William Le Queux

“ Every report we send to Berlin is noted; every report, however small and vague, is one step towards our great goal and final victory. The Allies may beat themselves against our steel and concrete ring, but they will never win. We sit tight. Our men sit in their comfortable dug-outs to wait—and to wait on until the Allies beat themselves out in sheer exhaustion. Our great invincible nation must win in this island, for one reason—because the German eagle has already gripped in her talons the very official heart of Great Britain herself. Our Kaiser Wilhelm is only William of Normandy over again. ”

“ Such, alas! was the British Intelligence Department—an organisation laughed at by the Secret Services of each of our Allies.
The folly of it all was really pathetic.
Jack Sainsbury knew much of this. He had, indeed, been, through Dr Jerome Jerrold, a friend of his, behind the scenes. Like all the world, he had read the optimistic, hide-the-truth newspapers. Often he had smiled in disbelief. Yet, on that afternoon, his worst fears had in a single instant been confirmed. He knew the volcano upon the edge of which Great Britain was seated.
What should he do? How should he act? ”

“ Lewin Rodwell went on, clenching his fist, “we are at war—a war the result of which no man can, as yet, foresee. But win we must—yet, if we are to win, we must still make the greatest sacrifices. We must expend our last shilling and our last drop of blood if victory is at last to be ours. Germany, the mighty country of the volte-face, with her blood-stained Kaiser at her head, has willed that Teuton ‘kultur’ shall crush modern civilisation beneath the heel of its jack-boot. ”

“ How the people born in society laugh at Tom, Dick and Harry, with their feminine folk, who, in our world of make-believe, are struggling and fighting with one another to be regarded by the world as geniuses. Money can bring everything—all the thousand attributes this world can give—all except breeding and brains.
Breed, even in the idiot, and brains in the pauper’s child, will always tell.
When Jack Sainsbury descended the steps into Fitzjohn’s Avenue and strode down the hill to Swiss Cottage station, he was full of grave and bitter thoughts. ”

“ Look what spies did in Belgium! Men who had lived in that country all their lives, believed to be Belgians and occupying high and responsible positions—men who were deeply respected, and whose loyalty was unquestioned—openly revealed themselves as spies of the Kaiser, and betrayed their friends the instant the Germans set foot on Belgian soil. All has long ago been prepared for an invasion of Great Britain, and when ‘the Day’ comes we shall, depend upon it, receive a very rude shock, for the same thing will certainly happen. ”

“ Is it really possible that this Lewin Rodwell, one of the most popular men in England, is a German agent?”
“If you dared to say so, the whole country would rise and kill you with ridicule,” remarked Jack Sainsbury. “Once the British public establishes a man as a patriot, their belief in him remains unshaken to the very end. This war is a war where spies and spying, treachery and double-dealing, play a far bigger part than the world ever dreams. Jerrold always declared to me that there were German spies in every department of the State, just as there are in France, in Russia, and in Italy. ”

“ If the truth had been realised when Lord Roberts started out to speak—and when the whole Government united to poke fun and heap ridicule upon the great Field-Marshal, who knew more of real warfare than the whole tangle of red-tape at Whitehall combined—then to-day thousands of brave men, the flower of our youth, who have laid down their lives in the trenches in Flanders, would have been alive to-day. ”

“ Upon the warrant was a distinct charge against the young man before him, and upon that charge he centred his hide-bound mind. It is always so easy to convict a suspect by one’s inner intuition. Had Jack Sainsbury been able to glance at the file of papers which had culminated in his conviction, he would have seen that only after Jerome Jerrold’s death had the charge of war-treason been brought against him. There was no charge of espionage, because, according to the Hague Convention, nobody can technically be charged as a spy unless the act of espionage is committed within the war zone. ”

“ In Germany’s long and patient preparation for the world-war, nothing in the way of espionage was too large, or too small for attention. The activity of her secret agents in Berlin had surely been an object-lesson to the world. Her spies swarmed in all cities, and in every village; her agents ranked among the leaders of social and commercial life, and among the sweepings and outcasts of great communities. The wealthiest of commercial men did not shrink from acting as her secret agents. ”

“ And I assert to-day, Mr Trustram, that we treat Germany as the ‘most-favoured nation,’ even though the flower of our land are being sacrificed by thousands and thousands upon the fields of Flanders. Yes, it is an outrageous scandal—a disgrace to our nation. As I said in a speech at Liverpool last week, we are daily being misled, misguided, and lured to our destruction. And for that reason,” the great man added—“for that reason I’m only too ready and anxious to help the Anti-Teuton Alliance in their splendid crusade against this canker-worm in England’s heart.” ”

“ Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were national heroes—men against whom no breath of suspicion as traitors had ever arisen. It was the habit of the day to laugh at any suspicion of Britain’s betrayal—an attitude which the Government had carefully cultivated ever since the outbreak of war. On that day the Chief of the Military Operations Department of the War Office—in other words our Secret Service—had been—for reasons which will one day be revealed—promoted and sent to the front, leaving the Department in the hands of others fresh to the work. ”

“ He is a bosom friend of Cabinet Ministers, and to him many secrets of State are confided. He, and his friend Sir Boyle Huntley, play golf with Ministers, and the name of Lewin Rodwell is everywhere to-day one to conjure with. He has, since the war, risen to be one of the most patriotic Englishmen—a man whose unselfish efforts are praised and admired from one end of Great Britain to another. Surely he would have become desperate if he had the least suspicion that Jerome Jerrold had discovered the truth, and intended to unmask him—as he had openly declared to you. ”

“ Think what would be the fate of your own women and children should the German army land upon these shores! The Germans did not hate the Belgians—they had no reason whatever to do so. But the hatred in Germany against the British race to-day amounts to a religion, and if ever the Germans come, depend upon it that the awful massacres in Belgium will be repeated with tenfold vigour, until the streets of every English town and village run red with the blood of your dearly-loved ones. Young men! ”

“ Hence nobody could be charged as a spy.
“Mr Sainsbury, I think there is nothing more to say to-night,” Tennant said at last. “It is growing late. I’ll see that your message is sent to Fitzjohn’s Avenue by telephone. They will see you in the morning regarding your defence. But—well, I confess that I’m sorry that you should have said so much as you have.”
“So much!” cried the young man furiously. “Here I am, arrested upon a false charge—accused of being a traitor to my country—and you regret that I dare to defend a man who is in his grave and cannot answer for himself! ”

“ The official account of the Battle of the Falklands in to-night’s papers is splendid reading. Sturdee gave Admiral von Spee a very nasty shock. I suppose we shall hear of some other naval successes in the North Sea soon—eh?”
Trustram hesitated for a few seconds. “Well, not just yet,” was his brief reply.
“Why do you say ‘not yet’?” he asked with a laugh. “Has the Admiralty some thrilling surprise in store for us? Your people are always so confoundedly mysterious.”
“We have to be discreet,” laughed Trustram. “In these days one never knows who is friend or foe.” ”

“ True, the British public will never be able to realise one hundredth part of what Germany has done by her spy-system, or of the great diplomatic and military successes which she has achieved by it. Yet we know enough to realise that for years no country and no walk of life—from the highest to the lowest—has been free from the ubiquitous, unscrupulous and unsuspected secret agents of whom Lewin Rodwell was a type. ”

“ Those two highly patriotic men, whose praises were being sung by every newspaper up and down the country; whose charitable efforts had brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds and hundreds of tons of comforts for our troops abroad; the two men whose photographs were in every journal, and whom the world regarded as fine typical specimens of the honest Briton, men who had raised their voices loudly against German barbarism and intrigue, were, Jack Sainsbury knew, wearing impenetrable masks. They were traitors! ”

“ Jack Sainsbury smiled.
“No, please don’t apologise, Mr Charlesworth,” he said, with a faint smile. “I daresay I shall soon find some other employment more congenial to me.”
“I hope so,” replied the manager, peering at the young man through his horn-rimmed glasses—a style affected in official circles. “Nowadays, with so many men at the front, it is not really a difficult matter to find a post in the City. It seems to me that the slacker has the best of it.”
“I’m not a slacker, though you may think I am, Mr Charlesworth,” cried Jack, reddening. ”

“ Take it home and read it for yourselves—read how those devilish hordes of the Kaiser invaded poor little law-abiding Belgium, and what they did when they got there. Murder, rape, arson and pillage began from the first moment when the German army crossed the frontier. Soldiers had their eyes gouged out, men were murdered treacherously and given poisoned food. Those fiends in grey killed civilians upon a scale without any parallel in modern warfare between civilised Powers. ”

“ Can it be true, Sir Houston? Do you really think it is true?”
“No, I don’t,” was the prompt, straightforward answer. “Nothing will ever cause me to suspect Sainsbury to be guilty of espionage. He’s far too good an Englishman to accept German gold.”
“Then you believe him to be innocent!” cried the girl, her fair countenance brightening with a ray of hope.
“Yes, I do. He’s the victim of some dastardly plot. That’s my firm belief. And yet it is so strange that his friend Jerrold committed suicide.”
“But was Dr Jerrold a spy? That is the question!” ”

“ He mustn’t, for a single moment, suspect the reason of his dismissal.”
Lewin Rodwell reflected for a second, and then, as though in his active, clever brain a sudden suggestion had arisen, he laughed and replied:
“There are more ways than one by which to crush an enemy, my dear Boyle—as you yourself know. Leave all to me, and I can guarantee that we shall have nothing to fear from this young prig, Sainsbury. So set your mind at ease at once over it.”
“Very well, Lewin. I know how clever you always are in avoiding trouble,” laughed Sir Boyle Huntley. ”

“ Alas! that we always judge a man by his coat, his cook, his smiles and his glib speeches. Put a dress-suit upon the biggest scoundrel who ever stood in the dock at the Old Bailey—from Smith who murdered his brides in baths downwards—and he would pass as what the world calls “a gentleman.”
One evening in December—the ninth, to be exact—there had been a big dinner-party at Sir Boyle’s, in Berkeley Square, and afterwards Trustram had accompanied Rodwell home to Bruton Street in a taxi for a smoke. ”

“ Therefore, at the meeting, I intend to warn the Government that if some strong measure is not adopted, and at once, the people themselves will rise and take matters into their own hands. There’ll be rioting soon, if something is not done—that’s my firm conviction,” and in his dark eyes was a keen, earnest look, as he waved his white hand emphatically. Truly, Lewin Rodwell was a clever actor, and the line he had taken was, surely, sufficiently bold to remove from him any suspicion of German birth, or of double-dealing.
“Yes, I quite agree,” declared Trustram enthusiastically. ”

“ Later that same evening Jack, who had walked down Fitzjohn’s Avenue to Mr Shearman’s, as was his habit, found Elise’s father at home.
Though old Dan Shearman, a hale, bluff North-country man, rather liked young Sainsbury, yet, at heart, he would have preferred a man of established prosperity as his daughter’s husband—a manufacturer like himself, or a professional man with a good paying practice. Dan Shearman—as everybody called him in Birmingham—was a practical man, and had made a fortune by dint of hard toil and strict economy. ”

“ Certainly those who come after us would never forgive us—you and I—those who, if born into a Germanised world and held under the iron yoke of barbaric ‘Kultur,’ looked back to our conduct of the war that sealed their fate and found that, besides supplying the enemy with war material—cotton and the like—we actually harboured Germans in our camp and gave them knowledge, power and position vital to the enemy’s success. ”

“ The two men could not raise a protest. They knew, alas! that the words the young man had spoken were the actual and ghastly truth.
“Well,” he went on, looking at his visitors, “we know what is in progress—or at least we have the strongest suspicion of it. Now, what decision have you both arrived at? What, in the interests of the safety of the Empire, shall we do?”
Trustram shrugged his shoulders blankly, while Sir Houston drew a long breath.
Neither man replied. What could they do, save to warn the War Office, who they knew would probably turn a deaf ear to all their suspicions? ”

“ The trio were discussing the situation, when Jack Sainsbury exclaimed:
“And yet the public will not believe that there are spies amongst us—even in face of daily events of incendiary fires, of submarine outrages, and of spies who, arriving with American passports, are watched, arrested, and executed at the Tower of London.”
“True?” cried Trustram. “I agree entirely with all you say. Shall we act—or shall we join in the saliva of sweetness and raise the chorus that the Germans are, after all, dear good people?”
“Never!” exclaimed Sir Houston fiercely. “Jerrold knew, and he died mysteriously. ”