by Mark Hodder
Again engine-bells rang, and with surprising swiftness the great war vessels of the defending force darted forward in pursuit of the attacking force. First went the torpedo-boats, fairly leaping into their strides like whippets, and the destroyers and the cruisers were not far behind them. Last came the mighty battleships, gathering way until behind them rolled out a swell heavy enough to sink a barge.
“Very pretty, my friend,” the Kaiser sneered, “but it is not war.”
“No, thank Heaven!” Sexton Blake answered fervently, watching one of the sinister-looking cruisers pass.
The Kaiser paced restlessly up and down the bridge as his yacht followed in the wake of the battleships.
“But why?” he demanded. “War is a good thing for a nation. It makes her men self-reliant, it keeps her on her guard, so that she does not get slack, it gives the ambitious—”
“In the first two things you are right, sire,” Sexton Blake interrupted coolly, “but you spoilt yourself when you spoke of the good that war does to the ambitious. It is those men who make war, confident in the strength of arms behind them, really not needing more land and possessions, but only wresting them from their neighbours because of—ambition. They forget the men who have got to die to gratify that ambition, the mothers and sweethearts who must weep, the toilers who go more heavily to their tasks because they are so taxed—to pay for this same ambition—that they scarce seem to touch the money that they earn so hardly. Ambition is a terrible thing when it leads a man to throw a nation into bloody strife.”
“A ruler—” the Kaiser began; but again Sexton Blake interrupted him.
“I know what you would say, sire,” he said, “that a ruler is not as other men, and you are right, for his actions can do much for his people. A word from him means happiness or pain, not to his own family, but to millions. Yet, through it all, he should remember that it is only accident of birth that has made him the ruler of a nation, should not forget that but for that he might not be the man with the ambition for conquest, but the struggling man forced to pay the price for it.”
The Kaiser was silent for a minute, a moody look on his face, then he turned to the officer on the bridge and gave him an order that made Sexton Blake eyebrows go up in surprise.
“Then you will follow the manoeuvres no further, sire?” he asked.
“No,” the Kaiser answered, with determination. “I am tired of all this playing at battle, and I am going straight home.”
“You will have good news for your people?” Sexton Blake suggested.
The Kaiser shook his head, and a rueful expression crossed his face.
“Ah, but you do not know my people!” he said quickly. “They would coin their very blood into money to pay for arms—if I told them to.”
“But you have lost ambition in that direction, sire,” Sexton Blake said.
“Why, yes, my friend,” the Kaiser answered slowly. “I fancy that I have only two ambitions left.”
“I may ask what they are?”
“An ambition to go home,” the Kaiser answered, a dreamy look in his eyes, “and to have you at the head of my secret service.” He swung round upon the detective, and his face was very eager, but Sexton Blake spoke before he could say more.
“Remember, sire,” he said earnestly, “that Britishers are patriotic, too, and that I am one of them.”
“No offer would tempt you?” the Kaiser persisted.
“None while Great Britain belongs to the Britishers,” Sexton Blake assured him.
The Hohenzollern, gathering way with every yard she covered, swept out of the Thames, taking the Kaiser back to his people.
TINKER CAME HURRYING into the breakfast-room at Baker Street, a broad grin on his face, a newspaper in his hand.
“Anything about the Kaiser’s plans yet?” Sexton Blake asked, looking up from his breakfast.
“I should jolly well think so, sir!” the boy answered. “Oh, he’s got out of it beautifully! Just read it, sir!”
The boy thrust the paper excitedly under his master’s nose, pointing to a column that was headed:
“NO DANGER FROM GERMANY.
Five Millions Saved.
The Kaiser’s Reason.
(From our special correspondent in Berlin).
“The Kaiser has reappeared again, and it is now known that his disappearance was owing to his presence at the British naval manoeuvres, and not, as it was feared, to illness. It is quite evident that his Majesty is much impressed by what he has witnessed, although his statements are evidently intended to give quite an opposite impression.
“Last night, in a semi-official speech, he announced that Germany would not continue building ships of war, that, in fact, no more would be laid down for years, as
“Germany Is Already the Superior of Great Britain.”
Sexton Blake dropped the paper, and laughed. Certainly the Kaiser had wriggled out of his difficulty very neatly. But what did that matter?
“There is another piece you ought to read, sir,” Tinker said, pointing to another paragraph, which was headed:
“Rumoured New Peer
It is rumoured on good authority that Mr. Sexton Blake, the famous detective, whose name has been before the public for so many years, is to be offered a peerage in return for his services to the State. It appears that for some time he has been the government’s principal secret agent, and that even during these manoeuvres he was not idle.”
Sexton Blake crumpled the paper up in his hands.
“Get the car round after breakfast, my lad,” he answered shortly.
“Anything important, sir?” Tinker asked eagerly.
“Yes,” Sexton Blake answered. “I’ve got to stop this nonsense by telling the Prime Minister that the name of Sexton Blake is all that I want.”
THE END
ON WAR SERVICE; OR, SEXTON BLAKE’S SECRET MISSION
THE RAIN BEAT with greater force against the windowpane. The thunderstorm was directly overhead.
I’d sat in silence, watching wisps of steam rise from my drying trouser legs while Sexton Blake read through the record of his tussle with Kaiser Wilhelm II. It hadn’t taken him long. His reading speed was at least twice as fast as my own.
When he finished, he sighed and murmured, “Dear old Goddard. His writing style was erratic but he was consistently entertaining. A great loss.”
“Killed on the French front,” I said.
“During the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He was just thirty-six years old.”
After a moment of silence, I changed the subject. “You met the Kaiser on a number of occasions.”
“We had a complicated relationship,” Blake murmured. He shook his head in what I took to be an expression of regret. “A strange man. Narcissistic, bellicose and impetuous. Very bombastic. He had a tendency to speak before thinking. Ultimately, it was his undoing, but not, unfortunately, before he’d ignited a world war. Can I refill your glass?”
I declined the offer.
Blake turned to the next issue in the binder.
The Union Jack story paper launched in 1894. By 1905, it had become “Sexton Blake’s own paper,” featuring a Blake tale every week through to 1933, when, after issue number 1,531, it had been transformed into the larger format, and ultimately far less popular, Detective Weekly. Until 1929, all the Union Jack stories were published anonymously. Blake, however, appeared to have no problem in recollecting who wrote the one he was looking at.
“Cecil Hayter.”
“Best known for recounting the earlier of your various adventures in Africa,” I observed. “Though in this case, it’s a war story. I think it gives a good indication of the rather flexible role you adopted during the conflict.”
His right eyebrow went up. “Flexible role?”
“Well, you didn’t, as far as I can ascertain from the published material, serve in any official capacity in the armed forces, but you certainly visited the front lines on more than one occasion—even went behind them—and, at hom
e, you hunted spies and defeated many plots that would have otherwise damaged British interests.”
He raised his right hand and tapped its knuckles against his chin. “Hmm. I had intended to join up, of course, but before I could do so, the prime minister approached me.”
“Asquith?”
“A ring of the doorbell, a shriek from Mrs Bardell, and up the stairs he came. He can’t have been in my consulting room for more than five minutes, and when he was gone, I was left with documents giving me special dispensation to serve my country at home and abroad in whatever capacity I felt would do the most good. Occasionally, I was commissioned to undertake particular missions.” He tapped a forefinger on the Union Jack in the binder. “This was one of them.”
ON WAR SERVICE; OR, SEXTON BLAKE’S SECRET MISSION
by Cecil Hayter
UNION JACK issue 645 (1916)
SEXTON BLAKE SAT back in the depths of a great, green leather-covered armchair, watching his man in a sleepy sort of way from beneath half-closed lids. His hands were folded lightly on his knees, and by special permission he was allowed to smoke a cigarette. The fact that that permission had been given freely, without his even asking for it, told him that his help was very badly needed indeed, and he smiled inwardly, for, as he was well aware, smoking in any form was not allowed, as a rule, in that big, gloomy room just off Whitehall.
It was a huge place, over forty feet long, with two fine Adam fireplaces, and the walls were lined with bookshelves and maps on rollers. A very large and rather ornate desk strewn with papers stood within a few feet of him. The only light, saving that from the fires, came from a low, green-shaded electric table lamp, and on the far side of the desk sat a smartly-dressed elderly man with grey hair and moustaches. Keen-eyed in spite of his gold-rimmed pince-nez, with a flower in his buttonhole. But his face was haggard and worn, deeply seamed with worry and anxiety as he sat in the little oasis of light and peered at a pile of papers.
“And so you want me, Sir James, for—what?” said Blake at last, after some five minutes’ silence, broken only by the scratching of a pen and the occasional tinkle of a cinder in the grate.
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Blake,” replied Sir James, and gave an apprehensive glance backwards over his shoulder towards his secretary’s table, which stood empty.
Blake noticed the glance and the apprehension, took a final puff or two at his cigarette, and flung the end into the grate.
“I’m in no hurry,” he said lazily. “Please don’t mind me. But by the signs of things I shall be in a deuce of a hurry when things start moving,” he added to himself under his breath.
The parchment-like paper crackled, and Sir James laid his pen neatly in the rack with a sigh of relief.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” he said, blinking over his glasses, “but we’re hard put to it these days. You’ve done us many services in the past, hard services, and—er—dangerous. I sent for you here to ask you to do us another. It will be—ahem!—risky, but it will be well rewarded, and we may be able to prove our gratitude in other ways. There is a C.B., for instance, at my disposal, which I am free to—”
Blake rose to his feet.
“Is this war service, Sir James?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Then if I can be of use I want neither C.B.s nor rewards. In short, I want my instructions as briefly as you can give them to me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Blake; but it was my duty to make the offer to you, as I should have made it to anyone else, and it is a very special and difficult mission.”
“Then the sooner you give me the details the better.”
Sir James unlocked a drawer of the desk and drew out a long, official-looking envelope. From this in turn he took a big, folded sheet of stamped paper, which he passed across.
“You can read it, if you like. In fact, you had better read it. I know that its contents will be perfectly safe with you.”
“H’m!” said Blake. “There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Couldn’t I give this message or whatever it is verbally? Frankly, Sir James, I distrust papers of any kind on this kind of job. They can be stolen, photographed; a hundred-and-one different things may happen to them, and they increase the risk tenfold. Now, if I were to carry the contents of this, here, in my head, the message could certainly be neither stolen nor photographed, and the only way they could be lost would be by someone succeeding in putting a knife or a bullet into me, in which case they would be none the wiser, and you could send another man.”
“Quite so!” said Sir James drily. “If you could carry the contents in your head. But, unfortunately, long though your head is, and remarkably capable as your brains are, as I am the first to acknowledge, neither head nor brains are capable of reproducing signatures, and if you will glance at that paper you will see that the signatures of the—er—shall we say ‘personages’ attached are the most important part really of the whole document. They guarantee the matter, they are men whose names are known throughout the world, and if that scrap of paper were to be found by the agents of either of the Central Powers there would be such a ‘flare-up,’ to use a vulgar expression, that I doubt whether we could put the flames out in time to save the building.”
He took off his glasses and polished them thoughtfully on the corner of his handkerchief.
Blake nodded and opened the paper handed to him. As he read it his face grew grave, and he gave vent to a low whistle of astonishment.
“This is a pretty tall order, Sir James,” he said, as he refolded the paper.
Sir James drew imaginary plans on the desk with an ivory paper-knife.
“It is,” he assented. “That is why I sent for you. Any lesser job I might have given to a lesser man. In this case, having a free hand, I chose you. Our own agents are too well known; and though they mean all right, between you and me, they are apt to be a trifle clumsy in their methods. Oh, they’re plucky enough, but they lack discretion!”
Blake nodded.
“And my instructions?”
Sir James scribbled a name and an address on a piece of paper and passed it across. It read:
“Adolph Schmidt, Rue le Heron, No. 19, Antwerp.”
“You are to deliver that paper to that address and bring me back a receipt, which I alone shall be able to identify by certain marks.” He glanced round anxiously again, though there was nobody in the room except themselves—a sure sign that his nerves were overstrained. He dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “The receipt will be written on a small square of tracing paper, the left-hand bottom corner of which will be torn off as though by accident. Here is the man’s photograph. Look at it closely, so that you are positive that you can identify him and not get taken in by a man dressed up to resemble him.”
Blake studied the photograph carefully, and then turned to the back, on which was written in Sir James’ own neat handwriting a terse description of the colouring of eyes and hair and a note of a missing canine tooth and a slight scar on the left temple.
“This is,” said he, “to be brief, a guarantee for a consignment of two hundred thousand rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition per rifle, to be delivered at some port unnamed before Christmas of this year, and, as you say, the names of the guarantors place the matter beyond all doubt.”
“Quite so,” said Sir James. “The destination of the consignment is purposely omitted for additional safety, but it is known to the man who calls himself Schmidt and to the others concerned. The port was fixed on and the arrangements made six weeks ago. The importance of this lies entirely on the quantity stated as having been secured, and the signatures. The German agents would stick at nothing to lay their hands on that paper. It would prove a formidable weapon, and might involve the Powers of a country which up to now has remained neutral.”
“They know of the existence of this paper, then?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“And it is essential that it should be delivered to this Antwerp address, to a town
overrun with German troops and spies?”
“It is too late to alter that plan now. Even this building has been carefully watched, as I have good reason for knowing. My private telephone has been tapped on several occasions before now. They may even have overheard my message to you and followed you on here, though I think that that is unlikely.”
Blake nodded, and strolled over to the heavily-curtained windows overlooking the street.
“Be kind enough to switch off that light, Sir James,” he said.
Sir James reached out his hand, and the room was at once plunged into darkness. Then, and not till then, Blake cautiously parted the curtains and peered down into the street below. For a full two minutes he stood there quite motionless. Then he let the curtains drop back into place.
“You can light up again now, Sir James,” he said across the darkness. “There are two of them right enough, and I fancy there is a third somewhere further down the street, for I saw something like a signal pass. Isn’t there some back way out of here—a lower window, or something—by which I could reach that maze of mews which lies beyond?”
“There is a way,” said Sir James doubtfully. “It leads through what used to be the cellars of the house. They are used now for storing old documents chiefly.”
“Capital! The very thing! And now, with your permission, I’ll ring for a messenger I left below.”
He touched the bell, and a grizzled commissionaire with half a dozen medals glistening on his breast answered it.
“You will find a messenger-boy waiting in the hall,” Blake said. “Bring him up, please.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man.
Blake bent over the desk, took up a telegraph-form, and wrote a message. It was addressed to himself, making an urgent appointment for the afternoon of the next day, and the signature appended was that of Sir James.