CHAPTER XXXI

At the very hour when Elaine received the strange letter signed "Bernard Treves," a letter which awoke all her defensive feminine instincts, John occupied a chair in the little mess-room at Heatherpoint Fort. The occasion was one of deep and portentous significance. At the head of the table, where Mrs. Beecher Monmouth had so recently taken tea with Lieutenant Parkson, General Whiston was seated in state. His big, commanding figure bulked largely in the chair usually occupied by Colonel Hobin. Beneath the General's eyes was a map of the South Coast defences--an elaborate, minutely particularised map, which in a layman's eyes would have been almost undecipherable.

The General held a blue pencil over a particular section of the Solent; his eyes, however, were fixed upon the countenance of a naval captain who sat at his left hand, a little farther down the table. Opposite the naval captain was Colonel Hobin, and next to Hobin sat old Commander Greaves.

John occupied an insignificant position next to Greaves, and near the end of the table there was a vacant chair.

"Is there no possibility, Captain," inquired General Whiston, speaking to the naval officer, "of altering the mine-field in the time at our command?"

Before the naval officer lay a small Admiralty chart of the Solent clustered with a multitude of red crosses.

"Well," he said, deliberating upon the situation, "this is a pretty elaborate field, and it would take us quite two days to make an effective new arrangement. Of course, we could mine the free channels, but that prevents us coming in."

He went into technical details.

General Whiston cast a glance at John.

"You are quite sure your friends Voules and Company intend to strike on the twenty-eighth?"

"All the evidence I have been able to get points to that, sir," answered John promptly.

"The twenty-eighth is the day after to-morrow," put in Greaves.

"Mr. Dacent Smith," said John, "had an idea that the attack might be postponed, but he has now come round to my view."

As a matter of fact, John had that day amply convinced his chief that the German blow was to fall on the date originally prescribed. Since leaving Colonel Treves's house, and since his embarrassing interview with Elaine, John had made certain valuable discoveries, all of which pointed to the imminence of the German attack on the South Coast defences. With infinite subtlety von Kuhne had managed to institute nefarious schemes in a dozen different directions. The night of the twenty-eighth had been marked out in the German general's mind with the clockwork precision which was a second nature to him. And John believed that nothing would shake his resolution. Mrs. Beecher Monmouth's particular work of the early part of that night was to see that Lieutenant Parkson was not at his post. All her potent charms were to be expended to that end. That she would succeed in her task was, in von Kuhne's and the lady's own eyes, a foregone conclusion. As to Manwitz, he was to be mysteriously occupied with certain men of his Majesty's forces whose business it was to operate the boom between Ponsonby Lighthouse and Windsor Fort. Cherriton's particular duty upon the eventful night John had not been able to discover. The tall German still occupied the isolated cottage he had recently taken on the Downs near Freshwater. Since John's visit to the cottage he had not had further meeting with this particular formidable enemy.

In thinking of his visit to the cottage, however, John was conscious that the man's attitude upon that day had been singular in the extreme. What had been in Cherriton's mind he did not know, and he was, of course, totally unaware that sentence of extermination had been passed upon him. It is no stretch of imagination to say that in visiting the cottage he had, without knowing it, walked within the very shadow of the grave.

"Friend Cherriton is no mean antagonist," thought John, pondering upon the German's personality as he sat in the little mess-room.

Now that the great blow was so soon to fall, Dacent Smith--an unusual circumstance with him--had left his post in London and come to the Isle of Wight. General Whiston and Captain Throgmorton, who respectively commanded the counter military and naval measures, found the pleasant, keen-eyed Chief of Intelligence an invaluable ally. His intuitive knowledge of the German character proved to be of the utmost assistance. He had been studying Germany and the German secret service for twenty years, and what he did not know about Teutonic psychology, chicanery and guile, was not worth knowing.

Dacent Smith, however, never made the mistake of under-estimating his enemy. Von Kuhne's blow would, he conceded, be a well-wrought and scientifically delivered attack. There was one slight thing, however, which von Kuhne had possibly overlooked--he had possibly overlooked the important fact that the Isle of Wight is after all an island, and that in gathering his forces upon this particular portion of His Majesty's dominions he was isolating himself from chances of escape in case of failure.

Dacent Smith thought a good deal upon this subject during his first day at Heatherpoint Fort. But when he presently resumed his chair at the end of the table in the little mess-room, opposite General Whiston, his pleasantly good-humoured face showed nothing of the intense mental activity within.

General Whiston lifted his eyes as Dacent Smith took his seat.

"Well, have you found out anything else for us?"

"Nothing," answered Dacent Smith, "except further confirmation that von Kuhne will make his attempt the day after to-morrow. He has disposed his forces with a good deal of ingenuity. This end of the Isle of Wight is at present dotted with amiable Britishers who happen to be Germans!"

A curious smile flitted across the face of John's Chief.

"It must have been very gratifying," said he, "to Captain Cherriton, Manners, and von Kuhne to say 'British subject' to our good-looking policeman as they stepped on board the boat at Lymington. Manners, so I hear, was the only one of a dozen who came that way who showed the slightest trace of nervousness. I think we shall have to reckon, General," he concluded, "upon von Kuhne providing something pretty forceful and daring!"

The naval captain whose eyes were still occupied with the chart of the Solent, lifted his keen gaze. "Something in the nature of our own adventure at Zeebrugge and Ostend, do you think?"

Here he turned his red-starred chart face downwards. On its back were twenty or thirty neatly-pencilled lines.

"That," he said, pushing the chart towards Dacent Smith, "is my forecast of what is going to happen in this area during the next forty-eight hours. If your date is correct, I think my forecast will be pretty well right. What do you think, General?"

Throgmorton's incisive, clean-cut features turned towards Whiston.

"I think it's a devilish clever piece of work!" answered General Whiston, generously.

Dacent Smith's eyes lifted from the pencilled forecast. His vivid gaze rested for a minute in admiration on Throgmorton's handsome, well-wrought features.

"Some day, young man," thought he, "you will be ruler of the King's Navy."

He pushed back the chart towards the naval officer; then turned towards John.

"You can go, Treves," he said, "with the General's permission."

Whiston nodded.

John saluted and withdrew from the room.

As Manton passed out into the asphalted courtyard he met Chief Gunner Ewins.

"Well, Ewins," he said, "what about your wife's dangerous illness?"

"She wasn't ill at all, sir. I can't make it out--I've just got a letter from her to-day, saying she's as well as ever she was."

"Of course, she never sent the wire," explained John.

"Who could have sent it?" said Ewins, looking at John with puzzled eyes; "it's a silly sort of joke to play on anybody, sir."

"Very silly," John admitted. "It looked as if somebody wanted to get you out of the fort for a day or two. That's why the Colonel wouldn't grant you leave. He didn't think you were playing a trick on him. He thought some one was playing a trick on you. How are your guns, Ewins?"

"Nicely, sir, thank you," answered the chief gunner. "But I'm sorry we've missed our nine-inch practice this week."

"You won't miss much by that," John answered. "You'll shoot as well as ever when the time comes."

He knew how soon the time would come, though Ewins did not.

John descended the steps of the fort, took his bicycle, and, with due observance of ceremonies, passed through the great gate that had recently all but intimidated Mrs. Beecher Monmouth.

An hour later, John, still pedalling steadily, descended the winding road into Brooke. At the outskirts of the village he placed his bicycle against a gate, climbed into a field, and, by a detour, made his way to the back of Doctor Voules's house. In the darkness he walked softly forward under the shadow of the doctor's garden wall He had made only a few paces when a voice came to him out of the gloom.

"Who's that?" demanded the voice, in a guarded whisper.

"Treves," answered John. "Is that you, Watson?"

"Yes, sir," came the answer.

John drew himself to the top of the garden wall and looked down upon a corporal in uniform.

"Anything happened?" John asked.

"Yes," answered Watson; "three men came to the house after dark, stayed a little while, and went away again, sir."

As a matter of fact, half an hour earlier Doctor Voules and two tall young men had stealthily mounted the wall and entered the house by the back way. Corporal Watson had been concealed in the garden and witnessed this visit, and Voules's and his friends' departure in the same stealthy manner.

"They are evidently trying to give the impression that the house is uninhabited, sir," the corporal amplified.

John, who had climbed into the garden and was standing by him, gave a few further instructions as to Voules's abode, presently mounted his bicycle and rode away. Three quarters of an hour later, in a small clump of trees on the heather-clad cliff-top near Freshwater, he spoke to another soldier. This man, with three others, had been detailed to watch Cherriton's cottage.

"The captain's been in his cottage all the evening, sir," said the man to John, "and the big, fat man's been with him."

Having satisfied himself as to the whereabouts of Cherriton and Manners, John cycled on and entered the Freshwater Hotel. Here he put through a trunk-call to Newport. When he had been connected with a particular number he inquired into the telephone:

"Is that you, Gibb?"

"Yes, sir," came the answer.

"Do you know who is speaking?"

"It's Mr. Treves, isn't it?"

"Yes," John answered.

Having satisfied himself that he was in touch with the gloomy-looking waiter at the Newport Hotel, he put a discreet inquiry. He had parted with certain Treasury notes to the benefit of the gloomy waiter. The waiter, thereafter feeling himself a small but important wheel in a piece of vast machinery, made himself busy and active in John's service.

"Is anybody at home, Gibb?"

"She's not been out all day, sir, and went to bed immediately after dinner. She told her maid that she had a lot to do to-morrow, and asked to be called at eight."

These details were, for the moment, enough to satisfy John.

"You know where to ring me up, Gibb, if anything exceptional occurs."

John, having concluded his duties for that day, pedalled slowly back to the fort. The night was overcast, the air close, and as he led his bicycle up the long white road to the gates, he could hear the waves softly falling at the foot of the cliffs in the bay below him. No other sound broke the stillness, and when the outer sentinel suddenly barred his path and a challenge rang out on the close air, John was startled out of a mood of dreams.

He passed the second and the third sentries, a wicket in the great gate of the fort opened and admitted him, and, having reported himself to the Colonel, he went straight to his room. For the better part of that night his mind occupied itself with the momentous doings of the morrow. The cloud that had gathered itself about that end of the island was about to break. What would happen to himself and others on the morrow he could not forecast. But one thing he knew--the long, hidden contest between Voules and Dacent Smith would reach its culmination. Each man, with his pawns, had manoeuvred, moved, finessed and counter-moved. The subtlety of Dacent Smith had been pitted against the precision and military skill of von Kuhne. What was to be the end? John did not know, and at that moment his mind was only secondarily occupied with the point; he was thinking, not of to-morrow, but of yesterday, of his interview with Elaine, of his abrupt separation from her, of his apparent brutality and harshness.

He wondered at himself, that he, a capable, alert and non-sentimental young man, an individual who had withstood the seductive blandishments of Mrs. Beecher Monmouth, he wondered to find himself deeply and passionately in love with a girl whose knowledge of artifice was of the slightest. Elaine's genuine trust in him, her belief in his integrity, her delight in the improvement in his character, all helped to enchain John's deepest affections.

As he lay now in the quiet and darkness of his room, he felt he dared not let his mind dwell upon the future. He had tricked and duped Elaine, and some day she would be bound to find him out.

What would happen then? What would happen when she learned the truth?

"There is nothing for it," John pronounced suddenly and emphatically. "I must tell her myself--I must confess the whole thing from the beginning."

Having arrived at this decision, he saw himself making the confession, though he could not see what her attitude would be. He could visualise, always standing between them as an impassable and sinister barrier, the man whose identity he had borne for so many months. Bernard Treves--his _alter ego_, his _doppel-gaenger_--had become what he had probably been from the first--his evil genius. From the very first he had disliked Treves; he had later grown to despise him. The man was contemptible beyond words.

At this point John took himself resolutely in hand--or, rather, he thought he took himself resolutely in hand. What really happened was that he put away thoughts of Elaine, hiding them courageously and tenderly in the deeps of his mind, for the sole reason that to think of her, to think of the hopeless situation between them, meant nothing but misery and bitterness.

At eight o'clock, when John appeared in the little mess-room, Colonel Hobin was alone at breakfast, at the head of the table.

"Well, Treves," he said, "if your predictions are right, this is going to be the day of our lives!"

"I think I am right, sir," John answered.

"We shall see," answered the Colonel. "Pass the marmalade, please."

John passed the marmalade. He noticed the Colonel's hand was steady--none of the nervous irritability that characterised him usually was apparent--and the old soldier's eyes had taken on a new masterful expression of command--the countenance of a good captain on the bridge in face of a great oncoming storm.