Читать книгу Number 70, Berlin: A Story of Britain's Peril - Le Queux William - Страница 2

At nine o’clock that same evening, in a well-furnished drawing-room half-way up Fitzjohn’s Avenue, in Hampstead, a pretty, blue-eyed, fair-haired girl of twenty-one sat at the piano alone, playing a gay French chanson, to pass away the time.

Dressed in a dainty little dinner-gown of carnation pink, and wearing in her well-dressed hair a touch of velvet to match, she presented a pretty picture beneath the shaded electric-light which fell over the instrument set in a corner.

Her mother, Mrs Shearman, a charming, grey-haired lady, had just gone out, while her father, Daniel Shearman, a rich tool-manufacturer, whose works were outside Birmingham, was away at the factory, as was his habit three days each week.

Elise Shearman was just a typical athletic English girl. In her early youth her parents were “making their way in the world,” but at fourteen she had been sent abroad to school, first to Lausanne, and afterwards to Dresden, where she had studied music, as so many English girls have done.

On her return to Hampstead, whither her father had removed from the grime and toil of work-a-day Birmingham, she found her home very dull. Because the Shearmans were manufacturers, the snobbishness of Hampstead, with its “first Thursdays,” would have nothing to do with them; though, if the truth were told, Dan Shearman could have bought up most of his neighbours in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, and was a sterling good Englishman into the bargain – which could not be said of some of those slippery, smooth-tongued City adventurers who resided behind the iron railings of that select thoroughfare.

Running her slim white hands over the keys, she began the gay refrain of one of the chansonettes which she had learned in Paris – one of the gay songs of the boulevards, which was, perhaps, not very apropos for young ladies, but which she often sang because of its gay, blithe air – Belloche’s “L’Eventail Parisien.”

In her sweet, musical treble she sang gaily —

And then, with a swing and go, she sang the chorus —

Hardly had she concluded the final line when the door opened and a tall, dark-haired, good-looking young man entered, crossed to her, and, placing his hand upon her shoulder, bent and kissed her fondly.

“Why, Jack, dear – you really are late!” the girl exclaimed. “Were you kept at the office?”

“Yes, dearest,” was his answer. “Or rather I had some work that I particularly wanted to finish, so I stayed behind.”

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a pair of keen, merry brown eyes, a handsome face with high, intelligent brow, as yet unlined by care, a small, dark moustache, and a manner as courteous towards a woman as any diplomat accredited to the Court of St. James.

Jack Sainsbury, though merely an employee of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, a man who went by “Tube” to the City each morning and returned each night to the modest little flat in Heath Street, at which his sister Jane acted as housekeeper for him, was an honest, upright Englishman who had, in the first month of the war, done his duty and gone to the recruiting office of the Honourable Artillery Company to enlist.

A defective elbow-joint had prevented him passing the doctor. And though no one in the office knew he had tried to join the new army, he had returned to the City and continued his soul-killing avocation of adding figures and getting out totals.

His meeting with Elise Shearman was not without its romantic side.

One Sunday morning, two years before, he had been riding his motor-cycle up to Hatfield, as was his habit, to meet at the Red Lion – that old inn that is the rendezvous of all motor-cyclists – the men and women who come out there each Sunday morning, wet or fine, from London. Fine cars, driven by their owners, turn into the inn-yard all the morning, but the motor-cyclist ignores them. It is the meeting-place of the man on the cycle.

One well-remembered Sunday morning Elise, who was advanced enough to put on a Burberry with a leather strap around her waist and sit astride on a motor-cycle, was careering up the North Road beyond Barnet when, of a sudden, she swerved to avoid a cart, and ran headlong into a ditch.

At the moment Jack Sainsbury, who chanced to be behind her, stopped, sprang off, and went to her assistance.

She lay in the ditch with her arm broken. Quickly he obtained medical aid, and eventually brought her home to Fitzjohn’s Avenue, where he had, with her father’s knowledge and consent, been a constant visitor ever since.

Jack Sainsbury, whose father, and his family before him, had been gentlemen-farmers for two centuries in Leicestershire, was, above all, a thorough-going Englishman. He was no smug, get-on-at-all-hazards person of the consumptive type one meets at every turn in the City. On the contrary, he was a well-set-up, bold, straightforward, fearless fellow who, though but a clerk in a City office, was one of that clean-limbed, splendid type which any girl would have welcomed as her hero.

What Jack Sainsbury said, he meant. His colleagues in the office knew that. They all regarded him as a man of high ideals, and as one whose heart had, ever since the war, been fired with a keen and intense spirit of patriotism.

That Elise Shearman loved him could be seen at the first moment when he had opened the door and crossed the threshold. Her eyes brightened, and her full, red lips puckered sweetly as she returned his fond, passionate kisses.

Yes, they loved each other. Elise’s parents knew that. Sometimes they were anxious, for Dan Shearman felt that it would not be altogether a brilliant match, as far as an alliance went. Yet Mrs Shearman, on her part, had so often pleaded, that no separation of the pair had, as yet, been demanded. Hence they found idyllic happiness in each other’s love.

“You seem unusually thoughtful to-night, Jack!” exclaimed the girl, tenderly smoothing his hair as they stood together clasped in each other’s arms.

“Do I?” he answered with a start. “I really didn’t know,” he laughed, aroused from his deep thoughts.

“You are, Jack. Why?”

“I – well, I’m really not – except perhaps – ”

“Perhaps what?” asked Elise determinedly.

“Well, I had rather a heavy day at the office,” was her lover’s hesitating reply. “And I’ve just remembered something.”

“Oh! business. And that’s all?”

“Yes, business, dearest,” was his reply. “I must apologise if my thoughts were, for the moment, far away,” he laughed.

“You’re like father,” said the girl. “He sits by the fire sometimes for a quarter of an hour at a stretch staring into it, and thinking of his horrid business affairs. But of course business is an obsession with him.”

“Perhaps when I’m your father’s age it will be an obsession with me,” replied Jack Sainsbury.

“I sincerely hope it won’t,” she said, with a smile upon her pretty lips.

“It won’t, if I’m able to make sufficient money to keep you properly, darling,” was the young man’s fervent answer, as he bent until his moustache lightly brushed her cheek.

Truth to tell, he was reflecting seriously. For hours he had thought over those strange words he had overheard on entering the boardroom that afternoon.

Those astounding words of Lewin Rodwell’s were, in themselves, an admission – a grave and terrible admission.

Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were engaged in a great conspiracy, and he – Jack Sainsbury – was the only person who knew the ghastly truth.

Those two highly patriotic men, whose praises were being sung by every newspaper up and down the country; whose charitable efforts had brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds and hundreds of tons of comforts for our troops abroad; the two men whose photographs were in every journal, and whom the world regarded as fine typical specimens of the honest Briton, men who had raised their voices loudly against German barbarism and intrigue, were, Jack Sainsbury knew, wearing impenetrable masks. They were traitors!

He alone knew the truth – a truth so remarkable and startling that, were it told and published to the world, Great Britain would stand aghast and bewildered at the revelation. It was inconceivable, incredible. At times he felt himself doubting what he had really heard with his own ears. Yet it had been Rodwell’s voice, and the words had been clear and distinct, a confession of guilt that was as plain as it was damning.

Sir Boyle had, from his seat in the House of Commons, risen time after time and denounced the policy of the Government in not interning every enemy alien in the country; he had heckled the Home Secretary, and had exposed cases of German intrigue; he had demanded that rigorous action should be taken against the horde of German spies in our midst, and had spoken up and down the country warning the Government and the people of the gravity of the spy-peril, and that British citizens would take the law in their own hands if drastic measures were not taken to crush out the enemy in our midst.

Yet that afternoon – by no seeking of his own – Jack Sainsbury had learnt a truth which, even hours after the words had fallen upon his ears, left him staggered and astounded.

He knew the secret of those two great and influential men.

What should he do? How should he act?

Such was the cause of his marked thoughtfulness that night – an attitude which Elise had not failed to notice and which considerably puzzled her.

Mrs Shearman, a pleasant-faced, grey-haired and prosperous-looking lady, who spoke with a strong Lancashire accent, entered the room a few moments later, and the pair, springing aside at the sound of her footsteps, pretended to be otherwise occupied, much to the elder lady’s amusement.

After greeting Jack the old lady sat down with him, while Elise, at her mother’s request, returned to the piano and began to sing Léon Garnier’s “Sublime Caresse,” with that catchy refrain so popular on the boulevards of Paris and in cafés in every town in France —

Elise, who spoke French excellently, was extremely fond of the French chansonette, and knew a great many. Her lover spoke French quite well also, and very frequently when they were together in the “tube” or train they conversed in that language so that the every-day person around them should not understand.

To speak a foreign language amid the open mouths of the ignorant is always secretly amusing, but not so amusing as to the one person who unfortunately sits opposite and who knows that language even more perfectly than the speaker – I was about to write “swanker.”

In that drawing-room of the red-brick Hampstead residence – where the road is so steep that the vulgar London County Council Tramways have never attempted to invade it, and consequently it is a “desirable residential neighbourhood” according to the house-agents’ advertisements – Jack and Elise remained after Mrs Shearman had risen and left. For another quarter of an hour they chatted and kissed wholeheartedly, for they loved each other fondly and dearly. Then, at ten o’clock, Jack rose to go. It was his hour, and he never overstepped the bounds of propriety. From the first he had felt himself a mere clerk on the forbidden ground of the successful manufacturer’s home. Dan Shearman, honest, outspoken and square, had achieved Hampstead as a stepping-stone to Mayfair or Belgravia. To Jack Sainsbury – the man of the fine old yeoman stock – the refinement of the red-brick and laurels of Hampstead was synonymous with taste and breeding. To him the dull aristocracy of the London squares was unknown, and therefore unregarded.

How the people born in society laugh at Tom, Dick and Harry, with their feminine folk, who, in our world of make-believe, are struggling and fighting with one another to be regarded by the world as geniuses. Money can bring everything – all the thousand attributes this world can give – all except breeding and brains.

Breed, even in the idiot, and brains in the pauper’s child, will always tell.

When Jack Sainsbury descended the steps into Fitzjohn’s Avenue and strode down the hill to Swiss Cottage station, he was full of grave and bitter thoughts.

As an Englishman and a patriot, what was his line of action? That was the sole thought which filled his mind. He loved Elise with every fibre of his being, yet, on that evening, greater and even more serious thoughts occupied his mind – the safety of the British Empire.

To whom should he go? In whom dare he confide?

As he crossed from the Avenue to the station, another thought arose within him. Would anybody in whom he confided really believe what he could tell them?

Lewin Rodwell and Sir Boyle Huntley were national heroes – men against whom no breath of suspicion as traitors had ever arisen. It was the habit of the day to laugh at any suspicion of Britain’s betrayal – an attitude which the Government had carefully cultivated ever since the outbreak of war. On that day the Chief of the Military Operations Department of the War Office – in other words our Secret Service – had been – for reasons which will one day be revealed – promoted and sent to the front, leaving the Department in the hands of others fresh to the work.

Such, alas! was the British Intelligence Department – an organisation laughed at by the Secret Services of each of our Allies.

The folly of it all was really pathetic.

Jack Sainsbury knew much of this. He had, indeed, been, through Dr Jerome Jerrold, a friend of his, behind the scenes. Like all the world, he had read the optimistic, hide-the-truth newspapers. Often he had smiled in disbelief. Yet, on that afternoon, his worst fears had in a single instant been confirmed. He knew the volcano upon the edge of which Great Britain was seated.

What should he do? How should he act?

In the narrow booking-office of Swiss Cottage station he stood for a moment, hesitating to take his ticket.

Of a sudden an idea crossed his mind. He knew a certain man – his intimate friend. Could he help him? Dare he reveal his suspicions without being laughed at for his pains?

Yes. He would risk being derided, because the safety of the Empire was now at stake.

After all, he – Jack Sainsbury – was a well-bred Briton, without a strain of the hated Teutonic blood in his veins.

He would speak the truth, and expose that man who was so cleverly luring the Empire to its doom.

He passed before the little pigeonhole of the booking-office and took his ticket – an action which was destined to have a greater bearing upon our national defence than any person even with knowledge of the facts could ever dream.