The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  And so Mr. Neilsen was ushered out into despair for the rest of the day, and booked for an unpleasant evening. He had accepted the captain’s invitation as a matter of policy; for he thought he might be able to talk further with him, and it was not always easy to secure an opportunity. In fact, when he thought things over he was inclined to feel more amiably toward the Pennyfeathers, who had put the idea of psychical research into the captain’s head.

  Promptly at half past eight, therefore, he joined the little party in the captain’s cabin. Miss Depew looked more Gibsonish than ever, and she smiled at him bewitchingly; with a smile as hard and brilliant as diamonds. Mrs. Pennyfeather looked like a large artificial chrysanthemum; and she examined his black tie and dinner jacket with the wickedly observant eye of a cockatoo. Three times in the first five minutes she made his hand travel over his shirt front to find out which stud had broken loose. They had driven him nearly mad in his stateroom that evening, and he had turned his trunk inside out in the process of dressing, to find some socks.

  Moreover, he had left his door unlocked. He was growing reckless. Perhaps the high sentiments of every one on board had made him trustful. If he had seen the purser exploring the room and poking under his berth he might have felt uneasy, for that was what the purser was doing at this moment. Mr. Neilsen might have been even more mystified if he had seen the strange objects which the purser had laid for the moment, on his pillow. One of them looked singularly like a rocket, of the kind which ships use for signaling purposes. But Mr. Neilsen could not see; and so he was only worried by the people round him.

  Captain Abbey seemed to have washed his face in the sunset. He was larger and more like a marine Weller than ever in his best blue and gilt. And Mr. Pennyfeather was just dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather, with his beard freshly brushed.

  “You’ve never been in London, Miss Depew?” said Captain Abbey reproachfully, while the Pennyfeathers prepared the ouija board. “Ah, but you ought to see the Thames at Westminster Bridge! No doubt the Amazon and the Mississippi, considered as rivers, are all right in their way. They’re ten times bigger than our smoky old river at ’ome. But the Thames is more than a river, Miss Depew. The Thames is liquid ’istory!”

  As soon as the ouija board was ready they began their experiment. Mr. Neilsen thought he had never known anything more sickeningly illustrative of the inferiority of all intellects to the German. He tried the ouija board with Mrs. Pennyfeather, and the accursed thing scrawled one insane syllable.

  It looked like “cows,” but Miss Depew decided that it was “crows.” Then Mrs. Pennyfeather tried it with Captain Abbey; and they got nothing at all, except an occasional giggle from the lady to the effect that she didn’t think the captain could be making his mind a blank. Then Mr. Pennyfeather tried it with Miss Depew—with no result but the obvious delight of that sprightly middle-aged gentleman at touching her polished finger tips, and the long uneven line that was driven across the paper by the ardor of his pressure. Finally Miss Depew—subduing the glint of her smile slightly, a change as from diamonds to rubies, but hard and clear-cut as ever—declared, on the strength of Mr. Neilsen’s first attempt, that he seemed to be the most sensitive of the party, and she would like to try it with him.

  Strangely enough Mr. Neilsen felt a little mollified, even a little flattered, by the suggestion. He was quite ready to touch the finger tips of Miss Depew, and try again. She had a small hand. He could not help remembering the legend that after the Creator had made the rosy fingers of the first woman the devil had added those tiny, gemlike nails; but he thought the devil had done his work, in this case, like an expert jeweler. Mr. Neilsen was always ready to bow before efficiency, even if its weapons were no more imposing than a manicure set.

  The ouija board was quiet for a moment or two. Then the pencil began to move across the paper. Mr. Neilsen did not understand why. Miss Depew certainly looked quite blank; and the movement seemed to be independent of their own consciousness. It was making marks on the paper, and that was all he expected it to do.

  At last Miss Depew withdrew her hand and exclaimed: “It’s too exhausting. Read it, somebody!”

  Mr. Pennyfeather picked it up, and laughed.

  “Looks to me as if the spirits are a bit erratic tonight. But the writing’s clear enough, in a scrawly kind of way. I’m afraid it’s utter nonsense.”

  He began to read it aloud:

  “Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth’s little appendix—”

  At this moment he was interrupted. Mr. Neilsen had risen to his feet as if he were being hauled up by an invisible rope attached to his neck. His movement was so startling that Mrs. Pennyfeather emitted a faint, mouselike screech. They all stared at him, waiting to see what he would do next.

  But Mr. Neilsen recovered himself with great presence of mind. He drew a handkerchief from his trousers pocket, as if he had risen only for that purpose. Then he sat down again.

  “Bardon me,” he said; “I thought I vas aboud to sneeze. Vat is the rest of id?”

  He sat very still now, but his mouth opened and shut dumbly, like the mouth of a fish, while Mr. Pennyfeather read the message through to the end:

  “Exquisitely amusing! Uncle Hyacinth’s little appendix cut out. Throat enlarged. Consuming immense quantities pork sausages; also onions wholesale. Best greetings. Fond love. Kisses.”

  “I’m afraid they’re playing tricks on us tonight,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “They do sometimes, you know. Or it may be fragments of two or three messages which have got mixed.”

  “Hold on, though!” said the captain. “Didn’t you send a wireless the other day, Mr. Neilsen, to somebody by the name of Hyacinth?”

  “Well—ha! ha! ha! It was aboud somebody by that name. I suppose I must have moved my hand ungonsciously. I’ve been thinking aboud him a great deal. He’s ill, you see.”

  “How very interestin’,” cooed Mrs. Pennyfeather, drawing her chair closer. “Have you really an uncle named Hyacinth? Such a pretty name for an elderly gentleman, isn’t it? Doesn’t the rest of the message mean anything to you, then, Mr. Neilsen?”

  He stared at her, and then he stared at the message, licking his lips. Then he stared at Captain Abbey and Miss Depew. He could read nothing in their faces but the most childlike amusement. The thing that chilled his heart was the phrase about onions. He could not remember the meaning, but it looked like one of those innocent commercial phrases that had been embodied in the code. Was it possible that in his agitation he had unconsciously written this thing down?

  He crumpled up the paper and thrust it into his side pocket. Then he sniggered mirthlessly. Greatly to his relief the captain began talking to Miss Depew, as if nothing had happened, about the Tower of London; and he was able to slip away before they brought the subject down to modern times.

  3

  Mr. Neilsen may have been a very skeptical person. Perhaps his intellect was really paralyzed by panic, for the first thing he did on reaching his stateroom that night was to get out the code and translate the message of the ouija board. It was impossible that it should mean anything; but he was impelled by something stronger than his reason. He broke into a cold sweat when he discovered that it had as definite a meaning as any of the preceding messages; and though it was not the kind of thing that would have been sent by wireless he recognized that it was probably far nearer the truth than any of them. This is how he translated it:

  Imperative sink Hispaniola after treacherous threat. Wiser sacrifice life. Otherwise death penalty inevitable. Flight abroad futile. Enviable position. Fine opportunity hero.

  He could not understand how this thing had happened. Was it possible that in great crises an agitated mind two thousand miles away might create a corresponding disturbance in another mind which was concentrated on the same problem? Had he evolved these phrases of the code out of some subconscious memory a
nd formed them into an intelligible sentence? Trickery was the only other alternative, and that was out of the question. All these people were of inferior intellect. Besides, they were in the same peril themselves; and obviously ignorant of it. His code had never been out of his possession. Yet he felt as if he had been under the microscope. What did it mean? He felt as if he were going mad.

  He crept into his berth in a dazed and blundering way, like a fly that just crawled out of a honey pot. After an hour of feverish tossing from side to side he sank into a doze, only to dream of the bald-headed man in Harrods’ who wanted to sell him a safety waistcoat, the exact model of the one that saved Lord Winchelsea. The most hideous series of nightmares followed. He dreamed that the sides of the ship were transparent, and that he saw the periscopes of innumerable submarines foaming alongside through the black water. He could not cry out, though he was the only soul aboard that saw them, for his mouth seemed to be fastened with official sealing wax—black sealing wax—stamped with the German eagle. Then to his horror he saw the quick phosphorescent lines of a dozen torpedoes darting toward the Hispaniola from all points of the compass. A moment later there was an explosion that made him leap, gasping and fighting for breath, out of his berth. But this was not a dream. It was the most awful explosion he had ever heard, and his room stank of sulphur. He seized the cork jacket that hung on his wall, pulled his door open and rushed out, trying to fasten it round him as he went.

  When the steward arrived, with the purser, they had the stateroom to themselves; and after the former had thrown the remains of the rocket through the porthole, together with the ingenious contrivance that had prevented it from doing any real damage under Mr. Neilsen’s berth, the purser helped him with his own hands to carry the brass-bound trunk down to his office.

  “We’ll tell him that his room was on fire and we had to throw the contents overboard. We’ll give him another room and a suit of old clothes for tomorrow. Then we can examine his possessions at leisure. We’ve got the code now; but there may be lots of other things in his pockets. That’s right. I hope he doesn’t jump overboard in his fright. It’s lucky that we warned these other staterooms. It made a hellish row. You’d better go and look for him as soon as we get this thing out of the way.”

  But it was easier to look for Mr. Neilsen than to find him. The steward ransacked the ship for three-quarters of an hour, and he began to fear that the worst had happened. He was peering round anxiously on the boat deck when he heard an explosive cough somewhere over his head. He looked up into the rigging as if he expected to find Mr. Neilsen in the cross-trees; but nobody was to be seen, except the watch in the crow’s nest, dark against the stars.

  “Mr. Neilsen!” he called. “Mr. Neilsen!”

  “Are you galling me?” a hoarse voice replied. It seemed to come out of the air, above and behind the steward. He turned with a start, and a moment later he beheld the head of Mr. Neilsen bristling above the thwarts of Number Six boat. He had been sitting in the bottom of the boat to shelter himself from the wind, and some symbolistic Puck had made him fasten his cork jacket round his pyjamas very firmly, but upside down, so that he certainly would have been drowned if he had been thrown into the water.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Neilsen,” said the steward. “The danger’s over.”

  “Are ve torpedoed?” The round-eyed visage with the bristling hair was looking more and more like Bismarck after a debauch of blood and iron, and it did not seem inclined to budge.

  “No, sir! The shock damaged your room a little, but we must have left the enemy behind. You had a lucky escape, sir.”

  “My Gott! I should think so, indeed! The ship is not damaged in any vay?”

  “No, sir. There was a blaze in your room, and I’m afraid they had to throw all your things overboard. But the purser says he can rig you out in the morning; and we have another room ready for you.”

  “Then I vill gum down,” said Mr. Neilsen. And he did so. His bare feet paddled after the steward on the cold wet deck. At the companionway they met the shadowy figure of the captain.

  “I’m afraid you’ve ’ad an unpleasant upset, Mr. Neilsen,” he said.

  “Onbleasant! It was derrible! Derrible! But you see, Captain, I vas correct. And this is only the beginning, aggording to my information. I hope now you vill take every brecaution.”

  “They must have mistaken us for a British ship, Mr. Neilsen, I’m afraid. I’m having the ship lighted up so that they can’t mistake us again. You see? I’ve got a searchlight playing on the Argentine flag aloft; and we’ve got the name of the ship in illuminated letters three feet high, all along the hull. They could read it ten miles away. Come and look!”

  Mr. Neilsen looked with deepening horror.

  “But dis is madness!” he gurgled. “The Hispaniola is marked, I tell you, marked, for gomplete destruction!”

  The captain shook his head with a smile of skepticism that withered Mr. Neilsen’s last hope.

  “Very vell, then I should brefer an inside cabin this time.”

  “Yes. You don’t get so much fresh air, of course; but I think it’s better on the ’ole. If we’re torpedoed we shall all go down together. But you’re safer from gunfire in an inside room.”

  The unhappy figure in pyjamas followed the steward without another word. The captain watched him with a curious expression on his broad red face. He was not an unkindly man; and if this German in the cork jacket had not been so ready to let everybody else aboard drown he might have felt the sympathy for him that most people feel toward the fat cowardice of Falstaff. But he thought of the women and children, and his heart hardened.

  As soon as Mr. Neilsen had gone below, the lights were turned off, and the ship went on her way like a shadow. The captain proceeded to send out some wireless messages of his own. In less than an hour he received an answer, and almost immediately the ship’s course was changed.

  It was a strange accident that nobody on board seemed to have any clothes that would fit Mr. Neilsen on the following day. He appeared at lunch in a very old suit, which the dapper little Mr. Pennyfeather had worn out in the bank. Mr. Neilsen was now a perfect illustration of the schooldays of Prince Blood and Iron, at some period when that awful effigy had outgrown his father’s pocket and burst most of his buttons. But his face was so haggard and gray that even the women pitied him. At four o’clock in the afternoon the captain asked him to come up to the bridge, and began to put him out of his misery.

  “Mr. Neilsen,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ve had a very anxious voyage; and, though it’s very unusual, I think in the circumstances it’s only fair to put you on another ship if you prefer it. You’ll ’ave your chance this evening. Do you see those little smudges of smoke out yonder? Those are some British patrol boats; and if you wish I’m sure I can get them to take you off and land you in Plymouth. There’s a statue of Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth ’Oe. You ought to see it. What d’you think?”

  Mr. Neilsen stared at him. Two big tears of gratitude rolled down his cheeks.

  “I shall be most grateful,” he murmured.

  “They’re wonderful little beggars, those patrol boats,” the captain continued. “Always on the side of the angels, as you said so feelingly at the concert. They’re the police of the seas. They guide and guard us all, neutrals as well. They sweep up the mines. They warn us. They pilot us. They pick us up when we’re drowning; and, as you said, they give us ’ot coffee; in fact, these little patrol boats are doing the work of civilization. Probably you don’t like the British very much in Sweden, but—”

  “I have no national brejudices,” Mr. Neilsen said hastily. “I shall indeed be most grateful.”

  “Very well, then,” said the captain; “we’ll let ’em know.”

  At half past six, two of the patrol boats were alongside. They were the Auld Robin Gray and the Ruth, and they seemed to be
in high feather over some recent success.

  Mr. Neilsen was mystified again when he came on deck, for he could have sworn that he saw something uncommonly like his brass-bound trunk disappearing into the hold of the Auld Robin Gray. He was puzzled also by the tail end of the lively conversation that was taking place between Miss Depew and the absurdly young naval officer, with the lisp, who was in command of the patrols.

  “Oh, no! I’m afraid we don’t uth the dungeonth in the Tower,” said that slender youth, while Miss Depew, entirely feminine and smiling like a morning glory now, noted all the details of his peaked cap and the gold stripes on his sleeve. “We put them in country houtheth and feed them like fighting cockth, and give them flower gardenth to walk in.”

  He turned to Captain Abbey joyously, and lisped over Mr. Neilsen’s head:

  “That wath a corking metthage of yourth, Captain. I believe we got three of them right in the courth you would have been taking today. You’ll hear from the Admiralty about thith, you know. It wath magnifithent! Good-by!”

  He saluted smartly, and taking Mr. Neilsen tightly by the arm helped him down to the deck of the Ruth.

  “Good-by and good luck!” called Captain Abbey.

  He beamed over the bulwarks of the Hispaniola like a large red harvest moon through the thin mist that began to drift between them.

  “Good-by, Mr. Neilsen!” called Mr. and Mrs. Pennyfeather, waving frantically.

  “Good-by, Herr Krauss!” said Miss Depew; and the dainty malice in her voice pierced Mr. Neilsen like a Röntgen ray.

  But he recovered quickly, for he was of an elastic disposition. He was already looking forward to the home comforts which he now would be supplied by these idiotic British for the duration of the war.