Remember, I was very young and she was all kindness. Yes, she discovered for me the avenue of escape and she set my foot upon it in the most motherly way. And I unknowingly took my first humble lesson in the great art of intrigue. For, as I learned years afterwards, that woman was not a German agent but a Russian!
But at that time I was all innocent gratitude for her kindness. I was thankful enough to proceed to St. Petersburg by way of Italy, Constantinople and Odessa. Of course, she must have designated a man unknown to me to travel with me, and make sure that I reached the Russian capital. To my hotel in St. Petersburg, just as the woman had predicted, came an officer of the political police, who courteously asked me not to leave the building for twenty-four hours. The next day the man from the Okrana, or Secret Police, came again. This time he had a droshky waiting, with one of those bull-necked, blue corduroy-robed, muscular Russian jehus on the box. We were driven down the Nevsky Prospekt to a palace. Here I soon found myself in the presence of a man I did not then know as Count Witte. He greeted me kindly, merely remarking that he had heard I was in some difficulties, and offering me aid and advice. My letter was not referred to and the interview ended.
So began the process of drawing me out. A fortnight later the matter of my information was broached openly and the suggestion was made that if I delivered it to the Russian Government, high officials would be friendly and a career assured me in Russia, as I grew up. But by that time Germany had changed her attitude. Her agents also reached me in St. Petersburg. From them I received a new assurance of the importance of the document. If I would release it so the German agent who came to my hotel told me and keep my tongue still, Berlin would pardon my indiscretion and assure me a career at home. Russia or Germany? My decision was quickly made. That very night I was smuggled out of St. Petersburg and whisked across the frontier at Alexandrovna into Germany; and the letter passed out of my hands for the time being.
CHAPTER II
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
I impersonate a Russian Prince and steal a Treaty What the Treaty contained and how Germany made use of the knowledge.
GROSS LICHTERFELDE! As I write, it all comes back to me clearly, in spite of the full years that have passed this, my first home in Berlin. A huge pile of buildings set in a suburb of the city, grim and military in appearance; and in fact, as I soon discovered.
I was to become a cadet, it seems; and where in Germany could one receive better training than in this same Gross Lichterf elde?
At home I had had some small experience with the exactions of the gymnasium; but now I found that this was so much child's play in comparison with the life at Gross Lichterf elde. We were drilled and dragooned from morning till night: mathematics, history, the languages they were not taught us, they were literally pounded into us. And the military training! I am not unfamiliar with the curricula of Sandhurst, of St. Cyr, even of West Point, but I honestly believe that the training we had to undergo was fully as arduous and as technical as at any of those schools. And we were only boys.
Military strategy and tactics; sanitation; engineering; chemistry; in fact, any and every study that could conceivably be of use to the future officers of the German Army; to all of these must we apply ourselves with the utmost diligence. And woe to the student who shirked!
Then there was the endless drilling, that left us with sore muscles and minds so worn with the monotony of it that we turned even to our studies with relief. And the supervision! Our very play was regulated.
Can you wonder that we hated it and likened the Cadet School to a prison? And can you imagine how galling it was to me, who had come to Berlin seeking romance and found drudgery?
But we learned. Oh, yes! The war has shown how well we learned.
There was one relief from the constant study which was highly prized by all the cadets at Gross Lichterfelde. It was the custom to select from our school a number of youths to act as pages at the Imperial Court; and lucky were the ones who were detailed to this service. It meant a vacation, at the very least, to say nothing of a change from the Spartan fare of the school.
I must have been a student for a full three months before my turn came; long enough, at any rate, for me to receive the news of my selection with the utmost delight. But I had not been on service at the Imperial Palace for more than a few days when a State dinner was given in honour of a guest at Court. He was a young prince of a certain grand-ducal house, which by blood was half Russian and half German. I recall the appearance of myself and the other pages, as we were dressed for the function. Ordinarily we wore a simple undress cadet uniform, but that evening a striking costume was provided: nothing less than a replica of the garb of a mediaeval herald tabard and all for Wilhelm II. has a flair for the feudal. From my belt hung a capacious pouch, which, pages of longer standing than I assured me, was the most important part of my equipment; since by custom the ladies were expected to keep these pouches comfortably filled with sweetmeats. Candy for a cadet! No wonder every boy welcomed his turn at page duty, and went back reluctantly to the asceticism of Gross Lichterfelde.
That was my first sight of an Imperial dinner. The great banquet hall that overlooks the square on the Ufer was ablaze with lights. The guests the men in their uniforms even more than the women made a brilliant spectacle to the eyes of a youngster from the provinces; but most brilliant of all was Wilhelm II., resplendent in the full dress uniform of a field-marshal. I can recall him as he sat there, lordly, arrogant, yet friendly, but never seeming to forget the monarch in the host. It seemed to me that he loved to disconcert a guest with his remarks; it delighted him to set the table laughing at someone else's expense.
By chance, during the banquet, it fell to me to render service to the young Emperor. Once, as I moved behind his chair, a German Princess exclaimed, "Oh, doesn't the page resemble his Highness?"
The Kaiser looked at me sharply.
"Yes," he agreed , "they might well be twins." Then, impulsively lifting up his glass, he flourished it towards the Russo-German prince and drank to him.
That was all there was to the incident then. I returned to Gross Lichterfelde the next morning, and proceeded to think no more of the matter. Nor did it come to my mind when a few weeks later, I was suddenly summoned to Berlin, and driven, with one of my instructors, to a private house in a street I did not know. (It was the Wilhelmstrasse, and the residence stood next to Number 75, the Foreign Office. It was the house Berlin speaks of as Samuel Meyer's Bude in other words, the private offices of the Chancellor and His Imperial Majesty.)
We entered a room, bare save for a desk or two and a portrait of Wilhelm I., where my escort surrendered me to an official, who silently surveyed me, comparing his observations with a paper he held, which apparently contained my personal measurements. Later a photograph was taken of me, and then I was bidden to wait. I waited for several hours, it seemed to me, before a second official appeared a large, round-faced man, soldierly despite his stoutness who greeted my escort politely and, taking a photograph from his pocket, proceeded to scrutinise me carefully. After a moment he turned to my escort.
"Has he any identifying marks on his body?" he asked.
My escort assured him that there was none.
"Good!" he exclaimed; and a moment later we were driving back towards Gross Lichterfelde I quite at sea about the whole affair, but not daring to ask questions about it. Idle curiosity was not encouraged among cadets.
I was not to remain in ignorance for long, however. A few days later I was ordered to pack my clothing, and with it was transferred to a quiet hotel in the Dorotheenstrasse. The hotel was not far from the War Academy, and there I was placed under the charge of an exasperatingly exacting tutor, who strove to perfect me on but three points. He insisted that my French should be impeccable; he made me study the private and detailed history of a certain Russian house; and he was most particular about the way I walked and ate, about my knowledge of Russian ceremonies and customs in a word, about my deportment in general.