Chapter V Under the Sycamore
Long before the smoke of the destroyer flotilla blurred the clean line of the horizon, it was known in Haddisport that H.M.S. Atreus had been sunk by a floating mine. Among the first of the townspeople to hear the news was Darby Catchpole.
Darby had come ashore from the Mignonette, and had hastened to the naval signal station at the end of the pier to report what he personally knew of the mine-layer. His Sea Scout’s uniform gave him a passport, and he entered the pavilion, undeterred by the armed bluejacket on guard at the door.
He found himself in a large room, in which were several officers and seamen. The officers were discussing a wireless message received from Captain Damant. He heard one of them transmitting the message by telephone. Another was working at the telegraph instrument. From an inner room came the busy clicking of a typewriter.
An officer whom he knew by sight as Lieutenant Ingoldsby, commander of a submarine, came up to him, and Darby told him of the loss of the What’s Wanted, adding that another steam trawler, the Pied Piper, had met a similar fate, with the loss of all hands.
“I suppose the fishing will be stopped, won’t it, sir?” Darby ventured anxiously. His father was an owner of several trawlers, and he foresaw the possibility of ruin.
“Not necessarily,” the officer assured him. “We shall soon clear the sea of mines. If you are not otherwise on duty, you can be useful here.”
Darby’s eyes brightened.
“I’m ready now, sir, this minute, to do anything I can,” he said.
“Good!” Lieutenant Ingoldsby nodded approval of this prompt willingness. “Go into the farther room, there. They’ll tell you what to do.”
Darby entered the tiny, sunlit room, from which he had heard the clicking of the typewriter. Two bluejackets stood between him and the table. One of them moved aside.
“A Sea Scout just come in, sir,” he announced to the man at the typewriter.
The operator wheeled round, and Darby was astonished to recognise his own Scoutmaster, Mr. Arnold Bilverstone. He was aware that Mr. Bilverstone was in the Royal Naval Reserve. What surprised him was that Mr. Bilverstone had so quickly been installed in naval duties, and that he should already be wearing the uniform of a petty officer.
Responding to Darby’s salute, Mr. Bilverstone questioned him concerning himself and his adventure, and, gathering a sheaf of papers, said:
“Take these to the Harbour-master. They are lists of selected steam trawlers that are to be brought at once into the inner harbour to be turned into mine-sweepers, flying the White Ensign.”
Not Darby Catchpole alone, but several other Sea Scouts of the Lion Patrol were occupied about the town and harbour that afternoon, helping to convert a fleet of fishing boats into a fleet of naval auxiliaries.
Instead of trawling for fish, these stout little vessels were to engage in the perilous pursuit of picking up explosive mines from the waters of the North Sea. It only needed that their funnels and hulls should be painted grey, and that some alterations should be made in their dredging gear, and they were ready for their new and dangerous work, each with her daring crew of naval reserve men.
In the late afternoon, Darby watched the first of them going out, under the escort of a gunboat. It was astonishing how wicked looking a coat of war paint had made them.
He lingered at the naval base until the survivors of the Atreus were landed in boats from the destroyers, and with other Sea Scouts he helped in conveying the wounded to the hospital. On his return he met Mark Redisham, who told him of how Max Hilliger had been on board the German mine-layer.
“I’ve been looking and asking for him,” said Mark, as they walked together across the swing-bridge. “I supposed he’d been picked up by one of the destroyers; but nobody seems to know anything about him. I’m afraid he is drowned. We’d better call and tell his people.”
Darby Catchpole shook his head.
“I’ve just heard that his people have left the neighbourhood,” he explained. “Mr. Hilliger, being a German, couldn’t very well stay in Haddisport. Of course, the consulate has ceased to exist. He has had to shut up his office and apply for his passports. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he, as well as Max, was aboard that Dutch ketch—the Thor—that we spotted off the Silver Pit. Perhaps he even went with Max on board the mine-layer. Anyhow, he’s said to have sold his business and gone off.”
“It looks as if he’d known long beforehand that there was going to be war,” Mark observed.
“That is what the men in the trawl market are saying,” resumed Darby. “They are saying, too, that for years past he has been acting as an agent of the German Navy against Great Britain, using his fishing boats to fetch and carry information. What about that pigeon message? Had it anything to do with him? Did you get at what was in it?”
“Yes.” Mark Redisham gave a cautious glance at his companion. “But I’ve got to keep it a secret.”
“Right,” nodded Darby. “Then I won’t refer to it again. Are you going to call at Sunnydene? I don’t suppose you will find any one there, except perhaps a caretaker. The German servants were dismissed quite a week ago.”
Sunnydene was the name of the Hilligers’ luxurious mansion on the edge of the cliff, to the north of the town. It was a conspicuous, stone-built house, with gables and turrets overgrown with creepers, flanked by fir trees grotesquely bent by the harsh winds of winter. In the middle of the front lawn there was a tall flagstaff, rigged like a schooner’s mast, from which, on occasion, the German ensign was displayed. The lower as well as the upper windows commanded a wide expanse of the North Sea, and it was from one of them, opening upon the terrace, that Herr Hilliger had watched the Thor setting out, with his son on board.
Time and again during this day he had stood looking out towards the far horizon, as if he expected something to happen. And now in the dusk of the evening he was once more gazing outward, with an expression of grave anxiety in his watery, blue eyes.
“The pigeon has not yet come home, Seligmann!” he said, turning sharply and speaking in German to his secretary, who had just entered the room carrying an overcoat and a yellow leather handbag.
“No, mein herr,” the secretary answered, “I have again been into the loft. It has not returned. And already the car is at the door. It is time that we start.”
“Strange!” ejaculated Heir Hilliger. “I cannot understand it. Max was to set it free at ten o’clock this morning. A bird that has so often found its way across from Heligoland is not likely to have lost itself on a shorter journey. It cannot be that the Minna von Barnhelm failed to come out from Cuxhaven. She was to have been at sea, equipped and ready to begin her work at once when Max should signal to her that war had been declared. Nothing can have gone wrong—nothing!”
He strode impatiently to and fro about the room.
“There is no help for it, Fritz,” he resumed. “You must go without me. You have your passport. You will go by motor-car to Harwich, catch the night boat for the Hook of Holland, and join Max at Wilhelmshaven. You understand?”
“I understand, mein herr,” returned Fritz Seligmann. “I have everything ready—the money, the secret code book, the plans, the letter to Admiral von Hilliger. But it is unfortunate that you come not also. If already our brave battleships are coming over for the great invasion, it will be better that you are in Germany rather than here in England.”
“Very true,” agreed Herr Hilliger. “But before three days I shall no longer be in England. I shall be on board the Admiral’s flagship. Why should I remain in the enemy’s country when I can be over there in my own, doing my duty for the Fatherland?”
An hour later, when the loaded car had gone off on its journey to Harwich and the house was in darkness, he was out in the grounds, prowling among the deep shadows of the trees. He seemed to have no object in his wanderings; but presently he entered the stables, empty now of both horses and motor-cars. He looked up into the blackness of the rafters, where the open square of a trap-door showed dimly. Then he determined to climb up into the pigeon loft. He clutched the sides of the ladder, his foot was on the lowest rung, when the sound of a footstep startled him. A hand caught agitatedly at his elbow. He turned with a nervous gasp, and drew back in amazement, as if he had seen a ghost.
“Max!” he cried. “You! Here? How is this? What has happened?”
Max stood facing his father, disguised in the engineer’s cap and jumper that he had borrowed in place of his own wet garments on the destroyer which had brought him to land. He was breathing heavily, as if he had been running; as, indeed, he had, all the way from the harbour.
“I’m in time, then,” he panted. “In time to stop you. But why are you not gone, hours ago? You got the message?”
“The message,” his father repeated, recovering his composure. “It has not come. The bird is not yet home. You failed me. You did not set it free!”
“But I did, father!” protested Max. “It ought to have been here long since. I don’t understand.”
“Nor I,” returned his father. “It was the best homing bird we ever had. Some one—why, what is the matter?”
Max was standing rigid, staring dazedly in front of him.
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “wondering—wondering if Mark Redisham——But no, it couldn’t be. It’s not possible. And yet there was that shot that I heard—a rifle shot—from across the sea! Are you sure the pigeon is not in the loft, father?”
“Never mind the pigeon now.” Herr Hilliger drew him out into the stable yard. “Tell me what has happened. What of the Minna von Barnhelm? You signalled her? You went aboard? Why have you come ashore?”
“What?” cried Max in astonishment. “You have not heard? You have not been told? But she is sunk—sunk by the guns of a British cruiser—the Atreus. I was aboard of her—yes. I was picked up. And then the cruiser herself was blown up, sky-high, by one of our floating mines.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Herr Hilliger, with a new eagerness. “Then the mines were laid?”
“Hundreds of them!” Max declared. “All along the coast.”
“Good!” nodded his father, moving out from the yard into the drive. “We shall succeed.”
He came to a halt under the shadow of a sycamore-tree.
“Listen, my son,” he resumed, speaking very low. “This morning I have had a secret dispatch from Berlin. Everything goes well. Our brave soldiers are sweeping their way through Belgium. In a week they will march triumphantly into Paris. We shall have taken possession of Calais. The way to England will then be easy. Our battleships and submarines will command the Channel, and all the seas; cutting off supplies so effectually that Great Britain will be starved into submission, even before our transports and Zeppelins land their invading forces. Your opportunities, my dear Max, are even brighter than I had dared to dream.”
He paused, drawing his son closer into the shielding shadows of the tree.
“But this delay in our getting over to Wilhelmshaven is most unfortunate,” he continued. “As it happens, you had better have gone right across in the ketch, instead of changing into the Minna. As for myself——”
“Why didn’t you go by the mail-boat from Harwich?” Max interrupted.
“My dear boy,” exclaimed his father, “I waited for your message. All our plans—everything—depended upon my knowing the bearings of the Minna and my getting on board of her, as we planned.”
“And now,” pursued Max, “what do you propose to do?”
“Listen!” rejoined Herr Hilliger, still speaking in a cautiously low voice. “Everything that we now do must be in the service of the Emperor and the Fatherland. You and I are no longer concerned with England, in any way whatever, excepting in hastening her complete downfall. Great Britain must be beaten to the dust. And I have come to the determination that for the present we can best serve the Kaiser’s cause by my going at once to Wilhelmshaven, leaving you here in England.”
“Leaving me here?” cried Max in surprise. “But why? Why should I, a German, remain here among our enemies?”
“To be of the greatest use to his Majesty the Kaiser,” returned Herr Hilliger. “You have been associated with the English people. You know them; you speak like one of them; you can pass yourself off anywhere as English. You can look about you without being suspected, seeing things which it is important that the Admiral and his captains should know.”
“What?” Max ground his heel into the gravel. “You want me to stop here and find out the secrets of our enemies—to continue your underhand work of sending private information to Germany about the British fleet? You want me to betray the people who have been my friends? No, my father, I cannot do that. I am a German; I will fight for Germany. I will give up my life for the Fatherland. But I will not pretend to be what I am not. I will not be a spy.”
Herr Hilliger laughed, a low, contemptuous laugh.
“My dear Max,” he said, “since when did you learn that to be a true patriot it is necessary to consider the advantages of your country’s enemies? It is nonsense. Your highest duty, as my son and as a German, is to do all you can against the arrogant English. You shall obey me. Do you understand? Tell me, once: how many people know that you are here in Haddisport? How many know that your life was saved when the British cruiser was blown to pieces by our faithful explosive mine?”
“Nobody knows,” Max answered sullenly. “Nobody on board the destroyer which picked me up knew me, even by sight. I did not intend that any one should guess I was a German. Nobody who was on board the Atreus knows that I was not blown to bits—except—yes, except Mark Redisham. He saw me swimming. But he doesn’t know that I was saved.”
“Ah!” nodded Herr Hilliger. “And he need never know. He must never know—never. It is better that he should believe that you were drowned.”
Max clutched at his father’s arm, pressing him back upon the grass behind the tree.
“Some one comes!” he whispered agitatedly.
They both saw the lithe figure of a youth approaching silently up the drive. He paused for a moment, looking at the front door of the dark, deserted house, strode to the porchway, and quickly ran up the steps. In the silence the two watchers heard the tinkling of an electric bell; but neither moved. Strange that they should thus hide themselves in their own garden!
They waited, knowing that the door would not be opened. Herr Hilliger ventured to lean out and look towards the porch. As he did so, the revolving beam of light from the lighthouse, half a mile away, illumined the trees, travelled slowly over the towers and gables of the dwelling, glinted for an instant on the upper windows, then spread its glow across the sea. Against this glow he saw the figure on the doorstep, clearly defined.
“It is one of your Sea Scouts,” he whispered.
The Sea Scout ran lightly down the steps, turned, and came quickly nearer, walking so quietly on the gravel that Max could only believe that he wore tennis shoes. Then, as he came yet closer, to within a couple of yards of the two Germans, again the beam from the lighthouse swung round and shone in his face.
It was the face of Mark Redisham.