THE WORD OF A PRINCE
If there was a moral to these narratives which were originally
written not so much for publication as to convey a true record of an
adventurous career, to one who was inexpressibly dear to me, the
learned and beautiful Miss Kathleen O’Mara, secretary (honorary, for
she would not accept payment for performing a national service) of the
German Gaelic League of Chicago, the most implacable, the most bitter
enemy proud Albion has ever had.
Thou sweet and slender flower of Erin, with thy shamrock eyes and thy
rosebud mouth, the unhappy writer of these lines will never again
tread a giddy measure at the Plumbers’ Ball where first I met thee.
Thy friend, whom thou hast admitted was more than friend, may yet fill
an unknown grave! Then, hadst thou been true, my voice would have
spoken to thee even though I floated in the Germanic Heaven amidst the
well-born saints of the Fatherland. As it is--I cry _pfui!_ to the
very thought of thee!
Reading this narrative over I think perhaps it would be more
consistent if I omitted these preliminary paragraphs in view of the
events which are recorded below. Should this story by chance obtain a
wider circulation than that which was intended, it would be perhaps
necessary to explain my honourable relationships with this sometime
belle of Irish freedom.
Miss O’Mara and I met in the halcyon days at a ball. What there was in
me that attracted her it is not for me to say. We Germans shrink from
the revelation of our secret souls. Our thoughts are too sacred for
vulgar expression, but this I may say, that it is a curious fact that
women find some subtle attraction in me which they cannot define.
There must be other men in the world of my height and build--even
stouter men. There must be eyes as blue as mine and hair as like
velvet pile of a deep sun-kissed auburn. There must be men with the
same deep, tender voice, and that there are men with the same taste
who dress as well, I can testify, for in one day in Chicago I have
seen a dozen gentlemen with the same patterned waistcoat, the same
pink tie, the same gold chain and wearing just as many rings as I
carry on my hands.
I think we must look for this fascination (if I may be allowed to use
the word, and I can think of no better) in a subtle mind, something
which cannot be reduced to words, an aura of understanding, a moral
up-lifting force which radiates from a vigorous and virile soul.
We Germans are rare sentimentalists, I admit. Materialism finds no
place in the true German heart. Enemies have made statements about me,
particularly in relation to a certain Flossie van Heever, a clerk at a
Detroit drug store, which I repudiate with scorn and indignation. The
girl utterly misinterpreted certain well-meaning words such as a
German gentleman would speak, certain innocent attention such as a
German gentleman can give, and I emphatically deny all the sordid
charges which this girl in a moment of delirium made against me.
Oh, Plato, Plato, what sins are committed in thy name! To what depth
will a woman sink in order to secure the man for whom her heart
craves!
But enough of these sordid affairs. It is sufficient that Miss
Kathleen O’Mara believed in me. I wrote to her every week from the day
I landed in England. I wrote about my life and about her work and that
peculiar hobby of hers that I had many times thought of utilizing for
the benefit of the Fatherland. Sometimes she would reply tenderly or
in holy rage when she thought of the wrongs of her down-trodden
countrymen (_i.e._, Irishmen) and sometimes she did not answer at all.
For three months before this story opened I had not heard from her.
I had posted my letter on the Friday afternoon and sauntered back to
my office to see if any news had come in. The boy I employed told me
there had been a caller, a gentleman who refused to give his name, but
said he would come back later. I do not like callers who refuse to
give their names, for though I do not believe there is a British
Secret Service, there is always a possibility that the regular police
may be going outside their province by prying into the lives and
habits of “respectable aliens,” as they call them.
“Did he leave no message?” I asked.
“No, sir,” said the boy, “he merely said that he would call again.”
It was not until the following day that my visitor made his
reappearance. It was Saturday and I was preparing to go home in the
English fashion at one o’clock, when the gentleman was announced.
He was a tall, pale man with a dark and heavy moustache, bristling
black eyebrows and that look of concentrated fierceness which so often
distinguishes the insurance agent.
“Come in,” I said, inviting him into my private office and closing the
door. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a message from Kathleen,” he said.
I seized him warmly by the hand and shook it.
“Any friend of Kathleen’s is a friend of mine,” I said: “sit down.”
I looked around uncomfortably and went again to the door and dismissed
the boy for the day, paying him his wages.
“You may speak in perfect security,” I said.
“Kathleen is coming home,” he whispered.
“Coming home?” I could not restrain the joy in my voice. “Do you mean
coming to----”
“To Ireland,” he said. “Things are going well over there.”
He need not have told me that. Indeed, I could have told him much more
than he could possibly have known. I could have explained why things
were going well. I could have made his hair stand on end if I had told
him the amount of money that had passed through my hands for
distribution to Dublin. I could have told him of stacks of arms landed
on the deserted coast by our submarines and of visits which were made
by the same vehicle of a certain distinguished Irishman, now unhappily
no longer with us.
I could have told him of the organization for which I, Heine, had been
responsible, which had provided the patriots of Ireland with
ammunition. But why continue the list? I did not tell him anything,
and I have reason to believe that he was disappointed.
A thought suddenly sobered me.
“Is it safe for Kathleen to come over at this juncture?” I asked. “By
the by, I don’t know your name.”
“I am Theopholos Hagan,” he said, and I seemed to remember the name.
“You have met me?” he went on.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said I, and curiously enough I had a dim
recollection of having met him somewhere, but for the life of me I
couldn’t remember the circumstances.
“Oh, yes, I remember you,” I said, for we Germans never admit
ignorance on any subject.
“There is something else I want to tell you about myself,” he said;
“but perhaps this is not the moment to give away secrets.”
“Tell me,” said I earnestly, “anything you know. It shall not leave
these four walls.”
I was curious to hear what his secret was, because our people in
Berlin were very anxious for news of what was going on in Ireland and
they had complained before that they were imperfectly informed.
“No,” said the man, “I will tell you later. I am going over to Ireland
to-morrow. If we have any luck we shall have a rising on Easter
Sunday. Kathleen wants you to be in Dublin when the trouble starts.”
I shook my head.
“That would be very unwise, very unwise indeed,” I said; “the more I
am kept out of it the better for the cause. When does she arrive?”
“She will be in Dublin a fortnight before the rising starts,” said he.
“I will endeavour to be there to see her,” I replied. “I shall not be
able to stay long because naturally I am very busy.”
I shook hands with him and saw him as far as the office door. After my
experience with Mister, or Major, Haynes, I did not deem it advisable
to be seen in public with gentlemen who might conceivably fall under
the displeasure of the British authorities, and I explained this to
him as a reason for my not coming to Euston Station to see him off.
I had spoken nothing but truth when I had said that I was very busy.
Extraordinary changes were going on in England and particularly in
London, where the constant alterations in the anti-aircraft gun
positions, the erratic systems of lighting their streets which the
British were adopting were turning my hair grey. It is said that I
sent a new map of London’s defences every week to Germany and that
every one was different, and this was true, but map-making was not my
only source of employment.
By this time there were quite a respectable number of German prisoners
in England, all of whom were anxious for help to make their escape,
and whilst, officially, I was not in touch with them, unofficially I
had a lot to do with such successes as they achieved. It was I who
provided the motor-car for the four officers who escaped from
Dabbington Hall. It was I who provided the tools for digging the
underground passage by which three officers escaped from the Marlow
camp. It was I who provided the clothing and disguises which enabled
four naval officers and a Zeppelin officer to cross England after they
had escaped from the Welsh camp. It is true they were all caught
again, but that was nothing to do with me. When I had freed them from
camp and set them on the road my work was finished and the rest was up
to their good German ingenuity and resourcefulness.
On the Sunday following the Saturday I had seen Mr. Theopholos Hagan I
was rung up on the telephone.
“Can you supply three dozen dress-collars for a gentleman from
Slough?” said a voice.
“Where does the gentleman live?” I asked calmly.
“Outside the White City. The collars are to be delivered at nine
o’clock,” was the reply.
“Thank you, I will attend to it,” I said, and hung up the receiver.
A curious place to live, you think, outside the principal entrance to
an exhibition ground? And is it not strange that a gentleman from
Slough required his collars delivered in London? I will make no
mystery of the matter. “Three dozen dress-collars” meant “I have
escaped and I want your help.” Slough was the place from which he had
escaped. The White City was the point at which I must meet him and the
hour was nine.
At nine o’clock to the moment my taxi-cab drew up in front of the
ornate entrance of the exhibition grounds. The place was of course in
darkness, and a man who was walking slowly along the curb turned to
the cab as it stopped and asked:
“Have you brought my collars?”
“Step in,” I said.
The cabman had his instructions and turned toward the City.
To meet these escaping-prisoner cases I had taken a furnished flat in
the Edgware Road. It was on the ground floor and had the advantage of
having no porter, so that one could go in and out without being spied
upon.
I opened the door of my flat and ushered my visitor in.
“Your name?” I demanded.
“Prinz,” he began.
“Highness,” said I quickly, “forgive my peremptory tone and please
command me. I am entirely at your disposition. If I have been a little
taciturn and quiet on the journey, and if I spoke to you a little
sharply, pray pardon an over-tired servant of the Empire.”
“With pleasure,” he said.
He was a little, short man, who wore glasses.
“My name,” he said, “is Prinz, Karl Frederick Prinz. I am a Lieutenant
of the 34th Selician Regiment.”
“Indeed,” I said a little coldly, “you led me to believe you were
highly-born. Now what the devil do you mean by doing that?”
“It is not my fault, Mr. Heine, that you were deceived,” he said
humbly.
“What do you expect me to do?” I asked angrily, for one cannot waste
time on a reserve lieutenant and such-like cattle. “You ought not to
have called me up at all,” I said, raising my voice; “it is
abominable. Have I nothing better to do.”
He stopped me with a gesture.
“Pray do not excite yourself unduly, Mr. Heine,” he said; “for any
trouble you may take, my father, the Colonial Secretary, will repay
you.”
“The illustrious Doctor Prinz?” I said. “Are you his son?”
I stretched out my hand and gripped his.
“Welcome, a thousand welcomes! I know your Councillor of State father
and his Excellency has frequently spoken to me of his son. Come,
come,” I said jovially, “help yourself to the good Rhine wine, for it
is not often that we are honoured by a visitor of your calibre, Herr
Lieutenant.”
We drank a bottle together, and then he told me his plans. The
difficulty of getting out of England is briefly to _get_ out of
England, to secure a place on board a ship is well-nigh impossible,
unless you are vouched for by Foreign Office officials, whilst the
punishment for stowing away is so heavy that few of the neutral
captains care to take the risk of allowing their ships to go out of
port, without conducting an independent search.
Herr Prinz, however, had received a message from his father by some
secret cipher to the effect that four times each month a submarine
would come in-shore off the Scottish coast. He was to reach a deserted
part of the foreshore, flash a signal from an electric lamp and a boat
would be put off to pick him up. This system would be put into
operation the moment the Herr Doctor Councillor of State, Prinz,
learnt from me that he was free.
“Content yourself, my dear lieutenant,” I said, “you are as good as in
the Fatherland. I will notify your august parent, to whom I trust you
will remember me forthwith.”
“I have already notified him and I desire that you should not
communicate,” he said, so I took no further steps.
There was no difficulty in getting the young man to Scotland, and I
ventured to take a little holiday and accompany him. After all, one
should show a little attention to men who have fought and bled for
one’s country, especially when they are nearly related to councillors
of State who, if not noble, are exalted personages on the way to
nobility.
I supplied the young man with passports and various documents to
identify him, and left him (with £50 which I advanced out of my
private purse) at an hotel in a small town not many miles from the
west coast of Scotland, under the care of a good German head-waiter
who promised to look after the lad. And there I thought I had heard
the last of him, and he had gone out of my mind, until I received an
urgent message from Scotland saying that the submarine had not come,
and asking me for another £50.
I went straight up to Scotland and found the Herr Lieutenant living at
the hotel and very weary.
“It is very strange, Heine, I have been at the appointed place every
night, on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th, I have flashed my lamp and
nothing has happened.”
He told me he had waited on one occasion for four hours on the beach;
on another he waited till daybreak.
“It is very extraordinary,” I said. “When you fixed this scheme with
His Excellency the Councillor of State, Doctor Prinz, was it by
writing?”
“By secret cipher, and what is more, the message was written in secret
ink.”
“Did it reach you without having been opened?”
“Yes,” replied the Herr Lieutenant; “I have one of the letters in my
pocket now.”
He took the letter and opened it. Apparently it was an innocent letter
such as an affectionate father might write to his prisoner son.
“Now wait,” said the young officer. He sent for a glass of milk and
immersed the letter, then held it before the fire to dry.
There instantly appeared string after string of words which were
meaningless to me, apparently written in brown ink.
“I carry the code in my head,” he said.
I looked at the envelope, carrying it to the light. I noticed that the
stamp and the postmark had been torn off and inwardly I praised the
young man for his discretion. The flap was stuck down, though it had
of course been cut at the top where the letter was taken out, and to
all intents it had not been tampered with. I examined it with a
magnifying glass, however, and saw that suspicious gum line which can
always be seen in a letter that has been opened and surreptitiously
closed.
“This envelope has been steamed,” I said, “the letter has been read,
replaced, fastened down by a kind of spirit gum which the censors use,
and smoothed with a hot iron.”
“How do you know?” he asked in alarm.
“I have opened too many myself,” said I, with a smile, “not to
recognize the signs.”
“But supposing they had brought up the secret writing,” he said, “they
could not understand the code.”
I thought for a moment and presently I said:
“There is only one person in the world who can read that code and that
person is a woman. More than that, Herr Lieutenant,” I added proudly,
“that woman is the dearest friend I have in the world, Miss Kathleen
O’Mara of Chicago, U.S.A.”
And I told him something of this delightful girl’s history, of how her
father had been a Fenian and how she was bitterly anti-English. She
had taken up codes and ciphers as a hobby, and she had come to be so
expert that you were always reading in the Chicago papers articles
either written by her or about her. There was not a cryptograph that
ever appeared in the agony column of a London newspaper that she
couldn’t discover.
“You said her name was O’Mara,” said the Herr Lieutenant thoughtfully;
“is she a tall, slim girl, with dark hair and blue eyes?”
It was my turn to be amazed.
“Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “even your illustrious father could not
have described her more accurately.”
“And is her husband a tallish man with bristling black eyebrows and
fierce black moustache?”
I drew myself up stiffly.
“The lady’s husband, Herr Lieutenant, you see before you in prospect.
She is unmarried.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
“Well, then, it is not the same lady. This was a Mrs. Hagan, the wife
of Captain Hagan of the United States Secret Service.”
I stepped back and clasped my brows. Now I remembered the man! Hagan
from Washington! And she had married him. By heavens! When I think of
the depth of woman’s duplicity I could despise the race. She, the
Irish patriot, the strafer of England, to send that man to me in the
hope that I should commit myself! Thou perfidious betrayer of one who
entertained for thee naught but the tenderest, holiest feelings! Oh,
what a low woman!
“I see it all now, Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “this woman was brought
down to your camp to unravel your cipher. When did you receive it?”
He thought a moment.
“The night she left.”
“Now you understand,” I cried passionately, “no wonder you have waited
in vain upon the beach! No wonder the four submarines disappeared! No
wonder you were allowed to remain at liberty! These cursed,
treacherous British! Was there ever a nation that more deserved to be
obliterated?”
I made my plans quickly, as is my wont. Before leaving that night I
gave the Herr Lieutenant another £50, making £100 he had received
since his escape.
I myself was in considerable danger and if Hagan suspected me, the
traitorous Kathleen knew me. I sent a man especially to Dublin and
discovered that they were staying at an hotel in Sackville Street and
that so far from Hagan having arrived recently, both he and his wife
had been in Dublin for six months and they were undoubtedly in the pay
of the British Government.
Of the events which occurred on Easter Monday in Dublin, I do not
propose to speak. I sent very full reports to the Government, which
may be read with profit by any who have the entrée to the archives in
Wilhelmstrasse.
Two days after the rebellion started I saw Hagan and his wife in
Regent Street, they were looking in the window of a jeweller’s shop.
With me to think is to act. I stepped up to her and offered her my
hand.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Hagan,” I said.
“Sure, ’tis the little Dutchman, Mr. Heine,” she smiled. “You know my
husband?”
“I have that pleasure.” I bowed stiffly and hid my emotions behind an
inscrutable face.
“And what are you doing in an enemy’s country?” asked Kathleen
innocently.
“Enemy!” I laughed bitterly. “There was a time, madam, when there was
only one enemy for the honorary secretary of a German-Gaelic club and
that was--England!”
“There is only one enemy for me now,” she said, gripping her husband’s
arm foolishly, “and that is Theo’s enemy. Sure, a wild young girl
never knows her own mind, Mr. Heine, and she runs this way and that
way with divil an idea what she is seeking. I guess I was seeking
Theo, and now I’ve found him I have stopped hustling.”
We exchanged a few words. I strolled with them to Piccadilly Circus
and they accepted my invitation to lunch at Prince’s.
“By the way,” I said in the midst of the meal, “do you still keep up
your cryptograph investigations?”
I thought I saw a little look pass between her and her husband and
then she smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she said, she may have said “sure” (I will not swear as to
the exact words of any dialogue which I report), “oh, yes, faith it’s
highly amusing.”
“And profitable, too, I suppose,” I said carelessly, helping myself to
some celery.
“Faith, it is that,” she said; “many is the laugh I have had going
through silly ciphers that come from Germany--bad cess to the place,
and from Scotland too,” she said.
You observe she was shameless! There was no flush of guilt, no
faltering, no lowering of eyes. She stood detected, blatantly
confessed, an agent of the English!
“When Theo came over to look after the American crooks in London I
came with him,” she said, “that is how I got to know those boys at
Scotland Yard, and I sort of drifted into the work and took to it like
a duck to water.”
My hand was trembling, I could not help it. Righteous indignation
shook me from head to foot. I could have boxed her ears, but for my
German chivalry and the presence of her husband, who might have been
distressed at such a display of emotion, though I am sure he would
have agreed with me had he only known the amount of money I had spent
on that frail creature in flowers and theatre tickets and candy, to
say nothing of postage stamps.
“They would amuse you, Heine,” she went on, “especially the queer
things they say about you. There was a fellow the other day got a
letter, phwat was the boy’s name, Theo?”
“Prinz,” said her husband, who hitherto had not spoken a word.
“Sure that was his name,” said the girl, “’twas from his old dub of a
father and written in a very simple cipher.”
“A child could have read it,” agreed her husband, “and it was all
about you,” he nodded to me.
“It said go and see Heine,” said the girl. “Tell him your father’s a
prince, and if you haven’t got the pluck to do that, say you are the
son of Colonial Officer Prinz, and he will do anything for you. There
was a long bit about the lie he had to tell you. About submarines
going up to Scotland to fetch him. When we told the commandant he let
the boy go, he was safe. He was arrested yesterday and his father has
been interned.”
“His father interned?” I gasped; “who was his father?”
Kathleen looked at her husband and Hagan spoke.
“He was the head-waiter at the hotel where the boy was staying,” he
said, “’twas his way of getting the lad a vacation.”