Major Haynes of the Secret Service E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 219

Beschreibung

Major Haynes of the Secret Service by Edgar Wallace is a riveting tale of military honor, loyalty, and the shadows of the past. Major Haynes, a decorated officer, returns from the frontlines only to find himself caught in a web of intrigue and conspiracy within the very ranks he once trusted. As whispers of betrayal and hidden agendas grow louder, Haynes must confront both enemies and allies in a battle that tests not just his courage, but his very identity. With each turn of the page, secrets unravel and loyalties are questioned, leading to a climax that will leave you breathless. Can Major Haynes clear his name and uncover the truth, or will he be consumed by the dark forces at play?

Leseprobe

Major Haynes of the Secret Service

Author: Edgar Wallace

Edited by: Seif Moawad

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq eBookstore

First published as a series in

Thomson's Weekly News, Dundee, Scotland, May 28-Jul 27, 1918

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Major Haynes of the Secret Service

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

INTRODUCING MAJOR HAYNES

I. — MAJOR HAYNES AND THE PRINCESS

II. — THE MISSING HOHENZOLLERN

III. — SUNK WITHOUT TRACE

IV. — THE Berman IRON BOOK

V. — UNMASKING A PEACE PLOT

VI. — THE TREASURE HOUSE OF THE PRUSSIAN KING

VII. THE QUESTION OF HORA DA SILVA

VIII. — THE ELUSIVE SWEIZER

IX. — THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY MARY BRETLEY

X. — TEN DIVISIONS AND A RED-HAIRED GIRL

Landmarks

The Council of Justice

Cover

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

DURING the First World War Edgar Wallace wrote a number of morale-boosting tales about the skill and derring-do of the British military and intelligence services, mostly in the form of series published under such titles as "Tam o' the Scoots," "Companions of the Ace High," and "Clarence—Private." Several series were published in the form of dramatic pseudo-documentary accounts of what he claimed to be true stories.

Three espionage series in this category are known to have been published in British newspapers. Two of these featured an intelligence agent by the name of Major Haynes and made their first appearance in the Dundee paper Thomson's Weekly News.

The first series was published from February 9 to May 18, 1918, under the general title "My Adventures as a German Spy in Britain." They were attributed to "Hermann Gallwitz, Agent of Captain Karl von Rintellen, the Famous Banker-Spy" and were purportedly "Written by Himself and Edited by Edgar Wallace." This series was subsequently reprinted under syndication with the title changed to Adventures of a German Spy in Britain. In the book edition Hermann Gallwitz was renamed "Heine," and some of the stories were abridged or otherwise edited. A copy of this book is available at RGL.

The second series, which RGL offers here for the first time in book form, consists of a long introduction and ten stories and was published in Thomson's Weekly News under the general title "Major Haynes of the Secret Service."

Bibliographic records show that the original typescripts of the Major Haynes stories were auctioned at Sotheby's, London, on July 12, 2007. The Sotheby's catalogue described this collection as follows:

"Description: Concerning the adventures of the American Major Hiram Haynes during World War I, eleven* stories. Major Hiram Haynes has a standing order with his bookseller, to supply him with all the spy stories that are published, whether in book form or in the current magazines. He says that if he were deprived of the recreation which this form of literature supplies, life would be insupportable and the war an unrelieved tragedy.... A fine series of Wallace stories about wartime espionage. 9* Haynes stories were published in the Dundee-based Thomson's Weekly News in 1918."

INTRODUCING MAJOR HAYNES

MAJOR HAYNES readers will recognise as the brilliant British Secret Service man who figured so prominently in the memoirs of Hermann Gallwitz, the German spy, which concluded in our last issue. From the notes of Captain Dane, Hayne's chief of staff, Mr. Wallace has been able to compile a new series of articles dealing with episodes in the Major's amazing career.

Major Haynes is this kind of man:

A general or a colonel or maybe a common Mexican insurgent came strolling valuables with the nonchalance of a car conductor collecting tickets.

"Hasten," growled the collector of booty, "money—everything!"

Hiram Haynes still smiled and the annoyed Mexican spat at him.

There was another South American affair.

In a state which shall be nameless there was a certain Pietro Seccecci (pronounced, I think, "Say-checky") who was the proprietor of a large establishment which was called a music hall but was infinitely less innocent.

To this establishment came by almost every boat one or two inexperienced girls who had accepted "theatrical engagements" at promising salaries.

Their disillusionment came soon after their arrival. The place was a crying scandal and the British Consul had unsuccessfully endeavoured to move the authorities to action. But Pietro had a "pull" and no steps were taken against him.

Then Haynes drifted into the town, dined with the consul and heard the story.

"It is horrible," said the consul, "week after week I get girls here—poor little beggars, they are frantic with terror. They are generally in debt to Seccecci who threatens——"

"I know," said Haynes, "my dear consul, I know the story backward—when does the Merrimas Chief clear?"

The consul was surprised at the brusqueness of the question. What had the sailing of an American tramp steamer to do with the plight of stage-struck girls in Queer Street?

"At daybreak—she has her papers. Why do you ask—do you know her skipper?"

"I'm going along to get acquainted," said Haynes. "By-the-way, I am leaving by the midnight for New Orleans."

At two o'clock in the morning, two hours after the northern express had pulled out, a man with a heavy black moustache and wearing spectacles, stalked into the over-heated music room of Seccecci's magnificent Concert-Café (it was called The Pallacio something-or-other) and made his way to where the stout proprietor, resplendent in evening dress and blazing with diamonds, sat.

"Señor," he said loudly, "I am the brother of a girl you have treated abominably."

Seccecci had treated so many girls abominably that he was bewildered by the accusation. Never before had brothers, with or without a knowledge of Spanish, penetrated into the Pallacio and created a scene.

He reached stealthily for his hip pocket but before his gun was out he was a dead man.

The story of that "vile assassination of our eminent and illustrious fellow citizen" will be found in the Diaro de ——. Here you may read how the outraged brother leapt through a window and outdistancing his pursuers, disappeared in the neighbourhood of the docks. The Merriraas Chief sailed at dawn and the British Consul wisely held his tongue.

Haynes was a born gun-man. He was a proof that there is truth in the trite admonitions which judges so often deliver to the men they are sending down to durance, that had they employed their ingenuity and courage in a lawful occupation they might have hit the roof.

Haynes was a person, engaged in lawful business, who employed unlawful methods. No conjurer produced a rabbit from a plug hat with greater rapidity than he could conjure from the air the lethal weapon, in the use of which he was so great an artist. He stretched out an empty hand—presto! something was in it—something black and shiny and menacing.

In 1911 when Germany and France were on the brink of war over the question of the Agadir, an innocent tourist, armed with a butterfly net went out of Liège toward the German border. An hour later he was being shown out of one of the forts—it was Chaudfontein—by a polite Belgian non-commissioned officer who accepted his explanation that he had climbed the forbidden glacis in search of a paphia glycerium or some member of the order Rhopalocera.

He wandered on to Visé and sent a telegram to a certain address in Paris. It was a telegram which dealt with the health of his aunt. It was a very long telegram and it described her symptoms in detail.

Officials at the Quai d'Orsay read it with interest and a 'phone call was put through to Brussels. The conversation was mainly about guns which ought to have been mounted and were not mounted. A colonel was retired, a minister was dismissed, but long before this happened, the tourist with the butterfly net was in a nursing home recovering from the effects of an artfully poisoned vol-au-vent, which had been served to him at Aix-la-Chapelle. For the German secret police knew him and when the station master's office was burgled at Aix and the secret mobilization instructions disappeared they arranged his funeral and provided almost everything but the corpse.

"This is a lesson to me," he said to his chief. "I guess I'll give it up."

"The service?" demanded his superior In some concern.

"No—vol-au-vent," said Haynes.

After his convalescence he took three weeks' leave and went back to Aix—for he was, as I say, a born gun-man with all a gun-man's poetical sense of justice.

From the Kölner Zeitung of 21st December 1911 I clip the following:

"Yesterday evening Franz Helle, employed as waiter at the Kölner Hof, was the victim of a strange outrage. The unfortunate man, who until recently was employed at the Hôtel Heullens at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) was returning at 1 a.m. from Bahnhof Straat to his home in Duetz when he was accosted by a stranger who held him at the mouth of a pistol and compelled him to eat twenty noxious pastries. Helle, who is now lying dangerously ill in the Burger Hospital, states that his assailant was an Englishman or American who had been taken ill after being served by Helle at Aachen and that the miscreant is a dangerous spy. The police are pursuing enquiries."

That is the sort of man Haynes is.

For what government he worked in pre-war days nobody knew. It was his boast to Dane—the only man admitted to his confidence—that he had been publicly repudiated by every one except Liberia. In 1911 he was undoubtedly working for the Second Bureau of the French Ministry of War. In 1910 he was as certainly at the end of a wire which stretched from Pekin to Washington. In the early part of the war he fought with the Legion d'Estranges in France and later was liaison officer between the Belgian and the British Armies.

In 1915-16 he was at a desk in the British War Office with the rank of Major. A good-looking lean-faced man inclined to sallowness, he conveyed an impression of slightness of build which was somewhat deceptive.

The British found him a veritable encycloaedia of political crime. He knew every anarchist leader there was in the world and had graded them in their order of frightfulness. His acquaintanceship ranged from Grand Dukes to confidence men. (Imagine if you can the fit of apoplexy which all but overcame the Bishop of Panton when, bearing off the Major to luncheon, the pair were accosted by a man in a noisy suit who addressed his companion as "Hi" and, answering Haynes' enquiry, admitted unblushingly that he had just been released from prison after a two-year sentence for fraud).

He spoke seven modern languages and read two dead ones, could and did quote Browning with remarkable fidelity, could live for a week without sleep, wrote the most villainous hand that any War Office clerk had ever deciphered—but first and best of all his accomplishments he was the compleat gun-man.

Fearless and unconventional in his methods, possessed of astounding coolness and audacity and a quaint sense of humour, Major Hiram Haynes has become the terror of enemy agents all over the world.

The first of his adventures appears below.

I. — MAJOR HAYNES AND THE PRINCESS

(DEPORTING A PRINCESS)

First published in Thomson's Weekly News, Dundee, Scotland, May 25, 1918

ONE warm night in June two men sat in the deserted smoke-room of Brown's Club.

Between them on a dwarf table was a tray containing coffee and liqueurs. Haynes, who was one of the two, was smoking a cigarette through a long amber holder; his companion, a tall, thick-set civilian, keen-eyed, alert, and impressively capable-looking, smoked a cigar.

"You certainly look dandy in that uniform, Hi," said the guest approvingly.

Chief Healy, of the newly-created C.E. Branch of the U.S. Intelligence Bureau, had a sense of humour.

"I feel safer with you in that kit," he nodded; "it kind of settles you in my mind. I hate to tell you so, but I have always accepted you with reservations—there's a grand criminal lost in you."

"Quite right," agreed the other lazily; "that is why I hold my job, and that is probably the reason you hold yours. Counter-espionage work calls for the illegal mind. That is where some of our people—and yours—go wrong. They put a man on to a clever devil who spends five-sixths of his time preparing alibis, and they wonder why patient investigation produces no other evidence than that when the crime was committed at 7.30 p.m. in Paris the accused was seen playing patience in Biarritz. You know the type—absolutely unconvictable."

Healy nodded again.

"Here's a case in point which will interest you," Haynes went on, and drawing a flat leather case from the pocket of his uniform jacket he laid it open upon the table. "Do you know that lady?"

The case contained the portrait of a girl. It was a beautiful face that Healy viewed. There was a delicacy in its moulding and a wide-eyed innocence in its expression that was disarming. The little portrait case was fitted for two photographs, but in the second space, facing the picture, was a sheet of stiff paper covered with figures in a microscopic hand.

"A code?" asked Healy looking up.

"Hardly," smiled the other, "no cipher above a nine. Note how every figure is equidistant from the other, and how even ones occupy as much space as the eights. A work of care, eh? Now, take a pencil and draw a line from the first of the nines to the nearest four—you needn't worry about disfiguring the card, it is a photographic reproduction. Go from 9 to 4, from 4 to 9, and continue."

He watched the chief's pencil moving amidst the figures.

"Phew!" cried Healy suddenly. "Why, this is a drawing of a gun."

"Of the new Whelt mortar," said Haynes: "clever, isn't it? That lady is the Princess Sabochiffski, the daughter of a high Russian official, and was until a month ago occupying one of the best suites at the best hotel in London."

"Wasn't that enough?"

"Not on your life." Haynes shook his head. "In the first place the card was not found in the lady's possession. It was discovered in the post—just a postal picture view of the Houses of Parliament. You know the method of 'detection'?"

"Sure. Take one well-nourished postcard, steam slowly over alcohol until the edges gape, carefully strip picture until the writing is revealed, and serve the sender hot."

"There's a chef lost in you, Jim," laughed Haynes. "Well—there it is. The postcard is traced to the Princess—of course, we have no direct proof. This isn't a job for a flat-footed policeman with a notebook. You can't do any of that grand spying work that you read about in exciting fiction."

Healy rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and chuckled.

"A masked figure rubbering secret drawers? No, I guess that's out. What did you do?"

"It was absurdly simple. One of the aviation people offered to take her for a flight—the lady is keen on that sort of thing. Took her out to sea—lost his bearings—forced landing in Holland—apologies to the lady—machine and aviator interned. Cost, about two thousand and the temporary loss of a man, but it saved complications."

"She tried to get back?"

"Sure thing—but there were passport difficulties. The lady's relatives were furious, but what would you do? Passport difficulties are the common lot in 'these iron times.' God bless the German for the phrase."

He beckoned a club waiter and paid his bill.

"Where now?" asked Healy.

"Home—gentle recreation—sleep," said Haynes.

"Fine—I'm going along to your Scotland Yard. I've got to fit things in if I am to sail by Thursday."

A waiter came toward them carrying a letter.

"For me?" asked Major Haynes.

He picked up the envelope and glanced at its flap.

"Hotel Astoria—good lord!"

He tore open the envelope and extracted a letter, read it in silence, and handed it to his companion.

Jim Healy fixed his glasses and read:—

Dear Major Haynes,

You will be surprised to receive this! Such a strange thing happened. As you know, I was at the Hague till this morning through some stupid trouble about my passport. This morning Mr. Van John very kindly took me on a trip in his airplane, and just the same thing happened as happened a month ago. We got lost in the mist and made a forced landing in Essex! Am I not unfortunate, and won't you please come along and see me?

Sincerely yours,

Olga Sabochiffski.

They looked at one another, and Haynes was the first to grin.

"Well, what do you know about that?" asked Healy in a tone of admiration. "That dame has left you no alternative, Hi—you'll have to bounce or be bounced. You didn't tell me you were on calling terms."

"I'm not," said Haynes quietly; "that's the queer thing about it. I've never met her or corresponded with her. I was under the impression that she was unaware of my existence—so far as her deportation was concerned. She's been busy in Holland, and Berlin has put her wise. This is a challenge."

He flourished the letter, and a bright light shone in his eyes.

The two men walked out of the club together, and parted at the corner of Brook Street.

"If I were you," said Healy at parting, "I'd go along to the Minister of the Interior or the Lord High State Secretary, or whoever is the guy responsible, and I'd get a repatriation order and fix her straight away."

Haynes shook his head.

"The cave-man system of diplomacy doesn't go with a first cousin to the Czarina and the niece of the Russian Minister of War," he said. "I'm going along to see Olga."

He hailed a taxi and drove, first to his flat, depositing the flat leather case in a place of security. Then he sat down in his dark study and thought. Here was a girl engaged in espionage work of a particularly dangerous character. She was admitted to the best and most exclusive naval and military circles, she was very beautiful, and she was extremely clever.

He changed his mind about interviewing his superior, and drove to the private residence of a permanent Secretary to the Home Office, being at once admitted to the presence of that great man. The old official listened to the brief narration, and when Haynes had finished stretched back in his chair and shook his head.

"The position with regard to Russia is too volatile. We pretty well know that the Government is letting us down, and I agree with you that this girl is probably working for Germany. Branstoff knows it, but is helpless. We cannot afford to antagonise further certain people in the Czarina's entourage, and a deportation order would, in all probability, lead to such a breach. Take any course you wish, but I warn you that the Government will, if expedient, repudiate any action of yours which you may take. The girl is known to be a pro-German—even the Russian Court has protested to her cousin and uncle."

"But why—she's a pure Russian?"

The Secretary shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't understand women—do you?"

"Like a book," said Major Haynes arrogantly.

He had no settled plan in his mind when he was ushered into the private sitting-room of Princess Sabochiffski.

A slight figure rose from a settee to give him a smiling welcome. She was undeniably lovely. The face was perfect of its type. ("Her eyes alone were worth a pilgrimage," he wrote to Healy). And there was in her every movement a charm most delicate and rare.

"Major Haynes?" she said. "I'm so glad you came—I wanted to see you dreadfully."

"And here I am, Princess, in my most dreadful and sinister aspect," he laughed as he took her hand.

She looked him fearlessly in the eyes.

"You're not so dreadful as I thought you would be," she said quietly. "As a rule I hate meeting clever men—they are so disappointing."

She pushed a low easy chair forward, and with a little bow he placed it in position—but not the position she had chosen.

"You do not like to sit with your back to a door, of course," she laughed. "You prefer your back to a window—even though there is a fire-escape balcony outside, and you might be as easily shot from there as from my bedroom—ah! I see you think I am really dangerous."

("Her laughter was like a peal of silver bells, believe me," wrote the irrepressible Haynes.)

"In a sense I think you are, Princess," he said gallantly, "but since we have drifted into frankness, I may say that I shifted the position of my chair in order that I might see you better."

She settled herself in one corner of the deep couch, and folding her arms across its end faced him.

"You wonder why I sent for you," she said, "bravado, you think—no, that is not it. Possibly I have made a mistake in asking you to come—I have just a little nervous feeling that I have been imprudent. You wish me to tell you something about myself? No? Well, you know it all, yes?"

"First at the beginning," she went on, never taking her eyes off him, "I was educated in Germany."

"At the Akademie of Frau Stephan, Bismarck Strasse, Karlsruhe," murmured Haynes, and there was a glint of amusement in the girl's fine eyes.

"I see—you have my dossier. Tell me, then, where shall I begin? I lived in Berlin up to the beginning of the war, when I went to Petrograd. There I remained until December, 1915—you see, I wish to inform you."

Haynes nodded.

"In that case you will satisfy my curiosity to this extent. Why, in December, 1914, did you go to Stockholm, staying there for three weeks? Why, in the period you say you remained in Russia, did you make four trips to Holland, travelling under the name of Madame Livoff?"

He did not expect that she would show any sign of embarrassment—he was surprised that she did. A faint flush came to her face and she jerked up her chin.

"That was no affair of—of Governments," she said with a touch of hauteur, "who told you such—such an absurd story? What is it that you know or think you know?"

All her self-possession, all the light pleasantry was gone. Her voice was hard, almost metallic, and her curious little faults of speech were accentuated.

Haines was alert, noting every phase of a situation which had undergone so singular a change.

"I know nothing," he said blandly, "except that such visits were paid, that you stayed with the widow of Junkheer van Reeden, and that for six months of 1916 you were untraceable, even as the guest of Madame van Reeden."

She was looking at him steadily, searchingly, and evidently her search satisfied her, for her manner became more composed.

"That fact is public property," she said carelessly. "I was coming to that; my relatives were alarmed by my disappearance, and I suppose that you, as well as every other policeman——"

"Say 'copper,'" urged Haynes, "it sounds more homely."

She frowned.

"Copper? Oh, yes, that is slang, is it not? I went away because I was tired of the war. I was in the Convent of the Sacred Heart at the Hague—the guest of the good Mother Superior. There is no mystery about that."

There was a ring of defiance in her voice.

"None at all," said the suave Haynes.

"Are you satisfied?"

"About what, Princess?"

"That I am not—not a dangerous person to be forcibly deported because you are so afraid of my powerful relations that you dare not eject me by legal means."

Major Haynes spread out his hands in a gesture of protest, and the girl laughed again.

"You think I am a spy, my dear Major Haynes? Is there anything I could learn from my friends more valuable than the information that your indiscreet newspapers reveal?"

She rose quickly and walked across the room to a table near the door where a small bundle of evening "specials" were lying.

"I will show you how clever men discover secrets," she rallied him as she opened one of the papers; "it is so simple—there is no need for spies. You reveal your secrets unconsciously. Look, here is a notice of a theatrical slump. 'There is a dearth of khaki, in the theatres,' says the writer. That means all army leave is stopped and that your offensive is near, is it not so? Here is another that says——"

She stopped, and Haynes, watching her, saw her face turn white.

"My God!" she whispered. "Oh, my God!"

He was on his feet in a second.

"Princess, is there anything——"

She dropped the paper and flung out her hands.

"Keep away—keep away!" her eyes were blazing with fury and now she was speaking in German. "I hate you—I hate you and your country! May God punish you!"

He was silent before the concentrated agony in her voice.

"You think I am dangerous—expel me! I am—bitterly dangerous. Tell your masters that I will work to ruin you and your degenerate Allies. Hear me! I will work till I die—I will——"

She swayed and fell back upon the sofa.

"Go away—go away—send my maid."

Haynes bowed and left the room, kicking the fallen newspaper before him as he went.

Outside the room he stooped and picked it up and pushed it into his pocket before he pressed one of the corridor bells and sent the chambermaid, who came in answer to the summons, in search of the Princess' maid.

Twenty minutes later he was in his study, carefully scrutinising the page which had produced so dramatic and crushing an effect upon the self-possessed member of the Russian aristocracy.

There was a resumé of Parliament—nothing in that. A ship had gone ashore off the North Foreland, and was reported a total wreck—nothing or, possibly little in that. A divorce case of a conventional kind—he read the evidence carefully, despising no possibility, but the parties were suburban tradespeople. So he went down each column until he found tucked away under the heading, "News in Brief" the following paragraph:—

"A Reuter wire from Amsterdam announces the death in action of Lt. Baron von Keller, whose name appeared in the German communique of last Friday as having brought down his twentieth enemy machine in air-fighting. He was shot down by a British airman."

Haynes searched the paper again, and one by one rejected every other story in favour of this.

He called up a certain information bureau in Whitehall.

"Who is von Keller—Baron von Keller?" he asked. "I know half a dozen—yes, the airman. What is his age and history?"