Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and SpyingLe Queux, William
General
Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and Spying
Le Queux, William
Spy stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Fiction
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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account