“Ah! as long as you know it, that’s all right,” laughed Rodwell. “When the invasion comes, as it undoubtedly will, very soon, then you will be looked after all right. Don’t you or your son worry at all. Just sit tight, as this house is marked as the house of friends. Germany never betrays a friend—never!”
“Then they do intend to come over here?” exclaimed the old fisherman eagerly, his eyes wide-open in wonderment.
“Why, of course. All has been arranged long ago,” declared the man whom the British public knew as a great patriot. “The big expeditionary force, fully fit and equipped, has been waiting in Hamburg, at Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven, ever since the war began—waiting for the signal to start when the way is left open across the North Sea.”
“That will never be,” declared the younger man decisively.
“Perhaps not, if you have dared to tamper with the cable,” was Rodwell’s hard reply.
“I haven’t, I assure you,” the young man declared. “I haven’t touched it.”
“Well, I don’t trust either of you,” was Rodwell’s reply. “You’ve had lots of money from us, yet your confounded patriotism towards your effete old country has, I believe, caused you to try and defeat us. You’ve broken down the cable—perhaps cut the insulation under the water. How do I know?”
“I protest, Mr Rodwell, that you should insinuate this!” cried old Tom. “Through all this time we’ve worked for you, and—”
“Because you’ve been jolly well paid for it,” interrupted the other. “What would you have earned by your paltry bit of fish sent into Skegness for cheap holiday-makers to eat?—why, nothing! You’ve been paid handsomely, so you needn’t grumble. If you do, then I have means of at once cutting your supplies off and informing the Intelligence Department at Whitehall. Where would you both be then, I wonder?”
“We could give you away also!” growled Ted Small.