The adventures of Heine 5 – Wallace · Verses Across
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The adventures of Heine 5The Man from the Stars
18
Literature · Short Stories
The adventures of Heine 5
The Man from the Stars
WallaceEnglish
It is an axiom of mine that news has no value unless it is based upon somebody’s misfortune. Take your newspaper and scan its close-set columns. Is there any item in these many pages which does not derive its importance from a calamity which has overtaken somebody?
Your police courts, your divorce courts, your war--they yield interest in ratio to the misfortune of one party or the other. Our great victory is your great defeat, the liberation by the Divorce Court of this woman is the exposure of that, startling crimes attract only by the measure of the anguish they impose. In war, when neither army is destroying the other we vote the news dull, and so I think would you describe the faithful record of my commonplace days when all went as smoothly and as evenly as the routine of a well-organized business.
And, after all, the spy’s work is more often than not the most dull and boring of work. One of my men spent eight weeks in timber yards, checking the supplies of box-wood and keeping track of its destination. When a certain noble lord in charge of a great national factory bought up all the box-wood, we knew by the extent of his purchases that the work which was being done in his well-guarded factory was shell-filling on a vast scale.
Here then was a form of “espionage” without adventure, humdrum, soul-destroying and to all appearance unprofitable. There is no material for narrative here, good friends. There is nothing of the bizarre, nothing of the flash, the sparkle, and the thrill of the work. Therefore, I do not offend you with the banal trivialities of my profession, otherwise I might present what was little more than a catalogue of appointments. As for example:
March 3rd.
10 o’clock.--Saw Hefferich and took report of spare ties and sleepers held by G.W. & C. Ry.
10.15.--Phone message from Stael to say that there was a case of bubonic plague reported at Gravesend (East India liner Ratapore.)
10.20.--Phone from Casey re proscribed meeting at Connemara.
10.30.--Phone weather report from Aberdeen.
10.33.--Phone weather report from Llandudno.
10.35.--Weather report from Southsea.
10.38.--Saw van Heerden re butter shipments for February.
and so and so forth. Yes, I was a weather bureau, and daily transmitted the barometer reading to Germany--useful information for our air service.
Many informative isobars would have been absent from the German meteorological charts but for the industry and organization of Heine! I have my critics and my enemies. Particularly do I single out amongst the latter, Trade-Councillor Karl Wesselsmanns, of Hamburg, on the staff of Vorwarts, who had the impertinence to write in his crude language and un-German spirit that “the work of the Secret Service in England was distinguished by bungling and stupidity. Whoever was in control of that work seemed to spend his time getting Germans into trouble and produced very few satisfactory results that are worthy of notice.”
It is true that I did not blow up munition works. It is true that I did not sink battleships like the heroic Weddigen, and that I did not drop bombs on the Houses of Parliament. That was not my duty. That that duty was ably performed I can prove by documents in my possession, notably one from the illustrious and High Admiral von Tirpitz, signed by his own hand, and I also adduce the statement of that saviour of Germany, the excellent and illustrious Prussian Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who on one occasion mentioned me by name, as I can prove, and stated that for all he knew I might be one of the most useful men in the German service. All these things have been said to me and I only repeat them in self-defence. I do not boast. We Germans never indulge in frivolous talk nor do we use sport-terms. Otherwise I would say that these attacks by the gutter scourings of Altonia were not bally cricket, to use an English expression. I admit there have been lamentable errors, and possibly in the course of these memoirs I shall have to admit others by which interfering and unofficially appointed amateurs have fallen a prey to their own arrogant ill-informedness.
As for me I can look the whole world in the face and say humbly that with no thanks for reward, and no hope of gain, facing an ignominious death from hour to hour, I have served the Fatherland. It does not matter to me whether I receive the Order of the Red Eagle, as I have been half-promised, or whether I do not. I feel my superiors must make some acknowledgment of my whole-hearted services on an inadequate and miserably insufficient salary.
And if you dare to suggest, as this ink-slinging rascal on the Vorwarts has done, that I have made large sums of money out of the expenses which the empire allow me for propaganda work, I fling the accusation in your teeth. I admit I am well off, but that is due to my private speculations on the Stock Exchange in the year 1914. But to return to my work and to an adventure which was, to say the least, out of the ordinary.
In the summer of 1915, I received a request from Berlin which somewhat surprised me. I was instructed to send to Holland as many good maps of London as I could buy, and I was told also to prepare one special map, marking the areas the street-lamps of which had been darkened. This was followed (or it may have come in the same dispatch, I forget) by a request that I should instruct my men to discover how it was that the British Government knew we contemplated an air-raid on London.
I myself wondered what information the British Government had secured, and how they had secured it. For months the streets had been lit as gaily as in pre-war days. The theatre signs glowed and flashed, the West End streets were bathed in radiance, and then, almost as by a touch of the magician’s wand, London “went dark.” Street lamps were shaded, the light signs outside the theatres were extinguished, and it was almost impossible to pick your way through the streets.
I suppose my excellent friend, the High-Born Baron von Hertz-Missenger, would have said, “English Secret Service.” He reminds me of a character in Charles Dickens, the great English poet, who invariably thought that his head was the head of King Charles II!
The explanation I offered was, that some of our too impetuous airmen must have betrayed the fact by shouting with haughty insolence to the English airmen they met in the air. As this has never been denied, it is probably true. At any rate I set myself to work upon a map. It was a long business, and very unsatisfactory, because the whole of London was dark, and no place was more light than another. This I reported, forwarding the maps by special courier.
And then I received a request from our Headquarters that I should arrange light-signals which should be seen by Zeppelins. The idea was to post three lights so that they formed a triangle, one near Albany Park, one near Maidstone Road, and a third in the east, near Shepherd’s Junction. The triangle thus made would contain all the valuable city area which it was our Zeppelins’ intention to utterly destroy.
Of the first raid in September, it is not necessary for me to tell. Of how the cowardly Englishmen trembled beneath the midnight hail of bombs, you have read.
I myself did not witness the raid, because, on receiving information in the afternoon, Zeppelins were due, I had left London for Cornwall. Since it was impossible for the brave fellows who piloted our good Zeppelins to distinguish between a patriot and a hateful enemy, I thought that in the interest of the Fatherland, it was necessary that I should be as far away as possible when the dread visitation came.
I returned to London the next morning and arrived at eleven o’clock. O what consternation there was. O what vile language these unkultured Londoners used, what epithets, what adjectives, the A’s, and B’s, and C’s, and D’s, they called us--but of that anon!
I was in some anxiety before my journey’s end was reached as to whether I should have to walk a part of the journey, and I was greatly relieved on questioning the conductor to learn that Paddington Station had escaped the holocaust. When I arrived at Paddington everything was going on as usual. To my amazement buses were running and cabs were plying for hire.
“Where was the raid?” I asked.
“In the East End and the City,” was the reply.
So, I thought, my triangle had proved efficacious, and calling a cab, I said:
“Will you please drive me to the ruined area?”
The poor, ignorant fellow thought at first that it was the name of a public-house, and I had to enlighten him.
“Where the bombs struck,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he said, brightening up, “I will ask a policeman where they fell.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” I inquired, “that you don’t know? Perhaps you haven’t been to the City?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in the true boorish cabman spirit. “I’ve been to the City three times, but I ain’t seen no place where the bombs fell.”
This of course was “eye-wash.” For my part I had removed all my archives from my office, and as that was on the edge of the City, I drove there first and was pleased to find that my office had not been touched. I drove up Ludgate Hill and apparently everything was as usual, and it was not until we had driven farther on and had penetrated a side street that I saw the wreckage of a house. It was pleasing and yet disappointing. A number of windows had been smashed, one house was in ruins and there was a big hole in a court-yard, but the damage was such as might have been caused by an explosion of gas.
It took me a long time before I found the second place where a bomb had fallen, and here again the results were not as I expected. I spent the whole of that day wandering about looking for devastation. I went east and south, and north, and although I saw some damaged houses, the results of our gallant Zeppelins’ visit left much to be desired.
Returning to my office I was called on the ’phone and a code message was sent through to me. As I expected, it was from Berlin asking for full particulars of the damage done, and very faithfully I described what I had seen, coded it and passed it on to the proper quarters.
To my wrath and humiliation, the next evening brought a peremptory demand from Berlin. It had been sent by radio, picked up off the coast by a little steamer flying the flag of----, and was brought to me from an East Coast port by one of the couriers we employed for that purpose.
The message was, as I say, peremptory, and there were tears in my eyes, tears of sorrow and injury as I read it.
“Cannot understand your message. Our pilots report Westminster Abbey was bombed. Whole streets of the City are in flames, Houses of Parliament partly destroyed, also London Bridge and Tower of London. Several ships in docks hit and sunk. Please personally investigate and report.”
Of course there was a chance that these cunning English had, by means of scene painters and workmen labouring through the night, removed all sign of the destruction, but I walked over London Bridge without any difficulty, and as far as I could see the Tower of London was uninjured.
I reported the same, and three days later, had this message back:
“Be on south side of Three Mile Wood, north-north-east Saffron Walden, at eleven o’clock on the night of October 7th.”
I could not understand this message, and my new assistant, who had arrived from America, Herr Wilhelm Peters, was as much puzzled as I.
However, on the 7th of October, I journeyed to Saffron Walden, which is a little town in Essex, and by studying a map I discovered that Three Mile Wood was inaccurately named because it was about seven miles from the town. I decided to walk, and arrived in the neighbourhood of the wood at about ten o’clock at night. Having ascertained by consulting my compass which was the south side, I made my way across fields and muddy ditches to a big meadow which was exactly placed to the south of the sparsely-wooded little forest.
It was a clear night with a thin ground haze and was rather cold. I had brought one of those walking-sticks, the top of which forms a seat, and this I found very comfortable; for the inner man I had a flask of brandy and some liver sandwiches, and I settled myself down to my vigil, wondering what on earth had induced Headquarters to send me upon this wild adventure.
Then suddenly my heart began beating at a tremendous rate as I divined the reason! It was intended this night for our airships to reach London, and they desired that I should be a witness. What folly! What folly! What incomparable insanity to risk the life of a high Officer of Intelligence, to place him in such horrible jeopardy.
I felt myself grow pale, but then with an effort I braced up. I was a German! We Germans fear God and nothing else, and, besides, I thought there might not be an air-raid after all.
But what satisfaction I got out of that thought was quickly dissipated. Suddenly an ominous sound came to me. A double “boom!” far away and to the east, was followed by three staccato explosions. Another bomb fell, and suddenly the whole of the eastern sky was illuminated by the tracing fingers of searchlights.
“Boom!” the sound was growing nearer and my mouth was dry. I felt choking. I loosened my collar and wiped the sweat from my forehead and stood up, my knees trembling.
I have thought the matter over since and I have come to the conclusion that my agitation might be explained in this way, that I was trembling with pride in the fearless exploits of our gallant airmen, those intrepid messengers of death who sailed the midnight skies fearless of foe; that I perspired because the liver sandwich was perhaps a little too highly flavoured. Anyway, the cursed things were coming closer and who knows what mistakes a blundering fool of a pilot might make. The searchlights were suddenly extinguished, the guns were silent, and for ten minutes I heard no sound save a faint but ever-growing-nearer hum of an engine in the sky. Then there was a shrieking whistle, a crash that seemed to shake the very earth, a blinding fan of flame and then silence. In my rage I shook my fist at the sky.
“Stupid jackasses, miserable, bat-eyed swine-hound!” I cried. “Have you not the highest instructions in your pockets to avoid bombing an Intelligence Officer?”
The cursed thing passed overhead. It was roaring like a railway train passing through a tunnel. I saw the bulk of it outlined against the stars and then I saw something else, a little black dot that moved and swayed against the sky.
I thought it might be some infernal machine and I nearly fainted.
Understand that my chief thought was of Germany. I had no fear for myself. I was merely a cog in the wheel of the great machine and stood ready at all hours and all days to sacrifice myself for our dear Deutschland.
Fortunately, there was a fallen tree in my neighbourhood, and under this I crept, looking out from time to time to see what had happened to the strange thing in the air. Then I heard a thud, a rustle, and an oath, and I jumped up, bruising the back of my head against the tree-trunk, and ran toward the sound, for that oath was in good German.
“Whars dar?” called a sharp voice.
“It is I, Heine,” I replied.
“Oh, good,” said the voice in German. “You are on the spot, I see. Help free me from this doubly rotten parachute.”
I made my way to him and helped unbuckle some of the straps that fastened him, and presently he was free.
“Have you got a pocket lamp?” he asked. “No, perhaps you had better not use it. Where can I put the parachute?”
I suggested the tree under which I had been--I won’t say hiding, let me rather say taking cover.
“Have you a car?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“You are an ass,” said he; “why haven’t you a car?”
I knew by the imperiousness of his tone that he was a true German gentleman, probably highly born and connected by many social ties with an old family of Prussia.
“I am the Baron von Treutzer,” he said, as though answering my thoughts, “and I have been sent here to survey the damage that was done in the last raid.”
“Your Excellency will discover that I have spoken nothing but the truth,” I said humbly.
The sound of the Zeppelin’s engines, which had diminished, was now increasing in volume.
“Is the airship returning?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said testily.
He took from his pocket a small electric lamp and flashed it three times in the air and immediately after three tiny sparks of light showed in the sky.
“They won’t be dropping any more bombs, Herr Baron?” I asked carelessly.
“Good heavens! What does it matter if they do?” he boomed--he was a booming kind of man, born to command, typical of our virile aristocracy which has placed Germany in the forefront of world-nations.
“I only asked,” I said. “I am a mere observer.”
“We only dropped a few bombs,” he said, “just to explain our presence. The real business of our visit is here.” I heard him slap his chest in the darkness.
“I did not know where the raid was intended,” I said, “or I would have arranged for a leader.”
“A leader?” he asked. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Evidently Herr Baron is not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” I said humbly, “or he would know that the Zeppelins are ‘led’ to their destination by motor-cars with strong head-lamps.”
“Of course I am not a member of the Zeppelin crew,” he said in deep disgust, “I am a Royal Lieutenant of the 31st Regiment of the Prussian Guard.”
“Does your Excellency intend staying here very long?” I asked, as we trudged along the country road.
“For a week,” he replied, “after that I return----”
“By----?”
“That is my business,” he replied, “if a Zeppelin can bring me here, a Zeppelin can take me away.”
Though I had never heard of parachutes that go up, I know all things are possible owing to the inventive genius of our nation, so I questioned him no further. Outside Saffron Walden we stopped whilst I went to the hotel to collect the handbag which I had left there.
Needless to say the people in the hotel were in that condition of cowardly funk which our Zeppelin always inspires. The children were crying because they had not seen the airship, and again I heard in the common bar of the hotel those terrible words which my modesty would only allow me to designate by using certain letters of the alphabet.
I rejoined the Baron and we made our way to the railway station, which was in darkness. Fortunately the train which came in was also darkened and remained that way until we reached London and I was able to bring the Baron to my flat without observation.
He was a tall, handsome gentleman, dressed in civilian clothes of a noble cut and rich texture, and over a glass of whisky he graciously unbent and told me that he had come to England by this curious method to discover the extent of the damage, not only of the first raid, but of a raid which was projected and by which it was hoped to lay London entirely in ruins.
“On what day will that occur?” I asked.
“You will be notified in due time. It may be to-morrow, and it may be the next day,” he replied.
“I only asked,” I said carelessly, “because it is necessary for me to see one of my agents in North Devon one day this week, and I should not like to miss the raid.”
“You will stay here until I go. That is an order. Why are you looking so pale?”
“It is the pressure of work, your Excellency,” I replied. “I am afraid I have rather taxed my strength. My doctor suggested that I ought to go away at once to Cornwall or perhaps Scotland.”
“We hope to bomb Scotland,” said the Baron thoughtfully. “It would not be a bad idea if you were there.”
“When I said Scotland,” I said hastily, “I should have said that my doctor suggested I should go to Scotland in the spring. This of course is the very worst weather. Are you likely to bomb Wales?”
“We cannot reach there. It is beyond our reach,” said the Baron.
“I only ask,” I said, “because he also suggested that I should go there.”
“When the raids are over you can go to the devil. I only want your assistance while they are on.”
“Did you say raids or raid?” I asked.
“There may be two,” he replied callously.
The next morning he expressed his intention of going through the City and the East End to photograph the worst of the damage. I did not offer to accompany him, and indeed, had he suggested that I should do so, I should have firmly declined. Fortunately, he knew London very well, for he had been an attaché at the German Embassy a few years before the war broke out, so he had no need of my assistance or guidance.
He left the flat at eleven o’clock and I arranged to meet him at a restaurant in Piccadilly for lunch. I need hardly say that he was armed with a passport; not only very completely filled in, but endorsed with an exact imitation of the rubber stamps which were used in those days by examining officers at Folkestone when passengers landed.
I was waiting for him at one o’clock, but he did not arrive. Half-past one came, a quarter to two, two o’clock, and I began to feel seriously alarmed, and was thinking what an excellent text his arrest would provide for a letter to Potsdam on the futility of sending amateurs, when he came through the swing doors. He uttered no word till we were sitting at the table, and the waiter had served the soup.
“These English people are very clever,” he said at last.
“In a way they are clever,” I said, “but by the side of the German----”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Our German people are merely slavish imitators of everybody else in the world. If Germany was not a nation of slaves we should never have an army.”
This put an end to the easy flow of conversation, but presently I ventured to ask:
“Why does your Excellency think the English are clever?”
“I am referring to the way they have cleared up the mess we made and have run up new buildings.”
He looked up at me curiously as he spoke.
“Don’t you agree?”
“Naturally,” I said heartily, “I have reason to believe that hundreds of thousands of workmen have been working day and night to restore the damage.”
He laughed.
“In addition to being a fool, you are a liar,” he said, and I could only smile at the good humour and buoyant frankness of this high-born officer who was in all probability in the entourage of the All-Highest himself and, at any rate, as I have since learnt, had frequently dined with that exalted Prince whom we call the Hope of Germany.
“No,” Baron von Treutzer went on, “the Zeppelin did little or no damage. It caused nothing of the smash that we expected it would. We will see what to-night’s raid brings out.”
“To-night?” I said, half-rising from my seat.
“Did I say to-night?” he said in an off-hand way. “Well, whenever it happens.”
But I knew that in a moment of incaution he had spoken the truth.
“By the way, I shall want you with me to-night,” he said.
“To-night?” I repeated. “I am very sorry but this is the one night I cannot be with your Excellency. I have an important messenger coming from Ireland with particulars of a rising, and the Foreign Office has particularly asked me----”
“I shall want you to-night,” repeated the Herr Baron, “and you will meet me at ten o’clock, let us say, in St. Paul’s Churchyard.”
“Himmel! Herr Baron!” I exploded, “that would be in the very centre of the raid!”
“Did I ever say that it would not?” he asked coldly, “of course it will be in the centre of the raid. You understand, at ten o’clock. The War Office require a detailed account by eye-witnesses of the damage which is done.”
“But my messenger arrives at Fishguard to-night,” I said with a tremor in my voice. “Forgive me if I am agitated, Herr Baron, but I realize the terrible importance, the absolute necessity, of meeting that boat.”
“At ten o’clock you will be in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” said the Baron.
How I loathed and hated this tyrant. We Germans are naturally lovers of freedom. We despise the sycophant and the toady. Tyranny to us is a pestilential disease to be stamped out with an iron heel. Woe to those who endeavour to enslave the German, for they are biting on granite!
I told the Baron that I would meet him at the appointed time.
“Don’t come before ten,” he said. “We will remain until the raid is over.”
I lifted my hat and bowed as I parted from him in Piccadilly, and I prayed, most fervently, that the earth would open and swallow this pig, whose abominable manners and low attitude to men not so well born as himself (though of that I am not sure, for there were many stories about my mother’s friendship for the Graf von Maldesee, which I sometimes reflect upon with a certain amount of satisfaction) aroused in me the deepest scorn.
I could eat no dinner that night, I could do no work that afternoon. I sat in my office until a quarter to ten, suffering, I think, from a touch of malaria and ague which I contracted in America.
I arrived in St. Paul’s Churchyard, dark and gloomy and silent, on the stroke of ten. I had arranged to meet the Baron at the corner of one of the lanes which slope down to Upper Thames Street, and here I took my station.
At quarter-past ten he had not arrived. At twenty minutes past ten a hundred searchlights flashed into the sky and the first gun-shot woke the sleeping city.
The Zeppelin was coming straight to the City, but was west of where I stood. I heard the thud of its bombs and the devil’s chorus of the guns. I saw the skies speckled with shrapnel bursts, but much of what happened in that brief space of time between its appearance and its disappearance is blotted from my memory.
I could only stand crouched in a friendly doorway, my hands before my eyes, thinking of my dear friends, and particularly of a certain girl in Chicago with whom I had exchanged photographs, of my dear home, my little brothers, in fact all my life passed before me. I dare not go out to look for the Herr Baron. How I envied him, that hardened man of war to whom this terrible concatenation of sound was as the gentle zephyrs; who could stand unmoved and watch with his stern military eye the destruction that was going on about him, uncaring, unafraid, contemptuous of danger, seeking only the information he required for his superiors!
In that moment I almost loved the man, even though I hated to meet him lest he mistook my ague for a more ignoble emotion, but presently I plucked up courage and went out to look for him. He was not at the corner of the lane nor was he on that pavement at all. I made a circuit of the Cathedral without meeting him and then I realized that the Zeppelins had not been near St. Paul’s but had passed westward. Naturally he would have been informed at the last moment and would have been on a spot where they would pass.
I did not attempt to join the throngs that gathered about the places where the bombs had fallen, but made my way homeward. At one o’clock he had not returned; two, three, and four passed. I still listened and then the horror of the possibility seized me. This gallant man had perhaps paid for his temerity with his life and I bought an early morning paper as soon as one was procurable and searched in vain for some indication of his fate. Such a man could not be stricken down without attracting attention, but there was no reference whatever to such a one as he. In a fever of anxiety I paced my room. I called up my various agents but they could give me no information and I had almost abandoned hope when, at half-past eleven, the Baron came, debonair and calm into my office.
“You had a good view,” were the first words he said.
“Oh, Herr Baron,” I said. I grasped his hand and shook it (a most presumptuous thing to do); “I am so glad to see you back! If you missed me, I was on the spot.”
“I didn’t miss you,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“I was at Fishguard, meeting your man but apparently without success, for he did not come.”
“You were at Fishguard?” I gasped.
“Naturally,” he said, “you don’t suppose I am such a silly fool that I am going to stand under a bomb to see it burst, do you?”
Such a man was this mean-souled dog, von Treutzer!
Thank heaven! He disappeared in a week. He may have been picked up by a descending Zeppelin. He may have been taken off by a near-approaching submarine. I have had no news, but if I hear he got back to Germany alive, I, Heine, will be sorry.
