The Lost Naval Papers - Bennet Copplestone
THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS
By
BENNET COPPLESTONE
1917
CONTENTS
PART I
_WILLIAM DAWSON_
CHAPTER
I A STORY AND A VISIT
II AT CLOSE QUARTERS
III AN INQUISITION
IV SABOTAGE
V BAFFLED
VI GUESSWORK
VII THE MARINE SENTRY
VIII TREHAYNE'S LETTER
PART II
_MADAME GILBERT_
IX THE WOMAN AND THE MAN
X A PROGRESSIVE FRIENDSHIP
XI AT BRIGHTON
PART III
_ SEE IS TO BELIEVE_
XII DAWSON PRESCRIBES
XIII THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
XIV A COFFIN AND AN OWL
PART IV
_THE CAPTAIN OF MARINES_
XV DAWSON REAPPEARS
XVI DAWSON STRIKES
XVII DAWSON TELEPHONES FOR A SURGEON
PART I
_WILLIAM DAWSON_
CHAPTER I
A STORY AND A VISIT
At the beginning of the month of September, 1916, there appeared in
the _Cornhill Magazine_ a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I
had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred
within my personal experience. One of the principals--to whom I had
allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary--was an intimate friend,
but I had never met the Scotland Yard officer whom I called William
Dawson, and was not at all anxious to make his official acquaintance.
To me he then seemed an inhuman, icy-blooded "sleuth," a being of
great national importance, but repulsive and dangerous as an
associate. Yet by a turn of Fortune's wheel I came not only to know
William Dawson, but to work with him, and almost to like him. His
penetrative efficiency compelled one's admiration, and his unconcealed
vanity showed that he did not stand wholly outside the human family.
Yet I never felt safe with Dawson. In his presence, and when I knew
that somewhere round the corner he was carrying on his mysterious
investigations, I was perpetually apprehensive of his hand upon my
shoulder and his bracelets upon my wrists. I was unconscious of crime,
but the Defence of the Realm Regulations--which are to Dawson a new
fount of wisdom and power--create so many fresh offences every week
that it is difficult for the most timidly loyal of citizens to keep
his innocency up to date. I have doubtless trespassed many times, for
I have Dawson's assurance that my present freedom is due solely to his
reprehensible softness towards me. Whenever I have showed independence
of spirit--of which, God knows, I have little in these days--Dawson
would pull out his terrible red volumes of ever-expanding Regulations
and make notes of my committed crimes. The Act itself could be printed
on a sheet of notepaper, but it has given birth to a whole library of
Regulations. Thus he bent me to his will as he had my poor friend
Richard Cary.
The mills of Scotland Yard grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding
small. There is nothing showy about them. They work by system, not by
inspiration. Though Dawson was not specially intelligent--in some
respects almost stupid--he was dreadfully, terrifyingly efficient,
because he was part of the slowly grinding Scotland Yard machine.
As this book properly begins with my published story of "The Lost
Naval Papers," I will reprint it here exactly as it was written for
the readers of the _Cornhill Magazine_ in September, 1916.
* * * * *
I. BAITING THE TRAP
This story--which contains a moral for those fearful folk who exalt
everything German--was told to me by Richard Cary, the accomplished
naval correspondent of a big paper in the North of England. I have
known him and his enthusiasm for the White Ensign for twenty years. He
springs from an old naval stock, the Carys of North Devon, and has
devoted his life to the study of the Sea Service. He had for so long
been accustomed to move freely among shipyards and navy men, and was
trusted so completely, that the veil of secrecy which dropped in
August 1914 between the Fleets and the world scarcely existed for him.
Everything which he desired to know for the better understanding of
the real work of the Navy came to him officially or unofficially.
When, therefore, he states that the Naval Notes with which this story
deals would have been of incalculable value to the enemy, I accept his
word without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them, and they
made me tremble--for Cary's neck. I pressed him to write this story
himself, but he refused. "No," said he, "I have told you the yarn just
as it happened; write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at
handling hard facts and making scientific deductions from them, but
with no eye for the picturesque details. I give it to you." He rose to
go--Cary had been lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my
front doorstep. "If you insist upon it," added he, smiling, "I don't
mind sharing in the plunder."
* * * * *
It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one
morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established his
headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes,
diagrams, and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the
apparent chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy's Work
which he proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not
designed to be an exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but it
would be full of fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear
analysis. Day by day for more than twenty months he had been
collecting details of every phase of the Navy's operations, here a
little and there a little. He had recently returned from a
confidential tour of the shipyards and naval bases, and had exercised
his trained eye upon checking and amplifying what he had previously
learned. While his recollection of this tour was fresh he was actively
writing up his Notes and revising the rough early draft of his book.
More than once it had occurred to him that his accumulations of Notes
were dangerous explosives to store in a private house. They were
becoming so full and so accurate that the enemy would have paid any
sum or have committed any crime to secure possession of them. Cary is
not nervous or imaginative--have I not said that he springs from a
naval stock?--but even he now and then felt anxious. He would, I
believe, have slept peacefully though knowing that a delicately primed
bomb lay beneath his bed, for personal risks troubled him little, but
the thought that hurt to his country might come from his well-meant
labours sometimes rapped against his nerves. A few days before his
patriotic conscience had been stabbed by no less a personage than
Admiral Jellicoe, who, speaking to a group of naval students which
included Cary, had said: "We have concealed nothing from you, for we
trust absolutely to your discretion. Remember what you have seen, but
do not make any notes." Yet here at this moment was Cary disregarding
the orders of a Commander-in-Chief whom he worshipped. He tried to
square his conscience by reflecting that no more than three people
knew of the existence of his Notes or of the book which he was writing
from them, and that each one of those three was as trustworthy as
himself. So he went on collating, comparing, writing, and the heap
upon his table grew bigger under his hands.
The clock had just struck twelve upon that morning when a servant
entered and said, "A gentleman to see you, sir, upon important
business. His name is Mr. Dawson."
Cary jumped up and went to his dining-room, where the visitor was
waiting. The name had meant nothing to him, but the instant his eyes
fell upon Mr. Dawson he remembered that he was the chief Scotland Yard
officer who had come north to teach the local police how to keep track
of the German agents who infested the shipbuilding centres. Cary had
met Dawson more than once, and had assisted him with his intimate
local knowledge. He greeted his visitor with smiling courtesy, but
Dawson did not smile. His first words, indeed, came like shots from an
automatic pistol.
"Mr. Cary," said he, "I want to see your Naval Notes."
Cary was staggered, for the three people whom I have mentioned did not
include Mr. Dawson. "Certainly," said he, "I will show them to you if
you ask officially. But how in the world did you hear anything about
them?"
"I am afraid that a good many people know about them, most undesirable
people too. If you will show them to me--I am asking officially--I
will tell you what I know."
Cary led the way to his study. Dawson glanced round the room, at the
papers heaped upon the table, at the tall windows bare of
curtains--Cary, who loved light and sunshine, hated curtains--and
growled. Then he locked the door, pulled down the thick blue blinds
required by the East Coast lighting orders, and switched on the
electric lights though it was high noon in May. "That's better," said
he. "You are an absolutely trustworthy man, Mr. Cary. I know all about
you. But you are damned careless. That bare window is overlooked from
half a dozen flats. You might as well do your work in the street."
Dawson picked up some of the papers, and their purport was explained
to him by Cary. "I don't know anything of naval details," said he,
"but I don't need any evidence of the value of the stuff here. The
enemy wants it, wants it badly; that is good enough for me."
"But," remonstrated Cary, "no one knows of these papers, or of the use
to which I am putting them, except my son in the Navy, my wife (who
has not read a line of them), and my publisher in London."
"Hum!" commented Dawson. "Then how do you account for this?"
He opened his leather despatch-case and drew forth a parcel carefully
wrapped up in brown paper. Within the wrapping was a large white
envelope of the linen woven paper used for registered letters, and
generously sealed. To Cary's surprise, for the envelope appeared to be
secure, Dawson cautiously opened it so as not to break the seal which
was adhering to the flap and drew out a second smaller envelope, also
sealed. This he opened in the same delicate way and took out a third;
from the third he drew a fourth, and so on until eleven empty
envelopes had been added to the litter piled upon Cary's table, and
the twelfth, a small one, remained in Dawson's hands.
"Did you ever see anything so childish?" observed he, indicating the
envelopes. "A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just
crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one
even if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to--well,
someone in whom we are deeply interested, though he does not know it."
Cary, who had been fascinated by the succession of sealed envelopes,
stretched out his hand towards one of them. "Don't touch," snapped out
Dawson. "Your clumsy hands would break the seals, and then there would
be the devil to pay. Of course all these envelopes were first opened
in my office. It takes a dozen years to train men to open sealed
envelopes so that neither flap nor seal is broken, and both can be
again secured without showing a sign of disturbance. It is a trade
secret."
Dawson's expert fingers then opened the twelfth envelope, and he
produced a letter. "Now, Mr. Cary, if we had not known you and also
known that you were absolutely honest and loyal--though dangerously
simple-minded and careless in the matter of windows--this letter would
have been very awkward indeed for you. It runs: 'Hagan arrives 10.30
p.m. Wednesday to get Cary's Naval Notes. Meet him. Urgent.' Had we
not known you, Mr. Richard Cary might have been asked to explain how
Hagan knew all about his Naval Notes and was so very confident of
being able to get them."
Cary smiled. "I have often felt," said he, "especially in war-time,
that it was most useful to be well known to the police. You may ask me
anything you like, and I will do my best to answer. I confess that I
am aghast at the searchlight of inquiry which has suddenly been turned
upon my humble labours. My son at sea knows nothing of the Notes
except what I have told him in my letters, my wife has not read a line
of them, and my publisher is the last man to talk. I seem to have
suddenly dropped into the middle of a detective story." The poor man
scratched his head and smiled ruefully at the Scotland Yard officer.
"Mr. Cary," said Dawson, "those windows of yours would account for
anything. You have been watched for a long time, and I am perfectly
sure that our friend Hagan and his associates here know precisely in
what drawer of that desk you keep your Naval Papers. Your flat is easy
to enter--I had a look round before coming in to-day--and on Wednesday
night (that is to-morrow) there will be a scientific burglary here and
your Notes will be stolen."
"Oh no they won't," cried Cary. "I will take them down this afternoon
to my office and lock them up in the big safe. It will put me to a lot
of bother, for I shall also have to lock up there the chapters of my
book."
"You newspaper men ought all to be locked up yourselves. You are a
cursed nuisance to honest, hard-worked Scotland Yard men like me. But
you mistake the object of my visit. I want this flat to be entered
to-morrow night, and I want your Naval Papers to be stolen."
For a moment the wild thought came to Cary that this man Dawson--the
chosen of the Yard--was himself a German Secret Service agent, and
must have shown in his eyes some signs of the suspicion, for Dawson
laughed loudly. "No, Mr. Cary, I am not in the Kaiser's pay, nor are
you, though the case against you might be painted pretty black. This
man Hagan is on our string in London, and we want him very badly
indeed. Not to arrest--at least not just yet--but to keep running
round showing us his pals and all their little games. He is an
Irish-American, a very unbenevolent neutral, to whom we want to give a
nice, easy, happy time, so that he can mix himself up thoroughly with
the spy business and wrap a rope many times round his neck. We will
pull on to the end when we have finished with him, but not a minute
too soon. He is too precious to be frightened. Did you ever come
across such an ass"--Dawson contemptuously indicated the pile of
sealed envelopes; "he must have soaked himself in American dime novels
and cinema crime films. He will be of more use to us than a dozen of
our best officers. I feel that I love Hagan, and won't have him
disturbed. When he comes here to-morrow night, he shall be seen, but
not heard. He shall enter this room, lift your Notes, which shall be
in their usual drawer, and shall take them safely away. After that I
rather fancy that we shall enjoy ourselves, and that the salt will
stick very firmly upon Hagan's little tail."
Cary did not at all like this plan; it might offer amusement and
instruction to the police, but seemed to involve himself in an
excessive amount of responsibility. "Will it not be far too risky to
let him take my Notes even if you do shadow him closely afterwards? He
will get them copied and scattered amongst a score of agents, one of
whom may get the information through to Germany. You know your job, of
course, but the risk seems too big for me. After all, they are my
Notes, and I would far sooner burn them now than that the Germans
should see a line of them."
Dawson laughed again. "You are a dear, simple soul, Mr. Cary; it does
one good to meet you. Why on earth do you suppose I came here to-day
if it were not to enlist your help? Hagan is going to take all the
risks; you and I are not looking for any. He is going to steal some
Naval Notes, but they will not be those which lie on this table. I
myself will take charge of those and of the chapters of your most
reprehensible book. You shall prepare, right now, a beautiful new
artistic set of notes calculated to deceive. They must be accurate
where any errors would be spotted, but wickedly false wherever
deception would be good for Fritz's health. I want you to get down to
a real plant. This letter shall be sealed up again in its twelve silly
envelopes and go by registered post to Hagan's correspondent. You
shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which we
want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten as
you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to
tempt him out of harbour. Don't overdo it, but mix up your fiction
with enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If
you do your work well--and the Naval authorities here seem to think a
lot of you--Hagan will believe in your Notes, and will try to get them
to his German friends at any cost or risk, which will be exactly what
we want of him. Then, when he has served our purpose, he will find
that we--have--no--more--use--for--him."
Dawson accompanied this slow, harmlessly sounding sentence with a grim
and nasty smile. Cary, before whose eyes flashed for a moment the
vision of a chill dawn, cold grey walls, and a silent firing party,
shuddered. It was a dirty task to lay so subtle a trap even for a
dirty Irish-American spy. His honest English soul revolted at the call
upon his brains and knowledge, but common sense told him that in this
way, Dawson's way, he could do his country a very real service. For a
few minutes he mused over the task set to his hand, and then spoke.
"All right. I think that I can put up exactly what you want. The faked
Notes shall be ready when you come to-morrow. I will give the whole
day to them."
In the morning the new set of Naval Papers was ready, and their
purport was explained in detail to Dawson, who chuckled joyously.
"This is exactly what Admiral ---- wants, and it shall get through to
Germany by Fritz's own channels. I have misjudged you, Mr. Cary; I
thought you little better than a fool, but that story here of a
collision in a fog and the list of damaged Queen Elizabeths in dock
would have taken in even me. Fritz will suck it down like cream. I
like that effort even better than your grave comments on damaged
turbines and worn-out gun tubes. You are a genius, Mr. Cary, and I
must take you to lunch with the Admiral this very day. You can explain
the plant better than I can, and he is dying to hear all about it. Oh,
by the way, he particularly wants a description of the failure to
complete the latest batch of big shell fuses, and the shortage of
lyddite. You might get that done before the evening. Now for the
burglary. Do nothing, nothing at all, outside your usual routine. Come
home at your usual hour, go to bed as usual, and sleep soundly if you
can. Should you hear any noise in the night, put your head under the
bedclothes. Say nothing to Mrs. Cary unless you are obliged, and for
God's sake don't let any woman--wife, daughter, or maid-servant
--disturb my pearl of a burglar while he is at work. He must have
a clear run, with everything exactly as he expects to find it.
Can I depend upon you?"
"I don't pretend to like the business," said Cary, "but you can depend
upon me to the letter of my orders."
"Good," cried Dawson. "That is all I want."
II. THE TRAP CLOSES
Cary heard no noise, though he lay awake for most of the night,
listening intently. The flat seemed to be more quiet even than usual.
There was little traffic in the street below, and hardly a step broke
the long silence of the night. Early in the morning--at six
B.S.T.--Cary slipped out of bed, stole down to his study, and pulled
open the deep drawer in which he had placed the bundle of faked Naval
Notes. They had gone! So the Spy-Burglar had come, and, carefully
shepherded by Dawson's sleuth-hounds, had found the primrose path easy
for his crime. To Cary, the simple, honest gentleman, the whole plot
seemed to be utterly revolting--justified, of course, by the country's
needs in time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing of
glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of
excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of
spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives
him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman--to whom a
salmon is a people's food--nets him coldly and expeditiously as he
comes in from the sea.
Shortly after breakfast there came a call from Dawson on the
telephone. "All goes well. Come to my office as soon as possible."
Cary found Dawson bubbling with professional satisfaction. "It was
beautiful," cried he. "Hagan was met at the train, taken to a place we
know of, and shadowed by us tight as wax. We now know all his
associates--the swine have not even the excuse of being German. He
burgled your flat himself while one of his gang watched outside. Never
mind where I was; you would be surprised if I told you; but I saw
everything. He has the faked papers, is busy making copies, and this
afternoon is going down the river in a steamer to get a glimpse of the
shipyards and docks and check your Notes as far as can be done. Will
they stand all right?"
"Quite all right," said Cary. "The obvious things were given
correctly."
"Good. We will be in the steamer."
Cary went that afternoon, quite unchanged in appearance by Dawson's
order. "If you try to disguise yourself," declared that expert, "you
will be spotted at once. Leave the refinements to us." Dawson himself
went as an elderly dug-out officer with the rank marks of a colonel,
and never spoke a word to Cary upon the whole trip down and up the
teeming river. Dawson's men were scattered here and there--one a
passenger of inquiring mind, another a deckhand, yet a third--a pretty
girl in khaki--sold tea and cakes in the vessel's saloon. Hagan--who,
Cary heard afterwards, wore the brass-bound cap and blue kit of a mate
in the American merchant service--was never out of sight for an
instant of Dawson or of one of his troupe. He busied himself with a
strong pair of marine glasses, and now and then asked innocent
questions of the ship's deckhands. He had evidently himself once
served as a sailor. One deckhand, an idle fellow to whom Hagan was
very civil, told his questioner quite a lot of interesting details
about the Navy ships, great and small, which could be seen upon the
building slips. All these details tallied strangely with those
recorded in Cary's Notes. The trip up and down the river was a great
success for Hagan and for Dawson, but for Cary it was rather a bore.
He felt somehow out of the picture. In the evening Dawson called at
Cary's office and broke in upon him. "We had a splendid trip to-day,"
said he. "It exceeded my utmost hopes. Hagan thinks no end of your
Notes, but he is not taking any risks. He leaves in the morning for
Glasgow to do the Clyde and to check some more of your stuff. Would
you like to come?" Cary remarked that he was rather busy, and that
these river excursions, though doubtless great fun for Dawson, were
rather poor sport for himself. Dawson laughed joyously--he was a
cheerful soul when he had a spy upon his string. "Come along," said
he. "See the thing through. I should like you to be in at the death."
Cary observed that he had no stomach for cold, damp dawns and firing
parties.
"I did not quite mean that," replied Dawson. "Those closing ceremonies
are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through to a
finish. You are a newspaper man, and should be eager for new
experiences."
"I will come," said Cary, rather reluctantly. "But I warn you that my
sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not
look to have a dog's chance against you."
"He hasn't," said Dawson, with great satisfaction.
Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near
his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first.
But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared
as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in
the naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance
can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but Hagan
seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching through
his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers or
passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be communicative;
he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw with surface
rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which would have
surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not, however, have
surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had been conceived.
This second trip, like the first, was declared by Dawson to have been
a great success. "Did you know me?" he asked. "I was a clean-shaven
naval doctor, about as unlike the army colonel of the first trip as a
pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London to-night by the
North-Western. There are two copies of your Notes. One is going by
Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the Midland. Hagan has
the original masterpiece. I will look after him and leave the two
other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard by 'phone, and
have arranged that all three shall have passports for Holland. The two
copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really must have
Hagan's set of Notes for my Museum."
"And what will become of Hagan?" asked Cary.