The Petticoat Commando Part 41

Harmony, surrounded as it was by British officers and their staffs, by British troops and Military Mounted Police--Harmony was at last chosen as the most suitable, the only spot in Pretoria in which the Captain of the Secret Service could be harboured with any degree of safety.

It was arranged that he would immediately be brought to Harmony when he came again, and in the meantime the Committee would be on the look-out for an opportunity to send a warning and instructions out to him not to approach the houses. .h.i.therto frequented by him.

For many weeks no spies belonging to his set came into town. No war news of any description reached his friends, except one day the information, conveyed we know not how, of the safe arrival at the Skurvebergen of young Els, the spy who had been fired upon and was missing from his companions on that eventful September 12th. That this news gave his relatives and friends great joy and relief after the intense anxiety gone through on his account, my readers will readily understand.

The discovery of the White Envelope was not always a source of unmixed satisfaction.

One of them, containing news of the betrayal and arrest of the Committee, and sent to Alphen in the ordinary way, failed to reach its destination. This caused the senders so much anxiety that for some time they did not dare risk the sending of another. The letter might have fallen into the hands of the censors and the secret be discovered by them, in which event they were probably waiting quietly to catch up further information.

It may have been only a coincidence, but at this time the plotters at Harmony observed that the censors.h.i.+p on _their_ post had been withdrawn altogether.

They knew only too well what this meant! And their hearts sank when they thought of the White Envelope!

It meant, good reader, that there was a most disquieting increase in the vigilance of the censor; it meant that their letters were opened _by steam_, to throw them off their guard, and to encourage them to write with greater frankness to their absent friends.

Mother and daughter felt the hair rising on their heads when they thought of one of their precious White Envelopes being subjected to a treatment of _steam_ by the censor, and of his exultation on beholding the result.

As the days went by, their dread of him and his evil machinations increased, for hardly a letter reached them that did not betray traces of his handiwork--or unhandiwork, for he was not always judicious in the quant.i.ty of glue used by him in reclosing the envelopes. He should have been a little more economical in the use of Government property if he really wished to hoodwink his enemies, and he would have saved Mrs. van Warmelo the trouble of damping the envelopes afterwards where they stuck, on the inside, to the letters.

While the steaming process was being carried on at the General Post Office, no White Envelopes were taken to the censor, but they were posted at Johannesburg by friends, and in this way the distant correspondents were warned of danger, until it became evident that the steam-censors.h.i.+p had been withdrawn and the old rea.s.suring order of things been established once more.

A week or two later another White Envelope from Holland reached Harmony in safety, by which it was known that the secret was still undiscovered, but the fate of the missing envelope remained a mystery to the end, and was a constant reminder and warning to the conspirators to be careful in the use of their priceless secret.

I am sure the Post Office officials had plenty to do during the war, but there is no doubt that their labours were considerably lightened by the "smugglers" who chose to dispense with the services of the censors entirely. And then we must not forget the activities of the spies and of their fellow-workers in town.

Quite a large private postal service was carried on by them, as we all know, and every week, before the entry into Pretoria became so difficult and dangerous, hundreds of letters were carried backwards and forwards, to and from the commandos.

One man in town was in the habit of receiving great batches of these smuggled letters, which he distributed to the various addresses, until one day he was very nearly caught. He had just received a packet of communications "from the front" and had opened it on his writing-table in his quiet study, when the doors were opened unceremoniously and some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending when they entered the room, was pa.s.sed over without so much as a glance.

This may sound a bit unreal, unlikely, but there are similar cases on record, which we know to be true beyond a doubt, and one of these I must relate, because it so closely concerned our friends at Harmony and so very nearly proved to be their undoing. They did not know it at the time, but were told by Mrs. Cloete, after the war, that she had sent all their uncensored, their "smuggled" letters, to her friend at Capetown, Mrs. Koopmans de Wet, with instructions to read and return them to her as soon as possible, which Mrs. Koopmans had done, with the alarming news that her house had been thoroughly searched for doc.u.ments while the pile of letters was lying open on her writing-table.

The authorities must have been "struck blind," she had said, for though they had overhauled the place and had taken away with them every suspicious-looking doc.u.ment, they had pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the papers on her table without a word and with nothing more than a superficial glance.

This information had alarmed Mrs. Cloete so much that she had immediately packed every incriminating letter and all her White Envelopes into a tin, which she secretly buried, with the help of her German nurse, under one of the trees at Alphen.

And there they, or what is left of them after ten years, still lie, for the spot has never again been found, although every effort was made to do so.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

"TEA FOR TWO"

It was at the time when the northern territories were being swept by the enemy for the first time that Mrs. van Warmelo heard that a relative of hers had been put over the border, and was staying with her husband at the Grand Hotel in Pretoria.

She therefore asked Hansie to call at the hotel to inquire whether she could be of any a.s.sistance to them in their trouble, and Hansie donned her prettiest frock that very afternoon on her "calling" expedition, Carlo walking with unusual sedateness by her side.

"We'll go and see General Maxwell too this afternoon, Carlo," she said, "and see whether we can get that permit. Always put on your best clothes when you go to the Military Governor, my boy. You'll find that Tommy Atkins never keeps you waiting then."

Arrived at the hotel, she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten her young relative's name, and did not know whom to ask for.

She was waited upon by a hall-porter, who watched her with a face of stolid patience while she searched her memory for the forgotten name.

At last she said: "The lady I want was a Miss Mare, but she has married an Englishman since last I saw her, and I have forgotten his name. Can you tell me whether there is a young couple with a baby, from Zoutpansberg, staying at the hotel?"

"I'll find out, miss."

He came back with the information that there were four young couples from Zoutpansberg, each with a baby.

Hansie wondered that he did not smile.

"Are they all in?" she asked.

"Some are in and some are out," he said.

Suddenly he seemed to wake up.

"Would it be any help if I told you their names?" he inquired.

"Yes, indeed," she exclaimed; "I would know the name at once if I heard it."

He brought her the book in which the names of visitors were entered, and read one name after the other slowly.

"That's it," Hansie said. "Knevitt! Is Mrs. Knevitt in?"

"No, miss, she is out, and I happen to know that she is leaving again soon. They only arrived yesterday. They were put over the border by the Boers."

"I don't understand," Hansie answered.

"Don't you see, miss? The Boers are still in possession of Pietersburg, and Mr. Knevitt, as a British subject, has been put over the border."

"Oh yes, I see. Well, will you please give these cards to Mrs. Knevitt when she comes in?"

Once on the street, Hansie again addressed herself to her faithful companion:

"It is not hard to believe that the world is turning round, Carlo, when one has to believe that Pretoria is the other side of one's own border. I wonder what our next sensation is to be."

She was soon to find out.

The Military Governor was engaged, and she was shown into the office of an under official, a tall, fair man whose name she did not catch.

She was politely asked to take a seat and the nature of her business inquired into.

The tall, fair man bent over some papers he had before him and toyed with a gold pencil, while she stated her case as clearly and concisely as she could.