Chapter Nine. The Kaiser’s Secret Agent.

“The position is a very grave one, Henri,” Rigaux explained when, a few minutes later, they were alone together in a small, circular, book-lined room, that room below one of the high round towers of the château, which the Baron used as a bureau. “I hesitated to speak very openly before your wife, because it would cause her undue alarm. There is no doubt—indeed, there has been abundant proof in these last four days—that Belgium swarms with German spies. They are everywhere. Our enemies have been most crafty and cunning in their preparations for our undoing. They have arrested and shot sixteen German agents in Antwerp alone. They had carrier-pigeons, secret wireless, code-books, German ammunition, secret stores of petrol, and other things, which showed, only too plainly, their intentions. Now your telephone was cut at noon to-day, was it not, and you are wondering? Well, the truth is that the Germans occupied Brussels at eleven o’clock this morning?”

“They are in Brussels!” gasped the Baron, starting up. “You must be joking!”

“I am not, I regret to say. To-day, at eleven, Burgomaster Max met the German commander in the Chausée de Louvain. There was no resistance, and the enemy marched into the city, doing the goose-step as they passed the Gare du Nord.”

“Impossible?” gasped de Neuville, pale as death.

“But it is the unfortunate truth. The Germans are asking for an indemnity of eight millions sterling. The Minister of finance has asked me to negotiate the loan. Will you and your friends take part in it?”

For a moment the Baron de Neuville was silent. He knew the financial straits of the Government at that moment, and he was reflecting.

At last he said, in a low, earnest voice:

“Arnaud, if I touch it at all, my friends in London and myself will make the whole loan.”

“What, you will bear the eight millions?” asked Rigaux, with some surprise.

“Yes. I feel it my duty to assist in the present crisis.”

“But I only asked for a portion. I can do some myself, and obtain the remainder in Holland.”

“I tell you I will arrange to bear the whole responsibility. I will send word to Monsieur Max to-night. I can arrange with good substantial friends in London to assist me.”

Rigaux was silent for a few seconds.

“Well,” he said enthusiastically at last, “yours is indeed a fine example of patriotism, Henri, I will let Max know your generous offer. There is no telegraphic or telephonic communication with Brussels now.”

He did not add that in his pocket was a special pass, signed by the German commander, which allowed him to go through the enemy’s lines, backwards and forwards, at will. If the Baron and his friends paid over eight millions to the enemy, then his friends in Berlin would be highly pleased at his clever diplomacy.

“You return to Brussels to-night—eh?”

“Yes, at once. It is a risky business to be on the roads at night nowadays.”

“I shall go to Brussels to-morrow, and make the offer personally,” the Baron said.

“But, if you do so, you will not leave your wife and daughter here. If I were you I would send them to Ostend, where, if further trouble occurs, they can easily cross to England. They should not be left here alone. One never knows what may happen.” The Baron did not reply. He was still reassured by the words of certain highly-placed officials in Brussels that the Baroness and Aimée would be quite safe at Sévérac, and Rigaux, on his part, did not think it worth while to tell him of the close proximity of the Uhlans.

“I shall see you in Brussels to-morrow,” the Baron said briefly.

“Yes. May I tell Max that you will be at the Hôtel de Ville at noon—eh?” asked the secret agent of the Kaiser, “and that you and your English friends will, if necessary, guarantee the loan to the municipality of the eight millions demanded?”

“Yes,” was his friend’s reply.

“Ah, Henri,” cried Arnaud Rigaux, “you are a true patriot. You, the wealthiest man in Belgium, to come forward at such a time,” And, Judas-like, he took the Baron’s hand—he who was now secretly acting as financial agent of the German Government. “Monsieur Max has been made responsible for the good behaviour of the capital, and they have handed him back his scarf of office. The surrender was a sad and impressive scene, I can assure you,” he added.

“Ah, yes,” replied the Baron very gravely. “I had no idea that the enemy were already in Brussels.”

“Yes. They have taken Liège, Tirlemont, and Louvain, and are now coming up to bombard Namur.”

“So near!” cried the broad-shouldered Baron, amazed.

“Yes. That is why I suggest to you, privately, that the ladies should be sent at once to the coast.”

“Thanks for your hint, my dear Arnaud. I will certainly consider it,” was the other’s reply.

He handed Rigaux the big silver box of cigarettes, and when both had lit up, the footman brought, in response to his master’s summons, two tiny Bohemian liqueur glasses and filled them with fine old cognac.

They tossed them off, in Belgian fashion, and soon afterwards Rigaux gripped his friend’s hand, saying:

“Au revoir, till to-morrow. And all Belgians will thank you, Henri, for saving their capital from the Kaiser’s brigands.”

The Baron de Neuville smiled, and shrugged his thickset shoulders.

“It is but my duty as a loyal Belgian. I cannot fight side by side with our brave men, as I certainly would if I were younger. So I will help as far as my means permit.”

And then Arnaud Rigaux, with those winds in his ears, waved his hand and descended the winding stairway to the great hall, outside which in the courtyard his fast, open car was in waiting.

Having put on his holland dust-coat, he flung himself into the bucket-seat next the driver, and then they moved away cautiously down the steep hill into the peaceful valley, where the summer twilight was fast darkening into night.

Many groups of homeless, despairing people, hauling along great packages and tramping towards an unknown bourne, were upon the road, and now and then suspicious cars passed without salute or challenge.

Once they met a patrol of Uhlans riding merrily along, big-booted fellows with lances, who chatted gaily, and who seemed to take no notice of them, knowing that in that particular area there was no opposition.

Suddenly Rigaux, who had now become very alert, remarked to the driver:

“Be careful. We are getting near Loverai, outside Charleroi.”

Before them had suddenly showed points of light from lanterns in the road, and then, a few hundred yards further on, they heard a gruff challenge in German, and a stern command to halt.

The driver drew up at once, and the car was instantly surrounded by half a dozen stalwart German outposts, their fixed bayonets shining in the headlights, demanding to know the destination of the travellers.

“To Brussels,” replied Rigaux, in German. “Here is my official permit from headquarters, signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Meuse.”

The sentry, in his spiked helmet, examined it beneath the flickering light of a lantern held by one of his comrades, and while doing so a lieutenant strolled up and also carefully scrutinised it. Yet for the moment the motorists were under arrest.

“Herr Rigaux—eh?—and chauffeur?” the officer read. “A general secret service pass from headquarters. You are going to Brussels, I suppose?”

Arnaud Rigaux replied in the affirmative, whereupon the lieutenant gave an order and the half-dozen men drew up in the dark, clicking their heels together, and presented arms in salute.

“You are free to pass, Herr Rigaux,” said the officer. “Take the left-hand road, and you will avoid the outposts of Charleroi and get to Nivelles. Our lines are two miles farther on, but with your pass you will have no difficulty. I see that you are one of us.”

Rigaux remounted into his car, and with a merry good night they swept along the dark, wide road, which at that point ran between two rows of high poplars, which were swaying and rustling slightly in the cool night wind, so refreshing after the broiling day.

Half a dozen times the car had been challenged in as many miles, but on each occasion the permit to travel was scrutinised closely, and as they went forward they saw in the sky, on the far-off horizon, the dull, red glare of the fires of war. They had left Charleroi on their right—the town of hardware, which the Germans had now surrounded, and intended on the morrow to reduce—and had now set their faces straight for the capital.

The pass which that morning Rigaux had received, on application to the headquarters at the Hôtel Cosmopolite, in Brussels, proved an open-sesame everywhere, for it was one of those cryptic passports which the German Empire had issued to all its spies, from the lowly to the wealthy.

That small piece of grey paper, stamped, signed, and countersigned, rendered its bearer immune from arrest, and provided safe conduct everywhere. What would his friends the Belgians say, or do, if they had known he had possessed such a document?

Time after time, on that dark, straight road between Charleroi and Brussels, the car was held up by men in spiked helmets, who covered both master and chauffeur threateningly with their rifles. But sight of that paper was magical. Arnaud Rigaux was bowed to with politeness, and urged onward with cautionary words to the next post.

Brussels lay thirty miles from Charleroi. They were now within the enemy’s lines, and were passing many burnt-out cottages and villages, some of the débris of which, strewn in the roadway, still glowed red in the night. Before them, in the dark, heavy sky, showed the glare of the lights of Brussels, the gay little city which now lay crushed and invested by the Teuton invaders.

The reflection of the light was not red, as in the case of a burning town. The Germans were committing no atrocities there, for the simple reason that, in the capital, they were beneath the eyes of the representatives of neutral powers. In the country it mattered not, and could easily be denied, but in Brussels the Commander-in-Chief had decreed that all should preserve a correct attitude and present the quintessence of German “culture.”

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when at last, Rigaux having pulled his cap over his eyes, they passed the sentries outside the station of Uccle, and were allowed to proceed down the long, straight Avenue Brugmann and the Chausée to the end of the Avenue Louise.

Half the street lamps of Brussels were out, and no one was in the streets save German sentries at the corners, acting as policemen, their fixed bayonets glinting in the brilliance of the car’s headlights. Brussels, with her Civil Guard disbanded, was in the grip of the invader, who modestly demanded eight millions as its ransom.

The car turned into the small Place Louise, past the café in the corner, and De Boek’s Hotel so long a famous “English house,” turned to the left, and then ran along the tree-lined boulevard to where Rigaux lived.

There was now no secrecy of presence of the fair-haired German naval wireless operator, for the enemy had occupied the capital. Indeed, as soon as Arnaud Rigaux arrived home he met him in the hall, and accompanied him to the room in the roof, in which was that powerful wireless plant run off the electric-light main.

The young fellow seated himself at once at his table, and, touching a Morse-key, a long blue spark was emitted and crackled across the big coil.

“Call up Nauen,” Rigaux said, his holland dust-coat not yet removed. “Give them this message: That the Baron de Neuville has consented, upon representations I have made, to negotiate the whole of the indemnity of eight millions levied upon the city of Brussels. Let me know of the acknowledgment of the receipt of the message by R.X.”

“Certainly, m’sieur,” was the operator’s reply in good French, and he began to tap out the preliminary “Da-de-Da-de-Da,” the call-signal, followed by the code-letters indicating that he wished to speak with Nauen.

Then he switched over, and adjusting his headphones to his ears, listened attentively.

Again he repeated the call, with dexterous rapidity, when, a few seconds later, he heard the answering ticks of the Telefunken near Potsdam, after which he reduced to code the significant message which Rigaux had given him for transmission, and tapped it out.