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

“Read!” he cried again. “Read, all of you, how seven hundred innocent men, women and children were shot in cold blood in the picturesque little town of Dinant, on the Meuse; read of the massacres and mutilations at Louvain, Tamines, Termonde and Malines – and then reflect! Think what would be the fate of your own women and children should the German army land upon these shores! The Germans did not hate the Belgians – they had no reason whatever to do so. But the hatred in Germany against the British race to-day amounts to a religion, and if ever the Germans come, depend upon it that the awful massacres in Belgium will be repeated with tenfold vigour, until the streets of every English town and village run red with the blood of your dearly-loved ones. Young men!” he shouted, “I ask you whether you will still stand by and see these awful outrages done, whether you will be content to witness the mutilation and murder of those dearest to your hearts, or whether, before it is too late, you will come forward, now, and at once, and bear your manly share in the crushing out for ever of this ogre of barbarism which has arisen as a terrible and imminent menace to Europe, and to the thousand years of the building up of our civilisation.”

In conclusion he made a fervent, stirring appeal to his hearers – an appeal in which sounded a true ring of heartfelt patriotism, and in consequence of which many young men came forward and gave in their names for enlistment.

And Lewin Rodwell laughed within himself.

A dozen men congratulated him upon his splendid speech, and as Charles Trustram sat by his side, on their drive back to the West End, he could not refrain from expressing admiration of the speech.

“Ah!” laughed Rodwell. “I merely try to do my little bit when I can. It is what we should all do in these black days. There is a big section of the public that doesn’t yet realise that we are at war; they must be taught, and shown what invasion would really mean. The lesson of poor stricken Belgium cannot be too vividly brought home to such idiots as we have about us.”

As the car dashed past Aldgate, going west, Trustram caught sight of the contents-bill of a late edition of one of the evening papers. In large letters was the bold announcement, “Air Raids on Colchester, Braintree and Coggeshall.”

“The Zeppelins have been over again!” he remarked, telling Rodwell what he had just read.

“When?”

“Last night, I suppose.”

“Didn’t you know anything of it at the Admiralty?” asked Rodwell.

“I heard nothing before I left this evening,” Trustram replied.

The pair smoked together for an hour in Rodwell’s room in Bruton Street; and during that time the conversation turned upon the arrest of Jack Sainsbury, Trustram expressing surprise that he had not yet been brought to trial.

“I suppose the case against him is not yet complete,” remarked Rodwell, with a careless air. “A most unfortunate affair,” he added. “He was a clerk in the office of a company in which I have some interest.”

“So I hear. But I really can’t think it’s true that he’s been guilty of espionage,” remarked the Admiralty official. “He was a great friend of Jerrold’s, you remember.”

“Well, I fear, if the truth were told, there was a charge of a similar character against Jerrold.”

“What!” cried Trustram, starting forward in great surprise. “This is the first I’ve heard of it!”

“Of course I can’t say quite positively – only that is what’s rumoured,” Rodwell said.

“But what kind of charge was there against Jerrold? I can’t credit it. Why, he did so much to unearth spies, and was of the greatest assistance to the Intelligence Department. That I happen to know.”

“That is, I think, admitted,” replied the man who led such a wonderful life of duplicity. “It seems, however, that information which came into the hands of the authorities was of such a grave character that a warrant was issued against him for war-treason, and – ”

“A warrant!” cried Trustram. “Surely that’s not true!”

“Quite true,” was Rodwell’s cold reply. “On the evening of his death he somehow learned the truth, and after you had left him that night he apparently committed suicide.”

Trustram was silent and thoughtful for some time. The story had astounded him. Yet, now he reflected, he recollected how, on that fatal night, while they had been dining together, the doctor had spoken rather gloomily upon the outlook, and had remarked that he believed that all his patriotic efforts had been misunderstood by the red-taped officialdom. In face of what his companion had just told him, it was now revealed that Jerome Jerrold, even while they had been dining together, had been contemplating putting an end to his life. He recollected that envelope in his possession, that envelope in which the man now dead had left something – some mysterious message, which was not to be read until one year after his death. What could it be? Was it, after all, a confession that he, the man so long unsuspected, had been guilty of war-treason!

The doctor’s rather strange attitude, and the fierce tirade he had uttered against the Intelligence Department for their lack of initiative and their old-fashioned methods, he had, at the time, put down to irritability consequent upon over-work and the strain of the war, but, in face of what he had now learnt, he was quite able to understand it. It was the key to the tragedy. No doubt that letter left for Jack Sainsbury contained some confession. Curious that suspicion had now also fallen upon Sainsbury, who had so often assisted him in watching night-signals over the hills in the southern counties, and in making inquiries regarding mysterious individuals suspected of espionage.

“Well,” he said at last, “you’ve utterly astounded me. Where did you hear this rumour?”

“My friend Sir Boyle Huntley is very intimate with a man in the War Office – in the Intelligence Department in fact – and it came from him. So I think there’s no doubt about it. A great pity, for Dr Jerrold was a first-class man, and highly respected everywhere.”

“Yes. If true, it is most terrible. But so many idle and ill-natured rumours get afloat nowadays – how, nobody can tell – that one doesn’t know what to believe, if the information does not come from an absolutely reliable source.”

“What I’ve just told you does come from an absolutely reliable source,” Rodwell assured him. “And as regards young Sainsbury, letters which he forgot and left behind him in his desk at the office are clear proof of his dealings with the enemy. In one was enclosed a ten-pound note sent as payment for information from somebody in Holland.”

“Is that really so? And he forgot it?” asked Trustram.

“Well, I’ve had the letter and the banknote in my hand. Our managing-director found the correspondence, and showed it to me before he handed it over to Scotland Yard.”

“Well, I must say that I’ve never suspected either of them as traitors,” declared the Admiralty official. “I liked young Sainsbury very much. He was a smart young fellow, I thought, and I know that Jerrold held him in very high esteem.”

“Ah! my dear Trustram,” remarked Rodwell, with a sigh, “nowadays, with an avalanche of German gold doing its fell work in England, it is, alas! difficult to trust anybody. And yet it is all the fault of the Government, who seem afraid to offend Germany by interning our enemies. If I had my way I’d put the whole lot of them under lock and key, naturalised and unnaturalised alike. It is in that where the peril arises, for, in my opinion, the naturalised Germans in high places are suborning many of our men to become traitors and blackmailing them into the bargain – alas! that I, an Englishman, should be compelled to express such an opinion regarding my compatriots. Here you have two cases in point where apparently honest, well-meaning and patriotic Englishmen are branded as spies, with evidence – in one case certainly, that of Sainsbury – sufficient to convict him.”

“When will his trial be? Have you heard?”

“No. You will be better able to discover that. It will, of course, be a secret court-martial.”

“In that case we shall never know either the nature of the charge – or of his defence.”

“Exactly,” replied Lewin Rodwell, with grim inward satisfaction. “We shall only know the sentence.”

Charles Trustram drew heavily at the fine cigar his host had given him, and sighed. The terrible charges of treason against his dead friend and young Sainsbury were indeed astounding. Yet he, as an official, knew full well that the Director of Intelligence did not take such steps as had been taken without some very firm and sound basis for prosecution. The Department generally erred upon the side of leniency, and always gave the accused the benefit of the doubt. That there was to be a court-martial was, indeed, a very significant fact.

“I suppose you are sending out troops to the Dardanelles?” remarked Lewin Rodwell carelessly, after a short silence. “I saw the announcement in to-day’s papers?”

“Yes. It will be a far tougher proposition than we at first believed. That’s the general opinion at the Admiralty. We have three troop-ships leaving Southampton to-morrow, and four are leaving Plymouth on Friday – all for Gallipoli.”

“Of course they’ll have escorts,” Rodwell remarked, making a mental note of that most important information.

“As far as Gibraltar.”

“Not farther? Aren’t you afraid of German submarines?”

“Not after they have passed the Straits. The drafts we are sending out this week are the most important we have yet despatched. The American liners Ellenborough and Desborough are also taking out troops to Egypt to-morrow.”

“From Plymouth, I suppose?”

“Yes. All the drafts for Egypt and Gallipoli are going via Plymouth in future,” was Trustram’s innocent reply.

Those few unguarded words might cost the British Empire several thousand officers and men, yet it seemed as though Trustram never dreamed the true character of the unscrupulous spy with whom he was seated, or the fact that the woman Kirby – whom he had never seen – was seated in an adjoining room, patiently awaiting his departure.

What, indeed, would Charles Trustram have thought had he known the true import of that vital information which he had imparted to his friend, under the pledge of confidence. The bombardment of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby had been directly due to what he had divulged, though he was in ignorance of the truth. More than once, however, he had reflected upon it and wondered.

Yet after all he had dismissed such suspicion as utterly absurd. To suspect Lewin Rodwell of any dealings with the enemy was utterly ridiculous. No finer nor truer Englishman had ever breathed. The very thought of such a thing caused him to ridicule himself.

He rose at half-past eleven, and, warmly shaking his friend’s hand, asked:

“Will you dine with me to-morrow at the Club?”

Rodwell hesitated; then, consulting his little pocket diary, replied —