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

Slimy and covered with weeds and barnacles, that strategic cable had been submerged and lay there, unsuspected, ready for “the Day,” for, truth to tell, the Spurn Head-Wangeroog cable had possessed a double shore-end, one of which had been landed upon British soil, while the other had been flung overboard from the German cable-ship four miles from land, while old Tom Small and his son had been established on shore in readiness to perform their part in dredging it up and landing it when required.

So completely and carefully had Germany’s plans been laid for war that Small, once an honest British fisherman, had unsuspectingly fallen into the hands of a certain moneylender in Hull, who had first pressed him, and had afterwards shown him an easy way out of his financial difficulties; that way being to secretly accept the gift of a small trawler, on condition that, any time his services were required by a strange gentleman who would come down from London and bring him instructions, he would faithfully carry them out.

In the middle of the month of August 1914 the mysterious gentleman had arrived, showed him a marked chart of the sea beyond the five-fathoms line at the Sand Haile, and had given him certain instructions, which he had been forced to carry out.

Not without great difficulty had the second shore-end of the cable been brought ashore at night just opposite his cottage, and dug into the sand at low water, the end being afterwards carried into the little bedroom in the cottage, where, a few days before, several heavy boxes had arrived – boxes which old Tom afterwards saw contained a quantity of electric batteries and weird-looking apparatus.

It was then that Lewin Rodwell arrived for the first time, and, among other accomplishments, being a trained telegraph electrician, he had set the instruments up upon the unsuspicious-looking stand of the big old sewing-machine.

Small, who daily realised and regretted the crafty machinations of the enemy in entrapping him by means of the moneylender in Hull, was inclined to go to the police, confess, and expose the whole affair.

Rodwell, with his shrewd intuition, knew this, and in consequence treated father and son with very little consideration.

Even as he stood in the room that night fingering the secret instruments, which he had just revealed by lifting the cover, he turned to the weatherbeaten old man and said, in a hard, sarcastic voice:

“You see the war is lasting longer than you expected, Small – isn’t it? I suppose you’ve seen all that silly nonsense in the papers about Germany being already at the end of her tether? Don’t you believe it. In a year’s time we shall have only just started.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the old fellow, in a thick voice. “But – well, sir, I – I tell you frankly, I’m growing a bit nervous. Mr Judd, from the Chapel Point coastguard, came ’ere twice last week and sat with me smokin’, as if he were a-tryin’ to pump me.”

“Nervous, be hanged, Small. Don’t be an idiot!” Rodwell replied quickly. “What can anybody know, unless you yourself blab? And if you did – by Gad! your own people would shoot you as a traitor at the Tower of London – you and your boy too! So remember that – and be very careful to keep a still tongue.”

“But I never thought, when that Mr Josephs, up in London, wrote to me sending me a receipt for the money I owed, that I was expected to do all this!” Small protested.

“No, if you had known you would never have done it!” laughed Rodwell. “But Germany is not like your gallant rule-of-thumb England. She leaves nothing to chance, and, knowing the cupidity of men, she takes full advantage of it – as in your case.”

“But I can’t bear the suspense, sir; I feel – I feel, Mr Rodwell – that I’m suspected – that this house is under suspicion – that – ”

“Utter bosh! It’s all imagination, Small,” Lewin Rodwell interrupted. “They’ve cut the cable at the Spurn, and that’s sufficient. Nobody in England ever dreams that the German Admiralty prepared for this war five years ago, and therefore spliced a second end into the cable.”

“Well, I tell you, sir, I heartily wish I’d never had anything to do with this affair,” grumbled old Tom.

“And if you hadn’t you’d have been in Grimsby Workhouse instead of having six hundred and fifty-five pounds to your credit at the bank in Skegness. You see I know the exact amount. And that amount you have secured by assisting the enemy. I know mine is a somewhat unpalatable remark – but that’s the truth, a truth which you and your son Ted, as well as your two brothers must hide – if you don’t want to be tried by court-martial and shot as traitors, the whole lot of you.”

The old fisherman started at those words, and held his breath.

“We won’t say any more, Tom, on that delicate question,” Rodwell went on, speaking in a hard, intense voice. “Just keep a dead silence, all of you, and you’ll have nothing to fear or regret. If you don’t, the punishment will fall upon you; I shall take good care to make myself secure – depend upon that!”

“But can’t we leave this cottage? Can’t we get away?” implored the old fellow who had innocently fallen into the dastardly web so cleverly spun by the enemy.

“No; you can’t. You’ve accepted German money for five years, and Germany now requires your services,” was Rodwell’s stern, brutal rejoinder. “Any attempt on your part to back out of your bargain will result in betraying you to your own people. That’s plain speaking! You and your son should think it over carefully together. You know the truth now. When Germany is at war she doesn’t fight in kid-gloves – like your idiotic pigs of English!”

Chapter Nine.

To “Number 70 Berlin.”

Lewin Rodwell, as a powerful and well-informed secret agent, was no amateur.

After the old fisherman had left the close atmosphere of that little room, Rodwell seated himself on a rickety rush-bottomed chair before the sewing-machine stand, beside the bed, and by the bright light of the petrol table-lamp, carefully and with expert touch adjusted the tangle of wires and the polished brass instruments before him.

The manner in which he manipulated them showed him to be perfectly well acquainted with the due importance of their adjustment. With infinite care he examined the end of the cable, unscrewing it from its place, carefully scraping with his clasp-knife the exposed copper wires protruding from the sheath of gutta percha and steel wire, and placing them each beneath the solid brass binding-screws upon the mahogany base.

“The silly old owl now knows that we won’t stand any more nonsense from him,” he muttered to himself, in German, as he did this. “It’s an unsavoury thought that the old fool, in his silly patriotism, might blab to the police or the coastguard. Phew! If he did, things would become awkward – devilish awkward.”

Then, settling himself before the instruments, he took from his inner pocket the long, bulky envelope, out of which he drew a sheet of closely-written paper which he spread out upon the little table before him. Afterwards, with methodical exactness, he took out a pencil and a memorandum-block from his side-pocket, arranging them before him.

Again he examined the connections running into the big, heavy tapping-key, and then, grasping the ebonite knob of the latter, he ticked out dots and dashes in a manner which showed him to be an expert telegraphist.

“M.X.Q.Q.” were the code-letters he sent. “M.X.Q.Q.” he clicked out, once – twice – thrice. The call, in the German cable war-code, meant: “Are you ready to receive message?”

He waited for a reply. But there was none. The cable that ran for three hundred miles, or so, beneath the black, storm-tossed waters of the North Sea was silent.

“Curious!” he muttered to himself. “Stendel is generally on the alert. Why doesn’t he answer?”

“M.X.Q.Q.” he repeated with a quick, impatient touch. “M.X.Q.Q.”

Then he waited, but in vain.

“Surely the cable, after the great cost to the Empire, has not broken down just at the very moment when we want it!” he exclaimed, speaking in German, as was his habit when excited.

Again he sent the urgent call beneath the waters by the only direct means of communication between Britain’s soil and that of her bitter enemy.

But in Tom Small’s stuffy little bedroom was a silence that seemed ominous. Outside could be heard the dull roar of the sea, the salt spray coming up almost to the door. But there was no answering click upon the instruments.

The electric current from the rows of batteries hidden in the cellar was sufficient, for he had tested it before he had touched the key.

“Tom,” he shouted, summoning the old fisherman whom he had only a few moments before dismissed.

“Yes, sir,” replied the old fellow gruffly, as he stalked forward again, in his long, heavy sea-boots.

“The cable’s broken down, I believe! What monkey-tricks have you been playing – eh?” he cried angrily.

“None, sir. None, I assure you. Ted tested at five o’clock this evening, as usual, and got an acknowledgment. The line was quite all right then.”

“Well, it isn’t now,” was Rodwell’s rough answer, for he detected in the old man’s face a secret gleaming satisfaction that no enemy message could be transmitted.

“I believe you’re playing us false, Small!” cried Rodwell, his eyes flashing angrily. “By Gad! if you have dared to do so you’ll pay dearly for it – I warn you both! Now confess!”

“I assure you, sir, that I haven’t. I was in here when Ted tested, as he does each evening. All was working well then.”

The younger man, a tall, big-limbed, fair-haired toiler of the sea, in a fisherman’s blouse of tanned canvas like his father, overhearing the conversation, entered the little room.

“It was all right at five, sir. I made a call, and got the answer.”

“Are you sure it was answered – quite sure?” queried the man from London.

“Positive, sir.”

“Then why in the name of your dear goddess Britannia, who thinks she rules the waves, can’t I get a reply now?” demanded Rodwell furiously.