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

I found myself reflecting how typically French she was in every detail – dainty in face and figure, immaculately dressed, and possessing that indefinably vivacious great charm which seems to be the monopoly of the cultured Frenchwoman. She could throw it aside when she chose, such was her wonderful versatility, and assume a mask of dullness and stupidity sufficient to ensure that no one meeting her would give her a second glance. It was a valuable accomplishment, and more than once had carried her safely through a difficult and dangerous situation.

To-day, among friends, she was her own sunny self. “Ah, Monsieur Gerald,” she cried, springing forward to greet me, “our friend Luigi has been telling me some very strange things – eh?”

“I have told Madame pretty well all I know,” said the suave Italian, in excellent English; “but it is not much. Engström has engaged a room for a lady friend – a Madame Bohman.”

“Swedish also?” I queried, with a smile. “When does our friend expect Mr Thornton, as he calls himself?”

“He is expected any moment,” replied Luigi; “he has retained his room ever since he left for London.”

“Good!” I said. And we all three sat down and plunged into an intricate discussion of every detail concerning the suspects and our plan of campaign.

My instructions to Luigi were to keep a constant watch upon the comings and goings of the Swedish engineer and his lady friend, while to Madame Gabrielle fell the task of endeavouring to scrape acquaintance with the latter on her arrival, in order to try to gain from some casual remark – for we could expect nothing more – a hint of what was in progress.

Engström’s lady friend, Madame Bohman, arrived in due course, and, though she was quite unaware of it, we scrutinised her closely before we gave her a chance of seeing us. I saw at once that she was a complete stranger to me. Madame Gabrielle did not know her, and Luigi, with his faultless memory for faces, declared positively that she had never entered any hotel at which he had been engaged.

“A new hand, in all probability,” I thought, “but none the less dangerous on that ground if she knows her business.” Madame Bohman was a tall, handsome, fair-haired woman of decidedly distinguished appearance, and, from the scraps of her conversation which we overheard, evidently well educated and well connected. She had the blue eyes and fair hair of the typical Swede, but blue eyes and fair hair are not exactly unknown in Germany, and, though there was no ostensible reason for it, I found myself wondering whether she was exactly what she professed to be. But the German spy bureau works with any tools that come handy, and, even though Madame Bohman were the pure-blooded Swede she professed to be, there was still no reason why she should not be an enemy agent as well. More than one Swedish “neutral” has been detected in that category and paid the penalty!

Chapter Fifteen

The Real Mr Engström

Three days after Madame Bohman’s arrival, a special messenger brought me from Hecq in Paris three reports which, when I had read them, reduced me to a condition of blank despair.

The first was from the French Consul-General at Stockholm, who had been instructed to make the closest possible inquiry into the bona fides of the shipbuilding and engineering firm of Engström and Linner, of Malmö. His report stated that he had paid a visit to Malmö, and as the result of his investigations there and elsewhere he had not the least doubt that they were a first-class firm, and it was a fact of considerable interest that they were employed by the Swedish Government upon several important contracts. No reason whatever could be suggested for doubting their sterling integrity, and the partners had never shown the slightest trace of pro-German bias, either as a firm or individually. This seemed a complete check to our suspicions.

The second report was from Aubert, whom I had left in Lisbon. Dated from the Palace Hotel, it read:

“I have kept constant observation upon the individual, Mr Thornton, but, with the exception of the fact that he is acquainted with Halbmayr, of the Königgrätzer-strasse – which, after all, may be quite innocent – I see no reason to suspect him of hostile intent. He has telegraphed several times to Lucerne, addressing his messages to the name of Syberg at the poste restante. You could probably secure sight of one of these; I cannot at this end. He was visited a fortnight ago by a Swedish lady named Bohman. The latter may be a travelling agent of the enemy, but somehow, after a close vigilance, I feel doubtful. When Thornton leaves I shall advise you. It will be best for Garcia to follow, as they have not met, and he is here for that purpose.”

The third report was from a certain very alert English business man named Charles Johnson-Meads, who had offices in Fenchurch Street, London. It was Johnson-Meads who, by a curious statement he made to me one evening, in my rooms in Curzon Street, London, had first aroused my suspicions that a deep plot, in which Engström and Thornton were somehow implicated, was on foot.

Johnson-Meads’ report read:

“I have strained every effort to learn more of these people and their mysterious movements in London. Contrary to my belief, I have now established the fact that Engström is, after all, the well-known Swedish engineer, and not the fraud I believed him to be.”

This, of course, appeared to be tolerably conclusive, and I was inclined to throw up the whole business at once and return to Paris, where other work urgently awaited my attention. It was clear enough from the report of the French Consul-General at Stockholm that Engström and Linner would not lend their name to any shady proceedings, while Johnson-Meads’ apparent certainty that Engström was really what he professed to be seemed to cut away the principal basis of suspicion.

Half an hour later I met Madame Gabrielle and Luigi in the same private room and showed them the three reports, which were as disappointing to them as they were to me. Of Madame Bohman, Gabrielle had failed to discover anything which could give reasonable grounds for suspicion. According to her own statement – for the resourceful Madame Gabrielle had speedily scraped up an hotel acquaintance with her – Madame Bohman and Engström were old friends, having known each other for years in Stockholm. Moreover, it was evident that Madame Bohman at least knew Stockholm well, for Madame Gabrielle was intimately acquainted with that city, and had no difficulty, by means of apparently artless conversation, in testing the accuracy of Madame Bohman’s knowledge. To all intents and purposes we seemed to be on a wild-goose chase, and I expressed this view.

“There is nothing in it,” was my verdict. “I think the best thing we can do is to give up wasting our time and get back to Paris at once. You know there is the Morny affair waiting for me, and Hecq is anxious I should take it in hand without delay.”

“The Morny affair” was one of those queer financial scandals which have been so rife in Paris during the war. A Frenchman, hitherto of unblemished reputation as a patriot, had suddenly come under suspicion of trafficking with the enemy. Questions and rumours had been flying thickly in the Paris Press, as well as in the Chamber, and it was urgently important that the unfortunate Mr Morny – for I, at least, believed he was being slandered by a group of business rivals and political enemies – should be cleared once and for all of suspicions which were rapidly reducing him to a state of complete prostration. How, later, I succeeded in completely vindicating his character, I hope to tell at some future time – at present a full disclosure of the facts might do untold harm.

But Madame Gabrielle, her feminine intuition busily at work, was not to be easily put off. She strongly dissented from my view.

“Yesterday,” she said, “during Madame Bohman’s absence with Engström at Brunner, I took Luigi’s master-key, and, entering her room, opened her dressing-case and thoroughly searched her papers. It is true I found nothing of interest, save that there were letters from certain friends in London, the addresses of which I have copied. And I found this!”

“This” was a blank sheet of notepaper, which she produced, bearing the heading of the Palace Hotel at Lisbon.

“You see,” she said, “it has been very carefully preserved, for it was enclosed in these two envelopes. I wonder why?”

I took the blank paper from her and examined it carefully. I found it to be the ordinary hotel notepaper, exactly similar to that which I myself had used in the hotel writing-room, during my recent visit to the Portuguese capital.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t see how that proves, or even suggests, anything. We know perfectly well that Madame Bohman has been to Lisbon – she herself makes no secret whatever of the fact, and she may very well have brought away by accident a sheet of the hotel notepaper and a couple of envelopes. It is true she seems friendly with both men, and there is undoubtedly some suspicion. But is it sufficient to justify action on our part, or even to give us good reason for staying here and devoting to a very trivial matter valuable time which at the moment we might be spending to much greater advantage in Paris?”

Luigi raised his dark eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious that he was entirely of my way of thinking, and, though he was willing to do anything to help me and to put a spoke in the wheel of the Hun plotters – for, like all patriotic Italians, he cherished the liveliest hatred for the Austro-Germans – he was no fonder than I am myself of the profitless task of chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. But the merry, go-ahead little Frenchwoman had her suspicions very thoroughly aroused, and I knew well that when this was the case it was not an easy task to allay them.

“I do not care, mon cher Gerald! There is evil work in progress, somewhere; I am confident. Why should Thornton be acquainted or have anything to do with our arch-enemy, Ernst Halbmayr? Remember how cleverly he escaped you six months ago in Rotterdam!”

“But we trapped the woman,” I rejoined grimly. “And there was a firing party at Versailles.”

“And there is somebody to be trapped here also,” persisted Madame Gabrielle. “You will surely not give up yet?”

While we were still discussing the matter a page-boy brought a telegram. Luigi took it from the lad and, dismissing him, handed the message to me. It was from Aubert in Lisbon, and it conveyed the significant news that this man Thornton had left for Lucerne, and that Garcia was travelling by the same train. “He has just sent a telegram to Syberg at the poste restante,” the message concluded.

After this, of course, there could be no question of our abandoning our task. There was evidently something afoot, and just as evidently Lucerne was likely to be the scene of some lively incidents.

Luigi did not lose a second. He rang the bell, and immediately another page-boy appeared.

“Go at once to the poste restante,” he said, “and ask for a telegram for Syberg. They know you come from me, so there will be no need of a letter. Don’t forget the name – S-y-b-e-r-g. And make haste.” The boy disappeared instantly, and for a quarter of an hour we waited in feverish impatience for his return. When he came back he brought with him the message we wanted. Opening it, I read in French, as follows:

To Syberg, Poste Restante, Lucerne.

“Received good news from London. Meads” (the man in London whose suspicions had been aroused) “is now with us, so business can proceed. Leaving for Lucerne to-night. Shall see T. in Paris to arrange further details and transit of machinery. Thyra” (the Christian name of Madame Bohman) “will meet E.H.” (was this Ernst Halbmayr?) “at Geneva on the 15th.”

This message was unsigned, but it confirmed the impression given us by Aubert’s wire that events were on foot, and at once the three of us plunged with renewed energy into our plan of campaign.

“There can be no doubt,” I said, “that ‘E.H.’ refers to Halbmayr, and probably he is directing the whole of the intricate affair.”

“Very likely,” said Luigi dryly, “but I do not see that we have much more light on what direction against the British the conspirators, if they really are German agents, intend to work.”

“True, but that is just what we have to find out,” I replied. “From what Johnson-Meads states, the plot in some way relates to the British submarines. At present I am just as much in the dark as you are. If Halbmayr is directing operations you may depend upon it that some really serious coup is intended, for Halbmayr never troubles his head about the small affairs. Don’t forget that next to Steinhauer he is the man the Königgrätzer-strasse puts most implicit faith in.”

Events were now moving rapidly. I waited with anxiety for the arrival of the man Thornton, whom I had never seen, for I was particularly anxious to have a look at him. I suspected very strongly that he was one of the German Secret Service men masquerading under an assumed name, and I was therefore particularly anxious for an opportunity of identifying him. I argued with myself that if he was mixed up with anything big enough to call for the co-operation of Halbmayr he must be one of the “big” men himself, and it was quite possible I might be able to identify him, for personally or through photographs I was well acquainted with most of the leaders of German espionage work.

Thornton at length reached the Waldesruhe, where he was greeted by the urbane Luigi with all the evidence of distinguished consideration which made the suave Italian so popular with his many patrons. Thornton would have passed for an Englishman anywhere, both in looks and language. He was perfectly dressed in clothes unmistakably British in cut, and spoke the language to perfection. This, however, was hardly surprising, for, as we learned afterwards, he had lived in London ever since he was fourteen. He had, however, been brought up in circles which were virulently anti-British, and had absorbed to the fullest extent that poisonous hatred of everything English which so frequently displays itself in the Hun who has made England his home of convenience.

He little suspected that the smiling Luigi, who so assiduously attended to his comforts, was one of the secret agents of the Allies; that another, in the person of myself, saw his arrival, or that in the turret of the great hotel there was a small secret room containing a powerful wireless set, which I sometimes operated myself.

I had to be very careful not to be seen by Thornton, for it was quite possible, if my suspicions were well founded, that he might know me. And it was well that I did, for I recognised him instantly as Emil Brahe, a German agent of whom we had lost sight for some time. He had formerly been engaged on the Continent and was well known to our men, though of late years he seemed to have dropped out of active work, and we had lost sight of him altogether. I realised now that we had been cleverly tricked: we had believed him to belong to the Berlin branch, while all the time he was living quietly in England, where he did no “business” whatever, and was thus never suspected even by the astute men of the Special Branch.

We had relied much on Madame Gabrielle’s powers to extract information from Madame Bohman, with whom she was already on excellent terms. The pair often sat chatting in the lounge, smoking each other’s cigarettes, and I knew the fair Gabrielle was keenly on the alert for any slip by which Madame Bohman might “give herself away.” The Swedish woman, however, was far too clever and would betray nothing.

Shadowing Thornton, or Brahe, to give him his right name, was Manuel Garcia, a capable ex-detective of the Lisbon police, who was now an agent of the Central Bureau of Counter-Espionage in Paris.

That telegrams were constantly passing between the Swedish engineer and some people in Lyons and Marseilles I knew, and, indeed, I was able to secure copies of some of them. In this way I discovered that these Swedes were on very friendly terms with a banker named Heurteau, who had carried on business in Paris before the war, had afterwards escaped to Zurich, and had long been suspected of being one of the paymasters of the spy bureau in Berlin.

On the morning of the thirteenth, in consequence of what Madame Gabrielle had told me, I took train to Geneva, where I put up at the National. Manuel Garcia followed by the next train, and early next morning I received a telephone message from Madame Gabrielle telling me that Madame Bohman had left the Waldesruhe and was due at Geneva at four o’clock that afternoon.

As a result of this message Garcia and I watched the incoming train, and my assistant followed Madame Bohman in a taxi to a small hotel in the Quai de Mont Blanc. An hour later Garcia himself took a cab to the hotel so as to watch for the arrival of Halbmayr, the real antagonist with whom our duel was being fought out.

Halbmayr, a short, stout, bald-headed man, with perfect manners and the air of a bon viveur, kept his appointment punctually, arriving from Bâle the next day about noon. As he knew me well, I was compelled to remain in hiding, but from my window I was able, with a pair of good field-glasses, to watch Madame Bohman and the German walking together on the Promenade du Lac, evidently engaged in the closest conversation. Garcia, of course, was not far away.

The pair remained together for an hour and a half, and I noticed with amusement that the wily Halbmayr took particular care to select a seat which stood quite in the open, with no shelter of any kind at hand behind which an eavesdropper might lurk. Garcia was thus, of course, effectually kept at a distance, and had no opportunity of gleaning anything from our enemies’ conversation.

Apparently the two, in the course of their earnest conversation, arrived at some definite agreement, for when they at length rose and parted, Halbmayr returned direct to the station, where he had left his luggage in the cloak-room, while the Swedish woman went back to her hotel, leaving for Lucerne an hour later.

By the next train I also travelled with Garcia to Lucerne. Immediately on our arrival we all had a consultation, and we were deep in talk when I received a startling message from Hecq in Paris. It had been sent to him by Johnson-Meads, who had promised to communicate with me through Hecq if any further suspicious matter came under his notice. The message read:

“Cancel my last message; most urgent I should see you immediately.”

Now Johnson-Meads’ last message had reported him as being assured of the bona fides of Engström. The “cancellation” of that could only mean one thing – that the Engström we knew was a fraud, and that for some sinister purpose he was trading on the good name of a perfectly reputable firm of engineers in Sweden.

An hour later I was on my way to London.

I arrived there without incident, and for an hour sat with Mr Johnson-Meads in his office in Fenchurch Street.

“I am afraid you will think me criminally careless, Mr Sant,” he said, “in the matter of my assurance that the man you know as Engström was what he professed to be. But I was deceived by a curious coincidence, and can only offer as an excuse that I have not had your training in solving problems of this kind.

“You will remember what I told you when I met you in Curzon Street? Well, that remains true. Where I went wrong was in identifying Engström with the head of the Swedish firm.

“It so happened that I have business friends in Malmö, and, after our conversation, being still very suspicious, I wrote to them asking for information about Engström and Linner. I soon received a reply, which was in every way satisfactory, and my correspondent mentioned, quite casually, that Mr Engström was actually in London and was staying at the Hotel Cecil. As I had that very day seen the man we now know as Engström, that seemed to me to clinch the matter, and perhaps foolishly, I dropped all suspicion.

“Now for the curious coincidence. A few days ago I was going home by train about six o’clock. The trains, of course, were packed, and I was ‘strap-hanging.’ We had just left King’s Cross when, owing to steam in the tunnel, our train ran with considerable violence into a train which was standing in the tunnel.

“The smash was not serious, but the shock was severe, and I was thrown right on top of a gentleman sitting on a seat close by me. A metal dispatch case he was carrying caught my face and, as you will see, cut it very badly. I was stunned for a moment, and when I came round I found the stranger holding me up. He tied a handkerchief round my face, and very kindly helped me out of the train to a hotel, where he got me some brandy, and I soon recovered.

“He had to go on, and as we were about to part he handed me his card. I slipped it into my pocket without looking at it, and went home, very much shaken. It was not until two days later that I looked at it. It read:

“Engström and Linner, Stockholm. Oscar Engström.

“Now, Mr Sant,” he went on, “the Mr Engström who helped me was not the man we both know as Engström! He did not resemble him in the slightest degree. I immediately tried to find Mr Engström, but found to my dismay that he had left the Hotel Cecil and no one knew where he had gone. He was on a holiday tour, and when he tears a few days from business he frequently disappears altogether for a week, in order to get a complete rest from business cares. I have wired Malmö, and all they can tell me is that he will not be back for ten days. Now what can we do?”

I thought deeply for a few moments. Obviously I must see the real Mr Engström as soon as possible. But there was no chance of finding him immediately, and in the meantime much might happen. I soon made up my mind.

“I shall return to Lucerne at once,” I said, “and go from there to Stockholm in time to meet Mr Engström on his arrival. There is nothing else to be done.”

Two days later I was back in Lucerne. “Engström,” his friend Thornton, and Madame Bohman were still there, busy on their plot, whatever it was, and entirely unsuspicious either of the urbane hotel manager or the pretty little Frenchwoman who had apparently developed a lively affection for the handsome Swedish woman.

One day I learned from Luigi that, in the course of a couple of hours, Engström had received three telegrams, and had sent a reply to each of them. Of their purport Luigi could gain no knowledge.

Now, I was particularly anxious to get a sight of those telegrams, for obviously they might throw a good deal of light on the business on which Engström was engaged. I laid my plans accordingly.

That same afternoon, with Luigi’s assistance, I managed to transform myself into a passable imitation of a very unkempt and dirty mechanic, and as soon as the Swedish engineer left the hotel, about half-past five – it was his usual habit to go out to take an apéritif– I took Luigi’s master-key, which unlocked all the doors in the hotel, and crept noiselessly to Engström’s room. I was soon inside, and a few minutes later, with the aid of my own skeleton keys, had opened the big leather travelling trunk, and was hastily examining its contents.

A number of telegrams had been hastily thrust into the trunk. I had grasped my prize and was just about to shut and relock the trunk, when I heard a sound behind me, and, turning, found myself face to face with Oscar Engström himself.

And not only that, but I was looking straight into the barrel of a very serviceable-looking automatic pistol, held without a tremor in Engström’s very capable hands!

Chapter Sixteen

In a Tight Corner

I was caught red-handed – caught as neatly as any bona-fide burglar who ever picked a lock!

I had opened the trunk of a fellow visitor with a skeleton key; I had been caught in the very act of pilfering the contents. Indeed, at that very moment I held in my left hand a tiny leather box containing Engström’s diamond tie-pin and studs, while with my right hand I had been delving into his big trunk. Never was a capture neater or more complete. And, with the menace of the big revolver in Engström’s hand, and knowing something of my captor, I knew better than to attempt a rush for escape. I should never have reached the door alive!

“Well, and what does this mean?” harshly demanded the Swedish engineer, in bad French, still covering me with his pistol. “And who are you?”