XVII
Herr Hans Schmidt lay sleeping peacefully and noisily in his porch in Panama. He lay on his back; when he went to sleep his hands had been crossed upon his stomach, but with the passage of time they had slid down the incline until now they lay on his chest, so that his attitude was entirely one of peace and resignation. Beside him Frau Schmidt slumbered just as peacefully and not quite as noisily; for the Schmidts believed in maintaining the good old tradition of the family double bed despite the heat of the tropics.
Verily was Herr Schmidt entitled to the blissful sleep which comes of a sense of completed duty. He was head of the German unofficial representatives on the Pacific coast, and all his work so far had been thorough and successful. He had gleaned from stray references the strength of Admiral Cradock’s squadron and he had reported it to Admiral von Spee, and the result had been obvious at Coronel. At Guayaquil and Callao he had colliers ready to sail on the instant—one of them, thanks to lavish expenditure of funds and jugglery with papers, actually under the British flag. Should von Spee decide to return northwards from Coronel he would find abundance of best Welsh steam coal awaiting him, or if Ziethen turned up unexpectedly there would be the same kindly reception ready for her. Everywhere German agents were seeking bits of news to report to him, so that he could piece them together and pass them on. He knew all about the British battle cruiser in the West Indies, and he could name the ships which were watching lest German commerce destroyers should push out of American Atlantic ports; he did not know, all the same, about Admiral Sturdee’s fleet which was fitting out in England, but for that he bears no blame. The discovery of the object of this squadron was the business of the central organization, which failed lamentably. No, Schmidt had done everything that could be expected of him, and he was fully entitled to the blissful sleep which encompassed him and which was about to be so rudely interrupted.
The telephone at the bedside rang sharply, and Schmidt started up, blinking himself into rapid wakefulness. Beside him his wife muttered heavily, humped over on her side, and clawed her tangled hair out of her eyes. She switched on the light while Schmidt pulled back the mosquito net and reached for the telephone instrument.
The first sounds to reach his ear were apparently meaningless gibberish, but it seemingly did not disconcert him. He uttered gibberish in reply, and with password and countersign thus exchanged his agent could safely pour forth his news into Herr Schmidt’s receptive ear. The torrent of rapid German was of an import which made Herr Schmidt start in surprise.
“What?” he demanded. “Where are they now?”
“They were going through Gatun when I tried to telephone first, sir,” came the answer. “They must be almost at the Cut now.”
“But why did I not hear of this at once?” demanded Herr Schmidt savagely.
The voice at the receiver fell away into a placatory whine.
“I couldn’t, sir. Really, sir. These two Englishmen here were too closely after us. They’ve taken Schulz. I’m sure they have. I’ve told you about them often before. I simply couldn’t get a line to Panama before this. They were all too busy, sir.”
“Rubbish!” exploded Herr Schmidt. “You Gatun set are a gang of cowards and worse. You say you don’t even know the battle cruiser’s name?”
“No, sir. Couldn’t get it anyway. But it’s a battle cruiser for certain. Twenty thousand tons. And the light cruiser’s the Penzance.”
“Bah!” said Schmidt. “Get her name at once. And all about her—where she comes from and what she’s doing. If you can’t do that in Gatun you’re not on my pay list any more. Report again in two hours’ time.”
Schmidt slammed down the receiver and heaved himself out of bed. His hairy legs protruded beneath his brief nightshirt, and there was a hint of hairy chest at its open throat. He put on his thick round glasses with one hand and reached for his trousers with the other. While pulling on his trousers he thrust his bare feet anyhow into his shoes. Then, with a growl at his wife, he went clattering out of the house to the garage. Three minutes later, in the growing light of dawn, his car was roaring out of Panama with its headlights blazing, while Schmidt, thick body bent, grasped the wheel in his big hairy hands. Out of Panama he went, with his car leaping madly over the fantastic bumps and hollows of the country road. He tore through the ruins of Old Panama and onward where the road degenerated into a mere track at the spot where the Canal Zone adjoined the Republic of Panama. A steady hand and powerful wrists were necessary to hold the car to the track, but burly Hans Schmidt was a brilliant driver. He swung aside on to an even narrower path where the undergrowth crashed beneath his wheels and tore at the body. Uphill he went, his foot steady on the accelerator, until the path ran into a small clearing beyond which stood a tall half-ruined building which, nevertheless, by its patching and by the condition of its courtyard, showed signs of recent occupation. Here Schmidt stopped the car, and with an agility unexpected in one of his bulk he scrambled out and rushed into the building and up the rotten stone stairs.
The tall room at the top of the tower was modern in its furnishings; indeed, the modernity was carried to an extreme pitch, for the main parts of the furniture comprised a receiving and transmitting wireless plant of the highest possible power. The old ruined tower, once a fortress which had been taken and sacked by Morgan and his buccaneers two and a half centuries ago, was now one of the central ganglia of the German Pacific secret service. On a camp bed at one side of the room lay a young man, half asleep, at the table by the instruments sat another, with the receivers on his ears. They both looked up when Herr Schmidt entered, but they were treated with scant courtesy. Schmidt’s first action was to jerk head and thumb back to the door, and they rose slowly to obey. The one with the instruments offered Schmidt the bearing pad the messages recently intercepted—all sorts of messages, in code and en clair, mercantile and military—but Schmidt cast it aside after flipping through its pages and running an eye over the messages.
“Outside,” he growled, “quickly.”
They went, shambling, while Schmidt threw himself into the chair, adjusted the receiver, and began tuning in the instruments with his thick hands, making the adjustments for a general call with steady delicacy. From a pocket at the back of his trousers he produced a small book printed on fine paper; and with a stub of pencil and a scrap of writing-paper he made a note or two, constantly referring to the book. Soon the message he had in mind was written in code on the paper; with his heavy face upturned to the ceiling he memorized it, and then, striking a match, he burnt the piece of paper bearing his notes. The code book was thrust back into his pocket, and above it, inside the pocket, he adjusted the fishhook which was fastened in the lining. The unwary hand which dived into that pocket in search of Germany’s most secret naval code would be lacerated and torn excruciatingly. Then Schmidt set about broadcasting his message, sending it out again and again. His substations at Callao and Valparaiso would take it in and relay it; the cables would bear it by devious routes back to Germany. Von Spee on the Chilean coast would receive it; the Ziethen, lost somewhere in the Pacific, would take it in as well. Hour after hour Schmidt sent out that message, sitting in his grotesque garb of nightshirt and trousers while the sweat ran down his unshaved cheeks and heavy jowl. It was not the sort of message he could trust to subordinates.
For the tremendous naval strength of England was to be exerted against von Spee’s squadron. There was to be no more attempts to engage him with armoured cruisers or obsolete battleships. There was a new power at the Admiralty—Fisher, who had become First Sea Lord at the time of the disaster at Coronel. Von Spee was to be hounded down and exterminated. Battle cruisers were to be used, the most deadly enemies of the armoured cruiser. Admiral Sturdee was to be sent from England with Invincible and Inflexible and half a dozen modern cruisers round the Horn to sweep northwards up the Pacific. But this part of the plan was unknown to Schmidt—it was unknown to any German until von Spee at the Falklands saw the tripod masts of the battle cruisers and read his death in that sight. The southward sweep was what concerned Schmidt at the moment.
H.M. battle cruiser Leopard had been stationed for three weeks already in the West Indies; there she could guard against von Spee, or any detachment from his force, passing the Panama Canal and ravaging the rich English shipping of the Caribbean and the Gulf, and there also she could be ready to cut off any movement of the Germans northward round the Horn. But to the new personality at the Admiralty any such defensive attitude was distasteful and obnoxious. Leopard must be used offensively. Let her pass the Canal herself, instead of waiting for the Germans to do it; let her seek out the enemy instead of waiting passively for the enemy to come within her grasp. It was the truer, more decisive strategy, and the orders were passed to Leopard on the same day that the other orders were given to Admiral Sturdee.
So that Leopard and her attendant light cruiser Penzance had passed out of the West Indies and the cognizance of the German agents there, and was even now making the passage of the Canal, the first ship of all Britain’s fleet to make use of the waterway—one month open, only. The whining voice on Herr Schmidt’s telephone had told him of her passing Gatun lock, and now, while Schmidt was broadcasting his warning to all who might read it, she was going through Miraflores lock and her bow was wet with the salt water of the Pacific. Her twenty-four knots and her 12-inch guns meant death to any German ship on that ocean; small wonder, then, that Herr Schmidt received the news so gravely, and small wonder that he prayed to his German God that the electrical disturbances of the Pacific would not prevent the reception of the warning he was sending out. With the damp, sticky heat calling forth the sweat from every pore he bent again and again to his duty, his masterful hands tapping out the staccato Morse at regular half-hour intervals. He did his duty thoroughly, as every German did. From down below came the faint thud-thud of the engine and the deep hum of the dynamo; the shrill whine of the mosquitoes circling round the sweating head blended with the hum. They bit the back of his thick neck, and they sought out his uncovered ankles.