The Three Crowns

Evening Star, Issue 20053, 19 December 1928, Page 14

The Three Crowns

Br WILLIAM LE QUEDX.

Lien tenant-commander Richard Holland, R.N,j D.S.O.—or “One Eye’d Dollie,” as he has long been known among his intimates or the British Secret Service—stood in rags at tho corner of the Tverskaya, opposite the Governor-General’s Palace in Moscow. Tho night was' bitterly cold, and mow lay thickly, for, it was Christmas, and all Russia lay in the grip of the black frost. His hair and beard were unkempt and matted, but as he stood there without, an overcoat, drawing his ragged old jacket about mm for pro* tection against the biting wind, his one quick, alert sailor’s eye kept a sharp lookout upon those who came to the Governor’s great, brightly-lit mansion, where lived the notorious Felix Dzerzinski, the hated chief and Grand Inquisitor of the All-Russia Tcheka; The left eye was closed and its lids were red and inflamed. A single light showed in-the great handsome square at the corner of which he stood, and only a single light

showed in the many windows of the big Hotel nearby. Moscow, the once proud capital of the Romanoffs, had Become, under the Soviet regime, a neglected, poverty-stricken, fll-lit town, tho populace of which were half-clothed and half-starv d—a populace which had_ been beaten +o its knees by the diabolical inquisitors, torturers, and executioners of the secret police, or Tcheka, whose spies swa -ied everywhere and in every guise over the whole face.of the enormous Empire. That night vigil of “Dollie,” as he had been affectionately known in the Navy before he had entered the SecretService of the Foreign Office, was neither easy nor safe. Ever and anon he ambled,across the square aimlessly, sometimes stamping his feet to keep them ,from frost-bite, while at the same- time he was well aware that his presence had unfortunately aroused the unwelcome curiosity of a stalwart Red

Guard on duty at the corner of tho Governor’s Palace. While his one open eye carefully scrutinised each person who came and went to the building _ wherein a brilliant reception was being given by the Soviet. Council to a German dipl-matic mission from Berlin, it also wandered now and then to a female figure In a ragged black shawl, who, huddled in a doorway nearby, having'- dropped there from sheer exhaustion, was sleeping soundly. He passed her without apparently noticing her. She was some poor starving wretch, like thousands of inhabitants of Moscow, whose religious rights had been withdrawn, together with their mode of livelihood, their fuel, and their food. Near her, in an adjoining doorway, a dozen starving, homeless children were lying huddled and asleep beneath _ the steely sky wherein shone tho brilliant stars. Dick Dolland eyed the Red Guard with distinct suspicion, and decided that to withdraw was the best course. Therefore ho shuffled through tho snow down the Bryusovski, past the “ Red Church,” or Church of the Resurrection, with its many domes, and the snow-clad little garden opposite, until he reached the Nikitskaya, where, a homeless outcast, he made himself as comfortable as he could in a big doorway in which he was partially sheltered from the wind. It was Christmas night in England. Dick remembered it, and, beneath his breath, cursed his luck.

“Stana gave no sign!” he mattered to himself. “ What on earth can -have happened?. Surely Peters is not arrested? If he is, then good-bye to everything—to life!” Ho had been born in Petrograd, his father having been an English banker and his mother a Russian countess. Hence, his earlier life having been spent m Russia and all his leave from the Navy with his widowed mother in Petrograd, he spoke Russian as a native, for, indeed, he was a Russian born subject. Afterwards, on aepount of his knowledge of Russian, he had during the war been appointed assistant naya] attache at the British Embassy in Petrograd. But since the Empire had been in the grip of the Soviet torturers all things had altered. Nearlj all his friends of the nobility had been butchered in the fearful torture chamber of, the Tcheka, and their valuables and property had been confiscated, while 1 others who had been fortunate enough to escape with their lives were now living in penury in the Slums of the famine-stricken cities. As a Russian, he was not seriously suspected as a foreign spy, but the slightest false move might land him instantly in a Tcheka gaol. For that reason he kept „ his automatic _ pistol ready at any moment to, take his own life rather than endure the horrible tortures which Dzerzinski, the fish “ Monster of Moscow.” and his myrmidons had devised. Truly, no man carried his life in his hand more insecurely than did One Eye’d Dollie. To hi« constant alertness, ingenuity, and daring the British Cabinet owed the intimate knowledge it possessed concerning all that was happening in Soviet Russia and of the dastardly Bolshevik machinations with Britain’s enemies. The craft and cunning with

which he managed to smuggle his secret reports out of Russia was equalled only by the channel by which he received the queriee sent to him from London. To live half-starved in a Moscow slum and to mix with a lowbred. poverty-stricken class, amid most squalid, famine-stricken surroundings, was bad enough, but to those discomforts were hourly added the constant peril of arrest and certain death. A thousand times the ex-naval commander had told himself that to endure it wonld never be possible if it were not for Stana, the girl who, at that moment, was huddled in the snow in the doorway in the Tverskaya-Platz in pretence of sleeping, but who was really just as wide awake and alert as himself. Times out of number he had been tempted to relinquish his secret mission in the fortress of the enemy, but always there arose within him the same thought—the impossibility of leaving Stana in Moscow alone. A dozen times she had been instrumental in shielding him from suspicion and thus saving his life. Hence his devotion to her. Without her aid ho could not live in Russia a single day._ He remained there pretending to sleep, for a guard passed and repassed several times. 1 At last the guard halted, and, giving him a kick, said in Russian: ‘‘Comrade, go home 1 You will he frozen if you are not careful!” i Dickie Holland—who used the name of Sergedvich Zoff, and who was thought by all to be a whole-hearted disciple of Leninism—stirred himself, grnmblad, and said: , “What is the use,.comrade, of going home when there is no fire and nothing ■ to eat?” “ Get home! It is cold to-night, and yon (haven’t your shuba (great coat) with yon,” the other urged. “ And I’ve forgotten to order my car!” laughed the ragged wanderer—- • piece*'of grim humour which erased the police guard to smile. _ Dollie was shrewd enough to see that if he did not act upon the wellmeant advice of tho guard he might be suspected of loitering, for the Tcheka eye was everywhere—the old Secret Police of Tsarist days, with its provocating agents a hundredfold reinforced, and corruptness added, with the same percentage. The Tcheka, under the iron hand of the ferocious sadist, Dzerzinski, actuBed Russia. It had broken

'(Published by Arrangement with the General Press (1027), Ltd.)

a powerful and intensely religious nation by the German-aided plot which had as* its object tho extermination of the Tsar, and tho whole Romanoff dynasty. Might not those same clever subtle influences which culminated in far off Ekaterinburg, when the Tsar Nicholas was shot as a dog one day, be repeated in onr own Britain? Soviet Russia was the avowed enemy of Downing street, and “ Dollio ” was Britain’s secret agont, out to counterplot the many clovcr_ and subtle plots by which the Bolshevists were conspiring to bring Britain beneath Bolshevist rute. At the good-humoured guard’s suggestion, he slunk away, wrapping his thin . rags around him—a shivering, down-and-out figure, chilled to the bone, compelled to act his part, which, he did to perfection. Ho shuffled along through tho snow, which had again begun to fall heavily, down to the converging streets called the Nikitskiya Gate. Then, taking a narrow turning to the left, ■he entered a dark, unlit slum street of small houses, called the Povarskaya, one of the workmen’s quarters of the once proud Muscovite capital. At one of the doors he gave three taps, three times repeated, when it was slowly opened by an old white-bearded man who held up a scrap of candle placed in a tin lamp. “God be with you, Comrade Sergius I ” exclaimed the bent old man as be admitted him. “ You are early. I expected you later.” “ Yes,” replied Serge Zoff. “ The night is too cold, and I left my friends earlier than I expected. I left Stana there. She will follow me.” “ Your will be done, Comrade Sergius,” croaked the old fellow, and be held his lantern high, so that Dollie could find his way up thh ricketty, dirtencrusted stairs to a door which was unlocked, as were all doors, by order of the Tcheka. In the darkness he groped about and felt around a cupboard, which he at last .opened with a key ho took from his rags, and, taking out a petroleum lamp, a precious possession in poverty-stricken Moscow, he lit it, revealing a bare, carpetless room, with a truckle bed in the corner,, a deal table, and a couple of rushbottom chairs. The room was stone cold, with the window encrusted by frost.

Dollie’s first action was to unstick his left eyelid and remove the make-up, and then, for a moment, he stood motionless, and drew a long breath. The place was squalid enough in all conscience, for he was in one of the worst quarters of Moscow, a veritable rabbit warren, which had always been the hiding place of thieves and undesirables.

He was anxious as to the safety of little Stana, or, to give her her prewar title, the Princess Anastasia Marie Paulovna Lubomirski, daughter of Prince Alexis Lubomirski, commander of the Preobrajensky Regiment of the Guard, and aide-de-camp to the Tsar. How Russia had changed! Stana’s father had been one of those who had conspired to’ encompass the death of Russia’s ti-Ohrist, the mock-monk Rasputin, Yet he had, in turn, been shot by the Bolshevists in the Tcheka shambles at Tver, while his daughter, to save her life, had been forced to accept service under the Tcheka as one of its spies. In that capacity she had met “ Dickie.’ or Sergius Zoff, as he called himself. They had known each other in Petrograd when, during the war, he had been attached to the British Embassy. For five years they had lost sight of each other, until an unexpected meeting in Kiev had brought them together again. He had fallen beneath suspicion as a spy of Britain, and she had been ordered to keep watch upon him to betray her friend I Instead., from that moment, she had, at peril of her life, assisted him, as, indeed, she was doing on that bitterly cold night. Alone in the room, he went to the cupboard and took out a bundle of dirty rags, men’s ,clothing, which he threw upon the floor. Selecting an old ragged waistcoat, he laid it upon the table, and, with his penknife, ripped out tne back. Then he divided the linings, and, stitched between them, a white cotton handkerchief was revealed. There was writing upon it—a secret message which had been conveyed from. London into Russia by way of Riga. He had not had time to open it before. It read: I

“ Spare no pains to discover the exact source of funds being sent to London for Communist propaganda; Most important: Jefferson and Maitland are leaving London for Moscow on the 14th on a secret mission. Watch them, and report. < They will be joined in Berlin by Rickert, who will travel with them. Most urgent to know if Tweedie attends Dzerzinski’s reception, and the nature of his dealings with the head of the -Tcheka. Marshall has reasons to suppose you are suspected; therefore exorcise greatest caution. Acknowledge through usual channel.”

These instructions from Downing street, which had been smuggled into Russia, Dollie read several times. Then, saturating the handkerchief with petroleum, he placed it on the empty brick stove, and, lighting it, watched it until it was consumed. Afterwards he broke i „> the tinder with his hands, lest some of the .writing should remain legible. Hardly had he done this when a footstep on f e stair caused him to start, but a warning cough reassured him, and he opened the door to Stana. “Phew!” exclaimed the wretchedly clad young woman. “ What a smoke! Another message? Is it important? ” sho whispered. t ■ “ Very,” he replied in a low voice. “ But what has happened to-night? I was watched, and had to leave piy post. Don’t say that Peters is arrested.” “ No. But he is suspected. _ I was called to Lubjanka and told of it. He must fly. You, too, are suspected, so you must exercise the greatest care,” urged the pretty, but unkempt young woman to whom Britain’s daring secret agent owed his life. “ I seem to have a run of bad luck just now,” laughed the daring ex-naval officer in disguise. “ Without you, Stana, I’d have been in my grave long ago. You are wonderful, dearest.” “ You are equally wonderful, Dickie. Your nerves are like _iron, and you don’t know what fear is.” “ I do, but,! don’t usually show it, laughed the inan whoso bravery was outstanding. “ But what have you found about to-night’s reception? Why was it given? Did Tweedie go there, after all? ” “Yes. After you loft your post I saw Comrade Jahn, and learnt- a good deal that is of interest. Tweedie is here as delegate from the Communists in London, making preliminary arrangements for the purchase by , a syndicate secretly formed in London, of tho remainder of the Crown jewels and the jewels of the nobility seized by the Tcheka. Two Communist delegates from London, named Jefferson and Maitland, are coming here with Rickert to .fix the business on behalf of the syndicate.” “’ A secret syndicate? Did Jahn tell you their names? ” asked Dickie quickly. ( , , “He does not know. _ Apparently they are influential international financiers, whose names are a strict secret.” _ , B Bat we puut obtain them.: in is

absolutely imperative,” declared the daring Englishman as he lit a cigarette and threw himself upon a rickety old chair to think.

“ I must got home,” tho girl said a moment afterwards.- “ It-is late.” “ I shall probably disappear for a bit, dearest,”' the man said quietly. “ Peters ust go, too. You will see to it,” and, taking her hand, tenderly ho raised it to his lips, adding: “An revoir, my Princess.” Assoon as she had gone tho resourceful Dollie crossed the room, removed the table, and, taking up a small length of the, dirty boardin' of the floor, drew forth two parcels. In one was a smart English suit of blue serge and grey felt hat, and in tho other a heavy travelling coat. From a box beneath the floor ho took pen and ink and a sheet of tho official notepaper of tho Headquarters of the Tcheka, embossed with the great seal of tho secret police organisation—paper stolen by Stana from the director’s offico in the Lubjanka. Seating himself at the table, he wrote a safe-conduct from tho German frontier to Moscow, stating that the bearer was William Walters, native of London, a secretary employed by the British Communist Party and delegated to travel to Russia to make preliminaries for tho secret mission to Moscow of Comrades Jefferson Maitland, and Rickert. All agents of the Tcheka were ordered to afford the bearer all facilities on his journey. This ho signed with a carefully imitated signature, “N. Tsersnski, assistant-director, G.P.U.” Having examined the document critically, he dated it three weeks previously, and then quickly shaved, cut his hair with a pair ot clippers, exchanged his rags for tho ;mart blue suit, and put on his hat and coat. Into his wallet, well-filled with banknotes, he placed his official “ permit ” to travel, and, having burnt the hair and concealed his rags beneath the boards, he blew out the lamp and crept downstairs into the silent snowy street.

Two days later, at 5 o’clock in the morning, an hour after tho night express from Riga to Moscow had roared along over tho great snowcovered plain past the little station of Drissa, three hundred miles from Moscow, a man staggered into the stationmaster’s office m an exhausted state and fell down unconscious. Restoratives were applied, and on being searched there was found upon him a permit of the Tcheka which showed him to be an Englishman named Walters, travelling on official business from London to Moscow,

Recovering consciousness, ho explained how, while travelling in a compartment with two men, they had suddenly attacked him and tried to rob him. In the struggle he had been flung out upon the snow. They had, however, seized his luggage—a circumstance which often happened in Russia. A telegram was at once sent to Polotsk, the next stopping place, but neither men nor luggage were found. It was thought that the thieves had jumped from the train. The Englishman was congratulated upon his narrow _ escape, and entertained by the stationmaster until late that evening, when another express was stopped by signal, and the traveller continued his journey to Moscow, a telegram being sent to the Kremlin announcing his forthcoming arrival. As he stepped upon the platform at Moscow an official approached him, and he was taken in a motor car to the Savoy Hotel as guest of the Soviet, and next day he sat in a well-furnished room in the Kremlin in conference with Mossolov, the official specially charged with tne reception of foreign missions to the Soviet Government.

Mossolov, an elegant, well-dressed man, who spoke French—Dickie pretending to be ignorant of Russian—apologised for the treatment the traveller had received on Russian soil, and hinted that his losses would be made good. Then they discussed the best means of entertaining the three delegates. “I understand they are bringing with them four of the leading diamond experts in Europe—Moller and Horton from London, Doorman from Amsterdam, and Oiry from Paris,” said the Russian official. “ The syndicate have appointed them. All the jewels are in a room along tho corridor —forty-eight boxes in all.” Dickie was most eager to learn the names of the men who were about to purchase the blood-stained jewels from the Bolshevists, but dare not appear too curious. Instead, ho merely remarked that the jewels must be of enormous value. “ Wo want four millions sterling for tho three Imperial crowns—those of tho Tsar Mikhail, the Grand Prince Vladimir Monamaldi, and Ivan Alexevitch, _ and the Imperial orb of Tsar Mikhailf, with the Throne of the Tsar Alexis, which is set with 876 diamonds and 1,223 other precious stones,” replied Mossolov. “They will be a bargain to such a man as Hasselbach and his friends Hewart, Birch, and Miller—all four > of them millionaires.” Dollie held his breath for a second. “ I certainly think they would, and no doubt a deal will result,’’ he managed to reply. “ Sir Isaac Hasselbach, a German naturalised in England, is one of the wealthiest of all international financiers, while his three friends are well known in the City of London as powers in finance,” he added. He did not remark that the other three were Germans masquerading under English names, Hewart being Isidore Hearwert, Birch Solomon Burchard, and Miller Samuel Muller. He noted the names which had been unconsciously betrayed, because Mossolov naturally believed that Mr i Walters knew who comprised the secret syndicate. But Dickie knew that he was now treading upon very thin ice. In a couple of days or less the three men comprising the mission would arrive in Moscow. What more likely than that they should send a secretary in advance? At any moment his clever impersonation might be discovered, and then he would inevitably find himself in one of those terrible torture chambers of the Lubjanka. Ho had obtained tho information that Downing street so urgently desired—the names of the men who, posing as patriotic Britans, wore Gormans actually trafficking with the murderers yffiich the world had put I beyond the pale. The buyers of the ; gems well knew that the money they were to pay was to bo used to foster internal strife, strikes, _ and oven revolution in Great Britain. Dolland saw that he must withdraw at once. Therefore, when fee. met Mossolov in the afternoon he complained of feeling very unwell, and put it down to something he had eaten at luncheon. He grew worse, and went to the hospital apparently writhing in agony. He was attended by the doctor, and afterwards went back to the Savoy. From there he sent a note in English to Mossolov, excusing himself, saying that feeling very ill, lie was returning at once to England. At his slum room he found a hasty unsigned note in a woman’s hand, telling him that the secret mission from London had arrived in Moscow that morning, and warning him of the peril of discovery. He halted and reflected.

Then he busied himself with ink, pen, and paper, and, glancing at his watch, burnt the warning letter, the writing of which he recognised as Stana’s, and, after making up his eye, left the place just as darkness fell. Half an hour later he was in the express for Riga on his way out of Russia with the invaluable information which was so urgently sought by Downing street. The journey proved an interminable one, for he carriages were badly heated,: and Dollie sat for hours hair frozen as the train crawled over the white illimitable plains, across the frozen rivers, .or through great forests of snow-clad pines. He existed on black bread and slices of raw ham with washy tea obtained at the railway restaurants, until, about 5 o’clock on the following afternoon, the train having stopped at the little way-side

station of Kreslavka, two agents of polico suddenly cutoi’cd his compartment. „ , _ “ You are William Waters, of London! Wo arrest you by order of the Tcheka of Moscow I " exclaimed the elder of the pair officiously. Dollie leaned back in his seat without turning a hair, looking at him with his one eye, but with a faint smile upon his Ups. „ , “What name did you say?” he asked in perfect Russian. Was it Walters, an Englishman? I am not English. Do not be foolish. My name is Sergius Zoff, Russian subject, born in Kiev. Here is my passport and my permit to travel.” And he handed his papers to the astonished police agents, who read them much puzzled, apologised profusely, and disappeared, greatly, it may be said, to the relief of the ingenious Dollie. As he showed his passport and false permit at the frontier some hours later, he felt in distinct peril, and held his automatic pistol in his pocket ready to use it upon himself in preference to arreet and torture in the Tcheka dungeons. But the officer, _ after closely scrufinising his permit, stamped it, and a moment later he passed out of the steel-ringed country of Red Terror. That night there arrived at a Certain secret address in London a code telegram by which the British Cabinet knew the identity of the unscrupulous financial group who were, about to supply the Soviet with funds intended to be applied for the ruin of Great Britain. By the knowledge thus obtained, nearly four million pounds were prevented falling into the coffers of the Bolshevists for use for propaganda purposes in Great Britv*-*-