Over There with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge

"I'll answer your question in this way: I'm sure that the time I spent helping to run down a dangerous spy was put to much better purpose than it would have been if spent in the trenches, although I think I did some good work out in No Man's Land in front of the trenches. But, of course, there's no more of that kind of work left for me to do."

"Are you sure about that?"

Irving looked curiously at the putter of this question, considered a moment or two, and then replied:

"No, I'm not; but I don't know of anything more."

"Suppose some more of that kind of work should be found, would you like to do it?"

"Surely."

"Irrespective of the size of the task or the danger?"

"I don't know how I could find anything much more dangerous than that skirmish in No Man's Land," Irving replied slowly. "The other part of your question I don't wish to answer rashly. Tell me the task, and I'll tell you if it's too big for me."

"That's the very answer I wanted you to make," said the colonel, almost eagerly. "Now, suppose we should ask you to go over into Germany on an important spy mission, how would that strike you?"

This was something Irving was not looking for, and he was so astonished that he did not answer for several moments. Then he said:

"It would strike me all right."

"Suppose you were given a credential that would effect admittance for you into high official circles-would you go there and attempt to obtain information that might be available, because of your credential?"

"Yes, sir," Irving replied firmly.

"What do you think of that stunt of tattooing a message in the form of a freak art production on the arm of Lieut. Tourtelle?"

Irving smiled.

"Of course," he said, "it was clever and under ordinary circumstances ought to have been successful; but I'd rather not go through life with a thing like that on my arm. It might brand me as a freak, if not something worse."

"I don't blame you," returned the colonel, but as he spoke a peculiar shrewdness lighted his eyes, causing the boy to wonder a little. Then he added: "Still, it might be possible for one to submit to such nonsense if thereby he might advance a great and worthy cause."

"Sure, that's quite possible," Irving agreed; "but I don't see how Tourtelle, or Hessenburg, can claim any such motive."

"No, but if he had done it for his own country, the British empire, to advance the cause of human freedom, what then?"

"Well, in spite of the ridiculous appearance of the picture on his arm, I'd say he ought to be proud to keep it there. I would. I think I'd be proud to show it. It would be something to show and tell about to-to-my great-great-grandchildren when I got old, you see," Irving finished with a really illuminating smile.

"I think I've quizzed you far enough on this subject," Col. Evans announced at this point, throwing off the manner of vagueness that had hitherto characterized a good deal of his conversation, and speaking with unmistakable directness. "I'm now going to ask you to consent to have that cubist picture tattooed on your arm."

Irving looked in astonishment at the commanding officer of the regiment, being scarcely able to believe his ears. Surely the proposition was nonsensical. And, yet, this was no occasion for nonsense. But the boy's wondering conjectures were interrupted by the officer, who was adding to his last announcement.

"After the art work on your arm is finished," he said, "I'm going to send you into Germany to find out some things we want to know."

"Yes?" Irving responded, with a rising inflection that carried with it a suggestion of an interrogation.

"Yes," the officer continued; "I want you to take the place of the spy whose tattooed arm had to be amputated."

CHAPTER XVII

PARACHUTE PRACTICE

Private Ellis looked hard into vacancy and thought just as hard for half a minute; then he said:

"I get you, I think, Col. Evans, all except one point; and that, I suppose, would come to me all right if I knew the contents of that tattooed message."

"No, you wouldn't," the colonel returned quickly. "It wouldn't do you a bit of good."

"I'd know whether it's important," Irving insisted.

"I can tell you that much," was the officer's reassurance; "and then you're no better off. It's of vast importance and would be of incalculable value to our enemies if it fell into their hands."

"Then there's only one explanation of your proposition," Irving concluded. "You will change the dots and dashes so that they will convey information different from that originally intended."

"Good!" exclaimed the colonel. "You'll do all right. Are you willing to undertake it?"

"I am," said Irving.

"Very well. So far so good. Now I'm going to test your nerve some more. Look out, for this is going to be a corker. If you drop, you'll drop hard."

"I'm waiting," said the boy, with a kind of gritty grin.

"All right. Would you dare make a descent with a parachute from an altitude of several thousand feet?"

This was a tester, indeed. Irving knew it the instant the last word of the question left the colonel's lips, but he did not flinch.

"Of course, I ought to have some preparation for such a feat," he replied. "I've never been up in an aeroplane."

"To be sure," Col. Evans agreed, with a vigorous nod. "You'll get all the schooling necessary. You'll start out on the venture well equipped. I'm going to send you to the aviation field near brigade headquarters, and there you'll learn to do your umbrella stunt. Then you'll come back here and go through some more preliminaries. The work of a spy, you see, is just as much of a science as the handling of an army."

That ended the interview, and an hour or two later Irving started in an automobile for the aviation field with a note from the colonel to the flying commander. There he was placed under an expert, and his schooling in the art of dropping from lofty heights began.

Private Ellis did not clearly understand just how all this program was to be carried out, but he had no doubt that Col. Evans had a complete plan in mind and that the missing details would fit in well with what had already been revealed to him. So he went about his new work confident that the outlook for success was good.

His training at the aviation field lasted a week. During that time he made half a dozen descents by parachute from various altitudes. The last descent was from a height of 3,000 feet. By this time the experience had become almost as commonplace a thriller as coasting on a long toboggan slide or "dipping the dips" at an up-to-date amusement park. He had never dreamed that descending with a parachute could become so matter-of-course a performance.

"I understand now how circus people can look on their death-defying stunts without being awe-struck with their own daring," he mused after he had floated down the fourth time at the rate of three-and-a-half feet a second. "Just think of it: a good swift sprinter would run a hundred yards in about one-third the time that I take to fall thirty-five feet. This is quite a revelation of physical science to me."

Irving was by nature a very observing youth. His instructor was something more than a mere bird-man, for he had studied aviation as a mathematical, as well as a physical, science. He showed the boy how to figure out the rate of falling after being given the diameter of a standard-made parachute and the weight of the aeronaut.

The parachute with which the young spy-student got his experience as a diver from the sky was one of several supplied for experimental work following reports that the enemy had perfected a similar device which had proved successful as a life saver in air battles. But the experiments of Allied aviators had not proved sufficiently successful to warrant providing all air fighters with "high-dive umbrellas." Descents could be made with reasonable assurance of safety from aeroplanes flying in good order, but if a pilot lost control of his machine the chances were small that he or his companion gunner or bomb dropper would be able to leap free from the struts and other framework with a parachute.

Irving would have liked to learn to pilot an aeroplane, but there was not time enough for him to take up that study. Indeed, before half the week had elapsed he decided he could like no occupation better than that of an aviator. He saw several expeditions start out to meet the enemy at the front, and also saw them return, followed by the announcement on two occasions that several of the British and Canadian flyers who had gone out to meet the foe, full of confidence in their own prowess, would return no more. They had been either shot down or forced to descend within the enemy's lines.

Nothing was said at the aviation field regarding the reason for the training that was being given to Private Ellis. No questions were asked and Irving did not volunteer any information. At last the instructor stated to the boy that he had completed his course and had learned his lessons well, and that he was now at liberty to seek further directions from the colonel. He accordingly returned to the latter's dugout.

Col. Evans asked him a number of questions, and then said:

"I want you to return to the field hospital and get some more information from that spy, Tourtelle, or Hessenburg. And in getting your information, remember that you are to impersonate him on the other side of the Rhine. Now, this is going to be a test of your spy-intelligence. Let's see how well equipped you can return here after your next interview with him. Do you get me, or must I give you some tips?"

"Don't give me any tips, but let me show you what I can do," Irving replied. "If I fall down on this mission, you'll know I'm not the fellow for the job."

"All right," said the colonel. "I've telephoned for Lieut. Osborne to come here and accompany you again. But this time, remember, you are to do the quizzing, and the lieutenant is to report to me how efficiently you went at it."

"I'm glad to be put on my own responsibility, sir, before I drop down from the clouds into the midst of the enemy," the boy said grimly.

CHAPTER XVIII

STUDYING TO BE A SPY

An hour later Lieut. Osborne arrived at the colonel's headquarters, and he and Private Ellis started at once for the field hospital. There they found Hessenburg, alias Tourtelle, much improved physically, but not a little nervous regarding his own rather precarious prospects. Instead of being an officer helping to direct, in his small way, the battle against the autocratic presumption of a great military power, he was something more than an ordinary prisoner of war-a trapped spy, who had conspired with others for the downfall of his own country. With seemingly genuine repentance, he exhibited much eagerness to give all the information possible in order to induce leniency for himself from a court-martial.

"I am instructed by Col. Evans to make this statement to you as coming from him," Irving announced early in the interview: "He desires all the information you can give him regarding your program that was to have been followed if you had succeeded in making your way beyond the enemy lines. He has certain plans in view, the success of which will depend largely on the correctness of your information. If you should misinform him, through us, those plans undoubtedly would fail. Moreover, if any enemy spy should get a tip through you or anybody else, that the information supplied by you was being used to attain important ends, those ends probably would never be reached.

"What we must have from you, therefore, is the truth, and the whole truth. To insure his receiving this, Col. Evans has asked me to inform you that the only thing that can save you is the success of his plan. If the plan fails, he will assume that the blame is yours and you will be shot."

Irving paused a moment, and Hessenburg seized the opportunity offered to interpose thus:

"You mean to say that he will have me shot for something for which I'm not the least responsible?"

"Not at all," Irving replied. "You will be shot for being a spy, which has already been proved against you. But if you're careful to tell us the truth, even though I don't cover some of it with my questions, your chances to escape that penalty are good."

"I understand," said the spy. "Fire away. I'll do the best I can."

The three were seated about a small table in a small room selected for the purpose. The door was closed. Irving drew a note-book and pencil from his pockets and prepared to jot down reminders of the information received by him.

"First," he said, "we'll all talk in low tones to prevent, if possible, anybody's overhearing us. Now, begin by telling me what was the extent of your acquaintance with spies in Canada and their system of operations."

"My acquaintance with those people and their affairs was very limited," Hessenburg replied. "I can't even say that my uncle was, or is, a spy, although it would be natural to suspect him. Government agents watched him pretty closely, and it's possible that he didn't actually do anything that would call for his arrest. But I'm pretty certain he knew a good deal more than I did. I think he knew all about my affair and approved of it. To tell the truth, I believe that it was through him that the spy organization learned that my sympathies were treasonable and decided to approach me on the subject of making a spy agent out of me.

"It was the man with whiskers at the hospital who first broached the subject to me: You seem to have a pretty complete report of that affair. That man was a physician, and I got acquainted with him while making business trips to the hospital for my uncle. He learned that I was an art student, and one thing led to another, until he knew I wanted England and France to be defeated and was willing to do anything I could secretly to bring that about. After that it didn't take him long to persuade me to be the bearer of a tattooed message on my arm into Germany. The other fellow who helped tattoo the message was the artist, an architectural draftsman with considerable skill at free-hand drawing."

"What are their names?" asked Irving.

"Dr. Adolph Marks and Jacob L. Voltz."

"What is your uncle's name?"

"Ferdinand J. Hessenburg."

"What does the 'J' stand for?"

"Johan."

Irving put a long string of questions of this kind, and thus obtained much detailed information regarding the spy and his family connections and home surroundings, also concerning the art school he attended in Toronto. He made copious notes of the answers, so that the process of questioning the confessed enemy agent was necessarily much slower than it otherwise would have been.

"I'm up against one difficulty that I'd like to clear away," the inquisitor mused in the course of his examination of the wounded "second looie"; "and that is the fact that this fellow is an artist and I am not. Suppose when I get over in Berlin, some wise fellow, full of information from Canada, should ask me to paint a cubist picture. What would I do? I must find out if there's any danger of my being asked to do anything of that sort to test my identity."

He continued his questioning thus:

"Did those two men who tattooed that picture on your arm know that you were an art student?"

"Oh, sure," Hessenburg replied. "That's how they happened to suggest the art method of conveying the message."

"And how about your credentials, your identification when you got into Germany? How were the German officials to know who you were, that you weren't a fake?"

"By the message itself."

"You think your instructors believed that was enough?"

"Yes, they said so. We had that question up for discussion. I raised it myself."

"How did you raise it?"

"I wanted them to get word to Berlin by another route to look out for me, but they said that would involve a danger that they were trying to avoid by the tattoo method. If they tried to get a wireless code message to Berlin, it might be intercepted and deciphered, and then a thorough search would be made for me."

Irving was much relieved by this statement. There was no reason to suspect Hessenburg of trying to deceive him in this regard. The spy could have no grounds to suspect that his inquisitor was planning to take his place and carry an altered copy of the cubist message to the war lords of the enemy.

"I guess I'm safe enough in that regard," he told himself. Then he added aloud:

"You think they have no information regarding you in Berlin?"

"Yes-I don't see why they should. I was informed that the contents of the message would be all the credential I'd need, that it would make me so popular among the high-ups that I could have anything I asked for."

"But they wouldn't tell you what was in the message?"

"I didn't ask. I knew better. The plan we were working on was directly opposed to my knowing the information I was to carry."

The quizzing of Hessenburg continued half an hour longer, and Irving and the lieutenant started back for the colonel's headquarters.

"Did I omit any questions I should have asked?" the spy-student inquired after they had ridden a short distance.

"You did fine," Lieut. Osborne replied. "I couldn't think of another question that I would have asked."

CHAPTER XIX

LAST PREPARATIONS

The next move in Irving's program of preparation for spy work in Germany had to do with the tattooing of an altered copy of the cubist art message on his arm. The alterations were made by the cryptologist who had deciphered the original message. He made the changes after consulting with intelligence officials, who prepared a system of dots and dashes that ostensibly conveyed valuable information. This "information," however, was not only misleading, but it was of such character that the deception could hardly be discovered before the lapse of months and possibly a year or more.

By the time the spy-student had "completed his course of study" the material, instruments, and artist were ready for the pictorial operation. The instruments had been supplied by a surgeon, the artist had been discovered after a search by telephone communication with the various official headquarters of the regiment, and the material, some pure aniline dye, had been found in a moving laboratory, or automobile chemical outfit, maintained for surgical, sanitation, pure food, and pure water purposes for the army.

The artist, aided by a surgeon, and the dye and some sharp-pointed needles, did the work. It was a long and tedious task, and many rests were required for the users of the dye-dipped needles in order to keep their nerves steady and their judgment sure in the delicate workmanship. After it was finished, the boy compared it with the salt-preserved original, and decided that the result could hardly have been more satisfactory for the desired purpose.

Then Irving had another session with Col. Evans, who gave him his final instructions.

"I haven't given you much of an idea yet what we want you to find out for us at Berlin, or wherever you can get the information," said the commander of the regiment. "We know, of course, that there is an extensive enemy spy organization in both Canada and the United States, and while we are able to get a few of those fellows now and then, still they're pretty smart as a rule, and we feel that we have only scratched the surface. We want their names, or the name of every leader of consequence among them. That's what we're sending you into Germany for. You must realize, therefore, that the mission on which you are being sent is one of no small consequence. The highest officers in the army have been acquainted with the plan and not only concurred in it, but offered suggestions for its improvement and perfection.

"You have learned from Hessenburg what you are to do when you land on German soil. You will probably be taken to Berlin or some important German military point, and there your message will be read. You will be a hero in the minds of the highest commanders and will undoubtedly be granted any favor you ask. My suggestion is that you ask to be assigned for study to qualify you for the most confidential and important work in the enemy secret service. Tell them you wish to return to America as a leader in the work and call their attention to the fact that, as you have become pretty thoroughly Americanized, or Canadianized, and lost most of the foreign appearance and accent of your father, you can pass successfully as a loyal citizen of the dominion. Then work your way into the confidence of those who are directing the spy system of our enemies and get at their records. Get the names of all the leaders you can find. You may be able to do this openly, for your own information when you return to take up more important work in Canada and the United States. Give special attention to the spy activities in the United States, for we want to show that the pro-German agents in that country are violating its policy of neutrality.

"Now, let me tell you frankly why we have selected you for this work in spite of your youth. Any man, – I won't call you a boy, for from now on you must be a man in every sense of the word, – any man who can put together the twos and twos you summed up after your experience with Hessenburg, or Tourtelle, and after reading your cousin's letter, is a natural-born investigator. The average person would have been confused by that evidence; he would not have had the nerve to form the conclusions you formed. I'm not saying this to flatter you. If you feel in the least flattered, you had better say so at once, and give up the whole scheme, for there is great danger of your failing and being shot. Let me tell you why:

"The man who has one second's time to entertain a conceited or self-conscious thought, devotes just that much time to the undermining of his own strength. Get me?"

"Absolutely," Irving replied. "I've told myself that many times, although not in those words."

"Now," continued the colonel, "I believe you told me that you had studied German at school?"

"Yes, I had one year of it."

"And Hessenburg said he knew only a little of the language?"

"Yes."

"Does he know any Austrian?"

"No. His uncle and his father, although Austrians by birth, lived mostly in Germany until they emigrated."

"Good. You will not be under suspicion because of your ignorance of the German language. Still, it would be well for you to be able to make yourself understood and to understand others from the moment you get into that country. So I'm going to put you under an instructor for a few days."

In accord with this announcement, Private Ellis talked nothing but German for a week with an orderly of German parentage who had enlisted with the Canadian army to help "get the kaiser." By the end of that time he felt as if he could hold his own, conversationally, at anything from a kaffee klatsch to a Berliner royal turnverein, and announced that he was ready to make his "high dive" into the land of the enemy.

CHAPTER XX

"SECOND LOOIE ELLIS"

Meanwhile activities at the front had been progressing in a decisive manner, although familiarity with the progress and its significance was restricted to an exclusive class, consisting of certain officers and an army of industrious workers, who might be classed as the moles of modern warfare.

The latter were the engineers and workmen whose occupation at times was a good deal like that of a miner. It had been their duty to tunnel, tunnel, tunnel, until you'd think the whole of the country in this vicinity must be a system of underground passages that would almost rival the catacombs of Rome.

This tunneling, or sapping, was one of the most important forms of strategy in the war. Undoubtedly in future years, remnants of many of these underground passages, preserved for their value as historical curiosities, will be inspected by thousands of tourists visiting the scenes of the world's greatest conflict.

Vimy Ridge, near the end of the historic fight at that long elevation of earth, was a veritable human anthill. The work of opposing armies in their efforts to undermine each other is an exceedingly interesting, if terrible, operation, and Vimy Ridge furnished an excellent illustration of this.

Early in the fight for possession of the hill the tunneling began. At the beginning of this narrative, when Private Irving Ellis and "Second Looie Tourtelle" were scouting in No Man's Land, this boring of the elongated mole on the earth's surface was as much of a fencing contest as a sword battle between two seventeenth century Frenchmen. The Germans held the hill, had taken possession of it and intrenched themselves on the eastern slope as one of the strongholds of their advanced positions in France. The Canadians and the British in attempting to dislodge the invaders, found themselves at a considerable disadvantage. There seemed to be only one way to overcome this difficulty without a great slaughtering of the forces of the Allies. This was by boring under the hill, mining it with trinitrotoluol, touching off the explosive with electric sparks and blowing the fortified mound into Kingdom Come.