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Title: The adventures of Heine

Author: Edgar Wallace

Release date: July 8, 2025 [eBook #76462]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1929

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
ADVENTURES OF HEINE ***

THE ADVENTURES
OF HEINE
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
Author of “Keepers of the King’s Peace,”
“People of the River,” etc.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
1929

CONTENTS
Chapter I. Alexander and the Lady
Chapter II. The Man who Dwelt on a Hill
Chapter III. The Lovely Miss Harrymore
Chapter IV. The Affair of Mister Haynes
Chapter V. The Man from the Stars
Chapter VI. The Affair of the Allies’ Conference
Chapter VII. The Word of a Prince
Chapter VIII. The Jermyn Credit Bank
Chapter IX. Mr. Collingrey, M.P.—Pacifist!
Chapter X. The Grey Envelope
Chapter XI. The Murderers
Chapter XII. The Passing of Heine
Chapter XIII. The U-Boat Adventure
Chapter XIV. Brethren of the Order
Chapter XV. The World Dictator
Chapter XVI. The Syren
Chapter XVII. The Coming of the Bolsheviks
Chapter XVIII. The Going of Heine
Endnotes

THE ADVENTURES OF HEINE

CHAPTER I.
ALEXANDER AND THE LADY

Secret Service work is a joke in peace time and it is paid on joke rates.
People talk of the fabulous sums of money which our Government spend on
this kind of work, and I have no doubt a very large sum was spent every
year, but it had to go a long way. Even Herr Kressler, of the Bremen-
America Line, who gave me my monthly cheque, used to nod and wink
when he handed over my two hundred marks.
“Ah, my good Heine,” he would say, stroking his stubbly beard, “they
make a fool of me, the Government, but I suppose I mustn’t ask who is your
other paymaster?”
“Herr Kressler,” said I earnestly, “I assure you that this is the whole sum
I receive from the Government.”
“So!” he would say and shake his head: “Ah, you are close fellows and I
mustn’t ask questions!”
There was little to do save now and again to keep track of some of the
bad men, the extreme Socialists, and the fellows who ran away from
Germany to avoid military service. I often wished there were more, because
it would have been possible to have made a little on one’s expenses.
Fortunately, two or three of the very big men in New York and Chicago
knew the work I was doing, and credited me with a much larger income
than I possessed. The reputation of being well off is a very useful one, and
in my case, it brought me all sorts of commissions and little tips which I
could profitably exploit on Wall Street, and in one way or another I lived

comfortably, had a nice apartment on Riverside Drive, backed horses, and
enjoyed an occasional trip to Washington, at my Government’s expense.
I first knew that war was likely to break out in July. I think we Germans
understood the European situation much better than the English, and
certainly much better than the Americans, and we knew that the event at
Serajevo—by the way, poor Klein of our service and an old colleague of
mine, was killed by the bomb which was intended for the Archduke, though
nobody seems to have noticed the fact—would produce the war which
Austria had been expecting or seeking an excuse to wage for two years.
If I remember aright the assassination was committed on the Sunday
morning. The New York papers published the story on that day and on the
Monday afternoon I was summoned to Washington, and saw the Secretary,
who was in charge of our Department, on the Tuesday evening after dinner.
All the big people, even his Excellency, called me by my Christian name,
for I was at college with many of the officials who are prominent in the
world to-day, and I served as volunteer in the engineers of the guard and
afterwards served a probation on the Great General Staff, Survey
Department.
The Secretary was very grave and told me that war was almost certain,
and that Austria was determined to settle with Serbia for good, but that it
was feared that Russia would come in and that the war could not be
localised because, if Russia made war, Germany and France would also be
involved.
Personally, I have never liked the French, and my French is not
particularly good. I was hoping that he was going to tell us that England
was concerned, and I asked him if this was not the case. To my
disappointment, he told me that England would certainly not fight; that she
would remain neutral, and that strict orders had been issued that nothing
was to be done which would in any way annoy the English.
“Their army,” he said, “is beneath contempt, but their navy is the most
powerful in the world and its employment might have very serious
consequences.”
It seemed very early to talk about war, with the newspapers still full of
long descriptions of the Serajevo murder and the removal of the Archduke’s
body, and I remembered after with what astounding assurance our Secretary
had spoken.

I must confess I was disappointed, because I had spent a very long time
in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, establishing touch with good
friends who, I felt, would work with advantage for me in the event of war. I
had prepared my way by founding the Chinese News Bureau, a little
concern that had an office in Fleet Street and was ostensibly engaged in
collecting items of news concerning China and distributing them to the
London and provincial press, and in forwarding a London letter to certain
journals in Pekin, Tientsien and Shanghai.
Of course, the money was found by the Department, and it was not a
financial success, but it was a good start in case one ever had to operate in
London, since I was registered as a naturalised Chilian and it was extremely
unlikely that Chili would be at war with any European Power.
I could not see what there was to do in New York, where the ground was
so effectively covered. We had a police force of our own associated with the
Bremen-America line. We had reservist organisations in every big town,
and both the military, naval and commercial investigation—I will not use
the hateful word “espionage”—was in good hands, and I looked like being
at a loose end and subordinate to people who were my inferiors, if I
remained in America.
On the 3rd August, 1914, I received a message from Washington in the
Departmental code, telling me that war with England was inevitable and
that I was to sail on the first boat and take up my duties in London in full
control of the British Department.
I was overjoyed with the news and I know that men like Stohwasser,
Wesser, and other men of my Department, looked at me with envy. They did
not think they had an easy task because the American Secret Service is a
very competent one; but they thought I was a lucky pig—as indeed I was—
to be operating in a country containing a population of forty millions, most
of whom, as one of their writers said, were fools.
The English are, of course, a very thick-headed people, as I have reason
to know. They are childish and unsuspecting, and you have only to ask for
valuable information to get it. The Scotch, or Scots, are shrewder in
business, but very simple people, practically ignorant, as are the English, of
European politics, and very naïve in all matters affecting the State.
Moreover, as I have discovered on several of my visits, the Scots are not
particularly well disposed to their southern neighbours, and I have heard
many insulting references made by one against the other. It is quite a

common thing to hear the expressions of scorn as a “close-fisted Scot” or “a
pudding-headed Englishman,” whilst in Wales neither the Scots nor the
English are popular.
Ireland, of course, was in a constant condition of rebellion, and I looked
forward with great pleasure to witnessing and inflaming the little domestic
quarrels which I knew would arise as soon as war broke out.
I landed at Liverpool on August 11th. My passport was in order and I
immediately went forward to London. There was no trace of any
excitement. I saw a lot of soldiers on their way to their depôts; and arriving
in London, I immediately received the reports of our innumerable agents.
With what pride did I contemplate the splendid smoothness of our
system!
When the Emperor pressed the button marked “Mobilise,” he called, in
addition to his soldiers, a thousand gallant hearts and brilliant minds in a
score of countries all eager and happy to work for the aggrandisement of
our beloved Fatherland.
Six of us met at a fashionable restaurant near Trafalgar Square. There
were Emil Stein, who called himself Robinson, Karl Besser—I need not
give all their aliases—Heine von Wetzl, Fritz von Kahn and Alexander
Koos.
Stein had arrived from Holland the night before and Fritz von Kahn had
come down from Glasgow where he had been acting as a hotel porter. These
men were, as I say, known to me, and to one another, but there were
thousands of unknowns who had their secret instructions, which were only
to be opened in case of war, and with whom we had to get in touch.
I briefly explained the procedure and the method by which our agents
would be identified. Every German agent would prove his bonâ fides by
producing three used postage stamps of Nicaragua. It is a simple method of
identification, for there is nothing treasonable or suspicious in a man
carrying about in his pocket-book a ten, twenty or a fifty centime stamp of a
neutral country.
I sent Emil Stein away to Portsmouth and instructed him to make contact
with sailors of the Fleet, especially with officers. Besser was dispatched to a
West Coast shipping centre to report on all the boats which left and entered.
I sent Kahn and his family on a motor-car tour to the East Coast with
instructions to find out what new coast defences were being instituted.

“You must exercise the greatest care,” I said; “even though these English
are very stupid, they may easily blunder into a discovery. Make the briefest
notes of all you see and hear and only use the Number 3 code in case of
urgent necessity.”
We finished our dinner and we drank to “The Day” and sang under our
breath “Deutschland über alles” and separated, Koos coming with me.
Koos was a staff officer of the Imperial Service, and though he was not
noble, he was held in the greatest respect. He was a fine, handsome fellow,
very popular with the girls, and typically British in appearance. His English
was as good as mine, and that is saying a great deal. I sent him to Woolwich
because in his character as an American inventor—he had spent four years
in the States—he was admirably fitted to pick up such facts as were of the
greatest interest to the Government.
I did not see Koos for a few days and in the meantime I was very busy
arranging with my couriers who were to carry the result of our discoveries
through a neutral country to Germany. The system I adopted was a very
simple one. My notes, written in Indian ink, were separately photographed
by means of a camera. When I had finished the twelve exposures, I opened
the camera in a dark room, carefully re-rolled the spool and sealed it so that
it had the appearance of being an unexposed pellicle. I argued that whilst
the English military authorities would confiscate photographs which had
obviously been taken, they might pass films which were apparently unused.
I had arranged to meet Koos on the night of August 17th, and made my
way to the rendezvous, engaging a table for two. I had hardly seated myself
when, to my surprise, Koos came in accompanied by a very pretty English
girl. He walked past me, merely giving me the slightest side-glance, and
seated himself at the next table. I was amused. I knew the weakness of our
good Koos for the ladies, but I knew also that he was an excellent
investigator and that he was probably combining business with pleasure. In
this I was right. The meal finished—and the innocent laughter of the girl
made me smile again—and Koos walked out with the girl on his arm.
As he passed my table he dropped a slip of paper which I covered with
my table-napkin. When I was sure I was not observed, I read the note.

“Making excellent progress. Meet me at a quarter to eleven
outside Piccadilly Tube.”

I met him at the appointed time and we strolled into Jermyn Street.
“What do you think of her?” was Koos’ first question.
“Very pretty, my friend,” said I. “You have excellent taste.”
He chuckled.
“I have also excellent luck, my dear Heine.” Even well-born people call
me by my Christian name, as I have before remarked, though I do not boast
of this because my father’s mother was a von Kuhl-Hozeldorf and I am in a
sense related to the best Würtemberg nobility. “That lady,” went on Koos,
“is the daughter of one of the chief gun-constructors at Woolwich.”
He looked at me to note the effect of his words, and I must confess I was
startled.
“Splendid, my dear fellow!” said I, warmly. “How did you come to meet
her?”
“A little act of gallantry,” he said airily; “a lady walking on Blackheath
twists her ankle, what more natural than that I should offer her assistance to
the nearest seat? Quite a babbling little person—typically English,” he
added dryly.
I laughed again.
“I could have done very well without her assistance, of course,” he went
on; “as a matter of fact, I had met one or two very excellent Englishmen
who, with their usual penchant for boastfulness, were able to supply me
with particulars of a new gun-lathe of which they are very proud. In fact, I
have got the rough drawings, but the little lady——”
He raised his eyes to the heavens and chuckled joyfully.
“My dear friend,” he said impressively, “she is a mine of information. An
only daughter and a little spoilt, I am afraid, she knows no doubt secrets of
construction of which the technical experts of the Government are ignorant.
Can you imagine a German talking over military affairs with his daughter?”
“The English are a little mad, as I have remarked before,” said I. I then
closely questioned Koos as to the activity of the police. It was naturally to
be expected that Woolwich would be well guarded and that strangers would
arouse suspicion.
“There is no English secret police,” said my friend cheerfully; “there is a
special department at Scotland Yard whose footsteps you can hear a mile
away, but a secret service, as it is understood in Germany, or even in
America, does not exist, except in the fervid imagination of romantic
novelists.”

“I only asked you,” I said hastily, “for fear that this girl should be
watched.”
“You can dismiss that possibility from your mind,” smiled Koos.
By this time we had reached the end of Jermyn Street and had turned
down St. James’s Street toward the Palace, and our conversation was
naturally interrupted, for we had to speak in English and there was rather a
crowd of people. It was not until we had reached the Mall, comparatively
deserted, that Koos continued this story.
“You need not worry. The girl is romantic—an idealist.”
“And you are the ideal, you dog!” said I.
He twisted his moustache, by no means ill-pleased at the accusation.
“Some men have that power of attraction,” he said modestly. “I am rather
sorry for the little thing.”
“What have you learnt from her?” I asked.
Koos did not reply for a moment, then he said:
“So far, very little. I am naturally anxious not to alarm her or arouse her
suspicions. She is willing to talk and she has access to her father’s study
and, from what I gather, she practically keeps all the keys of the house. At
present I am educating her to the necessity for preserving secrecy about our
friendship and to do her justice, she is just as anxious that our clandestine
meetings should not come to the ears of her father as I am.”
We walked along in silence.
“This may be a very big thing,” I said.
“Bigger than you imagine,” replied Alexander; “there is certain to be an
exchange of confidential views about artillery between the Allies, and
though we have nothing to learn from the English, it is possible that the
French may send orders to Woolwich for armament. In that case our little
friend may be a mine of information. I am working with my eyes a few
months ahead,” he said, “and for that reason I am allowing our friendship to
develop slowly.”
I did not see Koos again for a week, except that I caught a glimpse of him
in the Café Riche with his fair companion. He did not see me, however, and
as it was desirable that I should not intrude, I made no attempt to make my
presence apparent.
At the end of the week we met by appointment, which we arranged
through the agony column of a certain London newspaper.

I was feeling very cheerful, for Stein, Besser, and Kahn had sent in most
excellent reports, and it only needed Alexander’s encouraging news to
complete my sum of happiness.
“You remember the gun-lathe I spoke to you about,” he said. “My friend
—you may regard the blue prints as in your hands.”
“How has this come about?”
“I just casually mentioned to my little girl that I was interested in
inventions and that I had just put a new lathe upon the market in America
and she was quite excited about it. She asked me if I had heard about the
lathe at Woolwich, and I said that I had heard rumours that there was such a
lathe. She was quite overjoyed at the opportunity of giving me information
and asked me whether in the event of her showing me the prints I would
keep the fact a great secret, because,” he laughed softly, “she did not think
her father would like the print to leave his office!”
“You must be careful of this girl,” I said, “she may be detected.”
“There is no danger, my dear fellow,” said Alexander. “She is the
shrewdest little woman in the world. I am getting quite to like her if one can
like these abominable people—she is such a child!”
I told him to keep in communication with me and sent him off feeling
what the English call in “good form.” I dispatched a courier by the morning
train to the Continent, giving details of the British Expeditionary Force.
Only two brigades were in France—and that after three weeks of
preparation! In Germany every man was mobilized and at his corps or army
headquarters weeks ago—every regiment had moved up to its order of
battle position. Two brigades! It would be amusing if it were not pathetic!
Besser came to me soon after lunch in a very excited state.
“The whole of the English Expeditionary Force of three divisions is in
France,” he said, “and, what is more, is in line.”
I smiled at him.
“My poor dear fellow, who has been pulling your foot?” I asked.
“It is confidentially communicated to the Press, and will be public to-
morrow,” he said.
“Lies,” said I calmly, “you are too credulous. The English are the most
stupid liars in the world.”
I was not so calm that night when I ran down in my car to Gorselton,
where our very good friend, the Baron von Hertz-Missenger, had a nice
little estate.

“Heine,” he said, after he had taken me to his study and shut the door. “I
have received a radio through my wireless from the Kriegsministerium[1] to
the effect that the whole of the British Expeditionary Force has landed and
is in line.”
“Impossible, Herr Baron,” I said, but he shook his head.
“It is true—our Intelligence in Belgium is infallible. Now, I do not want
to interfere with you, for I am but a humble volunteer in this great work, but
I advise you to give a little more attention to the army. We may have
underrated the military assistance which Britain can offer.”
“The English army, Herr Baron,” said I firmly, “is almost as insignificant
a factor as—as well—the American army, which only exists on paper!
Nevertheless, I will take your advice.”
It was necessary to humour the good baron who, although a naturalised
British “subject” (which, of course, means absolutely nothing), is nobly
born and is indeed a member of the Hesse-Hohenlohe princely-descended
family.
We talked a little while about the British. I told the Herr Baron what I had
said about the British Secret Service, and he quite agreed.
“I have been in this country for twelve years and I have met everybody of
importance,” he said, “and I can assure you there is no Secret Intelligence
Department such as we Germans have brought to such perfect efficiency. As
you know, I am a racing man, and I meet with all sorts of people, good and
bad, and I can endorse all that you say.”
I went back to town and dispatched another courier, for as yet the
Torpington Varnish Factory (about which I will tell you later) had not been
equipped with Radio.
That night I again saw Alexander. It was at supper at the Fritz, and he
looked a fine figure of a man. I felt proud of the country which could
produce such a type. Where, I ask you, amongst the paunchy English and
the scraggy Scotch, with their hairy knees and their sheep-shank legs, could
you find a counterpart of that beau sabreur? Cower, treacherous Albion,
shiver in your kilt, hateful Scotch (it is not generally known that the Royal
and High-Born Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria is rightful King of Scotland),
tremble, wild Wales and unreliable Ireland, when you come in arms against
a land which can produce such men as Alexander Koos!
I never saw a girl look more radiantly happy than did the young woman
who was sitting vis-à-vis my friend. There was a light in her eye and a

colour in her cheeks which were eloquent of her joy.
I saw Alexander afterwards. He came secretly to my rooms.
“Have you brought the blue print?” I asked.
He shook his head smilingly.
“To-morrow, my friend, not only the blue print of the lathe, not only the
new gun-mounting model, but the lady herself will come to me. I want your
permission to leave the day after to-morrow for home. I cannot afford to
wait for what the future may bring.”
“Can you smuggle the plans past the English police?” I asked, a little
relieved that he had volunteered to act as courier on so dangerous a mission.
“Nothing easier.”
“And the girl—have you her passport?”
He nodded.
“How far shall you take her?”
“To Rotterdam,” he said promptly.
In a way I was sorry. Yes, I am sentimental, I fear, and “sentiment does
not live in an agent’s pocket,” as the saying goes. I wish it could have been
done without. I shrugged my shoulders and steeled my soul with the
thought that she was English and that it was all for the Fatherland.
“You must come to the Café Riche to-night and witness our going,” said
Alexander; “you will observe that she will carry a leather case such as
schoolgirls use for their books and exercises. In that case, my friend, will be
enough material to keep our friends in Berlin busy for a month.”
I took leave of him, giving him certain instructions as to the course he
was to take after reporting at Headquarters, and spent the rest of the night
coding a message for our Alexander to carry with him.
I snatched a few hours’ sleep between telephone calls, and rising at noon
I read the morning papers (full of lies, as are all British papers, though the
Americans are worse) and went through the picture postcards which my
kind friends von Kahn and von Wetzl had sent to me. If you had seen those
postcards with their long “holiday messages,” I wonder if you would have
taken a magnifying glass to search for minute pinpricks under certain letters
and words? I did, because I was a chief of a bureau unequalled in the world
for ingenuity and prescience.
The hour at which Alexander was to meet the girl was eight o’clock in
the evening. His table (already booked) was No. 47, which is near the

window facing Piccadilly. I telephoned through to the café and booked No.
46, for I was anxious to witness the comedy.
All was now moving like clockwork—and let me say that the smoothness
of the arrangements was due largely to the very thorough and painstaking
organisation-work which I had carried out in the piping days of peace. We
Germans have a passion for detail and for thoroughness and for this reason
(apart from the inherent qualities of simplicity and honesty, apart from the
superiority of our kultur and our lofty idealism) we have been
unconquerable throughout the ages.
For example, we had foreseen the necessity in organizing our Intelligence
Department, to employ, not Germans, but subjects of neutral states
wherever possible. People who talk of “German spies” or “the uninterned
German peril” cannot realise that from the moment war broke out, all
Germans, known as such, were under the observation of the police, and not
only the police but their own neighbours. It would be impossible, as I had
foreseen, for such men to offer assistance to our great and splendid cause,
because the least suspicious movement on their parts would result in their
arrest. I have a considerable respect for the Scotland Yard routine
investigation. No, my sirs, you do us no justice when you talk of “German
spies.” Search not for the “Hun,” as in the bitterness of your impotent rage
you call us, but for the——
I think that I have said that much of my time was taken up by answering
telephone calls.
You must remember that I was in London as the representative of a
Chinese News Bureau. I was also an agent for a firm of importers in
Shanghai. It was therefore only natural that I should be called up all hours
of the day and night with offers of goods.
“I can let you have a hundred and twenty bales of Manchester goods at
125.”
Now 120 and 125 added together make 245, and turning to my “simple
code” to paragraph 245, I find the following:

“2nd Battalion of the Graniteshire Regiment entrained to-day
for embarkation.”

The minor agents carried this code (containing 1,400 simple sentences to
cover all naval or military movements) in a small volume. The code is

printed on one side of very thin paper leaves, and the leaves are as porous
and absorbent as blotting paper.
One blot of ink dropped upon a sheet will obliterate a dozen—a fact
which our careless agents have discovered.
Clipped in the centre of the book (as a pencil is clipped in an ordinary
book) is a tiny tube of the thinnest glass containing a quantity of black dye-
stuff. The agent fearing detection has only to press the cover of the book
sharply and the contents of the book are reduced to black sodden pulp.
Need I say that this ingenious invention was German in its origin.[2]
My days were therefore very full. There came reports from all quarters
and some the most unlikely. How, you may ask, did our agents make these
discoveries?
There are many ways by which information is conveyed. The relations of
soldiers are always willing to talk about their men and will tell you, if they
know, when they are leaving, the ships they are leaving by, and will
sometimes give you other important facts, but particularly about ports and
dates of embarkations are they useful.
Also officers will occasionally talk at lunch and dinner and will tell their
women folk military secrets which a waiter can mentally note and convey
to the proper quarters. Our best agents, however, were barbers, tailors,
chiropodists, and dentists. English people will always discuss matters with a
barber or with the man who is fitting them with their clothes, and as almost
every tailor was making military uniforms and a very large number of the
tailors in London were either German or Austrian, I had quite a wealth of
news.
Tailors are useful because they work to time. Clothes have to be
delivered by a certain date and generally the man who has the suit made
will tell the fitter the date he expects to leave England. Other useful
investigators are Turkish-bath attendants and dentists. A man in a dentist’s
chair is always nervous and will try to make friends with the surgeon who is
operating on him. Of all agents the waiter is in reality the least useful,
because writers have been pointing out for so many years the fact that most
waiters were German. But the truth is that most restaurant waiters are
Italian, and it is amongst the bedroom waiters that you find a preponderance
of my fellow countrymen.
Another department of my work which kept me busy was the money-
lending department. I had initiated a system of inquiry into the financial

affairs of officers and I was able to keep track of all officers who were in
financial difficulties. This department had been a very great disappointment
to us, for in spite of the fact that we had the power to ruin hundreds of
careers, we have never been able to employ that power profitably. The
British officer is absolutely unscrupulous and has no sense of honour. Often
our agents have offered to release them from their liabilities in return for
some trifling service and these people have preferred to live under the
odium of owing people money, to securing an honourable release from their
debts; by some simple little obliging act, such as giving us particulars of
their brother officers’ losses at cards, and the like. And that is what is called
English honour!
Is it not more dishonourable to owe money you cannot pay than to
whisper a few little secrets about men who probably are as dishonourable as
yourself? However, to return to Alexander and his inamorata.
Prompt at eight o’clock, I took my place at the table and ordered an
excellent dinner (my waiter was naturally a good German) and a bottle of
Rhenish wine. A few minutes after I had given my order Alexander and the
girl arrived. She was dressed in a long travelling coat of tussore silk, and
carried—as I was careful to note—a shiny brown leather portfolio. This she
placed carefully on her lap when she sat down and raised her veil.
She looked a little pale, but smiled readily enough at Alexander’s jests.
I watched her as she slowly peeled off her gloves and unbuttoned her
coat. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy. Doubtless her conscience was
pricking her.
Is it the thought of thy home, little maid, from whence thou hast fled
never to return? Is it the anguished picture of thy broken-hearted and ruined
father bemoaning his daughter and his honour? Have no fear, little one, thy
treason shall enrich the chosen of the German God, the World Encirclers,
Foreordained and Destined to Imperial Grandeur!
So I thought, watching her and listening.
“Are you sure that everything will be all right?” she asked anxiously.
“Please trust me,” smiled Alexander. (Oh, the deceiving rogue—how I
admired his sang-froid!)
“You are ready to go—you have packed!” she asked.
“As ready as you, my dear Elsie. Come—let me question you,” he
bantered; “have you all those wonderful plans which are going to make our
fortunes after we are married?”

So he had promised that—what would the gracious Frau Koos-
Mettleheim have said to this perfidy on the part of her husband?
“I have all the plans,” she began, but he hushed her with a warning
glance.
I watched the dinner proceed but heard very little more. All the time she
seemed to be plying him with anxious questions to which he returned
reassuring answers.
They had reached the sweets when she began to fumble at her pocket. I
guessed (rightly) that she was seeking a handkerchief and (wrongly) that
she was crying.
Her search was fruitless and she beckoned the waiter.
“I left a little bag in the ladies’ room—it has my handkerchief; will you
ask the attendant to send the bag?”
The waiter departed and presently returned with two men in the livery of
the hotel.
I was sitting side by side and could see the faces both of the girl and
Alexander, and I noticed the amusement in his face that two attendants must
come to carry one small bag.
Then I heard the girl speak.
“Put your hands, palms upward, on the table,” she said.
I was still looking at Alexander’s face.
First amazement and then anger showed—then I saw his face go grey and
into his eyes crept the fear of death.
The girl was holding an automatic pistol and the barrel was pointing at
Alexander’s breast. She half turned her head to the attendants.
“Here is your man, sergeant,” she said briskly. “Alexander Koos, alias
Ralph Burton-Smith. I charge him with espionage.”
They snapped the steel handcuffs upon Alexander’s wrists and led him
out, the girl following.
I rose unsteadily and followed.
In the vestibule was quite a small crowd which had gathered at the first
rumour of so remarkable a sensation. Here, for the first time, Alexander
spoke, and it was curious how in his agitation his perfect English became
broken and hoarse.
“Who you are? You have a mistake maken, my frient.”
“I am an officer of the British Intelligence Department,” said the girl.
“Himmel! Secret Service!” gasped Alexander, “I thought it was not!”

I saw them take him away and stole home.
They had trapped him. The girl with the sprained ankle had been waiting
for him that day on Blackheath. She had led him on by talking of the plans
she could get until he had told her of the rough plans he already had. Whilst
(as he thought) he was tightening the net about her, she was drawing the
meshes tighter about him.… Phew! It makes me hot to think of it!
Was there a secret service in England after all?
For myself, my tracks were too well covered; for Alexander I could do
nothing. He would not betray me. I was sure of that. Yet to be perfectly
certain I left the next night for Dundee, and I was in Dundee when the news
came that Alexander had been shot in the Tower of London.

CHAPTER II.
THE MAN WHO DWELT ON A HILL

When I left London hurriedly, after the arrest of Alexander Koos, I must
confess that my mind was greatly disturbed. I sat half the night in my
sleeper, turning over all the circumstances leading up to the arrest of my
good friend. We Germans are the most logical people in the world. We
argue with precision from known facts, and we deduce from those facts
such subtle conclusions as naturally flow.
We do not indulge in frivolous speculations—we Germans are a serious
people with a passion for accurate data.
Thus I argued: (1) If a secret police force had been established it is a
post-war creation. Otherwise our general staff would have known of its
existence and have advised us. (2) Supposing a secret service had been
initiated where would its agents be found? Naturally in the vicinity of the
great arsenals and military camps. Under these circumstances it was not
surprising that Koos, confining his investigations to Woolwich, had been
brought into contact with a member of this new organisation. (3) It was
humanly impossible that the operations of an improvised secret service
could be extended in a few days to areas other than military and arsenal
areas. Therefore, it behoved the investigator to avoid as far as possible
arousing suspicion by pursuing his inquiries in the neighbourhood of
arsenals and camps.
When I had reached this conclusion I was much comforted. I had no
desire to take unnecessary risks. It seemed certain to me at that time, that
the war would not last longer than three months. Koos had thought it would
be over in two months, but I felt that he erred on the side of optimism. So
that the period of risk was not a very prolonged one, and if I were wise and
discreet and succeeded in impressing my subordinates with the necessity for
similar discretion, there was no reason why we should not return to the
Fatherland with a flawless record to receive those honours which the
Supreme War Lord bestowed upon the faithful servants of our beloved
Deutschland.

At eight o’clock in the morning I was taking my breakfast in the station-
buffet at Edinburgh. Von Kahn was awaiting me, and over the meal, served
by a sleepy waitress, I had an opportunity of retailing the events which had
led to my hasty departure from London. Von Kahn stroked his moustache
thoughtfully.
“Koos was an impetuous man,” he said, “I am not surprised that he has
been detected. You must not forget, my dear Heine, that we Germans have
only one thought, only one goal, the welfare of the Fatherland. Koos
allowed his penchant for feminine society to overcome his judgment. That
is a mistake which I should never make.”
I looked at our good von Kahn, with his big red face and his short, well-
fed body, and I could not help thinking that it would be indeed a remarkable
circumstance if he allowed himself to be lured to destruction in such a
manner.
He joined the train and went on with me to Dundee. We had not gone far
from the station before the train stopped and an attendant came in and
pulled down all the blinds, removing, in spite of our protest, all our
baggage, which he locked in an empty compartment.
“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded.
“I am very sorry, sir,” said the man, “but those are my orders.”
For a moment I had a cold feeling inside me that I was suspected, but his
next words reassured me.
“We do it to everybody, sir, before we cross the —— Bridge.”
When he had gone I turned to von Kahn.
“This is an extraordinary thing,” I said. “I never suspected the English of
taking such intelligent precautions.”
Von Kahn laughed.
“The English here are Scots,” he said, “and they are very cautious.”
I should have dearly liked to peep out when the rumble of the wheels told
me we were passing the famous bridge, but in the corridor outside the
carriage I discovered, to my amazement, a Scottish soldier with fixed
bayonet, and for some reason or other his eyes never left us.
It was not until we were a very long way past the bridge that the
attendant returned my bag and suit-case and pulled up the blind, and not
until we reached Dundee that I discussed the matter at all with von Kahn.
“I have reason to believe,” he said, “that we have passed a portion of the
British Fleet, and it will be my endeavour during the next few days to

discover what units are at present in the region of Rosyth.”
He told me this in the cab on the way to our hotel and he also gave me a
great deal of information about the East Coast defences which it had been
his business to investigate.
“It is practically impossible to get near the important parts of the coast,”
he said, “and I think you must give up all idea of establishing light-signal
stations at X and Q.”
This was a sad disappointment to me, which I did not attempt to hide.
“My dear von Kahn,” I said testily, “you are getting hypnotised by the
English. You are giving them credit for gifts which are not theirs. You are
imagining that these people, these Scotch for example, have the same keen
national sense of suspicion as we Germans possess.”
We drove the rest of the journey to an hotel in silence. I registered here in
the name by which I was known to the Chilian Legation.
I had never been in Dundee before and I hope I may never see the town
again, for reasons which will be sufficiently obvious to all the good friends
who read my narrative.
Dundee is a sad, grey town, so grim on the rainy morning I arrived, that I
was filled with a strange sense of foreboding. It is a city of high chimney-
stacks that stream smoke, and of clanging tramway cars.
I don’t know whether it was my imagination, or due to the shock of poor
Koos’ arrest, but it also seemed that it was a town of graveyards, for
whichever way I went I seemed always to return to one drear space of
tombstones and sad trees.
My local agent here was a barber named Shmidt, and the first thing I did
on my arrival at the hotel was to send for a barber! What was more natural
than that a weary traveller should require shaving! Ah! do not smile, my
friends! By such acts of forethought and detail was our great service built
up and wonderfully established. Our good friend came with his little black-
leather bag and was admitted to my room. The honest fellow was almost
overcome by the sight of one whom he regarded as being a veritable link
between himself and his Supreme War Lord.
“It is beautiful to be able to speak our noble German tongue again,” he
said; “think of it, Herr Heine! Here I am week in and week out talking
Scotch—not even English.”
He had much to tell me that I committed to memory. He even had had the
good fortune to be called in professionally to an admiral who was passing

through Dundee on the way to a certain town in the north.
“Naturally,” said Shmidt, “I was extremely tactful and suspicion-
avoiding. But, Herr Heine, not even the high officers of State know
discretion. Reticence is not!
“ ‘I wish you’d take me with you, Sir Jones,’ I said; he was well-born and
had been created a Sir for war knowledge.
“ ‘Come along,’ said Sir Jones, ‘but I’m afraid you will not be
comfortable when our fleet goes into action next week against Heligoland.’
“ ‘That is a strong fortress, Admiral,’ I said.
“ ‘We have been undermining it for a month,’ said Sir Jones.
“Herr Heine, I nearly fainted with excitement. Consider the position.
Here was I, a faithful servant of the Fatherland, listening to one of the most
important military secrets from an Excellency of the English Navy. I kept
my blood cool and went on lathering without a tremble of hand.’
“ ‘That must have been terribly difficult, Sir Jones,’ I said.
“ ‘Not at all,’ said Sir Jones; ‘we have a new submarine on wheels that
creeps along the bed of the ocean and fortunately there are beneath
Heligoland several very large caves in which our divers can store
explosives. I trust you will regard all I have told you as confidential!’ ”
By the time Shmidt had finished I was on my feet. I knew that there had
been a secret vote or appropriation for the British Navy a year before. So
this was the reason.
“Send Herr von Kahn to me, you will find him in Room 84,” I said; and
long before my companion had arrived I was working at my codes.
“We must find a way to get this information to Germany,” I said.
“The way is simple,” said he; “the Sven Gustavus is in harbour, waiting
to clear for Bergen. She has wireless, and outside of the territorial waters
she can get into touch with the Bremen wireless station.”
The message I sent was a long one, and I have since learnt that it created
something like a sensation at the Admiralty. All the warships in the vicinity
of Heligoland were ordered away, the Corps of Divers came from
Cuxhaven and the foundations of the island were thoroughly explored,
although the Admiralty Marine Survey Department was emphatic on the
point that no caverns existed under the island.
As a matter of fact none were discovered, though a certain suspicious-
looking hole was found in one of the rocks.[3]

I cannot believe that a High Officer of State who was also a Sir would
condescend to a lie or be so frivolous as to invent such a story, and to this
day I believe that my promptitude in notifying Berlin in all probability
saved the Fatherland from an incalculable disaster. It was after I had sent
this message away, together with certain data which I received from
London, that I set about the business which had induced me to choose
Dundee as the scene of my sojourn.
Scotland had an importance in our scheme which many people have
made the mistake of under-estimating. To appreciate that importance, let us
examine the nature of the German Plan in the event of war. Britain’s
strength and weakness lay in her great extent and in the homogeneous
nature of her people. In this respect she resembled the Royal and Imperial
Empire of Austria-Hungary, with its German, Magyar, Czec, Slav and Jugo-
Slav, Italian, Serbian, and Roumanian subjects. Austria-Hungary, however,
had this advantage, that whatever views might be held, whatever
dissatisfaction and dissensions might exist amongst the peoples, the Empire
was organised for control by a certain authority. Britain was not so
organised. The English hated the Irish, the Welsh hated the English, the
Scotch despised both, and the Irish hated everybody, including themselves.
At the outbreak of war the north and south of Ireland were on the brink of
civil war, a great strike was pending in Wales (of this more anon), and the
Scottish industrial classes, particularly on the Clyde, were in a state of
unrest.
Outside of the island kingdoms we had an Egypt ripe for rebellion, with
the Khedive on our side, we had India seething with sedition, and South
Africa organised for revolt under two of the most popular of the Boer
Generals in De la Rey and De Wet. Our task was, of course, to drive the
wedges of dissension still deeper, and largely my work was specialised in
this direction, for now the routine of gathering naval and military
information was so smoothly-running that there was nothing for me to do
but to sort out the news which came to me and pass it along to the proper
quarters.
And here I might explain that there were in reality two branches of
Investigation. There was my own, which comprehended all the hackwork of
espionage and propaganda, and there was the Higher Service with which I
was seldom brought into contact. The Higher Service was unpaid but
skilfully organised. Its members were practically unknown to one another,

though most of them were known to me and watched by my agents. We
Germans leave nothing to chance. In Scotland, living not a very long way
from Dundee, was one whom for certain reasons I regarded as a good friend
of ours and who was known locally as “Mr. Brown from Australia.”
He had a cottage in the loveliest part of the Highlands,[4] where he lived
for three months in the year, spending his time in fishing one of the little
rivers in the neighbourhood. Beyond that he was eccentric and had had a
big flag-staff erected before his cottage on which he used to fly the
Australian flag, little was known of him.
He had few visitors. His cottage was on an inhospitable spur of the hills,
which was more often than not wreathed in the low-lying clouds or mists
which seem to be a permanent feature of this country.
Now and again a member of the Mounted Constabulary would ride up
and exchange a few words or even go inside for a glass of refreshment
when he saw the flag flying, which was always a sign that Mr. Brown was
in residence.
He had one servant, a Swiss youth, who was valet, groom and cook.
I have said about the Higher Service that I knew most of the members.
Some of the names had been officially supplied to me, before my return to
England to take up my work, by von Igel, who was practically in charge of
all the commercial work in New York. Some of them I had already located
on my previous visits to England; while some were so important, so well-
born and so well-connected with Illustrious Excellencies, that not only were
their names withheld from me but I was discouraged whenever I applied to
Headquarters for information.
My local agents in Scotland had already marked down Mr. Brown, of
Australia, and I had put through an inquiry about this gentleman, informing
the Kriegsministerium that he was evidently well educated, that he was a
fluent German scholar, and that he belonged to a superior London club,
much frequented by ministers and attachés. Obviously his name was not
“Brown,” and the two surreptitious views I secured of him, one close at
hand and one through powerful field-glasses, left no doubt in my mind that
he was a son of the Fatherland. We Germans have an instinct one for the
other, a sort of sixth sense due to our common kultur and to our higher
human development.
Headquarters could tell us nothing, and I thought I detected a certain
discouragement in the wording of the brief message which came through to

me, and drew my own conclusions. There were certain peculiarities about
Mr. Brown which strengthened my resolve, and von Kahn, who had paid
two visits to Glen Macintyre, was even more emphatic.
“It is not my desire, as you well know, von Kahn,” said I, “to intrude
myself into illustrious circles, but there is every reason, in view of the fate
of poor Koos, why we should get in touch with every friend we can
muster.”
There is only one other incident of my stay in Dundee to record, and that
is a curious one. In my rôle as a Chilian importer, I carried a fairly large
sum of money, and to emphasize my association with the South American
Republic, and the international character of my business, it was my custom
in every new town I visited to call either on a money-changer or the
principal bank, and request an exchange of British money for my foreign
notes.
Accordingly I went into the Dundee branch of the Bank of Tayside and
producing a small bundle of notes asked for their British equivalent. There
were, I remember, twelve hundred peses notes of Chili, a ten-condor note of
Ecuador, a hundred-franc note of France and a hundred-franc note of the
Bank of Switzerland.
The teller took the money, counted it and jotted the totals down until he
came to the Swiss note. He looked at the note and then looked at me. Then
he pushed the note back.
“We cannot change Swiss money,” he said.
I scented a mystery—possibly some hidden diplomatic trouble with our
good Swiss neighbour.
“Why?” I asked. “The Swiss exchange is above parity.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the clerk decisively, “but we are not changing Swiss
notes.”
He added some lame story about a large number of Swiss forgeries being
in circulation, but I sought a deeper reason. There had been a frontier
incident. Two or three English newspaper correspondents had been arrested
at Bale and there had been certain hints in the Paris newspapers that a
member of the Swiss General Staff had been conveying information to our
own staff. Here was a matter on which I could very well consult “Mr.
Brown,” if von Kahn’s inquiries satisfied me as to his bonâ fides.
I started off next morning, accompanied by von Kahn, who had left his
family at an East Coast watering place, fully determined to over-ride the

objections which Berlin had shown and to establish communication with
“the hermit of the Glen,” as I had, with a little touch of true German
sentimentality, described him.
We went across Scotland, changing at Stirling, and in the evening I came
to the little town which was the nearest point on the railway to Mr. Brown’s
residence.
Stirling was interesting. It was full of soldiers in their picturesque kilts.
“Ah, my fine fellows,” thought I pityingly, “how little you know of the
humiliation in store for you!”
In six months’ time these proud regiments who were marching to the
station with bands and banners would come creeping back, possibly under a
German guard! Little did they think, these officers who sat chattering so
frivolously on the station, that the unobtrusive man in knickerbockers and
rough stockings, watching them so innocently, was a member of the
dominant race and an officer of that great secret service which has no
parallel in the world.
But to resume my narrative. The next morning, at six o’clock, I rose and
knocked on the door of von Kahn’s room. He was up and dressed, and after
a hasty breakfast we were soon flying through the morning sunlight to our
destination.
Four miles out of the town we left the main road and pursued a narrow
cart-track which led gradually up to the hills. The road crosses a saddle of
one of these ridges, then drops steeply into a broad green valley, through
which runs two rivers.
We stopped at the top of the hill and von Kahn pointed out the shooting-
box which stood on the crest of the farther rise—a little white building.
“Our Mr. Brown is at home,” he said and pointed to the flag, a yellow
flag with a red lion in the centre, the same being the secret standard of
Scotland, which is always flown in defiance of the English, whose banner is
the Union Jack.
We had discussed our plans thoroughly the night before because,
obviously, nothing could be left to the last, and it would have been
extremely dangerous to have talked in the presence of the chauffeur of our
hired car.
I have always made it a point to have no dealings with anybody outside
our own service, and I had arranged with von Kahn to undertake all
negotiations with this stranger. I said good-bye to my friend and wished him

good luck, and I watched him as he descended a steep footpath and walked
along the little road that led to the farther hill.
I sent the chauffeur back to the main road, telling him to rejoin me at
noon, and profitably spent the time of waiting by exploring ground and
coding a message on the Swiss incident, for transmission to Germany.
Through my glasses I could watch from time to time the progress of my
comrade. I saw him climb the hill and stand before the door of the cottage,
and presently a man came out. They talked together for about ten minutes
and then they both disappeared into the interior.
It was not until half-past ten that von Kahn made his appearance again. I
saw him shake hands with his host and wave his hand cheerily, and three-
quarters of an hour later he rejoined me on the crest of the hill.
“Well?” I asked.
There was no need to ask von Kahn. His eyes were gleaming with
triumph.
“I can only say,” said he, “that our Mr. Brown is a remarkable man.”
“In what way?”
“He speaks German, he reads German, and he is German,” said von Kahn
emphatically, “he has a library of all the German classics. I discovered that
when he was out of the room. His flag-post obviously supports a wireless
aerial in the night-time, and although he is bland and uncommunicative, I
have no doubt whatever about his character. He is one of the Higher
Service.”
I nodded.
“Did he give you any hint——?” I began.
“Not a word,” said von Kahn emphatically; “he speaks splendid English,
is well acquainted with Australia, and pretends that he is a wealthy
pleasure-seeker with no other interest than fishing and shooting.”
“I hope you were tactful,” I said suddenly.
Von Kahn smiled.
“My dear Heine,” he said, “you need have no apprehension. I whistled a
certain little tune you know, and he finished it without hesitation. He is not
only in the Higher Service, but he stands very high in the Higher Service.”
To make absolutely sure, we returned that night, and in company with
von Kahn I crossed the valley and climbed the hill.
I was half-way up the hill when I heard a familiar sound. If you can
imagine the rattling of dried peas in a tin canister shaken at irregular

intervals, you know the sound that wireless makes, and that a wireless
message was being tapped from the cottage on the hill there was no doubt.
More than this, the unknown Mr. Brown had taken elaborate precautions to
avoid detection. We climbed the hill a little higher and suddenly my foot
caught an obstruction. I flashed my electric lamp down and saw that I had
snapped a tiny wire.
Instantly the “clickety-click” of the wireless ceased. There was a stealthy
footstep at the top of the hill and I guessed that the aerial was being taken
down and that it would be stowed and hidden, together with the
instruments, long before any intruder could reach the cottage.
“Go up now,” I whispered to Kahn; “go quickly and reveal yourself.”
I handed him the message I had coded and which I had brought with me.
“Give him your official number, show him your credentials, and ask the
illustrious gentleman to send this message through.”
Kahn took the message without a word and began the ascent. I watched
him, not moving from my position and presently I heard him challenged
sharply.
“It is I,” said von Kahn’s voice and, like the bold fellow that he was, he
spoke in German.
Some one replied in the same language. There was a brief exchange of
question and answer, and the three—the Swiss valet was evidently present
—disappeared into the cottage, and a few minutes later I saw the red glow
of a light from the windows.
I was sorely tempted to creep up and listen. After all, there was no reason
why von Kahn alone should have an opportunity of meeting this well-born
gentleman who might be in a position to speak a favourable word in the
highest quarters regarding myself. Then, again, I was not sure that von
Kahn would fulfil his mission to my satisfaction.
We Germans trust nobody. Probably that is one of the reasons of our
phenomenal success in dealing with people of less kultural eminence than
ourselves.
I determined to risk it, and keeping as much in the shadow as possible,
and feeling gingerly for other wire signals, I made my way to the little
platform upon which the cottage stood. We had specially put on rubber-
soled shoes for the night’s work, and I moved noiselessly. The door was
closed, but there was no difficulty in discovering the room to which von
Kahn had been taken. I crept nearer to the window.

The two men were talking and laughing and, thank heaven! their speech
was German.
“But how do I know,” I heard Mr. Brown say, “that you are not a member
of the British Secret Service?”
“For the matter of that,” said von Kahn jovially, “how am I to know that
your Excellency is not also of that phantom body?”
And they both laughed together.
I heard the clink of a bottle on a glass and two hearty “Prosits,” and then
Mr. Brown spoke again.
“Now what can I do for you? I suppose you know that you ought not to
have come anywhere near me? How did you find me out? Was it the ever-
to-be-condemned tune I whistled?”
Von Kahn chuckled.
“I have known about you for a long time,” he said, “and as I am in need
of help I thought I would take the bull by the horns and seek this interview.”
“Are you alone?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Quite alone,” said von Kahn promptly.
“I mean, were you alone in making the discovery?”
“Quite alone,” said von Kahn again.
“Then you are a remarkably shrewd fellow,” laughed Brown.
I can tell you it made my blood boil to hear this swine-hound taking all
the credit for this discovery. Little he knew that I was standing outside the
window listening to his immodest perfidy! Could he not have said, “No,
Excellency; the credit is due entirely to my respected chief, whose name I
am forbidden to mention. I am merely an instrument in a superior hand?”
Oh, no! In his vanity and deceit he must take full kudos to himself. Would
he go any farther? Almost as I framed this question he spoke.
“I would ask your Excellency,” he said, “if you ever refer to this meeting
to the illustrious Chief of Naval Intelligence that you will give him a
testimonial.”
I could hardly restrain myself. For one second it was in my mind to rap
sharply at the window and denounce this underling. But, fortunately, I
restrained myself, though I was boiling with rage. We Germans have a keen
sense of justice and are inherently, almost transparently, honest, and nothing
so distresses us, so angers us, as duplicity and ingratitude.
“But surely,” said Mr. Brown’s voice, “you did not come alone to-night.”
I waited.

Just as I had been anxious for von Kahn to give me full credit, so was I
now as anxious to hear him deny my presence. I do not know what it was
that brought this revulsion of feeling, whether it was something in the tone
of Mr. Brown or some instinctive flash of knowledge that all was not well,
but I sweated as I stood waiting for the answer which seemed an eternity in
coming, though in reality it was only a second or so.
“No, I assure you, Herr Brown,” said von Kahn, “I came alone.”
“That makes matters simple,” said Brown’s voice, and as he spoke the
light went out. I heard von Kahn shout, but his voice was instantly muffled.
There was a struggle, a thud that seemed to shake the little building, a
groan, and then silence.
I had my automatic pistol in my hand in a second.
Should I go to his rescue and take the risk of capture or should I leave
him to his fate? It was a terrible decision I was called upon to make. We
Germans do not shrink from our responsibilities, nor are we governed by
the foolish sentimentality which dictates the actions of the commoner tribes.
I made my way down the hill with great rapidity. You may say that I was
leaving a comrade to his fate, but I answer that when one cog of a wheel
breaks off do the other cogs disintegrate themselves in sympathy. We were
part of a great machine, von Kahn and I, and my action, if it needed such
justification, was justified by the events which followed.
I was within fifty yards of the narrow road which winds along the base of
the hill when I thought I heard a sound before me and I stopped, flattened
myself on the ground between two bushes, and listened. There was no doubt
that I had reason for my suspicions. I heard, not one stealthy footfall, but a
dozen, and, peering up, I saw against the artificial sky-line which I had
created by lowering myself to the earth, half a dozen shadowy figures. The
nearest was ten yards away and my heart came to my throat when I saw a
gleam of light upon the tunic of a policeman.
They were police, undoubtedly, and they were making their way up the
hill in such a manner as led me to believe that the hill itself was practically
surrounded. I watched, holding my breath. The first of the figures passed
not two yards away, the second on my right less than a yard. I waited until
they were well up the hill before I moved, and then I wriggled forward with
the utmost caution, for I thought it was possible that they had left a guard
on the road. This view proved to be correct as I had not got far before I saw
a man pacing the roadway.

Fortunately his beat was long and I was able to gain the road and cross it.
I found myself in a field of cabbages. Here again luck was with me, for
running along two sides of the field was a deep ditch. Into this I sank and
with great labour reached the opposite hill, on the top of which, hidden in a
small copse, were the two motor bicycles which had brought us on our
night adventure.
Here again German forethought saved me from what might have been
destruction. Von Kahn had suggested we should have the chauffeur and the
car we had in the morning, but as I pointed out, this would have aroused
suspicion, and so instead we had hired two motor bicycles, not from the
town in which we were staying, but one five miles farther along the line
from whence we had set forth upon our quest.
Near by the copse, as I had seen earlier in the day, was a disused quarry
overgrown with vegetation. Swiftly I wheeled Kahn’s bicycle to the edge
and flung it over. It would remain undiscovered for at least a few days, and
possibly for ever, unless a search was made.
To leap upon the other motor cycle and to go flying down the road was
the work of a few minutes. I confess I was agitated and nervous. Who was
this mysterious man who lived at the top of the hill? How did he know we
were coming that night and was so sure of the hour that he could surround
his house with policemen to trap us? Why had he assaulted my friend when
he and his servant could have overcome him or have held him at the point
of a revolver until the police arrived?
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!

CHAPTER III.
THE LOVELY MISS HARRYMORE

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!

CHAPTER IV.
THE AFFAIR OF MISTER HAYNES

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.

CHAPTER V.
THE MAN FROM THE STARS

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.
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.

CHAPTER VI.
THE AFFAIR OF THE ALLIES’ CONFERENCE

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.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WORD OF A PRINCE

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:
“Have you brought my collars?”
“Step in,” I said.
The cabman had his instructions and turned toward the City.
To meet these escaping-prisoner cases I had taken a furnished flat in the
Edgware Road. It was on the ground floor and had the advantage of having
no porter, so that one could go in and out without being spied upon.
I opened the door of my flat and ushered my visitor in.
“Your name?” I demanded.
“Prinz,” he began.
“Highness,” said I quickly, “forgive my peremptory tone and please
command me. I am entirely at your disposition. If I have been a little
taciturn and quiet on the journey, and if I spoke to you a little sharply, pray
pardon an over-tired servant of the Empire.”
“With pleasure,” he said.
He was a little, short man, who wore glasses.
“My name,” he said, “is Prinz, Karl Frederick Prinz. I am a Lieutenant of
the 34th Selician Regiment.”
“Indeed,” I said a little coldly, “you led me to believe you were highly-
born. Now what the devil do you mean by doing that?”

“It is not my fault, Mr. Heine, that you were deceived,” he said humbly.
“What do you expect me to do?” I asked angrily, for one cannot waste
time on a reserve lieutenant and such-like cattle. “You ought not to have
called me up at all,” I said, raising my voice; “it is abominable. Have I
nothing better to do.”
He stopped me with a gesture.
“Pray do not excite yourself unduly, Mr. Heine,” he said; “for any trouble
you may take, my father, the Colonial Secretary, will repay you.”
“The illustrious Doctor Prinz?” I said. “Are you his son?”
I stretched out my hand and gripped his.
“Welcome, a thousand welcomes! I know your Councillor of State father
and his Excellency has frequently spoken to me of his son. Come, come,” I
said jovially, “help yourself to the good Rhine wine, for it is not often that
we are honoured by a visitor of your calibre, Herr Lieutenant.”
We drank a bottle together, and then he told me his plans. The difficulty
of getting out of England is briefly to get out of England, to secure a place
on board a ship is well-nigh impossible, unless you are vouched for by
Foreign Office officials, whilst the punishment for stowing away is so
heavy that few of the neutral captains care to take the risk of allowing their
ships to go out of port, without conducting an independent search.
Herr Prinz, however, had received a message from his father by some
secret cipher to the effect that four times each month a submarine would
come in-shore off the Scottish coast. He was to reach a deserted part of the
foreshore, flash a signal from an electric lamp and a boat would be put off
to pick him up. This system would be put into operation the moment the
Herr Doctor Councillor of State, Prinz, learnt from me that he was free.
“Content yourself, my dear lieutenant,” I said, “you are as good as in the
Fatherland. I will notify your august parent, to whom I trust you will
remember me forthwith.”
“I have already notified him and I desire that you should not
communicate,” he said, so I took no further steps.
There was no difficulty in getting the young man to Scotland, and I
ventured to take a little holiday and accompany him. After all, one should
show a little attention to men who have fought and bled for one’s country,
especially when they are nearly related to councillors of State who, if not
noble, are exalted personages on the way to nobility.

I supplied the young man with passports and various documents to
identify him, and left him (with £50 which I advanced out of my private
purse) at an hotel in a small town not many miles from the west coast of
Scotland, under the care of a good German head-waiter who promised to
look after the lad. And there I thought I had heard the last of him, and he
had gone out of my mind, until I received an urgent message from Scotland
saying that the submarine had not come, and asking me for another £50.
I went straight up to Scotland and found the Herr Lieutenant living at the
hotel and very weary.
“It is very strange, Heine, I have been at the appointed place every night,
on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th, I have flashed my lamp and nothing has
happened.”
He told me he had waited on one occasion for four hours on the beach;
on another he waited till daybreak.
“It is very extraordinary,” I said. “When you fixed this scheme with His
Excellency the Councillor of State, Doctor Prinz, was it by writing?”
“By secret cipher, and what is more, the message was written in secret
ink.”
“Did it reach you without having been opened?”
“Yes,” replied the Herr Lieutenant; “I have one of the letters in my
pocket now.”
He took the letter and opened it. Apparently it was an innocent letter such
as an affectionate father might write to his prisoner son.
“Now wait,” said the young officer. He sent for a glass of milk and
immersed the letter, then held it before the fire to dry.
There instantly appeared string after string of words which were
meaningless to me, apparently written in brown ink.
“I carry the code in my head,” he said.
I looked at the envelope, carrying it to the light. I noticed that the stamp
and the postmark had been torn off and inwardly I praised the young man
for his discretion. The flap was stuck down, though it had of course been
cut at the top where the letter was taken out, and to all intents it had not
been tampered with. I examined it with a magnifying glass, however, and
saw that suspicious gum line which can always be seen in a letter that has
been opened and surreptitiously closed.
“This envelope has been steamed,” I said, “the letter has been read,
replaced, fastened down by a kind of spirit gum which the censors use, and

smoothed with a hot iron.”
“How do you know?” he asked in alarm.
“I have opened too many myself,” said I, with a smile, “not to recognize
the signs.”
“But supposing they had brought up the secret writing,” he said, “they
could not understand the code.”
I thought for a moment and presently I said:
“There is only one person in the world who can read that code and that
person is a woman. More than that, Herr Lieutenant,” I added proudly, “that
woman is the dearest friend I have in the world, Miss Kathleen O’Mara of
Chicago, U.S.A.”
And I told him something of this delightful girl’s history, of how her
father had been a Fenian and how she was bitterly anti-English. She had
taken up codes and ciphers as a hobby, and she had come to be so expert
that you were always reading in the Chicago papers articles either written
by her or about her. There was not a cryptograph that ever appeared in the
agony column of a London newspaper that she couldn’t discover.
“You said her name was O’Mara,” said the Herr Lieutenant thoughtfully;
“is she a tall, slim girl, with dark hair and blue eyes?”
It was my turn to be amazed.
“Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “even your illustrious father could not have
described her more accurately.”
“And is her husband a tallish man with bristling black eyebrows and
fierce black moustache?”
I drew myself up stiffly.
“The lady’s husband, Herr Lieutenant, you see before you in prospect.
She is unmarried.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
“Well, then, it is not the same lady. This was a Mrs. Hagan, the wife of
Captain Hagan of the United States Secret Service.”
I stepped back and clasped my brows. Now I remembered the man!
Hagan from Washington! And she had married him. By heavens! When I
think of the depth of woman’s duplicity I could despise the race. She, the
Irish patriot, the strafer of England, to send that man to me in the hope that I
should commit myself! Thou perfidious betrayer of one who entertained for
thee naught but the tenderest, holiest feelings! Oh, what a low woman!

“I see it all now, Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “this woman was brought down
to your camp to unravel your cipher. When did you receive it?”
He thought a moment.
“The night she left.”
“Now you understand,” I cried passionately, “no wonder you have waited
in vain upon the beach! No wonder the four submarines disappeared! No
wonder you were allowed to remain at liberty! These cursed, treacherous
British! Was there ever a nation that more deserved to be obliterated?”
I made my plans quickly, as is my wont. Before leaving that night I gave
the Herr Lieutenant another £50, making £100 he had received since his
escape.
I myself was in considerable danger and if Hagan suspected me, the
traitorous Kathleen knew me. I sent a man especially to Dublin and
discovered that they were staying at an hotel in Sackville Street and that so
far from Hagan having arrived recently, both he and his wife had been in
Dublin for six months and they were undoubtedly in the pay of the British
Government.
Of the events which occurred on Easter Monday in Dublin, I do not
propose to speak. I sent very full reports to the Government, which may be
read with profit by any who have the entrée to the archives in
Wilhelmstrasse.
Two days after the rebellion started I saw Hagan and his wife in Regent
Street, they were looking in the window of a jeweller’s shop. With me to
think is to act. I stepped up to her and offered her my hand.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Hagan,” I said.
“Sure, ’tis the little Dutchman, Mr. Heine,” she smiled. “You know my
husband?”
“I have that pleasure.” I bowed stiffly and hid my emotions behind an
inscrutable face.
“And what are you doing in an enemy’s country?” asked Kathleen
innocently.
“Enemy!” I laughed bitterly. “There was a time, madam, when there was
only one enemy for the honorary secretary of a German-Gaelic club and
that was—England!”
“There is only one enemy for me now,” she said, gripping her husband’s
arm foolishly, “and that is Theo’s enemy. Sure, a wild young girl never
knows her own mind, Mr. Heine, and she runs this way and that way with

divil an idea what she is seeking. I guess I was seeking Theo, and now I’ve
found him I have stopped hustling.”
We exchanged a few words. I strolled with them to Piccadilly Circus and
they accepted my invitation to lunch at Prince’s.
“By the way,” I said in the midst of the meal, “do you still keep up your
cryptograph investigations?”
I thought I saw a little look pass between her and her husband and then
she smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she said, she may have said “sure” (I will not swear as to the
exact words of any dialogue which I report), “oh, yes, faith it’s highly
amusing.”
“And profitable, too, I suppose,” I said carelessly, helping myself to some
celery.
“Faith, it is that,” she said; “many is the laugh I have had going through
silly ciphers that come from Germany—bad cess to the place, and from
Scotland too,” she said.
You observe she was shameless! There was no flush of guilt, no faltering,
no lowering of eyes. She stood detected, blatantly confessed, an agent of the
English!
“When Theo came over to look after the American crooks in London I
came with him,” she said, “that is how I got to know those boys at Scotland
Yard, and I sort of drifted into the work and took to it like a duck to water.”
My hand was trembling, I could not help it. Righteous indignation shook
me from head to foot. I could have boxed her ears, but for my German
chivalry and the presence of her husband, who might have been distressed
at such a display of emotion, though I am sure he would have agreed with
me had he only known the amount of money I had spent on that frail
creature in flowers and theatre tickets and candy, to say nothing of postage
stamps.
“They would amuse you, Heine,” she went on, “especially the queer
things they say about you. There was a fellow the other day got a letter,
phwat was the boy’s name, Theo?”
“Prinz,” said her husband, who hitherto had not spoken a word.
“Sure that was his name,” said the girl, “ ’twas from his old dub of a
father and written in a very simple cipher.”
“A child could have read it,” agreed her husband, “and it was all about
you,” he nodded to me.

“It said go and see Heine,” said the girl. “Tell him your father’s a prince,
and if you haven’t got the pluck to do that, say you are the son of Colonial
Officer Prinz, and he will do anything for you. There was a long bit about
the lie he had to tell you. About submarines going up to Scotland to fetch
him. When we told the commandant he let the boy go, he was safe. He was
arrested yesterday and his father has been interned.”
“His father interned?” I gasped; “who was his father?”
Kathleen looked at her husband and Hagan spoke.
“He was the head-waiter at the hotel where the boy was staying,” he said,
“ ’twas his way of getting the lad a vacation.”

CHAPTER VIII.
THE JERMYN CREDIT BANK

Theories and lofty idealism have ever been qualities identified with
Germanism. We Germans despise duplicity and double dealing. In our bluff,
hearty way, we are impatient with the jiggling nonsense of diplomacy and
the shining sword of Michael cuts through the cringing wall of our enemies,
opening the way to the rich streams of kultur which are dammed in ever-
increasing volume by the banks which the envy, barbarism, and frivolity of
our enemies erect.
There is a saying in my country: “Trust an Englishman, admire a
Frenchman, learn from a Russian, but never argue with an American.” I
think it is the deceit of the English race, the mean treachery amounting to
sneakiness which so appals we Germans.
I have previously related a certain adventure with a person called Haynes
who insinuated himself into my office disguised as a journalist. I learnt that
he was a member of the ridiculous secret service which the English had
improvised during the war and with which it hoped to counteract the well-
organized and foreseeing sagacity of our bureau. I can prove that this same
Haynes, an English gentleman forsooth, was no better than an associate of
common blackguards, ruffians, and cutpurses of the worst description.
Such is English gentlemanliness!
What a scandal there would be revealed if on a certain day in 1916, I
could have walked into this man’s club where he sat with the pampered
aristocracy of England and have denounced him!
“Behold!” I would say, “a man who is little better than a common cad of
the golf links, and I can prove every word, gentlemen of the British
aristocracy!”
How sensational! But, alas! I had higher game than Mr. Haynes. I had the
interest and the future of the Fatherland to consider and these matters were
of infinitely greater importance than a thousand Haynes.
You must know that when I speak of the “well-organized and far-seeing
sagacity” of the German Intelligence Service, I am not in any way

exaggerating. For how many years had we been preparing for this most
gigantic and world-shocking conflict? How minutely were laid the plans of
the Intelligence Department! With what care and thoroughness and brainy
preparation did we patiently fashion the pieces of the game!
When I came to England I took charge, as I think I have explained
before, of the hundred and one departments which were in some way or
other associated with Intelligence. My task was to co-ordinate the whole of
the common service of Deutschstrum, to gather up all the strings in my own
fingers and to pull them each to serve the higher purpose. One of the most
important branches of our work had been inaugurated ten years before I
came to England, and I think if you spent the whole of those ten years
guessing you would not divine how the business which had been
established was to serve Germany in her hour of need.
Perhaps you have noticed, you who have been to London, a modest, yet
substantial, building in Jermyn Street, which is known as the Jermyn Credit
Bank. It is, or was, a very unpretentious and serious building with a modest
facia and a small but imposing interior. If you had not seen the place you
would not fail to have seen the advertisements of the bank which ran
consistently in most of the English papers.
The advertisement was as follows:

Gentlemen of position, officers of both services and officials of
the British or Indian Civil Service may arrange loans on note of
hand with the Jermyn Credit Bank. No security required. Interest
7 per cent. per annum. Apply by letter, which will be treated in
the strictest confidence, to the Secretary, Jermyn Credit Bank,
642, Jermyn Street, St. James.

There was nothing flamboyant about the advertisement any more than
there was about the building. The advertisement occupied a space of two
inches in most of the newspapers, but generally in the more respectable and
conservative of newspapers. Those who called by appointment were treated
with the greatest courtesy. They were ushered into the luxurious room of the
manager, the needs of the client were discussed, the question of security
delicately touched upon—there is always some security to be had even
though the advertisement made a point that none was required—and loans
were arranged, very often for considerable amounts.

The bank was very popular with officers of the army and navy. Men who
found themselves in a tight corner blessed the name of the Jermyn Credit
Bank. If, when their bills became due, there was any difficulty about
payment there was certainly no difficulty about renewing the document on a
very reasonable basis.
Sometimes, of course, it happened that the bank manager, a polite and
charming gentleman who was, alas! killed on the western front by the
treacherous English, could not, with all the best will in the world, oblige the
client. Needy professional men, doctors, lawyers and unimportant
journalists would learn that even with their security the golden coffers of
the Credit Bank remained tightly closed. But to any officer, especially to an
officer who had the magic letters P.S.C. after his name, or any head of a
civil department or any naval gentleman, who had won the slightest
distinction and promotion in his profession, might be assured that if not the
whole, at least part of his necessities were met.
The business grew to an extraordinary extent. One officer would
introduce another. Mr. Rostenberg, the manager, would occasionally give
little dinner parties, to which he would invite one of his more exalted
clients, on the understanding that he would bring two or three friends.
I cannot say that the business was particularly prosperous from our point
of view, but there were singularly few bad debts, and I do not suppose it
cost the Fatherland more than £10,000 a year to secure an intimate financial
history of every officer serving in the army, plus a pull over such of the
bank’s clients as were in its debt. For men who borrow money are very
grateful and a grateful man is talkative, especially if conversation is assisted
by a little Veuve Clicquot and a chic dinner, and what is more natural than a
man should talk about his brother officers and their financial positions?
The bank had the reputation—so valuable—that it never dunned its
clients or brought an action against even the most backward and unfaithful
amongst them, and such a reputation helped considerably when war broke
out and Mr. Rostenberg was called upon by his directors to resign
immediately owing to his German origin and his place was taken by Mr.
Mathew Ritten, a neutral gentleman of great integrity.
As the English army increased so increased the business of the bank, for
young officers are impecunious all the world over. I am not going to say
what steps were taken to secure information. This, however, I am willing to
confess, that much news came to me which, otherwise, I should not have

heard, for Mr. Ritten gave little dinners and went to clubs and met many
men who were glad to talk to one who was so enthusiastically an anti-
German, and I, Heine, sitting in my little Fleet Street office would receive
short notes in the code and would learn that the 10th Blankshires and the
division to which the 10th Blankshires were attached were being withdrawn
to General Reserve, and the 19th Wessex were training for attack behind the
lines and being taught by means of models the topography of the country to
the east of Lens.
For myself, I never went to the bank. If you had told me of its existence I
should have expressed surprise and wonder. I saw the advertisements as
everybody else saw them, but to me, Mr. Ritten was a name and nothing
more. We Germans have the reputation of devoting too much attention to
insignificant details, but let me tell you, my friends, that the might of
Germany was built upon details, expanded on details, and came to its
highest and most world-defying decision in August, 1914, upon the faith
which we had in the detailed plan.
Though I despised the English Secret Service, though I could shrug my
shoulders and snap my fingers at these amateurs, I was too much of a
German to rush bull-headed into danger. Realizing that Mister, or Major,
Haynes, was a man of duplicity and low cunning, I purposely avoided
associating myself in the slightest degree with the Jermyn Credit Bank,
though it was originally the idea of those who sent me to England, that I
should appear in London in the capacity of manager of that bank.
Happily, I was too shrewd a fellow to agree to such stupidity. There is a
certain bat-eyed ignorance about the officials who direct the Intelligence in
Berlin, which is deplorable and incomprehensible. That they need new
blood at Headquarters, is acknowledged all over the world. If they had had
a man there with a knowledge of England and America, a man who himself
had carried out difficult and dangerous tasks, and who, by reason of his
long service in the department, was well entitled to greater promotion than
that which was grudgingly given to him: if, in fact, they had such a man as
I, many of the mistakes which disfigured the administration during the
years of war would have been avoided.
They chose for me the most incompetent of helpers. They sent me all
sorts of impossible assistants, with whom I would not associate my name
and my proud record. They foisted upon me unskilful enthusiasts who were
often sent to England without any notification coming to me, and these, in

most cases, were detected and suffered at the hands of the law. Do not think
that I have any axe to grind. I am only concerned with the welfare of the
Fatherland, but there were moments when even I, faithful servant and
obedient subordinate of higher authorities, “kicked myself against the
pricks,” as the English say, at the absurd lack of comprehension and
seriousness which was shown.
One afternoon I had returned from the country, where I had been
superintending the erection of a temporary wireless plan, when my office-
boy informed me that a man was waiting to see me. I found him sitting on
the edge of the table, smoking the stump of a cigar. He was a tall man,
rather broad, and by the fact that he was wearing his hat in my office, and
that the room was filled with the rank smell of tobacco, I gathered that he
was an American of the lowest class. He was dressed expensively but
loudly. He wore a great bunch of seals which dangled from a broad silk
ribbon, and had two diamond rings upon the little finger of his right hand.
He nodded as I came in, but did not attempt either to take off his hat or to
stand on his feet. For the moment I did not recognize him.
“May I ask to what I owe the honour of this visit?” I demanded politely.
“Cut all that out, Heine,” he said coarsely. “Why, don’t you recognize
your old friend, Big Jim?”
“Don’t call me Heine,” I said hastily.
I recognized the man at once as one of the private detective staff of the
Hamburg-American line. It had been my duty to keep an eye upon
undesirable characters, and Big Jim Riley was as well known to New York
as he was to London as a “con.” man. He used to work the boats of the
Hamburg-American line in the days before the war, and for some time was
one of a gang of crooks that spent their lives crossing and re-crossing the
Atlantic.
Though we had many complaints about the man, he had too big a pull in
New York for us to interfere with him. I had lived with Big Jim and his
gang in that spirit of camaraderie and tolerance which typifies the attitude
of a shrewd German detective to the criminal classes.
“Why, so it is,” I said heartily, “but you must not call me Heine, Jim.”
“Ain’t you a Dutchman?” he said.
“I never was a German!” I doubt whether he saw the subtle correction. “I
am a Chilian and I am happy to say that I hate the Germans and all their
work.”

Big Jim’s eyes opened wide.
“Well, now, if that don’t beat the band,” he said, “so that’s your name, is
it?”
He pointed to the name that was painted on the glass panel of the door,
and I nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I guess those people in New York have made some
mistake. Pretzl told me I was to come along and report to you and that you
might put some good work in my way. I don’t care what it is,” he said,
swinging his legs and puffing away at his cigar, “anything short of a
business that will send me to the Chair is good enough for me.”
“My dear Jim,” I said mildly. “I am afraid Herr Pretzl is under altogether
a wrong impression.” How I cursed that interfering swine von Pretzl who
had placed my life and freedom in the hands of a common confidence man!
I have frequently warned von Papen that Pretzl was an old woman and a
fool. How much was I justified!
“See here, Heine,” said Jim, speaking with great earnestness, “I want
some kinder job. There ain’t any suckers left in the world—I guess they’re
all gone to war. There’s nothing crossing the Atlantic now but Dago
acrobats on their way to join up with the Alpinis, and they’re wrapped up so
in life-savin’ suits that they couldn’t get at their wad even if they wanted to
give it to you. Them and feeble-minded old men and women are all the
passengers there are—and women as you know are meaner than hell when
it comes to a show-down of real money. I’ve been across three times
dodging submarines and mines and all I could raise was a game of auction
bridge at ten cents a hundred. Now you know the ropes here. Put me wise to
a few.”
I thought rapidly. He might be a useful man. Then again he might be a
source of grave danger. A man of that character would not come to England
without the British police force being informed and probably he was
shadowed. In the circumstances I rejected any offer of personal help, but I
gave him the address of two or three gambling clubs and promised to call
on the ’phone a good friend of mine who was the proprietor of the largest.
He cheered up when I told him this.
“If there is money to be made,” he said, “I am after it. Some of these
young officers have got plenty of money, you say.”
“Some of them are worth millions,” I said solemnly.

He shook hands heartily and I was glad to see the back of him. I watched
through the window his departure. There was a man standing on the other
side of the road, apparently watching the traffic, but as soon as Jim made
his appearance and turned westward the idler turned too. Of course he was
watched. The imbecility of sending such a man to me with all the interests I
represented!
I was in despair, but pulling myself together I put on my hat and going
out into the street hailed a cab and was driven off to my club, where I told
an amusing story to a few of the members who were loafing in the smoke-
room about this confidence man who had come to me with a letter of
introduction. I felt sure that somebody would repeat the story, and in this I
was not mistaken.
I heard no more of Big Jim, though I saw him one night at dinner at the
Ritz-Carlton, and from his prosperous appearance I gathered that he was not
in any immediate want. My friend, to whom I had given him an
introduction, told me that Jim had cleaned up a lot of money one night at
the gaming club, that he was friendly with a number of officers, and that he
had become persona grata at a certain Bohemian club, the members of
which are mostly of the theatrical profession. I remembered, when this was
told me, that Big Jim, before he began his nefarious career, had been an
actor, if you can dignify with such a name one who travelled one-night
stands with a third-rate burlesque company, and he was alternately
comedian and baggage man.
What I expected, and what did not occur, was a visit from the police in
regard to Big Jim. For this I was prepared, but apparently the story I told at
the club must have been repeated in the proper quarters, as I intended it
should be, and nobody questioned me as to my acquaintance with this
undesirable American.
Whatever place Big Jim may have occupied in my mind was dispelled by
a piece of news which came to me one morning whilst I was in my bath—it
was Friday, that being the day I invariably bathe—which was of so
remarkable a character, and its possibilities so far-reaching, that nothing
else occupied my thoughts.
My servant knocked at the door and told me that there was an urgent
message awaiting me from “Mr. Thompson.” Now “Mr. Thompson” was
the telephone name for Mr. Ritten, and dressing myself hastily in my bath-
wrap I hurried to the room I used as a study, knowing that Ritten would not

call me at that unearthly hour unless something important was afoot or
unless he had secured some information of an unusual character.
“It is I, Thompson,” said the voice, “can I see you? It is most important.”
“My dear Thompson,” I said testily, “you know very well that it is
impossible that we should meet.”
“But I must see you,” he said, “it is a matter of the first importance. I
cannot communicate over the telephone.”
“Come then at once,” I said, “bringing some documents which would
excuse your presence.”
In ten minutes the bell of my flat rang, and Mr. Ritten was ushered in. He
was a suave, gentlemanly man, who was, I believe, well born in his own
country. With a preliminary apology for troubling me, which I coldly
dismissed, he laid before me the object of his visit.
“I have had a request for a loan of £20,000 for seven days,” he said.
“Twenty thousand pounds!” I was surprised at the largeness of the sum.
“That is an enormous amount. Who asks for it?”
“General Sir Stanley Magward!”
I whistled.
“Sir Stanley Magward!”
This was indeed a remarkable request. This general, as everybody knows,
commands one of the English armies. He is a famous strategist, and marked
for further promotion.
“Here is the letter. It arrived this morning,” said Ritten, and passed me
across a sheet of note-paper, which bore at the top the inscription:

“Headquarters of the 9th Army.”

The letter was brief and peremptory:

“Dear Sirs,
“I am in need of £20,000 to pay off a mortgage which falls due
on my Somerset property this week. My brother-in-law, Mr.
Hiram S. Carter, the well-known railroad magnate of America, is
on the ocean homeward-bound, and I cannot, therefore, get in
touch with him. Upon his arrival the debt will be liquidated. I
agree to pay a sum equivalent to 10 per cent. per annum for the
accommodation. I apply to you because I have no desire to let my

banker into the secret of my embarrassment. I shall be in London
the day after to-morrow, on short leave. A note delivered to the
Senior Army Club will find me.”

“Well?” said Ritten, when I pushed the letter back to him.
“By all means let him have the money,” I said.
“You authorize it?”
“Certainly,” I replied.
“I have made inquiries,” said Ritten, “his brother-in-law is on the
homeward trip, but the date of his arrival is rather uncertain. The mortgaged
property is Penton Close, and the mortgagees are the London and
Manchester Bank.”
I nodded.
“That explains why he does not wish to bother his bankers,” I said. “Send
a note to the Senior Army Club and have the money ready for the General
—this may mean a lot to us. It is the kind of connection that would be very
useful.”
Well might I feel elated. That an army commander should place himself
in the hands of money-lenders, and such money-lenders, was distinctly a
feather in my cap. It would not be well for my Lord Magward that the
mighty War Office should know one of their trusted generals was borrowing
money. On the other hand, it might be well for the Jermyn Credit Bank, if
any question rose as to its bonâ-fides, that it had amongst its clients so
august a personage. Whichever way I looked it was all to the good.
The letter was despatched, and on the Monday Mr. Ritten called me up
on the ’phone to say that the general was in his private office, and had
signed the necessary documents and was waiting whilst the cheque was
being cashed.
“Come round and meet him,” suggested Ritten.
“Am I a fool?” I replied sarcastically.
“He is very interesting,” said Ritten. “I have much to tell you when I
have the time. He has invited me to go to France to his headquarters, and to
bring any friends I wish.”
I could have hugged myself with delight.
“Accept the invitation,” I said quickly, “also discover where the
headquarters of the 9th Army are. Find out why he is on leave for such a
short time, and whether his army had many casualties in the last offensive.”

Ritten acknowledged my instructions and hung up the receiver, and I sat
down at my desk to formulate a plan for the forthcoming visit which I
intended to pay to an important headquarters of the British army in the
field.
I suppose I must have been working away for two hours when I heard a
commotion in the outer office, the door was flung violently open and a tall,
broad officer dashed in, slamming the door behind him. He was breathless
and could not speak. He was perhaps no more breathless than I, for he wore
the cross-batons and stars of a superior general, and across his broad chest
were three rows of medals, ribbons and decorations.
He tore off his gold-laced hat and wiped his brow.
“Pardon me, general,” I began.
“Shut up, Heine,” he gasped. “Forget that general stuff, and help me out
of this.”
It was my turn to gasp.
“Jim,” I said, “what is the meaning of it?”
He sank down into a chair.
“I have got away with £20,000 from a bank,” he said rapidly. “Gee, it
was easy money, Heine. A bit of note-paper that I borrowed from a kid on
leave from one of these army headquarters, a suit of clothes, and it was like
taking money from a child. But they’re after me; one of those damned
English officers spotted me and asked me in the street who I was. I just had
time to jump into a cab and bolt.”
The dreadful truth was slowly dawning upon me.
“Twenty thousand pounds,” I said, “you have got £20,000 from a bank—
from the Jermyn Credit Bank, Jim?”
“Sure thing,” he said, “do you know them?”
I passed my trembling hand across my brow.
“Leave the money here in my desk, Jim,” I said. “I will take care of it,
then, when the coast is clear, you can come back for it.”
“Give nothing,” he said brutally.
He walked across the room and took a cautious glance from the window.
“I am going,” he said, “they didn’t pick me up.”
“Don’t go with that money,” I cried in alarm, “it will be bad if they catch
you with the goods. Be a good boy and leave it here,” but before I could
finish he had thrown open the door.
“Hell!” said Jim, as Major Haynes walked in.

“Friend of yours, Heine?” said Major Haynes; “dear me, what excellent
company you are keeping. I hardly know who to expect next. I shan’t be
surprised to find the Minister of War here one of these fine days. How do
you do, general?”
“Quit kidding!” growled Jim.
“What horrible language for the commander of the 9th Army,” said
Major Haynes, and then—“I suppose you know it is an offence to wear a
uniform to which you are not entitled?”
It was now my turn to speak.
“This man,” I broke in, “is a thief. He has robbed a certain bank of a
large sum of money.”
“As to that I know nothing,” said Major Haynes, “all that I am concerned
with is the fact that your friend is wearing a uniform to which he is not
entitled.”
“He is a robber,” I cried excitedly, “he has obtained by trickery and fraud
a great amount of money.”
“From the Jermyn Credit Bank?” asked Major Haynes in a tone of
interest, “the officers’ friend, the help-one-another association? How
perfectly shocking!”
He beckoned with his finger and Jim and he left the room. I saw them
drive away in a cab together, and sat in an agony of apprehension, not only
that day but for the rest of the week.
Then, one afternoon, Major Haynes strolled into my office.
“Your friend, the general, has sailed,” he said, “and you will be pleased to
learn that I took from him everything to which he was not entitled.”
“The money?” I said eagerly.
“The uniform,” said Major Haynes; “I think he was entitled to the money,
don’t you? As a matter of fact,” he went on, “I will ease your mind about
the money. That also was taken from him, and is now with the rest of the
bank’s credits—in the hands of a British official.”
I turned sick and faint.
“You are thinking of your friend von Ritten,” smiled Haynes. “He also is
in the hands of a British official!”

CHAPTER IX.
MR. COLLINGREY, M.P.—PACIFIST!

I have often said that there is something grossly immoral about the
profession of journalism. These men who live on the woes of others, who
batten on the miseries of the world, must of necessity be dead to all kindly
impulse and to the gentler emotions. They must be sceptical of all that is
good, and have immeasurable faith in the wickedness of human nature.
They must have neither reverence for the great ones of the earth nor charity
for the sins of the weak.
My experience of journalists and of English journalists particularly, had
been with a Mister Haynes, who behaved with the greatest treachery toward
me, insinuated himself into my office under false colours, for was he not an
officer of the English Intelligence Department, and has he not, as I have
reason to believe, the blood of two high-spirited German youths upon his
gory hands?
In the autumn of 1916, I learnt that Berlin was sending to me a Swedish
gentleman named Heigl, and I was ordered to follow his instructions and to
give him all the assistance which lay in my power. I have a constitutional
objection to the intrusion of outsiders and more especially to amateur
intelligence officers who, in my experience, have never failed to bungle any
task to which they set their hands, so I cannot say that I viewed with any
enthusiasm the coming of Mr. Heigl, fraught as it would be, and as I knew,
with additional risks for myself and possibly the disorganization of the
perfect system which I had with such labour established.
Mr. Heigl proved to be a very pleasant gentleman, a merchant of
Stockholm, a short man with an untidy grey beard, well dressed and having
the appearance of prosperity. In fact, as I learnt, he was a gentleman of
considerable wealth, and though not well born, even in a Swedish sense, he
was a persona grata with the leaders of the Conservative Party in Sweden
and was frequently consulted by his Government on all matters affecting
trade.

Amongst other things he was the proprietor of a weekly newspaper
published in Stockholm. All this he told me within the first hour of our
meeting; in fact, on the way up from an East Coast port to whither I had
gone to meet him.
“You must understand, sir,” he said with great affability, which I need
hardly tell you I returned, since he was the trusted agent of my beloved
country and was, moreover, a man who might be able to put a few things in
my way. One never knows when one requires the help of a man of this
description or, as we say in Germany, “Don’t refuse the carter the tyre, one
day the wheel may be yours.”
To resume the record of our conversation.
“You understand, sir,” he said, “that I am a citizen of a neutral state and,
therefore, I can take no active part in any propaganda designed to assist
Germany.”
“That is understood, excellent sir,” I replied, “and, believe me, I will not
embarrass you to the smallest extent by requesting your assistance.”
He inclined his head graciously.
“There are certain people in Berlin whom I have recently had the
pleasure of meeting. They are anxious that in this great world war the
German view shall not be entirely lost sight of.”
It was my turn to nod.
“The English press is not exactly friendly or inclined even to print the
German point of view, save to ridicule it.”
“The English, or British press, my dear sir,” I said warmly, “is a
Government press. Every evening, as is well known, the Government send
every newspaper the outlines of the leading article which they will write. So
cunningly contrived are those leaders, that in some of them they criticize
the Government, and nobody outside the office would realize that all those
articles are written by a special band of writers who work day and night in
Downing Street.”
He seemed interested at this news which was well known to me and to
many of my friends.
“But I interrupted you,” I said, “pray forgive me.”
“In Berlin,” Mr. Heigl went on, “it is thought that an excellent
opportunity exists either for founding or for purchasing a newspaper. It is
understood that the Post-Herald is for sale.”

“That is so,” I said nodding. I did not know it before, but I took his word
for it. We Germans can never be caught napping.
“The price that is asked,” Mr. Heigl went on, consulting a little note-book
which he drew from his waistcoat pocket, “is £100,000, that is to say, two
million marks. It is a paper which has had a great deal of influence in the
past but seems to have fallen away gradually until it has got into very low
water indeed. We believe that if we found the right man and spent a little
money the paper could be revived to its former prestige.”
“Of that I am convinced,” I said, “and it is a view which I have often
thought of advancing to Berlin. Believe me, Mr. Heigl, I have not neglected
the press. There is scarcely a newspaper man in Fleet Street whom I do not
know. I can tell you their circulations, the family history of their editors, the
names and records of their principal correspondents.”
He interrupted me with a little gesture.
“I am delighted to hear this,” he said, “I had no idea that you had taken
the matter up. In fact, they thought that you were unacquainted with the
personnel of the newspapers.”
I smiled a little bitterly.
“Wilhelmstrasse is sometimes a little unjust,” I said, quietly and sadly.
“Now, what would you say the circulation of the Post-Herald was?”
asked Mr. Heigl.
It was an unfortunate and tactless question to ask at the moment, but I
replied with readiness.
“I cannot tell you until I have consulted my books. There are so many
newspapers in London and one cannot possibly keep their circulations in
one’s head.”
I could see he was a little impressed, and later he asked:
“Can you suggest a man to act as go-between? Neither you nor I can buy
the paper, but if we could only get hold of a good substantial fellow, a bit of
a crank preferably, we could easily hide ourselves behind a bank and a
lawyer and complete the sale.”
I knitted my brows and compressed my lips. “For the moment I cannot,”
I said. “This is much too important a matter to be settled off-hand.”
To tell the truth, gentle reader, since my making the acquaintance of
Mister Haynes, I had steered clear of journalists, and the only one I knew
well enough to speak to was an old gentleman in a top hat who used to
stand at the corner of Salisbury Square, and borrow half-crowns from me.

Even his name I did not know, but I felt with my usual good fortune and
perseverance, I should not be long in finding the right kind of man.
It would not be true to say that I did not understand the British press, or
that I had not given it a great deal of thought. In my humble way I have
been a contributor to English journalism, and my letters, signed “True
Patriot,” “Mother of Six,” and other noms de guerre, have appeared in
newspapers of almost every colour.
The British newspaper is remarkable for its stupidity and ignorance. I do
not think that even the best friends of English journalism will dispute this
fact.
It is a fact which I cannot too clearly emphasize, that there is not a single
London newspaper edited by a professor. Only two of the London editors
have an educational degree, and none has been in the army or the navy.
I then proceeded like a good general, to examine the ground. The Post-
Herald is an old-fashioned Whig newspaper which had fallen on evil times,
due to the fact that it was owned by a family all of whom took something
out of its coffers, and none of whom put any brains into its management.
With true German thoroughness, I discovered that it was deeply in debt to
paper manufacturers, and to a syndicate of printing-machine makers.
This poverty-stricken rag, without two penny pieces to rub against one
another, had the temerity, the audacity, to attack “unscrupulous Germany.” I
confess when I opened the sheet and read the scathing and vulgar abuse of
our truly great kulturland, I was filled with righteous anger. But business is
business. The Fatherland has need of thee, Post-Herald. Thy columns shall
yet scintillate with sarcasm, not directed toward the genius of Germany, but
toward the vile and frivolous men who have dared the wrath of Michael!
Thy readers from these dull pages shall imbibe the principles which have
made Prussia feared, aye, and hated the world over. Deutschland shall be
vindicated in triumphant and very clever articles written by professors of
learning and translated by English hack writers.
My spirits rose and my heart glowed within me at the thought that I,
Heine, should pull the strings and direct in the heart of this great and
sinister city a policy which should still further enhance my beloved land.
Deutschland über alles. Also, I thought there might be some commission
on the purchase, for these things can be arranged. The first thing to do was
to find a go-between, a man who could be implicitly trusted, and I began to
ransack my mind for a likely person. To put one of the known English

pacifists in control would be to give the show away, and to upset the apple-
cart, to employ two English idioms.
Collingrey was the man! It came to me in a flash of inspiration. He was a
member of Parliament and hard up, having an extravagant wife and other
obligations which my good German modesty prevents my describing. He
had been a failure as a barrister, and a failure as a member of Parliament.
He might have held a position in the Government but for certain disclosures
which came to light in the matrimonial suit in which he became involved.
During the war most of his questions and speeches in Parliament had
been directed against Italy—our perfidious ally! There never was a man
who so hated the Italian Government as he, and with good reason, for Mr.
Collingrey, a year before the war started, had invested all his fortune in the
purchase of two pictures by that master, Leonardo di Vinci. The Italian
Government had prohibited the export of the pictures and when on top of
this a lawsuit was started, which involved the ownership of these works of
art, Collingrey got neither the pictures he had bought nor the money he had
spent.
He had stood to make a fortune, having resold these gems to the
American millionaire, Tilzer. The lawsuit dragged on, and Collingrey had
declared that the Italian Government was putting every obstacle in the way
of a settlement, and as the English Government refused to give him any
assistance, he was doubly incensed.
He was, therefore, a bitter man, and never lost an opportunity of
embarrassing the Government. His articles appeared regularly in those
journals which we had subsidized—very few, alas!—in this country. He had
a reputation for honesty, was a brilliant writer and a clever debater.
The thing was to secure his co-operation, and to convey to him, with as
much delicacy as possible, the policy which he would be called upon to
support.
I have before me the draft of instructions which I received from Berlin at
a subsequent date, and I cannot do better than print these:

1. The editor will adopt a conciliatory attitude toward Germany
and German War Aims. It is not necessary that the German point
of view should be urged, since this would defeat the object aimed
at. The Germans may even be attacked, though no
uncomplimentary reference to the Great General Staff, to the

Kaiser, or to any member of the German royal family must be
permitted.
2. It is permissible to condemn air-raids or U-boat sinkings in a
decorous and serious manner, but at the same time a note should
be appended to the effect that whilst these things are unfortunate,
the English have largely themselves to blame for failing at the
beginning of the war to observe the distinction between open and
defended towns, and also for not observing the Treaty of London.
3. At all times the editor must urge the necessity for arriving at
an understanding with Germany. The cost of the war, the loss of
life, must be deplored, and the possibility of avoiding further
losses by meeting the Germans at a peace council must be insisted
upon.
4. References to the taxation which will follow the war, and
how hardly it will fall upon the working classes as well as upon
the moneyed classes must be made frequently.
5. Whenever possible it should be hinted that the British have
no reason for continuing the war, and that they are being bled
white to support the insensate ambitions of France. French
military actions should, in consequence, be criticized as far as
possible.
6. Stories dealing with the humanity of the German soldier,
which will be supplied from time to time, should be given
prominence, and references to German strikes may be made the
most of, especially at moments of industrial unrest in England.

These were only a few of the instructions. I cannot help thinking that
Wilhelmstrasse made a great mistake in its moderation. If it had been left to
me I would have instructed the editor to lose no opportunity of attacking
every other newspaper which spoke slightingly of our great country—but
then I am a patriot!
I had no difficulty in getting an introduction to Collingrey, and he invited
me to dine at the British House of Commons. In a few words over a post-
prandial cigar I explained the object of my visit. The good friend whose
letter of introduction had procured the interview had smoothed my path by
representing me to be an agent of a South American rancher (name

unknown) who desired to break into London society, and in tones of gentle
but amused tolerance I hinted at my client’s vanity.
It was a difficult interview, because Mr. Collingrey paid very little
attention to what I said, but launched forth into a diatribe against the Italian
Government. He was a monomaniac on the subject. He thumped the table
so that all the other members in the dining-room looked round. He pounded
his hand with his fist. He waved his finger in my face. He sat back, he sat
forward, and all the time he spoke of the Italian Government and its
iniquities. So much the better, my friend, thought I. I give you my word you
shall have your fling at false Italia.
It gave me an opening to the exposition of the policy which the
newspaper would support, particulars of which reached me providentially
on the morning of my meeting the gentleman. Very gently and delicately I
laid down the lines on which the paper would be conducted, and he agreed.
Of course I did not give him all the details, for I did not desire to scare him.
“If you asked me to run a pro-Government paper I should have refused
it,” he said violently, “this is a Government of nincompoops, a Government
of charlatans, a Government of Enemies of the People. I regard the war as a
crowning iniquity and its continuance inexcusable but for the fact that our
Ministers have sold themselves body and soul to Italy. Take my own case,
for instance.…”
And so I had it all over again, the story of his purchase of the di Vinci
pictures from the Montimi collection, the story of the embargo, the story of
the lawsuit. What bores these English members of Parliament are, how
childish; what a contrast to the staid members of our own Reichstag with
their serious politics and their love of the Fatherland!
Mr. Collingrey readily undertook to act as go-between. He entered into
the spirit of the matter with great enthusiasm, and when I met him two or
three days later he produced two manuscripts dealing with the Italian
Government, which he read to me in the lobby of the House of Commons.
When the purchase was completed and the Post-Herald had passed into
the possession of a certain syndicate, which it is not advisable to name, he
had a manuscript on Italy in every pocket. Having done my part of the work
and taken the small commission which was my right, and having seen Mr.
Heigl safely on his journey back to Stockholm, I had little time to bother
about the newspaper, the more so since Berlin in its folly had decided that I
was not to interfere in its management.

I bowed respectfully to the high authorities and to the well-born
gentlemen who directed Germania’s policy, but I submit in all humility that
had Heine been at the helm much that subsequently happened might have
been avoided.
Mr. Collingrey carried out his instructions faithfully, and when they were
explained with more elaborate detail he accepted his orders (to my surprise)
without demur or question. His vivid leading articles on the Italian
Government attracted a great deal of attention and led to a strict application
of the censorship, but this only gave him a new interest in life, namely, in so
couching his words that he could do the maximum amount of damage to his
enemies without incurring censure. He was gentle with Germany, restrained
in his reference to the U-boats, never spoke of the Kaiser except as the
Emperor William, and his references to labour were invariably quoted in the
extreme organs of the masses. He was indeed a most satisfactory person,
and I have in my possession a letter addressed to me by the noble-born
Count von Mazberg, the head of our propaganda department, congratulating
me upon my most excellent choice. This I can show to any interested person
who doubts my word, and especially to those evil-minded un-German
journalists who have so often attacked me and my work.
I was out of London a great deal, being concerned in consultation with
certain labouring men who desired to bring the war to an end by an
understanding with Germany. These English patriots were organizing a
strike, and, naturally, I rendered them all the assistance that lay in my
power. This meant that I had to travel with a great deal of money and could
not afford to allow my attention to be distracted from the business at hand.
I arrived in London one evening and on reaching my flat discovered an
urgent telegram from Mr. Collingrey asking me to dine with him at the
Carltonia Hotel, as he had news of the greatest importance. I immediately
changed into my evening dress and drove down to the hotel where the
editor was waiting impatiently. He was happier than I have ever seen him.
His thin, cadaverous face was wreathed in smiles, as he heartily shook my
hand, brushing aside the compliments on his conduct of the paper which I
had prepared.
“Come and have dinner, my boy,” he said. “I have got great news.”
“I am delighted to learn this,” I replied. “Have you got one in the eye for
Italy, if you will pardon the expression?”
“Oh, much better.”

Grasping my arm he led me into the dining-room.
“After all,” he said as we sat down at the table, “perhaps I have been
rather unkind about Italy—my articles have borne fruit.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in surprise.
He chuckled as he unfolded his serviette.
“They have released my pictures, my dear fellow,” he said, “you have no
idea of the weight there is off my mind. It means a tremendous lot to me—
my fortune and my wife’s was invested in those infernal daubs. Look here,”
he took a piece of paper from his pocket and passed it across to me.
It was a cablegram which had been handed in at New York that morning:

“Agree to your price, hundred and fifty thousand dollars for di
Vinci pictures. Ship them by first mail-boat in charge of reliable
man.—Tilzer.”

“We will have a bottle of champagne on this.”
“But what induced the Government to take this step?”
“The lawsuit is ended,” said Mr. Collingrey, “and ended in my favour. I
tell you it has taken ten years off my age.”
He babbled on like a boy, but presently he grew calmer and we discussed
the policy of the paper, and I was glad to see that he still retained those
honest convictions about Germania which had ever distinguished his
writings.
It was just about this time that America was trembling on the verge of
war, when the unscrupulous Wilson was making his preparations to commit
the great crime against civilization of plunging his country into the horrors
of strife. For me it was a time of the greatest stress and anxiety. Cablegrams
from certain neutral countries reached me every hour. Secret and
confidential wireless messages from the supreme political chiefs reached
me through the usual channels.
The excuse the Americans made was the initiation by our Admiralty of an
unrestricted U-boat campaign against the munition ships of the Allies and it
was still hoped by the superlatively clever men who guide the helm of the
German state that war might be avoided.
On a night I shall never forget I received a message from Amsterdam
which I decoded. It ran:

“VERY URGENT.—To Chief S.S. Agents, London, Madrid,
Paris, New York, Stockholm, Amsterdam.
“Editors and directors of friendly and subsidized papers must
be instructed to deal sympathetically with U-boat campaign. Point
out iniquity blockade which is starving German women and
children, and suggest a compromise between Germany and her
enemies. Endeavour counteract enemy propaganda which will be
unusually virulent. Prepare articles and comments in this vein.
Acknowledge to chief of staff.”

I wrote a brief note embodying these instructions to Mr. Collingrey,
telling him that the South American, the mythical proprietor of the Post-
Herald was a big shipowner, and desired to save the shipping of the Allies.
This I despatched by special messenger and immediately dismissed the
matter from my thoughts for, as I say, I had not only the organization of a
great strike but also I had to condense the very heavy reports which were
coming through from our agents in the various shipping centres.
I worked till three o’clock in the morning and then snatched a few hours’
sleep. At seven I was at my task again with all the newspapers ready for
perusal. Naturally I turned to the Post-Herald first. Here I knew I had
material for a good report and with my code book open in front of me, I was
preparing to translate the leading article into language which would pass the
censor for transmission to Holland.
I opened the paper. There was the leading article, but to my amazement it
was headed:

German Murderers at their Foul Work.

I gasped. From the very first word to the very last the article was the
bitterest, the most vehement, the most unscrupulous attack upon Germany
that had ever appeared. I grew red and white as I read it. It called the
Germans assassins of the sea, barbarians, Huns, Boches, pirates,
blackguards, thieves—I shudder as I recall the language which was used by
Mr. Collingrey.
I was in a maze, bewildered. I read on like a man in a bad dream,
conscious of the awful avalanche of fury which would sweep down upon
me when Berlin read this dreadful and disloyal article.

It was not till nearly the end of the leader that I began to understand Mr.
Collingrey’s attitude. The final paragraph ran:

“If any doubt existed that this nation of Hun marauders is
lacking in the elements of kultur, that doubt is removed by the
wanton sinking of the Italian steamship San Salvadoro. It was an
open secret that that ill-fated vessel was carrying to England two
great masterpieces of Italian art, two priceless examples of
Leonardo’s genius. Did that fact stay the barbarian’s hand? Nay!
Rather it lent zest to the lustful and bestial representative of a
savage and unkultured people.
“Those two masterpieces, unfortunately uninsured by their
owner, lie at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay.
“Let the British Government make instant reprisals. Intern the
aliens in our midst! Imprison and shoot secret agents whose evil
activity is seducing the allegiance of our people, whose hands are
discernible even in the press itself.”

I laid down the paper and wiped the perspiration from my brow. I took up
a pen to indite the traitor’s dismissal, but on second thoughts I put it down
again.
After all, it was not my idea. Let Berlin do its own dirty work.

CHAPTER X.
THE GREY ENVELOPE

It has often been remarked by impartially-minded thinkers that the German
race produces more psychologists and more introspective logicians than any
other race in the world. It may be thought that I make extravagant claims
for Germans because I am of that chosen race. It may be sneered that we
only see one side of any question and that is our own side, but as against
that we Germans contend that there can be only one side to any question
and that is the side we are on.
For, as a race, and as individuals, we have that innate sense of justice,
that discrimination, that almost godlike balance of judgment which enables
us to see every fault that our blind and conceited neighbours possess. When
we Germans talk of “kultural extension,” we mean that it is our object to
extend our practice of reasoning for the benefit of humanity. The English
newspapers are notoriously stupid, ignorant, and unreasonable. Very often
they print in the short extract from some exalted personage’s address to his
troops a great and a vital fact without realizing that the sentiment they so
ignobly deride is the basic truth on which civilization was founded, and
from which all nations but Germans are cast aside.
Forgive me, dear friend, if I depart from the plain narrative of the curious
happening which is chronicled below to wander at large in the realms of
metaphysics, but since this chapter deals largely with psychology, it is meet
that I should preface the story with a short introduction worthy, I trust, of
Mother Heidelberg which sent me to the world, so well equipped with a
knowledge of the sciences.
There is in Berlin, as you know, attached to the Intelligence Department
of the Kriegsministerium, the Psychological Branch, which deals entirely
with movements of national thought, especially enemy thought, in its
relation to Germany. I claim, and I would like to know who would dare
refute my claim, that I have rendered invaluable service to the Herr
Professor von Zollernborn, the head of that department.

It was I who started the story of the Massacre of the 194th Highlanders. It
was I, who, through my trusty friends, put into circulation that hint that
France was conducting secret peace negotiations which created so immense
a sensation in knowledgeable London circles. It was I, who, having
received news that the British had sustained a severe defeat at Ctesiphon,
spread news within six hours of my information coming to hand that the
British had marched into Baghdad, thereby preparing for a more profound
feeling of depression than had the news come without my preliminary
planning.
We Germans neglect no opportunities. In a war between nations you must
strike at the civilian as well as at the soldier, and since we are more
qualified by reason of our mental equipment to exploit the sciences of
which we are so perfect masters, we enjoy advantages which are denied to
non-kultural races.
It was in 1917, in the early part of the year, that, as a result of
communications which had passed between myself and our agent in
Amsterdam, we decided upon opening the most elaborate, and though I
myself say it, one of the best planned campaigns against the morale of the
British that had ever been undertaken. The occasion was the arrival amongst
the enemies of the Fatherland of the United States of America. The U.S.A.,
as everybody knows, came into the war owing to the fact that the munition
makers of America, who had spent millions of pounds in plant, had found
themselves faced with ruin. For this they had to thank the perfidious
behaviour of the British, who cancelled their orders, well knowing that to
keep all the American munition factories running the American government
would be compelled to declare war.
I had this information from a dear friend of mine who is in the secrets of
Washington and was on terms of personal friendship with many Senators
and Congressmen, one at least of whom had openly exposed the perfidious
Wilson—such balderdash as his speeches has never been uttered by serious
statesmen!—and his nefarious plan.
I had not lived in America for nothing. I knew how deep-rooted was the
detestation felt in America against the English. I remember before leaving
New York I dined with two true-born patriotic Americans, the Mr. Shauns
O’Gorman and Mr. Adolph Dinklewurtt, who assured me solemnly, that any
movement of the President toward assisting the English would result in
revolution from one end of the country to the other.

I felt therefore, that although the die had been cast, and Wilson had
committed the unforgivable and diabolical crime of plunging America into
war for chauvinistic aims—a responsibility from which the unfrivolous
mind reels in gasping horror—there was still an opportunity for a man who
could think quickly and act instantly, providing always he had that genius
for organization which so few of my rivals possess.
It made it easier for me that America was intensely unpopular with the
English people. How they sneered at that expression of his “Too haughty
for war!” How they gibed at his notes and derided his chauvinistic
speeches! They refused to accept this impertinent man, this ex-colonel of
cowboy rough-riders, at his own valuation, or to take his “big stick” speech
in any but a frivolous spirit.
Knowing this uncompromising hatred of the American, it did not take me
very long to set my agents working. Within a week the country was ringing
with stories of the behaviour of American soldiers in Lancashire. You,
yourself, must have heard of the quarrel between the English and American,
which resulted in the American being thrown into a river and drowned? It
also probably reached your ears, that certain American soldiers, refused
liquor at a saloon, set fire to the house and decamped, carrying with them
the hotel keeper’s young daughter.
You may also have heard how all American soldiers speak despisingly of
England and boast that they have come in to finish the war. Some of these
stories were more widely spread than others, but all of them fulfilled one
excellent purpose—they brought annoyance to that ridiculous person, Major
Haynes—the so-called Intelligence Officer, under whose nose the despised
Heine worked so brazenly!
I do not pretend to know intimately the mentality of such men as Major
Haynes. I confess it is difficult for a plain-thinking German, blunt and
honest, to understand deceit for deceit sake (I justly absolve myself of all
acts of deception performed on behalf of the Fatherland), or to lower his
moral vision to the gutter wherein much slimy kultur flows.
To me, it is abhorrent that men should be so frivolous that they should
engage themselves in despicable undertakings for wholly despicable
reasons.
That such a stigma applies to Major, or Mister, Haynes, I can prove by
his own words.

Some time after my last encounter with him, we met in a café in Fleet
Street. I had gone in to drink a cup of coffee and smoke a cigar when the
swing doors opened and I saw the somewhat drab and insignificant figure
of Haynes enter. He walked in furtively, almost apologetically. How
different, thought I, would have been the bearing of one of our German
officers! He would have flung the door open with a crash and have stood
erect with flashing eyes and haughty mien surveying the room ere he strode
forward, his sword clanking with every movement of his big earth-
trembling German feet.
Major Haynes came in timorously and seeing me came toward me. My
throat went dry with hate, my hands shook with righteous anger and I felt
myself go pale at the thought of his perfidy.
But there was nothing to be afraid of as his first words assured me.
“Good evening, Heine,” he said, “may I sit down with you?”
Here again, what a contrast to a major of the Highest German Staff! He
would have ordered me to rise and go to the devil, and probably honoured
me with a good German cuff of the ear!
“Certainly, Major Haynes,” I said, “this is indeed a pleasure I did not
anticipate. May I order you some coffee?”
He nodded and I summoned the waiter.
“It is such a long time since we met,” I went on, “that I have almost
despaired of seeing you again. I began to fear that you had been sent to the
front.”
“I am afraid that must have given you some sleepless nights,” he said
foolishly.
Why should this conceited hound imagine that his departure for the front
would disturb my rest? Such arrogance!
“You may think I exaggerate,” I said earnestly, “but believe me, I have
been much impressed by your personality——”
“It is curious you should have said that,” said Major Haynes, “for I was
just on the point of remarking how much I had been impressed by your
personality. You see, Heine,” he went on, noting, I trust, my modest
surprise, “I have been watching you pretty closely (my blood ran cold) and
I realize how utterly trustworthy you are and how different from other of
the South American neutrals one meets. I always had an admiration for the
Latin races and it is such a joy to meet a thorough-going South American

with a German name, and especially one so whole-heartedly in favour of
the Allies as yourself.”
“Major Haynes,” I said solemnly, “I have no interests but the interests of
the Allies. If I could shoulder a musket to-morrow——”
“You would look very silly,” said Major Haynes crudely, ignorant of the
fact that I was speaking in a figurative sense, because muskets are no longer
carried even by the German-trained native troops of West Africa.
“Yes, I am sure you would fight, Heine, and I am certain it is only the
fact that you have a wife and family, that you are the sole support of your
ancient mother, and that you suffer from a weak heart, which prevent your
flinging yourself joyously into the battle.”
I inclined my head with a certain quiet dignity.
“You are pleased to jest, Major Haynes, for being an Englishman you
will have your joke, but I assure you in all seriousness that if ever I could
render a service to the Allies you have but to command me.”
Major Haynes looked at me for a long time. It would be true to say that
he stared very rudely before he spoke, but when he did speak his words
shocked me.
“That is exactly what I want you to do,” he said slowly.
I was all attention, curious, and at the same time apprehensive. If he
dared ask me to commit any action which would have injured my beloved
land I should have first smacked his face and then shot myself, if I still
lived.
“Command me,” I said coldly.
Major Haynes looked round, then he lowered his voice.
“The matter I am going to discuss,” he said, “is a delicate one. I want you
to upset one of the cleverest gangs of spies we have had in this country,
headed by a man who is without doubt the biggest genius in the German
Intelligence Department.”
If I blush with gratification, even though those words of praise were from
an enemy, can you blame me? If my pleasure overcame my fears, can you
wonder?
“There is a man in England,” Major Haynes went on, “who is directing
the real work of espionage. I am not referring to the hacks that Germany
employs to send her weather news and reports on the effect of air-raids and
movements of troops, but to the big gang, the men who work in the dark,
who go after the big coups.”

I nodded again, not I trust with any evidence of self-complacence, but
certainly in a spirit of pride, for I seemed to realize more of my importance
to the state when I heard my work recounted in the cold and passionless
language of a man whom I regarded at that moment as one of the most
intelligent Englishmen I had ever met.
“They are the people we are anxious to get,” said Major Haynes, “and, I
might add,” he said, “to shoot.”
I shivered, but hid my shiver in a laugh.
“Go on, dear Major Haynes,” I said, “you interest me.”
“I know the man I am after,” said Haynes. (I clutched at the table-cloth.)
“But I have not been able to catch him. He has a dozen aliases, but his real
name is Professor Zollernborn.”
“Zollernborn?” I said in astonishment.
I think it was at that moment that my quick German brain grasped the
situation. Professor Zollernborn was in Berlin. The clever Major Haynes did
not know that only that morning I had received instructions from the Herr
Professor. I saw the trap plainly, but from my impassive face Major Haynes
would never have known the rapid, lightning-like thoughts which were
flashing and crackling in my brain.
It was a trap for Heine! Beware and walk warily, thou faithful servant of
government! Match thy wits against this dull Englishman and put him in the
soup!
“Indeed,” I said.
“I have reason to believe,” this so-called Intelligence Officer went on,
“that a document of a very important character, which in some mysterious
way recently disappeared for twenty-four hours from the papers of the
Director-General of Recruiting, will be transmitted to Berlin—or rather a
copy of that document which is in such a code that it cannot be forwarded
by wireless.”
“In what way can I help you?” I asked, playing my part in the farce with
admirable sang-froid.
Major Haynes leant back and thrust his hands in an ungentlemanly
manner in his trousers’ pockets.
“I am going to put all my cards on the table, Heine, all except the ace,”
he said. “It cannot have escaped your notice that you have been associated
with people who have been very naturally the objects of suspicion. Two or
three gentlemen with whom you have had dealings—in a perfectly innocent

manner, I am sure—have paid the penalty for espionage. I know what you
are going to say,” he said, checking my indignant protest with a shake of his
head, “that you know nothing about their nefarious work? Quite right, I can
believe it. But for some reason or other, Heine, they think, these enemies of
the government, that you are favourably disposed to help them.”
“Then they make a very great mistake,” I said firmly, “and if they ask me
to assist them I shall be extremely annoyed.”
He nodded.
“So I think. And yet they will ask you to assist them. The document in
question will pass from hand to hand. Sooner or later it will fall into your
possession and on the envelope will be the address of another agent to
whom you will deliver it. It will probably be thrust into your pocket while
you are walking along the street and somebody will whisper in your ear
‘Frieburg,’ which means, ‘you have something which must be passed on
without delay.’ ”
As he proceeded the perspiration was pouring from me—indeed that
night when I came to change my undervest (it being Friday) I found it quite
damp. “Frieburg” was the password which we used in the sense that Major
Haynes had stated. What traitor betrayed his Fatherland and placed this
stupid officer in possession of our code will perhaps one day be known and
his name will be execrated from one end of Germany to the other.
“But,” I said, calming myself, “how should I know what ‘Frieburg’ meant
if you had not told me?”
“You would probably be notified by letter,” said the Major suavely, “at
any rate, you will know.”
“What am I to do?” I asked.
The scheme was now to me as plain as daylight. I was suspect, and this
was a trap for me. How was the trap to be sprung?
“The moment you find yourself in possession of that letter you will bring
it to me,” said Major Haynes. “Of course, I could have you watched all the
time but I could not be searching you every five minutes, and I could never
know, unless you assisted me, when you were in possession of this
interesting document. I could even have you arrested now,” he shrugged his
shoulders cold-bloodedly, “but that would not help, because another agent
would be found.”
“You want me to bring you the letter as soon as I receive it?” I said.
“That is all I ask,” said Major Haynes.

I offered him my hand and smiled.
“On the word of a sportsman and a gentleman,” I said, “I will bring it to
you.”
I walked down Fleet Street whistling a tune. Even in that moment of
danger Heine’s well-balanced mind was not seriously perturbed.
“I shall know no danger until I am blind,” said Schiller, and so might I
say, for with my eyes open to the plot which was being laid against me half
the danger vanished.
The cleverness of it, the cunning underhandedness of it! I was suspect.
They had no evidence against me and they wanted to secure proof that I
was a dirty-devil of a German. A police agent would hand me the envelope.
I should probably find the name of a comrade inscribed. I would be
watched all the time and if I attempted to escape with the spurious
document I should be arrested.
I have a much better plan, dear Mister, or Major, Haynes! Into thy blood-
guilty hands will I deliver this fake, or dud, document, and shall stand with
quiet, smiling contempt, watching thy confusion, when thou discoverest
that Heine, with bland innocence, has carried out thy wishes!
Two days later I was called up on the telephone and a strange voice
speaking with a German accent said:
“Be prepared for ‘Frieburg’ to-day,” and immediately rang off.
I chuckled my amusement. So this was the day for the plot to materialize.
I went about my work in the usual manner. I lunched at a fashionable
restaurant in the Strand, returned to my office, finished up my work at 5.30,
and strolled, as was my wont, westward.
It was whilst making the purchase of a paper at the bookstall at Piccadilly
Tube Station, that the thing happened. Somebody pressed close to me. I
heard the word “Frieburg” whispered in my ear, and when I had disengaged
myself from the crowd and carelessly put my hand in my pocket, I found a
somewhat bulky envelope, which as I felt with my fingers was heavily
sealed.
I walked down Piccadilly and turned into the park, and presently found
my way to a quiet spot. Making sure that I was free from observation, I
pulled the envelope from my pocket, pretending to take out a handkerchief
which I had previously pocketed, and examined the letter.
It was enclosed in a big grey envelope and was addressed in English:

“Deliver without delay to our agent at Southampton.”

I put the envelope and handkerchief back. The solution of Major
Haynes’s plot became ridiculously simplified. It was not only a test for me,
but it was an attempt to discover who was the agent of the government at
Southampton. Could you not imagine me driving off to Waterloo followed
by Secret Service men, and shadowed until I met and betrayed the brave
fellow who overlooked the interests of Deutschland in Southampton?
Five minutes later I was out of the park, hailing a taxicab.
“Drive me to the War Office,” I said in a loud voice, for the benefit of a
skulking loafer who was near by, and who was probably a detective in
disguise.
Immediately on my arrival, I sent up my card and was ushered in to
Major Haynes’s office. He jumped up as I entered.
“Have you got it?” he said eagerly.
For answer I handed him the grey envelope, and he seized it.
“Sit down, Heine. Excuse my agitation,” he said, “but I had a feeling that
they would try you.”
I looked at him in wonder for, for the first time in his life, the major was
agitated. He pressed a bell and a soldier came in.
“Will you ask General Brackenhurst if he can come,” he said.
If Major Haynes’s excitement was astonishing, what shall I say of a staid
and veteran staff-general, who tore the wrappings from the envelope,
eagerly scanned the unfolded pages and gave a loud and vulgar cry of joy.
“It is the original, Haynes!” he said. “Thank God we’ve got it!”
“They haven’t taken a copy, you think?”
“It was the copy they sent back,” said the general, wiping his forehead,
“it is impossible to make a copy of this. That is how we detected the theft.
This is the original. In this code a pin-point’s difference in the position of
the letters would have made all the difference. That is why they are trying
to send it to Germany, because they couldn’t translate it here.”
He turned and looked at me.
“Is this the gentleman who assisted us?” he asked, and shook me warmly
by the hand. “We owe you a great debt of gratitude, sir,” he said. “As Major
Haynes has told you, this document, if it fell into the hands of the enemy,
would have been of inestimable value to the Germans.”

If it was acting it was good acting. My German instinct told me that it
was not acting at all. I knew by the trembling of my knees that I had
misjudged the position, and I left the War Office like a man in a dream.
Only one thing remained to be done. I left that evening for Southampton,
and was fortunate enough to see our agent in the vestibule of a theatre.
I whispered “Frieburg” in his ear, and put my hand in his pocket, but I
did not leave any letter.
Let him explain it if he can!

CHAPTER XI.
THE MURDERERS

In the latter days of March, 1915, I had received a communication from
Headquarters which was contained in a box of Dutch cigars forwarded to
me from Rotterdam. It was written to me on the usual grey paper and was
neatly sandwiched between the two thin pieces of wood which formed the
bottom of the box. You would never think of splitting the bottom of a cigar-
box into two shavings in order to discover a message from the Political
Intelligence Department, would you? Such was German ingenuity.
The communication may be given in full:

Kriegsministerium,
Berlin.
March 12, 1915.

By order of Section 10, Politik, Great General Staff.
There go to England, on March 16, two men
(1) Carl Jan Kattz
(2) Rudolph Kister
convicts from the Imperial Prison at Dresden under sentence for
(1) Murder and robbery, (2) Dangerous wounding and burglary.
These two men speak English and are acquainted with English
life and conditions. They are released on condition that they place
themselves at the disposal of the Chief of the Intelligence Bureau
in London. These men may be depended upon to perform the
most desperate acts. They will be placed on the pay-list of the C.
of I., London, at 20 marks each per diem and 10 marks each per
diem for normal expenses. The C. of I., London, will not hesitate
to shoot either man in the event of his failure to carry out orders.

Here is an instance of the common spirit of sacrifice which runs through
our dear Deutschland! All for the Fatherland! Noble born, well born,

burglich, peasant—even the convict in his sad and gloomy cell pleaded to
serve the Empress of Nations, the new Byzantium of Kultur! Yea, from the
very dungeon rose the cry of the patriot; into the deeps of misery had the
clarion call reached, and roused from the slimes of decadence the pure
flame-soul of Germanism!
I confess that my first care was to keep this precious pair of rascals as far
away from me as possible. I could not have such hang-dog cut-throats
haunting my office, and I sent Wilhelm Peters to meet them and instal them
in lodgings in Coventry—which was one of the towns I was not likely to
visit.
Wilhelm informed me that they preferred to go to Wednesbury, as they
were both acquainted with glass-working and there were two or three glass
factories in that town at which they could work. I made arrangements for
them to receive their weekly stipends, registered their addresses, and sent
them the card code (which was ingeniously got up in the form of a time-
table) and dismissed them from my thoughts with the earnest hope that it
would never be necessary to utilize their services.
For we Germans abhor deeds of darkness and violence. Who has looked
through the spectacles of a serious German boy and has seen his clear and
honest blue eyes shining thoughtfully, could ever question either the
gentleness of his disposition or the transparency of his motives. We hate
deceit and cruelty, we shrink from the infliction of needless pain and exalt
the fulfilment of the law to a worship.
So I shuddered and passed from my mind all thought of Carl Jan Kattz
and Rudolph Kister. And yet, despite this innate tenderness of ours, we
Germans are all granite and iron. When we set ourselves to the
accomplishment of a task we are not to be arrested by parsnip-buttering
words or even the allurement of the most indecorous siren, as you shall see.
I have referred to the assistance I offered to our gallant Zeppelins by the
triangle of lights.
One of these light stations was arranged in the stable-yard of a good
Polish friend named Jabowski. The yard was a small one shut in on three
sides by very high walls, and on the fourth by the stable (Jabowski was a
tailor in a large way of business and employed two carts for the collection
and distribution of goods.) He hated the English, who had treated him very
scurvily and had prosecuted him for some small breaches of the Factory
Act, and he was, in consequence of his tyranny-hatred, and for a very

handsome sum I paid him, willing to show the light—a motor head-lamp
coloured green.
One night after a raid was expected Jabowski came to see me. I had just
got back from an over-night trip to Bristol and I was eager for news. He
seemed puzzled and troubled.
“Was there a raid?” I asked.
“Well, Herr Heine,” he said, “there was—but it was the most curious raid
we have had. I came to tell you about it.”
“Proceed, Jabowski,” said I graciously, although he was a man of the
lowest social order.
“At eleven o’clock last night my son and I were standing in the yard,
watching the lamp and listening for the footfall of a policeman outside,
when we heard distinctly the noise of an airship. It grew nearer and nearer
until the sound was terrific and I could hear the people in the street
scurrying away to their houses. I looked up, as did my son, but I could see
nothing. Whatever it was passed overhead and when immediately over
something fell with a thud—right in the centre of the yard!”
“A bomb?”
“No, gracious Herr—it was a big paper bag which was evidently filled
with a sort of yellow vere. Thinking it was a new kind of poison or some
diabolical——”
“Ingenious is the word, Jabowski,” I interrupted.
“Exactly, gracious sir, some ingenious form of explosive, I did not
attempt to remove it until this morning. I gathered most of it up but it was
impossible to remove the stain from the stones.”
“There were no bombs?”
“None,” replied Jabowski with emphasis, “the raider was heard by many
people and, according to a policeman who came to see me this morning,
these yellow bags have been dropped all over the neighbourhood.”
I was thoughtful.
What did these bags portend? Obviously there was a message of some
kind, thought I, intended for me. That green light showed the raider that
there was a friend in the neighbourhood and yet——
Whilst I was talking, there was a knock at the hall-door of my flat, and
my servant (an excellent Swiss youth who had the good fortune to be born
in Breslau, of German parents) announced that the two Mr. Geisslers

wished to see me. I was amazed at the coincidence, for these two brothers
were in charge of the other two lamps which completed the triangle.
“Show them into my bedroom, and I will come and see them, Adolph,”
said I.
The Messrs. Geissler were bakers, and good friends of their Fatherland.
One had a shop near Albany Park, and the other a bakehouse south of the
Thames.
“Victor came over to see me this morning, Herr Heine,” explained Kurt
Geissler, the elder of the two, “and as he has had the same curious
experience that I had in last night’s raid, I thought we had better come along
and see you.”
Briefly his narrative was on all four-legs with the story which Jabowski
had told. They had heard the whirr of airship engines, and a bag of yellow
dust had fallen, in Victor’s case upon the roof of the bakehouse, and in
Kurt’s case on a chicken house in his back garden.
“The police say that these bags have fallen all over the South of
London,” said Kurt.
“They’ve been dropped on north-west London too,” said Victor, and
produced an envelope full of the stuff.
I looked at it without touching the powder. It was as fine as flour.
“You must leave me to think this matter out,” I said at last, and sent them
on their way.
I was engaged in intensive cogitation half an hour later, when Major
Haynes, of the British Intelligence Department, called. While I at first had
resented his calling, I had now overcome my repugnance to meeting one
who was engaged in such underhanded and sneaking work as the Military
Intelligence Department condescend to do. We Germans have a delicate
gorge, I tell you, and there were times when, remembering that his sly
cunning had probably sent many, and had certainly sent two brave Germans
to their death, I could scarcely bring myself to flatter him.
“Good morning, Mr. Major,” said I with a ready-adopted smile, “you are
looking inside the pink this morning.”
“Good morning, Heine,” he said. He had called me “Heine” many times
lately, and somehow I had never had the nerve to correct him. “Were you in
the raid last night?”
“The raid?” I said in innocence—amazed. “I saw nothing about it in the
papers—was there a raid?”

He laughed.
“So some people think,” he said, and then turning suddenly from the
subject he asked, “What size gloves do you take?”
It was an extraordinary question. All my wits were working at top
pressure. I was at my alertest, my mind reviewing all the circumstances
which had attended my doings of the past week.
Had I left a finger-print in my visit to the Chetwell Munition Works, or
dropped a glove on my recent conference with the executive of the Workers
for World Peace?
“I take an eight or nine size,” I said deliberately.
“That would be much too large—show me your hands.”
I extended my hands.
Why did a cold and sickly feeling come to a certain digestive organ?
Why did the beads of perspiration stand out on my brow? Why, in spite of a
mental effort of the strongest, did my face blanch and my hand tremble?
Did I expect to hear the click of steel, and feel chill bands about my
wrists, and hear the jangle of the link that holds the handcuffs together? Yet
none of these things happened.
Mr., or Major, Haynes just took my hands in his and turned them over
with the same delicacy of touch that I have observed in the German haus-
frau when she is buying fish, and turns over the soles on the stall to find the
biggest.
“Yes—a seven,” said the major, and I thought there was a note of
disappointment in his tone.
We chatted about the war for awhile and then he said good-bye and left
me with two puzzles to solve instead of one.
Fortunately the rest of the day was so fully occupied with sheer routine
work that I had not time to speculate upon the mystery of the Yellow Raid,
as I called it.
I had started two new societies. The Brotherhood of Humanity and the
Thinkers of Britain League, and these entailed an enormous amount of
correspondence. The former society had as its motive the elimination of all
wars; the latter was intended to bring together under one ægis that
considerable body of students and tractarians who regarded frontier lines as
artificial limitations set up to divide the many for the benefit of the few.
They were promising plants, and though I hoped that Germany would never
need to seek a peace but would so triumph in the field that she would be

able to dictate her terms to greedy England, bare-legged Scotland, libertine
France, and barbarian Russia, yet we Germans are habitually cautious.
That night I learnt from the usual quarter that the weather was propitious
for a Zeppelin raid, and warned the “leaders” (the car drivers whose
powerful head-lamps guided the Zeppelins to their destinations) and my
signal friends before I left town by the 8.30 train for Bath. I got on the
’phone to London that night and discovered that no raid had occurred, and
returned by the early morning train which reaches Paddington at 8.30. My
new assistant, Mr. Wilhelm Peters, was waiting for me at the flat.
“Bad news, Herr Heine,” he said.
“Tell me,” I replied.
“Jabowski and the two Geisslers were arrested last night in the act of
signalling.”
That was bad news indeed. I learnt that they had been raided practically
at the same hour by three parties of police, and had been taken to Scotland
Yard.
“I have been all night at work making inquiries,” said Peters, “and I have
discovered how they were detected.”
“Betrayed, of course,” said I, but to my surprise Wilhelm shook his head.
“They betrayed themselves,” he said, “the raid of the previous night was
not a raid at all. The noise they heard was that of an English dirigible
balloon flying at a very low altitude. It was up looking for signal lights, and
detected Jabowski’s light first. It flew over the yard and dropped a bag of
yellow ochre as near the light as possible, and the following morning the
police went round the neighbourhood with a story of a mysterious airship
which had been throwing such things. When they said that the airship had
dropped many they lied. There were only three bags dropped—on Jabowski
and the two Geisslers. Once the stain of the ochre was discovered, the
police had only to wait a favourable opportunity. The rumour of a coming
raid was circulated all over London for the purpose of deceiving us.”
I saw the thing clearly now. So that was why Mr., or Major Haynes had
come to my office. He thought that some of the yellow stuff would be
brought to me for my inspection, and that I would handle it! So you are
interested in the size of my gloves, my officer! So you would inspect my
hands, thou artful man of low cunning!
But Heine had been too clever—too wide-awakened! I could not deny
myself so much exhilaration of feeling, yet the position was a serious one.

The Geisslers I could trust. But Jabowski! Here was a man without a
country—a cringer, a born traitor, one who under pressure to save his own
miserable skin, would not hesitate to betray me and the sacred cause for
which I worked. Whatever doubts I had about the loyalty of Jabowski were
removed when his son came to see me that afternoon.
This young Jabowski was about twenty-five years of age, very dark, with
a curly head of hair and a long yellow face. He was dressed fashionably
(and a little above his class) in a check suit and a yellow tie, and wore the
diamond ring and scarf-pin that one would rather have expected on a
German gentleman than on a Polish tailor! I was annoyed to see him.
“Why do you come here?” I asked, when he was shown into my room.
“How dare you come to my apartments?”
“It’s all right, Heine, I wasn’t watched,” he said. “I came by Tube and
what’s more, I waited till it was dark. I suppose you know that the old
man’s pinched?”
“The old man pinched?” I said in astonishment-simulation. “What old
man—and what pinch?”
“Oh, come off it,” he said coarsely, “you know what I’m talking about—
my father, Mr. Jabowski.”
“For Mr. Jabowski I have the highest respect,” I said, “and I have had
many dealings with him, strictly in the way of business. Do I understand he
has been arrested? Dear, dear—I trust he has not been doing anything very
naughty?”
The young man scowled at me.
“Look here!” he said with violence, “you know why he was pinched—for
giving Zepp signals at your instructions.”
I sprang up.
“Shameless, lying Jew!” I cried in a great voice, “traducer of innocent
truly-neutrals! How dare you—how dare you make so infamous an
accusation? By heavens! I’ve a mind to grip you by the neck and your coat-
tails, and hurl you from the window!”
I saw a look of fear creep into his eyes, but he did not budge from his
contention.
“Have sense, Heine,” he pleaded, “can I allow my old man to be shot?
It’s a terrible position for me, and I was getting married to a widow-lady
with money too. The disgrace will kill me!”

“Your father can prove nothing against me,” I said, and the miserable
fellow smiled.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, “the old man was too wide for
you. ‘Jacob,’ says he to me, ‘this Prussian is so careful that he won’t put
anything in writing. If I get into trouble, he’ll pretend he doesn’t know me,
so when he comes this afternoon to talk things over in the stable yard, get
your camera and take a snap of us together,’ and,” said the despicable young
man in unmistakable tones of pleasure, “I’ve got that photograph to show
the police unless you do something to get my father out of trouble.”
“Have you the photograph with you, my dear young man?” I asked with
mildness.
“Am I nutty?” replied Jabowski, junior.
I promised to give him an answer that night. What could I do? To whom
could I turn to secure the release of this misguided and fearfully threatening
Pole? That he would betray me, I did not doubt, and the horror of the
thought stunned me. But I had escaped graver perils. I had incurred the
suspicions of the highest authorities and had yet won through. It was
because I had tricked them with the bluff of the experienced player that I
had escaped detection. Even Major Haynes believed that I was no more
than a dupish fool—but would he believe as much on such an accusation
supported by visible evidence of hob-nobbing with the dubious alien of
Polish origin?
So they would trap me—me, Heine, who would not tread on a turning
worm, unless it turned against the Fatherland. My gentle nature is notorious
amongst my friends. The song of the skylark rising to the dawn, the mist of
bluebells in the shadowy aisles of woods have made me cry like a child, and
this dirty dog of a Jabowski would send such a man as Heine to the
execution chair.
I sent a telegram to friends Kister and Kattz, at Wednesbury, telling them
to report to me in my apartments, by the first train. If there were any burnt
offerings required, it were better for the Fatherland that the sacrifices should
be Polish.
Let me describe Kattz and Kister as I saw them when they came walking
into my sitting-room.
Kattz was a thin man of about thirty-five. He was slightly bald, and he
wore a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez. His face was thin and studious, with
deep furrows and wrinkles. He reminded me of a bust I once saw of Dante.

He was quietly and respectably dressed, and his attitude and manner were
subdued and respectful. His companion, Kister, was of stouter build, and he
bore a facial resemblance to the English King Henry VIII. He was broad-
featured, had a small moustache and trim beard, and a rosy complexion.
Like his companion, he was quiet in speech and deportment.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” said I, greatly relieved by the uncriminal
appearance of my agents. “I will open a bottle of good wine—in the
meantime, help yourselves to the cigars.”
They seated themselves, and when they had been made comfortable, I
briefly outlined the nature of my difficulty.
“So you see, gentlemen, my position,” I concluded, “these two men have
the fate of our service in their hands.”
“They must be put out of the way,” said the jovial-faced Kister, “you
agree, my dear Kattz?”
Mr. Kattz nodded.
“We can settle the younger man very easily,” he said, “you have his
address, of course?” I inclined my head.
“You will probably find that he has the photograph in his pocket, in spite
of his protest,” he went on. “I can get on to him to-night.”
He felt in his pocket and drew out a short length of cord, to the ends of
which were fastened two small wooden handles. He unrolled the cord
which was wound about the sticks and re-rolling it, returned the instrument
to his pocket.
The jovial Mr. Kister frowned and shook his head.
“You know, my dear Kattz, I would not hurt your feelings, but I feel
compelled to demur at that method of yours. I believe in this.”
With a dexterity which hardly seemed possible, he slipped a long-bladed
knife from the inside of his waistcoat. I pushed my chair back a little.
“The knife or nothing, I say,” said he, “it is noiseless, it is instantly
effective, it can be used in a crowd, and the victim will not utter a sound.
Why?” he said, looking at me, “I once killed a friend of mine in the
Wintergarten, in Berlin, surrounded by policemen, and they thought he had
fainted!”
“A friend?” I said.
“When I say a friend,” said Mr. Kister apologetically, “I mean one who
had been a friend. We fell out over a lady—you remember, Kattz.”
“A tight-rope walker,” said Kattz.

“Exactly. She was not worthy of the quarrel. I have often regretted my
haste in the matter, for poor Joseph was a good fellow, and played skat like
a master.”
“I don’t think you should speak against the cord, Rudolph,” said Kattz,
“you have probably only seen it used by a bungler. There are three men—
there are two now, for Frederich Mullenheim laid down his life for the
Fatherland at the Battle of Roye—who can use it. It is as silent as the knife,
and I remember——”
My blood went cold as I listened to the exchanges of experience which
went on between the two, and when Kister was using my waistcoat to
illustrate what he called “the complete-silence stroke,” and Kattz was
showing on my neck the exact spot where the carotid artery nearest
approaches the cervical vertebræ, I thought matters had gone far enough.
“Make your own arrangements about young Jabowski,” I said hastily,
“but how are you going to deal with the old man—he is safely in prison?”
“That I think is simple,” said Kattz, “we have been studying the prison
system of England—naturally that interests us more than anything else, and
we know the procedure. A prisoner on remand is allowed to have his meals
sent in. I think there will be no difficulty in sending our friend something
more than he will digest.”
“I will leave the matter entirely in your hands,” I said.
I gave them £10 and bade them report to me by telephone when their
dread task was accomplished. I confess I spent a wretched night. How frail
a thing is life! The snap of a thread and the veil is rent—a puff of wind and
the serene flame goes out—a crack of a rifle and the accumulated genius
and experience of forty years, a million memories and a million hopes, are
dissipated to nothingness. How dreadful is that Visitation, I shuddered. I did
not want to die. As for these two traitors, death would rid the world of much
corporate infamy. The day came slowly, and I was up long before my
servant.
There was nothing in the morning newspaper to tell of any happening
such as I expected, but I could hardly expect to have news so soon.
I resolved to stay in my apartment till the afternoon, and it was ten
o’clock that I heard a ring at the bell, and went hot and cold. I heard my
servant go along the passage and open the door and presently came a knock.
“Come in,” I said, and to my surprise in walked young Jabowski.

His face was pale, his eyes were wild, and as for myself, I could frame no
question.
“Oh, Mr. Heine, Mr. Heine,” he said imploringly, and I thought he was
going to kneel at my feet, “give me another chance, give me another
chance! Here is the photograph.”
His trembling hands searched for a pocket-book, which presently he
produced. The book shook in his palsied fingers, but presently he mastered
himself sufficiently to extract a small photograph which he handed to me. It
was the photograph of myself and the ill-fated Jabowski.
“There, there is the evidence,” he gasped, “now do be a good friend and
save me!”
“I hardly know what you mean,” I said coldly, “all that I know is that you
came here yesterday and accused me of a crime from which my very soul
revolts, disloyalty to the British Government, for the members of which I
have the highest respect.”
“The old man will take his punishment without bleating,” he said, eagerly
ignoring my reference to his wild conduct. “The lawyers say he will only
get about twelve months’ imprisonment, and if he opens his mouth about
you, he will probably get more. But if they convicted me—why, I’d get five
years.”
I was silent. This talk still held a mystery for me, and I waited for him to
reveal that which, even in my curiosity, I did not dare to ask.
“I ought to have known, Mr. Heine,” he said, mopping his forehead with
an ungentlemanly handkerchief of many colours, “I ought to have known
that with all the spies you’ve got, you would be wise about me.”
“I am indeed wise about you,” I said very severely.
“Don’t think,” he said eagerly, “that I am a regular burglar, because I’m
not. The old man never allowed me more than eighteen shillings a week,
and a man can’t live in a gentlemanly way on that, can he? I got in bad with
a crooked lot of people, and one job led to another, and that is how it
happened.”
“I know exactly how it happened,” I said coldly.
“When I got home last night,” the young man went on, “it struck me that
you might know that I was in the Regent Street burglary, and it gave me the
shivers, but I wasn’t sure until I found myself being shadowed by the two
detectives you put on to follow me.”
I could have laughed out loud. Kattz and Kister—detectives!

“How did you know I had put them on to you?”
“I gave them the slip,” said young Jabowski, “and presently I spotted
them getting into a cab. It was about one o’clock in the morning, and I got
another cab and followed them and they came back here.”
“Came back here?”
This was indeed news for me.
“Well, they didn’t come up,” said Jabowski, “they stood outside the flat
talking, and one of them pointed up to your window, and then I knew that
you had put them on to me.”
I readily supplied an explanation. My friends Kister and Kattz had come
back to tell me of some difficulty they had met with, and I am rather glad
they took this step. What Jabowski told me greatly relieved me. If the old
man would remain silent and take his punishment, with the photograph in
my possession, and burnt, and Jabowski in terror of my betraying him, a
load was removed from my mind. There was no need for any drastic
measures, and I could only hope that my two friends, with characteristic
thoroughness, had not already despatched a deadly draught to the man in
the cells.
I was anxious to get rid of Jabowski before they turned up or telephoned,
as I had asked them to, and after lecturing him on his evil life and on the
necessity for dealing honestly by his fellow creatures and abandoning his
course of wickedness, I allowed him to depart with the promise that I
should take no further action against him.
“Honesty and straight dealing with your fellow creatures is the surest
road to happiness and success,” I said. “How beautiful is the life of the
virtuous man who can look the whole world in the face, as the poet says,
and owe not any man!”
He thanked me very humbly and went his way. Neither Kister nor Kattz
put in an appearance, and I began to worry whether they had got into some
trouble, or whether, in some spirit of friendly rivalry, they had gone outside
my instructions and in good-hearted competition had been practising their
science upon some unfortunate pig-headed Englishman or Englishmen.
When they had not turned up by the afternoon I am afraid I became very
angry. Was I to be kept waiting in my flat all day by two despicable jail-
birds? However, a diversion arrived in the shape of my assistant, Mr.
Wilhelm Peters, that amiable young man arriving after lunch with my
letters.

“I am sorry I am so late, Herr Heine,” he said, “but I had no idea that you
were not at the office.”
“Of course, of course,” I said genially, “you have been out of London.
Now tell me your news.”
He chatted away about various matters. He gave me a memorandum of
the amount of T.N.T. which was being made at ——, the big new English
factory, and told me of the trouble that had arisen because Woolwich had
rejected so many flawed shell-cases which were made in a certain factory in
the North of England. He also placed in my hand the memorandum,
compiled by our agent in Liverpool, of the cotton shipments, and furnished
me with particulars of certain petroleum boats which were due to arrive in
the Mersey.
“I saw Herr von Friedlander at Birmingham,” he said. “He has not been
able to find an agent in the small-arm factory, but he hopes——”
“He hopes!” I said irritably, “that infernal man may live on hopes, but I
can’t! I shall pack him straight back to America. Does he imagine because
he is well born that I must endure these harrowing disappointments? I
cannot find excuses for him any longer. You have done very well, my dear
Wilhelm Peters, and I shall report in terms of favour.”
“I thank you for your gracious words, Herr Heine,” he said, going red
under my approbation. “I also took the liberty of calling at Wednesbury to
see how our convicts were progressing.”
I smiled.
“And how were they?” I asked innocently.
“They are behaving themselves,” said Wilhelm Peters, “and seem to like
the life. The red-headed one, Kattz, is quite amusing.”
“Red-headed one?” I said.
“Yes, the little one who has red hair. Don’t you remember I described
them after I had met them on the steamer, Herr Heine?”
“And what is the other man like—Kister?” I asked.
“He is a man with a long black beard and rather consumptive looking,”
said Wilhelm.
“Are you sure?” my hair almost stood on end.
“Quite sure. The only thing that worried them was a visit which was paid
them by two secret service officers last week—at least I gathered they were
officers of the English secret service by the questions they asked.”

“Do you know what they looked like, the secret service officers?” I said,
endeavouring to control my voice.
Wilhelm Peters smiled like a fool.
“Don’t grin, stupid owl,” I said angrily.
“Pardon, Herr Heine,” said Wilhelm Peters, “but I was smiling because I
asked them that very question. One was a thin-faced man with lines in his
cheeks and the other was rather a stoutish man with a rosy face and a little
beard.”
“Secret service officers!” I breathed.
“Do you know them?” asked Wilhelm Peters.
“I have met them,” I said, and somehow at that moment I knew my stay
in England was nearly up.

CHAPTER XII.
THE PASSING OF HEINE

The British people, in their boastful, arrogant, and frivolous way, have a
saying that the British do not know when they are beaten. This betrays their
folly, their short-sightedness, and their inability to grasp the obvious. We
Germans, on the contrary, recognize facts. We have no illusions, knowing
that by reason of our superior kultur, our educational system, our national
discipline, our readiness for sacrifice, we are necessarily the highest
expression of man’s development. We also are prepared to recognize our
own shortcomings, such as they are. From the largeness of our eyrie-view,
comprehending as it does the vast surface of known facts, we can
distinguish the failings of those less favoured nations which enjoy, because
of their lower attainments, a more circumscribed view. Because of this
circumscription we have the folly embodied in the British maxim which I
have quoted.
I had enjoyed a great innings. I had done useful work. I had served the
Fatherland with a loyalty and unselfishness which I trust will be held as a
shining example to the unborn generations of secret service officers who
will follow in my steps.
To continue in England would be folly. There were many reasons why I
should determine my residence. It was growing more and more difficult to
get into communication with the Fatherland. Trading steamers, ostensibly
engaged in peaceable commerce, but in reality maintained to keep the
communications open between England and Germany, were constantly
disappearing in the most ominous fashion. The wireless stations which we
had established with so much thought were being eliminated and, worst of
all, since the conviction was forced upon me against my will, I had to
confess to myself that there really existed in Britain a secret service of a
peculiarly deceitful kind.
I had been constantly coming into contact with its members, constantly
foiled by its machinations. Its officers were to be found in all ranks and
departments of public life; they included Members of Parliament, and little

shopkeepers, newspaper reporters and doctors, railway officials of all
grades, ships’ stewards and parsons. It was unbelievable, and it took me
nearly two years to be convinced.
And now I had the feeling that a well-prepared net had been stretched
and was gradually encircling me. I had a sense that I was being played with
as a mouse is pawed by a cat. I notified Headquarters that I was retiring,
gracefully, and one night I sat down and worked out the details of my
escape.
I had four passports, and my first move was to obtain the endorsement of
all these. That in itself was a difficult business, but the original owners of
the passports were well chosen. It was an American, a Swede, a Chilian,
and a Canadian, and had you seen the four photographs attached to those
four documents, you would have observed that there was not a great
dissimilarity in appearance between any of the four.
I was due to leave England on May 15th, 1916. I actually left on May
14th. On the morning of that day, I took one of those bold steps which the
most daring spirits invariably find profitable.
I called at the War Office and asked to see Major Haynes, of the
Intelligence Department. I sent in my name, that is to say, my Chilian name,
and in a very short time I was ushered into a very large, bare office, where
the gallant major sat at a table which was covered with documents of all
kinds.
He rose and greeted me heartily.
“How are you, Heine,” he said, pulling a chair up for me to sit upon, “and
how are our friends Kattz and Kister?”
“Kattz and Kister?” I repeated, my face a blank.
“The scientific murderers,” said the major with a cheerful laugh, “the
bow-string expert and the stiletto specialist.”
In such a manner did this frivolous man speak. I know you will not
believe it is possible, and many to whom I have retailed this conversation
have doubted my word. I do not blame them. Flippancy and sports-language
would never pass the lips of a German officer in these iron times.
“I do not understand you, dear major,” I said.
“I didn’t think you would,” said he, and pulling out a drawer removed a
box.
“Have a poisoned cigar,” he said, “one of our Kattz-Kister Perfectos.”
He simply roared with laughter. Such vulgarity!

“I certainly remember the two names now you mention them. They called
upon me with a hoity-toity plan which I was much too busy to discuss with
them. As a matter of fact, they had not been there long,” said I with a
cunning smile, “before I realized that they were members of the great (I
emphasized the word “great” with a little sneer) English secret service, and
I had an amusing evening pulling their several legs.”
Major Haynes winked (he was not well born).
“What I like about you, Heine,” he said (again that objectionable word,
which I passed in silence), “is that you have a sense of humour. So few of
your fellow countrymen possess that sense.”
I laughed politely because I felt that it was what he expected me to do.
“Why have you come now?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Mister Haynes,” I began.
“Major,” said he, “but go on.”
“Major Haynes,” I said, “it seems to me that my most innocent actions
are misconstrued, and as I am going to-morrow to Brighton to spend a
week-end, I thought it advisable to notify you, so that you may know where
you can find me.”
“So you are going to Brighton, are you?” he said after a pause. “What an
eccentric fellow you are!”
“Eccentric, Major Haynes!” I repeated.
“To go to Brighton, an hour’s journey from London to an ordinary man,
by such a roundabout route.”
“Which way do you think I am going!” I smiled.
“I am not sure,” he said, “but, judging from the fact that most of your
boxes went up yesterday to Liverpool under the name of ‘Heigl,’ I gathered
that you were making a round trip of it. Still,” he said, rising and offering
his hand, “I will wish you bon voyage. You have entertained me vastly.
Keep clear of the mine-fields and ’ware submarines. They are dangerous
little devils.”
Oh! Had he seen my mind? Had he known the embittered thoughts that
flocked through my brain like a flight of wild geese? Could he have
detected the harsh and cynical expressions which trembled on my tongue, I
do not think this fatheaded Englishman would have seen me to the door
with such awkward grace.

I saw his idea. For his own purpose he desired to keep me in England
until the moment came to strike, but my friend, thought I, as I walked along
Whitehall, in Heine there are four people and Liverpool is not the only gate
to the “dark sea flood.”
Another man might have taken a long time to consider his plans. Mine
were already made. He expected me to go back to my office, or to my flat
perhaps, under the supervision of his detectives. I walked to Westminster
Bridge Underground station, took a train to Charing Cross, descended the
moving escalator to the Tube, and rode as far as Oxford Circus, where I
changed for a city train which carried me to the Bank. Here I changed again
and rode to Waterloo, came up to the surface in an elevator and caught a
train on the elevated electric to Clapham Junction.
From Clapham Junction I journeyed to Willesden, from Willesden by a
slow train to Rugby. Here I changed, leaving the North-Western station and
joining the Central line, found myself at half-past ten at night at Sheffield.
I walked across to the station hotel, taking a packed trunk which was
waiting for me at the cloak-room, registered myself, filling up the necessary
form, and was conducted to Room 43.
I was no sooner in the room and was unbuckling the straps of my trunk,
when there was a knock at the door. Thinking it was the chambermaid, I
said “Come in,” and the door opened—and admitted Major Haynes in
civilian dress.
“What time would you like your breakfast in the morning, Heine?” he
asked with such savoir-faire, that you might have thought he had
accompanied me and had only parted from me a few minutes before he
came into the room.
Not to be outdone in coolness, I replied:
“At nine o’clock.”
“You look tired,” he said, “I think the rest at Brighton is going to do you
a lot of good. When they told me you had got out at Clapham Junction I
really thought and hoped that you had decided upon taking the short route. I
expect it is the underground journeys that make you look so weary. Have
you a headache?”
“The only thing that gives me a headache, Major Haynes, is boorish and
unkultured conversation.”
I felt it was the moment to assert myself, even though it cost me my life.
“Then avoid soliloquies,” he said, and with a nod he shut the door.

There was nothing to do the next morning but to go back to London,
which I did, taking my suitcase with me.
Major Haynes was on the same train, nearer the engine than I. I saw him
step into a motor-car that was waiting and drive off, and I went into the
buffet and had some breakfast.
My difficulty was going to be to arrive at the port of embarkation rather
than the actual getting on board the steamer, and I knew that I should have
to abandon both the Liverpool and the Fishguard routes and go by way of
Glasgow and Greenock.
The thing was to shake off the men who by this time were watching me,
and Fortune favoured me to an extraordinary extent. That night there
descended on London one of those thick white mists which sometimes
occur in the late spring. I packed a grip with a special kind of disguise, put
the necessary documents in my pocket, and sent for a cab.
I came to the door of the front entrance of the flats, walked out
bareheaded to the driver and told him that I should want him to take me to
St. Pancras station to catch the 10.30 Scottish mail. I asked him how long it
would take me to get to the depôt, then I walked back into the vestibule,
picked up my hat, coat, and portmanteau, that were waiting in a dark corner,
slipped through the back door, across the yard by which the tradesmen enter
to deliver their goods, through a mews, and in a few minutes I was
swallowed up in the darkness. I stood at the end of the mews and listened.
There was no sound of footfall. Rapidly threading the narrow streets which
lay at the back of the apartment house in which I lived, I gained a second
road, hailed a taxi and instructed the man to drive me to Langley, which is a
wayside station fifteen miles out of London, and lies between Slough and
West Drayton. He promptly refused the fare, but I slipped a couple of notes
into his hand and his views on the shortage of his petrol underwent a
remarkable change. So much for the veracity and honesty of English
cabmen!
On the way down I changed my mind. My appearance at so insignificant
a station might excite comment, and as we cleared the patch of mist, the
cabman offered no objection to taking me on to Reading. At this station a
slow train from London to Plymouth leaves shortly after midnight. I
reached Bristol at 3.30 in the morning, and by 5 o’clock I was on my way
northward, journeying by workman’s train part of the way, until I changed
on to a main line train at Worcester.

Had you stood that same afternoon on Carlisle station, you would have
seen a clean-shaven clergyman with a white collar and a black soft felt hat,
immaculate black garments, and the various other insignia of his holy
office. You would have observed that he was drinking tea, and that under
his arm was a large and serious book, and that his gold-mounted spectacles
would occasionally be turned benevolently left and right, looking for Major
Haynes.
In this guise I reached Glasgow, a comfortable English parson. I passed
the inspection of the alien officer, my passport was stamped officially and I
crossed the gangway of the ship with a feeling of malicious joy.
“Here,” thought I, “is an object-lesson which Major Haynes himself
might take to heart as an example of German objectivity.”
We Germans never falter in our purpose. We set our minds upon a goal
and to that goal we attain. I stepped down the crowded gangway to the
purser’s office to present my ticket.
The purser looked at it and nodded.
“Take this gentleman to State Room 64,” he said to a steward, and the
man gathered up my trunk and my coat, led the way to the state room I had
booked, opened the door and I walked in—and there was Major Haynes
sitting on the settee smoking a cigar and looking bored.
“Close the door, Heine,” he said, and shook his head, reprovingly.
“I have not had the opportunity of telling you before,” he said gravely,
“but I think it is only right that you should know that a clergyman of the
Church of England does not wear gaiters, unless he is a bishop, and I feel
sure, Heine, that whatever you are, you are not a bishop.”
I felt I could not bandy words with him. I sat heavily down upon the
settee.
“You have been getting your ideas of the clergyman,” he said, “from
Simplicissimus. For example, that apron you are wearing, and which I have
no doubt was supplied to you by a theatrical costumier who thought you
were cast for the good clergyman in ‘The Silver King,’ is the apron that
rural deans dream about, and country vicars regard as being half-way to a
halo. I wonder you didn’t bring a shepherd’s crook,” he said bitterly.
“Do I understand that I am forbidden to travel on this boat?” I asked.
“Certainly. It would be no less than a scandal to allow you to
misrepresent the Church of England to our good friends in America,” said
Major Haynes. “Now get into some sensible clothes like a good fellow.”

“Very well,” I said.
I took up my trunk, watery at heart, walked up the companion-way and
crossed the gangway on the wharf.
Oh, that journey back to London, how long, how dreary, how full of
conflicting emotions! With what soul weariness did I recall every incident
of the northward journey! With what respect had I been greeted in my
Episcopalian character by the common people!
Major Haynes was not on the train, I am happy to say. I was too
depressed to make any other attempt to escape, too weary even to formulate
some alternative plan. I did not even have the energy to speculate upon the
reason I was being detained, for I had not been charged, as I might have
been charged, with using false passports, nor was I charged, with any of the
other offences which might have been alleged against me. I was just simply
let loose and given another chance of escape.
I made no pretence of going back to my flat, but drove to an hotel where
I knew I should be constantly under observation. I was eating my dinner in
an unhappy fashion, when I heard my name breathed, and, looking up, I
recognized in the waiter a man who had given us a great deal of
information, and was a worker for The Day. While he was bending over me
with the menu in his hand, and apparently taking my orders, he was
speaking rapidly.
“You are watched, Herr Heine,” he said under his breath.
“I know,” I replied in the same tone. “I am trying to get away from
London.”
He said no more, but when he came back with the soup he whispered:
“I think I can help you.”
When the fish arrived, he added a little more information.
“When you get back to your room to-night,” he said, “ring for the
sommelier. I will come up.”
I told him briefly that I had made two attempts and failed, and he nodded.
I waited till fairly late before I rang the bell, and my friend—his name
deserves mention in these records, it was Gustav Stheil, a worthy fellow
who, I understand, has since fallen into the hands of our hateful enemy—
responded very quickly.
“In half an hour,” he said, “come out of your room and go down the
service stairs. You will find them on the left. At three o’clock to-morrow
morning the chimney-sweeps are coming to clean the kitchen flues. I will

get an old suit of clothes for you and with a bag of soot and your face
blacked you can get out of the hotel without anybody being the wiser.”
“And after that,” I said.
“I think I can get you a horse and cart. Drive to this address. It is my
brother-in-law’s—he is in the country—and lay low there for a day or two
and I will come and see you.”
He gave me a key and the address. It was in a place called Palmer’s
Green.
The plan worked admirably. I descended without interruption or
observation, made a change of clothes, and so covered my face with soot
that no person would have recognized me. Gustav let me out through the
service entrance and I found a light cart and a horse waiting, with a boy
sitting in the seat.
“He is my son. You can trust him. Good luck, Herr Heine.”
I took a £5 note, it was somewhat dirty, I am afraid, for I had to rub it to
make sure there were not two, a mistake which I had once made—and
slipping it into the honest fellow’s hands, I drove off.
Picton Street, Palmer’s Green, is a street of small houses, and that house
to which I went was poorly furnished but was good enough for my purpose.
I washed the disguising soot from my face and lay down on the bed to
finish my sleep.
It was not a comfortable day by any means, because there was no food in
the house, and I was ravenously hungry that night when Gustav came
bringing me provisions and busying himself at the kitchen fire preparing me
coffee.
“There is a cattle-ship leaving Avonmouth in two days’ time,” he said. “A
friend of mine will smuggle you on board and look after you on the voyage
over.”
“How am I to get to Avonmouth?” I demanded.
“By train,” said he, but I shook my head.
“All the trains will be watched. Can you get me a motor-bicycle?”
He promised to do his best and, late as the hour was, he went out to
inquire. He came back with a push-bicycle and told me I should have to do
the best I could with that for one stage of the journey, and that he would
arrange to have me met on the Reading-Newbury road by a good patriot
with a motor-car, but that it would be necessary for me to lie in the bottom
of the car and allow myself to be covered by rugs.

I will not describe the frights and apprehensions of that journey. I cycled
through the night and just before daybreak I reached the Reading-Newbury
road and came within sight of the tail lights of a motor-car drawn up at the
roadside.
The journey was not an uncomfortable one. I descended from the car on
the outskirts of Bristol and made my way to the place where friend Gustav
told me I should meet the sailor. It was a little bar and from the description
which Gustav had given me I was able to recognize my friend, a stalwart
patriot of Finland, who despised the British even as he hated the barbarous
and tyrannical Russian.
To recall even that night’s adventures and to place on record all the
events which occurred between my leaving my friend’s lodgings and my
arrival in the hold of the soon-leaving ship would occupy a volume. How I
climbed two walls, how I concealed myself in a railway truck which was
slowly shunted to the side of the ship with most uncomfortable bumpings,
how I stole up the slippery side of a coal shute and lay for two hours
amongst the pots and pans of the cook’s galley, how I eventually swarmed
down an interminable ladder into the depths of the ship, an adequate
account of these happenings might be written by a Zola, but my poor pen
can neither describe the agonies of mind and body which marked my
reaching the ship, nor the miseries of soul which followed when the vessel
drew clear from the wharf and began to sway and heave, to jump and sink
in the open seas.
I was hungry until I went on board ship, but the moment the vessel
started on its voyage I felt I would never eat again. I almost wished I had
not left England. For a day and a night, it seemed like two months, or even
two years, I endured the agonies of sea-sickness beyond description. At the
end of the second night my friend made his way to the hold and brought me
up to the galley, for I should explain that he was the ship’s cook. Here I was
able to wash myself in a pail and to take the little nourishment which he
gave me. Just before daybreak and when I was preparing to return to my
submarine dungeon, the thud of the screw ceased.
“Are we stopping?” I asked my friend, the cook.
He went out on to the deck and presently returned.
“Yes,” he said, “you had better stay here. There is an English patrol
coming alongside.”

I could hear nothing but the whine of the wind and the ceaseless roar of
the sea, and the first thing I heard was the sound of voices on the deck just
outside the galley.
It was an English naval officer speaking.
“You have a stowaway on board, a German agent,” said the voice; “oh,
yes, I know you are not aware of the fact, but he is here. You can either
search the ship and bring him up or we will save you the trouble.”
I looked at the cook, and the cook looked at me.
“Herr Heine,” he said sadly, “there is only one thing to do. They will find
you—they are certain to find you. This is a small ship.”
I drew myself up and straightened my shoulders. Pushing open the door I
stepped out to the deck in the light of the dawn.
“I am the man you seek,” I said proudly.
I had to climb down the rope ladder on to a bobbing little motor-launch,
to the well of which I was conducted. We were very near land and I
supposed (and here I was right) that the land was Ireland, that down-trodden
nation, the sport and mock of the misgoverning English.
The motor-launch ran into a little harbour and came up by the side of the
jetty. A man in a long military overcoat was pacing up and down, but
stopped when the boat reached the landing stage. I sprang on to the steps
and mounted to the quay.
“Had a good time?” said the voice I hated more than all voices.
“Major Haynes,” I said with dignity, “I have not had a good time.”
“I am sorry to hear it. Anyway you have got the soot off your face, I am
happy to see. You are looking quite white, Heine. Come and have
breakfast.”
I accompanied him mutely to a little one-storeyed hotel which faced the
landing stage.
“You had better go up and tidy yourself,” he said, “I have engaged a
room for you.”
I bowed and followed the hall-porter, who was the only servant up at this
hour of the morning. He opened the door and showed me into a room, and
to my amazement I found all my trunks on the bed. One had been opened
and my razors and shaving apparatus were neatly laid out. Over the rail of a
chair hung my best suit, and my patent boots, nicely polished, stood neatly
against the wall.

I shaved, washed, and changed, and in half an hour I presented myself in
the dining-room where, to my surprise, a good breakfast was waiting, Major
Haynes being already at the table engaged in reading what appeared to be a
volume of poetry.
“Well, Heine,” he said, “your travels are nearly over, and I think that
some explanation is due to you.”
I bowed again, though it was a difficult performance, since I was at that
moment balancing a piece of fried egg upon my knife.
“Try the fork,” said Major Haynes.
Really this man’s inquisitive eyes saw everything.
“The fact is, Heine, we knew all about you before you arrived in
England. We knew you were at the head of the organization, we knew your
ways, your habits, your abnormal conceit—you don’t mind my speaking
frankly, do you?”
“Not at all,” I said stiffly. “I am in your power.”
“And we knew that wherever the corpse was there would the vultures be
gathered, or, to put it better, wherever was the magnet there would be the
iron filings. If we kept you going and left you alone, we always knew where
to look for your workers, who were ever so much more dangerous than you.
We thought once or twice of taking you,” he said reflectively, “but I
persuaded the power that it would pay in the long run to leave you alone.
And it has paid,” he said, “all the satellites that revolve about you have been
taken and destroyed. New suns will arise and attract new planets, and in
course of time will be dealt with, but the period of danger has passed.”
“And now, I suppose,” said I miserably, “having no further use for me
you are going to finish me off?”
“Exactly,” said Major Haynes, with great cheerfulness, “you shall go
back to America, Heine, as an awful example to all spies. In that capacity
you will still be useful to us. You will at least be able to tell them something
of the difficulties that await a man who tried to get out of England even
with a forged passport. Believe me, it is just as difficult to get in, unless we
want you in.”
“You are going to let me go free?”
He nodded.
“The outward-bound Cremanic calls here by arrangement in two hours’
time. You will be taken out in a motor-launch and put on board. Your cabin
is 143 and you will find it quite comfortable.”

He put his hand in his pocket and took out a flat case which he opened.
“Here is your passport,” he said.
I took the passport in my hand and read the description of myself, even
my photograph was pasted on. I was described as “Heine.” “Occupation:
German Spy.” “Reason for travel: By Special Deportation Order 64731. The
British Government having no further need of his services.”
To my mind the cruellest thing was the photograph which showed me in
that infernal clergyman’s garb. Underneath was written, “Religion: Church
of England.”
I looked at Major Haynes.
“You have spared me no humiliation,” I said, and there were tears in my
eyes, for remember what position I had held in the service.
“Oh, yes, I have,” said Major Haynes, “I might have taken a flashlight
photograph of you as a sweep. You’ve no idea how funny you looked.”
Two hours later I stood upon the first-class passenger deck of the
Cremanic watching with folded arms the land sinking slowly astern.
Farewell! False Albion! Thy doom is assured! The ever-victorious
German U-boat——
I stopped suddenly and thought, then turning to a sailor I asked: “Is there
any danger of being torpedoed?”
“They gets a ship sometimes, sir,” he said with callous indifference. “But
when we sees ’em we shoots at ’em and that generally frightens ’em off. If
every passenger keeps his eye skinned there ain’t much danger.”
I spent the rest of the voyage with my eyes skinned.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE U-BOAT ADVENTURE

I have often remarked to good friends of mine that there is evidence of the
fact that Providence has a special interest in my welfare. We Germans are
naturally a devout and religious people, and I need only remind you that
Luther, the Father of the Reformation, was a German, to bring home to you
the fact that in the ground of the Fatherland, piety and solemn-view-taking
flourish like the green bay tree. Charity, forbearance, lawfulness and
lovingkindness are as the breath of good German nostrils, and he who
disputes this statement is a liar and a rascal.
As for the editors of the English and Scottish press, by heavens! I would
that I had my way on them. I would flog them till they all but died and
brand them with hot irons “liar,” turning them loose to beg their way from
door to door. Woe to ye, Scribes and Pharisees, if Heine ever sits in London
as Administrator of the Hostile Press!
Such a thing is not unlikely.
When you received my last, did you not hourly expect to find me
knocking at your door? I told you of Major Haynes, the so-called
Intelligence Officer, and of how he put me on a ship sailing for America.
But he little knew his Heine! He little realized that the modest and
unassuming man who bade him a courteous farewell and walked with
careless dignity to the waiting boat was turning over certain schemes in his
head.
As I stood on the broad deck of the English steamer and shook my fist at
Perfidious Ireland, I realized in a flash what my beloved Fatherland was
losing by my departure from a land in which I had rendered Germany so
many signal services. Oh, thou Bride of the Rhine! Thou Iron Child of
Valour, I, Heine, the least of Thy Servants shed a tear of sorrow that thou
hast endured the loss of one loyal heart, faithful and restless in his efforts
against a World of Enemies! Prosper, beloved of the Gods! Let Victory be
added unto Victory!

“Keep your eye skinned for submarines,” said a kindly meaning mariner,
and these words brought me to the alert. My situation was serious. It could
not be known in Berlin that I had sailed, and the stupid fools of U-boat
commanders would be ignorant of my presence on the British ship.
At the thought a cold shiver of horror percolated through my spinal
column.
What tragedy if such be the end of a splendid career. I skinned my eyes
throughout the day and twice by my loud cries saved disaster, once from a
floating mine shaped like a wooden barrel (such is the supreme cunning of
our race) and once from a U-boat which constantly came up and dived.
The stupid English said that the first was only a barrel and that the up-
and-down-diving U-boat was a porpoise, but Heine’s eyes are sharp.
I did not attempt to make friends for the voyage, and rejected with scorn
the suggestion of a frivolous American that I should play poker. Imagine
playing poker in the midst of a great war! I asked him if he could play skat,
but he knew nothing of that splendid and truly German game.
I can give a great deal of information about the methods that are
employed to convoy ships through what is called the Danger Zone, and in
due course I may write a report on the subject, or rather I should have
written a report but for circumstances which I will reveal at a much later
stage. Of how we zig-zagged about, first east and then west, then north and
then south, of the balloons and aeroplanes and torpedo boats that watched
us there seemed no end.
My German heart swelled with pride as I thought that all these
precautions were forced by our incomparable U-boats.
I was sitting on the deck waiting for the sound of the dinner-bell, thinking
out how superior the German race is to all its kind and how it must
inevitably, sooner or later, conquer the world, when one of the ship’s
officers passed by. I took off my hat to him and bowed and he gave me a
little jerk of his head and passed on. Suddenly, however, he stopped.
“You want to keep your eyes skinned,” he said with that brutal gruffness
which is so characteristic of the English.
“Sir,” I said with a little smile, “my eyes are so thoroughly skinned that I
can hardly shut them at night.”
Instead of laughing at this little jest, he made a grunting, pig-like noise.
“There’s a U-boat somewhere about here,” he said, “the patrols have lost
sight of it. I see you are prepared.”

I was wearing an unsinkable waistcoat, which I had purchased from the
steward, the life-belt, which we are compelled to wear, but which I should
have worn under any circumstances, a pair of thick waterproof boots, and
my pockets were filled with brandy flask and sandwiches, in case of
accident. We Germans are prepared for anything, as I have remarked before.
“Do you mean to say,” I said in alarm, “that there is a chance of—of
unpleasant happenings?”
“A big chance,” he said, “fortunately we have got very few passengers,
so I am not disguising the fact to many of them that we are in some danger.”
“But,” I protested indignantly, “what about the boasted patrol boats?
Where are your many vaunted aeroplanes? Why are we not preceded by
warships to take the shock, which, according to the lying statements in the
daily papers, is the custom?”
“Probably they didn’t know you were coming on board,” he said with
true British insolence, and passed on.
The dinner-bell rang, but I remained on deck. I would take no risks. Here
I was, and here I would remain until the Danger Zone was passed, even if I
had to sit up night after night. All the lights on the deck were extinguished.
There was no sound but the steady thud of the screw and the roar of the
water running past the hull of the steamer. The night was pitch black, such a
night as filled my soul with strangely religious thoughts, and whilst my
mind was thus occupied, I heard a shout from the bridge, an excited voice
cried something, and I rushed to the side of the vessel and looked left and
right, my skinned eyes searching the darkness.
Then something happened! I have never understood what it was. I was
conscious of a brilliant flash of light, and a roar in my ear, such as a man
feels who may occasionally take a bath and inadvertently put his head under
the water. I felt myself leaping through space. I had only time to remember
that I had all my money in my pockets, but that I had left several important
documents in my cabin, before I received another shock. I was in the water.
The life-belt supported me. There was no sign of the ship. I screamed for
help with true German thoroughness. I was bobbing up and down like a
cork, and I felt dazed and ill.
What had happened? Had the ship sunk? Was I alone on the ocean? I
thought of my life. I thought of the Fatherland. I hoped the cursed
submarine would sink and all its crew be drowned.

I do not know how long I was in the water. They told me it was not more
than twenty minutes, but that twenty minutes was an eternity to me. The
water was bitterly cold, my hands were numb, but I found my brandy flask
and emptied its contents down my throat. I felt a little better after that, but,
oh, joy, when suddenly I heard a voice in the darkness shout, almost in my
ear it seemed:
“There’s somebody,” and the words were spoken in German.
Almost immediately something big and hard rubbed against me. I can
describe it in no other way. A hand gripped my collar and dragged me on to
what felt like the top of an egg, if you can imagine the egg laid over on its
side.
“Help,” I said faintly. “I am a true German.”
“A German?” said a surprised voice, “Gott in Himmel! What are you
doing here?”
I staggered to my feet, assisted by a strong German arm and addressed
the presence which was dimly outlined against the starry skies. How
godlike is a German officer! How loud and commanding is his voice! What
splendid domination there is in his whole bearing.
“Get him below,” he said, “there go the searchlights. Is that you, Fritz?”
“Yes, Herr Lieutenant.”
“Well, what is she doing?”
“She has just sent an S.O.S. and wirelessed her position,” said the other,
whom I could not see.
“Be ready to submerge. Come on, my friend.”
He gripped me by the arm. I was pushed down a steel ladder and found
myself in the confined space of a German submarine. Instantly there was a
loud clang as though the lid had closed on a box, a rush of warm air and
——
“Hold tight!” said the voice of the commander.
His back was to me, but I could tell by his voice that he was a man of
noble birth. The deck tilted under me and I had a sinking sensation in the pit
of my stomach, and then the horror of the situation dawned upon me. We
were going down to the depths of the sea. We would probably be chased by
those infernal destroyers and trawlers, and aeroplanes.
It never struck me before what a brutal race the British were. Here were
we, boxed up in a frail little vessel, the prey of a hundred bloodthirsty

hawks. I felt faint at the thought, and casting aside all restraint, I walked up
to the commander still standing by his directing instruments.
“Pardon, Excellency,” I said, and would have taken off my hat, only I
remembered I had left the ship without one.
“Well?” he said, without moving round.
“Would it not be wise,” I suggested, “if you made for the nearest port and
let me land? I feel I am only an encumbrance on your Excellency, and will
be eating the food which I feel sure you need.”
“Go to the devil,” said this arrogant young man, whose name I learnt was
von Gwinner.
Presently he had finished his work and walked back to me.
“Do you imagine that I would walk into the nets and risk certain
destruction in order to save you a little discomfort? What is your name,
swine?”
“Excellency,” I said, “I am known as Heine.”
I spoke, I think, with dignity, and I hope that the man was impressed.
“I am an officer of the Imperial Intelligence Staff.”
“How did you come to be on this ship?” he asked.
I explained to him that I was making my escape from England, carrying
valuable documents, which were of the highest importance to the German
Government. I felt if I said this he would regret his precipitate action in
sinking the ship, and it flashed upon me as I was speaking that possibly I
could find a way out of my exceedingly uncomfortable position.
“Did the ship sink?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a curse, “we probably damaged her bow, but she’s still
afloat.”
“Then,” said I eagerly, “why not run me up quite close to her. There are a
number of ladders with which I have familiarized myself and I can very
easily step from your deck to——”
“Don’t talk like a fool,” he said, “she is probably surrounded by
destroyers and trawlers now. If I got near her I should probably have a
depth charge on me and never know what struck me.” He looked at me
thoughtfully. “A spy, eh?” he said. “Do you speak English?”
“Perfectly, sir,” I said.
“Thunder and lightning,” he said, “you are the very man I want.”
I cannot say that I was very pleased.
“You want me?” I faltered.

“You are the man I want. By heavens! It’s providential. Sit down on that
locker.”
“May I smoke?” I asked.
“If you want me to kick you in the stomach,” he replied viciously;
“smoking on a submarine, are you mad? Do you imagine you are on the
Kiel Ferry?”
He was so angry that I changed the conversation. He then told me that
this was one of the super-submarines which had been sent out from Kiel
soon after the U-boat warfare had started, and that he had hitherto carried
an intelligence officer whose task was to go ashore at unfrequented places,
make his way to the nearest seaport and learn something about sailings.
“I have felt the loss of him,” he said.
“Have you lost him?” I asked with a quaking heart.
“Yes,” he said carelessly, “he was shot dead by a coastguard near
Portland. He was an amiable man, and I quite missed him.”
“Indeed,” I said faintly, “is there any danger of that?”
“Oh, yes, you would have to take that risk! You tell me you haven’t
incurred the suspicion of the authorities.”
Like a fool I had told him that in describing my departure from England.
“Very well. You couldn’t be better. I remember your name now.”
He unlocked a little steel box attached to the wall of the small cabin in
which we were speaking, and took out a book which is familiar to me—a
list of agents. He looked them down carefully. Presently he stopped.
“What is your code name?” he asked.
I told him, and he nodded.
“That’s right. If you had deceived me, I should have gone up to the
surface, put you on deck and submerged again—leaving you without your
lifebelt. As it is, I appoint you Intelligence Officer with pay at the rate of six
marks a day.”
“Thank you,” I said, not without sarcasm, though this I did not make
evident.
How can I describe my thoughts and feelings during that terrible night?
Wild with anxiety as to my fate, the maddening knowledge that I was
perhaps thousands of feet under the surface of the sea, and liable at any
minute to strike a submerged rock or a sea-mine, facing the prospect of
stealing ashore and perhaps being shot by coastguards either coming or

going! All these things crowded one upon the other, and robbed me of
sleep.
The interior of the submarine was thick and close. The sailors glanced at
me disdainfully, and answered any questions which I put to them with bluff
rudeness.
You cannot conceive, my dear friend, how restricted life is on board a
German submarine. It is all whirling engines and projecting brackets that
bump your head. These are noises most terrible to hear. The only man who
talked to me was a good fellow, whose name I forget, who told me that only
one German submarine in three ever gets back to port, and the stories he
told me about nets and submarine mines, and how you can be seen from the
surface by aeroplanes, and how sometimes the engines go wrong and it is
impossible to rise, turned me almost grey.
It is very likely that I slept. My own impression is that I did not, but I am
told that it was necessary to kick me because I was snoring. As I never
snore this is palpably absurd. But apparently we did come to the surface in
the night, but nobody told me this, or I would have gone on to the deck to
get some fresh air. The sailor with whom I spoke informed me that if I had,
the commander would probably have kicked me into the sea, and that
members of the crew were not allowed to come up without special
permission.
The agony of the following day beggars description. We were coming up
to the surface and our periscope was showing, when suddenly the U-boat
gave a violent jerk and I was almost flung off my feet. I thought we had
struck a mine, and fell into the arms of the commander, half-fainting. I fell
out again with true German alacrity, when I realized that it was not
agreeable to him. He afterwards explained to me with a great deal of
unnecessary insolence that he had come up close to a destroyer and had had
to submerge in a hurry.
We were not fortunate that day, and the next time our periscope showed
above water it was nearly carried away by shell-fire from a trawler less than
a thousand yards away, and I sat and quaked as I heard the dull throb of the
depth charges exploding in our vicinity.
That evening the commander beckoned me to the tiny box which he
called a cabin.
“Do you know Devonshire?” he asked.
“Yes, Excellency,” I replied.

Of course, I did not know Devonshire, but it is very simple to buy a map
and discover anything I want to know.
“Do you know Siddicombe Bay?”
“Not very well,” I replied.
“It is within easy walking distance of Torcombe Bay,” he said. “The coast
is not well guarded there. I will land you under cover of the darkness and
you will make your way to Quaytown. My information is that there is a
convoy of ships there which are sailing either to-morrow or the next day. I
want you to make inquiries. Here is the name of the public-house where
sailors are to be found. As soon as you have secured information make your
way back to the point where I shall land you, flash an electric torch once,
and I will come and pick you up.”
He opened a case that he took from his desk and extracted two or three
documents.
“Your name will be William Smith,” he said, “here is an English
registration card. You live in Manchester, and you are looking for a ship.
Here is your discharge book which you need not show unless you are
questioned.”
He told me that these documents had been taken from a sailing ship
which he had sunk, and that the owner of them had been killed by shell-fire.
At eight o’clock that night, we came slowly into the deep waters of
Siddicombe Bay. It is, I believe, one of the beauty spots of Devonshire, a
half-moon of green water surrounded by high red cliffs and sloping fields,
chequered red and green. I did not see this by night, of course, and I am
indebted to a local guide book for the description. A tiny collapsible boat
was got out and opened, and into this I stepped.
“Remember,” said Commander von Gwinner, at parting, “you are to
return at ten o’clock. If you are late you will be sorry, my friend.”
“Your Excellency,” I said quietly, “I am less influenced by your threats,
though I recognize that being well-born you mean no harm, than by the
knowledge that I am serving our beloved Fatherland, for whose success and
victory I ever pray, and on whose behalf I am prepared to make the most
monumental sacrifices.”
“You talk too much,” he said; “get into the boat.”
We landed at the beach without mishap. It was deserted, and I made my
way along in the direction indicated by the local map, which I had studied
with the commander, and presently found the zig-zag path that led to the top

of the cliffs and to the little village of Siddicombe. Half an hour’s brisk
walk brought me to Quaytown, a large, straggling town, which was in times
of peace a pleasure resort, but which had been converted in war time to a
port of call.
The main roads flank the little harbour which, as I could see, contained
about six ships, and after inquiring from the policeman, I found my way to
the public-house to which I had been directed.
It was nine o’clock when I arrived, so I had only half an hour to pursue
my inquiries. The common bar was filled with a noisy crowd, mostly sailors
and men of the R.N.V.R. I managed to get a drink, and cast my eyes round
for a likely informant, and found one in a common sailor of the Naval
Reserve, who gladly accepted my invitation to drink, but asked me to bring
it to him, because the bar lady had refused to serve him with any more.
“It’s a hell of a life,” he said, “what with the law and the price of beer.
It’s a dog’s life.”
It was providential that I found him. He was a man with a grievance, and
a man with a grievance is very voluble.
“Come,” I said cheerily, “things are not so bad as you think. We shall
soon have these damned Germans beaten.”
“Don’t you make any mistake about it, my boy,” said the common sailor,
whose name was Jones, “if we are beating the Germans, why are we
keeping our ships in harbour? Look here, mate,” he said, speaking with the
stupidity of a drunken person, “we’ve got six ships in this harbour. They’ve
been lying here for a week. Why? Because there are two German
submarines outside—or rather one,” he corrected himself. “We’ve looked
for them German submarines everywhere. The balloon’s been out, the
aeroplane’s been out, the trawlers and destroyers have been out, but they
haven’t got ’em—at least they haven’t found one,” he corrected himself
again. “What’s going to happen? To-morrow afternoon at three o’clock
when the convoy goes out——”
“To-morrow at three,” I said carelessly, “that’s a curious time to leave.”
“Never mind if it is curious, or if it isn’t,” said the man rudely
quarrelsome, “they know their own business better than you do, my lad.”
“Naturally,” I said hastily.
“Well,” he went on, “to-morrow afternoon they go out at three o’clock.
What happens? Them submarines will get ’em—at least one of ’em will,”
he said.

So I had my information. Trust Heine to make a discovery of this kind.
At three o’clock on the following afternoon! The excellent von Gwinner
would be delighted. He would understand perhaps that he had a different
type of man to deal with than what he expected. Possibly he would send my
name into Headquarters for an Iron Cross—that possibility awakened a
thrill of pleasurable anticipation.
“But come, my friend,” I said, “you take too pessimistic a view. Now I
don’t believe that these six ships will be sunk.”
“Not all of ’em,” said the inebriated sailor gloomily, “but one of ’em will.
Them submarines are too artful, or rather,” he said, “one of ’em is.”
His insistence upon the differentiation piqued my curiosity.
“Tell me, my friend, if it is not betraying any military secret, and
speaking as sailor to sailor——”
“You ain’t no sailor,” said the drunken man commonly.
“Speaking as man to man,” I said in haste to get him off the subject,
“why do you say first that there are two submarines and then you only refer
to one of them.”
He was pulling at a short clay pipe, very dark and very stomach-
revolting, and he pulled for a long time before he spoke.
“Because,” he said at last, “one of ’em’s done hisself in.”
“Sunk?” I said with the same carelessness.
What information to carry to Commander von Gwinner! What a back-
slap he would give me, at the same time saying, “Good old boy, you have
done very well indeed.” I declare to you at that moment that the thought of
serving the Fatherland brought tears of joy to my eyes. I would collect all
the information I could, for already the hands of the clock were ominously
near half-past.
“In what manner has he done himself in? Sunk?” I asked again.
“Well, he ain’t sunk,” admitted the man, “but he soon will be. He was
spotted about an hour ago going into Siddicombe Bay, and all the bloomin’
fleet is on its way there with nets and trawlers, and depth charges, and
Gawd knows what!”
I held on to the wall for support.
“They’ll have him netted in by half-past ten,” said my friend.
I looked at the clock again. There was time for me to get back to
Siddicombe, but the next words of my acquaintance arrested my attention.

“He’s bound to spot ’em comin’ and make a run for it, and they’re bound
to ketch ’im,” he said with cruel relish.
I could get back in half an hour. The boat would be there waiting at ten
o’clock. I could warn von Gwinner, and he would “make a run for it.”
What stupidity! What recklessness! Who are these people, these air-
giving aristocrats, who risk the lives of the true democracy! What right have
they, I thought, to fling men of my intelligence and genius into terrible and
spine-shaking danger and perhaps to death?
The clock pointed to 9.30.
“Well, so long,” said my acquaintance, “is there anything I can do for
you, matey?”
I swallowed my drink and looked at the clock again.
“Yes,” I said firmly, for with my usual quickness of thought I had made
my decision. “Can you recommend me an hotel where I can get a good
bed?”

CHAPTER XIV.
BRETHREN OF THE ORDER

Consider, dear friends, the embarrassing circumstances under which I
found myself! Deported from England by a man whom I admit, is a person
of considerable sagacity, though infinitely inferior to the Intelligence
officers one finds attached to the German army, both in birth and natural
inquisitiveness—a man who had it in his power to drag me straight away to
the execution shed as a spy!
Contrary to all his orders and instructions I had come back! I, one
humble German in a World of Enemies, had denied the law and majesty of
England and had come back! It is true that I did not want to come back, but
that does not alter the fact. We Germans are modest people, as I have
remarked before. We do not ask for praise, we do not invite approval; we
are satisfied, in the words of an English proverb, with the approval of a
good conscience.
I do not want to boast of my own courage. That would be an un-German
thing to do. I merely say that ninety-nine out of every hundred men who
found themselves in my position, alone, with a false registration card, with
no passport, with my disguise as a Chilian penetrated, with the doors of
twenty prisons yawning to receive me, would have sunk down into their
boots and suffered grievously from cold feet. But you, who know Heine, are
well aware that he is not a man to be lightly scared.
I woke up that morning in Quaytown without fear, a penniless Ishmael,
hunted by the law, the hand of every man against me. Yet I was cheerful.
When I say I was penniless, I speak of course in a figurative sense. I had a
few pounds in my belt. I had a few thousands in a certain New York bank
and in various places in England there would be men who would help me.
I paid my bill at the little hotel where I had spent the night and caught the
nine o’clock train for London. I got off the train at Bath and made my way
to a certain large stationer’s which accepts advertisements for the leading
London dailies. On payment of a little extra money those advertisements
are telegraphed to London and appear on the following morning.

The advertisement I inserted was a very simple one. It ran:

“Clerk, over military age, expert book-keeper, with intimate
knowledge of the Argentine, Cuba, Batavia and Holland, requires
situation. Salary £200.”

An innocent advertisement, you may say. Yet, my friend, that was the
S.O.S. of a political agent in distress. On the following morning when I saw
that appear, with a certain box number, in the Daily Megaphone, I should
know that I had to wait for two or three days for one of our industrious
agents to answer that advertisement.
The words, “Argentine, Cuba, Batavia, Holland,” in that order meant, “I
am in urgent need of money.” The “£200,” which followed was the amount
I required. Had I advertised that my experience was in France, Egypt,
China, every German agent in England would have known that special
intelligence had been received from Germany and that they must gather at
an agreed rendezvous to receive their orders.
Had I merely written that my experience was in London, Bombay and
Buenos Aires, half the agents in England would have made preparations to
depart from this country without delay.
I arrived in London by night. That was the object of my getting off at
Bath, or rather partly the object, because I had a certain person, a minor
agent, to interview. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he was not to be found,
and it was not until the train came in and I was preparing to step into my
carriage that he made his appearance, rather out of breath, for he had run all
the way from the apartment-house he kept.
“I found your note,” he said. “Are you alone in this carriage?”
I looked round. There were no other passengers.
“Then,” said he, “I will take the liberty, Herr Heine, of coming to London
with you. I have much to tell you. We thought you had left England.”
Briefly I explained to him, as the train moved on, the reason I had
returned. I told him how I was carrying important despatches for America,
and how the ship was sunk by a submarine, and of how I had reached the
submarine and had ordered the captain to take me to the nearest port.
“He landed me at night,” I said, “but I fear the unfortunate man suffered
sadly as a result of his politeness.”
He nodded.

“There was one of our heroic U-boats destroyed this morning in
Siddicombe Bay,” he said. “I got news through one of our men at
Quaytown. That wasn’t your U-boat, Herr Heine?”
“No, no,” I said hastily, “certainly not. I have never been to Siddicombe
in my life. I cannot tell you everything, my friend, there are some secrets
which cannot be revealed.”
He bowed respectfully.
He then went on to tell his news.
“I don’t know whether you have been in touch with Headquarters lately,”
he said, “but we have received information that a new society has been
formed in England called ‘The Sons of Irish Freedom.’ They are planning a
new rebellion, and we have been ordered to give them every assistance.”
I nodded.
“This information is not new to me,” I said.
It is not the German way to allow underlings to believe that they are
better informed than their superiors.
“But pray go on,” I resumed, “tell me all you know.”
As a matter of fact, he had very little to tell except that the Sons of Irish
Freedom were a numerous body, that they held meetings behind closed
doors, that they had special passwords, grips and penalties, and that all
agents had been instructed to get into touch with their local branch, not only
to offer whatever assistance they could to the movement, but also to call
upon the brethren of the order for whatever help they required. I made a
note of this. It might be of great use to me.
“What is the password?” I asked.
The foolish fellow smiled feebly.
“Alas, Herr Heine, I did not bring it with me, and I cannot recall the
word!”
“Stupid owl!” I thundered, “is it thus you neglect your work? Is the
Fatherland and its welfare of such small importance that you commit such
an act of carelessness?”
He was very apologetic and agitated, and I forgave him. You understand,
of course, that he was not a man of great intelligence. He was a German
who had married an Englishwoman and the English had not interned him
for some mad reason—you know what the English are!
I reached Paddington just before midnight, and took a cab to an
apartment in Bayswater, where a friend of mine had once stayed, but where

I was unknown to the landlord. I had previously telegraphed to him from
Bath to say that I was coming, and I found him sitting up for me, a tall,
gaunt-looking man, with long black hair and a straggling black beard. He
showed me up to my room and left me for the night.
My apartments were on the first floor, and consisted of a sitting and
bedroom, and I was up betimes in the morning, busy with the writing
material I had bought at Bath, reorganizing the service from which I had
been so rudely torn.
I dare not, naturally, go to my old offices, and it was not safe to trust the
post to communicate with my agents in London. But Heine is no ordinary
man, and there are many more ways of choking a cat than by feeding it with
butter-milk, as the old saying goes.
It was whilst I was at work that there occurred the incident which was to
so considerably affect my plans, and I would say to those supercilious
critics who are so ready to condemn from the critical arm-chair the active
workings of the executive officer (so easy it is, my dear critics, to sneer and
carp at hard-working and conscientious men performing the holiest services
for the Fatherland!) that in pursuit of a design even as infallible a man as
Heine may fall into an error or be guilty of a false side-step.
It is the intention, the dominant underlying spirit of patriotism which
counts. I was turning over my papers when I came upon an advertisement
booklet which had been packed in a small parcel of biscuits and chocolate,
which I had purchased at a grocer’s in Bath. I suppose when I was eating
my frugal meal in the train I had mechanically put the booklet into my
pocket and had piled it on the table with the rest of my papers—it is my
methodical custom to clear my pockets every morning and examine the
contents, in which ways I have very often saved most important memoranda
from destruction.
It was one of those gaudy advertisements of crude colours, such as the
English printers produce, advertising somebody’s whisky. But what
attracted my justifiable wrath was the design. It was a map of the world,
decorated as is the arrogant British custom, with patches of red to represent
her downtrodden colonies, whilst in the centre of the map was a picture of a
bottle. Over the design were the words, “The whisky that has made the
British Empire famous.”
Such frivolity! Such lowness! I looked with proud disdain upon this
shameless picture.

“British Empire!” I cried, and to make the well-deserved castigation
more apposite, I spoke in English. “The world’s curse! Be sure we shall
destroy thee, limb by limb, thou devastating and conscienceless robber of
the world!” and saying this I slashed the picture with my pen.
As I did so a voice said behind me:
“Well done, you never spoke a truer word.”
I turned with a start, cursing my folly that I had spoken my thoughts
aloud. The tall, gaunt man was standing behind me. He had entered
noiselessly and had closed the door.
“Give me your hand, brother,” he said, and at that moment there came to
me all that my friend from Bath had told me the night previous. I gripped
his hand, and as I did so, I felt his thumb touch one of my knuckles in a
peculiar way. It was the grip, and instantly with true German agility of
mind, I responded.
“You are one of us?” he said eagerly.
I hesitated a second. If I admitted that I was a member I should betray
myself.
“No, I am not yet,” I said boldly, “but I hope to be one of you.”
“You shall, you shall,” he said, “the lodge meets to-morrow night.”
He picked up the advertisement with a sneering smile, and tore it in two.
“You think I am a fanatic,” he said, “but I have seen so much of the ruin
and desolation——”
“Say no more,” I said, “I understand.”
I would have spoken about Ireland then and there, but I was not quite
sure of my ground. New Irish societies rise every week, and each has a
different and generally more violent programme than the last. It would not
do for me to show any lukewarmness.
“Believe me,” I said earnestly, “nothing will give me greater pleasure
than to be enrolled in your noble society which is to free the world from the
oppressor of centuries.”
He shook my hand, and I could see the emotion which my words had
evoked glistening in his eyes.
“You realize,” he said, “that you must pledge yourself——”
“Believe me,” I responded instantly, “I will take the oath without a
tremor. Your great enemy shall be my great enemy.”
We shook hands again and parted. When he had gone, I congratulated
myself. What good fortune had brought me here? Yet stay, was it not rather

my own acumen? Had I not specially chosen this boarding-house a year ago
for one of my agents? I forget what consideration had induced me, but there
the fact remained, it had been my choice.
I spent the rest of the morning writing. My first act, of course, was to
send a letter to Major Haynes. I must be on the safe side, and if I were ever
detected, in court it would count in my favour that I had technically
surrendered myself to him the moment I had reappeared in England. My
letter, a copy of which I have, may be given since it is, I think I may say in
all modesty, a fine example of what I might term an alibi letter.
It began thus:

“Sir Haynes (though I knew he was not noble, I thought it
might tickle the fellow’s vanity to address him in terms of
lordliness). Here am I like a naughty penny, turning up again
under your nose! But quite unwillingly! You have doubtless learnt
that the gallant ocean-liner upon which you placed me is no more!
She was sunk by a German U-boat! Though I swam about looking
for survivors, desiring to rescue as many poor Englishmen as
possible from the wicked and mistaken policy of dirty old von
Turnips” (may heaven forgive me for this jest at the expense of
that great patriot), I was not successful. I swam about in the water
for ten hours and was picked up by a passing steamer! We arrived
in London this morning and I am now in a terrible dilemma. I
dare not give you my address, for I am in fear of arrest!
Guarantee to me by your power-compelling word that I shall not
be punished. If you will insert an advertisement in the Daily
Megaphone, like this:
‘From H. to H. All well.
‘See me at my office’
I will immediately report myself. In the meantime, dear Sir
Haynes, thanking you for your past favours, and hoping by a
constant attention to your wishes to merit the continuance of your
patronage.

“I am,
“Yours faithfully,
“Heine.”

I calculated that it would take two days for this to reach him, another day
before the advertisement appeared, and I then had a fourth day before I
replied in person—and in four days much service could be rendered to the
Fatherland.
I was determined to get as much out of this secret society as I possibly
could. All that afternoon I formulated my plans. Through a call office I got
into touch with Kriessler, who was one of our subsidiary agents in London,
and had rendered me and the Fatherland great services.
We met by appointment that night at the Marble Arch, and almost the
first question he asked me was whether I had got into touch with the Sons
of Irish Freedom? When I told him I had, he was astonished.
“You don’t lose much time, Herr Heine,” he said admiringly.
“That is very true, Kriessler,” I said gravely, “and I appreciate your
compliment.”
Kriessler was in a position to pass through any information collected in
England. I, of course, had been the supreme medium, but I dare not exercise
any of the old machinery of transmission. It was very dangerous. It might
be, and probably was, very dangerous for Kriessler, but for the sacred cause
of Germany we must take risks, so I let Kriessler take them.
I arranged for him to send to my house on the following morning for a
brief report which I told him must be sent to Headquarters with the least
delay.
“You see, my dear Kriessler,” I said, at parting, “I know all there is to be
known about this secret society. But I am anxious to check my knowledge.
You will please tell me all you have heard, and if I do not interrupt you to
point out your mistakes, you will understand that it is not desirable that the
subordinate officials should know as much as their superiors.”
“I quite understand that, Herr Heine,” said Kriessler, “but I do not
pretend to know a great deal about the Sons of Irish Freedom. One knows
that they have meetings and passwords. I also know that the police are
actively searching for their lodges, but so far without success. I am told they
are very desperate and dangerous men, and I believe that there is only one
lot in London. They hate England——”
“That I know,” I smiled.
I went home and wrote a very full report on the constitution and working
of the Sons of Irish Freedom. Blame me not, dear friend, for my innocent
deceit, for I had never heard of the Sons of Irish Freedom till I arrived at

Bath, nor think harshly of me that I wrote with elaborate detail to Potsdam
upon their ritual and objectives.
That same night I sent off my letter to Major Haynes, and finished my
report on the secret society, which was given to the messenger whom
Kriessler sent soon after breakfast. I took my meals alone in my sitting-
room and my strange, gaunt friend, whose name was Clarkson, only saw me
once and did no more than to smile mysteriously and say:
“At eight o’clock to-night.”
I nodded gravely. I did not expect to hear any more about the matter,
being well aware that my host would not care to discuss so weighty a secret,
and I was surprised in the afternoon to receive a visit from Mr. Clarkson,
who was accompanied by a short, stout man, who was also very pale and
wore powerful spectacles.
“This, sir,” said he, “is my friend, Mr. Moore, who will act as your
sponsor to-night.” He turned to Mr. Moore. “This gentleman,” said he, “will
become one of us.”
Mr. Moore bowed.
“You realize, of course,” he said, a little pompously, I thought, “that you
must absolutely surrender your allegiance to the World’s Terror, and that
from this night forward you may count upon the moral support of a band of
brothers, and that you will give yourself heart and soul to our sublime task.”
“Have no fear,” I said, seizing his hand too, and wringing it, “until the
tyrant is crushed I will be a loyal comrade.”
“Good,” said Mr. Moore, and after a few commonplaces about the
weather, they departed.
At seven o’clock that night I dressed myself with care, soberly and
unostentatiously. What cared I for the oaths or for these fanatical
conspirators, with their absurd secrecy, their passwords, their grips and the
like!
Mr. Clarkson knocked at my door at a quarter to eight and we sallied
forth together. I suggested taking a taxi-cab, but he would not hear of it, and
we went by bus to Camden Town.
It was just as we were turning into Baynam Street that we noticed a little
crowd gathered about something which lay on the sidewalk. We would have
passed on, but Mr. Clarkson, overhearing something that was said by a
member of the group, pushed his way through the little knot of people and I
followed.

A man lay prone on the sidewalk.
“What is it?” I asked curiously.
Mr. Clarkson made no reply till we were clear of the crowd.
“One of our people,” he said bitterly, “fallen to the enemy.”
“Fallen?” I said.
Mr. Clarkson nodded.
“It happens now and again,” he said, “we are fighting a cunning and
ruthless foe, my friend.”
“But are you leaving him there?”
“For the moment,” said Mr. Clarkson. “I will ask one of the brethren to
make inquiries as to how it happened, and if it is possible to give any
assistance to our unfortunate comrade, it will be given.”
This was news indeed. So this mighty British government was not above
striking an assassin blow to rid itself of its enemies.
From Baynam Street leads a smaller thoroughfare, near the Camden
Road end of which is a small hall. The night was dark, the painted street-
lamps cast tiny pools of dim light upon the pavement as we stole furtively
through the door of the hall, and passed through a small anteroom to a
smaller room beyond.
In this room there was another door, and toward this Mr. Clarkson
walked.
“You will wait here,” he said in a whisper.
He knocked in a peculiar manner on the door, and a sliding panel opened.
He whispered something, the door was unlocked, and after he had slipped
into the room, closed again.
I waited about three minutes before the door opened, and Mr. Clarkson
came out accompanied by Mr. Moore, both of whom wore on their breasts
sashes of red.
Mr. Moore, scarcely raising his voice above a whisper, asked me a
number of questions. They were couched in a curious semi-legal, semi-
philosophical vein, and I confess I did not understand very much, nor did I
trouble to pay a great deal of attention to what was being said. I knew by
their intonation when I had to say “Yes,” and when I had to say “No.” When
I had finished Mr. Clarkson looked anxiously at his friend.
“I think that is satisfactory, Brother Moore?”
“Eminently satisfactory, Brother Clarkson,” said the other.

He rapped soberly at the door and again the panel slid back and a voice
challenged him.
“Who knocks?”
“Two brethren with a candidate for initiation,” said Mr. Moore.
The panel closed and presently it opened again.
“Who vouches for this candidate?” said the voice.
“I,” said Mr. Clarkson.
“I,” said Mr. Moore.
The door was opened and we passed through, not without a fluttering of
heart on my part.
Between my two sponsors I advanced into the hall. At one end of the
room on a raised dais sat three men bearing the strange regalia of their
order. To left and right at single tables were two other officers, also wearing
decorations. I passed from one to the other. Each addressed me in solemn
language on the duty of man to man, and presently I came to the raised dais
and had to endure yet a further long rigmarole, at the end of which the
president confided the password, which was “Fight the Fight,” the grip, and
the signal knock.
I was led to a seat in the body of the hall, congratulated heartily by Mr.
Moore and Mr. Clarkson, and settled myself down to listen to the
deliberations of this strange body. They were men of all ages, of all
conditions of life, stern, determined-looking men I thought, capable of
committing any desperate deed, the kind of men who might be most useful.
There were young and old amongst them, but all bore the same sour
disappointed expression, which I had noticed both in Mr. Moore and Mr.
Clarkson.
A brother rose and had begun to address the chair when the door was
flung open excitedly and a tall, pale-faced man rushed in. As he did so, I
heard the shrill sound of police whistles.
“A raid, a raid!” he cried.
Instantly the hall was in commotion. I felt myself grow pale and grasped
Mr. Moore, who was next to me, by the arm.
“Is there any way out of this?” I asked.
“You had better stay here,” he said.
“Stay here and be caught!”
That was not Heine’s way. I dashed through the door into the street.
There was no sign of policemen, but I heard shrill whistles blowing. I ran

up into Baynam Street straight into the arms of a policeman!
“Hello,” he said, “you had better take cover. There’s an air raid on.”
“An air raid!” I gasped. “An air raid!”
“Well, perhaps it isn’t one. A mate of mine just told me it’s a false alarm,
and very likely he’s right. There’s rather too much wind for a raid to-night.”
I could have leant against him. I was so confounded and confused I could
collect my thoughts only in fragments, and the first memory of that evening
which strangely enough came to me was the memory of that stricken form
on the pavement.
“Tell me, sir,” I said, “did you see a man lying on the ground round the
corner?”
It was, I admit, a foolish question to ask, but the memory of that rigid
victim had obsessed me.
“Oh, him,” said the constable, “yes! He was drunk.”
“Drunk?” I said in amazement.
“Yes,” said the policeman, “a man named Geary. He used to be a member
of that lodge down the road there.” He pointed to the building from whence
I had come.
“What lodge is that?” I asked.
“The Sons of Temperance,” he said, “I thought I saw you come out of
there. Ain’t you a member? Rum blokes, they are,” he went on with a little
chuckle, “always talking about drink as the Enemy and the Terror and the
Oppressor of the World. I wish somebody would oppress me with a pint.”
I pressed a shilling into his hard, corrupt fist, and walked back to
Bayswater.

CHAPTER XV.
THE WORLD DICTATOR

It has frequently been observed by impartial and neutral observers, as, for
example, the learned Professor Heinrich von Stosselkopf, of Zurich, the
Italian Professor Emil Zonnernheimer, of Verona, and Captain Albert von
Zohm, the brilliant writer of Sweden (you will observe that I have an
excellent memory for names, as indeed all true Germans have) that
Germany holds all the qualities of world-sufficient kultur save one, namely
the inability to tolerate frivolity.
This does not mean that we Germans have no sense of humour. How we
laugh at the English and their stupid jokes! How puerile is the American so-
called fun spirit! Give a German a true joke, however, and he will “ha, ha!”
with the best of them. The story of the little boy who climbed up the church
steeple and fell upon some iron railings and was prosecuted by the
unimaginative policeman for damaging church property, is one which
roused a tempest of laughter from one end of the Fatherland to the other.
Who in the world has not roared with delight at that true German story of
the lady who went to a doctor of music and showed him the corn of her
knee?
The German spirit is the true spirit of humour. Therefore, I reject with
scorn the suggestion which has been made by some who have seen these
notes, that I am trying to be funny or comical. The errors into which a man
may fall are many, but as I have said before, it is the spirit in which one
makes the attempt to serve one’s country which counts, and it is not the
performance, whether it be successful or otherwise, which should count to a
man’s credit.
I have never asked of my beloved Fatherland for any honour. I have been
content to serve humbly and obscurely. I know that the records of my work
have been wilfully suppressed by jealous superiors, otherwise to-day there
would be blazing on my bosom the Order of the Red Eagle. Yes, I repeat,
the Order of the Red Eagle has been stolen by the lies and the

misrepresentations of those who have belittled the monumental nature of
my labours in England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Wight.
There are moments when I grow cold with rage at the thought of this
base treason—but enough of this!
I pass to the strangest adventure of my experience, and I tell this story
because not only does it reveal the amazing unscrupulousness of the British
government, but I think it will also show the marvellous adaptability of a
German agent. I do not suggest that all agents would have acted as I did, but
then I do not think there are a great number of German agents who are
possessed of my extraordinary capacities.
It will be remembered that after my deportation from England, by a
certain Major Haynes, of whom more anon, I was submarined and landed
again on these inhospitable shores, and by reason of the sentence of
deportation, which had been illegally passed upon me without a trial, I was
compelled to lie, as they say in England, doggo.
With most of my friends I dare not communicate, and though I had
written to Major Haynes announcing that I was in England, and asking him
to give me an opportunity of calling upon him, giving, of course, no
address, I did not hear from him immediately. I had, however, inserted an
advertisement in the Daily Megaphone, stating that I was a clerk with
experience in the Argentine, Cuba, Batavia and Holland, saying that I was
willing to work for £200 a year, the combination of those words meaning
that I was an agent in distress and that I was requiring £200. I had no doubt
in my mind that the call would be responded to. I was officially penniless. I
had some money of my own, but why should I spend that when there was
so much money to be had for the asking?
I called at the office of the newspaper and received a big batch of letters
in response to my advertisement. I took them back to my new lodgings, for
I had left the old apartments, owing to the fact that the proprietor was a
fanatical teetotaler, and in the privacy of my own room I took the letters
from my pocket and turned them over rapidly, looking for one which would
have an inky finger-mark on the back flap.
I found and opened the envelope, and discovered, as I had expected, four
bank-notes for £50 without any reference to the sender. I would have
thrown the remaining letters upon the fire, had there been one, but
fortunately time was hanging on my hands, I had arranged to meet
Kriessler, the only man in London with whom I could safely communicate,

and I had two or three hours to fill in before that appointment. So what was
more natural than that I should open these offers of a situation and read
them through? Thoroughness is the characteristic of our race. We despise no
material, however unpromising. Germany was built up upon by-products,
and her wealth extracted from the dust-bins of Europe.
They were letters of a conventional type asking me for recommendations
or inviting me to make calls upon the writers. It was the fourth letter which
interested me most of all. I read it through carefully, put it aside, skimmed
through the remainder of the letters and then returned to this extraordinary
missive.
The paper was heavy and rich. There was on the top left-hand corner a
coat of arms embossed in gold and blue. The address was 182, Berkeley
Square, which is one of the most fashionable residential squares in London.
This address, however, had been scratched out and there had been
substituted “Stoney Cottage, Hebleigh-on-Avon.” The letter was marked
“Private and very Confidential,” and ran:

“If the advertiser is a person of discretion, and is willing to act
as confidential secretary to a high government personage, and has
a knowledge of world politics, a permanent position with a salary
of £500 per annum can be offered to him for the duration of the
war.”

I pondered this letter for some considerable time and before I went out to
my appointment with Kriessler, my mind was made up and I had written
offering my services, informing the writer that I had acted in a similar
capacity to a certain Legation which I was not at liberty to name in Holland;
that I was the soul of discretion, that I had no friends in England, and that I
was not liable for military service. I added that I should be glad if the
advertiser could arrange a meeting in town and that in the circumstances I
should like it to be as secret as possible, because I was already doing
confidential work for a government department and they might not like to
lose me.
The next morning came a telegram in reply.

“Meet me to-night at ten o’clock at the corner of Berkeley
Street. I shall be wearing a tall hat and light gloves.”

Ten o’clock that night found me at the rendezvous and punctually to the
minute a taxi-cab drew up and a gentleman alighted answering to the
description contained in the telegram. I walked up to him taking off my hat.
“You are the advertiser?” he said sharply.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
He looked at me thoughtfully. The light was very dim but I met his gaze
without faltering.
“Do you speak French?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“Walk along with me,” he said, taking my arm.
The cabman evidently knew his client and did not expostulate at his
departure. Had I been the fare he would have covered me with vile abuse
and would have told me that he had no petrol. Such is the unscrupulousness
of London cabmen!
We walked down Berkeley Street and turned into the deserted Berkeley
Square. He stopped in front of a gloomy house.
“I live here,” he said, “but I am at present staying in the country.”
His voice was sharp. He spoke brusquely and without politeness, and I
realized in a flash that he was noble-born. He asked me several questions,
more or less irrelevant, and then suddenly he turned about and walked back
in the direction of the cab.
“I think you will do,” he said, “you will leave to-morrow evening for
Hebleigh. I will meet you at the station and drive you to my cottage. I keep
no servants in the house when I am at Hebleigh.”
This seemed strange, but I was afterwards to discover that the cottage had
been specially built for my new employer, with vacuum cleaners, gas and
electric stoves, a perfect system of central heating, water on every floor and
a bathroom attached to every bedroom.
What a comfortable place, thought I, what luxury and how providential
for me! Here I could lie quiet for weeks and never be discovered, with
nothing to break the monotony of life but an occasional bath.
I had brought down a small hand-bag containing my worldly belongings,
and I was ushered into a small bedroom simply but expensively furnished
by my host. It was in that room, the first room in which the lights were all
switched on, that I had my first good view of him. He was a man of about
fifty-five, rather thin, very grey, with a pale, æsthetic face and long, nervous
hands. It may seem curious to you that I had not asked him his name, but if

you imagine I neglected that precaution you do not know your Heine. I had
asked him but he had not responded.
“A woman comes every day to make the beds and to prepare our
principal meal,” he said. “You will not see her because she does her work
whilst I am in my study, and the meals are served on a lift which comes
straight from the kitchen.”
To his study he led the way. It was a large room, one wall of which was
covered by a bookshelf filled with large and imposing volumes. A
handsome table filled the middle of the room. There were two comfortable
arm-chairs and a writing-table. Under the window, across which a heavy
curtain was drawn, was a smaller table, and to this my unknown employer
pointed.
“That will be yours,” he said. “Your duty will be to translate despatches
which I shall write, into such languages as I shall tell you. Do you speak
German?”
I kept a straight face.
“Perfectly,” I replied.
He nodded approvingly.
“You wonder probably,” he said, as he seated himself at the table and
looked at me strangely over the tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses fixed on his
nose, “why I require discretion, why I chose you without knowing anything
about you or without any kind of reference? I chose you in the first place,”
he went on, without waiting for me to explain that I could produce
references, “because in the first place, I think you are a foreigner. Am I
right?”
“In a sense——” I began.
“Very well,” he went on. “Oh, by the way,” he looked at me sharply,
“have you ever heard of Bilbury’s Tablets?”
I had indeed heard of Bilbury’s Tablets, the advertisements of which
covered the hoardings of England and formed the most attractive reading
matter in the stupid British newspapers. I therefore answered in the
affirmative.
“Do you know the man Bilbury?” he asked, still looking at me keenly.
I was at first tempted to say that I did, but on second consideration I
thought it best to tell the truth.
“No, sir. I have never met him.”
“Good,” he said, nodding again.

He leant back in his chair.
“Bilbury,” he said—“and this, you will understand, is confidential—is
one of the biggest and most dangerous forces working in this country
against England. I have reason to believe that, under one name or other, he
is supplying most of the German agents with their money. I am satisfied
also that his advertisements are code messages to the enemy government—
you see, I trust you.”
I nodded, a little bewildered, for I had never known of Bilbury, though I
had heard that there were in England certain persons of whose identity I
was ignorant, who were working with the Fatherland.
“I tell you of Bilbury,” he went on, “because in part he explains a great
deal of the secrecy both of my habitation and my movements. He also
explains why I have chosen, as you might think haphazard, a confidential
secretary. You are under no circumstances to communicate with any of
Bilbury’s agents, and you are at all times to be prepared to counter the
machinations of this extraordinary man.”
There were two or three letters on the table, and one of these he picked
up, slit it open and took out what appeared to me to be a perfectly blank
sheet of paper. He held it up to the light and frowned, replacing it upon his
desk.
“Your presence here is already known evidently,” he said, “but I don’t
think we need bother very much about that. Now,” he went on more briskly,
“you are entitled to know who I am. Do you know Lord Catherton?”
“I have seen Lord Catherton,” I replied.
He nodded.
“Do you know the Earl of Seabury?”
I shook my head.
“I have never met Lord Seabury.”
“Have you ever seen a photograph of him?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I replied, “I have not.”
Lord Seabury was until recently an English colonial governor, who was
now one of the members of the War Cabinet. He is not a man who has
figured largely in public life, and not at all in English public life, and as I
had never troubled about the colonies he was unfamiliar to me.
He nodded again.
“I see you don’t know Lord Seabury,” he said with a little smile, “for I
am he.”

My heart gave a great bound. Heine indeed had fallen upon his feet,
thought I! To find myself in the confidence of one who was admittedly a
most powerful member of the War Council—what fortune, what amazing
luck!
“Now you understand why I shall require that you treat everything I say,
and everything you witness here, in the strictest confidence.”
That practically finished the conversation. His lordship led me to a little
dining-room where dinner was already laid, and we ate our meal almost in
silence. He told me I could go to bed, that he was an early riser and would
require my attendance at six o’clock in the morning.
I scarcely slept that night, turning over and over in my mind how I might
use to the best advantage the information which I was certain to gain.
I had taken the precaution of buying at Paddington Station a little guide-
book of the district, and I carefully studied the roads, the railway stations,
and a time-table, with which I had provided myself with my usual
forethought, and planned out the course I would take if it became necessary
to leave hurriedly. With Kriessler in London, able to forward my despatches
to the Highest Quarters, I had no doubt that within a week the name of
Heine would be ringing along the corridors of the German Foreign Office.
Punctually at six, I presented myself in the library, and found that his
lordship had prepared coffee with his own hands. From six to eight we
worked strenuously, his lordship writing, sometimes asking me to translate
into Spanish, sometimes into French, occasionally into German, his brief
but vital correspondence. I memorized as best I could all these letters. Some
were to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, one was to a neutral
Legation at Berne, this being marked “Very Confidential and Secret,” and
sealed heavily with his lordship’s own hand. One was to a Spanish Cabinet
Minister, and all dealt intimately and frankly with the conduct of the war. I
remembered in a vague way that I had heard that Lord Seabury was the
virtual dictator of England, but I never realized it until I read those
dictatorial, intolerant messages which he sent forth, one being directed to
the commander-in-chief of a certain British army, telling him that he was on
no account to attack before the fourteenth of the following month.
Breakfast was served in the room where we had taken dinner and once
that was dispatched we returned to our labours. For the whole of that day I
was kept busy. A draft treaty with the Portuguese Government, dealing with

the future of the island of San Thomé, was one of the documents which
occupied the greater part of the afternoon in translating.
At dinner his lordship was unusually frank, and under my genial flattery
he unbent.
“It is true, Mr. Smith,” he said (Smith had been the name I had given
him), “that I am dictating the policy of the Cabinet, which reminds me that I
must draft a letter to-night to the commander-in-chief of the battle fleet. I
am not at all satisfied with—” he stopped short—“by the way,” he asked,
“have you had any communication from any mysterious source?”
“No,” I replied.
He shook his head a little despondently.
“It seems absurd that one should be dogged by a pill-maker,” he mused,
half to himself, “but that fellow has got to be dealt with sooner or later.”
He left the room to go to his study, leaving me to finish a glass of port,
and I was rising from the table when he returned.
“Come this way,” he said in a whisper, “I will show you something.”
He led me down the corridor into the study in which the lights had been
extinguished. We walked across the room and he pulled back the curtain. A
bright moon was shining and at the far end of the garden near the road was
the figure of a thick-set man who was pacing slowly and restlessly up and
down the road. He dropped the fold of the curtain and we returned to the
dining-room which faces the back of the house.
“That gentleman is M. Tarakanova,” he said, “and Tarakanova is the chief
of Bilbury’s agents.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully, “I shall have to send
that infernal dossier to town.”
“The dossier, my lord?” I repeated, innocently.
“The dossier,” he said.
He made no further explanation until later that night when we were
working in the study, a stealthy reconnaissance having revealed to me that
M. Tarakanova had disappeared. In the wall of the study was a safe, and just
before, or rather immediately after, he had bade me a curt good night, he
stopped my departure with a word, walked over to the safe, opened it with a
bunch of keys which he took from his pocket, and pulled out a long yellow
envelope which was heavily sealed.
He brought it carefully back to the table, switched on the table light
which he had extinguished, and placed the envelope under its rays.
“Look at this,” he said.

I looked. In a firm hand was written on the top of the envelope, with a
neat red line ruled beneath:

“(1) Statement signed by William II. Emperor of Germany, on
July 5th, 1914, expressing his intention of making war.
“(2) Letter from Emperor William II. of Germany to Emperor
Francis Joseph to the same effect.
“(Original documents).”

I did not speak. I was incapable of speech. Within this envelope lay
documents in the very writing of the All-Highest Supreme War Lord!
Documents of greatest national interest! Historical documents which in the
enemy’s hands might damage the beloved Fatherland and our Noble and
Glorious Kaiser!
I was clear-headed and cool. Those documents should be restored to their
Imperial owner. What reward would await the gallant and enterprising gent.
who delivered these papers into the hands of our Supreme and Noble
Master! I grew dizzy with the thought of the emoluments and the honours
which might be showered upon me. No office was too high for the man who
could render that magnificent service to the State!
My hand trembled as I touched the secret dossier.
“I must get rid of this at once,” said Lord Seabury. “It is too risky to keep
it here—put it back in the safe, Smith.”
Dare I do it? Half-a-dozen steps separated me from the desk to the steel
door in the wall. I half-glanced at his lordship. He was looking at a
document which he had half-finished before dinner. Quick as lightning I
slipped the envelope under my coat and under my arm, slammed to the door
of the safe, locked it and handed the keys back. He thanked me and put
them in his pocket.
“You may go now, Smith,” he said.
The perspiration was trickling down my forehead and I walked
unsteadily down the passage to my room. I closed and locked the door
behind me, took the envelope from my pocket and sat down on the bed.
There was a small writing-table in my room which had been placed there at
my request, and a supply of stationery. To enclose this large envelope in one
larger was the work of a second. I wrote a brief note to Kriessler telling him
that it was a matter of life and death that the enclosed should be sent

forward by the safest channels and should be placed in the hands of the All
Highest himself.
I then began the most important letter I have ever written in my life:

“All Highest Majesty.
“Your humble and obedient servant has the honour to transmit
to Your All Highest Majesty a document which I have extracted
from the safe of the English Cabinet Minister, Lord Seabury, at
great risk and with much labour, though I count no labour too
great if I am to serve Your All Highest Majesty. My name, as Your
All Highest Majesty’s Minister of Intelligence will tell Your All
Highest Majesty, is Heine.”

I added a number of other interesting details about myself, where I could
be found, what was my salary, and this paragraph, which I regard as one of
my finest efforts:

“Though no decoration blazes upon my humble coat, and no
patent of nobility has been granted me, though I am a poor man
with no more than my official pay to sustain me, I am
nevertheless proud and happy to be of such service to Your All
Highest Majesty as will merit Your All Highest Majesty’s
approval. I seek no rewards, no decorations, no monetary grants
—I do this for the Fatherland, and for Your All Highest Majesty,
who is the epitome of Germany’s greatness.”

I placed this and the dossier inside a large envelope, and in the middle of
the night I tip-toed back to the study in my stockinged feet and found a
larger covering in which to enclose the letter which I had addressed to the
Emperor. On the outer envelope I wrote Kriessler’s English name and
address, and soon after daylight I let myself out of the house and walked in
the direction of the village of Hebleigh which was distant about a mile from
Stoney Cottage.
I dropped the big envelope into the village post-box, retraced my steps
and reached my room without my absence being detected. I had to risk his
lordship discovering the disappearance of the letter, but fortunately
throughout the next day he showed no intention of going to the safe, and
beyond a reference to Bilbury, he scarcely spoke a word.

All day long we were inditing letters to every part of the world, which his
lordship sealed with his own hands, and which he packed away in a leather
satchel. How he posted them or whether he sent them to London, I did not
know, but I presumed that a Foreign Office messenger attended discreetly
and performed this duty.
Half-past eight that night, immediately after dinner, his lordship went to
his study and suggested, when I attempted to follow him, that I should have
a little fresh air.
“You need it, my friend,” he said, “you have been playing a part to-day in
the government of England, in the direction of affairs of the world. Surely
that merits a little recreation.” He smiled almost paternally.
I walked through the little panelled hall, opened the front door, and
stepped out. A man was standing by the gate. It was Bilbury’s man,
Tarakanova. To whom he was talking I did not know, but somebody stood
in the shadow and I heard his quiet laughter.
I shrugged my shoulders. I had nothing to fear from Bilbury, indeed I was
curious to learn what the agent of this mysterious person had to say to me.
So I walked boldly up the garden-path, humming a little tune, and
Tarakanova turned to meet me. He was, as I say, a thickset man, clean-
shaven, so far as I could see in the dusk, and not the sort of man you might
imagine would engage in espionage work.
“Good evening,” he said, as I came up.
“Good evening, sir,” I replied politely, “it is fine weather for this time of
the year.”
“You’re a trite devil,” said a voice in the half-darkness.
I turned to face the man who had spoken, and with whom Tarakanova
had been in conversation. I did not faint. I pride myself that I retain my self-
possession with remarkable sang-froid.
“Good evening, Major Haynes,” I said, not to be outdone in cool-
collectedness.
“Having a nice time, Heine?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed, Major Haynes,” I replied; “you got my letter?”
“I am sorry I did not reply, but I have been rather busy, and learning you
were down here, I thought I would look you up. How is his lordship?”
“Very well indeed,” I replied with great politeness.
Tarakanova laughed.

“I presume you know,” I said, as the thought struck me, “that this
gentleman is an employee of Bilbury.”
“I know that very well,” said Major Haynes, “though he is not exactly
employed by Bilbury, but by the gentlemen who are administering Mr.
Bilbury’s estate. You see, Heine,” Major Haynes went on in his fearfully
monotonous voice—how that man irritates me!—“the plutocratic Mr.
Bilbury, who is a very rich gentleman, went off his head about four years
ago.”
“Went mad?” I said.
“Went mad,” said Major Haynes, nodding, “not dangerously so, but just
enough to be a nuisance. His pet illusion is that he is Lord Seabury.”
“Oh, yes,” I said faintly.
“He spends all his time,” Major Haynes went on, “writing despatches for
important personages, and generally in running the war. Mr. Jacobson here,
is, if I may put it crudely, his keeper. I suppose he has told you all his
secrets?”
“Oh, yes,” I said carelessly.
“I wonder if he showed you that dossier of his about the Kaiser. I hope
you haven’t by any chance pinched it and sent it to His Imperial Majesty,”
said Major Haynes with coarse brutality, “because it happens that there is
nothing more interesting in it than a pamphlet on the remarkable quality of
Bilbury’s Pills.”
“Major Haynes,” I said in a husky voice, “I surrender.”
“Not at all,” said Major Haynes, “look me up any time you are in
London, and I will see what I can do for you. Now,” said this long, cool
devil, with true British wit, “you had better run back to his lordship. He will
be wanting you for a new offensive, or maybe to send an ultimatum to
Sweden.”
I made no reply. With dignity I returned to the house, walked up to my
room, and packed my bag.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SYREN

I have mentioned in an earlier chapter an organization known as the Sons of
Irish Freedom. I do not pretend that this is the name of the society which at
one time threatened to create the most serious difficulties for the British
Government, but which was dissolved owing to the base and ungentlemanly
treachery of Major Haynes, an Intelligence Officer, who got himself elected
a member of the principal lodge, and by cunning artfulness induced the
members to give a grand dinner to celebrate the first anniversary of its
foundation.
The members allowed this spurious and treacherous brother to order a
dinner which was given at one of the best hotels in London. Everything was
of the best, winter strawberries, most rare and wonderful wines, beautiful
flowers, and a magnificent entertainment to follow. The dinner, of course,
was not announced as one by the Sons of Irish Freedom, but had a much
more innocent excuse. When the bill was presented for payment, the
cunning Major Haynes, having identified certain prominent Irish
personages who were present with the responsibility for the festival, it was
found that it absorbed all the funds of the lodge and about £200 in addition.
[7]

The unfortunate and down-trodden Irish are cursed with that deluded
sense of humour which no German can ever understand. Else how could
you imagine that so frivolous a reason can bring about the disillusion of a
great political organization. We Germans would have repudiated the bill
and, if necessary, have sent secret letters to the hotel proprietor telling him
that his premises would be blown up if he did not mend his manners.
I do not profess to understand either the mentality of the Irish or that of
such men as Major Haynes. I have tried many times in the silent watches of
the night to reduce this officer (and I wish I could add gentleman) to an
understandable formula. I have never believed that there was a secret
service in England. I never shall believe that anything like the magnificent
and forethoughtful department which German genius has organized could

come into being in a dull-thinking country like Britain. The man himself
was the negation of all good German qualities. He had not the seriousness
which distinguishes men of my own department. He lacked that haughty
obedience-compelling manner which we look for and expect in the true
Prussian officer. His voice was a gentle drawl. He was always laughing with
his eyes, full of jokes which a gentleman, that is to say a Prussian
gentleman, would consider it beneath his dignity to utter.
I have seen him speak to quite common people as though they were his
equals, and for this reason I long suspected that he was a Socialist, and that
is a view which I still hold, and, believe me, Heine makes very few
mistakes.
But it would be unknightly in me if I did not pay this tribute to the man;
whether he secured his information by luck or by judgment, he knew a
disgusting sight too much.
I had returned to England, as you know, after being deported by Major
Haynes, but I had had the good sense and vision to write to him announcing
I was in England. By the sheerest accident he discovered me and requested
that I should call at his office or, as he put it, “look me up.”
Be assured, Major Haynes, I shall not only look you up, but look you
down! You may not see the carefully-veiled insolence in Heine’s eye or the
sneer behind his teeth. You will not know the bitter and insulting thoughts
which crowd one on top of the other in Heine’s teeming brain. I will look
you up indeed and some day you will look up to me. How dearly I should
love to repeat this bon mot to his face.
Two days after my meeting I decided to call upon him at the War Office.
It had not been my first visit, and so I knew the ropes, and having written
my name on a slip of paper I was shown up to his office, a very small,
unimportant apartment, showing that, whatever Major Haynes might be in
his own estimation, he was jolly little thought of by the Army Council, for
there was nothing in his room in the way of pictures except a plain map
which, incidentally, I glanced at and comprehended as I entered. It was a
map of Europe.
“Sit down, Heine,” said the Major, who was writing at his desk, “help
yourself to the cigarettes—those on the left. The others are poisoned. I keep
them for generals.”
Such frivolity! Would any major officer in the German army dare speak
of the members of the Great General Staff with such disrespect? Would they

not stand stiffly to attention and refer to them as “Illustrious General So-
and-so,” or “The Noble and Illustrious Well-Born General So-and-so”?
He finished writing, laid down his pen, and resting his elbows on the
arms of his chair, dropped his chin upon his clasped hands, all the time
surveying me with an inscrutable smile, as though—and I believe this to be
the truth—recognizing that in me he had a devilish stiff proposition, as the
English say.
“Well, Heine,” he said, at last, “how is the Kaiser?”
My blood boiled up to my head.
“Don’t blush,” he said. (Such a cad!)
“How is old von Hindenburg and the shining German sword?”
“Major Haynes,” I said coldly, “if you think I am not a German then you
are insulting me. If you believe I am a German, then your remarks are both
insulting and hurtful to my dignity and my loyalty and my sense of
decency.”
“Quite right,” said Major Haynes; and then after a pause, “I don’t know
what to do about you, Heine. If I send you to America you will be
torpedoed. If you get to America you will probably be executed. If I send
you back to Germany you will starve to death.”
I made no reply.
“If I leave you here——” Major Haynes went on, helping himself to a
cigarette. I noticed it was one of those which he said he used to poison
generals, so I presume it was the best kind. The inhospitality of the man and
his boorishness appalled me. “If I leave you here,” he said, “you will
probably be bombed to death. If I put you in an internment camp you will
be an expense to the Government. If I have you shot——” He paused.
I turned white with anger.
“I trust you are not going to do anything so stupid owlish as that, Major
Haynes,” I said, “I have done my best to prove to you that I am a perfectly
innocent Swiss.”
“Chilian,” he corrected, “but it doesn’t matter. There are lots of Swiss-
Chilians in London just now, and quite a few Swedish-Turks. No, I don’t
think I will have you shot, you may be very useful.”
“Any service I can render to you, Major Haynes,” I said, with my native
politeness, “I shall be happy to give. Unfortunately, I am——” I shrugged
my shoulders, introducing rather cleverly a suggestion of my helplessness.

“Cheer up, Heine,” he said with a cynical smile—there’s something
about that man’s smile I don’t like—“I think you can give me the greatest
assistance. Let’s put all our cards on the table,” he leant across the desk. “I
know that you were for some time the head of the German Intelligence
Department in London. Take that sad, pained smile off your face, and
behave. As I told you before, you weren’t dangerous, because your methods
were somewhat transparent and I don’t think (you will excuse my
directness) that you are a very clever man.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” I said stiffly.
“I think, as a matter of fact,” Major Haynes went on, not noticing the
interruption, “you have too good a heart to be a spy. Beneath that
outrageous waistcoat of yours, and the three or four undershirts which I am
sure you are wearing, beats a kindly heart.” I am recalling his indelicate
words from memory that you may learn what type of “gentleman” an
English officer can be. In honest truth, he was wide of the mark, for I had
only two undershirts on, the weather being warm. “Now with much of your
work,” Major Haynes went on, “I am well acquainted. I have your code,” he
opened the drawer of his desk and took out a very familiar book, and if I
changed colour, who shall blame me? “When I say your code, I mean the
code of your kind. I have a list of your sub-agents, such of them as are still
alive,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “I know all about your Kriesslers and
your Kahns. I know your newspaper advertisement code; in short, I know
almost everything about your business”—he paused—“except one thing.”
“And what is that, Major Haynes?” I asked innocently.
“It is the one thing I have never been able to discover,” said the Major,
putting the tips of his fingers together and looking down at them.
I pricked up my ears. What was it this clever fellow did not know?
“Many things, I should imagine,” I said with a sneer, speaking of course
to myself and sneering inwardly.
“It has come to my knowledge,” he said, speaking slowly, and raising his
eyes to mine in a steady, hypnotizing way, “that the agents of your—what
shall I call it?—department have a code whistle which is instantly obeyed.
At the sound of that whistle you are ordered, under whatever conditions you
are working, whatever you may be doing, however you may endanger
yourselves by so acting, to repair instantly to the spot from whence that
whistle is blown, and report yourself for duty to the man who has given the
signal.”

I felt my flesh grow rough like a goose’s, and my hair almost stood on
end. So precious a secret is the danger whistle that I have never referred to
it before. It is the last piece of information given to the closely-examined
candidate for the service after he has passed to the Executive. Only two
men in England had the authority to use that signal, or the means wherewith
such a call could be made. Every agent is pledged that, whatever he
divulges, that secret at least shall go down to the grave with him.
It was that danger whistle that brought about the rescue of Rosenberg
when he was captured on 42nd Street, New York, when he was carrying
despatches from von Papen to the Ambassador. That danger whistle,
sounded in the courtyard of Brixton Prison by one of my agents who had
himself arrested for debt in order to reach the interior, made Kruhn, waiting
trial for espionage, hang himself by his bootlaces.
Major Haynes was watching me keenly.
“Well?” he asked.
“I am surprised you should tell me of this, Major Haynes,” I said with
splendid self-possession. “I have never heard of this signal or whistle, or
call it what you will.”
He rose from the table and came over to me.
“Stand up,” he said.
I obeyed him.
“Stand against that wall.”
I did not think of expostulating. There was something in his voice which
dispersed all inclination to argue.
“Put out your arms,” he said. “I am going to search you.”
He went through all my pockets with extraordinary rapidity—I think he
must have been a pickpocket before he joined the Intelligence Department
—and of course he found nothing.
“Open your waistcoat,” he said.
I obeyed. He ran his hand lightly over my shirt.
“Tell me if I tickle you,” said he; but I was in no mood for jesting, for
under my arm he found the little pocket and the flat gold tube that I dreaded
he would find. He laid it on the table curiously.
“So that’s the whistle, eh? A peculiar note, I suppose. Now tell me, what
is the code. Four short blasts and a long one?”
I smiled.

“That is merely a little trinket which was given me by a lady friend?” I
said.
“Why do you wear it sewn into your shirt?”
“To have it near my heart,” I said. “I am surprised at you, Major
Haynes.”
“I am surprised at you, Heine,” he said, “if you keep your heart under
your right arm-pit. You are a physical monstrosity—but I suppose you are
one of those curious birds that carry their hearts in their sleeves. Come now,
Heine, what is the code?”
“Major Haynes,” I replied earnestly, “if you were to give me a hundred
thousand pounds at this moment——”
“Which I am very unlikely to do,” said Major Haynes.
“If you were to give me a million pounds,” I said desperately, “I could
not tell you, because I don’t know.”
He walked back to the other side of the table and sat down. For some
time he did not speak. He lit another cigarette and looked out of the
window, clasping his chin.
“You are a German, Heine, aren’t you,” he said at last, “and I am an
Anglo-Scot, with a touch of American. Generally speaking, I am British.
Now here is the situation,” he said, tapping on the blot-pad, “you are a good
German patriot (to my eternal credit, I didn’t deny it!), I am a British
patriot. Now, which of us is the more devoted to his Motherland?”
It was one of those kind of stupid questions to which there is no answer. I
had quite recovered my notorious sang-froid, and I laughed.
“Now, how can I answer that, my dear Major Haynes?” I said
humorously. “Supposing I were a German, which of course I am not, and
suppose you are a Briton, which of course you are, how can we determine
the extent of our various country-loving? Goethe says——”
“Blow Goethe!” said Major Haynes rudely. “Can you answer my
question?”
“Major Haynes,” I replied, “I cannot.”
“Very good,” said Major Haynes. He looked at his watch. “You will not
tell me the code.”
“I know of no code,” I replied firmly.
He picked up the little gold whistle and put it in his pocket.
“Very good,” he said again, “you will report to me here at 1.30 this
afternoon. You will be immediately admitted to my presence.”

“And then?” I said in trepidation.
“Then I will give you the finest lunch you have had for some time and a
bottle of the best liebfraumilch procurable in London.”
I went down the marble stairs of the War Office smiling. If this fellow
imagined that he could buy my so precious secret for a lunch, or that he
could make me so beastly intoxicated on the wine of my country, he was a
bigger fool than I had imagined.
No sooner was I ushered into his office at 1.30 than he took his hat and
his stick from a peg on the wall and taking me affectionately by the arm he
led me out into Whitehall, hailed a taxi, and we were driven to a restaurant
in the Strand, where an excellent repast was waiting.
“I have no doubt you think we are lunching luxuriously,” he said, as we
sat at the table, “but as this is the last meal that either you or I may ever
have in this world I think we may risk being considered extravagant.”
“These are strange words, Major Haynes,” I said.
“Very strange,” he replied with his foolish smile. “Wine, Heine? Drink
hearty or, as they say, ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.’
Cheerioh!”
Throughout that amazing meal, I was puzzling my brains. I think I may
say without undue conceit that I can grasp a situation as quickly as any
man. I am, so to speak, up to the tricks of the game—and then some. That is
not low swank. We Germans say no more than we mean, promise no more
than we can perform, claim no more than we can substantiate. That is why
we are the most respected nation in the world, and why the German sword,
once drawn from its sacred scabbard and brandished aloft, strikes terror to
the heart of its soon-to-be victims.
But despite my mind-ability I could only puzzle over his alarming words
and in the end find no solution to the mystery he had propounded. The
British are strange people with no sense of decency. They frequently joke
upon the most sacred subjects, and I have already described Major Haynes’s
terrible lack of true gentlemanliness in speaking of our August Sovereign
Lord. Possibly, I thought, this joke is British or Scottish idea of humour.
What pawkity!
He did not make any further reference to the discussion we had that
afternoon. We finished our meal with coffee and liqueurs and cigars, and he
paid his bill and we strolled out into the Strand.

I offered him my hand when we got outside, and thanked him for his
hospitality.
“You are not going, Heine,” said the Major, “oh, dear no! You don’t
suppose I have spent quite a lot of money in entertaining you for the
pleasure of your society, though I admit you are infinitely amusing.”
“But I don’t understand you, Major Haynes,” said I in surprise; “if there
is anything you want me to do I shall be most happy to do it, as I have told
you before.”
“It is now three o’clock,” he said, “and we have just twenty minutes to
get to the station.”
“To the station?” I repeated flabberfounded, so to speak.
He made a beckoning gesture, and a car which was at the other side of
the Strand drew across.
“Hop in, Heine,” he said; and I hopped.
He took his place by my side and we were whirled away to Paddington
Station. He did not take a ticket. We simply strolled through the first-class
booking-hall on to the platform, and a train was waiting, also another
officer who, saluting Major Haynes, led us to a carriage which had been
reserved.
“Get in, Heine,” said the Major, and again I obeyed, still dazed and
bewildered by the mysterious proceedings.
The second officer got in with us.
“I have telephoned to the factory, sir,” he said, “and I have brought the
things you wanted.”
He put his hands into his overcoat and took out three pairs of handcuffs.
“Thank you,” said Major Haynes.
“The other thing, sir, I couldn’t get, but I think a gas-mask would do as
well, one of the old type. They are not so cumbersome.”
From another pocket he drew forth a mask, with mica eyepieces. It had
evidently been adapted for a special purpose, for it had been cut off at the
bottom.
“Try that on, Heine,” said the Major.
I took it from his hands and fixed the loops over my ears.
“Look at yourself in the glass,” said Major Haynes.
One of the panels above the seats was a long slip of mirror.
“Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you,” he said.

A hideous sight I presented. The mask did not cover my face. It left my
mouth free. I could not imagine a more horrible spectacle than I presented.
“Fine,” said the Major, “put it in your pocket. I think that is all, isn’t it,
Mr. Samson?”
“That’s all, sir,” said the officer, saluting.
He looked at me with a smile, shook hands with the Major, and left us
together. Soon after this the train began to move and, leaning forward, I
spoke:
“I am sure you will not consider me unnecessarily inquisitive,” I said
with gentle sarcasm, “but may I ask why we are taking this journey, why
you are carrying manacles, and why you have presented me with this
curious mask?”
“You may ask,” said the Major, “but I shall not tell you for some time.
Here is a copy of Punch. Improve your mind and morals.”
The train was an express. It did not stop until we reached a junction
called Wellsbury, and here we alighted. It was now half-past five. A closed
car was waiting for us and into this we got and proceeded at a rapid pace
through the open country.
We had been travelling for half an hour, and had reached the top of a hill
and were passing over the crest, when the Major tapped the window behind
the chauffeur.
“Get out here for a moment, Heine,” he said, and obediently I followed.
We were on the top of a hill looking down on to a little village, the
principal feature of which was a large factory. On the tops of the hills were
a number of hutments, and it was clear to me that this was a factory erected
for war work.
“This is the Chamborn Shell-Filling Factory,” said Major Haynes. “That
large building is the mixing house. That smaller building behind, which you
can just see in spite of its being camouflaged is the T.N.T. store. That long
building is the magazine, and that to its right is the live-shell store. There is
at this moment in that factory about two hundred tons of T.N.T., and when I
tell you that at the Rivertown explosion, which shook up half of England,
only fifty tons were tonked off, you will understand the nature of the
disaster which would follow the blowing up of that establishment.”
“But, Major Haynes,” I said in desperation, “why do you tell me all this
and why do you bring me such a long journey to give me this information?”
“Get into the car,” said Major Haynes, “and I will tell you.”

We got into the car, but he did not speak, and when I suggested he should
keep his promise he merely said:
“Wait awhile.”
We passed through the stone-pillaried gates of the factory, along a broad
roadway, and came to a set of offices where the car stopped and we
alighted. Again the Major looked at his watch.
“Six o’clock,” he said, “we have an hour. I want to introduce you to the
manager of the works.”
He led me into an office which was comfortably furnished, and here I
met Mr. Perkins, a well-fed typical Englishman who hoped I had had a
pleasant journey down. A servant brought tea on a silver tray and we
chatted generally about various topics, though for my part I had very little
to say.
After about half an hour the Major again looked at his watch.
“Well, I wish you good-bye, Mr. Perkins,” he said, “I hope everything is
all right.”
A shrill hooter sounded outside.
“I am stopping the women working,” said Mr. Perkins, and Major
Haynes nodded.
“I think you are wise. You are getting them out of the factory on some
excuse, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Perkins, “I told them we were having a test in the mixing-
room and they quite understand.”
I stood with Major Haynes at the entrance of the offices watching the
ceaseless stream of women passing through the gates. My blood boiled as I
thought these women were preparing explosives to destroy my countrymen.
How unfeminine, I thought! How degraded! Woman, lovely woman, who
should create life, who should be all tenderness and kindness to man, was
now engaged in the low occupation of making shells to blow off the heads
of the world’s chosen people. It sickened me.
“Aha! My fine girls,” I said between my teeth, “you are not the only flies
in the ointment, for every son of the Fatherland you kill, loyal and death-
defying German women are preparing explosives to blow off the heads of
your husbands and sweethearts! Beware! Nemesis is on your track!”
I hated this place with its smoke and busy air. Such places should be
blown from the face of the earth. I hoped it would not be blown while I was

near by, but I looked forward one day to reading in the paper that Chamborn
had gone up to the sky in smoke and fury.
“Now, Heine,” said Major Haynes.
We walked across the road, down another road, then between two long
stone buildings, past a big power-house with two smoking chimneys, and at
last we came to a great brick shed painted in fantastic colours.
“This is the T.N.T. store,” explained Major Haynes. “Now where are
those chairs that Perkins said? Oh, here they are.”
Two arm-chairs had been placed against the wall. There was a small iron-
topped table with a bottle of whisky, a big syphon of soda and two glasses.
“Sit down and make your miserable life happy, Heine,” said the Major,
sinking down into one of the chairs and reaching out for the whisky bottle.
“Say when.”
When he had filled the glass with sizzling soda, he said:
“Heine, it is an awful thing to realize that within thirty minutes you and I
may be blotted out of life—be dissolved in thin air, leaving no trace of
ourselves and never knowing what struck us.”
My glass trembled against my teeth and I put down the whisky untasted.
“Explain yourself, Major Haynes,” I said hoarsely.
“I will explain to you, Heine,” he replied gravely, “I feel it is due to you.
You are probably aware that Chamborn is the most important shell-filling
factory in England. If you are not so aware I will tell you that it is. If this
place went up in smoke the British Army would be seriously
inconvenienced, though not crippled. Your friends in Berlin imagine that its
destruction would have decisive consequences, and in this, of course, they
are wrong, for there are other factories, quite a large number of them. They
have sent two or three agents from Germany,” he went on slowly, “and they
are clever men.”
I did not answer. I looked at the clock above the offices and noted that the
gold hands upon the black face stood at twenty minutes to seven. The major
followed my eyes and smiled.
“We have twenty minutes,” he said.
“What do you mean by all this?” I asked in an agitated voice, my
agitation being of course due to the presence in England of three gentlemen
who were probably well-born and my superiors. “What do you mean by
three agents?”

“Two or three,” corrected Major Haynes, “my information is that there
are two; my further information is that they are employed in these works;
that they speak English so perfectly that it is impossible to detect them, that
they are armed with all sorts of credentials; and——” he paused, “that they
intend blowing up this factory at seven o’clock.”
I half rose from my seat, but he laid his hand upon my arm and pushed
me back.
“We have taken the most elaborate precautions—when I say we,” he
apologized, “I mean the Government. We have weeded out suspicious
workmen, but we are still certain that these men have in some way
connected up a means of detonation which they will touch off at seven
o’clock to-night.”
The place swam round. I could feel my knees trembling against the
supports of the iron table. My throat and mouth went dry and I could only
look round helplessly. Major Haynes was quite cool.
“The only way to save this place from destruction,” he said, “is to bring
the men who are engaged in this work to our presence before the mischief is
done, and you, Heine, are the syren who will call them.”
He put his hands in his breast-pocket and took out my little gold whistle
and laid it on the table.
“You may not know the code of the danger whistle, but you may guess
it,” he said. “If you are telling the truth and you don’t know the code, then it
is very unfortunate for you and most unfortunate for me, because in a little
over a quarter of an hour, you and I, my dear Heine, will be continuing our
debate in heaven.”
“But—but——” I gasped.
“It is no use butting, my dear lad,” said the Major, “you will be butting
your head into that wall in less than sixteen minutes unless you can bring
your loyal but startled fellow-countrymen to this spot.”
I picked up the whistle in my shaking fingers.
“But it would be death to me,” I said, “and besides, Major Haynes, I am a
loyal man. I cannot betray my friends to their death.”
“Spoken like a patriot,” said the Major. “It seems to me that you are
almost as good a patriot as I am. In which case we shall both die without
remorse.”
I thought and I thought. Twice I picked up the whistle and twice I put it
down. The hands of the clock moved round inexorably. It wanted four

minutes to the hour when I turned my perspirationed face towards him.
“They’ll know I betrayed them,” I said; “they will see me.”
“You have a mask in your pocket, which I have thoughtfully provided,”
said the Major. “Put it on, my dear Heine, there are three minutes between
you and glory.”
With trembling hands I fixed the hideous mask. Better, I thought, that
these unfortunate men should be detected and that a great and hideous
crime should be prevented than that one whose life was of such service to
the Fatherland should be so cruelly extinguished.
I put the whistle to my lips and blew shrilly; short, long and trilling
blasts. I repeated it, and scarcely had the echoes died away when two men
came blundering round the corner of the building, one in his shirt-sleeves,
one in the black coat of a clerk. They stopped dead as they saw Major
Haynes, and put up their hands, for his revolver was covering them.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said as he snapped the handcuffs upon them,
“fortunes of war.”
They glared from him to me, and one said to the other quickly in
German:
“We’re caught. This is Voss’s work. We ought to have prevented his
leaving us.”
“Excellent news,” said Major Haynes briefly, “so Voss was the third man.
You may comfort yourselves with the knowledge that he was arrested in
London to-day, though your detection was not due to him but to my friend
here.”
I was trembling before the glare of those haughty German eyes.
“If you’d given us another day,” one of them growled in English, “we’d
have settled your cursed factory.”
“So I gather,” said Major Haynes.
“As for this swine,” he made a movement toward me and I stepped back
till I realized I was stepping toward the T.N.T. store, when I stepped
sideways. But the place was alive with detectives now. They seemed to
spring out of the ground and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw these
unfortunate men being led away.
“You can take off your mask now, Heine, they will never see you,” said
Major Haynes. “Poor devils! We will go up to town by a late train and I’ll
see what I can do for you in the morning.”

“Major Haynes,” I said brokenly, “I don’t want to see you to-morrow. I
am very ill. The danger I have been through, the strain upon my nerves,
how I envy you your coolness——”
“The strain upon your nerves, Heine?” said Major Haynes, with brutal
innocence.
“I have not your lack of imagination,” I said crossly. “I cannot sit here
waiting for a factory to blow up, watching the minutes pass——” I wiped
my brow with a silk handkerchief, looked up at the clock as it struck seven,
and shuddered.
“There was no danger, my dear man,” said the major calmly.
“But you told me that they were going to blow up the factory at seven
o’clock.”
“Exactly,” said Major Haynes, “you heard what the gentleman told you,
seven o’clock.”
“Well, this is seven o’clock,” I said.
“Yes, but I meant seven o’clock to-morrow night,” said the major.
Such a bluffer!

CHAPTER XVII.
THE COMING OF THE BOLSHEVIKS

If there is one quality which we Germans possess in a superlative quantity it
is a sense of justice. We Germans may be proud, we may be too soft-
hearted, we may be romantic, but we are just. The idea of injustice is
abhorrent to the truly-German. How many quarrels have I seen at the dining
tables in the various German pensions in which I have lived, because one
good German thought another was getting too large a helping! You see it in
every phase of life, and I must confess that in my own case, nothing so
irritates me, so rouses my deep German wrath, which is a terrible thing in
itself, as the knowledge that I am not getting my share.
Understand, that I say nothing which may be taken as disparaging to the
heads of those departments under whose guidance I have worked and for
whose interest I have taken risks—risks which have not been compensated
by the meagre salary and the grudging letters of thanks which I have
received. We Germans are people of iron will and determination. We are
perhaps the best disciplined people in the world. Give a German an order to
go into battle or to walk to the cannon’s mouth, whether it is loaded or not,
and he will obey, marching with parade step and a calm, stern face to what
may very easily be considerable personal disfigurement.
I myself have taken orders from my superiors with a sharp “Ja, Herr!”
and a stern salute, well knowing that if I carried those orders out I would be
going to certain destruction. Many of those orders I have obeyed, having
carefully reconnoitred the way and discovered the dangers which might be
avoided, for none but a fool would rush bat-eyed into terrible perils if he
could avoid them.
I have explained the circumstances under which I came to be under a
cloud, not only with the British Government, but, alas!—and my soul
weeps at the thought!—with the Government of my beloved Fatherland. I
make no complaint. We Germans never whine. We have in the
Wilhelmstrasse men without imagination, men without gratitude, men with
the brains of she-asses!

After my deportation from England and the torpedoing of the ship which
carried me, and my return to these shores on a submarine, I ceased to be
what I was, the recognized head and centre of the Intelligence Service of
the Fatherland in England. Though I had worked independently, I had
worked without success.
Major Haynes, of the British Intelligence Corps, knew I was in England,
probably had me watched night and day, and was, as the English saying
goes, “fair to my face but bitter to my stomach.”
I do not know whether I must hate this man, or whether, in my
professional zeal, admire one who must be clever—why should I deny it?—
since he had got the better of me. He was a suave, calm man with a foolish
sense of humour which no German would ever understand, a cynical man
who had probably been crossed in love in his earlier life—possibly by some
beautiful German girl, who lured the poor fool on and then threw him over
with a sneer. I often used to lie in bed picturing the circumstances which
brought about his snarling views of Germany, and often I have enacted the
scene, in which I was the beautiful young girl.
What bitter things I have said to him! How I have tossed my rosy locks at
this proud Englishman or Scotsman, standing pale and dejected before me
begging for one rose from my hair!
I had plenty of time to dream. I was out of touch with the organization I
had created with so much labour, forethought, and genius. I was unattached
and officially unrecognized. I suspected that some one else had taken on my
work, but I found it difficult to discover who was in my place owing to the
embargo which Major Haynes had laid upon me against communicating
with certain people, the names of whom in some mysterious way this
cunning man knew, who might inform me upon the situation.
I was sitting one day, morose and brooding, in my new lodgings in
Bayswater, meditating upon my fallen state and wondering if I had very
much farther to fall. I confess there were tears in my eyes when I
remembered all the power I had wielded, all the wonderful letters of
encouragement which had come to me from the well-born and illustrious
Captain Baron von Hazfeld, the chief of the Military Intelligence
Department; and of how I was now without recognition, a fugitive hunted
on the face of the earth, doubtless mocked at by men to whom I had
extended a helping hand.

It was near coffee-time, that is to say, nearly four o’clock in the
afternoon, when a knock came on my bedroom door and my landlady
entered with a telegram in her hand.
“For you, Mr. Smith,” she said.
I had given the name of Smith because I thought it was not likely to
attract unusual attention. It is a name very commonly used in England by
people who wish to remain anonymous.
“For me, my dear madam?” I said, taking the telegram in my hand. “Oh,
yes, I remember. A friend of mine is coming to London and he promised to
wire the hour of his arrival.”
With this pleasant little fiction I waved her out of the room.
You may wonder why I gave any excuse at all, but we Germans are by
nature furtive, and it is part of my business to puzzle and deceive those with
whom I am brought into contact.
I opened the telegram. My address was only known to two or three
people and none of these were compatriots of mine. Judge then of my
surprise when I saw that it was a cable addressed to me from Stockholm,
and read:

“Twenty-five kegs of butter consigned to you per The Scandia
Export Company.”

The telegram was signed “Fredericks.”
I needed no code-book to understand that message. It was an order from
a very powerful and an extremely illustrious member of my profession, a
gentleman with whom I had had some correspondence and, indeed, one
whom I had met on the occasion to which I have referred in these stories of
my purchasing a newspaper.
“Twenty-five kegs” meant “call upon.”
The next morning I sallied forth. A glance at a telephone book in one of
the telephone boxes told me the address of the Scandia Export Company,
which was in Upper Thames Street.
You would think, of course, that I made my way direct to my objective.
That was not the case. I had seen in the telephone book that the Scandia
Company, with whom, by the way, I had never had any previous dealings,
was a wholesale provision merchant.

I hired a cab and drove off to Bisbury’s, one of the greatest wholesale
provision merchants in London, asked to see the manager and demanded
from him whether he could supply me with twenty-five firkins of Danish
butter at the current price. Butter at this time was getting very scarce and
the polite manager informed me that it was impossible for him to supply
me.
I drove to another provision merchant’s, this time in Long Acre, and
repeated my request. Here an offer was made to sell me the amount I
required, and I noted the price and said I would call again. From thence my
cab took me into the south of London to another butter merchant, who was
unable to supply me. And so one after the other I called upon six firms, all
of which did business in butter, before I touched the Scandia Export
Company.
I am no fool. We Germans are wide-awake. I knew, or guessed, that Mr.,
or Major, Haynes (a more un-military person I have never seen) would have
me watched and that probably my shadow was following me now.
How puzzled he would be! What! Was Heine thinking of opening a butter
shop that he went to all these great merchants? No, sir. Heine would be no
butter-patter, but Heine knew that he had an excuse for calling at the
Scandia Company, and that it was no more suspicious to call upon this
particular firm than it was to call upon the half a dozen whom he had
already visited, or the three or four more that he would visit in the course of
the day.
And so I came to the Scandia Company and found its offices on the first
floor of a very dark and untidy building. I was met by a clerk in a large and
gloomy room which was furnished with a desk, a stool and a copying press,
and politely stated my business.
“You wish to see Mr. Brantl, I think,” said the clerk. “If you will wait a
moment I will find out if he is engaged.”
He went out of the room through a glass-panelled door and was away for
a few minutes. Presently he returned leaving the door open.
“Will you step this way?” he said, and I passed into the room, closing the
door behind me.
Mr. Brantl was a short, thick-set man with a close-cropped beard who
looked at me sharply through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Sit down,” he said imperiously, and then without a word of preliminary
he plunged into what I can only describe as an impertinent and ill-toned

harangue.
“Now, look here, Heine,” he said, and by his simple, direct rudeness I
perceived that he was no more of a Swede than a turnip (a play on words
which is called a “pun” in English), but a true Prussian and probably very
highly connected. “You have made a mess of things.”
I stared at the man.
“I don’t understand you,” I said coldly.
“You’ve made a mess of things, and don’t interrupt me,” he barked.
“Headquarters are crazy with you. You upset all their arrangements and you
have left your work in England in a disgraceful condition. Don’t interrupt
me! You know me?”
I looked at him closely.
“I only know,” I said after a pause, and speaking with a hauteur which
was quite unmistakable to any sensitive German, “that you are
impertinently discussing a matter of which I am perfectly ignorant. I can
only say——”
“Now shut up,” said Mr. Brantl. “Swine! Pig! Miserable thief! Have you
never heard of the Captain Baron von Hazfeld?”
I stared at him closely and gasped.
Instantly I was on my feet, clicking my heels, my hand raised to my
forehead, for this gentleman was none other than that illustrious Chief of
the Intelligence Bureau, whom I had had the honour and privilege to see on
one occasion through the window.
“Sit down,” he growled. “I have had to come to England to clear up the
damned mess you’ve made and I can tell you I am not feeling cheerful
about it. Now tell me what happened.”
Briefly I explained to him how Major Haynes had detected me and had
sent me out of the country. I also described my voyage back in the
submarine and he listened attentively.
“Part of what you tell me is lies,” he said, “part of it is true. British
Intelligence Department—bah! If you hadn’t been a sucking dove, or
should I say, a sucking pig——?”
“Whichever pleases you, Herr Baron,” I said, with a little smile.
“Don’t grin, you baboon. If you had exercised the slightest amount of
caution you would never have been caught. You have simply given yourself
into the hands of the Englishman.”
“Scotsman,” I murmured.

“Don’t interrupt,” he roared, “you needn’t be afraid of Hayes or Haynes,
or whatever the man’s name is. You have now a chance to rehabilitate
yourself in the esteem of the Department. I never agreed to your coming to
England. It was against my wishes, thank God! I told von Papen that I
wanted a man of intelligence who at any rate looked like an English
gentleman.”
“I flatter myself——” I began.
“You do,” said the Herr Baron, “that’s the trouble with you, your infernal
conceit. Now listen and don’t interrupt. In three days’ time there will arrive
in this country a very large number of forged bank and treasury notes.
Every agent in England and Scotland will put those notes into circulation.
They are so well done that you can’t tell the difference between them and
the real thing. They are, in fact,” he said, “made——”
“——in Germany,” I smiled.
He cursed me for interrupting him.
“You will be in Merson Street, Soho, on Thursday night, standing outside
the Petite Dejeuner restaurant. A man will come and give you a large
travelling case. It will contain the forged money, and you will spend the rest
of your time wandering about England getting rid of it. It will not be an
unpleasant experience,” he said. “The forgeries will never be detected until
the money comes into the Bank of England. Therefore, your job is to get as
far away from London as you possibly can.”
“But I shall never be able to spend it.”
“Give it away then,” said the Herr Baron. “You understand your orders?”
“Perfectly,” I replied.
“You won’t want any real money. You will buy everything except war
bonds.”
“I would not think of doing anything so unpatriotic,” I cried indignantly.
“It isn’t a question of patriotism, you fool. War bond money comes back
to the Bank.”
He was silent so long that at last I plucked up my courage to say:
“Is that all, Herr Baron?”
“No, that is not all,” he said slowly, “only I don’t know whether I can
trust you with the other matter.”
I drew myself up.
“I have been trusted with many delicate duties,” I said, not without a
certain quiet dignity.

“And you made a mess of ’em. I know all about it,” said the Baron, “still
I can tell you this because it may not come your way. Have you heard of
Loski?”
To another man I should have said “Yes,” but to this discerning, thought-
reading, truth-compelling German, who was, moreover, of the highest
nobility, I replied simply and modestly: “No.”
“Loski is the chief of the Lithuanian Soviet. He is a member of the
Supreme Council at Petrograd, and is a Bolshevik—hang all Bolsheviks!
but they are very useful to us. The mad English Government has given him
permission to visit this country on behalf of some industrial corporation at
Moscow. I have had a telegram from Stockholm to say that he will be here
this week. Now, don’t forget, this man is working for us, and if he swims
into your orbit you are to do everything you can for him. Render him any
assistance that lies in your power. Find out where he is lodging and make
his acquaintance. That is all.”
I bowed and withdrew. I must confess that on my journey back to my
lodgings I was troubled. I did not share this bullying, brow-beating, stupid
man’s views of Major Haynes. We Germans never despise an enemy who is
worthy of our steel, and I felt that Major Haynes was not only worthy of my
steel, but my carving knife as well. It is hard to jest with a sad heart! So I
was not surprised the following morning when my landlady came to me to
tell me that a soldier had called to see me with a message.
He was quite a common soldier, evidently an orderly, and when he was
shown into my room I immediately put him into his place by telling him to
take his cap off. The fact that he took not the slightest notice of what I said,
shows that the English Army is the worst disciplined and the least respectful
of all armies in the world.
I read the note. It was from Major Haynes, telling me to come to his
office with the least possible delay.
“Tell your master I will be there,” I said haughtily.
“Tell who?” said the common soldier.
“Your master, my man.”
“Pull yourself together,” said the common soldier, “do you mean Major
Haynes?” Of course the low fellow called him ’Aynes.
I resolved to report him for his insolence, but somehow the idea slipped
from my mind on the journey, because I was in some apprehension (why
should I conceal the fact?) as to why this officer wanted me.

He was busily writing as I entered and jerked his head to a chair and,
since I am a perfect gentleman, I did not interrupt him until he had finished.
He blotted his letter and folded it up into an envelope before he turned his
attention to me.
“I’ve got a little honest work for you.”
I shivered at the words. I remembered the last time I had assisted him,
and he evidently read my thoughts.
“Oh, this is all right,” he said with a smile, “no danger, Heine. You are a
good German, I believe?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“What is the use of arguing with you, Major Haynes,” I said with a smile,
“if I were a German I should certainly be a good German.”
“And every good German is afraid of the Russian.”
“We Germans fear nobody,” I said hotly, and then, realizing that I had
betrayed myself, I went on with scarcely a break, “as a German would say.”
“Neatly put,” said the Major, “at any rate, a well conducted German does
not love the Bolshevik, and especially a Bolshevik who is not even—there,
I nearly said too much,” he smiled, “and that is not like me, is it?”
I could have told him that anything he said to me was too much, but I
refrained.
“Foreign as I know it to be to your honest nature,” the Major went on, “I
am, nevertheless, asking you to do a little professional espionage work for
me—oh, yes, I am serious,” he said, “you owe me a great deal, Heine. You
owe me your life amongst other things, and I am going to give you a chance
of paying me back, or rather paying the Government back, without
necessarily betraying any of your own fellow countrymen. From such a
prospect as that,” he said with pious hypocrisy, “my very soul revolts.”
And this man who had the brazen effrontery to make a so-canting
statement had deliberately forced me to assist him in capturing two of my
lamentable fellow-countrymen only a few weeks before? Such is the
boasted honour of the British race!
“In reality,” said the Major, “the work I want you to do is very simple,
very harmless and yet very necessary, and I believe that you, of all the
people I know, can best perform the service I require.”
I nodded.
“There is a man arriving in this country in the course of this week, named
Loski,” said the Major. “He may be a Russian patriot. He may be an

anarchist. He may be only a simple-minded burglar. On the other hand, he
may be engaged by your clever Intelligence Department to carry on
propaganda work. There is a man in London named Missovitch who I know
is in correspondence with the Loski crowd and is their agent in London.
Missovitch lives at 364, Dean Street, Soho. I will write the address for
you,” he said, suiting the action to the words.
“And what do you expect me to do, Major Haynes?” I asked.
“I want you to see Missovitch. He is one of those peculiar Russians who
speak German, the type with which you are well acquainted.”
“Probably from the Baltic Provinces?” I said boldly.
“Very likely,” said Major Haynes, with a smile. “Pump him. He will
confide in you. Nobody would mistake you for an English gentleman. Find
out what the game is. No harm can come to our friend Loski. The worst that
can happen is that he will be handed his passports and returned to the place
from whence he came.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and was inwardly chuckling. Somehow I felt in
the swing again, an entire master of my confidence.
I found Missovitch without any trouble. He kept a little tobacconist’s
shop at the address Major Haynes had given me, a pale, unhealthy young
man with a slight moustache and a fringe of beard. He was not very
communicative. I might say that from the very moment I entered the shop
till I left he regarded me with suspicion which he did not attempt to
disguise.
I was in a quandary because I could not betray my knowledge of Loski,
nor could I tell this unauthorized person that I was an agent of the great
German Government that wished him no harm. He grew more and more
uneasy at my careless questions, and to my amazement he also grew paler,
and beads of perspiration grew upon his brow as I asked one question after
another.
“I don’t know who you are, sir,” he said at last, “but I assure you I have
not any knowledge of the Bolsheviks, and I am not interested in anything
which is occurring in Russia.”
“Come, come,” I said jokingly, “that is fine talk from a man with your
name. Tell me, who is this Loski I hear so much about?”
He looked at me through his half-closed lids.
“Sir,” he said, “if you are the police I can give you no information. You
may arrest me,” he said excitedly, though I tried to calm him, “you may put

me in jail, but I can tell you nothing, and Ivanoff’s trouble will be in vain. I
am a poor shopkeeper trying to earn my living. I don’t know anything about
the Bolsheviks, anything about M. Loski. I know nothing, nothing.”
This was a bad beginning, I thought, as I left the shop, wondering who
was Ivanoff, and certainly not a satisfactory one for Major Haynes. And yet
in many ways it could not have been better.
I had but to tell the truth to Major Haynes and be relieved of a rather
embarrassing mission. Strangely enough, when I reported to the Intelligence
Officer, he accepted my word without any query, though he was, as I could
see, rather troubled.
“The man suspected you, that’s bad,” he said, frowning. “Still, I’m sure,
Heine, you did your best. By the way, he didn’t mention any other Russian
person?”
I suddenly remembered.
“Yes,” I said, “he mentioned a man named——”
“Ivanoff?” said the Major quickly.
“That’s the name,” I said, stupefied by his intelligence.
“H’m,” said Major Haynes, “thank you, Heine. I will let you know if I
want you again.”
I did not hear from the Major, but on the Thursday morning a note was
delivered to my lodgings, this time in the well-known writing of Captain
Baron von Hazfeld. It ran simply:

“Cancel my previous instructions. Meet messenger to-night at
8.30, under the clock at King’s Cross Station.”

At eight o’clock I was at King’s Cross. I gathered that I was to meet the
boat train which was coming in from the north. The train itself was about
five minutes late, and I composed myself to read the evening newspaper to
pass the time. I stood in a little recess and away from observation, and I was
immersed in my newspaper when suddenly I heard a smothered cry, and,
looking up, I found myself face to face with Missovitch.
He was staring at me with horror. His face was no longer white but green,
and as I took a step toward him he put up his hands with a strangled cry,
and turning, ran like the wind, dodging between passengers and porters and
disappearing through the archway which leads into the station. I was
amazed. What was there in my appearance which frightened him. Was he

following me with the intention of doing me bodily harm? The thought sent
a cold shiver down my spine.
But I had little time to speculate upon this mystery, for a few minutes
afterwards the boat train drew into the station, and I took up my position
under the clock and waited. The passengers streamed through the narrow
barriers, some hailing taxi-cabs, some stopping to pick up other friends who
were on the train, some greeting those who were waiting for them.
I had no means of recognizing the man who was to bring me the forged
money, but I supposed that he had been well instructed. Do not let it be
thought that I was quite free from care, that in a few moments I should be in
possession of a vast number of forgeries gave me no pleasure. Suppose
anything went wrong! Suppose I was captured! A fine end for a great agent.
I don’t think, as they say in England.
Presently a man emerged from the crush about the barrier and walked
straight across to me, looking at me thoughtfully. He was a tall man with a
thin black moustache, and he stopped near me.
“May I take your bag?” I asked softly in German.
He smiled, passed the bag to me, and we walked out of the station
together.
“Which way do you go?” I asked still in the same language.
“We shall meet at your place to-night,” he said in a low voice.
He turned to the left and I turned to the right. My taxi-cab was waiting,
and I put the bag in. I turned back and saw two men leap from the shadow
upon my late companion. There was a struggle, I heard a shot, and my
blood turned to water.
Summoning all my reserves, I said to the taxi-cab driver, in as calm a
voice as I could manage:
“Bayswater Square,” and in a few seconds I was being whirled away, as I
believed, from the greatest possible danger, my mind filled with the most
distressing and painful thoughts.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GOING OF HEINE

Picture my feelings as I drove away from King’s Cross in a cab, with a fat
suit-case at my feet. M. Missovitch had most mysteriously been struck by
terror at the sight of me and had bolted. The messenger with the bag had
arrived, and in answer to my inquiry, in German, whether I should carry his
bag, had handed it to me and we had separated.
Scarcely had we parted than two mysterious men had leapt upon him.
There had been a struggle in the street, a shot had been fired, and here was I
driving off in a high condition of perspiration, wondering how much the
Government knew, whether they were aware that I, Heine, was burdened
with a big bag full of forged notes.
I summoned up courage to look back out of the window. I could only see
a crowd gathering in the half-darkness, and withdrew my head. Should I
throw the bag out of the window? If I did somebody might see me and that
would be fatal. Besides, I owed duty to the Fatherland. My chest swelled at
the thought.
I did not drive to my lodgings—believe me, I do not live in Bayswater
Square—but dismissed the man and pretended I was going into one of the
houses. I waited till he had driven away and descended the steps and
walked rapidly to my own humble dwelling which was about two streets
away. Here I admitted myself with a key and entered and went straight to
my room, locking the door behind me.
I realized that for the safety of the Fatherland and for the honour of the
great service, of which I was no unworthy member, that my first step must
be to prove an alibi. With that forethought which is so characteristically
German, I had made myself acquainted with Major Haynes’s habits. I knew
he spent his evenings at Brown’s, a well-known club in the West End, and I
immediately called him up. To my surprise and delight I found he was
there.
“I wish to see you, Major Haynes,” I said. “When will it be convenient?”

“Come round to the club if it is important,” replied his voice, and having
packed away the suit-case under my bed, I drove to Brown’s, and was met
by the Major in the vestibule.
“Let us pretend you are not an alien enemy,” he said, as he signed my
name in the book, “if it ever leaked out that I had entertained a German spy
I should be hauled before the committee and asked to resign.”
“You will have your joke, Major Haynes,” I smiled.
“Won’t I?” he asked. “Now tell me what is the trouble?”
I had made up my excuse in the cab.
“When I reported to you that I had interviewed Missovitch,” I said, “you
asked me if he had named anybody and I had replied that he had mentioned
a person named Ivanoff.”
“Quite right,” said the Major, “Alexis Ivanoff.”
“It has occurred to me,” I went on boldly, for I can be a bluffer too and
had played many games at poker, “that I know this Ivanoff. Is he not an
officer of the Preobojensky Regiment?”
“To be exact,” said the Major, “he is not.”
“Oh!” said I, with a well-simulated disappointment, “then my journey
has been in vain.”
“As a matter of fact, you have never heard of Alexis Ivanoff. You don’t
believe he is a member of that regiment, and you have merely come round
to pump me or,” he looked at me with cold-devil scrutinizing eyes, “or as an
excuse to show yourself at”—he looked up at the clock—“ten-thirty.”
“Not at all,” I said eagerly, though my marrow shook within me.
He did not take his eyes off me.
“There is some reason,” he said slowly, “now own up, Heine?”
We Germans are quick thinkers and the idea came to me as an
inspiration.
“I will be frank with you,” I said, “I have been summoning up my
courage to ask you a favour, but my heart descended to my shoes when I
saw your official face.”
“Go ahead.”
“I need permission to leave London,” said I. “You were kind enough to
tell me that you would facilitate my journey to America, and I have many
real genuine bonâ-fide businesses to do in England before I depart.”
He thought a moment.
“I have no objection,” he said. “When do you expect to leave?”

“To-morrow,” I replied.
“Now look here, Heine,” he said. “I don’t dislike you. You are quite a
decent fellow, but you have to promise me that you will engage yourself in
no espionage work, that you will not go into any of the prohibited areas,
and that you will report yourself to me on your return to London.”
“I promise,” I said.
We shook hands and parted. Somehow I knew that this time, at any rate,
he was taking me at my word and I was not being followed. Nevertheless, I
altered my appearance as best I could, but not until within two hours of my
departure did I unlock that suit-case which lay beneath my bed.
You will understand that I had a natural feeling of delicacy about playing
the common part of a forgery-distributor. You must remember that I was a
student of Heidelberg, that my parents were people of honour, my father
being a State district councillor with a fourth-class order of the Red Eagle.
Was it honourable, thought I, to distribute forged money? More than that,
was it safe?
An examination of the contents of the case satisfied me and filled me
with a certain pride in the skill and genius of our German workmen. There
the money lay in great thick packets of £5, £10, £50 and £100 notes with
innumerable thicker packages of £1 treasury bills. And the cleverness of the
forgeries! Not only were they indistinguishable from real money, both in the
texture of the paper and in the colour of the printing, but every bank-note
bore a different number and the greater proportion of them had the
appearance of having been used very frequently.
You would never have suspected that these soiled notes, with the fold
marks upon them, were not what they pretended to be. I must confess it
gave me greater courage, and filled me with a certain boyish satisfaction to
know how many people would be deceived.
I left that night for the North. My destination was Scotland, and I reached
Glasgow the following morning. I did not of course put any money into
circulation on the train. Heine is not exactly a fool. He had to come back by
that railway and a fine flibberty-gibbet he would look if the so-handsomely-
tipped guard or the in-excess-paid sleeping-car attendant were to recognize
the man who had given him forged notes.
I will not attempt to describe the adventures of that week. I will not tell
you how I passed my first £5 note and how I stood in fear and trembling
with my heart thumping so that even the shopkeeper thought that an