of the keen, British naval officer. “Dick has been the victim of a very carefully-prepared plot. That is my firm belief. I’ve been making some inquiries at the Grand Hotel, and learn that Dick came over from Norwich on his motor-cycle at nine o’clock yesterday morning for some purpose, and idled about Mundesley and the neighbourhood all the day. The head-waiter at the hotel knew him, for he had often lunched there. But yesterday he evidently came here with some fixed purpose, for he seemed to be eagerly expecting somebody, and at last, a little before two o’clock, a young lady arrived by the motor-bus from Cromer. They describe her as a neat, dark-haired, good-looking young person, rather well-dressed – and evidently a summer visitor. The pair walked about the village, and then went down to the beach and sat upon deck-chairs to chat. They returned to the hotel at half-past three and had tea together, tête-à-tête, in a small sitting-room. The waiter tells me that once, when he went in, suddenly, she was standing up, apparently urging him to act in opposition to his own inclinations. Her attitude, he says, was one of unusual force, it being evident that Dick was very reluctant to give some promise she was endeavouring to extract from him. She left again by the motor-bus for Cromer just after four.”
“Ah! There you are! The woman!” exclaimed the owner of Keswick Hall, with a smile. “I thought as much.”
“I don’t think she had anything to do with the affair,” said Barclay. “The police this morning obtained a detailed description of her – just as I have done – and they are now searching for her in Cromer, Runton, and Sheringham, believing her to be staying somewhere along this coast. She was dressed in a pale blue kit of a distinctly seaside cut, so the police are hoping to find her. Perhaps she doesn’t yet know of the tragic fate that has befallen poor Dick.”
“I wonder who the girl can be? No doubt she’d be able to make a very interesting statement – if they could only discover her.”
“I think she left Cromer last night,” Noel Barclay suggested to his companion.
“She would, if she were in any way implicated. Perhaps she has already gone!”
“No, I don’t agree. I believe she is still in ignorance.”
“What, I wonder, was the motive for their meeting here – in this quiet, out-of-the-world little place?” asked Goring. “If he wanted to see her, he might have motored to wherever she was staying, and not have brought her over here in a motor-bus. No, it was a secret meeting – that’s my opinion – and, as it was secret, it probably had some connection with the tragedy which afterwards occurred.”
The two men were now close to the “Gap,” or steep, inclined cart-road which ran down to the sands. On their right, a little way from the road, stood a small, shed-like building where the rocket life-saving apparatus of the Board of Trade was housed. In front, the roadway, and indeed all down the “Gap” and across the sands to where the waves lapped the shore, had been recently opened, for upon the previous day the shore end of the new German telegraph-cable connecting England with Nordeney had been laid. At that moment, while the cable-ship, on its return across the North Sea, was hourly paying out the cable, a German telegraph engineer was seated within the rocket-station, constantly making tests upon the submerged line between the shore and the ship.
Up from the trench beside the rocket-house came the cable – black, coiled, and snake-like, about three inches in thickness – its end disappearing within the small building.
“Been inside to-day?” asked Goring, just as they were passing.
“No. Let’s see how they are progressing,” the other said; and both turned into the little gate and asked permission to enter where the tests were being made.
Herr Strantz, the German engineer, a dark-haired, round-faced, middle-aged man, came forward, and, recognising the pair as visitors of the previous day, greeted them warmly in rather imperfect English, and bowed them into where, ranged on a long table, the whole length of the left-hand wall, stood a great quantity of mysterious-looking electrical appliances with a tangle of connecting wires, while below the tables stood a row of fully fifty large batteries, such as are used in telegraph work.
On the table, amid that bewildering assortment of queer-looking instruments, all scrupulously clean and highly polished, were two small brass lamps burning behind a long, narrow strip of transparent celluloid whereon was marked a minute gauge. On the edge of the table, before these lamps, was a switch, with black ebonite handle.
As the two Englishmen entered, the German’s eyes caught the small, round brass clock and noted that it was time to make the test – every five minutes, night and day, while the cable was in process of completion.
Therefore, without further word to his visitors, he carefully pulled over the long ebonite handle of the switch, and, at the same instant, a tiny spot of bright light showed upon the transparent gauge.
This the engineer examined to see its exact place upon the clearly-defined line, afterwards noting it in his book in cryptic figures, and then carefully switching off again, when the tell-tale light disappeared.
“Well?” asked Barclay. “How are you getting along? Not quite so much excitement in this place as yesterday – eh?”
“No,” laughed the engineer. “Der people here never see a shore-end floated to land wiz bojes (buoys) before. Dey have already buried der line in der trench, as you see. Ach! Your English workmen are far smarter than ours, I confess,” he added, with a pleasant accent.
“Is it being laid all right?” the airman asked.
“Ja, ja. Very good work. Der weather, he could not be better. We have laid just over one hundert mile in twenty-four hours. Gut – eh?”
As he spoke the Morse-sounder at the end of the green baize-covered table started clicking calling him.
In a moment his expert hand was upon the key, tapping a response.
The ship tapped rapidly, and then the engineer made an enquiry, and received a prompt reply.
Then tapped out the short-long-short-long and short, which meant “finish,” when, turning to the pair, he said:
“Dey hope to get it am Ufer (ashore) at daybreak to-morrow. By noon there will be another through line between Berlin and London.”
Lieutenant Barclay was silent. A sudden thought crossed his mind. At Bacton, a couple of miles farther down the coast, the two existing cables went out to the German shore. But this additional line would prove of immense value if ever the army of the great War Lord attempted an invasion of our island.
As a well-known naval aviator, and as chief of the whole chain of air-stations along the East Coast, the lieutenant’s mind was naturally ever set upon the possibility of projected invasion, and of an adequate defence. That a danger really existed had at last been tardily admitted by the Government, and now with our Navy redistributed and centred in the North Sea, our destroyer-flotillas exercising nightly, and the establishment of the wireless at Felixstowe, Caister, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, and Hunstanton, as well as the construction of naval air-stations, with their aeroplanes and hydroplanes from the Nore up to Cromarty we were at last on the alert for any emergency.
When would “Der Tag” (“The Day”) – as it was toasted every evening in the military messes of the German Empire – dawn? Aye, when? Who could say?
CHAPTER II.
CONCERNS A PRETTY STRANGER
A short, puffy, red-faced man in grey flannels went past.
It
