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

“Well, that would not matter very much, so long as the enemy obtains no knowledge of the British Admiral’s intentions,” remarked Lewin Rodwell, contemplating the end of his cigar and reflecting for a few seconds.

Then he blurted out:

“Gad! that’s jolly interesting. I shall wait for next Wednesday with all eagerness.”

“You won’t breathe a word, will you? Remember, it was you who obtained the information by suggestion,” Trustram said, with a good-humoured laugh.

“Can’t you really rely on me, my dear fellow, when I give you my word of honour as an Englishman to say nothing?” he asked. “I expect I am often in the know in secrets of the Cabinet, and I am trusted.”

“Very well,” replied his friend. “I accept your promise. Not a word must leak out. If it did, then all our plans would be upset, and possibly it would mean the loss of one, or more, of our ships. But you, of course, realise the full seriousness of it all.”

“I do, my dear Trustram – I do,” was the reassuring answer. “No single whisper of it shall pass my lips. That, I most faithfully promise you.”

Chapter Eight.

Toilers of the North Sea

Just as it was growing dark on the following evening, a powerful pale grey car, with cabriolet body, drew out of the yard of the quaint old Saracen’s Head Hotel at Lincoln, and, passing slowly through the town, set out on the straight, open road which led past Langworth station to Wragby, and on to Horncastle.

The occupant of the car, muffled up as though he were an invalid, had come in from London half an hour before, taken his tea in the coffee-room, and had resumed his journey, together with his smart, clean-shaven chauffeur.

Though he posed as an invalid at the Saracen’s Head, yet as soon as the car had left the town he threw off his thick muffler, opened his coat and drew a long sigh of relief.

Truth to tell, Mr Lewin Rodwell, whose photograph appeared so constantly in the picture-papers, was not over anxious to be seen in Lincoln, or, indeed, in that neighbourhood at all. With Penney, his trusted chauffeur – a man who, like himself, was a “friend of Germany” – he had set out from Bruton Street that morning, and all day they had sat side by side on their journey towards the Fens.

Many times, after chatting with Penney, he had lapsed into long spells of silence, during which time he had puffed vigorously at his cigar, and thought deeply.

Until, after about five miles, they passed Langworth station, they had been content with their side-lights, but soon they switched on the huge electric head-lamps, and then they “put a move on,” as Rodwell was anxious to get to his journey’s end as quickly as possible.

“You’ll drop me, as usual, at the three roads beyond Mumby. Then go into Skegness and put up for the night. Meet me at the same spot to-morrow morning at seven-thirty.”

“Very well, sir,” was the young man’s obedient reply.

“Let’s see,” remarked Rodwell. “When we were up in this lonely, forsaken part of the country a week ago, where did you put up?”

“The last time in Louth, sir. The time before in Lincoln, and the time before that in Grimsby. I haven’t been in Skegness for a full month.”

“Then go there, and mind and keep your mouth shut tight!”

“I always do, sir.”

“Yes, it pays you to do so – eh?” laughed Rodwell. “But I confess, Penney, that I’m getting heartily sick of this long journey,” he sighed, “compelled, as we are, to constantly go many miles out of our way in order to vary the route.”

“The road is all right in summer, sir, but it isn’t pleasant on a cold stormy night like this – especially when you’ve got a two-mile walk at the end of it.”

“That’s just it. I hate that walk. It’s so dark and lonely, along by that open dyke. Yet it has to be done; and, after all, the darker the night – perhaps the safer it is.” Then he lapsed again into silence, while the car – well-driven by Penney, who was an expert driver – flew across the broad open fenlands, in the direction of the sea.

The December night was dark, with rain driving against and blurring the windscreen, in which was a small oblong hole in the glass, allowing Penney to see the long, lonely road before him. Passing the station at Horncastle, they continued through the town and then up over the hill on the Spilsby road and over the wide gloomy stretch until, about half-past seven o’clock, after taking a number of intricate turns up unfrequented fen-roads, they found themselves passing through a small, lonely, ill-lit village. Beyond this place, called Orby, they entered another wide stretch of those low-lying marshes which border the North Sea on the Lincolnshire coast, marshes intersected by a veritable maze of roads, most of which were without sign-posts, and where, in the darkness, it was a very easy matter to lose one’s way.

But Penney – who had left the high road on purpose – had been over those cross-roads on many previous occasions. Indeed, he knew them as well as any Fenman, and without slackening speed or faltering, he at last brought the car to a standstill a few miles beyond the village of Mumby, at a point where three roads met about two miles from the sea.

It was still raining – not quite so heavily as before, but sufficiently to cause Rodwell to discard his fur-lined overcoat for a mackintosh. Then, having placed an electric flash-lamp in his pocket, together with a large bulky cartridge envelope, a silver flask and a packet of sandwiches, he took a stout stick from the car and alighting bade the young man good-night, and set forth into the darkness.

“I wonder whether I’ll be in time?” he muttered to himself in German, going forward as he bent against the cold driving rain which swept in from the sea. He usually spoke German to himself when alone. His way, for the first mile, was beside a long straight “drain,” into which, in the darkness, it would have been very easy to slip had he not now and then flashed on his lamp to reveal the path.

Beneath his breath, in German, he cursed the weather, for already the bottoms of his trousers were saturated as he splashed on through the mud, while the rain beat full in his face. Presently he came in sight of a row of cottage-windows at a place called Langham, and then, turning due north into the marshes, he at last, after a further mile, came to the beach whereon the stormy waters of the North Sea were lashing themselves into a white foam discernible in the darkness.

That six miles of low-lying coast, stretching from the little village of Chapel St. Leonards north to Sutton-on-Sea, was very sparsely inhabited – a wide expanse of lonely fenland almost without a house.

Upon that deserted, low-lying coast were two coastguard stations, one near Huttoft Bank and the other at Anderby Creek, and of course – it being war-time – constant vigil was kept at sea both night and day. But as the district was not a vulnerable one in Great Britain’s defences, nothing very serious was ever reported from there to the Admiralty.

By day a sleepy plain of brown and green marshes, by night a dark, cavernous wilderness, where the wild sea beat monotonously upon the shingle, it was a truly gloomy, out-of-the-world spot, far removed from the bustle of war’s alarm.

Lewin Rodwell, on gaining the beach at the end of a long straight path, turned without hesitation to the right, and walked to the south of the little creek of Anderby for some distance, until he suddenly ascended a low mound close by the sea, half-way between Anderby Creek and Chapel Point, and there before him stood a low-built fisherman’s cottage, partly constructed of wood, which by day was seen to be well-tarred and water-tight.

Within a few yards of the beach it stood, with two boats drawn up near and a number of nets spread out to dry; the home of honest Tom Small and his son, typical Lincolnshire fishermen, who, father and son, had fished the North Sea for generations.

At the Anchor, in Chapel St. Leonards, old Tom Small was a weekly visitor on Saturday nights, when, in that small, close-smelling bar-parlour, he would hurl the most bitter anathemas at the “All Highest of Germany,” and laugh his fleet to scorn; while at Anderby Church each Sunday morning he would appear in his best dark blue trousers, thick blue jacket and peaked cap, a worthy hardworking British fisherman with wrinkled, weatherbeaten face and reddish beard. He was of that hardy type of seafarer so much admired by the town-dweller when on his summer holiday, a man who, in his youth, had been “cox” of the Sutton lifeboat, and who had stirring stories to tell of wild nights around the Rosse Spit and the Sand Haile, the foundering of tramps with all hands, and the marvellous rescues effected by his splendid crew.

It was this man, heavily-booted and deep-voiced, by whom Lewin Rodwell was confronted when he tapped at the cottage door.

“Come, hurry up! Let me in!” cried Rodwell impatiently, after the door was slowly unlocked. “I’m soaked! This infernal neighbourhood of yours is absolutely the limit, Small. Phew!” and he threw down his soaked cap and entered the stone-flagged living-room, where Small’s son rose respectfully to greet him.

“Where are my other clothes?” he asked sharply, whereupon the weatherbeaten fisherman produced from an old chest in the corner a rough suit of grey tweeds, which Rodwell, carried to the inner room on the left, and quickly assumed.

“Pretty nice weather this!” he shouted cheerily to father and son, while in the act of changing his clothes. “Is all serene? Have you tested lately?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the elder man. “I spoke at five o’clock an’ told ’em you were coming. So Mr Stendel is waiting.”

“Good!” was Rodwell’s reply. “Anybody been looking around?”

“Not a soul to-day, sir. The weather’s been bad, an’ the only man we’ve seen is Mr Bennett, from the coastguard station, on his patrol. He was ’ere last night and had a drop o’ whisky with us.”

“Good?” laughed Rodwell. “Keep well in with the coastguard. They’re a fine body, but only a year or so ago the British Admiralty reduced them. It wasn’t their fault.”

“We do keep in with ’em,” was old Tom Small’s reply, as Rodwell re-entered the room in dry clothes. “I generally give ’em a bit o’ fish when they wants it, and o’ course I’m always on the alert looking out for periscopes that don’t appear,” and the shrewd old chap gave vent to a deep guttural laugh.

“Well now, Small, let’s get to work,” Rodwell said brusquely. “I’ve got some important matters on hand. Is all working smoothly?”

“Splendidly, sir,” answered the younger man. “Nothing could be better. Signals are perfect to-night.”

“Then come along,” answered the man who was so universally believed to be a great British patriot; and, turning the handle of the door on the right-hand side of the living-room, he entered a small, close-smelling bedroom, furnished cheaply, as the bedroom of a small struggling fisherman would be. The Smalls were honest, homely folk, the domestic department being carried on by Tom’s younger daughter, Mary, who at the moment happened to be visiting her married sister in Louth.

The son, Ted, having lit a petrol table-lamp – one of those which, filled with spirit, give forth gas from the porous block by which the petrol is absorbed and an intense light in consequence – Lewin Rodwell went to the corner of the room where an old curtain of crimson damask hung before a recess. This he drew aside, when, hanging in the recess, were shown several coats and pairs of trousers – the wardrobe of old Tom Small; while below was a tailor’s sewing-machine on a treadle stand – a machine protected by the usual wooden cover.

The latter he lifted; but beneath, instead of a machine for the innocent needle-and-cotton industry, there was revealed a long electrical tapping-key upon an ebonite base, together with several electrical contrivances which, to the uninitiated, would present a mysterious problem.

A small, neatly-constructed Morse printing machine, with its narrow ribbon of green paper passing through beneath a little glass cover protecting the “inker” from the dust; a cylindrical brass relay with its glass cover, and a tangle of rubber-insulated wires had been hidden beneath that square wooden cover, measuring two and a half feet by one.

Behind the sewing-machine stand, and cunningly concealed, there ran a thick cable fully two inches in diameter, which was nothing else but the shore-end of a submarine cable directly connecting the East Coast of England with Wangeroog, the most northerly of the East Frisian Islands, running thence across to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, and on by the land-line, via Hamburg, to Berlin.

The history of that cable was unknown and unsuspected by the British public, who, full of trust of the authorities, never dreamed that there could possibly be any communication from the English shore actually direct into Berlin. Five years before the declaration of war the German Government had approached the General Post Office, offering to lay down a new cable from Wangeroog to Spurn Head, in order to relieve some of the constantly increasing traffic over the existing cables from Lowestoft, Bacton and Mundesley. Long negotiations ensued, with the result that one day the German cable-ship Christoph passed the Chequer shoal and, arriving off the Spurn Lighthouse, put in the shore-end, landed several German engineers to conduct the electrical control-tests between ship and shore, and then sailed away back to Germany, paying out the cable as she went.

In due course, after the arranged forty days’ tests from Wangeroog to the Spurn, the cable was accepted by the General Post Office, and over it much of the telegraphic traffic between England and Germany had, for the past five years, been conducted.

On the declaration of war, however, telegraph engineers from York had arrived, excavated the cable out of the beach at the Spurn, and effectively cut the line, as all the lines connecting us with German stations had been severed. After that, the British postal authorities contented themselves that no further communication could possibly be established with the enemy, and the public were satisfied with a defiant isolation.

They were ignorant how, ten days after the cables had been cut, old Tom Small, his son and two other men, in trawling for fish not far from the shore, had one night suddenly grappled a long black snaky-looking line, and, after considerable difficulties, had followed it with their grapnels to a certain spot where, with the aid of their winch, they were able to haul it on board in the darkness.

Slimy and covered with weeds and barnacles, that strategic cable had been submerged and lay there, unsuspected, ready for “the Day,” for, truth to tell, the Spurn Head-Wangeroog cable had possessed a double shore-end, one of which had been landed upon British soil, while the other had been flung overboard from the German cable-ship four miles from land, while old Tom Small and his son had been established on shore in readiness to perform their part in dredging it up and landing it when required.

So completely and carefully had Germany’s plans been laid for war that Small, once an honest British fisherman, had unsuspectingly fallen into the hands of a certain moneylender in Hull, who had first pressed him, and had afterwards shown him an easy way out of his financial difficulties; that way being to secretly accept the gift of a small trawler, on condition that, any time his services were required by a strange gentleman who would come down from London and bring him instructions, he would faithfully carry them out.

In the middle of the month of August 1914 the mysterious gentleman had arrived, showed him a marked chart of the sea beyond the five-fathoms line at the Sand Haile, and had given him certain instructions, which he had been forced to carry out.

Not without great difficulty had the second shore-end of the cable been brought ashore at night just opposite his cottage, and dug into the sand at low water, the end being afterwards carried into the little bedroom in the cottage, where, a few days before, several heavy boxes had arrived – boxes which old Tom afterwards saw contained a quantity of electric batteries and weird-looking apparatus.

It was then that Lewin Rodwell arrived for the first time, and, among other accomplishments, being a trained telegraph electrician, he had set the instruments up upon the unsuspicious-looking stand of the big old sewing-machine.

Small, who daily realised and regretted the crafty machinations of the enemy in entrapping him by means of the moneylender in Hull, was inclined to go to the police, confess, and expose the whole affair.

Rodwell, with his shrewd intuition, knew this, and in consequence treated father and son with very little consideration.

Even as he stood in the room that night fingering the secret instruments, which he had just revealed by lifting the cover, he turned to the weatherbeaten old man and said, in a hard, sarcastic voice:

“You see the war is lasting longer than you expected, Small – isn’t it? I suppose you’ve seen all that silly nonsense in the papers about Germany being already at the end of her tether? Don’t you believe it. In a year’s time we shall have only just started.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the old fellow, in a thick voice. “But – well, sir, I – I tell you frankly, I’m growing a bit nervous. Mr Judd, from the Chapel Point coastguard, came ’ere twice last week and sat with me smokin’, as if he were a-tryin’ to pump me.”

“Nervous, be hanged, Small. Don’t be an idiot!” Rodwell replied quickly. “What can anybody know, unless you yourself blab? And if you did – by Gad! your own people would shoot you as a traitor at the Tower of London – you and your boy too! So remember that – and be very careful to keep a still tongue.”

“But I never thought, when that Mr Josephs, up in London, wrote to me sending me a receipt for the money I owed, that I was expected to do all this!” Small protested.

“No, if you had known you would never have done it!” laughed Rodwell. “But Germany is not like your gallant rule-of-thumb England. She leaves nothing to chance, and, knowing the cupidity of men, she takes full advantage of it – as in your case.”

“But I can’t bear the suspense, sir; I feel – I feel, Mr Rodwell – that I’m suspected – that this house is under suspicion – that – ”

“Utter bosh! It’s all imagination, Small,” Lewin Rodwell interrupted. “They’ve cut the cable at the Spurn, and that’s sufficient. Nobody in England ever dreams that the German Admiralty prepared for this war five years ago, and therefore spliced a second end into the cable.”

“Well, I tell you, sir, I heartily wish I’d never had anything to do with this affair,” grumbled old Tom.

“And if you hadn’t you’d have been in Grimsby Workhouse instead of having six hundred and fifty-five pounds to your credit at the bank in Skegness. You see I know the exact amount. And that amount you have secured by assisting the enemy. I know mine is a somewhat unpalatable remark – but that’s the truth, a truth which you and your son Ted, as well as your two brothers must hide – if you don’t want to be tried by court-martial and shot as traitors, the whole lot of you.”

The old fisherman started at those words, and held his breath.

“We won’t say any more, Tom, on that delicate question,” Rodwell went on, speaking in a hard, intense voice. “Just keep a dead silence, all of you, and you’ll have nothing to fear or regret. If you don’t, the punishment will fall upon you; I shall take good care to make myself secure – depend upon that!”

“But can’t we leave this cottage? Can’t we get away?” implored the old fellow who had innocently fallen into the dastardly web so cleverly spun by the enemy.

“No; you can’t. You’ve accepted German money for five years, and Germany now requires your services,” was Rodwell’s stern, brutal rejoinder. “Any attempt on your part to back out of your bargain will result in betraying you to your own people. That’s plain speaking! You and your son should think it over carefully together. You know the truth now. When Germany is at war she doesn’t fight in kid-gloves – like your idiotic pigs of English!”

Chapter Nine.

To “Number 70 Berlin.”

Lewin Rodwell, as a powerful and well-informed secret agent, was no amateur.

After the old fisherman had left the close atmosphere of that little room, Rodwell seated himself on a rickety rush-bottomed chair before the sewing-machine stand, beside the bed, and by the bright light of the petrol table-lamp, carefully and with expert touch adjusted the tangle of wires and the polished brass instruments before him.

The manner in which he manipulated them showed him to be perfectly well acquainted with the due importance of their adjustment. With infinite care he examined the end of the cable, unscrewing it from its place, carefully scraping with his clasp-knife the exposed copper wires protruding from the sheath of gutta percha and steel wire, and placing them each beneath the solid brass binding-screws upon the mahogany base.

“The silly old owl now knows that we won’t stand any more nonsense from him,” he muttered to himself, in German, as he did this. “It’s an unsavoury thought that the old fool, in his silly patriotism, might blab to the police or the coastguard. Phew! If he did, things would become awkward – devilish awkward.”

Then, settling himself before the instruments, he took from his inner pocket the long, bulky envelope, out of which he drew a sheet of closely-written paper which he spread out upon the little table before him. Afterwards, with methodical exactness, he took out a pencil and a memorandum-block from his side-pocket, arranging them before him.

Again he examined the connections running into the big, heavy tapping-key, and then, grasping the ebonite knob of the latter, he ticked out dots and dashes in a manner which showed him to be an expert telegraphist.

“M.X.Q.Q.” were the code-letters he sent. “M.X.Q.Q.” he clicked out, once – twice – thrice. The call, in the German cable war-code, meant: “Are you ready to receive message?”

He waited for a reply. But there was none. The cable that ran for three hundred miles, or so, beneath the black, storm-tossed waters of the North Sea was silent.

“Curious!” he muttered to himself. “Stendel is generally on the alert. Why doesn’t he answer?”

“M.X.Q.Q.” he repeated with a quick, impatient touch. “M.X.Q.Q.”

Then he waited, but in vain.

“Surely the cable, after the great cost to the Empire, has not broken down just at the very moment when we want it!” he exclaimed, speaking in German, as was his habit when excited.

Again he sent the urgent call beneath the waters by the only direct means of communication between Britain’s soil and that of her bitter enemy.

But in Tom Small’s stuffy little bedroom was a silence that seemed ominous. Outside could be heard the dull roar of the sea, the salt spray coming up almost to the door. But there was no answering click upon the instruments.

The electric current from the rows of batteries hidden in the cellar was sufficient, for he had tested it before he had touched the key.

“Tom,” he shouted, summoning the old fisherman whom he had only a few moments before dismissed.

“Yes, sir,” replied the old fellow gruffly, as he stalked forward again, in his long, heavy sea-boots.

“The cable’s broken down, I believe! What monkey-tricks have you been playing – eh?” he cried angrily.

“None, sir. None, I assure you. Ted tested at five o’clock this evening, as usual, and got an acknowledgment. The line was quite all right then.”

“Well, it isn’t now,” was Rodwell’s rough answer, for he detected in the old man’s face a secret gleaming satisfaction that no enemy message could be transmitted.

“I believe you’re playing us false, Small!” cried Rodwell, his eyes flashing angrily. “By Gad! if you have dared to do so you’ll pay dearly for it – I warn you both! Now confess!”

“I assure you, sir, that I haven’t. I was in here when Ted tested, as he does each evening. All was working well then.”

The younger man, a tall, big-limbed, fair-haired toiler of the sea, in a fisherman’s blouse of tanned canvas like his father, overhearing the conversation, entered the little room.

“It was all right at five, sir. I made a call, and got the answer.”

“Are you sure it was answered – quite sure?” queried the man from London.