M (32 page)

So in August 1910, when Mr and Mrs William Melville took their holiday at Ilfracombe, it was probably not coincidental that their fellow guests at the hotel included Mr & Mrs Will Crook, the Labour MP for Woolwich and his wife. Woolwich, with its arsenal and docks, was key to the new arms race and would be crucially important in wartime. Melville would have found it useful to hear Crook's opinion of the state of labour relations.
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Two years later James Melville would defend
The Syndicalist.
He was unsuccessful; the syndicalists got six months' hard labour.
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1911 was the turning point: after Agadir, well-informed men no longer said ‘if ' war comes, but ‘when'. Churchill, as Home Secretary in 1910 and 1911, was avoiding delay and serenely disregarding the protection of civil liberties by signing ‘general warrants' – warrants to examine the correspondence of listed individuals.
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The list was updated from Kell's alien return forms whenever anything suspicious was reported.

Steinhauer, in the English version of his autobiography, insists that he quickly discovered that mail to and from the Caledonian Road and Walthamstow addresses was being opened because a postman told Ernst it was.
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His strategy after that was to send misleading information through the post. This does not fit the facts. Although most of his network remained in place and under surveillance, some spies were informed upon, arrested and charged before the war and incriminating letters to and from Steinhauer came up more than once in evidence. He does not appear to have understood the extent to which his communications must be penetrated. If he did, he would surely have dropped the whole set-up and started again.

The first man to be tried under the new Official Secrets Act of 1911 was Heinrich Grosse, masquerading as merchant marine Captain Hugh Grant. He was an ex-convict who had been given a ten-year sentence in Singapore in 1898 for forging banknotes. Steinhauer, as Richard H. Peterssen, had hired him in Brussels.

Grosse had persuaded Steinhauer into giving him the job, but that was a minor hurdle; when he got to Portsmouth, he had no idea how to obtain the information that was wanted. In desperation, he decided to pay for it. He saw an advertisement placed in a local paper by ‘William Salter, Inquiry Agent', and invited the man to visit him at his lodgings. When he arrived Grosse introduced himself as the Captain of a merchant ship who needed information about how much coal was in the dockyard at Southsea. As there was a strike in the offing, he explained that he was hoping to find a market in England for German coal.

As the case officer was pretending to be someone he wasn't, and so was the spy, it was only fitting that the inquiry agent should be a fraud too. William Salter was in fact a retired Chief Petty Officer trying his hand at detective work for the first time (and as it turned out, the last). When Grosse next asked him to find out how many men were stationed at the Royal Naval Barracks at Portsmouth, he became suspicious and told the police. They referred him to the Admiral-Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard, who told the Admiralty. SSB was approached; the Bureau provided information so that Salter could string his client along. As in the case of Schultz, duff information was provided and coded letters to ‘Peterssen' in Hamburg intercepted.

By November of 1911 Melville had been snooping in the district. When the case came up at Winchester Assizes there was evidence from local people about stories Grosse had told them. To one he had said he was in Portsmouth on a fishing trip, to another that he was writing a book, to another that he needed information about the Navy to settle a bet, and so on; these variant accounts did not inspire confidence. Grosse was arrested and appeared at Winchester Assizes in February.

Grosse stepped briskly into the dock. He was smartly dressed in a dark suit and a black overcoat with velvet collar. His strong-looking face was quite stolid at first, but as the charges were read out an expression of anxiety overcast his features.
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As well it might. The charges included conspiracy (with Peterssen) which carried a seven-year sentence. He maintained his plea of not guilty at Winchester Assizes, but was sent to jail for three years.
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At about the same time an even odder character was jailed. This was Dr Armgaard Karl Graves, the self-mythologising ‘doctor' (‘he was never a spy of mine', growled Steinhauer.)
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He later claimed he had been a spy since the old days in Port Arthur, when his masters in Berlin had barked that

You must abstain from intoxicating liquors. You are not permitted to have any women associates. You will be known to us by a number. You will sign all your reports by that number…

That was before he got there and found himself ankle-deep in wine and surrounded by slappers from four continents (see Chapter 8).

Most newspaper reports of the 1912 Graves case have been destroyed, so we are mainly reliant on his own account which was published in New York in 1914. It deals with his entire career and is written in a somewhat narrow-eyed style, typically

Slowly inhaling the smoke of my excellent Mejideh, I fell into a sort of contemplative reverie while waiting for the Prince…
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His ‘mission' on this occasion was particularly dangerous, for the new Official Secrets Act was ‘so elastic and convenient for convictions that a judge could charge a jury to find a man guilty on suspicion only'.
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He was risking seven years' penal servitude – in England, ‘plain hell'. However, duty called from Berlin, so he set off to Edinburgh posing as an Australian doctor engaged in postgraduate work at the University. He was looking for information about Scapa Flow, and claims to have struck up an acquaintance with a keeper of the Forth Bridge and through him the ‘waterguard' (coastguard?) who knew the Firth of Forth well. He filed his intelligence but he had already aroused suspicion: the landlady let searchers into his room, and he was followed. He confronted the local police chief who knew nothing about any searchers. But he moved to Glasgow to be on the safe side.

In Glasgow he paid for, and claims that he obtained, plans of naval guns then being manufactured by Beardmore & Co. But it was all wasted effort; his support staff let him down. He was using fake Burroughs & Wellcome envelopes and according to him, the people at the mail-drop misdirected his reports to the real company, who called the cops. His account of his arrest by four burly, plain-clothes men is quite gripping; one is impressed that he was ready to inject himself with deadly poison, obviously, but the circumstances were inappropriate. And the police did not behave like gentlemen.

The Inspector seemed to me to subsequently try and get a lot of publicity out of my arrest as if he himself had detected the whole concern, instead of having it thrust under his nose by the London chemical company.

He was sentenced to eighteen months, spent some time incarcerated in Bairlinnie, and was released when the British realised what they were missing.

In the fifth week of my imprisonment I was taken to the office of the Governor of the prison. As I entered I saw a slight, soldierly looking English gentleman of the cavalry type – (a cavalry officer has certain mannerisms that invariably give him away to one who knows).

They were left alone by a deferential Governor, and ‘Robinson' began to make casual conversation.

‘Is the confinement irksome to you?'

‘Naturally.' I looked him straight in the face. ‘I am a philosopher. Kismet, Captain.'

‘Oh – ho', he exclaimed. ‘You address me as Captain. Wherefore this knowledge? We have never met.'

‘No', I replied. ‘But I have associated too long with various types of army officer not to be able to detect a British cavalry officer. Formerly of an Hussar regiment, I take it?' [Kell was in the South Staffordshire Regiment]

He laughed for some time…

How could Graves stay inside after this? It would be like keeping Sherlock Holmes banged up. They immediately reached a gentlemen's agreement and Graves changed sides. The following day the Lieutenant-Governor escorted his distinguished prisoner by train to London and handed him over to ‘Captain Robinson'. Graves stayed overnight at the Russell Hotel before keeping a luncheon appointment with Robinson at Morley's Hotel in Trafalgar Square.

There another gentleman joined us – a Mr Morgan, whom I easily judged and afterwards knew to be of the English Secret Service. Presently Morgan told me that I was to drive with Captain Robinson to Downing Street that afternoon.

‘One of our ministers wishes to see you', he explained.

There follows a highly unlikely interview with Sir Edward Grey.

It is all preposterous. Graves got out of jail early, as all model prisoners may, and did, as he says, go to America. Whether or not anyone, either German or English, thought of employing him on a ‘mission' there is doubtful. According to Steinhauer, ‘most of the letters and telegrams he sent from Glasgow contained nothing but requests for money, which is always the way with these swindlers'.
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And an SSB ‘List of persons to be arrested in case of war' drawn up in July 1914
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contains his name, marked ‘in America'.
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But by 1914 he, at least, knew or had been told about Mr Morgan.

In the summer of 1912 Melville was on the trail of a Royal Navy gunner who would later be charged with ‘communicating information prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state… useful to an enemy'. Warrant Officer George Charles Parrott, aged forty-five, was in charge of the rifle range at the Naval Gunnery School at Chatham, where he lived with his wife in a private house at Alexandra Road, and was officially stationed on HMS Pembroke further along the coast at Sheerness. According to his commanding officer, he was ‘an exceptionally smart man'.
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Some time before, he had become friendly with a language teacher called Hentschel from Sheerness. Parrott, ace marksman, boasted also what was then called ‘a keen eye for the ladies'. He began an affair with Mrs Hentschel, an Englishwoman
née
Riley. Later his defence was that Hentschel had told his wife to seduce him so that he could blackmail Parrott into spying.
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If this was true, Parrott risked jail and dismissal from the service after twenty-seven years rather than have Mrs Parrott discover his infidelity. It seems unlikely. Whatever his motive, he agreed to provide Hentschel with information, and did so from 1910 onwards.
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Eventually the two spies fell out over money. Parrott claimed that he was being cheated. Maybe Mr Parrott's ardour for Mrs Hentschel was cooling too. Anyway, he began freelancing direct to Germany, and Hentschel, annoyed, communicated anonymously with the British Admiralty.

In July of 1912 Parrott obtained leave to visit Devonport. A Warrant Officer was not allowed to leave the country without permission, which he made no attempt to obtain. He set off from Sheerness Dockyard, accompanied by a lady, on the train to Sittingbourne, where she disembarked. He carried on to Dover. At Dover he was stopped as he tried to board the Ostend boat. At first he claimed to be a civilian. Then, confessing his identity, he explained that he had to meet a lady at Ostend at 8.00 p.m.

The person he was really going to meet was either Steinhauer, or another officer of the German Secret Service; it was all prearranged by an intercepted telegram from ‘Seymour' (Parrott) to Richard Dinger in Berlin. Steinhauer used that name, and on the matter of the actual trip to Ostend the German
Meisterspion
may be less than trustworthy as his account of Parrott's trip to Ostend is pretty much identical to the one Melville gave in court. However, Steinhauer claims to have been in Dover, shadowing Parrott to the continent in case he was really a double agent:

Shortly afterwards the detective let him go aboard the steamer. Parrott did not notice what I had already seen – something that told me his fate was sealed. I had been hanging around – easy enough with a big crowd of people such as travel by the Ostend boat in summer-time – when I noticed, behind a pillar in the waiting room, a quiet, keen-eyed man who followed Parrott with his eyes and missed nothing.

Scarcely had Parrott gone up the ship's gangway than the detective went to the man behind the pillar and greeted him unob trusively. The pair of them followed Parrott aboard and then, as I caught a good sight of the second man, I nearly fell backwards with fright. In spite of his excellent disguise, of which he was a master, who should I recognise but my former friend, the famous Superintendent Melville of Scotland Yard!

…I should have liked to warn him but it was utterly impossible. I knew too well that any attempt on my part would only make it worse, for the moment Melville caught sight of me
any uncertainty they may have harboured about Parrott's guilt would have vanished
instanter.

Steinhauer followed Melville and the detective, and Parrott, onto the boat. Months later at Parrott's trial, we find a retired, but unusually vigilant, former policeman appearing as a witness.

Mr William Melville, of Clapham, formerly a Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, said that he was at Dover on July 13th, and saw the defendant go on board the boat. The witness also went, reaching Ostend about 8.30. On leaving the boat and passing through the railway station the defendant was joined by a man. There was no mutual recognition or handshaking; the stranger, evidently a foreigner, sidled up to the defendant. The foreigner was about 35 years of age. The witness thought that he was a German. They walked off together and went through various back streets into the fishing quarter of the town, finally coming out on the promenade. As they walked the foreigner looked round several times. They sat down on two chairs in a remote place where no one was about. At 9.25 several persons came along, and the defendant and the foreigner got up and moved about 50 yards to another retired position. They remained chatting until 10.15 when the other man got up and hurriedly walked away. The defendant remained sitting for a few minutes longer, and then he got up and walked away too. The witness followed him through various streets to the Place d'Armes, in the centre of the town, where the defendant entered a cigar shop and bought a box of cigars. There he entered a café, afterwards going towards the Dover boat, which he reached about 11 o'clock. The witness saw him on board but did not travel by the same boat.
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