The adventures of Heine
it hoped to counteract the well-organized and foreseeing sagacity of
our bureau. I can prove that this same Haynes, an English gentleman
forsooth, was no better than an associate of common blackguards,
ruffians, and cutpurses of the worst description.
Such is English gentlemanliness!
What a scandal there would be revealed if on a certain day in 1916, I
could have walked into this man’s club where he sat with the pampered
aristocracy of England and have denounced him!
“Behold!” I would say, “a man who is little better than a common cad
of the golf links, and I can prove every word, gentlemen of the
British aristocracy!”
How sensational! But, alas! I had higher game than Mr. Haynes. I had
the interest and the future of the Fatherland to consider and these
matters were of infinitely greater importance than a thousand Haynes.
You must know that when I speak of the “well-organized and far-seeing
sagacity” of the German Intelligence Service, I am not in any way
exaggerating. For how many years had we been preparing for this most
gigantic and world-shocking conflict? How minutely were laid the plans
of the Intelligence Department! With what care and thoroughness and
brainy preparation did we patiently fashion the pieces of the game!
When I came to England I took charge, as I think I have explained
before, of the hundred and one departments which were in some way or
other associated with Intelligence. My task was to co-ordinate the
whole of the common service of Deutschstrum, to gather up all the
strings in my own fingers and to pull them each to serve the higher
purpose. One of the most important branches of our work had been
inaugurated ten years before I came to England, and I think if you
spent the whole of those ten years guessing you would not divine how
the business which had been established was to serve Germany in her
hour of need.
Perhaps you have noticed, you who have been to London, a modest, yet
substantial, building in Jermyn Street, which is known as the Jermyn
Credit Bank. It is, or was, a very unpretentious and serious building
with a modest facia and a small but imposing interior. If you had not
seen the place you would not fail to have seen the advertisements of
the bank which ran consistently in most of the English papers.
The advertisement was as follows:
Gentlemen of position, officers of both services and officials of the
British or Indian Civil Service may arrange loans on note of hand with
the Jermyn Credit Bank. No security required. Interest 7 per cent. per
annum. Apply by letter, which will be treated in the strictest
confidence, to the Secretary, Jermyn Credit Bank, 642, Jermyn Street,
St. James.
There was nothing flamboyant about the advertisement any more than
there was about the building. The advertisement occupied a space of
two inches in most of the newspapers, but generally in the more
respectable and conservative of newspapers. Those who called by
appointment were treated with the greatest courtesy. They were ushered
into the luxurious room of the manager, the needs of the client were
discussed, the question of security delicately touched upon--there is
always some security to be had even though the advertisement made a
point that none was required--and loans were arranged, very often for
considerable amounts.
The bank was very popular with officers of the army and navy. Men who
found themselves in a tight corner blessed the name of the Jermyn
Credit Bank. If, when their bills became due, there was any difficulty
about payment there was certainly no difficulty about renewing the
document on a very reasonable basis.
Sometimes, of course, it happened that the bank manager, a polite and
charming gentleman who was, alas! killed on the western front by the
treacherous English, could not, with all the best will in the world,
oblige the client. Needy professional men, doctors, lawyers and
unimportant journalists would learn that even with their security the
golden coffers of the Credit Bank remained tightly closed. But to any
officer, especially to an officer who had the magic letters P.S.C.
after his name, or any head of a civil department or any naval
gentleman, who had won the slightest distinction and promotion in his
profession, might be assured that if not the whole, at least part of
his necessities were met.
The business grew to an extraordinary extent. One officer would
introduce another. Mr. Rostenberg, the manager, would occasionally
give little dinner parties, to which he would invite one of his more
exalted clients, on the understanding that he would bring two or three
friends.
I cannot say that the business was particularly prosperous from our
point of view, but there were singularly few bad debts, and I do not
suppose it cost the Fatherland more than £10,000 a year to secure an
intimate financial history of every officer serving in the army, plus
a pull over such of the bank’s clients as were in its debt. For men
who borrow money are very grateful and a grateful man is talkative,
especially if conversation is assisted by a little Veuve Clicquot and
a chic dinner, and what is more natural than a man should talk about
his brother officers and their financial positions?
The bank had the reputation--so valuable--that it never dunned its
clients or brought an action against even the most backward and
unfaithful amongst them, and such a reputation helped considerably
when war broke out and Mr. Rostenberg was called upon by his directors
to resign immediately owing to his German origin and his place was
taken by Mr. Mathew Ritten, a neutral gentleman of great integrity.
As the English army increased so increased the business of the bank,
for young officers are impecunious all the world over. I am not going
to say what steps were taken to secure information. This, however, I
am willing to confess, that much news came to me which, otherwise, I
should not have heard, for Mr. Ritten gave little dinners and went to
clubs and met many men who were glad to talk to one who was so
enthusiastically an anti-German, and I, Heine, sitting in my little
Fleet Street office would receive short notes in the code and would
learn that the 10th Blankshires and the division to which the 10th
Blankshires were attached were being withdrawn to General Reserve, and
the 19th Wessex were training for attack behind the lines and being
taught by means of models the topography of the country to the east of
Lens.
For myself, I never went to the bank. If you had told me of its
existence I should have expressed surprise and wonder. I saw the
advertisements as everybody else saw them, but to me, Mr. Ritten was a
name and nothing more. We Germans have the reputation of devoting too
much attention to insignificant details, but let me tell you, my
friends, that the might of Germany was built upon details, expanded on
details, and came to its highest and most world-defying decision in
August, 1914, upon the faith which we had in the detailed plan.
Though I despised the English Secret Service, though I could shrug my
shoulders and snap my fingers at these amateurs, I was too much of a
German to rush bull-headed into danger. Realizing that Mister, or
Major, Haynes, was a man of duplicity and low cunning, I purposely
avoided associating myself in the slightest degree with the Jermyn
Credit Bank, though it was originally the idea of those who sent me to
England, that I should appear in London in the capacity of manager of
that bank.
Happily, I was too shrewd a fellow to agree to such stupidity. There
is a certain bat-eyed ignorance about the officials who direct the
Intelligence in Berlin, which is deplorable and incomprehensible. That
they need new blood at Headquarters, is acknowledged all over the
world. If they had had a man there with a knowledge of England and
America, a man who himself had carried out difficult and dangerous
tasks, and who, by reason of his long service in the department, was
well entitled to greater promotion than that which was grudgingly
given to him: if, in fact, they had such a man as I, many of the
mistakes which disfigured the administration during the years of war
would have been avoided.
They chose for me the most incompetent of helpers. They sent me all
sorts of impossible assistants, with whom I would not associate my
name and my proud record. They foisted upon me unskilful enthusiasts
who were often sent to England without any notification coming to me,
and these, in most cases, were detected and suffered at the hands of
the law. Do not think that I have any axe to grind. I am only
concerned with the welfare of the Fatherland, but there were moments
when even I, faithful servant and obedient subordinate of higher
authorities, “kicked myself against the pricks,” as the English say,
at the absurd lack of comprehension and seriousness which was shown.
One afternoon I had returned from the country, where I had been
superintending the erection of a temporary wireless plan, when my
office-boy informed me that a man was waiting to see me. I found him
sitting on the edge of the table, smoking the stump of a cigar. He was
a tall man, rather broad, and by the fact that he was wearing his hat
in my office, and that the room was filled with the rank smell of
tobacco, I gathered that he was an American of the lowest class. He
was dressed expensively but loudly. He wore a great bunch of seals
which dangled from a broad silk ribbon, and had two diamond rings upon
the little finger of his right hand. He nodded as I came in, but did
not attempt either to take off his hat or to stand on his feet. For
the moment I did not recognize him.
“May I ask to what I owe the honour of this visit?” I demanded
politely.
“Cut all that out, Heine,” he said coarsely. “Why, don’t you recognize
your old friend, Big Jim?”
“Don’t call me Heine,” I said hastily.
I recognized the man at once as one of the private detective staff of
the Hamburg-American line. It had been my duty to keep an eye upon
undesirable characters, and Big Jim Riley was as well known to New
York as he was to London as a “con.” man. He used to work the boats of
the Hamburg-American line in the days before the war, and for some
time was one of a gang of crooks that spent their lives crossing and
re-crossing the Atlantic.
Though we had many complaints about the man, he had too big a pull in
New York for us to interfere with him. I had lived with Big Jim and
his gang in that spirit of camaraderie and tolerance which typifies
the attitude of a shrewd German detective to the criminal classes.
“Why, so it is,” I said heartily, “but you must not call me Heine,
Jim.”
“Ain’t you a Dutchman?” he said.
“I never was a German!” I doubt whether he saw the subtle correction.
“I am a Chilian and I am happy to say that I hate the Germans and all
their work.”
Big Jim’s eyes opened wide.
“Well, now, if that don’t beat the band,” he said, “so that’s your
name, is it?”
He pointed to the name that was painted on the glass panel of the
door, and I nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I guess those people in New York have made some
mistake. Pretzl told me I was to come along and report to you and that
you might put some good work in my way. I don’t care what it is,” he
said, swinging his legs and puffing away at his cigar, “anything short
of a business that will send me to the Chair is good enough for me.”
“My dear Jim,” I said mildly. “I am afraid Herr Pretzl is under
altogether a wrong impression.” How I cursed that interfering swine
von Pretzl who had placed my life and freedom in the hands of a common
confidence man! I have frequently warned von Papen that Pretzl was an
old woman and a fool. How much was I justified!