The Spy Net (23 page)

I knew her quite well. With those who didn't know her, she had the reputation of being a crafty gold-digger, but as a matter of fact, she was the reverse. She was simply a big, overgrown child, joyous, and full of frolic. She had a peculiar fascination for men, which she probably could not explain herself. She merely took what they willingly gave her.

Other silhouettes flit through my memory: Isabelita Ruiz, in one of those delightful Madrid cabarets, long before Cochran made her famous at the London Pavilion; Hari Singh, later the Maharajah of Kashmir, whom all the ladies thought a darling; the Maharajah of Patiala, on the Champs-Élysées; Zographos and the Greek syndicate holding the bank at the big table at Deauville; André, the cheery Casino owner and gambling king of France, drinking his Eau Contrexéville, while he himself gaily lost a few thousands as a punter, knowing it would all come back to him; the King of Spain, watching his horses run under the colours of the ‘Duke of Toledo', at that intimate little racecourse in Madrid; the brisk Dolly Sisters, gay and full of fun; Raquel Meller, the idol of the Spanish and Argentine colony in Paris, whose folk songs, sung as only she could sing them, brought back to them homeland memories; the Terrace at Monte Carlo, looking on the beautiful bay with its waters of the deepest blue, and the Hôtel de Paris and the Casino, at the height of the season; Épinard, Coq Gaulois, and Flower Shop, those three great horses, winning at Longchamps and Auteuil; San Sebastian and Madrid in summer, land of cabarets, where the meanest performer is a superb artist, and where, in the fierce heat, the people go to bed at dawn and dine at midnight; the Embassy Club, in Bond Street, under the direction of Luigi, where England's aristocracy mingles with the élite of the stage; dinner at ‘Valadier's', looking down on the lights of Rome, and then the Hôtel de Russie, with its delightful gardens; the Bay of Naples, and Capri; the Lido Beach, the Excelsior, and a gondola at night on the Grand Canal; Belmonte, that ace of toreadors, and the bull fights at Pamplona.

This is the setting in which I passed those happy two years with Yvonne – now frantically engaged in putting over some financial project in order to make the much-needed money, now dashing back to Brussels in the opera season, or to France, Italy, and Spain in summer, to spend a short time in her company and to watch with pride her triumphs wherever she was dancing.

Although I suffered materially in that I was diverted from an ordered career at the most critical period of my life, yet even today I do not regret those years, for they supplied me with unforgettable memories.

E
XCEPT FOR MY
army pay, I had never earned a penny in my life. An indulgent father had almost lavishly supplied all my needs during my university days, and while I was in secret service I had never counted costs – I had produced results and expense accounts had been met generously. I had virtually been on an allowance all my life, with no comprehension of the financial pressure under which most men live.

I now became painfully aware of the fact that millions were scrambling for a job. For each good appointment there were dozens of candidates, and tens of thousands of perfectly capable and willing men, with the finest educations and training, were
literally out on the streets. Besides, I was in Belgium, where salaries, even for the directors of the big companies, were absurdly low compared with the rest of Europe.

My old restlessness seized me, not merely, I think, because of financial disappointment, but because the life I was leading offered no definitely energetic action. Everywhere I faced hesitancy and vacillation, and I felt the imperative need of a clear objective and a settled chance of accomplishment. Inevitably my thoughts turned to C and the secret service. I would return to it temporarily. It would take me to a new country, and there, perhaps, at last I would succeed in finding myself.

It was with pleasure that I resumed contact with the chief and with my old colleagues, for although I had no intention of devoting myself entirely to the service, and stipulated that I should be free to continue my own commercial enterprises, my feeling upon finding myself once more a link in the adventures of secret service was very much that of the war horse who sayeth ‘Ha! Ha!’ among the trumpets. I had missed the excitement, the ceaseless work, and even the heavy burden of my wartime responsibilities.

For some time I had given a somewhat listless ear to proposals from my Belgian friends that I should arrange an interchange of information between the Belgian and British secret services. I now surprised them by the enthusiastic manner in which I took up the matter with the chief in England, pointing out to him that there was a great deal of information which interested both secret services, and which neither side should mind the other getting. ‘Why not pool this type of information?’ I urged him. The chief finally agreed, and I was asked to handle the first
interchange of reports. Even though this was purely a routine job I thrilled once more at reading secret service reports. Always keenly interested in international affairs, I had been relying on the newspapers during the last two years; now once again I was getting a preview of impending events, and sensing once more the undercurrents of international relations, which as a rule come to the surface in print only after a crisis has been reached. How long this interchange continued I do not know, for I was suddenly requested by the chief to undertake some urgent work for him in Germany, which required immediate attention. Handing over my job to another intermediary, I set off post-haste to London to get my instructions.

The chief informed me that through an officer in the control commission he had just learned of a wireless-controlled robot perfected by the Germans a few days before the Armistice, which could not only guide an aeroplane in its flight, but also drop bombs on a given objective. I was to proceed to Germany immediately, secure full details at all costs, and if possible, bring the inventor over to England for an interview at the British Air Ministry.

My first step naturally was to find the officer who had supplied the information. Knowing his name, I quickly located him in Munich, and from him gained sufficient information to run the inventor to earth. To my surprise, I found my man in the Rhineland, in occupied territory. He was a sportsman, interested in speed and machines of speed; his appearance was anything but that of the typical inventor. Tall, thin, with a long, pointed, foxlike face, high narrow brow and fair hair combed straight back from it, he looked – especially in his gay tweed plus fours – the
double of the German Crown Prince just off on a ski-ing expedition. Protected by the army of Occupation, I had no fear of being embarrassed by the German authorities; so I went straight to the point, explaining to the inventor what I wanted, and asking him to accompany me to England.

Without giving me a decision, he immediately launched into a graphic description of his invention, and the destruction it would cause. ‘There has never been anything approaching it,’ he cried, his pale blue eyes blazing, his hands spread flat on the table between us. ‘The Allies were worried by the big gun, and by the zeppelin and aeroplane raids on London, but all of that was child’s play to what my wireless robot could have done. Just imagine several hundreds of these aeroplanes, dropping tonnes of high explosives on London at night! Had the war lasted, my invention would have produced startling results. I was at German headquarters in Spa at the time of the Armistice,’ he went on, more quietly, but with a wry grin that said much of his irritation and disappointment. ‘You should have heard how the High Command cursed the revolutionaries and independent socialists for the cowardly betrayal of the country.’

I discounted a certain amount of what he had told me as inventor’s enthusiasm. But I had reported the existence of torpedo-nosed motor boats at Zeebrugge, controlled by wireless operated from an aeroplane. I had also seen a model airship manoeuvred by wireless, without a soul on board, and also knew of the stabilising effect of a gyroscope. In addition to the supporting evidence of these earlier devices, which had probably led him on, this man gave me the impression of honesty and sincerity; I was convinced of the truth of most of what he had told me.

He was a typical inventor, more interested in the invention itself than in selling it. I soon discovered, however, that if he was not business-minded, his woman companion was. When we went to his house, I found myself in the presence of a young girl about twenty-one years old, a pretty blonde, fragile, but with a dynamic personality, who quickly took charge of the discussion, while he listened attentively to the very intelligent questions she asked me. What her relation was to this man, who was old enough to be her father, I do not know – I am sure she was not a blood relation; nor was she his wife. Without any comments, he accepted her final decision that he should accompany me back to London.

On our way through Belgium, and again on the Ostend–Folkestone boat, and at Scott’s near Leicester Square, where I took him to dinner on the night of our arrival, he insisted on ordering champagne of the best vintage, and mixing it with Guinness’s stout. ‘Ah,’ he kept saying, as he smacked his lips, ‘this is the best drink in the world. How I missed it during the war!’ He appeared surprised and a little put out when I refused to try it.

Having put him in contact with the Air Ministry, my mission was accomplished, and as I was urgently needed in Aachen, I left him to carry on the negotiations. I learned subsequently that they were entirely successful.

Some months later I met the inventor again, wrapped up in a new invention. By gluing sheets of three-ply wood together across-grain with a special glue, and by chemically treating it in a secret way, he had discovered a system through which he could mould the wood into any required shape, yet be sure of
an extremely durable product when it solidified. He was using it for canoe construction, and also for the body of a new light motor car which he was experimenting with. This car, although it could seat two people, was so light that a strong man could lift it off the ground, and its construction costs were so low that it could sell at the same price as a motor-cycle. He was as enthusiastic about this car as he had been about his aeroplane, but although he drove me around the town in a model, it never appeared on the market. It was probably too uncomfortable and small, more suited to juveniles than adults. The canoe was a great success, and no doubt his wood-moulding process is now being used for a great many other articles. The world will remember him, however, by his wireless robot-controlled aeroplane, for it is an engine of destruction which must be reckoned with in the next war.

A short while afterwards I was put on the track of two other German inventions, the one a mysterious ray, the other a new light machine gun.

I had heard persistent rumours that the Germans had developed a ray which, when projected from the ground, had the power of putting out of action the magneto of an aeroplane in flight. It was whispered that several planes had actually been brought down in some very mysterious manner, with dead engines, during the last stages of the war. Finally, I got an urgent message from the chief, instructing me to clear up the mystery without fail. Whenever I tried to trace down these stories to their source, I was always met by a blank wall. No one had any definite information to give me. It appeared to be very much the same sort of legendary affair as the rumour at the commencement of
the war about the Russians landing in France, which sprang from a fantastic blunder. Someone had sent a telegram from one of the Scandinavian countries to the effect that a certain specified number of Russians had been sent from Archangel to England; the sender was specifying a type of eggs, but the telegraph clerk thought that Russians were troops, and spread the tale accordingly. The whole matter had assumed the proportions of legend and the conviction of truth, which was only heightened by the mysterious quality of the affair. But on what distortion of fact could these rumours of a deadening ray depend?

I had very nearly given the matter up when one day a Russian in my employ, who had served as an aviator during the war, told me that he had met the inventor’s wife, and that she had promised to talk to her husband about it. She was afraid that her solicitations would be fruitless, since her husband was a member of the Black Reichswehr, and as such would be summarily put out of the way if his negotiations with me were discovered.

Although this put me definitely on the track of the ray, the outlook seemed almost hopeless, for I had already sent in a long report of the Black Reichswehr’s activities, and I knew only too well the sinister tactics of the organisation. It was a secret band founded in 1922 with the object of collecting arms and forming itself into a secret army. Its members were plotting the downfall of the government, which they accused of pandering too much to the Allies, and in order to maintain secrecy, the leaders summarily murdered any of its members whose actions seemed to them suspicious in any degree.

I persisted, however, in my efforts, and eventually, through the Russian, I finally brought the inventor to hear my offer. He
was to have a big sum for the full information, and £50 down for a preliminary report, which was to be submitted to the Air Ministry as a test of his good faith. If this report proved satisfactory, I promised that the Air Ministry would make him a definite offer for the complete details. The information proved sufficiently interesting for the chief to want the man in London, so that the negotiations could take place there after a final demonstration.

When I set about to convey this message to the inventor, I was stupefied to learn that he had died suddenly. I never heard anything more of him. I did not wish to inquire into the matter generally or pointedly, and I could get nothing whatever from the Russian, who seemed afraid to discuss the subject. Whether the inventor had been killed as he feared, or whether he died a natural death; whether he suddenly grew afraid and simply disappeared; or whether it was a fake and he dared not attempt to carry out a useless trick, I never could discover. Personally, I think there was something tangible in the ray; the Russian intermediary, I am convinced, was honest. His terror at the time of the inventor’s death was too real to be acted. In my own mind there persists the opinion that the inventor was done to death by Schulz, the head of the Black Reichswehr’s murder squad. This fiendish butcher was eventually run to earth after the organisation had been forcibly disbanded by the government. At his trial it was proved conclusively that he had been responsible for twenty-two murders, and it was surmised that there must have been a great many more. I anxiously scanned the reports of the trial in search of the inventor’s name, but nothing came to light about him.

My first knowledge of the machine gun developed by the
Germans came from old General von G. He was a fine old chap whom I had met during my first visit to Berlin in 1919. On my return to the German capital I had been glad to resume our acquaintance. I often dropped into his apartment after dinner, and over a coffee and kirsch, which he never failed to remind me was thirty years old, we discussed various phases of the war. The question of war guilt was what exasperated him the most. ‘Didn’t the Russians mobilise first?’ he would shout in his excitement. ‘It is perfectly clear; the war was manoeuvred by the Russians and the French, who were jealous and afraid of us. The assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand – wasn’t it instigated by the Russians?’ I have never yet come across a German who believed that his country was responsible for the war, and so I never attempted to argue with the general. Germans never could understand that imperialism and militarism, to the extent that it was practised in Germany, was a menace to the peace of Europe, and, in itself, an incentive to war.

Like every other German of his class, the general’s income and savings had dwindled to the vanishing point, and he was anxiously looking around for some new source of income. I should have been prepared, perhaps, to receive offers of information from him, but such violent partisanship as his quite closed my mind to the possibility. I was intensely surprised, therefore, when one day the fiery old patriot told me about a new light machine gun that had just been invented. He claimed for it the most surprising results in the trials. When I cautioned him about compromising himself, he shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘As long as the French don’t get it, that’s all we care about. It is no use to us; the control commission wouldn’t permit its employ
anyhow.’ In the end, not only did he consent to procure a blueprint for me, but he also arranged a demonstration. The chief was delighted with the details. The gun proved to be much lighter than the Lewis machine gun, and just as efficient; it could be carried by one man and fired from the shoulder. The inventor received his money and the general his commission.