The Mystery of Blind Heinrich.
“Blind Heinrich!”
Without any conscious effort of memory on my part, these words flashed suddenly into my mind, as, six weeks or so after the events just related, I sat lazily in Armand Hecq’s private room in the Boulevard des Capucines, turning over our latest problem in my mind, while I waited for the astute chief, who was busy investigating a report which had just been brought in by one of his numerous financial clients—in other words, by one of the numerous expert agents whom he kept constantly busy up and down Europe, at the task of countering the villainous work of the spy bureau in Berlin.
“I wonder whether he is mixed up in the affair,” I mused; rapidly working out a new train of thought to which the old scoundrel’s name had given rise. So intent was I that I did not notice Hecq’s entrance. His quick eye noticed my absorption.
“A penny for your thoughts, mon cher Gerald,” he laughed.
“Well,” I said with a smile, “I was pretty far away, I admit. The fact is, I was wondering whether Blind Heinrich is taking any part in the game?”
The director of the International Secret Service of the Allies raised his brows and stared at me across the big, littered writing-table. Behind him a tape machine was clicking out its message, just as it should in a well-ordered financier’s office. He was evidently surprised.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed in English, which he spoke to perfection. “I never thought of him! My dear Gerald, old Heinrich is an extremely wily bird; and if he is mixed up in this business we shall have all our work cut out. Remember how he wriggled out of our hands in the Gould affair, when we thought we had him safely netted?”
The Gould affair! I should think I did remember it! I took a part in tracing and arresting the spy, Frederick Adolphus Gould, who lived near Chatham, and who, a few months before the war, was sent to prison for five years for attempted espionage. The case was a bad one. For years “Gould” had posed, like so many of his unscrupulous countrymen, as a good, patriotic John Bull Englishman, unable to speak German, expressing hatred of Germany and the Kaiser, and warning us that wax would come. Yet, after his arrest, I had gone to Germany very much incognito to make inquiries, and found that exceedingly patriotic “Englishman” was the son of a certain Baron von S—, that he had been born in Berlin in 1851, had fought in the Franco-German War, and had been awarded the customary Iron Cross!
Now one of “Gould’s” closest friends in England had been a certain Norwegian named Heinrich Kristensten, a half-blind violinist who lived at Hampstead. Some strange facts came to light in the course of our inquiries, but the afflicted musician forestalled us by very cleverly coming forward and denouncing his whilom friend—not, however, before he saw that Gould was quite hopelessly entangled in the net which had been spread for him by the British Secret Service. His action, of course, was quite in accord with German practice. Seeing that the game was up, so far as Gould was concerned, he saved himself on the principle that one loss was better than two. His name had leaped spontaneously into my mind in connection with the latest problem upon which we were engaged—the mysterious manner in which, despite the rigid British censorship, details of the damage done in London by the raiding Gothas were so quickly and so accurately transmitted to Berlin. That they were so transmitted we knew, for the German papers promptly published them. And obviously, if severely censored matters of this kind were leaking out, there was some channel of information open of which we were unaware. We had to find and close it.