Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  All went well until I produced his letters and read them to him. He was abashed for a moment, but only for a moment. His explanation was that his object in offering to guide Zeppelins to England was to be sent over here in order to offer his services to the Air Ministry as a guide for aeroplanes bombing Germany. I think that during the war I never met a more loathsome type of international. He was ready to serve any and every master if only it should be to the advantage of Lionel Max Preiznitser. And we could do nothing more drastic than intern him until the end of the war.

  The spy who made the worst impression was Albert Meyer, a Jew, with a very mean history. He was one of those young scoundrels who live upon women, defraud their landladies and cheat their employers. A letter was stopped in the Censorship which proved on examination to be full of secret writing. The name and address of the sender were false. There was nothing to do but to sit down and wait. During the next few weeks many more of these letters were stopped in the same handwriting, but with different names and addresses. All that could be gathered from them was that the writer was of foreign nationality and that he was living somewhere in London. After a long and patient search a little Jew of uncertain nationality named Albert Meyer was arrested in a lodging-house. He had been moving from one lodging-house to another, promising the landladies that he would pay them as soon as his remittances arrived from ‘his parents abroad’. He was living the kind of life which spies affect – dining one day in an expensive restaurant and the next, when the money was exhausted, begging a meal from an acquaintance. He could not even keep faith with his employers, for his communications contained a mass of fictitious information. When he was required to furnish a specimen of his handwriting and the similarity with the writing in the letters was pointed out to him, he explained it by saying that it had been the malicious work of a so-called friend and the invisible ink found in his possession had been also planted on him by this ‘friend’. He was tried by court-martial on 5 November and sentenced to death. His end was characteristic. He had behaved quietly during the weeks that followed his sentence, but as soon as he knew his fate and was taken from his cell to the place of execution he struck up the tune of ‘Tipperary’. On reaching the miniature rifle-range he burst into a torrent of blasphemy and he had to be placed forcibly in the chair and strapped in. He tore the bandage from his eyes and was still struggling when he died.

  The most curious and ineffective of the German spies during the war was Alfred Hagn, a young Norwegian whom we arrested on 24 May 1917. He was one of those young people who write novels, paint Futurist pictures, compose startling poetry and prose for the magazines and fail to arrive anywhere. He had gone to America in the hope of selling his pictures and had returned penniless in 1916. We were afterwards told that his parents, who were in quite humble circumstances, were really to blame for his misfortunes. They had educated him above his station and filled him with the belief that he was destined to become a great artist.

  In the autumn of 1916, while he was trying to dispose of some of his pictures in Norway, he met a German painter named Lavendel and a member of the German Intelligence who called himself Harthern. To those men he related to what straits he was reduced and they suggested to him in a joking manner that he should go to England as an agent. He rejected this suggestion at the time, but later, on the assurance of Harthern that, as a correspondent of a Norwegian newspaper, he was not at all likely to be suspected, he consented. He approached the editor of a daily paper, offering to act as special correspondent and the low price which he was prepared to accept for his articles, which were to be contributed free of any claim for expenses, clinched the matter. He arrived in England on 10 October and for some weeks gave no ground for suspicion. He wrote a few articles for his Norwegian newspaper and then returned to Norway. Here the German agents again got hold of him. His money had run short and there was nothing for it but to undertake another trip. His second arrival was on 13 April 1917. He went to a boarding-house in Tavistock Square. Here he appears to have excited suspicion by his taciturnity. An Italian professor who was staying in the same house came to the conclusion that a man who had evidently so much on his mind must be a German spy. While at this boarding-house he received a notice calling him to join the Colours, which had been sent under the impression that he was a British subject. He called at the recruiting office to explain that he was not liable.

  It was to the Italian professor that the credit for unmasking Hagn’s real employment was due. He was so convinced by his conduct in the hotel that he called at the nearest police station to denounce him as a German spy. There were many hundreds of such denunciations, but they were all passed to the proper department. A careful examination was made of the documents produced by Hagn when he received permission to land in this country. Though there was nothing incriminating in these there was some reason for suspecting that he might be using a new secret ink. His room was visited and on the table was noticed a bottle labelled ‘Throat Gargle’. A little of the liquid was abstracted for analysis and it proved to be an ink with which invisible writing might be produced. On 24 May, therefore, Hagn was taken into custody. He took his arrest quite calmly. In fact, he behaved as if he had been expecting it. When a search was made of his effects the police discovered pieces of cotton-wool bearing traces of ammonia, a drug which had to be used with this ink. In examination it transpired that he had written only two or three articles, for which he received £2 a piece and that his expenses in England had come to much more than this. He could not account for the source of his livelihood, but in the end he broke down and admitted everything. He told us that his mission was to obtain particulars of the alleged misuse of hospital ships: probably he had not sent the Germans anything of importance. It transpired that among other things he had made application for permission to visit the Western Front on behalf of his newspaper.

  He was brought to trial on 27 August 1917, when his counsel told the whole of his unhappy story. He had been a spoilt child, whose every whim had been indulged by his parents. All went well while his father lived, but at his death the mother was left nearly destitute. She brought her son back to Norway in the hope that he would be able to support her, but what can a Futurist artist, whose pictures no one will buy, do to support himself, much less a dependent? And, to crown his troubles, Hagn was suffering from unrequited love. His death sentence was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life. He gave no trouble in Maidstone Prison for two years and then he went on hunger strike – not for the usual reason of forcing the hands of the authorities, but because he had become convinced that such a wretch as he had no longer the right to cumber the earth. It was a form of delusional insanity. Counsel was taken with the Norwegian government and on 13 September 1919 he was sent back to Norway on an undertaking that he would never come to England again.

  After Hagn’s conviction there was a lull. A good many suspects were interned or deported during 1917, but it was not until September that another real spy landed in England. Jose de Patrocinio, a Brazilian half-caste, the son of a well-known journalist in Brazil who had been largely concerned in the liberation of the slaves, arrived at Gravesend from Flushing. He cut so unsatisfactory a figure while he was being questioned that the port authorities felt sure that he was a spy. He was taxed with it and almost immediately he made a confession.

  According to his story, he had gone to Paris in 1913 as a correspondent for a newspaper and while there he had been offered an appointment as attaché to the Brazilian Consulate. In 1916, however, his appointment came to an end and he found himself in Amsterdam short of funds and with a wife to support. He was actually considering how he could get money enough for returning to Brazil when a German agent came into touch with him. To this man he related all the squalid little details of his struggle to accumulate sufficient money for his passage. The next day a man named Loebel, afterwards known as a recruiter of spies, began to talk about his approaching visit to Brazil. ‘How are you going?’ he asked. ‘There are no Dutch boat
s.’ Patrocinio told him that he would go first to the United States and thence to South America. Loebel said that in his opinion it was a stupid plan. He might make a great deal of money if he stayed in Europe. In the end Patrocinio promised to be in the same café at a fixed hour the next day in order to be introduced to a person who would put him in the way of making this money.

  The newcomer turned out to be a sallow, swarthy person with ingratiating manners, who wore spectacles and perpetually rubbed his hands. He gave his name as Levy and declared himself to be a Brazilian. Patrocinio thereupon addressed him in Portuguese and was immediately aware that whatever Levy’s nationality might be he was not a Brazilian. Levy went on to say that he had been born at Rio Grande do Sul, but on hearing that his Portuguese accent was not all that it should be, he said, quite unabashed, ‘Oh, but I am a naturalised Brazilian.’

  Then Patrocinio pressed his questions and said at last, ‘You see, you have never been to Brazil at all.’

  Mr Levy was not in the least abashed. He laughed and said, ‘You are very clever. You are just the kind of man I want.’ He then told him he was a Swiss, but wanted a Brazilian passport with which to go to England and would pay a great deal of money for such a passport. In the subsequent conversation about the use of fraudulent passports, Levy whispered to him, ‘I can put you in the way of getting £1,000,’ and then, a little later, ‘How would you like to look after my affairs in England and France?’

  ‘You see, I know nothing about your business.’

  ‘You are an intelligent man. If you want to earn £1,000 try to find out where the next offensive in France will take place.’

  According to Patrocinio, he decided at that moment to track down this ingratiating and shameless person as a service for the Allies and for Brazil. That was an oft-told tale. According to his story, he then asked Levy how he could communicate such information even if he found it out.

  ‘I will tell you everything. I am specially employed by the police in Berlin. If you are faithful to us we can protect you both in France and in England and if you are willing to obtain this information we will give you a secret ink in which you can write your messages in perfect safety and we can give you addresses which no one will suspect.’

  Patrocinio asked for the ink.

  ‘Oh, I don’t carry that about with me. Come and see me again at Loebel’s house and we will have another talk.’

  Late in the evening he met the two men again, as arranged and Levy said, ‘You must not go unwillingly. There is plenty of time to draw back if you are afraid.’ Patrocinio resented the suggestion of fear, but said that he did not altogether like being branded as a spy. ‘But £1,000!’ whispered the tempter and Patrocinio fell. As a parting injunction, Levy said, ‘Remember if you betray us I can have you assassinated either in London or in Paris.’ There were claws beneath his velvet gloves!

  The instructions Patrocinio received were that he was to obtain news of the movements of troops and forward it written in secret ink between the lines of an ordinary letter to six addresses, of which some were in Switzerland and some in Denmark. At the end of six weeks he was to go to Switzerland and write a letter to Frankfurt-on-Main announcing his arrival. He would be paid according to the value of his information and if he served faithfully he would receive further employment. Levy then took Patrocinio into another room and gave him instructions in the use of this new secret ink, which was contained in a soft linen collar and two or three handkerchiefs. These had to be soaked in water and the water then became the ink. He gave a demonstration by writing a message, but when Patrocinio asked how it was to be developed the claws again peeped from the velvet gloves. Patrocinio went back to his wife thoroughly frightened and it was probably due to her intervention that the confession was made. It appears that as the boat conveying Patrocinio and his wife to England left the quay at Flushing one of the passengers saw the little Brazilian lean over the side and throw some collars into the sea. This seemed to him so remarkable a proceeding that he kept the little man under observation. And, to make Patrocinio’s fears even more acute, a lady, addressing his wife in his hearing, asked whether she knew a Mr Rene Levy, who was staying in the hotel and said he was a Brazilian. A few minutes later the fellow passenger who had noticed the incident of the collars came up to him and asked him whether he had had any dealings with Germans while he was in Holland.

  By this time Patrocinio’s nerves were so shaky that he blurted out to this stranger a great deal of what he afterwards confessed to us. On the whole, it seems doubtful whether Patrocinio ever intended to act as a spy, though he had certainly promised the Germans that he would become one. If he had really intended to unearth the conspiracy and bring the information to England he would have lost no time in making a full report, but being a timid person he very foolishly told falsehood after falsehood until his story had become so involved that the whole of it was suspected.

  He was detained while a communication was made to the Brazilian government. It then appeared that his father was regarded as a sort of national hero and was known as the liberator of the slaves and that if anything happened to his son there would be an outburst of popular feeling in Brazil. For this reason Patrocinio was sent back to Brazil with the usual warning.

  In February 1916 we had information that a young man of good family named Adolfo Guerrero was on his way to England in the employment of the Germans. The port authorities allowed him to land in order to keep him under close observation. He told them that he was a Spanish journalist representing a Madrid newspaper, Libral, and they made the astonishing discovery that he could not speak a word of English. How the Germans could have brought themselves to engage such a person passed their comprehension. Guerrero had brought with him as far as Paris a young woman, a professional dancer, who called herself Raymonde Amondarain, with the ‘sub-titles’ of ‘Aurora de Bilbao’ and ‘La Sultana’. Guerrero first set to work to pull the strings to obtain permission for this young woman to come to London and he found a Spanish merchant in Fenchurch Street who was ready to write a letter telling her that he had a clerical position in his office open to her if she would come. It did not seem to strike either of them that a young dancer with an extensive wardrobe was scarcely the kind of person who would settle down to clerical work in a city office, but it was good enough for the French Passport Office; and when Amondarain announced at the port that she had come to join her future husband, Señor Guerrero, she was detained, for it was found that she had given false answers to the questions put to her for passport purposes. On 18 February 1916 Guerrero was arrested and brought down for examination. From his point of view, it was tragic that the lady was lodged, all unknown to him, a few streets off. For a time he adhered to his ridiculous story that he was to be a correspondent for the Libral on payment of £2 an article. In sixteen days he had written two such articles and he was proposing to keep himself and Amondarain on the earnings of his pen.

  It was now necessary to ascertain who Guerrero really was. Officers were sent out to Spain and they found that part of the story was true. He did belong to a noble family, but he had fallen into wild habits and had become an easy victim to the German agents then living in Spain. The editor of the Libral had never heard of him. It was not until 13 July that he appeared at the Old Bailey, but before this it had been decided not to include Amondarain in the charge, because her strenuous advocacy of her intended husband and the inquiries we had made about her antecedents seemed to make it clear that she was not implicated in espionage. She was, however, kept in custody until the issue of Guerrero’s trial and then sent back to Spain. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.

  A few days after his trial he wrote to say that if his life was spared he would give information that would break up the whole of the German espionage system, but his confession proved to be a tissue of fiction. He said that his name in the German Secret Service was Victor Gunantas, that he was known as No. 154, which meant that he was the 154th spy who had come from Spain to E
ngland. He was to visit mercantile ports and report merchantmen who were about to sail to ensure their becoming a prey to the submarines; he was to receive £50 a week and a commission on all ships sunk as the result of his information. No man ever deserved the extreme penalty more richly, but influences had been at work in Spain and, in deference to the representations of the Spanish government, his life was spared. I am not sure that there have not been moments during Guerrero’s imprisonment when he wished that his friends had not been so insistent in his behalf.

  It was a curious fact that among the papers found upon him was a letter telling him to call on a certain number in Stockwell Road, Brixton, the address of the spy, de Rysbach, who had been arrested in 1915.

  Early in 1916 we learned that, besides the perennial question of movement of troops, the Germans were anxious to locate our munitions factories. But they were even more anxious to know about our national morale, probably because their own was beginning to give them cause for anxiety. We learned that a certain Dutch Jew who passed under the name of Leopold Vieyra was being sent to England specially to report upon these points and that the Germans had given him a sum of money calculated at the rate of 50s. a day for the expenses of his trip. He was allowed to land and very careful observation was kept upon him. It was found that he was communicating with a person in Holland whom he addressed as Blom, that he had once dealt in films under the name of Leo Pickard and that he had been getting his living in buying and selling films, both in England and in Holland. In July 1916 he mentioned in a letter to Blom that he was about to return to Holland and in one of Blom’s letters occurred the passage, ‘If you cannot do anything in London try the provinces.’ It was arranged that a call should be made at Blom’s address and it was found that no one lived there except a Mrs Dikker, who admitted that her maiden name was Sophia Blom. Further inquiries showed that this address was an ordinary post-box for letters addressed to the German Secret Service. In August Vieyra was arrested, his house was searched and in it was found the usual outfit for secret writing. His explanation of his connection with Blom broke down under interrogation. He was tried by court-martial on 11 November, found guilty and sentenced to death, but the sentence was afterwards commuted to one of penal servitude for life.