Mrs. van Warmelo told the members that she was in a position to communicate with the President in Holland by every mail, and that the methods employed by her would be revealed to them after the war. With this they expressed themselves satisfied, willingly leaving the matter of sending away dispatches from the field in Mrs. van Warmelo's capable hands.
It was felt that the greatest responsibility resting on them at the time was to have a suitable place of refuge ready to receive the Captain when next he entered the town.
There was no house free from suspicion since the arrest of the Committee, except—except—Harmony!
Harmony, surrounded as it was by British officers and their staffs, by British troops and Military Mounted Police—Harmony was at last chosen as the most suitable, the only spot in Pretoria in which the Captain of the Secret Service could be harboured with any degree of safety.
It was arranged that he would immediately be brought to Harmony when he came again, and in the meantime the Committee would be on the look-out for an opportunity to send a warning and instructions out to him not to approach the houses hitherto frequented by him.
For many weeks no spies belonging to his set came into town. No war news of any description reached his friends, except one day the information, conveyed we know not how, of the safe arrival at the Skurvebergen of young Els, the spy who had been fired upon and was missing from his companions on that eventful September 12th. That this news gave his relatives and friends great joy and relief after the intense anxiety gone through on his account, my readers will readily understand.
The discovery of the White Envelope was not always a source of unmixed satisfaction.
One of them, containing news of the betrayal and arrest of the Committee, and sent to Alphen in the ordinary way, failed to reach its destination. This caused the senders so much anxiety that for some time they did not dare risk the sending of another. The letter might have fallen into the hands of the censors and the secret be discovered by them, in which event they were probably waiting quietly to catch up further information.
It may have been only a coincidence, but at this time the plotters at Harmony observed that the censorship on their post had been withdrawn altogether.