After going over it for half an hour he led her down into the cellar by a concealed stairway and, through a tunnel, into the large underground chamber where the air-compressors, vats, and great storage reservoir were. From one corner of this he took her through a descending tunnel which ended in the old four-foot water main. Here he showed her the porcelain-lined conduit which had been laid along the bottom of the piping—providing an inner sluiceway for the liquid chlorine, sixteen inches wide and six high. At either side of this had been laid small rails upon which ran a miniature flat-car about large enough to carry an average-sized man, lying at full length. At one end of it was an electric motor, fed from a storage battery—and through the line of piping there was a strong current of fresh air from an electrically driven fan. Madame was strongly tempted to explore the entire seven miles of piping and inspect the system of tunnelling under Aldershot—but it would have taken at least three hours, and her long stay at the manor house might have been remembered.
After she had left him, Mr. Sheffield (or Franz Schufeldt, as he was known in Berlin) motored over to Aldershot, with the details of the tracings fixed in his mind, and satisfied himself that they were correct in every particular.
Next evening proved rainy and foggy. At ten o’clock a company of sappers left the South Camp in two motor-vans and disappeared, around Fleet Pond, on the road which led through Blackbushes. In the heart of the woods they came upon a cavalry patrol sitting his horse where a little blind path left the road—which was a rough one, seldom used. Following him along this path, they came to a big oak—in the bark of which they could just make out the lines of what had once been engineering symbols cut many years before. Here, after lighting a dozen lanterns, they began digging a hole ten feet in diameter—using great care to work as noiselessly as possible. At a depth of four feet they came upon a big cylindrical something which they carefully avoided striking with their spades. After two hours’ work they had dug down at each side of the great cylinder until they could stow a number of packages under it.
Twice, while digging, they had heard a rumbling sound inside which seemed to approach from the westward and then recede again. Each time this occurred they stood without making a sound until the noise had died away entirely. When their preparations were complete, several ends from a main wire were attached to the packages under the big cylinder and they walked back to the road, paying out the wire after them. Then one of the engineers turned a crank in a square box—and there was a stunning concussion which shook the ground for a radius of half a mile. Groping their way back to where they had been digging, they found a yawning pit twenty feet deep and a hundred feet in diameter. The mangled trunks of a dozen trees had fallen into it, and upon opposite sides were torn and twisted sections of four-foot iron piping—choked solid with débris. Leaving guards at the edge of the pit, the sappers climbed into their motor-vans and returned to Aldershot.
In the meanwhile, three troops of cavalry had ridden by another road to Bramshill Park, silently drawing a cordon about the stock farm and manor house—concealing themselves behind trees and shrubbery. There they waited until some men from the house came along in a car. These were quietly arrested and sent to Aldershot. In the next two hours several other men and one woman came from the house and stables, being arrested like their fellows. At ten in the morning the troopers closed in, but the house appeared to be deserted, and the underground chambers also. Dynamite was then placed in various places, and the entire plant blown out of existence, after the troopers had ridden to a sufficient distance to be safe from the liberated chlorine in the big reservoir.
Late that evening Madame la Condesa—beautifully gowned for the opera—was awaiting the arrival of her escort, a Cabinet Minister, when there was a faint tapping at the door of her suite, and Ayesha admitted the girl Betty. When they were alone, with the doors locked, Betty staggered to a chair—her teeth chattering. Pouring a glass of wine, the Condesa held it to her lips until she had swallowed it—then said, guardedly:
“Wait a few moments until your nerves are steadier, my dear. You increase the danger for all of us by going to pieces in this way!”
“I know that, madame—oh, I know it! But—every second, I seem to feel the hand upon my shoulder; I fear some man I never saw before will take me by the elbow and whisper in my ear that I must go with him—quietly, without any show of resistance—as they did to poor Johann in the hotel office half an hour ago! It was done just as quietly as that. Johann knew—but he spoke to the manager and asked if he could go out for an hour or two with the gentleman upon a matter of importance; then he put on his hat and coat and walked out with the man, smoking a cigarette. It was the same with Katrina, on the second floor! A gentleman spoke to her in the corridor—told her to get into the servants’ lift and go up to her room for her wraps. He didn’t let her out of his sight a second—made her walk out of the servants’ entrance ahead of him! She knew there was no escape—so she didn’t try to run away in the street. Mr. Chudleigh Sammis had been spending half an hour with Colonel Parker in his suite on this floor. He saw me in the corridor when he came out—whispered that he was leaving by the night train for Liverpool, and sailing on one of the Lamport and Holt steamers for Buenos Ayres; said he would tell the reporters that he was going down to study labor conditions in Argentina.”
“The worst move he could possibly make—dangerous for all of us! Looks suspicious! They’ll never let him sail! We must try to catch him on the telephone! What is it all about, anyhow?”
“Haven’t you seen the evening papers, madame? It is said that someone at Aldershot heard a faint noise underground which made him suspect our tunnelling. Some of the Engineer officers looked up the old reconstruction drawings, traced that line of water main, suspected our stock farm, and began watching it. Last night the sappers dynamited a section of the piping in the woods two miles west of Aldershot. This morning a cavalry detail arrested nine of us from the manor house—found your tracings and other papers in Franz’s desk—and blew up the whole plant. It is thought that half a dozen men, including Franz himself, are buried alive in the tunnels under the camps. The others were all shot at sunset. Johann and Katrina will be shot in the morning—or hanged—in the Tower, where they were taken.”
“Do you think that any of them betrayed you or the rest of us in London?”
“No, madame; they died without any admission of their Wilhelmstrasse connection, I am sure. But if Sir Thomas by any chance remembers what he told me in the library of his town house—the night he was drunk there, alone with me—or if the disappearance of those plans is traced to you, madame—well, that would settle it!”
“Bettina, in the game we play, nothing is more certain to arouse suspicion than the slightest evidence of apprehension. I have faced death more than once with a laugh of amazed denial upon my lips—when I could see no possible escape, and believed my life was measured only by seconds. Never admit being guilty even while you are dying! That is a principle in all underground diplomacy. Do not compromise others even if you must yourself die! The safest place in the world for Chudleigh Sammis is on the floor of the House of Commons—representing his constituency. The safest place for you and me, just now, is right here in this hotel—doing exactly what we’ve been doing every day! I doubt if the management knows anything whatsoever against you. Your duties here constitute an almost perfect alibi.”
Considerably reassured, Betty left the Condesa’s suite and tried to forget her haunting terror in the activities demanded by her position. But for a fortnight several of the guests who really liked the girl thought from her paleness and lassitude that she must be coming down with a serious illness. In the room she occupied with three other girls, up under the roof, the dread of a zeppelin raid and annihilation from the dynamite in the sand bags over her head was enough to prevent her sleeping for more than a few moments at a time. Upon the streets, the passing glance of any unknown man sent a chill do
wn her back which made her feel faint. One night—at the house in Soho—she typed a warning to the hotel management concerning the dynamite. When no attention was paid to it, she sent another anonymous warning—and was immensely relieved when finally the explosive was removed. The constant strain she had been under for ten months in London had developed a functional weakness in her heart which nothing but rest and freedom from anxiety could relieve. Had she known that she was under constant espionage from Downing Street men, she would probably have died of heart failure. But with the idea of using the girl to obtain future information vital to the safety of England, Lady Nan insisted that she be left unmolested unless caught in some fresh plot against the Empire. As for madame herself, Betty felt a wonderful admiration for her sang froid and apparent indifference to deadly risk.
CUNNINGHAM
W. F. MORRIS
BORN IN NORWICH and educated at Cambridge University, Walter Frederick Morris (1892–1975) served as the commander of the 8th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment during World War I, attaining the rank of major by the age of twenty-seven, and was awarded the Military Cross.
After writing The British Empire (1927), Morris turned to writing crime and espionage fiction, beginning with a minor masterpiece, Bretherton: Khaki or Field Grey? (1929; the American title is G. B.: A Story of the Great War), that Eric Ambler named as one of the five greatest spy thrillers of all time.
Like all great books, it transcends the genre with which it is identified. In addition to the mystery and spy elements, it is a powerful depiction of what it was like to participate in World War I. Having been on the scene, he could tell firsthand the terror and boredom of the trenches, the gallows humor of the soldiers, romantic episodes away from the front, an exciting escape from a prisoner-of-war camp, and other adventures. Unlike most British books about the war, Morris sympathetically portrayed some German soldiers as decent human beings, every bit as patriotic and courageous as their adversaries.
The novel opens with a baffling mystery. As a small British raiding party comes across an evidently ruined and uninhabitable château, the soft sounds of a piano are heard. When they enter the house, they see a beautiful young woman in an evening gown, lying dead on a sofa. At the piano, a man in a German uniform also is dead. A closer look reveals that it is surely Bretherton, a British officer who disappeared some time ago. Is he a British spy in a German uniform, or a German who had served as a spy while in the British army?
Morris wrote a half dozen additional thrillers, but none after 1939, and none with much success. The Strange Case of Gunner Rawley (1930) was issued by the American publisher of G. B.: A Story of the Great War, but it was not published in England, and the remaining five novels were published only in England.
I have been unable to trace the original publication of this story. It was collected in My Best Spy Story, edited anonymously (London, Faber & Faber, 1938).
CUNNINGHAM
W. F. MORRIS
I FIRST MET Cunningham in the spring of 1916. It was outside the Company Headquarters’ dug-out one glorious day in June when the birds were singing as though there were no war within a hundred miles, and the familiar smell of chloride of lime and herded humanity was held temporarily in abeyance by the fresh early morning air. He had come up with the rations during the night to replace young Merton who had been knocked out during one of those raids our Divisional Headquarters were so fond of ordering.
I could see at a glance that he had been out before, and I liked the look of him as he stood there by the dug-out steps, hands in pockets, pipe in mouth and the old pattern respirator satchel slung over one shoulder. The appearance of a new member of the mess was always a matter of importance, for when half a dozen men are cooped up together for what someone aptly described as long periods of intense boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear, tempers wore thin occasionally, and one man of the wrong sort could create more mischief than the proverbial wagon-load of monkeys.
But it went deeper even than that. Most commanding officers, I fancy, divided their juniors into two categories: those who did merely what they were told, and those who could be relied upon in an emergency to carry on upon their own initiative. Unhealthy duties such as raids and patrols were supposed to be allotted in rotation from a roster, but whenever it came to sending a party on some highly dangerous and important job, ninety-nine commanding officers out of a hundred would let the roster go hang and put an officer from the second category in command. Now as the number of names in this category was usually considerably smaller than that in the other group, there was undeniably a good deal of what is known as working the willing horse, and it was therefore a matter of considerable interest to all of us to see how a new-comer shaped.
Cunningham shaped well. He quickly graduated to that select band of soldiers that is distinguished by no particular rank—and by no kaleidoscope of chest colours for that matter—but possesses simply that little extra something that the others have not got. The men, quick in such matters, noticed it at once. Even the fussiest and jumpiest of them were calm and happy if he were in charge of them, and the usual good-natured blasphemy which the detailing of a working or wiring party called forth became noticeably milder when it was known that he was to lead it.
From the Colonel downwards we were quickly satisfied that Cunningham would “do,” and we were the more glad to have him because with the Somme battle approaching, we knew that officers of his stamp were worth their weight in gold.
Cunningham and I hit it off very well together. We shared a brick-floored cottage room when we were back in rest, and on two memorable occasions, when the loan of a car enabled us to run into Amiens, we did ourselves superlatively well amid the varied wartime attractions of that remarkable city. Friendships in those days were usually strong but of short duration. One or other would receive a Blighty wound, if nothing worse, and pass back down the lines never to be seen again. In our case, however, a slight mishap to one of us served only to strengthen the attachment.
For some days the battalion had been holding on to one of those graveyards of bare, blasted tree-trunks and fallen branches that had been leafy woods less than a month before; and one morning just before dawn, it was discovered that Cunningham was missing. He had been out with a patrol which had returned safely, and he had last been seen no more than a few yards from the edge of the wood. It was certain he could not be far away, so I took a man with me and set out to look for him.
For twenty minutes we searched without success, but as soon as the light grew strong enough to see at all clearly, I spotted him out by a shell-hole no more than a few yards from the margin of the wood. My runner, young Sanders, Cunningham’s devoted servant, ran forward before I could stop him, but he went no more than a couple of paces. The light was still poor, but a man running upright makes a conspicuous target at under two hundred yards.
I crawled out to find young Sanders with a neat hole drilled in his forehead; death must have been instantaneous. I had begun to fear that Cunningham too was dead, but to my great relief as I wriggled up to him, he turned his head and assured me that a broken arm was the full extent of the damage. It appeared that in the darkness he had tripped into a shell-hole and broken his arm, and on trying to crawl out had become entangled in some low-pegged wire. With but one arm in commission, his struggles to free himself had resulted only in his becoming further entangled, and there he had remained fuming and helpless ever since.
I had with me a small but very efficient pair of wire-cutters which had proved their worth on more than one occasion, and it took me no more than a few minutes to cut him free. Then we wriggled back to the shelter of the wood.
There was nothing heroic about this episode; it was no more dangerous than the ordinary daily round and common task of those hectic days above the Somme, but Cunningham chose to consider that I had saved his life. As a matter of fact I suppose I had, but it was those very efficient little wire-cutte
rs he had to thank and the good luck that brought them with me.
With his arm in a sling he was of little use as a fighting soldier for the two or three weeks it took the bone to set, but he refused to go farther back than the transport lines and insisted on coming up to occupy a listening post we had established on the outskirts of Guillemont. He spoke German fluently, and on more than one occasion we had enjoyed a good laugh at some tit-bit of Teutonic humour he had overheard while lying inside the German wire.
Corps Headquarters in due season heard of this accomplishment and inevitably they took him from us. The Colonel fought a gallant rearguard action to defend our rights and, nobly backed up by the Brigadier, put down a heavy barrage of indignant chits on headquarters. But it was all in vain. Cunningham received orders to report to Corps Intelligence for duty at the prisoners’ cage in the interrogation of prisoners.
After two years of trench warfare most men would have jumped at the chance of the comparative safety and luxurious comfort of headquarters life; but not so Cunningham. But orders were orders; he had to go. We gave him a great send-off and besought him half-seriously not to forget us when he was a brass-hatted general with rows of decorations, for like most infanteers we were firmly convinced that the farther one went from the line, the greater became one’s chances of promotion and honours.
And so he departed for the august portals of Corps H.Q., and as though to emphasize the gulf that had now come between us, a large green staff car came to fetch him away. We did see him again, however, for twice he visited us when we were back in rest, and occasionally one of us drawing money from the Field Cashier ran into him in the little market town behind our front. Then the Division was shifted northwards to another Corps and we lost sight of him for good.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 27
