Читать книгу The Day, or The Passing of a Throne - Fred M. White - Страница 3

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The two men in the back room behind the little Italian pastrycook's shop in Stanton-street were making history. As yet they did not know it; they were to find it out later on. The elder of the two, the man with the grey moustache ferociously cooked and the cook's cap on the back of his head, was known locally as Manuel Serano, and his younger companion as Luigi Serrai; but as a matter of fact the leader was Stuart Hallett, of the Secret Service, and the other Paul Rosslyn, his chief assistant. It was what they called early closing day so that they were free to discuss the knotty problem which had been worrying them for the past month.

"Now what do you make of it?" Hallett asked. "Have you got any further with the cipher? I suppose you are quite convinced that somebody is working a pretty powerful wireless within the four-mile radius. The question is. Can you locate it?"

"I believe I have done so," Rosslyn said quietly. "But don't you think, sir, it would be a mistake to raid the place? Those people are quite convinced that we have overlooked them and that their code is absolutely beyond detection. Well it isn't. As you know, I haven't been making a study of wireless in connection with aeroplanes the last three years for nothing. Now I believe I've got one of last night's messages decoded."Rosslyn took from his pocket what appeared to be a mass of mathematical formula. As he explained the position and value of certain letters and figures, Hallett nodded approvingly. A few moments later and he was reading for himself the last message dispatched from the mysterious wireless station on the previous evening. He read the message aloud, slowly and carefully thus:—

"The Mailed Fist is torn and bruised. The steel gauntlet is filled with its wearer's blood. The time has come to cut it off."

There was no more than that but Hallett laughed aloud in the sheer joy of discovery. He patted Rosslyn on the back.

"Egad, the chap who sent that message is right there. For three months now the Mailed Fist has been hammering against Liege and Namur and the French advance until every nuckle is broken. By gad, who would have thought three months ago that little Belgium could have held the Mad Dog by his tongue all this time. And what would the German people say if they knew the truth?"

"Heaven only knows. It strikes me that the man who sent that message wants them to know. Any way we are aware of the fact that he is a German and evidently no friend of the tin Napoleon. No; my theory is this. Somewhere in the City these people have got an office, or perhaps an whole building. It would be a building preferably which carried on the roof a telephone standard sustaining a hundred or two wires. Now you can quite see how easy it would be to mix up the aerial with these. If you have a dynamo in the basement with sufficient power you could send messages any practical distance—certainly as far as Berlin, which is what our mysterious friend seems to be aiming at."

"Wouldn't the game be spotted?" Hallett asked.

"I don't think so. Let us suppose that the basement is occupied by a firm of engineers or motor agents, anything to give them a plausible excuse for running machinery night and day. I don't want to be unduly sanguine, but I believe I have found the place; anyhow I shall know for certain to-morrow. The question is are we going to raid the show, or wouldn't it pay us better to lie low for a bit now that the cipher is no longer a secret to us? I should like to hear your opinion."

"Festina lente," Hallett said, "I think you are right. Anyhow there is nothing more to be done for the moment, and now you can go off and dine with your friend Pierre Leroux and that charming daughter of his. My dear boy, there is no reason why you should grin so uncomfortably. She is a most beautiful and fascinating girl, and when you get the authorities to see the beauties of that now silent aeroplane engine of yours you will be able to pose as a millionaire. And now good-night, and a pleasant evening to you."

Rosslyn laughed as he removed his baker's cap and big white apron, and revealed his dress clothes below. A great deal of information had found its way to the War Office through the little pastry cook's shop, and as yet nobody had guessed the identity of the two men who posed as Italian pastrycooks. Many a spy had been tracked in this way, and many a danger removed. But for the moment Rosslyn put all this out of his mind. He was not concerning himself with the troubles of Germany and the hideous breakdown of the Kaiser's plan. He knew that the war could have but one end, he knew that Germany was being slowly strangled between the locked arms of France and Russia, and that the silent sentinels guarding the Seven Seas were bringing the Teuton to his knees in the throes of starvation. But that mysterious wireless worried him. What manner of man, he asked himself, was it who flung these messages out upon the air, and what was his feeling towards Germany? It sounded like one revolutionary calling to another. It might have been a warning to Berlin, sign for the beginning of strife, the trumpet blast summoning a nation to free itself from the grip of a tyrant. Like other men who knew the truth, Rosslyn had no enmity in his heart for Germany as a nation. He knew perfectly well that she would never have gone to war had she not been dragged into it by the visionary at Potsdam and the gang who flattered him and fooled him to the top of his bent. He had every sympathy for a country brow beaten and held in bondage by a madman. He knew that the destruction of Germany would be the ruin of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen who had their money invested there. He knew that Germany wiped out would mean a dislocation of trade so great that the whole world would reel before it. And in a way his heart went out to the man who was evidently trying to tell Berlin the truth which was being so sedulously suppressed.

Still he would know to-morrow for certain, perhaps to-night if one of his trusted subordinates was successful in obtaining certain information. He was feeling pleased with the world in general as he rang the door bell of the flat in Medhurst-gardens.