Sir John Fisher was there to speak for King George. Lord William Cecil held a brief for the General Staff. There was one other man who was a complete stranger to me. Yet if I had never met him again I should not have forgotten his appearance. He was wearing the uniform of a Royal Navy captain. I recall him as being dapper, alert, with a perfectly-domed bald head, a large hooked nose and a strong cleft chin. Most memorably, he had eyes that were possessed of a dark and penetrating hypnotic power.
As we entered the damask-panelled chamber, Fisher went up to this newcomer and then turned to us.
“Gentlemen, may I present to you Captain Reginald Hall, who is at present commander of the battle-cruiser
Queen Mary?
You will see and hear a good deal of him before long. He will very shortly be taking up his appointment among us as Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, Director of Admiralty Intelligence.”
After that, I needed no further hints to deduce what part Holmes and I were invited to play. When the formal introductions were over. Reginald Hall casually picked up a copy of that evening’s
Globe
newspaper, which had been left on a small occasional table. Its tall black headlines proclaimed the immediate German military threat to Belgium and hopeless Belgian gallantry in meeting an overwhelming attack. As a way of introducing himself, the captain tossed the paper back again and looked at us with his penetrating gaze.
“Well, here’s a business, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson.”
“I daresay, Sir Reginald,” said Holmes, rather too coldly as it seemed to me, “but it is not a business of my making nor is it to my taste. I confess that I have killed one or two men in my time—and without regret—but slaughter of this kind is not a dish I can relish.”
Fisher intervened at once, before my friend could make matters worse.
“Nor I, Mr Holmes. However, now that the choice is set before us we must either win this war or lose it. My sole duty to His Majesty is to ensure that we win.”
I could guess what was coming, for I had heard it from so many people in the past few weeks. Fisher reminded us that England had fought no great European war for almost a century, since the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. In consequence, we had been caught thoroughly unprepared for this one, as he had repeatedly warned us that we would be. Now there was work for us all, and we must do it with a will. There could be no “civilians.” Every man and woman at home had duties to perform, as surely as the first of our front-line regiments who had embarked secretly for France. The particular duties of Sherlock Holmes and I had yet to be agreed, but that they must be a matter of national importance was constantly implied.
“There can only be one place for you, Mr Holmes,” Fisher said at length, his eyes holding my friend’s gaze, “Your gifts belong at the heart of our nation’s security. Without such intelligence as you can bring us, we fight blind—and deaf too, for that matter.”
“To begin with,” said Holmes, more gently than I had feared, “if I were to travel like an office boy each day from Baker Street to Whitehall, I should soon have every spy in London on my back. I take it that when we speak of Whitehall we are talking of the famous Room 40 in the Old Admiralty Building. Room 40 is a secret so well kept that every newspaper boy in the West End streets can tell you a dozen stories about it.”
“If there are spies on your tail, the more easily shall they be caught,” said Fisher evenly. “We shall get the better of those fellows, believe me. I have given the matter considerable thought.”
Holmes seemed only to be half listening. He was looking round the ante-room, as though it were beyond his conception that any sane man should choose to live among such paint and gilt, such damask and satin as this. He responded to Fisher by raising his eyebrows a fraction, indicating a little surprise that a mere admiral of the fleet should presume to think in competition with the sage of Baker Street. Then he sighed.
“Very well. Tell me what you propose.”
Jacky Fisher relaxed and began to explain himself.
“Some years ago, you will recall that you first came to my assistance by recovering the Bruce-Partington submarine plans which had been stolen from Woolwich Arsenal. Indeed, our friend Dr Watson wrote an account of your adventure on that occasion.”
“Not by my wish,” said Holmes quickly but Fisher ignored him.
“At the time,” he continued, “I recall that you had made a hobby—or a study—of the choral music of the Middle Ages. Indeed, you were writing an analysis of the Polyphonic Motets of Orlando Lassus, were you not? I was much struck by that.”
“Your memory does you credit,” said Holmes dryly. Sir John brushed this aside.
“I will make a suggestion. Our adversaries in Berlin would give a good deal to know of your activities in the course of this war. I intend to appease their curiosity by feeding them something to chew on. Now, then. Your reluctance to go to war is humane and sensible. I will not ask you to compromise your views. Indeed, I suggest that you should compose a letter to the editor of the
Times
or the
Morning Post
or both, expressing your disapproval of this coming entanglement with Germany and your hopes for an early resolution of the conflict....”
“Not merely a disapproval of this war but of all such unnecessary wars,” Holmes retorted.
Captain Hall blinked but Fisher took this in his stride.
“The fact that the letter is genuine in its sentiments is entirely as I would wish. Having let your feelings be known, you should then openly pledge to dedicate yourself to the study of Orlando Lassus. Of course, the Germans may doubt the sincerity of your objections to the war but they cannot be sure. A suitable library should be chosen for your work. It must not be open to the public. If there is free access, your movements could be spied upon even while you were at your desk. That would never do. You will be seen coming and going to the institution but that also is as we would wish it.”
“And behind this charade of Achilles sulking in his tent?” Holmes inquired.
“I propose,” said Sir John Fisher, the eyes twinkling at last, “or rather His Majesty proposes, that you should become Director of Admiralty Signals Intelligence at Room 40. We divide our surveillance into Human Intelligence and Signals Intelligence. We offer you Signals. You see that your fame goes before you!”
Holmes began to mellow a little under Fisher’s charm. As we talked of the proposed arrangement that evening in the anteroom, the dancers whirled in a twisting of silk and a glitter of diamonds, a few feet away beyond the locked door.
The very existence of Room 40 was supposed to be known only to the trusted few. Despite Holmes’s scornful aside, that was still the case. At the rear of the Old Admiralty Building, this room and its offices looked out across the expanse of Horse Guards Parade and St James’s Park towards the heavy Renaissance pile of the Foreign Office. It was the centre from which the best brains of Naval Intelligence struggled with the coded signals and secret telegraph messages that filled the night sky between Berlin and Ankara, Vienna and New York, Valparaiso and Tokyo.
In addition, Fisher confided to us that the German deep-sea cables carried both naval and diplomatic ciphers, as well as conventional telegrams. They ran from Bremen on the bed of the North Sea, westwards down the English Channel, then across the Bay of Biscay to Vigo in northern Spain. From here they extended across the Atlantic to New York, and alternatively to Buenos Aires, touching first at Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
These sea-bed cables were not destined to survive the outbreak of war by more than a few hours. The Cable & Wireless company’s cable-laying ship
Telconia
was lying at Dover, already commandeered by the Admiralty and with a Royal Navy crew aboard. A few hours before the British ultimatum to Berlin expired, she would put to sea in darkness, carrying sealed orders. Her course had been set for the neutral Dutch coast to strike at the weakest point, where the cables must run in shallow waters. There the vessel would ride at anchor in the darkness and the mist, where the territorial waters of Holland meet those of Germany, awaiting the midnight signal from the Admiralty to all shipping that war had been declared.
As soon as the signal was received,
Telconia
was to trawl with her grappling gear for the five transatlantic cables in their iron sheathing. They would be hauled to the surface at the invisible sea-frontier. Royal Navy cable engineers were to sever them through their iron casings and let the broken ends fall back into the depths. Neutral Holland might continue to signal to the world. Our enemies in Germany would be obliged to communicate openly by wireless from the powerful transmitter at Nauen near Berlin or through neutral countries, most probably Sweden. Every one of the coded messages sent by such means could be intercepted by a new chain of Admiralty signal stations established round our coasts.
Having explained this, Fisher came to the supreme consideration of security and secrecy. “Your presence at the Admiralty, Mr Holmes, is to be kept from public knowledge. Our opponents almost certainly know that you have broken their code in the past. We must try to persuade them that you have not been given the chance to do it again.”
Captain Hall interposed, rather diffidently, as became a newcomer to the debate.
“Our first measure has been an attempt to convince our adversaries of the existence of a vast and efficient network of British spies on the Continent. Indeed two Royal Navy officers, Lieutenant Brandon and Lieutenant Trench, have served prison sentences in Germany. It seems Tirpitz prefers to believe that his cipher-tables may have been given away by indiscretion, or even betrayed, but not deciphered. We have a small number of spies in Europe, to be sure, but nothing like the total that the Wilhelmstrasse believes. A few of our most skilled and important agents play the part of traitors to us. We know that German intelligence believes such disloyalty to be the most valuable source of their information.”
Holmes turned away and stood silent for a moment. Sir John Fisher interrupted his thoughts with growing impatience.
“You say that you disapprove of this war, Mr Holmes. You do not disapprove of it more heartily than I do—or more deeply than the King himself. So long as it continues, the best of our young men face death in the trenches or on the high seas. The sooner it is over, the better. With your abilities we may win bloodless victories. If there is war, there must be battles, of course. But many more battles that would have cost tens of thousands of young lives may never need to be fought. I low much better to triumph in this way than through the hecatombs of the slaughtered young.”
Holmes turned to him, calmly and with his decision made.
“Very well. I am His Majesty’s subject and shall obey. May the end be as quick and as bloodless as you propose.”
In the white anteroom with its gold-laced furniture it was impossible to miss a collective breath of relief.
Our negotiations with Fisher and Hall were not before time. In the course of that evening, a score of officers in their medalled mess jackets and formal dress took an unceremonious leave of the Court Ball. Despatch riders had brought orders to the Palace that two of our most famous regiments must return to camp. There was to be no delay, not even to enable reservists to reach them. Their battalions were to mobilise at present strength. At Liverpool Street station, they were to entrain for King’s Lynn to meet a possible German raiding party on the East Coast. The enemy might be expected as early as the next day’s summer dawn.
Such news brought with it a sense of complete unreality, as if we were taking part in a new play at the Haymarket or the Lyceum. All too soon, the same news was to be the talk of the hour.
3
E
ven as we discussed Fisher’s plans for Sherlock Holmes, I was doubtful that the enemy would be deceived for long. It was all very well for Sir John Fisher to boast how easily he could make fools of the Germans. The truth was that enemy spies might be anywhere in London, in guises of every kind. A citizen of a neutral country, let alone our own, might have private German sympathies. Holmes and I must assume, each time we left Baker Street, that either of us was being followed by a man or woman whose presence we had failed to detect.
We came to recognise one or two of those who quite plainly kept watch on us, though it would have been difficult to prove what law they were breaking. In any case, Holmes insisted that we must “let them be.” Far better to have such hangers-on where we could see them, than behind prison bars. We might not recognise the enemies who took their places, until it was too late.
There was a stout young man with a high flush and breathless movements. He would frequently appear in cap and gaiters where Cornwall Terrace joins Baker Street, like a stable-groom setting out for the park, just as Holmes stepped into his hansom cab. But this young look-out went no further. He crossed the road and turned away in the opposite direction, towards Marylebone. We could accuse him of nothing—and yet we were sure. His turning away was the signal for another watchdog. As the cab moved forward, this second man would very often appear round the corner from Park Street. He rode a bicycle, convenient for keeping a cab in view, and appeared much the older of the pair. His dark hair and pointed beard had the suggestion of being rimed by white frost. All the same, the nimbleness of his movements on the bicycle pedals hinted strongly to me that he was a younger man disguised. But we could hardly have him shot for that.