Читать книгу A Toast to Tomorrow - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 3

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He walked into his study, switched on the reading-lamp, drew the curtains and threw more logs on the blazing fire, for it was very cold in Berlin that evening in March 1933. He pushed an armchair in front of the fire, a huge padded leather one which looked much too large for his short spare figure, and put beside the chair a table with a box of cigars on it, matches and a thick wad of papers in a cardboard cover with a label inscribed, “The Radio Operator, A Play, by Klaus Lehmann.” He had the air of a man who is preparing to enjoy a long-expected pleasure and does not intend small discomforts to spoil it. Every few moments he glanced at the clock. Finally he opened a cupboard door and looked inside, scowled, and rang the bell; a manservant answered it, a man as long, thin and melancholy as his master was short and cheerful.

“Yes, sir?”

“Franz, did I not say there should be beer?”

“I could not say for certain, sir.”

“When in doubt, Franz, provide it.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I rather think, Franz, that I have told you that before.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“Of course I say so, haven’t you just heard me? Don’t stand there arguing, go and get it.”

The servant’s long wrinkled face assumed exactly the expression of a pained bloodhound, and he slid out of the room leaving the door ajar and admitting an icy draught. “Now I’ve annoyed him, Franz always leaves the door open when his feelings are hurt.”

Franz came back with a tall jug, put it on the table and prepared to leave, but his master said, “Just a moment,” took two glasses from the cupboard, filled them both and handed him one.

“Drink success to The Radio Operator, Franz,” he said. “This is a great moment, when one hears one’s first play being performed for the first time.”

Franz’s ugly face lit up. “It must be, sir. Prosit! The Radio Operator.”

They drank with appropriate solemnity, and Franz put his glass down.

“I know how you feel, sir, if I may say so. I felt like that myself once.”

“I didn’t know I had a fellow-author in the house.”

“It was only a little thing, sir. It went:

‘Though she was old,

Her heart was never cold.

I’ll never see another

Like my grandmother.’

My parents put it in the paper, sir, when she died.”

“I see,” said the successful playwright. “An epitaph, and very nice, too. I always think epitaphs must be so difficult. Either you delight the family and nobody else, or else you delight everybody except the family.”

“Yes, sir,” said Franz. “Excuse me, it is time.”

“Heavens, yes,” said the author, springing at the wireless set and switching it on, to be rewarded with the closing bars of a Beethoven concerto. Franz left the room, shutting the door this time, while his master poured himself out some more beer and settled down in the big armchair with the manuscript upon his knee to listen to his very own play.

“You are now to hear,” said the announcer, “the first broadcast of a new play, The Radio Operator, by Klaus Lehmann. There is only one character, the radio operator himself——”

The play opened with the usual background of morse, starting very softly, growing louder and more insistent, then dying away again to a whisper as the only character began to speak. It would seem that even the morse, unintelligible jumble of letters though it was, delighted its author, for he snuggled down into his chair and a self-satisfied smile illuminated his scarred face even before the speech began.

“To-night I sit for the last time,” said the radio operator, “in the little cabin they call the wireless room, surrounded by the familiar instruments——”

“I hope to goodness that’s right,” muttered the author. “Don’t believe I was ever in a wireless room in my life.”

“—the table before me, for to-morrow we reach Hamburg and I go ashore for the last time. Next voyage another man will sit here in my place listening to the myriad voices of the air——”

“Nice touch, that.”

“—instructing, warning, comforting——”

The morse rose in intensity again, drowning the operator’s voice for a moment, and again the author smiled.

“For my life at sea is ended, and to-morrow I retire. How well I remember when I first went to sea!”

The operator had started his career in a Jewish-controlled shipping line, where starvation wages, revolting food, and disgusting accommodation had combined with the slave-driving habits of the owners to make his young life a misery. “Cockroaches,” said the operator, in a tone quivering with emotion, “cockroaches in my bunk, cockroaches in the wireless room, even cockroaches in the coffee, and if a free-born German dared to complain he was met with hectoring disdain and bullying laughter.”

“Not a good phrase,” said the playwright, frowning. “I meant to alter that and I forgot. Hectoring something else and disdainful laughter would be better.”

Then the war came, the wireless operator joined the Imperial Navy, and was wounded at the battle of Horns Reef. He seemed to have had the singular gift of being in several different parts of the North Sea at once, but what of that?

“On that great day,” he said, “I saw with my own eyes numerous gallant destroyer actions between the bull-terriers of our Fleet and the darting, stinging wasps of the enemy; I saw our cruiser squadrons sweep the English ships out of their way as a broom scatters autumn leaves; I saw the proud English battleships blow up with a thunderous roar and become as it were dust in a moment, while their cries for help came to my ears over the air.”

Again the morse rose and sank again, and the author took a pull at his beer.

“And I sincerely hope that makes the English sit up and listen,” he said.

When the operator came out of hospital he was sent to the shore station at Ostende, where the U-boats, returning from their nocturnal adventures, reported arrival in the chilly dawns—or did not return nor report. The war came to an end and there followed the dreadful years of defeat, when the mark slumped, food was bad or unobtainable, and the people perished.

“I walked the streets of Hamburg,” said the wireless operator, “out of work, out of money, out of hope, starving, destitute, wretched. ‘Will this go on for ever,’ I cried, ‘will no one deliver Germany from her chains?’ But heaven was merciful and sent us a Deliverer.”

“Came the Dawn,” commented the author, lighting a cigar.

“Our Leader,” continued the voice from the radio set, “had an uphill task indeed, such as only a superman could have performed, but he has done it, and what do we see to-day? A Germany free, powerful, respected and feared. Her sons walking the world with stately tread and unbending necks, her ships, well found, well provisioned and equipped, sailing the seven seas again with ships’ companies proud to serve in them, and the tramp of her armies shaking the earth. At home her people are busy, contented and happy, and her children grow up healthy, strong and fair. We know to whom we owe all this, to whom all praise and honour is due, and we shall pay it, we and our children and our children’s children; in days to come the whole world shall pay it too, saying as I do, ‘Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil!’ ”

The morse broke in again, rising to a staccato climax, only to be drowned in its turn by the strains of the Horst Wessel Song. The author closed his manuscript and relaxed in his chair.

“That ought to please Adolf,” said Klaus Lehmann, Deputy Chief of the German Police.

The S.S. Whistlefield Star was a biggish cargo boat six hours out of Hamburg for Cardiff, and she carried two wireless operators. The senior operator was approaching middle age, red-haired, stocky and freckled. He had seen service in destroyers in the Great War and was a little too apt to tell people all about it. The second mate, on the other hand, was the possessor of a wireless set which he claimed would bring in anything except the morning’s milk, and he kept it in the saloon. The wireless operator came in off duty, looking for supper, and found the second mate producing hyena-like noises varied by cat-fights in an attempt to tune out an over-powerful German station which was broadcasting a Beethoven concerto.

“For the love of Larry,” said the operator, “pipe down. Can’t a man get a bit of peace from the blasted wireless in his spare time?”

“I shall in a minute, if I can’t get anything but this high-brow stuff. Give me something with a tune to it.”

“You might know you can’t get anything but Hamburg off here. Ow! Oh, Lord, don’t do that, you’re turning the sardines liverish.”

The concerto drew to its close and there followed an announcement in German. “Sounds like the end of the concert,” said the second mate, “perhaps we’ll get something decent now.” The next item started with morse, at first very soft, working up in a crescendo and then falling quiet again.

“Here, Sparks,” said the unfeeling second mate, “something to amuse you.” But the wireless operator was too busy telling the steward what he thought of the tea to pay any attention. A voice on the radio started to talk, and after waiting a moment in the hope of something better the second mate was just beginning to tune away from it when the morse broke in again. “Taa,” it said, “tit—taa—tit—tit, taa. Taa, tit—taa—tit—tit, taa.” This time the wireless operator sat up listening.

“Here,” he said, “hold that a moment. T-L-T. T-L-T. Where have I heard that before? It’s a call-sign. I used to know it.”

The morse died out when the German voice went on talking, talking, while the wireless operator scowled with thought, till the second mate got fidgety.

“I’m fed up with all this yap,” he said, “I’ll have a look round to see if I can’t find something else.”

“I have it,” said the wireless man suddenly. “One of our people in Germany. We had a list of call-signs to listen for, and I’m sure that was one of ’em. T-L-T.”

“What?” said the mate. “Britishers broadcasting from Germany? When?”

“During the war.”

“But did they? Who were they? What were they doing?”

“Spying, like. Intelligence work they called it, an’ I’ll say they had to be pretty intelligent to get away with it. There was a few of them used to transmit with spark sets, used to get messages out that way. In code, of course, couldn’t make head nor tail of what the message—— Listen!”

The morse began again, and the wireless operator snatched a pencil and an old envelope from his pocket and jotted down letters as they came. “T-L-T. RKEHO——” When it ceased again he looked mournfully at the result.

“Well, there you are,” he said, “and what it all means I’ve no more idea than a blind kitten.”

“P’raps it doesn’t mean anything,” said the second mate. “Just trimmings, like, like what you get on the National sometimes.”

“Don’t believe it, not starting T-L-T like that. I don’t know if I ought to do something about it, but I don’t know who to send it to now. Now, when I was in the Service——”

“Oh, Lor’,” said the second mate, and unostentatiously quitted the saloon.

Young Emsworth settled himself down in his chair before the receiving set in the Foreign Office, pulled the earphones over his head and listened with pleasure to the last movement of a Beethoven concerto, magnificently rendered. “If only we could always hear stuff like that,” he murmured, “instead of all the awful tosh we have to listen to.” He glanced with distaste at the programme. A play by Klaus Lehmann called The Radio Operator, doubtless some of that dreadful propaganda stuff, news, a talk on the Hitler Youth movement, a concert of light music. He sighed and drew a writing-pad towards him, for it was his business to listen to what Germany was being told, and report upon anything rich and strange. Also within his reach was the switch of the recorder, an instrument which would, if required, make a record of what was said, so that the exact wording could be studied at leisure. The German announcer’s voice ceased, and the play began with a crackle of morse.

An expression of speechless amazement crossed Emsworth’s face, he shot out one hand automatically to switch on the recorder and then took his headphones off, looked at them and put them on again, an idiotic gesture sometimes seen when a man cannot believe his ears.

“To-night,” said the guttural German voice, “I sit for the last time in the little cabin they call the wireless room, surrounded——”

Emsworth pressed a bell-switch and after a short pause a messenger came in, but Emsworth held up his hand for silence because the morse had come on for the second time. When it ended, he said, “Is Mr. Wilcox still here? Go and see, if he is ask him to be good enough to come to me here.”

Wilcox came in, an elderly man, heavy and pallid with years of sedentary employment.

“What’s the excitement, Emsworth? You only just caught me, I was putting my coat on.”

Emsworth slipped one headphone forward in order to hear what Wilcox said with one ear and the German broadcast with the other. “D’you remember telling me the other evening about people transmitting messages from Germany during the war? You quoted three or four call-signs, wasn’t T-L-T one of them? Yes—well, here it is again in a morse background to a German radio play about a wireless operator.”

“Got the recorder going? Good,” said Wilcox, snatching up another pair of headphones and plugging them in. “Oh, he’s still talking, I dare say we’ll get some more in a minute. Yes, I had your job in those days, but it was a bit more interest——”

He broke off and listened intently, jotting letters down on a slip of paper. “T-L-T. RKEHOSWR39X—” When the morse had ended again, he said, “How many times has that come in?”

“That’s the third. Once at the beginning, quite short and nothing but the call-sign repeated, and once since, before this.”

Wilcox nodded and went on listening. “More talky-talky, lots of, my hat, how these propagandists do gas,” he said. “No, I can’t remember exactly what this fellow was after all this lapse of time. After all, it’s sixteen years, but I can tell you right away it’s not the same fellow transmitting. I remember he had a distinctive, rather pedantic style. I always put him down as a rather elderly self-taught amateur. You know, of course, that men in the habit of listening to morse come to recognize the touch of other operators they are in the habit of hearing, much as you recognize a man’s voice or his handwriting.”

“B—but,” spluttered young Emsworth, who found Wilcox’s calmness positively inhuman, “do you really think it’s the same man? After all these years? Do you think it’s real?”

“Yes, I think it may be real, but we can tell better when it’s decoded. No, I don’t think it’s the same man, I’ve said so already. As for ‘after all these years,’ stranger things have happened and will again. When it’s all over I’ll have those old codes turned up an—— Sh!”

The morse came in for the last time and was finally drowned by the Horst Wessel Song. The two men waited till it was clear that the play was over, and Wilcox took his headphones off and got up.

“Now I’ll leave you in peace to listen to the news,” he said, taking the thin steel strip out of the recording machine, “while I go and see if I can worry this out.”

The next morning there was a conference on the subject attended by Wilcox and his immediate superior, also an elderly Colonel called up by telephone from the Sussex cottage to which he had retired when he left the War Office years before.

“The code in which these messages were sent,” said Wilcox, rustling papers, “was used during the late war by an agent of ours named Reck, who was science master of a school at Mülheim, near Cologne.”

“I remember,” said the Colonel. “A queer dry old stick. I only saw him once or twice. He never came to England unless it was really urgent, he had become so German that he could hardly speak English at all—he had forgotten it. Very useful man on his job.”

“Where is Reck now?”

“Dead. He took to drink, was removed to an asylum at Mainz, and died there,” answered Wilcox.

“Either Reck is not dead,” said Authority, “or he was careless enough to leave his code behind him and somebody has found it.”

“He went out of his mind,” said the Colonel. “I am sure of that, for I kept an eye on him. Denton went to see him once and said the poor old fellow complained of bright seraphim crawling up the walls.”

“Dear me,” said the senior officer present, “how very superior. I thought it was usually snakes in bathing costumes wearing straw hats and playing banjoes.”

“He may well have mislaid his code,” said Wilcox. “I am sure it was not he who was transmitting. In any case, the question remains, who sent the message? Because at the best of times he only coded and sent messages, he did not originate them.”

“If it is genuine,” said the Foreign Office man, “it is probably somebody who was in touch with Reck in the old days. Is there anyone who went missing without trace and may have turned up again?”

“Plenty,” said the Colonel sadly, “but not, as it happens, connected with Reck. Let me see. Hall died in England after the war. Inglis is in an asylum in the Midlands, poor devil. Saunders was shot in Hampshire. Beckett runs a chicken farm in Dorset. Denton is in the Balkans, and has been for the last couple of years. Hambledon was drowned. MacVicar is in an engineering works on Tyneside. Thorpe is married and living quietly in Salisbury. No, none of Reck’s contacts are what you’d call missing. May I hear the messages again?”

“The message was in four parts, in intervals in the play, you understand,” said Wilcox. “The first was merely the call-sign repeated. Next came, ‘T-L-T. British agent in Germany begs to report thinks he may be of assistance.’ Then, ‘Your agent Arnold Heckstall will be delivered at Belgian frontier April 5th.’ Finally, ‘Information in diplomatic bag reaching London April 6th.’ That’s all.”

“April 5th,” said Wilcox’s superior, “is Wednesday next; to-day’s Saturday. I have instructed the British Embassy in Berlin to watch their diplomatic bag like a mother brooding over her sick child. They may find somebody trying to do something to it.”

“Otherwise,” said the Colonel, “there’s nothing for it but to wait and see what what’s-his-name—Hinkson?—has to say, that is, if he turns up.”

“Heckstall,” said the Foreign Office man. “We knew, of course, that they had gathered him in. We did not expect—er—a happy issue out of his afflictions.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Wilcox.

In Berlin there had been another conference between the heads of the police. “This fellow Heckstall,” said the Chief, “is a nuisance. I am perfectly certain he is an English agent.”

“Shoot him, then,” said the Deputy Chief cheerfully.

“I would with pleasure, but there have been too many Englishmen dying of heart-failure in Germany lately. They will not always believe it, and our Leader does not wish for trouble over it. There was that curate, who would have believed he really was?”

“The curate rankles with you, my dear Niehl.”

“I do not like to be misinformed,” said Niehl stiffly.

“Had I been in office at that time it would not have occurred,” said his subordinate soothingly. “In future we will be more careful with curates. Returning to Heckstall, leave him to me, I will manage him.”

“I should be very glad, my dear Lehmann. What plan had you in your mind?”

“If a man is put over the frontier at a quiet spot and found shot on Belgian territory in the morning, what business is it of ours?”

The third footman at the British Embassy brought a scuttle of coal into the Ambassador’s room, and made up the fire during His Excellency’s temporary absence. There were a number of papers on the table, some already tied into bundles for the diplomatic bag for London. The footman glanced hastily at the door, drew a long envelope from inside his coat, pushed it into the middle of one of these bundles, and immediately left the room as the Ambassador returned to it.

The conference at the Foreign Office was resumed in the evening of April 6th with one addition to the previous company, the British agent, Arnold Heckstall, who had flown from Brussels that afternoon.

“I was picked up in Berlin on the evening of the day I got there,” he said, “and consigned to gaol. That was on Wednesday, March the 22nd. They came and hauled me out for questioning occasionally, but it was not too drastic. Then yesterday evening some S.S. men came in, an officer and three others, and removed me. I thought I was going to be bumped off, of course, but they pushed me into a car and we drove to the Tempelhof Aerodrome. A plane was all ready, so we took off and flew for about two hours and came down near Aachen. There were some more S.S. men there, and we all got into Mercédès cars, four of them, with the officer, two others and myself in the second, and started off again. It was then something after midnight and perfectly dark, but we went through Aachen, which I recognized, that was how I knew where we were. They had refused to answer my questions, or, indeed, to speak to me at all except to give me orders. Some time later the cars all came to a standstill, and in the headlights of the first I saw a frontier marking post at the side of the road just ahead. The officer got out and ordered the cars to be turned round to face the way we had come, which was done.”

Heckstall paused for a moment with an odd little smile and then continued.

“They came and told me to get out of the car, which I did. As there were about six of them pointing automatics at me, there did not seem to be much I could do about it. Two of them took me by the arms and marched me along the road towards the frontier, with the officer following behind. At the mark post he sent these two men back and told me to walk on, with him just behind prodding me with his automatic.

“When we were out of earshot of the rest of the party—we must have been out of sight too, in the darkness—he said, ‘Keep on moving ahead of me, don’t look round. When you hear two shots behind you, run like blazes. Remember what I’m saying, it’s important. Don’t come back. Officially you’re dead, so don’t let anyone at home see you, either. Go somewhere quiet and keep silkworms, and give my love to the Only Girl in the World!’ He spoke the last five words in English with a strong German accent.”

“Silkworms,” said the retired Colonel thoughtfully.

“He said silkworms, sir.”

“Go on, please.”

“Then he fired two shots and I ran like blazes, as he said. I glanced back once or twice and could see him walking back to the cars, he was silhouetted against the lighted road. I did not know where I was except that it must be Belgium, but after wandering about for miles in the dark I reached Limburg at about 4 a.m., got an early train for Brussels and flew back by the first available plane.”

“Yes,” said his Foreign Office chief slowly, “we were hoping you would.”

“B-but——”

“We were told you would be released on the sixth.”

Heckstall merely stared at him.

“Tell me, did you see this officer plainly? What was he like?”

“Oh, quite plainly. Rather a nondescript little man, grey eyes, rather ginger hair going grey, short but not fat, thin face with duelling scars across his right cheek, quick, energetic walk, rather a pleasant voice, cheerful-looking fellow, looked as though he could see a joke. Short nose, wide mouth rather thin-lipped, square jaw. He was evidently someone very important, his men fairly jumped to it when he spoke.”

“Duelling scars,” said Wilcox. “Evidently a pukka German.”

“Which year,” asked the Colonel, “was that song about the Only Girl in the World popular?”

“ ‘The Bing Boys’? Oh, about ’16,” said Wilcox.

“I am sorry to have come back without the information, sir,” said Heckstall.

“We got that to-day,” said his chief unexpectedly.

The startled Heckstall stared at him for the second time and slowly coloured to his eyes. “It came in the diplomatic bag from the British Embassy in Berlin to-day,” the Foreign Office man went on. “It was written—or rather, typed—on British Embassy notepaper, enclosed in an official envelope, and tied up with a number of confidential documents about another rather important matter which we’d rather they hadn’t read. And all this in spite of the fact that not only was the bag not tampered with—and it was not left unwatched for a single instant—but no attempt was made at any time to approach it. The King’s Messenger assures me of that.”

“Reminds me of Maskelyne and Devant,” said the Colonel.

“I suppose,” said Wilcox, who had been rubbing his hand over his head till his hair stood straight on end like a scrubbing-brush, “the Messenger is all right?”

“I’ll have him watched, shall I?” said his harassed superior. “And the Ambassador too, while I’m about it? Wilcox, I haven’t seen you do that since ’17.”

“I’ve had no occasion,” said Wilcox. “Any suggestions, Colonel?”

“No,” said the War Office man slowly. “Only—Reck used to keep silkworms.”