The Lost Naval Papers Part 10

"You shouldn't have asked me such a question. You really shouldn't--you know you shouldn't."

Her eyelids flickered, and the violet pools which they uncovered glittered with a moisture which was not of tears, and she laughed, laughed, and continued to laugh with the deepest enjoyment.

"I wanted to see how much you would stand," said she at last.

From that moment her spell over me was broken, and we became friends.

I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy and unbeautiful of female axe-grinders.

"Will you permit me to offer you a cup of tea so as to wash from your mouth the unpleasant taste of my brutal refusal?"

"I will," said Madame Gilbert graciously.

We issued from my office and betook ourselves to a pleasant shop where we could drink tea and nibble cakes, and talk without being overheard.

Madame Gilbert, I observed, had a healthy appet.i.te.

We talked of ourselves and exchanged delicious confidences. "You have asked me many questions," I said. "May I ask one of you? What are you?

You are not English, and you are not, I think, French."

"Shall I also learn a lesson from you in unkindness and say 'No'?" she inquired. "But it would be cruel, for you have really been quite nice to me. I will reveal the secret of my birth." She put up one hand and began to tick off the countries which had been privileged to play a part in her origin and education. "My father was a Swede--one; my mother was an Irishwoman--two. I was born at Cork in Ireland, but remember nothing about it, for my father died when I was three years old, and my Irish mother removed instantly to Paris--three. By the way, I have observed that the Irish and the Scotch always run away from their own countries at the first possible opportunity. Why is this?"

"It is much pleasanter," I remarked sententiously "to sentimentalise over the fringes of the United Kingdom from a safe distance, than to live in them."

"Oh! Let me see, I had got as far as Paris. When I was old enough I went to a convent school there. I speak French rather better than I do the Irish-English which my mother taught me."

"You speak English most charmingly. There is about it now a delicate suggestion, no more, of Ireland. When you first came to me your accent was distinctly foreign, French or Italian. I am afraid that you are a wicked woman, a deceiver, and that the fascinating accent was put on for my subduing. It was a very pretty accent."

"I have found it most effective," said she brazenly.

"When I was eighteen I was married--to an Italian (Guilberti)--four. I should have become a Catholic, my husband's faith, but for my mother's Protestant-Irish prejudices. She was of the Irish Church, my husband of the Roman, so I compromised. I joined the Church of England, the High Branch."

"Your religion is almost as complicated as your nationality."

"Yes, isn't it?" said she. Her hand was still uplifted; she had paused at the fourth finger. "We lived in Italy and in France. Two years ago my husband died, and shortly after the war began my mother died. I had a little money, I was known to the Emba.s.sy in Paris as one who could pa.s.s indifferently as English, or French, or Italian. I wanted to strike a blow for all my countries, and I was recommended to Mr.

Dawson for"--she looked round carefully, bent her head close to mine, and whispered--"the Secret Service. So I came for the first time that I remember to England--five."

"But what are you?" I asked, with knitted brows; "I am not an international lawyer."

"Mr. Dawson says"--I found that she has a childlike confidence in the redoubtable Dawson--"that by birth I am a British subject. My Swedish father doesn't count, as I never adopted Sweden when I came of age. My domicile before marriage was France, but by marriage I became an Italian. It is no matter; I am of the Entente, and I do my bit. It is not a bad bit sometimes."

That was the first of many agreeable tea-drinkings which Madame Gilbert and I took together.

Madame Gilbert believes herself to be, as she puts it, a woman of "surprising virtue," and I am by no means sure that she is not right.

For the doing of her bit has led her into situations from which nothing but the coolest of hearts and the quickest of wits could have brought her out untarnished. She has played her part gallantly, serenely, in the service of the Alliance; I should be a poor creature if I judged her by British provincial standards. Among other stories she told me the tale which I will repeat to the reader. Here and there were gaps which I have sought diligently to fill up until the whole has been made complete. Madame Gilbert told to me the most intimate details without a blush, and if in my telling I startle the blood to the cheek of the very oldest of readers, the fault will rest with me.

"I have a notion, Madame Gilbert, which I should like you to follow up," said Dawson. He was at that time (the Spring of 1915) in his office in London--he had not yet been despatched on his s.p.a.cious pilgrimage to the northern s.h.i.+pyards--and Madame Gilbert sat opposite to him in an att.i.tude deliberately provocative. She sat back in a comfortable chair facing the light, her legs were crossed, and she displayed a great deal more of beautifully rounded calf and perfectly fitting silk stockings than is usual even in the best society.

Although she did not look at Dawson, she was fully conscious of the frowning glare which he threw at the audacious leg.

"Please give me your attention--if you can. I have been out at the Front lately, at General Headquarters, to advise upon the means of stopping the flow of information from our lines to the enemy. All the obvious channels have been stopped--the telephones hidden in French cellars, the signals given by the hands of clocks, the German spies dressed in uniforms stripped from our dead, and so on. Lots of them, all obvious and simple. One can deal with that sort of thing by a careful system of unremitting watchfulness. We must have caught up with most of the arrangements made by the Germans before the war, but they still get much more information than is good for them to have, and for us to lose. I am convinced--and G.H.Q. agrees--that there are many officers, especially in the French and Belgian armies, who were planted there years before the war for the precise purpose to which they are now put. Even in our own Army, which is expanding so rapidly, the same thing is possible, even probable. An infantry officer spy can do little--he knows nothing of the Staff plans, and cannot get into communication with the enemy at all readily, without arousing suspicion. I went into the whole thing at the Front, and I put my finger, as I always do, upon the danger spot--the Flying Corps. Those who fly constantly over our own and the enemy's lines have complete information as to distribution and movements, and, if they choose, can drop dummy bombs containing news for the enemy to pick up. A French, Belgian, or English aeroplane 'observer' in the enemy's secret service could convey information to him at pleasure and without the possibility of detection. I don't suspect our own Flying Corps, except on the general principle of suspecting everybody and everything, but I do that of the French and the Belgians. France and Belgium were salted through and through by the Germans in antic.i.p.ation of war. There in the Flying Corps we have a very grave danger which--But I see that you are not attending, madame," he broke off angrily.

Her eyes withdrew from the offending leg for an instant, and flashed at Dawson with a penetrative power which even he felt.

"Shall I repeat what you have said, word for word?" asked Madame Gilbert coldly.

"I am not now dealing with facts, but with conjecture;" went on Dawson, after begging her pardon. "I have nothing to go upon, but the Germans have far more of imagination and ingenuity than we always credit to them. They must see that with the great advance in the Flying Corps of the Allied armies, and the opportunities which flying men have for collecting and conveying information, one flying spy would be worth a hundred spies on foot. For them to perceive is to act. I therefore conclude positively that they have agents in the flying squadrons of France and Belgium, and possibly even in our own.

So I told the C. in C., and he agreed with me. He was good enough to say that he would never have thought of this had I not suggested it to him. Soldiers are not detectives, madame, and very few detectives are William Dawsons. If the War Office knew its business, every a.s.sistant Provost-Marshal would be, not a soldier, but a man from the Yard, and I should be the P.M. in Chief on the Headquarters Staff. I should wear a general's uniform and hat."

"You would look sweet," said Madame politely.

Dawson, the ex-private of Red Marines, swelled out his chest and felt himself to be a Major-General at the least.

"They will do their best to follow up my idea at the Front, and I shall start a campaign here. For I become more and more convinced that the head centre of the German secret service is here in London. Paris, even before the war, was too watchful, and now is as hot as h.e.l.l.

London reeked with spies, and though we locked up the worst of them when war broke out, lots still remain. If you only knew how many we laid by the heels and keep shut up without any trial, or nonsense of that sort, you would be surprised. It is only since the Defence of the Realm Act was pa.s.sed that England has become a free country. We keep a drag-net going continually, we have hundreds of agents in all suspected quarters, but this wilderness of bricks and mortar is too big even for us. Once an enemy agent has got himself into an English or Allied uniform, he is horribly difficult to run down. That is where you, and those like you, come in. Are you sure, my dear madame, that you can pa.s.s without detection as a Frenchwoman or a French-Belgian?"

Madame Gilbert put up her left hand, and began to tick off her qualifications. "My father was a Swede, my mother was Irish, I was educated in France from the age of three to eighteen, I married an Italian. Brussels I know almost as well as dear Paris. I can be Parisienne or Bruxelloise--whichever you wish, Mr. Dawson."

"Good," said Dawson. "What I want of you is this. Whenever here in London you see a French or Belgian officer wearing the badges of the Flying Corps, mark him down. Make his acquaintance somehow; you will know how. Entertain him, fascinate him, let him entertain you; fool him as you would fool me if I let you; worm out his secrets, if he has any. If you get upon a promising track, go strong; let the man make love to you--he will, whoever he is, if you give him half a chance--intoxicate him with those confounded eyes of yours. If you can find only one who is in the enemy's service, you will be fully repaid for all your trouble."

"It is a largish contract," murmured Madame thoughtfully.

"There are not so very many flying officers," said Dawson, "and they are all young. You will work through them pretty quickly. Most of them will be the genuine article upon whom you need not waste much time.

But the others, those whom I suspect, you must grab hold of and never let go, whatever happens."

"I hope," said Madame primly, "that you do not expect me to do anything--improper."

Dawson stared at her in wonder. Her big eyes, s.h.i.+ning with the lovely innocence of childhood, met his without a flicker. "Bless my immortal soul," he muttered, "she is getting at me again." Then aloud, and gravely--"My a.s.sistants are always expected to conduct themselves with the strictest propriety."

Madame laughed softly. "I have known many men in my time, Mr. Dawson, but I have never enjoyed any man so much as I do you."

"I appear to have rather a roaming commission," Madame Gilbert went on, after a thoughtful pause. "Can you not give me any guidance?"

"Not at present. I am testing an idea, that is all. You must be guided by your own wit and judgment, in which I have the utmost confidence.

Don't waste your time or fascinations on the wrong people. Find out if among the French or Belgian flying officers, who from time to time visit London, there are any whose connections and movements will repay close watching here and at the Front. Sift them out. When you get upon a track which seems promising, follow it up, and do not be--what shall I say?--do not be too squeamish. Money is no object. Behind us is the whole British Treasury, and you can have whatever you want. Will you take on the contract, madame?"

"I will do my best," she replied soberly, "and I will not be--too squeamish. I can look after myself, my friend."

In another room of the great building upon the Thames Embankment sat Deputy Chief Inspector Henri Froissart, a French detective officer who had been "lent" to the English service. Opposite him was sitting a young handsome man in the uniform of a captain in the British Army.

Froissart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect of Dawson, his immediate chief. "This English Dawson, with whom it is my misfortune to work, is of all men the most impossible. He is clever, as the Devil, but secretive--my faith! He tells me nothing. He lives in disguise of body and mind. There are twenty men in his face, his figure, and his dress. He comes to me as a police officer, a doctor, a soldier, a priest, even as an old hag who cleans the stairs. He deceives me continually, and laughs, laughs. He is a reproach and an insult. I have it in my mind to score off him; what do you say, mon ami?"

Froissart spoke in French, and the English officer replied in the same language. "With pleasure, in the way of business. I have been placed at your orders, not at old man Dawson's. Go ahead, what is the game?"

Froissart nodded approval. "I think that you can pa.s.s as a French officer or a French-speaking Belgian. Is it not so?"

"You should be able to certify that better than I can myself," replied the officer modestly. "As a boy I was brought up at Dinard in Normandy. I served two years in the French Army as a volunteer, a gunner. Then I went to St. Cyr, but England, the home of my father, claimed me, and I was given a commission in the Artillery. That was two years ago. I volunteered for the Flying Corps, served in it at the outbreak of war, but was invalided after that confounded accident which spoilt my nerve. I fell two hundred feet into the sea, and pa.s.sed thirty hours in the bitter water before a destroyer picked me up. Thirty hours, my friend. My nerve went, and I was besides crippled by rheumatism of the heart. Then I was for a few weeks liaison officer on the Yser at the point where the English and Belgian lines met. The wet, the cold, were too great for me, and again I was invalided. I was a temporary captain without a job until you met me and asked for me to be attached to you for secret service. Yes, M. Froissart, I can pa.s.s as a French or a Belgian officer. It needs but the uniform."

"Good," cried Froissart. "You are English of the English, and French of the French. You have served under the Tricolor and under the Union Jack. You are an embodiment of L'Entente Cordiale. You almost reconcile me to that detestable Dawson, but not quite. He is of the provincial English, what you call a Nonconformist--bah! He is clever, but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this service, am _aristocrat_, a Count of _l'ancien regime, catholique, presque royaliste_. His blood is that of muddy peasants, yet he is my chief! Peste, I spit upon the sacred name of Dawson!"