Thirty-six hours had passed since the young German who called himself Burton, but whose real name was Berenstein, had sat in Mrs Kirby’s drawing-room discussing the faulty ammunition being made at the works at G—. Twelve hours before, namely, at six o’clock on the previous evening, the court-martial sitting at the Old Bailey had concluded the hearing of the grave case of espionage brought against young Sainsbury. The evidence—some of the most damning evidence ever brought before a court-martial—had been given, and Mr Pelham his counsel had made his speech for the defence. Sentence had been postponed, in order that the whole of the facts should be considered by the military authorities. The trial having taken place in camera, not a word had leaked out to the newspapers, therefore the public were in ignorance of the young man’s arrest, still more so of the grave offence with which he had been charged.
Elise knew what had happened. She had sat outside the court, in the big stone hall upstairs, where a kindly usher had given her a brief résumé of the proceedings. Indeed, through the glass door she had been able to get a momentary peep of her lover as he had stood in the dock, pale and erect, defiant of his accusers.
When the court rose, she had returned to Fitzjohn’s Avenue in a taxicab, sobbing and broken-hearted.
On arriving home she had rung up Sir Houston Bird on the telephone, but his man had answered saying that he had been called out suddenly, and had not returned. Therefore she went to her room and there gave way to a paroxysm of grief. It was over. Jack had been found guilty!
In the grey light of dawn, Lewin Rodwell was seated in the stuffy, little room in Tom Small’s cottage, his hand upon the telegraph-key, clicking out rapidly a message to Berlin.
At his side sat his accomplice, Mrs Kirby, in a heavy fur motor-coat with toque to match, for she had been all night on the road with Penney, who, having dropped her quite near, had turned the car and gone back into Horncastle to wait until the following evening.
The woman had been engaged writing, by the light of the petrol lamp, a long message since her arrival an hour before, while it was still dark; and it was this—a detailed report of the movements of troops to the front in Flanders, which young Burton had obtained for her—that Rodwell was engaged in transmitting.
Without speaking the spy sat, his left elbow upon the table, with his brow upon his palm while, with his right hand, he tapped away quickly with the rapid touch of the expert telegraphist.
“What a wretched little place!” the woman remarked at last, gazing around the narrow little bedroom. “How horribly close and stuffy!”
“Yes, and you’d find it so, if you’d been here a prisoner for three days and nights, as I have, Molly,” her companion laughed, still continuing to transmit the information for which Number Seventy had asked so constantly. The German General Staff were anxious to ascertain what strength of reinforcements we were sending to our line near Ypres.