to the German Consul in London to offer his services. Receiving no answer, he travelled to Berlin without permission to take leave, where he telephoned the German Foreign Ministry and demanded to talk to an English-speaker. That resulted in him making contact with a Major Mueller under the Brandenburg Gate, where he agreed to spy for Germany. Using the pretext of studying for Staff College examinations, he borrowed from the Aldershot Military Library specifications and photographs of an experimental tank, the Vickers A1E1 Independent, as well as a new automatic rifle and notes on the organisation of tank and armoured car units. It was charged that he had sold this material to a German known as "Otto Waldemar Obst" in return for which he received two letters signed "Marie-Luise", one containing ten £5 notes and the other four £10 notes. Evidence was also produced that he had also made several trips to the Netherlands to meet his handlers. MI5 files have since shown that Marie-Luise had been merely a figment of his controller's imagination. Major Mueller's covername was Obst (fruit) and Baillie-Stewart's was Poiret (little pear), and Marie-Luise, a type of pear, was used to conceal their correspondence. Ballie was convicted of seven of the ten charges against him and was imprisoned for five years. He was released from Maidstone Prison on 20 January 1937. He was initially held at the Tower of London and was the last British subject to be held there as a proper prisoner, rather than as one awaiting transfer. German collaboration After his release from prison in 1937, Baillie-Stewart moved to Vienna, where he applied for Austrian citizenship. However, it was refused since he did not meet the residency qualification. In August 1937, the Austrian government, led by Kurt Schuschnigg, suspected him of being a Nazi agent and gave him three weeks to leave Austria. Baillie-Stewart's disenchantment with Britain was increased when the British embassy in Vienna refused to help him. Rather than return to Britain he went to Bratislava, which was then in Czechoslovakia. Following the Anschluss, Baillie-Stewart was able to return to Austria, where he made a modest living by operating a trading company. He applied for naturalisation, but the application was delayed by bureaucracy at the ministry, and he did not become a German citizen until 1940. In July 1939, Baillie-Stewart attended a friend's party in which he happened to hear some