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
Shadowing Thornton, or Brahe, to give him his right name, was Manuel
Garcia, a capable ex-detective of the Lisbon police, who was now an
agent of the Central Bureau of Counter-Espionage in Paris.
That telegrams were constantly passing between the Swedish engineer and
some people in Lyons and Marseilles I knew, and, indeed, I was able to
secure copies of some of them. In this way I discovered that these
Swedes were on very friendly terms with a banker named Heurteau, who had
carried on business in Paris before the war, had afterwards escaped to
Zurich, and had long been suspected of being one of the paymasters of
the spy bureau in Berlin.
On the morning of the thirteenth, in consequence of what Madame
Gabrielle had told me, I took train to Geneva, where I put up at the
National. Manuel Garcia followed by the next train, and early next
morning I received a telephone message from Madame Gabrielle telling me
that Madame Bohman had left the Waldesruhe and was due at Geneva at four
o'clock that afternoon.
As a result of this message Garcia and I watched the incoming train, and
my assistant followed Madame Bohman in a taxi to a small hotel in the
Quai de Mont Blanc. An hour later Garcia himself took a cab to the
hotel so as to watch for the arrival of Halbmayr, the real antagonist
with whom our duel was being fought out.
Halbmayr, a short, stout, bald-headed man, with perfect manners and the
air of a _bon viveur_, kept his appointment punctually, arriving from
Bale the next day about noon. As he knew me well, I was compelled to
remain in hiding, but from my window I was able, with a pair of good
field-glasses, to watch Madame Bohman and the German walking together on
the Promenade du Lac, evidently engaged in the closest conversation.
Garcia, of course, was not far away.
The pair remained together for an hour and a half, and I noticed with
amusement that the wily Halbmayr took particular care to select a seat
which stood quite in the open, with no shelter of any kind at hand
behind which an eavesdropper might lurk. Garcia was thus, of course,
effectually kept at a distance, and had no opportunity of gleaning
anything from our enemies' conversation.
Apparently the two, in the course of their earnest conversation, arrived
at some definite agreement, for when they at length rose and parted,
Halbmayr returned direct to the station, where he had left his luggage
in the cloak-room, while the Swedish woman went back to her hotel,
leaving for Lucerne an hour later.
By the next train I also travelled with Garcia to Lucerne. Immediately
on our arrival we all had a consultation, and we were deep in talk when
I received a startling message from Hecq in Paris. It had been sent to
him by Johnson-Meads, who had promised to communicate with me through
Hecq if any further suspicious matter came under his notice. The
message read:
"Cancel my last message; most urgent I should see you immediately."
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account