“I acknowledge the receipt of 10,000 francs from Mynheer van Spranekhuizen, but must ask you to send a further sum twice that amount. My agents are risking their lives, and will not work for less.”
“You, too, my dear Brodersen, have risked your life,” said the Lieutenant-Colonel seriously. “I should not like to give much for it at the present moment.”
“These notes are very instructive,” observed Heideck. “If we strengthen Admiral Hollway in the belief that we intend to land the German troops in England from Antwerp and not from Kiel, our fleet of transports at Kiel will be able to cross the North Sea all the more safely and effect the landing in Scotland.”
XXVIII
THE FATE OF A SPY
Colonel Mercier-Milon reported from Brussels that he had arrested Countess Arselaarts and thought he had made a valuable capture. The Countess was deeply in debt and lived very extravagantly. A little time ago she had been assisted financially by an exalted personage, who had left the country. Since then her resources had become exhausted, and it was supposed that she had acted as a spy for the English at a high salary. He added that he was on the point of discovering a widespread network of espionage in France and Belgium.
Herr van Spranekhuizen and Hinnerk Brodersen of Schleswig had also been arrested the same morning.
“I wish we had trustworthy information as to the strength of the British fleet,” said the Lieutenant-Colonel, who had communicated the above report to Heideck. “Sometimes I am really inclined to believe that this fleet is not so effective as all the world has hitherto assumed. It is almost impossible for outsiders to get a clear insight into the condition of the English navy. So far as I can remember, false reports are systematically published about the fleet—officially, semi-officially, and privately. From time to time a speaker is put up in Parliament by the Government to deliver a violent attack on the naval administration. He is contradicted by a representative of the Admiralty, and dust is again thrown in the eyes of the world. On one of Queen Victoria’s last birthdays a powerful squadron, as it was called, was assembled for review off Spithead. But no foreigner was allowed a close inspection of these imposing fleets, and I am greatly inclined to think that it was another case of the famous movable villages, which Potemkin showed the Russian Empress on her journey to the Crimea. Official statements give the number of English warships as more than four hundred, not including torpedo-boats, but amongst them is a large number of obsolete and inefficient vessels.”
Heideck nodded.