This was the clipping from an American paper also found in the bag. “It has been said that in our land we do not use women spies as much as they do in some other countries, but we cannot stop them if they wish to work along this dangerous line, and we can only admire them for what they accomplish. A case has just come to our attention of a beautiful American woman trapping in Paris a clever and long-sought-for spy.
“He was a Russian Prince, well-known in diplomatic circles, though after his father’s death, his German mother returned to her native land to bring up her boy and instil German sympathies in him. For a number of years he was obscurely connected with the Turkish Government.
“During the War this popular bachelor Prince had an apartment in Paris. He was supposed to be just over the age limit for the army, so he interested himself and worked for the betterment of the Russian prisoners, being privileged therefore to send material across the border into Germany. No one suspected him, and in the evenings he gave gay little suppers in his quarters, which were well attended and much enjoyed.
“Women of all kinds accepted his hospitality, often bringing their husbands or lovers, generally just back from the front. They gathered in his rooms like bees about a honey-pot and much war news was exchanged or discussed. For some time a leak in high circles was suspected, but it took a pretty American woman, who, it seems, had had earlier reasons to distrust him, to get a dictagraph installed in his rooms. Soon it was discovered that when indiscreet remarks were dropped in his salon, the burden of them was mysteriously conveyed into Germany through packages of food to Russian prisoners. She surmised this first; later it was proved. The Prince was lunching at a restaurant with the American lady when he was arrested.”
So the Polly whom I helped dress at the hotel and who gave me the bag must surely be Polly of the letters but I did not place her in the dark during the air raid although I, too, just a few days before the fatal Good Friday, had been lunching at the same hostelry the very hour the Prince was arrested. Suddenly there was a complete silence in the room. I looked up. All heads were turned toward the table where a blue-eyed man of Slavic type sat facing a fashionably dressed little blonde. The excitement was intense; the scene, dramatic, as if they were holding their pose for a tableau. He still sat there, the gendarmes at his side, his expression unchanging, looking intently at the woman opposite, while she returned his gaze not a whit less steadily. Neither spoke. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and might have gotten away had she not been too quick for him, and had flung herself in front of him. He threw her off roughly but it was too late. The gendarmes slipped on the handcuffs, and the woman followed them out, her lips white with pain and her right arm hanging helplessly by her side.
Then the dining room doors shut behind them and the room buzzed as if invaded by a swarm of flies. I inquired of the head waiter what it was all about, and he answered excitedly, “They have arrested a Russian Prince! The police think he is a spy—but surely there is some mistake.” Then he added, “Why, the Prince has been here on and off for years—we know him well!”
“Who is the lady with him?” I inquired.
“I do not know,” he answered. “They say she is an American, but she has never been at the restaurant before.”
“Is this the first thing of its kind that ever happened here?”