The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  “Captain Thierry’s compliments,” he recited mechanically, “and is he to delay longer for Madame d’Aurillac?”

  With a sharp gesture General Andre waved Marie toward the door. Without rising, he inclined his head. “Adieu, madame,” he said. “We act at once upon your information. I thank you!”

  As she crossed from the hall to the terrace, the ears of the spy were assaulted by a sudden tumult of voices. They were raised in threats and curses. Looking back, she saw Anfossi descending the stairs. His hands were held above his head; behind him, with his automatic, the staff officer she had surprised on the fourth floor was driving him forward. Above the clinched fists of the soldiers that ran to meet him, the eyes of Anfossi were turned toward her. His face was expressionless. His eyes neither accused nor reproached. And with the joy of one who has looked upon and then escaped the guillotine, Marie ran down the steps to the waiting automobile. With a pretty cry of pleasure she leaped into the seat beside Thierry. Gayly she threw out her arms. “To Paris!” she commanded. The handsome eyes of Thierry, eloquent with admiration, looked back into hers. He stooped, threw in the clutch, and the great gray car, with the machine gun and its crew of privates guarding the rear, plunged through the park.

  “To Paris!” echoed Thierry.

  In the order in which Marie had last seen them, Anfossi and the staff officer entered the room of General Andre, and upon the soldiers in the hall the door was shut. The face of the staff officer was grave, but his voice could not conceal his elation.

  “My general,” he reported, “I found this man in the act of giving information to the enemy. There is wireless——”

  General Andre rose slowly. He looked neither at the officer nor at his prisoner. With frowning eyes he stared down at the maps upon his table.

  “I know,” he interrupted. “Some one has already told me.” He paused, and then, as though recalling his manners, but still without raising his eyes, he added: “You have done well, sir.”

  In silence the officers of the staff stood motionless. With surprise they noted that, as yet, neither in anger nor curiosity had General Andre glanced at the prisoner. But of the presence of the general the spy was most acutely conscious. He stood erect, his arms still raised, but his body strained forward, and on the averted eyes of the general his own were fixed.

  In an agony of supplication they asked a question.

  At last, as though against his wish, toward the spy the general turned his head, and their eyes met. And still General Andre was silent. Then the arms of the spy, like those of a runner who has finished his race and breasts the tape exhausted, fell to his sides. In a voice low and vibrant he spoke his question.

  “It has been so long, sir,” he pleaded. “May I not come home?”

  General Andre turned to the astonished group surrounding him. His voice was hushed like that of one who speaks across an open grave.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “my children,” he added. “A German spy, a woman, involved in a scandal your brother in arms, Henri Ravignac. His honor, he thought, was concerned, and without honor he refused to live. To prove him guiltless his younger brother Charles asked leave to seek out the woman who had betrayed Henri, and by us was detailed on secret service. He gave up home, family, friends. He lived in exile, in poverty, at all times in danger of a swift and ignoble death. In the War Office we know him as one who has given to his country services she cannot hope to reward. For she cannot return to him the years he has lost. She cannot return to him his brother. But she can and will clear the name of Henri Ravignac, and upon his brother Charles bestow promotion and honors.”

  The general turned and embraced the spy. “My children,” he said, “welcome your brother. He has come home.”

  Before the car had reached the fortifications, Marie Gessler had arranged her plan of escape. She had departed from the château without even a hand-bag, and she would say that before the shops closed she must make purchases.

  Le Printemps lay in their way, and she asked that, when they reached it, for a moment she might alight. Captain Thierry readily gave permission.

  From the department store it would be most easy to disappear, and in anticipation Marie smiled covertly. Nor was the picture of Captain Thierry impatiently waiting outside unamusing.

  But before Le Printemps was approached, the car turned sharply down a narrow street. On one side, along its entire length, ran a high gray wall, grim and forbidding. In it was a green gate studded with iron bolts. Before this the automobile drew suddenly to a halt. The crew of the armored car tumbled off the rear seat, and one of them beat upon the green gate. Marie felt a hand of ice clutch at her throat. But she controlled herself.

  “And what is this?” she cried gayly.

  At her side Captain Thierry was smiling down at her, but his smile was hateful.

  “It is the prison of St. Lazare,” he said. “It is not becoming,” he added sternly, “that the name of the Countess d’Aurillac should be made common as the Paris road!”

  Fighting for her life, Marie thrust herself against him; her arm that throughout the journey had rested on the back of the driving-seat caressed his shoulders; her lips and the violet eyes were close to his.

  “Why should you care?” she whispered fiercely. “You have me! Let the Count d’Aurillac look after the honor of his wife himself.”

  The charming Thierry laughed at her mockingly.

  “He means to,” he said. “I am the Count d’ Aurillac!”

  GAS ATTACK!

  MARTHE MCKENNA

  THE BELGIAN-BORN Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert (1892–1969) was a nurse who became a spy for the British and its allies during World War I. First, however, she received the German Iron Cross for her work with injured soldiers—the same soldiers that had destroyed her village in West Flanders.

  When she was moved to a German military hospital in Roulers, she was recruited by a family friend to become a spy, which she did so valiantly and proficiently that she was showered with honors at the end of the war, including being made a member of the French and Belgian Legions of Honor. Winston Churchill personally handed her a certificate for gallantry.

  She took the name of her husband when she married John “Jock” McKenna, a British officer, who ghostwrote her memoir, I Was a Spy (1932), for which Churchill provided the foreword. It enjoyed great success and was bought for the movies, made quickly, and released in 1933 by Gaumont British Pictures. Madeleine Carroll played Marthe, Herbert Marshall played the hospital worker who had persuaded her to become a spy (though in real life it was a female friend), and Conrad Veidt played the commandant, one of approximately three million times he was cast in that role. The lovable Edmund Gwenn was the burgomaster and the great stage actor Gerald du Maurier played the doctor; Victor Saville directed.

  The success of the memoir inspired publishers to suggest that McKenna write fictional accounts of spies, which she agreed to do, though it is almost certain that her husband was the actual author of the thirteen novels that were published between 1935 and 1950. When the marriage ended in 1951, there were no more books. One of the novels found its way to the big screen when Lancer Spy (1937) was released by Twentieth Century-Fox the same year; the movie starred Dolores del Rio, George Sanders, and Peter Lorre, and was directed by Gregory Ratoff.

  “Gas Attack!” was originally published in Drums Never Beat (London, Jarrolds, 1936).

  GAS ATTACK!

  MARTHE McKENNA

  EARLY IN JANUARY the battle flared up anew and the British stubbornly crept ever closer and closer until shells rained constantly in the village. Two of the women were slightly wounded, and several times I had narrow escapes.

  One day after an intensive bombardment the town commandant sent for me and said: “Fräulein, I have given orders that all you women are to be evacuated to Roulers. In your case, both the medical officer and myself will strongly rec
ommend you to the hospital authorities at Roulers.”

  Under escort next day, and with our few miserable belongings, we took our last look on the beautiful village of our childhood dreams, for its disappearance was to be utter and complete.

  Two events of supreme importance were quickly to happen to me after my arrival in Roulers.

  Gratefully the hospital authorities accepted my offer of help, and I began nursing in earnest. Then the mysterious reappearance of Lucelle Deldonch and my promise to her to spy and work for the British Intelligence. Of the instant success and luck of my initial attempts in this dangerous undertaking I need not speak here, but these first successes spurred me on to greater efforts, and very soon I was to discover intrepid allies in this dangerous work. Of the normal routine of transmitting less important secret information, such as the arrival and departure of troops, identity and destination of German regiments, and the like, I shall make no mention, because it would become tedious, and the reader will no doubt take this detail work for granted.

  It is more the outstanding episodes that concern us here. In the middle of March, 1915, my father, who had joyfully welcomed Mother and me in Roulers, was offered the proprietorship of the Café Carillon by its owner, who, with his family, was going to a town farther behind the lines. The café nestled in the shadow of the tall grey church of Roulers on the Grande Place, and this incidentally sheltered the café to some extent from Allied shell-fire.

  Wide steps led up from the Grande Place to a beautiful façade of old Flemish style, and through this one passed into a large room with a counter which was used as the café.

  The two upper stories at the back of the house had been demolished by a bomb and were nothing but bricks, rubble, and splintered beams, but for all that there was ample accommodation. My mother and I pondered for long over this offer. It certainly presented many advantages, being reasonably safe, with spacious cellars, and the income would greatly help the ménage, for the war had sadly curtailed Father’s assets.

  Men will talk, I reasoned, and boast over strong liquor, and I realized that much useful information might be garnered in such a café. But on the other hand, the thought persisted: Was it too obvious? In actual practice should I be placing myself in a too-prominent and dangerous position? At that time there were many exaggerated stories current among the Germans in Belgium of the “café girls” and the way they had suffered for trying to make the troops talk. Although I feared these tales might throw suspicion upon me, I decided in the end that the advantages would prove worth the risk.

  As I should no longer have to come in contact merely with the hospital staff, with whom I was on the best of terms, but with all kinds of officers and men who would probably frequent the café, I made up my mind to adopt a definite attitude to the invader. Frequently I acted as spokesman and go-between for the townsfolk in their dealings with the town commandant. I was, therefore, to some extent in the good books of the authorities, and without presuming on this, or overstepping the bounds, I must, above all else, keep this goodwill. A too-friendly attitude on the surface would almost certainly arouse the suspicion of the German Secret Service, who were by no means fools. But at the same time I must contrive to be popular in a detached way and to gain the confidence of the men so that I was the very last person in the world they would suspect.

  Then, again, a too-sympathetic attitude to the invader would call down the wrath of my own compatriots, who rightfully looked on friendliness with the detested German as a treachery to Belgium.

  In a terribly difficult position, therefore, I bore myself as an aloof, rather detached girl who was quite honestly and openly in sympathy with the Allied cause and the sorrows of down-trodden Belgium, but as one nevertheless who held no ill-feeling against individual fighting-men so long as they behaved themselves.

  I made a point of bestowing my smiles on regular clients, and I readily arranged for washing, mending, and other small jobs to be done for them. Never encourage anyone, never speak to anybody; just let them know you are there, and wait for them to make the overtures, became the essence of my policy.

  It was amazing how well this attitude worked, and within a very short time it began to show startling results.

  Only three persons in our immediate circle knew the Intelligence nom de guerre “Laura” by which I was known. My mother, of course, knew I was “Laura.” Canteen Ma, the intrepid vegetable-woman and the mysterious No. 63 who took my messages and dispatched them over the frontier, were the other two who were in the secret.

  So we moved into the new life during March, and from the first the café was not only well patronized by the military but was also extensively used by civilians.

  One large room on the first floor which overlooked the Grande Place we reserved as a private room to be used for dinner-parties and special entertainments. When not in use for other purposes it was used as a lounge for officers, and at nights this place usually quickly filled, when cigar-smoke and restless chatter and argument made a lively scene. When it was my turn to be home for evenings from the hospital I made it a practice to help wait on our clients, reinforcing the two maids we kept.

  A week after we had taken over the café I returned from the hospital rather earlier than usual and was met by Bertha, one of our serving-maids. Her face was very concerned as she told me there were three officers, just arrived, who had announced their intention of billeting upon us. This was the last thing I wanted, being afraid that this proximity in the house might curtail my activities. But there was no help for it, as the town was packed with troops, and the three had the yellow slips of billeting requisitions.

  The lounge had not yet filled, and when the handbell rang I went to ask for orders, anxious to see what sort of men were to live the daily round with us.

  Three officers sat round the oak table in the centre of the room, gazing over empty wine-glasses. They had flung their equipment in a pile on the floor. Two Hauptmanns leaned back with tunics undone and puffed black cigars. The other, a fair Leutnant, very neat and tightly buttoned up, watched me, elbows on table and chin on hands. When I had brought the wine they had ordered, the large florid Hauptmann with red hair raised his glass.

  “Fräulein, won’t you do us the honour to drink a glass with us?” he commenced. Then, rising to his feet: “Drink to our trip to Paris.” He looked across at the others in a very knowing way.

  “Thank you, Herr,” I returned, “but I have had a very trying day at the hospital, and there are times when I feel that I do not require a drink.”

  I was, however, decidedly intrigued with that queer look he had flashed at the others when he mentioned the “trip to Paris.” It was perhaps merely a fatuous remark born of a fervent wish, but that acute, inexplicable sense of being on the track of a secret was beginning to develop in me even in those early days.

  “So you are from the big hospital on the Menin Road?” rumbled the red-haired man, as though I had committed some crime.

  “Really, Red Carl,” interposed a cherubic young voice, “you haven’t been sent here to court-martial this Fräulein, you know.” I noticed the speaker’s wavy golden hair and his lively eyes. He appeared a very attractive, boyish kind of officer.

  The other Hauptmann, a long, cadaverous man of middle age, with hair so closely cropped that his head appeared shaved, examined me through large spectacles whilst a cold smile played on his face.

  “Perhaps the Fräulein will be kind enough to show us our quarters,” he suggested in a strangely quiet voice. There was something intense and queer about this man which made me feel he was a dangerous type of individual to cross.

  The trio followed me silently. I intended to give the spectacled Hauptmann a room to himself, as obviously he was the senior, and allot the only remaining room we had to be shared by the other two. But the spectacled one turned to me.

  “Fräulein,” he said, “I shall share with the Herr Hauptma
nn. We have work which we must carry on together,” and his eyes glinted behind his glasses. “The Herr Leutnant can take my room.”

  “Splendid!” chuckled the Leutnant. “Red Carl, if you snore as thunderously to-night as you did in the train last night, I think at the Hauptmann’s hands you will die a nasty, sticky death.”

  “Oh no…you wouldn’t kill me, would you…you sinister old devil?” Red Carl returned with a great guffaw. “I’m too damned valuable to you, eh?”

  I showed the two into their room and then went back to the Leutnant, who had called.

  “Queer couple, those two, aren’t they, Fräulein?” he opened. “Possibly you think them a trifle rude and surly…not the usual type of our Army officer?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But they appear to be ill assorted, yet very friendly. What are they?”

  I had immediately noticed that neither of the Hauptmanns were of the Army of Würtemberg, that they wore the badges of some special unit which I failed to recognize.

  “Just two representatives whom we have sent ahead to arrange our trip to Paris,” he laughed cryptically.

  I knew it would be imprudent to press the matter further, but I was convinced there was some deep mystery here which needed probing. The Leutnant told me his name was Otto von Promft. He lighted an expensive cigarette, and offered me his case.

  Perhaps, I thought, as I stood there smoking, a little easy flattery might open his confidences. “You were a student, I see,” I remarked.

  “So you noticed my duelling-scar, Fräulein,” he responded with great pride. “I left Stuttgart six months ago.”

  Then he suddenly broke into fluent French. He told me he had lived in Paris most of his life until the war.

  “I have been in various parts of Belgium,” he told me during the conversation. “Everywhere it is the custom of you Belgians to bewail the terrible conditions under which you are forced to live, but I have recently returned from leave, and I dare say you will be surprised to hear that in Berlin the regulations are just as severe as those you know in Belgium.” He went on to paint a distressing picture, and appeared absolutely frank, and open in all he said.