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

Again the grey dawn was breaking over the chill North Sea – a wild, tempestuous morning.

On the far horizon northward, a steamer had just appeared, leaving behind a long trail of black smoke, but over the great expanse of storm-tossed waters which broke heavily upon the beach there was no sign of any other craft.

Thirty-six hours had passed since the young German who called himself Burton, but whose real name was Berenstein, had sat in Mrs Kirby’s drawing-room discussing the faulty ammunition being made at the works at G – . Twelve hours before, namely, at six o’clock on the previous evening, the court-martial sitting at the Old Bailey had concluded the hearing of the grave case of espionage brought against young Sainsbury. The evidence – some of the most damning evidence ever brought before a court-martial – had been given, and Mr Pelham his counsel had made his speech for the defence. Sentence had been postponed, in order that the whole of the facts should be considered by the military authorities. The trial having taken place in camera, not a word had leaked out to the newspapers, therefore the public were in ignorance of the young man’s arrest, still more so of the grave offence with which he had been charged.

Elise knew what had happened. She had sat outside the court, in the big stone hall upstairs, where a kindly usher had given her a brief résumé of the proceedings. Indeed, through the glass door she had been able to get a momentary peep of her lover as he had stood in the dock, pale and erect, defiant of his accusers.

When the court rose, she had returned to Fitzjohn’s Avenue in a taxicab, sobbing and broken-hearted.

On arriving home she had rung up Sir Houston Bird on the telephone, but his man had answered saying that he had been called out suddenly, and had not returned. Therefore she went to her room and there gave way to a paroxysm of grief. It was over. Jack had been found guilty!

In the grey light of dawn, Lewin Rodwell was seated in the stuffy, little room in Tom Small’s cottage, his hand upon the telegraph-key, clicking out rapidly a message to Berlin.

At his side sat his accomplice, Mrs Kirby, in a heavy fur motor-coat with toque to match, for she had been all night on the road with Penney, who, having dropped her quite near, had turned the car and gone back into Horncastle to wait until the following evening.

The woman had been engaged writing, by the light of the petrol lamp, a long message since her arrival an hour before, while it was still dark; and it was this – a detailed report of the movements of troops to the front in Flanders, which young Burton had obtained for her – that Rodwell was engaged in transmitting.

Without speaking the spy sat, his left elbow upon the table, with his brow upon his palm while, with his right hand, he tapped away quickly with the rapid touch of the expert telegraphist.

“What a wretched little place!” the woman remarked at last, gazing around the narrow little bedroom. “How horribly close and stuffy!”

“Yes, and you’d find it so, if you’d been here a prisoner for three days and nights, as I have, Molly,” her companion laughed, still continuing to transmit the information for which Number Seventy had asked so constantly. The German General Staff were anxious to ascertain what strength of reinforcements we were sending to our line near Ypres.

Suddenly Rodwell shouted for Ted; but the woman, passing into the living-room, calling for young Small, and receiving no reply, remarked: “I believe they both went out down on the beach, to the boat, a moment ago. Do you want him?”

“Only to tell him to get some breakfast. You must be fagged out after your journey,” he said, still working the cable without a pause. “How cold and draughty this house is!” he said. “I shall be glad when night comes again, and we can get away. I mean to give this place a rest for a month. I’m afraid it’s getting just a bit unhealthy for me. Come in, and shut the door, Molly. I’m nearly blown out, with that door open,” he complained.

Then, after she had re-entered the room and closed the door, he soon gave the signal “end of message,” and paused for the acknowledgment.

It came without delay. A few rapid clicks, and then all was still again – a silence save for the howl of the wind and the monotonous roar of the great breakers rolling in upon the beach outside.

“Well, Molly,” the man said, as he lit a cigarette, and seated himself on the edge of the little old-fashioned bed, “we’ll have to stay in here, I suppose, till it’s dark. Small doesn’t like it known that he has visitors. What time did you order Penney?”

“I told him to be at the place where he usually drops you at eight o’clock.”

“Excellent. I wonder where Ted is? I want my breakfast badly.”

“He said something about going down to the boat to get some fish for you.”

“Ah! of course. They went out in the night. I forgot,” he said.

Then, after a pause, the woman exclaimed —

“Is there no possibility of getting away from here before night? I don’t like the black looks which Small and his son gave me, Lewin.”

“Black looks! Oh, that’s nothing. I’m always putting the screw on them. Besides, Ted got to know from Stendel – who chatted to him over the wire one day – all about the Scarborough raid. So, naturally, he’s antagonistic.”

“But he might betray us, you know.”

“He’ll never do that, depend upon it. He knows that his own neck would be in danger if he did so. So rest quite assured about that.” Then, after a few moments’ silence, he added: “I wonder when we shall get that young Sainsbury out of the way. He’s the greatest source of danger that we have.”

“I thought your idea was that nobody would believe him, whatever he alleged against you?” asked the woman.

“That’s so. But we have now to count with Trustram. If he wilfully deceived me regarding those two transports leaving Plymouth, then he certainly suspects. And if he suspects, his suspicions may lead him in the direction of Sainsbury – see?”

“Yes. I quite see. You scent a further danger!”

“No, not exactly,” was his vague reply, an evil smile upon his lips. “With the exercise of due precaution we need have nothing to fear – as long as Sainsbury’s mouth is closed by the law – as it must be in a day or two.”

“But you don’t mean to come down here again for some time, do you?”

“No. For the next week or two we must trust to other channels of transmission – Schuette’s wireless at Sydenham, perhaps, though that’s far from satisfactory.”

“Hark!” exclaimed the woman, as they heard someone at the outer door. Both listened. There was a grating sound like that of a key – as though the door was being unlocked.

This surprised them, and they exchanged inquiring glances.

There was a sound of heavy footsteps, causing them both to hold their breath.

Next instant the door of the bedroom was unceremoniously flung open, revealing upon the threshold two burly men in hard felt hats and overcoats presenting service revolvers at them.

It was a striking scene.

The woman screamed loudly, but the man, who had sprung to his feet to find himself thus cornered, stood firm, his face blanched, and his eyebrows contracted.

“And pray what’s the meaning of all this?” he demanded, in hoarse defiance.

A second later, however, he saw that behind the two men who entered the room to place himself and his companion under arrest, were three other persons. One was a naval officer in uniform, evidently from the Admiralty Intelligence Department, while the other two were men well-known to him – namely, Sir Houston Bird and Charles Trustram.

“Your clever game is up, Mr Rodwell!” exclaimed Trustram, entering the room with the naval captain, whose gaze fell at once upon the telegraph instruments mounted on the old sewing-machine in the corner.

“Yes,” exclaimed the officer. “And a pretty big game it seems to have been – eh? So you’ve been working a cable across to Germany, have you? We’ve had suspicion that the cable laid to Wangeroog might have had a second shore-end, and, indeed, we started dredging for it off the Spurn only two days ago.”

“Mr Rodwell,” said Trustram, addressing him, as the two detectives were searching him for firearms: “You thought you were very clever. You betrayed me once, but I took very good care that all the information I gave you afterwards should be such as you would work for England’s advantage, and not for yours. In one case last week, when your masters acted upon my information, we were able to bag six of your submarines in the Straits of Dover within forty-eight hours. So you see my game was a double one,” he added, with a smile of satisfaction.

Rodwell was so nonplussed at thus being caught red-handed, that he could utter no reply. All his bluff and defiance had left him, and he stood white, inert, with a look of abject shame and terror upon his changed countenance.

As for the woman, she gave vent to a torrent of bitter vituperation. But nobody noticed her; she had, like poor old Tom Small and his son, been simply tools of that unscrupulous and clever master-spy in whose stirring patriotism all England was believing, but who had at last fallen into the trap which Charles Trustram had so cunningly prepared for him – a trap in which the confirmation of his traitorous act had actually been made by the enemy’s unseen wireless rays.

Sir Houston said little, except to remark that no doubt Lewin Rodwell’s arrest would put a new complexion upon the case against John Sainsbury, and result, he hoped, in breaking up the activity of the enemy in our midst.

Of much that followed the public are already aware.

The newspapers, however, merely reported that Mr Lewin Rodwell, who had been a most popular speaker at recruiting meetings, who had been a well-known city financier, and a power in the social and political world of London, had died suddenly in a motor-car in the Brixton Road. The Censor, however, suppressed the facts that he had been in the custody of two officers of the Special Department of New Scotland Yard when the tragic occurrence happened, and that he had succeeded in swallowing a tabloid that he had carried concealed in his handkerchief in case of necessity, while being conveyed to Brixton Prison on a charge of espionage.

The public knew, of course, that an unnamed woman was under arrest for acts of war-treason and, later, that she had been sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. They also knew that Jack Sainsbury had been mysteriously and suddenly released by a Home Office order, after having been tried and convicted by court-martial; but the true story of the evil machinations of Ludwig Heitzman, alias Lewin Rodwell, and how he had succeeded in bringing such indisputable evidence against an innocent man, is here revealed for the first time in the foregoing pages.

On the evening of Lewin Rodwell’s well-deserved, but cowardly end – the evening of the day of his arrest – Sir Boyle Huntley disappeared from London to the Continent, and was never again seen.