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

“And they are still in existence?”

“Certainly. And they could be occupied, and turned to valuable account, at any moment.”

“A fact which I can see they fully appreciated at Whitehall, and which will lend much colour to the charge against this inquisitive young fellow – who – well – who knows just a little too much. Ah! my dear Lewin, I never met a man quite like you. You can see through a brick wall.”

“No further than you can see, my dear Molly,” laughed the crafty man. “We were both of us trained in the same excellent school – that school which is the eyes and ears of the great and invincible Imperial Army of the Fatherland. Where would be that army, with our Kaiser at its head, if it had no eyes and no ears? Every report we send to Berlin is noted; every report, however small and vague, is one step towards our great goal and final victory. The Allies may beat themselves against our steel and concrete ring, but they will never win. We sit tight. Our men sit in their comfortable dug-outs to wait – and to wait on until the Allies beat themselves out in sheer exhaustion. Our great invincible nation must win in this island, for one reason – because the German eagle has already gripped in her talons the very official heart of Great Britain herself. Our Kaiser Wilhelm is only William of Normandy over again. In Berlin we hold no apprehensions. We know we must win. If not to-day – well, we sit safe in our trenches in Flanders, or give the gallant Russians a run just to exercise them – knowing well that victory must be ours when we will it!”

“Then, the correspondence found in Sainsbury’s ledger is entirely conclusive, you think?” asked his companion after a pause.

“Absolutely. There is no question. The letter shows him guilty of espionage.”

“They were actual letters, then?”

“Certainly. One of them was in an envelope addressed to him at the office, and posted at Norwich. I managed to find that envelope in his desk on the day before he was discharged. It came in extremely useful, as I expected it might.”

“So the charge against him cannot fail?” asked the handsome woman, puffing slowly at her cigarette. “Remember, he may suspect you – knowing all that he does!”

“Bah! The charge cannot fail. Of course I’ve had nothing to do with the matter as far as the authorities are concerned. I have simply slipped the noose over his head, and shall let the Intelligence Department do the rest. They will do their work well – never fear.”

“But you told the Intelligence Department about that Dr Jerrold?”

“Boyle did. I was most careful to keep out of it,” replied Rodwell, with a cunning look. “Boyle happens to be a friend of Heaton-Smith, who is in the Intelligence Department, and to him he gave information which cast a very deep suspicion that while Jerrold was pretending to hunt out spies, he was also engaged in collecting information. Indeed, we sent our friend Klost to consult him as a patient in order to further colour the idea that, in the doctor’s consulting-room, he was receiving German spies. Heaton-Smith, who has a perfect mania regarding espionage, took it, up at once, and had Jerome watched, while we on our part, manufactured just a little thread of evidence, as we have done in the present case. By it we succeeded in a warrant being issued for his arrest. It would have been executed that night if – well, if he had not committed suicide.”

“Perhaps he knew a warrant was out against him?”

“I think he did,” said Rodwell, with an evil smile.

“What causes you to think so?”

“Well, by the fact that Boyle, to whom he was unknown, rang him up that evening at half-past seven and, posing as an anonymous friend, warned him that there was a warrant out for him and that, as a friend, he gave him an opportunity to escape.”

“What did he reply to Sir Boyle?”

“He hardly replied anything, except to thank the speaker for his timely information, and to ask who it was who spoke. Boyle pretended to be a certain Mr Long, speaking from the National Liberal Club, and added, ‘If you wish to write to me, my name is J.S. Long.’ The doctor said he would write, but could not understand the charge against him. Boyle replied that it was one of war-treason, and added that the authorities had got hold of some documents or other which incriminated him on a charge of spying.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he declared that it was an infernal lie, of course,” laughed Rodwell.

The woman was again silent for a few moments.

“Its truth was plainly shown by his suicide,” she remarked at last. “By Jove, my dear Lewin, his death was most fortunate for you – wasn’t it?”

“Yes. We had to play a trump card then – just as we now have to play another against young Sainsbury,” replied the man, his eyes narrowing.

“I must congratulate you both,” said Mrs Kirby. “You’ve played your cards well – if you’re certain that he’ll be convicted.”

“My dear Molly, they can’t help convicting him. The acknowledgment and payment for reports, the request for more information, and the vague references to certain matters in which our friends in Holland are so keenly interested, all are there – addressed to him. Besides, he is known to have been an intimate friend and assistant of the man Jerrold – the man who committed suicide rather than face arrest and trial for treason. No,” Rodwell added confidently; “the whole affair is quite plain, and conviction must most certainly follow.”

“And serve him well right!” added the handsome woman. “Serve him right for being too inquisitive. But,” she added in a rather apprehensive voice, “I suppose there’s no chance of him making any allegations against you – is there?”

“What do I care if he did!” asked the man, with a laugh of defiance. Then, lowering his voice, he added: “First, there is no evidence whatsoever to connect me with any matters of espionage, and secondly, nobody would believe a word he said. The world would never credit that Lewin Rodwell was a spy!”

“No,” she laughed; “you are far too clever and cunning for them all. Really your sang-froid is truly marvellous.”

Chapter Sixteen.

The Catspaw

Some weeks had passed.

Jack Sainsbury had not reappeared at Bow Street, the authorities having decided, so serious was the charge and so important the evidence, that the trial should take place by court-martial and in camera.

Therefore the prisoner spent day after day in his narrow cell at Brixton Prison, full of fierce, angry resentment at the false charge made against him, and full of anxiety as to how Elise was bearing up beneath the tragic blow which had fallen upon them both.

He saw no one save Charles Pelham, his counsel, who now and then visited him. But even his adviser was entirely in the dark as to the exact evidence against his client. In the meantime the truth was that the Intelligence Department at Whitehall had sent an agent over to Holland to inquire into the bona fides of the Insurance Company whose offices were supposed to be in the Kalverstraat, in Amsterdam, and had discovered that though the “office” was run by highly respectable persons, the latter were undoubtedly Germans who had come to Holland just before the war. Every inquiry made by the Department revealed further proof of the accused’s guilt. Indeed, the astute Colonel who was the titular head of the Department had had Mr Charlesworth up at the War Office and thanked him personally for exposing what he had declared to be “a most serious case of espionage.”

Truly the fetters were gradually being forged upon the innocent young fellow languishing within Brixton Prison.

In complete ignorance of either the exact charge, or the identity of those who made it, Jack lived on day by day, full of the gravest apprehensions. The whole affair seemed to be one great, hideous nightmare. What would old Dan Shearman, never very well disposed towards him, think of him now? He recollected that strange anonymous letter which Elise had received. Who could possibly have sent it? A friend, without a doubt. Yet who was that secret friend? When would his identity be revealed?

He wondered if the person who had written that warning to his well-beloved would, when he knew of his arrest, come forward and expose the dastardly plot against him? Would he rescue him, now that he was in deadly peril?

With chagrin, too, he remembered how he had treated Elise’s fears with such silly unconcern. He had never dreamed of the real gravity of the situation until he found himself in the hands of the police, with that scandalous and disgraceful charge hanging over his head. The whole thing was so amazing, and so utterly bewildering, that at times he felt, as he paced that narrow, dispiriting cell, that he must go mad.

The days dragged on, each longer than its predecessor. Once his sister was allowed to see him. But he was anxious and eager to face his judges, to hear what false evidence the prosecution had to offer, and to refute the foul lies that had evidently been uttered against him. The authorities, however, seemed in no hurry to act, and it almost, seemed as though they had forgotten all about him.

One day he received a letter – the one welcome gleam of hope – a letter from Elise, who told him to bear up, to take courage, and to look forward to an early freedom.

“You surely know, Jack,” she wrote, “that I do not believe you to be a spy. Surely I know how strenuously you have worked in order to ferret out and expose the horde of spies surrounding us, and how you constantly helped poor Dr Jerrold.”

Those words of hers cheered him, yet he deeply regretted that she should have referred to the dead man’s name. The prison, authorities had read that letter, and mention of Jerrold would, in the circumstances, probably be registered as a point against him.

The weeks thus lengthened, until the middle of February.

On the night of the 21st of that month – the night on which the Admiralty issued its notification that a British fleet of battleships and battle cruisers, accompanied by flotillas, and aided by a strong French squadron, the whole under the command of Vice-Admiral Carden, had begun the attack on the forts of the Dardanelles – Charles Trustram dined early with Lewin Rodwell at the Ritz.

Rodwell was due to speak at a big recruiting meeting down at Poplar, and after their meal the pair drove in his car eastwards to the meeting, where he was received with the wildest enthusiasm.

A well-known retired Admiral was in the chair – a man whose name was as a household word, and whose reputation was that of one who always hit straight from the shoulder with the courage of his own convictions. The hall was crowded. The speech by the chairman was a magnificent one, well calculated to stir the blood of any Briton of military age to avenge Germany’s piracy “blockade.” He spoke of the low cunning of the “scrap-of-paper incident,” of the introduction of the red phosphorus poison-shells a month before, and the terrible barbarities committed in Belgium. That East-End audience were held spellbound by the fine patriotic speech of the grey-haired Admiral, who had spent his whole life at sea ever since he had left the Britannia as a midshipman.

Trustram, seated near the front, saw Lewin Rodwell rise deliberately from his chair on the platform, and became electrified by his words – fiery words which showed how deep was the splendid patriotic spirit within his heart.

On rising he was met with a veritable thunder of applause from that huge expectant working-class audience. They knew that Lewin Rodwell, being in the confidence of the Cabinet, would tell them something real and conclusive about the secret war-facts which the hundred-and-one irresponsible censors, in their infinite wisdom, forbade the long-suffering press to publish. Lewin Rodwell always regaled them with some tit-bits of “inside information.” It had been advertised up and down the country that he was on golfing terms with the rulers of Great Britain, and the words of a man possessing such knowledge of state-secrets were always worth listening to.

Glibly, and with that curious, half-amused expression which always fascinated an audience, Lewin Rodwell began by jeering at those who “slacked.”

“I ask you – every man of military age present,” he cried, thrusting forth his clenched fist towards his audience – “I ask you all to get, at any post office, that little pink-covered pamphlet called ‘The Truth about German Atrocities.’ You can get it for nothing – just for asking for it. Take it home and read it for yourselves – read how those devilish hordes of the Kaiser invaded poor little law-abiding Belgium, and what they did when they got there. Murder, rape, arson and pillage began from the first moment when the German army crossed the frontier. Soldiers had their eyes gouged out, men were murdered treacherously and given poisoned food. Those fiends in grey killed civilians upon a scale without any parallel in modern warfare between civilised Powers. We know now that this killing of civilians was deliberately planned by the higher military authorities in Berlin, and carried out methodically. They are a nation of murderers and fire-bugs. A calculated policy of cruelty was displayed that was without parallel in all history. Women were outraged, murdered and mutilated in unspeakable fashion; poor little children were murdered, bayoneted or maimed; the aged, crippled and infirm were treated with a brutality that was appalling; wounded soldiers and prisoners were tortured and afterwards murdered; innocent civilians, women and children of tender age, were placed before the German troops to act as living screens for the inhuman monsters, while there was looting, burning and destruction of property everywhere. Read, I say, that official report for yourselves!” he shouted, with anger burning his eyes, for he was indeed a wonderful actor.