Lady Torrent had her witnesses at hand, the friends who had kept her late in the afternoon and the two servants. Colonel Marchmont, on the other hand, disappointed his friends. He contented himself with reserving his defence. He was accordingly committed for trial at the next Old Bailey Sessions, which were to take place in a week, and admitted to bail.
During that week, of course, the scandal was immense and pleasurable. A season otherwise unremarkable received a tremendous fillip. The applications for seats at the trial made to Judges, High Sheriffs, Under-Sheriffs, Barristers and Cabinet Ministers, exceeded the applications made to the management at Covent Garden when Madame Jeritza was to sing.
Meanwhile Lady Torrent sat in her house in Emperor’s Gate, dramatising the wonderful moments when the Duchess of Saxemundham would take her stand in the witness-box and admit in low and broken tones that she had sent Colonel Marchmont to recover the compromising letters of her lover. For the hundredth time she reviewed her own position. She would be recalled to the witness-box.
“Letters? Certainly the Duchess’s love-letters were in the box too. I didn’t mention them, for the Duchess’s sake. How did I come to have them? I took them from a maid who had left the Duchess’s service and clearly meant to use them for blackmail. I expected the Duchess to dine with me on Thursday week, and I kept them locked in the box in order to return them to her with my own hand. Of course, if the love-letters were what Colonel Marchmont was after, let him return my necklace and I shall be happy to withdraw the charge against him.”
Her attitude would be incontestably magnanimous; and she would be repaid — how she would be repaid! — for twenty years of trying to become the real thing and not quite becoming it, for all her rebuffs, those witticisms at her expense, the little slaps in the face which she was going to return with one resounding smack which would bowl the beautiful idol of the day altogether off her pedestal and dismiss her to the obscurity of her island in the Hebrides.
Thus rejoicing, on the third day before the trial, Lady Torrent opened by chance the lowest drawer in the left-hand side of her knee-hole writing table; and sat like one turned into stone, and felt as cold as stone.
“Of course, I have been thinking of it too much,” she whispered to herself. “I see that box everywhere.”
But she could not convince herself by that argument. She dived for the box. It was real. It was locked. She shook it. Something rattled inside of it. She fetched the key and unlocked it. Her pearl necklace gleamed at her, but the letters were gone. She had been outwitted after all.
There was really only one course for Lady Torrent to take, to call for her motor-car, drive to her solicitor, and withdraw the charge of theft in terms as little humiliating as possible. But she could not do it. The triumph so earnestly prayed for — yes, she had dared to pray for it on her knees — must not be lost.
She consulted no one. She looked at her clock. It was three o’clock. She burnt the box, wrapped up the necklace, slipped on a cloche hat which came well down over her eyes, flung some furs about her shoulders, took a cab from the corner of the street to Victoria Station, travelled by the first available train to Brighton, pawned the necklace at a small jeweller’s in the King’s Road, and was back again at Emperor’s Gate in time to sit down to dinner with her husband.
“Three more days, my dear,” he said, looking at her tired face, “and this trial will be over, and we can get away to Switzerland for a holiday and a rest!”
“Yes, that will be pleasant,” she said. She added, with a timid glance: “Do you know, I think I can guess what Colonel Marchmont’s defence will be. He will say that the necklace is mislaid somewhere in the house.”
Sir William Torrent leaned back in his chair and blew out his lips, a sign with him of serious reflection.
“I hadn’t thought of that. We ought to have the house searched in the presence of witnesses; for that would be a suggestion, of course, that you had stolen it yourself to pay some secret debt,” he said, and he saw her face turn as white as the table-cloth.
A gasp of relief broke from her. She was thinking, “What a stroke of luck that I found the necklace to-day.”
While the knowledge of the shipwreck she had escaped was still overwhelmingly new to her, there came a knocking upon the door. A most polite inspector of police had come to make sure that the necklace had been nowhere mislaid.
“The positions in the world of yourself and Colonel Marchmont make this, of course, a most serious case, my lady,” he explained. “It is the intention of the Crown to take over the prosecution.”
The inspector’s statement troubled and even frightened Lady Torrent. This was a private feud between herself and the Duchess of Saxemundham. She had not calculated that since she had chosen to fight it out in the public courts, with a charge of theft against a third person as her weapon, the Crown would inevitably interfere.
Even when the inspector had departed satisfied that the necklace was not in the house, she was not altogether at her ease. She almost confided the truth to her husband. She began, and hesitated, and refrained; and this probably was the most fatal of all her mistakes in the affair.
For he was proud of the necklace. He had bought the pearls one by one, he had selected the design of the clasp, and when he went into the witness-box he was able to give so complete a description of it that any attempt to dispose of it undetected was quite out of possibility.
The little jeweller in the King’s Road read the description in his evening paper at Brighton. Now, he amongst jewellers was as Lady Torrent among Duchesses of Saxemundham. He too wanted prestige and recognition and the very best customers at his establishment; and here was his opportunity.
The next morning he tucked the necklace into his pocket, travelled up to London, and sent his name and the nature of his evidence in to the counsel for the defence.
VI
Toby Manister gave a glowing account of the sensation in court when, standing in the witness-box, he identified Lady Torrent as the woman who had pawned the necklace; of the modest demeanour of Colonel Marchmont; and of the collapse of Lady Torrent.
“But from what I could gather,” he added, “the Torrents are really much happier in their villa near Dieppe than they ever were while they were climbing. And as for the Duchess of Saxemundham, though she had lost the adoration of her Colonel, she received her compensations too; for the pair of them remained on the most affectionate terms for many years, and were often to be seen dining together at Claridge’s. Thus, as you will see, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
WAR NOTES
THE TWO FOLLOWING sketches were written very shortly after the war ended. Of one I knew; of the other I was informed; and it seemed to me that both occurrences were sufficiently striking to be worth preserving.
MATA HARI
THE GREAT WAR dispelled many illusions; amongst them that of the beautiful spy. It is the brutal truth that most of the regular women agents were of no use at all. There were upon our side, and no doubt upon the German side too, devoted women in a position to give real help, who did give it at great risk, and the names of only a few of these will ever be known. But the women of the restaurants and the continental resorts, the last word in clothes and sinuous grace, few though they were, did not really pay for their keep. The most notorious of them was no doubt the half-breed Javanese dancer Mata Hari. Yet the one startling feature of her career, and her only notable achievement, was the manner of her death.
Her real name was Margaret Gertrude Zeller. Born of a Dutch father and a Javanese mother, she had no doubt in her youth a kind of exotic beauty which appeals more to the Latin races than to the Anglo-Saxon. Certainly, though she danced in London, she made no success of it. Her triumphs, both on the stage and in her multitudinous affairs of the heart, were won upon the more favourable battle-ground of Paris. There the skin which we call yellow, would be more charmingly described as amber. There too, when youth has passed, valuable jewellery, beaut
iful dresses, and chic, plus a reputation for high affairs of love, will keep a star bright with its original lustre. Post-war French novelists have got to work upon her, idealizing both her beauty and her character and building up by their prose a sentimental monument to her memory. La Chevre aux Pieds d’Or makes her out a pretty child with an overwhelming terror of death and poverty. Les Defaitistes puts her on the level of the great Hetairae of Greece. But the sentimentalism of the French is a mere veneer upon the surface of the natures. When it comes to serious affairs no race is more practical, no race can be harder, and Mata Hari was treated in the end with the practical justice which she deserved. France gave to her her prestige, both as a dancer and as a harlot, covered her with jewels, and set her up in a little clandestine house in Passy; and in return for these favours she used her best efforts to ruin France for cash and did actually ruin one high official of that country, from whom in vain she endeavoured to extract information.
Mata Hari had one particular qualification for the work of a secret agent of Germany. Her profession, and the reclame she had acquired in it, made journeys to the neutral capitals of Europe natural, ordinary events. She was thus in a position, if she obtained information or documents of real value in Paris, to pass them on at first hand to Chiefs of German Espionage abroad. But as a matter of fact her information was futile; and her indiscretions glaring. It was, indeed, to her indiscretions that she owed her trial and execution.
Thus, in the summer of 1915, she was dancing in Madrid and at the same time associating far too openly with members of the very important branch of the German Secret Service established there under the German Naval, and the German Military, attache. The war had been in progress a year and there is little doubt that at this time the German Service had a fairly direct channel of communication with Berlin, across a strip of French railway from Port-Bou and through Switzerland. At the close of her engagement at Madrid, Mata Hari took ship for Holland on her way to Germany. By this time suspicions, entertained for some months, had gathered strength. Her ship was brought into Falmouth, and she herself escorted to London; where she had the amazing assurance to declare to Sir Basil Thomson, then Chief of the C.I.D., that she was indeed a spy, but a spy of France. She carried, however, nothing incriminating; she had not intended to land in England; and there was no definite evidence. It was not reasonable, therefore, to detain her. On the other hand, it would have been foolish to have helped to forward her on to Berlin; though the probability is that she was aware of the suspicions she had provoked, was thoroughly shaken, and was running to Germany for a refuge as well as for her reward. A compromise accordingly was reached. She was warned, with the utmost kindness, that her activities were known and she was sent back to Spain.
Upon her return to Madrid her position became tragic. She was frightened and she had no money. Like so many of her class, especially those who in their youth were poor, she had lived in a whirlpool of extravagance. Nothing was put by for the inevitable rainy day. At Madrid she applied for sufficient money to enable her to live out of France until the end of the war. But the Germans had no money for her either — or at all events yet. There was one last service to be fulfilled — one last journey to be made, and of all places, to Paris. Pressed for money, harried by fear, with the warning of Scotland Yard still in her ears, this unhappy creature set off by the train for France. She was searched, of course, at the French frontier town of Hendaye and some papers were found upon her. It is significant that the papers incriminated her fatally — and yet were of no real importance. The German Secret Service had little use for agents who had failed them and it is incredible that they should have imagined for an instant that Mata Hari carrying treasonable documents into France could have escaped detection. She was brought to Paris, condemned on July 25th, 1916, and executed on October 15th.
She is not a case for pity or sympathy. I can perfectly understand admiration and sympathy for a woman running grave risks for the sake of her own country, but when a great war is on foot, involving the fortunes of big nations and the lives and welfare of millions of individual people, the neutrals should keep quiet. It is not their affair, and if for the sake of cash they choose to meddle, they deserve the fate which the laws of nations assign for such crimes. The career of Mata Hari would be nothing but a sordid and commonplace incident but for her one bizarre and magnificent moment in the actual hour of her death.
She was driven out to Vincennes in the grey of an October morning. She had dressed herself with great care — a long chinchilla coat, a large hat, long gloves and her best suede shoes and stockings. Upon the journey she betrayed to the officer who was in the carriage with her no sign of fear. From the spot where the motorcar stopped to the centre of the parade ground where the execution post was fixed was some little distance. The file of soldiers with loaded rifles was already drawn up. The ground was wet and muddy. Mata Hari picked her way carefully and daintily over the ground, avoiding the pools as if she was afraid of soiling her shoes. When she got to the post the officer in charge of the file proposed to tie her up to it, but she refused. The officer, who was impressed by her courage, pleaded with her that it was the wisest thing to do. Tied up to the post it was certain that she would not be hurt, while if she remained quite free she might flinch or fall at the last moment, and her death not be as immediate as it ought to be. She was insistent, however, that she would not move. The officer then produced a folded handkerchief and proposed to blindfold her eyes, but Mata Hari again refused. The officer once more argued with her: she would know nothing about the execution if he bound her eyes. But she still refused, and since she made a point of the indignity of these precautions the officer in view of her bravery did not insist. She stood erect and quiet against the post whilst the officer gave his orders, and as the rifles of the firing-party were presented she suddenly flung back her chinchilla coat, showed her slender figure stark naked to the tops of her stockings, raised her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss at the soldiers. She fell dead the next instant. It was the death of a poor spy but a great cocotte.
THE CRUISE OF THE “VIRGEN DEL SOCORRO”
AMONGST THE MINOR adventures of the war, none was more gallant than the cruise of the Virgen del Socorro. To find its equal in audacity, one must go back to the clippers which in the North and South War of America ran — or tried to run — the blockade into Charleston. The facts are as follows:
During the round-up of the German troops in the Cameroons, certain bodies of them slipped across the border into Spanish Guinea and there laid down their arms. These men with the consent of the Allies were transported to Spain and interned in two camps, one at Pampluna and the other at the Northern Alcala. The officers were put upon parole and the private soldiers remained under the discipline of their officers. Lord Tennyson’s epigram, however, is as applicable to the German soldier as it was to Lancelot.
“His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
It was the German’s honour all through the war to break his word of honour if by so doing he could serve his country. It was not long, therefore, before plans of escape began to be concerted.
So far as the mere getting away from the camps was concerned very little difficulty was anticipated. Spanish sympathies were curiously divided during the first years of the war. What happened afterwards I do not know. I was transferred from the region of the Western Mediterranean in the spring of 1917 to a quite other part of the world. But in the first year this division existed. The captains of the ports and the navy on the one hand were notoriously pro-German. The chiefs of police on the other hand were for the most part in favour of the Allies. The army itself was rent by its internal dissensions. Its organization was inefficient, promotion was slow and went more by political favour than by military capacity; an appalling corruption had played havoc with its stores and ammunition; from General to private soldier, it knew as one man that it could take no distinguished part on either side of a European war; and its h
igh national pride forbade it to take any other. Its contending sections were looking for support for their different policies now to the Allies, now to Germany, both of which sides were for the moment sufficiently occupied. The Roman Catholic Church in Spain, with the exception of one or two outstanding figures like the Archbishop of Tarragona, was violent in its hope that the German cause, with all that it meant in the Rule of Authority and the relegation, perhaps for centuries, of popular control, would quickly prevail.
This division of opinion inevitably reacted upon the vigilance of the supervision supposed to be maintained by the Spanish authorities at the two camps of Pampluna and Alcala. The officers, for instance, got leave of absence without the slightest difficulty, and I saw parties of them from Pampluna in the restaurants of Barcelona and at the sea-coast resorts during the summer months, such as Arenys del Mar. Their difficulties, therefore, lay not in their disappearance from their camps, but in their subsequent escape from the coast of Spain and the ubiquity of the British patrols upon the high seas. A few secured false passports, and embarking on Spanish liners to South America, got quite as far as Gibraltar — which, according to the classic phrase, is another story. Captain Carl Koch, however, a reservist of the German Colonial Army at Pampluna, and Sergeant-major Gratschus at Alcala, worked out a likelier and bolder scheme. There were lying at that time in the harbour at Vigo two large German liners which had run into that neutral port for refuge upon the outbreak of war. These ships had their full crews and captains aboard. In fact, in every big or little port in Spain you would come across perhaps a small German sailing-ship, perhaps a cargo boat of 9,000 tons, perhaps a tramp steamer, and here and there a liner tied up against the quay, their fires out, waiting for the war to end. Nothing could have been more galling to these crews than to see English and French ships run in and out of the harbours on the ordinary business of commerce, and no stories of the damage done by the submarines, however startling, could have compensated them for their inactivity. Red-letter days no doubt they had. I remember myself putting into the harbour of Valencia the day after Warsaw fell and seeing two big German ships dressed in flags as if for a review. And another red-letter day was now to come for the liners at Vigo.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 831