Mata-Hari sported a new bauble soon after taking up with the Englishman—a jewelled replica of his gold insignia—her dragon had real emeralds for eyes, and a carrot-shaped ruby for a tongue darting from its opened fangs.
In May, 1916, a little more than a month before the Somme offensive opened and tanks were first used, Mata-Hari appeared before the police magistrate of her district and requested a safe conduct to visit a certain port in France. The reason she gave was that her fiance, an English officer, was seriously wounded and in hospital there. He had sent for her to come to see him. Perhaps they would be married at his deathbed if he could not recover, she volunteered, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
The safe conduct was made out, and Mata-Hari arrived at a certain French port almost simultaneously with the first consignment of tanks shipped over from England.
Now a tank of the early type was 35 feet long, 12 feet wide and 9 feet high, and the caterpillar tractors rumbling under it and over it and around it made a terrible din, attracting the attention of people for great distances around. And because of the weight of the tanks they could not be moved by rail, but had to travel under their own power. It was impossible, therefore, to wholly hide the monsters from inhabitants of that particular French port, and from the townspeople in the French villages through which they passed on the way to the Somme front. Of course most of the travelling was done by night, and tarpaulins were always draped over the armed and armored behemoths.
But there did not seem to be much necessity for precautions, as nearly all of the inhabitants of the districts through which the tanks passed remained stolidly right there where they were. Few indeed were as lucky as Mata-Hari and able to get safe conducts to travel about. But then few were as beautiful and alluring as the dancer.
Mata-Hari remained in the French port for a week. She strolled about the town at night and explained to the hotel clerks that she could not sleep without taking a certain amount of exercise before retiring, and that after being accustomed to gay life in Paris, she was not tired until after midnight.
It was on June 1, exactly a month before Gens. Haig and Foch began their drive astride the Somme, that Mata-Hari returned to Paris. And the first thing she did was to apply for a visé on her passport permitting her to go to Spain. San Sebastian was the place she mentioned, as she explained she wished to attend the horse races there. Her papers were stamped and sealed and she left almost immediately for the fashionable winter resort in the south.
Madrid, Spain, and Nauen, Germany, are in constant wireless communication. There are other radio stations, privately owned in Spain, which can flash messages to Germany, according to Allied intelligence officers who have investigated. And of course there are innumerable German agents, spies and propaganda disseminators infesting the land of the Dons.
Secret Service reports disclose the fact that Mata-Hari was seen much in company at San Sebastian race track with a man long looked upon with suspicion by the French Government. He was a frequent caller upon her at the hotel where she stopped, and it was reported that he made good many of the big bets she placed on horses that did not materialize as winners.
Soon Mata-Hari came back to Paris and the apartment near the Bois de Bologne. And once more the limousine owned by the individual whom rumor has branded a Deputy, began rolling up to her door twice a week and sometimes oftener.