CHAPTER I
IT was at the beginning of February 1938 that the bolt of war fell suddenly from the skies on an astounded, bewildered world - a world that had talked too glibly, or turned aside too obstinately from that in which, even while it cleared the stage, it had never really believed. It had been a nightmare too dreadful for the reality of the cheerful, trivial day: a thing too incredibly foolish for men to do: too horrible for Deity to permit. If it should threaten too close a cloud, sensible men had a line of defence which could never fail. They would refuse to fight; and the warmongers would find themselves foolishly regarding one another in a world too peaceful of disposition, too sane of mind, to allow itself to be blown to bits or choked with poisonous gas. . . . It broke first by night over the ancient city of Prague, which a German air force had reduced to burning ruin when morning came.
That was on the night of Friday, February 4. The next day the chancelleries of Europe were confronted by the fact that Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist. Poland and Hungary had received those cuts from an ample joint by the promise of which their friendly neutrality had been bought, and Germany had absorbed the major extent of a short-lived State.
Had the Berlin Government felt assurance during the following hours that Europe would accept the event with the passivity of its reaction to the Austrian coup of a few months before, it is possible that the war which no mortal wisdom of other lands could permanently avert would have been delayed for another year; for the plans of the High Command were not yet fully matured, and they would have preferred that Europe should wait, as a bullock waits the butcher's convenient time. They would have preferred to avoid each of the displays of truculence by which Germany had disturbed a half-frightened, half-resentful Europe during the three previous year; but they had been overridden by the urgence of politicians who had felt it necessary to placate a population reduced to ill-fed servitude in anticipation of national ascendancy, by providing morsels of the expected meal.
But it found that the world stirred ominously, moved both by apprehension of what might be its own fate on another day and hatred of an act abhorrent to all decent and kindly minds; it stirred in what might soon become a menace to those whom it was not yet wholly tutored to call its lords, and if it were inclining to present war - well, it should not be first to begin! Confident in her secret alliance with the atheistic tyranny of Russia - so different in its outer garb, so similar in its inward soul - Germany would be instant to separate or reduce the total of her potential foes.
With this object, as the afternoon waned, she had sent an ultimatum to the British Government requiring an instant declaration of neutrality against the possibility of the annexation of Czechoslovakia being made the occasion for continental war, and the temporary surrender of Gibraltar and the control of the Suez Canal as guarantees that that neutrality would be observed.
It is not a necessary conclusion that, had that assurance of neutrality been received, with the surrender of the guarantees which had been required, the Russo-German alliance would then have fallen upon the nations of Central and Southern Europe, as they actually did on the next day.
Had London yielded now, it is possible that Paris would have received a similar ultimatum: possible that, had she yielded in turn, as she might then have felt compulsion to do, Germany might have been content, for the time, to consolidate her Mid-European power: and probable that it would have been done without disclosing the secret alliance that she had formed, which she might have preferred not to invoke until her own strength had increased in that comparison also.
But with a caution born of the experience of the last war, she would have preferred that the British Empire should be paralysed into passive acquiescence rather than roused to active hostility, while the fetters of political and economic servitude would have been fastened upon a prostrate Europe at whatever moment she might feel opportune to make her intention plain. After that subjugation had been completed, it would have been needless to look beyond her own professions of political moralities and expediencies to learn what the fate of England would next have been.
It is even likely that she would have preferred at this i time to have made alliance with one or other of the great maritime powers - either England or the United States - by offering them a share in the spoils of a plundered world, had she not anticipated rebuff, and known also that the isolationist policy of the United States would have ensured the rejection of any offered alliance, even apart from any issue of morality, or of the motives or merits of the proposals it might receive. . . .
There is, at least, little doubt that the abrupt ultimatum was delivered in confident anticipation that the British Cabinet would lack courage to face the prospect of instant and single war. To the German mind, always curiously obtuse in appreciation of values differing from its own, the futile chatter of English pacifists, in a country where conscription was not imposed, though all Europe had armed for the coming war, was conclusive evidence of a national decadence which, while its existence could not be denied by anyone who looked with impartial eyes, might yet be consistent with the survival of a sound and most stubborn core. The sword had slipped from a slackened hand, and its rust was easy to see. But who could say how deeply it had eaten into the blade, or how far it had dulled its edge?
Actually, though that monstrous ultimatum was received by some members of the British Cabinet with mingled feelings of incredulity, irresolution, and fear, which were of less fortitude than the occasion required, the possibility of accepting it, when its details had been announced, was not even discussed. It would have been a betrayal beyond their power, as it would have been beyond the possibilities of their own minds. Had they issued such orders, it is not reasonable to suppose that they would have been obeyed, either at Gibraltar or Suez, for the ultimate loyalty of those who command her garrisons abroad is due to England, and to them only so far as they remain loyal to her. . . .
When the next morning came, the central city of London, and much of its eastern end, was a sea of flame, which the changing wind and heavy rains of the next day would be only partially able to check; while her gallant outnumbered air forces were driven back, or reduced to intermittent sporadic efforts to defend the vital nerve centres and arteries of a land which had failed to make them equal to meet their foes.
France, delayed through the fateful midnight hours through desire to have Russian backing for what she did, learnt in the time that preceded the dreadful dawn that the Russian air force had indeed taken the skies, but were approaching her own frontiers, to scourge her with hostile bombs. And in the following days, upon Southern Europe and Southern Asia, like a winter tempest out of the north, the swift tide of invasion came. In the protective arming of other lands there was nothing which could hold back the gathered might of these two nations, which, during the three previous years, had been solely organized and intended for war.
CHAPTER II
IT was on the evening of February 11, 1938, seven days after the destruction of Prague, that Prince Alexander Nicholas von Teufel, Commander of the combined Russo-German air forces, sat in his private room in the Lustgarten Palace, dining with Field Marshal Ernst von Hoffmann, the four-days Commander in Chief of the German Armies, who had gained that exalted position by the nomination of Prince von Teufel, after the Air Marshal had shot the previous holder of that office with his own hand, as part of a process of assassinations, not previously unfamiliar in Nazi records, by which he had made himself the centre of absolute and most ruthless power.
Now they met to discuss the military position of a world war which von Teufel felt no doubt that he could direct to his own ends, being no less than the domination of a prostrate world. During the last three days he had surrounded himself with those who had been his carefully chosen associates in the Air Ministry previously - men who were loyal to him, unscrupulous, and now intoxicated by his success, both against outer foes and those at home who would have disputed his power, and in that space of days he had become recognized as the de facto head of a Germany well accustomed in recent years to the unbridled violences of those who rule her.
It was only a few hours before that he had given orders for the assassination of certain Russian statesmen who might otherwise show the will and ability to oppose his ascendancy in that country, which could be based there on no better right than that of a Russian grandfather, and the fact that he had been chosen by the two governments which he had overthrown for the command of the combined air forces in the war by which they had conspired to enslave mankind.
"I will not vex my mind," he had said, "to decide how or by what hand they shall die. I have no time for such details now. Let me hear of it next as a thing done."
Now he rose, and strolled over to a large-scale map of the world which hung across the length of the one side of the room that was not broken either by window or door. He laid a finger upon the British Isles, as he said: "If they do not yield, you must make an end. You can have two days, but no more. We have too much on hand to be hindered longer by them." But he said this in an almost casual tone, and his eyes settled more seriously upon the Mediterranean, and the line of the North African coast. "It is here," he said, "that they will make head to resist our power."
. . . The decision to abandon Southern Europe on the fourth day of the war - which the President of the United States had made an emphatic condition of entering the arena of conflict in the Eastern Hemisphere - was not reached without emphatic protests from among the heterogeneous convention of statesmen, ambassadors, and military experts who had hurriedly assembled in Washington, by land and water and air, with such credentials as the occasion allowed, to represent the opinions of the assaulted world, and it has been the subject of much subsequent controversy.
It entailed the surrender of vast resources, which fell into von Teufel's hands without the wastage of war, and it abandoned large populations to a servitude which he would use to recruit his power.
But it is at least probable that it abandoned nothing which could have been held for more than a space of days and it gave an aspect of voluntary strategy to what might otherwise have been a demoralizing, compelled retreat.
It also saved immense quantities of war material, and naval and aerial fleets, which must have been destroyed or surrendered in the course of a stubbornly prolonged resistance, but which were now transferred to the North African coast by a decision which operated before von Teufel's armies could arrive in sufficient force, either by land or air, to restrain them effectually.
Like a migration of locusts, the remaining aeroplanes, civil and military, of the Christian lands darkened the winter blue of the Mediterranean skies. With ten thousand deep-wallowing holds, the Mediterranean shipping left the harbours of Europe empty as it fled to its meagre North African refuges, or crowded, like flocks of stampeded sheep, through the narrow Gibraltar straits, or the congestion of a Canal in which all the traffic was now moving in the same direction.
It was a disposition which gave a water frontier, deep and wide, to the Christian powers, and though the dangers of air remained, it must suffice to hold off the land-attack of the vast Russo-German armies, so long as its navies remained supreme, and the two gates of the inland sea could be held secure.
It was the position that the murdered Field Marshal Wertner had foretold, and it was one that von Teufel did not fail to recognize as formidable, though he did not doubt that he would be equal to overcome it.
He ordered that Gibraltar should be attacked by aerial fleets of overwhelming strength, armed with all the chemistry of hell, and that an army should be assembled in Southern Spain in readiness to be transported across the straits. He ordered that the naval harbour of Malta should be subjected to attacks of a like intensity. But it was to the Eastern Mediterranean that he looked as the point where he must strike the decisive blow which would leave him at the head of a prostrate world. Here was the gate of Africa. Here, equally, was the gate of Europe and Asia, if his enemies should become of a disposition and strength to endeavour to break it through.
The naval harbour of Alexandria - the narrow isthmus of Suez - the great island air base of Cyprus, which England owned, and which had been better prepared for this day of fate than either he or most of her own people knew - he looked at them, and saw that he had only to win them now to control the world. It would enable him to overrun Africa before sufficient armies could be assembled for its defence. He calculated that the subjection of Asia was no less than the certainty of an early day.
The New World might think itself to lie apart and secure, but how long would it maintain an unbroken front against the full strength of the Old? Its fate would be sure and soon. It would be struck from the north. Struck both east and west when the time should come, where the Arctic seas are not broad. But that time could wait. Now he had no more to do than to destroy those keys that the English held. Gibraltar - Malta - Cyprus - Alexandria - the Suez Canal - keys that must be easy to wrest from relaxing hands while the life of England itself ebbed out from its mortal wounds. And meanwhile he would hasten to advance the strength of his armies towards the fertile Syrian plains, that no moment would be lost before Africa should be overrun. 'Frightfulness and speed' must be the order for its subjection now that America had come into the war.
. . . The War Council at Washington saw the problem in the same light, and that the same area might soon become the final vortex of war. Senator Ramsden, asking the President in a moment of relaxation what this fool talk about Armageddon meant, and whether there were such a place on the map, and being shown the ridge from which Mount Carmel rises to front the sea, remarked that the Hebrew prophet must have been a wise old bird, and mightn't prove to be so far wrong after all.
CHAPTER III
PRINCE VON TEUFEL returned to the table, the Field Marshal following. They cracked nuts, which they ate with the aspect of men whose leisure was too assured to be disturbed by any outer affairs. Their thoughts, it is true, were upon other things than the kernels they ate, but it is true also that, among the scores of thousands of those who held posts of command or responsibility in the war which had suddenly spread over half a world at a pace which must be counted in minutes rather than weeks, Prince von Teufel, who had already seized a wider control than was held by any other on either side, may have been the one who was least conscious of pressure upon his time.
This came, in part, from the typically meticulous German care with which this monstrous assault upon civilization had been planned in detail before the first bomber rose to the midnight skies - a preparation gigantic in its original impetus, which must, however, decrease, as its orderly process must become confused with the passing days; and, in part, because not having been accidentally thrust into, or suddenly seized, an unanticipated power, but having schemed for it from the first day on which the organization of the German air forces had been placed in his hands, he had his own plans as matured as were those of the High Command which was now subordinate to his ruthless will. . . .
Now he said: "There is one point on which we must be assured beyond reach of doubt. We are agreed that the haste with which America has entered the war, which our High Command did not expect, renders it vital for us to possess the North African coast at the first moment we may, lest it become a ground on which the strength of the New World will be arrayed to augment our foes.
"That is what, if they be soundly advised, they will be active to try, and we must be the more diligent to prevent. But we must also look to the chance that their eyes will be drawn aside to the British Isles, thinking that they may be the better base from which to launch their attack."
Field Marshal von Hoffmann looked a doubt that he was slower to speak, and Prince von Teufel continued with an overbearing brusqueness which explained the Field Marshal's hesitation, though his prudence may have been falsely based: "Do you think me a fool? Even so, it is a thing to be said. I must have your thoughts, if you are to be useful to me."
The Field Marshal, who had seen his predecessor assassinated by von Teufel's hand less than a week before, showed no surprise, nor any sign of offence, at the manner of this address. He answered equably, as though the loss of von Teufel's temper assisted the stability of his own: "I thought it unlikely that such a choice would be made, but there may be reasons I have not weighed."
"Did I say it was not? But a small doubt is not to be left unprobed. We must be most certain in all we do."
"You would wish the greater energy to be shown in subduing the British Isles, if they would otherwise be used as a base for the landing of American troops?"
"So I might. Or I might wish to lure them to that which would be their fall. It is the fact I must have."
Field-Marshal von Hoffmann considered the military problem proposed, which he saw to involve others of air and sea. He said: "It is surely Africa they should use. Their advisers will tell them that. You may count it sure. But we know what the politicians are likely to be. They are dogs that the tail will wag, for those lands have no men who rule with better right than the counting of heads. They may say that England must be sustained, that her kindred shall not lose heart in their distant lands."
"It is not that which I wish to hear. I said we must know."
The Field Marshal might have replied that it was a matter for the Intelligence Service, and that he would see that it had their attention. Strictly, it was not his matter either to make inquiry or to give orders thereon. But if Prince von Teufel chose to make him the instrument of what, in all but name, had become an absolute power, should it be his part to object? Besides, it happened that he knew a very apposite fact, and one which would entail a responsibility of decision which he would be pleased for von Teufel to take, rather than that it should be his.
"There is one man," he said, "who might be trusted to find out what you wish to know. . . . That is, if he should be trusted at all."
"He is a spy whom there has been occasion to doubt?"
"Apparently not. He has just brought news of the situation of the secret aerodrome which we desired to locate. It is in Wales. In the Brecon Hills."
"Still, if you have had a doubt, he should die. Spies are venal men, most often selling secrets to either side. You should not doubt them a second time."
"I will remember that. But this is not an ordinary spy, or a common doubt. You may remember the name of Zweiss - Adolph Zweiss. He was a flying-ace in the last war. He did feats on the Italian front hard to believe, the aeroplanes being what they then were."
"I have heard his name. What of him?"
"He disappeared shortly after the end of the war. It was supposed he was dead. Two weeks ago a man was caught who would have been shot for an English spy, as, indeed, he did not deny that he was. But he said that he was Zweiss. He said that he had abandoned his identity nearly twenty years before, and joined the British Intelligence Service, which he had loyally served for that time, but solely that he might be ready to give us exceptional help in war - for which he had waited in assurance that it would come."
"But he was not fully believed?"
"His identity appeared to be proved, even to body-marks, such as a mole, which he could not fake."
"Then where is the doubt?"
"He was spying for England when he was caught, having penetrated one of our secret aerodromes in the Bavarian hills in a very bold - I might say a most impudent - manner. He was in the uniform of a German soldier, whom he had actually killed to obtain the disguise."
"That must have been hard to explain."
"He said that it had been necessary, so that he should not lose the confidence of his English employers, and all his eighteen years of preparation be thrown away, just as war was about to come. He asked what was the life of one German soldier beside the service which he could render while he was in the British Intelligence Service, and unsuspect."
Prince von Teufel considered this. It was a ruthless argument such as would have been sufficient to himself in a like case. He did not think the worse of Adolph Zweiss for that, nor was he less disposed to believe his tale. He asked: "You have trusted him since, and he has not failed?"
"It was not I. It is a tale I have heard no more than a few hours ago. He was allowed to fly from Nürnberg in the uniform of a German private, taking with him an English girl of good family, who was anxious to escape rather than be interned here. She was nothing to us, and his taking her was to give confidence to those in England who must not suspect, or his use is done. They cannot have had a doubt, for they let him return, with this information which we had required him to get."
"You are satisfied that it is not false?"
"Yes. It is corroborated by what I have learnt from another source."
"I will see this man for myself. Have him sent here in an hour's time. I shall be occupied until then."
Field Marshal von Hoffmann took a plain hint, and left at once to attend to this and other, as he may have thought, more important affairs.
The Prince said to himself: "If I should be assured, I must trust him much. But if there be a doubt, though it be of no more than a grain's weight, he shall surely die. For I must be certain in what I do."
He passed into an adjoining room, where he dictated to two secretaries for half an hour, thus duplicating the orders he issued, that there might be no error or alteration in what he said, and it would be at their peril that the copies should not be alike. He received some telephone reports, which were restricted by his command to the bare outlines of the movements that shook the world. He rested for a short time, according to the resolution he had made that the pace at which war swept over the earth like a forest fire should not confuse the stability of his own mind. Then he went back into the room to which he had ordered that Adolph Zweiss should be brought, and found that he was waiting there in the company of an officer of the Intelligence Service, who saluted and introduced himself as Major Luther.
CHAPTER IV
PRINCE VON TEUFEL looked at the man who said he was Adolph Zweiss, and the man looked back at him as an equal might, but as he had not supposed that a spy would.
Adolph Zweiss saw a man whose face was familiar from many prints. He saw black, straight, rather coarse hair, brushed back from a white bony forehead of no great dignity, over black eyes that were normally those of a dreamer rather than of a man of active affairs, but which would become piercingly intelligent and alert when his mind was outwardly roused, or alive with a dreadful menace when anger stirred. The nose was straight, short, thick. The thin-lipped mouth was hard and set in repose, and the jaw heavy in cruel lines. But these details were merged in a personality strangely magnetic, and in a coldly intense, dominating manner, under the influence of which few could come without being moved to devoted service, or repelled to a sharp aversion, which would be commonly allied to a great fear.
If it were true, as was to be said in the following days, that he was possessed by the archenemy of mankind, then it must be allowed that the devil could give him great, if sinister, dreams, and the driving force of a most ruthless and implacable will.
The man upon whom von Teufel looked was of a very different, though hardly opposite, type. He had a lean, tired face that had been deeply lined by stress of living, either through mental or physical strains. He was rather tall, with a spare, muscular frame, and of such an aspect that neither his nationality nor his age would have been simple to guess. When he spoke, his German was idiomatic, and its accent that of the Prussia in which Adolph Zweiss had been born. He spoke English with equal ease.
The Prince asked with abruptness: "You are Adolph Zweiss?"
"It is a name which I once bore, but is best unsaid. Every time it is used it is an added danger to me."
"Are you so easily scared, being in the occupation that you profess?"
"So it is. All my work, and the preparation of half a life, may be spoiled by this chatter of who I am."
"You would not expect to be trusted here without assurance of who you are?"
"It should have been asked once, and no more."
"But your chiefs in England must suppose that you have some status or footing here."
"They do not know what it is. They leave that to me. We are not trained to talk or explain, but to be frugal of words."
The Prince made no comment on this. He asked, in the same abrupt way as before: "Are you armed?"
"No."
The Prince opened a drawer at his side, by which action an automatic was near his hand. He said: "You are discreet." He turned to Major Luther: "You may go. But wait near. It may be that I shall need you again."
When he had left the room, Prince von Teufel asked: "You have the confidence of your English employers? You are not doubted by them?"
"So I have reason to think. Otherwise they had not released me, and sent me here."
"With what mission have you come back?"
"By your leave, it is a matter of which it would not be prudent to speak."
Prince von Teufel stared in an angry surprise. "You will be good enough," he said, "to reply in another way."
Adolph Zweiss, if he should be called by that name, appeared undisturbed by the anger that he had roused. "It is a question," he replied calmly, "of whether I am to return there."
"You will explain that."
"It is simple enough. If I am to go back, and in such a way that I can be of further avail to Germany and to you, I must be able to show that I have done that for which I was sent, which, if I say what it is, I suppose that I shall not do. But if I am to remain here, it is a matter which I may wisely betray."
"You may tell it to me. None can overhear, or will be informed, unless by my own will."
"Pardon me, but I think it were better not."
"That is for me to judge."
"When I had said what it is, it would be too late."
"Do you set your judgment against my own, and my stated will?"
"No. For if you had the same knowledge, I am sure that your judgment would be the same."
"Do you know that if you fail to give satisfaction to me you may be near to a quick death?"
"I believe that. But you will see that I am not taking the course which would be chosen by one of a false mind. I could have told you any one of a dozen lies as to what I have been ordered to do. In fact, I trust your judgment as I should be unlikely to dare if I spoke to a lesser man."
He watched the Prince as he said this with an anxiety which he must not show. Was he a man, as so many are, on whom flattery would work in a subtle way, even though it might have no instant effect? Whether his heart were with Germany or her foes, he knew his argument to be sound, but it was not such as one accustomed to be obeyed would be likely to accept with a good will.
Now it was hard to judge the impression that he had made, for von Teufel ignored his reply, turning the subject aside with the abruptness that he had used before. He asked: "By what name are you called now?"
"Richard Steele."
"Very well. We will call you that. Are you sure that the service which you can render to us is greater than that with which you will serve our foes?"
"How can I answer that, till I know what you require? If it be less, so I will say, and explain all. Except I can be of a great use, I have no desire to go to England again. It is a hazard greatly increased by the chatter here, which their spies may learn."
"Apart from that, you would feel secure?"
"Yes, I should."
"Who do you suppose will have the last success in this war?"
"Am I to say what I think, or that which all of our race are disposed to persuade themselves?"
"You must speak your thoughts, or you insult me by what you say."
"I think the war must be quickly won, or it will become harder to do. Our enemies will become stronger should we delay. But I do not know all the weapons that you may have."
"It is soundly thought. Is the resistance of Britain done? Is her strength spent?"
"She is on her knees, but she has as yet no will to submit."
"So I believe it to be. Can you penetrate to the counsels of those who are in control, and to the plans of their allies, of which they must be largely informed?"
"Yes. It is likely that I could do that."
"Will you find for me whether America will use that country, or let it go?"
"I suppose I could."
"That is well. You have my commission for that, and you have my trust. But it must be done. I call failure and treason by equal names, nor will the world be so wide, in a space of weeks, that the meanest man can hide, or the swiftest outrun my wrath. What reward do you ask for this?"
"I ask none. I suppose that you will give with a just hand."
"You are right in that. How soon can you do this? These are swift and most fateful hours."
"I will lose no time. But I must first have three days here. I must go back having done that for which I was sent, or at least be able to show that I have made a worthy attempt."
"You can have two days, but no more."
"They will be enough, if I am unmolested and unobserved."
"You ask much."
"I wish to succeed in that which you have required me to do."
"I will give orders for that, after which Major Luther will arrange for your return to England by a sure route."
"Is it wise? I suppose I could find my way."
"You would run a risk which you need not have?"
"It is one I should be likely to overcome. And the more risk on the way, the less there would be when I arrive. If I am to do that which you require, it will not be by an easy path."
Prince von Teufel remained silent for a moment. Then he said: "You shall have it all as you prefer. But you will understand that, after that, I expect success, and that excuses will not be heard. Do this, and you will be paid from a full hand. But I will forgive neither failure nor long delay."
He took a tablet, on which he wrote a single word, which he passed across the table for Steele to read. "Do not speak," he said. "Only read, and do not forget. That word, whispered to any officer about my doors who wears two white chevrons, will bring you quickly to me."
He tore the leaf from the tablet and cast it into the fire. He summoned Major Luther again. "You will provide all without stint that Herr Steele may require in the next hour. After that you will not see him again. Nor is he to be watched or molested while he is in Berlin on any pretext at all. You will let this be known to those whom it may concern, for disobedience and death are the same word."
CHAPTER V
RICHARD STEELE, or No. 973 as he was known to the Secret Service of England, left the Lustgarten Palace in some confusion of mind, and walked two random miles west and south to Potsdamer Street, and sat for some time in the Haus Vaterland Cafe, before it was clearly resolved.
When he had been summoned to von Teufel's presence, he had known that he walked on the fine edge of the pit of death, and even after he left he had some doubt of whether he had won his life or was marked to die, for he saw that he had met one who could be devious and secret in what he did, and whom no scruples would hold.
But he had resolved, before the ordeal began, that, whatever his real identity, and wherever his true sympathy might be, he would speak, and even think, while in von Teufel's presence, as Adolph Zweiss would have been likely to do, irrespective of consequence, which he must make his later concern.
He supposed that, by that attitude of mind, he had removed whatever suspicions had been attached to his name, as it had been vital for him to do, but now he must adjust what he had said to what he would actually have preferred. He must weigh losses and gains.
If it were indeed true that he would be allowed to move for the next two days "unmolested and unobserved", he had gained more than he could in reason have hoped. It might be said that he had gained all.
But it was also true that the price was high. Adolph Zweiss, fearful of arousing the suspicions of the British Intelligence Service, which he planned to betray, might have thought that it would look better if he should appear escape from Germany in a furtive way, but Richard Steele knew that if he should return to his own land by German airship or submarine it would make no difference at all. It may be said that he had acted his part too well, even to the misleading of his own mind. But he must rest content, as his occupation taught him to do, with the extent of his present gain. Two days hence there would be time enough to consider that! Let him use the hours that he had.
He rose as the cafe showed signs of preparing to close, and took an omnibus down Stresemann Street, at the end of which he changed to another, which carried him well into the poorer quarter of the south-eastern city.
He looked down the while on pavements which had been crowded throughout the day with those who were filled with sanguine excitement by the news which each moment brought, but now thinned at a late hour. Seeing them, he contrasted, in a cold bitterness of mind, a city which might be aware of the sudden war which it had thrust on a shaking world, but could still retain much of its gaiety, its amusements, its comforts of normal life, with that of London, crouching in darkness, now that the fires had died which had left most of its East End and half its centre no more than "a heap of ashes slaked with blood", but still gallant, desperate, licking its dreadful wounds.
Here, truly, there was awareness of war. Any woman or man not in uniform of some kind would have been a conspicuous figure, for Germany had been organized for this hour to the last man - the last woman - the last child that was of age to balance itself on its own feet.
For the first three days Berlin had known the ignominy of darkened streets, and Nürnberg had even heard the bursting of hostile bombs. But such days had been quickly done. The shattered remnants of the air forces of Southern Europe now fought rearguard actions among the clouds, lurked in hidden aerodromes mending their damaged wings and waiting for a dark hour that would aid escape, or were already gathering, like flocks of migrating birds that had been blown apart by a hostile gale, in Morocco, Libya, and the Sudan.
At Cyprus, at Ceuta - even at Malta - there might be nests of wasps whose venom was not yet spent, but they would surely preserve their stings for their near and most active foes. If the Christian nations had bombing-squadrons which were still of unbroken strength, they would have occupation more than enough in vexing the long battle-front which moved southward to the Mediterranean coasts. Certainly they would never reach to molest Berlin, through skies which were patrolled by swift-flying scouts, and possessed by fighter-squadrons against which the strongest bomber would have little hope of surviving in a close-fought fight, and insufficient speed to escape its foes. . . . No, Berlin had no reason to dim her lights as she came to the second week of the war. . . .
Being convinced, after alighting from the second omnibus, and having taken one or two sudden turns, and cut through a narrow passage, that he was indeed unfollowed, Richard Steele went on to a quiet side street, from which he entered a covered alley in which the light was so dim that it was rather by feeling than sight that he came to the door he sought - and here, for the next half-hour, he knocked gently, and then more firmly, without reply.
It was a confronting silence, by which he was disappointed but not surprised. It was indeed a natural sequence to that which he already knew. The door, as he had been told, was the sole entrance to the two-roomed dwelling of Martin Blatz, a confidential clerk in the service of the German War Office, and secret agent of England since he had settled in Berlin under that borrowed name fourteen years before.
Two years previously he had installed, in the solitary apartment of another espionage agent at Nürnberg, a radio transmission set working on microwaves not otherwise used, by which secret-code messages would be sent from time to time to London, based on information which he would obtain in the course of his own confidential employment and send to Nürnberg through an intermediate agent. But this medium of communication had been most sparingly used; the first object being to have it available if there should be the outbreak of war which had now come. Two days after the commencement of war a message which was being received in London had broken off in mid-sentence, and no further sound had come through.
To discover what had occurred - to ascertain whether the secret transmission had been detected - whether Martin Blatz or his subordinate agents, all or any, had been discovered for what they were - to re-establish communication if it should still be possible - such was the desperate enterprise which Richard Steele had undertaken; and to do this while maintaining also the character of Adolph Zweiss, so that his presence in Berlin must be known and his movements (he had supposed) almost certainly watched, in consequence of the very natural suspicion of his own nationality which was felt by the Berlin military police.
Now he could feel content that he was free from such surveillance; and even if contrary orders should have been issued subsequently by von Teufel it would still be probable that his movements would be unobserved until he should return to his own hotel, which he was resolved that, until the completion of this investigation, he would not do.
Yet what alternative had he? The night was becoming bitterly cold, and in the street without a thin sleet had commenced to fall. He had no means by which he could break open the door, even if that would have been prudent to try. To walk the streets through the night might be to draw the attention to himself which he must avoid at whatever cost. Considering the magnitude of the issues involved, he saw that his own comfort or health could be of weight in such scales only as they would affect his efficiency for that which he had to do. He sat down on the wooden step of the door, congratulating himself that it was not stone, and took such rest and shelter as could be found in the corner of door and jamb.
He waked from the uneasy slumber that the position allowed before the late February dawn had lightened the eastern skies, and rose stiffly, having resolved what he must do next. He knew that no one could have opened the door during the night, and that the one opposite to it, to which his feet had been nearly stretched, had been equally undisturbed. But, as the morning approached, that opposite door must be likely to open at any time, and when that happened he would prefer to be gone.
He gave a few further knocks upon Herr Blatz's door, gaining no more response than he had expected to hear, and went out to streets which were now covered by a thin coating of snow. Fortunately he would leave no footmarks in the covered entry, and the street was empty and silent. In the dim light of that early hour he did not suppose that anyone would have seen him pass out, or attach any importance to the movements of one who walked coolly, as being assured of the credentials of what he did.
CHAPTER VI
HE stopped at a coffee-stall for a much-needed meal, and continued to walk quietly about in the busier streets, making a wide circuit towards the place which he had in mind, so that he had no need either to loiter or to pass twice over the same ground until the hour arrived at which the smaller side street shops were beginning to open. Then he approached a delicatessen shop, and remained for a short time studying the contents of the window, as being in doubt of what he would buy, which in fact he was, for he was aware of the need of food, and his assumption of the identity of Adolph Zweiss did not include the German passion for the consumption of pigmeat in twenty forms.
Having resolved this, he entered the shop, to be greeted cheerfully by a small, pot-bellied elderly man, who bustled forward to serve him.
"Max," he said, "I will take half of a roast fowl, and some bread with it, for I must buy if I come here, and must then find somewhere to eat a meal. Show me some other things first, which I will not take, for I have questions to ask."
As he spoke, he observed a man whose face had changed from the first word, for Max was his middle name, which was not over the shop, nor was it commonly known. It could be used without difficulty of explanation by anyone who knew that it was his, but, in fact, it was only employed as a sign that he was addressed by another of the secret fraternity to which he had thrilled tremblingly to belong in less dangerous days. But for the last week he had been in a condition of panic fear, expecting every moment that those would enter the shop who would take him away for the perfunctory trial which would mean his death at the following dawn. Was this a trap? He would take no risks.
"Sir," he said, ignoring all but the order he had received, "chickens are dear and few, but if you have space on your card I shall be pleased to serve you with what I have."
Steele recognized a difficulty he had overlooked, but saw it to be one which would provide the present excuse which he required. It had become the custom in Germany at this time for every citizen to have a general food-card, on which particulars and prices of all he purchased must be entered by the shopkeeper from whom he bought, to a total which he could not exceed. It was a method of control which had proved to have many advantages, especially in reducing the prices of fancy foods, but it was not adapted to the requirements of a stranger who did not wish to return to his own hotel.
"I have no card," he said. "I am a visitor here. So for the next few minutes I must be begging for food which you will not give, or, at the last, perhaps some scraps, if you can. That is what you can say if you should be asked why I have called here, which you need not expect to be, for I am Adolph Zweiss, who was a flying ace in the last war."
"I do not care who you are," the man replied, "nor know why you tell me this, but if you have no card I cannot serve you, and you had better be gone. There is the Food Bureau, to which all may apply."
"I know who you are, and I can see that you are less certain of me, so I will speak in plain words. Do you know why I knock for hours on Herr Blatz's door, and have no reply?"
"Why should I be expected to know that?"
"Have you heard from Nürnberg during the last week? Do you know whether No. 428 is well? It is that which I have come from London to ask, for it is of importance to us. I am No. 973, of whom you may have heard something before now.
Max looked at the speaker with puzzled, frightened suspicious eyes, as he heard this. He knew that a mistake would be his death, but he was a shrewd though a timid man, and he saw cause for belief. Yet his answer was still very cautiously framed.
"I understand little of what you say, but there is talk of Herr Blatz - if we both speak of the same man - that he was caught in some treason against the State, and was beheaded a week ago. He was no friend of mine, though he would come here for some things for which I have a name that I cook well."
"There is no doubt that we speak of the same man, and it is news which I am sorry to hear. But my point is that the Nürnberg transmission failed - it may have been two days after that - by which you will see that there is a probability that it came to the ears of the police by the same channel as that by which Herr Blatz was shown to be serving us. But it is not enough to guess. We must know."
The old man had turned away as this was said. He fumbled under a shelf. He rose with a parcel wrapped in newspaper in his hand. "Here is half a chicken," he said, "and a piece of bread. You can call it scraps, and I have made no charge, as my till will show. But I can do no more. I shall be glad for you to leave."
"So I will when you have told me how you communicated with 428, and give me his address, which I have not got."
After he had said this there was sufficient silence to allow time for Steele to conclude that the man would not talk of his own will, and to consider what form of pressure he could apply. But after a while the man said: "I suppose they do not suspect, or they would have questioned me. It was of other matters that Herr Blatz was accused - as a spy of France. Yet if it be as you say. . . . The address is Paulborner Street 529. I suppose that there may be other apartments there. But I will give you a key which has been left with me against such a moment as this."
He went into a room at the rear of the shop, with the parcel still in his hand. He returned in a few minutes, saying: "You will find a key there, under the bones. I can do no more. I have been watched by the police for three months, and perhaps more, but they have no charge they can bring. They will suspect much if they see that you have come here, which may be fatal to both. . . . But I can tell you this - the last letter has not come back."
He handed the parcel across the counter, and as he did so another customer entered the shop. Steele said: "Well, a hungry man must take what he can get." He went out, thinking that there was no more there to be learnt or said.
It was bad news that Max was being watched by the police. It might mean that his own visit would be observed, even though they might not be looking for him. And as to proof being required, he did not think that the German police would be much troubled for lack of that. A mere suspicion would be enough to put the man behind solid bars at such a time, even if his life should be spared - unless, of course, he had been left as a decoy to draw better spoil into the net. . . . But more probably he was not suspected at all. It might be no more than the baseless fear of a frightened man.
With these thoughts, he entered a beer-house to which he came. He ordered a glass of lager, which could still be had without stint, and spread the parcel of bread and chicken open upon his knees. In that position it was a simple matter to abstract and secrete the key, which was a small one of the Yale pattern.
He saw now that he must go to Nürnberg, which he would have preferred to avoid. And, for several reasons, he must go by rail, which was also against his will. For one who wishes to elude the notice of the police, to enter a railway station is not the ultimate folly, because he may board a ship, which is insanity in an extreme form. But it is bad enough. And it was especially so at this time, when all human transit was more or less under the surveillance of the military police.
If he must do that there could be no purpose in absenting himself longer from his hotel, to which, indeed, it might be discreet to return. Let those who watched (if such there were) suppose that his secret work had been done while he had eluded them during the night. After all, he had undertaken to find his own way to England, and Nürnberg was a step in that direction by the more southerly line. He could raise no suspicion by going there, especially if he took a single ticket, as it would be prudent to do. Besides, whatever he might be going to find, it was unlikely that he would wish to return to Berlin. In fact, he would be glad to think that he was seeing it for the last time.
He went out and signalled a passing taxi. The police could question the man as to where he had taken it if they cared to do so. They would learn nothing from that. . . .
It was only a few hours later that he entered the Nürnberg train. He could not say that he was unobserved, but that he was unobstructed was certainly true. Two men who entered his compartment were required by a police official, with polite firmness, to remove themselves elsewhere. The ticket inspector passed without entering the compartment, or appearing to observe his presence. He concluded that von Teufel's orders were being strictly obeyed. For the first time he regarded it as more than a remote possibility that he might see England again.
CHAPTER VII
IT was dark, and the snow was falling thickly, when Richard Steele entered Paulborner Street, having spent a perhaps needless hour in making certain that he was not trailed; which would, indeed, have been almost impossible without his knowledge in the weather through which he came. But he had a double need for precaution. For if he were followed he would be leading the police to the last place of which he would wish them to know, and perhaps bringing death to one on whom no suspicion might yet be laid.
Perhaps. That was the word. It was hard to guess. The method of communication which Martin Blatz had instituted had been that he would write a letter in code, having no designation or address, and pass it over to Max while he would be making a purchase of liver-sausage or brawn, and when there were no other customers in the shop. Max, in his back room, after his visitor had left, would put it into an envelope addressed to Wilhelm Lotz, Paulborner Street 529, Nürnberg, and drop it into some letter box in the city, now here, now there, as he would wander about after dark, and when he was certain that he was not observed. The letter would arrive safely, as, indeed, why should it not?
Wilhelm Lotz was not one upon whom any suspicion had over lain. A quiet, elderly man. An outworker, engaged in the carving of toys. A childless, unmarried man, living a very solitary life. One with skilled, sensitive hands, who could have as much work as he would be likely to do, but if he should fail to canvass for it among the half-dozen firms by whom he was intermittently employed, which of them would take notice of that?
He had an English mother, who had died by his father's brutality forty years before. But was that a matter to be recorded, even in the official-ridden country to which he belonged. He was a simple German citizen, with a blameless record: one who had never been of any interest to the police.
The fact that Martin Blatz had been discovered in a separate treason against the State might seem likely to pass him by, and to leave the radio set which was in his charge unsuspected and undisturbed, and the fact that Max was still free gave this probability strong support.
Against it was the fact that the transmissions had broken off abruptly a short time after Blatz's arrest, and had been silent since. But here again a contrary argument could be used. Had it fallen into German hands, would not an attempt have been made to send false messages, or to draw London to indiscreet disclosures in its replies?
Steele climbed the ill-lighted stairs of the shabby apartment-house with a most doubtful mind as to what he would be likely to find.
The first floor gave him no occasion to pause. He heard children's voices within the rooms. He saw a supper-table through a half-open door, around which several people sat, and they were loud in some trivial dispute. He went on quickly, content to think that he had not been noticed by those within.
The next landing was investigated with equally definite result. Dimly lighted, it showed names painted upon the doors, none of which was that which he sought.
On the next landing he must stop, for there was no farther to go. He had reached the top. There was a single door here, bearing no name.
He listened for some time, and then knocked. Having done this several times without response, and hearing no movement within, he ventured to try the key.
The lock yielded at once, but the door did not. Pressure showed that it was bolted both above and below.
It was an unwelcome rebuff, yet one which seemed to indicate that there must be someone within. He considered that Wilhelm Lotz, guarding the secret he did, might not welcome callers whom he had no cause to expect. Had the door been unsecured, but for the lock, a pistol-bullet might have been a more probable greeting than an outstretched hand. It might be as well as it was. He knocked again, more loudly, but with no better result than before. He did not wish to raise a commotion which might bring up those who were at the supper-table below, or others from the nearer floor.
But neither did he wish to wait there through the midnight hours. He had spent one night at a closed door, and it was more than enough. He had no light but that which could be gained from a torch that his pocket held. His heavy coat, from which he had shaken a shower of half-melted snow, dripped audibly as he moved.
He tore a blank leaf from a pocketbook and wrote a short note in code, which No. 428 could not fail to understand, and pushed it under the door. Then he went down to the stormy street and sought an ironmonger, from whom he bought a stout chisel, so that, if it should be necessary on his return, he could force open the door.
He mounted the stairs again without encountering anyone, and having knocked for some further minutes, though not loudly, without response, sat down on the cold landing to wait till sleep should come to those in the rooms below before proceeding to force the bolts.
It proved to be slow and difficult work, for he was careful to make the least possible noise, and wished also to do the work in such a way that the door would not be materially damaged. Fortunately, the jamb to which the bolt-sockets were fixed, which was of greater age than the door, had softened sufficiently to release the screws under the steady pressure of a chisel that did not relax.
Finding that his first effort had such definite effect that the chisel could be more loosely inserted, he continued to apply the pressure, now high, now low, in preference to the more vigorous action of shoulder or foot, and had the satisfaction at last of swinging open the door on undamaged hinges. But not noiselessly. It opened with a long whine, such as surely must have alarmed anyone within, even had he been unaware of the long-drawn creaking before.
He darkened his torch and stood aside as he pressed open the door. He did not know what might be the significance of the silence and the shot bolts, and though he did not expect that an actual enemy would be there, his pistol was in his hand. But the silent darkness was all he met.
He felt round the jamb of the door while still standing aside, and his hand stopped on a switch. Instantly the room was alight.
He saw a workbench, littered with small carvings and tools, a table, two chairs, and a heavy chest. There was a small dresser, with shelves above it, on which some odd crockery was neatly arranged. On the right-hand wall there hung a coat, an apron, and two hats. It was plainly the living- and working-room of a single man, and one whose habits were simple, tidy, and clean.
The room had an appearance of having been deserted rather than disturbed. But, if that were so, how came the door to be bolted on the inside?
Looking down, Steele saw his own note on the floor, with another beside it. Picking this up, he observed the Berlin postmark, dated February 6 - evidently the last letter from Max, which had lain undisturbed since the postman had pushed it under the door.
There was a closed door in the farther wall, and the absence of sleeping-accommodation made it obvious that it led to a bedroom beyond. Presumably whoever had bolted the door was there.
Calling out, with no expectation of response, "Herr Lotz, I am a friend from London. Are you there?" Steele proceeded to further investigation.
CHAPTER VIII
THE man must have been dead for some days - dead perhaps within a few hours of when he had collapsed at the moment that the transmission had broken off. He appeared to have crawled to the bed, against the side of which he had propped himself, perhaps not having had strength to climb upon it. There he had died unrelieved. Perhaps unable to call for help. Perhaps loyal to the trust he had undertaken, and unwilling that any should set eyes on that which occupied a long attic that extended beyond the little bedroom where he had died. Perhaps thinking only of the danger to himself, if there should come those who would denounce him to the police.
It would have been a pathetic sight at another time, this lonely, untended death, but now, when the cry of a million woes that itself had made went up from a tortured earth to a Heaven that would not hear. . . . anyway, he was dead now, and his woes were done.
Having been dead for that time, he was not pleasant to see, and would become worse.
Steele was a tired man, but he saw that he must not sleep. The night was still young, and for the time, at least, he might expect to be undisturbed. He must think first, and might find that there would be much to do before morning would come.
He closed the outer door, which would still lock, though it would not bolt. He searched for food, and found some good bacon and musty bread. He switched on an electric stove, and soon had a meal that was good enough. He had learnt that, in such emergencies, if there be the chance of a quiet meal, it should not be missed. It is an insurance of strength of body and balance of mind for whatever may be ahead. And while you eat you can think, which is better than to act on the impulse of sudden moods.
The dead body could not remain there indefinitely without discovery being assured. Neither could people be called in for its removal without the probability that there would be disclosure of the radio apparatus in the further attic.
Yet that might be inevitable now. The simplest course might be to break it up, to destroy any documentary evidences by which codes might be discovered, or other agents involved, and to walk out, leaving the door open, and the dead man to be found either soon or late, as the chance might be.
Otherwise - but suppose he could get through to England now? Suppose he could get instructions that would put the responsibility of decision where it could be made with more knowledge than he possessed?
He examined the transmission apparatus, which appeared to be in good order, as was the reception also. He saw that the power which they required had been tapped, without formality of a registering meter, from the city current. He wondered whether an aerial were necessary for such transmission, and, if so, how it had been erected without suspicion being aroused; but it was not a matter which he was likely to investigate to his own exposure.
There was no difficulty about the code, which was one of the arbitrary variety, easy to remember, and very difficult to resolve. It was only necessary to look up each word in a Twentieth-Century Dictionary, and then - with some necessary qualifications, needless to detail - to substitute a previous word, selected according to the figures of the years from 1912. The word before - the ninth word before - the word before - the second word before - the word before - and so on, going forward through the years indefinitely, according to the length of the message sent. It was a cipher which could be coded and decoded with equal ease, and after finding the expected dictionary, standing among those of other languages on Herr Lotz's single bookshelf, it took no more than a short hour to prepare a concise summary of the position, including his interview with von Teufel and the mission he had undertaken from him. He dispatched this, and had repeated it twice in the silent interval that followed, before he received reply: "Djereed nosology leather oesophagus Yorkish camphire retaille contriturate oes rade ancome transmarine unleisured relay substernal autotype expatriate ouch messs dysuria micturition yoni timbrology wawe wile installation Yorkish impudent dudgeon coupure wharf tittup infold inordinate acknow"
He might have observed from the incidence of this cipher, had he had leisure for such reflections, how large a proportion of the words in the English language are not in general use, and how much the shorter of them prevail in colloquial speech, for the message, on being decoded, read: "Do not leave if you can retain control of radio and transmit unless reliable substitute available expect our messages each midnight your time we will instruct you in due course what to inform inquirer acknowledge."
He considered this blankly for a few minutes. There would be the dead body, already putrefying, to be disposed of in such a manner that not merely would he be unnoticed in what he did, but so that its ultimate identification would not lead to the eye of inquiring authority being directed upon these rooms where Herr Lotz had lived, which would be the natural sequel to such discovery. There was the question of how he could continue to occupy the rooms of the dead man without arousing the suspicion which must lead to inquiry, arrest, or instant flight. There was the certainty that if he were discovered to have remained here when more than two days had passed, von Teufel's vengeance would put a quick end to a life he loved, though he had been prepared, for that which he must regard as a greater stake, to risk it with every hour. There was the final prospect, if all these difficulties should be overcome, these dangers subdued, that he must face von Teufel again, not only with a lying answer (as it was likely to be), but with what must be an invented tale of how he had visited England, and returned through the German lines. It was a programme which the boldest, even the most foolhardy, of espionage agents might regard with irresolute eyes; and Richard Steele, whose long immunity had been won by no headlong courage, but by the patient thoroughness of his preparations for the hazards he undertook, sat for some minutes in a dubious silence before he reached for the dictionary, wrote out the message, "Shale statute busy prosopopeia succedaneous pood." - "Shall stay but prospect success poor" - then spoke it into the transmitter with the pauses which a verbal cipher requires. He received an answer a few minutes later, which he decoded to: "Your decision greatly appreciated," and was moved by it to a moment of irritation. "Wasting time," he muttered, "on such piffle as that!" And then went on, in a better mood: "Well, I have succeeded before. Several times. I must fail once." Sooner or later, what did he expect? What had he ever expected? Soon or late, he must fail once. And in time of war - and of such a war as had now fallen across the world! - a spy has no chance of failing a second time. . . .
He looked down on the putrefying body beside the bed. It must be removed. That was sure. But could he carry' it out into dark streets that were strange to him, and hope to dispose of it there in an effectual manner? The storm, which still raged without, would favour him to a point, but how could he proceed in a way that would provide against identification? And against the inquiry which would be certain to come to a door that would be fatal, if not to him, to the purpose for which he stayed? If there were a way, it was one of which he could not instantly think.
"No," he said, regarding the remains of Wilhelm Lotz with a natural repugnance, from which human pity was not divorced, "we must be companions here for another day, if not more."
He went to the outer door, and fixed a broom-stick under the latch, so that he should have some notice of the entrance of anyone who (unlikely enough) might have a key and the disposition to enter during the night.
He came back to the dead man, on whose shoulder he laid a hand, so that the awkwardly half-recumbent figure fell stiffly away from the bed against which it leaned. He had cast his wet great-coat aside when he lit the stove, and he lay down now in the clothes he wore, and had passed next moment to dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER IX
He awoke late, as he had purposed to do - for sleep, like food, should not be missed when the chance allows - and found that the long sleep had clarified his thoughts, as it often would.
It required no directions from others now to enable him to see that his place was here. Given the wireless installation - and perhaps even without - he would be of greater potential use to England here than if he should return to do one man's part in the defence of its threatened shores. That von Teufel might learn at last of tho most impudent use which Richard Steele had made of the freedom which had been granted to Adolph Zweiss, and that his vengeance would not be pleasant to meet, were considerations which must be put lightly aside. They were no more than the professional risks which he should always be ready to take, and against which his wits must protect his life, as they had been practised to do. And was it not for this hour, dimly foreseen, that he had been preparing through the patient diligence of earlier years? His long previous residence in Berlin, in an assumed identity too humble to draw attention upon himself - the care with which he had perfected himself, not only in the German language but even in some of its local dialects - his study, to minutest detail, of German ways, even to their habits of thought - his trained thoroughness which left no detail to the decision of friendly chance - must they not come to fruit at this crisis-hour, or be the mere waste of a worthless life? . . .
He must have an identity. That was the first imperative need. A name to give, if he were asked. Papers to show. A recognized food card, without which he could live only by continual theft in this land of slaves. And for all this the dead man was at hand to supply his need
Even in this highly organized State, where each man had his numbered, allotted place, the disappearance of Wilhelm Lotz from any war-time part he might be expected to fill might not be probed, or at least not to a point that would force his door. There must be much which would be confused or left to its own drift in these whirlwind hours.
Not to the neighbours, of course - not to those who had known him - but in street and shop, and anywhere that a name must be used, he would be Wilhelm Lotz, and if he were careful how, and at what times, he went up or down the stairs, he might pass unnoticed, or taken for a visitor of one who had presumably led a very unsociable life, with which his co-tenants were not likely to have had any intimate contacts.
Having decided this, Steele proceeded to adopt the identity of the dead man as closely as he was able. He could not hope to assume a voice that, most unfortunately, he had not heard. But he stripped off his clothes. He examined the contents of his pockets, which he adopted for his own use. He searched for the meagre correspondence, the few personal records, the rooms contained. He discovered surprisingly in the locked chest a collection of Asiatic postage-stamps which appeared to be the accumulation of many years, and upon which a large sum must have been spent. He thought that its present value must be great - or rather that which it would have commanded a fortnight before, for who could say what values would stand in tomorrow's world? He wondered whether it were gratification of this secret collector's passion, rather than hatred of a brutal father, or love of a mother's land, which had led the man to take a spy's perilous pay. But that was a question to which there could never be answer now.
The man had not been unlike himself in height, and his clothes were decent and clean. By their creases, and the way they hung, he judged that Wilhelm had walked with a slight stoop, which he practised. When he had worn the clothes for some hours, he had learned to move so that they fitted easily to his own limbs.
He found a receipt which showed that the rent was paid in advance for some months to come. The electricity, of which there had been legitimate as well as illicit use, had also been recently settled, and the meter was placed on the landing, so that it could be read if Wilhelm Lotz were "away", as no doubt he had explained that he often was. It was clear that he had taken all precautions against his rooms being entered, whether he were absent or not, and in that way Steele could not have come to a better heritage for that which he was attempting to do.
In the dusk he went out, wearing the dead man's clothes, and glad to separate himself for a time from that naked corrupting corpse on the floor of the inner room, with which he had still to deal. He met no one upon the stairs, and in the streets he was no more than a humble citizen, obviously German in gait and manner and speech.
The skies had cleared, and thaw had followed a veering wind. The main streets had already been freed from the melting slush, showing that local efficiency had not relaxed. Nürnberg had become a munition town, and its population had not been greatly reduced by the call of war. As the shifts of workpeople left the factories, they crowded the pavements, talking in excited groups, or filled the cinemas, which were now devoted entirely to news-reels showing how rapidly the Russo-German allies moved on to possess the world.
Having gone far enough from the shops at which Wilhelm's food-card showed that his recent purchases had been made, Steele bought boldly, and was readily served.
The cards were issued monthly. The one he had would last as long as he would be likely to need it, or so he thought, supposing that this would not be a long war, and, in any case, that he would be required to see von Teufel again within that time, after which - but it was a mistake in his profession to reflect on that which was far ahead, and might be quite different at a nearer view. . . . The last purchases had been made on February 4. He wondered whether he would be questioned as to how he had lived since then, and had prepared a reply, but those who served him took it without remark. His card was in order, his money good. Beyond that it was no business of theirs. . . . And besides that, he observed that the men around him were not suspicious of mood. They were not fearing bombs from the skies, or looking for treason in the faces of those they met. If there were any spies in Germany now, the Government would be quite equal to dealing with them! Their thoughts were on other things. On the events, which each hour announced, by which Germany climbed to seat herself on the world's back; as did Russia also, but there was less mention of that.
There was a growing realization - it was implied rather than said - that von Teufel controlled all, and though he had a proportion of Russian blood, he was German by nationality and descent, and they felt that it was for her that he took the world by the throat. It was an excited, brutal, good-humoured crowd, relaxing from hard work, which, in so great a cause, it was very willing to do. Steele bought newspapers also, from which he might learn much, though he knew that they would contain no greater leaven of truth than the Government felt it good for the people to have, and such lies as might be useful for them to believe. He did not look at these in the street, as was being commonly done, but reserved them for a later hour. His mind was upon the problem of the disposal of Wilhelm Lotz's remains, which must become more urgent with every hour, and he could observe no place in the neighbourhood of his rooms where he could dump such a burden without the certainty that it would be promptly discovered, which he was resolved to find some way to avoid. And to carry it without remark, even the length of the street, would not be easy to do, whether it were attempted in crowded hours, or in the solitary night. It would be a burden to excite the curiosity of any night-policeman, even if its odour did not announce the nature of what it was. He might, it was true, throw it down in such an event, and escape by violence or speed. But if it were subsequently identified, as was likely, being dropped in the street where William Lotz had been lodging so long, the advantage would not be much.
There was one alternative to the streets, which he did not like. There was a dormer window in the roof of Wilhelm Lotz's attic, which he had found to be strongly bolted, and with the appearance of not having been recently opened. But he had noticed that the latch and bolts had been kept oiled, so that they could be quickly and quietly withdrawn. It was a reasonable inference that Wilhelm had regarded the roof as a possible direction of flight, should there be those knocking upon his door whom he feared to meet.
Looking through panes which had not been cleaned for many months on the outside, Steele had been able to see no more than that the roofs were tiled, rather steep, and crowded closely together.
As an emergency exit, it was good to have, but as a road to take with a burden awkwardly shaped, and of little less than his own weight, it had a forbidding look. Yet, being in the desperate position he was, he had not put it wholly aside until he had considered that the tiles would be slippery from the frost, and had recognized that he wasted thought and that he could observe no sewer-access in the neighbourhood of Paulborner Street, such as might have taken a dead body with the reasonable chance that it would be swept unnoticed away, it seemed that it must be considered again.
Anyhow, there were two things that it might be useful to have - a good length of rope and a large sack. These he bought, while he was still a good distance from the place which he must call home for the coming days, and returned for a much-needed meal, and to decide what must be essayed at a later hour.
CHAPTER X
As Richard Steele entered the door which had become his by a war-time right, coming from the clean night-air, he perceived the foul stench of decay with an acute revulsion far exceeding that of which he had been conscious before. He saw that, apart from any question of his own capacity to endure that which already approached the intolerable, the risk that it would penetrate to the floor below, and rouse inquiry he could not meet, gave an urgency to the disposal of Wilhelm's body which must not be longer deferred.
Yet, even so, he must wait until a later hour; and meanwhile must eat with such appetite as he could contrive. To assist his mind toward unconsciousness of his unwelcome companion in the adjoining room - who yet had a clearer right to that occupation than he himself could claim - he was glad to open the newspapers that he had brought, and study them while he ate.
He read that a patriotic riot in Milan had been repressed with a 'firm' - it might be said with a very pitiless - hand; that General Hagen had flown to Rome to 'advise' the Government there upon the dispositions of their forces of land and air which the war required; that the Turkish Army had taken to headlong flight, without awaiting its foes; that a Russian Commissar had been appointed to take control of that country, in which, as in all occupied lands, conscription both for military service and civil occupations was to be immediately imposed.
Gibraltar, he read, had not yet fallen, but was expected to do so on the next day, being subjected to concentrated attacks from the air, which had already destroyed all the shipping its harbour held, except such as had run for the open sea, where the German submarines were await. . . . "Well," he thought, "so they say; and so, more or less, it may be. But they do not mention Italy's fleet, which, it is a most sure guess, will have joined its force to their Christian foes; and as to the Turkish Army turning tail before it has shown what its teeth can do, it has a reputation for better things. It might be truer to say that it has been withdrawn to a backward line, and that with such speed and skill that even its rearguard was not engaged. And as for Gibraltar's fate, there is a proverb that tomorrow will never come. Its harbour might not be a place in which to remain when the bombs fall, but for submarines - I have heard it said that the Mediterranean is for them, from end to end, a most unsuitable sea; and we have some too which will be likely to do their part."
So he fought with a stubborn mind, as did millions of others throughout an assaulted world, to maintain the fortitude on which, much more than on cunning schemes or stored munitions of war, victory must at last depend, and turned from troubled though half-sceptical reading of the destruction of English troops in attempting storm of the camp which the Germans had established at Bridgnorth, and were hourly reinforcing out of the clouds, to perusal of proclamations of a different, and possibly more informative, kind.
The German Government, it appeared, still desiring to show its moderation, its hatred of avoidable war, and its care for the cultural development of the world, had offered terms of accord to the United States. They were simple and short, and had a generous sound, proffering much which, it might be observed by those most nearly concerned, was not Germany's to bestow.
If the United States of America would leave the Old World alone, she could have the New, Canada being thrown in, together with the Guianas, the Falklands, and any other fragments or islands of which the already, or soon-to-be, subordinate European States had had possession. There would be no cavil for such trifles as those. Let the three nations that led the world dwell in accord, as great neighbours should, taking their own continents under control, with the wide oceans to keep the peace.
If this should be agreed, it was plausibly said, resistance in the Old World would be quickly done, and there would be a soon end to a war which would otherwise go far to destroy the civilization of many lands, which - if her supremacy were allowed - Germany had no wish to do. But if America should be obstinate to intrude upon a quarrel and a hemisphere which were not hers, the moral responsibility for prolonging the war, and her own ruin, must be laid at her single door.
It was easy to guess that this offer was made with the design that today's ally would serve for tomorrow's meal, but might it not also show that the German High Command was already concerned to reduce or divide its foes?
Reading it, Steele felt a faint stirring of hope, which was not lessened by contempt for a diplomacy which was so singularly and characteristically unable to appreciate the ponderance of moral standards it did not own. Nor was his judgment changed when he read that the Russo-German allies had made a similar offer to Japan. Let her call off her forces of land and air, and Australia should be hers. Could there be stronger evidence, it was urged, that the allies were without greed either for territory or power, desiring only to bring the world to a settled peace, beneath which its leading nations could impose their cultures, as it would be beneficial for them to do?
But after reading these declarations of the world-policy of the Reich, he came upon another which was of a more sinister, because of a less obviously futile, kind.
"The following," he read, "is the text of a proclamation which will be distributed, over the signature of Prince von Teufel himself, in all countries of Southern and Western Europe, including the British Isles, wherein resistance may be prolonged beyond the end of the present week:
DECLARATION OF CLEMENCY AND OF DISCIPLINE
(1) The families and dependants of all men of whatever nationality who give loyal service to the German Reich, whether by conscription or in a spirit of voluntary obedience, are hereby assured of immunity from outrage, wrong, or molestation of any kind, and of due provision being made for their shelter and sustenance, they being hereby accepted as citizens of the Reich, and entitled to its support and protection, so long as their own words and actions remain loyal thereto.
(2) The families and dependants of all men who fail to submit themselves to the irresistible might of the German Reich, whether by continuing armed resistance thereto, or by contumaciousness of whatever kind, are hereby declared to be outlawed from all civil and legal rights, and at the disposition of the constituted authority in the districts where they may be found, both in their persons and properties, and available for the use and service of loyal citizens at their discretion without redress.
ALEXANDER NICHOLAS VON TEURFEL,
Prince of the Power of the Air.
Steele considered the dreadful vagueness of this threat against the civilian populations, or at least against all such as might be relatives of men in arms against the violaters of their native lands, and saw, even more clearly than he had known it before, that he watched a war to which there could be no end until one side or other had been finally and utterly overcome. He wondered whether deliberate wholesale massacre, or merely plunder and starvation, perhaps leading to some form of slavery, naked or disguised, was the policy which this proclamation forecast. Or might it be a threat deliberately worded in such a way that it would arouse fears beyond anything that was intended, to induce the submission of fearful men?
It was a sanguine interpretation to which the ruthless horrors which had opened the war gave little support, and it disappeared when he turned the page to find an editorial, officially inspired as he knew that it must be, which was explicit in explanation.
Looking [it said] beyond these brief days of war, as good statesmanship must, to the permanent pacification of Europe, it becomes of an evident importance that future generations shall not be allowed to breed the spirit of insubordination, or of hostility to the Reich. To secure this paramount consideration, it is intended to remove the female members of the families of those who persist in armed resistance to the hegemony of Europe, in whom the spirit of bitterness might survive, and to distribute them in far-distant lands, where their crossbred offspring will have no race but that of the great new nation that is to come.
It is not intended that this policy shall be enforced in those countries, such as Holland, and the Scandinavian lands, which have given prompt and ready submission, unless it shall be found that a considerable number of their nationals have left their own countries to join our foes, in which event individual orders may be issued for the arrest of their wives and daughters, and for their ultimate disposition, after a sufficient interval has been allowed for their husbands to return and claim them. In the British Isles it appears probable that a substantial movement of population will be required, and it is the intention of our Government that the most part of these women, being of Aryan blood (excluding any which may prove to be of Semitic or Slavonic origin, who may be more suitably utilized for the adulteration of negro tribes), shall be distributed as concubines among men of loyalty and worth in the German lands.
For the assurance of German wives, who might otherwise resent the introduction of these women, a stringent edict will provide for their proper subordination, and for the drastic punishment of any of them who may become causes of discord, or fail in due respect to their mistresses, or in diligence in their allotted tasks. As, in the legend of Christian superstition Adam was given control of an inferior creation and had dominion over them, so will the German housewives be given dominion over these females to chasten them to the service and humility which, by the long verdict of history, must be the lot of a conquered foe. But, apart from and above all personal considerations of whatever kind, German wives will not fail to recognize with submissive loyalty that the introduction of these women is to the glory of the German Reich, and that their fecundity will increase its power.
It may be added that, in the spirit of lofty and impartial equity characteristic of German culture the sanctity of the homes of those who make docile submission in the occupied territories will be protected with all the rigour of martial law. Every man who receives a submission card, and whose subsequent conduct is consistent with the obligations which will be set out thereon, will find it all-sufficient for the retention of a legal wife, and for the protection of his legitimate daughters; and all women who may be arrested under the provisions of this edict will be granted, on their own applications, sufficient period of suspense, during which they may be claimed by husbands or fathers whose submissions have been satisfactorily made and accepted.
Steele read this with a hardening anger which made the disposal of that rotting body in the next room a mere matter of routine, in which he was assured that he would not fail. Was it possible, he thought, that the loud-boasted advance of civilization had led forward no farther than to such barbarism as this? His reason answered honestly that it was not merely a possible development, it was one that should not even arouse surprise. It was no more - it was, indeed, much less - in its calculated barbarity than were other things that had been done during the last two millenniums, even by those who had made profession of Christian faith. And the Russo-German allies had repudiated Christianity, and all that it had attempted to teach the world.
Indeed, their attitude went beyond that, casting contempt on all that spiritual religion had meant for men, setting up an affirmative atheism against which Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan might unite, as having a common faith and a common cause. And even in Christian lands - the callous brutalities of the Spanish conflict - the bloody roads of England and France, where lorries speeded and children died by a crime of slaughter faced, tabulated, publicly announced and allowed! - Perhaps had the hands of the Christian nations been cleaner from most innocent blood this nightmare of oppression would not have fallen upon the world.
It was true that this threatened wholesale expatriation of women, and their enforced submission to the embraces of alien men, was a brutality of a kind without exact parallel even in the Spanish War, but could it be said that it sank to a lower plane? After all, death was the worst fate that any woman need have to fear. She could kill herself, if she would! And she had a choice here, which was more than came to thousands who had been massacred in Spain, and that not only by atheist hands. It was true also that the German edict offered something better than the barren promiscuities which, if they had not been widely practised in France and England, the current literatures of both countries had openly condoned.
All these things might be true, but there are matters on which feeling and logic are widely apart, and it was true also that such action as the German edict forecast would not have been even contemplated by the Christian allies, had their armies entered the territories of the aggressors.
Their fault had been that, after one bitter lesson, and the loss of a million lives, they had allowed an unrepentant Germany to rearm - their fault, or at least that of their statesmen, who had presumably read the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and knew what the attitude of Germany had been to a prostrate foe.
Steele thought: "If this war endure for no more than a month, it will become one in which mercy will be a forgotten word." He went on, with the particularity which would be the reaction of millions who would read that proclamation during the next week, to consider what might be the position of one from whom he had parted in England a few days before, one from whom he had parted after no more than the brief fortuitous association of a common escape, and with no more than the half-conscious regard of a mind burdened with urgent, momentous things. Would she be one to be caught in this net of shame? How would she react to the ignominy which it proposed?
There had been a moment when he had thought her coward: when her courage had faltered from a parachute descent which had seemed the path of obvious safety to him. But in other matters - in different ways. . . . He wondered what she might be doing in England now. But it was unlikely that he would ever see her again. All these years he had kept himself clear from a woman's claims, that when the time should come, as it now had, he should be single in what he did. . . . But it was late now. He had sat long enough reading that with which he had no immediate concern, and thinking of what he read. The time for action had come.
It was long after midnight, and there had been no communication from London, which was not likely to be attempted without particular need. He rose, and drew a pair of Wilhelm Lotz's socks over his shoes. He opened the dormer window and looked out on a night that was cloudy, but with a clear air, and some diffused light from the wide city below. He climbed out, and was absent for more than an hour, making cautious explorations, patiently controlled by a hard resolve that he would not fail.
After that he did some unpleasant and probably unnecessary work upon the remains of William Lotz, being resolved that discovery should not come through any lack of thoroughness on his part. He removed a denture. He cut off a finger on which a signet ring was fixed too firmly to be otherwise removed. . . . The sack proved to be useless, being too small; but he was not now depending on that. He might not have used it had it been twice the size. The rope was a different matter. That was to be of vital use. . . . It was three hours later when he came back through the dormer window a second time. He was exhausted by physical toil prolonged under conditions of constant strain, during which instant death must have been the penalty of relaxing muscles or weakening mind. But the thing was done.
The naked corrupting body of Wilhelm Lotz lay across the ridge of a roof which, to the best of his observation, was not visible from surrounding windows or street below. Its head and arms hung down on one side, and its legs on the other. And there it might remain to complete decay, or to become food for the prowling cats, until identification would become an impossible task. . . . There would be some marks on the roofs, of course. It had been impossible to prevent that. But a brisk rain was falling. There might soon be little to fear from them.
CHAPTER XI
FOR the next five days Steele remained quietly in his garret, and nothing happened at all. He might almost have deceived himself to the belief that he had cunningly devised a means of escape from the black danger which had fallen upon the world. It seemed that while he remained there he was lost from scrutiny of unfriendly eyes, and he had established a new identity for himself which might be difficult to disprove. He drew rations which he did not even labour to earn. He had no occasion to transmit to London, for he observed nothing of importance adequate to the risk of discovery which each message involved, and nothing came through for him. It seemed that, while his ration-card remained valid, he was in no peril, unless he should do some act to draw attention upon himself.
That he might have excuse, if he should be asked why he was idle at such a time, he cut his right hand, deeply in one place, and slightly in several others, with a sharp splinter of glass. It was still not beyond use at need, but it was hurt enough to make it reasonable that it should be bound up, and it made a show that should be sufficient to turn anything less than acute suspicion aside.
At this time he went out for no more than a short daily walk, both to avoid needless observation and to be at hand if a message for him should come through at other than the expected time. When he was in the streets he observed all that he could. He listened to passing words; he read the Government newspapers, apart from which all publications, whether of books or papers, had ceased among a nation that was now organized for the sole purpose of war.
He knew that the news he read, even as far as it might be true, was not worth transmitting, for it dealt with no more than matters on which the Christian allies would be likely to be equally well, if not much better, informed. It was not concerned with high strategy, or the movements of troops or fleets. The newspapers spoke only of what (they said) had happened yesterday on the wide front of the war.
True or false, it was a loud boast. It seemed that the Russo-German eagle had swooped, and its talons had grasped its prey. It had its beak in the neck of a prostrate world. It drank blood. Its broad wings beat down a yet-struggling foe. Under the hypnotic urge of this strident claim there was a visible change in the demeanour of the men, and still more in that of the women, who talked in the biergartens, or in the streets, or as they came out in excited groups from the cinemas, which showed little now but scenes from yesterday's battles of land or air, or of frantic disordered flights, or of vast quantities of war material, or strong artilleried walls, abandoned to the armies of the advancing Reich.
For three years past they had been taught, controlled, disciplined, hardened, for the crime of which they were now a most willing part, and for the intoxication of its success. He heard them speak of England with exultation that she was low, and contempt of her damaged pride: of France with derisive jests that were heavy with a more bitter hate: of Italy as one that had kept its skin by making submissive alliance with the major power, as it would be likely to do. What it had gained for itself, whose armies must now bleed to make Germany strong, rather than for their own homes, was not easy to see, unless with myopic eyes.
But he heard on all sides that that which had been foretold, that for which they had endured privations, hard-drilled labour, and loss of all kindly freedoms of act and word, had most surely come Germany had risen to rule the world, and the future would be bright with triumph, and easy with riches and many slaves. They did not talk of a world made safe for peace-loving men, as had been the dream of those who had held them back in the earlier war, or of a war by which war would end. They spoke of a world made safe for themselves, and which would lay tribute about their doors.
He heard some talk of the edict which was to transfer women of rebel kin to the ownership of those of more pliant necks, and particularly of the probability that a large number of English women would be brought over to Germany. Even among German women he found this edict to be well received, but with some doubt of whether the recalcitrant supplies could be equal to the demand. They did not appear to doubt that, with the aid of an active law, they would be able to keep them in a subordination sufficient for their own comfort, and the fact that they were to be distributed according to merits, military or other, of their husbands and sons, made them a more desirable acquisition. Jealousy, it appeared, would be directed less upon them than upon neighbours who might be more liberally supplied with these household slaves.
He heard no word of sympathy for these English virgins or wives who were to be delivered to their own tyranny and their husbands' lusts. The common opinion appeared to be that they would be coming to better fate than their merits earned. There was talk, going somewhat beyond fact, of the meagre childbearing of English women. This, it appeared, was alone enough to justify their subjection to more virile masters than they had had. They were, by this sign alone, women of an inferior, decadent race. They would be brought now to a compulsion of better ways. Having avoided the production of English children, they would now become pregnant with those of a finer breed.
It was a judgment (to the measure of truth it held) by which innocent and guilty were cast to a common doom. But that, it is fair to observe, is an inevitable consequence of all national sins. An English girl whose instincts, of motherhood were uncorrupted would be no more exempt than the married women who had bought comforts and cars at the price of their children's lives. For the fact was that however deeply the vice of birth-prevention had rotted the core of the English race, and to whatever measure (which was not much) the German women could claim a superior practice, they were not being seized on that issue at all, but to coerce the world to crouch to the German whip. . . .
It was on the fifth night after that on which he had disposed of the body of Wilhelm Lotz that Steele entered a cinema to observe pictures which, however far they might be from giving a complete or attempting an impartial interpretation of the swift process of wide-fronted war, were yet capable of revealing much more to him than to the eyes of those who looked less keenly for that which they were not told to see, and who had been trained during three previous years to accept that which they were required to believe with passive, receptive minds. At this hour, when it seemed that all that had been promised to them was to be so richly fulfilled, were they likely to doubt the assurance of what they saw?
And, indeed, there was solid evidence enough that the German legions of land and air were on the heels of a flying foe. The triumphant entry of a strong mechanized unit of Bavarian infantry into Belgrade, with a support of Hungarian tanks, gave incidental glimpses of ruined streets, where the German air forces had scattered devastation and death, before surrender had closed the brief hours of hard-contested but hopeless war. . . . Another, entitled: The Maltese Air force having suffered heavy losses and fled, German bombers destroy Valetta, was less conclusive in what it showed, having been taken from a great height, but it appeared that Valetta burned in more places than one, and the two harbours were bare of shipping. . . . Another showed a German force, which had descended with its artillery from the skies, in possession of the railway junction at Lyons, it having been the strategic policy of the invaders to paralyse the railway systems of the countries they were invading in this manner, rather than to aim at the destruction of that which would be required for their own use when they had possessed themselves of lands from which their defenders fled.
It was only when the screen began to show scenes from the British Isles that land-fighting became a feature of the event. For the strategy of the Christian allies, which was withdrawing its mobile strength from Southern Europe to the North African coast, had avoided battle after the disasters of the past week had shown its immediate futility, and their pursuit came from the swift field of the air, from the heights of which they were strafed by great fleets at their focal points, and by hunting-squadrons of bombers that ranged more randomly through the skies. And these last would be caught at times, and driven downward to flaming death by some bold remnant of the fighting air forces of the allies that still made precarious effort to guard their retiring rear, trusting to speed, or the cloak of the friendly clouds, or to nothing more than the great expanse of the airfields in which they flew.
But the direction of this retreat was not intended, nor possible, for those who fought on British soil, and who must resist or yield, or else die, as they largely did. There was no Africa at their rear. Having lost supremacy of the air, they must either submit to see their country a province of German power, which in a space of days would be organized as an arsenal of munitions, in which they would be driven slaves, toiling for the destruction of their own friends, or they must resist from the ground with the maimed strength and unbroken spirit which still were theirs.
Steele looked at pictures which were not easy to endure with a quiet mind, and a demeanour suitable to those among whom he sat, whose excited murmurs rose to a clamour of approbation at what they saw.
London Still Burning. It was a picture of smouldering ruin, in the midst of which he had a clear sight, on the wall of a half-fallen street-corner house, of the sign Elm Street E.7. He took some satisfaction therefrom, as showing that London was still not in German hands, for had it been so there would have been widely different pictures from that. It was easy to believe that the conflagration which had devastated a third part of so vast a city had not been put out in a day, even though its course had been checked by rain and a changing wind. And he knew that it had been the East End and the docks that had suffered most from bombers rather than overhead, and there was sinister suggestion in that which he could not read.
One of the Frozen Regions. The screen showed a moving picture of desolation, in which there was no motion at all except that of the sliding landscape of death. It was a silence that could be felt. Here and there lay the stiff figures of men or of children or women - as they had been caught by the freezing death. Or there would be a single horse, or a herd of cattle or sheep, stiffly postured with outstretched legs. . . . There could be no resistance from any place which had been drenched by the freezing gas. But he told himself that there was a limit to the quantity that even the German laboratories could produce, and, besides that, it could not be satisfactory to them to destroy the land, as that method of warfare did. Who could say how long it would be before fertility would return to soil where not a blade of living grass, not a seed, not a worm, remained? Its purpose was to terrorize the nation against which it was so ruthlessly used, and if it should fail in that, it was likely that Germany would turn to other of the hellish means that her chemists knew.
Execution of Civilians taken with Arms. Steele must look on at the parading of several scores of his countrymen, with some women among them, who were shot without mercy for what he could not suppose to be even a technical breach of the rules of war, in view of the armlet order which had been broadcast by the British Government during the first hours of the German invasion.
The Last of the R.A.F. It was a vision of fields seen from above, and moving across the screen. The fields were scattered with fallen planes, some in fragments, some blackened, burnt-out wrecks, some still smoking in evidence that the scene had been photographed immediately after the battle in which they fell. Once the camera dipped to give a close view of a giant three-engined battle-plane that lay crumpled, with its nose driven deep into a rocky soil. It dwarfed the surrounding trees, and made more vividly real the extent of the far-spread wreckage which had seemed small as it was photographed from the clouds. It was an unhappy picture for English eyes, but he knew that to call it the last of the R.A.F. was to go too far, and as that was so, who could set a limit to that which was no less than a certain lie? How did he know that all those wrecks, or even half, had been British planes? He had seen one. The others had been too distant to identify. He had seen enough of aerial warfare to be sure that a fleet of battle-planes will not be shot down without bringing some, at least, of their assailants to equal loss. . . . The rocky scene had been Westmorland, or, perhaps - indeed, more probably - Wales. He remembered that he had been allowed to betray the secret aerodrome in the Brecon Hills that he might win von Teufel's confidence for a later gain. Was this a consequence of that which he had been permitted to do? . . . No. It would be unwise to imagine that.
He got up, feeling that he could see no more for that time, but his eyes were drawn backward to the screen as he withdrew. Sheffield Surrenders to General Bessel. There was no faking there. He saw familiar buildings. A familiar street. . . . He walked out pondering whether England were really so prostrate under the German heel in so short a time that organized resistance was at its end. Was that the reason that he had had no message for these five days? Was he waiting instructions that would not - that would never - come? If that were so, he must not wait vainly idle while better men were active to fight and die. He must consider how he could escape, or whether he could be of more use by remaining here. Should he dare von Teufel again with some audacious mendacity? . . . He resolved to call up England. He could surely think of something which it would be useful to them to know. But what he really wanted was to ascertain that it was possible to get a reply But he had no occasion for this, for, at the agreed hour; it was England that called to him.
He took down a long cipher message and gave no more than the reception signal in reply till he had decoded it to read:
See von Teufel at once. Inform him that there will be no attempt to hold the British Isles by landing American armies here. This information is true, and will have reached him from other sources. It is confidently hoped that it may enable you to obtain information of real importance, with which object you will make all possible excuses for remaining, transmitting what you learn as occasion requires. You will tell him that you returned by boarding German destroyer at Harwich, which was for some hours in German hands, but you were torpedoed within a mile of coast above Ostend. You swam ashore, and suppose yourself to be sole survivor. Destroyer 47B. captain's name Kant, not Spener.
Steele considered this, and saw bad and good in a mixed bag. It were better to return to von Teufel with a true tale than with one which might prove, or which he might already know, to be false. With that evidence that his mission had been performed there might not be too close a scrutiny into his account of how he had come and gone, for which he saw that he had been supplied with a likely tale. So far good; and if it had ended there, leaving him free to return either as a German spy or by his own wits, he would have felt that he might live for a week, and perhaps more.
But to stay in Germany, establishing contact with von Teufel again in his German guise, and to transmit! Did they realize that Nürnberg and Berlin were some distance apart? That it would be the end of his usefulness and himself if he were followed here, as he was so likely to be? That even to leave this place for more than a day, and then to return, might be to enter a waiting trap? Suppose that neighbours should observe that Wilhelm Lotz did not enter or leave, and break down a door on which they would first have knocked, thinking no worse than to give aid to a sick man!
But if he saw the risks with clear eyes, as it was his business to do, he did not fail to see also that the stake was worth the hazard of much more than a single life. It might be nothing or very much. It was his part to see that, should it fail, it should not be through lack of precaution, or any forethought of his.
Thinking thus, he sent out a series of inquiries designed to fortify him with accurate replies to any questions he might be asked concerning the condition of the country from which he would be supposed to have come. He learned, beside many specific details needless to be recorded, that the spirit of the nation was still unbroken, and the most part of its territory unsubdued, although there might be little where either safety or peace remained. Apart from the broad tracts to the south of the Firth of Forth, in Worcestershire, and in Surrey, which had been utterly destroyed by the freezing gas, the parts which had suffered most, outside the London area, were the North Midlands, in which the Germans had established themselves at two centres - at Bridgnorth, and on the Sheffield moors, where they had entrenched positions within which reinforcements arrived continually from the clouds. From these centres they were extending outward, like spreading ulcers, with the apparent objects of possessing themselves of the Midland industrial district, and dividing the London area from Northern England. The remnants of the R.A.F. which were still able to take the skies, and which had been joined by units from Scandinavia and the Netherlands, of no great strength, were too weak to prevent the convoying of the German armies, being more than fully employed in protection of vital posts and depots which still remained in British hands, and in rendering it dangerous for German bombers to venture destructive raids without the protection of a large force of their fighters.
But the Germans were finding that the resources even of their large transport air forces were a poor substitute for the facilities of land-transit available to them in Southern Europe, by which its territories were being so rapidly overrun, or for those of the sea which would have been theirs had they been able to subdue the British Navy to the extent to which they had driven out of the skies - though with losses they had not lightly endured - the outnumbered fleets of the air.
They were learning, too, as was the case on all fronts of the war, that the mobility of a highly mechanized army is dependent upon good weather and solid roads, apart from which its movements are more cumbersome, as they are more exposed, and more vulnerable to assault from the air, than is a force of more primitive equipment. But with the constant accession of men and material that they were receiving, they had become difficult, if not already impossible, to dislodge, and were gradually extending their positions southward, and advancing them towards the encirclement of the Birmingham manufacturing area.
Food, he learned, though its distribution was disorganized, was still abundant, and there was no fear of a general shortage, at least for some weeks to come. The idea, too lightly assumed in the considerations of prewar literature, that England would surrender at once if her food supplies should be gravely threatened, had passed from the minds of men who faced the reality of what surrender would surely mean. But private ownership of the essentials of life had virtually ceased. The invaders found that they were not confronted merely by a small regular army, and a somewhat larger ill-equipped militia, but by a nation which this sudden monstrous shock of assault had united in stubborn purpose to beat it back. If food should become short - well, they must go short of food. What else would there be to do?
And with this stubborn defiant unity there was more self-reliance, more individuality, more initiative, than would have been found under like conditions among the more straitly driven and severely disciplined of continental nations. . . .
Steele did not cease his questions until he had a clear picture of these conditions, with much detail of incident, so that he would be able to talk convincingly of the visit to England which he must represent himself to have made. The process of communicating by a cipher which must be composed by him and decoded by those who received it before the reply could be prepared in the same way, and then, after transmission, decoded by him, was necessarily slow, and it was near to the late February dawn before he closed the conversation with a warning that, even if he should be successful in deceiving von Teufel a second time, it might be difficult to return to Nürnberg, which he would not therefore attempt until he should have something of high value to tell. He added that, as there would be an intervening possibility of the discovery of the transmission set, he would commence an authentic message with a code word, the absence of which would indicate that the call did not come from him.
He rose from this conversation to pace the room with the excitement that the prospect of action brought. He saw that if he could gain von Teufel's further confidence, as he had a good hope that he might, there were possibilities, vague but vast, of the aid which he could give to the Christian cause. He saw it as the moment for which he had prepared himself through the long monotony of the years of uncertain peace, when he had looked ahead to this war. But it was a moment for caution rather than haste. A meal was his first need, and he prepared and cooked it with no less than his usual care.
While he ate he read the messages he had received, pondering their implications and storing them in a retentive memory. Then he destroyed them, crushing each ash beyond possibility of recovering any word from a charred fragment. He considered how he should reach Berlin, and in what guise he should present himself before the Dictator again. He had the clothes in which he had come, and those of Lotz which he now wore. He decided on the latter, which would enable him to leave without drawing observation from the lower tenants, if he should meet any of them upon the stairs, and which could be explained in one of a dozen ways, according to the tale of how he had come from Ostend, which he had still to invent. Probably it would all be wasted precaution! It was unlikely that von Teufel would have leisure for asking that, or that others, if he should be trusted by him, would have the right to inquire. But he was used to these elaborate mental preparations, of which ninety-nine would be utter waste, and the hundredth would save him from mortal peril he might not otherwise have escaped.
He would take nothing with him by which he could be identified as Wilhelm Lotz, or which could connect him with that garret, from which, apart from his own assertion, he would be entirely detached the moment that the street would be left behind. Even the key must be hidden rather than taken away. Lotz's food-card, his identity-card, all the contents of the pockets by which he had sustained that personality, must be left behind. He must put aside the mental habit he had cultivated of being Lotz, speaking as he would have spoken, thinking his thoughts. . . . But he would take nothing inconsistent with that identity, lest he should find himself in a position in which it would be the lesser peril to claim it, or perhaps to assert that he had impersonated him after returning from England. . . . Suppose he should say that he had killed him, as a traitor to Germany, and with a secret purpose of using that short waved radio to the confusion of the British Secret Service, which so foolishly trusted him still? He could think of many plausible lies which could be adapted to the dangers he had to meet. But he could not think of too many for his own security. Such tales should be well prepared. They should not need to be improvised when the moment of crisis comes. . . .
It should not be difficult to get unobserved to Berlin. The police were vigilant, no doubt. But their ranks were depleted now by the many calls of the war. And the general body of the people were not suspicious of spies. They were not in that mood. They did not feel as do those who crouch under the dread shadow of war. It had been different at first. It was scarcely a fortnight since there had been loud aerial battle above their heads, with falling of burning planes in the Nürnberg streets. But much had happened since then. Now the war had become to them a tale of victory moving ever farther away. On all sides their foes ran. They would not even have attached importance (had they been told) to the fact that the Christian nations planned to make a war-front of the North African coast. They might pause there if they would, till they should be reached by German bayonets transported across the straits, or by German bombs from the sky! But no longer than that. There was no fear - no thought - of Christian spies in the Nürnberg streets.
Steele walked out at a quiet pace, and with the slight stoop that he supposed Lotz to have used. He regarded none, having still much matter to tax his mind, and no man regarded him.
CHAPTER XII
THERE is none so lonely as those who rule. Prince von Teufel had been a lonely man even when his office had been no more than to organize the secret air forces with which Germany had plotted to shake the world. He had had followers, adherents, men whose ambitions were centred upon himself, but few friends. Now he had none. If he would trust any man, he must rely on his passions, of false patriotism, or ambition, or fear, or greed. One of these would be potent with most. But they left him a friendless man. He may not have been greatly conscious of that, or at least not as a matter for much regret. Ambition burned in him with too hot a flame. At this time he was conscious of little but what he won.
But it is possible that the devil may have a dog which will be faithful to him, even to facing the nether flames, because loyalty is its own nature, and without caring whether his master be evil or good. Prince von Teufel had such a dog. He was an orderly, Lessing by name, who had been with him from humbler days. He was rather dull, illiterate, having no qualities likely to draw the envy of more brilliant or ambitious men. He was never likely to gain, or even to seek, a position of military or civil power. Had he sought such a goal, it is unlikely that von Teufel would have misused him in such a way. But he knew him to be obedient, silent, diligent to fulfil whatever instructions he might receive, and sufficiently intelligent to be trusted in simple things.
This man came to him when he was engaged with the three architects of most repute in Berlin, as no other would have been permitted to do. He stood at his side, somewhat behind his seat. "Excellency," he whispered, in a voice too low for the men at the other side of the wide table to hear, "there is one here with the word."
Prince von Teufel gave no sign that he heard, and went on with the instructions he was giving. In the last week his manner had become abrupter, more imperative than before, but his temper, unless he were opposed, remained calm, there being little to cross his mood.
Now he showed a great project to astonished men. He would have plans prepared for a vast palace, such as no man might have imagined before. It should be a square mile in extent, and in the very midst of Berlin, for which all existing buildings, shop or warehouse, palace or hall, were to be ruthlessly swept away. He pointed to an outspread map of the city, suggesting the position he would prefer. But he would leave all detail, even the site, to them. Only they must understand that it must be the best position, and the greatest palace they could conceive, and no consideration of what must be destroyed was to be regarded at all.
In a few words he had done. "Gentlemen," he said, "that is all. I shall require the plans in a week's time. You will not regard cost, thinking only of magnificence and enduring strength, for you will have the world upon which to draw. You may go now. Let your plans be bold, for in that