The Waterbury Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1917-1946, 1934-01-30
FAMOUS sPIEs-NO. 2


Many q nation has been plunged
into war when the counter ACTIVE
tiles of secret agents OF foreign
power have been revealed. 1t
wasn't long ago that the myste-
$ rious behavior of six engineers
in Soviet Russia darkened the In
ternatiOnal horizon. Their
strange story Is told below In the
= second of six modern spy tales
: written for this newspaper.
BY MILTON BRoNNER
democrat Service staff Writer)
: ia MYSTERIOUS menace had
"a hung for days over the
: household of Allan Monk
house, director Of the British
: Metropolitan Vickers Electro
: cal company in Russia. The
native servants realized it,
whether their employer did or
: not.
First of all the Russian house
keeper had strangely disappeared
without warning. Moreover, she
= had not come back. Followed un-
- explainable nocturnal rustlings and
~srappings in the house at Polevko,
not far from Moscow, strangers
s lurking about. asking odd ques-
. tons.
= Finally, as Monkhouse and three
= friends sat one evening last March
9 over their coffee and liqueurs,
twenty representatives of the Ogpu,
.~dread Russian police, arrived with
search warrants. Pushing past the
terrified servants, the officers en-
tered the house and turned out the
~.Contents of bureaus, closets and
tasks, ending by ripping open all
1.-THE mattresses in an eager search
for documents which apparently
they did not find.
Great Consequences
~ However, that was only the first
-around. Next came the arrest of
six members of the metropolitan
s.Vickers staff, including Director
~.Monkhouse. The others were Les
a-lie Charles Thornton, John Cushny
s3Charles Nordwall, William Greg
A-ory and William Lionel Macdonald.
All were taken to Lubianka prison
and varied charges which includ-
ed sabstage, the giving of brides,
.sand military and economic esp1on-
sage were lodged against them.
That was the beginning of an
alleged spy case that at one time
s.thyeatened to wreck forever the
sstrade and diplomatic relations be-
- tween Great Britain and Russia
Heand to affect unfavorably Russia S
standing withother nations, notably
- the United States.
When news of the arrests
mreached England. the country in
@stantly went wild with indigna-
s.tion. The London press waited to
hear none of the details. Stream
ers and banner-lines Immediately
: proclaimed that the Britishers were
~innocent, that they had been out
~rageously framed by the Soviets.
= The British foreign office spoke
storly to the Soviet ambassador.
THE house of commons gave over
1.-The regular business of the day to
= allow impassioned denunciations
OF "unjustified charges" The Eng
Iish ambassador to Russia was
summoned home for conference.
Russians Arrested
Meantime in Russia, the Eng
i:shmen were questioned intensive
..ly for many hours and all except
Mac Donald were released on bail.
-sSuch was the international commo-
ton at this time that many doubt
ed the case would ever come to
trial. However, the Ogpu had
gone too far in their zeal to allow
-sof graceful withdrawal, for they
had arrested twelve Russians, one
woman and eleven men, in con-
nection with the case and charged
them also with sabotage and with
taking brides. The woman had
~served as secretary to the Metro
@politan-Vickers company, the men
had been employed as workers
What made the outlook espe-
-cially far from CHEEKY was that
only a Short time bofer, a number
~of Russians convicted of sabotage
had been shot. And added compli-
cation was that one of tho Britons
was being held without bail. An
uneasy conviction began to grow
-up in England that there was
something else behind the stated
-charges, that the Ogpu had been
Searching for documents of greater
consequence than had been ad-
united.