To be a success as a secret agent a wide knowledge of European hotels is
an absolute necessity.
You must, indeed, be familiar with the best hotel in every city of any
importance, and scarcely less important is the personal acquaintance of
the manager; for without his help you will inevitably find in your path
a thousand difficulties, small and great, which, with his friendly
assistance, melt almost insensibly away. Duty and inclination alike
have led me to make a special study of hotel life, and I think I may
say, without undue egotism, that there are few _maitres d'hotel_ in
Europe with whom I am not on terms of acquaintance, and even in many
cases warm friendship.
I was especially fortunate in this respect in the situation in which I
found myself one sunny morning in June, 1917. As the clock struck ten I
strolled out of a big hotel, which I will call the Waldesruhe, in
Lucerne, and wandered along the shady avenue beside the lake in the
direction of the Schwanen-Platz.
Luigi Battini, the manager of the Waldesruhe, was one of my closest
personal friends, and I should have stayed at the Waldesruhe at any time
I was in Lucerne quite apart from the particular business which had
brought me there on this occasion. Luigi was one of those marvellously
efficient human machines which appear almost to reach omniscience in
everything connected, even remotely, with his profession. He would give
his guests, off hand and without the slightest hesitation, minutely
detailed directions for the most complicated of journeys without opening
a time-table, and invariably his information was correct to the smallest
particular. He knew at what stations every dining-car was put on every
train within a radius of hundreds of miles, and he impressed upon you,
in the far-off pre-war days, to remember that the train left Weis for
Passau twenty minutes earlier this month than the hour mentioned in the
time-table.
His memory, especially for faces, was prodigious. Indeed, it was to
this that I owed the beginnings of our friendship. Years before Luigi
had been a waiter at the great buffet at Liverpool where passengers from
the incoming American boats were in the habit of snatching a hasty meal
before joining the train for London. I had arrived in England from New
York cold and hungry, and, owing to some delay about my baggage, was
unable to get to the restaurant until just before the London express was
due to start.
I had not realised how long I had been delayed, and had just taken my
first mouthful of the soup which Luigi had brought me when the bell
heralding the immediate departure of the train rang loudly. With a
muttered ejaculation of annoyance I hastily threw down on the table the
price of my abandoned meal and rushed out, jumped into the train, and a
moment later was speeding Londonwards, still cold and hungry and in the
very worst of tempers.
Of course I promptly forgot the incident, and it was not until a year
later that I was forcibly reminded of it. I had again arrived in
Liverpool from New York and hurried to the same restaurant for a meal.
By some queer chance I made for a table at which Luigi was still the
waiter. I should not have known him, but he recollected me and our
previous meeting.
With a profound bow and a smiling flash of his exquisite teeth, Luigi
said quizzically: "Good evening, monsieur. Has monsieur returned for
his dinner?"
I looked at him in blank astonishment for a moment, then burst into a
roar of laughter, as I remembered both him and the long-forgotten
incident of a year before. The ice was effectually broken between us,
and when I left for London I felt I had made a friend of the smiling
Italian. But it was years before I discovered how deep and loyal a
mutual regard had sprung out of a trifling incident. But the best
friendships not infrequently owe their origin to some such triviality.
Time had slipped by since then, and Luigi had climbed the ladder until
the humble waiter was a power in the great cosmopolitan world of the
hotel. But to me, at any rate, he was the Luigi of old; to others he
might be merely the official head of a perfectly appointed hotel, where
arrangements seemed to go by clockwork and no one ever heard of such a
thing as failure. Always in a frock-coat, whatever the season, whatever
the hour of the day; always wearing the diamond pin given him by a
travelling monarch; always alert though never obtrusive; known to all
his guests, but familiar with hardly any--such was Luigi Battini. And
he was one of Hecq's "friends."
I had gone to Lucerne on purpose to learn something from his lips which
he would not risk in the post, and what he had told me half an hour
earlier had set me thinking deeply. It entirely confirmed certain
information I had been able to gain in London and Lisbon.
After a long and meditative walk, I seated myself on the _terrasse_ of a
cafe overlooking the lovely Lake of Lucerne, and, with a _bock_ before
me, wrote out a telegram as follows:
"Arthon, Paris.--Returning London fourteenth.--Casentino."
Having finished my _bock_, I strolled along to the chief telegraph
office near the station and dispatched the message. To the uninitiated
it conveyed no other meaning than appeared on the surface, but its
receipt at the address for which it was destined set various elements of
machinery in motion.
On the evening of the fourteenth there stepped from the hotel omnibus--a
smartly dressed young Frenchwoman, carrying a little sable Pomeranian
dog and followed by a porter with her luggage.
Luigi met her in the hall, and, with his heels clicked together in his
usual attitude of welcome, received her with an exquisite bow. She
engaged a room, signed the visitors' book in the usual way, and then
allowed Battini to conduct her up by the lift. As she passed me our
eyes met, but without the slightest sign of recognition. Even though
the newly arrived guest was none other than my smartest assistant,
Madame Gabrielle Soyez.
Next day, in consequence of a note I sent her, we met in one of the
sitting-rooms in the further, and at the present moment unoccupied--wing
of the hotel. She then told me that her own sitting-room was next to
one occupied by a Swedish engineer named Oscar Engstrom, whom I had
watched in Lisbon a month before and who was now in Switzerland engaged
on some mysterious business which we had not been able to fathom. We
strongly suspected, however, from various bits of evidence that had
reached us, that the man was in the pay of Germany at the moment, even
if he were not one of the regular German agents.
When I entered, Madame Gabrielle, smartly attired in a tailor-made gown
of navy-blue cloth and a very bewitching hat, was standing at the
window, with her pet dog beneath her arm, chatting to the immaculate
Luigi, gazing the while on the blue waters of the lake.
I found myself reflecting how typically French she was in every detail--
dainty in face and figure, immaculately dressed, and possessing that
indefinably vivacious great charm which seems to be the monopoly of the
cultured Frenchwoman. She could throw it aside when she chose, such was
her wonderful versatility, and assume a mask of dullness and stupidity
sufficient to ensure that no one meeting her would give her a second
glance. It was a valuable accomplishment, and more than once had
carried her safely through a difficult and dangerous situation.
To-day, among friends, she was her own sunny self. "Ah, Monsieur
Gerald," she cried, springing forward to greet me, "our friend Luigi has
been telling me some very strange things--eh?"
"I have told Madame pretty well all I know," said the suave Italian, in
excellent English; "but it is not much. Engstrom has engaged a room for
a lady friend--a Madame Bohman."
"Swedish also?" I queried, with a smile. "When does our friend expect
Mr Thornton, as he calls himself?"
"He is expected any moment," replied Luigi; "he has retained his room
ever since he left for London."
"Good!" I said. And we all three sat down and plunged into an
intricate discussion of every detail concerning the suspects and our
plan of campaign.
My instructions to Luigi were to keep a constant watch upon the comings
and goings of the Swedish engineer and his lady friend, while to Madame
Gabrielle fell the task of endeavouring to scrape acquaintance with the
latter on her arrival, in order to try to gain from some casual remark--
for we could expect nothing more--a hint of what was in progress.
Engstrom's lady friend, Madame Bohman, arrived in due course, and,
though she was quite unaware of it, we scrutinised her closely before we
gave her a chance of seeing us. I saw at once that she was a complete
stranger to me. Madame Gabrielle did not know her, and Luigi, with his
faultless memory for faces, declared positively that she had never
entered any hotel at which he had been engaged.
"A new hand, in all probability," I thought, "but none the less
dangerous on that ground if she knows her business." Madame Bohman was
a tall, handsome, fair-haired woman of decidedly distinguished
appearance, and, from the scraps of her conversation which we overheard,
evidently well educated and well connected. She had the blue eyes and
fair hair of the typical Swede, but blue eyes and fair hair are not
exactly unknown in Germany, and, though there was no ostensible reason
for it, I found myself wondering whether she was exactly what she
professed to be. But the German spy bureau works with any tools that
come handy, and, even though Madame Bohman were the pure-blooded Swede
she professed to be, there was still no reason why she should not be an
enemy agent as well. More than one Swedish "neutral" has been detected
in that category and paid the penalty!