***
Down in Fleet Street, the editor of the Evening Sun, returning to the office after hours in order to plan the next day’s campaign, was holding a secret conference with his star reporter and his most intrepid photographer.
“There’s a story behind these hooded witnesses, and I want you to get it,” he said.
The reporter, who combined the most extraordinary name in Fleet Street—Cuthbert Clergyman—with the keenest nose for news, shook his head.
“Very dangerous,” he said.
Blackburn fumed.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“There’s nothing the matter with me,” he retorted, “but there will be with you, Blackie, if you start printing any of that stuff. It’s dynamite—and it’ll blow you to kingdom come and back. The Secret Service people have to keep these witnesses cloaked; I happen to know that they’ve taken extraordinary precautions to hide the identities of these people, some of whom are probably Ronstadt nationals, hidden.…Ever heard of the Official Secrets Act, Blackie?” he concluded with a sly chuckle.
“Go to the devil!” cried the baffled editor.
Chapter XIX
The Prisoner Gives Evidence
Bobby endeavoured to keep his voice firm as he took the oath. He realised that every eye in the crowded Court was fixed on him—at that moment, he was probably the most discussed person in the whole world: throughout every country where the printed word could be read, men and women were eagerly debating the subject of whether he was innocent or guilty.
He did not disguise the truth from himself: the evidence prepared against him by those British Secret Service witnesses, who had given their testimony while wearing those melodramatic costumes that covered both their faces and bodies, looked utterly damning. Even though he was entirely innocent, he knew that every one who had heard those stories of his conduct at Pé must believe him to be a traitor.
He had gone through hell during the last month. The strain had been terrific. Yet, when his father had come to see him he had always tried to give the Colonel the impression that he would emerge a free man. The woman he had always looked upon as his real mother had sent him many messages of love, sympathy and confidence.
“She is behaving marvellously,” Colonel Clinton had said. “She tells me that you are not to worry on her account at all.”
It had been this fact, perhaps more than any other circumstance, which had kept him going; otherwise, with what seemed hopeless odds against him, he must have weakened.
Rosemary, too, had been a brick. Although—ironically enough!—she was working for the enemy (wasn’t she employed in the office of the very man who was endeavouring so strenuously to secure his conviction?), she had sent messages through his father to the effect that she believed in him absolutely. “Tell him also,” she had said to Colonel Clinton, “that I should like to write to him, but that perhaps it would not be wise.”
***
During the whole of that morning, he had been sitting directly opposite the President of the Court-Martial, listening to the evidence being piled up against him. Witnesses had testified that the man he had known as Sandor was actually a well-known Secret Service agent named Adolf Ritter, formerly employed by Germany, and now working for Crosber, the Ronstadt Chief of Secret Police; he had heard further that the woman who had called herself first “Minna Braun” and later “Adrienne Grandin,” was also a Ronstadt agent, working in association with the man Ritter; he had heard how Fordinghame, the Chief of Y.1, had been able to trace the two fifty-pound notes he had received from “Sandor” to Adolf Ritter’s account at the Norodny Bank in Pé, since their issue by the Bank of England.
He further had to listen to the full story of his movements from the moment he left Pé—there was a British agent on board that Paris air liner—until the moment when he handed over the “dummy” package to the supposed emissary of Adrienne Grandin in that second-floor bedroom at the Hotel Continental in The Hague.
Altogether, it had been a comprehensive and thoroughly exhaustive indictment, and one which bore ample testimony to the brilliant way in which the British Secret Service discharged its duties.
***
And now he himself was in the box.
Peter Mallory, who had worked so hard on his defence, started to examine him.
“Your name is Robert Wingate and you are twenty-four years of age?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever attempted to obtain, have you ever obtained, or have you ever disclosed any information, appertaining to military matters or otherwise, which might be prejudicial to the State?”
“Never.”
“Have you ever been hard-up for money?”
The witness was seen to smile.
“Like most fellows, I’ve known what it is to be a bit short; but I’ve never been really hard-up—nor in debt,” he said.
“Has any previous complaint ever been made against you as a soldier and an officer?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“That is the young man who, you are asked to believe, has betrayed his country in such a despicable manner,” continued the defendant’s representative, in a scathing tone.
Mallory now asked the accused to tell the Court, in his own words, exactly what happened—from the moment he left London on his leave, until the time he arrived back in Harwich after handing over the dummy package at the Hotel Continental.
“Coming to this package,” said Mallory, “why did you take it?”
During his imprisonment Bobby had given a great deal of thought to the answering of this question. He could not give the real reason why he had gone to The Hague—namely, to try to induce the woman Minna Braun to return to England so that the plot against his father might be cleared up; and so he had decided to tell a white lie. In the circumstances, he considered that he was justified.
He squared his shoulders and replied:—
“On the night before I left Pé, the woman calling herself first ‘Minna Braun’ and then ‘Adrienne Grandin’ came to my room. She was very badly frightened—or pretended to be. She explained that she was really a French Secret Service agent, that she had been sent to Pé on a dangerous mission, that she had succeeded in this mission, but that the Ronstadt Intelligence people had evidently become suspicious of her and that she was expecting to be arrested at any moment. She dared not run the risk of being searched, so would I take charge of the package containing the information she had collected?”
“Did she give any reason why you should run this grave risk?”
“Yes. She said that the information vitally concerned England (she knew I was an Englishman) as well as France.”
“You believed her?”
“I believed her implicitly.”
“And so you took the package? What did you do with it?”
“I put it inside a newspaper and posted it to England.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I was afraid, after what the woman had told me, that it might be found in my luggage.”
“Which, as a matter of fact, was actually searched?”
“Yes—by the Secret Police.”
“And it was this same package which you took across to The Hague and handed to the man who gave you a letter signed ‘Adrienne Grandin’?”
“Yes.” He had to go on with the lie now.
“Did this woman know you to be a British officer?”
“No—I never mentioned my military rank.”
“Did the man who called himself ‘Sandor’?”
“No. I pretended to be a civilian. He, on the other hand, claimed to be a foreign agent working for the British Secret Service.”
“The prosecution has had a great deal to say about your going to Pé as a civilian. Tell the Court exactly why you went.”
T
he witness was observed to smile. Bobby, as a matter of fact, was reflecting how cynically amusing the turn of events had proved to be.
“I went to Pé as a civilian because I realised that, with the present tension between the two countries, I might be suspected if I proclaimed myself to be a British officer.”
“Exactly why did you go?”
“I was attracted by the information I had read about the new Ronstadt tractors for tanks.”
“And you hoped that you would be able to gather a little further information at first hand?”
“I thought perhaps I might.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because, directly I arrived at Pé, I realised I was probably being watched. I became sure of that when my baggage was searched.”
“And you decided to get back to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“So that what it amounts to is this: that, instead of intending to sell Ronstadt military information, as the prosecution contends, you went to Pé with the fixed idea of doing a little amateur spying yourself?”
“Since you put it that way—yes.”
“And now with regard to the banknotes. You swear you received these from the man calling himself ‘Sandor’ as the result of an afternoon’s poker-playing at his club?”
“I do.”
The President at this point took up the questioning.
“That was rather a lot of money to have won, was it not?”
“I was very lucky, sir.”
“Do you still believe the woman Minna Braun to be genuine?”
“No, of course not, sir, after the evidence I have heard.”
“But you believed her story at the time?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Why did you go to that guest-house?”
“At the request of the manager of the hotel. He said that, owing to the Musical Festival, there was no available accommodation at the hotel.”
Then followed a lengthy cross-examination by the prosecutor, Major Bingham.
This went on and on. The prisoner began to feel that he had ceased to be a human being and had become just an automaton—a mechanical figure that answered questions after being wound up and set going.
He could not decide whether his story—or, indeed, any part of it—was believed. To his right, taking a shorthand note of everything that was being said, was Rosemary—but she never looked his way. What were her private feelings? How could she sit there, hour after hour and day after day, having her feelings tortured by the foul and untrue suggestions against the honour of the man she had once said she loved? What was she thinking about that package? She knew he lied there. He could not understand it. Women seemed able to stand any amount of self-torment. And they even found consolation in it!
Now the voice which had grown so hateful boomed again.
“If,” asked the prosecutor, “you were merely fulfilling a duty you had promised to perform, why were you so agitated at the Hotel Continental?”
“Was I agitated?”
“You have heard the evidence of witnesses Number Sixteen and Number Seventeen. They have told the Court you were very agitated, both while waiting in the lounge of the hotel and again when talking to the man in the bedroom.”
“If I was agitated,—and I am not prepared to admit it in spite of the evidence of your witnesses—it was because I wanted to make certain that the man had really come from the woman who had given me the package.”
He was allowed to step down from the witness box at last. His legs felt that they must give way. The only encouragement he received was a smile from his father. The governor—bless him!—must think he had come through the ordeal well.
Tea was taken shortly afterwards, and he was grateful for the chance to have a talk with his father. The three of them—Mallory, the governor, and himself—sat by themselves.
“You’re doing splendidly—both of you!” declared Colonel Clinton.
Mallory shook his head gloomily.
“I shouldn’t be too confident,” he returned. “We know it’s merely circumstantial evidence; we know, also, all the charges are absolutely groundless; but the stories these witnesses told will want a lot of disbelieving. Did you notice the Judge-Advocate’s face? I was watching him all the time. I wish you had given me your confidence when I saw you in Pé, Bobby.”
“I don’t see how I could have.”
“If you had, much of this present business would have been avoided.”
“I don’t follow that,” commented Colonel Clinton sharply. “How could it have been avoided?”
Mallory, his mind evidently fully occupied with the many problems that thronged it, made an evasive reply.
“I didn’t quite realise what I was saying,” he murmured. “I shall have to see you after the Court adjourns,” he added to the prisoner.
It was when he had reached the Tower that the man who was defending him said: “What I meant back at the Court was, why didn’t you tell me about that package in Pé? By the way, what actually happened to it?”
“I told you in the Court this afternoon.”
“But that wasn’t the truth.”
“Not the truth? Of course it was the truth.”
What forced the lie from his lips he did not know; he only realised that something stronger than himself had prompted him.
But that Mallory still believed he had lied could be read in the man’s face.
Chapter XX
Kuhnreich Decrees
Kuhnreich’s scowl deepened. This was not a good morning with the Dictator of Ronstadt. What in the early days had seemed a mission from on high (not that Kuhnreich bothered much about religion) was now becoming a daily treadmill of vexation. Like others before him—and men gifted with much more brain power—Kuhnreich was beginning to realise that ruling over some sixty millions of people was not an enviable task.
When he took over power, Kuhnreich had stated that he was out to create a new nation—a nation infinitely stronger than the one from whose ashes it had sprung. All the demoralising forces which had caused so much misery, distress and national humiliation were to be rooted up; once he was in the saddle, with his loyal helpers around him, Ronstadt would be the strongest force in the world: the rest of Europe should act as its footstool.
The work was done—while the horror-stricken world shuddered as it read of the kind of methods used in the cleansing process. But the poison that, according to Kuhnreich and his counsellors, had lurked in the veins of the country for so long, devitalising the body politic, was eradicated.
All, then, should have been well. But it did not work out that way. With unemployment increasing and the nation generally having to tighten its belt, the promised millennium took on the aspect of a mirage—and the murmurings of those who had become disillusioned increased. These mutterings might be put down with a stern hand, but the economists whom Kuhnreich called in could not offer him much consolation.
“A population that is faced with starvation next winter cannot be expected to cry ‘Hosanna!’ ’’ declared one bluntly.
The Iron Man, as the carefully censored Pé newspapers united in calling him, was torn; he became the prey of two conflicting schools of thought. Those who had marched to power with him—a curious collection—were all for putting down the discontented elements with the sword; on the other hand, the Dictator (who was said to be sleeping badly) knew that the shedding of blood, even on a big scale, never had been a cure for empty stomachs.
But, gradually, the fire-eaters (“The Murder Gang,” as their enemies called them) gained the upper hand. Steiber, Minister for Propaganda, as the result of many private conversations with the Dictator, had planted a fertile seed in that megalomaniac’s head.
“What we want, your Excellency,” he had said in hi
s shrill, disturbing voice, “is another war! For war will distract the mind of the masses. It will create a yet newer wave of nationalism. Once we are at war, they will forget their real or imaginary troubles—besides, we shall be victorious this time, and the indemnities we shall demand from France and England will make us the greatest Power in the history of the world.”
Kuhnreich had wanted to believe it—how badly he had wanted to believe it! But it meant that in order to relieve one desperate situation he would have to plunge into another vortex. Yet out of this fresh maelstrom he might—yes, might—emerge a still stronger power. After all, he told himself, war was the natural destiny of the Ronstadt people. It had always believed in war, and would always believe in it. For, from time immemorial, its rulers had preached the gospel of the sword and fire.
“Yes—yes.…” he had murmured.
Steiber’s views had been supported by the Minister for Propaganda’s deadliest enemy—Muntz, the Chancellor. Between these two had existed, from the moment Kuhnreich had elevated them to power, a gnawing rivalry. They had paraded side by side; they had stood on the same platform; they had issued proclamations signed jointly—but the man in the street was not deceived: he knew the truth; and the truth was that either would have sacrificed the other without the slightest scruple—given the right opportunity.
Carl Muntz had his own private and separate dreams. A soldier by profession, he naturally believed in war. Once hostilities broke out, he confidently assumed he would be made commander-in-chief of all the Ronstadt forces. What a position! And what a vision—to see himself riding through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris at the head of a triumphant army!
So, secretly, instructions had been given that preparations were to be made on a giant scale for the war which might break out at any moment. The information which the agents of France and England sent back to their respective countries proved that Ronstadt believed her only possible future lay in a victorious army.
***
Once he had set his hand to the war plough, Kuhnreich concentrated all his energies in that one direction. The approaching war became his gospel and his creed. Fired by the intoxicating pictures which his brain provided, he thought of nothing else.
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