CHAPTER XVI.

THE SYREN

I have mentioned in an earlier chapter an organization known as the Sons of Irish Freedom. I do not pretend that this is the name of the society which at one time threatened to create the most serious difficulties for the British Government, but which was dissolved owing to the base and ungentlemanly treachery of Major Haynes, an Intelligence Officer, who got himself elected a member of the principal lodge, and by cunning artfulness induced the members to give a grand dinner to celebrate the first anniversary of its foundation.

The members allowed this spurious and treacherous brother to order a dinner which was given at one of the best hotels in London. Everything was of the best, winter strawberries, most rare and wonderful wines, beautiful flowers, and a magnificent entertainment to follow. The dinner, of course, was not announced as one by the Sons of Irish Freedom, but had a much more innocent excuse. When the bill was presented for payment, the cunning Major Haynes, having identified certain prominent Irish personages who were present with the responsibility for the festival, it was found that it absorbed all the funds of the lodge and about £200 in addition.[7]

The unfortunate and down-trodden Irish are cursed with that deluded sense of humour which no German can ever understand. Else how could you imagine that so frivolous a reason can bring about the disillusion of a great political organization. We Germans would have repudiated the bill and, if necessary, have sent secret letters to the hotel proprietor telling him that his premises would be blown up if he did not mend his manners.

I do not profess to understand either the mentality of the Irish or that of such men as Major Haynes. I have tried many times in the silent watches of the night to reduce this officer (and I wish I could add gentleman) to an understandable formula. I have never believed that there was a secret service in England. I never shall believe that anything like the magnificent and forethoughtful department which German genius has organized could come into being in a dull-thinking country like Britain. The man himself was the negation of all good German qualities. He had not the seriousness which distinguishes men of my own department. He lacked that haughty obedience-compelling manner which we look for and expect in the true Prussian officer. His voice was a gentle drawl. He was always laughing with his eyes, full of jokes which a gentleman, that is to say a Prussian gentleman, would consider it beneath his dignity to utter.

I have seen him speak to quite common people as though they were his equals, and for this reason I long suspected that he was a Socialist, and that is a view which I still hold, and, believe me, Heine makes very few mistakes.

But it would be unknightly in me if I did not pay this tribute to the man; whether he secured his information by luck or by judgment, he knew a disgusting sight too much.

I had returned to England, as you know, after being deported by Major Haynes, but I had had the good sense and vision to write to him announcing I was in England. By the sheerest accident he discovered me and requested that I should call at his office or, as he put it, “look me up.”

Be assured, Major Haynes, I shall not only look you up, but look you down! You may not see the carefully-veiled insolence in Heine’s eye or the sneer behind his teeth. You will not know the bitter and insulting thoughts which crowd one on top of the other in Heine’s teeming brain. I will look you up indeed and some day you will look up to me. How dearly I should love to repeat this _bon mot_ to his face.

Two days after my meeting I decided to call upon him at the War Office. It had not been my first visit, and so I knew the ropes, and having written my name on a slip of paper I was shown up to his office, a very small, unimportant apartment, showing that, whatever Major Haynes might be in his own estimation, he was jolly little thought of by the Army Council, for there was nothing in his room in the way of pictures except a plain map which, incidentally, I glanced at and comprehended as I entered. It was a map of Europe.

“Sit down, Heine,” said the Major, who was writing at his desk, “help yourself to the cigarettes--those on the left. The others are poisoned. I keep them for generals.”

Such frivolity! Would any major officer in the German army dare speak of the members of the Great General Staff with such disrespect? Would they not stand stiffly to attention and refer to them as “Illustrious General So-and-so,” or “The Noble and Illustrious Well-Born General So-and-so”?

He finished writing, laid down his pen, and resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, dropped his chin upon his clasped hands, all the time surveying me with an inscrutable smile, as though--and I believe this to be the truth--recognizing that in me he had a devilish stiff proposition, as the English say.

“Well, Heine,” he said, at last, “how is the Kaiser?”

My blood boiled up to my head.

“Don’t blush,” he said. (Such a cad!)

“How is old von Hindenburg and the shining German sword?”

“Major Haynes,” I said coldly, “if you think I am not a German then you are insulting me. If you believe I am a German, then your remarks are both insulting and hurtful to my dignity and my loyalty and my sense of decency.”

“Quite right,” said Major Haynes; and then after a pause, “I don’t know what to do about you, Heine. If I send you to America you will be torpedoed. If you get to America you will probably be executed. If I send you back to Germany you will starve to death.”

I made no reply.

“If I leave you here----” Major Haynes went on, helping himself to a cigarette. I noticed it was one of those which he said he used to poison generals, so I presume it was the best kind. The inhospitality of the man and his boorishness appalled me. “If I leave you here,” he said, “you will probably be bombed to death. If I put you in an internment camp you will be an expense to the Government. If I have you shot----” He paused.

I turned white with anger.

“I trust you are not going to do anything so stupid owlish as that, Major Haynes,” I said, “I have done my best to prove to you that I am a perfectly innocent Swiss.”

“Chilian,” he corrected, “but it doesn’t matter. There are lots of Swiss-Chilians in London just now, and quite a few Swedish-Turks. No, I don’t think I will have you shot, you may be very useful.”

“Any service I can render to you, Major Haynes,” I said, with my native politeness, “I shall be happy to give. Unfortunately, I am----” I shrugged my shoulders, introducing rather cleverly a suggestion of my helplessness.

“Cheer up, Heine,” he said with a cynical smile--there’s something about that man’s smile I don’t like--“I think you can give me the greatest assistance. Let’s put all our cards on the table,” he leant across the desk. “I know that you were for some time the head of the German Intelligence Department in London. Take that sad, pained smile off your face, and behave. As I told you before, you weren’t dangerous, because your methods were somewhat transparent and I don’t think (you will excuse my directness) that you are a very clever man.”

“That is a matter of opinion,” I said stiffly.

“I think, as a matter of fact,” Major Haynes went on, not noticing the interruption, “you have too good a heart to be a spy. Beneath that outrageous waistcoat of yours, and the three or four undershirts which I am sure you are wearing, beats a kindly heart.” I am recalling his indelicate words from memory that you may learn what type of “gentleman” an English officer can be. In honest truth, he was wide of the mark, for I had only two undershirts on, the weather being warm. “Now with much of your work,” Major Haynes went on, “I am well acquainted. I have your code,” he opened the drawer of his desk and took out a very familiar book, and if I changed colour, who shall blame me? “When I say your code, I mean the code of your kind. I have a list of your sub-agents, such of them as are still alive,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “I know all about your Kriesslers and your Kahns. I know your newspaper advertisement code; in short, I know almost everything about your business”--he paused--“except one thing.”

“And what is that, Major Haynes?” I asked innocently.

“It is the one thing I have never been able to discover,” said the Major, putting the tips of his fingers together and looking down at them.

I pricked up my ears. What was it this clever fellow did not know?

“Many things, I should imagine,” I said with a sneer, speaking of course to myself and sneering inwardly.

“It has come to my knowledge,” he said, speaking slowly, and raising his eyes to mine in a steady, hypnotizing way, “that the agents of your--what shall I call it?--department have a code whistle which is instantly obeyed. At the sound of that whistle you are ordered, under whatever conditions you are working, whatever you may be doing, however you may endanger yourselves by so acting, to repair instantly to the spot from whence that whistle is blown, and report yourself for duty to the man who has given the signal.”

I felt my flesh grow rough like a goose’s, and my hair almost stood on end. So precious a secret is the danger whistle that I have never referred to it before. It is the last piece of information given to the closely-examined candidate for the service after he has passed to the Executive. Only two men in England had the authority to use that signal, or the means wherewith such a call could be made. Every agent is pledged that, whatever he divulges, that secret at least shall go down to the grave with him.

It was that danger whistle that brought about the rescue of Rosenberg when he was captured on 42nd Street, New York, when he was carrying despatches from von Papen to the Ambassador. That danger whistle, sounded in the courtyard of Brixton Prison by one of my agents who had himself arrested for debt in order to reach the interior, made Kruhn, waiting trial for espionage, hang himself by his bootlaces.

Major Haynes was watching me keenly.

“Well?” he asked.

“I am surprised you should tell me of this, Major Haynes,” I said with splendid self-possession. “I have never heard of this signal or whistle, or call it what you will.”

He rose from the table and came over to me.

“Stand up,” he said.

I obeyed him.

“Stand against that wall.”

I did not think of expostulating. There was something in his voice which dispersed all inclination to argue.

“Put out your arms,” he said. “I am going to search you.”

He went through all my pockets with extraordinary rapidity--I think he must have been a pickpocket before he joined the Intelligence Department--and of course he found nothing.

“Open your waistcoat,” he said.

I obeyed. He ran his hand lightly over my shirt.

“Tell me if I tickle you,” said he; but I was in no mood for jesting, for under my arm he found the little pocket and the flat gold tube that I dreaded he would find. He laid it on the table curiously.

“So that’s the whistle, eh? A peculiar note, I suppose. Now tell me, what is the code. Four short blasts and a long one?”

I smiled.

“That is merely a little trinket which was given me by a lady friend?” I said.

“Why do you wear it sewn into your shirt?”

“To have it near my heart,” I said. “I am surprised at you, Major Haynes.”

“I am surprised at you, Heine,” he said, “if you keep your heart under your right arm-pit. You are a physical monstrosity--but I suppose you are one of those curious birds that carry their hearts in their sleeves. Come now, Heine, what is the code?”

“Major Haynes,” I replied earnestly, “if you were to give me a hundred thousand pounds at this moment----”

“Which I am very unlikely to do,” said Major Haynes.

“If you were to give me a million pounds,” I said desperately, “I could not tell you, because I don’t know.”

He walked back to the other side of the table and sat down. For some time he did not speak. He lit another cigarette and looked out of the window, clasping his chin.

“You are a German, Heine, aren’t you,” he said at last, “and I am an Anglo-Scot, with a touch of American. Generally speaking, I am British. Now here is the situation,” he said, tapping on the blot-pad, “you are a good German patriot (to my eternal credit, I didn’t deny it!), I am a British patriot. Now, which of us is the more devoted to his Motherland?”

It was one of those kind of stupid questions to which there is no answer. I had quite recovered my notorious sang-froid, and I laughed.

“Now, how can I answer that, my dear Major Haynes?” I said humorously. “Supposing I were a German, which of course I am not, and suppose you are a Briton, which of course you are, how can we determine the extent of our various country-loving? Goethe says----”

“Blow Goethe!” said Major Haynes rudely. “Can you answer my question?”

“Major Haynes,” I replied, “I cannot.”

“Very good,” said Major Haynes. He looked at his watch. “You will not tell me the code.”

“I know of no code,” I replied firmly.

He picked up the little gold whistle and put it in his pocket.

“Very good,” he said again, “you will report to me here at 1.30 this afternoon. You will be immediately admitted to my presence.”

“And then?” I said in trepidation.

“Then I will give you the finest lunch you have had for some time and a bottle of the best _liebfraumilch_ procurable in London.”

I went down the marble stairs of the War Office smiling. If this fellow imagined that he could buy my so precious secret for a lunch, or that he could make me so beastly intoxicated on the wine of my country, he was a bigger fool than I had imagined.

No sooner was I ushered into his office at 1.30 than he took his hat and his stick from a peg on the wall and taking me affectionately by the arm he led me out into Whitehall, hailed a taxi, and we were driven to a restaurant in the Strand, where an excellent repast was waiting.

“I have no doubt you think we are lunching luxuriously,” he said, as we sat at the table, “but as this is the last meal that either you or I may ever have in this world I think we may risk being considered extravagant.”

“These are strange words, Major Haynes,” I said.

“Very strange,” he replied with his foolish smile. “Wine, Heine? Drink hearty or, as they say, ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.’ Cheerioh!”

Throughout that amazing meal, I was puzzling my brains. I think I may say without undue conceit that I can grasp a situation as quickly as any man. I am, so to speak, up to the tricks of the game--and then some. That is not low swank. We Germans say no more than we mean, promise no more than we can perform, claim no more than we can substantiate. That is why we are the most respected nation in the world, and why the German sword, once drawn from its sacred scabbard and brandished aloft, strikes terror to the heart of its soon-to-be victims.

But despite my mind-ability I could only puzzle over his alarming words and in the end find no solution to the mystery he had propounded. The British are strange people with no sense of decency. They frequently joke upon the most sacred subjects, and I have already described Major Haynes’s terrible lack of true gentlemanliness in speaking of our August Sovereign Lord. Possibly, I thought, this joke is British or Scottish idea of humour. What pawkity!

He did not make any further reference to the discussion we had that afternoon. We finished our meal with coffee and liqueurs and cigars, and he paid his bill and we strolled out into the Strand.

I offered him my hand when we got outside, and thanked him for his hospitality.

“You are not going, Heine,” said the Major, “oh, dear no! You don’t suppose I have spent quite a lot of money in entertaining you for the pleasure of your society, though I admit you are infinitely amusing.”

“But I don’t understand you, Major Haynes,” said I in surprise; “if there is anything you want me to do I shall be most happy to do it, as I have told you before.”

“It is now three o’clock,” he said, “and we have just twenty minutes to get to the station.”

“To the station?” I repeated flabberfounded, so to speak.

He made a beckoning gesture, and a car which was at the other side of the Strand drew across.

“Hop in, Heine,” he said; and I hopped.

He took his place by my side and we were whirled away to Paddington Station. He did not take a ticket. We simply strolled through the first-class booking-hall on to the platform, and a train was waiting, also another officer who, saluting Major Haynes, led us to a carriage which had been reserved.

“Get in, Heine,” said the Major, and again I obeyed, still dazed and bewildered by the mysterious proceedings.

The second officer got in with us.

“I have telephoned to the factory, sir,” he said, “and I have brought the things you wanted.”

He put his hands into his overcoat and took out three pairs of handcuffs.

“Thank you,” said Major Haynes.

“The other thing, sir, I couldn’t get, but I think a gas-mask would do as well, one of the old type. They are not so cumbersome.”

From another pocket he drew forth a mask, with mica eyepieces. It had evidently been adapted for a special purpose, for it had been cut off at the bottom.

“Try that on, Heine,” said the Major.

I took it from his hands and fixed the loops over my ears.

“Look at yourself in the glass,” said Major Haynes.

One of the panels above the seats was a long slip of mirror.

“Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you,” he said.

A hideous sight I presented. The mask did not cover my face. It left my mouth free. I could not imagine a more horrible spectacle than I presented.

“Fine,” said the Major, “put it in your pocket. I think that is all, isn’t it, Mr. Samson?”

“That’s all, sir,” said the officer, saluting.

He looked at me with a smile, shook hands with the Major, and left us together. Soon after this the train began to move and, leaning forward, I spoke:

“I am sure you will not consider me unnecessarily inquisitive,” I said with gentle sarcasm, “but may I ask why we are taking this journey, why you are carrying manacles, and why you have presented me with this curious mask?”

“You may ask,” said the Major, “but I shall not tell you for some time. Here is a copy of _Punch_. Improve your mind and morals.”

The train was an express. It did not stop until we reached a junction called Wellsbury, and here we alighted. It was now half-past five. A closed car was waiting for us and into this we got and proceeded at a rapid pace through the open country.

We had been travelling for half an hour, and had reached the top of a hill and were passing over the crest, when the Major tapped the window behind the chauffeur.

“Get out here for a moment, Heine,” he said, and obediently I followed.

We were on the top of a hill looking down on to a little village, the principal feature of which was a large factory. On the tops of the hills were a number of hutments, and it was clear to me that this was a factory erected for war work.

“This is the Chamborn Shell-Filling Factory,” said Major Haynes. “That large building is the mixing house. That smaller building behind, which you can just see in spite of its being camouflaged is the T.N.T. store. That long building is the magazine, and that to its right is the live-shell store. There is at this moment in that factory about two hundred tons of T.N.T., and when I tell you that at the Rivertown explosion, which shook up half of England, only fifty tons were tonked off, you will understand the nature of the disaster which would follow the blowing up of that establishment.”

“But, Major Haynes,” I said in desperation, “why do you tell me all this and why do you bring me such a long journey to give me this information?”

“Get into the car,” said Major Haynes, “and I will tell you.”

We got into the car, but he did not speak, and when I suggested he should keep his promise he merely said:

“Wait awhile.”

We passed through the stone-pillaried gates of the factory, along a broad roadway, and came to a set of offices where the car stopped and we alighted. Again the Major looked at his watch.

“Six o’clock,” he said, “we have an hour. I want to introduce you to the manager of the works.”

He led me into an office which was comfortably furnished, and here I met Mr. Perkins, a well-fed typical Englishman who hoped I had had a pleasant journey down. A servant brought tea on a silver tray and we chatted generally about various topics, though for my part I had very little to say.

After about half an hour the Major again looked at his watch.

“Well, I wish you good-bye, Mr. Perkins,” he said, “I hope everything is all right.”

A shrill hooter sounded outside.

“I am stopping the women working,” said Mr. Perkins, and Major Haynes nodded.

“I think you are wise. You are getting them out of the factory on some excuse, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Perkins, “I told them we were having a test in the mixing-room and they quite understand.”

I stood with Major Haynes at the entrance of the offices watching the ceaseless stream of women passing through the gates. My blood boiled as I thought these women were preparing explosives to destroy my countrymen. How unfeminine, I thought! How degraded! Woman, lovely woman, who should create life, who should be all tenderness and kindness to man, was now engaged in the low occupation of making shells to blow off the heads of the world’s chosen people. It sickened me.

“Aha! My fine girls,” I said between my teeth, “you are not the only flies in the ointment, for every son of the Fatherland you kill, loyal and death-defying German women are preparing explosives to blow off the heads of your husbands and sweethearts! Beware! Nemesis is on your track!”

I hated this place with its smoke and busy air. Such places should be blown from the face of the earth. I hoped it would not be blown while I was near by, but I looked forward one day to reading in the paper that Chamborn had gone up to the sky in smoke and fury.

“Now, Heine,” said Major Haynes.

We walked across the road, down another road, then between two long stone buildings, past a big power-house with two smoking chimneys, and at last we came to a great brick shed painted in fantastic colours.

“This is the T.N.T. store,” explained Major Haynes. “Now where are those chairs that Perkins said? Oh, here they are.”

Two arm-chairs had been placed against the wall. There was a small iron-topped table with a bottle of whisky, a big syphon of soda and two glasses.

“Sit down and make your miserable life happy, Heine,” said the Major, sinking down into one of the chairs and reaching out for the whisky bottle. “Say when.”

When he had filled the glass with sizzling soda, he said:

“Heine, it is an awful thing to realize that within thirty minutes you and I may be blotted out of life--be dissolved in thin air, leaving no trace of ourselves and never knowing what struck us.”

My glass trembled against my teeth and I put down the whisky untasted.

“Explain yourself, Major Haynes,” I said hoarsely.

“I will explain to you, Heine,” he replied gravely, “I feel it is due to you. You are probably aware that Chamborn is the most important shell-filling factory in England. If you are not so aware I will tell you that it is. If this place went up in smoke the British Army would be seriously inconvenienced, though not crippled. Your friends in Berlin imagine that its destruction would have decisive consequences, and in this, of course, they are wrong, for there are other factories, quite a large number of them. They have sent two or three agents from Germany,” he went on slowly, “and they are clever men.”

I did not answer. I looked at the clock above the offices and noted that the gold hands upon the black face stood at twenty minutes to seven. The major followed my eyes and smiled.

“We have twenty minutes,” he said.

“What do you mean by all this?” I asked in an agitated voice, my agitation being of course due to the presence in England of three gentlemen who were probably well-born and my superiors. “What do you mean by three agents?”

“Two or three,” corrected Major Haynes, “my information is that there are two; my further information is that they are employed in these works; that they speak English so perfectly that it is impossible to detect them, that they are armed with all sorts of credentials; and----” he paused, “that they intend blowing up this factory at seven o’clock.”

I half rose from my seat, but he laid his hand upon my arm and pushed me back.

“We have taken the most elaborate precautions--when I say we,” he apologized, “I mean the Government. We have weeded out suspicious workmen, but we are still certain that these men have in some way connected up a means of detonation which they will touch off at seven o’clock to-night.”

The place swam round. I could feel my knees trembling against the supports of the iron table. My throat and mouth went dry and I could only look round helplessly. Major Haynes was quite cool.

“The only way to save this place from destruction,” he said, “is to bring the men who are engaged in this work to our presence before the mischief is done, and you, Heine, are the syren who will call them.”

He put his hands in his breast-pocket and took out my little gold whistle and laid it on the table.

“You may not know the code of the danger whistle, but you may guess it,” he said. “If you are telling the truth and you don’t know the code, then it is very unfortunate for you and most unfortunate for me, because in a little over a quarter of an hour, you and I, my dear Heine, will be continuing our debate in heaven.”

“But--but----” I gasped.

“It is no use butting, my dear lad,” said the Major, “you will be butting your head into that wall in less than sixteen minutes unless you can bring your loyal but startled fellow-countrymen to this spot.”

I picked up the whistle in my shaking fingers.

“But it would be death to me,” I said, “and besides, Major Haynes, I am a loyal man. I cannot betray my friends to their death.”

“Spoken like a patriot,” said the Major. “It seems to me that you are almost as good a patriot as I am. In which case we shall both die without remorse.”

I thought and I thought. Twice I picked up the whistle and twice I put it down. The hands of the clock moved round inexorably. It wanted four minutes to the hour when I turned my perspirationed face towards him.

“They’ll know I betrayed them,” I said; “they will see me.”

“You have a mask in your pocket, which I have thoughtfully provided,” said the Major. “Put it on, my dear Heine, there are three minutes between you and glory.”

With trembling hands I fixed the hideous mask. Better, I thought, that these unfortunate men should be detected and that a great and hideous crime should be prevented than that one whose life was of such service to the Fatherland should be so cruelly extinguished.

I put the whistle to my lips and blew shrilly; short, long and trilling blasts. I repeated it, and scarcely had the echoes died away when two men came blundering round the corner of the building, one in his shirt-sleeves, one in the black coat of a clerk. They stopped dead as they saw Major Haynes, and put up their hands, for his revolver was covering them.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said as he snapped the handcuffs upon them, “fortunes of war.”

They glared from him to me, and one said to the other quickly in German:

“We’re caught. This is Voss’s work. We ought to have prevented his leaving us.”

“Excellent news,” said Major Haynes briefly, “so Voss was the third man. You may comfort yourselves with the knowledge that he was arrested in London to-day, though your detection was not due to him but to my friend here.”

I was trembling before the glare of those haughty German eyes.

“If you’d given us another day,” one of them growled in English, “we’d have settled your cursed factory.”

“So I gather,” said Major Haynes.

“As for this swine,” he made a movement toward me and I stepped back till I realized I was stepping toward the T.N.T. store, when I stepped sideways. But the place was alive with detectives now. They seemed to spring out of the ground and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw these unfortunate men being led away.

“You can take off your mask now, Heine, they will never see you,” said Major Haynes. “Poor devils! We will go up to town by a late train and I’ll see what I can do for you in the morning.”

“Major Haynes,” I said brokenly, “I don’t want to see you to-morrow. I am very ill. The danger I have been through, the strain upon my nerves, how I envy you your coolness----”

“The strain upon your nerves, Heine?” said Major Haynes, with brutal innocence.

“I have not your lack of imagination,” I said crossly. “I cannot sit here waiting for a factory to blow up, watching the minutes pass----” I wiped my brow with a silk handkerchief, looked up at the clock as it struck seven, and shuddered.

“There was no danger, my dear man,” said the major calmly.

“But you told me that they were going to blow up the factory at seven o’clock.”

“Exactly,” said Major Haynes, “you heard what the gentleman told you, seven o’clock.”

“Well, this is seven o’clock,” I said.

“Yes, but I meant seven o’clock to-morrow night,” said the major.

Such a bluffer!