CHAPTER XI.

THE MURDERERS

In the latter days of March, 1915, I had received a communication from Headquarters which was contained in a box of Dutch cigars forwarded to me from Rotterdam. It was written to me on the usual grey paper and was neatly sandwiched between the two thin pieces of wood which formed the bottom of the box. You would never think of splitting the bottom of a cigar-box into two shavings in order to discover a message from the Political Intelligence Department, would you? Such was German ingenuity.

The communication may be given in full:

Kriegsministerium, Berlin. _March_ 12, 1915.

By order of Section 10, Politik, Great General Staff.

There go to England, on March 16, two men

(1) Carl Jan Kattz

(2) Rudolph Kister

convicts from the Imperial Prison at Dresden under sentence for (1) Murder and robbery, (2) Dangerous wounding and burglary. These two men speak English and are acquainted with English life and conditions. They are released on condition that they place themselves at the disposal of the Chief of the Intelligence Bureau in London. These men may be depended upon to perform the most desperate acts. They will be placed on the pay-list of the C. of I., London, at 20 marks each per diem and 10 marks each per diem for normal expenses. The C. of I., London, will not hesitate to shoot either man in the event of his failure to carry out orders.

Here is an instance of the common spirit of sacrifice which runs through our dear Deutschland! All for the Fatherland! Noble born, well born, _burglich_, peasant--even the convict in his sad and gloomy cell pleaded to serve the Empress of Nations, the new Byzantium of Kultur! Yea, from the very dungeon rose the cry of the patriot; into the deeps of misery had the clarion call reached, and roused from the slimes of decadence the pure flame-soul of Germanism!

I confess that my first care was to keep this precious pair of rascals as far away from me as possible. I could not have such hang-dog cut-throats haunting my office, and I sent Wilhelm Peters to meet them and instal them in lodgings in Coventry--which was one of the towns I was not likely to visit.

Wilhelm informed me that they preferred to go to Wednesbury, as they were both acquainted with glass-working and there were two or three glass factories in that town at which they could work. I made arrangements for them to receive their weekly stipends, registered their addresses, and sent them the card code (which was ingeniously got up in the form of a time-table) and dismissed them from my thoughts with the earnest hope that it would never be necessary to utilize their services.

For we Germans abhor deeds of darkness and violence. Who has looked through the spectacles of a serious German boy and has seen his clear and honest blue eyes shining thoughtfully, could ever question either the gentleness of his disposition or the transparency of his motives. We hate deceit and cruelty, we shrink from the infliction of needless pain and exalt the fulfilment of the law to a worship.

So I shuddered and passed from my mind all thought of Carl Jan Kattz and Rudolph Kister. And yet, despite this innate tenderness of ours, we Germans are all granite and iron. When we set ourselves to the accomplishment of a task we are not to be arrested by parsnip-buttering words or even the allurement of the most indecorous siren, as you shall see. I have referred to the assistance I offered to our gallant Zeppelins by the triangle of lights.

One of these light stations was arranged in the stable-yard of a good Polish friend named Jabowski. The yard was a small one shut in on three sides by very high walls, and on the fourth by the stable (Jabowski was a tailor in a large way of business and employed two carts for the collection and distribution of goods.) He hated the English, who had treated him very scurvily and had prosecuted him for some small breaches of the Factory Act, and he was, in consequence of his tyranny-hatred, and for a very handsome sum I paid him, willing to show the light--a motor head-lamp coloured green.

One night after a raid was expected Jabowski came to see me. I had just got back from an over-night trip to Bristol and I was eager for news. He seemed puzzled and troubled.

“Was there a raid?” I asked.

“Well, Herr Heine,” he said, “there was--but it was the most curious raid we have had. I came to tell you about it.”

“Proceed, Jabowski,” said I graciously, although he was a man of the lowest social order.

“At eleven o’clock last night my son and I were standing in the yard, watching the lamp and listening for the footfall of a policeman outside, when we heard distinctly the noise of an airship. It grew nearer and nearer until the sound was terrific and I could hear the people in the street scurrying away to their houses. I looked up, as did my son, but I could see nothing. Whatever it was passed overhead and when immediately over something fell with a thud--right in the centre of the yard!”

“A bomb?”

“No, gracious Herr--it was a big paper bag which was evidently filled with a sort of yellow vere. Thinking it was a new kind of poison or some diabolical----”

“Ingenious is the word, Jabowski,” I interrupted.

“Exactly, gracious sir, some ingenious form of explosive, I did not attempt to remove it until this morning. I gathered most of it up but it was impossible to remove the stain from the stones.”

“There were no bombs?”

“None,” replied Jabowski with emphasis, “the raider was heard by many people and, according to a policeman who came to see me this morning, these yellow bags have been dropped all over the neighbourhood.”

I was thoughtful.

What did these bags portend? Obviously there was a message of some kind, thought I, intended for me. That green light showed the raider that there was a friend in the neighbourhood and yet----

Whilst I was talking, there was a knock at the hall-door of my flat, and my servant (an excellent Swiss youth who had the good fortune to be born in Breslau, of German parents) announced that the two Mr. Geisslers wished to see me. I was amazed at the coincidence, for these two brothers were in charge of the other two lamps which completed the triangle.

“Show them into my bedroom, and I will come and see them, Adolph,” said I.

The Messrs. Geissler were bakers, and good friends of their Fatherland. One had a shop near Albany Park, and the other a bakehouse south of the Thames.

“Victor came over to see me this morning, Herr Heine,” explained Kurt Geissler, the elder of the two, “and as he has had the same curious experience that I had in last night’s raid, I thought we had better come along and see you.”

Briefly his narrative was on all four-legs with the story which Jabowski had told. They had heard the whirr of airship engines, and a bag of yellow dust had fallen, in Victor’s case upon the roof of the bakehouse, and in Kurt’s case on a chicken house in his back garden.

“The police say that these bags have fallen all over the South of London,” said Kurt.

“They’ve been dropped on north-west London too,” said Victor, and produced an envelope full of the stuff.

I looked at it without touching the powder. It was as fine as flour.

“You must leave me to think this matter out,” I said at last, and sent them on their way.

I was engaged in intensive cogitation half an hour later, when Major Haynes, of the British Intelligence Department, called. While I at first had resented his calling, I had now overcome my repugnance to meeting one who was engaged in such underhanded and sneaking work as the Military Intelligence Department condescend to do. We Germans have a delicate gorge, I tell you, and there were times when, remembering that his sly cunning had probably sent many, and had certainly sent two brave Germans to their death, I could scarcely bring myself to flatter him.

“Good morning, Mr. Major,” said I with a ready-adopted smile, “you are looking inside the pink this morning.”

“Good morning, Heine,” he said. He had called me “Heine” many times lately, and somehow I had never had the nerve to correct him. “Were you in the raid last night?”

“The raid?” I said in innocence--amazed. “I saw nothing about it in the papers--was there a raid?”

He laughed.

“So some people think,” he said, and then turning suddenly from the subject he asked, “What size gloves do you take?”

It was an extraordinary question. All my wits were working at top pressure. I was at my alertest, my mind reviewing all the circumstances which had attended my doings of the past week.

Had I left a finger-print in my visit to the Chetwell Munition Works, or dropped a glove on my recent conference with the executive of the Workers for World Peace?

“I take an eight or nine size,” I said deliberately.

“That would be much too large--show me your hands.”

I extended my hands.

Why did a cold and sickly feeling come to a certain digestive organ? Why did the beads of perspiration stand out on my brow? Why, in spite of a mental effort of the strongest, did my face blanch and my hand tremble?

Did I expect to hear the click of steel, and feel chill bands about my wrists, and hear the jangle of the link that holds the handcuffs together? Yet none of these things happened.

Mr., or Major, Haynes just took my hands in his and turned them over with the same delicacy of touch that I have observed in the German _haus-frau_ when she is buying fish, and turns over the soles on the stall to find the biggest.

“Yes--a seven,” said the major, and I thought there was a note of disappointment in his tone.

We chatted about the war for awhile and then he said good-bye and left me with two puzzles to solve instead of one.

Fortunately the rest of the day was so fully occupied with sheer routine work that I had not time to speculate upon the mystery of the Yellow Raid, as I called it.

I had started two new societies. The Brotherhood of Humanity and the Thinkers of Britain League, and these entailed an enormous amount of correspondence. The former society had as its motive the elimination of all wars; the latter was intended to bring together under one ægis that considerable body of students and tractarians who regarded frontier lines as artificial limitations set up to divide the many for the benefit of the few. They were promising plants, and though I hoped that Germany would never need to seek a peace but would so triumph in the field that she would be able to dictate her terms to greedy England, bare-legged Scotland, libertine France, and barbarian Russia, yet we Germans are habitually cautious.

That night I learnt from the usual quarter that the weather was propitious for a Zeppelin raid, and warned the “leaders” (the car drivers whose powerful head-lamps guided the Zeppelins to their destinations) and my signal friends before I left town by the 8.30 train for Bath. I got on the ’phone to London that night and discovered that no raid had occurred, and returned by the early morning train which reaches Paddington at 8.30. My new assistant, Mr. Wilhelm Peters, was waiting for me at the flat.

“Bad news, Herr Heine,” he said.

“Tell me,” I replied.

“Jabowski and the two Geisslers were arrested last night in the act of signalling.”

That was bad news indeed. I learnt that they had been raided practically at the same hour by three parties of police, and had been taken to Scotland Yard.

“I have been all night at work making inquiries,” said Peters, “and I have discovered how they were detected.”

“Betrayed, of course,” said I, but to my surprise Wilhelm shook his head.

“They betrayed themselves,” he said, “the raid of the previous night was not a raid at all. The noise they heard was that of an English dirigible balloon flying at a very low altitude. It was up looking for signal lights, and detected Jabowski’s light first. It flew over the yard and dropped a bag of yellow ochre as near the light as possible, and the following morning the police went round the neighbourhood with a story of a mysterious airship which had been throwing such things. When they said that the airship had dropped many they lied. There were only three bags dropped--on Jabowski and the two Geisslers. Once the stain of the ochre was discovered, the police had only to wait a favourable opportunity. The rumour of a coming raid was circulated all over London for the purpose of deceiving us.”

I saw the thing clearly now. So that was why Mr., or Major Haynes had come to my office. He thought that some of the yellow stuff would be brought to me for my inspection, and that I would handle it! So you are interested in the size of my gloves, my officer! So you would inspect my hands, thou artful man of low cunning!

But Heine had been too clever--too wide-awakened! I could not deny myself so much exhilaration of feeling, yet the position was a serious one. The Geisslers I could trust. But Jabowski! Here was a man without a country--a cringer, a born traitor, one who under pressure to save his own miserable skin, would not hesitate to betray me and the sacred cause for which I worked. Whatever doubts I had about the loyalty of Jabowski were removed when his son came to see me that afternoon.

This young Jabowski was about twenty-five years of age, very dark, with a curly head of hair and a long yellow face. He was dressed fashionably (and a little above his class) in a check suit and a yellow tie, and wore the diamond ring and scarf-pin that one would rather have expected on a German gentleman than on a Polish tailor! I was annoyed to see him.

“Why do you come here?” I asked, when he was shown into my room. “How dare you come to my apartments?”

“It’s all right, Heine, I wasn’t watched,” he said. “I came by Tube and what’s more, I waited till it was dark. I suppose you know that the old man’s pinched?”

“The old man pinched?” I said in astonishment-simulation. “What old man--and what pinch?”

“Oh, come off it,” he said coarsely, “you know what I’m talking about--my father, Mr. Jabowski.”

“For Mr. Jabowski I have the highest respect,” I said, “and I have had many dealings with him, strictly in the way of business. Do I understand he has been arrested? Dear, dear--I trust he has not been doing anything very naughty?”

The young man scowled at me.

“Look here!” he said with violence, “you know why he was pinched--for giving Zepp signals at your instructions.”

I sprang up.

“Shameless, lying Jew!” I cried in a great voice, “traducer of innocent truly-neutrals! How dare you--how dare you make so infamous an accusation? By heavens! I’ve a mind to grip you by the neck and your coat-tails, and hurl you from the window!”

I saw a look of fear creep into his eyes, but he did not budge from his contention.

“Have sense, Heine,” he pleaded, “can I allow my old man to be shot? It’s a terrible position for me, and I was getting married to a widow-lady with money too. The disgrace will kill me!”

“Your father can prove nothing against me,” I said, and the miserable fellow smiled.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, “the old man was too wide for you. ‘Jacob,’ says he to me, ‘this Prussian is so careful that he won’t put anything in writing. If I get into trouble, he’ll pretend he doesn’t know me, so when he comes this afternoon to talk things over in the stable yard, get your camera and take a snap of us together,’ and,” said the despicable young man in unmistakable tones of pleasure, “I’ve got that photograph to show the police unless you do something to get my father out of trouble.”

“Have you the photograph with you, my dear young man?” I asked with mildness.

“Am I nutty?” replied Jabowski, junior.

I promised to give him an answer that night. What could I do? To whom could I turn to secure the release of this misguided and fearfully threatening Pole? That he would betray me, I did not doubt, and the horror of the thought stunned me. But I had escaped graver perils. I had incurred the suspicions of the highest authorities and had yet won through. It was because I had tricked them with the bluff of the experienced player that I had escaped detection. Even Major Haynes believed that I was no more than a dupish fool--but would he believe as much on such an accusation supported by visible evidence of hob-nobbing with the dubious alien of Polish origin?

So they would trap me--me, Heine, who would not tread on a turning worm, unless it turned against the Fatherland. My gentle nature is notorious amongst my friends. The song of the skylark rising to the dawn, the mist of bluebells in the shadowy aisles of woods have made me cry like a child, and this dirty dog of a Jabowski would send such a man as Heine to the execution chair.

I sent a telegram to friends Kister and Kattz, at Wednesbury, telling them to report to me in my apartments, by the first train. If there were any burnt offerings required, it were better for the Fatherland that the sacrifices should be Polish.

Let me describe Kattz and Kister as I saw them when they came walking into my sitting-room.

Kattz was a thin man of about thirty-five. He was slightly bald, and he wore a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez. His face was thin and studious, with deep furrows and wrinkles. He reminded me of a bust I once saw of Dante.

He was quietly and respectably dressed, and his attitude and manner were subdued and respectful. His companion, Kister, was of stouter build, and he bore a facial resemblance to the English King Henry VIII. He was broad-featured, had a small moustache and trim beard, and a rosy complexion. Like his companion, he was quiet in speech and deportment.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” said I, greatly relieved by the uncriminal appearance of my agents. “I will open a bottle of good wine--in the meantime, help yourselves to the cigars.”

They seated themselves, and when they had been made comfortable, I briefly outlined the nature of my difficulty.

“So you see, gentlemen, my position,” I concluded, “these two men have the fate of our service in their hands.”

“They must be put out of the way,” said the jovial-faced Kister, “you agree, my dear Kattz?”

Mr. Kattz nodded.

“We can settle the younger man very easily,” he said, “you have his address, of course?” I inclined my head.

“You will probably find that he has the photograph in his pocket, in spite of his protest,” he went on. “I can get on to him to-night.”

He felt in his pocket and drew out a short length of cord, to the ends of which were fastened two small wooden handles. He unrolled the cord which was wound about the sticks and re-rolling it, returned the instrument to his pocket.

The jovial Mr. Kister frowned and shook his head.

“You know, my dear Kattz, I would not hurt your feelings, but I feel compelled to demur at that method of yours. I believe in this.”

With a dexterity which hardly seemed possible, he slipped a long-bladed knife from the inside of his waistcoat. I pushed my chair back a little.

“The knife or nothing, I say,” said he, “it is noiseless, it is instantly effective, it can be used in a crowd, and the victim will not utter a sound. Why?” he said, looking at me, “I once killed a friend of mine in the Wintergarten, in Berlin, surrounded by policemen, and they thought he had fainted!”

“A friend?” I said.

“When I say a friend,” said Mr. Kister apologetically, “I mean one who had been a friend. We fell out over a lady--you remember, Kattz.”

“A tight-rope walker,” said Kattz.

“Exactly. She was not worthy of the quarrel. I have often regretted my haste in the matter, for poor Joseph was a good fellow, and played _skat_ like a master.”

“I don’t think you should speak against the cord, Rudolph,” said Kattz, “you have probably only seen it used by a bungler. There are three men--there are two now, for Frederich Mullenheim laid down his life for the Fatherland at the Battle of Roye--who can use it. It is as silent as the knife, and I remember----”

My blood went cold as I listened to the exchanges of experience which went on between the two, and when Kister was using my waistcoat to illustrate what he called “the complete-silence stroke,” and Kattz was showing on my neck the exact spot where the carotid artery nearest approaches the cervical vertebræ, I thought matters had gone far enough.

“Make your own arrangements about young Jabowski,” I said hastily, “but how are you going to deal with the old man--he is safely in prison?”

“That I think is simple,” said Kattz, “we have been studying the prison system of England--naturally that interests us more than anything else, and we know the procedure. A prisoner on remand is allowed to have his meals sent in. I think there will be no difficulty in sending our friend something more than he will digest.”

“I will leave the matter entirely in your hands,” I said.

I gave them £10 and bade them report to me by telephone when their dread task was accomplished. I confess I spent a wretched night. How frail a thing is life! The snap of a thread and the veil is rent--a puff of wind and the serene flame goes out--a crack of a rifle and the accumulated genius and experience of forty years, a million memories and a million hopes, are dissipated to nothingness. How dreadful is that Visitation, I shuddered. I did not want to die. As for these two traitors, death would rid the world of much corporate infamy. The day came slowly, and I was up long before my servant.

There was nothing in the morning newspaper to tell of any happening such as I expected, but I could hardly expect to have news so soon.

I resolved to stay in my apartment till the afternoon, and it was ten o’clock that I heard a ring at the bell, and went hot and cold. I heard my servant go along the passage and open the door and presently came a knock.

“Come in,” I said, and to my surprise in walked young Jabowski.

His face was pale, his eyes were wild, and as for myself, I could frame no question.

“Oh, Mr. Heine, Mr. Heine,” he said imploringly, and I thought he was going to kneel at my feet, “give me another chance, give me another chance! Here is the photograph.”

His trembling hands searched for a pocket-book, which presently he produced. The book shook in his palsied fingers, but presently he mastered himself sufficiently to extract a small photograph which he handed to me. It was the photograph of myself and the ill-fated Jabowski.

“There, there is the evidence,” he gasped, “now do be a good friend and save me!”

“I hardly know what you mean,” I said coldly, “all that I know is that you came here yesterday and accused me of a crime from which my very soul revolts, disloyalty to the British Government, for the members of which I have the highest respect.”

“The old man will take his punishment without bleating,” he said, eagerly ignoring my reference to his wild conduct. “The lawyers say he will only get about twelve months’ imprisonment, and if he opens his mouth about you, he will probably get more. But if they convicted me--why, I’d get five years.”

I was silent. This talk still held a mystery for me, and I waited for him to reveal that which, even in my curiosity, I did not dare to ask.

“I ought to have known, Mr. Heine,” he said, mopping his forehead with an ungentlemanly handkerchief of many colours, “I ought to have known that with all the spies you’ve got, you would be wise about me.”

“I am indeed wise about you,” I said very severely.

“Don’t think,” he said eagerly, “that I am a regular burglar, because I’m not. The old man never allowed me more than eighteen shillings a week, and a man can’t live in a gentlemanly way on that, can he? I got in bad with a crooked lot of people, and one job led to another, and that is how it happened.”

“I know exactly how it happened,” I said coldly.

“When I got home last night,” the young man went on, “it struck me that you might know that I was in the Regent Street burglary, and it gave me the shivers, but I wasn’t sure until I found myself being shadowed by the two detectives you put on to follow me.”

I could have laughed out loud. Kattz and Kister--detectives!

“How did you know I had put them on to you?”

“I gave them the slip,” said young Jabowski, “and presently I spotted them getting into a cab. It was about one o’clock in the morning, and I got another cab and followed them and they came back here.”

“Came back here?”

This was indeed news for me.

“Well, they didn’t come up,” said Jabowski, “they stood outside the flat talking, and one of them pointed up to your window, and then I knew that you had put them on to me.”

I readily supplied an explanation. My friends Kister and Kattz had come back to tell me of some difficulty they had met with, and I am rather glad they took this step. What Jabowski told me greatly relieved me. If the old man would remain silent and take his punishment, with the photograph in my possession, and burnt, and Jabowski in terror of my betraying him, a load was removed from my mind. There was no need for any drastic measures, and I could only hope that my two friends, with characteristic thoroughness, had not already despatched a deadly draught to the man in the cells.

I was anxious to get rid of Jabowski before they turned up or telephoned, as I had asked them to, and after lecturing him on his evil life and on the necessity for dealing honestly by his fellow creatures and abandoning his course of wickedness, I allowed him to depart with the promise that I should take no further action against him.

“Honesty and straight dealing with your fellow creatures is the surest road to happiness and success,” I said. “How beautiful is the life of the virtuous man who can look the whole world in the face, as the poet says, and owe not any man!”

He thanked me very humbly and went his way. Neither Kister nor Kattz put in an appearance, and I began to worry whether they had got into some trouble, or whether, in some spirit of friendly rivalry, they had gone outside my instructions and in good-hearted competition had been practising their science upon some unfortunate pig-headed Englishman or Englishmen.

When they had not turned up by the afternoon I am afraid I became very angry. Was I to be kept waiting in my flat all day by two despicable jail-birds? However, a diversion arrived in the shape of my assistant, Mr. Wilhelm Peters, that amiable young man arriving after lunch with my letters.

“I am sorry I am so late, Herr Heine,” he said, “but I had no idea that you were not at the office.”

“Of course, of course,” I said genially, “you have been out of London. Now tell me your news.”

He chatted away about various matters. He gave me a memorandum of the amount of T.N.T. which was being made at ----, the big new English factory, and told me of the trouble that had arisen because Woolwich had rejected so many flawed shell-cases which were made in a certain factory in the North of England. He also placed in my hand the memorandum, compiled by our agent in Liverpool, of the cotton shipments, and furnished me with particulars of certain petroleum boats which were due to arrive in the Mersey.

“I saw Herr von Friedlander at Birmingham,” he said. “He has not been able to find an agent in the small-arm factory, but he hopes----”

“He hopes!” I said irritably, “that infernal man may live on hopes, but I can’t! I shall pack him straight back to America. Does he imagine because he is well born that I must endure these harrowing disappointments? I cannot find excuses for him any longer. You have done very well, my dear Wilhelm Peters, and I shall report in terms of favour.”

“I thank you for your gracious words, Herr Heine,” he said, going red under my approbation. “I also took the liberty of calling at Wednesbury to see how our convicts were progressing.”

I smiled.

“And how were they?” I asked innocently.

“They are behaving themselves,” said Wilhelm Peters, “and seem to like the life. The red-headed one, Kattz, is quite amusing.”

“Red-headed one?” I said.

“Yes, the little one who has red hair. Don’t you remember I described them after I had met them on the steamer, Herr Heine?”

“And what is the other man like--Kister?” I asked.

“He is a man with a long black beard and rather consumptive looking,” said Wilhelm.

“Are you sure?” my hair almost stood on end.

“Quite sure. The only thing that worried them was a visit which was paid them by two secret service officers last week--at least I gathered they were officers of the English secret service by the questions they asked.”

“Do you know what they looked like, the secret service officers?” I said, endeavouring to control my voice.

Wilhelm Peters smiled like a fool.

“Don’t grin, stupid owl,” I said angrily.

“Pardon, Herr Heine,” said Wilhelm Peters, “but I was smiling because I asked them that very question. One was a thin-faced man with lines in his cheeks and the other was rather a stoutish man with a rosy face and a little beard.”

“Secret service officers!” I breathed.

“Do you know them?” asked Wilhelm Peters.

“I have met them,” I said, and somehow at that moment I knew my stay in England was nearly up.