The Second Victorian Mystery Megapack, page 68
In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
“Patience,” he muttered; “patience! By ten tonight all will be dark. There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!”
At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear, of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these the sea was empty.
By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver of the char à banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well known and well liked.
Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees. Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him. But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn. In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
“I have been in constant communication,” said the man with the beard. “They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: ‘Will meet you tomorrow at the Crystal Palace.’ On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of this afternoon’s papers, he will insert the final advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will know the moment has come!”
As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf balls.
“A nation of wasters,” muttered the German, “sleeping at their posts. They are fiddling while England falls!”
Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It was nine o’clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms, and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr. Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
“Du bist gefangen!” he announced. “Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere Leute?” he demanded.
“You’ll ’ave to excuse me, sir,” said Mr. Shutliffe, “but I am a trifle ’ard of ’earing.”
The soldier addressed him in English.
“What is the name of this village?” he demanded.
Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years, recalled its name with difficulty.
“Have you seen any of our people?”
With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
“Go indoors!” commanded the soldier, “And put out all lights, and remain indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner! Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, thank’ee, sir, kindly,” stammered Mr. Shutliffe. “May I lock in the pigs first, sir?”
One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
“That was a fine start!” mocked Herbert. “Of course, you had to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had better pack up and go home.”
“The village inn is still open,” said Ford. “We’ll close It.”
They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the occasion.
“Now, then,” she exclaimed briskly, “What way is that to come tumbling into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young fellow, my lad, or—”
The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents, interrupted her sharply.
“We are Germans!” he declared. “This village is captured. You are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in. If you into the street go, we will shoot!”
He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
“You ass!” muttered the tall German. “Get out!”
As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
“That will hold Stiffkey for a while!” said Ford. “Now, back to the car.”
But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
“The constable!” whispered Herbert. “He must see us, but he mustn’t speak to us.”
For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into Stiffkey’s main street and halted before the constable. The driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
“Mr. Policeman,” he began; “when I turned in here three soldiers stepped in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward the beach. What’s the idea—manoeuvres? Because, they’ve no right to—”
“Yes, sir,” the policeman assured him promptly; “I saw them. It’s manoeuvres, sir. Territorials.”
“They didn’t look like Territorials,” objected the chauffeur. “They looked like Germans.”
Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal a grin.
“Just Territorials, sir,” he protested soothingly; “skylarking maybe, but meaning no harm. Still, I’ll have a look round, and warn ’em.”
A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
“I tell you, they were Germans. It’s either a silly joke, or it’s serious, and you ought to report it. It’s your duty to warn the Coast Guard.”
The constable considered deeply.
“I wouldn’t take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard,” he protested; “not at this time of the night. But if any Germans’ been annoying you, gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me your cards—”
“Ye gods!” cried the man in the rear of the car. “Go on!” he commanded.
As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
“What’s the use!” he protested. “You couldn’t wake these people with dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home.”
“They little know of England who only Stiffkey know,” chanted the chauffeur reprovingly. “Why, we haven’t begun yet. Wait till we meet a live wire!”
Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the job-master’s son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road—and in the light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
“Put out that light,” he commanded. “Go to your home and tell no one what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot. Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road.”
The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding over the cliff’s edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below. Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear—fear of laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly, silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney, sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud. As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained to Ford, were intended to give “verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” And the sighing of the bullets gave young Bradshaw exactly what he wanted—the assurance that he was not the victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then closing in his wake.
“Have you seen any—any soldiers?” he demanded.
“German soldiers!” Ford answered. “They tried to catch us, but when I saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and—”
“How many—and where?”
“A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We didn’t know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You’d better telephone the garrison, and—”
“Thank you!” snapped the elderly gentleman. “I happen to be in command of this district. What are your names?”
Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
“I’ve no time for that!” he called. “We’ve got to warn every coast town in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!”
As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
“We’ve got them guessing,” he said. “Now, what we want is a live wire, some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the countryside.”
“Looks ahead there,” said Birrell, “as though it hadn’t gone to bed.”
Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, “trippers” in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
“What’s this tale about Germans?” he demanded jocularly.
“You can see their lights from the beach,” said Ford. “They’ve landed two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they’ve cut all the wires south.”
The proprietor refused to be “had.”
“Let ’em all come!” he mocked.
“All right,” returned Ford. “Let ’em come, but don’t take it lying down! Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the Germans back! Gangway,” he shouted, and the car shot forward. “We warned you,” he called, “And it’s up to you to—”
His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man’s voice rose with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated cheer.
Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his seat.
“This thing is going to fail!” he cried petulantly. “They don’t believe us. We’ve got to show ourselves—many times—in a dozen places.”
“The British mind moves slowly,” said Birrell, the Irishman. “Now, if this had happened in my native land—”
He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished into the night.
“Things are looking up!” said Ford. “Where is our next stop? As I said before, what we want is a live one.”
Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
“We are next billed to appear,” he said, “about a quarter of a mile from here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his life.”
The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that, when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. “You are a prisoner,” he said. “We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get out!”
As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument. Ford flung his rifle upon it.
“No, you don’t!” he growled. “Get out!”
With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
“My pay—my month’s pay?” he stammered. “Can I take It?”
The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
“Take it and get out,” Ford commanded.
With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the papers inside.
“Quick!” cried Ford.
The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake, and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy’s shoulders, Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to shout: “Don’t touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!”
For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the shoulder.
“Your last remark,” he said, “was that what we wanted was a live one.”
“Don’t mention it!” said Ford. “He jammed that gun half down my throat. I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?”
“According to the route we mapped out this afternoon,” said Herbert, “We are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse and Weybourne, but—”
“Not with me!” exclaimed Birrell fiercely. “Those towns have been tipped off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to believe him, and they’ll call out the navy.”
Herbert consulted his map.
“There is a Coast Guard,” he said, “stationed just the other side of Morston. And,” he added fervently, “let us hope he’s lonely.”
They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars, nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon fires burning fiercely.
Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
“Since seeing those fires,” he explained, “I feel a strange reluctance about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard.”
“Coast Guards don’t shoot!” mocked Birrell. “They only look at the clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope.”
