The adventures of Heine
agents would dare to frame. He can go up and down the country without
exciting suspicion, and the mere fact that he is a reporter, is
sufficient to give him an entrée into circles, admission to which we
could only risk at grave danger to ourselves. An ordinary reporter
might have been valueless, but a man with a grievance, a man who was
“broke to the wide,” to use Mister Haynes’s own expressive idiom, was
especially valuable.
I took him down to the news agency office, and there he had tangible
proof of the solidity and bonâ-fides of the agency. The two rooms in
Fleet Street, which I had fitted up, were well furnished. The name of
the agency was painted on the windows and on the glass panels of the
office door, the files of the newspapers were carefully kept by the
boy I employed. There were telephones and a “tape machine”--in fact,
it was the most convincing environment that German forethought could
design. I never saw a man so content as he was when I sat him down at
a new desk within reach of the telephone, handed him a £5 note on
account of expenses, and outlined the plan of inquiry.
“Do you speak any foreign language?” I asked.
He said he spoke French indifferently and German not at all, which was
excellent news.
“My principals,” I explained, “are very anxious, of course, to receive
news of the war. The London hospitals are filled with wounded, and I
have no doubt that you would be able to obtain admission to the wards
and collect the personal narratives of the men as they come home.”
“I get you, Steve,” he said. “You want stories of heroism in battle?”
“Exactly,” I said, “but don’t dwell so much upon the romantical side
of the war. Encourage the men to speak not of their own battalions but
of the gallant fellows who were fighting on their left and on their
right. Find out what other regiments are in their divisions. Learn
something about their officers. Who are the most popular and who are
the most unpopular. What sort of men are their colonels. We want to
see the war at a new angle,” I went on hurriedly, for he looked a
little dubious and disappointed, “and we can only do that if we get
off the beaten track. When you have written your matter you will hand
it to me and I will embody it in my weekly letter to--er--China.”
From the very first my scheme was a success. Not a day passed but
Mister Haynes brought into me precisely the information which
Headquarters required.
You must understand that unless you take prisoners it is almost
impossible to discover what is your enemy’s order of battle. Once you
have discovered where certain divisions fit in and what places
particular battalions take, you will no longer be in the dark in any
subsequent actions in which those divisions take part. For instance,
if the Wessex are on the right of the 99th Division and the Royal
Hertfordshires are in the centre, and you know the positions of every
other battalion, you have only to pick up one prisoner from one
battalion at any point of the line to know exactly the disposition of
the others.
And here is another matter. A soldier coming back wounded from the
front will perhaps tell you that whilst his battalion stood the brunt
of an offensive, the battalion on his left did not resist with the
same resolution and he will probably give you the reason for this. It
may be that the weak battalion has a weak commanding officer, or that
the discipline is slack, and once our staff know this they also know
where to thrust the arrowhead of subsequent attacks.
The information which was given to the Great General Staff by the
indiscriminate publication of soldiers’ letters cannot be exaggerated,
and I for one deeply regretted the decision of the English War Office
to prohibit their publication.
Mister Haynes brought information of the first class, but nothing so
enthralling as that which he brought one afternoon about three weeks
after he had started working. I remember the occasion so well. I can
see him almost as tangibly as though he stood before me leaning
against the desk, his rusty hat on the back of his head, his hands as
usual in his pockets.
“I got a queer story from one of those chaps at the London Hospital,”
he said, “I don’t know whether I can use it.”
“What is it?” I asked carelessly.
“This man said that every night our front line near Bois Grenier is
evacuated to save the men from the effect of the German shelling. As
soon as it gets dark the whole line on a front of six miles is
withdrawn to the support trenches, and he said he was wounded through
being ordered back to the front line before the German’s artillery
strafe had finished.”
“That is very interesting,” said I, “on a front of six miles you say?”
“That’s right,” he said, “from Bois Grenier down to Festubert. Do you
think I had better use the story?”
“I think not,” I said shaking my head, “I don’t think it would be
patriotic. Those horrid Germans might get hold of the information and
use it to destroy our brave soldiers.”
“That is what I thought,” said Mister Haynes, though he did not seem
very enthusiastic, and indeed, as he told me, his reluctance to impart
the information had less to do with the safety of the soldiers than
with his own. “I don’t want three months’ hard labour under the
Defence of the Realm Act,” he said.
You may be sure that I was not very long in coding this news, though
it was some time before I could get my telegram to Stockholm.
Apparently the British Government were holding up all messages for
forty-eight hours, but this did not worry me so long as it reached its
destination eventually.
Naturally I received a reply in a much shorter space of time. In fact,
Berlin acknowledged my message within twelve hours of its receipt.
You will remember that in the first week of February we Germans
delivered a sudden and fierce attack upon the British front line
positions between Festubert and Bois Grenier. Owing to some unhappy
and unfortunate change of plan the front lines of the English position
were filled with soldiers, but this was probably due to the
carelessness of General von Klaus who had assembled his troops for the
offensive in broad daylight under the eyes of the British airmen. Von
Klaus himself denied this, but that is the theory which I have formed,
because Mister Haynes afterwards told me that he had had his story
confirmed from three independent sources, and gave me the names of his
informants, and even showed me the photograph of one of them.
Klein, who was up on a brief visit to London--he was very busy in
South Wales on propaganda work with his friend Mr. Craigmair--was
anxious that I should send Mister Haynes to the West of England where
certain experiments were being made with a new kind of armoured car.
He had attempted to get into the camp, which was guarded as carefully
as any prison, and had narrowly escaped being arrested.
It is a well-known fact that long before the famous Tank--that
atrocious and unfair weapon which the English used, contrary to the
laws of the Hague Convention--came upon the scene, secret experiments
were being made. Potsdam had heard of these, and I had received
instructions to prosecute my investigations with the greatest vigour.
Naturally rumours were rife, and there were many mares’ nests before,
by a lucky chance, our good Klein heard of this experimental camp. I
had no difficulty in concocting a story for Mister Haynes. My
suggestion was that he should write an article on the marvellous
mechanical contrivances which the genius of Britain had brought into
being and I despatched him, with Klein, hot upon the scent to
investigate and report.
They left by the night train from Paddington and I saw them off. Klein
was very decorous, the picture of an English gentleman in his check
cap and his long travelling coat, his neat-gloved hands and his
English magazine, and Mister Haynes, as untidy as ever, curled up in
the corner of the carriage and, I should imagine, asleep before he
left the station.
What happened was told me by Klein on the telephone. It was a
happening so disconcerting, so mysterious, that I must confess that I
regarded the unlooked-for outcome of this adventure with more than
ordinary disquietude, even had there not been the more terrible
sequel.
They reached their destination, a small West Country town, in the
early hours of the morning and went to their hotel where they were
joined by Posser, who was working with Klein, and who, deeply
conscious of the importance of finding out details of this particular
machine, had been spending that day in making judicious inquiries.
They had breakfasted together the next morning, when, of course, no
mention was made of the camp or the new armoured car, Klein
introducing Posser as his secretary. I might explain that Klein was
posing as a Swedish mining engineer who had a patent for sale
connected with coal haulage. I had sent Mister Haynes on the same
train and in company with Klein, on the pretext that, as Mr. Klein was
a friend and was going to the same town, they might travel together
and that Mr. Klein might possibly give my reporter certain
introductions which would be useful.
Mister Haynes spoke about his mission quite openly, though Klein
advised him, laughingly, not to mention his business if he wanted to
secure the information he required. Apparently Mister Haynes met with
little success, and came back to the hotel to dinner and said that all
his efforts to induce any of the soldiers attached to the camp to give
him information or to secure admission had been fruitless.
Klein was not greatly perturbed. In fact, he was very much elated
because Posser had told him secretly that he intended making his way
into the camp that night in the guise of one of the waiters at the
officers’ mess. They all ostensibly went to bed soon after ten
o’clock. Mister Haynes went to his room and Klein went to his, though
not to sleep. He made himself comfortable and took up a book and began
reading. Presently he heard a scraping on his door, and smiled, for it
was the agreed-on signal that Posser was stealing out into the night
to secure his information.
The house was wrapt in sleep at eleven o’clock, and Klein read on.
At one o’clock he heard a tap on the door. His room was next to Mister
Haynes, and thinking that Posser could not have returned at so early
an hour and that it was Haynes who was knocking, he opened the door.
And to his amazement and delight, for he saw success shining on his
comrade’s honest face, he admitted Posser.
“I’ve got it!” whispered our good Posser.
“Wait,” said Klein, in the same tone, and kicking off his slippers he
went into the corridor, softly opened Haynes’s door and listened. He
heard the regular breathing of the reporter, closed the door as softly
and came back.
“Now tell me,” he said quickly.
Posser explained how he had walked boldly into the camp in the
darkness, and how he had reached the shed, crawling through the
sentries, and had seen “the most remarkable machine that the war has
produced.”
“It is a triumph, my dear Klein,” he said, his eyes shining, “I have
in my head,” he tapped the good, broad German forehead, “the whole
construction of this engine. In twelve hours I will give you a drawing
and notes which----”
“Hush, hush,” said Klein, for in his natural excitement, Posser’s
voice had risen.
“Here is the rough idea.” Posser rapidly sketched a now familiar shape
briefly, outlined with rough squares and oblongs the position of the
engine and the guns.
“I will keep this,” said Klein. “You must get to work at once, my dear
fellow, and give us a more detailed drawing. But first we will drink
mutual congratulations.”
Klein got out a bottle of champagne, pulled out the cork, and these