why Heinrich should have so suddenly changed the entire routine of his existence. It looks to me as though either something very important has happened or that he is expecting important news. Yet he receives no messages; he never gets even a letter or a telegram.”

“There is only one fact that is peculiar,” said the smart Frenchwoman. “You know I have been looking after him pretty closely lately. Well, whenever he goes out, though he appears to wander about quite aimlessly, he invariably contrives his walk so that it takes him through Lembridge Square. He never misses.”

“Does he always go the same side of the Square?” I asked.

She replied in the affirmative, and I decided to have a look round the Square for myself at once.

That same afternoon found me on the scene of Blind Heinrich’s daily walk. The Square itself varied little from hundreds of others in London: it showed every evidence of dreary respectability common to half the squares in London. Two things, however, attracted my notice.

In the ground-floor window of one house was a big brass cage containing a grey parrot, which was insistently emitting the hideous noises common to the parrot tribe. In a similar window about a dozen houses away was a case containing some old-fashioned wax flowers beneath a glass dome, evidently a survival from the ornamental style peculiar to the early Victorian epoch to which, indeed, the whole dreary Square seemed to belong.

There was nothing to offer a lucid explanation of why Blind Heinrich should choose such a path for his daily ramble. There were dozens of other far more attractive promenades within easy walking distance. Yet here, unless my instinct entirely misled me, was the solution to our riddle.

Day after day I followed the old fellow’s route. I even went so far as to shadow Heinrich himself more than once and verified Madame Gabrielle’s observation. No matter which way he started out, he never failed, on either the outward or homeward journey, to pass along that particular side of the Square. Yet he never spoke to anyone, and I was morally certain that no signal was ever made to him from any of the houses.

On the fourth day I noticed a slight fact. The ring on the top of the parrot’s cage was tied with a big bow of yellow ribbon. Three days later it was altered to dark blue. On the eighth day it had returned to yellow again.

Why these changes? Were they signals?

That night enemy aircraft crossed the south-east coast, but their attempts to reach London were defeated by the terrific fire of the anti-aircraft guns and by a swift concentration of our fighting aeroplanes, which broke up several successive squadrons, and sent the raiders hurrying home again.

Several of my capable assistants then took over the task of finding out all that was known regarding the house in Lembridge Square. Forty-eight hours later I had a full report. I learned that the man in whose room the parrot lived was one of the mysterious band who foregathered to meet Kristensten in the empty house in Harrington Street. He was then dressed as a special constable, a part which, by the way, he had no right whatever to play. He bore the thoroughly English name of Mostyn Brown, and was in business in the City as the agent of a Manchester firm of cotton merchants. Apart from the fact of his presence that night in Harrington Street, nothing that the most exhaustive inquiries revealed suggested in the smallest degree any association with agents of the enemy. To all appearances he was a perfectly respectable City man, in no way different from thousands of others. But—there was a very big but: what was his business in the dead of night in an empty house in the West End in company of a suspected German spy?

A few days later the men who were keeping the houses in Lembridge Square and Hereford Road under surveillance sent me a strange report, which set me thinking deeply. By some means—whether he suspected he was being watched or whether a lucky chance favoured him, we never knew—Blind Heinrich managed to elude the unwearying vigilance of Madame Gabrielle and arrived alone, evidently in a hurry, at Westbourne Grove. Here he hailed a taxi and was driven to Waterloo Station. There at the booking-office on the loop-line side he had met a short, fat man, to whom, after a brief conversation, he handed a bottle wrapped in white paper. They remained in conversation a few minutes longer and then parted. The fat man was followed to the tube railway and thence to King’s Cross, where he had bought a ticket for Peterborough, and left by the five-thirty express.

Why Peterborough, I wondered? There were certainly no facilities there for anyone engaged in Germany’s nefarious work. But attached to the report was a snapshot—taken secretly, of course—which showed me at once that the little fat man was apparently a sailor, “camouflaged” hastily in a badly fitting overcoat and a cloth cap. That gave me a further clue. I took down a Bradshaw, and, glancing at the train by which the little fat man had travelled, made an interesting discovery. It was the Newcastle express. I began to see why the mysterious little man had booked to Peterborough. That afternoon I ascertained that the parrot’s cage in the house in Lembridge Square sported a broad ribbon of yellow satin. At midnight I rang up Hecq at his house at St. Germain, and asked him to send Aubert the detective over at once.

An hour after midnight came another air-raid alarm—the second to coincide with the appearance of the yellow ribbon.

Now one coincidence of this kind may mean nothing. Two begin to be suspicious. A third is convincing. I found my suspicions deepening into certainty.

Directly the air-raid warning was given, our watchers in Harrington Street were keenly on the alert, but, though they watched all night, there was no meeting of the mysterious men in the empty house. I guessed the reason. The raiders were again driven back before they could reach the Metropolis, and, therefore, there was no news to be gathered for transmission to the authorities in Berlin. Everything now pointed with increasing certainty to the house in Lembridge Square as a focus of enemy activity.

Directly the “All clear” had been sounded over the London area, Heinrich left Hereford Road, and, according to Madame Gabrielle’s report to me, hurried round to the house of the grey parrot. He remained there about half an hour, and then retraced his steps home in the waning moonlight.

Thus mystery followed mystery. What was the meaning of the various coloured bows on the parrot’s cage? For that they had a very definite meaning I no longer doubted. It seemed, indeed, tolerably clear that the yellow ribbon betokened a coming raid. And evidently the half-blind old musician was a close friend of the manufacturers’ agent. But who, in reality, was the mysterious Mostyn Brown, and, if he were indeed an enemy agent, how had he managed to elude the close watch that had been set upon him?

It had struck me that the house which sheltered the grey parrot might conceivably conceal a wireless plant of sufficient power to convey a message to a submarine lurking off the coast. Such a plant need not be a conspicuous affair. But one of my agents, posing as an official of the Metropolitan Water Board, had been able to negative the suggestion, and I confess I found myself still hopelessly puzzled as to the means by which information of the damage done by the raiding aircraft was so speedily and so accurately conveyed to the enemy.

By this time Aubert had arrived from Paris, and had taken an obscure lodging in Chessington Street, a dingy thoroughfare off the Euston Road. By appointment I met him late one night at the corner of Grey’s Inn Road and Holborn, and, having explained to him briefly what had occurred, told him to hold himself in readiness for instant action.

The apparent abandonment of the secret meetings in Harrington Street was a source of considerable anxiety and chagrin. I was particularly anxious about them. We had several of those who had taken part in the first meeting under close observation, but had learned nothing about them sufficient to justify our taking strong action. Most of them, indeed, seemed to be of the same apparently blameless type as Mr Mostyn Brown, and it was evident that if they were indeed enemy agents they had been selected or appointed by a master-hand at the game of espionage. And I wanted badly to gain some more information about them.

Madame Gabrielle was ever on the alert, and soon it appeared from her report that the blind fiddler was expecting another raid. The ribbon bow on the parrot’s cage changed to dark blue, and remained so for six days. On the seventh it was replaced by yellow. That night the old man remained in his room reading for hours after all the other inmates had retired. But that night no raid was made.

I now began to think that it would be well if I took the mysterious Mostyn Brown under my own special observation. For a week during the moonless nights I shadowed him closely. I found out that he was a member of a certain third-class City club, frequented by a large number of “pure-blooded Englishmen” who happened to bear German names—of course they had been naturalised—and very soon my name appeared on the club books.

It was not long before I managed to scrape acquaintance with Mostyn Brown over a game of billiards. I cultivated his friendship eagerly, and very soon we were on excellent terms. As a matter of fact, I wanted an invitation to his house, and at last I got it.

I spent there one of the dullest evenings of my life, an evening, as it happened, entirely wasted. Beyond noting that the ribbon on the parrot’s cage had again turned to blue, I saw nothing of the slightest interest.

The next night, however, I made a discovery. Dropping in at the club, I found Mostyn Brown engaged in a game of billiards with a man whom I knew in the club as Harry Smith. A bullet-headed, bespectacled person, with hair standing erect as the bristles of a blacking brush, Smith looked the typical Hun, and I very soon decided in my own mind that Heinrich Schmidt was probably the name by which he was first known to the world.

Suddenly a dispute arose about some point in the game, and in a moment words were running high. Half a dozen spectators noisily joined in the altercation, and the room was a Babel of dispute. I saw my chance.

Taking Mostyn Brown’s side, I suddenly interjected a sentence in German. Apparently hardly noticing the change in his excitement Mostyn Brown replied in the same language, and his accent told me at once that he was not of British birth. There was no possibility of mistake, for, however well the Hun may speak our tongue, he will inevitably betray himself when in a moment of excitement he lapses into his own language.

My suspicions of Mostyn Brown were naturally intensified a hundredfold by this discovery. Of course, I redoubled my efforts, and was in daily conference with certain highly placed people in Whitehall, whose curiosity was now fully roused, as well as with my own agents, the vivacious Madame Gabrielle and the slow, but painstaking and relentless, Aubert. The watch on the suspects became closer than ever, and I was convinced that, try how he might, none of them could move, practically speaking, without full details of what he was doing reaching me in the course of an hour or two at most. And I was ready to strike hard at the earliest moment when decisive action might seem justified.

For the moment, however, there was nothing to be done but watch and wait, tense and expectant, while night by night the moon drew nearer and nearer to the full. Thanks to the information I was able to place before the authorities in Whitehall, there was little chance of the anti-aircraft defences of London being caught napping, while the secret signal I had discovered—the changing of the coloured ribbon on the parrot’s cage at Mostyn Brown’s house in Lembridge Square—would be almost certain to give us warning of any long-arranged raid in force. Apart from the sequel, the worst we had to expect was a sudden dash by a few machines in the event of an unexpected improvement in the weather rendering such a course possible. But with regard to the big raids, involving days of patient preparation, settled weather, and most careful and thorough organisation, we felt tolerably sure that the tell-tale ribbon would give us the warning we wanted. So it proved in the event, and once again the Hun’s trickiness brought his carefully planned scheme to failure.

Chapter Thirteen.

How Berlin Obtains Information.

At last the day—or rather the night—which we had been expecting came. The sun had risen in a cloudless sky, and all day long had poured down a fierce flood of heat and light. London was stifling. Everyone seemed to be the victim of heat lassitude; tempers were decidedly short, and even the most amiable of people seemed suddenly to have developed raw-edged nerves. Added to all this was an uneasy presentiment of danger; “There will be a big raid to-night,” was the thought in the back of everyone’s mind.

In order to avoid arousing Mostyn Brown’s suspicions that his house was being watched, we had given up, apparently, all observation on the place during daylight. But not in reality. In a house on the other side of the Square, directly facing that occupied by Mostyn Brown, I had hired a room on the third floor, and from the window, with the help of powerful field-glasses, we could keep the house under the strictest watch. We had not even to enter the Square to reach our tower of vantage, for there was a back entrance from an adjoining street.

Towards this eyrie I had bent my steps, and on arriving I found Aubert in a state of suppressed excitement.

“Look!” he said, handing me the glasses, and, taking them from him, I levelled them at Mostyn Brown’s room.

The ribbon on the parrot’s cage had been changed to yellow!

But this was not all. The sun shone full on the window of Mostyn Brown’s house and his room was strongly illuminated. The field-glasses showed us that Mostyn Brown was at home, a most unusual thing in the day-time, and that with him was Blind Heinrich. How Heinrich had got there we could not imagine. Aubert had not seen him enter. They were seated on chairs drawn up to the table, and were poring intently over a book, apparently making memoranda on sheets of paper. As we watched, Madame Gabrielle, habited as a coster girl and carrying a huge basket of flowers, came slowly along the Square, past Mostyn Brown’s house and round past the house in which we were seated.

I saw her flutter a signal, and, with her arm resting naturally on the side of the basket, she rapidly tapped out a message with her nimble fingers.

“Heinrich has been with Mostyn Brown for the past two hours,” she spelt out. “He came straight from Hereford Road and went into the next house from the back.” Evidently there was some way of communication at the rear of the two houses.

I had now no time to waste, and, leaving Aubert and Madame Gabrielle to keep the necessary watch, I hurried off to Whitehall, where I was soon in deep talk with the astute and enterprising chief of the London defences, a keen officer who by sheer merit had forced himself to the very front rank in aircraft service.

“Good!” he said, when I had told him my news. “I think we shall give them a surprise to-night. Perhaps you would like to see how we work. Sit down for a bit.” And he turned to his big table, on which stood a telephone.

For the next half-hour I watched him, fascinated with his sure grasp of London’s intricate defences, and amazed, though I had thought I knew his capability, at the swiftness and decision with which he issued what to me seemed a veritable jumble of orders. To centre after centre of the aircraft defences he spoke a series of numbers, so bewildering in their speed and complexity that an enemy agent seated in the very room could not have gained a scrap of information. Even to me, familiar as I am with almost every branch of code work, it was a veritable revelation.

“I think we are ready for them now,” he said finally, wiping the perspiration from his face, and I could see that even to him the strain had been severe. How well he had done his work all England was to know the next day, though the public never even suspected the magnitude of his task.

There was now nothing to do but wait; our traps were set, and it remained to be seen whether the enemy would walk into them. I made my way to my chambers for a few hours’ rest and was soon deeply asleep.

At half-past nine Burton, my man, roused me. “The first warning has just come in,” he said.

I dressed swiftly and sat down to snatch a hasty supper, knowing well that it might be many hours before I tasted another meal.

It was exactly ten o’clock when the report of the first maroon broke the stillness, and London, with one accord, hastened to cover. Ten minutes later the streets were deserted, and a midnight hush reigned supreme. The great city seemed a city of the dead.

As we listened a faint, distant boom struck softly on our ears. The strafe had begun!

Suddenly, far away to the eastward, a searchlight flickered up into the sky; another and another followed in rapid succession, and soon the entire sky was covered and chequered by dozens of wavering pillars of flame, moving to and fro, methodically searching the heavens as though moved by a single hand. Far above us I caught the soft purr of an aeroplane, evidently one of our own, for the sound was quite different from the deeper and rougher note of the Gothas.

Suddenly, with a deafening crash, half a dozen guns barked simultaneously, and, looking out, I saw far away, seemingly caught on a pencil of living light, the ethereal butterfly shape of an enemy aircraft. A second later, in quick succession, came the unmistakable sound of bursting bombs.

In the midst of the tumult a single tiny light showed for a moment far up in the sky, just outside the ring of shrapnel that was bursting all round the enemy craft, now hopelessly entangled in the beams of a dozen converging searchlights, and, dive and drop as it would, utterly unable to escape from the zone of effulgent radiance in which it seemed to float.

Instantly every gun was silent! We caught the crackle of a machine-gun far up in the air, and a moment later the enemy machine burst into a lurid sheet of flame, and the blazing mass pitched headlong to earth amid a roar of cheering from watchers, who in thousands had braved all possible danger to see the aerial fight heralded by the outburst of machine-gun fire. It was obvious that one of our sentinel aeroplanes, perched far above the raider, had caught sight of him in the searchlights, and, swooping swift as a hawk on his quarry, had sent the Gotha a fiery run to the earth twelve thousand feet below. I learned later that the Gotha had fallen in Essex, the three occupants calcined to cinders in the flood of blazing petrol.

That was the extent of London’s excitement for the night. It was not until some hours later that I learnt that no fewer than eight squadrons of Gothas, each consisting of four machines, had started out on their errand of murder for London. Only a single machine got through, and that now lay a heap of ruins. The rest had been split up by gun fire, caught in the beams of endless searchlights, harried to and fro by a vast concentration of British fighting planes swiftly assembled when the warning of the yellow ribbon had become known, and had been relentlessly chased homeward in utter disorder. Their repulse was a triumph brought about by Colonel —’s masterly effort at organisation, when I conveyed to him in Whitehall the news which had reached me through a simple yellow ribbon tied to a grey parrot’s cage!

Reports soon began to reach me in swift succession from my subordinates in many quarters. Hereford Road, Harrington Street, and Lembridge Square were being carefully watched. Madame Gabrielle and Aubert, the latter dressed in the guise of a seafarer, were on the alert, with dozens of other reliable agents, ready for anything at a moment’s notice.

Suddenly Aubert rang me up on the ’phone. I took up the receiver and spoke to him for a few moments.

“Meet me at the corner of Harrington Street at five o’clock,” I said.

We met in the grey light of dawn, and I soon learned that, with anything like reasonable good fortune, we had in our hands the opportunity for a great coup. Blind Heinrich had gone to the house soon after the “All clear” had been sounded. He had been followed by Mostyn Brown, again in the uniform of a special constable, and by five other men, one of whom was the little fat man who had previously met Kristensten at Waterloo.

Now I had made up my mind that the little fat man was the intermediary by whom the news collected by the other conspirators was conveyed abroad, and it was essential that he should be caught red-handed. Fortune had favoured us. He had been the first to leave the house, had walked to the Queen’s Road Underground Station, and, as we learnt by telephone, had travelled to King’s Cross. Here he was at present, seated in one of the waiting-rooms, evidently intending to travel by an early train.

Leaving the necessary instructions with regard to the conspirators still in the house in Harrington Street, I accompanied Aubert to King’s Cross. The little fat man was still there, but just after seven he walked to the booking-office and took a ticket for Peterborough. Just behind him in the queue of passengers were Aubert and myself.

When the express pulled out on its fast run to Peterborough—the first stopping-place—Aubert sat in the same carriage as the little fat man, apparently profoundly asleep. I was in the next compartment, ready for anything that might happen.

We were not much surprised when at Peterborough the little fat man remained in the train, and so we continued our journey. When tickets were examined, the little man paid excess fare to Newcastle, and my hopes of an important capture rose momentarily higher.

Hour after hour the express raced northward, and in the afternoon we came to smoky Newcastle, where we were to be the witnesses of a strange dénouement.

The little fat man, closely followed by Aubert and myself, made straight for the docks. Here, in haste, he boarded a steamer, one of a service which sailed regularly between Newcastle and Bergen. He was evidently known, for he was greeted without question by the men about the decks and promptly disappeared below. We followed, with several other passengers, and very soon I sat in the captain’s cabin, swiftly explaining to “the owner” what had happened, and my suspicion of the man who had just come on board with a freedom of movement which suggested that he was one of the crew.

Captain Jackson was one of the men who have done so much to make the North Sea service a model of everything that is implied in unswerving courage and loyal devotion to duty. A fine, bluff, grey-bearded skipper of the very best type, he cared not a rap for the peril of mines and submarines which dogged him at every yard of his journeys. All he cared for or respected was the Admiralty orders which gave him his chart through the ever-shifting mine-fields; with those and his crew he was ready to take his ship across to Norway and to defy the Huns to do their worst.

His face grew grave and iron-stern as he heard my story, and, loyal Englishman as he was, he instantly fell in with my suggestion for trapping the scoundrel who was bringing disgrace on the good name of all sailors by his infamous traffic with the agents of the enemy.

“George Humber is the name he goes by,” said Captain Jackson, referring to the man we had followed from Lembridge Square. “He says he is a Swede and has Swedish papers. Let your French friend go below and help. I’ll see to it.”

He called up the chief engineer, Andrew Phail, a dour, hard, bitter Scotchman, who had followed the sea for forty years and cared for nothing on earth but it and his beloved engines. If ever a man loved his machines it was Phail, and if ever a man was loved and trusted by his subordinates it was he. Hard though he was, his crew, with the sure instinct of the sailor, recognised his sterling qualities, and would have followed his lead through the worst storm that ever blew. Indeed, the — was emphatically what is known among sailormen as “a happy ship,” thanks to the captain and chief engineer, and I was not altogether surprised to learn that Humber was the only discordant note among the crew; for some reason the men disliked him, though he did his work well enough.

An hour later, having taken our mails on board, we dropped down the Tyne bound for Norway.