It must be war to the death, they decided. The conflict could not be averted. So Britons unsheathed their steel, and held themselves in readiness for a fierce and desperate fray.
The invasion had indeed been planned by our enemies with marvellous forethought and cunning. There was treachery in the Intelligence Department of the British Admiralty, foul treachery which placed our country at the mercy of the invader, and sacrificed thousands of lives. On the morning following the sudden Declaration of War, the officer in charge of the telegraph bureau at Whitehall, whose duty it had been to send the telegrams ordering the naval mobilisation, was found lying dead beside the telegraph instrument—stabbed to the heart! Inquiries were made, and it was found that one of the clerks, a young Frenchman who had been taken on temporarily at a low salary, was missing. It was further discovered that the murder had been committed hours before, immediately the Mobilisation Orders had been sent; further, that fictitious telegrams had been despatched cancelling them, and ordering the Channel Fleet away to the Mediterranean, the Coastguard Squadron to Land's End, and the first-class Reserve ships to proceed to the North of Scotland in search of the enemy! Thus, owing to these orders sent by the murderer, England was left unprotected.
Immediately the truth was known efforts were made to cancel the forged orders. But, alas! it was too late. Our Fleets had already sailed!
CHAPTER IX.
COUNT VON BEILSTEIN AT HOME.
arl von Beilstein sat in his own comfortable saddlebag-chair, in his chambers in the Albany, lazily twisting a cigarette.
On a table at his elbow was spread sheet 319 of the Ordnance Survey Map of England, which embraced that part of Sussex where the enemy were encamped. With red and blue pencils he had been making mystic marks upon it, and had at last laid it aside with a smile of satisfaction.