Kitobni o'qish: «Number 70, Berlin: A Story of Britain's Peril»

Chapter One.
The Man of the Moment

“That man knows too much!”

“Do you really think he overheard?”

“He may not have done. But we must take no risks, my dear fellow. Remember we are at war! With people who know too much there’s but one way – dismissal,” declared Lewin Rodwell, the tall, well-groomed middle-aged man, in morning-coat and grey trousers, who stood in the panelled boardroom with his chairman, Sir Boyle Huntley, the other directors having left after the weekly meeting of the board.

“He might talk – eh?” Sir Boyle remarked in a low, apprehensive tone.

“He would probably fear the law of libel,” said Lewin Rodwell, fair-haired, sleek, rather refined, who, at the moment, was one of the most popular and patriotic figures in London – a man whose praises were sung constantly in the halfpenny press, and who numbered peers, Cabinet Ministers and diplomats among his friends.

His companion, ten years his senior, was of a different type – a somewhat uncouth man, with a reddish, bloated face, dark hair tinged with grey, deep-set crafty eyes, and a voice which betrayed his cockney birth and breeding, which even his Birthday baronetcy could not disguise.

Both men, of humble origin, had won considerable fortune in the City and had worked together on the boards of many companies more or less prosperous. They were “keen business men” – which, in these days, seems to be the accepted description of those who are not above descending to sharp practices – and indeed, if the truth be told, had been guilty of certain financial juggling which would have looked very ugly against them if placed before a court of law.

Yet what they had done had been done within the law, and their hands were, consequently, just as clean as those of hundreds of other company-directors in the City of London.

Rodwell, with his back to the fire – for it was a cold, dark November afternoon in the year 1914 – slowly lit a good cigar which he took from his case, while Sir Boyle fidgeted uneasily with some papers at the table.

“How shall you get rid of that unnecessary fellow?” he asked his friend at last. “If he were dismissed now, he’d at once guess the reason, and might become our enemy.”

“Enemy! Bosh!” laughed Lewin Rodwell, scornfully. “There’s no fear of that, my dear chap. Leave him to me. I shall do nothing till after our meeting next Thursday. Then we can call in Charlesworth and tell him that the fellow – Sainsbury is his name, I believe – is a slacker, and ought to join the army. Owing to the war we must cut down expenditure – you know. He must go, and several others too – in order to give our economy a flavour of truth.”

“Charles worth has always spoken very highly of him. He’ll certainly urge us to keep him,” the chairman remarked, looking blankly into the fire. “Only a fortnight ago his name was on the list of employees to be retained throughout the war.”

“I know. But if Sainsbury has overheard what I said, then he’s better outside this building than in it,” Rodwell declared emphatically, drawing heavily at his cigar.

“You were a confounded fool to speak of such matters outside your own room at home, Lewin. It was most indiscreet. It isn’t like you.”

“I know. I was a confounded fool,” the other admitted. “But I had no idea anyone had entered. He wears those infernal rubber things on his heels. But leave it to me. I’ll clear him out all right.”

“It must be done most delicately. He mustn’t, for a single moment, suspect the reason of his dismissal.”

Lewin Rodwell reflected for a second, and then, as though in his active, clever brain a sudden suggestion had arisen, he laughed and replied:

“There are more ways than one by which to crush an enemy, my dear Boyle – as you yourself know. Leave all to me, and I can guarantee that we shall have nothing to fear from this young prig, Sainsbury. So set your mind at ease at once over it.”

“Very well, Lewin. I know how clever you always are in avoiding trouble,” laughed Sir Boyle Huntley. “Had it not been for you we’d both have more than once been in a very tight corner. As it is we’ve prospered famously, and – well, I suppose the world thinks quite a lot of us – especially of you – the man who does so much good and charitable work without any thought of reward – purely as a patriotic Briton.”

Lewin Rodwell winked knowingly, and both men laughed aloud.

Rodwell’s eye caught the clock. It was half-past four.

“By Jove! I must fly!” he cried. “I promised to be at Lady Betty’s soon after four. Trustram, of the Admiralty, will be there, and I particularly want to meet him. I’ve got my car. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“Yes. At the Constitutional. I’m meeting a man there.”

So the pair, leaving the room, were helped on with their overcoats by an obsequious liveried servant and, descending in the lift, passed through the handsome set of offices where a hundred clerks were working beneath the electric-light, and out into Gracechurch Street, where Rodwell’s fine limousine was awaiting him; the footman standing with the fur rug ready to throw over his master’s knees.

On their way through the City the elder man reverted to the subject they had discussed in the boardroom of The Ochrida Copper Corporation – one of the greatest copper concerns in the world – and, drawing a long breath, he said:

“I really do hope that young fellow heard nothing. What if he knew – eh?”

“Of course he heard,” was his co-director’s reply. “But whether he understood is quite another thing.”

“I fear he did understand.”

“Why?”

“Because, as he left the room, I watched his face, and saw both suspicion and surprise upon it.”

“Bah! My dear Boyle, don’t let that worry you for a second longer,” Rodwell laughed, as the car sped silently along Queen Victoria Street and across to the Embankment. “Even if he does suspect he’ll soon be rendered quite harmless. When Lewin Rodwell makes up his mind to sweep an enemy from his path, you know that the enemy always disappears.”

“I know that,” replied the Baronet, with a slight hardening at the corners of his flabby mouth. Perhaps he recollected the fate of certain other enemies. He well knew the callous unscrupulousness of his friend and associate in his determined efforts to get rich quickly. Indeed, they had both got rich very quickly – more especially Rodwell – during the past four or five years by methods which would never bear investigation. Yet, as in so many other cases in our great complex London, the world regarded him as a perfectly honest and trustworthy man – a true Briton, who was ever ready to place both his valuable time and his money at the disposal of the British cause against her barbaric enemy.

“Sainsbury will never trouble us, I assure you,” he repeated, as at last Sir Boyle alighted in Northumberland Avenue, and he waved him a cheery good-bye as he went up the steps of the club.

Then, as the car re-started off to Upper Brook Street, Lewin Rodwell sat back, his hands resting idly on the fur rug, his cold, round blue eyes staring straight before him, the skin drawn rather tightly over his cheek-bones, giving him a look haggard and quite unusual.

“Yes,” he exclaimed to himself, drawing a long breath, “Boyle is quite right. That young man suspects – curse him! Phew! I must close his mouth somehow. But how? That’s the question. In these days, with the Government deceiving the people and lulling them into a false sense of security, the very least breath of suspicion quickly becomes magnified into an open scandal. And scandal, as far as I am concerned, would mean that I should be compelled to invite investigation. Could I bear such a test?” he asked. “Gad! no!” he gasped.

He set his lips firmly, and his eyes narrowed. He tossed his cigar angrily out into the roadway. It tasted bitter.

As the car went up the Haymarket, boys were crying the evening papers. Upon the contents-bill he noticed that the British were fighting gallantly at the Yser, stemming the tide of the Devil’s spawn, who were endeavouring to strike a death-blow at French’s little army and get through to Calais.

He smiled at his own strange thoughts, and then sank back into the soft cushions, again reflecting. That contretemps in the boardroom had really unnerved him. It unnerved him so much, indeed, that from Piccadilly Circus he drove to his club and swallowed a stiff brandy-and-soda – an action quite unusual to him – and then he went along to Upper Brook Street.

When the rather pompous elderly butler announced him at the door of the large drawing-room, Lady Betty Kenworthy, a tall, middle-aged woman, rose, greeting the great man affably, and then she introduced him to the dozen or so of her friends who were gossiping over their teacups – the names of most of them being household words both to those in society and the readers of the halfpenny picture-papers out of it.

Lady Betty, a well-preserved, good-looking woman, whose boy was at the front, was one of those leaders of society who, at the outbreak of war, for want of something more exciting, had become the leader of a movement. In London, after the first few months of war, the majority of society women took up one movement or another: red cross, Serbian relief, socks for the troops, comforts for mine-sweepers, huts for soldiers, work for women, hose-extensions for Highlanders, or one or other of the thousand-and-one “movements” which cropped up and duly found their places in the advertisement columns of the Times.

Lady Betty Kenworthy’s particular movement was the Anti-Teuton Alliance – an association formed by a few patriotic enthusiasts who bound themselves to take action against the hated German in every way – to expose and intern the enemy in our midst, to free the country from the baneful German influence which has spread into every sphere of our national life, to purchase no goods of German origin, to ban the German language, and to discover the existence of the pro-German sentiment, German intrigue, and the expenditure of German gold – “palm-oil” one distinguished writer has called it – in official and Parliamentary circles.

The programme was, to say the least, a wide and laudable one, and afforded ample scope to the thousands of members who had enrolled themselves.

In Lady Betty’s drawing-room that afternoon the committee of the movement had assembled, eager to meet Mr Lewin Rodwell, who had shown such patriotism that even Cabinet Ministers had publicly bestowed great praise upon his ceaseless and self-denying efforts.

There were present, first of all, the usual set of society women of uncertain age, dressed in the latest French models, which gave them an air of youth, yet, at the same time, accentuated their angularity and unnatural freshness; two or three elderly men, led there against their will by their strong-minded spouses, a pretty girl or two from nowhere, and one or two male enthusiasts, including two good-looking and merry-going peers who were loud in their condemnation of the whole Government – from the Prime Minister downwards.

Among those to whom the great and much-advertised Lewin Rodwell was introduced was a rather thick-set, dark-haired, clean-shaven, middle-aged man named Charles Trustram, a thoroughly John Bull type of Englishman, who occupied a highly responsible position in the Transport department of the Admiralty.

The two men shook hands warmly, whereupon Trustram expressed his great pleasure at meeting a man so famous as Lewin Rodwell.

“I came here this afternoon, Mr Rodwell, on purpose to meet you,” he assured him. “Lady Kenworthy told me you were coming, and I know the committee of the Anti-Teuton Alliance, of which I’m a member, are most eager to enlist your influence.”

“I’ll be most delighted,” declared Rodwell, in his charmingly affable manner. “I think the movement is a really excellent one. Without a doubt the question has become very serious indeed. There are Germans and German influence in our midst in quarters quite unexpected and undiscovered – high official quarters too. Can we, therefore, be surprised if things don’t always go as they should?”

“Exactly,” said the Admiralty official, as they both took seats together on a couch against the wall. “There’s no doubt that the Germans, as part of their marvellous preparedness, made an audacious attempt to weave a network of vile treachery in our Government Departments and, above all, in the War Office and Admiralty. As an official I can tell you, in strictest confidence of course, that I have, several times of late, had my suspicions seriously aroused. Information leaks out. How – nobody – not even our Intelligence Department itself can discover.”

“My dear sir,” exclaimed Rodwell confidentially, “is it really to be wondered at when men of German birth and German descent are employed in nearly all the various departments in Whitehall? After all, are we not to-day fighting for our country’s life and freedom? Certainly those who come after us would never forgive us – you and I – those who, if born into a Germanised world and held under the iron yoke of barbaric ‘Kultur,’ looked back to our conduct of the war that sealed their fate and found that, besides supplying the enemy with war material – cotton and the like – we actually harboured Germans in our camp and gave them knowledge, power and position vital to the enemy’s success. And I assert to-day, Mr Trustram, that we treat Germany as the ‘most-favoured nation,’ even though the flower of our land are being sacrificed by thousands and thousands upon the fields of Flanders. Yes, it is an outrageous scandal – a disgrace to our nation. As I said in a speech at Liverpool last week, we are daily being misled, misguided, and lured to our destruction. And for that reason,” the great man added – “for that reason I’m only too ready and anxious to help the Anti-Teuton Alliance in their splendid crusade against this canker-worm in England’s heart.”

Lady Betty, seated quite near, talking to a dowager-duchess, overheard him. He had purposely spoken loudly and emphatically, with that object.

“Good! Mr Rodwell,” her ladyship cried. “Excellent! I am so delighted that you thoroughly approve of our efforts. We are trying to do our share, in this terrible crisis. You are such a busy man that I almost feared to ask you to help us.”

“I am never too busy, Lady Kenworthy, to help in such a good cause as this,” he assured her, in that suave manner of his which stood him in such good stead at times. “True, I am rather a busy man, as everyone has to be in these days. We, in the City, have to bear our share in finance, for we know that one day – sooner or later – the Government will require a big loan to carry on the war. And when they do, we hope to be as ready to meet it as the industrial population of the country will no doubt be. Still, to us it means much thought. We have no time nowadays for any idle week-ends, or golf by the sea.”

At mention of golf Lady Betty smiled. She knew well that it was the great man’s habit to play golf at Sunningdale or Walton Heath with various important personages.

The conversation regarding the aims and aspirations of the Anti-Teuton Alliance grew general, and everyone was much gratified to hear Mr Lewin Rodwell’s reiterated approval of it, especially the half-dozen ascetic, hard-faced women who made “movements” the chief object of their lives.

Lewin Rodwell smiled inwardly at them all, sipped the cup of China tea offered him by a slim, dark-haired, loosely-clad girl who secretly regarded him as a hero, and then talked loudly, airing his opinion of “what the Government really ought to do.” To him, the huge farce was amusing. Lady Betty was, of course, “a good sort,” but he knew quite well that her association with the Anti-Teuton movement was merely for the sake of advertisement and notoriety – in order to go one better than the Countess of Chesterbridge, who had, for years, been her rival on the face of the social barometer – which, after all, was the personal columns of the daily newspapers.

After an hour, when most of the guests had left, Rodwell rose at last and said to Trustram, with whom he had had a long and very intimate chat:

“I really do wish you’d run in and see me, Mr Trustram. I’d be so awfully delighted. I’m sure we can do something together in order to expose this terrible scandal. Will you?”

“Most certainly. I’ll be most pleased.”

“Good. Can’t you dine with me – say on Tuesday?”

His newly-found friend reflected a moment, and then replied in the affirmative.

“Excellent. Tuesday at eight – eh? You know my address.”

“Yes – in Bruton Street.”

“Right – that’s an appointment,” Rodwell exclaimed cheerily; and then, after bending low over Lady Betty’s thin white hand, he left.

Chapter Two.
The Suspicions of Elise

At nine o’clock that same evening, in a well-furnished drawing-room half-way up Fitzjohn’s Avenue, in Hampstead, a pretty, blue-eyed, fair-haired girl of twenty-one sat at the piano alone, playing a gay French chanson, to pass away the time.

Dressed in a dainty little dinner-gown of carnation pink, and wearing in her well-dressed hair a touch of velvet to match, she presented a pretty picture beneath the shaded electric-light which fell over the instrument set in a corner.

Her mother, Mrs Shearman, a charming, grey-haired lady, had just gone out, while her father, Daniel Shearman, a rich tool-manufacturer, whose works were outside Birmingham, was away at the factory, as was his habit three days each week.

Elise Shearman was just a typical athletic English girl. In her early youth her parents were “making their way in the world,” but at fourteen she had been sent abroad to school, first to Lausanne, and afterwards to Dresden, where she had studied music, as so many English girls have done.

On her return to Hampstead, whither her father had removed from the grime and toil of work-a-day Birmingham, she found her home very dull. Because the Shearmans were manufacturers, the snobbishness of Hampstead, with its “first Thursdays,” would have nothing to do with them; though, if the truth were told, Dan Shearman could have bought up most of his neighbours in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, and was a sterling good Englishman into the bargain – which could not be said of some of those slippery, smooth-tongued City adventurers who resided behind the iron railings of that select thoroughfare.

Running her slim white hands over the keys, she began the gay refrain of one of the chansonettes which she had learned in Paris – one of the gay songs of the boulevards, which was, perhaps, not very apropos for young ladies, but which she often sang because of its gay, blithe air – Belloche’s “L’Eventail Parisien.”

In her sweet, musical treble she sang gaily —

 
Dès qu’arrivent les grand’s chaleurs,
À la terrass’ des brasseries
Les éventails de tout’s couleurs
Viennent bercer nos rêveries.
Car, pour allécher le client,
Le camelot toujours cocasse
En s’éventant d’un air bonasse
Envoi’ ce petit boniment:
 

And then, with a swing and go, she sang the chorus —

 
        Ça va, ça vient,
Ça donn’ de l’air, ça fait du bien.
C’est vraiment magnifique.
Quel instrument magique!
        Ça va, ça vient,
Ca donn’ de l’air et du maintien
Et ça ne coûte presque rien:
Voici l’éventail parisien!
 

Hardly had she concluded the final line when the door opened and a tall, dark-haired, good-looking young man entered, crossed to her, and, placing his hand upon her shoulder, bent and kissed her fondly.

“Why, Jack, dear – you really are late!” the girl exclaimed. “Were you kept at the office?”

“Yes, dearest,” was his answer. “Or rather I had some work that I particularly wanted to finish, so I stayed behind.”

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a pair of keen, merry brown eyes, a handsome face with high, intelligent brow, as yet unlined by care, a small, dark moustache, and a manner as courteous towards a woman as any diplomat accredited to the Court of St. James.

Jack Sainsbury, though merely an employee of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, a man who went by “Tube” to the City each morning and returned each night to the modest little flat in Heath Street, at which his sister Jane acted as housekeeper for him, was an honest, upright Englishman who had, in the first month of the war, done his duty and gone to the recruiting office of the Honourable Artillery Company to enlist.

A defective elbow-joint had prevented him passing the doctor. And though no one in the office knew he had tried to join the new army, he had returned to the City and continued his soul-killing avocation of adding figures and getting out totals.

His meeting with Elise Shearman was not without its romantic side.

One Sunday morning, two years before, he had been riding his motor-cycle up to Hatfield, as was his habit, to meet at the Red Lion – that old inn that is the rendezvous of all motor-cyclists – the men and women who come out there each Sunday morning, wet or fine, from London. Fine cars, driven by their owners, turn into the inn-yard all the morning, but the motor-cyclist ignores them. It is the meeting-place of the man on the cycle.

One well-remembered Sunday morning Elise, who was advanced enough to put on a Burberry with a leather strap around her waist and sit astride on a motor-cycle, was careering up the North Road beyond Barnet when, of a sudden, she swerved to avoid a cart, and ran headlong into a ditch.

At the moment Jack Sainsbury, who chanced to be behind her, stopped, sprang off, and went to her assistance.

She lay in the ditch with her arm broken. Quickly he obtained medical aid, and eventually brought her home to Fitzjohn’s Avenue, where he had, with her father’s knowledge and consent, been a constant visitor ever since.

Jack Sainsbury, whose father, and his family before him, had been gentlemen-farmers for two centuries in Leicestershire, was, above all, a thorough-going Englishman. He was no smug, get-on-at-all-hazards person of the consumptive type one meets at every turn in the City. On the contrary, he was a well-set-up, bold, straightforward, fearless fellow who, though but a clerk in a City office, was one of that clean-limbed, splendid type which any girl would have welcomed as her hero.

What Jack Sainsbury said, he meant. His colleagues in the office knew that. They all regarded him as a man of high ideals, and as one whose heart had, ever since the war, been fired with a keen and intense spirit of patriotism.

That Elise Shearman loved him could be seen at the first moment when he had opened the door and crossed the threshold. Her eyes brightened, and her full, red lips puckered sweetly as she returned his fond, passionate kisses.

Yes, they loved each other. Elise’s parents knew that. Sometimes they were anxious, for Dan Shearman felt that it would not be altogether a brilliant match, as far as an alliance went. Yet Mrs Shearman, on her part, had so often pleaded, that no separation of the pair had, as yet, been demanded. Hence they found idyllic happiness in each other’s love.

“You seem unusually thoughtful to-night, Jack!” exclaimed the girl, tenderly smoothing his hair as they stood together clasped in each other’s arms.

“Do I?” he answered with a start. “I really didn’t know,” he laughed, aroused from his deep thoughts.

“You are, Jack. Why?”

“I – well, I’m really not – except perhaps – ”

“Perhaps what?” asked Elise determinedly.

“Well, I had rather a heavy day at the office,” was her lover’s hesitating reply. “And I’ve just remembered something.”

“Oh! business. And that’s all?”

“Yes, business, dearest,” was his reply. “I must apologise if my thoughts were, for the moment, far away,” he laughed.

“You’re like father,” said the girl. “He sits by the fire sometimes for a quarter of an hour at a stretch staring into it, and thinking of his horrid business affairs. But of course business is an obsession with him.”

“Perhaps when I’m your father’s age it will be an obsession with me,” replied Jack Sainsbury.

“I sincerely hope it won’t,” she said, with a smile upon her pretty lips.

“It won’t, if I’m able to make sufficient money to keep you properly, darling,” was the young man’s fervent answer, as he bent until his moustache lightly brushed her cheek.

Truth to tell, he was reflecting seriously. For hours he had thought over those strange words he had overheard on entering the boardroom that afternoon.

Those astounding words of Lewin Rodwell’s were, in themselves, an admission – a grave and terrible admission.

Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were engaged in a great conspiracy, and he – Jack Sainsbury – was the only person who knew the ghastly truth.

Those two highly patriotic men, whose praises were being sung by every newspaper up and down the country; whose charitable efforts had brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds and hundreds of tons of comforts for our troops abroad; the two men whose photographs were in every journal, and whom the world regarded as fine typical specimens of the honest Briton, men who had raised their voices loudly against German barbarism and intrigue, were, Jack Sainsbury knew, wearing impenetrable masks. They were traitors!

He alone knew the truth – a truth so remarkable and startling that, were it told and published to the world, Great Britain would stand aghast and bewildered at the revelation. It was inconceivable, incredible. At times he felt himself doubting what he had really heard with his own ears. Yet it had been Rodwell’s voice, and the words had been clear and distinct, a confession of guilt that was as plain as it was damning.

Sir Boyle had, from his seat in the House of Commons, risen time after time and denounced the policy of the Government in not interning every enemy alien in the country; he had heckled the Home Secretary, and had exposed cases of German intrigue; he had demanded that rigorous action should be taken against the horde of German spies in our midst, and had spoken up and down the country warning the Government and the people of the gravity of the spy-peril, and that British citizens would take the law in their own hands if drastic measures were not taken to crush out the enemy in our midst.

Yet that afternoon – by no seeking of his own – Jack Sainsbury had learnt a truth which, even hours after the words had fallen upon his ears, left him staggered and astounded.

He knew the secret of those two great and influential men.

What should he do? How should he act?

Such was the cause of his marked thoughtfulness that night – an attitude which Elise had not failed to notice and which considerably puzzled her.

Mrs Shearman, a pleasant-faced, grey-haired and prosperous-looking lady, who spoke with a strong Lancashire accent, entered the room a few moments later, and the pair, springing aside at the sound of her footsteps, pretended to be otherwise occupied, much to the elder lady’s amusement.

After greeting Jack the old lady sat down with him, while Elise, at her mother’s request, returned to the piano and began to sing Léon Garnier’s “Sublime Caresse,” with that catchy refrain so popular on the boulevards of Paris and in cafés in every town in France —

 
Quand lâchement
À l’autre amant
Je me livre et me donne.
Qu’à lui je m’abandonne.
Le coeur pâmé,
O cher aimé,
C’est à toi que s’adresse
Ma sublime caresse!
 

Elise, who spoke French excellently, was extremely fond of the French chansonette, and knew a great many. Her lover spoke French quite well also, and very frequently when they were together in the “tube” or train they conversed in that language so that the every-day person around them should not understand.

To speak a foreign language amid the open mouths of the ignorant is always secretly amusing, but not so amusing as to the one person who unfortunately sits opposite and who knows that language even more perfectly than the speaker – I was about to write “swanker.”

In that drawing-room of the red-brick Hampstead residence – where the road is so steep that the vulgar London County Council Tramways have never attempted to invade it, and consequently it is a “desirable residential neighbourhood” according to the house-agents’ advertisements – Jack and Elise remained after Mrs Shearman had risen and left. For another quarter of an hour they chatted and kissed wholeheartedly, for they loved each other fondly and dearly. Then, at ten o’clock, Jack rose to go. It was his hour, and he never overstepped the bounds of propriety. From the first he had felt himself a mere clerk on the forbidden ground of the successful manufacturer’s home. Dan Shearman, honest, outspoken and square, had achieved Hampstead as a stepping-stone to Mayfair or Belgravia. To Jack Sainsbury – the man of the fine old yeoman stock – the refinement of the red-brick and laurels of Hampstead was synonymous with taste and breeding. To him the dull aristocracy of the London squares was unknown, and therefore unregarded.

How the people born in society laugh at Tom, Dick and Harry, with their feminine folk, who, in our world of make-believe, are struggling and fighting with one another to be regarded by the world as geniuses. Money can bring everything – all the thousand attributes this world can give – all except breeding and brains.

Breed, even in the idiot, and brains in the pauper’s child, will always tell.

When Jack Sainsbury descended the steps into Fitzjohn’s Avenue and strode down the hill to Swiss Cottage station, he was full of grave and bitter thoughts.

As an Englishman and a patriot, what was his line of action? That was the sole thought which filled his mind. He loved Elise with every fibre of his being, yet, on that evening, greater and even more serious thoughts occupied his mind – the safety of the British Empire.

To whom should he go? In whom dare he confide?

As he crossed from the Avenue to the station, another thought arose within him. Would anybody in whom he confided really believe what he could tell them?

Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were national heroes – men against whom no breath of suspicion as traitors had ever arisen. It was the habit of the day to laugh at any suspicion of Britain’s betrayal – an attitude which the Government had carefully cultivated ever since the outbreak of war. On that day the Chief of the Military Operations Department of the War Office – in other words our Secret Service – had been – for reasons which will one day be revealed – promoted and sent to the front, leaving the Department in the hands of others fresh to the work.