The success of the British organization puzzled not only the hostile, but also the Allied Counter-Espionage Services in Holland. The Hauptmann von Eberfeldt invited Paul Leipschitz to dine with him.
“Mynheer,” said the Head of the German Counter-Espionage Service in Holland, “you have, in the past, rendered valuable services to my country——”
“For which I have been paid most generously,” smiled the Dutchman.
Von Eberfeldt acknowledged the interruption with a stiff little bow.
“There are greater rewards to be earned,” he said, with a hint of sarcasm. “This Herr Walford, now, whom we all know to be acting in the interests of England—you might become more intimate with him!”
“It would be difficult,” Leipschitz faltered. “I have not troubled to hide my hatred of the British.”
“But you have not quarrelled with him?”
“No.”
“Then cultivate him. We will pay well for information leading to the destruction of his organization.”
Tom Walford received a call from Paul Leipschitz upon the following morning and the men remained closeted together for a long time. Thereafter the same sort of people, and particularly women, who had come to his house at Zutfen by night, began frequenting the office of Paul Leipschitz in Rotterdam and, incidentally, several bargees who, besides conveying food to the Dutch and American relief organizations in Belgium and France along the many canals, had been in the habit of conveying valuable information collected by promeneurs, were caught red-handed and promptly executed.
Von Eberfeldt was proud of the inspiration which had led him to enlist the help of the limping Leipschitz. “Letter-boxes,” too, were identified, passeurs were caught and further executions followed. Nevertheless the efficiency of the British Counter-Espionage organization remained unimpaired.
Among the women agents who visited Leipschitz was a certain Clothilde Bruun, of whom, at first, he was suspicious, because of a vague sense of familiarity which her personality aroused. It was a sensation so indefinite that he could not for the life of him remember whether he had seen her before in London or Berlin, although he was virtually certain that they had met previously in one or other of those cities.
Clothilde, for her part, proved reticent, or gave evasive answers to his guarded questions. Apart from the excellent work she did for him, he could not make the girl out. There was something of mystery and a certain haunting sadness about her. Many of the best female agents in the various secret services were no better than prostitutes, but Clothilde Bruun, quite definitely, did not come into that category. She had a quaint air of virginal sanctity, which seemed to be strangely at variance with the profession she had adopted. She did not appear to have become a spy through motives of patriotism, for she would confess to no nationality, and had, upon occasion, asserted laughingly that she owed allegiance to no particular country.
For a time Leipschitz suspected her of being of that most dangerous type, the international spy, who has no loyalty and is always ready to sell information to the highest bidder.
Nevertheless the girl served him well, often obtained the most valuable information and thus gradually gained both his confidence and his liking. Despite these circumstances, Clothilde herself could not make up her mind which side her employer was serving, for Paul Leipschitz was exceedingly clever and although he demanded information from her of troop movements in Belgium he gave her messages, just as frequently, to pass on to the German High Command. The playing of this double game on his part enabled her to come and go between Holland and Germany and Belgium by the frontier passages which her employer no longer used.
It was the capture of another of his agents, a sixteen-year-old Belgian girl named Marie, which finally revealed to Clothilde the true nature of her employer’s allegiance.
Marie had proved the best type of agent since she was fourteen, for she was fired by a veritable Jeanne d’Arc spirit of patriotism and, moreover, her rosy, peasant cheeks and innocent blue eyes had endeared her to the old family men of the German Landsturm troops who guarded the deadly high-voltage fence delimiting the frontier.
By making particular friends with one of these old German soldiers, to whom she often took little dainties from her mother’s kitchen, Marie had been able to get messages to a man in Wachtebeke who subsequently furnished valuable information as to a big concentration of German troops in the Wachtebeke-Moerbeke-Lokeren sector. The divisions making the concentration were from the Polish marshes and it was vitally important to find out for what purpose they were to be used on the Western Front. Marie was carrying the required report from the man at Wachtebeke, cleverly concealed on her person, when she was caught in the Selzaete sector by a German plain-clothes Secret Service man. The evidence against the child was damningly complete.
Leipschitz was appalled when he heard of the capture. He had often spoken to the child, without letting her have a notion of who he was, and, apart from that, had felt an abounding admiration for her resourcefulness and courage.
His first generous instinct was to slip across the frontier and to contrive her escape at any cost. Cool consideration brought wiser councils, for Leipschitz was, in reality, Chief of the British Counter-Espionage Service in Holland. As such, his life was worth the lives of many agents; for upon his genius the success of that organization depended. Remove him suddenly and the whole edifice he had so carefully erected would collapse like a house of cards.
To make matters worse, he was far from being unaware of how closely he had been watched of late by recognized German agents in Rotterdam. He had a habit of limping about the streets, markets and harbours of the city, stopping here to gaze into a shop window that was being redressed, halting there to finger, and perhaps rearrange, the wares displayed upon some open stall, or he would sit drinking in dockside taverns with sailors and stevedores sometimes for hours on end. After such excursions he would work patiently behind the locked door of his room far into the night with a thin code book open at his elbow.
Lately all his actions had been carefully observed and once the door of his room had been tried stealthily while he was hard at work, but the passage beyond had been empty by the time he got the door open.
No, it certainly would not do for him to enter any territory that was in German occupation and so he sent for Clothilde Bruun.
“Clothilde,” he said quietly, “a catastrophe has befallen. Marie has been captured; she is but a child and yet was one of our best passeurs.”
Clothilde dropped her eyes, lest the man should see the gleam of excited interest which must have shone in them.
“Marie—a Belgian, eh?” she queried.
“A Belgian refugee,” he agreed.
“Then you really are working against Germany?”
“Does it matter for whom we work,” he countered, “so long as both of us are well paid?”
“Not in the least,” she shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”
Paul Leipschitz leaned eagerly across the table.
“Will you slip through the frontier passage at Selzaete and go to Wachtebeke?” he said. “Go to the last house but one in the village and if you see a flower-pot in the window it will be safe for you to approach M.29. He will tell you where Marie is imprisoned. Contrive her escape if you can; if that is not possible use every means in your power to get her sentence commuted to imprisonment. They are pretty well certain to sentence her to death in the first place, for she was caught red-handed.”
“Very good,” said Clothilde Bruun, and left her employer abruptly.
A fortnight later Paul Leipschitz received a message from M.29 to the effect that the death sentence passed on Marie had been commuted to one of imprisonment for the duration of the war, but of Clothilde he received no word.
That Clothilde Bruun had been able to arrange matters thus satisfactorily was not in the least surprising.
After taking the precaution of satisfying herself as to the identity of M.29—the unfortunate man was shot in the cold of a grey dawn a fortnight later—she had stayed only for a short interview with the Officer Commanding the German troops before going straight through to Berlin.
Old Count von Reichofen, Chief of the Intelligence Department, received her in friendly fashion, for he knew that she would not have risked making the journey unless she had urgent information of the most important character to convey.
“Well, Count,” she said, “I’ve got what you wanted. The Head of the British Secret Service in Holland is our pseudo-spy—Mynheer Paul Leipschitz.”
“Paul Leipschitz! Impossible!” cried the Count. “Why, he risked his life by going to London to get the most valuable information about the British Navy. Besides, he has sent us much accurate information since then.”
Clothilde crossed her silk-clad legs and lit a cigarette with slow deliberation.
“Information that would have been valuable if it had reached you in time, or if the British had not altered their plans so opportunely for themselves,” she corrected. “I think Leipschitz has changed a great deal since he returned from London.”
“You mean——?”
“A change of heart. He’s the same man right enough, if one may go by the various portraits with which you provided me.”
“But, Fräulein——” protested Reichofen.
Clothilde crushed out her cigarette and tapping out each point upon the edge of the great man’s desk with the tip of a slender forefinger she set out, detail by detail, the evidence she had collected against Paul Leipschitz, right down to the damning corroboration of his own inferred admissions, supported by the orders he had given her concerning the child-spy named Marie.
After an hour or more had passed, the Count sat back, convinced at last.
“So!” His breath escaped in a gusty sigh and his fists clenched savagely. “So! He must be enticed into Belgium, or Germany, and dealt with. Will you be the pretty bait, mein liebchen?”
“Gladly, Count,” replied Clothilde, “but can things be arranged just so simply?”
“You mean——?”
“Mynheer Leipschitz is a Dutch subject, whose hatred of the British is well-known in his own country. Also, there may be evidence in existence that he has served the Fatherland. To merely deal with him in our own land, or for trespassing in occupied territory, would cause bad feeling in Holland, unless it could be proved that he was caught red-handed.”
“Then you suggest—what?”
Clothilde uncrossed her legs and folded her arms upon the desk as she leaned forward. Her great eyes blazed into the brooding ones of Karl von Reichofen.
“He has a fondness for me,” she murmured. “If he believed I was in danger he might come.”
“But that would not supply such evidence as would convict him to the satisfaction of his own people.”
“Give me leave to finish, my Commandant.”
“A thousand pardons, Fräulein. You were saying——?”
“I was about to tell you that Paul Leipschitz is moving heaven and earth to discover for what purpose the divisions are to be used that have come from the Russian front to the Wachtebeke-Moerbeke-Lokeren area. If he could be persuaded that I am in danger because I have obtained, and am prepared to hand over to him, a copy of the orders for the disposition of those newly arrived divisions, then I think he would come to me in any place I care to name.”
“Splendid!” cried the Count, thumping the desk. “A special set of plausible, but entirely false, orders shall be prepared at once.”
The beautiful spy smiled a slow, contemptuous smile.
“You underrate the intelligence and the extensive knowledge of this man, my Commandant. He is himself an expert in supplying nearly true, or too-late authentic information. If I am to go through with this business you must entrust me with the real orders—or none at all.”
“But suppose he snatches them from you and makes off at once?” protested von Reichofen.
“He is too chivalrous. I shall meet him at a house I know of in Wachtebeke—M.29, the agent who occupies it, can be removed just before Leipschitz is due to arrive and a certain flower-pot will be standing in the window. There I shall play the love-sick maiden who, to induce him to stay the night, will not give up the orders until her passion for him is satiated.”
“But——” broke in the Chief of Intelligence.
“Oh, I know all about my enviable reputation for chastity,” smiled Clothilde. “Do not worry about me, I can look after myself. Have the house surrounded and let your men enter when I remove the flower-pot from the window. I want time to find out as much as possible about the organization he has created.”
Thus were matters arranged and hence when Paul Leipschitz was becoming really anxious over the prolonged absence of Clothilde Bruun a message was passed on to him, in all innocence, by M.29.
The message was remarkably cryptic, but cleverly conveyed its meaning to the man who held the main clue and was, moreover, not unused to the deepest kind of cogitation.
Once he understood the situation and realized that Clothilde was being hunted for her life, the effect upon Paul Leipschitz was remarkable, although in the case of a younger man, with the hot blood of youth flowing fast in his veins, it might have been easily understandable. In the first shock of receiving such news the fact that the girl was in possession of the all-important Move, or Operation, Orders for the German divisions which had been released from the Russian front made no appreciable impression upon his mind. All he thought of was the fragrant sweetness of Clothilde as he had known, and not, he feared, appreciated her. Even that vague familiarity, that feeling of having known her elsewhere, which had caused him to distrust her slightly was forgotten.
By reason of his Secret Service training, however, the subsidiary, but, from considerations of duty, far more important, information contained in the message at last claimed his attention.
He would have liked to get in touch again with M.29 before moving, but that was impossible, because the message fixed a rendezvous for the next night at the last house but one in the main street of Wachtebeke.
Wherefore Paul Leipschitz laid his plans as carefully as possible and after dusk upon the following evening slipped across the Dutch border by the frontier passage at Selzaete, hard by the place where little Marie had been apprehended.
The night was intensely dark and a blinding rainstorm lashed pitilessly across the flat fields over which the man, disguised as a peasant whom no-one would have recognized as Paul Leipschitz, trudged doggedly. Surprisingly enough his habitual limp had disappeared. That limp, in fact, lay buried in the grave of the real Paul Leipschitz, who had faced a firing squad one morning in that tragic little rifle range at the grim old Tower of London.
The British Agent who had taken the dead Dutchman’s place arrived at the rendezvous in Wachtebeke a full hour before the time appointed. The expected shadow of the flower-pot showed against the lamplit blind of the living-room and the door was unlatched; but to the British Agent’s no small annoyance M.29 was absent.
“H’m,” said the man who had been known as Leipschitz, “whether he’s here or not doesn’t much matter. I’ve an hour in which to make myself both comfortable and presentable before Clothilde arrives.”
After locking the front door of the cottage he rummaged through the scullery for some time before unearthing an ancient wash tub. He had already set two kettles and four saucepans full of water upon the fire he had made up.
Then he went back to the living-room for the rush basket in which he had carried, wrapped in a ground-sheet, a suit of clothes suitable for the portly figure of Mynheer Leipschitz, together with sundry parcels of padding.
As he stooped to take up the basket he noticed for the first time a dull stain which was soaking brownly into the floo
r-boards. That stain was wet to the touch and the mark it left upon his questing finger was sticky and red, not brown.
A low whistle of surprise escaped from the man’s lips. Then, quickly, he hid the rush basket and its contents in the grate of an unlighted copper. It is noteworthy that he laid close to hand, while he took his bath, a heavy revolver which was fitted with a silencer. It may appear strange that in the circumstances he showed no signs of panic; but, as he saw things, if M.29 had been caught and killed that night in the living-room adjoining, the man’s murderers would by this time have taken their departure, well satisfied with their night’s work. In which case Clothilde would find the coast well clear.
If, on the other hand, his own advent had been anticipated, the house, most certainly, would be surrounded already, so that there would be no possible harm in comforting his cold body by means of a hot bath.
The one eventuality for which he did not legislate was the arrival of Clothilde some time in advance of the hour of their assignation. And Clothilde, anxious to make sure that the removal of M.29 had been carried out without too much disturbance, came to the cottage within a few minutes of the man she had known as Leipschitz completing his bath.
Turning the well-oiled lock with a skeleton-key, she entered the dark living-room without making a sound. At once she became aware of a light in the scullery, where someone was singing softly. One glimpse she had of the back view of a lean, hard body, and then saw reflected in a mirror hung upon the scullery wall, the features of a face that she had never forgotten. Slowly the blood drained from her cheeks, leaving her pale and swaying slightly, for she was half stifled by the tumultuous beating of her heart, which, at first, had seemed to stand still for an age-long while. Very quietly she crept out again into the howling gale to wait patiently, despite the driving rain and tearing wind, until a light sprang up in the cottage living-room. Then she advanced and knocked four times on the door in a manner which would be recognized by M.29—or his master.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 39
