Part 9 (2/2)

Next day was bl.u.s.tering and stormy. Snowflakes fell thick in large globules in the streets, making them almost impa.s.sable to traffic; yet a silent and un.o.btrusive man ploughed his way to the hotel soon after daylight, carrying interesting news.

The German auxiliary fast cruiser _Berlin_ had been seen entering the fjord.

This was indeed important. The news must at any cost be transmitted home, and at the earliest possible moment.

It appeared that the cruiser, a vessel of some 18,000 tons, armed with eight to a dozen quick-firing guns and other equipment, had, under her enormously powerful engines, and after disposing of her cargo of mines, laid a course northwards well into the region of floating ice, thus outwitting the vigilance of the English patrol boats. Taking the fullest advantage of the awful weather and frequent snowstorms, she had slipped un.o.bserved through the tortuous entrances and difficult channels of the Norwegian coast; past the guard fortresses at ----; past the guards.h.i.+ps; and finally dropped her anchor unchallenged and unhindered under the windows of the town of ----, which half encircles one of the most coveted harbours in all Europe.

It was a marvellous feat of navigation, but then it is an open secret that members of the German Navy know the ins and outs of the Norwegian fjords even better than Norwegians do themselves. They have also much better charts; both of which facts they proved in a startling manner in their manoeuvres before the war.

It is another open secret that at the German War Office, in the Wilhelmstra.s.se, Berlin, was kept a complete series of the Ordnance maps of England, brought fully up-to-date by secret surveys, which gave detail and information that our maps do not show and which our War Office is probably quite unacquainted with. I was never more astonished in my life, although I had the sense to conceal it, than when an alleged German commercial traveller with whom I had been travelling somewhere in Finland sketched, in order to ill.u.s.trate an argument, a correct plan of a remote part of the East Coast of England with which I was very well acquainted. On this sketch the aforesaid traveller proceeded to delineate fords to streams and hidden roadways, the existence of which most of those even who had dwelt all their lives in the parishes affected had either forgotten or never knew about.

To return to the subject. The long-lost _Berlin_ had been run to ground.

The burning question of the moment was whether she would face the music and make a bolt for the Fatherland or whether she would remain where she was and become interned. A collection of British cruisers outside probably caused her to elect the latter course. So it was up to me, somehow or other, to try and ferret out all I could relating to her recent voyage. But how?

The chief of the British Secret Service is never interested in detail.

To him the most interesting particulars, showing how an objective is attained, are irritating and merely so much waste of time. His requirements and mind centre only round concrete results, congealed into the fewest possible number of words. Whilst interviews in his office are limited almost to grudgingly-given minutes.

It is undoubtedly prudent and wise to draw a bough over my innumerable snow-trails in order to obliterate the footprints of my tortuous wanderings during the days that followed. Suffice to say that, night and day, awake or dreaming, the subject never left my thoughts, whilst I schemed and invented possible and impossible plans, until at last one day chance supplied the missing link.

Meanwhile side issues were not wanting. German agents had traced the hotel proprietor's show-English-spy to his nightly lair in the woodstacks. They naturally attached an unknown importance to what they believed to be his anxiety concerning the safety of these piles of innocent timber. They appeared to a.s.sume that this particular wood--worth possibly somewhere about 20,000--was considered of great value to the English Government. Accordingly they planned, by contra espionage, to lure the nightly watcher in another direction. As soon as his presence was thus temporarily removed they promptly fired the pile, which job was so thoroughly well done that hardly a plank could be salved from the flames.

Having been confidentially told that I was suspected of being an English S.S. agent, I promptly called up on the telephone the head of the department which controlled these matters, and invited him to lunch.

Fortunately I knew him well and could do so. It was humorous that whilst I was doing this the gentleman in question happened to be attending a small committee meeting which was, at the moment, discussing my _bona fides_, and the somewhat important personage called for raised unavailing protests at being compelled to answer my insistent call, only to learn of the unimportant invitation to himself from the actual suspect whose presence was then under discussion and whom it was part of his duty to be accountable for.

I could not help subsequently smiling when I was privately informed by another member of the committee that the old colonel had returned from the telephone, very red in the face, and swearing audibly about that ”d--d impudent mad-brained Englishman who was chasing him about, instead of waiting to be properly chased,” or its equivalent in words in his own language.

In a snug creek, away from the busy waterways and the ever-moving industry of the heavily overloaded quays, was securely moored and laid up for the winter a palatial pleasure yacht, belonging to a well-known Russian sugar queen of reputed fabulous wealth. Her captain and crew were objects of interest to all. I considered it politic to ingratiate myself with the crew with a view to future possibilities.

In course of time, certain ladies of unknown origin appeared at various hotels in the town and its environs. They possessed youth, beauty, vivacity of spirit, charm of manner, and apparently plenty of ready money to add to their attraction and graces. They had friends who soon called, or met them at or away from their hotels. From information received and from personal observation, I deemed it expedient to push myself forward into this small but somewhat exclusive circle, although it required the utmost ingenuity to mix with the members of these various circles whilst in constant touch with the chief residents of the town without permitting one group to gain knowledge of my intimacy with other groups.

By judicious expenditure in hospitality and a free hand with small gifts, I was able to draw into my confidences half a dozen acquaintances whom I could trust to render any a.s.sistance I might perhaps at some time require. Meanwhile I was ostensibly engaged in legal matters. Clients called with ma.s.ses of papers and remained closeted with me for hours.

Often they remained for meals, and then the choicest of wines were ordered, and the last doubts the proprietor of the hotel might have entertained vanished.

Within a week or ten days an accurate report was secretly handed to me of the exact number, nationality, and rating of every man on board the enemy vessel. It also contained addenda giving the name and business of every visitor thereto, and the duration of each visit; this afforded matter for cogitation, reflection, and thought.

My next requirement was a roughly summed-up estimate of the characteristics of each person I designated, with all possible information and detail concerning their believed weaknesses, whims, fancies, hobbies, ambitions, or failings, which I persisted in procuring concerning every person I could on the before-mentioned list. This was a long and more difficult task. Pride, conceit, alcohol, women, and money figured against one or the other. The two former would seem the easiest to work upon, but in the end it was the latter which affected the _debacle_.

Having laid well my plans, which promised almost certain successful results, it was advisable for me to depart from the town and district in order that matters might be permitted to operate successfully without any possible chance of failure through some remote suspicion being hatched and developed from my presence. It was far better for me to watch from a distance, to observe the effects of palm-oil penetrate deeper and yet deeper, until that which I was most anxious to get hold of, namely, material extracts from the log of the recent voyage of this important vessel, had been brought ash.o.r.e and communicated; and, what was most important of all, the exact number of mines she had laid in British waters, with precise lat.i.tude and longitude of such laying.

It was expensive, but it was worth the outlay many times over. It would have been undoubtedly a very great surprise indeed to the kultured Hun sea-pirates, had they only known how their most jealously-guarded secrets were thus so easily opened up.

When in England some months after this information had been communicated, I had an opportunity of interviewing some officers and members of the crews on board various minesweeping vessels which had been employed to remove these pests from navigable waters. They were men engaged to harvest what the _Berlin_ was alleged to have sown near Tory Island, which lies off the north-west coast of Ireland, and not far from the all-important Loch Sw.i.l.l.y. The first and second fleet sent there to act upon the information which had been collected in the manner hereinbefore described seem to have returned to their respective bases and reported there were no mines to be found. But whilst those in authority were debating or doubting the accuracy of the original information collected abroad, proof positive soon convinced them.

Vessel after vessel was reported sunk by mine contact, including the new leviathan, H.M.S. _Audacious_, which awful disaster was religiously hushed up and kept away from the ken of the English nation. American papers, however, exhibited photos of the wreck and rescues which were freely copied by international journals, whilst Germany knew all about it from the first. The third fleet of mine-sweepers, eventually sent to Tory Island with instructions to sweep the same area as at first directed but at a greater depth, gathered in about 120 to 130 large mines out of the 150 said to have been sown there. But this was after far too many casualties had been reported, and much s.h.i.+pping, with valuable lives, had been lost to Great Britain.

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