The French Secret Service knew that prior to the war Germans had made many secret surveys of France, particularly of the northern territories and provinces. Greatly to the credit of the French, and unknown to the Germans, copies of most of these surveys had been obtained and filed away for possible future use or reference. Probably it was remembered that one of these survey maps had been ruled up with diagonal, lateral and parallel lines dividing the country into squares, precisely as is shown on a chess-board.
It was not therefore much of a surprise when it was ascertained on comparing the sketch of the chess problem, which had been brought back to Paris, with the copy survey plan of the Germans which had been ruled up as before mentioned, to find that the one exactly corresponded with the other. But the French War Office was certainly surprised to see before it, set out on the sketch of the chess-board, an accurate portrayal of all their reserve forces behind their front lines, posted in the exact positions which they then held. It required little perspicuity to understand that pawns on the board, or rather map, represented infantry; kings, heavy artillery; queens, field artillery; knights, cavalry; bishops, air divisions; and a castle, the military headquarters.
CHAPTER V LOCATING GERMAN MINE-LAYERS
Coast Hunting—A Find—Spies of Many Nations—Obliterating Trails—Tracking down the Berlin—Marvellous Navigation by Germans—Interned—German Arson—An Impudent Invitation—A Russian Sugar Queen's Yacht—Queer Company—Sapping Hun Intelligence—Playing on Weaknesses—Success—Loss of H.M.S. Audacious—Soliloquising.
The first work which was entrusted to me after having been granted a rating in the Foreign Secret Service was to hunt out the hiding-places of the large German auxiliary cruisers which had been specially fitted out for the important service of laying special minefields off remoter parts of the coastline of the British Isles.
Early in October, 1914, I landed at the south of Norway, and I zigzagged my way northwards on all kinds of craft that cruised about the thousands of fjords and islands, inquiring as unobservantly and disinterestedly as circumstances would admit in the hope of picking up some information which might lead me to the object of my search.
It was believed that these pests of the seas were using unknown fjords as hiding-places, and taking advantage of the double neutral routes of the inner and outer passage of the west coast of Norway to cover their coming and their going from Germany to the Icelandic coast, whence they dropped down upon the British Isles suddenly and unexpectedly, laid their dangerous batches of eggs, and returned the same way as they came.
I had travelled almost 750 miles northward, and I was quite convinced that no German mine-layer was concealed anywhere in that distance. Many reports I gathered of German war and other vessels of various rig and shape taking advantage of the neutral waterways; but they had all been under steam.