Augustabad.

Stuart Menzies. This was Conrad’s introduction to M it seems likely to me that Conrad played some small part in Stuart Menzies eventual career in the service. At all events he will have raised an eyebrow or two. He gathered intelligence from  Royal Flying Corp pilots he took their undelivered reports of troop movements and artillery emplacements, compiled them and popped them in the post to Cathleen, Menzies and thence to a disbelieving War Office. They were flabbergasted that someone could be so foolhardy as to undertake such a mission at first they refused to accept even the hottest reports. But one day The British flew their top secret new bomber the “Handley Paige” to Air Command in France. An electrical storm over the channel wrecked the instrument panel rendering them blind. They decided to land the aircraft and ask directions. They circled a few times and found a suitable landing site. No sooner had they landed than a German patrol appeared and captured the plane and it's crew of two.  The German General Staff wishing to capitalise on their good fortune took the pilot to the place where they were building their own bomber designed to bomb London. They made the mistake of showing the pilot their blueprints. He it happened had a photographic memory. Soon he and Conrad were creating a report on the plane's most interesting aspects for the next letter to Cathleen.

Two weeks later the plans were in the hands of the War Office. Conrad had caught their interest. Conrad in essence was M’s first agent. It had been suspected the pilot had been a spy The press was full of it, he had a foreign name. The plans and Conrad's intelligence repudiated such suspicions. Soon London had an escape planned the pilot was included. Conrad wrote for German money and maps and enquired on the possibility of using a boat to get out of the country. Cathleen sent five hundred Mark notes concealed in the false bottom of a biscuit tin. The guards were reservists the Landsturm, they had been plying them with titbits from food parcels coffee tinned meat butter etc.. When Fritz was offered a hundred mark note, a veritable fortune to him a deal was made. It was arranged that at a given signal Fritz would turn a blind eye an allow them to escape. Fritz had also bought a couple of bicycles which he had hidden in the woods for them. Everything was set. They impatiently for word from War Office.