IV.
FRIDAY.
This is written under very different circumstances—and in a different place. My last words were written with my eyes shut; these are written with them open, but I shall simply tell what happened as calmly as I can. Let the events speak; I shall make no comment in the meanwhile.
On that Friday morning our breakfast was converted into a council of war. We all three discussed the situation gravely and frankly. I felt tempted to say some very bitter words to Tiel, for it seemed to me quite obvious that it was simply his gross mismanagement which had brought us to the edge of this precipice; but I am glad now I refrained. I was at no pains, however, to be over-polite.
"There is nothing to be done in the meanwhile, I'm afraid," said he.
This coolness seemed to me all very well in its proper season, but not at present.
"Yes, there is," I said urgently. "We might get out of this house and look for some other refuge!"
He shook his head.
"Not by daylight, if it is being watched."
"Besides," said Eileen, "this is the day we have been waiting for. We don't want to be far away, do we?"
"Personally," I said, "it seems to me that as I cannot be where I ought to be" (and here I looked at Tiel somewhat bitterly), "with my brave comrades in their attack on our enemies, I should much prefer to make for a safer place than this—if one can be found."
"It can't," said Tiel briefly.
And that indeed became more and more obvious the longer we talked it over. Had our house stood in the midst of a wood, or had a kindly fog blown out of the North Sea, we might have made a move. As it was, I had to agree that it would be sheer folly, before nightfall anyhow; and there was nothing for it but waiting.
To add to the painfulness of this ordeal, I found myself obliged to remain in my room, now that I had resumed my uniform. This time it did not need Tiel to bid me take this precaution. In fact, I was amazed to hear him suggesting that I would be just as safe in the parlour. At the time I naturally failed altogether to understand this departure from his usual caution, and I asked him sarcastically if he wished to precipitate a catastrophe.
"We have still a good deal to discuss," said he.
"I thought there was nothing more to be said."
"I mean in connection with the other scheme."
"The devil may take the other scheme!" said I, "anyhow till we escape from this trap. What is the good in planning ahead, with the house watched night and day?"
"We only suspect it is watched," said he calmly.
"Suspect!" I cried. "We are not idiots, and why should we pretend to be?"
And so I went up to my room and spent the most miserable and restless day of my life. How slowly the hours passed, no words of mine can give the faintest idea. In my present state of mind writing was impossible, and I tried to distract myself by reading novels; but they were English novels, and every word in them seemed to gall me. I implored Eileen to come and keep me company. She came up once for a little, but the devil seemed to have possessed her, for I felt no sympathy coming from her at all; and when at last I tried to be a little affectionate she first repulsed me, saying it was no time for that, and then she left me. With baffled love added to acute anxiety, you can picture my condition!
For the first part of that horrible day I kept listening for some sign of the police, and now and then looking out from the skylight at the back, but the watcher was no longer visible, and not a fresh step or voice was to be heard in the house. My door stood locked, my fire was blazing, and my papers lay ready to be consumed, and at moments I positively longed to see them blazing and myself arrested, and get it over, yet nothing happened.
In the afternoon the direction of my thoughts began to change as the hour approached when the fleet should sail and my country reap the reward of the enterprise and fidelity which I felt conscious I had shown, and the sacrifice which I feared I should have to make. I began to make brief visits to the parlour to look out of the window and see if I could see any signs of movement in the Armada. And then for the second time I saw Tiel in a genial cheerful humour, and this time there was no doubt of the cause. He too was in a state of tension, and his mind, like mine, was running on the coming drama. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, his thoughts were so entirely wrapped up in this that he frankly talked of nothing else. Was I sure we should have at least four submarines? he asked me; and would they be brought well in and take the risk? Indeed, I never heard him ask so many questions, or appear so pleased as he did when I reassured him on all these points.
As for Eileen, she was quite as excited as either of us, and when Tiel was not asking me questions, she was; until once again prudence drove me back to my room. On one of my visits she gave us some tea, but that is the only meal I remember any of us eating between our early and hurried lunch and the evening when the crash came.
The one thing I looked for as I gazed out of that window was the rising of smoke from the battle-fleet, and at last I saw it. Stream after stream, black or grey, gradually mounted, first from one leviathan and then from another, till the air was darkened hundreds of feet above them, and if our flotilla were in such a position that they could look for this sign, they must have seen it. This time I returned to my room with a heart a little lightened.
"I have done my duty," I said to myself, "come what may of it!"
And I do not think that any impartial reader will deny that, so far as my own share of this enterprise was concerned, I had done my very utmost to make it succeed.
The next time I came down my spirits rose higher still, and for the moment I quite forgot the danger in which I stood. The light cruisers, the advance-guard of the fleet, were beginning to move! This time when I went back to my room I forced myself to read two whole chapters of a futile novel before I again took off the lid and peeped in to see how the stew was cooking. The instant I had finished the second chapter I leapt up and opened the door—and then I stood stock-still and listened. A distant sound of voices reached me, and a laugh rang out that was certainly neither Tiel's nor Eileen's.
I locked my door, slipped back again, and prepared to burn my papers; but though I stood over the fire for minute after minute, there was no sound of approaching steps. Very quietly I opened the door and listened once more, and still I heard voices. And thus I lingered and hesitated for more than an hour. By this time the attack had probably been made, and I could stand the suspense no longer, so I went recklessly downstairs, strode along the passage, and opened the parlour door.
Nothing will ever efface the memory of the scene that met my eyes. Tiel, Eileen, and Ashington sat there, the two men each with a whisky-and-soda, and all three seemingly in the most extraordinarily high spirits. It was Ashington's face and voice that suddenly rent the veil from before my eyes. Instead of the morose and surly individual I had met before, he sat there the incarnation of the jovial sailor. He was raising his glass to his lips, and as I entered I heard the words—
"Here's to you again, Robin!"
What had happened I did not clearly grasp in that first instant, but I felt I was betrayed. My hand went straight to my revolver pocket, but before I could seize it, Tiel, who sat nearest, leapt up, grasped my wrist, and with the shock of his charge drove me down into a chair. It was done so suddenly that I could not possibly have resisted. Then with a movement like a conjurer he picked the revolver out of my pocket, and said in his infernally cool calm way—
"Please consider yourself a prisoner of war, Mr Belke."
Even then I had not grasped the whole truth.
"A prisoner of war!" I exclaimed. "And what the devil are you, Herr Tiel? A traitor?"
"You have got my name a little wrong," said he, with that icy smile of his. "I am Commander Blacklock of the British Navy, so you can surrender either to me or to Captain Phipps, whichever you choose."
"Phipps!" I gasped, for I remembered that as the name of a member of Jellicoe's staff.
"That's me, old man," said the gross person with insufferable familiarity. "The Honourable Thomas Bainbridge Ashington would have a fit if he looked in the glass and saw this mug!"
"Then I understand I am betrayed?" I asked as calmly as I could.
"You're nabbed," said Captain Phipps, with brutal British slang, "and let me tell you that's better than being dead, which you would have been if you'd rejoined your boat."
I could not quite control my feelings.
"What has happened?" I cried.
"We've bagged the whole four—just at the very spot on the chart which you and I arranged!" chuckled the great brute.
(At this point Lieutenant von Belke's comments become a little too acid for publication, and it has been considered advisable that the narrative should be finished by the Editor.)