William Le Queux

“ 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. ”

“ It was not until her trial by court-martial, in Milan, two weeks later, that the Marchesa learned, from the evidence given by Madame Gabrielle and myself, the truth of Carlo Corradini’s terrible vengeance—a long-nurtured grievance that he had held against her ever since those days in Budapest, when, on proposing to her, she had laughed him to scorn, and had actually told people of his poverty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We know perfectly well that Madame Bohman has been to Lisbon—she herself makes no secret whatever of the fact, and she may very well have brought away by accident a sheet of the hotel notepaper and a couple of envelopes. It is true she seems friendly with both men, and there is undoubtedly some suspicion. But is it sufficient to justify action on our part, or even to give us good reason for staying here and devoting to a very trivial matter valuable time which at the moment we might be spending to much greater advantage in Paris? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am here, in Sarzana, upon a secret mission—in order to speak with you.”
“Why?”
“Well,”—as he paused he looked the young wife of the Italian Admiral full in the face—“well, because, though your country is at war with Italy to-day, Austria has still friends in Italy, just as Germany has.”
“Ah! This war is all so horrible,” declared the Marchesa, with a slight shudder. “You Italians hate every Austrian with a fierce and deadly hatred.”
“Pardon me, my dear Elena, but you Austrians hate us just as fiercely,” he laughed. “Where is Guilio?” ”

“ But the merry, go-ahead little Frenchwoman had her suspicions very thoroughly aroused, and I knew well that when this was the case it was not an easy task to allay them.
“I do not care, mon cher Gerald! There is evil work in progress, somewhere; I am confident. Why should Thornton be acquainted or have anything to do with our arch-enemy, Ernst Halbmayr? Remember how cleverly he escaped you six months ago in Rotterdam!”
“But we trapped the woman,” I rejoined grimly. “And there was a firing party at Versailles.”
“And there is somebody to be trapped here also,” persisted Madame Gabrielle. ”

“ The hours seemed like years as the guilty woman sat alone in her magnificent, old-world salon, pale, startled, and nervous. Upon her left hand she wore a white glove. She had worn it ever since the previous evening, and the reason had greatly perturbed her.
At last, at nearly ten o’clock that night, her husband returned, hard-faced and haggard. With him was his chief of staff, Captain Vivarini, Madame Gabrielle, and myself. The instant we entered the room she saw that Guilio was not his old self. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I see you have mastered the essentials,” said Hecq approvingly. “Now Cauvin and all his friends are under the strictest surveillance; the question is how we are to secure evidence to convict him of the espionage he is undoubtedly concerned in. We can arrest him, of course, at any moment; he has no chance whatever of getting away. Every letter he sends or receives is opened and photographed, yet, up to the present, he has been too clever for us. If he were put on trial for espionage to-morrow, not even his friendship with Miassoyedeff would prevent him from being acquitted. ”

“ Aubert’s news told me that our Hun antagonists must have some very big plan in hand. Even the most desperate of spies draws the line at murder, unless he finds himself in an impasse with no other way out. This is not, of course, from any special reluctance to taking the life of an enemy, but simply as a matter of self-preservation. For we are so peculiarly constituted that we tolerate calmly the work of pestiferous agents whose activities are a greater peril to the community than a dozen murders would be, while the killing of a single man brings a hornets’ nest about the murderer’s ears. ”

“ For I had quite obviously dropped right on to the submarine supply-base, the existence of which had for months been a practical certainty. And, further, I had discovered the identity of “Fontan,” the German spy who was acting as the “post office” of the U-boats, and supplying them with all necessaries. It now remained only to smoke out the pirates’ nest and destroy the whole brood!
That cryptic telegram which was delivered to me at the Ezcurra in San Sebastian had been sent to Bernhard—in the name of Fontan—at the poste restante in San Sebastian and called for by the “Italian.” ”

“ And it was well that I did, for I recognised him instantly as Emil Brahe, a German agent of whom we had lost sight for some time. He had formerly been engaged on the Continent and was well known to our men, though of late years he seemed to have dropped out of active work, and we had lost sight of him altogether. I realised now that we had been cleverly tricked: we had believed him to belong to the Berlin branch, while all the time he was living quietly in England, where he did no “business” whatever, and was thus never suspected even by the astute men of the Special Branch. ”

“ There could be only one end to such a fight. Almost simultaneously the third shot of the Athabasca and our first rang out, and both shells found their mark. One struck the conning-tower fair and square, blowing it clean away; the other crashed into the upper part of the hull, tearing a huge gap, and in a few seconds the enemy vessel had sunk with all hands, leaving only a flood of oil on the heaving surface of the sea to show where she had disappeared.
Next day I was on the Sud Express for Paris, while Madame Gabrielle, whom I had recalled by wire, followed me a few hours later. ”

“ 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! ”

“ And the key to the whole problem was the mysterious advertisement for a lost trinket in the Petit Parisien. That simple advertisement, so apparently innocent, had announced to Blind Heinrich the enemy’s change of code! And without the book to which it referred no intelligence on earth could have deciphered the disorderly mass of figures which lay before our eyes!
“Well, I think we have got them now, Captain,” I said, “and I am sure the Government will be deeply obliged to you for your assistance. But how am I going to get this fellow? If he lands in Norway he will be out of our power.” ”

“ Carlo Corradini grinned very mysteriously.
“Well—I was in Vienna three weeks ago—that is all.”
“You in Vienna!” she gasped. “Are you, then, a friend of my country?” she asked, in a low, hoarse whisper.
“Why, of course,” he replied. “You are Austrian in all but name. I am a born Italian, but—well, I am a friend of Austria.”
“A well-paid friend—eh?”
“Yes, just as you may be—if you will. The Count is still your friend, and he greatly admires you. It is his one regret that you preferred the Marchese Guilio. He is a good fellow is the Count. ”

“ I am a cosmopolitan, the subject of no country, though through my parents my sympathies are more English than anything else. British when in England, I am a Frenchman in France, an Italian in Italy; I can be a German in Germany, or a Spaniard in Spain. The explanation is, of course, that I have led a wandering life, being of almost every nationality by turn and nothing for long. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thornton would have passed for an Englishman anywhere, both in looks and language. He was perfectly dressed in clothes unmistakably British in cut, and spoke the language to perfection. This, however, was hardly surprising, for, as we learned afterwards, he had lived in London ever since he was fourteen. He had, however, been brought up in circles which were virulently anti-British, and had absorbed to the fullest extent that poisonous hatred of everything English which so frequently displays itself in the Hun who has made England his home of convenience. ”

“ 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. ”