And if you dare to suggest, as this ink-slinging rascal on the Vorwarts has done, that I have made large sums of money out of the expenses which the empire allow me for propaganda work, I fling the accusation in your teeth. I admit I am well off, but that is due to my private speculations on the Stock Exchange in the year 1914.[6] But to return to my work and to an adventure which was, to say the least, out of the ordinary.
In the summer of 1915, I received a request from Berlin which somewhat surprised me. I was instructed to send to Holland as many good maps of London as I could buy, and I was told also to prepare one special map, marking the areas the street-lamps of which had been darkened. This was followed (or it may have come in the same dispatch, I forget) by a request that I should instruct my men to discover how it was that the British Government knew we contemplated an air-raid on London.
I myself wondered what information the British Government had secured, and how they had secured it. For months the streets had been lit as gaily as in pre-war days. The theatre signs glowed and flashed, the West End streets were bathed in radiance, and then, almost as by a touch of the magician’s wand, London “went dark.” Street lamps were shaded, the light signs outside the theatres were extinguished, and it was almost impossible to pick your way through the streets.
I suppose my excellent friend, the High-Born Baron von Hertz-Missenger, would have said, “English Secret Service.” He reminds me of a character in Charles Dickens, the great English poet, who invariably thought that his head was the head of King Charles II!
The explanation I offered was, that some of our too impetuous airmen must have betrayed the fact by shouting with haughty insolence to the English airmen they met in the air. As this has never been denied, it is probably true. At any rate I set myself to work upon a map. It was a long business, and very unsatisfactory, because the whole of London was dark, and no place was more light than another. This I reported, forwarding the maps by special courier.
And then I received a request from our Headquarters that I should arrange light-signals which should be seen by Zeppelins. The idea was to post three lights so that they formed a triangle, one near Albany Park, one near Maidstone Road, and a third in the east, near Shepherd’s Junction. The triangle thus made would contain all the valuable city area which it was our Zeppelins’ intention to utterly destroy.
Of the first raid in September, it is not necessary for me to tell. Of how the cowardly Englishmen trembled beneath the midnight hail of bombs, you have read.
I myself did not witness the raid, because, on receiving information in the afternoon, Zeppelins were due, I had left London for Cornwall. Since it was impossible for the brave fellows who piloted our good Zeppelins to distinguish between a patriot and a hateful enemy, I thought that in the interest of the Fatherland, it was necessary that I should be as far away as possible when the dread visitation came.
I returned to London the next morning and arrived at eleven o’clock. O what consternation there was. O what vile language these unkultured Londoners used, what epithets, what adjectives, the A’s, and B’s, and C’s, and D’s, they called us—but of that anon!
I was in some anxiety before my journey’s end was reached as to whether I should have to walk a part of the journey, and I was greatly relieved on questioning the conductor to learn that Paddington Station had escaped the holocaust. When I arrived at Paddington everything was going on as usual. To my amazement buses were running and cabs were plying for hire.
“Where was the raid?” I asked.
“In the East End and the City,” was the reply.
So, I thought, my triangle had proved efficacious, and calling a cab, I said:
“Will you please drive me to the ruined area?”
The poor, ignorant fellow thought at first that it was the name of a public-house, and I had to enlighten him.
“Where the bombs struck,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he said, brightening up, “I will ask a policeman where they fell.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” I inquired, “that you don’t know? Perhaps you haven’t been to the City?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in the true boorish cabman spirit. “I’ve been to the City three times, but I ain’t seen no place where the bombs fell.”
This of course was “eye-wash.” For my part I had removed all my archives from my office, and as that was on the edge of the City, I drove there first and was pleased to find that my office had not been touched. I drove up Ludgate Hill and apparently everything was as usual, and it was not until we had driven farther on and had penetrated a side street that I saw the wreckage of a house. It was pleasing and yet disappointing. A number of windows had been smashed, one house was in ruins and there was a big hole in a court-yard, but the damage was such as might have been caused by an explosion of gas.
It took me a long time before I found the second place where a bomb had fallen, and here again the results were not as I expected. I spent the whole of that day wandering about looking for devastation. I went east and south, and north, and although I saw some damaged houses, the results of our gallant Zeppelins’ visit left much to be desired.
Returning to my office I was called on the ’phone and a code message was sent through to me. As I expected, it was from Berlin asking for full particulars of the damage done, and very faithfully I described what I had seen, coded it and passed it on to the proper quarters.
To my wrath and humiliation, the next evening brought a peremptory demand from Berlin. It had been sent by radio, picked up off the coast by a little steamer flying the flag of——, and was brought to me from an East Coast port by one of the couriers we employed for that purpose.
The message was, as I say, peremptory, and there were tears in my eyes, tears of sorrow and injury as I read it.
“Cannot understand your message. Our pilots report Westminster Abbey was bombed. Whole streets of the City are in flames, Houses of Parliament partly destroyed, also London Bridge and Tower of London. Several ships in docks hit and sunk. Please personally investigate and report.”
Of course there was a chance that these cunning English had, by means of scene painters and workmen labouring through the night, removed all sign of the destruction, but I walked over London Bridge without any difficulty, and as far as I could see the Tower of London was uninjured.
I reported the same, and three days later, had this message back:
“Be on south side of Three Mile Wood, north-north-east Saffron Walden, at eleven o’clock on the night of October 7th.”
I could not understand this message, and my new assistant, who had arrived from America, Herr Wilhelm Peters, was as much puzzled as I.
However, on the 7th of October, I journeyed to Saffron Walden, which is a little town in Essex, and by studying a map I discovered that Three Mile Wood was inaccurately named because it was about seven miles from the town. I decided to walk, and arrived in the neighbourhood of the wood at about ten o’clock at night. Having ascertained by consulting my compass which was the south side, I made my way across fields and muddy ditches to a big meadow which was exactly placed to the south of the sparsely-wooded little forest.
It was a clear night with a thin ground haze and was rather cold. I had brought one of those walking-sticks, the top of which forms a seat, and this I found very comfortable; for the inner man I had a flask of brandy and some liver sandwiches, and I settled myself down to my vigil, wondering what on earth had induced Headquarters to send me upon this wild adventure.
Then suddenly my heart began beating at a tremendous rate as I divined the reason! It was intended this night for our airships to reach London, and they desired that I should be a witness. What folly! What folly! What incomparable insanity to risk the life of a high Officer of Intelligence, to place him in such horrible jeopardy.
I felt myself grow pale, but then with an effort I braced up. I was a German! We Germans fear God and nothing else, and, besides, I thought there might not be an air-raid after all.
But what satisfaction I got out of that thought was quickly dissipated. Suddenly an ominous sound came to me. A double “boom!” far away and to the east, was followed by three staccato explosions. Another bomb fell, and suddenly the whole of the eastern sky was illuminated by the tracing fingers of searchlights.
“Boom!” the sound was growing nearer and my mouth was dry. I felt choking. I loosened my collar and wiped the sweat from my forehead and stood up, my knees trembling.
I have thought the matter over since and I have come to the conclusion that my agitation might be explained in this way, that I was trembling with pride in the fearless exploits of our gallant airmen, those intrepid messengers of death who sailed the midnight skies fearless of foe; that I perspired because the liver sandwich was perhaps a little too highly flavoured. Anyway, the cursed things were coming closer and who knows what mistakes a blundering fool of a pilot might make. The searchlights were suddenly extinguished, the guns were silent, and for ten minutes I heard no sound save a faint but ever-growing-nearer hum of an engine in the sky. Then there was a shrieking whistle, a crash that seemed to shake the very earth, a blinding fan of flame and then silence. In my rage I shook my fist at the sky.
“Stupid jackasses, miserable, bat-eyed swine-hound!” I cried. “Have you not the highest instructions in your pockets to avoid bombing an Intelligence Officer?”
The cursed thing passed overhead. It was roaring like a railway train passing through a tunnel. I saw the bulk of it outlined against the stars and then I saw something else, a little black dot that moved and swayed against the sky.
I thought it might be some infernal machine and I nearly fainted.
Understand that my chief thought was of Germany. I had no fear for myself. I was merely a cog in the wheel of the great machine and stood ready at all hours and all days to sacrifice myself for our dear Deutschland.
Fortunately, there was a fallen tree in my neighbourhood, and under this I crept, looking out from time to time to see what had happened to the strange thing in the air. Then I heard a thud, a rustle, and an oath, and I jumped up, bruising the back of my head against the tree-trunk, and ran toward the sound, for that oath was in good German.
“Whars dar?” called a sharp voice.
“It is I, Heine,” I replied.
“Oh, good,” said the voice in German. “You are on the spot, I see. Help free me from this doubly rotten parachute.”
I made my way to him and helped unbuckle some of the straps that fastened him, and presently he was free.
“Have you got a pocket lamp?” he asked. “No, perhaps you had better not use it. Where can I put the parachute?”
I suggested the tree under which I had been—I won’t say hiding, let me rather say taking cover.
“Have you a car?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“You are an ass,” said he; “why haven’t you a car?”
I knew by the imperiousness of his tone that he was a true German gentleman, probably highly born and connected by many social ties with an old family of Prussia.
“I am the Baron von Treutzer,” he said, as though answering my thoughts, “and I have been sent here to survey the damage that was done in the last raid.”
“Your Excellency will discover that I have spoken nothing but the truth,” I said humbly.
The sound of the Zeppelin’s engines, which had diminished, was now increasing in volume.
“Is the airship returning?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said testily.
He took from his pocket a small electric lamp and flashed it three times in the air and immediately after three tiny sparks of light showed in the sky.
“They won’t be dropping any more bombs, Herr Baron?” I asked carelessly.
“Good heavens! What does it matter if they do?” he boomed—he was a booming kind of man, born to command, typical of our virile aristocracy which has placed Germany in the forefront of world-nations.
“I only asked,” I said. “I am a mere observer.”
“We only dropped a few bombs,” he said, “just to explain our presence. The real business of our visit is here.” I heard him slap his chest in the darkness.
“I did not know where the raid was intended,” I said, “or I would have arranged for a leader.”
“A leader?” he asked. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Evidently Herr Baron is not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” I said humbly, “or he would know that the Zeppelins are ‘led’ to their destination by motor-cars with strong head-lamps.”
“Of course I am not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” he said in deep disgust, “I am a Royal Lieutenant of the 31st Regiment of the Prussian Guard.”
“Does your Excellency intend staying here very long?” I asked, as we trudged along the country road.
“For a week,” he replied, “after that I return——”
“By——?”
“That is my business,” he replied, “if a Zeppelin can bring me here, a Zeppelin can take me away.”
Though I had never heard of parachutes that go up, I know all things are possible owing to the inventive genius of our nation, so I questioned him no further. Outside Saffron Walden we stopped whilst I went to the hotel to collect the handbag which I had left there.
Needless to say the people in the hotel were in that condition of cowardly funk which our Zeppelin always inspires. The children were crying because they had not seen the airship, and again I heard in the common bar of the hotel those terrible words which my modesty would only allow me to designate by using certain letters of the alphabet.
I rejoined the Baron and we made our way to the railway station, which was in darkness. Fortunately the train which came in was also darkened and remained that way until we reached London and I was able to bring the Baron to my flat without observation.
He was a tall, handsome gentleman, dressed in civilian clothes of a noble cut and rich texture, and over a glass of whisky he graciously unbent and told me that he had come to England by this curious method to discover the extent of the damage, not only of the first raid, but of a raid which was projected and by which it was hoped to lay London entirely in ruins.
“On what day will that occur?” I asked.
“You will be notified in due time. It may be to-morrow, and it may be the next day,” he replied.
“I only asked,” I said carelessly, “because it is necessary for me to see one of my agents in North Devon one day this week, and I should not like to miss the raid.”
“You will stay here until I go. That is an order. Why are you looking so pale?”
“It is the pressure of work, your Excellency,” I replied. “I am afraid I have rather taxed my strength. My doctor suggested that I ought to go away at once to Cornwall or perhaps Scotland.”
“We hope to bomb Scotland,” said the Baron thoughtfully. “It would not be a bad idea if you were there.”
“When I said Scotland,” I said hastily, “I should have said that my doctor suggested I should go to Scotland in the spring. This of course is the very worst weather. Are you likely to bomb Wales?”
“We cannot reach there. It is beyond our reach,” said the Baron.
“I only ask,” I said, “because he also suggested that I should go there.”
“When the raids are over you can go to the devil. I only want your assistance while they are on.”
“Did you say raids or raid?” I asked.
“There may be two,” he replied callously.
The next morning he expressed his intention of going through the City and the East End to photograph the worst of the damage. I did not offer to accompany him, and indeed, had he suggested that I should do so, I should have firmly declined. Fortunately, he knew London very well, for he had been an attaché at the German Embassy a few years before the war broke out, so he had no need of my assistance or guidance.
He left the flat at eleven o’clock and I arranged to meet him at a restaurant in Piccadilly for lunch. I need hardly say that he was armed with a passport; not only very completely filled in, but endorsed with an exact imitation of the rubber stamps which were used in those days by examining officers at Folkestone when passengers landed.
I was waiting for him at one o’clock, but he did not arrive. Half-past one came, a quarter to two, two o’clock, and I began to feel seriously alarmed, and was thinking what an excellent text his arrest would provide for a letter to Potsdam on the futility of sending amateurs, when he came through the swing doors. He uttered no word till we were sitting at the table, and the waiter had served the soup.
“These English people are very clever,” he said at last.
“In a way they are clever,” I said, “but by the side of the German——”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Our German people are merely slavish imitators of everybody else in the world. If Germany was not a nation of slaves we should never have an army.”
This put an end to the easy flow of conversation, but presently I ventured to ask:
“Why does your Excellency think the English are clever?”
“I am referring to the way they have cleared up the mess we made and have run up new buildings.”
He looked up at me curiously as he spoke.
“Don’t you agree?”
“Naturally,” I said heartily, “I have reason to believe that hundreds of thousands of workmen have been working day and night to restore the damage.”
He laughed.
“In addition to being a fool, you are a liar,” he said, and I could only smile at the good humour and buoyant frankness of this high-born officer who was in all probability in the entourage of the All-Highest himself and, at any rate, as I have since learnt, had frequently dined with that exalted Prince whom we call the Hope of Germany.
“No,” Baron von Treutzer went on, “the Zeppelin did little or no damage. It caused nothing of the smash that we expected it would. We will see what to-night’s raid brings out.”
“To-night?” I said, half-rising from my seat.
“Did I say to-night?” he said in an off-hand way. “Well, whenever it happens.”
But I knew that in a moment of incaution he had spoken the truth.
“By the way, I shall want you with me to-night,” he said.
“To-night?” I repeated. “I am very sorry but this is the one night I cannot be with your Excellency. I have an important messenger coming from Ireland with particulars of a rising, and the Foreign Office has particularly asked me——”
“I shall want you to-night,” repeated the Herr Baron, “and you will meet me at ten o’clock, let us say, in St. Paul’s Churchyard.”
“Himmel! Herr Baron!” I exploded, “that would be in the very centre of the raid!”
“Did I ever say that it would not?” he asked coldly, “of course it will be in the centre of the raid. You understand, at ten o’clock. The War Office require a detailed account by eye-witnesses of the damage which is done.”
“But my messenger arrives at Fishguard to-night,” I said with a tremor in my voice. “Forgive me if I am agitated, Herr Baron, but I realize the terrible importance, the absolute necessity, of meeting that boat.”
“At ten o’clock you will be in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” said the Baron.
How I loathed and hated this tyrant. We Germans are naturally lovers of freedom. We despise the sycophant and the toady. Tyranny to us is a pestilential disease to be stamped out with an iron heel. Woe to those who endeavour to enslave the German, for they are biting on granite!
I told the Baron that I would meet him at the appointed time.
“Don’t come before ten,” he said. “We will remain until the raid is over.”
I lifted my hat and bowed as I parted from him in Piccadilly, and I prayed, most fervently, that the earth would open and swallow this pig, whose abominable manners and low attitude to men not so well born as himself (though of that I am not sure, for there were many stories about my mother’s friendship for the Graf von Maldesee, which I sometimes reflect upon with a certain amount of satisfaction) aroused in me the deepest scorn.
I could eat no dinner that night, I could do no work that afternoon. I sat in my office until a quarter to ten, suffering, I think, from a touch of malaria and ague which I contracted in America.
I arrived in St. Paul’s Churchyard, dark and gloomy and silent, on the stroke of ten. I had arranged to meet the Baron at the corner of one of the lanes which slope down to Upper Thames Street, and here I took my station.
At quarter-past ten he had not arrived. At twenty minutes past ten a hundred searchlights flashed into the sky and the first gun-shot woke the sleeping city.
The Zeppelin was coming straight to the City, but was west of where I stood. I heard the thud of its bombs and the devil’s chorus of the guns. I saw the skies speckled with shrapnel bursts, but much of what happened in that brief space of time between its appearance and its disappearance is blotted from my memory.
I could only stand crouched in a friendly doorway, my hands before my eyes, thinking of my dear friends, and particularly of a certain girl in Chicago with whom I had exchanged photographs, of my dear home, my little brothers, in fact all my life passed before me. I dare not go out to look for the Herr Baron. How I envied him, that hardened man of war to whom this terrible concatenation of sound was as the gentle zephyrs; who could stand unmoved and watch with his stern military eye the destruction that was going on about him, uncaring, unafraid, contemptuous of danger, seeking only the information he required for his superiors!
In that moment I almost loved the man, even though I hated to meet him lest he mistook my ague for a more ignoble emotion, but presently I plucked up courage and went out to look for him. He was not at the corner of the lane nor was he on that pavement at all. I made a circuit of the Cathedral without meeting him and then I realized that the Zeppelins had not been near St. Paul’s but had passed westward. Naturally he would have been informed at the last moment and would have been on a spot where they would pass.
I did not attempt to join the throngs that gathered about the places where the bombs had fallen, but made my way homeward. At one o’clock he had not returned; two, three, and four passed. I still listened and then the horror of the possibility seized me. This gallant man had perhaps paid for his temerity with his life and I bought an early morning paper as soon as one was procurable and searched in vain for some indication of his fate. Such a man could not be stricken down without attracting attention, but there was no reference whatever to such a one as he. In a fever of anxiety I paced my room. I called up my various agents but they could give me no information and I had almost abandoned hope when, at half-past eleven, the Baron came, debonair and calm into my office.
“You had a good view,” were the first words he said.
“Oh, Herr Baron,” I said. I grasped his hand and shook it (a most presumptuous thing to do); “I am so glad to see you back! If you missed me, I was on the spot.”
“I didn’t miss you,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“I was at Fishguard, meeting your man but apparently without success, for he did not come.”
“You were at Fishguard?” I gasped.
“Naturally,” he said, “you don’t suppose I am such a silly fool that I am going to stand under a bomb to see it burst, do you?”
Such a man was this mean-souled dog, von Treutzer!
Thank heaven! He disappeared in a week. He may have been picked up by a descending Zeppelin. He may have been taken off by a near-approaching submarine. I have had no news, but if I hear he got back to Germany alive, I, Heine, will be sorry.
By what strange fate, you may ask, did I, Heine, the chief of the Intelligence Bureau in England, escape the detection which was the fate of Koos, of Klein, of Posser and in a degree of von Kahn? Had I not been associated with them? Had I not been identified with them? It is possible that there would have been little reason to ask this question, but I had been seen with Koos. The British Intelligence Department knew that I was associated with Posser and Klein. I had been seen in circumstances which, I am willing to admit, were suspicious, in Manchester, and yet I, the head and brain of the organization might walk at liberty and none question me as to my comings and goings!
I had this matter thoroughly thrashed out with myself in the seclusion of my room, for we Germans harbour no illusions. We have that gift of introspection, of self-weighing, which gift no other nation can claim with truth. We see the black side and the bright side. We see our own faults, few though they are, our own national shortcomings, such as modesty, sentimentality, and transparent honesty, and we are able to balance delicately the pros and the cons, even though in so doing we disparage in thought our own acts and thoughts. And after a night of self-communion I came to this conclusion:
It is true that I had been seen in association with my unfortunate friends, but then so had other men who were beyond any suspicion. It was abundantly clear to me that I had escaped any unpleasantness as a result of the thoroughness of my organization, my foresight, and the well-devised methods I had adopted for covering my tracks. You might come into my office any day and demand that my books should be seen. You might go to my bank and look at my account. You might examine all the records of my trading and find nothing there to support the suggestion that I was not carrying on a legitimate business.
I had not been very well after the unhappy ending of Klein and the disappearance of poor Posser. Who knows in what prison camp he languishes, far from the sound of Hameln’s bells—he was a Hanoverian, related to the well-born Graf von Welsich-Heidebrand—or with what anguished tears he dreams of his beloved Fatherland? But enough of sentiment! We Germans are a practical people, so practical that we have aroused the envy and hatred of the whole world.
I think it must have been my association with the spurious journalist, Haynes, that not only awoke a certain uneasiness in my breast, and shook my confidence in my judgment as to the existence of a British secret service, but it also showed me a way to dispel any suspicion which I might have created in the bosom of the police, and also to advertize my innocence to the great public. I began systematically to write letters to the newspapers.
You may remember my long letter in the Evening Post on the necessity for limiting the supplies to neutrals. You may recall the letter which was given due prominence in the Post Telegraph on the urgent necessity for a South American Federation to show a united front against German “cruelties”—I felt a foul traitor to Deutschtum when I wrote this!—you may have clipped from numerous papers, both in London and in the provinces, innumerable epistles, signed Francisco Cannelli, on the heroism of France, on the splendour of Belgium, on the necessity for learning Spanish, so that the good English could come into South America and take away the wicked German’s trade, and you would certainly have found my name against respectable amounts in the subscription lists which were opened by various newspapers in the early days of the war.
It was a scheme of colossal daring and how well I succeeded! No less than seven newspapers published my photograph. I was interviewed for the Times-Herald. I was referred to in other letters to the editor, and my frankness and geniality were praised in the highest measure. For, in the course of these letters, I admitted frankly that, quite unwittingly—because of my foreign origin—I had been acquainted with many notorious spies in England and I even suggested methods by which the spy could be traced and brought to justice (this was in one of the four letters I wrote on “The Unseen Hand”). I took up “The Unseen Hand” idea with enthusiasm. It was a popular cry and who was I, that I should not take advantage of the onrushing wave and ride to popularity upon its crest?
To the everlasting honour of the illustrious and excellent chiefs of my Department in Berlin, they recognized the object of my scheme, and I could show you now, if the codes had not been destroyed, messages of congratulation couched in the most gracious terms and signed by names which indicated personages of the most exalted character.
There was living in England (in Kent to be exact) at this time, the Baron von Hertz-Missenger, who was what was termed a naturalized German, and as I have remarked on many occasions (and have been complimented on my delicate wit) a naturalized German is a German in his natural state.
The Herr Baron had a beautiful house and was in a position to secure news both from the Fatherland and from certain exclusive circles in London. From that high flag-staff of his, many a message has leapt into the night and been caught by our vigilant radio operators at Wilhelmshaven. From that closed study, with its rows upon rows of books, its gorgeous Persian carpets and its shaded lamps, many a British secret has been coded into a few meaningless words.
The Herr Baron and I were good friends, though we seldom met. I think he was pleased with me because I never forgot the homage which is due to the greatly-born, and he was certainly popular with me because he had the ear of Potsdam and the All-Highest Confidence of He Whose Name we will not mention. My reputation as a writer of letters had been firmly established when I received a note asking me to meet the Baron at a certain hotel in a South Coast watering place. Precisely on the day, at the hour and to the minute of my appointment, I presented myself in the private suite of his Excellency, who always received me with the most gracious condescension.
“Heine,” he said, when he had closed the door, “I am very troubled about you.”
“About me, your Excellency,” I said in surprise.
“Yes, about you,” he repeated. “It is clear to me that you are suspect. I have heard all about the things which have happened in the past, and knowing the British Secret Service as I do, I cannot imagine that you have, as the Americans say, got away with it.”
“Secret service, your Excellency?” I smiled; “surely you do not believe in a widely organized——?”
“Don’t be a fool, Heine,” said the Herr Baron sharply; even to be called a fool by a man of his position and rank is a compliment, implying as it does a friendliness and an intimacy which few of us attain with our superiors. “Of course there is a Secret Police. The whole country is overrun with them. It is the most deadly Secret Police in the world, with the exception of the American, because it doesn’t boast and it doesn’t talk. Its very silence is its strength.”
For my part, though I was not feeling strong, I was silent. One cannot argue the point with an amateur, even a distinguished amateur, and whilst I was always willing to admit that the police of England were undoubtedly brilliant and extraordinarily lucky, I could not admit the existence of an organization on the scale which the Herr Baron outlined.
“You don’t believe this,” he said quickly, and before I could protest my faith in anything he said, he went on: “I tell you, that this hotel is filled with English spies. They probably saw you come into this room, and it is fairly certain they followed you from London and will go back with you. That is why I asked you in my telegram to come down and have a friendly argument on the question of trade after the war, as outlined in your letter to the Post Herald. That telegram was read and re-read before it reached you. Have no doubt of that, Heine. Here in England they know I am a German. They hope I am loyal. They do not trust me any more than they trust you.”
“But surely, Herr Baron,” I smiled, “this does not mean that your Excellency will not be able to serve the Fatherland in moments of emergency?”
He shook his head.
“If by that you mean wireless, my answer is no,” he said, “my wireless apparatus is dust and ashes. I have burnt it and destroyed every single code. I have one more piece of work to do for Deutschland and if I succeed, or if somebody else succeeds, I am finished, and leave well alone. I cannot advise you to do the same, because it is your business to take risks just as it is my business not to take risks. Now I have called you down partly to warn you, and partly to give you certain information. Whether you act on that information or not is also your business. You have heard of Lord Leatham?”
I nodded.
“He has an estate in Shropshire. He is not a rich man, and some years he used to let his estate to a tenant. He is a friend of a friend of mine and I have learnt that it is the intention of the Government to take over his property as a prison camp for German officers. Now, it may be necessary—this is merely a conjecture, and I am only looking ahead—to communicate with gentlemen who will be in that camp. Leatham Priory is a very old house,” he spoke slowly and impressively, “at one time it was in the possession of a persecuted Catholic family, and there is a legend that beneath the grounds runs a secret subterranean passage. That it was something more than a legend Lord Leatham discovered twenty years ago, for a portion of this tunnel was unearthed, but it seemed to lead to nowhere. What his Lordship does not know, is that that tunnel is virtually intact and that the passage which was discovered was not the real one but was merely a branch which was never completed and which was intended to lead to the crypt of the village church. Remember that this is all I can tell you. I know no more, and I merely pass on the information to you for what it is worth.”
I went back to London that night, a little puzzled as to why the good Baron had brought me all the way to Brighton to give me information of this kind. It was not a certainty that any well-placed person would be accommodated on Lord Leatham’s property, and it was less certain that I could be of any assistance to such a prisoner, unless I was prepared to take down a gang of workmen (which was obviously impossible) to open up the hidden passage.
The whole scheme was impracticable and I could only put it down as an excess of zeal for the Fatherland on the part of his Excellency.
At parting the Baron had given me a little plan showing the direction of the tunnel, the entrance of which he said would be found in a tiny ravine through which flowed a small river, and had also advised me to look up particulars of Leatham Priory.
The first discovery I made when I began my investigations was that Leatham Priory was not in Shropshire at all. It was in fact in Buckinghamshire, midway between Maidenhead and the small town of Beaconsfield. It was a remarkable mistake for the good Baron who, as a sporting man, was well acquainted with England, to have made, or rather it would have been remarkable, but for my knowledge of our German characteristics. Naturally his Excellency was as vague as possible. It was not his business to take risks, and if it should ever come out that he had told me of Leatham Priory, or if he had been overheard, how could anyone believe that this sport-racer, who had dined and slept in almost all the country houses in England, could make so great a mistake as to place Lord Leatham’s estate in Shropshire, when it was in Buckinghamshire?
Oh, yes, Heine was alert and wide-awake!
I sent a good friend down into Buckingham (or Bucks as they call it) to discover what was happening and he brought back the news that Lord Leatham’s house, the Priory, was being extensively decorated and refurnished.
Now, I know that the English, because of their fear of Germany, treat German officer prisoners with the greatest kindness, but I could not believe, in view of certain outcries in the public press to which I contributed my share, that they would spend large sums of money to furnish magnificently a country house for Germans, and I saw that even as the Herr Baron had been inaccurate in one particular, so was it likely that he had been wilfully “misinformed” in another.
I bided my time, for I knew that the significance of the Baron’s communication would be revealed. In the meanwhile, I myself had paid a visit to the ground and had discovered, not without a great deal of difficulty, the end of the subterranean passage. It needed some furtive digging, for the end had fallen in and was entirely covered up, before I could make sure that I had discovered the entrance.
The day, or rather the very early morning, I wriggled through the débris and found myself in a small paved tunnel, smelling terribly musty, was the day on which I understood the purport of the Baron’s communication. On that day the papers announced that there was to be a great War Council in London. There had arrived military representatives of all the Powers, and I, standing in Whitehall, had seen these officers enter the War Office, where they remained for two or three hours, when they were escorted by British officers to Downing Street, where again they remained some time.
At half-past four in the afternoon six great motor-cars drew up in Whitehall and the members of the Council entered the cars and were driven off. From the end of Downing Street I saw they turned into St. James’s Park and, hiring a taxi, I followed, giving the driver instruction to keep the cars in sight as long as he could. They passed through the park, up St. James’s Street, and I thought they were going to their hotel, but instead of this they went straight along Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, where they turned into the park. Realizing that I could not follow with my taxi, I put my head out of the window and ordered my driver to go up Park Lane. At the Marble Arch I picked them up again. They passed along the Bayswater Road and in a flash their destination was revealed to me. It was in order to entertain this Council that Lord Leatham’s house had been decorated! It was here that the real conference was to be held!
It was a breathless, tremendous problem which the Herr Baron had set me, but I am not a man easily baffled. There is something in our German nature which rises superior to difficulties and which enables us to meet the most tremendous problems in a calm spirit of transcendent perception.
I flew back to my office as fast as the taxi could carry me, and for an hour my telephone was busy. Understand that whatever risk I ran was more than justified. For there were men in that Council whose names were household words, whose faces were familiar even to the child of the cottager; there were names to conjure with, reputations and records that would have dazzled and frightened a man of a smaller calibre than myself.
By twelve o’clock that night two desperate and well-armed men were exploring the tunnel. They were men who were prepared at the call of the Fatherland to lay down their lives, yea, even on an enemy’s soil.
I was not one of them.
I was sorely tempted to go, but common prudence dictated that the brain of the movement should be far removed from the scene of danger.
Apparently the party met with no opposition and traversed the tunnel which had collapsed in places until they reached the ruins of a flight of circular stone stairs, which led up to a sort of shaft and terminated abruptly at a circular stone flag.
In preparation for such an emergency they had brought collapsible ladders and one of our friends mounted to the top. He could hear footsteps above him, and I judge that he was in the old baronial banqueting hall which is celebrated throughout England as the most perfect type of Norman architecture extant in the country. Its stone-flagged floor, its vaulted roof, its grim stone fire-place, its great mullion windows, have been so often described in guide-books that it is not necessary for me to attempt to rival our good friend Karl Baedeker.
But every attempt which was made to raise the flagged trap-door, which undoubtedly existed, was frustrated. I employed in this task one Hermann Swartz, or, to give him his English name, Herbert Black, a very skilled member of my staff who was also, curiously enough, a stone mason. Finding their efforts unavailing, the party made their way back to London and reported to me.
“I can tell you this, Herr Heine,” said Swartz, with that profound earnestness which is the charm of the German working man who has no peer in the world, “that if you let me bring my tools I will guarantee to open that trap to-night, but I feel in this that I cannot assume responsibility unless I am directed by a superior officer, and I suggest that you should come with us.”
“My dear good Swartz,” said I testily, “why should I go with you? You must understand that it is very necessary that I should not be identified with any such enterprise as this, that I am the brains of a great movement and that upon my safety depends, perhaps, the ever-to-be desired security of the Fatherland.”
Whereupon Swartz (and I regret to have to report this, and have already notified Berlin of the occurrence) refused to go except under my leadership.
Having made a most exhaustive inquiry of all the circumstances, and having discovered that there was very little danger of my detection, I agreed, and at three o’clock in the morning, behold me crawling stealthily through a square hole in the banqueting hall of Leatham Priory. One dim electric light burned in the roof, giving the gaunt apartment an air of size and mystery. Save along the centre, it was uncarpeted. The smouldering ashes of a fire still burnt in the big grate and from somewhere a great clock ticked solemnly. The room was almost innocent of furniture. There was a long, an interminably long table set upon the parallelogram of carpet and against this were pushed about twenty chairs. There were three or four suits of armour, two big pieces of tapestry covering the principal walls, a black oak buffet or sideboard, half a dozen easy-chairs about the fire-place and, so far as I could see, nothing else.
There were four doors leading from the room, two at each end, and I gathered that those flanking the sideboard would lead to the kitchens and servants’ apartments, and that the two doors facing them, which were beautifully carved, and one of which was half hidden by a portière, would lead to the wing in which Lord Leatham and his guests were asleep.
I had pulled on felt slippers over my boots and made my quiet way to the door which was covered by the portière. My objective you may easily guess. These high nobilities who were visiting Lord Leatham were members of a Conference, that Conference would be held possibly in one of the great saloons and the portfolios containing the notes of the meeting would be found in the high-born lord’s study or office.
I proceeded very stealthily, because I knew that in view of the presence of such important people, watchers and sentries would be placed about the house, and in this I was not mistaken, for looking through one of the long windows—there were half a dozen in the hall—I could see two policemen walking slowly along a path which ran parallel with the house.
The only danger was that they would also post watchers inside the house. As a matter of fact, there were two, but these men were posted on the next floor, one at each end of a passage leading to the apartments where the distinguished guests were sleeping. The study I found after a tiresome search. It was situated in an annex and reached by another passage which ran at right angles to the main corridor.
The door was fastened by a patent lock which, however, presented no difficulties to Heinrich Falkenburg, one of my assistants, whose services I am pleased to acknowledge. I made a very careful examination of the door with my pocket-lamp and there appeared to be no wires and no alarm signal.
You may wonder how I came to distinguish the study from the other rooms. I will tell you. It was the only room that was locked. I opened the door cautiously and listened for the sound of a bell. We stood for nearly five minutes before we ventured into the room, and when we did, we were rewarded. There was only one window and across that heavy purple velvet curtains had been drawn. There was a large library-table in the middle on which were several ash-trays filled with cigar ash. There was no need for me to make this discovery, for the room was heavy with the scent of cigar smoke and cedar wood.
So, thought I, the excellent plenipotentiaries have met here and not in the saloon. I looked about and found some scraps of paper in the waste-paper basket. Some were covered with figures, a few were just fantastically scrawled designs such as men make when their minds are occupied and their hands are idle. There were one or two blue books relating to food supply, but nothing of any great moment, though I very carefully pocketed all the written matter.
The search was necessarily slow since we depended upon our flash lamps, though we might have switched on the lights with impunity. In one corner of the room was a large and an old-fashioned safe. It stood about two metres high and a metre broad and had two narrow doors. Upon this Heinrich got to work and in half an hour I had the satisfaction of seeing the doors swing open.
What a tribute to my perspicacity! What a triumphant vindication of a “Hun’s” foresight! Call us “Boches,” call us by every vile name that your kultural deficiencies may suggest, but bear ungrudging witness to the everything-foreseeing perfections of German organization!
For there, stacked neatly, one on top of the other, were six black portfolios, bulky and bulging. There was no need to ask whose properties these were. The golden “R.F.” on one, the arms of Savoy on another, the crowned eagles on a third, advertized their ownership. Very carefully I removed them, handing them to my assistants.
The safe contained nothing else except a battered tin cash-box. I lifted it with difficulty, for it was heavy.
“No,” thought I, “we are not burglars. We do not require this haughty Lord’s treasure. We Germans are not pot-house thieves, horse-holders and cut-throat hangdogs, to steal from a house like burglars! Let my Lordship keep his gold. I have something better!”
I gave the signal and we crept forth along the corridor to the trap. We had closed it for fear that somebody passing through the hall should notice the opening and give the alarm.
Hermann knelt down and tried to lift the slab, but without success. He used his pocket-knife and did no more than break off the blade. I cursed his bungling stupidity so furiously that he cowered before me.
What undependable swine these German working classes are! What brainless idiots, with no other thought than eating and beer-drinking!
“Wretched owl,” I hissed in his ear, “if we were in Germany I would flay you alive!”
“Herr Heine,” he whined, “it is not my fault. I wanted to bring up my tools, but you refused to let me.”
I could not waste any time arguing with this scum. In half-an-hour the dawn would be breaking. There was only one way out and that was through the kitchen. We passed through one of the doors behind the buffet and found ourselves in another stone corridor lighted by little stone-framed windows, but heavily barred.
At one end of the corridor was another door and Heinrich, after a vain attempt to pick the lock, said it had been bolted from the outside.
“Have you no bolt-removing instrument?” I asked.
“No, Herr Heine,” he said apologetically, “that requires an apparatus of considerable complication. The only thing to do is to cut a hole through the door, and as the door is sheeted with iron I do not think it is possible.”
We went down the corridor to the other portal. This door yielded to the turn of a handle and we found ourselves in what was evidently a servery. Here there was one window which was also barred and a kitchen door, which, like the one at the farther end of the corridor, was bolted on the other side.
“What!” I said bitterly, “have I trusted my safety and the safety of the Empire to a monkey with the brains of a gnat?”
He was silent under my rebuke, for what could he say?
There remained only one possible egress and that was a skylight in the servery, and here Fortune was with us, for we found a step-ladder which enabled us to reach the ceiling.
I insisted upon Heinrich going first because it did not look very safe, and how my heart bounded when the skylight yielded to his touch and he was able to hoist himself, with the assistance of Hermann, through the aperture. I followed immediately afterwards.
We found ourselves on a sloping roof, and edging my way down to the guttering, I looked down and found that we had a drop of no more than a dozen feet. In three minutes we were on the ground, moving stealthily from bush to bush unchallenged by the cordon of policemen, and reached the outside road without mishap.
We were now on the other side of the house, far away from the ravine and my waiting motor-car. The first pale light of dawn was in the sky and I knew that we could not afford to take the risk of searching for the road by which we had come. Yet without the motor-car I was in a quandary. How might I get these portfolios of such world-shaking importance away without detection? I could not carry them myself and I could not trust my companions, for we Germans trust nobody, and by our caution-dictated suspicion we have eliminated half of the dangers which ordinarily threaten a modern state.
We were in a residential road. About Leatham Priory quite a respectable suburb has grown up and this was one of those better-class thoroughfares made up of detached houses standing in their own grounds, or, as the English advertisements put it, “Houses with every modern convenience.” In a flash I had made my plans. I knew that there was certain to be in such a road as this an empty house, and sure enough the third of the houses we passed bore in the garden a board (or rather two boards) saying it was “To Let.” I beckoned my party to follow me.
Heinrich opened the door in a trice—it was child’s play to this mechanic—and we entered the house, our footsteps sounding hollowly. It was not wholly unfurnished, I discovered to my surprise, for on the first floor there was a bedroom containing a few articles of furniture, but apparently the room had not been used for some time. The shutters were tightly fastened over the window and I guessed that the room had been used by a caretaker until the owner had got tired of paying his wages.
This view was fully confirmed later when I looked at the board outside, for the words “Apply to caretaker” had been painted over and a new address had been given at which the key might be obtained. In this room there was a big cupboard, the key of which was in the lock and into the cupboard I bundled the portfolios, locking the door, and put the key into my pocket.
“Now,” I said to my comrades, “each will go his own way but avoid observation as far as possible.”
“What about the car and the tools in the passage?” asked Hermann.
“I have told the car not to wait beyond daybreak,” I said (German forethought again!) “and as for the tools you may collect them after dark to-night.”
I got back safely to my apartment and turned up at ten o’clock at my office, very well pleased with my night’s work. At the office I found a messenger waiting for me. I recognized the man as the Herr Baron’s valet, a trustworthy Bavarian who had naturalized himself at the same time as my well-born patron. I opened the letter. It was from Baron von Hertz-Missenger.
It read:
“By this time you have probably understood the little riddle I set you. Don’t forget that it is of the utmost importance that certain things should be secured. I myself am working night and day to obtain results. Leave no stone unturned. If you fail notify me immediately. The Conference will last two more days. If you fail I am in a position to make the attempt myself.”
I put the letter down with a smile. With what joy would the good Baron receive my news. If I failed; if I, Heine failed, the idea was amazing!
I say here, before I proceed to the end of this incident, and I cannot give too great emphasis to my words, that it would be well if the Department in which I have the honour to serve—which is in other respects conducted with serious cleverness—implicitly trust the proved genius of their officers and would not allow amateurs, however distinguished, to interfere with the operations of regular departmental officers.
I burnt the letter and sent the good baron’s servant on his way rejoicing with half-a-crown. It is always as well to keep the servants of the high-born in good temper and favourably inclined.
Then I rang up Messrs. Hedley and Riddle. Yes, I had carefully noted the name of the house agents. I got them on the ’phone and asked to speak to the proprietor.
“You have a house to let near the village of Leatham Priory,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he responded in the servile accent of an English house agent.
“I would like to see the house. May I call to-day for the key?”
“Which house is it?” he asked.
Here again my forethought served me.
“It is the house called ‘Fairlawn.’ ”
“Certainly,” said the man, “my assistant has charge of this department. He is at lunch now, but when he comes in I will tell him to meet you at the station.”
“Don’t trouble,” said I; “will you have the key ready for me? You will remember, it is ‘Fairlawn,’ and I want to have the first refusal, so do not let anybody else see the house until I come.”
“Certainly not, sir,” said the servile hound.
I hung up the receiver and rubbed my hands, and at that moment there came a knock at my door. I walked over to the door and opened it. An officer with the green tabs of the British Intelligence Department stood smiling on the mat and I recognized my treacherous “friend” of other days, Mister Haynes or rather Major Haynes.
“Good morning, Major,” I said jovially, “have you come to ‘warn’ me again?”
“Not a bit,” he said, walking inside and shaking hands, “I have just come to ask you if you know anything about the Baron von Hertz-Missenger.”
I pricked up my ears.
“I know the good Baron,” I said carelessly, “just a casual acquaintance.”
“How unfortunate you are,” said Mister Haynes (I should say Major Haynes) in tones of sadness.
“Why unfortunate, major?” I asked.
“All your friends seem to get into trouble,” sighed the major; “perhaps you don’t know that a number of important documents were stolen from Leatham Priory last night.”
“Great heavens, you don’t mean to say that,” I said with well-simulated astonishment.
“Yes, fortunately, the most important, including secret cases, were left behind. They were in a steel cash-box and the thief or thieves did not trouble to examine its contents.”
I did not swoon. Nobody seeing me would imagine what thoughts were swimming through my brain.
“The robbery was discovered this morning and naturally suspicion attached to the Baron,” the major went on.
“Why to the Baron?” I asked.
“Well, you see,” said Haynes, “he has been hanging about the neighbourhood and we discovered some time ago that he had arranged with the clerk of a house agent to occupy a room in a house which was ostensibly to let.”
My flesh went cold and like a goose’s.
“From his headquarters,” Mister Haynes went on, “he apparently sallied forth from time to time making a very careful reconnaissance of the Priory. He must have known that an important Conference was to be held. We have established the fact that two of Lord Leatham’s servants were in his pay, and so, naturally, when the portfolios were missing we searched his lodging.”
“Oh, naturally,” said I weakly.
“And we discovered the stolen property.”
“How strange!” I said in a hollow voice.
“And you don’t know him,” said Mister Haynes, I mean Major Haynes.
“No, sir, I do not,” I said with firm determination.
“Well, you are unlucky,” said the major; “for if you don’t know him now you never will know him,” and with those ominous words he left me.
If there was a moral to these narratives which were originally written not so much for publication as to convey a true record of an adventurous career, to one who was inexpressibly dear to me, the learned and beautiful Miss Kathleen O’Mara, secretary (honorary, for she would not accept payment for performing a national service) of the German Gaelic League of Chicago, the most implacable, the most bitter enemy proud Albion has ever had.
Thou sweet and slender flower of Erin, with thy shamrock eyes and thy rosebud mouth, the unhappy writer of these lines will never again tread a giddy measure at the Plumbers’ Ball where first I met thee. Thy friend, whom thou hast admitted was more than friend, may yet fill an unknown grave! Then, hadst thou been true, my voice would have spoken to thee even though I floated in the Germanic Heaven amidst the well-born saints of the Fatherland. As it is—I cry pfui! to the very thought of thee!
Reading this narrative over I think perhaps it would be more consistent if I omitted these preliminary paragraphs in view of the events which are recorded below. Should this story by chance obtain a wider circulation than that which was intended, it would be perhaps necessary to explain my honourable relationships with this sometime belle of Irish freedom.
Miss O’Mara and I met in the halcyon days at a ball. What there was in me that attracted her it is not for me to say. We Germans shrink from the revelation of our secret souls. Our thoughts are too sacred for vulgar expression, but this I may say, that it is a curious fact that women find some subtle attraction in me which they cannot define. There must be other men in the world of my height and build—even stouter men. There must be eyes as blue as mine and hair as like velvet pile of a deep sun-kissed auburn. There must be men with the same deep, tender voice, and that there are men with the same taste who dress as well, I can testify, for in one day in Chicago I have seen a dozen gentlemen with the same patterned waistcoat, the same pink tie, the same gold chain and wearing just as many rings as I carry on my hands.
I think we must look for this fascination (if I may be allowed to use the word, and I can think of no better) in a subtle mind, something which cannot be reduced to words, an aura of understanding, a moral up-lifting force which radiates from a vigorous and virile soul.
We Germans are rare sentimentalists, I admit. Materialism finds no place in the true German heart. Enemies have made statements about me, particularly in relation to a certain Flossie van Heever, a clerk at a Detroit drug store, which I repudiate with scorn and indignation. The girl utterly misinterpreted certain well-meaning words such as a German gentleman would speak, certain innocent attention such as a German gentleman can give, and I emphatically deny all the sordid charges which this girl in a moment of delirium made against me.
Oh, Plato, Plato, what sins are committed in thy name! To what depth will a woman sink in order to secure the man for whom her heart craves!
But enough of these sordid affairs. It is sufficient that Miss Kathleen O’Mara believed in me. I wrote to her every week from the day I landed in England. I wrote about my life and about her work and that peculiar hobby of hers that I had many times thought of utilizing for the benefit of the Fatherland. Sometimes she would reply tenderly or in holy rage when she thought of the wrongs of her down-trodden countrymen (i.e., Irishmen) and sometimes she did not answer at all. For three months before this story opened I had not heard from her.
I had posted my letter on the Friday afternoon and sauntered back to my office to see if any news had come in. The boy I employed told me there had been a caller, a gentleman who refused to give his name, but said he would come back later. I do not like callers who refuse to give their names, for though I do not believe there is a British Secret Service, there is always a possibility that the regular police may be going outside their province by prying into the lives and habits of “respectable aliens,” as they call them.
“Did he leave no message?” I asked.
“No, sir,” said the boy, “he merely said that he would call again.”
It was not until the following day that my visitor made his reappearance. It was Saturday and I was preparing to go home in the English fashion at one o’clock, when the gentleman was announced.
He was a tall, pale man with a dark and heavy moustache, bristling black eyebrows and that look of concentrated fierceness which so often distinguishes the insurance agent.
“Come in,” I said, inviting him into my private office and closing the door. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a message from Kathleen,” he said.
I seized him warmly by the hand and shook it.
“Any friend of Kathleen’s is a friend of mine,” I said: “sit down.”
I looked around uncomfortably and went again to the door and dismissed the boy for the day, paying him his wages.
“You may speak in perfect security,” I said.
“Kathleen is coming home,” he whispered.
“Coming home?” I could not restrain the joy in my voice. “Do you mean coming to——”
“To Ireland,” he said. “Things are going well over there.”
He need not have told me that. Indeed, I could have told him much more than he could possibly have known. I could have explained why things were going well. I could have made his hair stand on end if I had told him the amount of money that had passed through my hands for distribution to Dublin. I could have told him of stacks of arms landed on the deserted coast by our submarines and of visits which were made by the same vehicle of a certain distinguished Irishman, now unhappily no longer with us.
I could have told him of the organization for which I, Heine, had been responsible, which had provided the patriots of Ireland with ammunition. But why continue the list? I did not tell him anything, and I have reason to believe that he was disappointed.
A thought suddenly sobered me.
“Is it safe for Kathleen to come over at this juncture?” I asked. “By the by, I don’t know your name.”
“I am Theopholos Hagan,” he said, and I seemed to remember the name. “You have met me?” he went on.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said I, and curiously enough I had a dim recollection of having met him somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the circumstances.
“Oh, yes, I remember you,” I said, for we Germans never admit ignorance on any subject.
“There is something else I want to tell you about myself,” he said; “but perhaps this is not the moment to give away secrets.”
“Tell me,” said I earnestly, “anything you know. It shall not leave these four walls.”
I was curious to hear what his secret was, because our people in Berlin were very anxious for news of what was going on in Ireland and they had complained before that they were imperfectly informed.
“No,” said the man, “I will tell you later. I am going over to Ireland to-morrow. If we have any luck we shall have a rising on Easter Sunday. Kathleen wants you to be in Dublin when the trouble starts.”
I shook my head.
“That would be very unwise, very unwise indeed,” I said; “the more I am kept out of it the better for the cause. When does she arrive?”
“She will be in Dublin a fortnight before the rising starts,” said he.
“I will endeavour to be there to see her,” I replied. “I shall not be able to stay long because naturally I am very busy.”
I shook hands with him and saw him as far as the office door. After my experience with Mister, or Major, Haynes, I did not deem it advisable to be seen in public with gentlemen who might conceivably fall under the displeasure of the British authorities, and I explained this to him as a reason for my not coming to Euston Station to see him off.
I had spoken nothing but truth when I had said that I was very busy. Extraordinary changes were going on in England and particularly in London, where the constant alterations in the anti-aircraft gun positions, the erratic systems of lighting their streets which the British were adopting were turning my hair grey. It is said that I sent a new map of London’s defences every week to Germany and that every one was different, and this was true, but map-making was not my only source of employment.
By this time there were quite a respectable number of German prisoners in England, all of whom were anxious for help to make their escape, and whilst, officially, I was not in touch with them, unofficially I had a lot to do with such successes as they achieved. It was I who provided the motor-car for the four officers who escaped from Dabbington Hall. It was I who provided the tools for digging the underground passage by which three officers escaped from the Marlow camp. It was I who provided the clothing and disguises which enabled four naval officers and a Zeppelin officer to cross England after they had escaped from the Welsh camp. It is true they were all caught again, but that was nothing to do with me. When I had freed them from camp and set them on the road my work was finished and the rest was up to their good German ingenuity and resourcefulness.
On the Sunday following the Saturday I had seen Mr. Theopholos Hagan I was rung up on the telephone.
“Can you supply three dozen dress-collars for a gentleman from Slough?” said a voice.
“Where does the gentleman live?” I asked calmly.
“Outside the White City. The collars are to be delivered at nine o’clock,” was the reply.
“Thank you, I will attend to it,” I said, and hung up the receiver.
A curious place to live, you think, outside the principal entrance to an exhibition ground? And is it not strange that a gentleman from Slough required his collars delivered in London? I will make no mystery of the matter. “Three dozen dress-collars” meant “I have escaped and I want your help.” Slough was the place from which he had escaped. The White City was the point at which I must meet him and the hour was nine.
At nine o’clock to the moment my taxi-cab drew up in front of the ornate entrance of the exhibition grounds. The place was of course in darkness, and a man who was walking slowly along the curb turned to the cab as it stopped and asked: