CHAPTER VII.

THE WORD OF A PRINCE

If there was a moral to these narratives which were originally written not so much for publication as to convey a true record of an adventurous career, to one who was inexpressibly dear to me, the learned and beautiful Miss Kathleen O’Mara, secretary (honorary, for she would not accept payment for performing a national service) of the German Gaelic League of Chicago, the most implacable, the most bitter enemy proud Albion has ever had.

Thou sweet and slender flower of Erin, with thy shamrock eyes and thy rosebud mouth, the unhappy writer of these lines will never again tread a giddy measure at the Plumbers’ Ball where first I met thee. Thy friend, whom thou hast admitted was more than friend, may yet fill an unknown grave! Then, hadst thou been true, my voice would have spoken to thee even though I floated in the Germanic Heaven amidst the well-born saints of the Fatherland. As it is--I cry _pfui!_ to the very thought of thee!

Reading this narrative over I think perhaps it would be more consistent if I omitted these preliminary paragraphs in view of the events which are recorded below. Should this story by chance obtain a wider circulation than that which was intended, it would be perhaps necessary to explain my honourable relationships with this sometime belle of Irish freedom.

Miss O’Mara and I met in the halcyon days at a ball. What there was in me that attracted her it is not for me to say. We Germans shrink from the revelation of our secret souls. Our thoughts are too sacred for vulgar expression, but this I may say, that it is a curious fact that women find some subtle attraction in me which they cannot define. There must be other men in the world of my height and build--even stouter men. There must be eyes as blue as mine and hair as like velvet pile of a deep sun-kissed auburn. There must be men with the same deep, tender voice, and that there are men with the same taste who dress as well, I can testify, for in one day in Chicago I have seen a dozen gentlemen with the same patterned waistcoat, the same pink tie, the same gold chain and wearing just as many rings as I carry on my hands.

I think we must look for this fascination (if I may be allowed to use the word, and I can think of no better) in a subtle mind, something which cannot be reduced to words, an aura of understanding, a moral up-lifting force which radiates from a vigorous and virile soul.

We Germans are rare sentimentalists, I admit. Materialism finds no place in the true German heart. Enemies have made statements about me, particularly in relation to a certain Flossie van Heever, a clerk at a Detroit drug store, which I repudiate with scorn and indignation. The girl utterly misinterpreted certain well-meaning words such as a German gentleman would speak, certain innocent attention such as a German gentleman can give, and I emphatically deny all the sordid charges which this girl in a moment of delirium made against me.

Oh, Plato, Plato, what sins are committed in thy name! To what depth will a woman sink in order to secure the man for whom her heart craves!

But enough of these sordid affairs. It is sufficient that Miss Kathleen O’Mara believed in me. I wrote to her every week from the day I landed in England. I wrote about my life and about her work and that peculiar hobby of hers that I had many times thought of utilizing for the benefit of the Fatherland. Sometimes she would reply tenderly or in holy rage when she thought of the wrongs of her down-trodden countrymen (_i.e._, Irishmen) and sometimes she did not answer at all. For three months before this story opened I had not heard from her.

I had posted my letter on the Friday afternoon and sauntered back to my office to see if any news had come in. The boy I employed told me there had been a caller, a gentleman who refused to give his name, but said he would come back later. I do not like callers who refuse to give their names, for though I do not believe there is a British Secret Service, there is always a possibility that the regular police may be going outside their province by prying into the lives and habits of “respectable aliens,” as they call them.

“Did he leave no message?” I asked.

“No, sir,” said the boy, “he merely said that he would call again.”

It was not until the following day that my visitor made his reappearance. It was Saturday and I was preparing to go home in the English fashion at one o’clock, when the gentleman was announced.

He was a tall, pale man with a dark and heavy moustache, bristling black eyebrows and that look of concentrated fierceness which so often distinguishes the insurance agent.

“Come in,” I said, inviting him into my private office and closing the door. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a message from Kathleen,” he said.

I seized him warmly by the hand and shook it.

“Any friend of Kathleen’s is a friend of mine,” I said: “sit down.”

I looked around uncomfortably and went again to the door and dismissed the boy for the day, paying him his wages.

“You may speak in perfect security,” I said.

“Kathleen is coming home,” he whispered.

“Coming home?” I could not restrain the joy in my voice. “Do you mean coming to----”

“To Ireland,” he said. “Things are going well over there.”

He need not have told me that. Indeed, I could have told him much more than he could possibly have known. I could have explained why things were going well. I could have made his hair stand on end if I had told him the amount of money that had passed through my hands for distribution to Dublin. I could have told him of stacks of arms landed on the deserted coast by our submarines and of visits which were made by the same vehicle of a certain distinguished Irishman, now unhappily no longer with us.

I could have told him of the organization for which I, Heine, had been responsible, which had provided the patriots of Ireland with ammunition. But why continue the list? I did not tell him anything, and I have reason to believe that he was disappointed.

A thought suddenly sobered me.

“Is it safe for Kathleen to come over at this juncture?” I asked. “By the by, I don’t know your name.”

“I am Theopholos Hagan,” he said, and I seemed to remember the name. “You have met me?” he went on.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said I, and curiously enough I had a dim recollection of having met him somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the circumstances.

“Oh, yes, I remember you,” I said, for we Germans never admit ignorance on any subject.

“There is something else I want to tell you about myself,” he said; “but perhaps this is not the moment to give away secrets.”

“Tell me,” said I earnestly, “anything you know. It shall not leave these four walls.”

I was curious to hear what his secret was, because our people in Berlin were very anxious for news of what was going on in Ireland and they had complained before that they were imperfectly informed.

“No,” said the man, “I will tell you later. I am going over to Ireland to-morrow. If we have any luck we shall have a rising on Easter Sunday. Kathleen wants you to be in Dublin when the trouble starts.”

I shook my head.

“That would be very unwise, very unwise indeed,” I said; “the more I am kept out of it the better for the cause. When does she arrive?”

“She will be in Dublin a fortnight before the rising starts,” said he.

“I will endeavour to be there to see her,” I replied. “I shall not be able to stay long because naturally I am very busy.”

I shook hands with him and saw him as far as the office door. After my experience with Mister, or Major, Haynes, I did not deem it advisable to be seen in public with gentlemen who might conceivably fall under the displeasure of the British authorities, and I explained this to him as a reason for my not coming to Euston Station to see him off.

I had spoken nothing but truth when I had said that I was very busy. Extraordinary changes were going on in England and particularly in London, where the constant alterations in the anti-aircraft gun positions, the erratic systems of lighting their streets which the British were adopting were turning my hair grey. It is said that I sent a new map of London’s defences every week to Germany and that every one was different, and this was true, but map-making was not my only source of employment.

By this time there were quite a respectable number of German prisoners in England, all of whom were anxious for help to make their escape, and whilst, officially, I was not in touch with them, unofficially I had a lot to do with such successes as they achieved. It was I who provided the motor-car for the four officers who escaped from Dabbington Hall. It was I who provided the tools for digging the underground passage by which three officers escaped from the Marlow camp. It was I who provided the clothing and disguises which enabled four naval officers and a Zeppelin officer to cross England after they had escaped from the Welsh camp. It is true they were all caught again, but that was nothing to do with me. When I had freed them from camp and set them on the road my work was finished and the rest was up to their good German ingenuity and resourcefulness.

On the Sunday following the Saturday I had seen Mr. Theopholos Hagan I was rung up on the telephone.

“Can you supply three dozen dress-collars for a gentleman from Slough?” said a voice.

“Where does the gentleman live?” I asked calmly.

“Outside the White City. The collars are to be delivered at nine o’clock,” was the reply.

“Thank you, I will attend to it,” I said, and hung up the receiver.

A curious place to live, you think, outside the principal entrance to an exhibition ground? And is it not strange that a gentleman from Slough required his collars delivered in London? I will make no mystery of the matter. “Three dozen dress-collars” meant “I have escaped and I want your help.” Slough was the place from which he had escaped. The White City was the point at which I must meet him and the hour was nine.

At nine o’clock to the moment my taxi-cab drew up in front of the ornate entrance of the exhibition grounds. The place was of course in darkness, and a man who was walking slowly along the curb turned to the cab as it stopped and asked:

“Have you brought my collars?”

“Step in,” I said.

The cabman had his instructions and turned toward the City.

To meet these escaping-prisoner cases I had taken a furnished flat in the Edgware Road. It was on the ground floor and had the advantage of having no porter, so that one could go in and out without being spied upon.

I opened the door of my flat and ushered my visitor in.

“Your name?” I demanded.

“Prinz,” he began.

“Highness,” said I quickly, “forgive my peremptory tone and please command me. I am entirely at your disposition. If I have been a little taciturn and quiet on the journey, and if I spoke to you a little sharply, pray pardon an over-tired servant of the Empire.”

“With pleasure,” he said.

He was a little, short man, who wore glasses.

“My name,” he said, “is Prinz, Karl Frederick Prinz. I am a Lieutenant of the 34th Selician Regiment.”

“Indeed,” I said a little coldly, “you led me to believe you were highly-born. Now what the devil do you mean by doing that?”

“It is not my fault, Mr. Heine, that you were deceived,” he said humbly.

“What do you expect me to do?” I asked angrily, for one cannot waste time on a reserve lieutenant and such-like cattle. “You ought not to have called me up at all,” I said, raising my voice; “it is abominable. Have I nothing better to do.”

He stopped me with a gesture.

“Pray do not excite yourself unduly, Mr. Heine,” he said; “for any trouble you may take, my father, the Colonial Secretary, will repay you.”

“The illustrious Doctor Prinz?” I said. “Are you his son?”

I stretched out my hand and gripped his.

“Welcome, a thousand welcomes! I know your Councillor of State father and his Excellency has frequently spoken to me of his son. Come, come,” I said jovially, “help yourself to the good Rhine wine, for it is not often that we are honoured by a visitor of your calibre, Herr Lieutenant.”

We drank a bottle together, and then he told me his plans. The difficulty of getting out of England is briefly to _get_ out of England, to secure a place on board a ship is well-nigh impossible, unless you are vouched for by Foreign Office officials, whilst the punishment for stowing away is so heavy that few of the neutral captains care to take the risk of allowing their ships to go out of port, without conducting an independent search.

Herr Prinz, however, had received a message from his father by some secret cipher to the effect that four times each month a submarine would come in-shore off the Scottish coast. He was to reach a deserted part of the foreshore, flash a signal from an electric lamp and a boat would be put off to pick him up. This system would be put into operation the moment the Herr Doctor Councillor of State, Prinz, learnt from me that he was free.

“Content yourself, my dear lieutenant,” I said, “you are as good as in the Fatherland. I will notify your august parent, to whom I trust you will remember me forthwith.”

“I have already notified him and I desire that you should not communicate,” he said, so I took no further steps.

There was no difficulty in getting the young man to Scotland, and I ventured to take a little holiday and accompany him. After all, one should show a little attention to men who have fought and bled for one’s country, especially when they are nearly related to councillors of State who, if not noble, are exalted personages on the way to nobility.

I supplied the young man with passports and various documents to identify him, and left him (with £50 which I advanced out of my private purse) at an hotel in a small town not many miles from the west coast of Scotland, under the care of a good German head-waiter who promised to look after the lad. And there I thought I had heard the last of him, and he had gone out of my mind, until I received an urgent message from Scotland saying that the submarine had not come, and asking me for another £50.

I went straight up to Scotland and found the Herr Lieutenant living at the hotel and very weary.

“It is very strange, Heine, I have been at the appointed place every night, on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th, I have flashed my lamp and nothing has happened.”

He told me he had waited on one occasion for four hours on the beach; on another he waited till daybreak.

“It is very extraordinary,” I said. “When you fixed this scheme with His Excellency the Councillor of State, Doctor Prinz, was it by writing?”

“By secret cipher, and what is more, the message was written in secret ink.”

“Did it reach you without having been opened?”

“Yes,” replied the Herr Lieutenant; “I have one of the letters in my pocket now.”

He took the letter and opened it. Apparently it was an innocent letter such as an affectionate father might write to his prisoner son.

“Now wait,” said the young officer. He sent for a glass of milk and immersed the letter, then held it before the fire to dry.

There instantly appeared string after string of words which were meaningless to me, apparently written in brown ink.

“I carry the code in my head,” he said.

I looked at the envelope, carrying it to the light. I noticed that the stamp and the postmark had been torn off and inwardly I praised the young man for his discretion. The flap was stuck down, though it had of course been cut at the top where the letter was taken out, and to all intents it had not been tampered with. I examined it with a magnifying glass, however, and saw that suspicious gum line which can always be seen in a letter that has been opened and surreptitiously closed.

“This envelope has been steamed,” I said, “the letter has been read, replaced, fastened down by a kind of spirit gum which the censors use, and smoothed with a hot iron.”

“How do you know?” he asked in alarm.

“I have opened too many myself,” said I, with a smile, “not to recognize the signs.”

“But supposing they had brought up the secret writing,” he said, “they could not understand the code.”

I thought for a moment and presently I said:

“There is only one person in the world who can read that code and that person is a woman. More than that, Herr Lieutenant,” I added proudly, “that woman is the dearest friend I have in the world, Miss Kathleen O’Mara of Chicago, U.S.A.”

And I told him something of this delightful girl’s history, of how her father had been a Fenian and how she was bitterly anti-English. She had taken up codes and ciphers as a hobby, and she had come to be so expert that you were always reading in the Chicago papers articles either written by her or about her. There was not a cryptograph that ever appeared in the agony column of a London newspaper that she couldn’t discover.

“You said her name was O’Mara,” said the Herr Lieutenant thoughtfully; “is she a tall, slim girl, with dark hair and blue eyes?”

It was my turn to be amazed.

“Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “even your illustrious father could not have described her more accurately.”

“And is her husband a tallish man with bristling black eyebrows and fierce black moustache?”

I drew myself up stiffly.

“The lady’s husband, Herr Lieutenant, you see before you in prospect. She is unmarried.”

He looked at me and shook his head.

“Well, then, it is not the same lady. This was a Mrs. Hagan, the wife of Captain Hagan of the United States Secret Service.”

I stepped back and clasped my brows. Now I remembered the man! Hagan from Washington! And she had married him. By heavens! When I think of the depth of woman’s duplicity I could despise the race. She, the Irish patriot, the strafer of England, to send that man to me in the hope that I should commit myself! Thou perfidious betrayer of one who entertained for thee naught but the tenderest, holiest feelings! Oh, what a low woman!

“I see it all now, Herr Lieutenant,” I said, “this woman was brought down to your camp to unravel your cipher. When did you receive it?”

He thought a moment.

“The night she left.”

“Now you understand,” I cried passionately, “no wonder you have waited in vain upon the beach! No wonder the four submarines disappeared! No wonder you were allowed to remain at liberty! These cursed, treacherous British! Was there ever a nation that more deserved to be obliterated?”

I made my plans quickly, as is my wont. Before leaving that night I gave the Herr Lieutenant another £50, making £100 he had received since his escape.

I myself was in considerable danger and if Hagan suspected me, the traitorous Kathleen knew me. I sent a man especially to Dublin and discovered that they were staying at an hotel in Sackville Street and that so far from Hagan having arrived recently, both he and his wife had been in Dublin for six months and they were undoubtedly in the pay of the British Government.

Of the events which occurred on Easter Monday in Dublin, I do not propose to speak. I sent very full reports to the Government, which may be read with profit by any who have the entrée to the archives in Wilhelmstrasse.

Two days after the rebellion started I saw Hagan and his wife in Regent Street, they were looking in the window of a jeweller’s shop. With me to think is to act. I stepped up to her and offered her my hand.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Hagan,” I said.

“Sure, ’tis the little Dutchman, Mr. Heine,” she smiled. “You know my husband?”

“I have that pleasure.” I bowed stiffly and hid my emotions behind an inscrutable face.

“And what are you doing in an enemy’s country?” asked Kathleen innocently.

“Enemy!” I laughed bitterly. “There was a time, madam, when there was only one enemy for the honorary secretary of a German-Gaelic club and that was--England!”

“There is only one enemy for me now,” she said, gripping her husband’s arm foolishly, “and that is Theo’s enemy. Sure, a wild young girl never knows her own mind, Mr. Heine, and she runs this way and that way with divil an idea what she is seeking. I guess I was seeking Theo, and now I’ve found him I have stopped hustling.”

We exchanged a few words. I strolled with them to Piccadilly Circus and they accepted my invitation to lunch at Prince’s.

“By the way,” I said in the midst of the meal, “do you still keep up your cryptograph investigations?”

I thought I saw a little look pass between her and her husband and then she smiled.

“Oh, yes,” she said, she may have said “sure” (I will not swear as to the exact words of any dialogue which I report), “oh, yes, faith it’s highly amusing.”

“And profitable, too, I suppose,” I said carelessly, helping myself to some celery.

“Faith, it is that,” she said; “many is the laugh I have had going through silly ciphers that come from Germany--bad cess to the place, and from Scotland too,” she said.

You observe she was shameless! There was no flush of guilt, no faltering, no lowering of eyes. She stood detected, blatantly confessed, an agent of the English!

“When Theo came over to look after the American crooks in London I came with him,” she said, “that is how I got to know those boys at Scotland Yard, and I sort of drifted into the work and took to it like a duck to water.”

My hand was trembling, I could not help it. Righteous indignation shook me from head to foot. I could have boxed her ears, but for my German chivalry and the presence of her husband, who might have been distressed at such a display of emotion, though I am sure he would have agreed with me had he only known the amount of money I had spent on that frail creature in flowers and theatre tickets and candy, to say nothing of postage stamps.

“They would amuse you, Heine,” she went on, “especially the queer things they say about you. There was a fellow the other day got a letter, phwat was the boy’s name, Theo?”

“Prinz,” said her husband, who hitherto had not spoken a word.

“Sure that was his name,” said the girl, “’twas from his old dub of a father and written in a very simple cipher.”

“A child could have read it,” agreed her husband, “and it was all about you,” he nodded to me.

“It said go and see Heine,” said the girl. “Tell him your father’s a prince, and if you haven’t got the pluck to do that, say you are the son of Colonial Officer Prinz, and he will do anything for you. There was a long bit about the lie he had to tell you. About submarines going up to Scotland to fetch him. When we told the commandant he let the boy go, he was safe. He was arrested yesterday and his father has been interned.”

“His father interned?” I gasped; “who was his father?”

Kathleen looked at her husband and Hagan spoke.

“He was the head-waiter at the hotel where the boy was staying,” he said, “’twas his way of getting the lad a vacation.”