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Page 96
"But how did you know we had the remaining portion of the letter?" I
asked.
The Chief chuckled again.
"My young men don't wire for cars to meet 'em at the station when they
have failed," he replied. "Now, tell me all about it!"
So I told him my whole story from the beginning.
When I had finished, he said:
"You appear to have a very fine natural disposition for our game,
Okewood. It seems a pity to waste it in regimental work ..."
I broke in hastily.
"I've got a few weeks' sick leave left," I said, "and after that I was
looking forward to going back to the front for a rest. This sort of
thing is too exciting for me!"
"Well, well," answered the Chief, "we'll see about that afterwards. In
the meantime, we shall not forget what you have done ... and I shall see
that it is not forgotten elsewhere."
On that we left him. It was only outside that I remembered that he had
told me nothing of what I was burning to know about the origin and
disappearance of the Kaiser's letter.
It was my old friend, Red Tabs, whom I met on one of our many visits to
mysterious but obviously important officials, that finally cleared up
for me the many obscure points in this adventure of mine. When he saw me
he burst out laughing.
"'Pon my soul," he grinned, "you seem to be able to act on a hint, don't
you?"
Then he told me the story of the Kaiser's letter.
"There is no need to speak of the contents of this amazing letter," he
began, "for you are probably more familiar with them than I am. The date
alone will suffice ... July 31st, 1914 ... it explains a great deal. The
last day of July was the moment when the peace of Europe was literally
trembling in the balance. You know the Emperor's wayward, capricious
nature, his eagerness for fame and military glory, his morbid terror of
the unknown. In that fateful last week of July he was torn between
opposing forces. On the one side was ranged the whole of the Prussian
military party, led by the Crown Prince and the Emperor's own immediate
entourage; on the other, the record of prosperity which years of peace
had conferred on his realms. He had to choose between his own
megalomania craving for military laurels, on the one hand, and, on the
other, that place in history as the Prince of Peace for which, in his
gentler moments, he has so often hankered.
"The Kaiser is a man of moods. He sat down and penned this letter in a
fit of despondency and indecision, when the vision of Peace seemed
fairer to him than the spectre of War. God knows what violent emotion
impelled him to write this extraordinary appeal to his English friend,
an appeal which, if published, would convict him of the deepest
treachery to his ally, but he wrote the letter and forthwith dispatched
it to London. He did not make use of the regular courier: he sent the
letter by a man of his own choosing, who had special instructions to
hand the letter in person to Prince Lichnowski, the German ambassador.
Lichnowski was to deliver the missive personally to its destined
recipient.
"Almost as soon as the letter was away, the Kaiser seems to have
realised what he had done, to have repented of his action. Attempts to
stop the messenger before he reached the coast appear to have failed. At
any rate, we know that all through July 31st and August 1st Lichnowski,
in London, was bombarded with dispatches ordering him to send the
messenger with the letter back to Berlin as soon as he reached the
embassy.
"The courier never got as far as Carlton House Terrace. Someone in the
War party at the Court of Berlin got wind of the fateful letter and sent
word to someone in the German embassy in London--the Prussian jingoes
were well represented there by K�hlmann and others of his ilk--to
intercept the letter.
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