Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and Spying. Le Queux William
financial agent, whose offices in the Boulevard des Capucines, opposite the Grand Hôtel, were visited by all sorts of persons of both sexes. None, excepting those “in the know,” suspected that these handsome offices, with the white-headed old concierge wearing the ribbon of 1870, were in reality no mere financial establishment, but the headquarters of the international espionage of the Allies. None realised that the crowds of “speculators,” who flocked thither in the pursuit of ever-elusive wealth, included among them dozens of men and women who day by day carried their lives in their hands in their never-ending warfare with the unscrupulous and resourceful agents of Germany. None dreamed that to the busy staff finance was a mere side-line; that their real interest was not the daily fluctuations of the Bourse, but the thread of Hun intrigue which ran through all the crowded life of the gay city, and was nowhere stronger than in the department of finance.
“Now, Sant,” said Hecq abruptly, after we had sat silent for a few minutes while I ran over in my mind the essential facts of the new and tangled case. “You have seen the photographs and the dossier, and you understand the position. What is your opinion?”
“There can be but one,” I answered leisurely. “Before the war, Jules Cauvin, of Issoire in Auvergne, was a struggling corn-merchant. He has since, in some unaccountable way, blossomed out into a man of wealth, and has purchased an important estate with money which has come from some mysterious source. Constant payments appear to reach him from a firm of motor-engineers somewhere in England. In his sudden prosperity he has bought a villa at Mentone, where he lives during the winter with his wife and family, and he is often seen at the tables at Monte Carlo. Among those who have stayed with him at the Villa des Fleurs was the Russian Colonel Miassoyedeff, who was recently hanged as a spy of Germany. There can be only one conclusion from all this.”
“Ah! my friend. I see you have mastered the essentials,” said Hecq approvingly. “Now Cauvin and all his friends are under the strictest surveillance; the question is how we are to secure evidence to convict him of the espionage he is undoubtedly concerned in. We can arrest him, of course, at any moment; he has no chance whatever of getting away. Every letter he sends or receives is opened and photographed, yet, up to the present, he has been too clever for us. If he were put on trial for espionage to-morrow, not even his friendship with Miassoyedeff would prevent him from being acquitted. We have no evidence against him whatever, beyond the fact of his sudden wealth, and that, even in these times, is not enough.” And Hecq looked at me with an appeal in those soft, strange eyes of his. I could see that the case of Cauvin presented itself to him as supremely important, and that it must be solved if we were ever to grapple successfully with the mysterious, deadly influence whose workings we could feel and trace all around us, but the real wielder of which appeared constantly to slip through our fingers.
“I quite understand you,” I said, sipping the little glass of Cointreau he had offered me. “There is only one thing to be done. We must find that finger of the Hidden Hand in England.”
“Exactly, my dear Sant,” exclaimed my chief, with a quick gesture of approval. “We seem to be losing ground day by day. Why? At all costs the position must be retrieved. You will want Madame Soyez to help you. Let me see; she is at present in England. I sent her across only a week ago to make some inquiries. Excuse me a moment while I speak to Guillet,” and he left me to go to the telephone.
Monsieur Guillet was his private secretary, who controlled his “financial office” in the Boulevard des Capucines.
A few minutes later he returned, saying: “Madame is to-day at the Midland Grand Hotel in Manchester. Presuming that you wish to meet her, I have told Guillet to telegraph, asking her, if possible, to meet you to-morrow night in London.”
“No,” I said at once. “That won’t do. We cannot begin to work in England yet. I must learn a lot more about this interesting person Cauvin, who has so mysteriously acquired a fortune. Then we will begin to probe matters across the Channel. Recall Madame Gabrielle here and we will set to work. But it will be extremely difficult. The investigation of the Hidden Hand in England has always met with failure, so far as the principals are concerned. We have caught one or two of the minor tools, but the master-mind has always eluded us, although the British Secret Service is most excellent.”
“Ah, mon cher Sant, there I agree most cordially with you. The world little dreams of the astuteness and resourcefulness of our colleagues at Whitehall. One day it will know – and it will be greatly surprised. Very well, I will order Madame Gabrielle to come direct to Paris.”
Again he rose, and during his absence I once more glanced at the formidable dossier concerning the wealthy Jules Cauvin, who was so well known in the gay night life of Paris, whose smart wife was one of the leaders in the social world, and who had recently established a hospital out at Neuilly, where his wife and daughter worked unceasingly on behalf of the wounded.
According to one report, the suspected man was in the habit of entertaining certain high officials of the State at his fine house close to the Étoile, and he had several bosom friends in the Admiralty. Such was the present position of a man who only five years ago was a struggling corn-merchant in rural Auvergne.
I lit a cigarette and reflected. By the time Hecq had returned I had hit upon the rough outlines of a plan.
“First of all,” I said, “you must call off the surveillance on Cauvin. I must have a free hand in the affair, and the Sûreté must not interfere in any way. If Cauvin gains the slightest suspicion we shall certainly fail. Secondly, I must have a good man to assist me. Aubert did extremely well in the case of Marguerite Zell, the dancing woman who came from The Hague; I will have him. I shall leave Paris this evening. Tell Madame Gabrielle to come home and wait till I return, and to hold herself in readiness with Aubert.”
Hecq nodded his assent, but did not ask me a single question. That was what I liked most about him; he never asked one how he intended to proceed. His trust, when it was given, was complete; he expected results, and did not bother about mere details. Yet, when his assistance was asked at a difficult point, he was always completely at the service of his employees. He knew I had no particular affection for the Sûreté, because in one important case they had bungled, and brought me to disaster which nearly cost me my life. So he merely shook hands and wished me good luck.
Twenty-four hours later I arrived at the Hôtel de la Poste, in Issoire, a dull, remote little town in Auvergne, and next morning set about making inquiries regarding Jules Cauvin. First of all, I looked up the entry of his birth at the Prefecture, which showed that he was the son of the village postman of Champeix, seven miles from Issoire. I found out also that his father had been imprisoned for seven years for thefts of letters.
It was necessary to make many inquiries without arousing suspicion, therefore I was compelled to spend several days at my task. I made some interesting discoveries, for naturally the entire neighbourhood was familiar with Cauvin’s rise to wealth, and he had been put under that microscopic observation and discussion which is so marked a feature of provincial life everywhere, but especially in France.
I chanced upon a retired butcher named Demetz, in whose debt Cauvin had been to the extent of nearly two thousand francs. Demetz had been on the point of suing for the money when, to his intense surprise, Cauvin called one day with a bundle of thousand-franc notes in his hand, and threw out three, saying gleefully: “The extra thousand is for interest, my dear friend. I invented an improvement in automobile engines a year ago and patented it. A big firm in England has taken up my invention, and my fortune is made.”
Naturally enough, the retired butcher had been keenly interested in Cauvin’s sudden wealth, and had tried to question him about it. But the postman’s son was too wily to be drawn. He declared that the invention was a secret, that it would revolutionise the motor trade, and that the English syndicate which had bought it meant to spring it upon the market as a complete surprise.
I soon found out that the man Cauvin was not popular. True, he flung his money about, and there were few local institutions which had not benefited by his largesse. But there is no population in the world so suspicious as the French provincial, and it was evident that the ex-postman’s son had entirely failed in his prosperity to win either the affection or the confidence of those who had known him in his earlier and humbler days.
Demetz