My adventures as a German secret agent

If at any time in this story of my life, I have given the impression that accident did not play a very important part in the work of myself and other secret agents, I have done so unintentionally. “If” has been a big word in the history of the world; and even in my small share of the events of the last ten years, chance has oftentimes been a more able ally than some of the best laid of my plans. If, for instance, I had not happened to be in Geneva in the winter of 1909-10; or if a certain official of the Russian secret police—the Okrana—had not met a well-deserved death at the hands of a committee of “Reds”; or if the German Foreign Office had not been playing a pretty little game of diplomacy in the Southwestern corner of Europe—why, the world to-day would be poorer by a King, and possibly richer by another combatant in the Great War.

And if another King had not kept a diary he might have kept his throne. And if both he and a certain young diplomat, whose name I think it best to forget, had not had a common weakness for pretty faces, Germany would have lost an opportunity to gain some information that was more or less useful to her, an actress whose name you all know would never have become internationally famous, and this book would have lost an amusing little comedy of coincidences.

All of which sounds like romance and is—merely the truth.

I had spent two uneventful years at Gross Lichterfelde at the time the comedy began; two years of study in which I had acquired some knowledge and a great weariness of routine, of hard work unpunctuated by any element of adventure. Of late it had almost seemed as if, after all, it was planned that I should become merely one of the vast army of officers that Gross Lichterfelde and similar schools were yearly turning out. For such a fate, as you can imagine, I had little liking.

Consequently I was far from displeased when one day I received a characteristically brief note from my old tutor, asking me to call upon him. Still more was I elated when, the next day, he informed me that I had enough of books for the time being, and that he thought a little practical experience would be good for me. A vacation, I might call it, if I wished—with a trifle of detective work thrown in.

H’m. I was not so delighted with that prospect, and when the details of the “vacation” were explained to me, I was strongly tempted to say no to the entire proposition. But one does not say no to my old tutor. And so, in the course of a week, I found myself spending my evenings in the Café de l’Europe in Geneva, bound on a still hunt for Russian revolutionists.

Russia, at this time, had not quite recovered from the fright she received in 1905 and 1906, when, as you will remember, popular discontent with the government had assumed very serious proportions. “Bloody Sunday,” and the riots and strikes that followed it, were far in the past now, it is true, but they were still well remembered. And although most of the known revolutionary leaders had been disposed of in one way or another, there were still a few of them, as well as a large number of their followers, wandering in odd corners of Europe. These it was thought best to get rid of; and Russian agents promptly began ferreting them out. And Germany—always less unfriendly to the Romanoffs than has appeared on the surface—lent a helping hand.

So it happened that on a particular night in December of 1909, I sat in the Café de l’Europe, bitterly detesting the work I had in hand, yet inconsistently wishing that something would turn up. I had no idea at the moment of what I should do next. Chance rumor had led me to Geneva, and I was largely depending upon chance for further developments.

They came. I had been sitting for an hour I suppose, sipping vermouth and lazily regarding my neighbors, when the sound of a voice came to my ears. It was the voice of a man speaking French, with the soft accent of the Spaniard; the tone loud and unsteady and full of the boisterous emphasis of a man in his cups. But it was the words he spoke that commanded my attention.

“Our two comrades,” he was saying, “will soon arrive from the center in Buenos Ayres.”

“Yes,” another voice assented—a harsher voice, this, to whose owner French was obviously also a foreign tongue. “In the spring, we hope.”

The Spaniard laughed.

“An excellent business! So simple. Boom! And our dear Alfonso....”

Some element of caution must have come over him, for his voice sank so that I could no longer hear his words. But I had heard enough to make me assume a good deal.

Some one was to be assassinated! And that some one? It was a guess, of course, but the name and the accent of the speaker were more than enough to lead me to believe that the proposed victim must be King Alfonso of Spain.

I sat there, undecided for the moment. It was really no affair of mine. I was on another mission, and, after all, my theory was merely a supposition. On the other hand, the situation presented interesting possibilities—and as I happened to know, Alfonso’s seemingly pro-German leanings and made him an object of friendly interest at that time to my government.

I decided to look into the matter.

It had been difficult to keep from stealing a glance at my talkative neighbors but I restrained myself. I must not turn around and yet it was vitally necessary that I see their faces. All I could do was to hope that they would leave before I finished my vermouth; for I had no mind to risk my clear-headedness with more than the glass I had already had.

They did leave shortly afterward. As they passed my table I took care to study their faces, and my intention to keep them in sight was immensely strengthened. The Spaniard I did not know, but his companion I recognized as a Russian—and one of the very men I was after.

I had been in Geneva long enough to know where I could get information when I needed it. It was only a day or two, therefore, before I had in my hands sufficient facts to justify me in reporting the matter to my government.

Alfonso was in England at the time and presumably safe; for I had gathered that no attempt would be made upon his life until he returned to Spain. So I wrote to Berlin reporting what I had learned.

A telegram reached me next day. I was ordered to Brussels to communicate my information to the Spanish Minister there.

Mark that: I was ordered to Brussels, although there was a Spanish Minister in Switzerland. But my government knew that there were many factions in Spain, and it had strong reasons to believe that the Spanish Minister to Belgium was absolutely loyal to Alfonso. And in a situation such as this, one takes as few chances as possible.

I followed my instructions. The Spanish Minister thanked me. He was more than interested; and he begged me, since I had no other direct orders, to do him the personal favor of staying a few days longer in the Belgian capital. I did so, of course, and a day or so later received from my government instructions to hold myself at the Spaniard’s disposal for the time being.

That night, at the minister’s request, I met him and we discussed the matter fully. He wished me, he said, to undertake a more thorough investigation of the plot. I was already involved in it, and would be working less in the dark than another. Besides, he hinted, he could not very well employ an agent of his own government. Who knew how far the conspiracy extended?

I was not displeased to abandon my chase of the Russian revolutionaries, toward whom I felt some sympathy. So, as a preliminary step, I went up to Paris, where through the good offices of one Carlos de Silva—a young Brazilian free-thinker, who was there ostensibly as a student—I succeeded in gaining admission into one of the fighting organizations of radicals there. They were not so communicative as I could have wished, but by judicious pumping I soon learned that there was an organized conspiracy against the life of Alfonso, and that the details of the plot were in the hands of a committee in Geneva.

Geneva, then, was my objective point. But what to do if I went there? I knew very well that conspirators do not confide their plans to strangers. And I dared not be too inquisitive. Obviously the only course to follow was to employ an agent.

Now, Cherchez la femme is as excellent a principle to work on when you are choosing an accomplice, as it is when you are seeking the solution of a crime. I therefore proceeded to seek a lady—and found her in the person of a pretty little black-eyed “revolutionist,” who called herself Mira Descartes, and with whom I had already had some dealings.

It is here that accident crosses the trail again. For if a certain official of the Okrana had not been murdered in Moscow three years before, his daughter would never have conceived an intense hatred of all revolutionary movements and I should have been without her invaluable assistance in the adventure I am describing.

Mira Descartes! She was the kind of woman of whom people like to say that she would have made a great actress. Actress? I do not know. But she was an artist at dissembling. And she had beauty that turned the heads of more than the “Reds” upon whom she spied; and a genius for hatred: a cold hatred that cleared the brain and enabled her to give even her body to men she despised in order the better to betray them.

I was fortunate in securing her aid, I told myself; and I did not hesitate to use her services. (For in my profession, as must have been apparent to you, scrupulousness must be reserved for use “in one’s private capacity as a gentleman.”)

So Mlle. Descartes went to Geneva, and armed with my previously acquired information and her own charms, she contrived to get into the good graces of the committee there, and surprised me a week later by writing to Paris that she had already contracted a liaison with the Spaniard whom I had overheard speaking that night in the Café de l’Europe.

Soon I had full information about the entire plot. It was planned, I learned, to blow up King Alfonso with a bomb upon the day of his return to Madrid. The work was in the hands of two South Americans who were then in Geneva.

But far more important than this was the information which Mlle. Descartes had obtained that a high official of Spain—a member of the Cabinet—was cognizant of the plot and had kept silent about it.

Why, I asked myself, should this official—a man who surely had no sympathy with the aims of the revolutionists—lend his aid to them in this plot? The reason was not hard to discover. Alfonso’s position at the time was far from secure. His government was unpopular at home; and the pro-Teutonic leanings of many government officials had lost him the moral and political support of the English government and press—a fact of considerable importance.

So it seemed possible that Alfonso’s reign might not be of long duration. And the new government? It might be radical or conservative; pro-English or pro-German. A man with a career did well to keep on friendly terms with all factions. Thus, I fancied, the Cabinet Minister must have reasoned. At any rate he said nothing of the plot.

But I went to Brussels and reported all I had learned—and did not forget to mention the Cabinet Minister’s rumored share in the plot.

There my connection with the affair ceased. But not long after a little tragi-comedy occurred which was a direct result of my activities. Let me recall it to you.

On the evening of May 24, 1910, those of the people of Madrid who were in the neighborhood of that monument which had been raised in memory of the victims of the attempted assassination of Alfonso, four years before, were horrified by a tragedy which they witnessed.

There was a sudden commotion in the streets, an explosion, and the confused sound of a crowd in excitement.

What had happened? Rumor ran wild through the crowd. The King was expected home that day—he had been assassinated. There had been an attempted revolution. Nobody knew.

But the next day everybody knew. A bomb had burst opposite the monument—a bomb that had been intended for the King. One man had been killed; the man who carried the bomb. But the King had not arrived in Madrid that day after all.

The police set to work upon the case and presently identified the dead man as Jose Tasozelli, who recently arrived in Spain from Buenos Ayres. It was not certain whether he had any accomplices.

And while the police worked, the King, following a secret arrangement which had been made by the Spanish Minister at Belgium, and of which not even the Cabinet had been informed—arrived safely and quietly in Madrid; a day late, but alive.

What became of the Cabinet Minister? There are no autocracies now, and not even a King may prosecute without proof. So the Minister escaped for the time being. But it is interesting to remember that this same Minister was assassinated, not a great while after.

Now there are more ways of getting rid of a king than by blowing him up with dynamite. Foreign Offices are none too squeamish in their methods, but they do balk at assassination, even if the proposed victim is a particularly objectionable opponent of their plans. There is another method which, if it be correctly followed, is every bit as efficacious.... Again I must refer you to that excellent French proverb: Cherchez la femme.

It would be difficult to estimate properly the part that women have played in the game of foreign politics. As spies they are invaluable: for amourous men are always garrulous. But as Enslavers of Kings they are of even greater service to men who are interested in effecting a change of dynasty. Even the most loyal of subjects dislikes seeing his King made ridiculous; and in countries where the line is not too strictly drawn between the public exchequer and the private resources of the monarch, a discontented faction may see some connection between excessive taxes and the jewels that a demi-mondaine wears. Revolutions have occurred for less than that—as every Foreign Office knows.

I am not insinuating that all royal scandals are to be laid at the door of international politics. I merely suggest that, given a king who is to be made ridiculous in the eyes of his subjects, it is a simple matter for an interested government to see that he is introduced to a lady who will produce the desired effect. But no diplomat will admit this, of course. Not, that is, until after he has “retired.”

This brings me to the second act of my comedy.

If I were drawing a map of Europe—a diplomatic map, that is,—as it was in the years of 1908 to 1910, I should use only two colors, Germany should be, let us say, black; England red. But the black of Germany should extend over the surfaces of Austria, Italy and Turkey; while France and Russia should be crimson. The rest of the continent would be of various tints, ranging from a discordant combination of red and black, through a pinkish gray, to an innocuous and neutral white.

In the race to secure protective alliances against the inevitable conflict, both Germany and England were diligently attempting to color these indeterminate territories with their own particular hue. Not least important among the courted nations were Spain and Portugal. Both were traditionally English in sympathy; both had shown unmistaken signs, at least so far as the ruling classes were concerned, of transferring their friendship to Germany. It was inevitable, therefore, that these two countries should be the scene of a diplomatic conflict which, if not apparent to the outsider, was fought with the utmost bitterness by both sides.

Somehow, by good fortune rather than any other agency—Spain had managed to avoid a positive alliance with either nation. Alfonso was inclined to be pro-German at that time; but an adroit juggling of the factions in his kingdom had prevented him from using his influence to the advantage of Germany.

Portugal was in a different situation. Poorer in resources than her neighbor, and hampered by the necessity of keeping up a colonial empire which in size was second only to England’s, she had greater need of the protection of one of the Powers. Traditionally—and rightly from a standpoint of self-interest—that Power should have been England. There were but three obstacles to the continuance of the friendship that had existed since the Peninsular War—King Manuel, the Queen Mother and the Church.

Germany seemed all-powerful in the Peninsula in 1908. Alfonso’s friendship was secured, and the boy king of Portugal was completely under the thumb of a pro-German mother and a Church which, as between Germany and England, disliked Germany the less. England realized the situation and in approved diplomatic fashion set about regaining her ascendancy.

But diplomacy failed. At the end of two years Berlin was more strongly intrenched in Portugal than ever; and England knew that only heroic measures could save her from a serious diplomatic defeat.

Then Manuel did a foolish thing. He kept a diary.

It was a commonplace diary, as you will remember if you read the parts of it which were published some time after the revolution which dethroned its author. The outpourings of a very undistinguished young man—conceited, self-indulgent, petulant—it gained distinction only as the revelation of an unkingly person’s thoughts on himself in particular and women in multitudes. But there were portions of it—many of them never published—which expressed unmistakably Manuel’s anti-English feeling and his affection for Germany.

Somehow England came into possession of the diary.

Perhaps it was the diary’s revelation of Manuel’s extreme susceptibility to feminine charms, which suggested the next step. That I cannot tell. In any event, not long after the diary became a matter of diplomatic moment, Manuel paid a visit to England, ostensibly in search of a bride. His search was unsuccessful; but in London he met and promptly became infatuated with Mlle. Hedwig Navratil—better known as Gaby Deslys.

They chose well who selected the lovely Bohemian as the instrument of Manuel’s downfall. Young, charming, she had all the qualities which would appeal to Manuel’s nature. Added to that, it had been rumored that not long before King Alfonso had shown some interest in her—and Manuel was easily influenced by the example of his elders.

You remember the rest of the story. Manuel’s frequent visits to Paris, where Mlle. Gaby was playing; the jewels—bought, it was said, with money from the public treasury—which he showered upon her; these were the subjects of countless rumors at the time. Then came reports that the lady was domiciled in one of the royal palaces. Finally, in September of 1910, the scandalized and tax-ridden populace of Portugal, learned that Mlle. Deslys had been “billed” at the Apollo Theatre in Vienna as the “Mistress of the King of Portugal.”

On October 5th, this same scandalized and tax-ridden populace joined forces with the revolutionary party—and Manuel fled to England, where he attended numerous musical comedies and hoped against hope that the English Government would live up to that provision of the treaty of 1908 which pledged England to aid the Portuguese throne in the event of a revolution.

But England—remembering the diary—wisely forgot its pledge. And a Republican government in Portugal looked with suspicion upon the diplomatic advances of a nation which had been too friendly towards the exiled king—and became pro-English, as you know.

There ends my comedy. The lady in the case achieved a sudden international fame and eventually came to America, where, I believe, she attracted more interest than commendation. But at best, so far as we are concerned, she is of importance merely as an illustration of how diplomacy—or chance, if you prefer—combines politics and the woman for its own purposes.

But there is an amusing epilogue to the affair, which was not without its importance to the Wilhelmstrasse, and in which I had a small part. To tell it, I must pass over several months of work of one sort or another, until I come to the following winter—that of 1911.

I was on a real vacation this time and had selected Nice as an excellent place in which to spend a few idle but enlivening weeks. The choice was not a highly original one, but as it turned out, chance seemed to have had a hand in it after all. Almost the first person I met there was a man with whom I had been acquainted for several years, and who was destined to have his share in the events which followed.

People who have visited Europe many times can hardly have avoided seeing upon one occasion or another, a famous riding troupe who called themselves the “Bishops.” They were five in number—Old Bishop, his daughter and her husband, a man named Merrill, and two others—and their act, which was variously known as “An Afternoon on the Bois de Boulogne,” “An Afternoon in the Thiergarten,” etc. (depending upon the city in which they played), was a feature of many of the famous circuses of seven or eight years ago. At this time they were helping to pay their expenses through the winter, by playing in a small circus which was one of the current attractions of Nice.

I had bought horses from old Bishop in the past and knew him for a man of unusual shrewdness, who besides being the father of a charming and beautiful daughter, was in himself excellent company; and I was consequently pleased to run across him and his family at a time when all my friends seemed to be in some other quarter of the earth. We talked of horses together and it was suggested that I might care to inspect an Arab mare, a recent acquisition, of which the old man was immensely proud.

That evening I heard of the arrival in Nice of a young British diplomat, an undersecretary of one of the embassies, whom, I remembered I had once met at a hotel in Vienna. I called upon him the following day—but I did so, not so much to renew our old acquaintance, as because that very morning I had received a rambling letter from my chief, commenting upon the imminent arrival of the Englishman and suggesting that I might find him a pleasant companion during my stay on the Riviera.

More work, in other words. My chief did not waste time in encouraging purposeless friendships. As I read the letter, it was a hint that the Englishman had something which Berlin wanted and I was to get it.

It was not difficult to recall myself to the Undersecretary. We became friendly, and proceeded to “do” Nice together; and in the course of our excursions we became occasional visitors at the villa of Maharajah Holkar, who, with his secretary (and his seraglio) lived—and still lives, for all I know—at 56 Promenade des Anglais.

The Maharajah was at that time an engaging and eccentric old gentleman, who had been an uncompromising opponent of the English during his youth in India, and was now practically an exile, spending most of his time in planning futile conspiracies against the British Government, which he hated, and making friends with Englishmen toward whom he had no animosity whatever. He was especially well disposed toward my diplomatic friend, and the two spent many a riotous evening together over the chess board, at which the Maharajah was invariably successful.

Meanwhile I made various plans and cultivated the acquaintance of the Rajah’s secretary. He was a Bengali, who might well have stepped out of Kipling, so far as his manner went. In character the resemblance was not so close. I happened to know that he was paid a comfortable amount yearly by the British Government, to keep them informed of the Rajah’s movements; and I also happened to know that the German Government paid him a more comfortable amount for the privilege of deciding just what the British Government should learn. (I have often wondered whether he shared the proceeds with the Maharajah, and whether even he knew for whom he was really working.) The secretary, I decided, might be of use to me.

As it happened, it was the secretary who unwittingly suggested the method by which I finally gained my object. It was he who commented upon the diplomat’s intense interest in the Maharajah’s seraglio, giving me a clue to the character of the Englishman, which was of distinct service. And it was he who suggested one evening that the three of us—for the Maharajah was ill at the time—should attend a performance of the circus in which my friends, the Bishops, were playing.

You foresee the end, no doubt. The diplomat, with his too susceptible nature, was infatuated by Mlle. Bishop’s beauty and skill. He wished to meet her, and I, who obligingly confessed that I had had some transactions with her father, undertook to secure the lady’s permission to present him to her.

I did secure it, of course, although not without considerable opposition on the part of all three of the family; for circus people are very straight-laced. However, by severely straining my purse and my imagination, I convinced them that they would be doing both a friendly and a profitable act, by participating in the little drama that I had planned. Eventually they consented to aid me in discomfiting the diplomat, whom I represented as having in his possession some legal papers that really belonged to me, although I could not prove my claim to them.

You will pardon me if I pass over the events of the next few days, and plunge directly into a scene which occurred one night, about a week later, the very night in fact on which the Bishops were to close their engagement with the little circus in which they were playing. It was in the sitting-room of the diplomat’s suite at the hotel that the scene took place; dinner a deux was in progress—and the diplomat’s guest was Mlle. Bishop, who had indiscreetly accepted the Englishman’s invitation.

Came a knock at the door. Mademoiselle grew pale.

“My husband,” she exclaimed.

Mademoiselle was right. It was her husband who entered—very cold, very businesslike, and carrying a riding crop in his hand. He glanced at the man and woman in the room.

“I suspected something of the sort,” he said, in a quiet voice. “You are indiscreet, Madame. You do not conceal your infidelities with care.” He took a step toward her, put paused at an exclamation from the Englishman.

“Do not fear, Monsieur—” elaborate irony was in his voice as he addressed the diplomat—“I shall not harm you. It is with this—lady—only, that I am concerned. She has, it appears, an inadequate conception of her wifely duty. I must, therefore, give her a lesson.” As he spoke he tapped his boot suggestively with his riding whip.

“My only regret,” he continued politely, “is that I must detain you as a witness of a painful scene, and possibly cause a disturbance in your room.”

Again he turned toward his wife, who had sat watching him, with a terrified face. Now as he approached her she burst into tears, and ran to where the Englishman stood.

“He is going to beat me,” she sobbed. “Help me, for Heaven’s sake. Stop him. Give him—give him anything.”

But the Englishman did not need to be coached.

“Look here!” he cried suddenly, interposing himself between the husband and wife. “I’ll give you fifty pounds to get out of here quietly. Good God, man, you can’t do a thing like this, you know. It’s horrible. And you have no cause. I give you my word you have no cause.”

He was a pitiable mixture of shame and apprehension as he spoke. But Merrill looked at him calmly. He was quite unmoved and still polite when he replied:

“The word of a gentleman, I suppose. No, Monsieur, it is useless to try to bribe me. It is a great mistake, in fact. Almost—” he paused for a moment, as if he found it difficult to continue—“almost it makes me angry.”

He was silent for a space, but when he spoke again it was as if in response to an idea that had come to him.

“Yes,” he continued. “It does make me angry. Nevertheless, Monsieur, I shall accept your suggestion. Madame and I will leave quietly, and in return you shall give us—O, not money—but something that you value very much.”

He turned to his wife.

“Madame. You will go to Monsieur’s trunk, which is open in the corner, and remove every article so that I can see it.”

The Englishman started. For a moment it seemed as if he would attack Merrill, who was the smaller man, but fear of the noise held him back. Meantime, the woman was riffling the trunk, holding up each object for her husband’s inspection. The latter stood at the door, his eyes upon both of the others.

“We are not interested in Monsieur’s clothing,” he said calmly. “What else is there in the trunk? Nothing? The desk then. Only some papers? That is a pity. Let me have them, however—all of them. And you may give me the portfolio that lies on the bureau.”

As he took the packet, the rider turned to the diplomat, who stood as if paralyzed, in the corner of the room.

“I do not know what is in these papers, Monsieur, but I judge from your agitation that they are valuable. I shall take them from you as a warning—a warning to let married women alone in the future. Also I warn you not to try to bribe a man whom you have injured. You have made me very angry to-night by doing so.

“Above all,” he added, “I warn you not to complain to the police about this matter. This is not a pretty story to tell about a man in your position—and I prepared to tell it. Good night, Monsieur.”

He did not wait to hear the Englishman’s reply.

That night, while the two younger members of the Bishop family sped away on the train—to what place I do not know—and old Bishop expressed great mystification over their disappearance, I made a little bonfire in my grate of papers which had once been the property of the diplomat, and which I knew would be of no interest to my government. There were a few papers which I did not burn—a memorandum or two, and a bulky typewritten copy of Manuel’s diary, which I found amusing reading before I took it to Berlin.

I called upon my English friend the next day but I did not see him. He had been taken ill, and had been obliged to leave Nice immediately. No, it was impossible to say what the ailment was.

Ah, well, I thought, as I returned to my room, he would get over it. It was an embarrassing loss, but not a fatal one; and doubtless he could explain it satisfactorily at home.

I was sorry for him, I confess. But more than once that day I laughed as I thought of the scene of last night, as Mlle. Bishop had described it to me. An old game—but it had worked so easily.

But then, wasn’t it Solomon who complained about the lack of original material on this globe?

The Diary? I took it to Berlin, as I have said, where it was a matter of considerable interest. Subsequently it was published, after discreet editing.

But at that time I was engaged upon a matter of considerably more importance.