The Lost Naval Papers - Bennet Copplestone
"Once a Marine, always a Marine," replied Dawson, who felt happier now
that the Admiral had recognised him. "I can't keep out of the uniform,
sir. Besides, it's very useful when I want to be about the docks."
"My orders," said the Admiral, "are to dock, clean, coal, and be off.
I am expecting more detailed instructions, but they have not yet come.
These letters say that you will explain the programme here, and that
you have been charged with full responsibility for keeping our
movements secret. I am to give you all possible assistance. All right.
Go ahead. What do you want of us?"
Dawson rapidly told how the two dummy battle-cruisers had come
stumbling into the Sound in the afternoon, and how the Three Towns
believed that the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ were at that moment lying
on the shoals out of service for weeks to come. "No one must guess,"
he concluded, "that the real _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ are here safe
in dock, that they will go out two days hence in the middle of the
night, and dash away south to wipe Fritz's flag off the seas. We have
picked the dockyard hands with the greatest care, and have them under
watch like mice with cats all about them. If a single one of your
officers or men goes out of the dock gates the game will be up and I
won't answer for the consequences. Everything rests with you, sir.
Will you give orders that no one, no one, not even you yourself, shall
leave either of the battle-cruisers while they are in dock--no one,
not for a minute."
The Admiral laughed, and the officers in his room respectfully joined
in. "So we have been mined and are aground somewhere yonder on the mud
surrounded by sorrowing patrols. And the Three Towns are dropping salt
tears into their beer. It is a fine game, Dawson. I didn't believe
much in Lord Jacquetot's dummies, but they've come in darned useful
this time. Are you going to keep Plymouth and Devonport in the dumps
for long?"
"Until you've done your work, sir," said Dawson.
"So until then the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ will lie crippled in the
Sound for all the world to see and for Fritz to believe. If this very
bright scheme is yours, Dawson, we will all drink your health down
south as soon as our work has been done. For the credit will be yours
rather than ours. I will help you all I can; it is my duty and my very
keen desire. A man who can make so brilliant a plan for confounding
the enemy's spies is worth a statue of gold. He is even worth the
sacrifice of two day's leave while one's ship is in dock. What do you
say, gentlemen?"
"I never thought," said the Flag Captain, "that I would willingly
spend two days shut up in a smelly dock, but you may count me in, sir.
I won't head a mutiny when all leave is refused."
"You shall have your way, Dawson. All leave stopped in both ships. Not
a man is to go ashore on any pretence, no matter what the excuse. The
mothers of the lower decks may all die--they always do when a ship is
in port--but not a man shall leave to bury them. Give the orders in
the _Intrepid_, and ask the captain of the _Terrific_ to be so good as
to come aboard."
* * * * *
"So far, good," exclaimed Dawson when he got back to his hotel and
found Froissart sitting up for him. "The ships are in and no one is to
be allowed ashore. I shall be in a fever till both of them are away
again. We are on very thin ice, Froissart. It is lucky that the
dockyard is on the Hamoaze, out of sight even of most of Devonport,
and far away from Plymouth and Stonehouse. I have seen all the foremen
of the dockyard myself, told them the whole trick which we are playing
on the Huns, and put them on their mettle to tackle their men. They
will pitch it fine and strong on the honour and patriotism of complete
silence, but not neglect to throw in a hint of the Defence of the
Realm Act and penal servitude. Never threaten an Englishman,
Froissart, but always let him know that behind your fine honourable
sentiments there is something devilish nasty. Preach as loud as you
can about the beauty of virtue, but don't forget to chuck in a
description of the fiery Hell which awaits wrongdoers. I don't depend
much either on the sentiments or the hints of punishment. I've got
every man of that hundred and twenty on my string, and if one of them
asks leave, within the next day or two, to go and bury his mother on
the East Coast, he shall go--but I shall go with him, and he shall
have a jolly little funeral of his own. Every letter which they write
will be read, every telegram copied for me, every message by 'phone
taken down. They are on my string, Froissart--every man."
"You do everything, Mr. Dawson," grumbled Froissart. "Where do I come
in?"
"You have helped me a lot already," replied Dawson handsomely. "You
being a foreigner make me talk very simple and plain, and think out my
plans so that I can explain them to you. One sees the weak points of a
scheme when one has to make it clear to a foreigner. You don't always
twig my meaning, Froissart, and sometimes your remarks are a bit
foolish; but you mean well, and, for a Frenchman, are quite
intelligent. I will say that for you, Froissart--quite intelligent."
"_Sacre nom d'un chien_--" began Froissart hotly; but Dawson paid no
heed. He just went on talking, and Froissart, realising that Dawson
could not understand his French, and that he himself could not give
words to his feelings in English, relapsed into wrathful silence. Much
as I respect and admire Dawson, I should not care to be his
subordinate.
"We must keep the cinema show going nice and lively for the Three
Towns," went on Dawson. "A big salvage steamer is coming down
to-morrow to give an air of verisimilitude to the proceedings. Patrol
boats will buzz about the Sound, and the potentates, naval and civil,
will gather from all parts. The unfortunate wrecks out at Picklecombe
Point will be guarded so that no shore boat can get within half a
mile. They won't bear a very close inspection. I hope that none of the
guns will break loose and float about the harbour. That would be what
you might call a blooming contretemps. I shall be pretty busy all the
next two days myself. Though I am a strict teetotaller, I shall get
into shore rig and spend my days in the public bars. I must know what
the Three Towns are talking about, and whether any suspicion of the
truth gets wind. I don't think that it can; at least, for some time.
The stage management has been too good. Later on there may be some
wonderment because none of the men from the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_
are allowed ashore. A lot of wives and families must be around here,
especially as the _Intrepid_ is a Plymouth ship. Of course it must be
given out that they are all needed to help with the salvage
operations, and no leave is allowed. You, Froissart, might spend your
time reading copies of all telegrams sent out from the Towns. If any
German agent wants to get news of the damage to the battle-cruisers
over to Holland, he will probably travel up to the East Coast and send
a wire on ahead. That is what I hope for. You shall then follow him
up, and make smooth the path of crime. Half our trouble will be lost
unless we can help the spoof news over to the Kaiser, bless him. The
job, at first, will be pretty dull for you, Froissart, and not over
lively for me. I hate pubs, yet for two days I must loaf about them,
pretending to drink. You can read the telegrams, but you can't
understand English well enough to pick up the gossip of the bars. I
must do that myself."
"You have stopped all leave on the battle-cruisers--the real ones, I
mean--but what about the dockyard men," inquired Froissart. "Are they
to be allowed to go to their homes when they come off their shifts?"
"I have thought of that and weighed both sides. It will be safer to
let them go home as usual. If we locked them all up in the dockyard
till the _Intrepid_ and _Terrific_ were both safe away, there would be
no end of curiosity and gossip. What so very special, people would
ask, could be going on in the yard that no one was allowed out for two
days. I don't want wives and families and neighbours to come smelling
round those dockyard gates. They might see the spotting tops of the
cruisers inside. Of course there is a regular forest of masts and
gantries showing, and a couple of spotting tops more or less might not
be noticed. But my general idea is to concentrate attention on those
dear old dummies down at Picklecombe Point. They are the centre of
interest, the eye of the picture--the cynosure, as a scholar would
say. I am not a bad scholar myself. I passed the seventh standard, and
went to school all the time I was in the Red Marines. I was a
sergeant, which takes a bit of doing. But see here, Froissart,"
exclaimed Dawson, looking at his watch, "it is five o'clock, and we
must get quick to bed so as to be bright and lively in the morning."
Dawson carried out his programme. Though a strict teetotaller, he
passed hours at public houses, especially in the evenings, listening
to the talk of the port. It was all about the disaster in the South
Seas, the heavy casualties suffered by the Three Towns, and the rotten
ill-luck of the avenging battle-cruisers running upon the German
mines. Not a whisper could Dawson hear of suspicion that the ships
beached under Mount Edgcumbe were other than the genuine article. The
salvage steamer with her big arc lights glowing through the darkness
had been the last artistic touch which brought complete conviction.
Gold-laced officers, including the Commander-in-Chief himself, had
been coming and going all day; the acting of the Navy had been
perfect. Dawson blessed the four bones of old Jacquetot, who, when he
tackles a job, does it very thoroughly indeed. "I should not be
surprised," thought he, "if the Mountain, as that young Jackanapes
called him, came trotting down here himself just to make the show
complete." And sure enough he did, accompanied by the Fourth Sea Lord
who had worked out all the convincing details. Dawson was ordered to
meet them in the Admiral's quarters of the _Intrepid_. He went,
looking a very different person from the private of Marines of some
thirty hours earlier, and had the honour of being invited to luncheon.
That lunch was the one scene in the comedy upon which he dwelt in
telling the story to me. "Lord Jacquetot," he said, "clinked glasses
with me and wished me the best of luck and success. It was as much as
he could do, he said, to keep the First Lord from coming down and
monkeying the whole affair. Luckily there was a debate in Parliament
that he wanted to figure in, and so couldn't get away. Lord Jacquetot
said that the First Lord had grabbed the whole scheme as his very own,
and forgotten that I had any part in it. I don't mind. The Secret
Service never gets any credit for anything. If it did, it wouldn't be
Secret very long."
"No credit," I remarked, "and not much cash I expect."
"Little enough, sir," replied Dawson. "I suppose we do the job for the
love of it. There's no sport like it. Our real work never gets into
the papers or the story-books."
"Never?" I asked slily. "What about that story of mine in the
_Cornhill Magazine_, which you still carry about next your heart?"
Dawson changed the subject. He never will appreciate chaff.
At midnight of the day of the luncheon party the _Intrepid_ and
_Terrific_, clean and fully loaded, cleared out of dock and slipped
off into the darkness attended by their destroyer escort, whose duty
it was to see them safe round Ushant. Eight hours later Dawson came
down to breakfast and found that Froissart, satisfied with his _petit
dejeuner_ of coffee and rolls, had already gone out. Dawson felt
satisfied with himself, and was confident now that his work in the
Three Towns had been well and truly done. The rest could be left to
the Navy, and to his Secret Service agents. He sat down to a hearty
meal, but was not destined to finish it. First came a messenger from
the Officer in charge of the Dockyard, who handed over a sealed note
and took a receipt for it. Dawson broke the seal. "Dear Mr. Dawson,"
he read, "You will be interested to learn that one of the hands
engaged upon the work we know of has asked for three days' leave--that
he may bury his mother in Essex. She died, he says, at Burnham. I
await your views before granting the leave asked for. The man has been
in our service for sixteen years, and bears the best of characters."
"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 Essex. 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 Essex.
Dawson picked up the note which he had received and passed 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 Essex 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 ashore 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
identity 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 Essex. 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 butt 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
shining black eyes and black beard, but no one here has seen you
officially, and you should pass 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 Essex? At a word from you his Chief would have refused
leave."
Dawson smiled at me in a fashion 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 Essex 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 Essex 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 passably 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 classes have no monopoly in illicit love affairs. Their working
class betters do a bit that way too."
"All right. Have it your own way. We will assume 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 pass 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 class 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
Essex, and why has she died just now? Real mothers don't do these
things; they've more sense."
Maynard received his third-class pass, respectfully thanked his
Officer for his kindly expressed sympathy--which in his case was quite
genuine--and disappeared. Dawson jumped into the room again to take a
word of farewell. "I should know him anywhere," he cried. "I am going
by the same train in the same carriage. Good-bye."
Maynard reached the Great Western station in good time, and found a
carriage which was not overcrowded. He was carrying a small handbag.
At the last moment before the train started a prosperous-looking
passenger, with "commercial gentleman" written all over him, stepped
into the same compartment and seated himself in a vacant seat opposite
the bereaved workman. It was Dawson in one of his favourite roles.
"There is nothing less like a detective," he would say, "than a
middle-aged commercial traveller. They are such genial, unsuspicious,
open-handed folk. This comes of wandering about the country at other
people's expense."
The 10.15 fast express from the Three Towns to Paddington is an
excellent one, and the journey was not more tedious than five hours
spent in a train are bound to be. All through the journey Dawson, from
behind his stock of papers and magazines, studied Maynard, and became,
not, perhaps shaken in his conviction, but certainly puzzled. "He
looked," he explained to me, "like a sick and sorrowful man. One who
had really lost a beloved mother far away would look just like that.
But so might one who had been unfaithful to a trusting wife and was
now risking his neck to pour gold into the greedy lap of a frowsy
mistress. One must never judge by appearances. A man may look as sick
over backing the wrong horse as at losing an only son in the trenches.
Human means of expression are limited."
"It takes time to learn that you are not such a beast as you pretend,"
I observed. Dawson grinned.
At Paddington Maynard took the Tube to Liverpool Street, and did not
observe that his fellow passenger of the brown tweed suit and the fat,
self-satisfied, rather oily face followed by the same route. Dawson,
who was famished, rejoiced to see Maynard make for the
refreshment-room. He could not lunch on the train, since the workman,
upon whom he attended, had economically fed himself upon sandwiches
put up in a "nosebag."
"No breakfast, no lunch," groaned Dawson. "What a day!" He did his
best during five minutes in the refreshment-room at Liverpool Street
to fill up the howling void in his person, and then watched Maynard
enter a train for Burnham-on-Crouch. In two minutes he had opened up
communications with a station Inspector of Police, made himself known,
and secured the services of a constable to travel in Maynard's
carriage. He did not wish to be seen again himself just at present. He
yearned, too, for a first-class compartment and an ample tea-basket.
Dawson's brain is a martyr to duty, but his stomach continually rises
in rebellion. It was a fast train which would not stop until the Essex
coast was reached, so that Dawson did not doubt that his quarry would
be upon the platform when he himself got out So he was, and so, too,
was a girl in deep mourning who had come to meet him. Dawson was
staggered; a girl, also in funeral blacks, upset the picture which he
had painted to himself. The man and girl talked together for a few
minutes, and then walked slowly arm in arm out of the station towards
the village. Dawson picked up his police assistant and followed. He
gave no explanation of the reasons for his shadowing of the man
Maynard, for he was just beginning to feel uneasy. Slowly the party of
four threaded through the pretty little place, bright under the
pleasant autumn twilight. Maynard and the girl were in front, Dawson
and his policeman followed some fifty yards behind. In a side street,
at the door of a small cottage--one of a humble row--the pair of
mourners stopped, opened the iron gate, and entered. Dawson waited,
watching. He could see through the windows into a little parlour where
some half a dozen people, all in deep black, were gathered. Presently,
as if they had waited only for the arrival of Maynard--which indeed
was the fact--the heavy steps of men clumping down wooden stairs
resounded from the open door, and there emerged into the street a
coffin borne upon the shoulders of six bearers. The moment that the
coffin appeared Dawson realised his blunder. Maynard had really lost
his mother, and, like a dutiful son, had come all the way from the
Three Towns to bury her! Off flew Dawson's hat, and he nudged the
policeman hard in the ribs. "Take off your helmet, you chump," he
growled savagely. "Don't you see that it's a funeral." The man, rather
dazed--he had been plucked away from Liverpool Street at a moment's
notice and sent upon what he thought was police service--did what he
was told. The group of mourners formed behind the coffin, which was
carried to the cemetery not far off. Still following, with their heads
bowed, Dawson and the bewildered policeman attended the funeral, heard
the beautiful service read, and the last offices completed. Then they
turned away and made for the railway station.