“Good!” was Rodwell’s reply. “Anybody been looking around?”
“Not a soul to-day, sir. The weather’s been bad, an’ the only man we’ve seen is Mr Bennett, from the coastguard station, on his patrol. He was ’ere last night and had a drop o’ whisky with us.”
“Good?” laughed Rodwell. “Keep well in with the coastguard. They’re a fine body, but only a year or so ago the British Admiralty reduced them. It wasn’t their fault.”
“We do keep in with ’em,” was old Tom Small’s reply, as Rodwell re-entered the room in dry clothes. “I generally give ’em a bit o’ fish when they wants it, and o’ course I’m always on the alert looking out for periscopes that don’t appear,” and the shrewd old chap gave vent to a deep guttural laugh.
“Well now, Small, let’s get to work,” Rodwell said brusquely. “I’ve got some important matters on hand. Is all working smoothly?”
“Splendidly, sir,” answered the younger man. “Nothing could be better. Signals are perfect to-night.”
“Then come along,” answered the man who was so universally believed to be a great British patriot; and, turning the handle of the door on the right-hand side of the living-room, he entered a small, close-smelling bedroom, furnished cheaply, as the bedroom of a small struggling fisherman would be. The Smalls were honest, homely folk, the domestic department being carried on by Tom’s younger daughter, Mary, who at the moment happened to be visiting her married sister in Louth.
The son, Ted, having lit a petrol table-lamp—one of those which, filled with spirit, give forth gas from the porous block by which the petrol is absorbed and an intense light in consequence—Lewin Rodwell went to the corner of the room where an old curtain of crimson damask hung before a recess. This he drew aside, when, hanging in the recess, were shown several coats and pairs of trousers—the wardrobe of old Tom Small; while below was a tailor’s sewing-machine on a treadle stand—a machine protected by the usual wooden cover.
The latter he lifted; but beneath, instead of a machine for the innocent needle-and-cotton industry, there was revealed a long electrical tapping-key upon an ebonite base, together with several electrical contrivances which, to the uninitiated, would present a mysterious problem.
A small, neatly-constructed Morse printing machine, with its narrow ribbon of green paper passing through beneath a little glass cover protecting the “inker” from the dust; a cylindrical brass relay with its glass cover, and a tangle of rubber-insulated wires had been hidden beneath that square wooden cover, measuring two and a half feet by one.