The Prussian aristocrat turned to Sir Hamish Bull, who was sitting well back in his chair, enjoying the convivial atmosphere of High Cedars.
‘Sir Hamish, I remember seeing you once at Lord Salisbury’s levee for the Diplomatic Corps. I’m sure you would have liked Adelheid von Braun. A lovely, blonde girl, she was. Her father, Colonel-General von Braun, was a very devoted and fanatical Prussian, with vast estates in Eastern Prussia. How admirable! The true Junker! He was more royalist than the Kaiser himself, so the Kaiser said to me on one occasion.’
Colonel Kershaw looked thoughtfully at Thalberg. Adelheid von Braun …. At least, it was a name, if not as pretty a name as Ottilie Seligmann.
‘Well,’ Thalberg concluded, ‘it must have been Paris she went to. Somebody told me she’d made a secret marriage to a Hungarian fellow, which may be true or false.’
‘Hamish here,’ said Kershaw, ‘is rather nervous of foreigners, Count. He’s a Scotsman, you see. They’re just about getting used to the English.’ Sir Hamish grinned, but said nothing.
‘A Scotsman, hey?’ said Thalberg. ‘Well, I knew a Scotsman once. A very dangerous, devilish kind of Scotsman. A lone wolf, as they say, and not very fond of the English. He wanted to sell something to a man in St Petersburg—’
‘What?’
‘Oh, didn’t you know that, Kershaw? Yes, my Scotsman is a very German type of Scotsman at the moment, too German for comfort. But he’s not averse from doing deals with Russians when the mood takes him. He was in Petersburg last month.’
Kershaw relapsed into silence. Sir Hamish looked doubtfully at Count von und zu Thalberg.
‘Look here, Count Thalberg,’ he said, in rather injured tones, ‘you spoke about your German Scotsman being too German for comfort. What do you mean by that? You’re a German yourself, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, indeed, Sir Hamish. But there are Germans and Germans.’
Sir Hamish beckoned a passing waiter and took another glass of champagne from a tray. He took an appreciative gulp.
‘I can’t get the measure of some of you foreigners. I’m a Scotsman, you know. I don’t wear a kilt, or toss the caber, and so on, but I’m Scots through and through. I’ve never heard of a Scots German. Not until now, anyway. There’s a woman turned up in my part of the world who’s apparently a Polish Bohemian. Why can’t foreigners just be French, or German, or whatever they are?’
Colonel Kershaw leaned over the table and took the glass of champagne out of Sir Hamish’s hand. He looked at him steadily and coaxingly. His voice was soothing and quiet.
‘Hamish, think, and then speak. What does your Polish Bohemian lady call herself?’
‘Call herself? Mrs Feissen. She’s a Pole. But a fellow I know who speaks Polish says she isn’t a Pole. He says she’s a Bohemian. Not one of those gipsy violinists, but a woman from Bohemia. Oh, dash it all, a Check. That’s the word this fellow used. A Check. Damned odd, I should have thought.’
Colonel Kershaw returned the glass of champagne to Sir Hamish, and leaned back in his chair. He glanced knowingly at the count, who smiled.
‘Sometimes, Count von und zu Thalberg,’ said Kershaw, ‘I think that Providence speaks directly through the oddest mediums. It must be a gift from the gods to be told that. About this Mrs Feissen, you know. There was a certain Polish lady living in Chelsea who suddenly left, saying that she was going to Warsaw. Evidently, she was making that voyage via Glasgow – that’s where we lost her. My crowd, you know. Yes, I think it was Providence who decreed that I should angle an invitation to High Cedars for old Hamish there.’
At midnight, a brilliant display of fireworks on the terrace of High Cedars lit up the black winter sky above the encroaching woods. It was seen as a signal that the evening’s celebrations had ended, and the many guests assembled to be lighted up to bed.
Colonel Kershaw had slipped away from the company, and made his way up a set of obscure back stairs to a landing on the top floor. He took a key from his pocket, and unlocked a stout door, which gave him access to a series of hidden rooms. There was a sparsely furnished business room, containing, among other things, an electric telegraph, and beyond this, a sort of council chamber, where Inspector Box sat in one of a number of chairs drawn round a blazing fire.
‘How are you, Mr Box? Have they treated you well?’
‘They have, sir. Food and drink aplenty, and a firework display. I couldn’t have asked for more.’
Colonel Kershaw smiled, sat down in one of the chairs, and withdrew his cigar case from the inside pocket of his dress coat.
‘Will you smoke a cigar with me, Mr Box?’
‘I will, sir.’
Kershaw played a match over the end of his cigar until it was glowing to his satisfaction, and then flicked the match into the fire.
‘This evening, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘a friend of mine, Sir Hamish Bull of Caithness, told me – in a rather roundabout way – that Mrs Poniatowski, the housekeeper at Chelsea, is living in his part of the world, under the name of Mrs Feissen. One of my crowd shadowed her from Chelsea when she left, but he lost her in Glasgow. Sir Hamish Bull also told me that she isn’t a Pole, but a Czech – a Bohemian, you know.’
‘A Bohemian? And her name is Feissen? But that’s – Yes! That’s the name of the concern that made the explosive used to blow up Dr Seligmann! “Feissen Werke”.’
‘Yes. So now you can see a new complexion on things, can’t you? Right in the heart of Dr Seligmann’s household was – well, I’ll tell you who she was. My people in Germany have sent me reports about her. Maria Theresa Feissen is the widow of the great Bohemian armaments manufacturer, Wilhelm Feissen. She is now the working principal of that concern. Both Feissens were fanatical pan-Germanists—’
‘Pause there, if you will sir – hold on …. This Mrs Feissen must have known Colin McColl. She must have supplied the explosive. She must have arranged for that crate to be delivered from Germany’
‘Exactly, Box. And as you very cleverly discovered, the object was to destroy the Belvedere, and with it Seligmann’s copy of The Hansa Protocol. And now she’s in Scotland, in the wilds of Caithness. Why, Box? What is she planning now?’
Box drew on his cigar, and looked at the cheerful fire. He let a string of images pass through his mind. The unseemly rows between Miss Ottilie and her sour-faced housekeeper. Her raging dislike of Count Czerny …. ‘He will go. And that Polish woman. She, too, will go.’
‘Sir, have your people found out anything interesting about Miss Ottilie Seligmann? From the start of this business I’ve had men shadowing the various people in that house. Miss Ottilie never seems to go anywhere, or do anything much. She seems to spend most of her time writing letters. The butler posts them regularly in the pillar box at the end of Lavender Walk.’
Colonel Kershaw smiled, and threw the butt of his cigar into the fire.
‘Miss Ottilie’s letters are quite harmless. They’re purely chatty things to English friends, or letters to fashionable shops. Some are private affairs, and one or two are written in German to people abroad. But they seem to be quite ordinary.’
‘How do you know that, sir?’
‘I’ve read them. I’m not going to tell you how we intercept them, Box, but it’s very ingenious. Something to do with the stamps. Of much greater interest is something else that I was told tonight, this time by a German diplomat called Thalberg. Our friend Miss Whittaker was right. The young woman at Chelsea is not Ottilie Seligman: she is yet another fanatic, and her name is Adelheid von Braun.’
‘I wondered all along about her, sir. So did my sergeant, Jack Knollys. Ottilie Seligmann didn’t ring true—’
Suddenly, almost with a sense of shock, the pieces of the puzzle rushed together. Box had been hovering for a week on the edge of discovery, and now the obscurities had cleared away. He began to speak, urgently and persuasively.
‘Colonel Kershaw, what we have witnessed at the house in Chelsea has been the dispersal of a gang of assassins after t
he successful completion of a mission. It has all been disguised as a series of rows and antipathies, and we’ve watched from the sidelines as the gang dispersed, Like all gangs, I expect it will regroup when the time is ripe. Once the mission was accomplished, they could disperse. So Miss Ottilie staged those rows, first with Mrs P. and then with Count Czerny, so that they could flee – if that’s the right word here – without anyone suspecting that they were the killers. All the neighbours saw was the spectacle of a few excitable foreigners squabbling with each other. The only innocent party in that house is Schneider, the German secretary.’
‘I believe you’re right, Box. We have witnessed the dispersal of a gang. Which means, of course, that the gang must have assembled at Chelsea in the first place. The false Ottilie, and the malevolent Mrs Poniatowski, were successful in becoming part of the household of their deadly ideological enemy, Dr Seligmann.’
‘Their object, as we know,’ said Box, ‘was to destroy The Hansa Protocol, and neutralize Seligmann’s bargaining power with the German war party. But they must have found it very difficult to keep the truth from Count Czerny.’
Kershaw gave Box a half-amused smile.
‘Are you going to disappoint me at this late hour, Mr Box? It was brilliant of Count Czerny to pose as a champion of peace, and to spout rhetorical nothings that told the sober truth. He is a bold man, a man who took the chance of revealing to you the existence of the Eidgenossenschaft, and then linking Colin McColl directly to it. Count Czerny, I have no doubt, was so convincing, that he managed to convince you of his own innocence. When Czerny left the house in Chelsea, he crossed the Channel with all his effects, and Europe swallowed him up.’
‘Sir—’
‘Mr Box, it is late, and we have both had a long and tiring day. Let us talk again tomorrow, after that telegraph machine in the other room has sprung to life, and brought us an account of tomorrow’s Pan-German Rally in Berlin.’
12
Baron von Dessau Smiles
Inspector Box stood at one of the windows in the sparsely furnished business room on the top floor of High Cedars, and looked out at the fir trees, which were bathed in the weak sun of the winter morning. A bank of dark cloud was beginning to show itself above the woods, and patches of green had appeared on the narrow lawn beyond the rear terrace. The relentless grip of the recent icy weather was beginning to relax in preparation for a thaw.
The door of the room opened, and Colonel Kershaw came in. He was followed by Sir Charles Napier, and a tall, bronzed man of forty or so, dressed informally in tweeds. He had jet-black hair and side whiskers, and looked out on the world from shrewd grey eyes.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kershaw without preamble, ‘this is Detective Inspector Box, of Scotland Yard. He is intimately bound up in this business of Seligmann and Lankester, and I beg you both to accept without demur that he is my colleague and associate. Box, you have seen Sir Charles Napier here before. This other gentleman is our host, Lord Mount Vernon.’
As he was speaking, a young man in a sober black suit came into the room, and at a nod from Kershaw, he began to busy himself with the technicalities of bringing the telegraph machine to life. Mount Vernon and Napier joined the operator, and Colonel Kershaw drew Box aside.
‘Mr Box,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d tell you that I’ve borrowed your sergeant, Mr Knollys, and sent him back to London on a little commission. I hope you can spare him.’
‘I can, sir, provided that you hand him back to me in good condition! Is it in order for me to ask whether or not the memorandum got safely to Berlin?’
‘Yes, Box, it arrived there late yesterday afternoon. I’ve already informed Sir Charles there of what happened. My wine merchant’s traveller delivered the memorandum to a man at the British Embassy, who immediately took it out to Baron von Dessau’s residence in Charlottenburg. Apparently, the baron opened it, read it, smiled, and said nothing.’
A faint humming sound told them that the young man had activated the electric telegraph. When the time was ripe, the machine would stutter into life, bringing the morning’s news from Berlin.
‘I wonder what made the baron smile?’ asked Box. Napier heard him, and nodded in agreement.
‘I wonder, too,’ said Napier. ‘I thought the idea was that he should quake and tremble at what poor Seligmann had written?’
‘Well, yes, Sir Charles,’ said Kershaw, ‘but that was before Colin McColl – and the Eidgenossenschaft – had blown the Belvedere to smithereens, and with it, Seligmann’s copy of The Hansa Protocol. That memorandum said, in effect: “If you don’t restrain the dogs of war in Berlin, I shall reveal all the secret naval and military codes of the German Empire to the British Government.” It was meant to be a containing exercise, a means of guaranteeing the peace of Europe by a careful adjustment in the balance of power.’
Sir Charles Napier nodded vigorously in agreement.
‘Quite right, Kershaw. At last, you’re talking the kind of language that I can understand. And yet—’
‘And yet the baron smiled! He did that, presumably, because Seligmann’s threat was now worthless. Once von Dessau has addressed his devoted mob in half-an-hour’s time, we’ll be able to judge the full reasoning behind that smile.’
Lord Mount Vernon stirred in his chair.
‘You know, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’ve been wondering about that memorandum of Seligmann’s. Are you quite sure, Kershaw, that it said – well, what you said it did? About the dogs of war, and the secret codes, and all that?’
‘Oh, yes. I read it, you see—’
‘What!’
Sir Charles Napier sprang to his feet. He looked beside himself with rage.
‘You damned scoundrel, Kershaw! I might have known you’d do something outrageous, something that flies in the face of all diplomatic practice—’
‘Hold your fire, Charles,’ said Kershaw. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury with these virtuous outbursts. Apoplexy, you know. Of course I read it! One of my people opened it as soon as I received it at Bagot’s Hotel, and then resealed it afterwards. It said exactly what I said, only it was in German, which, fortunately, I can read.’
‘You shouldn’t do these things, Kershaw,’ said Sir Charles Napier. ‘You’ll trip yourself up one of these days. Some damned traitor will be looking over your shoulder while you’re steaming the stamps off envelopes, or whatever other nefarious things you do.’
‘Talking of traitors,’ said Colonel Kershaw, ‘I went down to the cellarage very early this morning, and confronted Lankester.’
‘And what did the fellow have to say for himself?’ asked Napier, his face flushing with anger.
‘He confessed his guilt immediately. He had conducted several similar pieces of business with Ephraim Stolberg during the past twelve months or so, mainly to cover heavy gambling debts. On this occasion, a faked assault on Lankester had been arranged to take place on the train to Dover. He was to have been found, bruised and dazed, with the lining of his jacket ripped open and the memorandum gone. Stolberg had already paid him the fruits of his treachery.’
‘And who was to be the recipient, Kershaw? Who’s going to open that packet of blank paper that you substituted? It can’t be anyone in Germany—’
‘It’s on its way to St Petersburg. They’ll buy anything there, you know. It’s all grist to their Slavonic mill. I knew it would end up there. Or in Constantinople. Lankester was very obliging in his confession. He belonged to a little group of freelance spies who sell their secrets for money rather than political conviction. Ephraim Stolberg and his wife Rita, Klaus Miller …. They’re dangerous, of course, but ultimately containable.’
There was silence for a moment, and then Kershaw asked a question.
‘What do you want me to do with Lankester? He’s held here on Mr Box’s warrant. We can’t keep him here indefinitely.’
‘Tell him to go,’ said Napier, his voice choking with anger. ‘Tell him to resign from the service, resign from his regiment
, and hide himself away from the sight of men. Tell him to resign from his clubs. Either he can do all that, or wait for me to initiate a Process of High Crimes, which will send him to Dartmoor for life. I think I know what choice he’ll make. I don’t want things disturbed, Kershaw. Let all these traitors continue falsely secure, so that we can pick them off, one by one.’
‘You’re absolutely right, Napier,’ said Kershaw, ‘and it’s very decent of you not to throw my criticisms of your service in my face. What you suggest is what I myself would have advised. Perhaps you will care to leave Lankester to me? I will tell him what our judgement has been.’
‘Thank you. I’m grateful that you are to spare me the prospect of facing that man without striking him to my foot – but listen! There’s the telegraph beginning its chatter. It’s time to hear the report from Berlin.’
Half an hour later, the four men left the business room, and reassembled in the adjacent council chamber. Arnold Box watched his companions, and wondered what they had made of the pages of narrative which the young operator had rapidly scribbled on a pad of standard yellow telegraph forms. Sir Charles Napier and Colonel Kershaw sat with stacks of the papers on their knees, Both men’s faces were inscrutable. Lord Mount Vernon caught Box’s eye, and pulled a wryly comic face. Finally, Colonel Kershaw spoke.
‘I’m beginning to wonder, gentlemen,’ he said, in his quiet, rather world-weary voice, ‘whether I am rapidly getting out of my depth in this business. Baron von Dessau was free to whip up his followers to fever-pitch this morning. He could have urged an immediate expansion of the German Reich beyond its borders, and certain units of the German Army would have taken that as a signal for action. Am I right about that, or is there something I’ve missed?’
The Hansa Protocol Page 17