Chapter VI What Mark Found in the Pigeon-Loft
The two watchers under the sycamore-tree held themselves so very still and silent that even if he had been searching for them Mark Redisham might have passed by without a suspicion that they were so near. His well-trained senses were alert, but he was not consciously listening for any betraying sound or looking for any movement.
He went on along the gravel drive with confident stride until he reached the stables. Here he paused, glancing backward before entering the gateway of the yard. He had expected to find the gate shut and bolted, and was surprised to see that the door of the motor-garage also was open.
The place was in darkness, but he noticed that the motor-car was not there. This appeared to indicate that, although the family might have gone home to Germany, yet they had not dismissed all their servants. Mark reflected that probably the chauffeur, who acted also as gardener, had been left in charge of the house and grounds until the property should be sold or otherwise disposed of.
Mark had no intention of asking the caretaker’s sanction to do what he had come to do. Indeed, it gratified him that his precautionary ringing of the hall hell had not been answered. He went boldly into the stables.
Knowing that he was about to use his electric torch, he closed the door behind him, lest the light should be seen. He knew the place well. Even in this past summer the Lion Patrol had had a scout game at Sunnydene. Pickets had been stationed at various points, and it had been his own part to steal into the grounds and make his way in the darkness into the harness-room without being caught.
He was now engaged in no ordinary scouting game, but in a serious duty imposed upon him by the officer in command at the naval base, and it was even more important that he should not be detected.
Feeling along the whitewashed wall, he touched the ladder leading to the loft. Up this he climbed through the trap-door.
He stood for some moments looking about him in the darkness of the loft. In the high door by which hay and straw were brought in there was a small hole, on a level with his eyes. Swallows used it as an entrance to their nests in the rafters. Going up to it and peering outward, he could distinguish the dark level of the sea, and presently the ruby gleam of the Alderwick lightship appeared, grew brighter, and faded against the dim horizon.
Mark realised that, if from here he could see that ruby gleam, it was certain that the crew of the lightship could equally well see the flash of his electric torch. Was it not possible that Heinrich Hilliger had used this hole in the loft door through which to flash his signals? Mark covered the hole by hanging his cap on a nail just above it.
Then he turned and closed the trap in the floor. It made more noise in falling than he had intended. Whether it was the displacement of air or his own fancy, there seemed to be a corresponding sound down below, as if another door had been suddenly shut, and as if the key of that other door had been turned in the lock.
“I suppose I’m a bit nervous,” he said to himself. “It couldn’t have been anything.” He drew out his torch, pressed the switch, and turned the shaft of light upon the partition beyond which Hilliger’s pigeons were kept. The key was in the door. Feeling like a guilty burglar, he turned it and entered, shielding the light from the open space in the gable by which the pigeons flew in and out.
There were no pigeons here now. The coops and perches were empty. He supposed that Herr Hilliger had taken the birds away with him, to use them in carrying secret messages back to England; although, as yet, there was no proof that Herr Hilliger had ever actually used any of his pigeons for this purpose.
Mark made a rapid survey of the untidy loft, with its lumber of old harness, rusty garden tools, bundles of sacking, broken fishing-rods, and discarded cricket bats. On a low shelf were some model yachts with torn sails and tangled rigging. He looked at the rough model of a steam trawler. The boat was curiously constructed with a boxed-in and bottomless well. Inside this well there was a crude model of a submarine. Some one—Max Hilliger, perhaps—had evidently attempted to invent a device by which a real submarine might be hidden within the casement of a larger vessel, thus enabling it to be brought close to an enemy without being discovered. The idea was ingenious, but obviously not practical.
In a corner cupboard he discovered a box of electric light bulbs of various colours. The sight of these led him to search for electric wires. He saw none; but what he did find was a portable electric lamp coiled round with a wire so exceedingly long that, as he estimated, the switch might be worked here in the loft while the bulb could be cunningly planted amongst the gorse bushes halfway down the cliff, there to flash its signals of coloured light.
Mark wondered if he should take the lamp away with him, but decided to leave it untouched. If as he believed, Herr Hilliger was already on his way back to Germany, and if Max were drowned, there could be no more risk of their communicating with the enemy.
He turned his torch upon the long trestle table at the far end of the loft. It was littered with feathers and grain, and thick with dust. But in the midst of the litter were several things which he considered it his duty to examine. The first article he touched was a match-box, half full of very small elastic bands. Beside it was a spool of thin, narrow paper.
“Here’s proof enough!” he reflected with satisfaction. For he recognised the paper and the elastic bands as being precisely similar to the material found on the leg of the pigeon shot by Darby Catchpole from the deck of the What’s Wanted.
For a little while longer he continued his search. From a pile of old newspapers and tattered books, he idly drew forth a long, tin cylinder, thinking at first it was a telescope case. The lid had been jammed on crookedly, and he had difficulty in pulling it off with the help of his knife. When he succeeded at last in opening the canister, he saw that it contained several tightly-rolled sheets of paper. He spread them out on the table. They were maps, plans, and charts, very carefully drawn.
The uppermost one was a general map of the coast, including Haddisport and Buremouth, with the villages between and a wide strip of the sea, divided into numbered sections. The others—and there were some twenty of them—were detailed enlargements of the same sections, upon which were shown the principal buildings of the two towns, the particulars of the harbours and railways, with every road and lane and bridge, every field and coppice and house, distinctly indicated.
Mark Redisham had never seen such wonderful maps, or imagined that any existed so complete and correct. Nothing seemed to have been overlooked. On the margins of each sheet were notes, written in German, with numbers referring to certain features in the plans.
Mark saw much that he did not then understand; but there was one sheet in particular which was perfectly clear to him. It was a large scale chart of the section of the North Sea immediately facing Haddisport, giving the exact soundings of the channels and shallows and showing an outline of the coast, with every altitude measured.
The soundings of Alderwick Knoll were so precise and plentiful that it was evident to him that some important purpose was connected with this sand-bank. He could hardly doubt, indeed, that the chart had been prepared for the guidance of an enemy attempting an invasion!
So greatly was he impressed by this idea, that he became nervously excited over his discovery. What was he to do? Should he carry these charts and maps away with him, now—to-night? He had not been instructed to take anything away with him; but only to “have a look round” and report upon any discovery he might happen to make.
Thinking over the situation for a few swift moments, he determined to obey his orders to the letter. Accordingly, he returned the sheets to the map-case, put the case back where he had found it, and prepared to leave the loft.
He left no trace of his secret visit. Taking his cap and pocketing his torch, he climbed down the ladder into the garage. He pushed lightly at the door; but it did not swing open. He pushed it harder; still it resisted. Then he put his shoulder to it and gave it a shove. It did not move. He grappled with it, trying with all his strength to force it open and, realised, to his alarm, that it had been locked from the outside!
He grew hot and cold by turns. Had he been watched, stealing into these stables where he had no business which he could truthfully explain? If so, who could it be that had watched and trapped him? It could not be Heinrich Hilliger himself, or Max. Herr Hilliger had gone back to Germany. Max was drowned. The chauffeur had not returned with the car. Once more he put his shoulder to the door. No. It was certainly locked! He was a prisoner!
But Mark Redisham was not a Sea Scout for nothing. There were more ways than one of getting out. He tried the door of the harness-room. That, too, was locked. Yet there was still another door, leading into the stable. It opened with a simple latch and he crossed to the door giving on to the yard. Again he was foiled.
He looked to the window. It was heavily barred.
But not even now did he despair. Beyond the vacant horse-boxes was a small opening in the wall—a hatch through which the stable refuse was forked out. This hatch, he knew, was fastened only on the inside by a hook and staple. In a moment he had flung it open, to climb out without further hindrances and make his way among the fruit trees and across the tennis lawn to the back gate of the Sunnydene property, and into the Alderwick road.
Five minutes after his escape, he was at home in his father’s library, sending his report by telephone to the naval base.
His father, Major Redisham, had gone off to join his regiment, and the family supper was in consequence a melancholy meal. Mark said nothing of his visit to Sunnydene; but he was at liberty to tell his mother and sisters of the exciting events of the day—the loss of the What’s Wanted, the sinking of the German mine-layer, and the terrible disaster to the Atreus.
“So you see,” he concluded, “Rod was present at the firing of the first naval gun of the war!”
“Yes,” said his mother; “but unfortunately Rodney’s ship cannot be replaced, or the brave men who went down with her. He may not get another appointment for a long time. Is he coming home to-night, Mark?”
Mark shook his head.
“No, mother,” he answered. “He was kept aboard the destroyer—the Levity. The whole flotilla went off to sea again as soon as the wounded were put ashore for hospital.”
“I suppose they’ve gone to join the main fleet,” his sister Vera conjectured. “Of course, the German battleships are out, and there’ll be a great battle.”
“The destroyers went south, however,” Mark explained, “and the enemy fleet is much more likely to be hanging round off the Dogger Bank than down there in the narrow seas. It’s my idea that the destroyers have gone into the Channel.”
“Why?” questioned Vera. “What’s the good of their going into the Channel when the Germans are in the North Sea? We want to fight them, don’t we?”
“Well, you see,” resumed Mark, “the British Army will be crossing to France. You don’t suppose that ever so many of our transports—big liners crowded with troops—will be allowed to go over by themselves, at the risk of being sunk by German submarines? They’ve got to be protected on both flanks. I expect they’ll steam across through quite an avenue of cruisers and destroyers.”
Later, when Mark was saying good-night before going sleepily to bed, there was a ring at the front-door bell.
“Master Mark is wanted,” the parlourmaid announced agitatedly. “There’s a policeman and a lot of soldiers.”
No longer sleepy, Mark hurried into the hall, where he found Constable Challis, Mr. Bilverstone, and two men in khaki.
“What’s up?” he cried, seeing that the two soldiers were armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. “Are the Germans coming?”
“We want you to go with us,” Arnold Bilverstone explained. “Get on your overcoat, and bring your electric torch. We’re going to make a raid on Herr Hilliger’s pigeon-loft.”
Mark was quickly ready to march off at the head of the company. As they filed into the Sunnydene ground they saw that the house was in total darkness.
Leaving one of the sentries posted outside the stable yard, Mr. Bilverstone led the way round to the rear of the outhouses, where he posted the second sentry. Mark crossed the tennis-court, dodged under the fruit trees, and crawled through the hatch door which he had left unfastened. Mr. Bilverstone and Constable Challis followed him through the stable and into the garage. They mounted one by one into the loft. Mark flashed his torchlight along the floor, up into the rafters, and again along the floor. Then he stooped and picked up the stub of a cigarette, sniffed at it and shook his head.
“Somebody has been here!” he cried. “The end of this cigarette’s still wet.”
He went beyond the partition and began to search. But his search was in vain. The maps, the electric signalling-lamp and coloured bulbs, the model of the submarine, the spool of paper, the elastic bands—all had been cleared away. Nothing remained to show that the place was more than an abandoned pigeon-loft.