The adventures of Heine
I will look you up indeed and some day you will look up to me. How
dearly I should love to repeat this _bon mot_ to his face.
Two days after my meeting I decided to call upon him at the War
Office. It had not been my first visit, and so I knew the ropes, and
having written my name on a slip of paper I was shown up to his
office, a very small, unimportant apartment, showing that, whatever
Major Haynes might be in his own estimation, he was jolly little
thought of by the Army Council, for there was nothing in his room in
the way of pictures except a plain map which, incidentally, I glanced
at and comprehended as I entered. It was a map of Europe.
“Sit down, Heine,” said the Major, who was writing at his desk, “help
yourself to the cigarettes--those on the left. The others are
poisoned. I keep them for generals.”
Such frivolity! Would any major officer in the German army dare speak
of the members of the Great General Staff with such disrespect? Would
they not stand stiffly to attention and refer to them as “Illustrious
General So-and-so,” or “The Noble and Illustrious Well-Born General
So-and-so”?
He finished writing, laid down his pen, and resting his elbows on the
arms of his chair, dropped his chin upon his clasped hands, all the
time surveying me with an inscrutable smile, as though--and I believe
this to be the truth--recognizing that in me he had a devilish stiff
proposition, as the English say.
“Well, Heine,” he said, at last, “how is the Kaiser?”
My blood boiled up to my head.
“Don’t blush,” he said. (Such a cad!)
“How is old von Hindenburg and the shining German sword?”
“Major Haynes,” I said coldly, “if you think I am not a German then
you are insulting me. If you believe I am a German, then your remarks
are both insulting and hurtful to my dignity and my loyalty and my
sense of decency.”
“Quite right,” said Major Haynes; and then after a pause, “I don’t
know what to do about you, Heine. If I send you to America you will be
torpedoed. If you get to America you will probably be executed. If I
send you back to Germany you will starve to death.”
I made no reply.
“If I leave you here----” Major Haynes went on, helping himself to a
cigarette. I noticed it was one of those which he said he used to
poison generals, so I presume it was the best kind. The inhospitality
of the man and his boorishness appalled me. “If I leave you here,” he
said, “you will probably be bombed to death. If I put you in an
internment camp you will be an expense to the Government. If I have
you shot----” He paused.
I turned white with anger.
“I trust you are not going to do anything so stupid owlish as that,
Major Haynes,” I said, “I have done my best to prove to you that I am
a perfectly innocent Swiss.”
“Chilian,” he corrected, “but it doesn’t matter. There are lots of
Swiss-Chilians in London just now, and quite a few Swedish-Turks. No,
I don’t think I will have you shot, you may be very useful.”
“Any service I can render to you, Major Haynes,” I said, with my
native politeness, “I shall be happy to give. Unfortunately, I am----”
I shrugged my shoulders, introducing rather cleverly a suggestion of
my helplessness.
“Cheer up, Heine,” he said with a cynical smile--there’s something
about that man’s smile I don’t like--“I think you can give me the
greatest assistance. Let’s put all our cards on the table,” he leant
across the desk. “I know that you were for some time the head of the
German Intelligence Department in London. Take that sad, pained smile
off your face, and behave. As I told you before, you weren’t
dangerous, because your methods were somewhat transparent and I don’t
think (you will excuse my directness) that you are a very clever man.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” I said stiffly.
“I think, as a matter of fact,” Major Haynes went on, not noticing the
interruption, “you have too good a heart to be a spy. Beneath that
outrageous waistcoat of yours, and the three or four undershirts which
I am sure you are wearing, beats a kindly heart.” I am recalling his
indelicate words from memory that you may learn what type of
“gentleman” an English officer can be. In honest truth, he was wide of
the mark, for I had only two undershirts on, the weather being warm.
“Now with much of your work,” Major Haynes went on, “I am well
acquainted. I have your code,” he opened the drawer of his desk and
took out a very familiar book, and if I changed colour, who shall
blame me? “When I say your code, I mean the code of your kind. I have
a list of your sub-agents, such of them as are still alive,” he said,
smiling pleasantly. “I know all about your Kriesslers and your Kahns.
I know your newspaper advertisement code; in short, I know almost
everything about your business”--he paused--“except one thing.”
“And what is that, Major Haynes?” I asked innocently.
“It is the one thing I have never been able to discover,” said the
Major, putting the tips of his fingers together and looking down at
them.
I pricked up my ears. What was it this clever fellow did not know?
“Many things, I should imagine,” I said with a sneer, speaking of
course to myself and sneering inwardly.
“It has come to my knowledge,” he said, speaking slowly, and raising
his eyes to mine in a steady, hypnotizing way, “that the agents of
your--what shall I call it?--department have a code whistle which is
instantly obeyed. At the sound of that whistle you are ordered, under
whatever conditions you are working, whatever you may be doing,
however you may endanger yourselves by so acting, to repair instantly
to the spot from whence that whistle is blown, and report yourself for
duty to the man who has given the signal.”
I felt my flesh grow rough like a goose’s, and my hair almost stood on
end. So precious a secret is the danger whistle that I have never
referred to it before. It is the last piece of information given to
the closely-examined candidate for the service after he has passed to
the Executive. Only two men in England had the authority to use that
signal, or the means wherewith such a call could be made. Every agent
is pledged that, whatever he divulges, that secret at least shall go
down to the grave with him.
It was that danger whistle that brought about the rescue of Rosenberg
when he was captured on 42nd Street, New York, when he was carrying
despatches from von Papen to the Ambassador. That danger whistle,
sounded in the courtyard of Brixton Prison by one of my agents who had
himself arrested for debt in order to reach the interior, made Kruhn,
waiting trial for espionage, hang himself by his bootlaces.
Major Haynes was watching me keenly.
“Well?” he asked.
“I am surprised you should tell me of this, Major Haynes,” I said with
splendid self-possession. “I have never heard of this signal or
whistle, or call it what you will.”
He rose from the table and came over to me.
“Stand up,” he said.
I obeyed him.
“Stand against that wall.”
I did not think of expostulating. There was something in his voice
which dispersed all inclination to argue.
“Put out your arms,” he said. “I am going to search you.”
He went through all my pockets with extraordinary rapidity--I think he
must have been a pickpocket before he joined the Intelligence
Department--and of course he found nothing.
“Open your waistcoat,” he said.
I obeyed. He ran his hand lightly over my shirt.
“Tell me if I tickle you,” said he; but I was in no mood for jesting,
for under my arm he found the little pocket and the flat gold tube
that I dreaded he would find. He laid it on the table curiously.
“So that’s the whistle, eh? A peculiar note, I suppose. Now tell me,
what is the code. Four short blasts and a long one?”
I smiled.
“That is merely a little trinket which was given me by a lady friend?”
I said.
“Why do you wear it sewn into your shirt?”
“To have it near my heart,” I said. “I am surprised at you, Major
Haynes.”
“I am surprised at you, Heine,” he said, “if you keep your heart under
your right arm-pit. You are a physical monstrosity--but I suppose you
are one of those curious birds that carry their hearts in their
sleeves. Come now, Heine, what is the code?”
“Major Haynes,” I replied earnestly, “if you were to give me a hundred
thousand pounds at this moment----”
“Which I am very unlikely to do,” said Major Haynes.
“If you were to give me a million pounds,” I said desperately, “I
could not tell you, because I don’t know.”
He walked back to the other side of the table and sat down. For some
time he did not speak. He lit another cigarette and looked out of the
window, clasping his chin.
“You are a German, Heine, aren’t you,” he said at last, “and I am an
Anglo-Scot, with a touch of American. Generally speaking, I am
British. Now here is the situation,” he said, tapping on the blot-pad,
“you are a good German patriot (to my eternal credit, I didn’t deny
it!), I am a British patriot. Now, which of us is the more devoted to
his Motherland?”
It was one of those kind of stupid questions to which there is no
answer. I had quite recovered my notorious sang-froid, and I laughed.
“Now, how can I answer that, my dear Major Haynes?” I said humorously.
“Supposing I were a German, which of course I am not, and suppose you
are a Briton, which of course you are, how can we determine the extent
of our various country-loving? Goethe says----”
“Blow Goethe!” said Major Haynes rudely. “Can you answer my question?”
“Major Haynes,” I replied, “I cannot.”
“Very good,” said Major Haynes. He looked at his watch. “You will not
tell me the code.”
“I know of no code,” I replied firmly.
He picked up the little gold whistle and put it in his pocket.
“Very good,” he said again, “you will report to me here at 1.30 this
afternoon. You will be immediately admitted to my presence.”
“And then?” I said in trepidation.
“Then I will give you the finest lunch you have had for some time and
a bottle of the best _liebfraumilch_ procurable in London.”
I went down the marble stairs of the War Office smiling. If this
fellow imagined that he could buy my so precious secret for a lunch,
or that he could make me so beastly intoxicated on the wine of my
country, he was a bigger fool than I had imagined.
No sooner was I ushered into his office at 1.30 than he took his hat
and his stick from a peg on the wall and taking me affectionately by
the arm he led me out into Whitehall, hailed a taxi, and we were
driven to a restaurant in the Strand, where an excellent repast was
waiting.
“I have no doubt you think we are lunching luxuriously,” he said, as
we sat at the table, “but as this is the last meal that either you or
I may ever have in this world I think we may risk being considered
extravagant.”
“These are strange words, Major Haynes,” I said.
“Very strange,” he replied with his foolish smile. “Wine, Heine? Drink
hearty or, as they say, ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we
die.’ Cheerioh!”
Throughout that amazing meal, I was puzzling my brains. I think I may
say without undue conceit that I can grasp a situation as quickly as
any man. I am, so to speak, up to the tricks of the game--and then
some. That is not low swank. We Germans say no more than we mean,
promise no more than we can perform, claim no more than we can
substantiate. That is why we are the most respected nation in the
world, and why the German sword, once drawn from its sacred scabbard
and brandished aloft, strikes terror to the heart of its soon-to-be
victims.
But despite my mind-ability I could only puzzle over his alarming
words and in the end find no solution to the mystery he had
propounded. The British are strange people with no sense of decency.
They frequently joke upon the most sacred subjects, and I have already