The army behind the armyPowell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
History
The army behind the army
Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
United States. Army; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
Speaking of false scents in the tracking of spies, I remember being told
in England of an old lady, apparently a woman of some means, living in a
suburb of London, who was accustomed to write several times a week to her
daughter in Austria. The letters, being addressed to an enemy country,
were, of course, opened by the censor. Though there was nothing in the
communications themselves which could, by any stretch of the imagination,
be interpreted as treason, the suspicions of the officials were
instantly aroused by the discovery that each letter contained three new
playing-cards. One letter might contain, for example, the ace of hearts,
the ten of clubs, and the king of diamonds; in the next letter, posted a
few days later, would be the seven and the nine of spades and the king of
hearts. Here was a code which baffled every expert in the United Kingdom.
British Intelligence, the Censor’s Bureau, and the Criminal Investigation
Department of Scotland Yard all tried to ferret out the mystery of the
cards, but without success. Every conceivable test was applied to both
the letters and the cards for codes, ciphers, and invisible writing,
but without an atom of success. At length the old lady, whose every
movement had been shadowed for weeks, was summoned to Scotland Yard and
questioned. When the chief inquisitor suddenly demanded of her why she
enclosed playing-cards in her letters to her daughter, she replied: “My
daughter is a great bridge-player, and when I read in the newspapers that
it was impossible to get cards in Austria, I thought I would slip three
or four cards into every letter. In that way, you see, I would be able to
send her a pack every five or six weeks.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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