26
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
Ramsay was living in London, and I set out to see him before visiting Canning, who was at his farm some miles away.
I found Ramsay in a small inconspicuous hotel. He was an
unusually tall and gangling Scot, with a pronounced eagle
nose. This once honored member of His Majesty's Parliament
was now dressed in a frayed black suit and shoes that had seen
better days. He had a close-cropped mustache and thinning
hair. His deep-set brown eyes were settled in circles of wrinkles. He impressed me as austere and snobbish. His first question to me was: "Have you met Tyler Kent in the States?"
He was referring to the former decoding-clerk of our London Embassy, convicted of betraying the contents of cablegrams exchanged between Churchill and Roosevelt to one
Anna Wolkoff (a pro-Nazi woman of White Russian origin
living in London). Through her this vital information was to
be transmitted to Germany through Italian agents in London.2
Ramsay was formerly one of the figures in the Nordic
League, at which William