The Big Book of Espionage

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

  The woman in mourning looked up. Her eyes flashed fiercely across the room.

  “My husband!” she sobbed, “All that I had in the world!”

  Donvers looked at Cray as though pleading for his intercession. Cray turned to the young woman.

  “Madam,” he said, “may I ask your name?”

  “Ellen Saunderson,” was the tearful reply. “My husband was Joe Saunderson. He was as innocent as you or I. The letter which never reached Colonel Haughton would have proved it.”

  Mr. Cray fingered his chin thoughtfully.

  “Shot for a spy, eh,” he ruminated, “and that letter contained reports which would have saved him. Say, that’s hard! Has any official notice been taken of this matter?” he continued, turning to the Colonel.

  “Mr. Donvers came to me a few days later,” the Colonel said, “and confessed that he had not delivered to me one of the dispatches entrusted to him, and explained that he was not in a position to trace it. A few days later, the contents of that dispatch reached me officially. I advised Mr. Donvers to tender his resignation, which he did. Communications have passed in secrecy between a certain department of the American Secret Service and our own, concerning this unfortunate mistake. It has been decided, for obvious reasons, that it shall not be made a Press matter. The question we now have to discuss is the amount of compensation which shall be offered to Mrs. Saunderson.”

  The woman turned away wearily.

  “Compensation!” she murmured bitterly. “That won’t give me back Joe.”

  “I regret to say,” Colonel Haughton continued, “that I am not able to procure for Mrs. Saunderson any official recompense. On the evidence presented, the shooting of Joseph Saunderson was amply justified, and it is the official view that, if recompense be tendered to the widow, a mistake is admitted which might later have serious consequences. Mr. Donvers has made an offer which Mrs. Saunderson rejected with scorn. I will be perfectly frank to all of you. My interest in this matter is to see Mrs. Saunderson receive adequate compensation, and further, in the interests of my Department, to see that this matter is forgotten. If Mrs. Saunderson is not satisfied, she will probably drag into light a matter which, not for Donvers’s sake, but for the sake of the Department, it is my wish to conceal. Mr. Donvers has offered—what was the sum, Donvers?”

  “Five thousand pounds,” the young man replied. “It is half the spare money I have in the world.”

  The woman turned around with a sudden burst of passion.

  “You and your spare money!” she exclaimed. “Do you think your spare money, as you call it, will bring back Joe—the husband I lost while you stayed flirting with this hussy here?”

  Miss Clare frowned, and her fingers twitched nervously.

  “No shadow of blame can be attached to Miss Clare in this matter,” the Colonel intervened coldly.

  “Or to any one, I suppose?” the woman scoffed. “Look here,” she went on, facing Donvers, “I don’t want your money—I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than touch a penny of it—but I want to punish you, and if you’re a poor man, so much the better. Ten thousand pounds I want from you by mid-day to-morrow, and if I don’t have it, my story goes to the newspapers for the world to read.”

  There was a silence. Donvers turned towards his companion.

  “How are you fixed financially?” Cray asked him.

  “That five thousand pounds is my limit,” Donvers replied bitterly. “If I have to find the rest, it will break up the business I’ve just started and beggar me altogether.”

  “And why shouldn’t you be beggared?” the woman demanded, her hands working convulsively and her eyes filled with hate. “That’s what I want. That’s why I say I’ll have ten thousand pounds to-morrow if it means your last sixpence.”

  There was an uneasy silence. Mr. Cray gathered up the threads of the situation.

  “It don’t seem like there’s any more to be said,” he declared. “If you’ll bring the lady along to my rooms at the Milan Court to-morrow at twelve o’clock, Colonel, I’ll go into this young man’s affairs in the meantime and give him the best advice I can.”

  The colonel glanced at his engagement book.

  “I will come,” he promised, “but it is the last minute I can promise to give to this unfortunate affair. It must be concluded then, one way or the other.”

  He touched the bell. His soldier servant opened the door. Cray and his companion hurried off. The latter groaned as they reached the street.

  “Very kind of you to come along, Mr. Cray,” he said, “but you can see for yourself how hopeless the whole affair is. Not only have I got to go about all my life with the memory of that poor young man’s death on my conscience, but if I find that ten thousand pounds I shall be beggared. There’s only one way out that I can think of.”

  Mr. Cray was leaning back in his corner of the taxicab which they had just picked up, his chin resting upon his folded arms. The young man watched him furtively. It was not until they neared the Milan, however, that Mr. Cray spoke.

  “There may be another way,” he ventured. “I promise nothing, but be at my rooms at twelve o’clock to-morrow to meet those people and in the meantime don’t make a fool of yourself. You’d better bring me a statement of just how much you’ve got, five minutes before that time.”

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Cray retired early, thoroughly enjoyed his first night in his luxurious bedchamber, was up betimes, and spent a busy morning. At five minutes to twelve, Donvers looking ghastly ill, presented himself and handed over a folded slip of paper.

  “I’ve put down everything I’m worth there,” he said. “If I have to find a penny more than six thousand pounds, I’m done. I’ve come to the conclusion,” he went on, “that the fairest way will be to divide all I’ve got between that woman and my wife, and—disappear.”

  “Sit down,” Mr. Cray replied. “I’ll make the bargain for you.”

  There was a ring at the bell, a moment or two later, and Mrs. Saunderson was ushered in. A single glance into her face robbed Donvers of any hope he might have had. She was still lachrymose, but her face was set in hard and almost vicious lines. Colonel Haughton arrived a few minutes later. He received Mr. Cray’s welcome frigidly.

  “I desire,” he said, refusing a chair, “as speedy a conclusion to this affair as possible.”

  “Miss Clare not coming?” Mr. Cray inquired, with unabated geniality.

  “There is no necessity for her presence that I am aware of,” the Colonel replied. “The only question that remains to be decided is whether Mr. Donvers here is prepared to satisfy Mrs. Saunderson’s claims.”

  Mr. Cray was suddenly a different man. The smile had left his broad, good-natured face. His tone was still brisk, but as cold as the Colonel’s.

  “Colonel Haughton,” he said, “you want a show down. Here it is. The whole thing is a ramp. Joe Saunderson was never shot, and you know it. Neither was he ever married.”

  “What the devil——” the Colonel began.

  “Chuck it!” Mr. Cray interrupted. “Miss Clare, as you call her, is married to one of the worst crooks in the States, although you, Colonel, seem to have ruined yourself trying to support her for the last few years. This woman was once her dresser, and a very fair actress still. Joe Saunderson was in charge of the coffee urn in one of my Y.M.C.A. huts for over six months, and I heard the story of his detention and release, a dozen times. Now what are you going to do about it, Donvers? It’s up to you.”

  Donvers suddenly reeled and would have fallen but that Cray caught him and laid him upon the couch. He forced some brandy between his teeth. In a minute the young man opened his eyes, the colour came back to his cheeks. He looked around him. Save for their two selves the room was empty.

  “Mr. Cray!” he gasped. “Is this true
?”

  “Bible truth,” Mr. Cray declared cheerfully.

  “But Colonel Haughton? He’s a well-known man—a D.S.O.—head of his department.”

  “I guessed he was the goods,” Mr. Cray acknowledged. “They do give us the knock sometimes, you know, these men whom no one would suspect.”

  Donvers was on his feet now, going through all the phases of a rapid recovery to sanity.

  “And you actually knew this Joseph Saunderson?” he exclaimed wonderingly.

  “One of my washers-up,” Mr. Cray explained with unabated cheerfulness, “who was promoted to the coffee urn two months ago. I’ve heard the story of his arrest half-a-dozen times….What about going and looking for your wife, eh? I gave the ladies a hint that there might be something doing in the way of a little luncheon.”

  Mr. Cray led the way to the lounge, where Sara and Mrs. Donvers were seated.

  “You go and take your wife off somewhere, Mr. Donvers,” he said, “and don’t let us see you again for an hour or so. If you wish it, we’ll all dine together.”

  “At eight o’clock, here,” Donvers declared enthusiastically. “I’m host, and I promise you Jules shall do his best. I’ll try and say the things I ought to say to you, then, Mr. Cray. I’m going to take Lydia right off home now.”

  Mr. Cray nodded sympathetically, and drew Sara away.

  “It’s a long yarn, my dear,” he told her, “but things are fixed up all right for young Donvers. He hasn’t a worry left in the world. You shall have the whole story over luncheon.”

  Sara grasped her father’s hand.

  “Dad,” she exclaimed enthusiastically, “you’re a marvel! And to think that we have three months together!”

  That night, Colonel Haughton, D.S.O., shot himself in his study owing, it was stated, to financial troubles and general depression, and Miss Clare accepted a suddenly proffered engagement for the States. Gerald Donvers’s dinner-party however, was not postponed.

  GEORGETTE—A SPY

  GRAHAM SETON

  THE REPUTATION OF Scottish author Graham Seton Hutchison (1890–1946), as a fascist sympathizer has outpaced his memory as an author of espionage and adventure fiction, written under the Graham Seton byline.

  Hutchison joined the army in 1909 and served in Africa until the outbreak of World War I, in which he served valiantly but controversially. He propounded several theories about warfare that proved effective for the British army to implement, earning him a promotion to lieutenant-colonel. He opposed retreating from an enemy’s attack and is reported to have boasted that he once shot all but two of forty of his own men when they attempted to retreat from an advancing German army.

  After World War I, he came to believe that the Versailles Treaty was unfair to Germany and became attracted to fascism and Hitler, ultimately being paid by Joseph Goebbels to write positive articles about the Nuremberg Rallies. He belonged to, and founded, several fascist and socialist organizations, though the advent of World War II softened his positions and finally changed them altogether.

  Hutchison wrote a series of military adventure/espionage novels featuring Colonel Grant, beginning with The W Plan (1929), which had been proofread by D. H. Lawrence, who thought little of it. Nonetheless, it was plot-driven enough to inspire a Victor Saville–directed 1930 motion picture of the same title that starred Brian Aherne, Madeleine Carroll, and Gordon Harker. The series concluded with The V Plan (1941). By the time his literary output ended with The Red Colonel (1946) when Hutchison died, he had turned against Nazism and his novel reflected that turn of the tide. The poet Ezra Pound, who had his own flirtation with fascism, was a fan of the books, which are all but forgotten today.

  I have been unable to trace the original publication of this story. It was collected in My Best Spy Story, edited anonymously (London, Faber & Faber, 1938).

  GEORGETTE—A SPY

  GRAHAM SETON

  I HAD BEEN inside the barrel for nearly seventeen hours. In my confined position I could do nothing to stimulate the blood circulation and shivered continuously. This evening of the 4th February 1918 was icy cold. My limbs were cramped; hunger gnawed at the pit of the stomach, causing a sense of nausea immensely aggravated by the stench of tallow of which the empty barrel reeked. To add to my discomfort, the railway truck, in which among some two dozen others the barrel of my incarceration stood, had been jolted interminably over sidings and against couplings, until I was dizzy with sound and bruised from head to foot by the buffeting I had received.

  With a Dutch passport and identification papers showing that I was an employee of the Fabrik Venus—soap and tallow works—I was returning to the Rhineland industrial area to pursue what had almost become routine investigations into the output and destination of munitions and war material. So far as I knew no-one had ever regarded me with suspicion in Düsseldorf, where as an agent for tallow and fats imported via Rotterdam I had a room which served both as lodging and office. My agency was genuine enough; but I had not the slightest desire to make known all my comings and goings across the German-Dutch frontier, which would certainly have led to my being watched, and my contacts among factory workers and various women coming under suspicion. Hence the strange arrival at the Haupt Bahnhof of Düsseldorf in a barrel, and my reappearance among my fellow-men, grimed and slimed and reeking like a chandlery.

  I suppose I should tell you that at this date I was a British officer, employed in the Intelligence Service, though I believe this fact is now fairly well known. I had not the slightest desire to court suspicion and had planned to slip back into the routine life of the office and agency. My papers showed that I was a Dutch citizen, while the Fabrik Venus was held in high esteem by the industrialists of the Rhine, for the organization I represented was a reliable source of supply of raw materials of which Germany stood in urgent need. But my passport conferred no right to travel from Holland to Germany in a grease tub.

  So far as I was aware no-one knew that I had left Germany on the previous day, and on this occasion had returned in so strange a manner with the sole object of obtaining access to certain warehouses on a siding and blowing their contents sky-high. If indeed the Fabrik Venus provided the raw material necessary to the manufacture of high explosive, there was no reason why the Düsseldorf agent should not blow up the finished article as early as possible, and thus grease the wheels of commerce! The fact that the agent was a British officer pointed clearly to the desirability of explosions in German territory, with additional possibilities of destruction, rather than that he should tacitly aid and abet the annihilation of his fellow-countrymen entrenched “Somewhere in France.” At any rate, that was my quite unofficial way of regarding the matter.

  As the railway wagons rumbled across the bridge over the Rhine about seven o’clock in the evening, I raised the lid of the barrel. The keen wind, frozen as it was, refreshed me, but the first movement was agonizing. I wriggled from my cramped position and in a moment had clambered over the barrels, and, crouching upon the step, made ready to jump to the ground as soon as I saw a convenient opportunity. The warehouses I sought were some three hundred yards away from the main station; and, leaping clear, I ran towards them.

  By appalling ill-fortune, my appearance was at once detected by some soldiers. I heard an officer cry out: “There he is! Arrest him!” It seemed as if they were on the look-out for my arrival. I turned in the darkness and fled along the track back towards the bridge. As someone carrying a lamp appeared to be following in my wake, I slid down the embankment, and with some agility succeeded in scaling the fencing and dropped into the street, for the moment a free, if somewhat bewildered, man.

  During all these months I had been conducting the Venus agency I had never aroused any suspicion that it served as the camouflage for acquiring information. The agency was, in fact, quite a masterpiece of the art of espionage. It is true, of course, that I took risks. A number of pers
ons had from time to time received substantial sums from me in return for the provision of information. I had always hinted that I desired such information for commercial purposes and that my bribes were no less corrupt than were those of current commercial usage. No-one had known of my departure from Germany, neither could the hour nor manner of my return have been anticipated. My landlady was well accustomed to my occasional absences on business in Krefeld, Essen, or Mainz. Nevertheless, I was alarmed. I crouched for several minutes beside the fencing; and, as no-one appeared to have followed so far, I determined to abandon the role of a fugitive and to behave as an ordinary citizen, in fact as a workman returning to his lodgings.

  Apprehension that I had come under the watchful eye of counter-espionage did not easily escape me. I was carrying dynamite and fuses; and before I decided whether or not to return to my lodgings I hurried to the Hofgarten beside the Rhine and flung these incriminating souvenirs into the river. The dynamiting of warehouses was not my proper vocation; it was really just a whim, only an adventurous sideline, which had so nearly ended in my falling into the arms of a squad of soldiers.

  By this time I was almost famished with hunger, and was desperately anxious to find a haven of safety. I feared to return to my lodgings, so, casting my mind over those whom I had used for my business I decided to visit a lady of my acquaintance, whose flat, in common with other men, I frequented. She was not virtuous, as the world considers these things, and it was because of her relations with all manner of men that I had found in her a valuable contact. I had then persuaded her to use her charms and talents—neither of which were to be underrated—in procuring information for me. She was known as Georgette.