SPY TRAPPED

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 17, 4 March 1941, Page 4

SPY TRAPPED

TESTS REVEALED SECRET MESSAGES

One dreary day in the first winter of the last war, a British postal censor was sitting at his desk examining papers and parcels going to neutral countries. He came to a paper bearing an Amsterdam address, which he found to be on his Suspect List, so it was despatched to undergo the usual test for secret writing.

Evidences of furtive communication at once developed. Written in the margin of a newspaper were, a few words in English, reporting that "C" had gone "into the north," and that he was "sending from 201." The newspaper bore the postmark of Deptford. Well; there wasn't very much to work on, but it was presumed that "C" was spying on the Grand Fleet of the North Sea patrol.

"Baker and Confectioner" An inspector from New Scotland Yard was assigned to the case, and he found that only one street in jDeptford went up to the number ("201," and that was Deptford High Street. Visiting this number, he found a "baker and confectioner" by the name of Peter Hahn, a naturalised British subject. Hahn I swore that he never wrote anything

in the margin of a newspaper, and he was positive that he had never mailed anything to Amsterdam. However, upon searching his shop, invisible ink and a pen were found in an old shoe-box.

But still the police hadn't the vital information they wanted. Who was "C"? Friends and neighbours remembered that often a friend had called upon the baker—a distin-guished-looking man whom they had taken to be Russian.

The district register of all London's boarding-houses was now consulted and after much laborious work the hunt was narrowed down to Bloomsbury. There a perplexed landlady admitted the description of her guest and said that his name was Muller. She also said that he . had gone to Newcastle-on-Tyne on private business.

Now they were getting somewhere. "C" was in the north! Detectives were on watch in the Northumberland port when Muller boarded the train. Taken into custody, he was discovered to be an accomplished! secret agent with much technical naval information.

Muller's way of transmitting information was strikingly new. He merely inserted code advertisements in newspapers—rooms to let, articles for sale, books wanted— according to a pre-arranged plan, and posted the papers to various "cover" addresses- in neutral cities.

Hahn was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Muller himself faced the firing squad at the Tower of London.