Part 15

It was on June 1, exactly a month before Gens. Haig and Foch began their drive astride the Somme, that Mata-Hari returned to Paris. And the first thing she did was to apply for a visé on her passport permitting her to go to Spain. San Sebastian was the place she mentioned, as she explained she wished to attend the horse races there. Her papers were stamped and sealed and she left almost immediately for the fashionable winter resort in the south.

Madrid, Spain, and Nauen, Germany, are in constant wireless communication. There are other radio stations, privately owned in Spain, which can flash messages to Germany, according to Allied intelligence officers who have investigated. And of course there are innumerable German agents, spies and propaganda disseminators infesting the land of the Dons.

Secret Service reports disclose the fact that Mata-Hari was seen much in company at San Sebastian race track with a man long looked upon with suspicion by the French Government. He was a frequent caller upon her at the hotel where she stopped, and it was reported that he made good many of the big bets she placed on horses that did not materialize as winners.

Soon Mata-Hari came back to Paris and the apartment near the Bois de Bologne. And once more the limousine owned by the individual whom rumor has branded a Deputy, began rolling up to her door twice a week and sometimes oftener.

Then came the simultaneous Franco-British offensive at the Somme. Tanks went into action for the first time, and according to Gen. Haig's official communique his "land ships achieved satisfactory results."

The tanks did achieve satisfactory results. More than that, they revolutionized offensive tactics on favorable terrain by advancing immune against rifle and machine gun bullets, or even against light trench mortars whose shells exploded at a touch. They smashed by sheer weight strong points and machine gun emplacements. They straddled trenches, enfilading the occupants and crushed in entrances to dugouts.

But several of the tanks were put out of action--and not by stray shells hurtling forward from far behind the German lines. They were knocked out by small calibre _PENETRATION_ shells, fired from 37 millimetre trench cannons--the largest guns that can be handled from advanced positions. Guns specially built and rifled, and fired at high velocity and flat trajectory, so that, unlike any shell ever coughed up by a mortar, they penetrated the object struck--even though it were steel--before exploding.

Instantly it became evident that the enemy had become aware of what was in store for him and had constructed an "anti-tank" gun. And when the booty in the captured German positions was examined, the British found they had several good specimens of Krupp's newest weapon. Several German officers of higher rank taken prisoners confirmed suspicions, by explaining they had received description of the tanks several weeks before, and had been instructed how to combat them.

Now Mata-Hari is awaiting death and writing as she waits. She is penning her memoirs rapidly, filling scores of pages a day in a polyglot of French, German, Dutch, Javanese, Japanese and even English, according to the mood she is in, says the prison warder.

And because she fears her history will not be finished before that unannounced daybreak when she will be placed blindfolded before the high stone wall facing a firing squad of French soldiers, she has ordered her lawyer, M. Edouard Clunet, to plead for a stay of execution.

So Mata-Hari writes feverishly, and all Paris waits eagerly--except the one who waits apprehensively--to see if she will name the "ami" who gave her the first inkling of the tanks.

Pinned to the corsage of the Empire-cut black silk dress which Mata-Hari wears in her narrow cell in Saint Lazare Prison is a curious gold brooch. It is shaped like a twisted dragon, and its eyes are emeralds and its darting tongue a carrot-shaped ruby.

"It will be there--right over my heart--when I go away--when I stand before those men with guns aimed to kill me," says Mata-Hari. (Told in the _New York World_.)

(Since these stories were written Mata-Hari has gone to her death blindfolded before the firing squad. She met her execution stoically.)

III--ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF MATA-HARI

This is told by a man who for obvious reasons will not allow his name to be used:

"I knew Mata-Hari in Paris. I called on her at her home at Nieully-sur-Seine. The sinister character in Dumas' great romance was not more cunning or adventurous nor played for higher stakes than did Mlle. Mata-Hari. In many respects their histories should be printed in parallel columns. But I believe that for adventure, for cunning, for her great influence over the destiny of those with whom she came in contact, Mlle. Mata-Hari was more dreadful than 'Miladi.'

"Her father was a subject of the Netherlands and her mother was a Javanese. He died when she was an infant, and in order to protect her from the dangers which beset a young girl of mixed blood in the East her mother fled from Java with her when she was three years old and entered Burma. There, to further protect her, she pledged her to celibacy and placed her in a Buddhist temple to learn dancing. Then it appeared that her destiny would be not unlike that of thousands of other young girls in that country and similar in many respects to that of the old vestals of ancient Greece. In Burma these dancers are called bayadère.

"She told me that when she was twelve years old she was disgusted with life and was determined to change it or end it. After a dance at a great Buddhist festival in Burma, when she was about fourteen years old, she saw a British officer and fell in love with him. It was her first love affair. She managed to escape from the temple and joined him. This man was a baronet and loved her. Finally they married. Two children, a boy and a girl, were born of their union.

"I do not believe that she ever loved any man. It is certain that she did not love her husband. At any event, the monotonous life of a British official's wife was more than she could stand. The climax came when a maid whom she had beaten and discharged caused one of her gardeners to poison her infant son.

"The tragic sequence and scandal which followed the death of her son still is remembered by old timers in India. She started an investigation of the killing independent of the British authorities, and finally, in her own mind, fixed the guilt on one of her gardeners. She took a revolver, and, walking into the garden where the man was working, shot him dead.

"She was arrested, but owing to the high position occupied by her husband everything possible was done to suppress the scandal. Finally she was told that she would have to leave British India. It was just what she wanted to do. She left her home in the night, stealing her daughter from her husband. She made her way to Marseilles and thence to Holland, where she placed her daughter in a convent. Then she went straight to Paris, where she learned that she was penniless, the small fortune which her father had left her having, under the Dutch law, passed to her child. Then she set about to captivate Paris. Not satisfied with her conquest, she went to Berlin, to Petrograd, to Vienna--she travelled over all Europe--and became one of the most talked of women on the Continent.

"She met many men. One of them was a wealthy German, who was a high official of the Berlin government. He bought a home for her at Nieully-sur-Seine and furnished it in a style that was representative of what was most truly Oriental splendor. There the two of them lived. It was there that I first saw her.

"Soon she tired of this German. He was extremely jealous of her. Always her art--her dancing--called to her. He would not let her dance. There were many 'scenes' at home. Her life was not happy, despite the wealth at her disposal.

"Then she met a one-time Minister of Finance, of France, and, through him, his brother-in-law. He fell in love with her and she with him.

"This man was at that time the managing director of a great Paris bank. He deserted his wife and bought a magnificent château in Touraine. For two years they lived there. Then, one day, the police entered the bank and arrested the managing director. He was charged with embezzling the funds of the institution. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to two years at hard labor. The woman then went back to the German official at Neuilly-sur-Seine. They were living there when I left France four years ago." (Told in the _New York Herald_.)

IV--STORY OF EXECUTION OF SUSANNA RAYNAL

This is the story of a French young woman who was executed by the French military authorities in Bellegarde, the little Franco-Swiss frontier village.... Women have figured prominently as spies in every war. In this war their rôle has also been conspicuous. Some have betrayed their country for money, others have betrayed it for the love of adventure, and still others have betrayed it for the sake of love--following blindly the men who lead them astray along the fascinating and dangerous path of crime. This young woman was a victim of love.

Not a word has been written about her death. Not a sigh, not a tear, not a prayer from her friends and relatives. For they did not know what had become of her. The French newspapers did not record the end of this woman, who paid with her life for her daring, mad desire to help her Austrian lover, who sought to secure French military secrets.

Her name was Susanna Raynal. She was the wife of Louis Raynal, a lieutenant in the artillery of the French army. She was twenty-eight years old when she was put to death. The husband, twelve years her senior, was at the front when she was shot. Her lover was shot with her. He broke down, quivering and crying hysterically while she kept bracing him up, repeating: "Have no fear! Have no fear!"

She begged the officers to have them shot together, not separately. She declined to be blindfolded, held her lover by the hand and kept murmuring "Have no fear! Have no fear!"...

Several weeks ago I met in Paris a distinguished French diplomatist with whom I discussed many incidents of the war. Our conversation turned to the many varieties of spies and provocateurs and to the motives that prompted them to betray their country.

Then he told me the story of this young woman who met her end so bravely at the French-Swiss frontier. There were tears in his voice as he related the details. For he knew the woman and he knew her husband.

"I was returning from London to Paris a few weeks ago," he said. "Just as we were reaching Boulogne, on the boat crossing the Channel, while I was in line in the dining room of the boat where the passports were being examined by the military officers, I heard behind me a familiar voice, whispering in German, 'Furchte doch nicht!' (Don't be afraid!)

"I turned and saw the wife of my friend, a French lieutenant who was at the front. She felt somewhat embarrassed when she noticed me, but immediately advanced toward me and introduced to me a tall young man of rather anti-pathetic appearance.

"'This is my husband's friend,' she said to me. 'He was kind enough to help me arrange my business affairs in London. Louis is at the front....'

"Upon our arrival in Paris she asked me to visit her soon. She said she wanted me to advise her in a certain important matter, that she was alone now, that I could help her with letters of introduction, for which she would be most grateful. She urged me to visit her the following evening. I promised to call on her and bade her farewell.

"On the following evening, when I came to her house, her maid met me at the door and said that madam was expecting me for dinner an hour later. I asked her to tell Mme. Raynal that I had another engagement for dinner.

"A few minutes later Mme. Raynal came out. As I mentioned before, she was a beautiful young woman of about twenty-eight. She was most charmingly dressed. She greeted me warmly and begged me to stay for dinner. I told her I had another important engagement. She implored me to stay. She said she was alone, and that she wished to talk with me about a matter of great importance, in which she desired to enlist my aid. I said that I would call on her some other evening.

"Then she told me that she wished to visit friends in Switzerland, that she had some manuscripts of a literary character she wanted to take to them, and that she wished me to give her letters of introduction to several people, among them the Minister of War. I promised to call on her the following evening.

"As I bade her good night, she kissed me and begged me to break my other engagement and take dinner with her. I repeated that it was impossible. Then I left her. As I walked down the stairs, I noticed the tall young man I had met with her at Boulogne, going up in the elevator to her apartment. That seemed more than strange to me.

"The next morning I chanced to be lunching in a café where I occasionally met my friend, the head of the secret police department. In the course of my conversation I told the peculiar story of the woman and the young man, without mentioning her name. The police chief listened intently and then said:

"'I think I know the woman. We are watching her. We are also watching the man closely. He is an Austrian. They seem to be engaged in a serious political conspiracy.'

"About two weeks later I met the head of the secret police department in the same café. He said to me:

"'Do you know what has happened to that woman--Susanna Raynal?'

"'I haven't seen her since then,' I replied.

"'You will never see her again,' he said. 'She has been shot.'

"And then he told me how the police had shadowed her and her lover, how some one who had made her acquaintance recently gave her a letter of introduction to the Ministry of War. She wanted to help the Austrian carry certain documents out of France and wished to get a special letter from the Minister of War permitting her to take what she called 'manuscripts' to her friends in Switzerland.

"She came to the Ministry of War with her lover. They were taken to a room, where they met an officer who told her that he would be glad to arrange the matter for her. Then the police did what is usually done in such cases. The officer walked out of the room for a short time, leaving on the table near them a number of important-looking documents. The man took some of these documents, and after the officer had returned and had given them the letter they asked for they went away.

"On the following day they reached Bellegarde, the Franco-Swiss frontier. They were searched, and the papers taken from the War Department were found on the woman. Within one hour both were shot. She met her death bravely. She held the man by the hand and tried to brace him up. He was crying helplessly and hysterically....

"A few days ago I received information that Lieutenant Louis Raynal, the husband of the woman who was executed in Bellegarde, fell on the battlefield recently. He passed away without learning of the tragedy that had befallen his home.

"He died in defense of his fatherland, which his wife, through her blind love for a spy, had endeavored to betray. Perhaps as he was dying of his wounds, his last thoughts and prayers were for his home and for his wife." (Told by Herman Bernstein in the _New York American_.)

V--STORIES OF THE MILITARY SECRETS

The Paris papers contained a brief paragraph telling of a young girl, a milliner, in the neighborhood of Grenoble, who had been caught playing the spy for the Germans and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.

"We don't shoot women spies any more," said a soldier from the Somme front to whom I spoke of the story. "There have been no women shot for a long time. They generally get about twelve years at hard labor."

"Are you as much troubled as ever by spies?" I asked.

He laughed. "As long as there is war there will be spies," he replied. "You can't stamp them out. The only thing you can do is to try to catch them. It was only a few weeks ago that we caught a woman spy on the Somme.

"You remember when we took Bouchavesnes? Well, there was not much left of the village when we got it. Our artillery had knocked it pretty well to pieces, but we found an old woman there. She had remained all through the German occupation, and had even managed to hide and stay behind when all the rest of the civil population had evacuated. She was in a cellar during our bombardment, and when we went into the town she came out to welcome us, the only one of the original French inhabitants of the village remaining. As it was French again, she insisted on remaining. It was her home and she had succeeded in clinging on all the time the Germans were there. She saw no reason why she should go when the French came back into occupation.

"She stayed and did our washing for us. She was busy all the time, and every morning she would take the wet clothes out and spread them on the ground to dry. You could see soldiers' shirts and underwear all around the cellar where she lived, and hanging on all the posts and pieces of wall.

"The old woman pottered around and worked most industriously at her tubs. She always came out when there were troops going through the village and she would talk to the men, find out where they were going, where they came from and how long they expected to be there. And whenever she came out from her tubs she would go to her wash, lying out to dry, examine it, turn it over, rearrange it. She was a wonderful washwoman. It was a mania with her, having everything just right for the French soldiers, who had won back her home for her in France.

"But the Germans seemed to know every concentration of troops we made in that region. Their shells received us every time. We could not make a move that they did not know all about. We set three men to the special duty of finding out how the Germans got their information. The first thing they found out was that there were more air fights over Bouchavesnes than at any other part of the line. There seemed to be always a Boche aeroplane hovering over the ruins. They decided that there must be something about Bouchavesnes which made it a particularly good observation point. As the old woman was the only thing that distinguished the place from any other ruined village, they arrested her.

"At first she denied everything, but the German accuracy in bombarding our concentrations ceased with her arrest. It does not take a long argument to convince a drumhead court-martial, and the old woman saw that the game was up. She then claimed to be French, and said that she had consented to spy for the Germans partly under threats, partly because her life had been spared by them, and partly because they had paid her well, and she had no other way of getting any money to live. Finally, she acknowledged that she was German and had been purposely left behind to spy when the Germans got out. She got twelve years at hard labor."

* * * * *

"Spies work all kinds of tricks. There was the old fellow who came back to his farm just behind the lines and started to do his fall ploughing with three horses, a red, a white and a black. He did his signalling by changing the position of the white horse in the team. He was easy to catch, as a team, especially a plough team, always works in the same order. Some of our men who were farmers noticed how he was constantly changing his horses about. They talked about it among themselves a bit and at last one of them spoke of it to an officer. The alleged farmer was investigated and shot.

"Spies are almost sure to get a certain length of time to do their work before they are caught. We ran across a blacksmith who was one of the most congenial fellows you ever met. He had his shop right beside one of the main roads used by the troops in going back and forth to the trenches and he always had a stock of wine and something to eat. His shop did not keep him very busy and he was nearly always at his door. He would talk to the soldiers, give them a drink, ask where they were going and want to know how long they would be gone, so that he would be waiting to give them another glass of wine when they came back. He was very popular with the soldiers, because he was such a good fellow, always ready with a joke and a glass of wine.

"But our concentrations were known to the Boches. Our men were being shot down. We never could prepare anything in advance and bring it off successfully, because the Boches knew just where we were getting ready to do something. Some of our spy catchers got to work to find the leak. They hunted through the sector for the best place to pick up news about troop movements and they found, of course, that all the soldiers were friendly with the blacksmith. His shop was raided one day. He had been left behind by the Germans. He had a three months' store of wine and food in his cellar. Of course, he could give our men wine. But he had, also, direct telephonic communication from his cellar with the German lines. He was shot.

"The worst case that I ever knew of--but it was not the only one of the kind--was an officer in the French army who was a German spy. You can see from that how thorough the Boches are. That man had been sent from Germany to France when he was a boy. He had been educated in France and had gone to the French military schools. He was an artillery officer and one of the best. He was a lieutenant at the beginning of the war, but when the Somme offensive began he was a captain in command of a battery. For all that time he had done his work without being suspected.