The adventures of Heine
We drank a bottle together, and then he told me his plans. The
difficulty of getting out of England is briefly to _get_ out of
England, to secure a place on board a ship is well-nigh impossible,
unless you are vouched for by Foreign Office officials, whilst the
punishment for stowing away is so heavy that few of the neutral
captains care to take the risk of allowing their ships to go out of
port, without conducting an independent search.
Herr Prinz, however, had received a message from his father by some
secret cipher to the effect that four times each month a submarine
would come in-shore off the Scottish coast. He was to reach a deserted
part of the foreshore, flash a signal from an electric lamp and a boat
would be put off to pick him up. This system would be put into
operation the moment the Herr Doctor Councillor of State, Prinz,
learnt from me that he was free.
“Content yourself, my dear lieutenant,” I said, “you are as good as in
the Fatherland. I will notify your august parent, to whom I trust you
will remember me forthwith.”
“I have already notified him and I desire that you should not
communicate,” he said, so I took no further steps.
There was no difficulty in getting the young man to Scotland, and I
ventured to take a little holiday and accompany him. After all, one
should show a little attention to men who have fought and bled for
one’s country, especially when they are nearly related to councillors
of State who, if not noble, are exalted personages on the way to
nobility.
I supplied the young man with passports and various documents to
identify him, and left him (with £50 which I advanced out of my
private purse) at an hotel in a small town not many miles from the
west coast of Scotland, under the care of a good German head-waiter
who promised to look after the lad. And there I thought I had heard
the last of him, and he had gone out of my mind, until I received an
urgent message from Scotland saying that the submarine had not come,
and asking me for another £50.
I went straight up to Scotland and found the Herr Lieutenant living at
the hotel and very weary.
“It is very strange, Heine, I have been at the appointed place every
night, on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th, I have flashed my lamp and
nothing has happened.”
He told me he had waited on one occasion for four hours on the beach;
on another he waited till daybreak.
“It is very extraordinary,” I said. “When you fixed this scheme with
His Excellency the Councillor of State, Doctor Prinz, was it by
writing?”
“By secret cipher, and what is more, the message was written in secret
ink.”
“Did it reach you without having been opened?”
“Yes,” replied the Herr Lieutenant; “I have one of the letters in my
pocket now.”
He took the letter and opened it. Apparently it was an innocent letter
such as an affectionate father might write to his prisoner son.
“Now wait,” said the young officer. He sent for a glass of milk and
immersed the letter, then held it before the fire to dry.
There instantly appeared string after string of words which were
meaningless to me, apparently written in brown ink.
“I carry the code in my head,” he said.
I looked at the envelope, carrying it to the light. I noticed that the
stamp and the postmark had been torn off and inwardly I praised the
young man for his discretion. The flap was stuck down, though it had
of course been cut at the top where the letter was taken out, and to
all intents it had not been tampered with. I examined it with a
magnifying glass, however, and saw that suspicious gum line which can
always be seen in a letter that has been opened and surreptitiously
closed.
“This envelope has been steamed,” I said, “the letter has been read,
replaced, fastened down by a kind of spirit gum which the censors use,
and smoothed with a hot iron.”
“How do you know?” he asked in alarm.
“I have opened too many myself,” said I, with a smile, “not to
recognize the signs.”
“But supposing they had brought up the secret writing,” he said, “they
could not understand the code.”
I thought for a moment and presently I said:
“There is only one person in the world who can read that code and that
person is a woman. More than that, Herr Lieutenant,” I added proudly,
“that woman is the dearest friend I have in the world, Miss Kathleen
O’Mara of Chicago, U.S.A.”
And I told him something of this delightful girl’s history, of how her
father had been a Fenian and how she was bitterly anti-English. She
had taken up codes and ciphers as a hobby, and she had come to be so
expert that you were always reading in the Chicago papers articles
either written by her or about her. There was not a cryptograph that
ever appeared in the agony column of a London newspaper that she
couldn’t discover.
“You said her name was O’Mara,” said the Herr Lieutenant thoughtfully;
“is she a tall, slim girl, with dark hair and blue eyes?”
It was my turn to be amazed.
“Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “even your illustrious father could not
have described her more accurately.”
“And is her husband a tallish man with bristling black eyebrows and
fierce black moustache?”
I drew myself up stiffly.
“The lady’s husband, Herr Lieutenant, you see before you in prospect.
She is unmarried.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
“Well, then, it is not the same lady. This was a Mrs. Hagan, the wife
of Captain Hagan of the United States Secret Service.”
I stepped back and clasped my brows. Now I remembered the man! Hagan
from Washington! And she had married him. By heavens! When I think of
the depth of woman’s duplicity I could despise the race. She, the
Irish patriot, the strafer of England, to send that man to me in the
hope that I should commit myself! Thou perfidious betrayer of one who
entertained for thee naught but the tenderest, holiest feelings! Oh,
what a low woman!
“I see it all now, Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “this woman was brought
down to your camp to unravel your cipher. When did you receive it?”
He thought a moment.
“The night she left.”
“Now you understand,” I cried passionately, “no wonder you have waited
in vain upon the beach! No wonder the four submarines disappeared! No
wonder you were allowed to remain at liberty! These cursed,
treacherous British! Was there ever a nation that more deserved to be
obliterated?”
I made my plans quickly, as is my wont. Before leaving that night I
gave the Herr Lieutenant another £50, making £100 he had received
since his escape.
I myself was in considerable danger and if Hagan suspected me, the
traitorous Kathleen knew me. I sent a man especially to Dublin and
discovered that they were staying at an hotel in Sackville Street and
that so far from Hagan having arrived recently, both he and his wife
had been in Dublin for six months and they were undoubtedly in the pay
of the British Government.
Of the events which occurred on Easter Monday in Dublin, I do not
propose to speak. I sent very full reports to the Government, which
may be read with profit by any who have the entrée to the archives in
Wilhelmstrasse.
Two days after the rebellion started I saw Hagan and his wife in
Regent Street, they were looking in the window of a jeweller’s shop.
With me to think is to act. I stepped up to her and offered her my
hand.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Hagan,” I said.
“Sure, ’tis the little Dutchman, Mr. Heine,” she smiled. “You know my
husband?”
“I have that pleasure.” I bowed stiffly and hid my emotions behind an
inscrutable face.
“And what are you doing in an enemy’s country?” asked Kathleen
innocently.
“Enemy!” I laughed bitterly. “There was a time, madam, when there was
only one enemy for the honorary secretary of a German-Gaelic club and
that was--England!”
“There is only one enemy for me now,” she said, gripping her husband’s
arm foolishly, “and that is Theo’s enemy. Sure, a wild young girl
never knows her own mind, Mr. Heine, and she runs this way and that
way with divil an idea what she is seeking. I guess I was seeking
Theo, and now I’ve found him I have stopped hustling.”
We exchanged a few words. I strolled with them to Piccadilly Circus
and they accepted my invitation to lunch at Prince’s.
“By the way,” I said in the midst of the meal, “do you still keep up
your cryptograph investigations?”
I thought I saw a little look pass between her and her husband and
then she smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she said, she may have said “sure” (I will not swear as to
the exact words of any dialogue which I report), “oh, yes, faith it’s
highly amusing.”
“And profitable, too, I suppose,” I said carelessly, helping myself to
some celery.
“Faith, it is that,” she said; “many is the laugh I have had going
through silly ciphers that come from Germany--bad cess to the place,
and from Scotland too,” she said.
You observe she was shameless! There was no flush of guilt, no
faltering, no lowering of eyes. She stood detected, blatantly
confessed, an agent of the English!
“When Theo came over to look after the American crooks in London I
came with him,” she said, “that is how I got to know those boys at
Scotland Yard, and I sort of drifted into the work and took to it like
a duck to water.”
My hand was trembling, I could not help it. Righteous indignation
shook me from head to foot. I could have boxed her ears, but for my
German chivalry and the presence of her husband, who might have been
distressed at such a display of emotion, though I am sure he would
have agreed with me had he only known the amount of money I had spent
on that frail creature in flowers and theatre tickets and candy, to
say nothing of postage stamps.
“They would amuse you, Heine,” she went on, “especially the queer
things they say about you. There was a fellow the other day got a
letter, phwat was the boy’s name, Theo?”
“Prinz,” said her husband, who hitherto had not spoken a word.
“Sure that was his name,” said the girl, “’twas from his old dub of a
father and written in a very simple cipher.”
“A child could have read it,” agreed her husband, “and it was all
about you,” he nodded to me.
“It said go and see Heine,” said the girl. “Tell him your father’s a
prince, and if you haven’t got the pluck to do that, say you are the
son of Colonial Officer Prinz, and he will do anything for you. There
was a long bit about the lie he had to tell you. About submarines
going up to Scotland to fetch him. When we told the commandant he let
the boy go, he was safe. He was arrested yesterday and his father has
been interned.”
“His father interned?” I gasped; “who was his father?”
Kathleen looked at her husband and Hagan spoke.
“He was the head-waiter at the hotel where the boy was staying,” he
said, “’twas his way of getting the lad a vacation.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE JERMYN CREDIT BANK
Theories and lofty idealism have ever been qualities identified with
Germanism. We Germans despise duplicity and double dealing. In our
bluff, hearty way, we are impatient with the jiggling nonsense of
diplomacy and the shining sword of Michael cuts through the cringing
wall of our enemies, opening the way to the rich streams of kultur
which are dammed in ever-increasing volume by the banks which the
envy, barbarism, and frivolity of our enemies erect.
There is a saying in my country: “Trust an Englishman, admire a
Frenchman, learn from a Russian, but never argue with an American.” I
think it is the deceit of the English race, the mean treachery
amounting to sneakiness which so appals we Germans.
I have previously related a certain adventure with a person called
Haynes who insinuated himself into my office disguised as a
journalist. I learnt that he was a member of the ridiculous secret
service which the English had improvised during the war and with which