The White Lie

This the engineer examined to see its exact place upon the clearly-defined line, afterwards noting it in his book in cryptic figures, and then carefully switching off again, when the tell-tale light disappeared.

“Well?” asked Barclay. “How are you getting along? Not quite so much excitement in this place as yesterday – eh?”

“No,” laughed the engineer. “Der people here never see a shore-end floated to land wiz bojes (buoys) before. Dey have already buried der line in der trench, as you see. Ach! Your English workmen are far smarter than ours, I confess,” he added, with a pleasant accent.

“Is it being laid all right?” the airman asked.

“Ja, ja. Very good work. Der weather, he could not be better. We have laid just over one hundert mile in twenty-four hours. Gut – eh?”

As he spoke the Morse-sounder at the end of the green baize-covered table started clicking calling him.

In a moment his expert hand was upon the key, tapping a response.

The ship tapped rapidly, and then the engineer made an enquiry, and received a prompt reply.

Then tapped out the short-long-short-long and short, which meant “finish,” when, turning to the pair, he said:

“Dey hope to get it am Ufer (ashore) at daybreak to-morrow. By noon there will be another through line between Berlin and London.”

Lieutenant Barclay was silent. A sudden thought crossed his mind. At Bacton, a couple of miles farther down the coast, the two existing cables went out to the German shore. But this additional line would prove of immense value if ever the army of the great War Lord attempted an invasion of our island.

As a well-known naval aviator, and as chief of the whole chain of air-stations along the East Coast, the lieutenant’s mind was naturally ever set upon the possibility of projected invasion, and of an adequate defence. That a danger really existed had at last been tardily admitted by the Government, and now with our Navy redistributed and centred in the North Sea, our destroyer-flotillas exercising nightly, and the establishment of the wireless at Felixstowe, Caister, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, and Hunstanton, as well as the construction of naval air-stations, with their aeroplanes and hydroplanes from the Nore up to Cromarty we were at last on the alert for any emergency.

When would “Der Tag” (“The Day”) – as it was toasted every evening in the military messes of the German Empire – dawn? Aye, when? Who could say?

CHAPTER II.

CONCERNS A PRETTY STRANGER

A short, puffy, red-faced man in grey flannels went past.

It was Sir Hubert Atherton, of Overstrand – that little place declared to be the richest village in all England – and Francis Goring, recognising him, bade a hurried farewell to his naval friend, and with a hasty word of thanks to the German, went out.

The naval airman and the German were left alone.

Again the round-faced cable engineer pulled over the double-throw switch, examined the tiny point of light upon the gauge, and registered its exact position.

“You remember, Herr Strantz, the gentleman who accompanied me here yesterday,” exclaimed Barclay, when the engineer had finished writing up his technical log.

“Certainly. Der gentleman who was a motor-cyclist?”

“Yes. He was found on the road last evening, murdered.”

“Zo!” gasped the German, staring at his visitor. “Killed!”

“Yes; stabbed to death fifteen miles from here, and his motor-cycle was missing. It is a mystery.”

“Astounding!” exclaimed Herr Strantz. “He took tea mit a lady over at the hotel. I saw them there when I went off duty at half-past three o’clock.”

“I know. The police are now searching for that lady.”

“Dey will not have much difficulty in finding her, I suppose – hein?” the engineer replied. “I myself know her by sight.”

“You know her!” cried the Englishman. “Why, I thought you only arrived here from Germany two days ago. Where have you met her?”

“In Bremen, at the Krone Hotel, about three months ago. She call herself Fräulein Montague, and vos awaiting her mother who vos on her way from New York.”

“Did she recognise you?”

“I think not. I never spoke to her in the hotel. She was always a very reserved but very shrewd young lady,” replied Herr Otto Strantz, slowly but grammatically. “I was surprised to meet her again.”

“Montague!” the airman repeated. “Do you know her Christian name?”

“Jean Montague,” was the German’s response as he busied himself carefully screwing down one of the terminals of an instrument.

Noel Barclay made a quick note of the name in a tiny memorandum-book which he always carried in his flying-jacket.

He offered the German one of his cigarettes – an excellent brand smoked in most of the ward-rooms of His Majesty’s Navy – and then endeavoured to obtain some further information concerning his dead shipmate’s visitor.

But Herr Strantz, whose sole attention seemed centred upon the shore-end of the new cable which was so soon to form yet another direct link between Berlin and London, was in ignorance of anything connected with the mysterious young person.

The statement that Harborne – the motor-cyclist who had spoken the German language so well when he had accompanied the pretty young girl the day before to watch the testing – was dead, seemed to cause the cable-engineer considerable reflection. He said nothing, but a close observer would have noticed that the report of the murder had had a distinct effect upon him. He was in possession of some fact, and this, as a stranger on that coast, and a foreigner to boot, it was not, after all, very difficult to hide.

Noel, however, did not notice it. His mind was chiefly occupied in considering the best and most diplomatic means by which the missing lady, who lived in Bremen as Miss Montague, could be traced.

The two men smoked their cigarettes; Strantz pulling over the switch every five minutes – always to the very tick of the round brass clock – examining the tiny point of light which resulted, and carefully registering the exact amount of current and the position of the ship engaged in paying out the black, insulated line into the bed of the German Ocean.

While Noel watched he also wondered whether, in the near future, that very cable across the sea would be used by England’s enemy for the purposes of her destruction. True, we had our new wireless stations all along the coast, and at other places inland at Ipswich, Chelmsford, and elsewhere, yet if what was feared really came to pass, all those, together with the shore-ends of the cables, would be seized by advance parties of Germans already upon British soil – picked men, soldiers all, who were already living to-day in readiness upon the East Coast of England as hotel-servants, clerks or workers in other trades. Our shrewd, business-like friends across the grey, misty sea would take care to strike a blow on our shores by the wrecking of bridges, the disabling of railways, the destruction of telegraphs, and the like, simultaneous with their frantic dash upon our shore. Germany never does anything by halves, nor does she leave anything to chance.

Herr Strantz, having finished some calculations, and having tapped out a message to the ship, raised his head, and with a smile upon his broad, clean-shaven face, said, with his broad German accent:

“Ech! You are an officer. I suppose that, if the truth were told, England hardly welcomes another cable laid by Germany – hein?”

“Well,” laughed the airman, pushing his big, round goggles higher upon his brow, “we sometimes wonder when your people are really coming.”

“Who knows?” asked the other, smiling and elevating his shoulders. “Never – perhaps.”

“Ah! Many there are in England who still regard invasion by the Kaiser’s army as a bogey,” Noel Barclay remarked. “But surely it is not impossible, or why should the British authorities suddenly awaken to the peril of the air?”

“All is possible to Germany – when the time is ripe. That is my private opinion as a Deutscher, and as one who has an opportunity of observing,” the other frankly responded.

“I quite agree,” was Noel’s reply. “Dreams of ten years ago are to-day accomplished facts. Aeroplanes cross the Channel and the Alps, and fly from country to country in disregard of diplomatic frontiers, while your German airships – unfortunate as they may be – have actually crossed to us here, and returned without us being any the wiser. Had they been hostile they could have destroyed whole cities in a single night!”

“And your ever-watchful coastguards who actually saw them were disbelieved,” the German laughed.

“Yes. I admit the air is conquered by your people – and Great Britain is now no longer an island. Wireless messages can be transmitted five thousand miles to-day, and who knows that it may not be possible to-morrow, by directing similar electric rays, to blow up explosives wherever they may be concealed – in the magazines of battleships or in land forts?”

“Ach, yes!” agreed the engineer. “Ten years ago war between England and Germany was more improbable than it is to-day, for each day, I fear, brings us nearer to hostilities – which we, in Germany, know to be inevitable.”