Graham Greene (6 page)

This I found of value when I came to be pursued by mounted military police, who suspected me of being a spy at some manoeuvres abroad.

SIR ROBERT BADEN-POWELL

ake a spot of lemon juice. Use a perfectly clean nib. Dip it into the lemon and write the message on a piece of paper. Allow the juice to dry and there will be nothing to be seen. Run a hot iron over the paper and the writing will return—faint and light brown in shade.

•

Take a clean nib and dip it in water—or merely write with the dry nib on the paper. The nib will make minute scratches on the paper—invisible to the naked eye, but easily seen under the microscope. An iodine vapour bath can also be used. This is a simple
apparatus—a tin oven in which iodine is maintained at the lowest temperature at which it will remain vapourised. The letter is introduced into the bath, and when it is withdrawn after a few minutes crystals of iodine will have settled along the tiny rough edges formed by the scratch of the nib.

•

Naphthol, collodion and acetone in the proportions of one, twenty, sixty. For the reagent, five grains of sulphuric acid are mixed with fifty cubic centimetres of nitric acid in a litre of water and added cold to one gramme of sodium nitrate. Fifty grammes of sodium acetate are then dissolved in two hundred cubic centimetres of water. The paper is dipped in a mixture of a hundred cubic centimetres of the first solution and twenty cubic centimetres of the second solution.

•

A mixture of brandy and milk.

•

Take a hard-boiled egg. Mix alum and vinegar together to the consistency of ink and write the message on the shell. As the ink dries there is nothing to be seen but a few hours later the message (which must be written in large letters) will appear on the white of the egg.

BERNARD NEWMAN

efore I could utter aught save a muffled curse, I was flung head first into an empty piano case, the heavy lid of which was instantly closed on me … I had been tricked!

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

HAZARDS OF THE PROFESSION

They speak of murder … I can't trust anyone any more … assassination awaits me on the least suspicion …

FELIX STIDGER
UNION COUNTER-SPY AMONG THE COPPERHEADS IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, IN A SCRIBBLED REPORT TO HIS CHIEF, COLONEL HENRY B. CARRINGTON

hey kicked me to the head of the stairs, and stretched me over a guard-bench, pommelling me. Two knelt on my ankles, bearing down on the backs of my knees, while two more twisted my wrists till they cracked, and then crushed them and my neck against the wood. The corporal had run downstairs; and now came back with a whip of the Circassian sort, a thong of supple black hide, rounded, and tapering from the thickness of a thumb at the grip (which was wrapped in silver) down to a hard point finer than a pencil.

He saw me shivering, partly I think, with cold, and made it whistle over my ear, taunting me that before his tenth cut I would howl for mercy; and then he began to lash me madly across and across with all his might, while I locked my teeth to endure this thing which lapped itself like flaming wire about my body.

To keep my mind in control I numbered the blows, but after
twenty lost count, and could feel only the shapeless weight of pain, not tearing claws, for which I had prepared, but a gradual cracking apart of my whole being by some too-great force whose waves rolled up my spine till they were pent within my brain, to clash terribly together. Somewhere in the place a cheap clock ticked loudly, and it distressed me that their beating was not in its time. I writhed and twisted, but was held so tightly that my struggles were useless. After the corporal ceased, the men took it up, very deliberately, giving me so many, and then an interval during which they would squabble for the next turn. This was repeated often, for what may have been no more than ten minutes. Always for the first of every new series, my head would be pulled round, to see how a hard white ridge, like a railway, darkening slowly into crimson, leaped over my skin at the instant of each stroke, with a bead of blood where two ridges crossed. As the punishment proceeded the whip fell more and more upon existing weals, biting blacker or more wet, till my flesh quivered with accumulated pain, and with terror of the next blow coming. They soon conquered my determination not to cry, but while my will ruled my lips I used only Arabic, and before the end a merciful sickness choked my utterance.

T. E. LAWRENCE

n the fourth night of our arrival in the French capital I returned to the hotel about midnight, having dined at the Café Américain with Greville, the Naval Attaché at the Embassy.
In washing my hands prior to turning in, I received a nasty scratch on my left wrist from a pin which a careless laundress had left in the towel. There was a little blood, but I tied my handkerchief around it, and, tired out, lay down and was soon asleep.

Half an hour afterwards, however, I was aroused by an excruciating pain over my whole left side, a strange twitching of the muscles of my face and hands, and a contraction of the throat which prevented me from breathing or crying out.

I tried to rise and press the electric bell for assistance, but could not. My whole body seemed entirely paralysed. Then the ghastly truth flashed upon me, causing me to break out into a cold sweat.

That pin had been placed there purposely. I had been poisoned.

WILLIAM LE QUEUX

o anyone whom it may concern: I think it advisable to state that I have no documents of any importance in my own possession in connection with any other country of work I have undertaken. I am making this statement as, on January 4th, 1938, a friend and I left a certain Embassy in London. We were followed to Victoria Station, where I caught the 5.35 train. From then on, my memory is a blank until I found myself in hospital the following morning. Some papers of mine were missing. I will let the
Mid-Sussex Times
complete the story:

Mr W. H. Greene, of Oak Cottage, Plumpton, is in the Haywards Heath Hospital suffering from head injuries sustained in a motor accident at Plumpton last week. He was found lying unconscious near his damaged car.

HERBERT GREENE

e seized me by the collar and dragged me across the floor to my bathroom. I didn't even struggle because I thought he was only going to lock me in, but not a bit of it—he took the cord off my dressing-gown and started to make a noose.

Can you imagine what I felt like then? I realised with a horrible suddenness that he really meant to do me in. I sat on the floor there thinking desperately—racking my brains for some idea that would literally save my neck. I began to talk again—quickly, feverishly, of the first thing that came into my head, anything to gain time.