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

To be a real epicure one must be a cosmopolitan, taking one’s bouillabaisse in Marseilles, one’s red mullet in Leghorn, one’s caviare at eleven in the morning in Bucharest, one’s smoked fish and cheese in Tromso, one’s chicken’s breasts with rice in Bologna, and so on, across the face of the earth. To the man who merely pretends to know, the long gilt-printed menu of the smart London hotel becomes enticing to the palate, but to the man who has eaten his dinner under many suns it is often an amusing piece of mysteriously-worded bunkum.

Lewin Rodwell and his friend the Birthday Baronet sat down together to a perfectly-cooked and perfectly-served repast. Franks, the quiet, astute, clean-shaven man, a secret friend of Germany like his master, moved noiselessly, and the pair chatted without restraint, knowing well that Franks – whose real name was Grünhold – would say nothing. It was not to his advantage to say anything, because he was a secret agent of Germany of the fifth class – namely, one in weekly receipt of sixty marks, or three pounds.

Rodwell was apprehensive, unhappy, and undecided. Truth to tell, he wanted to be alone, to plot and to scheme. His friend’s presence prevented him from thinking. Yet, after dinner, he was compelled to go forth with him somewhere, so they went to the revue at the Hippodrome, and on to Murray’s afterwards.

It was half-past two o’clock in the morning when Rodwell re-entered with his latch-key and, passing into his den, found upon his writing-table a rather soiled note, addressed in a somewhat uneducated hand, which had evidently been left during his absence.

Throwing off his overcoat, he took up the note and, tearing it open, read the few brief unsigned lines it contained. Then, replacing it upon the table, he drew his white hand across his brow, as though to clear his troubled brain.

Afterwards he crossed to the small safe let into the wall near the fireplace and, unlocking it, took forth a little well-worn memorandum-book bound in dark blue leather.

“Cipher Number 38, I think,” he muttered to himself, as he turned over its pages until he came to that for which he was in search.

Then he sat down beneath the reading-lamp and carefully studied the page, which, ruled in parallel columns, displayed in the first column the alphabet, in the second the key-sentence of the cipher in question – one of forty-three different combinations of letters – and in the third the discarded letters to be interspersed in the message in order to render any attempt at deciphering the more difficult.

In that cleverly-compiled little volume were forty-three different key-sentences, each easy of remembrance, and corresponding in its number of letters with about two-thirds, or so, of the number of letters of the alphabet. From time to time it changed automatically, according to the calendar and to a certain rule set forth at the end of the little volume. Hence, though the spy’s code was constantly being changed without any correspondence from headquarters – “Number 70 Berlin” – yet, without a copy of the book, the exact change and its date could not be ascertained.

Truly, the very best brains of Germany had, long ago, been concentrated upon the complete system of espionage in Great Britain, with the result that the organisation was now absolutely perfect.

Taking a sheet of ruled paper from one of the compartments in the American rolltop desk before him, Lewin Rodwell, after leaning back wearily in his chair to compose himself, commenced, by reference to the pages of the little book before him, to trace out the cipher equivalents of the information contained in the note that had been left for him by an unknown hand in his absence.

He opened the big silver cigarette-box at his elbow, and having taken a cigarette, he lit it and began reducing the information into cipher, carefully producing a jumble of letters, a code so difficult that it had for a long time entirely defied the British War Office, the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the French Secret Service.

Though marvellously ingenious, yet it was, after all, quite simple when one knew the key-sentence.

Those key-sentences used by “Number 70 Berlin” in their wonderful and ever-changing secret code – that code by which signal lights were flashed across Great Britain by night, and buzzed out by wireless by day – were quite usual sentences, often proverbs in English, such as “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” “A man and his money are soon parted,” “Give one an inch and he’ll take an ell,” “Money makes the world go round,” and so on.

Simple, of course. Yet the very simplicity of it all, combined with the constant change, constituted its greatest and most remarkable secrecy. The great Steinhauer, with his far-reaching tentacles of espionage across both hemispheres, held his octopus-like grip upon the world, a surer, a more subtle and a more ingenious hold than the civilised world, from the spies of Alexander the Great down to those of President Kruger, had ever seen.

With infinite care, and because the information concerning certain naval movements in the Channel was urgent, he produced a mass of letters with words in German interspersed – a cipher message which resulted a fortnight later in one of our battleships being sunk in the Channel, with only eighty survivors. Of the message the following is a facsimile: —

Chapter Twelve.

On Thin Ice

One evening early in January three men had assembled and held a serious conference in Jack Sainsbury’s modest little flat in Heath Street, Hampstead. His sister being out for the day, Jack had personally admitted his visitors, who were Charles Trustram and Sir Houston Bird, and the trio had sat by the fire discussing a matter of the greatest moment.

Briefly, the facts were as follow: Trustram had, ever since the raid on Scarborough, wondered whether the failure of the British naval plan to entrap the German Fleet had been directly due to his own indiscretion in mentioning to Lewin Rodwell what was intended. He deeply regretted having let out what had been an absolute secret; yet Rodwell was a man of such tried and sterling patriotism, constantly addressing audiences in the interests of recruiting, and a man whose battle cry “Britain for the British” had been taken up everywhere. No one was possessed of a deeper and more intense hatred of Germany than he, and Trustram felt certain that no man was a greater enemy of the Kaiser.

The papers wrote fulsome praise of his splendid example and his fine patriotic efforts, both as regards recruiting and in the raising of funds for various charitable objects; therefore the Admiralty official was wont to comfort himself with the reflection that such a man could never be an agent of Germany.

Only a few days ago, when he had confessed to Sir Houston and the latter had, on his part, spoken to Sainsbury, the puzzle had become pieced together; and on that evening, as the trio sat opposite each other, the young fellow explained how he had been dismissed from the Ochrida Company at the instigation of Lewin Rodwell and his titled sycophant Sir Boyle Huntley.

“There is a mystery,” Jack went on. “I’m certain there’s some great mystery regarding poor Jerrold’s sudden death,” he said decisively. “I was, that night, on my way to him, to tell him what I had accidentally learnt, and to seek his advice how to act. Yet, poor fellow, he died in my arms.”

“His suicide was certainly quite unaccountable,” declared Sir Houston. “I often reflect and wonder whether he really did commit suicide – and yet it was all quite plain and straightforward. He must have swallowed a tablet – coated, no doubt, or the effect must have been far more rapid.”

“But why did he declare that he’d been shot?” asked Trustram, whose fine, strong face was dark and thoughtful.

“Ah! Who knows? There’s the mystery,” replied the great pathologist. “Of course, men sometimes have curious hallucinations immediately prior to death. It might have been one.”

“He was in terrible agony – poor fellow,” Jack remarked.

“No doubt, no doubt. But the drug would, of course, account for that.”

“Then, in the light of your expert medical knowledge, you don’t think that his death was a mysterious one?” Jack queried.

“No, I don’t say that at all,” was the reply of the busy man, who was working night and day among the wounded in the hospitals. “I merely say that Jerrold was poisoned – and probably by his own hand. That’s all.”

“You say ‘probably,’” remarked Trustram. “Could that man, Rodwell, have had anything to do with it do you think?”

“My dear Mr Trustram, how can we possibly tell?” asked Sir Houston. “What real evidence have we got? None.”

“And so clever are our enemies that we are not likely ever to get any, I believe,” was Trustram’s hard reply. “I only know what has happened to our plans for the defeat of the German Fleet. 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. No secret of any of the European States is a secret from the central spy-bureau in Berlin.”

“Jerrold knew that. He set out sacrificing body and soul – nay, his very life – to assist our Intelligence Department,” Trustram remarked.

“I know,” said Jack. “They were foolishly jealous of his knowledge – jealous of the facts he had gathered during his wanderings up and down Germany, and jealous of the sources of information. They pretended a certain friendliness towards him, of course, but, as you know, the khaki cult is never in unison with the civilian. Jerrold did his duty – did it splendidly, as a true Englishman should. His work will live as a record. Seven years ago he commenced, at a time when the money-grubbing, ostrich-like section of the public – bamboozled by politicians who pretended not to know, yet who knew too well, and who told us there would be no war – not in our time – were content in amassing wealth. What did they care for the country’s future, as long as they drew big dividends? Jerrold foresaw the great Teutonic plot against civilisation, and was not afraid to point to it. What did he get for his pains? Ridicule, derision, and aspersions that his mind was deranged, and that he was a mere romancer. Well, to-day he’s dead, and we can only judge him by his works.”

“There are others – certain others too – whom we may also judge by their works,” remarked Trustram grimly – “their subtle, fiendish works, aimed at the downfall of our Empire. 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. No!” he cried angrily. “There are traitors in our midst, and yet if one dares to suspect, if one dares to breathe a word, even to inquire and bring absolute evidence, the only thing which the khaki-clad Department will vouchsafe to the informant is a meagre printed form to acknowledge that one’s report has been ‘received.’ After that, the matter is buried.”

“Perhaps burnt,” laughed Sir Houston.

“Most probably,” Trustram asserted. “To me, an Englishman, the whole situation is as utterly appalling as it is ludicrous. We must win. And it is up to us all to see that we do win.”

“Excellent!” cried Sir Houston. “And so we will – all three of us. I’ll go to the War Office to-morrow and try and see someone in authority. You, Sainsbury, will come with me, and you’ll make your statement – you’ll tell them all that you know. They must take some notice of it!”

“I should be quite ready,” was Jack’s reply. “But will they believe me? They didn’t believe poor Jerrold, remember – and he actually held proof positive of certain traitorous acts. The whole idea of the Intelligence Department is to pooh-pooh any report furnished by a civilian. Indeed, Jerrold showed me a signed statement by a British officer whom the authorities had actually threatened to cashier because he had assisted him to investigate some night-signalling in Surrey!”

“Impossible!” cried Sir Houston.

“It’s the absolute truth. I’ve had the statement in my own hands. He was an officer stationed in a town in Surrey.”

“Well,” remarked the great pathologist. “Let us allow the past bygones to be bygones. Let us work – not in resentment of the past, but for our protection in the future. What shall we do?”

The two men were silent. On the one hand they saw the fortress-wall which the War Office placed between the civilian and the man in khaki. Reports of espionage were extremely unwelcome at Whitehall. And yet how could men in khaki and assistant-provost-marshals, with their crimson brassards of special-constable or veteran volunteer conspicuousness, ever hope to cope with the clever, subtle and wary spies of Germany? The whole thing was too farcical for words.

The British public, trustful of this cult of khaki and of a Cabinet who daily bleated forth “All is well!” had no knowledge, for instance, of the cleverly-laid plan of the enemy in Russia – the plot to blow up Ochta, the Russian Woolwich. Later, the English, in their ignorance of German intrigue, asked each other why no forward move was being made – the move promised us in the spring. They knew nothing of that great disaster, so cleverly accomplished by Germany’s spies, the blowing up of Ochta, that disaster which entirely crippled Russia, and which resulted, later on, in her retreat from Warsaw. It was this – alas that I should pen these lines! – which prevented the British and French from advancing during the whole spring and summer of 1915.

The Russians, our gallant allies, were producing, at the Putilof works, great siege guns, bigger than any turned out from Krupp’s. Yet, after Ochta had been blown up by means of a cable laid by spies under the Neva before the war, so that hardly one brick stood upon another and Petrograd had been shaken as by an earthquake in consequence, what could Russia do? She had no munitions; therefore why make guns?

That act of German spies in directly crippling Russia – an act plotted and prepared ten years previously – had checked the striking power of France, and quite defeated the splendid intentions of Lord Kitchener and our own good General French.

Let history speak. As our two armies were holding only a small section of the line, it was more convenient for the general interests of the Allies that we should, instead of employing our increased forces, postpone the entry into action of our national armies, and bend our chief energies to the task of supplying Russia with the munitions which had suddenly become to her a matter of life or death.

Was not this, indeed, an object-lesson to England?