Number 70, Berlin: A Story of Britain's Peril

“Yes: I won’t be seen,” and returning to the stuffy little room, he reopened the cable instruments and soon got into communication with Stendel, in order to pass away the time which he knew must hang heavily upon his hands, for even then it was not yet nine o’clock in the morning.

He sat smoking and gossiping with the old fisherman nearly all the day, impatient for the coming of darkness, for his imprisonment there was already becoming irksome.

It grew dusk early when, about four o’clock, a footstep outside caused them both to start and listen. In answer to the summons at the door Tom went, and was handed a telegram by the boy messenger from Huttoft.

Opening it, he found it had been despatched from London, and read:

“Impossible to leave till to-morrow. – M.”

He gave it to Rodwell, who at once saw that the woman he expected had been delayed. Probably she had not yet been able to gather that important information which was wanted so urgently in Berlin.

The telegram puzzled him. Was it possible that the arrangements which he had made with such cunning and forethought, and had left to Molly to carry out, had broken down after all?

Lewin Rodwell bit his lip, and wondered. He seemed that day beset by misfortune, for when at five o’clock, Ted having returned, he tested the cable as usual, a call came through from Berlin.

Rodwell answered it, whereupon “Number 70” flashed the following message beneath the sea.

“Your information of this morning regarding troop-ships leaving Plymouth for Dardanelles is incorrect. Desborough was torpedoed off Canary Islands on January 18th, and Ellenborough is in dry dock in Belfast. Source of your report evidently unreliable.”

Rodwell read the words upon the long green tape as it slowly unwound, and sat staring at them like a man in a dream.

Chapter Nineteen.
Days of Darkness

On the same afternoon that Lewin Rodwell was stretching himself, impatient and somewhat nervous, in the lonely little house on the beach, Elise Shearman, pale and apprehensive, was seated in Sir Houston Bird’s consulting-room in Cavendish Square.

The spruce, young-looking pathologist, clean-shaven and grave, with hair streaked with grey, was listening intently to the girl’s words. It was her second visit to him that day. In his waiting-room were half a dozen persons who had come to consult him, but the blue-eyed young lady had been ushered straight into the sanctum of the great Home Office expert.

“Curious! Very curious!” he remarked as he listened to her. “That anonymous letter you brought this morning I have already taken to Whitehall. The whole affair seems a complete mystery, Miss Shearman. No doubt the charge against young Sainsbury is a very serious one, but that you should have been given warning is most strange. Since I saw you this morning I’ve had a visit from Mr Trustram, whom I called up on the ’phone, and we have had a long consultation.”

“What is your opinion?” she asked breathlessly.

“Will you forgive me, Miss Shearman if, for the present, I refrain from answering that question?” asked the great doctor, with a smile. He was sitting at his table with one elbow resting upon it and half turned towards her, as was his habit when diagnosing a case. The room was small, old-fashioned, and depressingly sombre in the gloom of the wintry afternoon.

“But do you think Jack will ever clear himself of these horrible charges?” she asked, pale and anxious.

“I hope so. But at present I can give no definite opinion.”

“But if he can’t, he’ll go to penal servitude!” cried the girl. “Ah! how I have suffered since his arrest! Father will hear no word in his favour. He daily tells me that Jack is a spy of Germany, and as such deserves full punishment.”

“Mr Trustram has found out from the War Office that his trial by court-martial begins at the Old Bailey to-morrow.”

“Yes, I know. Mr Pelham, his counsel, called on me just after lunch, and told me so,” said the girl tearfully. “But oh! he seemed so hopeless of the result. The prosecution, he said, would bring forward the most damning evidence against him. 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!”

“It seems quite true that a warrant had been issued for his arrest upon a charge of war-treason,” Sir Houston replied. “Why didn’t he try and face it?”

The girl, pale and agitated, sat in silence, her gloved hands lying idly on her lap before her. Those awful weeks of anxiety had left traces upon her face, now thin and worn. And she felt that her lover’s fate was sealed unless he could clear himself. In desperation she had sought the great doctor, and he had been most thoughtful and sympathetic.

“I think,” he went on in a kindly voice, “I think it would be best, Miss Shearman, if you went home, and remained there in patience. You know that Mr Pelham is a sharp lawyer, and, being quite alive to the seriousness of the situation, he will do his very utmost for his client. Go quietly home, and await the result of our combined efforts,” he urged sympathetically. “I am meeting Mr Trustram again at five o’clock. Believe me, Mr Trustram is not inactive, while I, too, am doing my level best in your lover’s interests.”

“Oh! thank you,” cried the girl, tears standing in her fine blue eyes. “You are both so good! I – I don’t know how to thank you both,” and, unable to further restrain her emotion, she suddenly burst into tears.

Quickly he rose and, placing his hand tenderly upon her shoulder, he uttered kind and sympathetic words, by which she was at length calmed; and presently she rose and left the room, Sir Houston promising to report to her on the morrow.

“Now, don’t alarm yourself unduly,” was his parting injunction. “Just remain quite calm and patient, for I assure you that all that can be done will be done, and is, indeed, being done.”

And then, when the door had closed, the great pathologist drew his hand wearily across his white brow, sighed, buttoned his perfectly-fitting morning-coat, glanced at himself in the glass to see that his hair was unruffled – for he was a bit of a dandy – and then pressed the bell for his next patient.

Meanwhile, Charles Trustram was working in his big airy private room at the Admiralty. Many men in naval uniform were ever coming and going, for his room was always the scene of great, but quiet, orderly activity.

At his big table he was examining documents, signing some, dictating letters to his secretary, and discussing matters put forward by the officials who brought him papers to read and initial.

Presently there entered a lieutenant with a pale yellow naval signal-form, upon which was written a long message from the wireless department.

Those long, spidery aerial wires suspended between the domes at the Admiralty, had caught and intercepted a German message sent out from Norddeich, the big German station at the mouth of the Elbe, to Pola, on the Adriatic. It had been in code, of course, but in the department it had been de-coded; and the enemy’s message, as the officer placed it before him, was a truly illuminating one.

“I think this is what you wanted,” said the lieutenant, as he placed the paper before him. “It came in an hour ago, but they’ve found great difficulty in decoding it. That is what you meant – is it not?”

“Good Heavens! Yes!” cried Trustram, starting to his feet. “Why, here the information has been sent to Austria for re-transmission to the German submarines – the exact information I gave of transports leaving for the Dardanelles! The Ellenborough and Desborough are not mentioned. That shows the extent of their intimate knowledge of the movements of our ships. But you see,” he went on, pointing to the message, “the Cardigan, Leatherhead and Turleigh are all mentioned as having left Southampton escorted to Gibraltar, and not beyond, and further, that in future all drafts will embark at Plymouth – just the very information that I gave!”

“Yes; I quite see. There must be somewhere a very rapid and secret channel for the transit of information to Germany.”

“Yes, and we have to find that out, without further delay,” Trustram replied. “But,” he added, “this has fixed the responsibility undoubtedly. Is Captain Weardale in his room?”

“He was, when I came along to you.”

Trustram thanked him, and, a few moments later, was walking down one of the long corridors in the new building of the Admiralty overlooking St. James’s Park, bearing the deciphered dispatch from the enemy in his hand.

“The artful skunk!” he muttered to himself. “Who would have credited such a thing! But it’s that confounded woman, I suppose – the woman of whom poor Jerrold entertained such grave suspicions. What is the secret of it all, I wonder? I’ll find out – if it costs me my life! How fortunate that I should have suspected, and been able to test the leakage of information, as I have done!”

Just before midnight a rather hollow-eyed, well-dressed young man was seated in Mrs Kirby’s pretty little drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens. The dark plush curtains were drawn, and against them the big bowl of daffodils stood out in all their artistic beauty beneath the electric-light. His hostess was elaborately dressed, as was her wont, yet with a quiet, subdued taste which gave her an almost aristocratic air. She posed as a giddy bridge-player, a theatre and night-club goer; a woman who smoked, who was careless of what people thought, and who took drugs secretly. That, however, was only her mask. Really she was a most careful, abstemious, level-headed woman, whose eye was always directed towards the main chance of obtaining information which might be of use to her friend Lewin Rodwell, and his masters abroad.

Both were German-born. The trail of the Hun was over them – that Teuton taint of a hopeful world-power which, being inborn, could never be eradicated.

“Well?” she was asking, as she lolled artistically in the silk-covered easy chair in her pretty room, upholstered in carnation pink. “So you can’t see him till to-morrow? That’s horribly unfortunate. I’m very disappointed,” she added pettishly.

“No,” replied the young man, who, fair-haired and square-jawed, was of distinctly German type. “I’m sorry. I tried my best, but I failed.”

“H’m. I thought you were clever enough, Carl. But it seems that you failed,” and she sighed wearily.

“You know, Molly, I’d do anything for you,” replied the young fellow, who was evidently of quite superior class, for he wore his well-cut evening coat and soft-fronted dress-shirt with the ease of one accustomed to such things. And, if the truth were told, he would have been recognised by any of the clerks in the bureau of the Savoy Hotel as one of their most regular customers at dinner or supper.

“I know that, Carl,” replied the handsome woman impatiently. “But, you see, I had made all my arrangements. The information is wanted hourly in Berlin. It is most urgent.”

“Well, they’ll have to wait, my dear Molly. If I can’t get it till to-morrow – I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, what’s the good of explaining? Heinrich has gone off down to Brighton with a little friend of his – that’s all. He’s motored her down to the Metropole, and won’t be back till to-morrow. How, in Heaven’s name, can I help it?”

“I don’t suppose you can, my dear boy,” laughed the big, overbearing woman, who held the son of the “naturalised” German financier in the grip of her white, bejewelled fingers. “But, all the same, we have both to remember our duty to the Fatherland. We are at war.”

“True! And haven’t I helped the Fatherland? Was it not from information given by me that you knew the truth of the blowing up of the battleship Bulwark off Sheerness, and of the loss of the Formidable on New Year’s day? Have I and my friends in Jermyn Street been inactive?”

“No, you haven’t. Our dear Fatherland owes you and your friends a deep debt of gratitude. But – Well, I tell you, I’m annoyed because my plans have been upset by your failure to-day.”

“Rodwell’s plans, you mean! Not yours!” cried the young fellow, his jealousy apparent.

“No, not at all. I don’t see why you should so constantly refer to Mr Rodwell. He is our superior, as you know, and in its wisdom Number Seventy has placed him in supreme command.”

“Then why do you complain of my failure?” protested the young man viciously, placing his cigarette-end in the silver ash-tray.

“I don’t. I only tell you that it has upset my personal plans. I had hoped to get away down to Torquay to-morrow. I must have a change. I’m run down.”

“One day does not matter, surely, when our national interests are at stake!”

“Of course not, silly boy,” laughed the woman. She saw that she was not treating him with tact, and knew his exact value. “Don’t let us discuss it any further. See what you can do to-morrow.”

“I’ll compel Heinrich to get at what we want,” cried Carl Berenstein – whose father had, since the war, changed his name, with the consent of the Home Office, of course, to Burton. “I’m as savage as you are that he should prefer to motor a girl to Brighton. But what can I do?”

“Nothing, my dear boy. The girl will always win. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you will understand.”

“Then you don’t blame me – do you?” asked the young man, eagerly.

“Why, of course, not at all, my dear Carl. Heinrich’s a fool to be attracted by any petticoat. There are always so many better.”

“As long as you don’t blame me, Molly, I don’t care. The guv’nor is as wild as I am about it.”

“Oh, never mind. Get hold of him when he comes back, and come here as soon as possible and tell me. Remember that Number Seventy is thirsting for information.”

“Yes, I will. Rely on me. We are good Germans, all of us. These silly swelled-headed fools of English are only playing into our hands. They have no idea of what they will have to face later on. Ach! I only wish I were back again in the dear Rhineland with my friends, who are now officers serving at the front. But this British bubble cannot last. It must soon be pricked. And its result must be disastrous.”

“We hope so. We can’t tell. But, there, don’t let us discuss it. We are out to win the war. This matter I leave to you, good Germans that you and Heinrich are, to make your report.”

“Good. I will be here to-morrow evening, when I hope I shall have everything quite clear and precise. There is to be a big movement of troops to France the day after to-morrow, and I hope to give you a list of the names of all the regiments, with their destinations. You know, I suppose, that three parts of the cartridges they are making at the G – factory will, in a month’s time, when they get to the front, be useless?”

“So Mr Rodwell told me, a couple of days ago. Herzfelder is evidently doing good work there; but it is not a matter even to whisper about. It might leak out, and tests might be made.”

Then, having drained off the whisky-and-soda which his hostess had poured out for him, he rose, shook her hand warmly, saying, “I’ll be here as early as possible to-morrow night. Good-bye, Molly,” and strode out.

And the maid showed the young man to the door of the flat, while Mrs Kirby cast herself into a low lounge-chair before the fire, lit a cigarette, and, with her eyes fixed thoughtfully upon the flames, smoked furiously.

Chapter Twenty.
Told at Dawn

Again the grey dawn was breaking over the chill North Sea – a wild, tempestuous morning.

On the far horizon northward, a steamer had just appeared, leaving behind a long trail of black smoke, but over the great expanse of storm-tossed waters which broke heavily upon the beach there was no sign of any other craft.

Thirty-six hours had passed since the young German who called himself Burton, but whose real name was Berenstein, had sat in Mrs Kirby’s drawing-room discussing the faulty ammunition being made at the works at G – . Twelve hours before, namely, at six o’clock on the previous evening, the court-martial sitting at the Old Bailey had concluded the hearing of the grave case of espionage brought against young Sainsbury. The evidence – some of the most damning evidence ever brought before a court-martial – had been given, and Mr Pelham his counsel had made his speech for the defence. Sentence had been postponed, in order that the whole of the facts should be considered by the military authorities. The trial having taken place in camera, not a word had leaked out to the newspapers, therefore the public were in ignorance of the young man’s arrest, still more so of the grave offence with which he had been charged.

Elise knew what had happened. She had sat outside the court, in the big stone hall upstairs, where a kindly usher had given her a brief résumé of the proceedings. Indeed, through the glass door she had been able to get a momentary peep of her lover as he had stood in the dock, pale and erect, defiant of his accusers.

When the court rose, she had returned to Fitzjohn’s Avenue in a taxicab, sobbing and broken-hearted.

On arriving home she had rung up Sir Houston Bird on the telephone, but his man had answered saying that he had been called out suddenly, and had not returned. Therefore she went to her room and there gave way to a paroxysm of grief. It was over. Jack had been found guilty!

In the grey light of dawn, Lewin Rodwell was seated in the stuffy, little room in Tom Small’s cottage, his hand upon the telegraph-key, clicking out rapidly a message to Berlin.

At his side sat his accomplice, Mrs Kirby, in a heavy fur motor-coat with toque to match, for she had been all night on the road with Penney, who, having dropped her quite near, had turned the car and gone back into Horncastle to wait until the following evening.

The woman had been engaged writing, by the light of the petrol lamp, a long message since her arrival an hour before, while it was still dark; and it was this – a detailed report of the movements of troops to the front in Flanders, which young Burton had obtained for her – that Rodwell was engaged in transmitting.

Without speaking the spy sat, his left elbow upon the table, with his brow upon his palm while, with his right hand, he tapped away quickly with the rapid touch of the expert telegraphist.

“What a wretched little place!” the woman remarked at last, gazing around the narrow little bedroom. “How horribly close and stuffy!”

“Yes, and you’d find it so, if you’d been here a prisoner for three days and nights, as I have, Molly,” her companion laughed, still continuing to transmit the information for which Number Seventy had asked so constantly. The German General Staff were anxious to ascertain what strength of reinforcements we were sending to our line near Ypres.

Suddenly Rodwell shouted for Ted; but the woman, passing into the living-room, calling for young Small, and receiving no reply, remarked: “I believe they both went out down on the beach, to the boat, a moment ago. Do you want him?”

“Only to tell him to get some breakfast. You must be fagged out after your journey,” he said, still working the cable without a pause. “How cold and draughty this house is!” he said. “I shall be glad when night comes again, and we can get away. I mean to give this place a rest for a month. I’m afraid it’s getting just a bit unhealthy for me. Come in, and shut the door, Molly. I’m nearly blown out, with that door open,” he complained.

Then, after she had re-entered the room and closed the door, he soon gave the signal “end of message,” and paused for the acknowledgment.

It came without delay. A few rapid clicks, and then all was still again – a silence save for the howl of the wind and the monotonous roar of the great breakers rolling in upon the beach outside.

“Well, Molly,” the man said, as he lit a cigarette, and seated himself on the edge of the little old-fashioned bed, “we’ll have to stay in here, I suppose, till it’s dark. Small doesn’t like it known that he has visitors. What time did you order Penney?”

“I told him to be at the place where he usually drops you at eight o’clock.”

“Excellent. I wonder where Ted is? I want my breakfast badly.”

“He said something about going down to the boat to get some fish for you.”

“Ah! of course. They went out in the night. I forgot,” he said.

Then, after a pause, the woman exclaimed —

“Is there no possibility of getting away from here before night? I don’t like the black looks which Small and his son gave me, Lewin.”

“Black looks! Oh, that’s nothing. I’m always putting the screw on them. Besides, Ted got to know from Stendel – who chatted to him over the wire one day – all about the Scarborough raid. So, naturally, he’s antagonistic.”

“But he might betray us, you know.”

“He’ll never do that, depend upon it. He knows that his own neck would be in danger if he did so. So rest quite assured about that.” Then, after a few moments’ silence, he added: “I wonder when we shall get that young Sainsbury out of the way. He’s the greatest source of danger that we have.”

“I thought your idea was that nobody would believe him, whatever he alleged against you?” asked the woman.

“That’s so. But we have now to count with Trustram. If he wilfully deceived me regarding those two transports leaving Plymouth, then he certainly suspects. And if he suspects, his suspicions may lead him in the direction of Sainsbury – see?”

“Yes. I quite see. You scent a further danger!”

“No, not exactly,” was his vague reply, an evil smile upon his lips. “With the exercise of due precaution we need have nothing to fear – as long as Sainsbury’s mouth is closed by the law – as it must be in a day or two.”

“But you don’t mean to come down here again for some time, do you?”

“No. For the next week or two we must trust to other channels of transmission – Schuette’s wireless at Sydenham, perhaps, though that’s far from satisfactory.”

“Hark!” exclaimed the woman, as they heard someone at the outer door. Both listened. There was a grating sound like that of a key – as though the door was being unlocked.

This surprised them, and they exchanged inquiring glances.

There was a sound of heavy footsteps, causing them both to hold their breath.

Next instant the door of the bedroom was unceremoniously flung open, revealing upon the threshold two burly men in hard felt hats and overcoats presenting service revolvers at them.

It was a striking scene.

The woman screamed loudly, but the man, who had sprung to his feet to find himself thus cornered, stood firm, his face blanched, and his eyebrows contracted.

“And pray what’s the meaning of all this?” he demanded, in hoarse defiance.

A second later, however, he saw that behind the two men who entered the room to place himself and his companion under arrest, were three other persons. One was a naval officer in uniform, evidently from the Admiralty Intelligence Department, while the other two were men well-known to him – namely, Sir Houston Bird and Charles Trustram.

“Your clever game is up, Mr Rodwell!” exclaimed Trustram, entering the room with the naval captain, whose gaze fell at once upon the telegraph instruments mounted on the old sewing-machine in the corner.

“Yes,” exclaimed the officer. “And a pretty big game it seems to have been – eh? So you’ve been working a cable across to Germany, have you? We’ve had suspicion that the cable laid to Wangeroog might have had a second shore-end, and, indeed, we started dredging for it off the Spurn only two days ago.”

“Mr Rodwell,” said Trustram, addressing him, as the two detectives were searching him for firearms: “You thought you were very clever. You betrayed me once, but I took very good care that all the information I gave you afterwards should be such as you would work for England’s advantage, and not for yours. In one case last week, when your masters acted upon my information, we were able to bag six of your submarines in the Straits of Dover within forty-eight hours. So you see my game was a double one,” he added, with a smile of satisfaction.

Rodwell was so nonplussed at thus being caught red-handed, that he could utter no reply. All his bluff and defiance had left him, and he stood white, inert, with a look of abject shame and terror upon his changed countenance.

As for the woman, she gave vent to a torrent of bitter vituperation. But nobody noticed her; she had, like poor old Tom Small and his son, been simply tools of that unscrupulous and clever master-spy in whose stirring patriotism all England was believing, but who had at last fallen into the trap which Charles Trustram had so cunningly prepared for him – a trap in which the confirmation of his traitorous act had actually been made by the enemy’s unseen wireless rays.

Sir Houston said little, except to remark that no doubt Lewin Rodwell’s arrest would put a new complexion upon the case against John Sainsbury, and result, he hoped, in breaking up the activity of the enemy in our midst.

Of much that followed the public are already aware.

The newspapers, however, merely reported that Mr Lewin Rodwell, who had been a most popular speaker at recruiting meetings, who had been a well-known city financier, and a power in the social and political world of London, had died suddenly in a motor-car in the Brixton Road. The Censor, however, suppressed the facts that he had been in the custody of two officers of the Special Department of New Scotland Yard when the tragic occurrence happened, and that he had succeeded in swallowing a tabloid that he had carried concealed in his handkerchief in case of necessity, while being conveyed to Brixton Prison on a charge of espionage.

The public knew, of course, that an unnamed woman was under arrest for acts of war-treason and, later, that she had been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. They also knew that Jack Sainsbury had been mysteriously and suddenly released by a Home Office order, after having been tried and convicted by court-martial; but the true story of the evil machinations of Ludwig Heitzman, alias Lewin Rodwell, and how he had succeeded in bringing such indisputable evidence against an innocent man, is here revealed for the first time in the foregoing pages.

On the evening of Lewin Rodwell’s well-deserved, but cowardly end – the evening of the day of his arrest – Sir Boyle Huntley disappeared from London to the Continent, and was never again seen.

On that same night, too, at ten o’clock, there was a little assembly in Sir Houston Bird’s consulting-room in Cavendish Square. Jack and his fiancée were standing happily reunited and arm in arm, while Charles Trustram and Sir Houston were also present. It was then that Trustram decided to hand over the note which poor Dr Jerrold had left for his friend on the fatal night before he took his own life.

Jack broke the seals, and slowly taking out the brief letter, read it, his lips contracting as he realised its contents. Then he handed it from one to the other until they had all read it.

The confession, for such it was, showed how Jerrold had, like old Small – who, by the way, was forgiven, for the assistance he had in the end rendered to the authorities – first been inveigled into the net spread by a moneylender, and having been forced to perform a small traitorous though unsuspected act three years before the outbreak of war, had, in order to extricate himself from financial ruin, been constantly threatened with exposure by Rodwell if he refused to further help the enemy, now that we were at war. He had steadfastly defied the master-spy, and had, indeed, in order to retrieve his past, boldly sought out spies and denounced them. But, alas! Rodwell’s widespread influence in the network of espionage asserted itself, and into the hands of the Intelligence Department there had been placed the facts, with the proofs of his action three years before. A warrant had consequently been issued, and rather than bear the blackmail longer, or the punishment, he had been driven to take his own life, and thus unfortunately give colour to the base, unfounded charges levelled against his friend.

Then, when the lovers knew the truth – and that the anonymous letter of warning had been sent by the woman Kirby in order to mystify them and thus strengthen Rodwell’s hand – Jack, heedless of their two friends being present, turned and kissed his well-beloved fondly upon the lips.

He saw that her big blue eyes were dimmed by tears of joy, and then he said, his voice trembling with emotion:

“At last, my darling, I am free – free to love and to marry you – free at last of that terrible stigma placed so cleverly and wilfully upon me by that mean, despicable coward, who was both spy and blackmailer.”

“Yes, Jack dear,” whispered the girl softly, as she raised her ready lips to those of her lover – “yes, you are free, and moreover we now love each other far better than ever we did, for our affection has been tried – tried and proven in the fire of the hatred of ‘Number Seventy Berlin.’”