CHAPTER XIV AVOIDING COLD MURDER
Swarms of Bagmen—Jesuitical Methods—Mysterious Disappearances—Unaccountable Accidents—Avoiding a Duel—Fascinated by a Hungarian—A Ludicrous Traveller—Fracas at a Theatre—Insult, Assault, and Challenge—Choosing Weapons—Difficulties Overcome—Fixing Details—Early Travelling—Dénouement—"Am Tag."
Germans in neutral countries during the war were circumspect. They swarmed everywhere, and never in the history of commercial enterprise since the world began were seen so many commercial travellers as the Fatherland provided, at such "kolossal" expense and for such little return.
Nearly every one of those men without exception was in the direct pay of the German Secret Service. It was part of their work to nose into everything, to shadow everyone believed to be foreign to the land they visited, or who showed any sympathy for the enemies of Germany, or antagonism towards their country.
If they desired to or had received a direct order to stop by any means the activities of another, those men rarely came out into the open. They much preferred ways that are dark and tricks that are deep to achieve their desired ends. The depths to which their cunning sank had to be experienced to be believed.
During the years 1914 and 1915, when I was employed in the B.F.S.S. in Northern Europe, several most extraordinary accidents occurred, from which I had miraculous escapes. At the time I put them down to incidents. I think very differently now.
Verily Prussian methods in all things seem to be Jesuitical, in that it is believed the end justifies the means. If one of their employees in their own, Secret Service, no matter what his station of life may be, gets to know too much, his fate may be sealed by a secret sentence of death passed in the Wilhelmstrasse, and the supreme penalty is inflicted in a manner unsuspected by the unfortunate victim.
Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves records in his book, "The Secrets of the German War Office," how the woman Olga Bruder, whose death in an hotel on the Russian frontier was returned to the Press as suicide, was in reality poisoned; how young Lieutenant Zastrov was challenged to repeated duels until he was killed in one of them; and how others suspecting trouble avoided it by escape. Otto Diesel, we know, disappeared from the Harwich boat when on his way to England to exploit his engines which the Germans had bought. What happened to Frederick Krupp of Essen, no one knows.
Presumably executive workers in the German Secret Service knew as much about these things as Dr. Graves did himself. Perhaps it is part of their training and instruction to attempt to involve representatives of other nations with whom they come in contact and whose energies may be considered prejudicial or annoying to them, in quarrels or in brawls where a blow can be struck which it might be difficult if not impossible to trace. It must be more than a coincidence that Secret Service agents often find themselves in the middle of a small crowd where the pick-pocketing fraternity are undoubtedly represented. Be as careful, polite, and inoffensive as possible, quick-tempered, irascible irreconcilables will at times attempt to pick a quarrel. Boats, motor-cars, and other vehicles by which Secret Service agents travel often meet with mysterious and altogether unaccountable accidents, whilst a challenge to a duel, for some trifling cause, is an experience which more than one of them has had to endure and to evade as best he can.
I chuckle now as I remember how I passed through one of these ordeals, not a hundred miles from the Rathhaus of Kiel. The incident took place very shortly before this world-war had actually begun. I have happily only received the very doubtful honour of one challenge since, which I insisted on treating as a practical joke, wisely absenting myself before developments could make the situation serious and untenable.