THE MAN FROM THE STARS
It is an axiom of mine that news has no value unless it is based
upon somebody’s misfortune. Take your newspaper and scan its close-set
columns. Is there any item in these many pages which does not derive
its importance from a calamity which has overtaken somebody?
Your police courts, your divorce courts, your war--they yield interest
in ratio to the misfortune of one party or the other. Our great
victory is your great defeat, the liberation by the Divorce Court of
this woman is the exposure of that, startling crimes attract only by
the measure of the anguish they impose. In war, when neither army is
destroying the other we vote the news dull, and so I think would you
describe the faithful record of my commonplace days when all went as
smoothly and as evenly as the routine of a well-organized business.
And, after all, the spy’s work is more often than not the most dull
and boring of work. One of my men spent eight weeks in timber yards,
checking the supplies of box-wood and keeping track of its
destination. When a certain noble lord in charge of a great national
factory bought up all the box-wood, we knew by the extent of his
purchases that the work which was being done in his well-guarded
factory was shell-filling on a vast scale.
Here then was a form of “espionage” without adventure, humdrum,
soul-destroying and to all appearance unprofitable. There is no
material for narrative here, good friends. There is nothing of the
bizarre, nothing of the flash, the sparkle, and the thrill of the
work. Therefore, I do not offend you with the banal trivialities of my
profession, otherwise I might present what was little more than a
catalogue of appointments. As for example:
March 3rd.
10 o’clock.--Saw Hefferich and took report of spare ties and sleepers
held by G.W. & C. Ry.
10.15.--Phone message from Stael to say that there was a case of
bubonic plague reported at Gravesend (East India liner _Ratapore_.)
10.20.--Phone from Casey _re_ proscribed meeting at Connemara.
10.30.--Phone weather report from Aberdeen.
10.33.--Phone weather report from Llandudno.
10.35.--Weather report from Southsea.
10.38.--Saw van Heerden _re_ butter shipments for February.
and so and so forth. Yes, I was a weather bureau, and daily
transmitted the barometer reading to Germany--useful information for
our air service.
Many informative isobars would have been absent from the German
meteorological charts but for the industry and organization of Heine!
I have my critics and my enemies. Particularly do I single out amongst
the latter, Trade-Councillor Karl Wesselsmanns, of Hamburg, on the
staff of _Vorwarts_, who had the impertinence to write in his crude
language and un-German spirit that “the work of the Secret Service in
England was distinguished by bungling and stupidity. Whoever was in
control of that work seemed to spend his time getting Germans into
trouble and produced very few satisfactory results that are worthy of
notice.”
It is true that I did not blow up munition works. It is true that I
did not sink battleships like the heroic Weddigen, and that I did not
drop bombs on the Houses of Parliament. That was not my duty. That
that duty was ably performed I can prove by documents in my
possession, notably one from the illustrious and High Admiral von
Tirpitz, signed by his own hand, and I also adduce the statement of
that saviour of Germany, the excellent and illustrious Prussian
Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who on one occasion mentioned me by
name, as I can prove, and stated that for all he knew I might be one
of the most useful men in the German service. All these things have
been said to me and I only repeat them in self-defence. I do not
boast. We Germans never indulge in frivolous talk nor do we use
sport-terms. Otherwise I would say that these attacks by the gutter
scourings of Altonia were not bally cricket, to use an English
expression. I admit there have been lamentable errors, and possibly in
the course of these memoirs I shall have to admit others by which
_interfering and unofficially appointed amateurs have fallen a prey to
their own arrogant ill-informedness_.
As for me I can look the whole world in the face and say humbly that
with no thanks for reward, and no hope of gain, facing an ignominious
death from hour to hour, I have served the Fatherland. It does not
matter to me whether I receive the Order of the Red Eagle, as I have
been half-promised, or whether I do not. I feel my superiors must make
some acknowledgment of my whole-hearted services on an inadequate and
miserably insufficient salary.
And if you dare to suggest, as this ink-slinging rascal on the
_Vorwarts_ has done, that I have made large sums of money out of the
expenses which the empire allow me for propaganda work, I fling the
accusation in your teeth. I admit I am well off, but that is due to my
private speculations on the Stock Exchange in the year 1914.[6] But
to return to my work and to an adventure which was, to say the least,
out of the ordinary.
In the summer of 1915, I received a request from Berlin which somewhat
surprised me. I was instructed to send to Holland as many good maps of
London as I could buy, and I was told also to prepare one special map,
marking the areas the street-lamps of which had been darkened. This
was followed (or it may have come in the same dispatch, I forget) by a
request that I should instruct my men to discover how it was that the
British Government knew we contemplated an air-raid on London.
I myself wondered what information the British Government had secured,
and how they had secured it. For months the streets had been lit as
gaily as in pre-war days. The theatre signs glowed and flashed, the
West End streets were bathed in radiance, and then, almost as by a
touch of the magician’s wand, London “went dark.” Street lamps were
shaded, the light signs outside the theatres were extinguished, and it
was almost impossible to pick your way through the streets.
I suppose my excellent friend, the High-Born Baron von
Hertz-Missenger, would have said, “English Secret Service.” He reminds
me of a character in Charles Dickens, the great English poet, who
invariably thought that his head was the head of King Charles II!
The explanation I offered was, that some of our too impetuous airmen
must have betrayed the fact by shouting with haughty insolence to the
English airmen they met in the air. As this has never been denied, it
is probably true. At any rate I set myself to work upon a map. It was
a long business, and very unsatisfactory, because the whole of London
was dark, and no place was more light than another. This I reported,
forwarding the maps by special courier.
And then I received a request from our Headquarters that I should
arrange light-signals which should be seen by Zeppelins. The idea was
to post three lights so that they formed a triangle, one near Albany
Park, one near Maidstone Road, and a third in the east, near
Shepherd’s Junction. The triangle thus made would contain all the
valuable city area which it was our Zeppelins’ intention to utterly
destroy.
Of the first raid in September, it is not necessary for me to tell. Of
how the cowardly Englishmen trembled beneath the midnight hail of
bombs, you have read.
I myself did not witness the raid, because, on receiving information
in the afternoon, Zeppelins were due, I had left London for Cornwall.
Since it was impossible for the brave fellows who piloted our good
Zeppelins to distinguish between a patriot and a hateful enemy, I
thought that in the interest of the Fatherland, it was necessary that
I should be as far away as possible when the dread visitation came.
I returned to London the next morning and arrived at eleven o’clock. O
what consternation there was. O what vile language these unkultured
Londoners used, what epithets, what adjectives, the A’s, and B’s, and
C’s, and D’s, they called us--but of that anon!
I was in some anxiety before my journey’s end was reached as to
whether I should have to walk a part of the journey, and I was greatly
relieved on questioning the conductor to learn that Paddington Station
had escaped the holocaust. When I arrived at Paddington everything was
going on as usual. To my amazement buses were running and cabs were
plying for hire.
“Where was the raid?” I asked.
“In the East End and the City,” was the reply.
So, I thought, my triangle had proved efficacious, and calling a cab,
I said:
“Will you please drive me to the ruined area?”
The poor, ignorant fellow thought at first that it was the name of a
public-house, and I had to enlighten him.
“Where the bombs struck,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he said, brightening up, “I will ask a policeman where they
fell.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” I inquired, “that you don’t know? Perhaps
you haven’t been to the City?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in the true boorish cabman spirit. “I’ve been
to the City three times, but I ain’t seen no place where the bombs
fell.”
This of course was “eye-wash.” For my part I had removed all my
archives from my office, and as that was on the edge of the City, I
drove there first and was pleased to find that my office had not been
touched. I drove up Ludgate Hill and apparently everything was as
usual, and it was not until we had driven farther on and had
penetrated a side street that I saw the wreckage of a house. It was
pleasing and yet disappointing. A number of windows had been smashed,
one house was in ruins and there was a big hole in a court-yard, but
the damage was such as might have been caused by an explosion of gas.
It took me a long time before I found the second place where a bomb
had fallen, and here again the results were not as I expected. I spent
the whole of that day wandering about looking for devastation. I went
east and south, and north, and although I saw some damaged houses, the
results of our gallant Zeppelins’ visit left much to be desired.
Returning to my office I was called on the ’phone and a code message
was sent through to me. As I expected, it was from Berlin asking for
full particulars of the damage done, and very faithfully I described
what I had seen, coded it and passed it on to the proper quarters.
To my wrath and humiliation, the next evening brought a peremptory
demand from Berlin. It had been sent by radio, picked up off the coast
by a little steamer flying the flag of----, and was brought to me from
an East Coast port by one of the couriers we employed for that
purpose.
The message was, as I say, peremptory, and there were tears in my
eyes, tears of sorrow and injury as I read it.
“Cannot understand your message. Our pilots report Westminster Abbey
was bombed. Whole streets of the City are in flames, Houses of
Parliament partly destroyed, also London Bridge and Tower of London.
Several ships in docks hit and sunk. Please personally investigate and
report.”
Of course there was a chance that these cunning English had, by means
of scene painters and workmen labouring through the night, removed all
sign of the destruction, but I walked over London Bridge without any
difficulty, and as far as I could see the Tower of London was
uninjured.
I reported the same, and three days later, had this message back:
“Be on south side of Three Mile Wood, north-north-east Saffron Walden,
at eleven o’clock on the night of October 7th.”
I could not understand this message, and my new assistant, who had
arrived from America, Herr Wilhelm Peters, was as much puzzled as I.
However, on the 7th of October, I journeyed to Saffron Walden, which
is a little town in Essex, and by studying a map I discovered that
Three Mile Wood was inaccurately named because it was about seven
miles from the town. I decided to walk, and arrived in the
neighbourhood of the wood at about ten o’clock at night. Having
ascertained by consulting my compass which was the south side, I made
my way across fields and muddy ditches to a big meadow which was
exactly placed to the south of the sparsely-wooded little forest.
It was a clear night with a thin ground haze and was rather cold. I
had brought one of those walking-sticks, the top of which forms a
seat, and this I found very comfortable; for the inner man I had a
flask of brandy and some liver sandwiches, and I settled myself down
to my vigil, wondering what on earth had induced Headquarters to send
me upon this wild adventure.
Then suddenly my heart began beating at a tremendous rate as I divined
the reason! It was intended this night for our airships to reach
London, and they desired that I should be a witness. What folly! What
folly! What incomparable insanity to risk the life of a high Officer
of Intelligence, to place him in such horrible jeopardy.
I felt myself grow pale, but then with an effort I braced up. I was a
German! We Germans fear God and nothing else, and, besides, I thought
there might not be an air-raid after all.
But what satisfaction I got out of that thought was quickly
dissipated. Suddenly an ominous sound came to me. A double “boom!” far
away and to the east, was followed by three staccato explosions.
Another bomb fell, and suddenly the whole of the eastern sky was
illuminated by the tracing fingers of searchlights.
“Boom!” the sound was growing nearer and my mouth was dry. I felt
choking. I loosened my collar and wiped the sweat from my forehead and
stood up, my knees trembling.
I have thought the matter over since and I have come to the conclusion
that my agitation might be explained in this way, that I was trembling
with pride in the fearless exploits of our gallant airmen, those
intrepid messengers of death who sailed the midnight skies fearless of
foe; that I perspired because the liver sandwich was perhaps a little
too highly flavoured. Anyway, the cursed things were coming closer and
who knows what mistakes a blundering fool of a pilot might make. The
searchlights were suddenly extinguished, the guns were silent, and for
ten minutes I heard no sound save a faint but ever-growing-nearer hum
of an engine in the sky. Then there was a shrieking whistle, a crash
that seemed to shake the very earth, a blinding fan of flame and then
silence. In my rage I shook my fist at the sky.
“Stupid jackasses, miserable, bat-eyed swine-hound!” I cried. “Have
you not the highest instructions in your pockets to avoid bombing an
Intelligence Officer?”
The cursed thing passed overhead. It was roaring like a railway train
passing through a tunnel. I saw the bulk of it outlined against the
stars and then I saw something else, a little black dot that moved and
swayed against the sky.
I thought it might be some infernal machine and I nearly fainted.
Understand that my chief thought was of Germany. I had no fear for
myself. I was merely a cog in the wheel of the great machine and stood
ready at all hours and all days to sacrifice myself for our dear
Deutschland.
Fortunately, there was a fallen tree in my neighbourhood, and under
this I crept, looking out from time to time to see what had happened
to the strange thing in the air. Then I heard a thud, a rustle, and an
oath, and I jumped up, bruising the back of my head against the
tree-trunk, and ran toward the sound, for that oath was in good
German.
“Whars dar?” called a sharp voice.
“It is I, Heine,” I replied.
“Oh, good,” said the voice in German. “You are on the spot, I see.
Help free me from this doubly rotten parachute.”
I made my way to him and helped unbuckle some of the straps that
fastened him, and presently he was free.
“Have you got a pocket lamp?” he asked. “No, perhaps you had better
not use it. Where can I put the parachute?”
I suggested the tree under which I had been--I won’t say hiding, let
me rather say taking cover.
“Have you a car?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“You are an ass,” said he; “why haven’t you a car?”
I knew by the imperiousness of his tone that he was a true German
gentleman, probably highly born and connected by many social ties with
an old family of Prussia.
“I am the Baron von Treutzer,” he said, as though answering my
thoughts, “and I have been sent here to survey the damage that was
done in the last raid.”
“Your Excellency will discover that I have spoken nothing but the
truth,” I said humbly.
The sound of the Zeppelin’s engines, which had diminished, was now
increasing in volume.
“Is the airship returning?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said testily.
He took from his pocket a small electric lamp and flashed it three
times in the air and immediately after three tiny sparks of light
showed in the sky.
“They won’t be dropping any more bombs, Herr Baron?” I asked
carelessly.
“Good heavens! What does it matter if they do?” he boomed--he was a
booming kind of man, born to command, typical of our virile
aristocracy which has placed Germany in the forefront of
world-nations.
“I only asked,” I said. “I am a mere observer.”
“We only dropped a few bombs,” he said, “just to explain our presence.
The real business of our visit is here.” I heard him slap his chest in
the darkness.
“I did not know where the raid was intended,” I said, “or I would have
arranged for a leader.”
“A leader?” he asked. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Evidently Herr Baron is not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” I said
humbly, “or he would know that the Zeppelins are ‘led’ to their
destination by motor-cars with strong head-lamps.”
“Of course I am not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” he said in deep
disgust, “I am a Royal Lieutenant of the 31st Regiment of the Prussian
Guard.”
“Does your Excellency intend staying here very long?” I asked, as we
trudged along the country road.
“For a week,” he replied, “after that I return----”
“By----?”
“That is my business,” he replied, “if a Zeppelin can bring me here, a
Zeppelin can take me away.”
Though I had never heard of parachutes that go up, I know all things
are possible owing to the inventive genius of our nation, so I
questioned him no further. Outside Saffron Walden we stopped whilst I
went to the hotel to collect the handbag which I had left there.
Needless to say the people in the hotel were in that condition of
cowardly funk which our Zeppelin always inspires. The children were
crying because they had not seen the airship, and again I heard in the
common bar of the hotel those terrible words which my modesty would
only allow me to designate by using certain letters of the alphabet.
I rejoined the Baron and we made our way to the railway station, which
was in darkness. Fortunately the train which came in was also darkened
and remained that way until we reached London and I was able to bring
the Baron to my flat without observation.
He was a tall, handsome gentleman, dressed in civilian clothes of a
noble cut and rich texture, and over a glass of whisky he graciously
unbent and told me that he had come to England by this curious method
to discover the extent of the damage, not only of the first raid, but
of a raid which was projected and by which it was hoped to lay London
entirely in ruins.
“On what day will that occur?” I asked.
“You will be notified in due time. It may be to-morrow, and it may be
the next day,” he replied.
“I only asked,” I said carelessly, “because it is necessary for me to
see one of my agents in North Devon one day this week, and I should
not like to miss the raid.”
“You will stay here until I go. That is an order. Why are you looking
so pale?”
“It is the pressure of work, your Excellency,” I replied. “I am afraid
I have rather taxed my strength. My doctor suggested that I ought to
go away at once to Cornwall or perhaps Scotland.”
“We hope to bomb Scotland,” said the Baron thoughtfully. “It would not
be a bad idea if you were there.”
“When I said Scotland,” I said hastily, “I should have said that my
doctor suggested I should go to Scotland in the spring. This of course
is the very worst weather. Are you likely to bomb Wales?”
“We cannot reach there. It is beyond our reach,” said the Baron.
“I only ask,” I said, “because he also suggested that I should go
there.”
“When the raids are over you can go to the devil. I only want your
assistance while they are on.”
“Did you say raids or raid?” I asked.
“There may be two,” he replied callously.
The next morning he expressed his intention of going through the City
and the East End to photograph the worst of the damage. I did not
offer to accompany him, and indeed, had he suggested that I should do
so, I should have firmly declined. Fortunately, he knew London very
well, for he had been an attaché at the German Embassy a few years
before the war broke out, so he had no need of my assistance or
guidance.
He left the flat at eleven o’clock and I arranged to meet him at a
restaurant in Piccadilly for lunch. I need hardly say that he was
armed with a passport; not only very completely filled in, but
endorsed with an exact imitation of the rubber stamps which were used
in those days by examining officers at Folkestone when passengers
landed.
I was waiting for him at one o’clock, but he did not arrive. Half-past
one came, a quarter to two, two o’clock, and I began to feel seriously
alarmed, and was thinking what an excellent text his arrest would
provide for a letter to Potsdam on the futility of sending amateurs,
when he came through the swing doors. He uttered no word till we were
sitting at the table, and the waiter had served the soup.
“These English people are very clever,” he said at last.
“In a way they are clever,” I said, “but by the side of the
German----”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Our German people are merely slavish imitators
of everybody else in the world. If Germany was not a nation of slaves
we should never have an army.”
This put an end to the easy flow of conversation, but presently I
ventured to ask:
“Why does your Excellency think the English are clever?”
“I am referring to the way they have cleared up the mess we made and
have run up new buildings.”
He looked up at me curiously as he spoke.
“Don’t you agree?”
“Naturally,” I said heartily, “I have reason to believe that hundreds
of thousands of workmen have been working day and night to restore the
damage.”
He laughed.
“In addition to being a fool, you are a liar,” he said, and I could
only smile at the good humour and buoyant frankness of this high-born
officer who was in all probability in the entourage of the All-Highest
himself and, at any rate, as I have since learnt, had frequently dined
with that exalted Prince whom we call the Hope of Germany.
“No,” Baron von Treutzer went on, “the Zeppelin did little or no
damage. It caused nothing of the smash that we expected it would. We
will see what to-night’s raid brings out.”
“To-night?” I said, half-rising from my seat.
“Did I say to-night?” he said in an off-hand way. “Well, whenever it
happens.”
But I knew that in a moment of incaution he had spoken the truth.
“By the way, I shall want you with me to-night,” he said.
“To-night?” I repeated. “I am very sorry but this is the one night I
cannot be with your Excellency. I have an important messenger coming
from Ireland with particulars of a rising, and the Foreign Office has
particularly asked me----”
“I shall want you to-night,” repeated the Herr Baron, “and you will
meet me at ten o’clock, let us say, in St. Paul’s Churchyard.”
“Himmel! Herr Baron!” I exploded, “that would be in the very centre of
the raid!”
“Did I ever say that it would not?” he asked coldly, “of course it
will be in the centre of the raid. You understand, at ten o’clock. The
War Office require a detailed account by eye-witnesses of the damage
which is done.”
“But my messenger arrives at Fishguard to-night,” I said with a tremor
in my voice. “Forgive me if I am agitated, Herr Baron, but I realize
the terrible importance, the absolute necessity, of meeting that
boat.”
“At ten o’clock you will be in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” said the Baron.
How I loathed and hated this tyrant. We Germans are naturally lovers
of freedom. We despise the sycophant and the toady. Tyranny to us is a
pestilential disease to be stamped out with an iron heel. Woe to those
who endeavour to enslave the German, for they are biting on granite!
I told the Baron that I would meet him at the appointed time.
“Don’t come before ten,” he said. “We will remain until the raid is
over.”
I lifted my hat and bowed as I parted from him in Piccadilly, and I
prayed, most fervently, that the earth would open and swallow this
pig, whose abominable manners and low attitude to men not so well born
as himself (though of that I am not sure, for there were many stories
about my mother’s friendship for the Graf von Maldesee, which I
sometimes reflect upon with a certain amount of satisfaction) aroused
in me the deepest scorn.
I could eat no dinner that night, I could do no work that afternoon. I
sat in my office until a quarter to ten, suffering, I think, from a
touch of malaria and ague which I contracted in America.
I arrived in St. Paul’s Churchyard, dark and gloomy and silent, on the
stroke of ten. I had arranged to meet the Baron at the corner of one
of the lanes which slope down to Upper Thames Street, and here I took
my station.
At quarter-past ten he had not arrived. At twenty minutes past ten a
hundred searchlights flashed into the sky and the first gun-shot woke
the sleeping city.
The Zeppelin was coming straight to the City, but was west of where I
stood. I heard the thud of its bombs and the devil’s chorus of the
guns. I saw the skies speckled with shrapnel bursts, but much of what
happened in that brief space of time between its appearance and its
disappearance is blotted from my memory.
I could only stand crouched in a friendly doorway, my hands before my
eyes, thinking of my dear friends, and particularly of a certain girl
in Chicago with whom I had exchanged photographs, of my dear home, my
little brothers, in fact all my life passed before me. I dare not go
out to look for the Herr Baron. How I envied him, that hardened man of
war to whom this terrible concatenation of sound was as the gentle
zephyrs; who could stand unmoved and watch with his stern military eye
the destruction that was going on about him, uncaring, unafraid,
contemptuous of danger, seeking only the information he required for
his superiors!
In that moment I almost loved the man, even though I hated to meet him
lest he mistook my ague for a more ignoble emotion, but presently I
plucked up courage and went out to look for him. He was not at the
corner of the lane nor was he on that pavement at all. I made a
circuit of the Cathedral without meeting him and then I realized that
the Zeppelins had not been near St. Paul’s but had passed westward.
Naturally he would have been informed at the last moment and would
have been on a spot where they would pass.
I did not attempt to join the throngs that gathered about the places
where the bombs had fallen, but made my way homeward. At one o’clock
he had not returned; two, three, and four passed. I still listened and
then the horror of the possibility seized me. This gallant man had
perhaps paid for his temerity with his life and I bought an early
morning paper as soon as one was procurable and searched in vain for
some indication of his fate. Such a man could not be stricken down
without attracting attention, but there was no reference whatever to
such a one as he. In a fever of anxiety I paced my room. I called up
my various agents but they could give me no information and I had
almost abandoned hope when, at half-past eleven, the Baron came,
debonair and calm into my office.
“You had a good view,” were the first words he said.
“Oh, Herr Baron,” I said. I grasped his hand and shook it (a most
presumptuous thing to do); “I am so glad to see you back! If you
missed me, I was on the spot.”
“I didn’t miss you,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“I was at Fishguard, meeting your man but apparently without success,
for he did not come.”
“You were at Fishguard?” I gasped.
“Naturally,” he said, “you don’t suppose I am such a silly fool that I
am going to stand under a bomb to see it burst, do you?”
Such a man was this mean-souled dog, von Treutzer!
Thank heaven! He disappeared in a week. He may have been picked up by
a descending Zeppelin. He may have been taken off by a
near-approaching submarine. I have had no news, but if I hear he got
back to Germany alive, I, Heine, will be sorry.