A.E.W. Mason - The Summons
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A.E.W. Mason >> The Summons
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Meanwhile Hillyard busied himself with the second of the two white
porcelain dishes. He brought out a cruet stand from a cupboard at the
side of the stove and filled the dish half full of vinegar. He added
water until the liquid rose within half an inch of the rim, and rocked
the dish that the dilution might be complete. Next he took a new
copying-pencil from the pen-tray on his bureau and stripping the wood
away with his knife, dropped the blue lead into the vinegar and water.
This lead he carefully dissolved with the help of a glass pestle.
"There! It's ready," he said.
"I, too," added Fairbairn.
He lifted out of the developing dish a wet sheet of writing paper which
was absolutely blank. Not one drop of the black ink which had recorded
those sentimental effusions remained. It was just a sheet of notepaper
which had accidentally fallen into a basin of water.
"That's all right," said Hillyard; and Fairbairn gently slid the sheet
into the dish in front of Hillyard. And for a while nothing happened.
"It's a clever trick, isn't it?" Hillyard used the words again, but now
with a note of nervousness. "No unlikely paraphernalia needed. Just a
copying pencil and some vinegar, which you can get anywhere. Yes, it's a
clever trick!"
"If it works," Fairbairn added bluntly.
Both men watched the dish anxiously. The paper remained blank. The
solution did not seem to work. It was the first time they had ever made
use of it. The coast slid by unnoticed.
"Lopez was certain," said Fairbairn, "quite certain that this was the
developing formula."
Hillyard nodded gloomily, but he did not remove his eyes from that
irresponsive sheet.
"There may be some other ingredient, something kept quite
secret--something known only to one man or two."
He sat down, hooking his chair with his foot nearer to the table.
"We must wait."
"That's all there is to be done," said Fairbairn, and they waited; and
they waited. They had no idea, even if the formula should work, whether
the writing would flash up suddenly like an over-exposed photographic
plate, or emerge shyly and reluctantly letter by letter, word by word.
Then, without a word spoken, Fairbairn's finger pointed. A brown stain
showed on the whiteness of the paper--just a stroke. It was followed by
a curve and another stroke. Hillyard swiftly turned the oblong
developing dish so that the side of it, and not the end, was towards him
now.
"The writing is across the sheet," he said, and then with a cry, "Look!"
A word was coming out clear, writing itself unmistakably in the middle
of the line, at the bottom of the sheet--a signature. Zimmermann!
"From the General Staff!" said Hillyard, in a whisper of excitement. "My
word!" He looked at Fairbairn with an eager smile of gratitude. "It's
your doing that we have got this--yours and Lopez Baeza's!"
Miraculously the brown strokes and curves and dots and flourishes
trooped out of nothing, and fell in like sections and platoons and
companies with their due space between them, some quick and trim, some
rather slovenly in their aspect, some loitering; but in the end the
battalion of words stood to attention, dressed for inspection. The brown
had turned black before Hillyard lifted the letter from the solution and
spread it upon a sheet of blotting paper.
"Now let us see!" and they read the letter through.
One thousand pounds in English money were offered for reliable
information as to the number of howitzers and tanks upon the British
front.
A second sum of a thousand pounds for reliable information as to the
manufacture of howitzers and tanks in England.
"So far, it's not very exciting," Hillyard remarked with disappointment,
as he turned the leaf. But the letter progressed in interest.
A third sum of a thousand pounds was offered for a list of the postal
sections on the British front, with the name, initials and rank of a
really good and reliable British soldier in each section who was
prepared to receive and answer correspondence.
Fairbairn chuckled and observed:
"I think Herr Zimmermann might be provided with a number of such good
and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with
a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here.
You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise they'll snaffle it
in London."
Fairbairn, once a mild north-country schoolmaster, of correct
phraseology and respectable demeanour, had, under the pressure of his
service, developed like that white sheet of notepaper. He had suffered
"A sea-change
Into something rich and strange"
and from a schoolmaster had become a buccaneer with a truculent manner
and a mind of violence. London, under which name he classed all
Government officials, offices, departments, and administrations,
particularly roused his ire. London was ignorant, London was stupid,
London was always doing him and the other buccaneers down, was always
snaffling something which he ought to have. Fairbairn, uttering one
snort of satisfaction, would have shot it with his Browning.
"Get it off your chest, old man," said Hillyard soothingly, "and we'll
go on with this letter. It looks to me as if----" He was glancing
onwards and checked himself with an exclamation. His face became grave
and set.
"Listen to this," and he read aloud, translating as he went along.
"_Since the tubes have been successful in France, the device
should be extended to England. B45 is obviously suitable for
the work. A submarine will sink letters for the Embassy in
Madrid and a parcel of the tubes between the twenty-seventh
and the thirtieth of July, within Spanish territorial waters
off the Cabo de Cabron. A green light will be shown in three
short flashes from the sea and it should be answered from
the shore by a red and a white and two reds._"
Hillyard leaned back in his chair.
"B45," he cried in exasperation. "We get no nearer to him."
"Wait a bit!" Fairbairn interposed. "We are a deal nearer to him through
Zimmermann's very letter here. What are these tubes which have been so
successful in France? Once we get hold of them and understand them and
know what end they are to serve, we may get an idea of the kind of man
obviously suitable for handling them."
"Like B45," said Hillyard.
"Yes! The search will be narrowed to one kind of man. Oh, we shall be
much nearer, if only we get the tubes--if only the Germans in Madrid
don't guess this letter's gone astray to us."
Hillyard had reflected already upon that contingency.
"But why should they? The sleeping-car man is held _incomunicado_. There
is no reason why they should know anything about this letter at all, if
we lay our plans carefully."
He folded up the letter and locked it away in the drawer. He looked for
a while out of the window of the saloon. The yacht had rounded the Cabo
San Antonio. It was still the forenoon.
"This is where Jose Medina has got to come in," he declared. "You must
go to Madrid, Fairbairn, and keep an eye on Mr. Jack Williams.
Meanwhile, here Jose Medina has got to come in."
Fairbairn reluctantly agreed. He would much rather have stayed upon the
coast and shared in the adventure, but it was obviously necessary that a
keen watch should be kept in Madrid.
"Very well," he said, "unless, of course, you would like to go to Madrid
yourself."
Hillyard laughed.
"I think not, old man."
He mounted the ladder to the bridge and gave the instructions to the
Captain, and early that evening the _Dragonfly_ was piloted into the
harbour of Alicante. Hillyard and Fairbairn went ashore. They had some
hours to get through before they could take the journey they intended.
They sauntered accordingly along the esplanade beneath the palm trees
until they came to the Casino. Both were temporary members of that club,
and they sat down upon the cane chairs on the broad side-walk. A
military band was playing on the esplanade a little to their right, and
in front of them a throng of visitors and townspeople strolled and sat
in the evening air. Hillyard smiled as he watched the kaleidoscopic
grouping and re-grouping of men and children and women. The revolutions
of his life, a subject which in the press of other and urgent matters
had fallen of late into the background of his thoughts, struck him again
as wondrous and admirable. He began to laugh with enjoyment. He looked
at Fairbairn. How dull in comparison the regular sequences of his
career!
"I wandered about here barefoot and penniless," he said, "not so very
long ago. On this very pavement!" He struck it with his foot, commending
to Fairbairn the amazing fact. "I have cleaned boots," and he called to
a boy who was lying in wait with a boot-black's apparatus on his back
for any dusty foot. "Chico, come and clean my shoes." He jested with the
boy with the kindliness of a Spaniard, and gave him a shining peseta.
Hillyard was revelling in the romance of his life under the spur of the
excitement which the affair of the letter had fired in him. "Yes, I
wandered here, passing up and down in front of this very Casino."
And Fairbairn saw his face change and his eyes widen as though he
recognised some one in the throng beneath the trees.
"What is it?" Fairbairn asked, and for a little while Hillyard did not
answer. His eyes were not following any movements under the trees. They
saw no one present in Alicante that day. Slowly he turned to Fairbairn,
and answered in voice of suspense:
"Nothing! I was just remembering--and wondering!"
He remained sunk in abstraction for a long time. "It can't be!" at grips
with "If it could be!" and a rising inspiration that "It was!" A man had
once tried him out with questions about Alicante, a man who was afraid
lest he should have seen too much. But Hillyard had learnt to hold his
tongue when he had only inspirations to go upon, and he disclosed
nothing of this to Fairbairn.
Later on, when darkness had fallen, the two men drove in a motor-car
southwards round the bay and through a shallow valley to the fishing
village of Torrevieja. When you came upon its broad beach of shingle and
sand, with its black-tarred boats hauled up, and its market booths, you
might dream that you had been transported to Broadstairs--except for one
fact. The houses are built in a single story, since the village is
afflicted with earthquakes. Two houses rise higher than the rest, the
hotel and the Casino. In the Casino Hillyard found Jose Medina's agent
for those parts sitting over his great mug of beer; and they talked
together quietly for a long while.
Thus Martin Hillyard fared in those days. He played with life and death,
enjoying vividly the one and ever on the brink of the other, but the
deep, innermost realities of either had as yet touched him not at all.
CHAPTER XVII
ON A CAPE OF SPAIN
The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and
close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the
green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply
back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay
and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty
harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an
undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. Two
tiny fishing villages cluster a mile or two apart at the water's edge,
and high up on the cape's flanks here and there a small rude settlement
clings to the hillside. There are no roads to the cape. From the east
you may ride a horse towards it, and lose your way. From the west you
must approach by boat. So remote and unvisited is this region that the
women in these high villages, their homes cut out of the actual brown
rock, still cover their faces with the Moorish veil.
There are no roads, but Jose Medina was never deterred by the lack of
roads. His business, indeed, was a shy one, and led him to prefer wild
country. A high police official in one great town said of him:
"For endurance and activity there is no one like Jose Medina between the
sea and the Pyrenees. You think him safe in Mallorca and look! He lands
one morning from the steamer, jumps into a motor-car, and in five
minutes--whish!--he is gone like the smoke of my cigarette. He will
drive his car through our mountains by tracks, of which the guardia
civil does not even know the existence."
By devious tracks, then, now through narrow gullies in brown and barren
mountains, now striking some village path amidst peach trees and
marguerites, Jose Medina drove Martin Hillyard down to the edge of the
sea. Here amongst cactus bushes in flower, with turf for a carpet, a
camp had been prepared near to one of the two tiny villages. Jose Medina
was king in this region. The party arrived in the afternoon of the
twenty-sixth day of the month, all of the colour of saffron from the
dust-clouds the car had raised, and Hillyard so stiff and bruised with
the intolerable jolting over ruts baked to iron, that he could hardly
climb down on to the ground. He slept that night amidst such a music of
birds as he had never believed possible one country could produce.
Through the night of the twenty-sixth he and Jose Medina watched; their
lanterns ready to their hands. Lights there were in plenty on the sea,
but they were the lights of acetylene lamps used by the fishermen of
those parts to attract the fish; and the morning broke with the
lighthouse flashing wanly over a smooth sea, pale as fine jade.
"There are three more nights," said Hillyard. He was a little dispirited
after the fatigue of the day before and the long, empty vigil on the top
of the day.
The next watch brought no better fortune. There was no moon; the night
was of a darkness so clear that the stars threw pale and tremulous paths
over the surface of the water, and from far away the still air vibrated
from time to time with the throbbing of propellers as the ships without
lights passed along the coast.
Hillyard rose from the blanket on which he and Jose Medina had been
lying during the night. It had been spread on a patch of turf in a break
of the hill some hundreds of feet above the sea. He was cold. The
blanket was drenched and the dew hung like a frost on bush and grass.
"It looks as if they had found out," he said.
"This is only the second night," said Jose Medina.
"It all means so much to me," replied Hillyard, shivering in the
briskness of the morning.
"Courage, the little Marteen!" cried Jose Medina. "After breakfast and a
few hours' sleep, we shall take a rosier view."
Hillyard, however, could not compose himself to those few hours. The
dread lest the Germans should have discovered the interception of their
letters weighed too heavily upon him. Even in the daylight he needs
must look out over that placid sunlit sea and imagine here and there
upon its surface the low tower and grey turtle-back of a submarine.
Success here might be so great a thing, so great a saving of lives, so
dire a blow to the enemy. Somehow that day slowly dragged its burning
hours to sunset, the coolness of the evening came, and the swift
darkness upon its heels, and once more, high up on the hillside, the
vigil was renewed. And at half-past one in the morning, far away at sea,
a green light, bright as an emerald, flashed thrice and was gone.
"Did I not say to you, 'Have courage'?" said Jose Medina.
"Quick! the Lanterns!" replied Hillyard. "The red first! Good! Now the
white. So! And the red again. Now we must wait!" and he sank down again
upon the blanket. All the impatience and languor were gone from him. The
moment had come. He was at once steel to meet it.
"Yes," said Jose Medina, "we shall see nothing more now for a long
while."
They heard no sound in that still night; they saw no gleam of lights. It
seemed to Hillyard that aeons passed before Jose touched him on the elbow
and pointed downwards.
"Look!" he whispered excitedly.
Right at their very feet the long, grim vessel lay, so near that
Hillyard had the illusion he could pitch a stone on to the conning
tower. He now held his breath, lest his breathing should be heard. Then
the water splashed, and a moment afterwards the submarine turned and
moved to sea. They gave it five minutes, and then climbed down to a tiny
creek. A rowing-boat lay in readiness there, with one man at the tiller
and two at the oars.
"You saw it, Manuel?" said Medina as he and Hillyard stepped in.
"Yes, Senor Jose. It was very close. Oh, they know these waters!"
The oars churned the phosphorescent water into green fire, and the foam
from the stem of the boat sparkled as though jewels were scattered into
it by the oarsmen as they rowed. They stopped alongside a little white
buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that
again to a chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the
chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two
men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with a
greater effort.
"It is coming," said one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward
to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared
down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything
but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the
fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked
against the boat's flanks.
"Once more," whispered the man from the tiller. "Now!"
And the load was perched upon the gunwale and lowered into the boat. It
consisted of three square and bulky metal cases, bound together by the
chain.
"We have it, my friend Marteen," whispered Jose Medina, with a laugh of
sheer excitement. He was indeed hardly less stirred than Hillyard
himself. "Not for nothing did the little Marteen lead the horse across
the beach of Benicassim. Now we will row back quickly. We must be far
away from here by the time the world is stirring."
The boatmen bent to their oars with a will, and the boat leaped upon the
water. They had rowed for fifty yards when suddenly far away a cannon
boomed. The crew stopped, and every one in the boat strained his eyes
seawards. Some one whispered, and Hillyard held up his hand for silence.
Thus they sat immobile as figures of wax for the space of ten minutes.
Then Hillyard relaxed from his attention.
"They must have got her plump with the first shot," he said; and,
indeed, there was no other explanation for that boom of a solitary
cannon across the midnight sea.
Jose Medina laughed.
"So the little Marteen had made his arrangements?"
"What else am I here for?" retorted the little Marteen, and though he
too laughed, a thrill of triumph ran through the laugh. "It just needed
that shot to round all off. I was so afraid that we should not hear it,
that it might never be fired. Now it will never be known, if your men
keep silent, whether they sunk their cargo or were sunk with it on
board."
The crew once more drove the blades of their oars through the water, and
did not slacken till the shore was reached. They clambered up the rocks
to their camp bearing their treasure, and up from the camp again to the
spot where Jose's motor-car was hidden. Jose talked to the boatmen while
the cans were stowed away in the bottom of the car, and then turned to
Hillyard.
"There will be no sign of our camp at daybreak. The tent will be
gone--everything. If our luck holds--and why should it not?--no one need
ever know that the Senor Marteen and his friend Jose Medina picnicked
for three days upon that cape."
"But the lighthouse-keepers! What of them?" objected Hillyard. In him,
too, hope and excitement were leaping high. But this objection he
offered up on the altars of the gods who chastise men for the insolence
of triumph.
"What of them?" Jose Medina repeated gaily. "They, too, are my friends
this many a year." He seated himself at the wheel of the car. "Come, for
we cannot drive fast amongst these hills in the dark."
Hillyard will never forget to the day of his death that wild passage
through the mountains. Now it was some sudden twist to avoid a
precipice, now a jerk and a halt whilst Jose stared into the darkness
ahead of him; here the car jolted suddenly over great stones, then it
sank to the axle in soft dust; at another place the bushes whipped their
faces; and again they must descend and build a little bridge of boughs
and undergrowth over a rivulet. But so high an elation possessed him
that he was unconscious both of the peril and the bruises. He could have
sung aloud. They stopped an hour after daybreak and breakfasted by the
side of the car in a high country of wild flowers. The sun was hidden
from them by a barrier of hills.
"We shall strike an old mine-road in half an hour," said Jose Medina,
"and make good going."
They came into a district of grey, weathered rock, and, making a wide
circuit all that day, crept towards nightfall down to the road between
Aguilas and Cartagena; and once more the sea lay before them.
"We are a little early," said Medina. "We will wait here until it is
dark. The carabineros are not at all well disposed to me, and there are
a number of them patrolling the road."
They were above the road and hidden from it by a hedge of thick bushes.
Between the leaves Hillyard could see a large felucca moving westwards
some miles from the shore and a long way off on the road below two tiny
specks. The specks grew larger and became two men on horses. They became
larger still, and in the failing light Hillyard was just able to
distinguish that they wore the grey uniform of the Guardia Civil.
"Let us pray," said Medina with a note of anxiety in his voice, "that
they do not become curious about our fishing-boat out there!"
As he spoke the two horsemen halted, and did look out to sea. They
conversed each with the other.
"If I were near enough to hear them!" said Jose Medina, and he suddenly
turned in alarm upon Hillyard. "What are you doing?" he said.
Hillyard had taken a large.38 Colt automatic pistol from his pocket. His
face was drawn and white and very set.
"I am doing nothing--for the moment," he answered. "But those two men
must ride on before it is dark and too late for me to see them."
"But they are of the Guardia Civil," Jose Medina expostulated in awed
tones.
To the Spaniard, the mere name of the Guardia Civil, so great is its
prestige, and so competent its personnel, inspires respect.
"I don't care," answered Hillyard savagely. "In this war why should two
men on a road count at all? Let them go on, and nothing will happen."
Jose Medina, who had been assuming the part of protector and adviser to
his young English friend, had now the surprise of his life. He found
himself suddenly relegated to the second place and by nothing but sheer
force of character. Hillyard rested the point of his elbow on the earth
and supported the barrel of his Colt upon his left forearm. He aimed
carefully along the sights.
"Let them go on!" he said between his teeth. "I will give them until the
last moment--until the darkness begins to hide them. But not a moment
longer. I am not here, my friend, for my health. I am here because there
is a war."
"The little Marteen" was singularly unapparent at this moment Here was
just the ordinary appalling Englishman who had not the imagination to
understand what a desperately heinous crime it would be to kill two of
the Guardia Civil, who was simply going to do it the moment it became
necessary, and would not lose one minute of his sleep until his dying
day because he had done it. Jose Medina was completely at a loss as he
looked into the grim indifferent face of his companion. The two horsemen
were covered. The Colt would kill at more than five hundred yards, and
it had no more to do than carry sixty. And still those two fools sat on
their horses, and babbled to one another, and looked out to sea.
"What am I to do with this loco Ingles?" Jose Medina speculated,
wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. He had no share in those
memories which at this moment invaded Martin Hillyard, and touched every
fibre of his soul. Martin Hillyard, though his eye never left the sights
of his Colt nor his mind wavered from his purpose, was with a
subordinate consciousness stealing in the dark night up the footpath
between the big, leafy trees over the rustic railway bridge to the
summit of the hill. He was tramping once more through lanes, between
fields, and stood again upon a hillock of Peckham Rye, and saw the
morning break in beauty and in wonder over London. The vision gained
from the foolish and romantic days of his boyhood, steadied his finger
upon the trigger after all these years.
Then to Jose's infinite relief the two horsemen rode on. The long,
black, shining barrel of the Colt followed them as they dwindled on the
road. They turned a corner, and as Hillyard replaced his pistol in his
pocket, Jose Medina rolled over on his back, and clapped his hands to
his face.
"You might have missed," he gasped. "One of them at all events."
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