Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and Spying

There was now nothing to do but wait; our traps were set, and it remained to be seen whether the enemy would walk into them. I made my way to my chambers for a few hours’ rest and was soon deeply asleep.

At half-past nine Burton, my man, roused me. “The first warning has just come in,” he said.

I dressed swiftly and sat down to snatch a hasty supper, knowing well that it might be many hours before I tasted another meal.

It was exactly ten o’clock when the report of the first maroon broke the stillness, and London, with one accord, hastened to cover. Ten minutes later the streets were deserted, and a midnight hush reigned supreme. The great city seemed a city of the dead.

As we listened a faint, distant boom struck softly on our ears. The strafe had begun!

Suddenly, far away to the eastward, a searchlight flickered up into the sky; another and another followed in rapid succession, and soon the entire sky was covered and chequered by dozens of wavering pillars of flame, moving to and fro, methodically searching the heavens as though moved by a single hand. Far above us I caught the soft purr of an aeroplane, evidently one of our own, for the sound was quite different from the deeper and rougher note of the Gothas.

Suddenly, with a deafening crash, half a dozen guns barked simultaneously, and, looking out, I saw far away, seemingly caught on a pencil of living light, the ethereal butterfly shape of an enemy aircraft. A second later, in quick succession, came the unmistakable sound of bursting bombs.

In the midst of the tumult a single tiny light showed for a moment far up in the sky, just outside the ring of shrapnel that was bursting all round the enemy craft, now hopelessly entangled in the beams of a dozen converging searchlights, and, dive and drop as it would, utterly unable to escape from the zone of effulgent radiance in which it seemed to float.

Instantly every gun was silent! We caught the crackle of a machine-gun far up in the air, and a moment later the enemy machine burst into a lurid sheet of flame, and the blazing mass pitched headlong to earth amid a roar of cheering from watchers, who in thousands had braved all possible danger to see the aerial fight heralded by the outburst of machine-gun fire. It was obvious that one of our sentinel aeroplanes, perched far above the raider, had caught sight of him in the searchlights, and, swooping swift as a hawk on his quarry, had sent the Gotha a fiery run to the earth twelve thousand feet below. I learned later that the Gotha had fallen in Essex, the three occupants calcined to cinders in the flood of blazing petrol.

That was the extent of London’s excitement for the night. It was not until some hours later that I learnt that no fewer than eight squadrons of Gothas, each consisting of four machines, had started out on their errand of murder for London. Only a single machine got through, and that now lay a heap of ruins. The rest had been split up by gun fire, caught in the beams of endless searchlights, harried to and fro by a vast concentration of British fighting planes swiftly assembled when the warning of the yellow ribbon had become known, and had been relentlessly chased homeward in utter disorder. Their repulse was a triumph brought about by Colonel – ’s masterly effort at organisation, when I conveyed to him in Whitehall the news which had reached me through a simple yellow ribbon tied to a grey parrot’s cage!

Reports soon began to reach me in swift succession from my subordinates in many quarters. Hereford Road, Harrington Street, and Lembridge Square were being carefully watched. Madame Gabrielle and Aubert, the latter dressed in the guise of a seafarer, were on the alert, with dozens of other reliable agents, ready for anything at a moment’s notice.

Suddenly Aubert rang me up on the ’phone. I took up the receiver and spoke to him for a few moments.

“Meet me at the corner of Harrington Street at five o’clock,” I said.

We met in the grey light of dawn, and I soon learned that, with anything like reasonable good fortune, we had in our hands the opportunity for a great coup. Blind Heinrich had gone to the house soon after the “All clear” had been sounded. He had been followed by Mostyn Brown, again in the uniform of a special constable, and by five other men, one of whom was the little fat man who had previously met Kristensten at Waterloo.

Now I had made up my mind that the little fat man was the intermediary by whom the news collected by the other conspirators was conveyed abroad, and it was essential that he should be caught red-handed. Fortune had favoured us. He had been the first to leave the house, had walked to the Queen’s Road Underground Station, and, as we learnt by telephone, had travelled to King’s Cross. Here he was at present, seated in one of the waiting-rooms, evidently intending to travel by an early train.

Leaving the necessary instructions with regard to the conspirators still in the house in Harrington Street, I accompanied Aubert to King’s Cross. The little fat man was still there, but just after seven he walked to the booking-office and took a ticket for Peterborough. Just behind him in the queue of passengers were Aubert and myself.

When the express pulled out on its fast run to Peterborough – the first stopping-place – Aubert sat in the same carriage as the little fat man, apparently profoundly asleep. I was in the next compartment, ready for anything that might happen.

We were not much surprised when at Peterborough the little fat man remained in the train, and so we continued our journey. When tickets were examined, the little man paid excess fare to Newcastle, and my hopes of an important capture rose momentarily higher.

Hour after hour the express raced northward, and in the afternoon we came to smoky Newcastle, where we were to be the witnesses of a strange dénouement.

The little fat man, closely followed by Aubert and myself, made straight for the docks. Here, in haste, he boarded a steamer, one of a service which sailed regularly between Newcastle and Bergen. He was evidently known, for he was greeted without question by the men about the decks and promptly disappeared below. We followed, with several other passengers, and very soon I sat in the captain’s cabin, swiftly explaining to “the owner” what had happened, and my suspicion of the man who had just come on board with a freedom of movement which suggested that he was one of the crew.

Captain Jackson was one of the men who have done so much to make the North Sea service a model of everything that is implied in unswerving courage and loyal devotion to duty. A fine, bluff, grey-bearded skipper of the very best type, he cared not a rap for the peril of mines and submarines which dogged him at every yard of his journeys. All he cared for or respected was the Admiralty orders which gave him his chart through the ever-shifting mine-fields; with those and his crew he was ready to take his ship across to Norway and to defy the Huns to do their worst.

His face grew grave and iron-stern as he heard my story, and, loyal Englishman as he was, he instantly fell in with my suggestion for trapping the scoundrel who was bringing disgrace on the good name of all sailors by his infamous traffic with the agents of the enemy.

“George Humber is the name he goes by,” said Captain Jackson, referring to the man we had followed from Lembridge Square. “He says he is a Swede and has Swedish papers. Let your French friend go below and help. I’ll see to it.”

He called up the chief engineer, Andrew Phail, a dour, hard, bitter Scotchman, who had followed the sea for forty years and cared for nothing on earth but it and his beloved engines. If ever a man loved his machines it was Phail, and if ever a man was loved and trusted by his subordinates it was he. Hard though he was, his crew, with the sure instinct of the sailor, recognised his sterling qualities, and would have followed his lead through the worst storm that ever blew. Indeed, the – was emphatically what is known among sailormen as “a happy ship,” thanks to the captain and chief engineer, and I was not altogether surprised to learn that Humber was the only discordant note among the crew; for some reason the men disliked him, though he did his work well enough.

An hour later, having taken our mails on board, we dropped down the Tyne bound for Norway.

I learned from Captain Jackson that Humber had signed on some months before, and had made a number of trips across the North Sea. He had been in the habit of travelling to London each time the vessel reached Newcastle, and at length this fact had aroused Captain Jackson’s suspicions, and he had made up his mind that this trip should be Humber’s last. It was, indeed, but the end came in a manner which not even Captain Jackson’s keen wits had anticipated.

In the meantime I knew that Aubert, a splendid linguist, who could play many parts, from that of an idler in Paris to a worker in a munition factory, was somewhere below in the engine-room, certainly not very far from Humber, and assuredly very much on the alert.

An hour after we left the Tyne mouth I was standing with some of the passengers on deck, watching some winking signals as our convoy appeared out of the misty twilight. Of what the convoy consisted I could not quite discern, but the Captain, before he ascended to his bridge, had said: “Our friends will pick us up presently, and they will see us safely across and look out for submarines.”

The night passed without incident, and the next day proved grey and windy. Ever and anon one of our patrolling airships paid us a visit, while three other ships, forming our convoy, stood by, with their deadly guns ever ready to talk in deadly earnest with any submarine that might venture to show her periscope.

At ten o’clock that night I was on deck watching a series of strange flashes of light showing in the eastern sky, when a sailor approached, and informed me that the Captain wanted to see me in his cabin. I went at once.

“Look here, Mr Sant!” the bluff old seaman exclaimed as soon as I had closed the door, which he locked. “I’ve been rummaging the ship. Does this interest you?” And he brought out from the drawer in his table a bottle of medicine. It had apparently been recently bought from a chemist, for it was wrapped up in the usual paper, which was still quite clean and fresh, and sealed in the usual way. “This was found by your French friend concealed in Humber’s trunk. Your man would be up here, only he is watching the fellow below, and as he is supposed to be on duty his absence might rouse suspicions.”

As Captain Jackson ended he handed me the bottle.

“It does interest me, indeed,” I said. “If Humber were ill enough to need medicine – and he certainly does not look it – he would hardly have brought this all the way from London without opening it.” And I thought of the bottle wrapped in white paper which, on an earlier visit to London, Humber had received from Blind Heinrich at Waterloo.

“I’ll have a look at it, anyhow,” I said.

My first precaution was to soften the sealing wax with a match, so that I could unwrap the bottle without tearing the paper, and, if necessary, so replace it that no suspicion that it had been tampered with should be aroused. The bottle might prove useless as a clue. In that case we should have to seek further, and to replace the bottle in Humber’s trunk in such a condition that he must inevitably see that it had been opened would certainly arouse his suspicions and defeat our object.

I soon had the paper opened out. The bottle of medicine seemed genuine enough. It bore the label of a well-known West End firm and the name of Mr Humber. I tasted the contents.

“Cough mixture” was my comment, and Captain Jackson at once confirmed me. “Humber never had a cough,” he remarked reflectively.

“Now for the paper,” I said, and began examining it. It was perfectly blank, and I was experiencing a pang of disappointment when, catching on the paper the reflection of the swinging lamp, I detected in one corner a faint, glistening line. Lemon juice, I was confident.

Under appropriate “treatment” a number of neat figures arranged in groups of three sprang into vivid prominence on the inside of the paper wrapping. They ran:

123 – 5 – 8; 27 – 32 – 6; 46 – 23 – 11;

294 – 12 – 3; 18 – 1 – 8;

and so on.

I swiftly copied out the figures for safety, and handed the original paper to Captain Jackson, who, on board his own ship, was, of course, the supreme and unquestioned authority, and I wanted his full approval and support to any action that might be necessary. The figures were meaningless as they stood, but I had not forgotten old Heinrich’s systematic search for that odd volume of Royal Love Letters. I had my copy in my bag and fetched it at once.

With such an obscure book as the key to the cipher there was no need for any further elaborate precautions, and we hit upon the solution of the difficulty at once. On page 123 the eighth letter on the fifth line was “B;” on page 27 the sixth letter in the thirty-second line was “r”; and in a few minutes I had decoded the word “Brixton.” Going on, I found that the message conveyed the news that Number 24, – Road, Brixton, had been wrecked by one of the bombs dropped in the recent raid; that a man, a woman, and two children had been killed. The spots where the other bombs had fallen were accurately described, and it was stated that they had done no damage beyond blowing holes in the roads and bursting gas and water mains. Every word was accurate.

And the key to the whole problem was the mysterious advertisement for a lost trinket in the Petit Parisien. That simple advertisement, so apparently innocent, had announced to Blind Heinrich the enemy’s change of code! And without the book to which it referred no intelligence on earth could have deciphered the disorderly mass of figures which lay before our eyes!

“Well, I think we have got them now, Captain,” I said, “and I am sure the Government will be deeply obliged to you for your assistance. But how am I going to get this fellow? If he lands in Norway he will be out of our power.”

“Come on deck,” said Captain Jackson, with a laugh. “Don’t make your mind uneasy about that.”

I followed him up the companion-way gladder to the deck, now deserted by all save the steersman and the officer on watch.

“Come up to the bridge with me,” said the Captain.

Although it was so near the period of full moon the night was dark, the sky being covered by a dense mass of heavy clouds. Try as we would, our eyes could not pierce the gloom, and we could see nothing a few yards from the ship. Though we had parted company from the destroyers long before, we were, of course, travelling without lights in view of possible danger, and only the binnacle lamp shed a soft radiance on the ship’s compass. I was soon to learn, however, how closely we were watched.

Captain Jackson entered the wheel-house and touched a key. From the masthead above a signal lamp flashed intermittently for a few seconds. Instantly from the southward winked an answering gleam, and Captain Jackson turned to me. “That’s a destroyer,” he said, “and she is coming up full speed.”

For the next few minutes signals were exchanged with the racing destroyer which was on our track, and soon I caught sight of the faint glow from her funnels, and then the outline of her low, rakish hull as she came abreast with us. At a signal from Captain Jackson our engines stopped, and soon we were lying motionless while a boat from the destroyer pulled rapidly across the gap which separated the two vessels.

A few minutes later a smart naval officer came on board with four men. We were soon seated in the Captain’s cabin, and I rapidly gave him an outline of what had happened. His quick intelligence took in the situation at a glance.

“I’ll take your Mr Humber back with me,” he said, “and you and your man can come along.”

But we were nearly to lose our man. As the officer and his men entered the engine-room Humber caught sight of them. He started, but instantly recovered himself. As the lieutenant spoke to Phail, Humber watched him closely. I saw Aubert move noiselessly but swiftly behind Humber, evidently ready for a tussle. A moment later Phail beckoned Humber to come to him.

Instantly the spy’s hand shot to his jacket pocket, and, as it came out, bringing with it a revolver, Aubert sprang. The next instant the revolver was on the floor and Aubert had Humber in a grip of iron. Ten minutes later, with Humber securely handcuffed, we were on our way to the destroyer, and were soon thrashing our way at top speed for home.

There is little more to tell. Humber proved to be a Swede named Holmboë, and we clearly established the fact that he had been for a long time acting as the travelling agent of the Berlin espionage bureau, carrying information to Norway for transmission through the German Legation in Christiania. The conspirators in the house in Harrington Street were all taken into custody, and we soon had all the threads of their activities in our possession, including the key to the mystery of Mr Mostyn Brown, whose connection with various little affairs of espionage was clearly established. Blind Heinrich, too, was at length effectively unmasked, and, with the rest of the group, is now safely under lock and key, with ample leisure to repent of the nefarious business upon which they were engaged.

On this occasion, at any rate, the secret message failed to reach Berlin, and I often laugh when I think of the amazement and anxiety that must have been caused in the enemy’s camp at the sudden silence of their emissaries. To-day we can afford to make them a present of the truth!

Chapter Fourteen

The Great Submarine Plot

To be a success as a secret agent a wide knowledge of European hotels is an absolute necessity.

You must, indeed, be familiar with the best hotel in every city of any importance, and scarcely less important is the personal acquaintance of the manager; for without his help you will inevitably find in your path a thousand difficulties, small and great, which, with his friendly assistance, melt almost insensibly away. Duty and inclination alike have led me to make a special study of hotel life, and I think I may say, without undue egotism, that there are few maîtres d’hôtel in Europe with whom I am not on terms of acquaintance, and even in many cases warm friendship.

I was especially fortunate in this respect in the situation in which I found myself one sunny morning in June, 1917. As the clock struck ten I strolled out of a big hotel, which I will call the Waldesruhe, in Lucerne, and wandered along the shady avenue beside the lake in the direction of the Schwanen-Platz.

Luigi Battini, the manager of the Waldesruhe, was one of my closest personal friends, and I should have stayed at the Waldesruhe at any time I was in Lucerne quite apart from the particular business which had brought me there on this occasion. Luigi was one of those marvellously efficient human machines which appear almost to reach omniscience in everything connected, even remotely, with his profession. He would give his guests, off hand and without the slightest hesitation, minutely detailed directions for the most complicated of journeys without opening a time-table, and invariably his information was correct to the smallest particular. He knew at what stations every dining-car was put on every train within a radius of hundreds of miles, and he impressed upon you, in the far-off pre-war days, to remember that the train left Weis for Passau twenty minutes earlier this month than the hour mentioned in the time-table.

His memory, especially for faces, was prodigious. Indeed, it was to this that I owed the beginnings of our friendship. Years before Luigi had been a waiter at the great buffet at Liverpool where passengers from the incoming American boats were in the habit of snatching a hasty meal before joining the train for London. I had arrived in England from New York cold and hungry, and, owing to some delay about my baggage, was unable to get to the restaurant until just before the London express was due to start.

I had not realised how long I had been delayed, and had just taken my first mouthful of the soup which Luigi had brought me when the bell heralding the immediate departure of the train rang loudly. With a muttered ejaculation of annoyance I hastily threw down on the table the price of my abandoned meal and rushed out, jumped into the train, and a moment later was speeding Londonwards, still cold and hungry and in the very worst of tempers.

Of course I promptly forgot the incident, and it was not until a year later that I was forcibly reminded of it. I had again arrived in Liverpool from New York and hurried to the same restaurant for a meal. By some queer chance I made for a table at which Luigi was still the waiter. I should not have known him, but he recollected me and our previous meeting.

With a profound bow and a smiling flash of his exquisite teeth, Luigi said quizzically: “Good evening, monsieur. Has monsieur returned for his dinner?”

I looked at him in blank astonishment for a moment, then burst into a roar of laughter, as I remembered both him and the long-forgotten incident of a year before. The ice was effectually broken between us, and when I left for London I felt I had made a friend of the smiling Italian. But it was years before I discovered how deep and loyal a mutual regard had sprung out of a trifling incident. But the best friendships not infrequently owe their origin to some such triviality.

Time had slipped by since then, and Luigi had climbed the ladder until the humble waiter was a power in the great cosmopolitan world of the hotel. But to me, at any rate, he was the Luigi of old; to others he might be merely the official head of a perfectly appointed hotel, where arrangements seemed to go by clockwork and no one ever heard of such a thing as failure. Always in a frock-coat, whatever the season, whatever the hour of the day; always wearing the diamond pin given him by a travelling monarch; always alert though never obtrusive; known to all his guests, but familiar with hardly any – such was Luigi Battini. And he was one of Hecq’s “friends.”

I had gone to Lucerne on purpose to learn something from his lips which he would not risk in the post, and what he had told me half an hour earlier had set me thinking deeply. It entirely confirmed certain information I had been able to gain in London and Lisbon.

After a long and meditative walk, I seated myself on the terrasse of a café overlooking the lovely Lake of Lucerne, and, with a bock before me, wrote out a telegram as follows:

“Arthon, Paris. – Returning London fourteenth. – Casentino.”

Having finished my bock, I strolled along to the chief telegraph office near the station and dispatched the message. To the uninitiated it conveyed no other meaning than appeared on the surface, but its receipt at the address for which it was destined set various elements of machinery in motion.

On the evening of the fourteenth there stepped from the hotel omnibus – a smartly dressed young Frenchwoman, carrying a little sable Pomeranian dog and followed by a porter with her luggage.

Luigi met her in the hall, and, with his heels clicked together in his usual attitude of welcome, received her with an exquisite bow. She engaged a room, signed the visitors’ book in the usual way, and then allowed Battini to conduct her up by the lift. As she passed me our eyes met, but without the slightest sign of recognition. Even though the newly arrived guest was none other than my smartest assistant, Madame Gabrielle Soyez.

Next day, in consequence of a note I sent her, we met in one of the sitting-rooms in the further, and at the present moment unoccupied – wing of the hotel. She then told me that her own sitting-room was next to one occupied by a Swedish engineer named Oscar Engström, whom I had watched in Lisbon a month before and who was now in Switzerland engaged on some mysterious business which we had not been able to fathom. We strongly suspected, however, from various bits of evidence that had reached us, that the man was in the pay of Germany at the moment, even if he were not one of the regular German agents.

When I entered, Madame Gabrielle, smartly attired in a tailor-made gown of navy-blue cloth and a very bewitching hat, was standing at the window, with her pet dog beneath her arm, chatting to the immaculate Luigi, gazing the while on the blue waters of the lake.