THE AFFAIR OF MISTER HAYNES
In February, 1915, there occurred an event which I cannot pretend
did not give me a certain amount of satisfaction, tragic and
ever-to-be regretted as that event proved. I had constantly urged both
upon the naval and military Intelligence Departments in Berlin that
the work in England should be left entirely in my hands, and that I
should not be badgered or embarrassed by amateurs being sent to
operate in my territory, independent of my control and very often
without my being acquainted with their presence or purpose.
I have already shown how lamentable can be the results if the
illustrious Excellencies who direct our operations (in a manner, I
hasten to add, which reflects the greatest credit to themselves, and
brings the greatest profit to the Fatherland) take the work out of the
hands of the skilled and intimately-understanding officials who have
made Great Britain a life-long study, who appreciate the psychology,
and have an insight into the habits and customs of the people whom
Paoli (and not Napoleon) described as “Sono Mercanti,” or “a nation of
shopkeepers.”
For I pride myself that I understand not only British character but
British institutions. I am deeply intimate with the political sects
and with the system of British journalism, and although the affair of
Mister Haynes may seem to dispose of this latter claim, yet I think my
friends, for whom this memoir is designed, will agree that the
circumstances in the case of Mister Haynes were unusual. The event I
refer to was the arrest of Herr Blaumberg, who was sent from America
without my knowledge to secure an accurate list--“accurate” mark
you!--of the warships which the British were laying down, especially
in reference to the super-X battleships which were destined to prove
Mr. Churchill’s happiest experiment.
Herr Blaumberg had no sooner landed than he was arrested. I received
an inquiry from Wilhelmstrasse which was the first information I had
of Herr Blaumberg’s foolish attempt to meddle in matters which he
obviously did not understand. The second intimation was the official
notice in the English papers:
“This morning a man, tried and convicted of espionage at the Central
Criminal Court, was executed in the Tower of London.”
This, I believe, was Herr Blaumberg, and in my note to my superiors I
could not refrain from urging the unwisdom of entrusting delicate and
important work to any but those tried and trusted officials, who were
acquainted with every move of the game and able not only to
circumvent, but to anticipate the action of the official police.
Of course, the people in Berlin very emphatically restated their old
parrot cry that there was a formidable secret service in existence and
they sent me a cock-and-bull story (as the British say), that Herr
Blaumberg had been shadowed from the moment he left America to the
moment he arrived in the Mersey; that all his documents had been
scientifically burgled and the fullest particulars of his mission had
been transmitted by wireless long before he had reached England.
Thus do incompetent bureaucrats excuse their own lack of foresight!
I was in London when the news came, firmly established in my rôle of
Chilian importer, and so well did I play my part, that I had secured
certain little Government orders and was even assisted by Government
officials, all unknowing, you may be sure, to the pursuit of my
investigations.
It was on the very day that I read this doleful news of Herr
Blaumberg’s sad end, that I made the acquaintance of Mister Haynes. I
saw him standing on the corner of Bouverie and Fleet Streets--a tall,
young, unshaven man, wearing pince-nez, and a very shabby suit. With
one quick, comprehensive glance I sized him up. The bundle of various
coloured pencils and the fountain-pen in his left-hand waistcoat
pocket, the absence of watch and chain, the hat carelessly balanced on
the back of his head, the hands thrust into his trousers pockets, the
drooping cigarette and the listless eyes, which watched the traffic
passing up and down, told me as plainly as though his biography had
been handed to me, all the history I wished to know.
His linen was not clean, his collar was two or three days old, his
boots were down at heel.
With that decision which has always marked my actions I walked up to
him with a smile.
“I think I have met you before, have I not?” I said.
He turned his head and looked at me from the crown of my hat to the
soles of my boots.
“I daresay,” he said.
“Come and have a drink,” said I briskly, and he obeyed with alacrity.
We turned into the private bar of a public house, ordered our drinks
and withdrew to a little round table and a couple of chairs in a
corner of the saloon bar.
“I don’t remember your name,” said I, “but I know you are a newspaper
man and if I remember rightly you have not had a great deal of luck
lately?”
“You have a good memory,” he said, “and if mine was as good I could
tell you your name, your age, the place of your birth and the state of
your banking account, but, unfortunately, my memory is a little
groggy.”
He lifted his drink with a shaking hand. I saw the whole story.
Here was what is commonly called in England, a “liner,” or a
free-lance, a man not attached to any newspaper but contributing
whatever stories, interviews or articles that come his way. They are
not so common in Fleet Street as they used to be when I first came to
London. The great news agencies have killed them. The new system of
journalism has passed them by. But occasionally you meet a man with
that hungry, hard-up look, with a grievance against the world, and a
pretty taste in whisky-and-soda, and this was such a one.
Under the genial influence of a second drink he confirmed my
diagnosis. He had a grievance against all the papers and admitted that
he was on the black-list of three or four for sending in contributions
which were not exactly true.
I asked him why he had not enlisted and his lips curved in a sneer. He
said he was an Irishman, and that he hated England anyway, and that he
hated the army more poisonously than he hated anything else. He hated
the war, he hated the Northworths and a long string of other newspaper
proprietors, but most of all he hated Fleet Street, its editors,
sub-editors, reporters, advertisement managers; in fact, his hatred
extended to the very newsboys on the streets.
This was the man for my money. I explained to him that in addition to
being a Chilian importer I was running a Chinese news agency to
collect and distribute news pertaining or of interest to Europeans in
China, and when I told him that I was short of a reporter for news
collection and offered him £6 a week, he nearly jumped into the air
with delight.
In engaging him I was putting into practice a plan which I had long
formed. Here was an opportunity for collecting news without arousing
suspicion. A newspaper reporter can ask questions which none of my
agents would dare to frame. He can go up and down the country without
exciting suspicion, and the mere fact that he is a reporter, is
sufficient to give him an entrée into circles, admission to which we
could only risk at grave danger to ourselves. An ordinary reporter
might have been valueless, but a man with a grievance, a man who was
“broke to the wide,” to use Mister Haynes’s own expressive idiom, was
especially valuable.
I took him down to the news agency office, and there he had tangible
proof of the solidity and bonâ-fides of the agency. The two rooms in
Fleet Street, which I had fitted up, were well furnished. The name of
the agency was painted on the windows and on the glass panels of the
office door, the files of the newspapers were carefully kept by the
boy I employed. There were telephones and a “tape machine”--in fact,
it was the most convincing environment that German forethought could
design. I never saw a man so content as he was when I sat him down at
a new desk within reach of the telephone, handed him a £5 note on
account of expenses, and outlined the plan of inquiry.
“Do you speak any foreign language?” I asked.
He said he spoke French indifferently and German not at all, which was
excellent news.
“My principals,” I explained, “are very anxious, of course, to receive
news of the war. The London hospitals are filled with wounded, and I
have no doubt that you would be able to obtain admission to the wards
and collect the personal narratives of the men as they come home.”
“I get you, Steve,” he said. “You want stories of heroism in battle?”
“Exactly,” I said, “but don’t dwell so much upon the romantical side
of the war. Encourage the men to speak not of their own battalions but
of the gallant fellows who were fighting on their left and on their
right. Find out what other regiments are in their divisions. Learn
something about their officers. Who are the most popular and who are
the most unpopular. What sort of men are their colonels. We want to
see the war at a new angle,” I went on hurriedly, for he looked a
little dubious and disappointed, “and we can only do that if we get
off the beaten track. When you have written your matter you will hand
it to me and I will embody it in my weekly letter to--er--China.”
From the very first my scheme was a success. Not a day passed but
Mister Haynes brought into me precisely the information which
Headquarters required.
You must understand that unless you take prisoners it is almost
impossible to discover what is your enemy’s order of battle. Once you
have discovered where certain divisions fit in and what places
particular battalions take, you will no longer be in the dark in any
subsequent actions in which those divisions take part. For instance,
if the Wessex are on the right of the 99th Division and the Royal
Hertfordshires are in the centre, and you know the positions of every
other battalion, you have only to pick up one prisoner from one
battalion at any point of the line to know exactly the disposition of
the others.
And here is another matter. A soldier coming back wounded from the
front will perhaps tell you that whilst his battalion stood the brunt
of an offensive, the battalion on his left did not resist with the
same resolution and he will probably give you the reason for this. It
may be that the weak battalion has a weak commanding officer, or that
the discipline is slack, and once our staff know this they also know
where to thrust the arrowhead of subsequent attacks.
The information which was given to the Great General Staff by the
indiscriminate publication of soldiers’ letters cannot be exaggerated,
and I for one deeply regretted the decision of the English War Office
to prohibit their publication.
Mister Haynes brought information of the first class, but nothing so
enthralling as that which he brought one afternoon about three weeks
after he had started working. I remember the occasion so well. I can
see him almost as tangibly as though he stood before me leaning
against the desk, his rusty hat on the back of his head, his hands as
usual in his pockets.
“I got a queer story from one of those chaps at the London Hospital,”
he said, “I don’t know whether I can use it.”
“What is it?” I asked carelessly.
“This man said that every night our front line near Bois Grenier is
evacuated to save the men from the effect of the German shelling. As
soon as it gets dark the whole line on a front of six miles is
withdrawn to the support trenches, and he said he was wounded through
being ordered back to the front line before the German’s artillery
strafe had finished.”
“That is very interesting,” said I, “on a front of six miles you say?”
“That’s right,” he said, “from Bois Grenier down to Festubert. Do you
think I had better use the story?”
“I think not,” I said shaking my head, “I don’t think it would be
patriotic. Those horrid Germans might get hold of the information and
use it to destroy our brave soldiers.”
“That is what I thought,” said Mister Haynes, though he did not seem
very enthusiastic, and indeed, as he told me, his reluctance to impart
the information had less to do with the safety of the soldiers than
with his own. “I don’t want three months’ hard labour under the
Defence of the Realm Act,” he said.
You may be sure that I was not very long in coding this news, though
it was some time before I could get my telegram to Stockholm.
Apparently the British Government were holding up all messages for
forty-eight hours, but this did not worry me so long as it reached its
destination eventually.
Naturally I received a reply in a much shorter space of time. In fact,
Berlin acknowledged my message within twelve hours of its receipt.
You will remember that in the first week of February we Germans
delivered a sudden and fierce attack upon the British front line
positions between Festubert and Bois Grenier. Owing to some unhappy
and unfortunate change of plan the front lines of the English position
were filled with soldiers, but this was probably due to the
carelessness of General von Klaus who had assembled his troops for the
offensive in broad daylight under the eyes of the British airmen. Von
Klaus himself denied this, but that is the theory which I have formed,
because Mister Haynes afterwards told me that he had had his story
confirmed from three independent sources, and gave me the names of his
informants, and even showed me the photograph of one of them.
Klein, who was up on a brief visit to London--he was very busy in
South Wales on propaganda work with his friend Mr. Craigmair--was
anxious that I should send Mister Haynes to the West of England where
certain experiments were being made with a new kind of armoured car.
He had attempted to get into the camp, which was guarded as carefully
as any prison, and had narrowly escaped being arrested.
It is a well-known fact that long before the famous Tank--that
atrocious and unfair weapon which the English used, contrary to the
laws of the Hague Convention--came upon the scene, secret experiments
were being made. Potsdam had heard of these, and I had received
instructions to prosecute my investigations with the greatest vigour.
Naturally rumours were rife, and there were many mares’ nests before,
by a lucky chance, our good Klein heard of this experimental camp. I
had no difficulty in concocting a story for Mister Haynes. My
suggestion was that he should write an article on the marvellous
mechanical contrivances which the genius of Britain had brought into
being and I despatched him, with Klein, hot upon the scent to
investigate and report.
They left by the night train from Paddington and I saw them off. Klein
was very decorous, the picture of an English gentleman in his check
cap and his long travelling coat, his neat-gloved hands and his
English magazine, and Mister Haynes, as untidy as ever, curled up in
the corner of the carriage and, I should imagine, asleep before he
left the station.
What happened was told me by Klein on the telephone. It was a
happening so disconcerting, so mysterious, that I must confess that I
regarded the unlooked-for outcome of this adventure with more than
ordinary disquietude, even had there not been the more terrible
sequel.
They reached their destination, a small West Country town, in the
early hours of the morning and went to their hotel where they were
joined by Posser, who was working with Klein, and who, deeply
conscious of the importance of finding out details of this particular
machine, had been spending that day in making judicious inquiries.
They had breakfasted together the next morning, when, of course, no
mention was made of the camp or the new armoured car, Klein
introducing Posser as his secretary. I might explain that Klein was
posing as a Swedish mining engineer who had a patent for sale
connected with coal haulage. I had sent Mister Haynes on the same
train and in company with Klein, on the pretext that, as Mr. Klein was
a friend and was going to the same town, they might travel together
and that Mr. Klein might possibly give my reporter certain
introductions which would be useful.
Mister Haynes spoke about his mission quite openly, though Klein
advised him, laughingly, not to mention his business if he wanted to
secure the information he required. Apparently Mister Haynes met with
little success, and came back to the hotel to dinner and said that all
his efforts to induce any of the soldiers attached to the camp to give
him information or to secure admission had been fruitless.
Klein was not greatly perturbed. In fact, he was very much elated
because Posser had told him secretly that he intended making his way
into the camp that night in the guise of one of the waiters at the
officers’ mess. They all ostensibly went to bed soon after ten
o’clock. Mister Haynes went to his room and Klein went to his, though
not to sleep. He made himself comfortable and took up a book and began
reading. Presently he heard a scraping on his door, and smiled, for it
was the agreed-on signal that Posser was stealing out into the night
to secure his information.
The house was wrapt in sleep at eleven o’clock, and Klein read on.
At one o’clock he heard a tap on the door. His room was next to Mister
Haynes, and thinking that Posser could not have returned at so early
an hour and that it was Haynes who was knocking, he opened the door.
And to his amazement and delight, for he saw success shining on his
comrade’s honest face, he admitted Posser.
“I’ve got it!” whispered our good Posser.
“Wait,” said Klein, in the same tone, and kicking off his slippers he
went into the corridor, softly opened Haynes’s door and listened. He
heard the regular breathing of the reporter, closed the door as softly
and came back.
“Now tell me,” he said quickly.
Posser explained how he had walked boldly into the camp in the
darkness, and how he had reached the shed, crawling through the
sentries, and had seen “the most remarkable machine that the war has
produced.”
“It is a triumph, my dear Klein,” he said, his eyes shining, “I have
in my head,” he tapped the good, broad German forehead, “the whole
construction of this engine. In twelve hours I will give you a drawing
and notes which----”
“Hush, hush,” said Klein, for in his natural excitement, Posser’s
voice had risen.
“Here is the rough idea.” Posser rapidly sketched a now familiar shape
briefly, outlined with rough squares and oblongs the position of the
engine and the guns.
“I will keep this,” said Klein. “You must get to work at once, my dear
fellow, and give us a more detailed drawing. But first we will drink
mutual congratulations.”
Klein got out a bottle of champagne, pulled out the cork, and these
two fine fellows, true and loyal sons of the Fatherland, drank in a
whisper to the destruction of civilization’s enemy--England!
Klein accompanied Posser to his room. They pulled down the blinds
before they switched on the light. Quickly the drawing pads, the
rulers, the T-squares and the compasses were taken out of Posser’s
suit-case and arrayed on the table.
“Now I will leave you,” said Klein, shook hands heartily with the hero
of that night’s adventure and left the room, as he said, without a
sound.
He had scarcely got into his own room and shut the door when he heard
the click of the lock on Posser’s door and smiled his approval. It was
at a quarter to two when he went to bed and at half-past seven the
maid brought him a cup of coffee and some biscuits. He drank his
coffee and rose, slipped into his dressing-gown and went over to
Posser’s room anxious to know what was the result of the night’s work.
He tapped at the door. There was no answer. He tapped again. There was
still no answer. He tried the handle, remembering at the same time
that Herr Posser had locked the door. He was a little surprised to
find that the door yielded.
The room was in semi-darkness, the blinds were still drawn and he
walked to the window and let the blinds up with a crash.
What he saw, or rather what he did not see, struck him with amazement.
The bed had not been slept in. All the drawing material had been
cleared. Posser’s trunks were still in the position where he had left
them, but there was no sign of Posser.
He went back to his room and rang the bell. The night porter was
summoned, but neither he nor any of the servants had seen Posser, who
from that moment vanished from the earth as completely as though the
ground had opened and swallowed him, and not only vanished but had
taken with him whatever drawings he had made.
In his perturbation Klein went to the room of Mister Haynes, who was
still in bed and sleeping soundly.
“Get up!” said Klein testily; “have you seen Mr.----my secretary?”
Mister Haynes sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“What’s the time?” he asked.
“Confound it,” said Klein angrily, “what does it matter what the time
is? Have you seen my friend?”
“Why should I have seen your friend?” growled Haynes. “What has
happened to him?”
“He has disappeared,” said Klein.
“Gone out for a walk, I expect; it is a beautiful morning.”
“On the contrary, it is raining and blowing,” said Klein angrily; “why
should he go out on a morning like this?”
Haynes rose and dressed himself leisurely, spending an unconscionable
time in the bathroom for a man whom I never suspected of washing, and
turned up at breakfast, wholly unconcerned in his callous English
fashion as to what had happened to poor Posser.
Klein, who was all nerves, could eat nothing. He had questioned
everybody in the hotel, but nobody had heard a sound in the night and
the night-porter supplemented his previous statement, declaring that
it was impossible for Posser to leave the house except with his
knowledge.
Klein was not satisfied and made an examination of the outside of the
hotel, hoping to pick up some trace of his comrade.
Outside Posser’s window he made a discovery. A line of bushes grew
within a foot of the house-wall, and beneath Posser’s window these had
been broken as though by some heavy body having jumped or fallen upon
them. Moreover, he discovered a small pair of dividers which he
recognized as Posser’s.
Pursuing his investigations beyond the grounds of the hotel, he came
upon the track of motor-car wheels which he followed to the outskirts
of the town where he made another discovery. The road here was
undergoing repair and owing to the wetness of the morning the night
watchman was still on duty, not having been relieved as usually is the
case at the hour when the men started work.
This old man Klein questioned.
“Yes,” said the watchman, “I saw a motor-car. It was an ambulance with
green lights. It went past here a little after one this morning and
came back a little after two. It stopped very near the hotel, because
I could see its tail lights and I saw it turn round.”
Klein went back to the hotel with his nerves shaken and his usually
well-ordered mind in a condition of chaos.
“I am going back to town by the ten o’clock train,” he told Mister
Haynes. “I suppose you will be staying?”
“No,” said Mister Haynes with another yawn. “I shall go back, too.
There is nothing to be got out of this place.”
And so, much to the disgust of Klein, who in his state of mind would
have preferred to have been alone, they went back together.
They had to change at Basingstoke, and there finding that he would
have half an hour to wait, Klein crossed to the nearest hotel and got
me on the ’phone.
It was in this way that he related to me as far as he could with
safety the extraordinary happenings of the previous night.
“It is inexplicable, my dear Heine,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “I
am bewildered, stunned.”
I no less was agitated.
“Did he not communicate anything to you?” I asked.
“Yes, thank our good Gott!” said Klein’s voice; “he gave me a rough
sketch which may be sufficient. Whatever has happened to him the good
fellow’s work is not fruitless.”
Then suddenly his voice sank and he spoke hurriedly.
“I cannot say more,” he said, “that infernal reporter of yours is
outside the box. Does he understand Spanish?”
“He understands no language except bad French,” I replied, and heard
the click of the telephone receiver being hung up.
So distressed and puzzled was I that I went down to the station to
meet my friend.
I walked along the platform as the train came to a slow standstill,
and the first person I met was Mister Haynes, looking more untidy than
ever.
“Where is my friend?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Haynes, yawning; “he went over to the hotel to
telephone to somebody at Basingstoke and left before I did. In fact, I
had to run to catch the train,” he explained. “He is here somewhere.”
But there was no Klein. If he had been left behind he would have
telephoned me. I made inquiries of the guard.
“A gentleman in a check cap and a long ulster?” said that official.
“Yes, I remember him. He got on to the train at Basingstoke,
first-class passenger, wasn’t he? I particularly noticed he was in a
carriage by himself and was reading. This is the carriage,” he said,
pulling the door open, “here is his magazine.”
On the rack above was Klein’s suit-case. It was evident that it had
been rifled because the collars and night-shirt, brushes and combs,
were all mixed together in confusion.
I stared at Haynes and Haynes looked at me.
“How extraordinary!” said Mister Haynes.
It was not until that night that Klein’s body was recovered, lying in
a ditch by the side of the railway, shot through the heart, with every
pocket turned inside out, and yet, curiously enough, with all his
money, his watch and the rings left intact.
Of the rough drawing which he had promised to deliver me there was no
sign. Close at hand was his revolver with one chamber discharged.
Mister Haynes was in the office when the news came. He had been out
all the afternoon and had, he said, met with an accident, for his arm
was bandaged and in a sling. I was so upset by my anxiety over Klein
that I had barely noticed Mister Haynes’s injury, but now I looked at
him narrowly.
“What is the nature of your injury?” I asked.
He laughed.
“Mr. Cannelli,” he said, “I don’t know very much about you. You may be
a very honest man, the tool of very dishonest men.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It may be,” he went on, without taking any notice of my question,
“that you are being duped and that it is only coincidence that you
have friends who pursue extraordinary inquiries. All the records we
have of you,” my heart gave a throb and I could feel my hands
trembling, “all the records we have of you,” he repeated, “seem to be
in good order. I will give you two pieces of advice. The first is to
be careful in your choice of acquaintances. The second is to refrain
from allowing your very natural anxieties to lead you into further
inquiries as to the fate of Mr. Adolph Klein, alias Simpson, and if I
would add a third,” he said, looking out of the window and speaking in
his slow drawl, “it is to advise your friends in communicating with
you to avoid both the telephone and the Spanish language. Good
afternoon.”
He picked up his hat and went out, the picture of a broken-down
journalist, and I did not see him again until one day in Whitehall I
passed an officer, wearing the badge of the Intelligence Department,
who smiled and waved his hand to me. It was my reporter.