The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

"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."

"I'll come and help you carry the things," said my brother, and they left the room as friendly as if they had known each other for years.

"Well, what do you think of my brother?" I asked Doris. I'm afraid my arm was round her waist and I had forgotten Lockhart.

"I'm decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that Commander Carey knows more than enough to come indoors when it rains."

Lockhart here revealed qualities of an unsuspected nature – I had never really appreciated Lockhart until the night before.

"I happen to have, locked up in the cupboard of my sitting-room," he said, "a bottle of claret wine and a bottle of sherry wine. I will go and fetch them to grace this feast."

"You nasty, horrid villain, so you drink in secret, do you?" I remarked.

"Only Bovril, but please don't let it be known," was the reply, and then Doris and I were alone.

I have never been one of those people who kiss and tell, so I will pass over the next minute; but after some business of no importance, she put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the face.

"John," she said, "there is something up!"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't exactly know, but there is something up. I can feel it – and something has happened, too, that I have got to tell you about. Before the Doctor left this morning, he told Marjorie that Mr. Jones had fallen in love with her and that she would have to marry him after the war was over, when he has straightened out his business affairs."

"Good Lord!" I said, "that thing? Why – "

"What have you got against him?" she asked quickly. "He's wealthy, the Doctor says, he has got good manners; of course, he's older than Marjorie, but he's not an old man. I thought you said you rather liked him?"

"I did say so, and I liked him better than ever after meeting him this morning. You know I had breakfast with the Doctor?"

"I know, and there is something up. Something to do with your brother – I am certain of it. But why do you object to Mr. Jones for Marjorie?"

"What does Marjorie say herself?"