Eagerly we read the formal letter from the German aristocrat, dated from the Leipziger Strasse, Berlin, stating that, being about to take up his residence in London, he was in want of a good and reliable English servant. He would be at the Ritz Hotel in four days' time, and he made an appointment for me to call.
"Good!" cried Ray. "You must ask very little wages. Germans are a stingy lot. The Baron has been acting as a secret agent of the Kaiser in Paris, but had to fly on account of the recent Ullmo affair at Toulon. He's a very clever spy—about as clever, indeed, as Hartmann himself. Why he is coming to England is not quite clear. But we must find out."
For the next four days I waited in great anxiety, and when, at the appointed hour, I presented myself at the "Ritz" and was shown into the private salon, the middle-aged, fair-haired, rather elegant man eyed me up and down swiftly as I stood before him with great deference.
I was about to play a dangerous game.
After a number of questions, and an examination of my credentials, all of which, I may as well admit, had been prepared by Ray and Vera, he engaged me, and that same evening I entered upon my duties, greatly to the satisfaction of Vera and her lover.
Fortunately I was not known at the "Ritz," and was therefore able for the first week or so to do my valeting, brushing my master's clothes, polishing his boots, getting out his dress-suit, and other such duties, undisturbed, my eyes, however, always open to get a glimpse of any papers that might be left in the pockets or elsewhere.
Twice he drove to Pont Street and dined with Hartmann. The pair were in frequent consultation, it seemed, for one afternoon the chief of the German spies in England called, and was closeted closely with my master for fully two hours.
I stood outside the door, but unfortunately the doors of the "Ritz" are so constructed that nothing can be heard in the corridors. All I knew was that, on being called in to give a message over the telephone, I saw lying on the table between them several English six-inch ordnance maps.
No master could have been more generous than the Baron. He was tall, rather dandified, and seemed a great favourite with the ladies. Hartmann had introduced him to certain well-known members of the German colony in London, and he passed as the possessor of a big estate near Cochem, on the Moselle. He told me one day while I was brushing his coat that he preferred life in England to Germany. He, however, made no mention of his residence in France and how he had ingeniously induced a French naval officer to become a traitor.
From the "Ritz" we, later on, removed into expensive quarters at "Claridge's," and here my master received frequent visits from a shabby, thin-faced, shrivelled-up old foreigner, whom I took to be a Dutchman, his name being Mr. Van Nierop.