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Page 13
Here was Dr. Semlin's real visiting-card.
I held in my hand a badge of the German secret police.
You cannot penetrate far behind the scenes in Germany without coming
across the traces of Section Seven of the Berlin Police Presidency, the
section that is known euphemistically as that of the Political Police.
Ostensibly it attends to the safety of the monarch, and of distinguished
personages generally, and the numerous suite that used to accompany the
Kaiser on his visits to England invariably included two or three
top-hatted representatives of the section.
The ramifications of _Abteilung Sieben_ are, in reality, much wider. It
does such work in connection with the newspapers as is even too dirty
for the German Foreign Office to touch, comprising everything from the
launching of personal attacks in obscure blackmailing sheets against
inconvenient politicians to the escorting of unpleasantly truthful
foreign correspondents to the frontier. It is the obedient handmaiden of
the Intelligence Department of both War Office and Admiralty in Germany,
and renders faithful service to the espionage which is constantly
maintained on officials, politicians, the clergy and the general public
in that land of careful organisation.
Section Seven is a vast subterranean department. Always working in the
dark, its political complexion is a handy cloak for blacker and more
sinister activities. It is frequently entrusted with commissions of
which it would be inexpedient for official Germany to have cognizance
and of which, accordingly, official Germany can always safely repudiate
when occasion demands.
I thrust the pin of the badge into my braces and fastened it there,
crammed the rest of the dead man's effects into his bag, stuck his hat
upon my head and threw his overcoat on my arm, picked up his bag and
crept away. In another minute I was back in my room, my brain aflame
with the fire of a great enterprise.
Here, to my hand, lay the key of that locked land which held the secret
of my lost brother. The question I had been asking myself, ever since I
had first discovered the dead man's American papers of identity, was
this. Had I the nerve to avail myself of Semlin's American passport to
get into Germany? The answer to that question lay in the little silver
badge. I knew that no German official, whatever his standing, whatever
his orders, would refuse passage to the silver star of Section Seven. It
need only be used, too, as a last resource, for I had my papers as a
neutral. Could I but once set foot in Germany, I was quite ready to
depend on my wits to see me through. One advantage, I knew, I must
forgo. That was the half-letter in its canvas case.
If that document was of importance to Section Seven of the German
Police, then it was of equal, nay, of greater importance to my country.
If I went, that should remain behind in safe keeping. On that I was
determined.
"Never before, since the war began," I told myself, "can any Englishman
have had such an opportunity vouchsafed to him for getting easily and
safely into that jealously guarded land as you have now! You have plenty
of money, what with your own and this ..." and I fingered Semlin's wad
of notes, "and provided you can keep your head sufficiently to remember
always that you are a German, once over the frontier you should be able
to give the Huns the slip and try and follow up the trail of poor
Francis.
"And maybe," I argued further (so easily is one's better judgment
defeated when one is young and set on a thing), "maybe in German
surroundings, you may get some sense into that mysterious jingle you got
from Dicky Allerton as the sole existing clue to the disappearance of
Francis."
Nevertheless, I wavered. The risks were awful. I had to get out of that
evil hotel in the guise of Dr. Semlin, with, as the sole safeguard
against exposure, should I fall in with the dead man's employers or
friends, that slight and possibly imaginative resemblance between him
and me: I had to take such measures as would prevent the fraud from
being detected when the body was discovered in the hotel: above all, I
had to ascertain, before I could definitely resolve to push on into
Germany, whether Semlin was already known to the people at the hotel or
whether--as I surmised to be the case--this was also his first visit to
the house in the Vos in't Tuintje.
In any case, I was quite determined in my own mind that the only way to
get out of the place with Semlin's document without considerable
unpleasantness, if not grave danger, would be to transfer his identity
and effects to myself and vice versa. When I saw the way a little
clearer I could decide whether to take the supreme risk and adventure
myself into the enemy's country.
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