Ace of Spies (38 page)

Although
The Gadfly
provided Reilly with the template for his fabricated life story, it does not explain where he got the fine detail about the years he allegedly spent in South America. We do not need to go too far along the library shelf for the answer, which is to be found in a later, lesser-known Ethel Voynich book,
An Interrupted Friendship,
published in 1910. The book attempts to recapture the success of
The Gadfly
by returning to the story of Arthur Burton, alias Felice Revarez, and focuses on the period he was in South America.

In Ecuador a group of explorers, led by Col. Duprez, are deserted by their interpreter and seek a replacement, which turns out to be no easy task as the respectable interpreters are too scared to join them. They are inundated with applications from those who have no skill with languages. When Rivarez presents himself he is mistaken for a tramp.
¹⁶
It soon becomes apparent, however, that under the grime and dirt he is a gentleman and that his claim to be able to speak several languages is true. Col. Duprez therefore takes him on and they proceed with the expedition. When crossing a river, Rene, one of the explorers, falls in and gets his equipment wet so that when he is about to be attacked by a jaguar, his gun will not fire. Just as the jaguar cuts his arm with its claws, however, a shot rings out killing the animal – Rivarez has saved Rene’s life. When the expedition is in danger from being attacked by a
tribe of savages, Rivarez goes to the natives alone and successfully calms them. When he returns safely, Col. Duprez gives him a permanent contract and says that it is the only way he has at that time to show his gratitude to Rivarez for risking his life to save theirs. He adds that he will let all of France know about him when they return. Three years pass and they return to Europe.

Here then is the genesis of the Fothergill story. In this case it is at least chronologically possible that Rosenblum provided Voynich with some inspiration, although highly improbable. Again, it is more likely that he lifted the tale from her, rather than the other way around.

A
PPENDIX
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M
ISTAKEN
I
DENTITY

In July 1905, Reilly graduated from the Royal School of Mines with top marks… he then went straight up to Trinity College Cambridge, to do research into Civil Engineering.
Sidney Reilly –
The True Story
by Michael Kettle
¹

The evidence Kettle presents in support of this theory is, at first sight, compelling and beyond doubt. According to Kettle, Reilly used the name Stanislaus George Reilly to successfully make an application to study electrical engineering at the Royal School of Mines in Exhibition Road, Kensington, on 15 September 1904. On the form he refers to his experience of railway, waterway and road construction work in India. At the top of the form a college official has noted that Reilly produced a certificate confirming that he had studied at Roorkee College in India and that his date of birth was 24 April 1877.
²

Kettle relates in his book how he set about trying to establish the claims made on the application form by studying India Office Records in London and initiating enquiries in India. He concludes that Reilly’s claim to have been educated at Roorkee is without foundation as indeed are his claims to have been a civil engineer.
³
In his view, the whole story was a skilfully constructed alibi, which Reilly ‘carefully kept up to date all his life’
⁴
as a cover for his spying activities. He produces no evidence to show that Sidney Reilly ever used the name Stanislaus Reilly or used Stanislaus’ curriculum vitae, fictitious or otherwise, as a cover or alibi for himself, however. It is also significant that not one of Sidney Reilly’s friends, acquaintances or colleagues ever heard or referred to this ‘India story’.

In July 1905, Stanislaus Reilly’s student records indicate that he completed his electrical engineering course with full marks and was then admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, to do research in civil engineering in October 1905. Kettle speculates that Reilly lived at Jesus Lane with Margaret until 1907 or 1908. On his application he had stated that he had been educated at ‘schools in India’. In establishing what seems the most conclusive piece of evidence, Kettle sought the opinion of John Conway, a Fellow of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences. He examined the handwriting on the college application forms from 1904 and 1905 with a letter written by Sidney Reilly to his wife Pepita on 25 September 1925. Conway concluded that the three samples were all written by the same hand.
⁵
Kettle also unearthed an application made by Stanislaus Reilly to join the Institute of Civil Engineers in May 1925, and found from the institute’s archives that Stanislaus Reilly had remained on the institute’s membership list until 1948, when Kettle presumes that SIS had his name removed.

When marshalled together, the pieces of evidence Kettle has assembled seem to establish almost beyond doubt that Stanislaus Reilly was a character whose background had been fabricated by Sidney Reilly in order to cover his past and to gain admission to the Royal School of Mines and to Trinity College, Cambridge. Subjected to closer examination, however, major faults are to be found running through his evidence.

Kettle’s enquiries were apparently set in motion after reading in
Ace of Spies
that Reilly had claimed to be a graduate of the Royal Institute of Mines in London.
⁶
He therefore set about finding corroboration for this in the records of London University, eventually discovering an application form dated 5 September 1904, in the name of Stanislaus George Reilly. One can appreciate that the coincidence was uncanny. A person of a similar age to Sidney Reilly, with a Polish first name and an identical middle and family name, found at an institution Reilly himself had apparently claimed to have attended.

Sidney Reilly’s claim was to have studied chemistry not electrical engineering, however. Furthermore, the application form unearthed by Kettle was not a Royal School of Mines application, it was for the adjacent City and Guilds Central Technical College, which later became part of Imperial College, along with the Royal School of Mines, in 1907.
⁷
At Trinity College, it is certainly the case that S.G. Reilly was admitted in October 1905 and lived at 8 Jesus Lane, Cambridge. However, he most certainly was not living at that address ‘with his wife Margaret’ for, as Cambridge City records affirm, the address was a lodging house offering single-room accommodation to individual students. The lodging house keeper during the time that S.G. Reilly lived there was Mrs L. Flatters.
⁸
College minute books
also indicate that S.G. Reilly took a keen part in extra-curricular activities and joined the Trinity College Boat Club on 14 October 1905.
⁹
In terms of the hand-writing on the application forms allegedly matching that of Sidney Reilly’s, one should appreciate that even among handwriting experts, such pronouncements are not viewed as an exact science. Equally, it must also be recorded that John Conway was not a handwriting expert, his field of expertise lay in establishing whether or not documents were authentic.

While Kettle quite properly checked the details of Stanislaus Reilly’s birth, had he run a similar check on records of death he would have found that Stanislaus George Reilly died at the age of seventy-five, at Horton Hospital in Epsom, Surrey, on 13 June 1952.
¹⁰

The death certificate is a key piece of evidence. It provides numerous leads to other documents concerning the administration of his estate, by which other family members can be traced. In this way, Stanislaus’s daughter Aline and nephew Noel were both located. They were able to provide details of their family history and in particular an account of Stanislaus’s life and career.
¹¹
From this, a check was carried out of contemporary British and Indian records, which authenticated their recollections.
¹²
Indian residential records confirm that he was living in India until 1903, where he had worked as an overseer and an assistant engineer in Khandwah and Dharmpur. Due to the fact that he was in London and Cambridge between 1904 and 1907 he does not appear in the residential records during those years. On his return to India he married Aline’s mother, Edith Anne, at Agra in 1909. Aline was born two years later in Dehra Dun, shortly after which he became engineer and manager of the Dehri Rohtus Light Railway.
¹³
On 11 June 1918 he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers (Infantry), from where he was seconded to the Royal Engineers. A year later he was promoted to lieutenant and was promoted again to lieutenant-colonel before being released in 1920. The Reilly family returned to England before the outbreak of the Second World War, where Stanislaus was engaged as a civil engineer. Edith died in 1945
¹⁴
and Stanislaus’s health, too, declined after the war. In fact, his resignation from the Royal Institute of Mines in 1948 was for reasons of ill health and was certainly not the result of SIS machinations. It is therefore clear that Stanislaus George Reilly was in fact a real and distinctly separate person from Sidney George Reilly, and not the fabrication of Sidney Reilly or SIS.

A
PPENDIX
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T
HE
F
ACTORY
F
IREMAN

The Kaiser was building a gigantic war machine… but British intelligence had no idea what kind of weapons were being forged inside Germany’s sprawling war plants. Reilly was sent to find out.
Spies
by Jay Robert Nash
¹

The story of how Reilly infiltrated the Krupps plant in Essen and made away with plans of Germany’s most secret weapons bears all the hallmarks of a classic Reilly storyline, with the courageous and resourceful ‘Master Spy’ triumphing against the odds. With a German foe, this story no doubt went down well with colleagues and friends just after the First World War. When first published in 1967, Robin Bruce Lockhart’s
Ace of Spies
maintained that this episode occurred in 1904. However, twenty years later, when he published
Reilly: The First Man,
1909 is given as the date
^.2
The story itself, whether told by Lockhart, Nash or Van Der Rhoer
³
is at least consistent.

In true
Boys’ Own
style, the tale opens with Reilly arriving in Essen in the guise of a Baltic German shipyard worker by the name of Karl Hahn.
⁴
Having scrupulously prepared his cover by spending time at a Sheffield engineering firm learning the craft of a welder, he immediately secures a position as a welder at the plant and joins the works fire brigade, which enables him to move around at night without raising suspicion. The cunning Reilly then persuades the foreman in charge of the fire brigade that a complete set of plans of the plant are needed to indicate the position of fire extinguishers and hydrants. The plans are duly lodged in the foreman’s office for members of the brigade to consult, and Reilly sets about locating the secret plans.

In the dead of night, using lock-picks, he breaks into the office where they are kept but is disturbed by the foreman. Reilly throttles the man to death before completing the theft. In making his escape, he is intercepted by a night watchman, but knocks the man out and ties him up before walking out of the factory with the plans.

From Essen, Reilly took a train to Dortmund where he had a safe house, changed into his Savile Row suit and tore the plans into four pieces, mailing each one separately. If one was lost, the other three would still reveal the gist of the plan.

The fact that this tale is nothing more than an entertaining yarn can be clearly established by reference to the substantial archives of the Krupps Company in Essen. The index of files alone amounts to over 100 pages and indicates that comprehensive records have survived which cover the development of the plant and the personnel of the works fire brigade. After a disastrous fire in 1865 Alfred Krupp decided to found a fire brigade for his factory, which on foundation consisted of thirty-six men, organised in six companies of six.
⁵
It is clear from the records that the Krupps fire brigade was a professional fire brigade, and was not organised on the basis of the British model for works brigades that were made up from volunteers from among the workforce.
⁶
Reilly’s story describes such a scenario whereby Hahn responds to a factory notice calling for volunteers to join the works brigade, hardly in keeping with the reality of a professional brigade.
⁷

Service in the fire brigade was based on the principle that members lived on the factory site, or nearby, in houses provided by the Krupps Company. By 1900 a lack of space put this policy in jeopardy. The following year, however, measures were taken to ensure that housing for all members of the brigade was available. New accommodation in Altendorferstrasse, Bunsenstrasse and Harkortstrasse provided 214 flats by 1902.
⁸
There is no record of a Karl Hahn living in any Krupps property. Likewise, there are records of those who served on the brigade from 1873 up to 1915.
⁹
Again, the name Karl Hahn is noticeable by its absence.

Interestingly, it would seem that the fire brigade also acted as a security service for the plant.
¹⁰
Security records and correspondence for the period 1878–1915 again make no reference to a Karl Hahn. Could it therefore be that, although not a member of the fire brigade, a Karl Hahn was employed as a welder at the plant? The card index of employees
¹¹
by the name of Karl Hahn working at the plant, from the turn of the century to the outbreak of the First World War, indicates the following persons:

Karl Hahn, born 16 June 1889 at Bielefeld, lathe operator (employed 1903–45)
Karl Hahn, born 10 November 1875 at Beuren, mason (employed 1912–36)
Karl Hahn, born 12 December 1887 at Demerath, machinist (employed 1912–27)
Karl Hahn, born 20 June 1878 at Schoeneberg, labourer (employed 1906–26)