My position was a precarious one. Von Kahn had been seen with me in Dundee and obviously my business was to make myself scarce. It was half past eleven that night when I rode up to the cycle dealer’s in X——, and knocked at the door. The town was asleep and the street deserted, but the man had been expecting our return and was waiting up.
He looked surprised at my muddy appearance and more surprised at the absence of my companion. I apologized to him, and told him that my friend had been called away to London and had ridden down to a station on the main line. I think he was most surprised when I offered to buy the cycle I was using and also to buy that of von Kahn. I told him that I had taken a liking to the machine and that von Kahn had similarly expressed a wish to retain his. The price he fixed was a fairly moderate one—we had already paid a large deposit—and I concluded the bargain there and then.
I was anxious, of course, to finish this business of the motor-cycles in order that I should not set on foot independent inquiries as to their whereabouts, inquiries which would certainly have identified me with von Kahn.
Taking on a supply of petrol and trimming my lamp, I set out for Dundee, arriving at my hotel a little after four o’clock in the morning. After some difficulty I aroused the night porter, a sleepy old man whose name, I remembered, was Angus, and went to my room, packed my small valise and, awaiting my opportunity, stole out of the hotel, strapped my bag to the carrier of the bicycle, and rode through the drear, menacing streets of Dundee for the last time.
Twenty miles out of Dundee all trace of the mysterious person who had disappeared from his hotel leaving a £5 note to cover his bill and a polite request that his letters should be forwarded to the Majestic Hotel, London, vanished. A cool young Englishman joined an early morning train to Edinburgh at an intermediate station, and certainly that cool, young Englishman in his grey tweeds and his eye-glass bore no resemblance to the muddy cyclist in soiled overalls who had crossed the river at Perth and had excited the attention of a certain mounted constable.
That cool young Englishman, perfect in every detail, might have been seen leaving the Central Station at Glasgow that same afternoon not only accompanied by his valise but by a large portmanteau which he had taken from the cloak-room at the station and which with characteristic German foresight he had caused to be forwarded to Glasgow on the night he left London for Dundee.
I had communicated with London by telephone. Nothing had been heard of von Kahn, but the whole of my service in England was now on the qui vive. Posser, one of my assistants, was on his way to Glasgow to confer with me, and half a dozen agents in that town were busy investigating the mystery of the man on the hill.
I was sitting at dinner that night in one of the fashionable restaurants of Glasgow, a restaurant approached through a magnificent marble vestibule, searching the latest edition of the papers, hoping for two lines which would give me a clue to von Kahn’s fate, when a staring headline met my eye and I gasped.
“Swiss Forgers: Sensational Arrests at Glen Macintyre.
“The Sheriff’s Court at Stirling was crowded to-day when Emil Zimmwald, alias Brown, a Swiss, Louis Swart, Swiss, and Heinrich Kahn, also described as a Swiss, were remanded on a charge of forging Swiss bank notes. Inspector Macguire, of the Stirling Constabulary, stated that the prisoner Zimmwald, who called himself Brown, rented a cottage at Glen Macintyre, Swart posing as his valet. The two men were well-known international forgers, and had been engaged in printing a very large number of Swiss bank notes. The attention of the police had first been attracted to the house owing to the noise of working of the small printing machine which the prisoners used for their nefarious purpose. On raiding the premises the prisoner Kahn was discovered in a dazed condition. There had evidently been a quarrel and Kahn had been struck. The prisoner Zimmwald made a rambling statement to the effect that Kahn was a detective who had been sent to arrest him, but this highly improbable story will be investigated by the sheriff at a later sitting. The man Kahn resolutely refuses to make any statement at all.”
My poor von Kahn! Thou shalt go down in Scottish history as a confederate of forgers and shall spend many years in that grim penitentiary at Perth, pleading guilty to a crime abhorrent to thee, lest the confession of thy true crime lead thee to a firing party in the chilly dawn!
In America, where the German and Austro-Hungarian population is so much larger than in any other foreign country, the work of my department is split up into three sections. There is a naval, a military, and a commercial branch, each under an expert controlling and distinct organization which could, however, be co-ordinated in the event of war. In the United Kingdom there was no separation of interests, and the root organization, that which I controlled, covered, after the outbreak of the war, all three departments.
And let me say here for the information of my good friends who may perhaps imagine I am boasting, that when I describe myself as “controlling” the organization, I may inadvertently deceive. The exact position was that I had organized my department, dug the channels through which would flow the streams or rivulets of information; that I myself had been in the position of the central reservoir which collected and refined and transmitted the information so received. It does not necessarily mean that because I was the architect that I was necessarily the tenant of the fabric which I had created.
All the time in the first months of war there were great comings and goings. Men arrived from Germany, from America, from Switzerland, Sweden, and Holland, with forged passports, each charged with a distinct and separate mission. Lody, whose name you may have heard, came in the guise of a tourist agent, having certain definite discoveries to make and certain propaganda to forward. Other men came from America on similar missions. Some of these were gentlemen of the very highest character who were not associated with me in any way, but nevertheless sought me out in order to secure my assistance for the development of their plans. Of their adventures I know little. Whether they returned to Germany or not I am unable to say. Some got away and some were caught, but in what manner I never knew.
I was loath to believe, and, indeed, did not believe, that a Secret Service existed in Britain. There were, of course, detectives and plain clothes policemen, whose task it was to watch railway and steamship arrivals, but obviously it was impossible in the space of a few weeks to create such a bureau as exists in the Wilhelmstrasse, or that over which Captain von Treutchen presides with such distinguished success in the Admiralty Buildings.
In November, 1914, I received orders direct from Berlin—the first I had ever received—telling me that I must devote myself entirely to industrial propaganda. I was informed that the sum of £12,000 had been placed to my credit in the West London and Birmingham Bank, and I was told to make my headquarters at Manchester in the capacity of buyer for a well-known firm of Chilian importers with whom my chiefs had a working arrangement.
I arrived at Manchester late one misty afternoon and made my way to the best hotel, where rooms had been reserved for me.
I went to the desk and registered, and upon seeing my name the clerk informed me that two gentlemen were waiting for me in the palm court.
“I don’t know whether you want to see them, sir,” he said; “I think they are commercial travellers.”
“I will see them in my room, if you will be good enough to send them up,” said I, and five minutes later the “commercial travellers” were shown in to me and introduced themselves as representatives of the Incorporated Carolina Cottonfields Company.
“I am afraid I am rather tired to-night,” said I; “but as you seem in a hurry to do business I will compare your quotations.”
When the door had shut upon the waiter who had shown them in we got to business. One, of course, was my friend Posser, and the other was young Klein, one of those brilliant children of the Fatherland, who had been in the service of the department ever since he left Heidelberg.
“We are ordered to place ourselves at your disposal, Herr Heine,” said Klein, “and we have been here two days investigating the conditions.”
“Are they favourable?” I asked.
“Extremely so,” said Posser; “but you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself.”
We exchanged experiences, and half an hour later I rang the bell for the waiter and my visitors were shown out. After I had dined I left the hotel for the rendezvous I had made outside the post-office.
It was now raining heavily, and I would like to have taken a taxi, but Klein suggested that we should make our way on foot to our destination, which proved to be a very small hall in some unsavoury part of Manchester. It was a dilapidated building, the entrance door being flush with the street and had the appearance of being a mission hall dedicated to one of those dour and unhappy sects which find a virtue in the very dreariness of their environment.
Two nights a week it was used for religious services, but on the other nights it was let out to whosoever cared to hire the place. On this occasion some sort of Labour meeting seemed to be in progress and a small bill attached to an inner baize door leading to the hall itself announced an address by Mr. William Craigmair on “Labour and the War.”
The hall was sparsely filled and I do not suppose there were more than fifty people present when we walked in and took our seats. The man who was speaking was of the usual demagogic type, loud-mouthed, illogical, full of bitter jibes at Capitalism, which he said was the cause of the war and at the bottom of the whole European crisis.
Klein nudged me.
“Imagine this in Berlin!” he whispered.
I nodded. It was indeed pathetic, and only shows how wholly inefficient the English police service is that it allowed such men to be at large.
I sat through the tirade, a little bored if the truth be told, because this was to be the least interesting part of the evening.
After the meeting was over Klein told us to go out and wait for him, and presently he rejoined us accompanied by a man whom I recognized as the speaker, Mr. Craigmair. He introduced us as sympathizers with the cause of Labour, and I congratulated this gaunt Englishman upon his “wonderful rhetoric,” though worse balderdash I had never heard in my life.
The man’s harsh arrogance melted under this well-directed stream of Teutonic flattery and he became almost human in the glow of our admiration.
“I am much obliged to you, gents,” he said, grinning; “speakin’ impartially, I can say it wasn’t a bad speech for a self-taught man. Any Sunday afternoon you happen to be in Finsbury Park you will find me there addressing the proletariat.”
“Finsbury Park?” said I. “Do you come from London?”
“Yes,” said the man. “Our comrade here,” he nodded to Klein, “persuaded me to go round delivering a few addresses to the working classes. I’ve got a lot of friends in this part of the world,” he went on, “and you mustn’t judge me on the audience I got to-night. I am addressin’ the Junior Operatives’ League to-morrow and then you will see an audience if you like.”
I murmured my intention of being present, expressed my sympathy with the Labour movement, and invited him to meet me at lunch on the following day.
When we had parted Klein told me that he had first heard the man addressing meetings in London, either at Finsbury or in Hyde Park.
“He was such a fanatic, and he had, moreover, such a convincing way that I thought we might find him useful. I know you think what he says is nonsense,” Klein went on, addressing me; “but what is illogical to us is sound sense to the common workman. To-morrow’s meeting, for example, is of the greatest importance to us. The Junior Operatives have threatened to strike against the advice of their Trade Union, and as they have a working arrangement with the Carters’ Union, a strike would be of the utmost importance. Whilst I do not expect we can do very much in the early stage of the war to bring about a general stoppage of labour, we can embarrass the Government, and who knows how these little labour troubles may develop!”
I quite agreed with Klein, who is a psychologist of a very high order, in addition to being well born, his mother being a Frenheim-Hazebrucken, and her sister being married to Graf von Metzenheim, an illustrious gentleman with whom I once had the honour of taking wine.
Mr. Craigmair came to lunch the next day. In order not to excite attention I arranged with him to meet me at Lytham, and there we spoke frankly and freely. I told him how intensely interested we all were in the Labour movement, and I pointed out that this war might be brought to an end if some great leader arose from the people and seized his opportunity.
“For, Mr. Craigmair,” said I, “what is war but a negation of all law? Is it better that a few miserable capitalists and statesmen should be chagrined, or that thousands of human lives should be sacrificed in the red-hot pit of battle? Is it not better that these money-grabbers should be ruined than that innocent people who have no concern in the war and have no hatred towards any nation should be compelled to walk into the shambles like dumb beasts? If they tell you that it is not patriotic to attempt to stop a war, even though you may be acting contrary to the maddened sentiments of the majority of the people, you answer that there is no such thing as patriotism, that we owe our chief duty to humanity which knows no frontier and no language. For what is there more precious in the soil of England than in the soil of Germany or in France? Do they not equally produce wheat and sustain life? Has anyone a more precious value than another? Does one handful of red earth contain a magic quality which is not possessed equally by a handful of any other kind of earth? Patriotism is the shibboleth of the capitalist and the ambitious statesman, my friend, and he who opposes his will to that hateful creed is doing magnificent work for mankind.”
I spoke in this vein and I could see that Mr. Craigmair was impressed. He made little notes with the stub of a pencil upon what looked like a laundry-book, interrupting my remarks with uncouth sounds of admiration and approval.
I gave him £50, as a mark of my interest in his work.
“And on the day you bring the people out on strike I will give you another £50,” I said; “not because I am anxious to promote industrial discord, but because war is against my principles as a hateful and an unnecessary evil.”
I went back to my hotel feeling that I had done a good day’s work. I did not attend the meeting of the Junior Operatives, but I am told that it was very enthusiastic and that by an overwhelming majority the men and the women members had decided to strike, and had received a promise of support from the transport workers.
My interest in the Labour movement was momentarily diverted that same day by the receipt of a message from London—it was brought by courier on the afternoon train. The message was an important one, and had been received by radio direct from Potsdam, and had been decoded in London and transmitted to me for report.
News had reached Berlin that the firm of Pollygay & Moxon, a chemical firm on the outskirts of Manchester, were engaged in conducting secret experiments with a new bomb. The news had reached Berlin from a very reliable source. I believed that it had been mentioned after dinner at a well-known Bohemian club in London by an under-secretary in a certain Government department. He had spoken rather boastfully of “something” very deadly which the Government were experimenting with, and our agent, who was one of the party to whom this was told, discovered by a well-timed display of scepticism that the experiments were being conducted by Pollygay & Moxon, and had sent forward the information which, had I been in London, must have gone through me.
I put Klein on to the job immediately, and he called in the assistance of Craigmair, who apparently was in touch with workmen in most of the big factories, and fortunately numbered among his acquaintances a wretched German named Bluer, who was employed in the laboratories of the firm. As a matter of fact, we did not know of the existence of Bluer, a dour, taciturn man of the hateful socialistic type who had no patriotism, no love for his Fatherland, and was tainted with poisonous internationalism.[5]
This renegade, living in England, with excellent opportunity for serving the Fatherland, had never put himself into touch with the superior authorities, nor had he offered the slightest assistance to the officers of State, and it was only by accident that we discovered his existence. However, his internationalism served one good purpose. Though he might earn his livelihood by preparing deadly weapons for the destruction of his fellow-countrymen, he was in theory an opponent of war, and Mr. Craigmair, after a while, enlisted his sympathies and introduced him to Klein, who said he was an author engaged in writing a book painting war in its most horrible aspects. He also told him that he was compiling as long and as formidable a list of deadly weapons as he could secure.
“And when I have finished, my friend,” said Klein, “we shall have the most damning indictment of warfare that the world has ever seen.”
This interested Bluer and it was not long before he told of the secret experiments which had been conducted on the firm’s private range with the new hand grenade.
“I don’t know how it is made,” said Bluer, “because that is not in my department, and all the chemical experiments have been in the hands of the head chemist, but my brother-in-law is a night watchman and has the entry to the records office and I daresay I could give you a rough idea of what it is like.”
I was overjoyed to hear this news, the more so since I had received another, and even more urgent, message from Headquarters, telling me to spare no expense or pains to secure a specification.
I now come to the remarkable part of this narrative, one which I cannot tell without a little shudder. Bluer and his relative certainly made an attempt to locate the specifications and drawings. I will do this un-German Teuton (to whom Klein was eventually compelled to reveal something of his designs) the credit of saying that he tried his best—but for a week he and his relative were unsuccessful.
The manager was a gentleman named Tyson, or Tynson, a good-looking man of about twenty-eight. Naturally, I had set my people to work to find out all particulars about every member of the firm, and it was reported to me that Tyson had been frequently seen in the company of a very beautiful lady, named Miss Harrymore.
I put my own men on to discover something about Miss Harrymore, and found that she was a stranger to Manchester; that she had only arrived a month previous to my appearance on the scene; and that she occupied a small house which she had taken furnished in the most fashionable suburb of the Lancashire city.
She had come from London and almost immediately had made friends with the manager. This in itself was to me a most remarkable circumstance, because Manchester people are very suspicious, almost as distrustful as the Scotch, and I wondered what inducement there was to cause this young man to contract so sudden a friendship. They used to dine occasionally and they went to the theatre together once a week, but there was no evidence that the friendship was a very warm one. Miss Harrymore had been a dancer; but apparently had retired from the stage—at least that was the story which her maid told Posser, who investigated the matter.
I smoked many cigars over this friendship and formed certain conclusions, especially after I had learnt that on the nights Mr. Tyson was working late the lady had driven down to the factory in her car, had spent some little time in the manager’s office, and had driven that gentleman to supper.
I have already told you of my disbelief in the existence of a secret service in England, but I had modified that view after the experience of my poor friend Koos, who was brought to an untimely end through the artfulness of a chit of a girl.
Naturally I was suspicious of beautiful ladies who were on terms of furtive friendship with Government officials—and to all intents and purposes Tyson was a Government official—and I kept my eyes “skinned,” as they say in England.
The business of the bomb was worrying me more than I cared to confess to my assistants. A third message had come through from Berlin, even more urgent than the last, and one paragraph of that message considerably disturbed me.
It ran:
“Whilst we expect you to secure these plans we are leaving nothing to chance. We hope, however, that the credit for securing them will fall to you.”
I understood this significant passage. It meant that Berlin was sending independent agents to England to try their luck, and I was determined to justify myself in the eyes of the Fatherland.
I sent for Posser and Klein to come to my room and I outlined my views and gave my final instructions. Posser gave me encouraging news. He told me that Bluer had secured some information of the greatest importance. It appears that the Government had sent for a rough drawing of the bomb, and that one of the engineers was coming next night to make the drawing and a copy of the secret specification, and that the original was kept in a safe in the records office. The combination safe opened to the word “Track” and the specification would be found in No. 3 drawer, the lock of which could be picked.
So far, so good, but the situation was still desperate. It was as clear as daylight that my chief difficulty was going to be, not to circumvent the manager, but to get past the guard which the secret service had set up. It was then a struggle between Miss Harrymore and Heine. Very well! Heine picks up the gauntlet with a clear mind and a high confidence in his German genius.
Klein saw Bluer on the following afternoon and an unexpected difficulty arose. Bluer, if you please, had discovered a conscience! This renegade, this traitor to the Fatherland, this dirty Swabian refused to go any farther in the matter!
“The English have always treated me well,” he told Klein; “my children have been born in the country and I have friends here. I cannot help you any more, Herr Klein. I should not only be a traitor to the English, but a traitor to the Internationale, if I betrayed my employers. You have the combination word—I can do no more.”
“Are you a German?” asked Klein sternly.
“Ja!” replied Bluer, “but I’m not a fool.”
“If you refuse your help,” said Klein, who was by now filled with holy annoyance, “you are a traitor to your Kaiser and to your Fatherland. The curses of unborn generations of Germans will be upon you. Every German will shun you and spit upon your name, which shall be ‘accursed.’ ”
“Herr Klein,” said Bluer with emotion, “I think that anyway all the world will spit upon the name of a German after this war is over.”
Klein threatened and argued, pleaded and raved, but all to no purpose.
“I have told you where you will find the specifications,” said Bluer doggedly; “you have a plan of the factory—which is not guarded—and you know the way to the records room. In telling you this I have done more than I ought to have done. If you threaten me any more I will go for the police and tell them all I know.”
Ingrate! Rascal! Black swine of Würtemberg!
I paced my room cursing the villain, and Klein stood by in respectful silence as I “let off steam,” as the British say.
However, I soon mastered my rage and sat down to evolve a plan. We Germans can meet all contingencies and adapt our minds to any difficulty which may arise. I drew out the plan of the factory and soon Klein and I were deep in the discussion of the alternative scheme.
The factory was a straggling collection of buildings, enclosed on three sides by high walls and on the fourth by a canal, alongside of which ran a double-track railway siding. There were three gates and two small wickets, none of which were practical for our purpose, since there would be a night watchman at each, and, moreover, the records office was a fairly long distance from all. This squat building adjoined the main warehouse near the canal-siding and obviously it was from the canal that we must make our entrance. We had learnt that the wharf was patrolled by a watchman who had a little hut at the northern end of the quay, to which it was his habit to retire between eleven and twelve at night to make his coffee or tea, or whatever refreshment he favoured, and we decided that this should be the hour for our attempt.
Our plan was to paddle down the canal in a small collapsible canoe (an advertisement of which Klein had seen), wait our opportunity and land. With Klein’s equipment of keys and instruments we should have no difficulty in forcing an entrance, and the rest would be easy.
When we had agreed upon our scheme, Klein went off to Chester to purchase the boat, whilst I elaborated my plan for conveying the specifications to Germany.
I was working away at this all the afternoon, telephoning to certain garages, arranging routes and rendezvous, and reporting points, newspaper advertisement codes, etc., and had almost finished my organization work when the waiter brought me a card.
I took the paste-board from the salver and as I read the name I felt myself grow pale. It was—
Miss Angela Harrymore.
Yes, my friends, I confess it, in that second of time I experienced the gripping fear-panic which comes to such men as myself perhaps twice in a lifetime.
Prince Bismarck said: “We Germans fear God and nothing else,” but the Illustrious Highness was either a very religious man or he had never engaged himself in espionage work in an enemy country in the days of war; he had never looked into the cold and merciless eyes of a woman enemy; he had never confronted the possibilities of a grey dawn and a firing party…
“Show the lady up,” I said.
As soon as the waiter was gone, I took my Browning from my pocket, examined it and slipped its blank barrel under my left armpit, the butt concealed by the fold of my coat. Only thus can a danger-waiting man be sure that he has his pistol ready for use.
The door opened and I rose to meet the lady. She was, as far as I could judge, about twenty-six years of age. She was tall and willowy, and perfectly gowned in some blue stuff which admirably suited her fair complexion.
About her neck and shoulders was a Chinchilla wrap, which I valued at £250, and beneath the white kid gloves of one hand I saw the bulge of many rings. Her features were regular and aristocratic, her eyes blue and steadfast, her hair of pale gold. She was a type one meets as frequently in England as in Northern Germany or Denmark. In fine, the first impression I had was that she was of my own race, an impression helped very cleverly by her greeting.
“Good day, Herr Cannelli,” she said (Cannelli being the name I traded under), and she spoke in faultless German.
But, O gracious lady, Heine was on guard!
At all times, I think, I am clever and alert; at some times I may be a little too clever, but never am I caught napping.
I frowned, smiled, and shook my head.
“You are speaking German, are you not?” I asked in English. “I am afraid I do not speak that language.”
It was her turn to smile.
“Come, come!” she rallied me, “you are not going to pretend with me,” and she laid two slim fingers on her chin, the old sign—the pre-war sign—by which one recognized a member of the Admiralty Secret Service.
Aha! Gracious lady, thought I, would you try an old trick upon an old wolf! Do you not know that all the spy-revealing signs and make-knowing phrases had been changed on the outbreak of war? On me—on Heine—will you try these subterfuges!
“I do not speak your language, madam,” I said, shaking my head; “harla usted Espanol.”
I saw a shade of disappointment dim for a moment the brightness of her eyes, then she laughed.
“I don’t know why I thought you spoke German,” she said coolly and speaking in perfect English; “but somehow you reminded me of a man I once knew in New York—a gentleman called by his friends, ‘Heine.’ ”
She was watching me closely, but I never so much as blinked.
“I am indeed fortunate, madame, even to resemble one whom you have remembered,” I said; “but I have never been to New York except on one occasion, and then only for a few hours.”
“Then I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she smiled, and her smile was a radiance. “I saw you at dinner the other night and I was almost sure that you were the friend of other days who had sung ‘Es stehen unbeweglich.’ ”
I could have laughed! Again the old song and the old “code of recognition”—a code which had been changed for six months.
“My dear lady,” I said gently, “I have never sung in my life.”
She was baffled and showed signs of distress. She stood biting her lips and frowning into the fire until, recovering her self-possession, she smiled, shrugged her shoulders and offered me her hand.
“I am afraid you must think I am very stupid,” she said frankly, “but I could have sworn I knew you.”
I took her hand and conducted her to the corridor and to the lift, and summoned Posser.
Briefly I retailed all that had happened.
“There is no doubt about it at all,” said Posser; “she came to trap you. We must get out of Manchester to-night, and we must take with us the specifications.”
At eleven o’clock that night we slipped down the canal, Klein at the bow and myself at the stern.
Fortunately it was a dark night, with a thin fog, and we moved silently and unchallenged to our destination. Klein had made a very careful survey of the wharf and he guided the canoe to one of the big supporting piles up which ran a steel-runged ladder.
Klein made a reconnaissance. Looking along the wharf, we could see the little glass-windowed hut and the night-watchman standing before a small fire, evidently boiling his kettle. We tied the canoe to the ladder and moved noiselessly across the wharf.
The factory was in darkness, but we had no difficulty in discovering the records office, a small, dark building thrown out as an annex to the main machinery warehouse. To open the outer door was the work of a few seconds. We entered and closed the door behind us and found ourselves in a little wooden vestibule from which opened yet another door. To my surprise the inner door was not locked but still ajar.
Down the centre of the building ran a corridor and from this various doors led to offices. Our objective was the last on the left and quietly we crept forward and reached the door. I gently turned the handle in order to secure a grip and was inserting my skeleton key when I felt the door give. All my nerves were on edge. Things were going much too easy and I pulled my gun and slipped down the safety catch.
Now, as I pushed the door gently open I could have sworn I saw the faint reflection of a light, such a reflection as you would expect from the varnished matchboard-lining to the office, if some person had incautiously shown a light for a second. I hesitated on the threshold. The office was in darkness. There was no sound, no sign, and I thought that the light I saw must have been a reflection from one of the street lamps on the other side of the canal, until I remembered that the fog was quite thick enough to veil any of the outside lights. I stepped forward cautiously toward the safe, felt for and found the handle, and had replaced my pistol in my jacket pocket and was feeling for my electric lamp, when Klein whispered fiercely in my ear:
“There’s someone in the room!”
Almost as he spoke we heard a quick rustle and swish, and a figure dimly seen flashed across the room and through the door. At that moment I felt the safe-door swing back in my grasp, and I realized that we had come too late.
I was out of the office in a trice, flashed my lamp along the corridor, and caught just a glimpse of a woman’s figure as it disappeared through the door at the other end. She fled across the yard, we behind her, and disappeared in the gloom. There was no time to search for her. We had to consider ourselves. We scurried down the ladder and heard the hoarse challenge of the watchman. By this time we were in mid-stream and paddling furiously. It was too dangerous to keep to the canal, and at the first opportunity we found a landing place and reached a street, an ill-favoured, dingy slum, which suited our purpose very well.
Ten minutes rapid walking brought us to one of the main thoroughfares where we found a taxi-cab, and in the brief space of time between this discovery and our arrival at the hotel, I gave my instructions to Klein.
“She is evidently a member of the secret police,” I said, “and she got to know that we were after the specifications to-night and forestalled us. I think Manchester is a little too hot for you and me, Klein, and we will fade away.”
We dismissed the cab at the hotel and walked into the brightly-lighted vestibule, and came face to face with Miss Harrymore!
There was no doubt in my mind. There she stood, her face flushed with triumph. I could see the mud on her shoes, I recognized the fur-edged coat, and I realized my danger. She probably had a motor-boat waiting for her and had taken the short-cut back to the hotel in time to confront and denounce us.
In that moment all the latent genius of our race came to the surface. We Germans make our decisions quickly, boldly. With such rapidity did I act that I even surprised myself. Extending my forefinger I pointed at Miss Harrymore.
“This woman,” I said, “is a German spy. She has in her possession certain specifications and plans of a new and secret weapon.”
I said this in a loud voice and a quiet-looking man who had been sitting reading dropped his paper and springing up edged his way through the little crowd which had collected about us. I saw the girl go pale. I knew that she could not betray herself as a secret agent and that, found in possession of the plans, she would not be able to explain how she came by them.
The quiet-looking man moved to her side and caught her arm. “I am Inspector Lovell, of the Manchester Detective Department,” he said, “and on this gentleman’s accusation I shall take you to the Central Police Station.”
He told us to follow, and led Miss Harrymore out of the hotel. I gave a sign to Klein, and we followed, but not to the station.
Our big Mercédès was waiting round the corner and dawn found me in London, so changed in appearance that I doubt if the admirable Inspector Lovell would have recognized the man who had trapped Miss Harrymore.
So far this comedy goes and now comes the tragedy. I found in London, waiting for me, a code message from Berlin.
“Reference Polygay bomb. Fraulein von Liebmann of the Secret Service is in Manchester under the name of Miss Harrymore. She has love affair with manager and reports she can secure specifications. Assist her all you can. Instruct her in new code.”
It was signed by the High Chief of the Admiralty Intelligence. For an hour I was prostrate and then I coded my reply to Admiralty, Potsdam.
“In spite my efforts, Fraulein von Liebmann arrested in possession of specifications, which she carried against my wishes.”
I think it was an admirable explanation. As for the fraulein, it will be many years before she will be able to supply her personal narrative!
In February, 1915, there occurred an event which I cannot pretend did not give me a certain amount of satisfaction, tragic and ever-to-be regretted as that event proved. I had constantly urged both upon the naval and military Intelligence Departments in Berlin that the work in England should be left entirely in my hands, and that I should not be badgered or embarrassed by amateurs being sent to operate in my territory, independent of my control and very often without my being acquainted with their presence or purpose.
I have already shown how lamentable can be the results if the illustrious Excellencies who direct our operations (in a manner, I hasten to add, which reflects the greatest credit to themselves, and brings the greatest profit to the Fatherland) take the work out of the hands of the skilled and intimately-understanding officials who have made Great Britain a life-long study, who appreciate the psychology, and have an insight into the habits and customs of the people whom Paoli (and not Napoleon) described as “Sono Mercanti,” or “a nation of shopkeepers.”
For I pride myself that I understand not only British character but British institutions. I am deeply intimate with the political sects and with the system of British journalism, and although the affair of Mister Haynes may seem to dispose of this latter claim, yet I think my friends, for whom this memoir is designed, will agree that the circumstances in the case of Mister Haynes were unusual. The event I refer to was the arrest of Herr Blaumberg, who was sent from America without my knowledge to secure an accurate list—“accurate” mark you!—of the warships which the British were laying down, especially in reference to the super-X battleships which were destined to prove Mr. Churchill’s happiest experiment.
Herr Blaumberg had no sooner landed than he was arrested. I received an inquiry from Wilhelmstrasse which was the first information I had of Herr Blaumberg’s foolish attempt to meddle in matters which he obviously did not understand. The second intimation was the official notice in the English papers:
“This morning a man, tried and convicted of espionage at the Central Criminal Court, was executed in the Tower of London.”
This, I believe, was Herr Blaumberg, and in my note to my superiors I could not refrain from urging the unwisdom of entrusting delicate and important work to any but those tried and trusted officials, who were acquainted with every move of the game and able not only to circumvent, but to anticipate the action of the official police.
Of course, the people in Berlin very emphatically restated their old parrot cry that there was a formidable secret service in existence and they sent me a cock-and-bull story (as the British say), that Herr Blaumberg had been shadowed from the moment he left America to the moment he arrived in the Mersey; that all his documents had been scientifically burgled and the fullest particulars of his mission had been transmitted by wireless long before he had reached England.
Thus do incompetent bureaucrats excuse their own lack of foresight!
I was in London when the news came, firmly established in my rôle of Chilian importer, and so well did I play my part, that I had secured certain little Government orders and was even assisted by Government officials, all unknowing, you may be sure, to the pursuit of my investigations.
It was on the very day that I read this doleful news of Herr Blaumberg’s sad end, that I made the acquaintance of Mister Haynes. I saw him standing on the corner of Bouverie and Fleet Streets—a tall, young, unshaven man, wearing pince-nez, and a very shabby suit. With one quick, comprehensive glance I sized him up. The bundle of various coloured pencils and the fountain-pen in his left-hand waistcoat pocket, the absence of watch and chain, the hat carelessly balanced on the back of his head, the hands thrust into his trousers pockets, the drooping cigarette and the listless eyes, which watched the traffic passing up and down, told me as plainly as though his biography had been handed to me, all the history I wished to know.
His linen was not clean, his collar was two or three days old, his boots were down at heel.
With that decision which has always marked my actions I walked up to him with a smile.
“I think I have met you before, have I not?” I said.
He turned his head and looked at me from the crown of my hat to the soles of my boots.
“I daresay,” he said.
“Come and have a drink,” said I briskly, and he obeyed with alacrity.
We turned into the private bar of a public house, ordered our drinks and withdrew to a little round table and a couple of chairs in a corner of the saloon bar.
“I don’t remember your name,” said I, “but I know you are a newspaper man and if I remember rightly you have not had a great deal of luck lately?”
“You have a good memory,” he said, “and if mine was as good I could tell you your name, your age, the place of your birth and the state of your banking account, but, unfortunately, my memory is a little groggy.”
He lifted his drink with a shaking hand. I saw the whole story.
Here was what is commonly called in England, a “liner,” or a free-lance, a man not attached to any newspaper but contributing whatever stories, interviews or articles that come his way. They are not so common in Fleet Street as they used to be when I first came to London. The great news agencies have killed them. The new system of journalism has passed them by. But occasionally you meet a man with that hungry, hard-up look, with a grievance against the world, and a pretty taste in whisky-and-soda, and this was such a one.
Under the genial influence of a second drink he confirmed my diagnosis. He had a grievance against all the papers and admitted that he was on the black-list of three or four for sending in contributions which were not exactly true.
I asked him why he had not enlisted and his lips curved in a sneer. He said he was an Irishman, and that he hated England anyway, and that he hated the army more poisonously than he hated anything else. He hated the war, he hated the Northworths and a long string of other newspaper proprietors, but most of all he hated Fleet Street, its editors, sub-editors, reporters, advertisement managers; in fact, his hatred extended to the very newsboys on the streets.
This was the man for my money. I explained to him that in addition to being a Chilian importer I was running a Chinese news agency to collect and distribute news pertaining or of interest to Europeans in China, and when I told him that I was short of a reporter for news collection and offered him £6 a week, he nearly jumped into the air with delight.
In engaging him I was putting into practice a plan which I had long formed. Here was an opportunity for collecting news without arousing suspicion. A newspaper reporter can ask questions which none of my agents would dare to frame. He can go up and down the country without exciting suspicion, and the mere fact that he is a reporter, is sufficient to give him an entrée into circles, admission to which we could only risk at grave danger to ourselves. An ordinary reporter might have been valueless, but a man with a grievance, a man who was “broke to the wide,” to use Mister Haynes’s own expressive idiom, was especially valuable.
I took him down to the news agency office, and there he had tangible proof of the solidity and bonâ-fides of the agency. The two rooms in Fleet Street, which I had fitted up, were well furnished. The name of the agency was painted on the windows and on the glass panels of the office door, the files of the newspapers were carefully kept by the boy I employed. There were telephones and a “tape machine”—in fact, it was the most convincing environment that German forethought could design. I never saw a man so content as he was when I sat him down at a new desk within reach of the telephone, handed him a £5 note on account of expenses, and outlined the plan of inquiry.
“Do you speak any foreign language?” I asked.
He said he spoke French indifferently and German not at all, which was excellent news.
“My principals,” I explained, “are very anxious, of course, to receive news of the war. The London hospitals are filled with wounded, and I have no doubt that you would be able to obtain admission to the wards and collect the personal narratives of the men as they come home.”
“I get you, Steve,” he said. “You want stories of heroism in battle?”
“Exactly,” I said, “but don’t dwell so much upon the romantical side of the war. Encourage the men to speak not of their own battalions but of the gallant fellows who were fighting on their left and on their right. Find out what other regiments are in their divisions. Learn something about their officers. Who are the most popular and who are the most unpopular. What sort of men are their colonels. We want to see the war at a new angle,” I went on hurriedly, for he looked a little dubious and disappointed, “and we can only do that if we get off the beaten track. When you have written your matter you will hand it to me and I will embody it in my weekly letter to—er—China.”
From the very first my scheme was a success. Not a day passed but Mister Haynes brought into me precisely the information which Headquarters required.
You must understand that unless you take prisoners it is almost impossible to discover what is your enemy’s order of battle. Once you have discovered where certain divisions fit in and what places particular battalions take, you will no longer be in the dark in any subsequent actions in which those divisions take part. For instance, if the Wessex are on the right of the 99th Division and the Royal Hertfordshires are in the centre, and you know the positions of every other battalion, you have only to pick up one prisoner from one battalion at any point of the line to know exactly the disposition of the others.
And here is another matter. A soldier coming back wounded from the front will perhaps tell you that whilst his battalion stood the brunt of an offensive, the battalion on his left did not resist with the same resolution and he will probably give you the reason for this. It may be that the weak battalion has a weak commanding officer, or that the discipline is slack, and once our staff know this they also know where to thrust the arrowhead of subsequent attacks.
The information which was given to the Great General Staff by the indiscriminate publication of soldiers’ letters cannot be exaggerated, and I for one deeply regretted the decision of the English War Office to prohibit their publication.
Mister Haynes brought information of the first class, but nothing so enthralling as that which he brought one afternoon about three weeks after he had started working. I remember the occasion so well. I can see him almost as tangibly as though he stood before me leaning against the desk, his rusty hat on the back of his head, his hands as usual in his pockets.
“I got a queer story from one of those chaps at the London Hospital,” he said, “I don’t know whether I can use it.”
“What is it?” I asked carelessly.
“This man said that every night our front line near Bois Grenier is evacuated to save the men from the effect of the German shelling. As soon as it gets dark the whole line on a front of six miles is withdrawn to the support trenches, and he said he was wounded through being ordered back to the front line before the German’s artillery strafe had finished.”
“That is very interesting,” said I, “on a front of six miles you say?”
“That’s right,” he said, “from Bois Grenier down to Festubert. Do you think I had better use the story?”
“I think not,” I said shaking my head, “I don’t think it would be patriotic. Those horrid Germans might get hold of the information and use it to destroy our brave soldiers.”
“That is what I thought,” said Mister Haynes, though he did not seem very enthusiastic, and indeed, as he told me, his reluctance to impart the information had less to do with the safety of the soldiers than with his own. “I don’t want three months’ hard labour under the Defence of the Realm Act,” he said.
You may be sure that I was not very long in coding this news, though it was some time before I could get my telegram to Stockholm. Apparently the British Government were holding up all messages for forty-eight hours, but this did not worry me so long as it reached its destination eventually.
Naturally I received a reply in a much shorter space of time. In fact, Berlin acknowledged my message within twelve hours of its receipt.
You will remember that in the first week of February we Germans delivered a sudden and fierce attack upon the British front line positions between Festubert and Bois Grenier. Owing to some unhappy and unfortunate change of plan the front lines of the English position were filled with soldiers, but this was probably due to the carelessness of General von Klaus who had assembled his troops for the offensive in broad daylight under the eyes of the British airmen. Von Klaus himself denied this, but that is the theory which I have formed, because Mister Haynes afterwards told me that he had had his story confirmed from three independent sources, and gave me the names of his informants, and even showed me the photograph of one of them.
Klein, who was up on a brief visit to London—he was very busy in South Wales on propaganda work with his friend Mr. Craigmair—was anxious that I should send Mister Haynes to the West of England where certain experiments were being made with a new kind of armoured car. He had attempted to get into the camp, which was guarded as carefully as any prison, and had narrowly escaped being arrested.
It is a well-known fact that long before the famous Tank—that atrocious and unfair weapon which the English used, contrary to the laws of the Hague Convention—came upon the scene, secret experiments were being made. Potsdam had heard of these, and I had received instructions to prosecute my investigations with the greatest vigour.
Naturally rumours were rife, and there were many mares’ nests before, by a lucky chance, our good Klein heard of this experimental camp. I had no difficulty in concocting a story for Mister Haynes. My suggestion was that he should write an article on the marvellous mechanical contrivances which the genius of Britain had brought into being and I despatched him, with Klein, hot upon the scent to investigate and report.
They left by the night train from Paddington and I saw them off. Klein was very decorous, the picture of an English gentleman in his check cap and his long travelling coat, his neat-gloved hands and his English magazine, and Mister Haynes, as untidy as ever, curled up in the corner of the carriage and, I should imagine, asleep before he left the station.
What happened was told me by Klein on the telephone. It was a happening so disconcerting, so mysterious, that I must confess that I regarded the unlooked-for outcome of this adventure with more than ordinary disquietude, even had there not been the more terrible sequel.
They reached their destination, a small West Country town, in the early hours of the morning and went to their hotel where they were joined by Posser, who was working with Klein, and who, deeply conscious of the importance of finding out details of this particular machine, had been spending that day in making judicious inquiries.
They had breakfasted together the next morning, when, of course, no mention was made of the camp or the new armoured car, Klein introducing Posser as his secretary. I might explain that Klein was posing as a Swedish mining engineer who had a patent for sale connected with coal haulage. I had sent Mister Haynes on the same train and in company with Klein, on the pretext that, as Mr. Klein was a friend and was going to the same town, they might travel together and that Mr. Klein might possibly give my reporter certain introductions which would be useful.
Mister Haynes spoke about his mission quite openly, though Klein advised him, laughingly, not to mention his business if he wanted to secure the information he required. Apparently Mister Haynes met with little success, and came back to the hotel to dinner and said that all his efforts to induce any of the soldiers attached to the camp to give him information or to secure admission had been fruitless.
Klein was not greatly perturbed. In fact, he was very much elated because Posser had told him secretly that he intended making his way into the camp that night in the guise of one of the waiters at the officers’ mess. They all ostensibly went to bed soon after ten o’clock. Mister Haynes went to his room and Klein went to his, though not to sleep. He made himself comfortable and took up a book and began reading. Presently he heard a scraping on his door, and smiled, for it was the agreed-on signal that Posser was stealing out into the night to secure his information.
The house was wrapt in sleep at eleven o’clock, and Klein read on.
At one o’clock he heard a tap on the door. His room was next to Mister Haynes, and thinking that Posser could not have returned at so early an hour and that it was Haynes who was knocking, he opened the door. And to his amazement and delight, for he saw success shining on his comrade’s honest face, he admitted Posser.
“I’ve got it!” whispered our good Posser.
“Wait,” said Klein, in the same tone, and kicking off his slippers he went into the corridor, softly opened Haynes’s door and listened. He heard the regular breathing of the reporter, closed the door as softly and came back.
“Now tell me,” he said quickly.
Posser explained how he had walked boldly into the camp in the darkness, and how he had reached the shed, crawling through the sentries, and had seen “the most remarkable machine that the war has produced.”
“It is a triumph, my dear Klein,” he said, his eyes shining, “I have in my head,” he tapped the good, broad German forehead, “the whole construction of this engine. In twelve hours I will give you a drawing and notes which——”
“Hush, hush,” said Klein, for in his natural excitement, Posser’s voice had risen.
“Here is the rough idea.” Posser rapidly sketched a now familiar shape briefly, outlined with rough squares and oblongs the position of the engine and the guns.
“I will keep this,” said Klein. “You must get to work at once, my dear fellow, and give us a more detailed drawing. But first we will drink mutual congratulations.”
Klein got out a bottle of champagne, pulled out the cork, and these two fine fellows, true and loyal sons of the Fatherland, drank in a whisper to the destruction of civilization’s enemy—England!
Klein accompanied Posser to his room. They pulled down the blinds before they switched on the light. Quickly the drawing pads, the rulers, the T-squares and the compasses were taken out of Posser’s suit-case and arrayed on the table.
“Now I will leave you,” said Klein, shook hands heartily with the hero of that night’s adventure and left the room, as he said, without a sound.
He had scarcely got into his own room and shut the door when he heard the click of the lock on Posser’s door and smiled his approval. It was at a quarter to two when he went to bed and at half-past seven the maid brought him a cup of coffee and some biscuits. He drank his coffee and rose, slipped into his dressing-gown and went over to Posser’s room anxious to know what was the result of the night’s work. He tapped at the door. There was no answer. He tapped again. There was still no answer. He tried the handle, remembering at the same time that Herr Posser had locked the door. He was a little surprised to find that the door yielded.
The room was in semi-darkness, the blinds were still drawn and he walked to the window and let the blinds up with a crash.
What he saw, or rather what he did not see, struck him with amazement. The bed had not been slept in. All the drawing material had been cleared. Posser’s trunks were still in the position where he had left them, but there was no sign of Posser.
He went back to his room and rang the bell. The night porter was summoned, but neither he nor any of the servants had seen Posser, who from that moment vanished from the earth as completely as though the ground had opened and swallowed him, and not only vanished but had taken with him whatever drawings he had made.
In his perturbation Klein went to the room of Mister Haynes, who was still in bed and sleeping soundly.
“Get up!” said Klein testily; “have you seen Mr.——my secretary?”
Mister Haynes sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“What’s the time?” he asked.
“Confound it,” said Klein angrily, “what does it matter what the time is? Have you seen my friend?”
“Why should I have seen your friend?” growled Haynes. “What has happened to him?”
“He has disappeared,” said Klein.
“Gone out for a walk, I expect; it is a beautiful morning.”
“On the contrary, it is raining and blowing,” said Klein angrily; “why should he go out on a morning like this?”
Haynes rose and dressed himself leisurely, spending an unconscionable time in the bathroom for a man whom I never suspected of washing, and turned up at breakfast, wholly unconcerned in his callous English fashion as to what had happened to poor Posser.
Klein, who was all nerves, could eat nothing. He had questioned everybody in the hotel, but nobody had heard a sound in the night and the night-porter supplemented his previous statement, declaring that it was impossible for Posser to leave the house except with his knowledge.
Klein was not satisfied and made an examination of the outside of the hotel, hoping to pick up some trace of his comrade.
Outside Posser’s window he made a discovery. A line of bushes grew within a foot of the house-wall, and beneath Posser’s window these had been broken as though by some heavy body having jumped or fallen upon them. Moreover, he discovered a small pair of dividers which he recognized as Posser’s.
Pursuing his investigations beyond the grounds of the hotel, he came upon the track of motor-car wheels which he followed to the outskirts of the town where he made another discovery. The road here was undergoing repair and owing to the wetness of the morning the night watchman was still on duty, not having been relieved as usually is the case at the hour when the men started work.
This old man Klein questioned.
“Yes,” said the watchman, “I saw a motor-car. It was an ambulance with green lights. It went past here a little after one this morning and came back a little after two. It stopped very near the hotel, because I could see its tail lights and I saw it turn round.”
Klein went back to the hotel with his nerves shaken and his usually well-ordered mind in a condition of chaos.
“I am going back to town by the ten o’clock train,” he told Mister Haynes. “I suppose you will be staying?”
“No,” said Mister Haynes with another yawn. “I shall go back, too. There is nothing to be got out of this place.”
And so, much to the disgust of Klein, who in his state of mind would have preferred to have been alone, they went back together.
They had to change at Basingstoke, and there finding that he would have half an hour to wait, Klein crossed to the nearest hotel and got me on the ’phone.
It was in this way that he related to me as far as he could with safety the extraordinary happenings of the previous night.
“It is inexplicable, my dear Heine,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “I am bewildered, stunned.”
I no less was agitated.
“Did he not communicate anything to you?” I asked.
“Yes, thank our good Gott!” said Klein’s voice; “he gave me a rough sketch which may be sufficient. Whatever has happened to him the good fellow’s work is not fruitless.”
Then suddenly his voice sank and he spoke hurriedly.
“I cannot say more,” he said, “that infernal reporter of yours is outside the box. Does he understand Spanish?”
“He understands no language except bad French,” I replied, and heard the click of the telephone receiver being hung up.
So distressed and puzzled was I that I went down to the station to meet my friend.
I walked along the platform as the train came to a slow standstill, and the first person I met was Mister Haynes, looking more untidy than ever.
“Where is my friend?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Haynes, yawning; “he went over to the hotel to telephone to somebody at Basingstoke and left before I did. In fact, I had to run to catch the train,” he explained. “He is here somewhere.”
But there was no Klein. If he had been left behind he would have telephoned me. I made inquiries of the guard.
“A gentleman in a check cap and a long ulster?” said that official. “Yes, I remember him. He got on to the train at Basingstoke, first-class passenger, wasn’t he? I particularly noticed he was in a carriage by himself and was reading. This is the carriage,” he said, pulling the door open, “here is his magazine.”
On the rack above was Klein’s suit-case. It was evident that it had been rifled because the collars and night-shirt, brushes and combs, were all mixed together in confusion.
I stared at Haynes and Haynes looked at me.
“How extraordinary!” said Mister Haynes.
It was not until that night that Klein’s body was recovered, lying in a ditch by the side of the railway, shot through the heart, with every pocket turned inside out, and yet, curiously enough, with all his money, his watch and the rings left intact.
Of the rough drawing which he had promised to deliver me there was no sign. Close at hand was his revolver with one chamber discharged.
Mister Haynes was in the office when the news came. He had been out all the afternoon and had, he said, met with an accident, for his arm was bandaged and in a sling. I was so upset by my anxiety over Klein that I had barely noticed Mister Haynes’s injury, but now I looked at him narrowly.
“What is the nature of your injury?” I asked.
He laughed.
“Mr. Cannelli,” he said, “I don’t know very much about you. You may be a very honest man, the tool of very dishonest men.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It may be,” he went on, without taking any notice of my question, “that you are being duped and that it is only coincidence that you have friends who pursue extraordinary inquiries. All the records we have of you,” my heart gave a throb and I could feel my hands trembling, “all the records we have of you,” he repeated, “seem to be in good order. I will give you two pieces of advice. The first is to be careful in your choice of acquaintances. The second is to refrain from allowing your very natural anxieties to lead you into further inquiries as to the fate of Mr. Adolph Klein, alias Simpson, and if I would add a third,” he said, looking out of the window and speaking in his slow drawl, “it is to advise your friends in communicating with you to avoid both the telephone and the Spanish language. Good afternoon.”
He picked up his hat and went out, the picture of a broken-down journalist, and I did not see him again until one day in Whitehall I passed an officer, wearing the badge of the Intelligence Department, who smiled and waved his hand to me. It was my reporter.
It is an axiom of mine that news has no value unless it is based upon somebody’s misfortune. Take your newspaper and scan its close-set columns. Is there any item in these many pages which does not derive its importance from a calamity which has overtaken somebody?
Your police courts, your divorce courts, your war—they yield interest in ratio to the misfortune of one party or the other. Our great victory is your great defeat, the liberation by the Divorce Court of this woman is the exposure of that, startling crimes attract only by the measure of the anguish they impose. In war, when neither army is destroying the other we vote the news dull, and so I think would you describe the faithful record of my commonplace days when all went as smoothly and as evenly as the routine of a well-organized business.
And, after all, the spy’s work is more often than not the most dull and boring of work. One of my men spent eight weeks in timber yards, checking the supplies of box-wood and keeping track of its destination. When a certain noble lord in charge of a great national factory bought up all the box-wood, we knew by the extent of his purchases that the work which was being done in his well-guarded factory was shell-filling on a vast scale.
Here then was a form of “espionage” without adventure, humdrum, soul-destroying and to all appearance unprofitable. There is no material for narrative here, good friends. There is nothing of the bizarre, nothing of the flash, the sparkle, and the thrill of the work. Therefore, I do not offend you with the banal trivialities of my profession, otherwise I might present what was little more than a catalogue of appointments. As for example:
March 3rd.
10 o’clock.—Saw Hefferich and took report of spare ties and sleepers held by G.W. & C. Ry.
10.15.—Phone message from Stael to say that there was a case of bubonic plague reported at Gravesend (East India liner Ratapore.)
10.20.—Phone from Casey re proscribed meeting at Connemara.
10.30.—Phone weather report from Aberdeen.
10.33.—Phone weather report from Llandudno.
10.35.—Weather report from Southsea.
10.38.—Saw van Heerden re butter shipments for February.
and so and so forth. Yes, I was a weather bureau, and daily transmitted the barometer reading to Germany—useful information for our air service.
Many informative isobars would have been absent from the German meteorological charts but for the industry and organization of Heine! I have my critics and my enemies. Particularly do I single out amongst the latter, Trade-Councillor Karl Wesselsmanns, of Hamburg, on the staff of Vorwarts, who had the impertinence to write in his crude language and un-German spirit that “the work of the Secret Service in England was distinguished by bungling and stupidity. Whoever was in control of that work seemed to spend his time getting Germans into trouble and produced very few satisfactory results that are worthy of notice.”
It is true that I did not blow up munition works. It is true that I did not sink battleships like the heroic Weddigen, and that I did not drop bombs on the Houses of Parliament. That was not my duty. That that duty was ably performed I can prove by documents in my possession, notably one from the illustrious and High Admiral von Tirpitz, signed by his own hand, and I also adduce the statement of that saviour of Germany, the excellent and illustrious Prussian Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who on one occasion mentioned me by name, as I can prove, and stated that for all he knew I might be one of the most useful men in the German service. All these things have been said to me and I only repeat them in self-defence. I do not boast. We Germans never indulge in frivolous talk nor do we use sport-terms. Otherwise I would say that these attacks by the gutter scourings of Altonia were not bally cricket, to use an English expression. I admit there have been lamentable errors, and possibly in the course of these memoirs I shall have to admit others by which interfering and unofficially appointed amateurs have fallen a prey to their own arrogant ill-informedness.
As for me I can look the whole world in the face and say humbly that with no thanks for reward, and no hope of gain, facing an ignominious death from hour to hour, I have served the Fatherland. It does not matter to me whether I receive the Order of the Red Eagle, as I have been half-promised, or whether I do not. I feel my superiors must make some acknowledgment of my whole-hearted services on an inadequate and miserably insufficient salary.