The Lost Naval Papers - Bennet Copplestone
"If the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ arrive according to programme," said
Jacquetot, "they will not come up the Sound till after dark. Then in
the small hours they will slip into dock, and no one but the regular
dockyard hands will know that they are there. We will haul them out
also in the middle of the night, and they will be clear away by
daybreak, forty-eight hours after arrival. Coal and other stores are
on the spot in plenty, and the shells and cordite for the twelve-inch
guns can soon be got down from the Plymouth magazines. The secrecy of
the operation seems to me to turn on whether we can trust the dockyard
hands."
Dawson shook his head. "I wouldn't plump on that, my lord. There have
been enemy agents working in every dockyard in the kingdom for years
past, and we haven't spotted all of them. Still, we have our own men
working alongside of them--Scotland Yard men engaged from among the
shipbuilding trades unions--accounting for every one, so that no man
can be away from his post without our knowing and shadowing him. It is
not easy to get any information out of the country nowadays. The
secret wireless stories are all humbug. Wireless gives itself away at
once. If one wants to get news to the enemy, one has to carry it
oneself, or hire some one else to carry it. Most of that which goes we
allow to go for our own purposes. I am pretty sure that no dockyard
hand could get anything away to Holland without our knowledge, so that
it doesn't matter whether they are trustworthy or not so long as we're
not fools enough to trust them. You may not know it, but I have my own
Yard men among your messengers here in this building, and among your
clerks too."
"What!" cried the First Lord. "You don't even trust the Admiralty!"
"Least of all," said Dawson grimly. "If I was head of the German
Secret Service, I would have my own man as your private secretary."
The First Lord sat down gasping. Jacquetot nodded kindly to Dawson,
and laughed in his grim old way. "You are the man we want," said he.
"I am not thinking much of the dockyard hands," went on Dawson; "I can
look after them. They're all provided for. The danger is in the gossip
of a seaport town. I have lived in Portsmouth for years, and Plymouth
is just like it. You may take my word for it that the arrival of the
_Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ in dock at Devonport will be known all over
the Three Towns half an hour after they get there. Their mission will
be discussed in every bar, and it won't be difficult to make a pretty
useful guess. Here is a disaster in the South Seas--which will be
published all over the country by to-morrow morning--and here are two
of our fastest battle-cruisers summoned in hot haste from Scotland to
be cleaned and loaded for a long voyage. Any child, let alone a
longshoreman, could put the two things together. 'So the _Intrepid_
and _Terrific_ are off to the South Seas to biff old Fritz in the
eye.' That is what they will say in the Three Towns where there must
be hundreds of men--British subjects, too, the swine, and many of them
natural born--who would take risks to shove the news through to
Holland if they could get enough dirty money for it. Our worst spies
are not German, you bet; they are Irish and Scotch and Welsh and
English. That's where our difficulties come in. I am not afraid of the
dockyards, but the gossip of the Three Towns gives me the creeps."
"Then what can we possibly do?" wailed the First Lord, who saw his
prospect of a brilliant coup wilt away like a fair mirage. "The secret
will get out, our plans will fail, and MY Administration, my beautiful
Administration, will have to stand the racket. How shall I defend
myself in the House?"
"That won't matter much to the country," put in Jacquetot bluntly.
"What matters, is that we should do everything possible to keep the
secret in spite of all the inherent difficulties. Sit down, Mr.
Dawson, and do some hard thinking."
"I prefer to stand, my lord. When I want to think I do a bit of
sentry-go."
"So do I!" exclaimed the First Lord. "All my most famous speeches were
composed while I walked up and down my dressing-room before my--" He
broke off hastily, but as neither Jacquetot nor Dawson were listening,
he might have completed the sentence without revealing the secrets of
his looking-glass.
"May I speak my mind, my lords?" asked Dawson.
"It is what you are here for," replied Jacquetot.
"I always work on certain general principles. They apply here. People
will talk; that is certain. If one doesn't want them to talk about
something really important, one puts up something else conspicuous,
harmless, and exciting to occupy their minds. In your politics"
--turning to the First Lord with an air of simplicity--"when
you've made a thorough mess of governing England, and don't want to be
found out, you set the people fighting about Home Rule for Ireland. I
don't mean you, sir, but politicians generally."
"Quite so," said the First Lord, blinking.
"Well, see here. We don't want any talk about the _Intrepid_ and
_Terrific_. So, before they arrive, we must give the people of the
Three Towns a real titbit of excitement. Battle-cruisers come to dock
in Devonport quite often when they are damaged. Two battle-cruisers
which had been mined or submarined, one towing the other, would be a
pretty picture in the Sound. It would set all the folk talking for
days, and no one would think that two damaged cruisers had anything to
do with the South Seas. Everybody would say, 'What cruel luck. If the
_Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ hadn't got blown up they would be just right
and handy to send down south. As it is--' And then the German agents
would somehow get the news to Holland--we would help them all we could
in a quiet way--that the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_, two fast
battle-cruisers, had been nearly lost, and were being patched up at
Devonport. The Germans, hearing the glorious news, would hug
themselves and say that now was the time for the High Seas Fleet to
come out and smash Jellicoe. The last thing in their minds would be
any concentration in the south against their own Pacific Squadron.
That's how I apply my general principles to this case. Meanwhile, of
course, the _Terrific_ and _Intrepid_, well and sound, would be racing
away down to the South Seas and no one in the Three Towns--except the
dockyard hands, whom we would look after--and no one at all in
Germany, would have a glimmer of the real truth."
While Dawson was thinking aloud in this rather halting, stumbling way,
the First Lord and his chief naval colleague were looking hard at one
another. The politician, with his quick House-of-Commons wits, jumped
to the idea before his slower thinking expert colleague could sort out
the two battle-cruisers who were to be mined or submarined from the
two which were to speed away south to avenge the recent disaster.
"If the two battle-cruisers are mined or submarined--which God
forbid," said Jacquetot, "how can they sail for the south?"
"Need they be the same ships?" inquired Dawson, whose eyes had begun
to flash with excitement. "Need they be the same?"
"Don't you see?" interposed the First Lord. "The idea is quite good. I
was just about to suggest something of the kind myself when Mr. Dawson
anticipated me. That is where the mind with a wide universal training
has a great advantage over the narrow intensive intelligence of the
professional expert. Even in war. What I propose, what Mr. Dawson here
proposes with my full concurrence, is that two severely damaged
battle-cruisers, known temporarily as the _Terrific_ and _Intrepid_,
should be brought into the Sound in broad day and displayed before the
eyes of the curious in the Three Towns. The real ships will slip in,
be docked and coaled, and slip out again. The two others, upon whom
public attention has been concentrated, shall be put aground somewhere
in the Sound to be salved with great and leisurely ostentation. We
will keep them well away from the Hoe, and allow no one whatever to
approach them. We will, unofficially, allow the news of their sorry
state to get out of country and into the Dutch papers. Meanwhile, as
Mr. Dawson says, the real _Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ will be speeding
towards the south, and the saving for the nation's service of my
invaluable public reputation for accurate judgment and quick decision.
Mr. Dawson's suggestion--I should, perhaps, rather say my own
suggestion--shall be laid before the Board at once."
Though the stiff mind of Lord Jacquetot was not very quick to take in
a new idea, no man alive was better equipped for practically working
out a naval scheme. While the First Lord was assuming that sorely
damaged battle-cruisers, or vessels which could be passed off in place
of them, needed but his summons to spring from the deeps, Jacquetot
had pressed a bell and ordered a messenger to request the immediate
presence of the Fourth Sea Lord, within whose province was the whole
art and mystery of ship construction. Upon the appearance of this
officer the plan was gone over anew, and he was asked whence and
within what time he could produce two presentable dummies to do duty
in the Sound for the entertainment of the population of Plymouth,
Devonport, and Stonehouse. There were, said he, two if not three at
Portsmouth, constructed out of old cargo tramp hulls for the
mystification of the enemy. They had already done duty as newly
completed battleships, but with a little alteration to the canvas of
their funnels, the lath and plaster of their turrets and conning
towers, and the wood of their guns, they might be made into perfect
likenesses--at a distance--of the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_. The
ships' carpenters, he explained, could make the changes while the
dummies were coming round to Plymouth. Seated at the desk of Lord
Jacquetot he wrote the necessary orders in code, his Chief signed
them, and they were put at once on the wires for Portsmouth. The
sea-cocks, said the Fourth Lord, would be opened twenty miles from
land so that the "_Intrepid"_ might come in sadly down by the bows,
and the "_Terrific"_ with a list of twenty degrees, pluckily towing
her sorely crippled sister. With a chart of Plymouth Sound before
them, the two officers settled the precise spot, sufficiently remote,
yet well within sight of the Hoe, at which the two unhappy
battle-cruisers should come to rest upon the mud. "It will be a most
pathetic spectacle," said the Fourth Lord laughing, "and I will bet a
month's pay and allowances that at the distance not a man in the Three
Towns will have the smallest suspicion that the genuine
copper-bottomed _Terrific_ and _Intrepid_ are not ditched before his
blooming eyes." He rose from the table, upon which the chart had been
laid, walked over to Dawson and shook him warmly by the hand. "You
won't get any credit for the idea," he whispered. "One never does. But
it was a damned good notion. What are you going to do now?"
"I am going to Plymouth this afternoon to make sure that the German
truth gets over the water to Holland, and that the English truth stays
safely behind. If you will all do your part, I will do mine."
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
"Every man to his trade," said Dawson. "I didn't go into the
difficulties of our job to those high folks at the Admiralty, but they
are not at all small. You have a head on you, Froissart, though it has
the misfortune to be French; set it going on double shifts."
The two men were sitting in a specially reserved first-class
compartment in the Paddington-Plymouth express; as companions they
were hopelessly uncongenial, yet as colleagues formed a strong
combination in which the qualities of the one served to neutralise the
defects of the other. Dawson, in spite of his love for the Defence of
the Realm Regulations, was still sometimes unconsciously hampered by
an ingrained respect for the ordinary law and the rights of civilians;
Froissart, like all French detective officers, held the law in
contempt, and was by nature and training utterly lawless. The more
reputable a suspect, the more remorseless was his pursuit. They were,
professionally, a terrible pair who could have been passed through a
hair sieve without leaving behind a grain of moral scruple.
Froissart, when he would be at the trouble, understood and spoke
English quite well, though with me he used nothing but the raciest of
boulevard French. "My friend," said he, "your promise to those
Ministers of Marines was rash; for, unless there is the most perfect
execution of your scheme and the most sleepless watching of those whom
you call dockyard hands--_ceux qui travaillent dans les chantiers, ne
c'est pas_?--the sailing of these _grands croiseurs_ will be told to
Germany. There are too many who will know. We are upon _une folle
enterprise_--a chase of the wild goose."
"You do not know my system if you think that," remarked Dawson,
frowning.
"And if I do not, of whom is the fault?" inquired Froissart blandly;
"for, my faith, you never tell what you would be doing."
"A secret," said Dawson sententiously, "is a secret when known to one
only. If two know of it there is grave danger. If three, one might as
well shout it from the housetops. Therefore I keep my own counsel."
"That is just what I said," cried Froissart triumphantly. "If the
secret of these _grand croiseurs_ is known to one hundred, two
hundred, _le bon Dieu_ knows how many hundreds of dockyard hands, one
might as well print it in these dull English _journaux_. You attempt
the impossible, _mon ami_."
"They are Englishmen," proclaimed Dawson, who felt compelled to uphold
the character of his countrymen in the presence of a foreigner. "They
are patriots. Not a man of them would sell his country."
"I would not bank on their patriotism, my friend, when there is much
Boche gold to be won and much beer to be drunk."
"And who said that I did bank upon it?" cried Dawson testily,
forgetting his noble, words of two minutes earlier. "I wouldn't trust
one of them out of my sight. I have two dozen of my own men working
alongside of those dockyard hands, watching them by night and day. We
know if a man drinks two glasses of beer when he used to drink one,
and takes home to his wife eighteenpence above his ordinary wage. Do
you take me for a fool?"
"You'll be a bigger fool than I take you for if you do not play
straight this time with me, and tell me your plans in detail. I have
to work with you, and I cannot give service blindfold."
"You are not a bad fellow, Froissart," said Dawson thoughtfully--the
name in his mouth became Froy-zart--"and I will tell you here and now
more of my mind than I have yet shown even to the great Chief of us
all. It will take all your brains--for you have some brains--and all
of mine to keep the secret of those battle-cruisers."
* * * * *
In the morning the newspapers published the meagre details of the
disaster in the South Seas, and the Three Towns were shaken to their
foundations. For when naval ships go down, they take with them crews
of whom half have their homes in Devon. The disaster meant that eight
hundred families in the West mourned a son or a father. Ever since the
days of the Great Queen--whose name in the West is not Victoria, but
Elizabeth--Devon has paid in the lives of its best men the price of
Admiralty. The Three Towns mourned with a grief made more bitter by
the realisation that the disaster was one which never should have
happened. Bad slow English ships had been sent against good fast
German ships, and had been sunk with all hands without hurt to the
enemy. The Three Towns know the speed and power of every fighting ship
afloat, British or foreign, as you or I before the war knew the public
form of every leading golfer or cricketer. In every bar where
sailormen met one another, and met, too, the brothers and fathers of
sailormen, the Lords of the Admiralty were weighed and condemned. It
is a thing most serious when in the cradles of the Navy, Portsmouth
and the Three Towns, faith in the wisdom of Whitehall becomes shaken.
One may muzzle the Press, but no muzzle yet devised can close the
mouths of sailormen and their friends in dockyard towns.
In the afternoon of the same day, while the news of the disaster was
still fresh, there came a whisper, which gained in loudness and in
precision of detail as it passed from mouth to ear and from ear to
mouth, that the worst had not yet been told. There had been not one,
but two disasters. Two battle-cruisers, it was declared, had been sunk
in the Channel by German mines or submarines. What were their names?
inquired the white-faced women. The names were not yet known, but they
would soon come. A little later the severity of the rumour became
softened. The battle-cruisers had not, it appeared, been sunk, but
severely damaged. They were at that moment on their way to the Sound,
crippled sorely, yet afloat. Men groaned. Two battle-cruisers blown up
in the Channel; what in God's name were two battle-cruisers doing in
the mine-strewn Channel when their proper place was in one of the safe
eyries overlooking the North Sea? A plausible explanation was offered.
The two battle-cruisers had been coming to Plymouth to take in stores
that they might speed away south to avenge those other two cruisers
sunk by the Germans as had been told in the morning's papers. If this
were indeed true, the news was of the worst; England's prestige afloat
was gone. She could not spare two other whole battle-cruisers to
proceed upon a mission of vengeance to the South Seas while the
Germans' Battle Squadrons in the North Sea ports were still
undefeated. Meanwhile the Germans far away to the south could do what
they pleased; they could sink and burn our merchant steamers at will.
The command of the Pacific had passed from England to Germany, and the
White Ensign hung draggled and shamed for all the world to sneer at.
The Three Towns almost forgot their personal grief for drowned friends
in their horror at the disgrace which had come to their own sacred
Service.
It was still light, though late in the afternoon, when the anxious
watchers upon the Hoe made out, beyond Drake's Island, two big ships
coming in round the western end of the breakwater. Though deep in the
water they towered above their escort of destroyers and fast patrol
boats. The leading ship was listing badly, her tripod mast with its
spotting top hung far over to port, and she was towing stern first a
sister ship whose bows were almost hidden under water. The Three
Towns, which can recognise the outlines of warships afar off, rapidly
pronounced judgment. "That's the _Intrepid_" they declared, "and the
one she's towing is a battle-cruiser of the same class--the
_Terrific_ or _Tremendous_. They're both badly holed." "Gawd
A'mighty," cried a grizzled longshoreman, who might have sailed with
Drake or Hawkins--as no doubt his forbears had done--"look to the list
of un! And thicky with her bows down under, being towed by the stern
to keep her from swamping entire. If it worn't for them bulk'eads un
wouldn't never have made the Sound." It was plain to those who had
glasses turned on the damaged ships that they were drawing far too
much water to be brought into the Hamoaze and over the sill of the dry
dock at Devonport, so that no one felt surprise when the
battle-cruisers were seen to pull out of the deep fairway and make
towards the shore. The purpose was plain to read. They were to be put
aground under Mount Edgcumbe, patched up, and pumped dry, and then
would go into dock for repairs. It was a job of weeks, and during all
that time the Fleet would be short of two battle-cruisers which might
have swept the South Seas clear of the German Ensign. It was cruel
luck, and the Three Towns had enough to talk of to keep them occupied
for many days. Presently more news came, authentic news, and passed
rapidly from mouth to mouth. The vessels were the _Intrepid_, the
flagship of Admiral Stocky, and her sister the _Terrific_, a pair of
fast Dreadnought cruisers. They had, as was surmised, been speeding
down from Scotland to dock at Plymouth on their way to clean up the
mess made in the far South. They had come safely through the Irish Sea
and round the Land's End, but when near their journey's end off Fowey
they had run into a patch of mines laid by German submarines. The
_Terrific_ had had her bow plates ripped into slivers of ragged steel,
and the three fore compartments flooded. The _Intrepid_ had picked up
the wire of a twin mine, got caught badly on the port side, but had
luckily escaped to starboard. She had taken her crippled sister in
tow, and brought her in safely. Both ships could easily be repaired,
but it would take time. The voyage to the South Seas was off. Nothing
could have been more convincing than the story which quickly got
about; the ships had been seen and recognised by the Three
Towns--there was no concealment and no mystery. For once the Silent
Navy appeared to be talkative. The hearts of German agents in the
Towns swelled with pride and joy. Here was convincing proof of the
kindly hand of the Prussian Gott. If the great news could be carried
through to the Kaiser and von Tirpitz, there would be much ringing of
church bells in the Fatherland. But these English, since the war
began, had become very watchful, very suspicious. The problem was: how
to get the glad news through.
* * * * *
It was two o'clock in the morning and very dark. The big dry docks at
Devonport were deserted except for a few picked hands, not more than
two score at the outside, told off on night shift for special duty.
Against all workmen who had not been warned for this duty the big
gates would be closed for two whole days. There were important jobs
awaiting completion, but they must wait. One hundred and twenty men,
working in three eight-hour shifts per day--forty at a time--could do
all that was needed to the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_, and not one man
was included who had not served at Devonport for at least ten years.
Dawson had been very firm, and the Commander-in-Chief had backed him
with full authority. "Don't make any mistake," said Dawson. "Among
even one hundred and twenty, though picked in this way, there will be
some few who would sell us if they could. One would have to go back
more than ten years to weed out all those whom the Germans have
corrupted. But out of this lot there should not be more than two or
three swine, and I can look after them." He did not say that he had
already been in touch with the Scotland Yard officer at Devonport, and
had arranged that a dozen out of his precious twenty-four
counter-spies should be put among the chosen hundred and twenty.
Dawson never did allow his left hand to know the wiles of his right.
Under the thick cover of the autumn night two massive silent forms,
which had crept with all lights out into the Sound after their long
fast voyage from the northern mists, were warped into dock; the
supporting shores were fitted, and the water around them run out. Long
before the flagship _Intrepid_ stood clear and dry on the dock floor,
Dawson, in his uniform of a private of Marines--"A Marine can go
anywhere and do anything," he would say--had slipped on board and
shown the Commander credentials from the Board of Admiralty which made
that hardened officer open his eyes. "My word," exclaimed he, "you
must be some Marine! Come along quick to the Admiral." So Dawson went,
not a little nervous--the moment his foot trod the decks of a King's
ship all his assurance dropped off, his old sense of discipline flowed
back over him, and an Admiral became a very mighty potentate indeed.
Ashore Dawson could face up to the Lord Jacquetot himself; on board
ship a two-ring lieutenant was to him a god! He followed the
Commander, and was ushered into the Admiral's presence. "What!" cried
Stocky, stern in manner always, but very kindly at heart towards those
whom he found to be true men. "A private of Marines with plenary
powers from the First Lord? Take the papers off him and chuck the
damned comedian into the ditch. We have no time here for the First
Lord's humour." The Commander drew near and whispered. "What!
Authority endorsed by Jacquetot? There is something queer about this.
Look here, my fine fellow, who the devil are you? Are you a Marine, or
a too clever German spy, or what? Make haste. There is still enough
water left over the side to pitch you into without breaking your dirty
neck."
Dawson knew his man. He had served in the same ship with Stocky when
that officer had been a lieutenant; he had waited upon him in the
wardroom. He had felt the rasp of his tongue in old days. He
approached, and without saying a word handed the letters given him by
the First Lord and Jacquetot, adding his official card. The Admiral
read the papers slowly and came at last to the card. Then his frowning
brows softened, and he smiled. It was the old smile of Lieutenant
Stocky. "Why, it's Dawson who was my servant in the old _Olympus_; now
Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard. That explains all. But why the hell,
man, do you dress up as a Marine?"