The adventures of Heine
up,” said I, and five minutes later the “commercial travellers” were
shown in to me and introduced themselves as representatives of the
Incorporated Carolina Cottonfields Company.
“I am afraid I am rather tired to-night,” said I; “but as you seem in
a hurry to do business I will compare your quotations.”
When the door had shut upon the waiter who had shown them in we got to
business. One, of course, was my friend Posser, and the other was
young Klein, one of those brilliant children of the Fatherland, who
had been in the service of the department ever since he left
Heidelberg.
“We are ordered to place ourselves at your disposal, Herr Heine,” said
Klein, “and we have been here two days investigating the conditions.”
“Are they favourable?” I asked.
“Extremely so,” said Posser; “but you will have an opportunity of
judging for yourself.”
We exchanged experiences, and half an hour later I rang the bell for
the waiter and my visitors were shown out. After I had dined I left
the hotel for the rendezvous I had made outside the post-office.
It was now raining heavily, and I would like to have taken a taxi, but
Klein suggested that we should make our way on foot to our
destination, which proved to be a very small hall in some unsavoury
part of Manchester. It was a dilapidated building, the entrance door
being flush with the street and had the appearance of being a mission
hall dedicated to one of those dour and unhappy sects which find a
virtue in the very dreariness of their environment.
Two nights a week it was used for religious services, but on the other
nights it was let out to whosoever cared to hire the place. On this
occasion some sort of Labour meeting seemed to be in progress and a
small bill attached to an inner baize door leading to the hall itself
announced an address by Mr. William Craigmair on “Labour and the War.”
The hall was sparsely filled and I do not suppose there were more than
fifty people present when we walked in and took our seats. The man who
was speaking was of the usual demagogic type, loud-mouthed, illogical,
full of bitter jibes at Capitalism, which he said was the cause of the
war and at the bottom of the whole European crisis.
Klein nudged me.
“Imagine this in Berlin!” he whispered.
I nodded. It was indeed pathetic, and only shows how wholly
inefficient the English police service is that it allowed such men to
be at large.
I sat through the tirade, a little bored if the truth be told, because
this was to be the least interesting part of the evening.
After the meeting was over Klein told us to go out and wait for him,
and presently he rejoined us accompanied by a man whom I recognized as
the speaker, Mr. Craigmair. He introduced us as sympathizers with the
cause of Labour, and I congratulated this gaunt Englishman upon his
“wonderful rhetoric,” though worse balderdash I had never heard in my
life.
The man’s harsh arrogance melted under this well-directed stream of
Teutonic flattery and he became almost human in the glow of our
admiration.
“I am much obliged to you, gents,” he said, grinning; “speakin’
impartially, I can say it wasn’t a bad speech for a self-taught man.
Any Sunday afternoon you happen to be in Finsbury Park you will find
me there addressing the proletariat.”
“Finsbury Park?” said I. “Do you come from London?”
“Yes,” said the man. “Our comrade here,” he nodded to Klein,
“persuaded me to go round delivering a few addresses to the working
classes. I’ve got a lot of friends in this part of the world,” he went
on, “and you mustn’t judge me on the audience I got to-night. I am
addressin’ the Junior Operatives’ League to-morrow and then you _will_
see an audience if you like.”
I murmured my intention of being present, expressed my sympathy with
the Labour movement, and invited him to meet me at lunch on the
following day.
When we had parted Klein told me that he had first heard the man
addressing meetings in London, either at Finsbury or in Hyde Park.
“He was such a fanatic, and he had, moreover, such a convincing way
that I thought we might find him useful. I know you think what he says
is nonsense,” Klein went on, addressing me; “but what is illogical to
us is sound sense to the common workman. To-morrow’s meeting, for
example, is of the greatest importance to us. The Junior Operatives
have threatened to strike against the advice of their Trade Union, and
as they have a working arrangement with the Carters’ Union, a strike
would be of the utmost importance. Whilst I do not expect we can do
very much in the early stage of the war to bring about a general
stoppage of labour, we can embarrass the Government, and who knows how
these little labour troubles may develop!”
I quite agreed with Klein, who is a psychologist of a very high order,
in addition to being well born, his mother being a
Frenheim-Hazebrucken, and her sister being married to Graf von
Metzenheim, an illustrious gentleman with whom I once had the honour
of taking wine.
Mr. Craigmair came to lunch the next day. In order not to excite
attention I arranged with him to meet me at Lytham, and there we spoke
frankly and freely. I told him how intensely interested we all were in
the Labour movement, and I pointed out that this war might be brought
to an end if some great leader arose from the people and seized his
opportunity.
“For, Mr. Craigmair,” said I, “what is war but a negation of all law?
Is it better that a few miserable capitalists and statesmen should be
chagrined, or that thousands of human lives should be sacrificed in
the red-hot pit of battle? Is it not better that these money-grabbers
should be ruined than that innocent people who have no concern in the
war and have no hatred towards any nation should be compelled to walk
into the shambles like dumb beasts? If they tell you that it is not
patriotic to attempt to stop a war, even though you may be acting
contrary to the maddened sentiments of the majority of the people, you
answer that there is no such thing as patriotism, that we owe our
chief duty to humanity which knows no frontier and no language. For
what is there more precious in the soil of England than in the soil of
Germany or in France? Do they not equally produce wheat and sustain
life? Has anyone a more precious value than another? Does one handful
of red earth contain a magic quality which is not possessed equally by
a handful of any other kind of earth? Patriotism is the shibboleth of
the capitalist and the ambitious statesman, my friend, and he who
opposes his will to that hateful creed is doing magnificent work for
mankind.”
I spoke in this vein and I could see that Mr. Craigmair was impressed.
He made little notes with the stub of a pencil upon what looked like a
laundry-book, interrupting my remarks with uncouth sounds of
admiration and approval.
I gave him £50, as a mark of my interest in his work.
“And on the day you bring the people out on strike I will give you
another £50,” I said; “not because I am anxious to promote industrial
discord, but because war is against my principles as a hateful and an
unnecessary evil.”
I went back to my hotel feeling that I had done a good day’s work. I
did not attend the meeting of the Junior Operatives, but I am told
that it was very enthusiastic and that by an overwhelming majority the
men and the women members had decided to strike, and had received a
promise of support from the transport workers.
My interest in the Labour movement was momentarily diverted that same
day by the receipt of a message from London--it was brought by courier
on the afternoon train. The message was an important one, and had been
received by radio direct from Potsdam, and had been decoded in London
and transmitted to me for report.
News had reached Berlin that the firm of Pollygay & Moxon, a chemical
firm on the outskirts of Manchester, were engaged in conducting secret
experiments with a new bomb. The news had reached Berlin from a very
reliable source. I believed that it had been mentioned after dinner at
a well-known Bohemian club in London by an under-secretary in a
certain Government department. He had spoken rather boastfully of
“something” very deadly which the Government were experimenting with,
and our agent, who was one of the party to whom this was told,
discovered by a well-timed display of scepticism that the experiments
were being conducted by Pollygay & Moxon, and had sent forward the
information which, had I been in London, must have gone through me.
I put Klein on to the job immediately, and he called in the assistance
of Craigmair, who apparently was in touch with workmen in most of the
big factories, and fortunately numbered among his acquaintances a
wretched German named Bluer, who was employed in the laboratories of
the firm. As a matter of fact, we did not know of the existence of
Bluer, a dour, taciturn man of the hateful socialistic type who had no
patriotism, no love for his Fatherland, and was tainted with poisonous
internationalism.[5]
This renegade, living in England, with excellent opportunity for
serving the Fatherland, had never put himself into touch with the
superior authorities, nor had he offered the slightest assistance to
the officers of State, and it was only by accident that we discovered
his existence. However, his internationalism served one good purpose.
Though he might earn his livelihood by preparing deadly weapons for
the destruction of his fellow-countrymen, he was in theory an opponent
of war, and Mr. Craigmair, after a while, enlisted his sympathies and
introduced him to Klein, who said he was an author engaged in writing
a book painting war in its most horrible aspects. He also told him
that he was compiling as long and as formidable a list of deadly
weapons as he could secure.
“And when I have finished, my friend,” said Klein, “we shall have the
most damning indictment of warfare that the world has ever seen.”
This interested Bluer and it was not long before he told of the secret
experiments which had been conducted on the firm’s private range with
the new hand grenade.
“I don’t know how it is made,” said Bluer, “because that is not in my
department, and all the chemical experiments have been in the hands of
the head chemist, but my brother-in-law is a night watchman and has
the entry to the records office and I daresay I could give you a rough
idea of what it is like.”
I was overjoyed to hear this news, the more so since I had received
another, and even more urgent, message from Headquarters, telling me
to spare no expense or pains to secure a specification.
I now come to the remarkable part of this narrative, one which I
cannot tell without a little shudder. Bluer and his relative certainly
made an attempt to locate the specifications and drawings. I will do
this un-German Teuton (to whom Klein was eventually compelled to
reveal something of his designs) the credit of saying that he tried
his best--but for a week he and his relative were unsuccessful.
The manager was a gentleman named Tyson, or Tynson, a good-looking man
of about twenty-eight. Naturally, I had set my people to work to find
out all particulars about every member of the firm, and it was
reported to me that Tyson had been frequently seen in the company of a
very beautiful lady, named Miss Harrymore.
I put my own men on to discover something about Miss Harrymore, and
found that she was a stranger to Manchester; that she had only arrived
a month previous to my appearance on the scene; and that she occupied
a small house which she had taken furnished in the most fashionable
suburb of the Lancashire city.
She had come from London and almost immediately had made friends with
the manager. This in itself was to me a most remarkable circumstance,