Number 70, Berlin: A Story of Britain's PerilLe Queux, William
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Number 70, Berlin: A Story of Britain's Peril
Le Queux, William
War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Rodwell was so nonplussed at thus being caught red-handed, that he could
utter no reply. All his bluff and defiance had left him, and he stood
white, inert, with a look of abject shame and terror upon his changed
countenance.
As for the woman, she gave vent to a torrent of bitter vituperation.
But nobody noticed her; she had, like poor old Tom Small and his son,
been simply tools of that unscrupulous and clever master-spy in whose
stirring patriotism all England was believing, but who had at last
fallen into the trap which Charles Trustram had so cunningly prepared
for him--a trap in which the confirmation of his traitorous act had
actually been made by the enemy's unseen wireless rays.
Sir Houston said little, except to remark that no doubt Lewin Rodwell's
arrest would put a new complexion upon the case against John Sainsbury,
and result, he hoped, in breaking up the activity of the enemy in our
midst.
Of much that followed the public are already aware.
The newspapers, however, merely reported that Mr Lewin Rodwell, who had
been a most popular speaker at recruiting meetings, who had been a
well-known city financier, and a power in the social and political world
of London, had died suddenly in a motor-car in the Brixton Road. The
Censor, however, suppressed the facts that he had been in the custody of
two officers of the Special Department of New Scotland Yard when the
tragic occurrence happened, and that he had succeeded in swallowing a
tabloid that he had carried concealed in his handkerchief in case of
necessity, while being conveyed to Brixton Prison on a charge of
espionage.
The public knew, of course, that an unnamed woman was under arrest for
acts of war-treason and, later, that she had been sentenced to eight
years' imprisonment. They also knew that Jack Sainsbury had been
mysteriously and suddenly released by a Home Office order, after having
been tried and convicted by court-martial; but the true story of the
evil machinations of Ludwig Heitzman, alias Lewin Rodwell, and how he
had succeeded in bringing such indisputable evidence against an innocent
man, is here revealed for the first time in the foregoing pages.
On the evening of Lewin Rodwell's well-deserved, but cowardly end--the
evening of the day of his arrest--Sir Boyle Huntley disappeared from
London to the Continent, and was never again seen.
On that same night, too, at ten o'clock, there was a little assembly in
Sir Houston Bird's consulting-room in Cavendish Square. Jack and his
fiancee were standing happily reunited and arm in arm, while Charles
Trustram and Sir Houston were also present. It was then that Trustram
decided to hand over the note which poor Dr Jerrold had left for his
friend on the fatal night before he took his own life.
Jack broke the seals, and slowly taking out the brief letter, read it,
his lips contracting as he realised its contents. Then he handed it
from one to the other until they had all read it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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