The Invasion of 1910. Le Queux William
just as Big Ben chimed the half-hour, the echoes of the half-deserted Strand were suddenly awakened by the loud, strident voices of the newsboys shouting —
“Weekly Dispatch, spe-shall! Invasion of England this morning! Germans in Suffolk! Terrible panic! Spe-shall! Weekly Dispatch, Spe-shall!”
As soon as the paper had gone to press Fergusson urged the motorist – whose name was Horton, and who lived at Richmond – to go with him to the War Office and report. Therefore, both men entered the car, and in a few moments drew up before the new War Office in Whitehall.
“I want to see somebody in authority at once!” cried Fergusson excitedly to the sentry as he sprang out.
“You’ll find the caretaker, if you ring at the side entrance – on the right, there,” responded the man, who then marched on.
“The caretaker!” echoed the excited sub-editor bitterly. “And England invaded by the Germans!”
He, however, dashed towards the door indicated and rang the bell. At first there was no response. But presently there were sounds of a slow unbolting of the door, which opened at last, revealing a tall, elderly man in slippers, a retired soldier.
“I must see somebody at once!” exclaimed the journalist. “Not a moment must be lost. What permanent officials are here?”
“There’s nobody ’ere, sir,” responded the man in some surprise at the request. “It’s Sunday morning, you know.”
“Sunday! I know that, but I must see someone. Whom can I see?”
“Nobody, until to-morrow morning. Come then.” And the old soldier was about to close the door when the journalist prevented him, asking —
“Where’s the clerk-in-residence?”
“How should I know? Gone up the river, perhaps. It’s a nice mornin’.”
“Well, where does he live?”
“Sometimes ’ere – sometimes in ’is chambers in Ebury Street,” and the man mentioned the number.
“Better come to-morrow, sir, about eleven. Somebody’ll be sure to see you then.”
“To-morrow!” cried the other. “To-morrow! You don’t know what you’re saying, man! To-morrow will be too late. Perhaps it’s too late now. The Germans have landed in England!”
“Oh, ’ave they?” exclaimed the caretaker, regarding both men with considerable suspicion. “Our people will be glad to know that, I’m sure – to-morrow.”
“But haven’t you got telephones, private telegraphs, or something here, so that I can communicate with the authorities? Can’t you ring up the Secretary of State, the Permanent Secretary, or somebody?”
The caretaker hesitated a moment, his incredulous gaze fixed upon the pale, agitated faces of the two men.
“Well, just wait a minute, and I’ll see,” he said, disappearing into a long cavernous passage.
In a few moments he reappeared with a constable whose duty it was to patrol the building.
The officer looked the strangers up and down, and then asked —
“What’s this extraordinary story? Germans landed in England – eh? That’s fresh, certainly!”
“Yes. Can’t you hear what the newsboys are crying? Listen!” exclaimed the motorist.
“H’m. Well, you’re not the first gentleman who’s been here with a scare, you know. If I were you I’d wait till to-morrow,” and he glanced significantly at the caretaker.
“I won’t wait till to-morrow!” cried Fergusson. “The country is in peril, and you refuse to assist me on your own responsibility – you understand?”
“All right, my dear sir,” replied the officer, leisurely hooking his thumbs in his belt. “You’d better drive home, and call again in the morning.”
“So this is the way the safety of the country is neglected!” cried the motorist bitterly, turning away. “Everyone away, and this great place, built merely to gull the public, I suppose, empty and its machinery useless. What will England say when she learns the truth?”
As they were walking in disgust out from the portico towards the car, a man jumped from a hansom in breathless haste. He was the reporter whom Fergusson had sent out to Sir James Taylor’s house in Cleveland Square, Hyde Park.
“They thought Sir James spent the night with his brother up at Hampstead,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been there, but find that he’s away for the week-end at Chilham Hall, near Buckden.”
“Buckden! That’s on the Great North Road!” cried Horton. “We’ll go at once and find him. Sixty miles from London. We can be there under two hours!”
And a few minutes later the pair were tearing due north in the direction of Finchley, disregarding the signs from police constables to stop, Horton wiping the dried mud from his goggles and pulling them over his half-closed eyes.
They had given the alarm in London, and the Weekly Dispatch was spreading the amazing news everywhere. People read it eagerly, gasped for a moment, and then smiled in utter disbelief. But the two men were on their way to reveal the appalling truth to the man who was one of the heads of that complicated machinery of inefficient defence which we so proudly term our Army.
Bursting with the astounding information, they bent their heads to the wind as the car shot onward through Barnet and Hatfield, then, entering Hitchin, they were compelled to slow down in the narrow street as they passed the old Sun Inn, and afterwards out again upon the broad highway with its many telegraph lines, through Biggleswade, Tempsford, and Eaton Socon, until, in Buckden, Horton pulled up to inquire of a farm labourer for Chilham Hall.
“Oop yon road to the left, sir. ’Bout a mile Huntingdon way,” was the man’s reply.
Then away they sped, turning a few minutes later into the handsome lodge-gates of Chilham Park, and running up the great elm avenue, drew up before the main door of the ancient hall, a quaint many-gabled old place of grey stone.
“Is Sir James Taylor in?” Fergusson shouted to the liveried man who opened the door.
“He’s gone across the home farm with his lordship and the keepers,” was the reply.
“Then take me to him at once. I haven’t a second to lose. I must see him this instant.”
Thus urged, the servant conducted the pair across the park and through several fields to the edge of a small wood, where two elderly men were walking with a couple of keepers and several dogs about them.
“The tall gentleman is Sir James. The other is his lordship,” the servant explained to Fergusson; and a few moments later the breathless journalist, hurrying up, faced the Permanent Under-Secretary with the news that England was invaded – that the Germans had actually effected a surprise landing on the east coast.
Sir James and his host stood speechless. Like others, they at first believed the pale-faced, bearded sub-editor to be a lunatic, but a few moments later, when Horton briefly repeated the story, they saw that whatever might have occurred, the two men were at least in deadly earnest.
“Impossible!” cried Sir James. “We should surely have heard something of it if such were actually the case! The coastguard would have telephoned the news instantly. Besides, where is our fleet?”
“The Germans evidently laid their plans with great cleverness. Their spies, already in England, cut the wires at a pre-arranged hour last night,” declared Fergusson. “They sought to prevent this gentleman from giving the alarm by shooting him. All the railways to London are already either cut, or held by the enemy. One thing, however, is clear – fleet or no fleet, the east coast is entirely at their mercy.”
Host and guest exchanged dark glances.
“Well, if what you say is the actual truth,” exclaimed Sir James, “to-day is surely the blackest day