CLAUD HEATHWAITE

Claud Heathwaite is an agent with the British Secret Service.

From his own words we learn at the onset of the recorded adventures his life's story and how he came to work for the intelligence bureau, answering to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a man he does not name specifically but whom he addresses as the Chief.

Heathwaite had been attended Eton followed by studies at Oxford, working towards a career in the diplomatic field. An initial posting as an attaché in Madrid was followed swiftly by stints in Athens, Petrograd (aka Leningrad, aka St. Petersburg), and then Paris. He was well on his way to steady promotion.

Then, in 1912, his father died and in clearing up the man's affairs learned the debts that had accrued. For the next two years he worked diligently in both his diplomatic duties as well as in settling the deceased's estate. The one bright spot in the troubles was his "inheriting" his father's manservant, Quaife, an elderly valet who was very much a cosmopolitan fellow and who would be a stalwart supporter for years to come.

We are told briefly of Heathwaite's strenuous days at the Embassy in Paris during the Great War. Roughly a year after the Armistice, Heathwaite is called into the offices of his future boss where he was told a particularly dangerous but vitally important mission to Russia was needed and he was the man for the job.

From that moment on, Heathwaite was a secret agent, one with a considerable amount of expertise in diplomacy and languages but with no formal training as an operative.

What we will discover in the set of adventures that follow this first escapade is that Heathwaite is a very resourceful and dedicated man who would know danger and excitement in a wide range of places in war-torn Europe.

For most of his writing career, which was pretty much all his adult life, the author, Le Queux, was a fervent drafter of dire predictions about the dangers from Germany and her allies, many a story or novel talking about the certain conflict to come. He would be proven correct by history.

After the War and the forced end of the Kaiser's plans, Le Queux found a couple of new dangers to cause his readership to have frets. Both would be fuel for his stories, eagerly read by a horde of followers and, apparently, viciously denouced by those "in the know".

One was the remnants of the German hegemony who struggled out of view to find ways to ease the "terrible" burden inflicted on Germany by the victors. This was to be accomplished by diplomacy or extortion, though if those did not work, starting a revolution here or there in other parts of Europe could prove distracting.

The other was the new rulers of Russia, the diabolical and very blood-thirsty bolshevists. Those schemers were not content with having taken control of the largest country in landmass; they wanted to extend their revolution to the other nations of Europe, especially England.

That is what the eight tales of Claud Heathwaite deal with and it is fascinating how stories crafted in likely 1920 were so timely. Was it just terrific imagination? Did he have inside intelligence? Who knows!?

What I do know is that these tales are darned interesting read nearly a century later with the knowledge of events that came after the author's pen had done its job.