Page:Britain's Deadly Peril.djvu/105

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN
99

the Press. For several weeks this fact, I confess, caused me considerable thought. Some secret means of communication must, I realised, exist between the enemy's camp and London, perhaps by wireless, perhaps by the new German-laid cable, the shore-end of which is at Bacton, in Norfolk, and which, eighteen months ago, in company with the German telegraph-engineers, I assisted to test as it was laid across the North Sea to Nordeney. In the archives of the Intelligence Department of the War Office will be found my report, together with a copy of the first message transmitted by the new cable from Norfolk to Germany, a telegram from one of the Kaiser's sons who happened to be in Scotland at the time, and addressed to the Emperor, which read: "Hurrah for a strong navy!"—significant indeed in the light of recent events!

I was wondering if, by any secret means, this cable could be in operation when, on the afternoon of February 23rd, an officer of the Naval Armoured Car Squadron called upon me and invited me to assist in hunting spies in Surrey. The suggestion sounded exciting. Signals had been seen for a month or so past, flashed from a certain house high upon the Surrey hills. Would I assist in locating them, and prosecuting a full inquiry?

Within half an hour I was in a car speeding towards the point where mystery brooded, and which we did not reach till after dark. A gentleman living three miles across the valley, whose house commanded full view of the house under suspicion—a large one with extensive grounds—at once placed a room at our disposal, wherein we sat and watched. In the whole of these investigations I was assisted by an officer who was an expert in