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« on: May 08, 2023, 12:16:55 pm » |
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“I’M afraid I can’t let you go back to the asylum yet,” said Tommy Hambledon. “I want you to help me. I don’t yet quite know how, but some scheme will doubtless present itself. You see, I have to get in touch with London, and----”
“Not through me,” said Reck with unexpected firmness.
“Eh? Oh, you’ll be all right, I’ll look after you. I think I had better find you a post in my house---can you clean knives and boots? You shall have a bedroom to yourself, and food and wages. Isn’t that better than wandering about the streets selling papers and sleeping rough?”
“No. Not if I’ve got to be mixed up in espionage again at my age.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Hambledon. “Anyone would think I wanted you to run along and fire the President’s palace.”
“From what I remember of you,” said Reck acidly, “that is precisely the sort of thing you would suggest.”
“Listen,” said Hambledon patiently. “D’Artagnan is not the character which naturally rises to my mind when I look at you. Definitely no. If I wanted someone to go leaping in and out of first-floor windows with an automatic in one hand and a flaming torch in the other, I shouldn’t offer the job to you first, I shouldn’t really. What you’re going to do is to obtain from various sources the component parts of a spark transmitter----”
“I’ve forgotten what they are----”
“Assemble it in your lonely bedroom---thank goodness we’ve got a top flat---and stand by to send out messages to London in the dear old Mülheim code. That’s all.”
“No,” said Reck obstinately.
“You see, normally I could get messages through in various ways, but they might be slow. If I wanted to get a message through quickly, wireless is the obvious method.”
“Doubtless. But with some other fool operating it.”
“It will also be useful,” said Hambledon, disregarding this, “for confirmatory purposes. ‘What I tell you three times is true.’ ”
“I have already told you four times that I won’t have anything to do with it, and that’s true, too.”
“You obstinate old fool,” exploded Hambledon, “will you take this in? You---are---going---to---do this, or by Gog and Magog I’ll make you sweat for it! Ever heard of a concentration camp?”
Reck winced.
“I am not the Deputy Chief for nothing, you know, and I haven’t been in the Nazi Party for ten years without learning how to persuade people, believe me! Now then?”
“Listen,” said Reck with unexpected dignity, “I was born in England of English folk, but I have lived in Germany since I was a boy. I worked for England in the last war---yes, I was paid for it, you need not remind me---but Germany is my home, I have almost forgotten how to speak English. Ever since I worked for you I have been afraid, afraid somebody would find out or somebody would talk, afraid of the police, afraid of my old friends, afraid to drink for fear I might talk, afraid to sleep for fear I might dream aloud. Let me alone now, I will not be troubled by you any more. I am tired of being afraid.”
The old man sank back in his chair and the animation died in his face and his manner. “Leave me alone,” he whimpered. “I do very well, selling papers----”
Hambledon’s face softened. “Look here,” he said, “where could you be safer than with me? You shall be housed and fed and paid, and who looks twice at my servants? No one would dare suspect you. I am sorry, but it is necessary that you should do this. Necessary, you know what that means? Better men than you or I have died because it was necessary, and I’m only asking you----”
“And I refuse,” shrieked Reck, shaking with passion. “I will not, I tell you. I’ll tell everyone who you are----”
“And who’ll believe you? Don’t be a damned old fool! Go to the British Government and tell them Winston Churchill’s a Nazi agent, and see what happens. It would be nothing to what will happen if you talk about me here. You must agree, I’m sorry, but I need you and you must. Well?”
“I won’t. I don’t believe it. Tommy Hambledon’s dead and you’re just trying to make me incriminate myself. I won’t work against the Nazi Government, Herr Deputy Chief, I am a good German, I am really. I talk nonsense sometimes but I can’t help it, I was mad once, you know, it doesn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t do a thing like that----”
“Reck! Stop it at once. You will do as I tell you or take the consequences. Well?”
“I won’t.”
“Very well.” The Deputy Chief rang the bell and the Storm Trooper returned.
“This man’s explanations do not satisfy me, but I can’t waste any more time over him now. He will go to a concentration camp for ten days, perhaps he will be more willing to talk after that, eh, Hagen? Take him away.”
About a week later Gustav Niehl, who was Klaus Lehmann’s Chief in the German police, came into his room and said, “There’s a man coming to Berlin to-morrow whom I want you to arrest, please. He is an Englishman named Heckstall, and pretends to be an innocent traveller in brewery fittings, but I have reason to believe that he is an English Intelligence agent. He has been over here a good deal in the last year or two without being suspected, but he’s done it once too often.”
“How very interesting,” said Lehmann truthfully. “It enthralls me to have even the smallest contact with enemy espionage, one’s boyhood storybooks come true! When is he expected and where does he stay in Berlin?”
Niehl gave him particulars, and added, “He is clever. We have always kept an eye on him, of course, but he never gave us the smallest grounds for suspicion and I had no idea there was anything shady about him.”
“Then what makes you suspect him now?”
“Our agents in London report that he is in close touch with British Intelligence. Of course, it may be that the Foreign Office and the War Office in London have secret beer engines installed in every cupboard and he merely goes in to see that they are working properly, but somehow I doubt it, Lehmann, I doubt it.”
“The idea seems to me so excellent,” said Lehmann laughing, “that it might well be adopted in the Wilhelmstrasse.”
“You might suggest it to the Führer,” said Niehl, “and see what he thinks of the idea.”
Instantly Lehmann’s laughter vanished. “Our Führer’s views on the subject are well known,” he said stiffly, “and have my unalterable respect. I spoke in the merest jest.”
“I know, my dear Lehmann, I know,” said Niehl soothingly, and took his leave.
“Trying to trap me into speaking disrespectfully of the all-highest Adolf,” thought Hambledon indignantly, “and then you’d run to him with the whole story embellished with ornate embroidery, you lop-eared lounge lizard, would you?”
Hambledon lit a cigar and sat down to do a little hard thinking. So the German agents in London reported Heckstall to be in touch with M.I.; German Intelligence must have some fairly good men. Hambledon’s first idea had naturally been to report to London by the earliest possible means, but the more he thought about it the less he liked it. His own position was so desperately dangerous that one unguarded word, one careless exposure of his name, would destroy him at once, apart from these clever agents of whom Niehl spoke, and goodness alone knew who they were. By degrees it became clear to him that he dared not let anyone whatever know his secret, not even the head of his Service in London. “Three may keep a secret,” he murmured, “if two of them are dead.” Only Reck knew and he was safe, since even if he talked nobody would believe him.
Then the problem arose as to how he was to communicate with London. It would be a sound scheme to give them something dramatic the first time, such as the release of this fellow Heckstall for example, “with brass band obbligato,” said the unmusical Tommy. Suitably heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, the rescue of Heckstall should impress even M.I. His return should be announced beforehand, Heckstall himself should have a little story to tell, and there must be a follow-up of some kind just to round it off, to make the third act in the little drama.
Drama. Why not write a play and broadcast it? A play on the Prodigal Son theme. He went into a far-off country among strange people, so did Heckstall, and returned without tangible results, again Heckstall’s case.
Too obscure, they’d never understand it in London. Something definite was wanted. “Heckstall returned to stock undamaged Thursday next,” that sort of thing, but one couldn’t put that in a play unless it was in code. Code. Reck. A play with morse coming into it. Then the play could be about anything, a wireless operator was the most obvious choice, some of that propaganda stuff, all “O beautiful Hitler, O Adolf my love, what a wonderful Führer you are, you are, you are,” besides, that kind of thing would be much more acceptable to the Austrian in Germany than a story about another young man who went into a foreign country and came to horrid grief . . .
Hambledon stretched his arms over his head and yawned. Reck was coming out from his ten days in camp on Friday, three days hence, probably in a more malleable mood, it should at least be possible to persuade him to code the messages as soon as one knew exactly what one had to say. Arrangements must be made about Heckstall, first for his arrest, which was easy, and later on for his release. This last could be announced in the morse accompaniment to the broadcast play. For the finishing touch, there could be nothing better than to supply whatever information Heckstall was sent to obtain, if one could discover what it was.
On Friday afternoon Reck was ushered into the office of the Deputy Chief of Police, and Hambledon greeted him cheerfully.
“Welcome, little stranger,” he said genially. “Sit down and have a cigar. Or a bag of nuts. Forgive the implications of the alternative, but you really do look remarkably agile.”
“Agile,” said Reck scornfully, but he accepted the cigar.
“No, really, you look years younger---you may go, Hagen---what have you been doing?”
“Working. Shovelling concrete, look at my hands. Physical drill, insufficient food and no schnapps.”
“Insufficient food,” repeated Hambledon. “Then I take it you collected an appetite?”
“I wish to complain of the soap. Bright yellow, smelt disgusting, and stung, too.”
“I dare say, but that wouldn’t kill you,” said Hambledon, with a slight stress on the pronoun. “Anything else?”
“There was an inaccurate notice to the effect that purity of the soul is won through labour. It was displayed where we could see it while shovelling. I find I am not, by nature, a shoveller, and the notice is a lie.”
“I take it you don’t want to go back?”
“Am I a fool? Besides, it is unjust, I haven’t done anything to deserve punishment, it is not a crime to sell newspapers.”
“No,” said Hambledon coldly, “but it is a crime to refuse to serve your country when it is in your power to do so. Your next visit may not be quite so pleasant.”
“Pleasant!”
“Comparatively pleasant. Will you code three or four simple sentences for me?”
“If that is all,” said Reck unwillingly, “I will agree this once.”
“It is all at present,” said Hambledon significantly, and went on in a lighter tone. “So that’s settled, good. Will you dine with me to-night and we’ll try to remove that hollow feeling?”
Early in the following week Niehl sent for Hambledon and complained bitterly of the difficulty of getting definite evidence against Heckstall. “I am sure he is an English spy,” he repeated more than once, “but there is no evidence to prove it apart from Niessen’s statement. But he is a good man.”
“Niessen?”
“Carl Niessen, a Danish importer who lives in London and is a friend of Herr Heckstall’s. His real name is Schulte, but they do not know that in London. He has lived there many years, he knows a number of people in Government circles and they talk to him, my goodness how these English talk---thank heaven!”
Tommy Hambledon winced inwardly, for he knew this was perfectly true. “But hasn’t Heckstall done anything? Not even asked questions about anything?”
“Oh, yes. Pipes---the kind water goes through, or gas. In lengths with screwed connections, you know. There are probably some in your bathroom. They are also used extensively in breweries, so Heckstall may be quite justified in asking about them. Only, he started asking at such an awkward time, you know, just when we were short.”
Klaus Lehmann nodded comprehendingly, and said, “It looks fishy, certainly, I should be inclined to assume him guilty. Would you like me to try and make him talk?”
“What’s the good? If he’s made to talk we shall have to shoot him anyway, or there will be a fuss when he gets home, and we want no more of these fusses.”
Eventually Lehmann offered to deal with the matter himself, and Niehl gratefully accepted. “I should like an official order to deport him across the frontier,” said Klaus, “just in case our bona fides are ever called in question.”
“You are very wise,” said Niehl. “You shall have it.”
Hambledon took himself off with a feeling of good work well done, for he knew now what the information was for which Heckstall had come. Hambledon returned home with a light heart and drafted three short messages which Reck coded for him as a background to his propaganda play.
The play itself was broadcast on Friday, March 31st, as in the case of a monologue very little rehearsing is necessary. It is possible that that is why the author wrote a one-character play in the first place, though to those who commented upon this he said seriously that he was experimenting with a new art-form, a reply which can be relied upon to silence ninety-nine people out of every hundred, and no wonder.
On Sunday evening he said to Fräulein Rademeyer, “I am sorry to have to leave you alone for an hour or so to-night. I have business to do at the office.”
“What, on Sunday night?”
“I have some papers to study before to-morrow morning.”
“Papers, dear?”
“Yes.”
“Blonde or brunette, Klaus?”
“Good gracious,” said Klaus, horrified, “what an idea!”
“I understand,” said the old lady, “that when a man has business at the office out of hours, it’s usually feminine.”
“You’ve been reading the comic papers,” said her adopted nephew accusingly, and left the house.
In his official capacity he had access to certain confidential documents. He took out a folder from the safe where it was kept, and spent an uninterrupted half-hour copying a sketch-map and a page of notes. He put his copies in an envelope the flap of which was embossed, curiously enough, with the Royal Arms of England, and added a covering letter thumped out, like the page of notes, with one unskilled finger on a typewriter. “It will be time enough,” he said to himself, “if I speak to Johann the footman on Tuesday night.” He paused, while a gentle smile illuminated his scarred face. “And he thinks he’s such a clever Nazi agent, bless his little striped waistcoat!”
---
There was a meeting in London in the evening of Thursday, April the 6th, when Wilcox of the Foreign Office, his immediate superior, and a retired Colonel from Sussex came together to hear a curious story from the lips of Arnold Heckstall. When the British agent from Germany had told all he knew, he was dismissed with kindly words, and the three men remaining settled down to discuss the further enigma from the British diplomatic bag.
“This map,” said the Foreign Office Head of Department, “shows the frontiers of Germany with France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland in detail, merely indicating the others. Along these frontiers, starting at a point near Karlsruhe where the Rhine ceases to be the boundary between Germany and France, and going westward, there appears a line of red ink in places where the land lies low. Where the land lies low,” he repeated, and glanced at his hearers. “The notes make this clear. They refer to numbers marked on the map, and in several instances, at points where the red line is gapped, they say, ‘Broken for such-and-such a ridge of hills.’ In the next valley the line begins again. The notes are headed ‘Galvanized iron pipe half-inch, screwed connections.’ At the bottom there is ‘Laid by draining-plough.’ ”
He paused and addressed the Colonel. “You may not have heard the rumour. It was whispered that Germany was laying a pipe-line along her western frontiers to supply gas. Gas, hissing softly through the soil, to drench the valleys through which an invasion must pass. Those valleys might be death to every living thing for months on end.”
“So Heckstall went to find out if this were true,” said the Colonel, “and was dropped on.”
The Foreign Office man nodded, and Wilcox said, “I am a Londoner. This business of a draining-plough?”
“I am a countryman,” said the Colonel modestly. “A draining-plough carves a deep but narrow slot in the earth in which drainage-pipes may be laid, deep enough to be out of danger from the ordinary plough. A quick and easy method, and on arable land leaves no trace at all.”
“The Rhineland and the Saar are, of course, demilitarized zones,” said Wilcox.
“Yes, but there’s nothing in the Treaty to prevent a simple but industrious peasantry from tillin’ the soil,” said the Colonel.
“Sowing dragon’s teeth,” commented Wilcox, “and what will the harvest be?”
“Dead men,” said the Colonel grimly, for he was at Ypres in ’15.
“So our anonymous correspondent has done us a good turn,” said Wilcox, with a slight shiver.
“He has done us another,” said the superior, “at least, if what he says is true. There is a covering note, I’ll read it to you.
“Information required herewith. Also Niessen, Danish importer, real name Schulte, is agent of Germany. He it is who on Heckstall the gaff stridently has blown. Passed to you for action, please!”
“I am beginning to know,” said the Colonel, “what women feel like when they go into hysterics. It can’t be true, it’s fantastic. I think I’m getting old. In my day we had a cupboard which contained restoratives----”
“I beg your pardon,” said his host, rising hastily, “so do we. Soda? Or just straight?”
“After a letter like that,” said the Colonel, “I think I won’t dilute it, thanks. My soul, I needed that. Who is this fellow who uses a German construction one moment and a Civil Service formula the next?”
“A man might easily do that,” said Wilcox, “who had lived in Germany so long that his English was rusty.”
“All we can suggest about him,” said Authority, “is that he is possibly a friend of Reck’s.”
“Reck’s been dead these twelve years,” said Wilcox.
“I don’t know what you propose to do,” said the Colonel, “but Denton used to know Reck personally.”
“Am I to recall Denton from the Balkans to hunt for a dead man?”
The Colonel made a gesture of despair. “There’s Niessen too,” he said.
---
In Berlin, the Deputy Chief of Police made a report to his superior in the matter of the British agent.
“I regret to inform you, sir, that there was trouble at the frontier. I passed Herr Heckstall through on our side in accordance with your orders, but when the Belgian guard challenged, the prisoner, instead of stopping, ran like a hare. As you know, there has been a lot of trouble thereabouts with smugglers, and the guards have been told to be exceedingly firm. They fired, and the prisoner fell dead—on the Belgian side.”
“Most unfortunate,” said Niehl smoothly. “Very unfortunate, but no one can say it was our fault. A traveller so experienced as poor Heckstall should have known better than to behave so foolishly. Well, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, the incident is closed.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lehmann hesitantly.
“Why, what is the matter? You have no reason, have you, to expect any---er---repercussions?”
“None in regard to Heckstall. I did have a little talk with him in the course of which he gathered that our decision was final, and though his immediate departure rather depressed him he still seemed to be unpleasantly pleased about something. He rather hinted that two Governments could play at that game.”
“Can they possibly have found out about Niessen?”
“I wondered that myself, sir.”
“I will recall him at once.”
So Herr Niessen packed his suit-cases and left London in haste, but two horribly calm men in plain clothes met him at Dover and took him back again, protesting volubly. It appeared that Niessen had been the leading spirit in an organization which smuggled drugs into England, and though he declared with tears that he did no more than sniff occasionally, he retired from public life for a very long time indeed.
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