"Blind Heinrich!"
Without any conscious effort of memory on my part, these words flashed
suddenly into my mind, as, six weeks or so after the events just
related, I sat lazily in Armand Hecq's private room in the Boulevard des
Capucines, turning over our latest problem in my mind, while I waited
for the astute chief, who was busy investigating a report which had just
been brought in by one of his numerous financial clients--in other
words, by one of the numerous expert agents whom he kept constantly busy
up and down Europe, at the task of countering the villainous work of the
spy bureau in Berlin.
"I wonder whether he is mixed up in the affair," I mused; rapidly
working out a new train of thought to which the old scoundrel's name had
given rise. So intent was I that I did not notice Hecq's entrance. His
quick eye noticed my absorption.
"A penny for your thoughts, _mon cher_ Gerald," he laughed.
"Well," I said with a smile, "I was pretty far away, I admit. The fact
is, I was wondering whether Blind Heinrich is taking any part in the
game?"
The director of the International Secret Service of the Allies raised
his brows and stared at me across the big, littered writing-table.
Behind him a tape machine was clicking out its message, just as it
should in a well-ordered financier's office. He was evidently
surprised.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed in English, which he spoke to perfection. "I
never thought of him! My dear Gerald, old Heinrich is an extremely wily
bird; and if he is mixed up in this business we shall have all our work
cut out. Remember how he wriggled out of our hands in the Gould affair,
when we thought we had him safely netted?"
The Gould affair! I should think I did remember it! I took a part in
tracing and arresting the spy, Frederick Adolphus Gould, who lived near
Chatham, and who, a few months before the war, was sent to prison for
five years for attempted espionage. The case was a bad one. For years
"Gould" had posed, like so many of his unscrupulous countrymen, as a
good, patriotic John Bull Englishman, unable to speak German, expressing
hatred of Germany and the Kaiser, and warning us that wax would come.
Yet, after his arrest, I had gone to Germany very much incognito to make
inquiries, and found that exceedingly patriotic "Englishman" was the son
of a certain Baron von S--, that he had been born in Berlin in 1851, had
fought in the Franco-German War, and had been awarded the customary Iron
Cross!
Now one of "Gould's" closest friends in England had been a certain
Norwegian named Heinrich Kristensten, a half-blind violinist who lived
at Hampstead. Some strange facts came to light in the course of our
inquiries, but the afflicted musician forestalled us by very cleverly
coming forward and denouncing his whilom friend--not, however, before he
saw that Gould was quite hopelessly entangled in the net which had been
spread for him by the British Secret Service. His action, of course,
was quite in accord with German practice. Seeing that the game was up,
so far as Gould was concerned, he saved himself on the principle that
one loss was better than two. His name had leaped spontaneously into my
mind in connection with the latest problem upon which we were engaged--
the mysterious manner in which, despite the rigid British censorship,
details of the damage done in London by the raiding Gothas were so
quickly and so accurately transmitted to Berlin. That they were so
transmitted we knew, for the German papers promptly published them. And
obviously, if severely censored matters of this kind were leaking out,
there was some channel of information open of which we were unaware. We
had to find and close it.
Now, as is well known, every wireless message which passes from the
outer world to Berlin, or from Berlin to the outer world, is picked up
and decoded at our wireless stations. The news was, we knew, not sent
by wireless. Yet it was clear the Wilhelmstrasse got early information,
not only as to where the bombs were dropped, but the extent of the
damage done, both points on which they could not obtain the slightest
information from the English papers. These details were published by
the German and Swiss papers, and, allowing for Berlin's invariable
exaggeration of its own prowess, they were remarkably full and accurate.
The task before me was to find out how the news was transmitted, and it
was one, I confess, which fairly bristled with difficulties.
"Heinrich, being a neutral, has lately been showing a great interest in
the welfare of blinded British soldiers," I remarked to Hecq. "If he
were a friend of Gould's, why should he do this?"
"For some reason of his own," said Hecq, "possibly to avert suspicion.
We know pretty well that he was very deep in it with Gould and had
received money from him. Perhaps you will recollect that he admitted
it, explaining that it was a loan, and indeed we found his I.O.U. in
Gould's desk, made out, no doubt, `to lend artistic verisimilitude to a
bald and otherwise unconvincing narrative,' as your Gilbert has it. You
know he said his daughter had been ill, and that in consequence he was
short of money. That was too weak; we knew well enough that Heinrich
made a good deal out of his fiddle, as his bank balance showed. He was
not short of money at all, and I have not the least doubt that the
`loan' was for value received in the shape of information or assistance,
perhaps both."
"Yes, I remember now," I said, reflecting deeply.
Three weeks went by. I was tired and run down, and decided to snatch a
fortnight with Doris in Worcestershire before embarking upon a task
which was likely to be arduous, if not actually dangerous. Greatly
strengthened by my sojourn in delightful Worcestershire, I was back in
town, keenly interested in the work I had in hand.
One evening I had been down to Hertford, and was returning by the Great
Eastern Railway to Liverpool Street, when, just before ten o'clock, the
train pulled up abruptly at Stratford, all lights were instantly
extinguished, and I was swept into an excited throng of several hundreds
of refugees in the subway beneath the line. There, amid a motley
gathering, largely composed of panic-stricken foreign Jews, I was
compelled to remain for over three hours, listening to the venomous
barking of the anti-aircraft guns and the occasional rending,
ear-splitting crash of a high explosive bomb.
It was the first time I had seen the alien under air-raid conditions,
though I had heard a good deal about him; and as I watched the cowardly
wretches my whole mind was revolted at the thought that a large
proportion of these quivering masses of jelly, for in their fright they
were little else, had been welcomed to British citizenship under the
imbecile naturalisation system. No one blamed them for being
frightened: the Englishwomen and children of the working classes,
huddled in the shelters, were quite obviously frightened, and small
wonder. But if they were frightened, they were brave, and they kept
their self-control even when the infernal racket overhead was at its
worst. I had seldom seen a better proof of the essential superiority of
the Briton over the harpies who prey upon him, and as I watched I felt
proud that, cosmopolitan as I am, I had good English blood in my veins.
At ten o'clock next morning I went to Whitehall, where exact of all the
damage done by the Gothas was placed freely at my disposal. From the
secret reports I made certain extracts for future use.
Five days later.
As I sat in my flat in Curzon Street, my man, Burton, brought in copies
of the _General Anzeiger fur Elberfeld-Barmen_, the Berlin _Borsen
Courier_, and the _Tageblatt_, all of which had been sent me by special
messenger from Whitehall.
I opened them, and in both the _General Anzeiger_ and the _Tageblatt_
were exultant articles on the success of the air raid upon the
metropolitan area a few nights before. They were, of course, luridly
"written up," but they contained a great deal of perfectly accurate
information, as I knew by the secret reports shown to me directly after
the raid.
How could the enemy know? Of course, the blazing accounts of the terror
and panic supposed to have been created in London could have been
written up anywhere. But how was it that not only were the localities
in which the bombs had fallen accurately specified, but in several
instances details were given of the exact damage to certain buildings?
By no possibility could the latter information have been the result of
an effort of Teutonic imagination. The enemy _knew_; proof of it was
there in cold print. How did the news reach the Wilhelmstrasse so
quickly?
It was certainly not by wireless, for every message was picked up and
decoded by our own stations. That the news had not passed through the
great German wireless stations of Norddeich, at the north of the Elbe,
or Nauen, near Berlin, was certain. Here was a pretty problem set for
solution.
As I sat alone in my room that evening, having dined at my club and
returned to the enjoyment of slippers, a novel, and a good cigar, I
reflected on the task I had in hand. I realised, of course, that my
suspicions of Blind Heinrich might be entirely unfounded, but I had at
the moment nothing better to go upon, and I decided that, in view of his
known association with Gould, whether he was mixed up with the matter we
now had in hand or not, a close watch upon him might provide some facts
of interest.
Upon my arrival in London from Paris, I had sought out Blind Heinrich,
who was now living in a boarding-house in Hereford Road, Bayswater,
close to Westbourne Grove. In the same house was now living a dainty
little woman, a Belgian refugee, who was in very straitened
circumstances. According to her own story, she had become separated
from her husband, a rich merchant of Brussels, before going on board a
boat at Ostend, during the terrible flight from Belgium in 1914. Since
then she had been unable to obtain the slightest information about him,
and did not know even whether he was alive or dead.
For nearly three years, she related, she had remained in terrible
anxiety, which was rapidly wrecking her nerves and her life. As a
refugee, a pitiful victim of the catastrophe which had befallen her
beloved country, she was existing upon English charity. She called
herself Madame Taymans, and her old address in happier days was in the
Rue de Namur in Brussels. But her real name was--Gabrielle Soyez!
Few women in the world could so perfectly adapt themselves to the
ever-changing demands of the Secret Service as Madame Soyez. In her
present circumstances she was absolutely at home, for she had been
educated in part at a convent near Gembloux, and could assume the
Belgian accent to perfection. It was an easy matter, therefore, for her
to pass for what she pretended to be.
In Hereford Road the Frenchwoman had established herself on my
instruction for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye upon the quiet,
long-haired, half-blind violinist, who, to all appearances, was eking
out only a meagre existence, and whose clothes were of that
shabby-genteel brand which usually betrays respectable poverty. But we
knew enough of Heinrich's affairs to be convinced that the
shabby-genteel role was deliberately assumed for purposes of deception.
A splendid musician and a born teacher, Heinrich could command his own
terms, and, as a matter of fact, he made a good deal of money. More
than this, he was well known in high circles of Society, where his
teaching abilities gave him the _entree_ to a large number of the best
houses. And, of course, no one ever suspected that the half-blind old
fiddler, crawling from house to house in the aristocratic quarters in
which he found most of his pupils, was in reality the alert and
dangerous agent of the enemy which subsequent events revealed him to be.