Where Mata-Hari obtained her first tip on the tanks has not yet been disclosed. And that is one reason why the "memoirs" which she is writing in her cell at Saint Lazare prison are being awaited with fear and anxiety by at least one person, and with the liveliest interest by the world at large.
It is rumored that a Deputy inadvertently gave her the first information about tanks. And the rumor is strengthened by the fact that Mata-Hari had plenty of coal for her apartment during the fuel famine in winter. That in itself is proof enough to everybody of her intimacy with some high official, as few people short of Deputies had influence enough to obtain a hundredweight of coal during the bitter months of January, February and March.
In any event, Mara-Hari learned vaguely of tanks early in 1916, when the Krupp guns of the Crown Prince were daily booming nearer and nearer to Verdun in that terrific struggle which was to mark the turning point of the war. Mata-Hari also learned that the tanks were being constructed in England and would be shipped to France _viâ_ certain ports--and she got the names of the ports.
Then Mata-Hari decided she must return to her native country, Holland. For, with all her Javanese appellation, she was born near Rotterdam, although it is true she went to the Dutch East Indies when a tiny child. She gave as reason for going to Holland the fact that she had married a Dutch army officer with a Scotch name--Capt. Macleod, that they had divorced, and she wished to arrange a settlement of their common property.
Her passports were made out, and safe conducts granted for a trip to Holland, _viâ_ England, of course, as that is the only way to get into the Low Countries from the Allied side.
Mata-Hari went to England. But before she proceeded to Holland, as Secret Service agents of the British and French Governments ascertained, she visited a certain English manufacturing city, where, it so happened, the tanks were being constructed.
Evidently Mata-Hari did not find out much about the tanks there, as not a man connected with their construction ever passed through the gates of the high brick wall which surrounded the factory during the six months that the first "fleet" was building. The men were boarded, entertained and employed here continually. Every letter they sent out or received was subjected to the most rigorous censorship.