The Riddle of the Sands
walls and furnished like an office; in the far right-hand corner a
counting-house desk, Grimm sitting at it on a high stool, side-face to
me, counting money; opposite him in an awkward attitude a burly fellow
in seaman’s dress holding a diver’s helmet. In the middle of the room a
deal table, and on it something big and black. Lolling on chairs near
it, their backs to me and their faces turned towards the desk and the
diver, two men—von Brüning and an older man with a bald yellow head
(Dollmann’s companion on the steamer, beyond a doubt). On another
chair, with its back actually tilted against the window, Dollmann.
Such were the principal features of the scene; for details I had to
make another inspection. Stooping low, I crept back, quiet as a cat,
till I was beneath the window, and, as I calculated, directly behind
Dollmann’s chair. Then with great caution I raised my head. There was
only one pair of eyes in the room that I feared in the least, and that
was Grimm’s, who sat in profile to me, farthest away. I instantly put
Dollmann’s back between Grimm and me, and then made my scrutiny. As I
made it, I could feel a cold sweat distilling on my forehead and
tickling my spine; not from fear or excitement, but from pure ignominy.
For beyond all doubt I was present at the meeting of a _bona-fide_
salvage company. It was pay-day, and the directors appeared to be
taking stock of work done; that was all.
Over the door was an old engraving of a two-decker under full sail;
pinned on the wall a chart and the plan of a ship. Relics of the
wrecked frigate abounded. On a shelf above the stove was a small
pyramid of encrusted cannon-balls, and supported on nails at odd places
on the walls were corroded old pistols, and what I took to be the
remains of a sextant. In a corner of the floor sat a hoary little
carronade, carriage and all. None of these things affected me so much
as a pile of lumber on the floor, not firewood but unmistakable
wreck-wood, black as bog-oak, still caked in places with the mud of
ages. Nor was it the mere sight of this lumber that dumbfounded me. It
was the fact that a fragment of it, a balk of curved timber garnished
with some massive bolts, lay on the table, and was evidently an object
of earnest interest. The diver had turned and was arguing with gestures
over it; von Brüning and Grimm were pressing another view. The diver
shook his head frequently, finally shrugged his shoulders, made a
salutation, and left the room. Their movements had kept me ducking my
head pretty frequently, but I now grew almost reckless as to whether I
was seen or not. All the weaknesses of my theory crowded on me—the
arguments Davies had used at Bensersiel; Fräulein Dollmann’s
thoughtless talk; the ease (comparatively) with which I had reached
this spot, not a barrier to cross or a lock to force; the publicity of
their passage to Memmert by Dollmann, his friend, and Grimm; and now
this glimpse of business-like routine. In a few moments I sank from
depth to depth of scepticism. Where were my mines, torpedoes, and
submarine boats, and where my imperial conspirators? Was gold after all
at the bottom of this sordid mystery? Dollmann after all a commonplace
criminal? The ladder of proof I had mounted tottered and shook beneath
me. “Don’t be a fool,” said the faint voice of reason. “There are your
four men. Wait.”
Two more _employés_ came into the room in quick succession and received
wages; one looking like a fireman, the other of a superior type, the
skipper of a tug, say. There was another discussion with this latter
over the balk of wreck-wood, and this man, too, shrugged his shoulders.
His departure appeared to end the meeting. Grimm shut up a ledger, and
I shrank down on my knees, for a general shifting of chairs began. At
the same time, from the other side of the building, I heard my knot of
men retreating beachwards, spitting and chatting as they went.
Presently someone walked across the room towards my window. I sidled
away on all fours, rose and flattened myself erect against the wall, a
sickening despondency on me; my intention to slink away south-east as
soon as the coast was clear. But the sound that came next pricked me
like an electric shock; it was the tinkle and scrape of curtain-rings.
Quick as thought I was back in my old position, to find my view barred
by a cretonne curtain. It was in one piece, with no chink for my
benefit, but it did not hang straight, bulging towards me under the
pressure of something—human shoulders by the shape. Dollmann, I
concluded, was still in his old place. I now was exasperated to find
that I could scarcely hear a word that was said, not even by pressing
my ear against the glass. It was not that the speakers were of set
purpose hushing their voices—they used an ordinary tone for intimate
discussion—but the glass and curtain deadened the actual words. Still,
I was soon able to distinguish general characteristics. Von Brüning’s
voice—the only one I had ever heard before—I recognised at once; he was
on the left of the table, and Dollmann’s I knew from his position. The
third was a harsh croak, belonging to the old gentleman whom, for
convenience, I shall prematurely begin to call Herr Böhme. It was too
old a voice to be Grimm’s; besides, it had the ring of authority, and
was dealing at the moment in sharp interrogations. Three of its
sentences I caught in their entirety. “When was that?” “They went no
farther?” and “Too long; out of the question.” Dollmann’s voice, though
nearest to me, was the least audible of all. It was a dogged monotone,
and what was that odd movement of the curtain at his back? Yes, his
hands were behind him clutching and kneading a fold of the cretonne.
“You are feeling uncomfortable, my friend,” was my comment. Suddenly he
threw back his head—I saw the dent of it—and spoke up so that I could
not miss a word. “Very well, sir, you shall see them at supper
to-night; I will ask them both.”
(You will not be surprised to learn that I instantly looked at my
watch—though it takes long to write what I have described—but the time
was only a quarter to four.) He added something about the fog, and his
chair creaked. Ducking promptly I heard the curtain-rings jar, and:
“Thick as ever.”
“Your report, Herr Dollmann,” said Böhme, curtly. Dollmann left the
window and moved his chair up to the table; the other two drew in
theirs and settled themselves.
“_Chatham,_” said Dollmann, as if announcing a heading. It was an easy
word to catch, rapped out sharp, and you can imagine how it startled
me. “That’s where you’ve been for the last month!” I said to myself. A
map crackled and I knew they were bending over it, while Dollmann
explained something. But now my exasperation became acute, for not a
syllable more reached me. Squatting back on my heels, I cast about for
expedients. Should I steal round and try the door? Too dangerous. Climb
to the roof and listen down the stove-pipe? Too noisy, and generally
hopeless. I tried for a downward purchase on the upper half of the
window, which was of the simple sort in two sections, working
vertically. No use; it resisted gentle pressure, would start with a
sudden jar if I forced it. I pulled out Davies’s knife and worked the
point of the blade between sash and frame to give it play—no result;
but the knife was a nautical one, with a marlin-spike as well as a big
blade.
Just now the door within opened and shut again, and I heard steps
approaching round the corner to my right. I had the presence of mind
not to lose a moment, but moved silently away (blessing the deep
Frisian sand) round the corner of the big parallel building. Someone
whom I could not see walked past till his boots clattered on tiles,
next resounded on boards. “Grimm in his living-room,” I inferred. The
precious minutes ebbed away—five, ten, fifteen. Had he gone for good? I
dared not return otherwise. Eighteen—he was coming out! This time I
stole forward boldly when the man had just passed, dimly saw a figure,
and clearly enough the glint of a white paper he was holding. He made
his circuit and re-entered the room.
Here I felt and conquered a relapse to scepticism. “If this is an
important conclave why don’t they set guards?” Answer, the only
possible one, “Because they stand alone. Their _employés,_ like
_everyone_ we had met hitherto, know nothing. The real object of this
salvage company (a poor speculation, I opined) is solely to afford a
pretext for the conclave.” “Why the curtain, even?” “Because there are
maps, stupid!”
I was back again at the window, but as impotent as ever against that
even stream of low confidential talk. But I would not give up. Fate and
the fog had brought me here, the one solitary soul perhaps who by the
chain of circumstances had both the will and the opportunity to wrest
their secret from these four men.
The marlin-spike! Where the lower half of the window met the sill it
sank into a shallow groove. I thrust the point of the spike down into
the interstice between sash and frame and heaved with a slowly
increasing force, which I could regulate to the fraction of an ounce,
on this powerful lever. The sash gave, with the faintest possible
protest, and by imperceptible degrees I lifted it to the top of the
groove, and the least bit above it, say half an inch in all; but it
made an appreciable difference to the sounds within, as when you remove
your foot from a piano’s soft pedal. I could do no more, for there was
no further fulcrum for the spike, and I dared not gamble away what I
had won by using my hands.
Hope sank again when I placed my cheek on the damp sill, and my ear to
the chink. My men were close round the table referring to papers which
I heard rustle. Dollmann’s “report” was evidently over, and I rarely
heard his voice; Grimm’s occasionally, von Brüning’s and Böhme’s
frequently; but, as before, it was the latter only that I could ever
count on for an intelligible word. For, unfortunately, the villains of
the piece plotted without any regard to dramatic fitness or to my
interests. Immersed in a subject with which they were all familiar,
they were allusive, elliptic, and persistently technical. Many of the
words I did catch were unknown to me. The rest were, for the most part,
either letters of the alphabet or statistical figures, of depth,
distance, and, once or twice, of time. The letters of the alphabet
recurred often, and seemed, as far as I could make out, to represent
the key to the cipher. The numbers clustering round them were mostly
very small, with decimals. What maddened me most was the scarcity of
plain nouns.
To report what I heard to the reader would be impossible; so chaotic
was most of it that it left no impression on my own memory. All I can
do is to tell him what fragments stuck, and what nebulous
classification I involved. The letters ran from A to G, and my best
continuous chance came when Böhme, reading rapidly from a paper, I
think, went through the letters, backwards, from G, adding remarks to
each; thus: “G. . . completed.” “F. . . bad. . . 1.3 (metres?). . .2.5
(kilometres?).” “E . . . thirty-two. . . 1.2.” “D. . . 3 weeks. . .
thirty.” “C. . .” and so on.
Another time he went through this list again, only naming each letter
himself, and receiving laconic answers from Grimm—answers which seemed
to be numbers, but I could not be sure. For minutes together I caught
nothing but the scratching of pens and inarticulate mutterings. But out
of the muck-heap I picked five pearls—four sibilant nouns and a name
that I knew before. The nouns were “Schleppboote” (tugs); “Wassertiefe”
(depth of water); “Eisenbahn” (railway); “Lotsen” (pilots). The name,
also sibilant and thus easier to hear, was “Esens”.
Two or three times I had to stand back and ease my cramped neck, and on