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Chapter Ten.
The Khaki Cult

Twenty-four hours later Lewin Rodwell was standing upon the platform of the big Music Hall, in George Street, Edinburgh, addressing a great recruiting meeting.

The meeting, presided over by a well-known Scotch earl, had already been addressed by a Cabinet Minister; but when Rodwell rose, a neat, spruce figure in his well-fitting morning-coat, with well-brushed hair, and an affable smile, the applause was tremendous – even greater than that which had greeted the Minister.

Lewin Rodwell was a people’s idol – one of those who, in these times, are so suddenly placed high upon the pedestal of public opinion, and as quickly cast down.

A man’s reputation is made to-day and marred to-morrow. Rodwell’s rapid rise to fortune had certainly been phenomenal. Yet, as he had “made money in the City” – like so many other people – nobody took the trouble to inquire exactly how that money had been obtained. By beating the patriotic drum so loudly he stifled down inquiry, and the public now took him at his own valuation.

A glib and forceful orator, with a suave, persuasive manner, at times declamatory, but usually slow and decisive, he thrust home his arguments with unusual strength and power.

In repeating Lord Kitchener’s call for recruits, he pointed to the stricken fields of Belgium, recalling those harrowing scenes of rapine and murder, in August, along the fair valley of the Meuse. He described, in vivid language, the massacre in cold blood of seven hundred peaceful men, women and young children in the little town of Dinant-sur-Meuse, the town of gingerbread and beaten brass; the sack of Louvain, and the appalling scenes in Liège and Malines, at the same time loudly denouncing the Germans as “licentious liars” and the “spawn of Satan.” From his tongue fell the most violent denunciations of Germany and all her ways, until his hearers were electrified by his whole-souled patriotism.

“The Kaiser,” he cried, “is the Great Assassin of civilisation. There is now ample evidence, documentary and otherwise, to prove that he, the Great War Lord, forced this great war upon the world at a moment which he considered propitious to himself. We now, alas I know that as far back as June 1908 the Kaiser assembled his Council and, in a secret speech, declared war against England. You, ladies and gentlemen, have been bamboozled and befooled all along by a Hush-a-bye Government who told you that there never would be war:” emphatic words which were met with loud yells of “Shame!” and execration.

“The Cabinet,” he continued, “knew all along – they knew as far back as 1908 – that this Mad Dog of Germany intended to strangle and crush us. Yet, what did they do? They told you – and you believed them – that we should never have war – not in our time, they said; while in the House of Commons they, knowing what they did, actually suggested disarmament! Think of it!”

Renewed cries of “Shame!” rose from all parts of the hall.

“Well,” Lewin Rodwell went on, clenching his fist, “we are at war – a war the result of which no man can, as yet, foresee. But win we must – yet, if we are to win, we must still make the greatest sacrifices. We must expend our last shilling and our last drop of blood if victory is at last to be ours. Germany, the mighty country of the volte-face, with her blood-stained Kaiser at her head, has willed that Teuton ‘kultur’ shall crush modern civilisation beneath the heel of its jack-boot. Are you young men of Scotland to sit tight here and allow the Germans to invade you, to ruin and burn your homes, and to put your women and children to the sword? Will you actually allow this accursed race of murderers, burglars and fire-bugs to swarm over this land which your ancestors have won for you? No! Think of the past history of your homes and your dear ones, and come forward now, to-night, all of you of military age, and give in your names for enlistment! Come, I implore of you!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Come forward, and do your duty as men in the service of mankind – your duty to your King, your country, and your God!”

His speech, of which this was only one very small extract, was certainly a brilliant and telling one. When he sat down, not only was there a great thunder of applause while the fine organ struck up “Rule Britannia,” but a number of strong young men, in their new-born enthusiasm, rose from the audience and announced their intention of enlisting.

“Excellent!” cried Rodwell, rising again from his chair. “Here are brave fellows ready to do their duty! Come, let all you slackers follow their example and act as real honest, patriotic men – the men of the Scotland of history!”

This proved an incentive to several waverers. But what, indeed, would that meeting have thought had they caught the words the speaker whispered in German beneath his breath, as he reseated himself? “More cannon-fodder,” he had muttered, though his face was brightened by a smile of supreme satisfaction of a true Briton, for he had realised by his reception there in Edinburgh, where audiences were never over-demonstrative, how exceedingly popular he was.

Afterwards he had supper at the Caledonian Hotel with the Cabinet Minister whom he had supported; and later, when he retired to his room, he at once locked the door, flung off his coat, and threw himself into the armchair by the fire to smoke and think.

He was wondering what action his friends at Number 70 Berlin were taking in consequence of the report he had made on the previous night. On Wednesday the north-east coast of England would be left unguarded. What, he wondered, would happen to startle with “frightfulness” the stupid English, whom he at heart held in such utter contempt?

That same night Jack Sainsbury was on his way home in a taxi from the theatre with Elise. They had spent a delightful evening together. Mrs Shearman had arranged to accompany them, but at the last moment had been prevented by a headache. The play they had seen was one of the spy-plays at that moment so popular in London; and Elise, seated at his side, was full of the impressions which the drama had left upon her.

“I wonder if there really are any spies still among us, Jack?” she exclaimed, as, with her soft little hand in his, they were being whirled along up darkened Regent Street in the direction of Hampstead.

“Alas! I fear there are many,” was her lover’s reply. “Poor Jerrold told me many extraordinary things which showed how cleverly conceived is this whole plot against England.”

“But surely you don’t think that there are really any spies still here. There might have been some before the war, but there can’t be any now.”

“Why not, dearest?” he asked very seriously. He was as deeply in love with her as she was with him. “The Germans, having prepared for war for so many years, have, no doubt, taken good care to establish many thoroughly trustworthy secret agents in our midst. Jerrold often used to declare how certain men, who were regarded as the most honest, true John Bull Englishmen, were actually in the service of the enemy. As an instance, we have the case of Frederic Adolphus Gould, who was arrested at Rochester last April. He was a perfect John Bull: he spoke English without the slightest trace of accent; he hated Germany and all her works, and he was most friendly with many naval officers at Chatham. Yet he was discovered to be a spy, having for years sent reports of all our naval movements to Germany, and in consequence he was sent to penal servitude for six years. In the course of the inquiries it was found that he was a German who had fought in the Franco-German war, and was actually possessed of the inevitable iron cross!”

“Impossible!” cried the girl, in her sweet, musical voice.

“But it’s all on record! The fellow was a dangerously clever spy; and no doubt there are many others of his sort amongst us. Jerrold declared so, and told me how the authorities, dazzled by the glamour of Teuton finance, were, unfortunately, not yet fully awake to the craft and cunning of the enemy and the dangers by which we are beset.”

Then he lapsed into silence.

“Your friend Dr Jerrold took a very keen interest in the spy-peril, didn’t he?”

“Yes, dear. And I frequently helped him in watching and investigating,” was his reply. “In the course of our inquiries we often met with some very strange adventures.”

“Did you ever catch a spy?” she asked, quickly interested, for the subject was one upon which Jack usually avoided speaking.

“Yes, several,” was his brief and rather vague reply. The dead man’s discretion was reflected upon him. He never spoke of his activity more frequently than was necessary. In such inquiries silence was golden.

“And you really think there are many still at large?”

“I know there are, Elise,” he declared quickly. “The authorities are, alas! so supine that their lethargy is little short of criminal. Poor Jerrold foresaw what was happening. He had no axe to grind, as they have at the War Office. To-day the policy of the Government seems to be to protect the aliens rather than interfere with them. Poor Jerrold’s exposure of the unsatisfactory methods of our bureau of contra-espionage to a certain member of Parliament will, I happen to know, be placed before the House ere long. Then matters may perhaps be remedied. If they are not, I really believe that the long-suffering public will take affairs into their own hands.”

“But I don’t understand what spies have done against us,” queried Elise, looking into her lover’s face in the furtive light of the street-lamp they were at that moment passing. Her question was quite natural to a woman.

“Done!” echoed her fine manly lover. “Why, lots of our disasters have been proved to be due to their machinations. The authorities well know that all our disasters do not appear in the newspapers, for very obvious reasons. Look what spies did in Belgium! Men who had lived in that country all their lives, believed to be Belgians and occupying high and responsible positions – men who were deeply respected, and whose loyalty was unquestioned – openly revealed themselves as spies of the Kaiser, and betrayed their friends the instant the Germans set foot on Belgian soil. All has long ago been prepared for an invasion of Great Britain, and when ‘the Day’ comes we shall, depend upon it, receive a very rude shock, for the same thing will certainly happen.”

“How wicked it all is!” she remarked.

“All war is ‘wicked,’ dearest,” was the young man’s slow reply. “Yet I only wish I were fit enough to wear khaki.”

“But you can surely do something at home,” she suggested, pressing his hand. “There are many things here to do, now that you’ve left the City.”

“Yes, I will do something. I must, and I will!” he declared earnestly.

A silence again fell between them.

“It is a great pity poor Dr Jerrold died as he did,” the girl remarked thoughtfully at last. “I met him twice with you, and I liked him awfully. He struck me as so thoroughly earnest and so perfectly genuine.”

“He was, Elise. When he died – well – I – I lost my best friend,” and he sighed.

“Yes,” she answered. “And he was doing such a good work, patiently tracing out suspicious cases of espionage.”

“He was. Yet by so doing he, like all true patriots, got himself strangely disliked, first by the Germans themselves, who hated him, and secondly by the Intelligence Department.”

“The latter were jealous that he, a mere civilian doctor, should dare to interfere, I suppose,” remarked the girl thoughtfully.

“The khaki cult is full of silly jealousies and petty prejudices.”

“Exactly. It was a very ridiculous situation. Surely the man in khaki cannot pursue inquiries so secretly and delicately as the civilian. The Scotland Yard detective does not go about dressed in the uniform of an inspector. Therefore, why should an Intelligence officer put on red-tabs in order to make himself conspicuous? No, dearest,” he went on; “I quite agree with the doctor that the officials whose duty it is to look after spies have not taken sufficient advantage of patriotic civilians who are ready to assist them.”

“Why don’t you help them, Jack?” suggested the girl. “You assisted Dr Jerrold, and you know a great deal regarding spies and their methods. Yet you are always so awfully mysterious about them.”

“Am I, darling?” he laughed, carrying her hand tenderly to his lips and kissing it fondly.

“Yes, you are,” she protested quickly. “Do tell me one thing – answer me one question, Jack. Have you any suspicion in one single case? – I mean do you really know a spy?”

Jack hesitated. He drew a long breath, as again across his troubled mind flashed that thought which had so constantly obsessed him ever since that afternoon before Jerome Jerrold had died so mysteriously.

“Yes, Elise,” he answered in a thick voice. “Yes, I do.”

Chapter Eleven.
The Enemy’s Cipher

The afternoon of December 16th, 1914 – the 135th day of the war – was grey and gloomy in Northumberland Avenue, that short thoroughfare of high uniform hotels and buildings.

The street-lamps had just been lit around Trafalgar Square when Lewin Rodwell passed out of the big hall of the Constitutional Club, and down the steps into the street. At the moment a newsboy dashed past crying the evening papers.

The words that fell upon Rodwell’s ear caused him to start; and, stopping the lad, he purchased a paper, and, halting, read the bold, startling headlines: “Bombardment of the East Coast this morning: Great destruction of seaside towns.”

“Ach!” he murmured with a grin of satisfaction. “Ach! Number 70 was not slow in acting upon my message. Instead of the German Fleet falling into the trap, they have taught these pigs of English a lesson. Not long ago one Minister declared that if the German Fleet did not come out of the Kiel Canal, that the brave British would dig them like rats out of a hole. Good! They have come out to respond to that challenge,” and he laughed in grim satisfaction. “Let’s see what they’ve done.”

Turning upon his heel, in his eagerness to learn the truth, he reascended the broad steps of the Club, and in the hall seated himself and eagerly devoured the account which, at that moment, was thrilling the whole country.

The paper stated, as all will remember, that the German ships having, by some extraordinary and unknown means, succeeded in evading the diligent watch kept upon them in the North Sea, had appeared on the Yorkshire coast early that morning. A German battleship, together with several first-class cruisers, had made a raid, and shelled Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby. At the three towns bombarded much damage was done, hotels, churches and hospitals being struck; and, according to the casualty list at that moment available, twenty-nine persons had been killed and forty-six wounded at Hartlepool; two killed and two wounded at Whitby, and thirteen casualties in Scarborough. The paper added that the list of casualties was believed to be very much greater, and would, it was thought, amount to quite two hundred. British patrol boats had endeavoured to cut off the Germans, whereupon the latter had fled.

Lewin Rodwell, having read the leading article, in which the journal loudly protested against the bombardment of undefended towns, and the ruthless slaughter of women and children, cast the paper aside, rose and again went out.

As he walked in the falling twilight towards Pall Mall, he laughed lightly, muttering in German, beneath his breath: “That is their first taste of bombardment! They will have many yet, in the near future. They laugh at our Zeppelins now. But will they laugh when our new aircraft bases are ready? No. The idiots, they will not laugh when we begin to drop bombs upon London!”

And, hailing a taxi, he entered it and drove home to Bruton Street, where Sir Boyle Huntley was awaiting him.

The man with the bloated, red face and loose lips greeted his friend warmly as he entered the quiet, cosy study. Then when Franks, Rodwell’s man, had pulled down the blinds and retired, he exclaimed:

“Seen this evening’s paper? Isn’t it splendid, Lewin! All your doing, my dear fellow. You’ll get a handsome reward for it. Trustram is very useful to us, after all.”

“Yes,” was the other’s reply. “He’s useful – but only up to a certain point. My only regret is that we haven’t a real grip upon him. If we knew something against him – or if he’d borrowed money from one of our friends – then we might easily put on the screw, and learn a lot. As it is, he’s careful to give away but little information, and that not always trustworthy.”

“True,” was Sir Boyle’s reply. “But could we not manage to entice him into our fold? We’ve captured others, even more wary than he, remember.”

“Ah! I wish I could see a way,” replied Rodwell reflectively, as he stood before his own fireplace, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets.

“To my mind, Lewin, I foresee a danger,” said the stout man, tossing his cigarette-end into the grate as he rose and stood before his friend.

“How?”

“Well – last night I happened to be at the theatre, and in the stalls in front of me sat Trustram with young Sainsbury, the fellow whom we dismissed from the Ochrida office.”

“Sainsbury!” gasped the other. “Is he on friendly terms with Trustram, do you think?”

“I don’t think, my dear fellow – I am certain,” was the reply. “He had his girl with him, and all three were laughing and chatting merrily together.”

“His girl? Let me see, we had him watched a few days ago, didn’t we? That’s a girl living up at Hampstead – daughter of a Birmingham tool-manufacturer, Elise Shearman, isn’t she?” remarked Rodwell slowly, his eyebrows narrowing as he spoke.

“I believe that was the name. Olsen watched and reported, didn’t he?” asked the Baronet.

“Yes. I must see him. That young fellow is dangerous to us, Boyle – distinctly dangerous! He knows something, remember, and he would have told his friend Jerrold – if the latter had not conveniently died just before his visit to Wimpole Street.”

“Yes. That was indeed a lucky incident – eh?”

“And now he is friendly with Charles Trustram. How did they meet, I wonder?”

“Trustram was, of course, a friend of Jerrold’s.”

“Ah – I see. Well, we must lose no time in acting,” exclaimed Lewin Rodwell in a low, hard voice. “I quite realise the very grave and imminent danger. We may be already suspected by Trustram.”

“Most probably, I think. We surely can’t afford to court disaster any further.”

“No,” was Rodwell’s low, decisive answer, and he drew a long breath. “We must act – swiftly and effectively.”

And then he lapsed into a long silence, during which his active brain was ardently at work in order to devise some subtle and deadly plan which should crush out suspicion and place them both in a position of further safety.

At the moment, the British public believed both men to be honest, patriotic supporters of the Government – men who were making much sacrifice for the country’s welfare.

What if the horrible and disgraceful truth ever became revealed? What if they were proved to be traitors? Why, a London mob would undoubtedly lynch them both, and tear them limb from limb!

One man in England knew the truth – that was quite plain – and that man was young Sainsbury, the clerk who had accidentally overheard those indiscreet words in the boardroom in Gracechurch Street.

Lewin Rodwell, though ever since that afternoon when he had been so indiscreet he had tried to hide the truth from himself, now realised that, at all hazards, the young man’s activity must be cut short, and his mouth closed.

Sir Boyle remained and dined with him. As a bachelor, and an epicure, Lewin Rodwell always gave excellent dinners, dinners that were renowned in London. He had a French chef to whom he paid a big salary – a man who had been chef at Armenonville, in the Bois, in Paris. Upon his kitchen Rodwell spared nothing, hence when any of those men – whom he afterwards so cleverly made use of to swell his bank-balance – accepted his hospitality they knew that the meal would be perhaps the best procurable in all London.

Many are the men-about-town who pride themselves upon their knowledge of the gastronomic art, and talk with loving reflections of the soups, entrées, and what-not, that they have eaten. Most of such men are what may be termed “hotel epicures.” They swallow the dishes served at the fashionable hotels – dishes to the liking of their own palates possibly – smack their lips, pay, and are satisfied. But the real epicure – and he is indeed a rara avis– is the one who knows that the thin-sliced grey truffle, light as a feather, cannot be put on a fillet in London, and that “sea-truffles” have never been seen in the Metropolis.

To be a real epicure one must be a cosmopolitan, taking one’s bouillabaisse in Marseilles, one’s red mullet in Leghorn, one’s caviare at eleven in the morning in Bucharest, one’s smoked fish and cheese in Tromso, one’s chicken’s breasts with rice in Bologna, and so on, across the face of the earth. To the man who merely pretends to know, the long gilt-printed menu of the smart London hotel becomes enticing to the palate, but to the man who has eaten his dinner under many suns it is often an amusing piece of mysteriously-worded bunkum.

Lewin Rodwell and his friend the Birthday Baronet sat down together to a perfectly-cooked and perfectly-served repast. Franks, the quiet, astute, clean-shaven man, a secret friend of Germany like his master, moved noiselessly, and the pair chatted without restraint, knowing well that Franks – whose real name was Grünhold – would say nothing. It was not to his advantage to say anything, because he was a secret agent of Germany of the fifth class – namely, one in weekly receipt of sixty marks, or three pounds.

Rodwell was apprehensive, unhappy, and undecided. Truth to tell, he wanted to be alone, to plot and to scheme. His friend’s presence prevented him from thinking. Yet, after dinner, he was compelled to go forth with him somewhere, so they went to the revue at the Hippodrome, and on to Murray’s afterwards.

It was half-past two o’clock in the morning when Rodwell re-entered with his latch-key and, passing into his den, found upon his writing-table a rather soiled note, addressed in a somewhat uneducated hand, which had evidently been left during his absence.

Throwing off his overcoat, he took up the note and, tearing it open, read the few brief unsigned lines it contained. Then, replacing it upon the table, he drew his white hand across his brow, as though to clear his troubled brain.

Afterwards he crossed to the small safe let into the wall near the fireplace and, unlocking it, took forth a little well-worn memorandum-book bound in dark blue leather.

“Cipher Number 38, I think,” he muttered to himself, as he turned over its pages until he came to that for which he was in search.

Then he sat down beneath the reading-lamp and carefully studied the page, which, ruled in parallel columns, displayed in the first column the alphabet, in the second the key-sentence of the cipher in question – one of forty-three different combinations of letters – and in the third the discarded letters to be interspersed in the message in order to render any attempt at deciphering the more difficult.

In that cleverly-compiled little volume were forty-three different key-sentences, each easy of remembrance, and corresponding in its number of letters with about two-thirds, or so, of the number of letters of the alphabet. From time to time it changed automatically, according to the calendar and to a certain rule set forth at the end of the little volume. Hence, though the spy’s code was constantly being changed without any correspondence from headquarters – “Number 70 Berlin” – yet, without a copy of the book, the exact change and its date could not be ascertained.

Truly, the very best brains of Germany had, long ago, been concentrated upon the complete system of espionage in Great Britain, with the result that the organisation was now absolutely perfect.

Taking a sheet of ruled paper from one of the compartments in the American rolltop desk before him, Lewin Rodwell, after leaning back wearily in his chair to compose himself, commenced, by reference to the pages of the little book before him, to trace out the cipher equivalents of the information contained in the note that had been left for him by an unknown hand in his absence.

He opened the big silver cigarette-box at his elbow, and having taken a cigarette, he lit it and began reducing the information into cipher, carefully producing a jumble of letters, a code so difficult that it had for a long time entirely defied the British War Office, the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the French Secret Service.

Though marvellously ingenious, yet it was, after all, quite simple when one knew the key-sentence.

Those key-sentences used by “Number 70 Berlin” in their wonderful and ever-changing secret code – that code by which signal lights were flashed across Great Britain by night, and buzzed out by wireless by day – were quite usual sentences, often proverbs in English, such as “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” “A man and his money are soon parted,” “Give one an inch and he’ll take an ell,” “Money makes the world go round,” and so on.

Simple, of course. Yet the very simplicity of it all, combined with the constant change, constituted its greatest and most remarkable secrecy. The great Steinhauer, with his far-reaching tentacles of espionage across both hemispheres, held his octopus-like grip upon the world, a surer, a more subtle and a more ingenious hold than the civilised world, from the spies of Alexander the Great down to those of President Kruger, had ever seen.

With infinite care, and because the information concerning certain naval movements in the Channel was urgent, he produced a mass of letters with words in German interspersed – a cipher message which resulted a fortnight later in one of our battleships being sunk in the Channel, with only eighty survivors. Of the message the following is a facsimile: —