Chapter SEVENTEEN

About other Spies--I am Shown the List of British Traitors
Paid by Germany--For that Reason I am Feared in Certain
Quarters--Why Scotland Yard Withdrew its Protection from
Me--My Campaign Against Enemy Aliens--Efforts to Discredit
Me--Poisonous Gossip in Society--A Report is Set About
that I Am a German Spy!--Our Silly Censorship--I Defy
it, and As a Patriot Await Prosecution--The Traitors
Fear Lest I May Make Ugly Disclosures--Prominent Men Who
Supported Me--Humours of Lecturing--I Meet the Mock Monk
Rasputin--Herr Steinhauer, Chief Spy of the Kaiser--The
Identity of “Jack the Ripper” Disclosed for the First Time.

The British public are even to-day ignorant of the widespread and powerful pro-German influence that was at work in our country before the outbreak of war, during the struggle for our national existence, and continues even to-day.

I am a thorn in the side of the traitors. There is no doubt whatever of the truth a certain Cabinet Minister told me when he said:

“There are a good many people in England who are wishing that something would happen to you, Le Queux.”

“I know,” I said. “And I know the reason.”

In high quarters, strings were being pulled constantly against me, much to my detriment. The penalty I paid for daring to write _The Invasion_ proved of very serious consequences to me, inasmuch as the newspapers that did not agree with my patriotic endeavours tried to suppress me by refusing to publish any more of my novels serially! And by this I lost a very considerable part of my income. Nevertheless, my friends encouraged me in the work I was striving to do, and I felt sufficiently rewarded to know that when the war came my efforts were appreciated, even by many of those who had hitherto turned a deaf ear to all my warnings.

And now let me explain why I was such a thorn in the side of our traitors who, working in unison, constituted the Hidden Hand. They feared me because I possessed knowledge of their identities, and in many cases of the sums secretly paid to them by Germany! The truth was that in 1912 my friend Herr N----, for my personal information, showed me a list of persons in England to whom German money had been, and was still being indirectly paid. And he was their pay-master! I was aghast at the sight of this list. I sat staggered. It was appalling that persons whom the nation considered highly patriotic and upright, and who were afterwards loudest in their praise of “our gallant fellows,” should have fallen into the insidious tentacles of the great German octopus.

I know that this sensational statement will be questioned, but I vouch on my honour and all I hold most sacred as to its truth.

Remember the traitors unearthed in France--Lenoir, Bolo Pasha, and many others--and what Germany was doing in France she did also in England, though here our betrayers have remained undiscovered and are allowed to go free in full possession of their blood-money.

The names I read in that list were mostly well-known throughout the country, and embraced persons of the higher and official classes. Members of Parliament and others, including two influential writers who were my friends. I asked to be allowed to make a copy of the list, but my request was refused, therefore I could only carry the names in my memory. In it the Foreign Office, Home Office, India Office, Admiralty, and War Office were all represented; and all should have faced the firing party instead of living to-day, lolling in their cars and enjoying themselves on the price of their treachery.

“Now you see for yourself how Germany is working,” my friend said, as he replaced that amazing document in his pocket. “You know the truth concerning your own betrayers. But, of course, you will regard what I have shown you as strictly confidential. _One day, if we are conquered, we may publish those names! Who knows?_”

My lips have been sealed till to-day. There are traitors in every camp, and Britain was, and still is, no exception. Would that Germany would publish those names and the amounts annually paid to each. I hinted at what I knew to my friends, and for that reason I believe Lord Charles Beresford one day, during the war, turned on a certain politician in his bluff fiery way and declared him in my presence to be among the traitors. And the politician only laughed!

During the war many events proved beyond all doubt that we were being betrayed by some persons in authority. Therefore the facts speak for themselves. I make no charge against any Government as a whole. Each did its best in turn, but our betrayers were in our midst and secretly pulled the wires that worked the Hidden Hand.

Many persons have wondered why I have met with much hostility in certain official circles, but what I here reveal for the first time is surely sufficient explanation. By some means it had become known to the traitors that I had gained knowledge of them and, in fear lest I should make disclosures of how they had been bribed by German gold, they united to discredit me and to wreck my reputation.

To what extent this was carried is shown by an incident that occurred two days after war was declared.

Scotland Yard knew that ever since the publication of _The Invasion_ and my campaign against the Hun I had received a number of threatening letters, all of which I sent to the Department. The Metropolitan Police, feeling that I was in personal peril while the country was still swarming with Germans, very properly placed a police guard night and day on my house--for I was then living at Upper Halliford, near Sunbury-on-Thames, which is in the Metropolitan Police area. Indeed, the detective inspector who saw me expressed the view that I was in grave danger, and for that reason they had resolved to give me protection. So a constable lurked each night in the summer-house in my garden.

Two days later, at orders from a higher quarter, my police protection was suddenly withdrawn! By the Hidden Hand, of course--the hand of someone who hoped every day that something might happen to me, for I was a _person who knew too much_!

A few weeks later I was lunching at Lady Owen Philipps’s when my friend Mrs. Eckstein, who sat next to me, said:

“Oh, Mr. Le Queux, do you know the latest about yourself? It is all over London that you are really a German spy! I’ve heard it from half a dozen people during the past week. I wonder who started such a wicked report?”

I only smiled. I knew that it had come from the traitors, in order to hound me down and discredit me in case I broke my vow of silence concerning them.

Further, I greatly incensed the authorities by my campaign that demanded that all Germans of whatever class should be interned. I was, however, assisted by Lord Leith of Fyvie, Sir W. Joynson-Hicks, an old friend and a true Englishman, the Duke of Newcastle, another old friend, the Earl of Crawford, Earl Clarendon, Lord Galway, Lord Headley, and others.

For months the wire-pullers resisted. Sir Edgar Speyer, Privy Councillor, put his fingers to his nose at the King and crossed to America; yet not till after we held a violent meeting at the Mansion House, where many hard things were said, did the authorities at last yet very reluctantly resolve to intern enemy aliens. I happen to know that, so bitter was their opposition to our just demands, they actually interned two Germans who, being employed in our own Secret Service, were doing valuable work for us! Hundreds of dangerous aliens were allowed to slip through the meshes of the net by those who, bent on our downfall, were awaiting the landing of the Germans. Indeed, at no period of the war were they all interned. Further, though I pointed out to the authorities that Detective-Sergeant Wegner, who was Russian born and spoke German like a native, and had been conveniently “retired” from Scotland Yard at the outbreak of war, should be re-employed, it was refused, even though he had been an expert on alien enemies in the West End!

I myself undertook some investigations on the Clyde, assisted by Alexander Morton, the messenger-at-arms, of Glasgow; and in one case I found a German carrying on a typewriting school, actually training secretaries--some thirty of whom he had managed to get posts at the naval base at Rosyth! I published the results of my investigations in the _Glasgow Sunday Post_, and by doing so further incensed the authorities, who were anxious to suppress me.

After that I wrote a book, _German Spies in England_, and in open defiance of the idiotic censorship published it. There were fierce official threats to prosecute me and also my publisher, Mr. Stanley Paul. But I presume it was feared that I might make some rather nasty accusations, and bring proof against certain highly-placed persons, so the matter was allowed to drop. Then I went further, and wrote another fearless exposure of the truth, which I called _Britain’s Deadly Peril_, and again defiantly published it, well knowing that I had a patriotic circle of good friends behind me. I awaited prosecution, but none came.

About this time a Danish bookseller, who sells my books in Copenhagen, wrote to me telling me he had just returned from Berlin, where he had heard of the naval raid on Scarborough _three days before it took place_! He was often in London before the war, and in the course of his interesting letter he wrote:

“I always thought the spy mania in England exaggerated, but
now I am absolutely persuaded that even those Englishmen who
recognize this peril do not realize the lengths to which it
goes. They have been suspecting waiters and servants, whilst
the spies are in high social positions; they have contented
themselves with searching the houses of German barbers and
grocers, whilst neglecting the hands which collect and forward
to Berlin the information gathered by more humble satellites.

“It is very sad to have to say such things, but I think the
most dangerous spies still in England are not Germans, whether
naturalized or not, but are people belonging to neutral
countries--even to countries actually fighting Germany--and
also subjects of Great Britain herself.

“I would not have written this if I was not sure of it; the
diplomat from whom I got the information assured me that there
are some English and French of both sexes who come regularly
to Berlin, or to frontier towns through neutral countries,
and have conversations with officials and then return. The
restrictions as to luggage and passports, both in France and
in England, are not half so severe as they should be; _they
are even slacker than at the beginning of the war_. I know,
personally, of a number of stolen American passports under
the shelter of which German spies are now travelling, and
an Italian Consul with whom I happened to travel a few days
ago said he had discovered two fellows with false Italian
passports almost perfectly imitated.

“In Berlin I heard people, well-informed people, saying that
in every English town of importance, and on every spot of
strategical value on the British coast, Germany has got _few
friends_ keeping their eyes open, and ready to receive an
eventual German raid, and to give their friends as strong a
hand as possible.”

That letter bore out exactly what I was trying to preach every day.

* * * * *

One day while lunching with Lord Northcliffe at his house in St. James’ Place--I having assisted Lady Northcliffe and the Duchess of Roxburghe in the organization of a field hospital for Serbia--he said to me:

“Quex, my dear fellow, why don’t you lecture? Tell the people about spies and their ways. Having been our spy yourself, you know the game better than anybody. I’m sure it would interest people.”

As first I demurred, but he pressed me, assuring me that it would cause the people to think.

“There are spies everywhere among us, as you are aware. The authorities are most reluctant to arrest one, for reasons we already know. Now and then one is caught, just in order to make pretence of our great vigilance and keep incompetent people in their jobs.”

So I decided to lecture. Perhaps some of those who read this book may have listened to me while I spoke from one or other of the two hundred and twenty-eight different platforms I occupied, in as many different towns, from Aberdeen to Brighton and from Cromer to Carmarthen.

Lord Headley, who is a great humorist, often took the chair, and among other chairmen I had the Earl of Midleton, ex-Minister for War, the Earl of Clarendon, the Marquis of Linlithgow, Lord Rochdale, Lord Leith of Fyvie, and many peers, parsons, provincial mayors, and distinguished people.

Now Lord Headley is a ventriloquist inasmuch as he can speak without moving his lips. He lives at St. Margaret’s, near Twickenham, and I introduced him to Douglas Sladen, who lived across the Thames at Richmond; so the pair became great friends. But it was his lordship’s ventriloquial abilities that worried me. We would travel down from London together by car to some distant town, arrive about six o’clock, eat a chop, and go to the place where I was “billed” to lecture, usually for some local charity, so I paid the expenses! Duly we arrived on the platform amid applause, and duly he would rise and make an eulogistic speech that caused me to blush.

Then, when I rose and began to try and entertain my audience for an hour and a half without the aid of “pictures”--no easy task in these days, if one is not a variety performer, I assure you--he would presently _sotto voce_ give his humorous impressions of the audience. I heard whispered loudly, though nobody else could hear, something as follows:

“Good Lord! What a funny crowd! Putrid! Look at that old girl at the corner of the third row! What a guy! She’ll look under the bed to-night to make sure there’s not a spy there!”

Then a pause.

“That’s it! They’ve all got their mouths open now. Tell them a funny story. Yes, they’re right with you--with you every time--look at the reporters scribbling it all down--lots in the papers to-morrow. Phew! The place is packed. I’m tired--beastly tired!”

I was compelled to endure this, and much more, for he would single out persons in the audience, indicate them, and criticize their personal appearance in such a manner that I had to clench my hands and set my jaws hard to keep myself from laughing in the faces of my listeners.

One hot summer’s night I was advertised to lecture in the Town Hall at Windsor, and we drove down together by car from London. It was for charity. I was suffering from a bad cold in the head, and I could hardly speak. Indeed, I had been in bed till four o’clock, but was determined not to disappoint those who wished to hear me. I had been told, too, that, the Court being in residence at the Castle, a number of officials attached to it had taken tickets.

On the way down I said to my chairman:

“Look here, Headley, no humour to-night. I’m horribly ill, and really can’t stand it. How I shall get through it I don’t know.”

“My dear fellow, I can see you’re queer,” he replied. “I won’t utter a single word. Dry up early, and let’s get back as soon as we can. We have to go up to Newcastle to-morrow, remember.”

And so it was arranged.

The big hall was packed. His lordship explained that I was suffering from a very bad cold and had risen from my bed to fulfil my promise in the cause of charity.

Then I rose, and I started in a voice that I fear was very harsh and hoarse. Though feeling only half awake I nevertheless did my best.

For nearly half-an-hour I went on, till suddenly I heard that familiar voice exclaim in a whisper:

“I know that you will forgive me. I humbly apologize, but I--I really can’t help it. Don’t kick me when you get me outside, will you? But we’ve actually come across It at last! Great Scot! Look!”

I continued lecturing, determined to take no notice of his lordship’s remark.

A few minutes later he said:

“Ah! It’s quite evident that you’ve lost your sight as well as your voice. No! You’re not looking in the right direction! You’re blind!”

I continued with my lecture, telling a story that made the audience laugh.

“My dear fellow,” whispered my chairman, “do look down below--in the first row of the stalls.”

I did so, and at once I burst out laughing with the audience. I could not help it.

In a seat right beneath where I stood sat an elderly lady in black, with a double-sized old-fashioned ear-trumpet, covered with a little black lace curtain, and as she listened intently, she turned the whites of her eyes upwards to me. She was the wife of a famous headmaster whose name I think I may as well omit.

When we got outside, Lord Headley said:

“I knew, my dear Le Queux, that you would, in such circumstances, forgive me for breaking my promise. But I couldn’t resist. Oh! What a time we have on these lectures, don’t we?”

I had many other humorous adventures on my lecture tour. More than once I found Horatio Bottomley lecturing in the same town as myself, and staying at the same hotel. On such occasions we always had supper together.

I knew him in London quite well, for I used to write for _John Bull_. Almost the first week I went out lecturing I met him on the railway platform at Perth, on a winter’s day, both of us going up to Dundee.

“Well, Le Queux,” he asked, bustling up with his secretary behind him, “what are you doing here?”

I told him that I was out lecturing.

“So am I, dear boy,” he said in his breezy way. “So am I. Just trying to turn an honest penny, you know!”

At his trial he alleged that he made nothing by his tub-thumping lectures that drew such big crowds because he was such a fine showman, but I happen to know that he would turn up his nose at a fee of a hundred guineas to lecture. He told me so.

At that moment Horatio was the idol of the middle and lower classes. They believed in him, and certainly he was very outspoken in his criticisms, and, like myself, was hated by the authorities because he dared to tell the truth. One afternoon I strolled in at one of his lectures in a mining town, where quite unexpectedly he pointed to me and told his audience what I had done for England. I was cheered to the echo, and felt most embarrassed.

I could write a volume about my amusing experiences while lecturing. Travelling in war-time was bad enough, and what with food-rationing, lack of motor-cars, and such-like inconveniences, it was really a dog’s life.

Both Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Colwyn were extremely good to me during my lecturing, for they both took a great interest in my propaganda against the enemy. Both knew that my attitude was correct and reliable beyond attack, for, had it not been, I should have been prosecuted and probably imprisoned for publishing books in defiance of the Government’s censorship.

Here I will say a word concerning the censorship of letters. The reader will recollect that a huge department was formed to open and read everyone’s correspondence. Hundreds of men, women, and flappers were engaged in Kingsway and its vicinity in order to throw dust in the eyes of the public, in pretence of preventing enemy communication. And one’s letters were marked with the words, “Opened by the Censor.”

This was all too funny for words, though you, my reader, and myself had to pay for it, even to the flappers’ teapots. The whole department was a delusion and a fraud. I know this is a sweeping statement to make, but I make it because the German Secret Service had discovered a means of secret writing between the lines of an ordinary letter that, even if suspected and treated with chemical reagents, as so many hundreds were, the invisible writing, instead of being revealed, was instantly destroyed! I feel half inclined to explain the matter, but I hesitate to do so for fear that it may not be in the public interest.

I know Herr Steinhauer, who acted as chief director of German espionage throughout the world. In 1913, while on one of my periodical visits to Turkey, I was staying as usual at the Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople.

Before dinner Fred Stevens, who was one of the known crooks in Constantinople--now dead--lounged in, and we took our glass of sherry in the bar. As we lifted our glasses there entered a tall, round-faced, smart-looking man of about forty, with a well-trimmed fair moustache and typically German, whom he introduced to me as Dr. Beutner. I understood that he was a representative of the big furnishing house of Heewart Wolfe in Berlin, and that he was their buyer of Turkish, Persian, and Angora carpets, of which he was an expert.

I strolled about with him for several days, and Stevens accompanied us. On two evenings we went together to the Concordia, the gay music-hall in the Grand Rue, and one afternoon we crossed the Bosphorus to Scutari and spent a delightful evening there. It was not till two months later that, to my great surprise, I discovered that my entertaining friend Dr. Beutner was none other than the notorious Herr Steinhauer, the Kaiser’s bosom friend and confidant, and head of the service of German espionage in Great Britain.

About eighteen months before the war I met another highly interesting person, whose name was afterwards on everyone’s lips. It was in a far-off log-built fishing town, a black, treeless settlement, which for three months in the year endures the Arctic night. It was snowing hard when I stepped off the black old tramp-steamer, laden with dried fish and whale-oil, on to the new landing-stage of what was afterwards to be an important strategic point, the little place founded in 1900, called Alexandrovsk. At that time public works had just been ordered from Petrograd--the Catherine Harbour to be deepened and a new quay built. I lunched with the captain of the ship, the engineer in charge of the works, the stout military commander in a grey uniform too small for him, and a scraggy-bearded, long-haired, ill-conditioned-looking man in a greasy black robe. His eyes were bloodshot and deep-set, he spoke the Russian of the _mujik_, but he wore, suspended by a heavy silver chain, a crucifix of magnificent emeralds.

I wondered what could be the worth of those splendid gems. After we parted and I returned again to the ship, I inquired of Captain Thurstrup as to whom the priest might be.

“Oh,” he replied, “I ought to have told you. He is the Monk Rasputin, the great friend of the Emperor. There are all sorts of wonderful tales afloat as to his influence over the Imperial family, and many of them are, I believe, true. He has come down to see the place and report to the Emperor.”

Little did I dream that the dirty, unkempt, pasty-faced priest with his sinister smite and damp, flabby hand was the Kaiser’s creature, who would eventually throw Holy Russia into the melting-pot.

* * * * *

I think it is well-known that after the murder of the Mock-monk in Petrograd the Kerensky Government handed to me, in confidence, a great quantity of documents which had been found in the safe in the cellar of his house, in order that I might write an account of the scoundrel’s amazing career. This I did, from the documentary evidence, under the title of _Rasputin_, which met with great interest all over the world. Now among that huge mass of letters, telegrams, and compromising correspondence from the Empress and others--for Rasputin was a blackmailer, as well as a priest--I found the greater part of a manuscript which he himself a criminal, had evidently intended to publish, entitled “Great Russian Criminals.” It was in French, a language which the monk knew only slightly, and being typed, had evidently been dictated. In it I found to my amazement _the actual truth concerning the “Jack the Ripper” crimes_!

I did not publish it in my book because I have been unable, until recently, to verify any of the facts alleged. I will, however, quote from Rasputin’s own manuscript which, before I returned it to the Revolutionary Government, I copied, as follows:

“London was horrified by the evil work of a mysterious
criminal known as ‘Jack the Ripper,’ who killed and mutilated
a number of women of ill-repute in the East End of the
capital. The repetition of the appalling crimes mystified the
world. The true author of these atrocities was disclosed by a
Russian well-known in London, named Nideroest, a spy of our
Secret Police, who was a member of the Jubilee Street Club,
the Anarchist Centre in the East of London. One night in the
club the identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’ was revealed to him by
an old Russian Anarchist, Nicholas Zverieff. The mysterious
assassin was Doctor Alexander Pedachenko, who had been on the
staff of the Maternity Hospital at Tver, and lived on the
second floor in the Millionnaya, but had gone to London, where
he lived with his sister in Westmorland Road, Walworth. From
there he sallied forth at night, took an omnibus across London
Bridge and walked to Whitechapel, where he committed his
secret crimes.

“Alexander Pedachenko, according to Zverieff--whose record
appears in the reports of the Secret Police--was aided by a
friend of his named Levitski, and a young tailoress, called
Winberg. The latter would approach the victim and hold her in
conversation and Levitski kept watch for the police patrols,
while the crimes and mutilations took place. Levitski, who had
been born in London, wrote the warning post-cards signed ‘Jack
the Ripper’ to the Police and Press. It was through Levitski
that Zverieff knew the truth.

“The report of Nideroest’s discovery amused our Secret Police
greatly, for, as a matter of fact, they knew the whole details
at the time, and had themselves actively aided and encouraged
the crimes, in order to exhibit to the world certain defects
of the English police system, there having been some
misunderstanding and rivalry between our own police and the
British. It was, indeed, for that reason that Pedachenko, the
greatest and boldest of all Russian criminal lunatics, was
encouraged to go to London and commit that series of atrocious
crimes, in which agents of our police aided him.

“Eventually at the orders of the Ministry of the Interior
the Secret Police smuggled the assassin out of London, and
as Count Luiskovo he landed at Ostend, and was conducted by
a secret service agent to Moscow. While there he was, a few
months later, caught red-handed attempting to murder and
mutilate a woman named Vogak and was eventually sent to an
asylum, where he died in 1908.

“After the return to Russia of Levitski and the woman Winberg
the Secret Police deemed it wise to suppress them, and they
were therefore exiled to Yakutsk. Such are the actual facts of
the ‘Jack the Ripper Mystery’ which still puzzles the whole
world.”

I venture to give this quotation from Rasputin’s unfinished work because I have only recently discovered that a doctor named Pedachenko did actually live in Tver, and his homicidal tendencies were well-known. Again, I have further found out that a man named Nideroest was a member of the Jubilee Street Club and was known in connection with the Anarchist affray at Tottenham, and also with the Sidney Street affair.

In addition, it must be remembered that during the war, Rasputin was plotting with Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, for the downfall of Russia, and therefore he had access to all the secret archives of that Department, from which it is plain he obtained his facts.

Hence, without agreeing that our police system is defective, I print these disclosures among “Things I Know.”