HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22256, 2 November 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES

SECRET SERVICE THRILLS ADVENTURE IN RUSSIA r """ FORMER CHIEF'S EXPLOITS SAVED BY COURAGEOUS FRIEND Looking back on a. life packed with thrills and hairbreadth escapes, it is almost jimpossible for mo to pick out. a single hour which stands above the others as being the most momentous, writes Sir Paul Dukes, formerly Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Soviet Russia, in tho Canadian National Home Monthly. But, judged by tho effect on my lifo, my greatest hour was probably tho one in which I wast taken to tho top of a building near 'ITrafalgar Squaro and led through a mazo of passages, corridors, flights of steps and iron bridges until at last 1 reached a low, dark room and stood before " the Chief," that mysterious figure who directed, the' British Secret Service. There ho sat behind a row of extending telephones. At his side was a table littered with maps and drawings. Models of aeroplanes, submarines and mechanical devices, a scries of different coloured bottles, a distilling outfit and R rack of test tubes completed the atmosphere of mystery. Our conversation was brief and precise—but I must not repeat it. I might describe many a "greatest hour " which followed this momentous interview. Tho hour, for instance, in which I was rowed across the river Sestro by Finnish boatmen under the nose of ,a Bed patrol, who, alarmed by the splashing of oars, opened fire. This was my first entry into Russia as a Secret Servico agent. Ohase Across Ice Or the hour in which I succeeded in getting back to Finland with the two daughters of the Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovitch, the Tsar's uncle, and with Mrs. Marsh, the wife of an English business man, a lady who had just been smuggled out of No. 2 Gorohavaya, the headquarters prison of the Tcheka.

A still more exciting hour was the one in which I set out by night at breakneck speed across the frozen Finnish Gulf, which was swept by the searchlights of Cronstadt Fortress. Mounted riders spotted us and chased na, firing with their carbines until our horse fell. Making off on foot, I threw away an Incriminating packet containing maps and documents in cipher and lay down flat in the middle of a broad patch of wind-swept ice. And, luckily, after, an anxious few minutes, the riders gave up searching for me. But perhaps the culminating point in my work with the Secret Service in Russia was the hour, in 1919, when the Chief Investigator of the Tcheka, who had bfeen specially put on my trail, discovered me in the early houxs of the morning, looked straight in my face at close quarters—and was bluffed by my beard I Disguised as Oommercial Traveller Disguised as a middle-class commercial traveller, I had met in Finland a Russian naval officer named Melnikoff, who had worked with Captain Crombie, the late British Naval Attache at Petrograd, who was murdered by the Bolshevist's. TVlelnikoff proved extremely helpful to'me. He gave me many useful introductions, among others one to a certain doctor in Petrograd, who, I afterwards found, was his uncle. My first interview with this doctor had been very difficult. When I announced myself as a friend of Melnikoff he evidently did not believe me and took me for a Bolshevist agent. He was polite but formal, and would admit noth'ing. He could not believe that I was an, Englishman. At last in exasperation I burst out in English: "Why the devil can't you see I am an Englishman and not an agent-provocateur?" and I related some circumstantial incidents about hia nephew. We became firm friends from that moment.

The doctor was one of the most extraordinary and heroic men I have ever met, and later on he took enormous risks to help me. On one of my periodical crossings of the Finnish border, I had made the journey up in the far north on skis, and both my fe<?t had been frost-bitten. The doctor treated me, .pud his flat became one of my haunts at night. Changing His Identity

The Tcheka by that time were hot ttn my track. Although I had many different disguises, different names, and a passport to match each of them, they had a full description of each, and they even knew about the front tooth which was sometimes sewn into the lapel of my coat and sometimes screwed into its Bocket.

They had also discovered most of ray haunts and habits, so that at this critical juncture it became necessary to start afresh with an entirely new appearance and identity. Some time beforehand I had foreseen such an emergency, and had collected a supply of clothing to meet it. Part of this was lying in my flat.

.Clean-shaven, with my hair cut short and my tooth replaced in its socket, I went to my flat to collect it. My housekeeppr did not recognise me and was deeply suspicious when I introduced myself as a friend of mine! I had to go round the corner and write a letter to myself before she would admit mo. At Dead o! Night As the hue and cry after me became more intense, it was necessary to hoodwink the hall porter at the doctor's flat so that ho should admit nothing incriminating if he was cross-questioned by the Tcheka. He knew me as a patient who suffered from frost-bitten feet. Wo felt it safer to change my complaint when I changed my disguise, and after some discussion we decided upon epilepsy. The doctor coached me in the symptoms, and after a few lessons I could throw quito a passable fit.

Wo had ono or two dress rehearsals, and after the hall porter and his wife had carried me up the stairs a time or two thev became quito sympathetic. Time passed, and I heard that the Tcheka were redoubling their efforts to catch me. They had heard that the mysterious Englishman was back in

Russia again, and they sent special investigators to Finland to find out how I had got across the frontier. They also tried hard to discover where I lived, and at length, after about three months, they found out that Doctor So-and-So had treated me. v Then suddenly down they "swooped on the doctor's flat at dead of night. The hall porter told them there was a man sleeping in the study who suffered from epileptic fits. Presently I was awakened by the sound of clumping boots in the corridor, and before 1 could think of what to do, in. they camo. Somebody came up to my couch, pulled down the bedclothes from my face, and stared hard at me It was the Chief Investigator of the Tcheka himself! At that critical moment, in rushed tho doctor. He asked sharply what they were doing and warned them that I must on no account bo disturbed. The bluff worked, and they withdrew with him into another room. In the few moments available I crept out of bed and burned two out of the three passports which I had in my pocket. No sooner was this done than they returned " I have warned 3 T ou," said the doctor in significant tones, " that this man is subject to fits. Ho may have one at anv moment." I took the hint and had one, and all tho time tho searchers were ransacking the room J writhed and groaned on my couch. They could find nothing but some money, and presently they went away. But, although I escaped, they arrested tho doctor. He was their only clue to my whereabouts, and for a long time they threatened him in prison with torture and execution unless he betrayed mo. More than once I was within an aco of giving myself up to save him. But that amazing man refused to say a word, and lie scared them by declaring that ho was a personal friend of Lenin's. He persisted so steadily that at last they sent him under escort to Moscow. Ho was conducted into Lenin's presence in the Kremliu Palace, and instantly the Bolshevist leader recognised the doctor as the man who, in days gone by had smuggled food to him in prison. Lenin expressed his profound gratitude and ordered tho case against him to be dropped immediately.