"My first impulse was to denounce the assassin, but what the dead man had told me caused me to hesitate, and I resolved to first get at the truth, which I have done with Mr. Raymond's aid," Richardson went on.
"The story of the schooner was true," he added, "except that it was a steam schooner-rigged yacht which was about to land some stuff for another depot at Burnham."
"What stuff?" I asked quickly.
"Ammunition ready for the German army when it lands upon this coast. It was that fact which Pavely had discovered and told me. After agreeing to keep the secret of the saccharine, it seems that he discovered that the boxes really contained cartridges, a fact which he urged me to communicate to the War Office after he had secured the German's bribe."
"Yes," declared Raymond, "the extensive cellaring under this place is packed to the ceiling with ammunition ready for the Day of Invasion. See this, which has just been brought!"
After prising open one of the boxes, many rounds of German rifle-cartridges were revealed. "That man Freeman before you, though brought up in England and passing as an Englishman, is, I have discovered, a German agent, who, in the guise of estate-pupil, has been busy composing a voluminous report upon supplies, accommodation, forage, possible landing-places, and other information useful to the invader.
His district has been the important country between the Blackwater and the Crouch, eastward of Maldon and Purleigh. Bramberger, who is also in the German Secret Service, has been accumulating this store of ammunition as well as forwarding his coadjutor's reports and plans to Berlin, for, being German, it excited no suspicion that he posted many bulky letters to Germany. He is often in direct communication with our friend in Pont Street. My secret investigations revealed all this, Jacox, hence I arranged this raid to-night."
"You'll never take me!" cried Freeman in defiance. But next moment these men, all of them constables in plain clothes, closed with him.
For a moment there was another desperate struggle, when with startling suddenness a shot rang out, and I saw Bramberger drop to the floor like a stone at my feet.
Freeman had wrested a weapon from one of his assailants and killed his fellow-spy; while, next instant, without reflection, he turned the revolver upon himself, and, before they could prevent him, had put a shot through his own brain, inflicting a wound that within half a minute proved mortal.
When we searched the cellars of the "Goat and Binnacle" we found no fewer than eighty-two cases of rifle cartridges; while next morning, in a small cottage within a stone's-throw of the "White Hart" at Burnham, we discovered sixty-odd cases of ammunition for various arms, together with ten cases of gun cotton and some other high explosives. Also we found six big cases full of proclamations, printed in English, threatening all who opposed the German advance with death. The document was a very remarkable one, and deeming it of sufficient interest, I have reproduced it in these pages.
DECREE CONCERNING THE POWER OF COUNCILS OF WAR.
WE, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF EAST ANGLIA, by virtue of the powers conferred upon us by His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor, Commander-in-Chief of the German Armies, order, for the maintenance of the internal and external security of the counties of the Government-General:--
ARTICLE I.--Any individual guilty of incendiarism or of wilful inundation, of attack, or of resistance with violence, against the Government-General or the agents of the civil or military authorities, of sedition, of pillage, of theft with violence, of assisting prisoners to escape, or of inciting soldiers to treasonable acts, shall be PUNISHED BY DEATH.
In the case of any extenuating circumstances, the culprit may be sent to penal servitude with hard labour for twenty years.
ARTICLE II.--Any person provoking or inciting an individual to commit the crimes mentioned in Article I. will be sent to penal servitude with hard labour for ten years.
ARTICLE III.--Any person propagating false reports relative to the operations of war or political events will be imprisoned for one year, and fined up to 100.
In any case where the affirmation or propagation may cause prejudice against the German army, or against any authorities or functionaries established by it, the culprit will be sent to hard labour for ten years.
ARTICLE IV.--Any person usurping a public office, or who commits any act or issues any order in the name of a public functionary, will be imprisoned for five years, and fined 150.
ARTICLE V.--Any person who voluntarily destroys or abstracts any documents, registers, archives, or public documents deposited in public offices, or passing through their hands in virtue of their functions as government or civic officials, will be imprisoned for two years, and fined 150.
ARTICLE VI.--Any person obliterating, damaging, or tearing down official notices, orders, or proclamations of any sort issued by the German authorities will be imprisoned for six months, and fined 80.
ARTICLE VII.--Any resistance or disobedience of any order given in the interests of public security by military commanders and other authorities, or any provocation or incitement to commit such disobedience, will be punished by one year's imprisonment, or a fine of not less than 150.
ARTICLE VIII.--All offences enumerated in Articles I.--VII. are within the jurisdiction of the Councils of War.
ARTICLE IX.--It is within the competence of Councils of War to adjudicate upon all other crimes and offences against the internal and external security of the English provinces occupied by the German Army, and also upon all crimes against the military or civil authorities, or their agents, as well as murder, the fabrication of false money, of blackmail, and all other serious offences.
ARTICLE X.--Independent of the above, the military jurisdiction already proclaimed will remain in force regarding all actions tending to imperil the security of the German troops, to damage their interests, or to render assistance in the Army of the British Government.
Consequently, they will be PUNISHED BY DEATH, and we expressly repeat this, all persons who are not British soldiers and--
(_a_) Who serve the British Army or the Government as spies, or receive British spies, or give them assistance or asylum.
(_b_) Who serve as guides to British troops, or mislead the German troops when charged to act as guides.
(_c_) Who shoot, injure, or assault any German soldier or officer.
(_d_) Who destroy bridges or canals, interrupt railways or telegraph lines, render roads impassable, burn munitions of war, provisions, or quarters of the troops.
(_e_) Who take arms against the German troops.
ARTICLE XI.--The organisation of Councils of War mentioned in Articles VIII. and IX. of the Law of May 2, 1870, and their procedure are regulated by special laws which are the same as the summary jurisdiction of military tribunals. In the case of Article X. there remains in force the Law of July 21, 1867, concerning the military jurisdiction applicable to foreigners.
ARTICLE XII.--The present order is proclaimed and put into execution on the morrow of the day upon which it is affixed in the public places of each town and village.
THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF EAST ANGLIA.
Copy of the German Proclamation found in the Secret Store of Arms at Burnham-on-Crouch.
The affair caused the greatest consternation at the War Office, at whose instigation it was instantly hushed up by the police for fear of creating undue panic.
But the truth remains--a very bitter, serious, and significant truth--of Germany's hostile intentions at a not distant date, a date when an Englishman's home will, alas! no longer be his castle.
CHAPTER V
THE SECRET OF THE NEW BRITISH AEROPLANE
"If we could only approach the Military Ballooning Department we might, perhaps, learn something," I remarked. "But I suppose that's quite out of the question?"
"Quite," declared Ray. "We should receive no information, and only be laughed at for our trouble."
"You don't think that the new Kershaw aeroplane can be the one now being tried by the Royal Engineers with so much secrecy on the Duke of Atholl's estate?"
"I think not," was his prompt reply. "My reason briefly is because I have discovered that two Germans stayed at the Blair Arms Hotel, at Blair Atholl, for six weeks last summer, and then suddenly disappeared--probably taking with them the plans of the airship about which there has been so much secrecy."
"I don't quite follow you," I said.
"No, there is still another fact. A month ago there arrived in England a man named Karl Straus, a lieutenant of the Military Ballooning Department of the German Army stationed at Dusseldorf. He paid several visits to our friend Hartmann in Pont Street, and then disappeared from London. Now, why did he come on a special mission to England? For one reason. Because of the failure of Germany's hope, the Zeppelin airship, combined with the report that our new Kershaw aeroplane is the most perfect of the many inventions, and destined to effect a revolution in warfare. The Kershaw, which was only completed at South Farnborough two months ago, is now being tried in strictest secrecy. Vera was told so by an engineer officer she met at a dance at Chatham a short time ago."
"And it is being tried here in the north somewhere," I added, as together, seated in a "forty-eight Daimler," we ascended Glen Garry from Blair Atholl--which we had left a couple of hours before--and sped along over the wild, treeless Grampians towards Dalwhinnie. The March morning was bitterly cold, and snow covered the ground, rendering the Highland scenery more picturesque and imposing. And as we preferred an open car to a closed one, the journey was very cold.
Our inquiries in Blair Atholl had had a negative result. In the long, old-fashioned Blair Arms Hotel Ray had made a number of searching inquiries, for though two officers of the Ballooning Department lived there, and had been conducting the experiments in Blair Park, it was plain that the machine had never yet taken flight. So the pair of mysterious Germans, whose names we discovered in the visitors' book, had either obtained the details they wanted or had left the neighbourhood in disgust.
It was at my friend's suggestion that we had hired the car from Perth, and had now set out upon a tour of discovery in the wildest and least frequented districts of the Highlands--some of which are in winter the most unfrequented in all Great Britain. Something--what I know not--had apparently convinced him that the tests were still in progress.