The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

There was dead silence for an instant, then I jumped down from my desk and rushed out. An unpleasant, almost a terrifying spectacle met my eyes. Old Mrs. Gaunt, the matron, was rolling upon the flags of the corridor like a wounded ostrich, yelping, there is really no other word for it, as if in agony. Her face was pale as linen and her mouth was twisted. She was obviously in great pain.

"Whatever has happened?" I said, trying to help her, but as I lifted the old thing by the shoulder she shrieked loudly and I had to lay her down again.

"My leg's broken!" she cried, "my leg's broken! One of those filthy boys left his ball about, and I trod on it" – and indeed I saw, a few yards away, the white fives ball which had been the cause of her disaster.

The porter was summoned, we improvised an ambulance somehow, and took the poor old thing to her room in the Doctor's wing, Doris and Marjorie attending to her, while the porter rushed off on his bicycle for the nearest doctor.

In about an hour the doctor came. It was perfectly true, Mrs. Gaunt had broken her leg. It was a simple fracture and, as the Doctor told me afterwards, the woman was as tough as an old turkey, but she would be confined to her bed for a fortnight at least, and the injured limb was already encased in plaster of Paris.

It was strictly against the rules for any boy to leave a fives ball about. An accident had nearly happened once before for the same reason. At lunch, I conducted a stern inquisition as to the culprit's identity. It was Dickson max., who owned up at once, and I told him to come to my room after the meal.

I could not very well cane a boy of seventeen who would have been at Sandhurst if his people could have afforded. Besides, I was too inwardly grateful to him to have the slightest wish to do anything of the sort. I gave him a thousand Latin lines and told him to stay in that afternoon, which was a half-holiday, and on three subsequent halves, and I am sorry to say that he grinned in my face as I did so. It was not an impudent grin, or I should have known how to deal with it, but it was one of perfect comprehension, and I fear I blushed as I told the young beggar to clear out as quickly as possible.

Certainly the fates were working well for me, though I had, even then, not the least idea of what an eventful day this was to prove. Nothing came to tell me that I was already embarked upon the greatest enterprise of my life. I was to know more before night.

Now one of my most cherished possessions at that time was a motor bicycle. It was of an antiquated pattern and more often in the workshop than on the road. Fortunately, such engineering knowledge as I had enabled me to tinker at it for myself. To-day, though it had recently been running with a most horrid cacophony resembling the screams of a dying elephant and a machine gun alternately, it would still get along, and I mounted it for Blankington-on-Sea to meet my brother Bernard.

I put it up at the hotel – I saw the yard attendant wink at the stable boy as he housed it – ordered a trap and went to the station. The train came in to time and my brother descended from a first-carriage. I had seen him in London only a day before, and despite his natural annoyance at the failure to get me into the R.N.F.C., he had been particularly cheery. As we shook hands and the porter took his kit-bags and gun-cases to the trap, I saw that he had something on his mind. He hardly even smiled. I jumped to a wrong conclusion.

"Bernard," I said, "would you like a whisky-soda before we start? You look as if you had been enjoying yourself too much last night."

He shook his head. "No peg for me, thanks; let us get on the road."

We went out of the station together and as we came into the yard he said in a low voice: "I have a deuce of a lot to tell you, but not now."

Then we started for Morstone.

Little more than an hour later we were seated in the parlour at the inn. A comfortable fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections round the homely room, lighting up the stuffed pintail in its case, the old-fashioned, muzzle-loading marsh gun over the mantelpiece, the gleaming lustre ware upon a dresser of old oak, and an engraving of old Colonel Hawker himself, the king of wild-fowlers and a name to conjure with in East Anglia. Upon the table was a country tea, piping hot scones made by good Mrs. Wordingham, a regiment of eggs, a Gargantuan dish of blackberry jam.

"By Jove, this is a good place!" Bernard said. "Two lumps and lots of cream, please. Look at this egg! Upon my word, I would like to shake by the hand the fowl that laid it!"

We made an enormous meal and then, as he pulled out a blackened "B.B.B." and filled it with "John Cotton," my brother began to talk.

"We are quite safe here, I suppose?" he said; "nobody can overhear us?"

"Safe as houses."

"Very well, then; now look here, old chap, you noticed I seemed a bit off colour when you met me. Well, I'm not off colour, but I've had some very serious news and, what is more, a sort of commission in connection with it. After I saw you off yesterday I went to the Army and Navy Club. There I found a letter from Admiral Noyes, written at the Admiralty and asking me to call at once. I was shipmate with Noyes when he was captain of the old Terrific, and he has helped me a lot in my service career. It was he who got me transferred into Submarines – where, you know, I have made a bit of a hit. Well, now Noyes is Chief of the Naval Intelligence Department. He sent for me and asked me a lot of questions, specially about Kiel and the Frisian Islands. I was at Kiel for the manœuvres two years ago and I know all that coast like my hat. I didn't quite see the drift of his questions until he told me what was going on. It seems" – and here Bernard's voice sank very low – "it seems that, recently, there has been a tremendous leakage of information to the enemy – Naval information, I mean. We have our people on the look-out, and there is no doubt whatever that, during the last two months, over and over again the German ships have got information about our movements."

"I know. There is a whole lot about it in the Daily Wire: flash signals from the Yorkshire coast at night, round about Whitby, and so on."

"Oh yes, I saw that too; but the leakage is not there, my boy. That's newspaper talk. The Admiralty know to a dead certainty that the leakage is going on in East Norfolk, round about here."

I whistled. "I don't see how that can be," I said. "There is no wireless station anywhere near. The few boats that come into Blankington-on-Sea are only small coasters and they are very carefully scrutinised; and as for flash signals, I am out on the marshes nearly every night, the foreshore is patrolled by sentries, and nothing of the sort has ever been hinted at."

"Exactly; that is the point. But that there is a leakage and that it is doing irreparable harm, you may take as an absolute certainty. Noyes knew that I was coming down to Norfolk for a rest and for some shooting. When I applied for leave, I had to state my destination and so forth. Noyes got hold of it by chance and sent for me, knowing he could trust me. The long and short of it is, Johnny, that I have got a roving commission to keep my eyes very wide open indeed, to see if I can't find something out. Don't mistake me. This is not a mere trifling matter. It is one of the gravest things and one of the most perfectly organised systems that has happened during the war. Why," he said, bringing his fist down upon the table so that the cups rattled, his face set and stern, "the safety of the whole of England may depend upon this being discovered and stopped!"

"But surely," I asked, "they have had people down here already?"

Bernard nodded. "Oh yes," he said, "the coastguards are specially warned, there have been thorough searches, quietly carried out, reports are constantly made from every village by accredited agents – and the Admiralty has not a single clue. Now, old chap, if you can help me, and if we can do anything together, well, here's our chance! There won't be any difficulty about your getting into the R.N.F.C., or any other corps you like, if we can only throw light upon this dark spot."

I caught fire from his words. "By Jove!" I cried, "if only there was a chance! I would do anything! But I know every man, woman, and child in this village and the surrounding ones. There is not one of them capable of acting as a spy. There are no suspicious strangers. Even the wild-fowlers who come down here are all regular and known visitors, above suspicion." I said this in all good faith, and then, suddenly, a light came to me like a flash of lightning, and I rose slowly from my chair. Bernard told me afterwards that I had grown paper-white and was trembling.

"What is it?" he said quickly.

"I hardly dare say," I replied. "It seems wild foolishness and yet – "

He waited very patiently, and still I could not bring myself to speak. Then it was his turn to take away my breath. He leant forward on the table and pulled out a pocket-book.

"Supposing, John," he said, "that you have been living in a fool's paradise for months. Supposing that, by some means unknown to me and the Admiralty, unknown to anyone, you are actually living in the centre of a cunningly woven web of espionage, whose strands reach from Berlin to Wilhelmshaven, from Kiel to London!"

He took a piece of paper from his pocket-book. I saw that there were figures upon it, not letters, but he read it as if they were print.

"'Paul Upjelly,'" he said, "'Paul Upjelly, Ph.D.; English subject; possessed of private means; has been for eight years headmaster of Morstone House School; habits' – h'm – h'm – you know all about his habits, John – 'man whose past cannot be traced for more than ten years; known to have lived in Germany in youth; no suspicion at present attaches.'"

"What on earth does this mean?" I gasped.

"It only means that in this pocket-book I have lists of forty or fifty people round these coasts who might or might not be in the pay of Germany. There is not the slightest suspicion attaching to any one of them, but I saw you stand up suddenly and grow pale – well, I played into your strong suit, that was all. Was I right?"

"Last night," I said, "I had a very curious and significant talk with a brother-master of mine, whose name is Lockhart."

"Get him to come here and have a chat as soon as possible."

"That isn't necessary, because Upjelly is away in London and an old beast of a housekeeper he keeps, who tells him everything, is in bed with a broken leg. We can go up to the school all right, and I particularly want to introduce you to Miss Joyce, who is – er – "

He nodded. "I know," he said. "You bored me to tears about the young lady last time I saw you. Delighted to meet her. We will toddle up to the school as soon as ever you like and I will hear what Mr. Lockhart has got to say. I suppose you can trust him?"

"I am absolutely certain of it," and, with that, things began to fall together in my mind as the glass pieces in a kaleidoscope fall and make a pattern. I mentioned the Navy List that I had seen at breakfast that morning, and I told Bernard what Wordingham had told me concerning the Doctor's knowledge of his visit.

A gleam came into his eyes. "Ah!" he said, very softly, and that was all.

We got up to go, and as Bernard walked across the room to find his overcoat, for night had fallen and it was bitter cold, I exclaimed aloud. I knew what had puzzled me at breakfast when Mr. Jones came into the room. He walked exactly like my brother. If you go to Chatham, Portsmouth, or Plymouth, almost every other man in the street walks like that.

We went straight to the school, only a quarter of a mile away, and entered by the masters' door. I lit the lamp in my sitting-room, put on some coals, and rang a bell which communicated with the upper boys' room, where they were now at preparation. In a minute, there was a knock at the door and Dickson max. entered.

"Dickson," I said, "I want you to find Mr. Lockhart and ask him if he would be so very kind as to come to my room – oh and, by the way, this is my brother, Commander Carey, Dickson."

The boy grew pale for an instant and then flushed a deep, rosy red. He was a cool young wretch as a rule and I had never seen him so excited before. I loved him for it. The boys knew all about my brother. They had read of his exploits in the Submarine E8. I was always being pestered with questions about him.

Bernard shook hands. "I am glad to meet you," he said.

Dickson was tongue-tied, but he gazed with an almost painful reverence at Bernard.

"Oh, sir," he stammered, "oh, sir" – and then could get no further. In desperation he turned to me. "I've done five hundred of the lines, sir," he said.

"Oh well, you needn't do any more," I answered.

"And please, sir, I've taken some more snapshots which I think you might like" – and with that the lad pulled out a little bundle of recently developed and printed photographs – he had a small kodak – and laid them on the table. Then he bolted and we could hear him leaping downstairs, bursting with the great news.

"He's got it badly," I remarked – "hero worship."

"Jolly good thing," my brother answered. "Lord, I remember when I was a midshipman of signals, how I worshipped the flag-lieutenant. I ran after him like a little dog, and I thought he was God. Healthy!"

We sat without speaking, waiting for Lockhart. My brother took up the little bundle of snapshots and looked through them. Then we heard a shuffling footstep in the passage and Lockhart entered. I introduced him and we shut and locked the door. Bernard looked the little man up and down for a minute or two, talking on indifferent subjects. And then, as if satisfied, he plunged into business. He didn't tell my colleague all that he had told me, but he told him enough to set Lockhart quivering with eagerness and excitement.

"You shall hear all I know, Commander Carey," he said. "After all, it isn't much, though" – he hesitated for a moment and then began:

"This man, Upjelly, our chief, is absolutely unfitted to be a schoolmaster. He takes not the slightest interest in the school. John, here, has found out, what I long more than suspected, that the Doctor's wild-fowling is really a colossal pretence."

"Does the school pay?" my brother asked.

"Just about. There may be a small profit, but not enough to keep any man tied down here if he has the slightest ambition or is anybody at all. And, you haven't met the Doctor, but you may take it from me that he is no ordinary man. There has always been an air of mystery and secretiveness about him. He neither asks nor gives confidences. It struck me from the very first that he was a man with an absorbing mental interest of some sort or other. What was it? – that is what I asked myself.

"Three weeks ago, the Doctor had a guest. It was a Mr. Jones, who frequently visits him, apparently for the shooting. My bedroom is on the floor below this. As you see, I am a cripple and an invalid. I often pass nights of pain, when I cannot sleep. On one such night, three weeks ago, the window of my bedroom was open and I lay in the dark. About half-past three in the morning I heard footsteps on the gravel outside, and the Doctor's voice. The night was quite still, though pitch dark. Then I heard another voice which I recognised as that of the man Jones.

"The voices drew nearer until the men were almost underneath my window. They were coming back from the marshes. I only know a few words of German, but I recognise the language when I hear it. They were speaking German."

My brother nodded.

"That Jones," I put in, "I have already told you, Bernard, was here when I arrived last night. He left for London this morning, taking the Doctor up with him in his car."

"Four days ago," Lockhart continued, "I wanted some waste paper to wrap up a pair of boots I was sending to be mended. I was in my room and I told one of the boys of my dormitory to go downstairs and get some. It was about nine o'clock at night. The boy brought back two or three newspapers. One of them was the Cologne Gazette, very crumpled and torn, but with the date of only five days before. I have got it locked up in my writing-desk.

"To-day, being a half-holiday, I thought I would go out for a walk upon the foreshore. An overcoat rather impedes my movements, though I have to wear one sometimes. I thought I would take a scarf instead. I went into the hall, knowing that my scarf was in the pocket of my overcoat, and felt for it. The hall is rather dark and I could not see very well what I was doing. What I brought out of the pocket in which I felt was not my scarf, but – this!"

Lockhart quietly laid something upon the table, and we bent over to look at it. To me, at any rate, it was an extraordinary object. It was a sort of cross between a large watch and a compass, with a curious little handle. There were letters or figures, for a moment I could not say which, in a double row round the dial.

"Can you tell me what it is?"

My brother was shaken from his calm at last. He gave an exclamation.

"Yes, I can!" he said. "I know very well. But first, when was this photograph taken?"

With dramatic suddenness, he held out one of Dickson's prints. It was a picture of Mr. Jones' motor, with that gentleman at the wheel and the Doctor sitting on the far side, taken that very morning as they left for London.

"This morning," I said. "That is the Doctor and Mr. Jones going off to town."

"Mr. Jones at the wheel?" my brother asked.

"Yes, that is the fellow."

"Let me get it quite clear. The man, you say, walks like me?"

"Yes."

"Ah!" said my brother again, and his eyes had the look of a bloodhound on a leash. "And now I will proceed to explain to you the use of this pretty thing."

CHAPTER IV

DORIS AND MARJORIE GIVE A SUPPER PARTY. THE ARROW FLIES IN MORSTONE SEA WOOD

"This," said my brother, "is what is known as Charles Wheatstone's Cipher Instrument. It is a machine for writing in cipher. You see it has a sort of watch-face, which has the alphabet inscribed round its outer margin in the usual order, plus a blank space. A second alphabet is written on a card or paper and attached to the watch-face within the first alphabet. This has no blank space, and so there are but twenty-six divisions as against twenty-seven in the outer ring. Two hands are attached which travel at different speeds when the handle is turned. Accordingly, each time the long hand is carried forward to the blank space at the end of a word, the short hand will have moved forward one division on the inner ring of letters. Then a word is chosen as a key, written down in separate letters and the remaining letters of the alphabet are written in order beneath it. I'll show you. Suppose, for example, we choose the word 'English,' thus." He took a pencil and scribbled for a moment upon the back of one of Dickson's photographs:

ENGLISH

ABCDFJK

MOPQRTU

VWXYZ.

"Now, if you read these letters downwards, you get this arrangement:

EAMVNBOWGCPXLDQYIFRZSJTHKU.

"This cryptographic alphabet is written on the inner card of the instrument, beginning at a point previously agreed on. Then, when a despatch is to be translated into cipher, the long hand is moved to that letter in the outer alphabet, and the letter to which the short hand points in the inner ring is written down. I need not go on, but I am sure the principle will be clear to you. These machines are in use in our Secret Service. But what I should like to point out to you in regard to this example is that the alphabet here is in German."

We all looked at each other in silence.

"That is conclusive proof," I said at length. "Of course, you will have Doctor Upjelly arrested directly he comes back."

"And thank you!" said my brother. "So kind of you to put up your little turn, Johnny! Will you have a cigar or a cocoanut? My dear boy, if we had this man arrested, ten to one his tracks would be absolutely covered and we could prove nothing. Don't you see, what we want to do is to catch him in the act, to find out what he does and how he does it. No such rough and ready methods!" – his voice became very grave and stern.

"Quarter-deck!" I thought to myself.

"This has not got to be taken lightly," he went on. "I believe that fate has put my finger upon the very pulse of what has been puzzling the Admiralty for weeks. I honestly believe that here, in this lonely house, is hidden the intellect of the Master Spy of Germany. We are up against it. We must work in silence and in the dark. The slightest slip would be fatal. I cannot exaggerate the importance of this affair, nor," he concluded, looking keenly at Lockhart and myself, "nor the danger."

Little Lockhart's face positively brightened at this. "Danger!" he cried, as if someone had made him a present. "Then I shall be able to do something to help! We shall all be able to do something and – "

Lockhart started and broke off. At that moment, from behind Smith's classical dictionary and Liddell and Scott's Greek ditto there came a faint, muffled whirr.

"Good God, what's that?" said Lockhart.

"Oh, it's all right," I answered, and I expect I looked about as big an ass as I felt. "That is – er – a little contrivance of my own. By the way, you fellows must keep it absolutely dark."

To say that they watched me with interest is to put it mildly. I withdrew "Our House Telephone, Not a Toy, 27s. 6d. net" from its hiding place. Doris was speaking. She knew that my brother had come and she was dying to meet him. Old Mrs. Gaunt was sleeping peacefully; in fact I fear, so prone are all of us to error, that Doris had administered just twice the amount of opiate that the doctor had prescribed.

Doris suggested that she and Marjorie should come at once to my room. They also suggested that we should dine there, with the connivance of a friendly housemaid. I told her to hold the line for a minute, and explained.

My brother's face lost all preoccupation. He was a naval officer, you will remember, and, though a distinguished one, was as young gentlemen in that Service usually are in both age and inclination.

"Can a duck swim?" said my brother.

"Well, I'll go," Lockhart remarked, with just a trace of his old bitterness.

"You sit where you are, old soul," I told him. "Bernard, both the girls are only stepdaughters of the Doctor, who, they have told me, did not treat their mother very well and who is a perfect tyrant to them. They're as true as steel; I can answer for them. They will be of tremendous help."

"Leave it all to me," he replied. "I am skipper of this from now onwards. You follow my lead."

A minute or two afterwards the girls came in. Doris, as I have already explained, was as pretty as Venus, Cleopatra, and Gertie Millar all in one, and she only beat Marjorie by a short head. All the other girls I've ever met were simply "also ran."

Marjorie's hair was black. She was a brunette with olive-coloured skin and green eyes, like very dark, clear emeralds. She was extraordinarily lovely. Indeed, all three of us had seriously considered starting a picture postcard firm, with the girls as models and I to manage it, so that Doris and I could get married and have Marjorie to live with us. Rather a good scheme, only it would have needed at least two hundred pounds capital, which we hadn't got! Doris had on her engagement ring, which she generally wore on a string round her neck, underneath her blouse. I had put thirty shillings each way on "Baby Mine" for the Grand National and it had come off – hence the ring.

"Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Miss Joyce," I said to Bernard.

He took her hand and bowed over it, looking out of the corner of his eyes at Marjorie.

Little Lockhart gasped. "Babe that I am!" he said, "blind mole! To think that I have lived in this house with young John Carey for so long, the house honeycombed with secret wires, and an illicit engagement in progress under my nose, and I knew nothing of it!"

"Well, you are not the only person, Mr. Lockhart," Marjorie said. "And now I am going to fetch up dinner. Cook is out for the evening. Amy is in the plot. We've got soup – only tinned, but quite nice; there's a round of cold beef; and we will make an omelette on John's fire."