Web of Discord

by Norman Russell

  Bob Jones moved away to talk to one of the other operators, and William Pascoe sat down in front of Number 5 engine, a gleaming Kelvin Siphon Recorder. His experienced fingers made a few quick adjustments to the terminals and to the speed of the electro-magnetic engine. Then he caught the moving paper tape between his hands as it rolled off the spool, reading the peaks and dips recorded by the elderly machine, and mentally translating them into letters.

  The message was in English, and directed from the cable station at Carcavelos in Spain to the military section of the Russian Embassy in London. ‘Have ascertained,’ it ran, ‘that the German cargo steamer Berlin Star, out of Bremerhaven, is in reality a contraband runner, smuggling arms from Britain to dissidents in Russia. Let all necessary action be taken.’ What could it mean? Was it a hoax? Perhaps, but the letters concluding the message were undoubtedly the signal code for the receiving telegraph office at the Russian Embassy. Here was Bob Jones again.

  ‘Any luck, William?’ said his colleague, good-humouredly. Bob Jones was an easy man to work with. Although much older than Pascoe, he didn’t seem to begrudge the younger man his seniority.

  ‘Yes, Bob, I’m quite certain that this message was relayed here from a splice, made just an hour ago by that rogue cable ship, the Lermontov. I’ll write it down in plain English, and send it enclosed in a letter to Mr Dangerfield at Winchester House. Perhaps he’ll pass it on to that clever chap who was down here in January – Captain Adams. And I think I’ll go down to my friend Hugh Trevannion at St Columb’s Manor on Monday. I’d value his advice.’

  Young Pascoe turned the knurled brass knobs that stopped the mechanisms rotating, and the Kelvin-Muirhead Recorder fell silent.

  The rush of calls on the cable station had subsided, and Jones had strolled over to the blazing fire.

  ‘Incidentally,’ he said, ‘if secret messages can be so easily breached by splicing the cables, then the government should consider using direct-voice communications through the Post Office’s electric telephone lines. That new line from London to Paris has been wildly successful.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Pascoe, smiling, ‘a very great success – at eight shillings for three minutes! It’s only used by the Stock Exchange to talk to the gentlemen of the Paris bourse. The government would never sanction using the electric telephone for serious work, ingenious as it is.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you a little piece of fatherly advice. Forget all this cloak-and-dagger business. Your job – our job – is to forward incoming messages to their destinations. If we do that, we’ll all keep out of trouble. I’m off, now. Time for a bit of shut-eye.’

  William Pascoe went into the inner office, and rummaged among the pile of newspapers. He’d leave the heavy ones to Bob and the others. Where was the Graphic? There’d be a leader by William Fiske, the great political correspondent. Yes, here it was.

  We ask ourselves this morning, what Lord Salisbury would have done. Readers will know the answer to that rhetorical question. He would have sent the whole menagerie of snarling bears and their lackeys packing, bag and baggage, to St Petersburg. We wait to see what the present administration will do. Their Liberal principles may caution them to use the kid-glove; the temper of the British people this morning will tell them, unequivocally, to shake the naked fist of retaliation. Prince Orloff and his minions will contrive to produce excuses for the hideous insult to Sir Charles Napier. Let the lion’s fearsome roar drown the uncertain growls of the bear.

  Marvellous! It was good to know that not everybody in the capital believed in hiding their heads in the sand.

  *

  Squire Trevannion glanced out of the long medieval window of the living-room at his ancient Cornish manor of St Columb’s. How far off London seemed! For himself, he would be content to remain here, within the confines of his walled cliff-top estate, until he died. But the old, stable world was shrinking fast. The railways, and the web of telegraphic cables and humming wires, had reduced the vast realm of Britain to a comparatively small and manageable island.

  Here was young Pascoe now, pushing open the gate in the dry-stone wall that gave entrance to St Columb’s from the cliff path. He’d sent a note over on Sunday, saying he wanted to call and ask for advice. Best go to the door and greet him. Would he mind these old, patched tweeds? Pascoe always dressed smartly – too smartly, to some folk’s way of thinking. One day, if he wasn’t careful, he’d forget that he was a Penzance man, born and bred.

  ‘Now, I wonder,’ said Trevannion, as he ushered his visitor over the threshold and into the long, low parlour, ‘what brings you this far out from Porthcurno today? I’m sure it’s not merely for the pleasure of my conversation.’

  ‘As I said in my note, Hugh, I’ve come to ask you a favour. It’s nothing very much, just permission to use your cliff path down to Spanish Beach. You see, somebody told me recently that a boatload of men came ashore one January night from that Russian cable ship—’

  Hugh Trevannion sprang to his feet. His face, normally wooden and impassive, was flushed with anger.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Pascoe,’ he cried, ‘can’t you leave that wretched business alone? Damn it, man, it’s six weeks since those odd messages came through your machines. Leave it, I say. You’re a clever fellow, I’ve no doubt, but there are cleverer people in London who’ll ferret out the meaning of it all.’

  ‘I’m sorry to annoy you so much, Hugh—’

  ‘I’m not really annoyed with you, William. It’s just that as I get older, I get grumpier! By all means go down my private path to Spanish Beach. I expect you want to talk to the folk at the inn. They’re the people who’ve been putting these rumours about. I wish you’d give it up. But there, young men don’t really like to accept advice from folk of my age, even though they ask for it. Get down to Spanish Beach. I know you won’t rest until you’ve heard what the folk at the inn have to say.’

  As Hugh Trevannion stood at one of the windows, watching Pascoe as he hurried across the sparse grass towards the cliff, a voice behind him said softly, ‘Curiosity, so you English aver, killed the cat.’

  Trevannion turned from the window to look at the man who had been his secret guest since mid-February. A tall man, whose bony wrists protruded from the sleeves of his black jacket, a man with strong, sinuous hands, from the fingers of which some nails were missing. Familiarity with the man brought these things to the forefront of Hugh’s attention, but on first acquaintance, it was the face that had held him fascinated.

  It was a face of almost ghostly pallor, chalk-white. The features were regular, and the man was clean-shaven, so that when you saw beyond the pallor you realized that he must have been very handsome in his youth. He was nearer fifty than forty, but his hair was of a deep bluish black. His eyes, of a startlingly pale blue, had the unsettled gaze of a fanatic.

  Hugh Trevannion felt a surge of excitement. He forgot about Pascoe, as he met the disturbingly unfocused gaze of the corpsepale man. Had the moment arrived when the manor, and its lands, were to be truly his own again? Dr Karenin had come into his life at a desperate juncture, when total ruin had threatened him, not financial ruin alone, but mental disintegration, for he had begun to hear the voice of his dead sister Meg talking and singing about the house. Karenin had brought him solvency and security. All he had to do was say nothing, and think nothing.

  ‘That is what you English say, is it not? “Curiosity killed the cat”. Well, that young man should have heeded your warning. Spanish Beach is a decidedly unhealthy place at this time of year.’

  ‘Are you ready, now, Dr Karenin, to conclude the business?’ asked Trevannion in a trembling voice. ‘You promised that today would be the day – Monday, the thirteenth of March.’

  ‘I did, Mr Trevannion, and you’ll find that I am true to my word. Let us go up to my room, and conclude the business there.’

  An old twisted staircase took them to the second storey, where Trevannion’s guest occupied a large room overlooking the wild, boulder-str
ewn approach to the edge of the cliff. The man sat down at a roll-top desk, and carefully sorted some papers into order. Trevannion sat in tense watchfulness on an upright chair.

  This had once been his sister Meg’s room. It still contained her vanity-table, and the double doors of the tall wardrobe concealed her clothes. Meg had died of pleurisy during the fierce Cornish winter of ’85. Sometimes Hugh fancied that she was still moving quietly about the ancient house.

  When his guest picked up a time-worn document bearing a number of wax seals dangling from faded tapes, Trevannion cried out in satisfaction, and stretched out his hand. Dr Karenin clung on to the document, and quelled his host with a single glance from his pale-blue, restless eyes.

  ‘Wait!’ His tone was peremptory, almost threatening. Even as he spat out the single word of warning, Trevannion wondered at his excellent command of English.

  ‘Wait! Yes, my friend, this is the original title deed of St Columb’s Manor, which lay safe for centuries with your family and its lawyers, and then began its ignominious travels, as you were obliged to mortgage your birthright to grasping strangers. Well, I have it, now, and in a moment or two I’ll affix my signature to a deed of relinquishment that will make this title deed yours once again. But you must give me your verbal assurance that you will honour your side of the bargain.’

  ‘My side?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Trevannion, your side of it. In a few moments’ time you will be a true property owner once again, an English milord, living on his own ancestral acres. How romantic it sounds! But unlike other English landed gentry, you, my friend, are bound to me.’

  Dr Karenin picked something up from the desk, and held it up to the light.

  ‘What would you say this thing was, Mr Trevannion? Long and thin, like a needle, and capped with a little diamanté globe? How elegant it is!’

  ‘That? Why, it’s a hatpin. There are a great many of them in that little box. They belonged to my late sister, Miss Margaret Trevannion.’

  ‘Miss Margaret…. Well, she had good taste in hatpins! Sister of the Lord of the Manor, she resides in glory with the saints. Amen. But you, my friend, are still living, and bound to me.’

  Dr Nikolai Ivanovich Karenin slowly turned his pale-blue eyes and fixed them on his host. He had placed the hatpin down carefully on the desk.

  ‘You have observed me, no doubt?’ he asked. ‘You have noticed my pale complexion? That is what they call prison pallor. It is the result of twenty-five years in a Russian prison! The paleness etches itself on the skin, so that if you were to live the rest of your life in the tropics, you would be branded with the leprous white mark of the convict.’

  Dr Karenin seemed lost in his own vivid musings. He hugged the title deed of the manor closely to his chest. Then he suddenly began to laugh, his shoulders heaving with a strangely terrifying mirth. Hugh Trevannion waited.

  ‘We Russians, Mr Trevannion,’ said Karenin at length, ‘we Russians do everything by extremes. So a man who’s rotted in gaol for a lifetime comes out looking like a leper…. Oh, yes! We Russians are terrible creatures. And that is the kind of man to whom you are bound, Hugh Trevannion – that, and worse. I have more work to do, work that will bring me flying back to this sanctuary of yours. I have restored to you your estate. In return, you must always give me sanctuary, either here, or elsewhere. Is that a bargain?’

  ‘It is. You need not doubt my word. Now, will you sign the transfer?’

  Without warning, Karenin suddenly lunged towards Trevannion, and encircled his throat with a sinuous, bony hand. Trevannion shrieked with fear.

  ‘Whatever happens, my friend,’ the corpse-white Karenin whispered, ‘you ask no questions, venture no opinions. That curious cat – the young man from Porthcurno – who knows what will happen to him? Do not presume to ask. And to avoid you asking any curious questions, Mr Trevannion, I’ll let you share some little secrets.

  ‘You recall what happened to Sir John Courteline? Well, Courteline was my enemy, and, with the hired help of a murderous thug, I sent him to perdition. Later, I left a device in the killer’s wretched hovel which blew him to pieces. There, you now share one of my deadly secrets. If you ever contemplate becoming a danger to me by talking too much, then, my friend, your life will not be worth a day’s purchase.’

  Karenin suddenly laughed again, and relinquished the title deed of St Columb’s Manor to Trevannion. He turned back to the desk, dipped a pen in an inkwell, and taking a handwritten note from the sheaf of papers, he signed it with a flourish. When he spoke again, it was in a pleasant, businesslike tone, accompanied with something approaching a smile.

  ‘There you are, my friend,’ he said, ‘the deed of relinquishment, duly signed. The manor of St Columb is truly yours once more.’

  The next day, Hugh Trevannion left St Columb’s Manor early, and took a hired trap to the busy town of Truro, where he deposited the precious title deeds with his lawyer. The business done, he turned into a nearby coffee shop, where the day’s papers were available for customers to read. He selected the Exeter Express from the rack, and laid it flat on the table. The front page, usually covered in lines of advertisements, had produced a black headline, A RUSSIAN ATROCITY. The story beneath it cried out for his attention.

  Tuesday, 14 March. We have learned from our London correspondent that at two o’clock this morning the German cargo steamer Berlin Star, out of Bremerhaven, was fired upon by an unidentified Russian ship, in the open seas twelve miles south of Heligoland. The unprovoked attack, which occurred in a dense fog, was witnessed by the British freighter Camberley, Captain James Jerome, Master, who has made an immediate deposition to the German authorities, and to the British Consul in Hamburg.

  Later. It has been reported from our correspondent in Hamburg that the Berlin Star caught fire immediately, and sank at twelve minutes to three this morning, with the loss of the master and all twelve crew. A statement issued by the Russian Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, Prince Gregory Orloff vehemently denies any Russian involvement in this unprovoked atrocity.

  Trevannion put the newspaper aside, and sipped his coffee. It was grave news, but under the new dispensation ushered in by Dr Karenin, it was none of his business. Let the great world go its own way – his world lay on the edge of the cliffs at St Columb’s Manor. Say nothing, think nothing. That must now be his saving creed.

  Hugh Trevannion returned to St Columb’s in the mid-afternoon, but instead of pushing open the gate in the dry-stone wall, he walked along the narrow road that would take him to the cliff edge. It was a blustery day, with angry grey clouds scudding across the sky. Once arrived at the edge of the cliff, he looked down the giddy slope to Spanish Beach, 200 feet below.

  The spume-crested waves flung themselves against the rocks, broke up into violent spray, and retreated, only to revisit the inhospitable shore with renewed violence. Below him, Hugh could see wind-blown plants and gnarled bushes growing perilously from the many outcrops. Gulls wheeled and screamed across the uneasy sky.

  Something shifted in the foaming channels between the rocks, something that seemed to be endowed with a kind of erratic life, lunging forward with the inrush of the waves, and retreating when the waters retreated. But it was in reality a dead thing, broken and lifeless, the body of a young man, floating on its back, its white face staring sightlessly up towards the cliff-top from which it had been flung. Soon, it would be swept out to sea, to be yielded up, no doubt, days later, on a strand further along the Cornish coast. From the top of the cliff, Hugh Trevannion looked down in stunned terror at the bobbing white face of his dead friend William Pascoe, and listened in dread to the phantom mourning dirge begun somewhere in his head by his dead sister Meg.

  Sir Charles Napier, seated at his ornate desk, read William Pascoe’s message aloud, for the benefit of the man sitting opposite him. The message had been brought earlier that day by a courier from Mr Dangerfield, of the Eastern Telegraph Company.

  ‘“Have ascertained that the Germa
n cargo steamer Berlin Star, out of Bremerhaven, is in reality a contraband runner, smuggling arms from Britain to dissidents in Russia. Let all necessary action be taken”. What do you think of that, Herr Fischer?’

  It was to be one of those German mornings, thought Napier, occasions usually characterized by the cautious sharing of routine information in an atmosphere of frigid politesse. He had asked Herr Fischer, the German commercial attaché, to call at the Foreign Office that day, but a second visitor had arrived unannounced, bringing with him the usual fulsome apologies. He was in the anteroom now, reading the morning’s papers.

  ‘It’s mischievous nonsense, Sir Charles,’ said Fischer. ‘As commercial attaché at the German Embassy, I naturally have records of all vessels of the German mercantile marine, and what they are carrying. I have access to all manifests and bills of lading. The Berlin Star is one of the vessels of the Hofmann Line, a very reputable company.’

  ‘The Berlin Star was in the Thames only recently,’ Napier observed.

  ‘Quite so, She docked at Chandler’s Wharf on Tuesday, 7 March. She was carrying general merchandise, as you can readily ascertain, I’ve no doubt. I’m inclined to see the message as a hoax, especially as it implies that Britain is covertly arming the Russian anarchists, which is nonsense, of course. But it is very good of you, Sir Charles, to call me in like this. I can assure you that His Excellency the German Ambassador is most grateful.’

  Napier looked across the document that Dangerfield had sent him at the dapper man with the bristling moustache and eye glass sitting opposite him. The man’s appreciation of his gesture was only too patently genuine. In this matter of the Russian cable, he was convinced that Germany was an innocent and aggrieved party.