Part 17 (1/2)
”Now what do I know of Burnham?” muttered Dawson. ”The name seems familiar.” He rang the bell, asked for an atlas, and studied carefully the coast of Ess.e.x. Burnham stood upon the river Crouch, which Dawson had heard of as a famous resort for motor-boats. His eyes gleamed, and he threw up his head, which had been bent over the map. ”The man shall have his leave,” murmured he. ”But I don't think it will be his mother who is buried.”
Just at that moment in came Froissart, looking, as Dawson at once remarked, merry and bright. ”It is no wonder,” said he, ”for see this telegram of which I have just had a copy. It was spotted at once at the Bureau, and the man who despatched it has been shadowed by a police officer.” The telegram read, ”Coming to-day by South Western.
Meet me this evening at usual place.” It was addressed to Burnham-on-Crouch in Ess.e.x.
Dawson picked up the note which he had received and pa.s.sed it to Froissart, who read it slowly. ”The same place!” cried he.
”Yes,” said Dawson slowly, ”the same place, and a famous resort for motor-boats. We have not finished yet, my friend, with the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_”
CHAPTER XIV
A COFFIN AND AN OWL
Dawson laid the letter and the telegram upon his breakfast-table, and bent his head over them. In a few minutes he had weighed them up, sorted out their relative significance, and spoke. ”We have here, Froissart, two distinct people. I am almost sure of that. My man of the dockyard who wants leave to bury his mother in Ess.e.x has not yet received permission from his Chief. He would not therefore be telegraphing about his train. He does not know yet whether he will be permitted to go at all. Your man is quite confident that his movements are in no way restricted. As I read between the lines I judge that my man, who knows the actual truth about the docking and sailing of the battle-cruisers, wants to reach the East Coast, whence he has means of transmitting the priceless news to Germany. Your man is of one of the Towns; he has seen the dummy cruisers ash.o.r.e in the Sound; he believes them to be genuine, and he also wants to transmit the news to his paymasters in Germany, He will be an ordinary German agent. The ident.i.ty of place whither both wish to go is partly a coincidence, and partly explained by its excellence as a jumping-off place for fast motor-boats, which, during these long autumn nights, could race over to and get back again between sunset and dawn. We have coast watchers always about for the very purpose of stopping such lines of communication. You shall accompany your own man, and make sure that he is allowed to get through. If he does not himself cross, arrest him as soon as his boat has gone. If he does go, watch for his return and arrest him, and his boat and all on board, the moment that they return. In any event the boat and its crew must be seized upon return to Ess.e.x. Are you quite clear about what you have to do?”
”Quite,” said Froissart. ”The spies and their boat must be caught red-handed, but not till after the false news of the mining of the battle-cruisers has been carried to Holland. But how shall we make certain that the sleepless English Navy will not b.u.t.t in and catch the boat at sea before it gets across to Holland. The Narrow Seas swarm with fast patrols.”
”I will provide for that. I will write at once for you a letter to the Inspector of police at Burnham, and enclose copies of my credentials from the Admiralty. I will also wire to Lord Jacquetot in private code. You will find on arrival that the responsible naval authorities of the district will be entirely at your service. That motor-boat with the news of the great spoof shall be shepherded across most craftily, but when it comes to return will find that the way of transgressors is very hard. Get ready and be off, Froissart; we depend upon your skill and discretion. Get a good view of your man--the police will point him out--before he boards the train, and then don't let him out of your sight. Take two plain-clothes officers with you. Run no unnecessary risks of being spotted. You are rather easily recognisable with those s.h.i.+ning black eyes and black beard, but no one here has seen you officially, and you should pa.s.s unsuspected as a Scotland Yard man.
Can I trust you?”
”_Mais certainement_,” said Froissart crossly. ”This is simple police work, which I have done a thousand times. I could do it on my head.”
”Your train leaves at 10.8; the South Western station. I will give you the letters at once, and then you can start.”
Within a quarter of an hour Dawson--his breakfast forgotten--had given Froissart his letters, sent a long telegram by special messenger to the Commander-in-Chief for despatch in code to Jacquetot. Not even to Dawson would the Admiralty entrust its private cypher. Then, as soon as Froissart had disappeared, he called up the Chief of the Dockyard on the telephone and arranged to come at once to his office.
”I had given the easy job to Froissart,” he explained to me long afterwards. ”It was, as he called it, simple police work. He had, without arousing suspicion, to make smooth the path for his spy just as you and I opened the door to the Hook for the late-lamented Hagan, and escorted him across in the mail-boat. We have helped false news over to the Germans scores of times. It is grand sport. My job was something much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour.”
”Why did you not cut out your difficulties by just stopping him from going to Ess.e.x? At a word from you his Chief would have refused leave.”
Dawson smiled at me in a fas.h.i.+on which I find intensely aggravating.
He has no tact; when he feels superior, he lets one see it plainly.
”The fat would have been in the fire then,” exclaimed he. ”Suppose he lay low for a day or two, took French leave, and went. I should have been off his track. Shadowing is all very well, but it does not always succeed in a crowded district like the Three Towns. If he had got away without me beside him, the man might have reached Ess.e.x and done there what he pleased. Besides, he might have had accomplices unknown to me.
No, it was the only possible course to give him leave and follow him up close. Then whatever he did would be under my own eye.”
Dawson gulped down a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. ”Who is this man of yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us?
What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Ess.e.x at all? He ought to be a Devon man.”
”He isn't, anyway. I have been making close inquiries. Though he has been with us for sixteen years, he did come originally from somewhere in the East. The man is one of the best I have--never drinks, keeps good time, and works hard. He makes big wages, and carries them virtuously home to his wife. He has money in the savings bank, and holds Consols, poor chap, on which he must have wasted the good toil of years. I can't imagine any one less likely to take German gold than this man Maynard. Sure you haven't a bee in your bonnet, Dawson? To a police officer every one is a probable criminal, but some of us now and then are pa.s.sably honest. I will bet my commission that Maynard is honest.”
Dawson sniffed. ”The honest men, with the excellent characters and the virtuous wives, are always the most dangerous because least likely to arouse suspicion. How do you know that Maynard hasn't a second establishment hidden away somewhere in the Three Towns? The upper and middle cla.s.ses have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working cla.s.s betters do a bit that way too.”
”All right. Have it your own way. We will a.s.sume for the sake of security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I grant leave?”
”Yes,” said Dawson, ”and do it handsomely. Give him four days and run the sympathetic stunt. Offer him a Service pa.s.s by the Great Western.
Say how grieved you are and all the rest of the tosh. Have him up now, and put me somewhere close so that I can take a good look at the swine when he comes in and when he goes out.”
The Chief of the Dockyards shrugged his shoulders, placed Dawson in an adjoining room, and summoned Maynard from the yard. The man, who was dressed in the awful dead black of his cla.s.s when a funeral is in prospect, came up, and Dawson got a full sight of him. Maynard was about thirty-five, well set up--for he had served in the Territorials--and looked what he was, a first-rate workman of the best type. Even Dawson, who trusted no one, was slightly shaken. ”I have never seen a man who looked less like a spy,” muttered he; ”but then, those always make the most dangerous of spies. Why has he a mother in Ess.e.x, and why has she died just now? Real mothers don't do these things; they've more sense.”