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call at ‘3000’, which he naturally could make no sense of. A mistake of this sort could have had extremely serious consequences. Gambier-Parry’s investigation of the matter revealed the care rightly lavished on the system. The master substitution tables – each of which had ten vertical and horizontal columns, and a hundred different versions of which were used – were typed in the office at Whaddon Hall and a carbon copy on flimsy paper given to the agent. But the tables were ‘retyped on tough paper for the station where they receive a considerable amount of handling from day to day’. Gambier-Parry reported that the mistake had occurred in the re-typing, ‘despite the fact that the invariable practice is to have the retyped copy checked by two people independent of the person who has typed it’. He had identified the original typist (who made the copy six months previously) and ‘admonished him for his mistake’, though he argued to Menzies that it was ‘a human error of which the chances of recurrence are extremely remote’.

Secret writing was a tried and tested method of communication, but it, too, could be problematic. In late 1942 Cyril Cheshire, head of the Stockholm station, had a job persuading a Danish agent, ‘161’, who was ‘naturally of a timid nature’, to take back to Denmark some new tablets for making ‘invisible’ ink. The tablets were supplied in a Swedish box ‘which had previously contained stomach pills. I assured 161 that in case of need he could prove that these pills were for his own personal use and could demonstrate this by taking one.’ But, he continued, ‘I have no idea whether this will have any ill effect on this valuable agent, but I am hoping for the best.’ Back in Broadway a colleague noted, ‘not toxic to any great degree’, and Cheshire was reassured that the ‘developer, although slightly toxic, would not harm him in smallish doses’. While ‘the whole packet might put him under for a bit’, it was ‘unlikely to bring about his demise’.

Some of the many ingenious types of concealing devices prepared for the use of SIS and its agents.

The conveyance of reports by agents or couriers out of occupied Europe was considered by Bill Cordeaux in a review of SIS operations after the war. Most documents were ‘photographically reduced in size’ and various concealing devices were used. Reflecting that ‘ingenious concealing devices are a favourite subject with writers of spy stories’, Cordeaux remarked that ‘in practice there is not a great deal to say on the subject. Once a person is suspected of carrying secret papers, it is almost certain that a rigorous search will discover them.’ Concealing devices, therefore, were ‘normally only designed to evade a routine examination’, for which ‘a quite simple device is adequate’. Among this type, ‘the well tried ones of hollow hairbrushes, nail brushes and tooth brushes, the backs of pocket mirrors, fountain pens, pencils, the soles of shoes, cakes of soap, tooth paste and shaving cream were all used’. The most popular were creamy substances, such as toothpaste and shaving cream. Reports, reduced to ‘about a square centimetre’, would be wrapped in a condom and buried in the centre of the pot of cream concerned. In February 1944 John Bruce Lockhart in Italy reported using animals ‘with false shoes, tails, horns etc’ to get matter through controlled areas. ‘A shorn sheep, for example,’ he wrote, ‘if well fitted with a woollen skin sewn onto light gauze can conceal under it on the flat of its back a number of largish documents.’ He also claimed to know of a case where a false horse penis had improbably been employed. ‘Contrary to popular belief,’ asserted Cordeaux, ‘suitable parts of the human body, such as the inside of the mouth, hollow teeth, the aenus [sic] and the vagina were not often used.’ In one instance, however, a sleeping-car attendant on the Trieste-Lausanne train brought reports from a network in north Italy to Switzerland ‘wrapped in greaseproof cloth’ and concealed in his anus. The fastidious Cordeaux remarked that the transference of ‘reports from the agents