Part 22 (1/2)

Very quietly, without ostentation or any show of violence, Valentine drew a revolver from the hip pocket of his trousers, and directed the barrel fair at the detective's heart.

”Hands up!” said he, almost in a whisper.

With an air of meekness and submission that was little short of amazing, the superintendent-detective raised both hands above his head.

Valentine spoke again, this time more quickly, as if he were excited.

”Who you are,” he cried, ”I neither know nor care. But attempt to betray me, attempt to leave this room until we have come to some mutual understanding, and you do so at your peril. How you discovered my ident.i.ty, I don't pretend to know.”

”Then,” said Etheridge, whose hands were still held high above his head, ”then, you admit that you are von Essling.”

”I admit nothing,” rapped out the other.

”You have already done so,” answered the detective. ”And that is enough for me.”

And hardly had the words left his lips than Valentine was seized roughly from behind and both arms were pinned to his sides. For a moment, he struggled violently to free himself; and it was then that the revolver went off, and the leaden bullet was driven deep into the flooring. With an effort, he twisted round, to see who his adversary might be; and his disgust and astonishment can better be imagined than described when he found himself confronted by the same white-coated steward--the thick-set man with the black moustache--who had carried his cabin trunk on board.

A second later, he was out of action, his hands fastened together behind his back by means of a pair of handcuffs.

”That was smart work, Richards,” observed the superintendent-detective, turning to the steward. ”I hope you were able to hear every word that pa.s.sed between us?”

”Every word, sir,” said the steward, who, as a matter of fact, was one of the detective's most trusted men, who had accompanied him from London, sitting beside the driver in the eighty horse-power Rolls-Royce car, which had come from Whitehall at the rate of forty miles an hour.

CHAPTER XXII--By the Dogger Bank

Whilst these events were in progress Captain Crouch and Jimmy Burke, in the great seaport town of Hull, were hot upon the scent of Rudolf Stork.

From the railway station they drove straight to the central police station, where they found the inspector in his office. Scotland Yard had telephoned during the night that Stork would probably arrive in Hull early in the morning. Detectives had been dispatched at once to the railway station, but got there too late to arrest the spy, who was probably the only first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger who arrived by the one forty-seven train from King's Cross, who had no other baggage than a small handbag, and who was met by a motor-car in which he went off in the direction of the docks.

The police had made sundry inquiries among the fis.h.i.+ng people in the poorer part of the town, and had learnt that the smack ”Marigold” had put to sea in the small hours of the morning.

Crouch saw that there was nothing to be done but to continue the pursuit, even into the midst of the shoals and fog-wreaths of the Dogger Bank. He knew well the maxim that it was wise to set a thief to catch a thief, and decided to follow the ”Marigold” in another fis.h.i.+ng-smack, and not a steamer.

His reasons for this were twofold. In the first place, the Well-bank was extremely shallow water, across which no ocean-going s.h.i.+p could pa.s.s. Secondly, as he knew full well, in view of the forthcoming raid, the neighbouring waters were alive with enemy submarines, who were more likely to torpedo a steamer flying the English flag than a comparatively valueless fis.h.i.+ng-boat.

Now, the name of Captain Crouch's friends was legion, but for the most part they lived, moved and had their being in seaport towns, and there were not a few in Hull.

One of these was a Grimsby man, with nearly thirty years' experience as a trawler, who was known as Captain Whisker; and it was to his house that Crouch and Jimmy Burke betook themselves, as soon as they had gleaned all available information from the police.

Though it was still exceedingly early in the morning Captain Whisker was up, digging furiously in his garden, with a blackened pipe between his lips. He was a man the very opposite of Crouch. Crouch was small and wizened; Whisker broad, florid and colossal. He could not have been less than six feet five in height, and his chest measurement was exceeded only by the girth of his waist. He was clean-shaven, but his eyebrows were so extremely large and bushy that they resembled a kind of superior moustache, and made his surname of ”Whisker” seem singularly appropriate.

”Why, Crouch!” he exclaimed, driving his garden fork into the ground and coming forward with outstretched hand. ”The last man on earth I ever thought to see! It must be five years, at least, since you and I were s.h.i.+pmates; and that was on the West Coast, when I took you down from Sierra Leone to Banana Point, when you were bound for the Aruwimi, to look for a lost explorer who, you said, was a good two inches taller than I.”

”There's no time now to talk of that,” said Crouch. ”I've a job of work on hand, and you're the very man who can help. There's a German spy who put to sea at daybreak in the 'Marigold,' and I've a mind to go after him, if you know of a craft that can be safely recommended.”

Captain Whisker drew himself up to his full height and puffed out both his cheeks, at the same time opening his blue eyes so widely that they resembled those of an enormous doll.

”Come inside,” said he, almost in a whisper, after a pause sufficiently long to enable him to recover from his surprise. ”Come inside, and talk matters out.”

Crouch and Jimmy followed the burly captain into a very singular room, in which a hammock was suspended from the ceiling, whilst the floor was wholly taken up by fis.h.i.+ng-nets, tarpaulins, ropes, boats' anchors, lifebuoys and a hundred odds and ends such as might be picked up on a sheltered beach near which a wreck had taken place. There was barely room in which to move.