iss X Unmasked Her Boss
... de Was a Master Spy

*

By CHIEF INSPECTOR SIDNEY S. BIRCH

HE BRAVEST GIRL I ever

knew was a British secret agent.

I met her the only time my
duties at Scotland Yard’s Fingerprint
Department took me into that twi-
light world of international espionage
just before the last war.

I shall always remember her. She
had forgotten more about courage
than many soldiers ever learn on the
battlefield.

And the scene of the exploit which
brought her to my notice? London,
gay capital with its busy streets and
carefree peacetime crowds. It was in
this setting that Miss X, as I shall call
her, trapped a gang of Russian spies.

Most of what happened is‘ still
secret. To the detectives of the Special
Branch who watched her like
guardian angels during the days of
her greatest danger, Miss X was a
slender girl with dainty ankles and
honey-blonde hair, who walked light-
heartedly, seemingly unaware of dis-
creet men in overcoats who stirred at
street corners as she passed.

To the Military Intelligence De-
partment at the War Office she was a
secret agent, assigned to a dangerous
Mission.

To her mother and brother in the
old English manor house where she
spent her childhood she was an em-
barrassing pause in tea-time conversa-
tion—the daughter who “seemed to
have got mixed up with some dreadful
Communists in London.”

Poet Who Sought Red Revolt

For she bore the burden of many
who risk their lives silently for their
country—not even her loved ones
must know.

Miss X loved England. Just as
fiercely and with equal purpose as the
spy against whom she battled loved
Russia. He was dark, distinguished,
suave, with greying temples and good
suits. A reader of poetry and a
dreamer of revolt under high’ scarlet
banners. I will call him George, al-
though that was not his real name.

After 10 years fervent service to the
Communist International in Britain,
TWENTY-FOURTH EDITION

OF SCOTLAND YARD
*

he was chosen at the age of 32, to go
in 1924 to India to stir sedition.

The followers he gathered were
convicted in Meerut in 1925 for con-
spiring against the King-Emperor.
But not George. Ruthless shadowmen
stepped in to effect his escape.

Tough, amiable, cigarette-
smoking Chief Detective In-
spector Sidney Summerhill Birch
has had 29 years of hectic police
life. Until his recent retirement
he was second-in-command of
Scotland Yard’s famed and
feared fingerprint department.
In his car, with its specially
equipped laboratory, Birch has
turned up at nearly every major
crime in the Metropolitan dis-
trict for years. Through his
microscope he has peered at
fingerprints of a macabre
pageant of underworld charac-
ters—vicious, humorous, glamor-
ous, tragic. Here he delves into
the twilight world of interna-
tional espionage and tells how a
pretty blonde secretary trapped
a gang of Russian spies.

Back in England, he got a job at
Woolwich Arsenal in his trade of en-
gineer. For three years he tried to
spread unrest until, in 1928, the
authorities dismissed him, amid pro-
tests from indignant British working-
men who thought a colleague was be-
ing victimized.

George traveled to attend an ad-
vance course in anarchy at the Lenin
Communist School, Moscow.

I learnt that among the subjects he
was taught was a primer course in
fingerprints as a means of identifica-
tion, types of materials upon which
they were most easily detectable, and
the use of chemical powders to bring
up prints on documents.

He was armed with all the knowl-
edge that Russia’s forensic scientists
could give him on how to use finger-

prints as a weapon of offence without
being caught by them.

Yet he was caught by them. He
made his mistake—as even the
cleverest men do.

Scotland Yard raised watchful eye-
brows when he returned two years
later. His life had changed. He no
longer worked, but seemed to have
an income, with cash to spare for
printing secretly a small magazine
which tried to spread sedition in the
British armed forces.

The British Secret Service noted all
this, too, and “Miss X”—still in her
teens—quietly joined the organization
of which George was a member.

After a while the comrades no
longer lowered their voices in her
presence. Keys and documents were
left around.

So Miss X lit a tiny candle of light
in that dark red kitchen. By 1934 the
magazine which sought to spread un-
rest among the troops was flopping.
George turned to organizing small,
malcontent Communist groups in East
London factories.

Miss X seemed to share his pride
when the Kremlin appointed him
chief of a Communist espionage sys-
tem in Britain. He celebrated by pub-
lishing an illegal booklet, dedicated
this time to creating unrest among
defence workers. When an_ unfor-
tunate accident occurred to stockpiles
of the booklet, Miss X seemed as up-
set as anyone.

The quiet Miss X was seldom far
from George. One can only imagine
the courage that went into her seven
years of patient work before she
finally trapped him. Furtive phone
calls—then blank-faced innocence as
yet another Communist plot failed; an
emissary intercepted, a message un-
delivered, while the organization
hunted for the betrayer.

In February, 1937, George asked her
to rent a furnished flat for the organ-
ization in Holland Road. I remember
looking through this flat for finger-

(Continued on Page 68)

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