The White Lie. Le Queux William

know her!” cried the Englishman. “Why, I thought you only arrived here from Germany two days ago. Where have you met her?”

      “In Bremen, at the Krone Hotel, about three months ago. She call herself Fräulein Montague, and vos awaiting her mother who vos on her way from New York.”

      “Did she recognise you?”

      “I think not. I never spoke to her in the hotel. She was always a very reserved but very shrewd young lady,” replied Herr Otto Strantz, slowly but grammatically. “I was surprised to meet her again.”

      “Montague!” the airman repeated. “Do you know her Christian name?”

      “Jean Montague,” was the German’s response as he busied himself carefully screwing down one of the terminals of an instrument.

      Noel Barclay made a quick note of the name in a tiny memorandum-book which he always carried in his flying-jacket.

      He offered the German one of his cigarettes – an excellent brand smoked in most of the ward-rooms of His Majesty’s Navy – and then endeavoured to obtain some further information concerning his dead shipmate’s visitor.

      But Herr Strantz, whose sole attention seemed centred upon the shore-end of the new cable which was so soon to form yet another direct link between Berlin and London, was in ignorance of anything connected with the mysterious young person.

      The statement that Harborne – the motor-cyclist who had spoken the German language so well when he had accompanied the pretty young girl the day before to watch the testing – was dead, seemed to cause the cable-engineer considerable reflection. He said nothing, but a close observer would have noticed that the report of the murder had had a distinct effect upon him. He was in possession of some fact, and this, as a stranger on that coast, and a foreigner to boot, it was not, after all, very difficult to hide.

      Noel, however, did not notice it. His mind was chiefly occupied in considering the best and most diplomatic means by which the missing lady, who lived in Bremen as Miss Montague, could be traced.

      The two men smoked their cigarettes; Strantz pulling over the switch every five minutes – always to the very tick of the round brass clock – examining the tiny point of light which resulted, and carefully registering the exact amount of current and the position of the ship engaged in paying out the black, insulated line into the bed of the German Ocean.

      While Noel watched he also wondered whether, in the near future, that very cable across the sea would be used by England’s enemy for the purposes of her destruction. True, we had our new wireless stations all along the coast, and at other places inland at Ipswich, Chelmsford, and elsewhere, yet if what was feared really came to pass, all those, together with the shore-ends of the cables, would be seized by advance parties of Germans already upon British soil – picked men, soldiers all, who were already living to-day in readiness upon the East Coast of England as hotel-servants, clerks or workers in other trades. Our shrewd, business-like friends across the grey, misty sea would take care to strike a blow on our shores by the wrecking of bridges, the disabling of railways, the destruction of telegraphs, and the like, simultaneous with their frantic dash upon our shore. Germany never does anything by halves, nor does she leave anything to chance.

      Herr Strantz, having finished some calculations, and having tapped out a message to the ship, raised his head, and with a smile upon his broad, clean-shaven face, said, with his broad German accent:

      “Ech! You are an officer. I suppose that, if the truth were told, England hardly welcomes another cable laid by Germany – hein?”

      “Well,” laughed the airman, pushing his big, round goggles higher upon his brow, “we sometimes wonder when your people are really coming.”

      “Who knows?” asked the other, smiling and elevating his shoulders. “Never – perhaps.”

      “Ah! Many there are in England who still regard invasion by the Kaiser’s army as a bogey,” Noel Barclay remarked. “But surely it is not impossible, or why should the British authorities suddenly awaken to the peril of the air?”

      “All is possible to Germany – when the time is ripe. That is my private opinion as a Deutscher, and as one who has an opportunity of observing,” the other frankly responded.

      “I quite agree,” was Noel’s reply. “Dreams of ten years ago are to-day accomplished facts. Aeroplanes cross the Channel and the Alps, and fly from country to country in disregard of diplomatic frontiers, while your German airships – unfortunate as they may be – have actually crossed to us here, and returned without us being any the wiser. Had they been hostile they could have destroyed whole cities in a single night!”

      “And your ever-watchful coastguards who actually saw them were disbelieved,” the German laughed.

      “Yes. I admit the air is conquered by your people – and Great Britain is now no longer an island. Wireless messages can be transmitted five thousand miles to-day, and who knows that it may not be possible to-morrow, by directing similar electric rays, to blow up explosives wherever they may be concealed – in the magazines of battleships or in land forts?”

      “Ach, yes!” agreed the engineer. “Ten years ago war between England and Germany was more improbable than it is to-day, for each day, I fear, brings us nearer to hostilities – which we, in Germany, know to be inevitable.”

      “And when that day dawns we shall have to exert every force, every nerve, every muscle, if we are to repel you,” remarked Noel, his clear-cut face unusually dark and serious.

      “I fear that you will, sir,” was the other’s quiet response. “Individually we want to be friends mit England, but you, as a British officer, know quite well that one day the powder magazine will explode and there must be der war. It will be forced suddenly and swiftly upon the Kaiser and upon the people.”

      “Yes,” sighed the naval airman. “So all we can now do is to remain good friends as long as ever we can – eh? Forewarned is forearmed.”

      “Exactly; but,” added the German, “I trust the openness of my remarks has given you no offence, sir. If it has, then I beg you to accept my most sincere apologies. You are an officer and serve your country. I, too, am an officer of reserve and serve mine.”

      “Surely no apologies are needed, my dear Herr Strantz,” laughed the lieutenant, extending his hand frankly. “We have both exchanged our opinions. In most I agree with you, although, of course, I naturally believe in England’s invincible power on the sea.”

      “That is but natural, my dear lieutenant. You are English,” was the engineer’s response, and while he turned again to pull over the testing-switch and bent to examine the point of light, Noel was puzzled as to his exact meaning.

      Presently Noel Barclay, shaking Herr Strantz’s hand, humorously expressed a hope that they might never find themselves enemies, and that the cable might be successfully completed and inaugurated on the morrow; strode out into the village street, and down the “Gap” to that wide expanse of golden sands where a big Post Office gang were busily at work covering up the long black cable lying in its trench.

      The engineer of the General Post Office who was in charge, recognising the airman, wished him good afternoon; but his thoughts were centred upon the mysterious death of the man about whom so many queer rumours had been afloat.

      Rumours! Ah, how well he recollected one of them – a rumour that had gone around the Service – namely that he had retired with the money earned by selling to a foreign power a certain secret concerning “plotting.” For that reason, it was said, he had lived so constantly abroad. Though the offence had never been brought home to him by the Admiralty, yet the rumour had never been contradicted. Mud thrown, alas! always sticks.

      Was it true, or was it a lie? his friend was wondering, as he stood looking out upon that calm blue summer sea, bathed in the warm light of that August afternoon, the sea in the deep bed of which lay the new link connecting Berlin with London.

      What could Dick Harborne have been doing, motoring so constantly about that rural, out-of-the-world corner of England, that delightful little strip of the open Norfolk