In half an hour's time two of the visitors departed, whereupon my vis-à-vis looked hard at me over the top of his newspaper and elevated both eyebrows. I nodded. He smiled, and with a slight indication of the head, implying that he wished to be followed, slowly left the room and proceeded up the grand stairway. Waiting perhaps a quarter of an hour I also took the same route. The first and second landings were devoid of life. On the third I noticed a half-open door, which I entered as though the room were my own; whilst I was quite prepared to apologise if a mistake was made in my so doing.
Here, however, I found my friend of the elevating eyebrows, who received me cordially, and I was introduced to his wife as an Englishman recently arrived. I gave the name in which I had booked on arrival; my newly-found friend did the same. This, of course, was not sufficient. For some little time we talked of trivialities and verbally fenced, and thrust, and parried, the while certain secret passwords were casually introduced and exchanged in a somewhat similar manner as has before been narrated in connection with the little gentleman at Bergen. When assurance had become doubly sure, the door was locked and bolted, the dispatch handed over, and the story of the horses told.
Thus it came to pass that I was first "blooded" in the Foreign Secret Service of His Britannic Majesty's Government.
CHAPTER IV INTERCOMMUNICATING WITH TEMPORARY CODES AND INCIDENTS
Grammatical Code—A Tête-a-tête—Confidences—Misconstrued Message Leads to Domestic Tragedy—Local Codes—An Altered Message—An Important Mission—Shadowed—Attempted Thefts of Papers—A Contretemps—Leakage of News from England—Watching a Suspect—False Message Discloses an Open Code—Geometrical Codes—The Knot Code—A Fascinating Actress, a Confiding Attaché, and a Mysterious Chess Problem—Cleverness of French Secret Service.
No reader must expect or anticipate a disclosure of the direct methods which the British Secret Service uses for communicating with headquarters. That is a carefully-guarded secret which no one in or out of the Service would dream of referring to. Suffice it therefore to say that it is difficult to conceive anything more clever or effective than it is, both as to its efficiency and its celerity in use.
On the other hand, when Secret Service agents are working abroad they must perforce rely upon codes of sorts, for means of intercommunication between themselves, their friends and supporters. These codes are invented by them entirely at their discretion. If they are wise in their generation they never keep the same code too long in use, but change it, at frequent intervals, for another entirely different in every respect. Such codes cannot be too carefully prepared; whilst every user knows that if his deception is discovered the consequences to himself might be serious indeed. Simplicity is invariably the safest and most effective rule to follow. In order to give the reader a good idea of how the work was accomplished a couple of these codes are roughly outlined, with examples of their working in each case.