That night I again saw Alexander. It was at supper at the Fritz, and he looked a fine figure of a man. I felt proud of the country which could produce such a type. Where, I ask you, amongst the paunchy English and the scraggy Scotch, with their hairy knees and their sheep-shank legs, could you find a counterpart of that beau sabreur? Cower treacherous Albion, shiver in your kilt, hateful Scotch (it is not generally known that the Royal and High-Born Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria is rightful King of Scotland), tremble, wild Wales, and unreliable Ireland, when you come in arms against a land which can produce such men as Alexander Koos!
I never saw a girl look more radiantly happy than did the young woman who was sitting vis-a-vis my friend. There was a light in her eye and a colour in her cheeks which were eloquent of her joy.
I saw Alexander afterwards. He came secretly to my room.
“Have you brought the blue print?” I asked. He shook his head smilingly. “Tomorrow, my friend, not only the blue print of the lathe, not only the new gun-mounting model, but the lady herself will come to me. I want your permission to leave the day after to-morrow for home. I cannot afford to wait for what the future may bring.”
“Can you smuggle the plans past the English police?” I asked, a little relieved that he had volunteered to act as courier on so dangerous a mission.
“Nothing easier.”
“And the girl—have you her passport?”
He nodded.
“How far shall you take her?”
“To Rotterdam,” he said promptly.
In a way I was sorry. Yes, I am sentimental, I fear, and “sentiment does not live in an agent’s pocket,” as the saying goes. I wish it could have been done without. I shrugged my shoulders and steeled my soul with the thought that she was English and that it was all for the Fatherland.
“You must come to the Cafe Riche tonight and witness our going,” said Alexander; “you will observe that she will carry a leather case such as schoolgirls use for their books and exercises. In that case, my friend, will be enough material to keep our friends in Berlin busy for a month.”
I took leave of him giving him certain instructions as to the course he was to take after reporting at Headquarters, and spent the rest of the night coding a message for our Alexander to carry with him. The hour at which Alexander was to meet the girl was eight o’clock in the evening.
His table (already booked) was No. 47, which is near the window facing Piccadilly. I telephoned through to the cafe and booked No. 46, for I was anxious to witness the comedy.
All was now moving like clockwork—and let me say that the smoothness of the arrangements was due largely to the very thorough and painstaking organisation-work which I had carried out in the piping days of peace. We Germans have a passion for detail and for thoroughness and for this reason (apart from the inherent qualities of simplicity and honesty, apart from the superiority of our kultur and our lofty idealism) we have been unconquerable throughout the ages.
You must remember that I was in London as the representative of a Chinese News Bureau. I was also an agent for a firm of importers in Shanghai. It was therefore only natural that I should be called up all hours of the day and night with offers of goods.
“I can let you have a hundred and twenty bales of Manchester goods at 125.”
Now 120 and 125 added together make 245, and turning to my “simple code,” to paragraph 245, I find the following:
“2nd Battalion of the Graniteshire Regiment entrained to-day for embarkation.”
The minor agents carried this code (containing 1,400 simple sentences to covet all naval or military movements) in a small volume. The code is printed on one side of very thin paper leaves, and the leaves are as porous and absorbent as blotting paper.
One blot of ink dropped upon a sheet will obliterate a dozen—a fact which our careless agents have discovered. Clipped in the centre of the book (as a pencil is clipped in an ordinary book) is a tiny tube of the thinnest glass containing a quantity of black dye-stuff. The agent fearing detection has only to press the cover of the book sharply and the contents of the book are reduced to black sodden pulp. Need I say that this ingenious invention was German in its origin.
[As a matter of fact, it was invented by the American Secret Service—E. W.]
My days were therefore very full. There came reports from all quarters and some the most unlikely. How, you may ask, did our agents make these discoveries?
There are many ways by which information is conveyed. The relations of soldiers are always willing to talk about their men and will tell you, if they know, when they are leaving the ships they are leaving by, and will sometimes give you other important facts, but particularly about ports and dates of embarkations are they useful.
Also officers will occasionally talk at lunch and dinner and will tell their women folk military secrets which a waiter can mentally note and convey to the proper quarters. Our best agents, however, were barbers, tailors, chiropodists, and dentists. English people will always discuss matters with a barber or with the man who is fitting them with their clothes, and as almost every tailor was making military uniforms and a very large number of the tailors in London were either German or Austrian, I had quite a wealth of news.
Tailors are useful because they work to time. Clothes have to be delivered by a certain date and generally the man who has the suit made will tell the fitter the date he expects to leave England. Other useful investigators are Turkish-bath attendants and dentists. A man in a dentist’s chair is always nervous and will try to make friends with the surgeon who is operating on him.
Of all agencies the waiter is in reality the least useful, because writers have been pointing out for so many years the fact that most waiters were German. But the truth is that most restaurant waiters are Italian, and it is amongst the bedroom waiters that you can find a preponderance of my fellow countrymen.
Prompt at eight o’clock, I took my place at the table and ordered an excellent dinner (my waiter was naturally a good German) and a bottle of Rhenish wine. A few minutes after I had given my order Alexander and the girl arrived. She was dressed in a long travelling coat of tussore silk, and carried—as I was careful to note—a shiny brown leather portfolio. This she placed carefully on be lap when she sat down and raised her veil.
She looked a little pale, but smiled readily enough at Alexander’s jests. I watched her as she slowly peeled off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy. Doubtless her conscience was pricking her.
Is it the thought of thy home, little maid from whence thou hast fled never to return? Is it the anguished picture of thy broken-hearted and ruined father bemoaning his daughter and his honour? Have no fear, little one, thy treason shall enrich the chosen of the German God, those World Encirclers, Foreordained and Destined to Imperial Grandeur!
So I thought, watching her and listening.
“Are you sure that everything will be all right?” she asked anxiously.
“Please trust me,” smiled Alexander. (Oh, the deceiving rogue—how I admired his sang-froid!)
“You are ready to go—you have packed?” she asked.
“As ready as you, my dear Elsie. Come—let me question you,” he bantered, “have you all those wonderful plans which are going to make our fortunes after we are married?”
So he had promised that—what would the gracious Frau Koos-Mettleheim have said to this perfidy on the part of her husband?
“I have all the plans,” she began, but he hushed her with a warning glance.
I watched the dinner proceed but heard very little more. All the time she seemed to be plying him with anxious questions to which he returned reassuring answers. They had reached the sweets when she began to fumble at her pocket. I guessed (rightly) that she was seeking a handkerchief and (wrongly) that she was crying.
Her search was fruitless and she bec
koned the waiter.
“I left a little bag in the ladies’ room—it has my handkerchief; will you ask the attendant to send the bag?”
The waiter departed and presently returned with two men in the livery of the hotel. I was sitting side by side and could see the faces both of the girl and Alexander and I noticed the amusement in his face that two attendants must come to carry one small bag.
Then I heard the girl speak.
“Put your hands, palms upward, on the table,” she said. I was still looking at Alexander’s face. First amazement and then anger showed—then I saw his face go grey and into his eyes crept the fear of death. The girl was holding an automatic pistol and the barrel was pointing at Alexander’s breast. She half turned her head to the attendants.
“Here is your man, sergeant,” she said briskly. “Alexander Koos, alias Ralph Burton-Smith. I charge him with espionage.”
They snapped the steel handcuffs upon Alexander’s wrists and led him out, the girl following. I rose unsteadily and followed. In the vestibule was quite a small crowd which had gathered at the first rumour of so remarkable a sensation. Here, for the first time, Alexander spoke, and it was curious how in his agitation his perfect English became broken and hoarse.
“Who are you? You have a mistake maken, my frient.”
“I am an officer of the British Intelligence Department,” said the girl.
“Himmel! Secret Service!” gasped Alexander, “I thought it was not!”
I saw them take him away and stole home.
They had trapped him. The girl with the sprained ankle had been waiting for him that day on Blackheath. She led him on by talking of the plans she could get until he had told her of the rough plans he already had. Whilst (as he thought) he was tightening the net about her, she was drawing the meshes tighter about him…Phew! It makes me hot to think of it!
Was there a secret service in England after all? For myself, my tracks were too well covered; for Alexander I could do nothing. He would not betray me. I was sure of that. Yet to be perfectly certain I left the next night for Dundee, and I was in Dundee when the news came that Alexander had been shot in the Tower of London.
THE POPINJAY KNIGHT
VALENTINE WILLIAMS
THE SON OF G. Douglas Williams, the chief editor of Reuters, George Valentine Williams (1883–1946) followed in his father’s footsteps and began his career as a journalist, returning to it frequently, even after he found success as the author of twenty-five novels of crime, mystery, and espionage.
In 1905, at twenty-one, he became the Berlin correspondent for Reuters but left in 1908 to work for the Daily Mail, becoming one of the first accredited war correspondents in World War I in 1915. Later that year, he enlisted in the Irish Guards, advanced to the rank of captain, and was awarded a Military Cross. While convalescing from shell shock, he began to write thrillers on the advice of his friend John Buchan.
He had written several memoirs of his war experiences, With Our Army in Flanders (1915) as by G. Valentine Williams, and Adventures of an Ensign (1917), but then produced his first work of fiction, The Man with the Clubfoot (1918), as by Douglas Valentine, introducing Dr. Adolph Grundt, known as “Clubfoot,” one of the first great master criminals of fiction who appeared in a half dozen books. Other series characters created by Williams include Trevor Dene, a bespectacled genius English policeman (though most of his cases take place in the United States), and Mr. Treadgold, a Savile Row tailor and amateur detective.
Dividing his time between England, the French Riviera, and the United States, Williams went on to write thirty books while also acting, lecturing, and writing screenplays. When World War II began, he was recruited to the British Secret Service and was assigned to the British Embassy in Washington, DC, but resigned before the end of the war to move to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter, though none of his scripts were ever produced.
The Crouching Beast (1935), based on the 1928 Williams novel of the same title, was produced by the British studio Stafford. Set in the Dardanelles, it is the story of a mysterious British spy aided by an American girl in the theft of fortification plans. Williams’s story “Fog” was the basis for the 1933 Columbia Pictures film of the same title. Directed by Albert S. Rogell, it starred Mary Brian, Donald Cook, and Reginald Denny.
“The Popinjay Knight” was originally published in The Knife Behind the Curtain (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1930).
THE POPINJAY KNIGHT
VALENTINE WILLIAMS
I
I DON’T SUPPOSE you would have found anywhere on the British front in France a handsomer or better turned-out officer than my friend Lucius. Tall, blond, and blue-eyed, with a fair wisp of moustache, so beautifully trained that we used to call it the Flappers’ Dream, he was always, in all circumstances, faultlessly dressed from head to foot. He used his captain’s prerogative of wearing field-boots and spurs, and his boots, well fitting his shapely leg and as bright as a mirror, were a perpetual testimonial to the taste of their wearer and the excellence of his servant. His uniform was always spotless: his buttons were never dull; and never did I see him dirty or jaded or discomposed. For his temperament was as sprightly as the rest of him. Every time I saw him I used to think of that popinjay knight who excited the wrath of Harry Hotspur in Henry IV.
Lucius was my friend, but when one had paid this tribute to his outer man, I sometimes thought there was really nothing more to be said for him. For of all the decorative shirkers in khaki at the front, from the extra A.D.C.s down to the O.C.s God knows what at remote bases, we used to think him the most glaring example. And the worst of it was that he was so shamelessly and blatantly frank about it. He had some vague job (carrying with it the sole disposition of a magnificent Vauxhall car) in the Corps Intelligence, and when my battalion was in rest he would often motor over from Corps Headquarters and look me up.
I shall never forget the occasion on which he openly proclaimed at our mess his satisfaction at not being a combatant. Now at the front, fellows were very broad-minded. A man kept himself to himself, as the saying is, and seldom inquired about any one else as long as the fellow did his job all right. This is by way of showing you that old Lucius was asking for it when he started bucking in our mess about being a shirker.
We were having tea in some filthy estaminet or other when Lucius blew in, impeccably attired as usual. He started in right away.
“Hullo, my brave foot-slogger,” he said to me, “I’ve been meaning to come and look you up for ages, but I wasn’t keen on coming as long as you were near the line. There’s a damn sight too much shell-fire about this sector for my liking.”
You could kind of feel a frost stealing over our fellows round the tea-table, but nobody said anything. I sat him down beside me, and got him a mugful of tea, pushed the condensed milk over, and the loaf and the butter and jam. I didn’t have to introduce him round, for he had been over to our mess often enough before.
“Well, what kind of a time have you been having?” he asked me as he helped himself.
“Pretty thin,” I replied. “We had a lot of shelling during our tour in the trenches and a lot more when we went into support.”
“How perfectly horrible!” said Lucius, with his mouth full of bread and jam. “And to think that if I hadn’t had a lively imagination I might have gone into the infantry too. I should be terrified if a shell came near me; I’m sure I should run away. I’m devilish glad I had the sense to pick a nice, safe job like mine, with decent quarters, and…why, damn it, I don’t suppose you’ve slept in a bed for days, some of you fellows…have you?”
Now Blinkers, our second-in-command, a regular officer, out since Mons and all the rest, was having tea with us that afternoon, and I knew that to him this kind of talk was as a red rag to a bull. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him bristling up. I kicked Lucius under the table, but he took no notice and went babbling on.
“I’ve always been able to imagine exactly what being shelled is like,” he continued, “and I was resolved that I should have a jolly good try to get a job that would keep me clear of it. So I reserved the infantry as my last string…to go into if all else failed.”
Blinkers had been swelling and swelling and clearing his throat in a way that we all knew portended trouble.
“…I knew I could always have come to you,” Lucius went on, “you’d have got me a commission in your lot, wouldn’t you, Billie?”
He turned to me with that winning smile of his, so that he did not see that Blinkers was on the point of bursting. So he positively jumped when Blinkers slapped the table with his hand and cried:
“And do you really suppose that this regiment that was complimented by the great Duke for the part it played at Waterloo, that fought alongside the Guards at Inkerman, that…that…that was one of the last to come off Spion Kop, that…that…has gained two V.C.s and four D.S.O.s in this war, would give a commission to a cowardly jackanapes like you? Do you really imagine that a…a…that an officer who glories in a soft job is a fit companion for gentlemen of England who have answered their country’s call and are doing their bit? Allow me to tell you, sir, that it would be more becoming in you to hide your satisfaction at your immunity from…er…discomfort and…er…er…danger, and not discredit yourself as well as the officer who has seen fit to introduce you here!”
And old Blinkers got up and stalked out of the place.
Lucius turned to me with a blank face.
“Sorry, old boy, I seem to have bracketed you with myself in the Major’s bad books. I really think the most graceful thing I can now do is to withdraw with humble apologies for having been the innocent instrument of this disagreeable scene…”
He rose to his feet and looked round the table.
“…especially as I’ve finished my tea!” he added.
Nobody moved to stop him, and I went out with him to see him off. When we were clear of the estaminet he said, chuckling:
The Big Book of Espionage Page 36