Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and Spying

by William Le Queux

A— swore fervently, and I saw by the gleam in his eyes that he was fully awake to the possibilities of the trap into which he had been so nearly led.

Our task now, barring some unforeseeable contingency, was fairly easy; there was a good prospect of ensnaring our foes in the pit they had so skilfully dug for us.

“The matter is up to you now,” I told A—. “I’m going to drop out till the very last minute. But I shall be with you then. It is of the utmost importance that we shall do nothing to scare these very wary birds. What is your plan?”

“Well,” said A—, “it seems to me I had better go ahead as if nothing had happened. The arrangement is that Engström shall take his apparatus to Havre and instal it on E77. We are then to put to sea for the tests, and are to meet him later and inform him of our decision.”

“That will do all right,” I said. “I shall come on board the submarine before Engström arrives, and then I think we shall surprise him.”

A— departed at once to make the final arrangements and I busied myself in sending off some telegrams arranging for the final downfall of the Hun plotters.

A week later I found myself on board E77 at Havre. The mysterious cases had been sent on, and with them came Engström, with Thornton and Tegelmund, who professed to be interested in the venture—the former financially, the latter as the inventor. Tegelmund was in high glee at being thus afforded an opportunity of putting his device to a thoroughly satisfactory test. We also had a big surprise in the arrival of Halbmayr, who arrived in Havre under the name of Mennier. That he should have ventured on the scene at all showed how intensely interested he was.

Engström declared that the fitting of the machinery would occupy fully three days, and we, of course, humoured him in every way possible. A— made himself particularly agreeable, playing the part of host to perfection, and it was evident that the conspirators never even dreamed that their nefarious designs were suspected by the genial naval officer who showed such an enthusiastic interest in the wonderful stories with which they plied him on the merits of their great discovery.

The three days went by. Four great cases of machinery had been duly shipped on board, and Engström, Thornton, and Tegelmund spent many hours daily at their work in the interior of the submarine. Of course I could not appear—I should have been recognised at once—but among the crew of the submarine were a couple of the smartest men of the Sûreté, who kept the bogus engineer and his associates under the closest scrutiny. They reported to me that Engström appeared to be the only one of the three with any great amount of mechanical knowledge, and that, while Tegelmund worked assiduously at his machine, the others spent most of their time carefully examining the details of the British vessel, in which they showed the greatest interest. I began to get at last an inkling of the plot!

The fourth day dawned—the day of the dénouement. Early in the morning I slipped on board the submarine, and when the two conspirators arrived we made our coup.