Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England
"I always carry it nowadays," was my reply.
"Well, old chap, to-night promises to be exciting."
"Why!" I exclaimed. "Look! There are three men lurking under that wall over yonder!"
"I know," he laughed. "They're our friends. To-night we shall avenge the death of the poor pilot Pavely. But remain silent, and you'll see!"
I noted that the three dark figures concealed near us were water-side labourers, fellows whose rough-looking exteriors were the reverse of reassuring. Yet I recollected that every man who worked on the Blackwater or the Crouch was a patriot, ready to tear the mask from the spies of England's enemies.
We must have waited in patience fully three hours, when again from the timber-ship lying in the Blackwater came the laden boat, and again were similar boxes landed and carried in the shadow up to the inn, the door of which opened silently to receive them. Wherever the Customs officers or police were, they noticed nothing amiss.
The two men had made their second journey to the "Goat and Binnacle," when Ray Raymond suddenly exclaimed:
"We're going to rush the place, Jacox. Have your gun ready"; and then he gave a low whistle.
In a moment fully a dozen men, some of whom I recognised as Customs officers in mufti and police in plain clothes, together with several longshoremen, emerged from the shadow, and in a moment we had surrounded the public-house.
The door had closed upon the two men who carried up the boxes, and a demand that it should be reopened met with no response. Therefore a long iron bar was procured from somewhere, and two policemen working with it soon prised the door from its hinges.
The lights within had all been suddenly extinguished, but finding myself in the little bar-parlour with two others of the party, I struck a vesta and relit the gas.
Two of the mysterious wooden cases brought from the ship were standing there.
We heard loud shouts in German, and a scuffle upon the stairs in the darkness, followed by a shot. Then a woman's scream mingled with the shouts and curses of my companions, and I found myself in the midst of a wild mêlée, in which furniture and bottles were being smashed about me. My friends were trying to secure Bramberger and Freeman, while both were fighting desperately for their lives.
Ray made a sudden spring upon the young man who had been so attracted by Vera Vallance, but for his pains received a savage cut in the arm from a knife.
The man stood at bay in the corner of the smoke-room with half a dozen of us before him. The fellow had set his jaws fiercely, and there was murder in his black eyes. Bramberger, however, had already been secured, and handcuffs had been slipped upon him by the police.
"Now," cried Ray Raymond, "tell your story, Richardson. These two blackguards must hear it before we hand them over." And I noticed that near me were two policemen, who had covered Freeman with their revolvers.
From among us a rough man in a shabby pea-jacket, whom I had seen once or twice in that inn, came forward, and without a word of preliminary exclaimed:
"Jim Pavely, the poor fellow whom these accursed foreigners murdered, was my brother-in-law. The night before he was killed he slept at my house. He was drunk, but he told me something that at first I didn't believe. He told me that on the previous day, spending so much time about this place, he had stumbled on the fact that a certain German timber-ship was in the habit of bringing up among its cargo a quantity of saccharine which was smuggled ashore at night and stored in the cellars below here. He had had words with the landlord Bramberger, but the latter had made him promise to keep his secret till next morning, when he would pay him a certain sum to say nothing to the Customs officers. Next afternoon at four o'clock he went to the 'Goat and Binnacle' to receive the money, and I entered after him, intending to assist him in getting all he could out of the German. But that fellow Freeman, yonder – whom I know to be also a German – was with his compatriot, and the three had consultation together in the back room. Half an hour later Jim Pavely came back to my house and showed me fifty pounds, and a written agreement signed by Bramberger to pay one hundred and fifty pounds more in gold in Calais, on condition that he remained abroad and held his tongue."
Then the informer paused.
"Go on," I urged. "What then?"
"Pavely told me something – something he had discovered. But I foolishly laughed his statement to scorn. He added that he was to sail in a French schooner that night, and that Freeman, who was in partnership with Bramberger, was to go over to Latchingdon with him that evening and introduce him to the skipper, who would land him at Calais. When he had gone, the story he had told me struck me as very astounding; therefore I resolved to follow him. I saw him come with Freeman out of this place just after midnight, and I followed them. When they got to Button's Hill, on that lonely stretch of road, I saw with my own eyes Freeman suddenly attack him with a life-preserver, and having smashed his skull before I could interfere, he stole the German's undertaking from his pocket."
At this, the man accused, standing in the corner covered by several revolvers, turned livid. He tried to protest, but his voice was only faint and hollow before the living witness of his crime.
He had collapsed.
"My first impulse was to denounce the assassin, but what the dead man had told me caused me to hesitate, and I resolved to first get at the truth, which I have done with Mr. Raymond's aid," Richardson went on. "The story of the schooner was true," he added, "except that it was a steam schooner-rigged yacht which was about to land some stuff for another depôt at Burnham."
"What stuff?" I asked quickly.
"Ammunition ready for the German army when it lands upon this coast. It was that fact which Pavely had discovered and told me. After agreeing to keep the secret of the saccharine, it seems that he discovered that the boxes really contained cartridges, a fact which he urged me to communicate to the War Office after he had secured the German's bribe."
"Yes," declared Raymond, "the extensive cellaring under this place is packed to the ceiling with ammunition ready for the Day of Invasion. See this, which has just been brought!"
After prising open one of the boxes, many rounds of German rifle-cartridges were revealed. "That man Freeman before you, though brought up in England and passing as an Englishman, is, I have discovered, a German agent, who, in the guise of estate-pupil, has been busy composing a voluminous report upon supplies, accommodation, forage, possible landing-places, and other information useful to the invader. His district has been the important country between the Blackwater and the Crouch, eastward of Maldon and Purleigh. Bramberger, who is also in the German Secret Service, has been accumulating this store of ammunition as well as forwarding his coadjutor's reports and plans to Berlin, for, being German, it excited no suspicion that he posted many bulky letters to Germany. He is often in direct communication with our friend in Pont Street. My secret investigations revealed all this, Jacox, hence I arranged this raid to-night."
"You'll never take me!" cried Freeman in defiance. But next moment these men, all of them constables in plain clothes, closed with him.
For a moment there was another desperate struggle, when with startling suddenness a shot rang out, and I saw Bramberger drop to the floor like a stone at my feet.
Freeman had wrested a weapon from one of his assailants and killed his fellow-spy; while, next instant, without reflection, he turned the revolver upon himself, and, before they could prevent him, had put a shot through his own brain, inflicting a wound that within half a minute proved mortal.
When we searched the cellars of the "Goat and Binnacle" we found no fewer than eighty-two cases of rifle cartridges; while next morning, in a small cottage within a stone's-throw of the "White Hart" at Burnham, we discovered sixty-odd cases of ammunition for various arms, together with ten cases of gun cotton and some other high explosives. Also we found six big cases full of proclamations, printed in English, threatening all who opposed the German advance with death. The document was a very remarkable one, and deeming it of sufficient interest, I have reproduced it in these pages.
DECREE CONCERNING THE POWER OF COUNCILS OF WAR.
WE, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF EAST ANGLIA, by virtue of the powers conferred upon us by His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor, Commander-in-Chief of the German Armies, order, for the maintenance of the internal and external security of the counties of the Government-General: —
Article I. – Any individual guilty of incendiarism or of wilful inundation, of attack, or of resistance with violence, against the Government-General or the agents of the civil or military authorities, of sedition, of pillage, of theft with violence, of assisting prisoners to escape, or of inciting soldiers to treasonable acts, shall be PUNISHED BY DEATH.
In the case of any extenuating circumstances, the culprit may be sent to penal servitude with hard labour for twenty years.
Article II. – Any person provoking or inciting an individual to commit the crimes mentioned in Article I. will be sent to penal servitude with hard labour for ten years.
Article III. – Any person propagating false reports relative to the operations of war or political events will be imprisoned for one year, and fined up to £100.
In any case where the affirmation or propagation may cause prejudice against the German army, or against any authorities or functionaries established by it, the culprit will be sent to hard labour for ten years.
Article IV. – Any person usurping a public office, or who commits any act or issues any order in the name of a public functionary, will be imprisoned for five years, and fined £150.
Article V. – Any person who voluntarily destroys or abstracts any documents, registers, archives, or public documents deposited in public offices, or passing through their hands in virtue of their functions as government or civic officials, will be imprisoned for two years, and fined £150.
Article VI. – Any person obliterating, damaging, or tearing down official notices, orders, or proclamations of any sort issued by the German authorities will be imprisoned for six months, and fined £80.
Article VII. – Any resistance or disobedience of any order given in the interests of public security by military commanders and other authorities, or any provocation or incitement to commit such disobedience, will be punished by one year's imprisonment, or a fine of not less than £150.
Article VIII. – All offences enumerated in Articles I. – VII. are within the jurisdiction of the Councils of War.
Article IX. – It is within the competence of Councils of War to adjudicate upon all other crimes and offences against the internal and external security of the English provinces occupied by the German Army, and also upon all crimes against the military or civil authorities, or their agents, as well as murder, the fabrication of false money, of blackmail, and all other serious offences.
Article X. – Independent of the above, the military jurisdiction already proclaimed will remain in force regarding all actions tending to imperil the security of the German troops, to damage their interests, or to render assistance in the Army of the British Government.
Consequently, they will be PUNISHED BY DEATH, and we expressly repeat this, all persons who are not British soldiers and —
(a) Who serve the British Army or the Government as spies, or receive British spies, or give them assistance or asylum.
(b) Who serve as guides to British troops, or mislead the German troops when charged to act as guides.
(c) Who shoot, injure, or assault any German soldier or officer.
(d) Who destroy bridges or canals, interrupt railways or telegraph lines, render roads impassable, burn munitions of war, provisions, or quarters of the troops.
(e) Who take arms against the German troops.
Article XI. – The organisation of Councils of War mentioned in Articles VIII. and IX. of the Law of May 2, 1870, and their procedure are regulated by special laws which are the same as the summary jurisdiction of military tribunals. In the case of Article X. there remains in force the Law of July 21, 1867, concerning the military jurisdiction applicable to foreigners.
Article XII. – The present order is proclaimed and put into execution on the morrow of the day upon which it is affixed in the public places of each town and village.
THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF EAST ANGLIA.
Copy of the German Proclamation found in the Secret Store of Arms at Burnham-on-Crouch.
The affair caused the greatest consternation at the War Office, at whose instigation it was instantly hushed up by the police for fear of creating undue panic.
But the truth remains – a very bitter, serious, and significant truth – of Germany's hostile intentions at a not distant date, a date when an Englishman's home will, alas! no longer be his castle.
CHAPTER V
THE SECRET OF THE NEW BRITISH AEROPLANE
"If we could only approach the Military Ballooning Department we might, perhaps, learn something," I remarked. "But I suppose that's quite out of the question?"
"Quite," declared Ray. "We should receive no information, and only be laughed at for our trouble."
"You don't think that the new Kershaw aeroplane can be the one now being tried by the Royal Engineers with so much secrecy on the Duke of Atholl's estate?"
"I think not," was his prompt reply. "My reason briefly is because I have discovered that two Germans stayed at the Blair Arms Hotel, at Blair Atholl, for six weeks last summer, and then suddenly disappeared – probably taking with them the plans of the airship about which there has been so much secrecy."
"I don't quite follow you," I said.
"No, there is still another fact. A month ago there arrived in England a man named Karl Straus, a lieutenant of the Military Ballooning Department of the German Army stationed at Düsseldorf. He paid several visits to our friend Hartmann in Pont Street, and then disappeared from London. Now, why did he come on a special mission to England? For one reason. Because of the failure of Germany's hope, the Zeppelin airship, combined with the report that our new Kershaw aeroplane is the most perfect of the many inventions, and destined to effect a revolution in warfare. The Kershaw, which was only completed at South Farnborough two months ago, is now being tried in strictest secrecy. Vera was told so by an engineer officer she met at a dance at Chatham a short time ago."
"And it is being tried here in the north somewhere," I added, as together, seated in a "forty-eight Daimler," we ascended Glen Garry from Blair Atholl – which we had left a couple of hours before – and sped along over the wild, treeless Grampians towards Dalwhinnie. The March morning was bitterly cold, and snow covered the ground, rendering the Highland scenery more picturesque and imposing. And as we preferred an open car to a closed one, the journey was very cold.
Our inquiries in Blair Atholl had had a negative result. In the long, old-fashioned Blair Arms Hotel Ray had made a number of searching inquiries, for though two officers of the Ballooning Department lived there, and had been conducting the experiments in Blair Park, it was plain that the machine had never yet taken flight. So the pair of mysterious Germans, whose names we discovered in the visitors' book, had either obtained the details they wanted or had left the neighbourhood in disgust.
It was at my friend's suggestion that we had hired the car from Perth, and had now set out upon a tour of discovery in the wildest and least frequented districts of the Highlands – some of which are in winter the most unfrequented in all Great Britain. Something – what I know not – had apparently convinced him that the tests were still in progress.
"And where the trials are taking place we shall, I feel certain, find this inquisitive person Karl Straus," he declared. "From Berlin, through a confidential source, I hear that it was he who obtained the German General Staff photographs and plan of the new French aeroplane that was tried down in the Basque country last May. He's an expert aeronaut and engineer, and speaks English well; our object is to discover his whereabouts."
In pursuance of this quest we visited the various hotels on our way north. The "Loch Ericht" at Dalwhinnie we found closed, therefore we went on to Newtonmore, and by taking luncheon at the hotel there ascertained that there were no visitors who might be either British military officers or German spies.
In the gloomy, frosty afternoon we, a month after the affair down at Maldon, sped up the Speyside through dark pine forests and snow-covered moorland till we found ourselves in the long grey street of Kingussie, where we halted at the Star Hotel, a small place with a verandah, very popular in summer, but in winter deserted.
Leaving me to warm myself at the fire, Ray crossed to the telegraph office to despatch a message, and afterwards I saw him enter a small shop where picture post-cards were sold. For a quarter of an hour he remained inside, and then went to another shop a few doors further down.
Afterwards he rejoined me, and as we remounted into the car I saw that his face wore a dark, puzzled expression.
"Anything wrong?" I inquired, as we sped away through the firs towards Loch Alvie and Aviemore.
"No," he replied. Then, after a pause, he asked, "You once used to ride a motor-cycle, didn't you, Jack?"
I replied in the affirmative; whereupon he said that it would be necessary for me to hire one, an observation which somewhat mystified me. And for the next hour we roared along over the loose, uneven road through Aviemore, where the chief hotel was, of course, closed, and on over Dulnan Bridge, that paradise of the summer tourist; then turning to the right past the post office, until we were soon "honk-honking" up the wide main street of Grantown.
Here in summer and autumn the place is alive with tourists; but in winter, with its tearing winds and gusty snowstorms, the little place presents a very different appearance. The excellent "Grant Arms," standing back from the road at the further end of the town, is, however, one of the few first-class hotels in the Highlands open all the year round. And here we put up, both of us glad to obtain shelter from the sleet which, since the twilight had faded, had been cutting our faces.
While I sat before the big smoking-room fire with a cigarette, after we had been to our rooms to remove the mud from our faces, Ray was bustling about the hotel, eagerly scanning the visitors' book, among other things.
Our quest was a decidedly vague one, and as I sat staring into the flames I confess I entertained serious misgivings.
When I went forth into the hall to find my friend, I was told that he had gone out.
A quarter of an hour later he returned, saying:
"I've seen a garage along the street; come with me and hire a motor-cycle. You'll probably want it."
"Why?" I asked.
"Wait and see," was his response; therefore I put on my hat and coat and walked with him to the garage, about half-way along the street, where I picked out a good strong machine which was duly wheeled back to the hotel.
That night, among the eight or nine guests assembled for dinner, there was not one who had any resemblance either to a German spy or an officer of the Military Balloon Factory at South Farnborough.
In the days following we used our map well, scouring the whole of the Spey side to the Bridge of Avon, and on to Rothes, while westward we drove by Carrbridge, over the Slochd Mor to Loch Moy and across to Daviot. We explored the steep hills of Cromdale and Glen Tulchan, surveyed the rugged country from the summit of Carn Glas, and made judicious inquiry in all quarters, both among village people, shepherds, and others. Nowhere however could we gather any information that any trials of an airship were in progress.
Sometimes in leggings, mackintosh, and goggles, I went forth alone on my motor-cycle, negotiating the rougher byways and making confidential inquiry. But the result was ever a negative one and always disheartening.
On one occasion I had been out alone and reached the hotel, when, some hours later, our chauffeur returned with the car empty, and handed me a hastily scribbled note to explain that Ray had left suddenly for the south and instructing me to remain at Grantown till his return.
By that I imagined that he had made some discovery. Or had he gone south to see Vera, his well-beloved?
Curiously enough, next day a foreigner – probably a German – arrived at the hotel, and, as may be imagined, I at once took steps to keep him under the strictest observation. He was a quiet, apparently inoffensive person about thirty-five, who, among his impedimenta, brought a motor-cycle and box camera. Before he had been in the place twenty-four hours I had convinced myself that he was the spy Straus.
This fact I wired to Bruton Street in the code we had long ago arranged, hoping that the message would find my friend.
To my surprise, all the reply I got was: "Be careful that you have made no mistake."
What could he mean? I read and re-read the message, but remained much puzzled, while my excitement increased.
Each day the new arrival, who had written the name of "F. Goldstein" in the visitors' book, went forth on his cycle to explore the beauties of the Highlands, the thaw having now cleared the roads, and on each occasion I managed by dint of many subterfuges to watch his proceedings. His gaze was ever in the distance, and each time he gained high ground he swept the surrounding country with a pair of powerful prismatic field-glasses.
I confess I was rather annoyed at Ray's conduct in thus abandoning me at the very moment of my discovery, for here was the ballooning expert Straus bent upon seeing and photographing our newest arm of defence.
As the days passed I exerted every precaution, yet I followed him everywhere, sometimes using the car, and at others the motor-cycle.
The spy, a bespectacled, round-faced Teuton who spoke with a strong accent, was ever active, ever eager to discover something in the air. Yet, to my intense satisfaction, he seemed to be utterly unaware that I was keeping so strict a watch upon his movements. Purposely I avoided speaking to him in the hotel, for fear of arousing his suspicions.
One day Mr. Goldstein did not appear, and in response to my inquiry the waiter informed me that he had caught cold and was confined to his room.
A spy with a cold! I laughed within myself, and the afternoon being bright, I took a run south through the Abernethy Forest down to Loch Pityoulish. On my return I crossed Dulnan Bridge, where the turbulent Dulnan River hurtles along over the stones on its way down to the Spey. I dismounted, hot and tired, and propped up my cycle against the parapet to rest and admire the dark pine-clad gorge which opened to the north.
My reflections were suddenly cut short by a loud humming sound which seemed to come from the road which I had just traversed. Instinctively I looked round for the approaching motor-car. The sound came nearer, but instead of a car, I saw in the air, above the tops of the firs against the distant hill in the background, a splendid aeroplane with two men aboard. Swiftly it swept over the stream with the ease and majesty of an enormous albatross!
Next instant it had disappeared from my gaze. Yet in that brief moment I had had ocular demonstration that the secret trials were in progress in the neighbourhood.
I waited on tiptoe with excitement. Again the whirring sound came nearer, the occupants of the neighbouring cottages being undisturbed, believing it to be a motor-car. Once again I saw the new aeroplane circling above the tree-tops to the north, after which it turned suddenly and made off in a bee-line south, in the direction whence I had travelled.
I had actually seen the new invention!
Scarcely, however, had I recovered from my surprise when I heard, coming from the direction of Grantown, the "pop-pop-pop" of a motor-cycle, and across the bridge like a flash, in the direction the aerial machine had taken, came the spy whom I had only that morning left an invalid in bed.
