Don Martin diary entry for Monday, January 21, 1918:
Started
cleaning up the Fleet St. office, physically and establishing a little system.
Both the office and the staff are dying of dry rot. In Simpson’s at dinner I
met Charlie Wheeler of the Chicago Tribune who has come here to do about the
same thing I am doing. Spent couple hours with him. He thinks the war will end
this year with an economic collapse in Germany. He thinks Germany is bluffing
about the big offensive. Went to Fleet St. office and talked to Champion about
readjustments. He is certainly, as [James Gordon]
Bennett says, wedded to routine.
Weather beautiful. Quite astonishing.
Don Martin picked up an interesting spy story, which he dated Jan 21 and
mailed to New York. It was published in the New York Herald on Tuesday,
February 5, 1918.
KEY TO
CYPHER INSCRIBED ON SHOUDERS OF FEMALE AGENT
Elena
Teodorini, Famous Italian Opera Singer, Arrested as German Spy After Search in
Mid-Atlantic—Met Luxburg in Argentina
[Special to the Herald]
Herald Bureau, No. 130 Fleet
Street, London, Jan. 21
One of the most interesting spy stories of the
war has just been released for publication. It comes from Milan and concerns
Elena Teodorini, a famous Italian opera singer, who made a sensational début
twenty-six years ago at the Constanzi Opera House, Rome, alongside the
celebrated tenor, Marconi, in “The Huguenots.”
 |
Elena Teodorini |
Before the outbreak of war Teodorini
bade what may prove to have been a final professional adieu of Europe. Singing
again in company of Marconi at a gala performance in the Italian capital, this
time in the role of Lucrezia Borgia, she bade goodby to Rome, and so
disappeared across the seas.
Nothing more was heard of her beyond
reports of big successes in the United States and in the big cities of South
America, until some three months ago. Then rumors spread in Italian operatic
circles of her mysterious arrest as a spy in the pay of Germany.
Met Count
Luxburg
It now appears that during her sojourn
in Argentina the famous prima donna seems to have been caught in the toils of
Count Luxburg and his band and thereby to have become involved in the alleged
conspiracy for the undoing of France.
According to information collected by
the Corriere della Sera, the American authorities had long suspected Teodorini
of espionage. These suspicions wee intensified through her incessant tripping
to and fro between New York and Buenos Aires. All efforts to establish any guilt
were foiled till after her embarkation early in October on board the Spanish
transatlantic steamship Queen Victoria Eugenia, when the American police sent a
wireless despatch to the Angle-French watchers telling of their grave
misgivings that Teodorini perhaps was bearing confidential despatches to
Germany’s secret service agents in Spain.
“Some distance off Cadiz,” reports a
travelling companion of Teodorini, who is at present singing at the Constanzi
Theatre in Rome (the account is published in the Milan Review), “a British
destroyer loomed up. The cruiser ordered our ship, the Queen Victoria Eugenia,
to follow her. We were boarded by English officials, who, having produced
warrants, asked pointedly after Signorina Elena Teodorini.
“On being told that they were to
ransack her baggage Teodorini turned deadly pale; but quickly recovering
herself, she assumed a more haughty demeanor, demanding ‘why mine more than
anybody’s else?’ She assisted in the search, maintaining an attitude of
apparent indifference.
Laugh at
Curl Papers
“Some amusement was caused among the
bystanders by the seizure, among other articles, of a bulky roll of curl papers
the wrapper of which was still intact. On being subjected to a special acid
test, however, these papers appeared to be covered with curious hieroglyphical
writing.
“The searchers confessed that the
cypher surpassed their understanding. After an English stewardess had been
fetched on board to replace Teodorini’s maid, orders were given to get the vessel
again under way.
“While British officers still could be
seen tackling their task of decypherment with all the patience of enthusiastic
cryptologists, the passengers, on their part, were beginning to forget the
incident in the fond imagination that they were at last nearing their port of
destination.
“Instead of that they suddenly found
themselves alongside a French cruiser. Then Teodorini’s artist acquaintances
learned that the suspected spy had been stripped for the bath, when lo! and
behold, inscribed on her shoulders was discovered a complete key to the writing
on the roll of curl papers.
“Thus was
delivered into the hands of Britain’s ally, Signorina Teodorini, now accused of
treasonable communications with the enemy.”
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