Graham Greene (28 page)

“How did you get hold of it?”

“Oh, that was easy! The Duchessa Grazioli lives at the Hotel
Windsor. I had her watched by one of my agents. Well, yesterday, Sunday, she went to the races. My man took advantage of the opportunity to slip into her room and search her trunks, her wardrobes, her bed, clothes …”

“And the hotel servants let him?”

“The hotel servants? Naturally I had given them something to keep their eyes shut.”

“Naturally, that was the indispensable preliminary, I should have realised.… And the cipher?”

“In the end my agent found it in a very pretty toilet necessity, underneath a packet of fine handkerchiefs. Also it has a delicious scent. Smell it!”

“You're quite right, the scent is delicious.… You see how right I was the other day when I told you that your flair had deceived you!”

“Yes.… All that's left now is to see what is in the telegrams.”

“Your curiosity shall soon be satisfied.”

Two days later I took Sandherr the translation of his mysterious telegrams. Indeed they contained no suspicion of espionage. The decoded correspondence was perfectly clear and frank, for it expressed nothing but simple, elemental, natural feelings.

However, one four-figure sequence which recurred in most of the telegrams remained indecipherable. All that our decoders were able to suggest was that the apocalyptic number stood for something extraordinary, unforgettable, and sublime.

MAURICE PALEOLOGUE

reyfus remained what he had always been, a strictly honourable soldier. He had never lent himself to political adventures. After a short period in the Army, he resigned and went on to the reserve. During the 1914–18 war he was recalled to service and commanded an ammunition column with efficiency. He died in 1935, a quiet old gentleman. During his later years he liked to play bridge. One evening his partner remarked that a certain X had been arrested for espionage, and then, realising the tactlessness of his remark, added that he did not suppose there was anything in it. Dreyfus, calmly dealing, rejoined: “Oh, I don't know; after all, there's no smoke without fire.”

GUY CHAPMAN

cene:
Tilsit and the river Niemen.

Napoléon and Alexander emerge from their seclusion, and each is beheld talking to the suite of his companion apparently in flattering compliment. An effusive parting, which signifies itself to be but temporary, is followed by their return to the river shores amid the cheers of the spectators. Napoléon and his marshals arrive at the door of his quarters and enter, and pass out of sight to other rooms than that of the foreground in which the observers are loitering. Dumb show ends. A murmured conversation grows audible, carried on by two persons in the crowd beneath the open windows. Their dress being the native one, and their tongue unfamiliar, they seem to the officers to be merely inhabitants gossiping; and their voices continue unheeded.

First English Spy:
¹
Did you get much for me to send on?

Second English Spy:
I have got hold of the substance of their parley. Surely no truce in European annals ever led to so odd an interview. They were like a belle and her beau, by God! But, queerly enough, one of Alexander's staff said to him as he reached the raft: “Sire, let me humbly ask you not to forget your father's fate!” Grim—eh?

First Spy:
Anything about the little island which shall be nameless?

Second Spy:
Much; and startling, too. “Why are we at war?” says Napoléon when they met.—“Ah—why!” said t'other.—“Well,” said Boney, “I am fighting you only as an ally of the English, and you are simply serving them, and not yourself, in fighting me.”—“In that case,” says Alexander, “we shall soon be friends, for I owe her as great a grudge as you.”

First Spy:
Dammy, go that length, did they!

Second Spy:
Then they plunged into the old story about English selfishness, and greed, and duplicity. But the climax related to Spain, and it amounted to this: they agreed that the Bourbons of the Spanish throne should be made to abdicate, and Bonaparte's relations set up as sovereigns instead of them.

First Spy:
Somebody must ride like hell to let our Cabinet know!

Second Spy:
I have written it down in cipher, not to trust to memory, and to guard against accidents.—They also agreed that France should have the Pope's dominions, Malta, and Egypt; that Napoléon's brother Joseph should have Sicily as well as Naples, and that they would partition the Ottoman Empire between them.

First Spy:
Cutting up Europe like a plum-pudding.
Par nobile fratrum!

Second Spy:
Then the worthy pair came to poor Prussia, whom Alexander, they say, was anxious about, as he is under engagements to her. It seems that Napoléon agrees to restore to the King as many of his states as will cover Alexander's promise, so that the Tsar may feel free to strike out in this new line with his new friend.

First Spy:
Surely this is but surmise?

Second Spy:
Not at all. One of the suite overheard, and I got round him. There was much more, which I did not learn. But they are going to soothe and flatter the unfortunate King and Queen by asking them to a banquet here.

First Spy:
Such a spirited woman will never come!

Second Spy:
We shall see. When necessity compels needs must; and she has gone through an Iliad of woes!

First Spy:
It is this Spanish business that will stagger England, by God! And now to let her know it.

French Subaltern (looking out above
): What are those townspeople talking about so earnestly, I wonder! The lingo of this place has an accent akin to English.

Second Subaltern:
No doubt because the races are both Teutonic. (The
spies observe that they are noticed, and disappear in the crowd. The curtain drops.
)

THOMAS HARDY

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Often most valuable clues can be picked up by spies who get beneath windows and peer in at the corners at critical times.

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

isard was the Director of Political Affairs at the Quai D'Orsay; General Mercier, the Minister of War; Hanotaux, the Foreign Minister.]

•

October 12th, 1894. When Nisard had come to the end of his confidences, he asked me if I knew how the Intelligence Service procured papers from the German Embassy. General Mercier had said that the letter had reached the General Staff by “the ordinary route.” What was this “ordinary route”? Hanotaux attached great importance to being informed on this point.

I explained to him how the “ordinary route” worked.

“The Intelligence Service,” I said, “has succeeded in suborning a servant at the German Embassy. She is a woman of about
forty. Her name is Marie Bastian. She is vulgar, stupid, and completely illiterate, but she has been clever enough to gain the confidence of her employers. She is the charwoman; she washes down the stairs, cleans the windows, lights the fires, and sweeps out the offices, and she has the run of the house all day long. It is thus very easy for her to pick up papers which Embassy secretaries or military attachés tear up and put in the waste-paper basket. She periodically hands them over to another counterespionage agent, Brücker, or sometimes to an officer of the Intelligence Service. The hand-over generally takes place in the evening, in a chapel of St Clotilda.”

“But how is it possible for anyone to be so foolish as to put papers of any value in the waste-paper basket, even after tearing them up?” Nisard exclaimed, raising his arms. “How is it that they are not burnt?”

“How are you to deal with negligence? Do you suppose that in our offices …?”

“Don't go on!”

MAURICE PALEOLOGUE

hen he had set out, Kintup
¹
had been issued with the usual secret service agent's equipment. In the pilgrim's prayer wheel, in place of the rolled paper inscribed with the sacred formula “Om Mani Padme Hum,” were a prismatic compass and a roll of paper for making notes. In place of the Tibetan rosary of
108 beads was one of 100 beads for counting paces. But in addition to these normal articles of equipment, Kintup and the monk had been given a number of small metal tubes containing written papers and a drill with which to make the holes for fixing the tubes into the logs they were to float down the river.