Number 70, Berlin Part 28

"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 d.a.m.ning 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 a.s.sure 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, b.u.t.toned his perfectly-fitting morning-coat, glanced at himself in the gla.s.s 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 doc.u.ments, 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 cla.s.s, 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."