“This is a copy made by me. Juan de Maestre left the original document with us for an hour,” said Fairbairn, and he allowed Hillyard to speculate for a few seconds upon the whereabouts of that dangerous and reef-strewn sea. “It’s not a chart of any bay or water at all. It’s a plan of Cardiff by night for the guidance of German airships. Those patches are not shallows, but the loom in the sky of the furnaces. The black spots are the munition factories. Here are the docks,” he pointed with the tip of his pencil. “The Jesus-Maria brought that back a week ago. Let it get from here to Germany, as it will do, eh? and a Zeppelin coming across England on a favourable night could make things hum in Cardiff.”
Hillyard laid the sketch down and took another which Fairbairn held out to him.
“Do you see this?” Fairbairn continued. “This gives the exact line of the nets between the English and the Irish coasts, and the exact points of latitude and longitude where they are broken for the passage of ships, and the exact number and armament of the trawlers which guard those points.”
Hillyard gazed closely at the chart. It gave the positions clearly enough, but it was a roughly-made affair, smudged with dingy fingers and uneven in its drawing. He laid it upon the table by the side of the map of Cardiff and compared one with the other.
“This,” he said, touching the roughly-drawn map of a section of the Channel, “this is the work of the ship’s captain?”
“Yes.”
“But what of this?” and Hillyard lifted again the elaborate chart of Cardiff by night. “Some other hand drew this.”
Fairbairn agreed.
“Yes. Here is the report which goes with the charts. The chart of Cardiff was handed to the captain in an inn on shore. It came from an unknown person, who is mentioned as B.45.”
Hillyard seized upon the report and read it through, and then the others upon the top of that. Cloth, saddlery, equipment of various kinds were needed in England, and a great sea-borne trade had sprung up between the two countries, so that ships constantly went to and fro. In more than one of these reports the hieroglyph B.45 appeared. But never a hint which could lead to his detection — never anything personal, not a clue to his age, his business, his appearance, even his abode — nothing but this baffling symbol B.45.
“You have cabled all this home, of course,” Hillyard observed to Fairbairn.
“Yes. They know nothing of the B.45. They are very anxious for any details.”
“He seems to be a sort of letter-box,” said Hillyard, “a centre-point for the gathering in of information.”
Fairbairn shook his head.
“He is more active than that,” he returned, and he pointed to a passage here and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure, the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the oak-trees of England, doing his secret, mean work for the ruin of the country. Hillyard dreamed that night of B.45. He saw him in his dreams, an elusive figure without a face, moving swiftly wherever people were gathered together, travelling in crowded trains, sitting at the dinner-tables of the great, lurking at the corners of poor tenements. Hillyard hunted him, saw him deftly pocket a letter which a passing stranger as deftly handed him, or exchange some whispered words with another who walked for a few paces without recognition by his side, but though he hurried round corners to get in front of him and snatch a glance at his face, he could never come up with him. He waked with the sunlight pouring in between the lattices of his shutters from the Plaza Cataluña, tired and unrefreshed. B.45! B.45! He was like some figure from a child’s story-book! Some figure made up of tins and sticks and endowed with malevolent life. B.45. London asked news of him, and he stalked through London. Where should Hillyard find his true image and counterpart?
It is not the purpose of this narrative to describe how one Christobal Quesada, first mate of the steamship Mondragon, utterly overreached himself by sending in a report of a British hospital ship, sure to leave the harbour of Alexandria with gun-carriages upon her deck; how the report was proved to be a lie; how it was used as the excuse for the barbarous sinking of the great ships laden with wounded, and ablaze from stern to stern with green lights, the red cross glowing amidships like a wondrous jewel; how Christobal Quesada was removed from his ship in a French port, and after being duly arraigned for his life, met his death against a prison wall. Fairbairn wrote to Martin Hillyard:
“The execution of Quesada has put an end to the whole wicked question. So long as the offender was only put in prison with the certainty of release at the end of the war, whilst his family lived comfortably on German money, the game went merrily on. But the return of the “Mondragon,” minus her executed mate, has altered the whole position. Juan de Maestre has nothing whatever to do nowadays.”
Hillyard smiled with contentment. He could understand a German going to any lengths for Germany. He was prepared to do the same himself for his country. But when a neutral under the cloak of his neutrality meddles in this stupendous conflict for cash, for his thirty miserable pieces of silver, he could feel no inclination of mercy.
“Let the neutrals keep out!” he murmured. “This is not their affair. Let them hold their tongues and go about their own business!”
He received Fairbairn’s letter in the beginning of the year 1916. He was still no nearer at that date to the discovery of B.45; nor were they any better informed in London. Hillyard could only wait upon Chance to slip a clue into his hand.
CHAPTER XV
In a Sleeping-Car
THE NIGHT EXPRESS from Paris to Narbonne and the Spanish frontier was due to leave the Quai d’Orsay station at ten. But three-quarters of an hour before that time the platform was already crowded, and many of the seats occupied. Hillyard walked down the steps a little before half-past nine with the latest of the evening papers in his hand.
“You have engaged your seat, monsieur,” the porter asked, who was carrying Hillyard’s kit-bag.
“Yes,” said Martin absently. He was thinking that on the boulevards the newsboys might now be crying a later edition of the papers than that which he held, an edition with still more details. He saw them surrounded in the darkened street by quiet, anxious groups.
“Will you give me your ticket, monsieur?” the porter continued, and as Hillyard looked at him vacantly, “the ticket for your seat.”
Hillyard roused himself.
“I beg your pardon. I have a compartment in the sleeping-car, numbers eleven and twelve.”
Amongst many old principles of which Martin Hillyard had first learned the wisdom during these last years, none had sunk deeper than this — that the head of an organisation cannot do the work of any of its members and hope that the machine will run smoothly. His was the task of supervision and ultimate direction. He held himself at the beck and call of those who worked under him. He responded to their summons. And it was in response to a very urgent summons from Fairbairn that he had hurried the completion of certain arrangements with the French authorities in Paris and was now returning to the south! But he was going very reluctantly.
It was July, 1916. The first battle of the Somme, launched some days past, was at its very climacteric. The casualties had been and were terrible. Even at this moment of night the fury of the attack was not relaxed. All through the day reports, exasperating in their brevity, had been streaming into Paris, and rumour, as of old, circled swift-winged above the city, making good or ill the deficiencies of the telegrams. One fact, however, had leaped to light, unassailably true. The Clayfords, stationed on the north of the line at Thiepval, had redeemed their name and added a new lustre to their erstwhile shining record. The devotion of the officers, the discipline of the men, had borne their fruits. At a most critical moment the Clayfords had been for
ced to change front against a flank attack, under a galling fire and in the very press of battle, and the long extended line had swung to its new position with the steadiness of veterans, and, having reached it, had stood fast. Hillyard rejoiced with a sincerity as deep as if he himself held his commission in that regiment. But the losses had been terrible; and Martin Hillyard was troubled to the roots of his heart by doubts whether Harry Luttrell were at this moment knowing the deep contentment that the fixed aim of his boyhood and youth had been fulfilled; or whether he was lying out on the dark ground beneath the stars unaware of it and indifferent. Hillyard nursed a hope that some blunder had been made, and that he would find his compartment occupied.
The controller, in his brown uniform with the brass buttons and his peaked cap, stood at the steps of the car with the attendant.
“Eleven and twelve,” said Hillyard, handing to him his ticket.
The attendant, a middle-aged, stout man with a black moustache and a greasy face, shot one keen glance from under the peak of his cap at the occupant of numbers 11 and 12, and then led the way along the corridor.
The compartment was empty. Hillyard looked around it with a grudging eye.
“I am near the middle of the coach here, I think,” he said.
“Yes, monsieur, quite in the middle.”
“That is well,” answered Hillyard. “I am an invalid, and cannot sleep when there is much motion.”
He spoke irritably, with that tone of grievance peculiar to the man who thinks his health is much worse than it is.
“Can I get coffee in the morning?” he asked.
“At half-past six, monsieur. But you must get out of the train for it.”
Hillyard uttered an exclamation of disgust, and shrugged his shoulders. “What a country!” the gesture said as plainly as speech.
“But it is the war, monsieur!” the attendant expostulated with indignation.
“Oh, yes, I know! The war!” Hillyard retorted with ill-humour. “Do I want a bath? I cannot have it. It is the war. If a waiter is rude to me, it is the war. If my steak is over-cooked it is the war. The war! It is the excuse for everything.”
He told the porter to place his bag upon the upper berth, and, still grumbling, gave him some money. He turned sharply on the attendant, who was smiling in the doorway.
“Ah, it seems to you funny that an invalid should be irritable, eh?” he cried. “I suppose it must be — damnably funny.”
“Monsieur, there are very many men who would like to-night to be invalids with a sleeping compartment to themselves,” returned the attendant severely.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it any more,” said Hillyard roughly, and he shouldered his way out again on to the platform.
The attendant followed him. The smile upon his face was sleeker than ever. He was very amused and contented with his passenger in the compartment numbers 11 and 12. He took the cap off his head and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
“Ouf! It is hot to-night.” He looked after Hillyard with a chuckle, and remarked to the controller, “This is a customer who does not like his little comforts to be disarranged!”
The controller nodded contemptuously.
“They must travel — the English! The tourism — that is sacred, even if all Europe burns.”
Hillyard strolled towards the stairs, and as he drew near to them his eyes brightened. A man about six years older than himself, tall, broad-shouldered, slim of waist, with a short, fair moustache, was descending towards him.
The war has killed many foolish legends, but none more foolish than the legend of the typical Frenchman, conceived as a short, rotund, explosive person, with a square, brown beard of curly baby-hair and a shiny silk hat with a flat brim. There have been too many young athletes of clean build on view whose nationality, language and the uniforms of powder-blue and khaki could alone decide. The more curious might, perhaps, if the youth were in mufti, cast a downward glance at the boots; but even boots were ceasing to be the sure tell-tale they once used to be. This man descending the stairs with a limp was the Commandant Marnier, of the 193rd Regiment, wounded in 1915, and now attached to the General Staff. He was in plain clothes; he was looking for Martin Hillyard, and no stranger but would have set him and the man for whom he was looking in the same category of races.
The Commandant Marnier saw Martin Hillyard clearly enough long before he reached the foot of the stairs. But nevertheless he greeted him with an appearance of surprise.
“But what luck!” he said aloud. “You leave by this train?”
“Yes. It may be that I shall find health.”
“Yes, yes. So your friends will pray,” returned the Commandant, falling into Hillyard’s pace.
“The telegram we sent for you — —” Marnier began.
“Yes!”
“There is an answer already. Your friend is unhurt. I have brought you a copy. I thought that perhaps I might catch you before your train started.”
He gave the slip of typewritten message into Hillyard’s hand.
“That was most kind of you,” said Hillyard. “You have removed a great anxiety. It would have been many days before I should have received this good news if you had not gone out of your way to hurry with it here.”
Hillyard was moved, partly by the message, partly by the consideration of Marnier, who now waved his thanks aside.
“Bah! We may not say ‘comrade’ as often as the Boche, but perhaps we are it all the more. I will not come further with you towards your carriage, for I have still a few things to do.”
He shook Hillyard by the hand and departed. Hillyard turned from him towards his sleeping-car, but though his chief anxiety was dispelled, his reluctance to go was not. And he looked at the long, brightly-lit train which was to carry him from this busy and high-hearted city with a desire that it would start before its time, and leave him a derelict upon the platform. He could not bend his thoughts to the work which was at his hand. The sapphire waters of the South had quite lost their sparkle and enchantment. Here, here, was the place of life! The exhilaration of his task, its importance, the glow of thankfulness when some real advantage was won, a plot foiled, a scheme carried to success — these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden in a match-box a little phial, which never left him, to put the sure impediment between himself and a forced confession of his aims and knowledge. But he was not aware of it. How many times had he seen the red light at Europa Point on Gibraltar’s edge change to white, sometimes against the scarlet bars of dawn, sometimes in the winter against a wall of black! But on the platform of the Quai d’Orsay station, in a bustle of soldiers going on short leave to their homes, and rattling with pannikins and iron-helmets, he could remember none of these consolations.
He reached his carriage.
“Messieurs les voyageurs, en route!” cried the controller.
“What a crowd!” Hillyard grumbled. “Really, it almost disposes one to say that one will never travel again until this war is over.”
He walked along the corridor to his compartment and sat down as the train started with a jerk. The door stood open, and in a few minutes the attendant came to it.
“Who is in the next compartment on the other side of the lavatory?” Hillyard asked.
“A manufacturer of Perpignan and his wife.”
“Does he snore?” Hillyard asked. “If he snores I shall not sleep. It should be an offence against your bye-laws for a traveller to snore.”
He crossed one leg across his knee and unlaced his shoe.
The attendant came into the room.
“It is possible, monsieur, that I might
hurry and fetch you your coffee in the morning,” he said.
“It is worth five francs to you if you do,” replied Hillyard.
“Then monsieur will not move from his compartment until luncheon. I will see to it. Monsieur will bolt his door, and in the morning I will knock when I bring the coffee.”
“Good,” returned Hillyard ungraciously.
The attendant retired, and Hillyard closed the door. But the ventilating lattice in the lower part of the door was open, and Hillyard could see the legs of the attendant. He was waiting outside — waiting for what? Hillyard smiled to himself and took down his bag from the upper berth. He had hardly opened it when the attendant knocked and entered.
“You will not forget, monsieur, to bolt your door. In these days it is not wise to leave it on the latch.”
“I won’t forget,” Hillyard replied surlily, and once more the attendant retired; and again he stood outside the door. He did not move until the bolt was shot. The attendant seemed very pleased that this fool of a tourist who thought of nothing but his infirmities should safely bolt the door of the compartments numbers 11 and 12; and very pleased, too, to bring to this churlish, discontented traveller his coffee in the morning, so that he need not leave compartments numbers 11 and 12 unguarded. Hillyard chuckled as the attendant moved away.
“I am to be your watch-dog, am I? Your sentinel? Very well! Come, let me deserve your confidence, my friend.”
The train thundered out of the tunnel and through the suburbs of Paris. Hillyard drew a letter from Fairbairn out of his pocket and read it through.
“Compartments numbers 11 and 12 on the night train from the Quai d’Orsay station to Cerbère. Good!” murmured Hillyard. “Here I am in compartments numbers 11 and 12. Now we wait until the married couple from Perpignan and the attendant are comfortably asleep.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 546