Donald Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

Before I left the Pool of London on a Dutch ship, the nature of my mission was allowed to leak out by means of several loud and indiscreet conversations in hotels and bars frequented by neutrals with German sympathies. I was not convinced that this would be sufficient bait but my guardians thought otherwise and, after all, they knew best. The proof of the pudding would be in the eating. It was in this frame of mind that I sailed for Holland on the first Friday evening in August.

In Rotterdam, rooms had been booked for me at a hotel near the docks, where the hall-porter was known to our naval intelligence as being in German pay. By the time I came ashore, I could be assured that my presence in the city was not unnoticed. The time of my arrival was of the essence. It was the Saturday afternoon of an August bank holiday weekend, observed in England but nowhere else. The British Consulate behaved as though it were in England. In other words, it had shut on Saturday morning and would remain closed until Tuesday.

I acted the part of a frustrated emissary, spending my time reading newspapers in the hotel foyer, drinking whisky and twiddling my thumbs. After an hour or two, the hall-porter fell into conversation with me, as hall-porters are apt to do in such places when business is quiet. I complained of a tedious wait, caused by offices that did not open on the first Monday in August. After that, there could be little doubt who I was or where my business lay. In any case, the porter had only to glance at my passport which now lay behind the hotel desk. Whether or not he knew that the British consul was due to receive a copy of the Secret Emergency War Code, I could not say. I was quite sure by now that his masters had been warned.

Nothing more was said until the following evening-Sunday-when the obliging porter suggested that it was a pity I could not have a little “fun” while delayed in Rotterdam. I complained again, this time that I was a perfect stranger in the city and had no idea of where fun was to be found. He tendered the name and address of a house, also near the port, where a warm welcome and a good deal of amusement could be depended upon by the lonely stranger. I began to brighten up at this information. I went up to my room and changed. While there, I opened the locked briefcase with its code-book and papers, in order to take out some cash. In my apparent eagerness to experience the delights on offer, I omitted to lock the case when I put it back, clumsily hidden under a pile of clothes in the wardrobe drawer.

I now followed the plan prepared for me. It was simple in the extreme. I made sure that I was not followed immediately I left the hotel. Then I ordered a cab from the rank and loudly gave the address of the “house” recommended to me. Once round the corner and out of sight, I ordered the driver to drop me as I had decided to have my dinner first. He shrugged and drove off. Making sure again that no one had followed me, I diverged from the hall porter’s route. On my way to the hotel the previous day, I had noticed a pleasant enough quayside brasserie and now took a table outside it. This looked directly back across a stretch of water, giving me a view of my own window.

The window of that room was the third along from the right on the second floor and I had naturally left it in darkness. I waited for more than an hour, drinking my schnapps slowly on the quayside. Another twenty minutes passed and then, to my relief and excitement, the light went on in my hotel window.

This was no visit by a maid, turning down the bed. The light remained on for over an hour, quite long enough for someone to photograph every page in the Secret Emergency War Code, as well as to search my effects and confirm my assumed identity as William Greville. Before they began the search, the intruders had allowed me time to get to the house where amusement might be found and to immerse myself in it. No doubt the hall porter was on guard at the desk, watching for any unexpected return, but they had every reason to believe that there was ample time in hand, more than enough to copy the bound cipher volume.

I waited for a little while after the light had gone off. Then I made my way to a restaurant near the famous statue of Erasmus and spent another hour or so eating my dinner. As for my return to the hotel, I have seen and heard enough drunkards during my career to put on a pantomime of being a little the worse for wear. I welcomed help from the kindly hall-porter in climbing the stairs and getting into bed. He was very insistent in seeing that I got there.

I tipped him generously and, as soon as he had gone, went to look for the attaché-case. It was once again under the pile of clothes but not quite as I had left it. Moreover, someone in closing it had caused it to lock automatically. Such was the end of my three days of active service in the pay of British Military Intelligence. I cannot pretend that I found it exciting, it was more than anything tedious and a matter of waiting around for something to happen. However, Holmes seemed well pleased with the result and Sir John Fisher appeared positively affable towards me.

For more than six months after this, Admiral Hall and his colleagues were able to transmit messages from our own chain of wireless stations in a code which the Germans could decipher, thanks to the present I had made them, but which meant nothing to our own side. All the same, this advantage was only to be exploited with great care.

Counterfeit cipher messages must correspond in most details to subsequent events. It was the few significant variations which would plant false information in the intelligence bureau of the Wilhelmstrasse. On one occasion, at least, Admiral Beatty altered by two days the date on which he was to take the Home Fleet to sea on gunnery exercises, in order that this should verify the counterfeit version of the war code ciphers. It was a small price to pay for giving apparent authenticity to a masterpiece of deception.

On the basis of false information fed to Berlin through the counterfeit cipher tables my friend engineered what became known sardonically in Room 40 as “The Sherlock Holmes Invasion of Belgium.” This was at a time when detachments of our troops were being withdrawn from the Western Front to reinforce the expeditionary force to Salonika. As Holmes remarked, it seemed desirable that the Germans should be induced to withdraw units of their own troops in return.

In messages based on the new ciphers, the intelligence bureau of the Wilhelmstrasse was allowed to read an ingenious fiction of closely-guarded movements by our small naval craft on the eastern coast of England. Flat-bottomed boats of the kind used for landing troops on a sandy coast were being marshalled there. A further message contained an instruction to stop at short notice all cross-channel shipping between England and neutral Holland. The order would remain in force for a fortnight, so that merchant shipping should not compromise the movement of an invasion fleet on course for the coast of Belgium.

These enciphered orders, based upon the counterfeit code and its appendix, then revealed details of an imminent invasion of that coast, in the rear of the German army in France. It was gratifying that the enemy’s High Command diverted some 20,000 men to the defence of the Belgian sands and dunes along the North Sea. Little by little, the Admiralty’s orders to an imaginary invasion fleet were received in Berlin. The vessels would sail in three groups, from Harwich, from Dover, and from the mouth of the Thames. The command for the temporary prohibition of sea traffic to Holland was authorised, though not yet issued.

As a final persuasion of the truth of this story, a special edition of the Daily Mail was printed. This was done in consultation with Admiral Hall and the paper’s editor. It consisted of only twenty-four copies for sale in Holland, where it was routinely bought by German agents. The paper contained a front-page paragraph reporting “Great Military Preparations on the East Coast” and “Flat Bottomed Boats.” Within hours, this was followed by a further edition of the Mail with the whole story blacked out, as if the censor had intervened.