The Sleuth of St. James Street [99]
that only the briefest signals could go out. "The Government radio stations were always alert. And they at once negatived any unauthorized wireless so that German spies could only snap out a signal or two at any time. They could do this, however. "They had a wireless apparatus inside a factory chimney at Auteuil. It wasn't located until the war was nearly over. "The French didn't undertake to say that they could make their country spy-proof. They knew that there were German agents in France that nobody could tell from innocent French people. But they did undertake to say that nothing could be carried over into the German lines. And they justified that promise. They did see that nothing was carried out of France." The Baronet looked at me across the table. "Now, that's what took St. Alban across the Channel," he said. "The English authorities wanted to be certain that there was no German espionage. And there was no man in England able to be certain of that except St. Alban. He went over to make sure. If the plans for the Somme drive should get out of France, they should not get out through any English avenue." The Baronet paused. "St. Alban went about the thing in his thorough, persistent manner. He didn't trust to subordinates. He went himself. That's what took him out on the English line. And that's how he came to be wounded in the elbow. "It wasn't very much of a wound - a piece of shrapnel nearly spent when it hit him. But the French hospital service was very much concerned. It gave him every attention. "The man came into Paris when he had finished. The French authorities put him up at the Hotel Meurice. You know the Hotel Meurice. It's on the Rue de la Rivoli. It looks out over the garden of the Tuileries. St. Alban was satisfied with the condition of affairs in France, and he was anxious to go back to London. Arrangements had been made for him to go on the hospital transport. "He was in his room at the Meurice waiting for the train to Calais. He was, in fact, fatigued with the attention the French authorities had given him. Everything that one could think of had been anticipated, he said. He thought there could be nothing more. Then there was a timid knock, and a nurse came in to say that she had been sent to see that the dressing on his arm was all right. He said that he had found it easier to submit to the French attentions than to undertake to explain that he didn't need them. "He was busy with some final orders, so he put out his arm and allowed the nurse to take the pins out of the split sleeve and adjust the dressing. She put on some bandages, made a little timid curtsey and went out. "St. Alban didn't think of it again until the German Uboat stopped the transport the next morning in the Channel. He wasn't disturbed when the submarine commander came into his cabin. He knew enough not to carry any papers about with him. But Plutonburg didn't bother himself about luggage. He'd had his signal from the factory chimney at Auteuil. He stood there grinning in the cabin before St. Alban; that Satanic, Chemosh grin that the artist got in the Munich picture. "`I used to be something of a surgeon,' he said, `Doctor Ulrich von Plutonburg, if you will remember. I'll take a look at your arm.' "tit, Alban said he thought the man might be moved by some humane consideration, so he put out his arm. "Plutonburg took the pins out of the sleeve and removed the bandage that the nurse had put on in the Hotel Meurice. Then he held it up. The long, cotton bandage was lined with glazed cambric, and on it, in minute detail, was the exact position of all the Allied forces along the whole front in the region of the Somme, precisely as they had been massed for the drive on July first!" I cried out in astonishment. "So that's what you meant," I said, "by the trailed thing turning on him!" "Precisely," replied the Baronet. "The very thing that St. Alban labored to prevent another from doing, he did awfully himself!" The big Englishman's fingers drummed on the table. "It was a great moment for Plutonburg,"