She Acquires a Dragon
“The dancer proceeded to Rotterdam. Investigation there has since proved that she had no ‘communal rights property’ to settle with any one, and further that Captain MacLeod of the Dutch Army was known among his fellow officers as pronouncedly pro-German.
“Soon Mata-Hari returned to Paris. She was seen at the Café de Paris and at Maxim’s, and at Armenonville in the Bois with an English officer who wore on the lapel of his collar, as insignia denoting his branch of service, a little twisted brass dragon. Months later, when more of these badges were seen on British officers passing through Paris, it became known that the dragon was of the official insignia denoting service with the tanks.
“Mata-Hari sported a new bauble soon after taking up with the Englishman—a jeweled replica of his gold insignia—her dragon had real emeralds for eyes, and a carrot-shaped ruby for a tongue darting from its opened fangs.
“In May, 1916, a little more than a month before the Somme offensive opened and tanks were first used, Mata-Hari appeared before the police magistrate of her district and requested a safe conduct to visit a certain port in France. The reason she gave was that her fiancé, an English officer, was seriously wounded and in hospital there. He had sent for her to come to see him. Perhaps they would be married at his death-bed if he could not recover, she volunteered, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The safe conduct was made out, and Mata-Hari arrived at a certain French port almost simultaneously with the first consignment of tanks shipped over from England.”
She spent the greater part of her time for a week strolling about the town making frequent excursions by night, and then just a month before Foch and Haig began their drive along the Somme she appeared again in Paris.
“The first thing she did was to apply for a visé on her passport permitting her to go to Spain. San Sebastian was the place she mentioned, as she explained she wished to attend the horse-races there. Her papers were stamped and sealed and she left almost immediately for the fashionable winter resort in the south.
“Madrid, Spain, and Nauen, Germany, are in constant wireless communication. There are other radio stations, privately owned, in Spain which can flash messages to Germany, according to Allied intelligence officers who have investigated. And of course there are innumerable German agents, spies, and propaganda disseminators infesting the land of the Dons.
“Secret service reports disclose the fact that Mata-Hari was seen much in company at San Sebastian race-track with a man long looked upon with suspicion by the French government. He was a frequent caller upon her at the hotel where she stopped, and it was reported that he made many of the big bets she placed on horses that did not materialize as winners.