At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

“S-s-sh, my friend?” Rigaux said warningly. “I will send Michel out on a pretext, and you shall see. He is loyal, but I trust no man. I never let him know too much.”

Then he rang, and his man, white-haired and humble, appeared.

“Michel, go down to the Grand Hotel at once and ask for Monsieur Legrand. Tell him I wish to see him. If he will kindly come up here in a taxi.”

“Bien, m’sieur!” and the grave-faced servant bowed and withdrew.

A few moments later Arnaud Rigaux took from a drawer in his library table an electric torch and led the way up the great wide staircase, through his own bedroom, past a door into a smaller dressing-room, in which was a huge mahogany wardrobe. The door of this he opened, and pushing the back outwards through a line of coats hanging there, a dark opening was revealed. Into this both men passed, finding themselves upon a wooden flight of dusty stairs, up which they ascended for two floors, until they arrived in a long, low attic, beneath the sloping roof of which were suspended, upon porcelain insulators, many thin, black-enamelled wires.

“Come! You shall hear for yourself,” Rigaux exclaimed; and passing along to the gable-end of the main wall of the house, he paused before two tables, upon which were set out a most complete set of wireless instruments.

To the uninitiated eye those two tables were filled with a most complicated assortment of weird electrical apparatus connected by india-rubber covered wires. To the expert, however, all was quite clear. On the one table stood a receiving-set of the latest pattern, while upon the other was what is technically known as “a five kilowatt set,” which would transmit wireless messages as far as Nauen, the great wireless station near Potsdam, and, indeed, over a radius of nearly a thousand miles. It was a Marconi set, not Telefunken.

Arnaud Rigaux seated himself upon a stool before the receiving-table, while overhead, insulated from the rafters of the roof, were a hundred bare copper wires strung across and across. His example was followed by Captain von Silberfeld, both clamping the double head-telephones over their ears, listening.

Next instant both heard the buzzing ticks of wireless, so weird and uncanny to those uninitiated.

“Da-de, Da-de-da. Da-de, Da-de-da.”

It was a call. Then followed the code-letters, “B.B.N.” with “B.Y.B.”

“Hush!” Rigaux exclaimed, glancing at the book at his elbow. “The British Admiralty station at Cleethorpes are calling the battleship London.”

The big wireless code-book – a book which could be bought in Berne for five francs – lay open before him. There was a quick response in the ’phones.

“The London is off the west coast of Ireland,” he remarked, bending with interest. “There’s the reply. Here is ‘London.’”

He touched the “tuner,” one of the round ebonite handles upon a long mahogany box, and next moment a little “click” of quite a different note was heard in the head ’phones.

“Listen?” Rigaux exclaimed, and then for a moment he was again all attention. “Marseilles is speaking to one of your North German Lloyd liners on her way from Alexandria.” Then he paused. “Are you satisfied that I am leaving to your army a complete set, quite in working order – eh?”

“Entirely. Why, it is splendid,” declared the captain, who, though he had no expert knowledge of wireless, had seen quite enough to convince him that the secret installation was practically perfect. “This,” he added, “will surely be of great use to us before many weeks are over. It is splendid!”

“Let us descend,” Rigaux said. “Michel may now be back. This part of the house is, of course, unknown to my servants.”

When they were again back in the financier’s snug little business-room, wherein he received visitors privately, he asked earnestly:

“Tell me, Count, is all complete?”

“Everything. We shall advance to-morrow, or next day. We have mobilised secretly, though Europe is in entire ignorance. First Belgium is to be occupied – then we shall cross to England. Paris is only a secondary affair. London is our chief goal. We shall crush for ever the arrogant English with our Zeppelins and our submarines. Oh! what an unpleasant surprise they will have?” and he laughed.

“But you will not conquer Belgium – eh?”

“Not if she offers no defence. If she does, then I tell you – in confidence – the Kaiser means to sweep this country with fire and sword; we shall wipe villages and towns completely out of existence, so as to strike terror and horror into the heart of Europe. War is war, you know.”

“Do you advise me to leave Brussels?”

“Well, not yet – wait and see. Your safety is assured. You already have your safe-conduct, have you not?”

“That has already been arranged.”

“His Majesty told me to give you his Imperial assurance. The final draft in your favour on the Dresdner Bank has been passed, and you will receive it in due course, paid into your bank in London,” replied the German officer.

“But what do you advise me to do, my friend? Remember, I may yet be discovered as having assisted you. And it will be awkward – very awkward?”

“Remain here for a time, and then go back to the coast. You can, as a patriotic Belgian, always cross from Ostend to England as a wealthy refugee – when the time arrives. And that will not be very long, I assure you,” he added, with a grim smile. “The brave Belgians have to-day ended their career. Our big howitzers will come along. Pouf! and Belgium is no more. In a few days we shall be at the mouth of the Scheldt, and at Ostend – in front of Dover. Besides, our grand fleet of Zeppelins are ready in their secret sheds. Later, when Belgium is devastated, they will glide forth for the conquest of our dear, sleepy friends, the British – whom God preserve. Meanwhile, we have a very satisfactory army of secret agents over yonder making ready to undermine any poor, puny defence that they – with all their vaunted might of Empire – can possibly put up.”

Both men laughed heartily as they stood there together, conversing in low tones.

“The intention, then, is first to destroy Belgium?” asked Rigaux, suddenly growing serious.

“Yes. To seize this country, notwithstanding any defence which may be offered. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg we shall only march through. But the General Staff know that, in Belgium, there may be a desperate resistance, if Britain – the broken reed – is to be relied upon. Hence we shall smash her – and Britain afterwards.”

“But is Great Britain, with her splendid navy, really a broken reed?” queried the financier very seriously.

“Personally, I do not at all agree. I only tell you the declaration of our General Staff.”

“Britain has a very mysterious way of asserting her own superiority,” said the banker, shaking his head dubiously. “France is still, as she has ever been, a nation of great emotions. But Great Britain, with her enormous Colonial possessions, her deep-seated loyalty, and her huge wealth, is a tremendous power – a power which I believe the Kaiser has never yet estimated at its true value.”

“Bah! my dear Arnaud. We, in Berlin, know all that is in progress. Surely you must know, you must feel, the irresistible power of our militarism – of our great and formidable war-machine. Germany is the greatest nation at war that the world has ever seen, and – ”

“And England still rules the seas,” interrupted the financier in a hard voice.

“The seas! Bah!” declared his dusty, travel-worn visitor. “We shall first win on land; then our grand fleet will face those overbearing British. We shall, like the Dutch, place a broom upon the mast-head of the flag-ship of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and sweep the British clean off the seas.”

“You are optimistical – to say the least.”

“I am, my dear Arnaud,” he admitted, “because I, as one of the General Staff, know what has been arranged, and what is intended. I know the great surprises we have in store for Europe – those great guns, which will smash and pulverise to dust the strongest fortresses which man can devise, and aircraft which will hurl down five tons of high explosive at a time,” he added, with an exultant laugh. “But, I had almost forgotten. Have you had any report from our friend Van Meenen, in Ostend?”

“It came yesterday, and is included in the papers you have there. Our friends in Liège have been warned, I suppose?”

“They have been warned to-day. Doctor Wilberz, brave Belgian, of course, has a secret wireless in his house, while sixty of our trusty agents are living there, quite unsuspected.”

“Wilberz was here in Brussels a month ago, and told me what he was doing. Truly the ring of forts will stand a very poor chance when you make the attack.”

“Belgium will never dare to resist, we feel sure,” declared Captain von Silberfeld. “In a month the Crown Prince will enter Paris. But I must get away at once. I have to be back in Cologne with the dawn. The Staff are awaiting your reports with eagerness, especially those upon the financial position.”

“I have supplied every detail,” responded the banker. “The position is not good, and even my friend the Baron de Neuville cannot, I happen to know, come to the rescue at the present moment.”

“Good,” exclaimed the Captain, dropping into German. “Adieu!” he said, placing the bulky envelope beneath his cotton dust-coat. “What excitement there is in the streets – eh?”

The banker laughed grimly.

“It will increase very soon, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes,” whispered the other, as they descended to the front entrance together, where the long, powerful, low-built car stood with its glaring headlights, in charge of a smart chauffeur, who saluted in military fashion. “Adieu, my dear Arnaud. I must hasten,” he whispered, “for to-morrow’s dawn will bring to us ‘The Day’!”

And with a triumphant wave of his hand he mounted beside the driver, and a moment later the car moved swiftly and silently down the hill on its long journey to the German frontier, carrying with it the final secret report of the many made through the last ten years by the traitor Arnaud Rigaux to the Prussian General Staff.