The Traitor (16 page)

“He admitted having met the man who called himself Sandor on the train?”

“Yes.”

“Can you give me any reason why the accused, who knew nothing of Intelligence methods, should be able to recognise on sight a Secret Service agent of another country?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me why a young man, on holiday in a foreign country, should refuse the company of an attractive visitor at the same hotel?”

“No, providing—”

“I was coming to that,” cut in the Accused's Friend; “providing, of course, that he is entirely ignorant of the fact that, to use the picturesque if somewhat lurid words of the prosecution, she is a ‘professional seductress' and a character borrowed from the realm of fiction. Granted those premises—and the accused in his evidence will swear that he had no idea of the lady's real mission in life—can you advance any reason why Lieutenant Wingate should not have spent a day in her company—or have entertained her in his bedroom?”

The witness, conscious of a growing titter at the back of the Court, flushed a deeper red.

“The woman was a foreign spy,” he said at length.

“Will you please answer my question and not make comments?”

“You must answer the question,” prompted the Judge-Advocate.

“Since you put it that way—no,” replied the witness, turning to his cross-examiner.

“Thank you. Now you realise, of course, the extreme importance of the interview you had with this young officer?”

“Yes—from his point of view.”

“Did it occur to you at the time that you might be called as a witness?”

“No.”

“You swear that?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” The man acting in the capacity of defending counsel sat down, and shortly afterwards the Court adjourned.

***

At the Senior Services—the club which had been the scene of so much animated discussion of the case during the previous three weeks—the talk was of nothing but the court-martial that evening. In one corner of the smoking-room, a particularly heated argument was proceeding between a young “ace” of the R.A.F. and an elderly major who had “Indian Retired List” written all over him.

The major was spluttering.

“Damnable.…I hope he gets five years…deserves it…ought to be publicly flogged as well.…”

The younger man flicked the ash off his cigarette.

“Hold your horses, Major,” he returned, a steely look in his grey eyes; “the fellow hasn't been found guilty yet.”

“Guilty! Of course he's guilty! Do you think the authorities would have brought him to trial (and letting in the civilian public, too!) if they hadn't overwhelming evidence—if they weren't absolutely certain of a conviction?”

“Then it's something like shooting a sitting pheasant,” was the irreverent reply. “Well, all the same, Major, I don't mind making a small bet with you that Wingate gets off.”

“Do you want to lose your money, young man?”

“I don't mind giving a fiver a run.”

“I'll take the bet; it will teach you a lesson. But I should like to know the reasons for your absurd confidence.”

“I haven't any reasons; I'm just backing my fancy. It's ridiculous, in my opinion, to think that a fellow like Wingate (you should have seen him to-day) would be a traitor—especially for a paltry hundred quid. He isn't the type.”

“Traitors have sold their country before this young man for less than a hundred pounds.”

“Well, I maintain that the whole thing is just so much cock-eye. Any one would think the Army crush were staging one of old man Sardou's spy-dramas: why do they insist upon the foreign witnesses being cloaked?”

“You damned well don't know what you are talking about!” exploded his opponent, rising from his chair and stamping from the room.

“I'll make it a tenner if you like,” was the flying officer's parting taunt.

***

Down in Fleet Street, the editor of the
Evening Sun
, returning to the office after hours in order to plan the next day's campaign, was holding a secret conference with his star reporter and his most intrepid photographer.

“There's a story behind these hooded witnesses, and I want you to get it,” he said.

The reporter, who combined the most extraordinary name in Fleet Street—Cuthbert Clergyman—with the keenest nose for news, shook his head.

“Very dangerous,” he said.

Blackburn fumed.

“What's the matter with you?” he demanded.

“There's nothing the matter with me,” he retorted, “but there will be with
you
, Blackie, if you start printing any of that stuff. It's dynamite—and it'll blow you to kingdom come and back. The Secret Service people
have
to keep these witnesses cloaked; I happen to know that they've taken extraordinary precautions to hide the identities of these people, some of whom are probably Ronstadt nationals, hidden.…Ever heard of the Official Secrets Act, Blackie?” he concluded with a sly chuckle.

“Go to the devil!” cried the baffled editor.

Chapter XIX

The Prisoner Gives Evidence

Bobby endeavoured to keep his voice firm as he took the oath. He realised that every eye in the crowded Court was fixed on him—at that moment, he was probably the most discussed person in the whole world: throughout every country where the printed word could be read, men and women were eagerly debating the subject of whether he was innocent or guilty.

He did not disguise the truth from himself: the evidence prepared against him by those British Secret Service witnesses, who had given their testimony while wearing those melodramatic costumes that covered both their faces and bodies, looked utterly damning. Even though he was entirely innocent, he knew that every one who had heard those stories of his conduct at Pé must believe him to be a traitor.

He had gone through hell during the last month. The strain had been terrific. Yet, when his father had come to see him he had always tried to give the Colonel the impression that he would emerge a free man. The woman he had always looked upon as his real mother had sent him many messages of love, sympathy and confidence.

“She is behaving marvellously,” Colonel Clinton had said. “She tells me that you are not to worry on her account at all.”

It had been this fact, perhaps more than any other circumstance, which had kept him going; otherwise, with what seemed hopeless odds against him, he must have weakened.

Rosemary, too, had been a brick. Although—ironically enough!—she was working for the enemy (wasn't she employed in the office of the very man who was endeavouring so strenuously to secure his conviction?), she had sent messages through his father to the effect that she believed in him absolutely. “Tell him also,” she had said to Colonel Clinton, “that I should like to write to him, but that perhaps it would not be wise.”

***

During the whole of that morning, he had been sitting directly opposite the President of the Court-Martial, listening to the evidence being piled up against him. Witnesses had testified that the man he had known as Sandor was actually a well-known Secret Service agent named Adolf Ritter, formerly employed by Germany, and now working for Crosber, the Ronstadt Chief of Secret Police; he had heard further that the woman who had called herself first “Minna Braun” and later “Adrienne Grandin,” was also a Ronstadt agent, working in association with the man Ritter; he had heard how Fordinghame, the Chief of Y.1, had been able to trace the two fifty-pound notes he had received from “Sandor” to Adolf Ritter's account at the Norodny Bank in Pé, since their issue by the Bank of England.

He further had to listen to the full story of his movements from the moment he left Pé—there was a British agent on board that Paris air liner—until the moment when he handed over the “dummy” package to the supposed emissary of Adrienne Grandin in that second-floor bedroom at the Hotel Continental in The Hague.

Altogether, it had been a comprehensive and thoroughly exhaustive indictment, and one which bore ample testimony to the brilliant way in which the British Secret Service discharged its duties.

***

And now he himself was in the box.

Peter Mallory, who had worked so hard on his defence, started to examine him.

“Your name is Robert Wingate and you are twenty-four years of age?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever attempted to obtain, have you ever obtained, or have you ever disclosed any information, appertaining to military matters or otherwise, which might be prejudicial to the State?”

“Never.”

“Have you ever been hard-up for money?”

The witness was seen to smile.

“Like most fellows, I've known what it is to be a bit short; but I've never been really hard-up—nor in debt,” he said.

“Has any previous complaint ever been made against you as a soldier and an officer?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“That is the young man who, you are asked to believe, has betrayed his country in such a despicable manner,” continued the defendant's representative, in a scathing tone.

Mallory now asked the accused to tell the Court, in his own words, exactly what happened—from the moment he left London on his leave, until the time he arrived back in Harwich after handing over the dummy package at the Hotel Continental.

“Coming to this package,” said Mallory, “why did you take it?”

During his imprisonment Bobby had given a great deal of thought to the answering of this question. He could not give the real reason why he had gone to The Hague—namely, to try to induce the woman Minna Braun to return to England so that the plot against his father might be cleared up; and so he had decided to tell a white lie. In the circumstances, he considered that he was justified.

He squared his shoulders and replied:—

“On the night before I left Pé, the woman calling herself first ‘Minna Braun' and then ‘Adrienne Grandin' came to my room. She was very badly frightened—or pretended to be. She explained that she was really a French Secret Service agent, that she had been sent to Pé on a dangerous mission, that she had succeeded in this mission, but that the Ronstadt Intelligence people had evidently become suspicious of her and that she was expecting to be arrested at any moment. She dared not run the risk of being searched, so would I take charge of the package containing the information she had collected?”

“Did she give any reason why you should run this grave risk?”

“Yes. She said that the information vitally concerned England (she knew I was an Englishman) as well as France.”

“You believed her?”

“I believed her implicitly.”

“And so you took the package? What did you do with it?”

“I put it inside a newspaper and posted it to England.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I was afraid, after what the woman had told me, that it might be found in my luggage.”

“Which, as a matter of fact, was actually searched?”

“Yes—by the Secret Police.”

“And it was this same package which you took across to The Hague and handed to the man who gave you a letter signed ‘Adrienne Grandin'?”

“Yes.” He had to go on with the lie now.

“Did this woman know you to be a British officer?”

“No—I never mentioned my military rank.”

“Did the man who called himself ‘Sandor'?”

“No. I pretended to be a civilian. He, on the other hand, claimed to be a foreign agent working for the British Secret Service.”

“The prosecution has had a great deal to say about your going to Pé as a civilian. Tell the Court exactly why you went.”

The witness was observed to smile. Bobby, as a matter of fact, was reflecting how cynically amusing the turn of events had proved to be.

“I went to Pé as a civilian because I realised that, with the present tension between the two countries, I might be suspected if I proclaimed myself to be a British officer.”

“Exactly why did you go?”

“I was attracted by the information I had read about the new Ronstadt tractors for tanks.”

“And you hoped that you would be able to gather a little further information at first hand?”

“I thought perhaps I might.”

“But you didn't?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because, directly I arrived at Pé, I realised I was probably being watched. I became sure of that when my baggage was searched.”

“And you decided to get back to Paris?”

“Yes.”

“So that what it amounts to is this: that, instead of intending to sell Ronstadt military information, as the prosecution contends, you went to Pé with the fixed idea of doing a little amateur spying yourself?”

“Since you put it that way—yes.”

“And now with regard to the banknotes. You swear you received these from the man calling himself ‘Sandor' as the result of an afternoon's poker-playing at his club?”

“I do.”

The President at this point took up the questioning.

“That was rather a lot of money to have won, was it not?”

“I was very lucky, sir.”

“Do you still believe the woman Minna Braun to be genuine?”

“No, of course not, sir, after the evidence I have heard.”

“But you believed her story at the time?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Why did you go to that guest-house?”

“At the request of the manager of the hotel. He said that, owing to the Musical Festival, there was no available accommodation at the hotel.”

Then followed a lengthy cross-examination by the prosecutor, Major Bingham.

This went on and on. The prisoner began to feel that he had ceased to be a human being and had become just an automaton—a mechanical figure that answered questions after being wound up and set going.

He could not decide whether his story—or, indeed, any part of it—was believed. To his right, taking a shorthand note of everything that was being said, was Rosemary—but she never looked his way. What were her private feelings? How could she sit there, hour after hour and day after day, having her feelings tortured by the foul and untrue suggestions against the honour of the man she had once said she loved? What was she thinking about that package? She knew he lied there. He could not understand it. Women seemed able to stand any amount of self-torment. And they even found consolation in it!

Now the voice which had grown so hateful boomed again.

“If,” asked the prosecutor, “you were merely fulfilling a duty you had promised to perform, why were you so agitated at the Hotel Continental?”

“Was I agitated?”

“You have heard the evidence of witnesses Number Sixteen and Number Seventeen. They have told the Court you were very agitated, both while waiting in the lounge of the hotel and again when talking to the man in the bedroom.”

“If I was agitated,—and I am not prepared to admit it in spite of the evidence of your witnesses—it was because I wanted to make certain that the man had really come from the woman who had given me the package.”

He was allowed to step down from the witness box at last. His legs felt that they must give way. The only encouragement he received was a smile from his father. The governor—bless him!—must think he had come through the ordeal well.

Tea was taken shortly afterwards, and he was grateful for the chance to have a talk with his father. The three of them—Mallory, the governor, and himself—sat by themselves.

“You're doing splendidly—both of you!” declared Colonel Clinton.

Mallory shook his head gloomily.

“I shouldn't be too confident,” he returned. “We know it's merely circumstantial evidence; we know, also, all the charges are absolutely groundless; but the stories these witnesses told will want a lot of disbelieving. Did you notice the Judge-Advocate's face? I was watching him all the time. I wish you had given me your confidence when I saw you in Pé, Bobby.”

“I don't see how I could have.”

“If you had, much of this present business would have been avoided.”

“I don't follow that,” commented Colonel Clinton sharply. “How could it have been avoided?”

Mallory, his mind evidently fully occupied with the many problems that thronged it, made an evasive reply.

“I didn't quite realise what I was saying,” he murmured. “I shall have to see you after the Court adjourns,” he added to the prisoner.

It was when he had reached the Tower that the man who was defending him said: “What I meant back at the Court was, why didn't you tell me about that package in Pé? By the way, what actually happened to it?”

“I told you in the Court this afternoon.”

“But that wasn't the truth.”

“Not the truth? Of course it was the truth.”

What forced the lie from his lips he did not know; he only realised that something stronger than himself had prompted him.

But that Mallory still believed he had lied could be read in the man's face.