In many people the very name “Spy” excites a shudder of apprehension; we
Spies, in fact, get quite used to being shuddered at. None of us Spies
mind it at all. Whenever I enter a hotel and register myself as a Spy
I am quite accustomed to see a thrill of fear run round the clerks, or
clerk, behind the desk.
Us Spies or We Spies--for we call ourselves both--are thus a race apart.
None know us. All fear us. Where do we live? Nowhere. Where are we?
Everywhere. Frequently we don’t know ourselves where we are. The secret
orders that we receive come from so high up that it is often forbidden
to us even to ask where we are. A friend of mine, or at least a Fellow
Spy--us Spies have no friends--one of the most brilliant men in the
Hungarian Secret Service, once spent a month in New York under the
impression that he was in Winnipeg. If this happened to the most
brilliant, think of the others.
All, I say, fear us. Because they know and have reason to know our
power. Hence, in spite of the prejudice against us, we are able to move
everywhere, to lodge in the best hotels, and enter any society that we
wish to penetrate.
Let me relate an incident to illustrate this: a month ago I entered one
of the largest of the New York hotels which I will merely call the B.
hotel without naming it: to do so might blast it. We Spies, in fact,
never _name_ a hotel. At the most we indicate it by a number known only
to ourselves, such as 1, 2, or 3.
On my presenting myself at the desk the clerk informed me that he had no
room vacant. I knew this of course to be a mere subterfuge; whether or
not he suspected that I was a Spy I cannot say. I was muffled up, to
avoid recognition, in a long overcoat with the collar turned up and
reaching well above my ears, while the black beard and the moustache,
that I had slipped on in entering the hotel, concealed my face. “Let
me speak a moment to the manager,” I said. When he came I beckoned him
aside and taking his ear in my hand I breathed two words into it. “Good
heavens!” he gasped, while his face turned as pale as ashes. “Is it
enough?” I asked. “Can I have a room, or must I breathe again?” “No,
no,” said the manager, still trembling. Then, turning to the clerk:
“Give this gentleman a room,” he said, “and give him a bath.”
What these two words are that will get a room in New York at once I must
not divulge. Even now, when the veil of secrecy is being lifted, the
international interests involved are too complicated to permit it.
Suffice it to say that if these two had failed I know a couple of others
still better.
I narrate this incident, otherwise trivial, as indicating the astounding
ramifications and the ubiquity of the international spy system. A
similar illustration occurs to me as I write. I was walking the other
day with another man, on upper B. way between the T. Building and the W.
Garden.
“Do you see that man over there?” I said, pointing from the side of
the street on which we were walking on the sidewalk to the other side
opposite to the side that we were on.
“The man with the straw hat?” he asked. “Yes, what of him?”
“Oh, nothing,” I answered, “except that he’s a Spy!”
“Great heavens!” exclaimed my acquaintance, leaning up against a
lamp-post for support. “A Spy! How do you know that? What does it mean?”