8 
LAND & WATER 
July 5. 1917 
it was to pft on n false, srcnt. And he felt alternately 
exalted and depressed. The eoast was welt patrolled and all 
approaches to t\\f beach were pri)hilMted by an order issued 
by the C.N. A. under Defence of the Realm regulation 2<Sa, 
closing them nightlv at (1 p.m. Besides, the Morse code seemed 
a little too obvious, and the .X.l'.M. had a i)assion for the 
obscure, not realising that the most successful deceptions 
are always the simpU^t. and that monosyllables like " Yes" 
and " No " may in a cipher stand for otlier things than mere 
affirmatives and negatives. 
The A. P.M. had read a great many detective stories— which 
isja very bad training for a detective. Life is never so elabo- 
ra'te as fiction. In the spy stories of fiction there is usually a 
master mind who erects a scaffolding round a house in a per- 
fect state of repair and employs six secret agents as bncE- 
layers, merely m order that one of them may drop a brick 
from his hod on the head of the detective as he passes by ; he 
hires a powerful Rolls-Royce to procure his death by a street 
accident ; or he watches his movements by aerial reconnais- 
sance from an aeroplane ; and he invariably uses a cipher 
language so obviously obscure that it shrieks for elucidation as 
loudly as a cuneiform inscription. You must have noticed 
this if you are in the habit of reading detective stories. But 
the real spy never does anything so melodramatic or so sug- 
gestive ; he usuallv journeys by tram or motor-bus, eats 
buns in an .\.B.C." shop, travels in Dutch cigars or cinema 
films, and is nothing if not unobtrusive. He does not 
use numerals for letters or transpose the alphabet ; he sends 
transparently simple messages about invoices, or contents 
himself with posting a catalogue of cigars or a newspaper. 
It is only your trained " Intelligence " men who will guess 
that the commercial correspondence, the price list of Havanas, 
or the stop press space may have a secondary meaning. The 
art of esponiage consists in making the primary meaning so 
obvious that a secondary meaning will never be suspected. 
It is the art of the double entendre. 
. The A. P.M. knew nothing of all this. He was not an 
" M.I." man alnd had never worn the green tabs of an 
intellectual life. Consequently his first flush of certitude 
was succeeded by a cold fit of doubt. The situation seemed to 
lack colour. .\ restaurant in Soho, a suite of rooms at the 
Ritz, an alcove in the National Liberal Club, an opium den 
in Whitechapel — such romantic surroundings he felt, were 
the proper mise en scene for a real spy stunt. At that moment 
the orderly entered with a telegram. The A. P.M. opened it, 
and as -he" read his heart went " dot and carry one." For 
this was what he read : 
" TAHW ECIRP EMBARKATION DRAFTS RETTOR 
MA DEF PU ON DOOG AT AT. 
DECENCY LONDON." 
Decoded this ran : 
Suspect embarkation drafts sailings are known to U boats 
please set a watch upon coast in vicinity of harbour. 
Then he knew his chance had come. He spent a restless 
day counting the hours till dusk. About 8 p.m. after a delib- 
erately frugal meal, he^girded up his loins with his Sam Brci^vne 
belt, slipped his Mark Webley into its holster, and set out on 
foot for Winstone Point.' As he proposed to begin with a 
reconnaissance he decided to go alone. It was a warm night, 
but there was that brooding apprehension in the air which 
seems to portend a thunderstorm, and low down on the 
horizon Orion, the herald of troubled weather, shone with 
a baleful light. 
Winstone Point is a bold headland on the west side of which 
lies a small fishing village. The Point is the limestone 
termination of a long greyhound-backed down which runs 
inland for many miles and is covered with short crisp turf 
and creeping cinque foil. It is intersected by a winding track 
strewn with flints chipped into sharp and minute splinters 
like thorns by the chisel-like feet of flocks of sheep. The 
A. P.M. carefully avoided this track as he cUmbed the down, 
and finding a small dew-pond like a shell-hole which com- 
manded a view of the whole ridge as it ran inland, he crouched 
against its grassy slopes. The night was dark save for the 
feeble light of the stars, and as he glanced at the phos- 
phorescent glow of his wTist watch he could just make out the 
position of the hands — they were at 10.30. His position was 
about a mile due north of the spot where the ridge terminated 
in an abrupt cliff some four hundred feet above the sea, and he 
was facing north-east. For a long time nothing happened as 
he lay there listening to the beating of his heart and the 
fairit chafing of the sea upon the distant beach. Then he 
suddenly saw a flash about a mile and a half further inland, 
where the do«-n attained a greater altitude. It was followed 
by a sequence of short and long flashes, and he realised that 
someone was signalling in the Morse code. He made out the 
words " Ansuer." " Gfneral Answtji^" Thon a pause. 
Then " No," " Yes." " Repeal," " Xo." " Yes," " 109 
Hatlalion," " June ^." Then the signals ceased. 
Me lay prone on iiis stomach on the turf waiting for their 
repetition. Nothing happened. Reflecting that his prey 
might use the track on his right for his return journey, he con- 
tinued to wait, olilivious of time. .Meanwhile t lie sky, long 
ol)scure, grew black above him, the air curdleil anil thickened, 
not a brt-ath of wind stirred the sultry atmosphere. Some- 
thing cold as dew liopped on to his liand.and as he moved 
jumped suddenly, so that his heart jumped with it. It was 
a toad. The sheep grazing t>n the brow of the hill had dis- 
appeared. The furze buslies were suddenly shaken by a violent 
convulsion, the clumps of j-oung heather rustled like tissue 
paper, antl every bent of grass trembled. At that moment 
a shaft of light cleft the sky downwards from zenith to horizon, 
and in one trenchant glimpse he saw the whole sea for miles, 
and outlined upon it, like the silhouettes in a naval text- 
book, the siiapes of the patrol-boats black as ink against a 
background of burnished silver. The heavens opened their 
batteries, and as the thunder crashed the rain descended in 
torrents and smote the hard dry earth like hail. Another 
flash rent the sky, and by its blue corrosive light the A. P.M. 
saw the whole ridge and every furze bush upon it. But not 
a living thing stirred. The mysterious signaller had vanished. 
Drenched to the skin, with runnels of water down his back, 
the A. P.M. rose stiffly. All further quest was useless that 
night. He took out his knife, cut a branch of furze, and dig- 
ging a small hole in the earth he planted it upright in front of 
him. Then he drew back some two yards, and placing his 
walking stick in a line with the twig on what he judged to be 
the point whore he had last seen the signals, as though he 
were bringing "the sights of a rifle to bear on a given object, 
he planted tlie stick firmly in the ground. An hour later 
he was in bed. i. 
He was trying to read a signal of baffling brightness, when 
he awoke out of a troubled dream to find the sun shining full 
upon his face. He rose and dressed and, after a hasty break- 
fast, determined to visit the scene of the night's operations. 
Before leaving he gave orders that the Sergeant of the 
military police with a^picquet of three men should join him at 
2 p.m. at the fishing vdlage on the western slope of Winstone 
Point; I'' 
He went armed as before, but this time he took with him 
a magnifying glass with a handle such as is used for reading 
print by persons who suffer from niyopia. He had purchased 
that magnifying' glass some months earlier as the result of a 
careful study of the operations of a classical detective whose 
name is a household word as the discoverer of the Inductive 
Method. He felt that the time had come to use it. 
He left his horse at the village inn and ascended the down . 
He discovered the two sticks without difliculty, and taking a 
compass bearing he found that they were aligned on a point 
due north north-east. He walked slowly in the direction 
indicated, keeping a sharp eye on the turf after he had 
covered about a mile. He suddenly came to a halt at a spot 
where hc saw a number of matches. Examining the ground 
more closely he thought he found traces of trampled grass 
which tlie rain had not wholly obliterated. Then he went 
down on his hands and knees and scrutinised every blade of 
grass with his magnifying glass. At the end of half an hour 
he had gathered the following : 
(i) Nineteen burnt matches. 
(2) A piece of burnt paper. 
(3) A pipeful of tobacco only partially consumed. 
(4) A small piece of sausage. 
Then he sat down and applied the Inductive Method. He 
tried to reconstruct the personality of the suspect from these 
apparently insignificant trifles. At the end of half an hour's 
deep meditation he had arrived at the conclusion that the man 
had a tooth missing in the centre of the upper jaw, was one- 
armed, probably careless of money, and verj" probably a 
'(German. How ? By a simple process of ratiocination : 
The serrated edge of the half-eaten sausage revealed the marks 
of an even row of teeth, but in the middle of the perimeter 
there was a gap. Nineteen matches had been expended in 
an attempt to hght one pipe — there was no trace of ashes 
beyond those of the halt-cohsumed wad of tobacco — and each 
of the matches I'lad onlj- burnt to the extent of an eighth of 
an inch ; this showed that they had been extinguished as soon 
as lit, a contretemps so iinusual as to be only expUcable on 
the assiunption that the smoker had been unable to use his left 
hand to. shield the match held in his right. The waste of 
tobacco costing iijd. an ounce pointed to an indifference to 
considerations of economy ; an application of the method of 
Observation an<i Experiment to the tobacco by first smelling 
it and then smoking it had convinced the A. P.M. that it was 
a cho'iQe blend of. " John Cotton." The nationality of the 
suspect was more difficult to establish ; the sausage suggested 
Gennah nationality ; but the A.P.M. would have felt more 
