No. 101 (ePub)

Excerpt: ?There was a real ?No. 101.? Unpublished MS. despatches now in the Record Office of the British Museum reveal the interesting fact that on more than one occasion the British Government obtained important French state secrets through an agent known to the British ministers as ?No. 101.? Who this mysterious agent was, whether it was a man or a woman, why and how he or she so successfully played the part of a traitor, have not, so far as is known to the present writer, been discovered by historians or archivists. The references in the confidential correspondences supply no answer to such questions. If the British ministers knew all the truth, they kept it to themselves, and it perished with them. Doubtless there were good reasons for strict secrecy. But it is more than possible that they themselves did not know, that throughout they simply dealt with a cipher whose secret they never penetrated. It is, however, clear that ?No. 101? was in a position to discover some of the most intricate designs in the policy of the French Court, and that the British Government, through its agents, was satisfied of the genuineness of the secrets for which it paid handsomely. On the undoubted existence of this mysterious cipher, and the riddles that that existence suggests, the writer has based his historical romance.