STRANGE SIDE SHOWS
All this time we were living in the atmosphere of a ‘Shilling Shocker’
or, as the Americans call it, the ‘Dime Novel.’ When one started
work in the morning one could never tell what the day was to bring
forth, what curious personage would be ushered into the room, what
high adventure or what squalid little tragedy would be unfolded by
some occupant of the low armchair. Vivid impressions trod close upon
the heels of one another. It was like fragments of melodramatic films
pieced together at random: all had to be carried in the mind until the
case might be considered closed. Most of the actors in these dramas
disappeared into the outer space, and then months later they would
drift in again in some new drama, only to disappear finally after the
Armistice.
What has become of them all? What are all those spies and pseudo-spies
now doing for a living? Where are all the temporary officers who were
living riotously at the Savoy like butterflies that emerge untimely
into the winter sunshine? Where are the girls that shared their revels
during those purple weeks? Are they serving behind some counter? Have
they pawned their jewellery and their furs? Or are they safely married
in some suburban lodging and finding life a little flat? What has
become of the young men who tore about the country in high-powered
cars, who loved to use their cut-out while racing up the Mall? Do
they now drive motor-’buses, or are they chicken-farming in Canada?
The whole drama and all the actors have vanished, as they do in the
real theatre ten minutes after the curtain has fallen. And where are
the young women who used to take us elderly gentlemen by the elbow
and help us into ’buses? Do they miss the toes of the passengers on
which they used to tread; the uniform, the excitement of doing men’s
work; or are they glad to be quit of it all and settle down to some
less exciting occupation? These young people thought that there was
to be a new heaven and a new earth in which the young would toil not
nor spin but would have purses like the widow’s cruse. And the rest of
us thought that there would certainly be a new earth--mostly made up
of revolutions. As the War went on we began to realise that the real
England--all the England that really mattered--was in Northern France,
in Gallipoli, in Salonika, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
All the exciting events, from the point of view of police action, seem
to have been crowded into 1915 and the early part of 1916. September
was a notable month because we had at the same time the great forgeries
of the ‘G’ series of Treasury Notes, the seizure of the Austrian
dispatches from the United States which were being carried by an
American journalist, and the Indian murder conspiracy.
It had been reported to the police that the little active band of
Indian revolutionaries who were working with the Germans in Berlin
were running to and from Switzerland in connection with an extensive
assassination plot. A seizure of documents late in August corroborated
this. Whether the plot was devised by certain Indian revolutionaries or
by the Germans themselves is not clear. The plan was to bring about the
simultaneous assassination of the leading men in Entente countries.
The names of the King of Italy, Lord Grey, Lord Kitchener, Mons.
Poincaré, Mons. Viviani, and Sr. Salandro were specially mentioned.
The bombs had been manufactured in Italy and were tested by the German
military authorities at the military testing ground near Berlin. At
the English end of the conspiracy were certain British Indians, one of
whom was living with a German woman whom he declared to be his wife.
An Englishwoman was known to be privy to their plans, and a Swiss
girl was the messenger between Switzerland and the English group. The
case was one of extraordinary difficulty, because the real culprit,
Chattopadhya, an Indian well known in Berlin, made only flying visits
to Switzerland, and was careful never to set foot on the soil of an
Entente country. As soon as the available evidence was complete steps
were taken simultaneously to detain all the persons who were in British
jurisdiction. They were interned as persons dangerous to the safety of
the Realm, and kept in internment until the Armistice, despite repeated
appeals to the Committee set up to revise Internment Orders made by the
Home Secretary.
About the examinations in my room there was never anything in the
nature of what the Americans call the ‘Third Degree,’ which, I
understand, consists in startling or wearying the suspect into a
confession. If they preferred not to answer questions they were
detained until further inquiry could be made about them. In many cases
it was the detention that influenced them. They were not sent to prison
unless it was clear that their detention would have to be prolonged.
There was a range of cells in the adjacent building of Cannon Row
Police Station: one of these was furnished as a bed-sitting-room,
and was known as the ‘extradition cell’: the others were the ordinary
cells in which remand prisoners are placed after arrest. One has to
put oneself into the suspect’s position in order to realise what
this change of circumstances meant to him. He had been full of the
excitement and interest of foreign travel, fresh from a voyage in a
liner, where he was unsuspected and liked. Suddenly he found himself
within four narrow walls, in silence and without the amenities of
comfortable armchairs and tables. If he wished to write he might do so,
but everything he wrote would be subject to scrutiny. He had, however,
ample time for reflection, and now that the first move must come from
his side it was not long before he would send a request for another
interview. If he did not he would, in course of time, be sent for, but
the period of waiting without any fixed date usually had its effect.
In the middle of October 1915 very definite evidence reached us of the
extent of the German-Indian conspiracy and the length the conspirators
were prepared to go. The Indian Committee in Berlin was established
quite early in the War. After his expulsion from the United States
Har Dayal, who had been conducting the ‘Ghadr’ (Mutiny) newspaper
in California, went to Switzerland, and on the outbreak of war he,
Chattopadhya, and some other Indian revolutionaries who were living
in Switzerland went to Berlin. At first the Germans, feeling that
they had them quite in their power, treated them with some contempt,
but this attitude changed when one or two Germans who posed as Indian
experts persuaded the Government to found an Indian Committee to
concert measures for starting a revolution in India under a German
President. They had a Press Bureau and a regular working scheme for
corrupting the loyalty of Indian prisoners of war. Still, though tons
of paper and lakes of ink were consumed, no headway was being made
until March 1915, when an Indian land-owner named Pertabr conceived
the plan of going over to the Germans in the character of an Indian
prince. He had some slight claim to this self-assumed title since he
was the son of a deposed ruler of a small native State. Having obtained
a passport from the Indian Government on the backing of a man whose
loyalty was unquestioned, he arrived in Switzerland from Marseilles and
lost no time in communicating with Har Dayal, who took him to see the
German Consul. Now it does not take much to deceive a German official
about Oriental matters. Pertabr wore native dress, and was aloof and
condescending. In fact, his haughtiness was exactly what the German
Consul would have expected from a Rajah. When pressed to enter the
Fatherland Pertabr declared firmly that he would not cross the German
frontier until he had a promise that the Kaiser would receive him in
person. This arrangement suited Har Dayal admirably, for he would
become the intermediary between the two potentates and the springs of
money would begin again to flow. After several journeys to and from
Berlin an audience was arranged. It was characteristic of the German
Consul that he besought Pertabr in all humility to say a good word for
him to the All Highest when he should enter the Presence.
No doubt Pertabr had day-dreams of himself mounted on a fiery white
steed at the head of conquering bands as the new liberator of India. At
Delhi he would receive the homage of the native princes. He may have
imbued the Kaiser with some of these ideas, though one cannot imagine
that the Imperial mind had any day-dreams of Oriental conquests in
which some other man was to prance on a white horse; but however this
may be, a mission did start for Kabul, headed by ‘Prince’ Pertabr with
three German officers and several released Indian prisoners of war, to
raise the Amir against India. They passed through Constantinople during
the first week of September, and then they disappeared into space. It
was learned afterwards that they got no farther than Afghanistan, and
that the fragments of the mission were reported many months later to be
wandering as homeless outcasts about Central Asia.
That was not the end of the German attempts upon India. Some few months
later there came into our hands an autograph letter addressed by the
Kaiser to the ruling princes in India, which had been photographed down
to a size little exceeding that of a postage stamp, and enclosed in a
tiny tube to be concealed about the body. The belief in German circles
was that Persia was about to rise on the side of Germany, and that that
would be the signal for the invasion of India by the Afghans.
The headquarters of the Indian conspirators who were being manipulated
by the Germans in America were at Berkeley, California. It was there
that the ‘Ghadr’ (Mutiny) newspaper was printed in the vernacular,
and arrangements were made for shipping arms to India at the German
expense. It took many months to convince the Californian police
authorities that there were ample grounds for taking action under the
neutrality laws, but when they did move they moved to some purpose. The
two Indian leaders were arrested. When they were brought to trial one
of them, convinced from the intimate knowledge of his secret activities
disclosed by the prosecution that the other had turned informer,
slipped a pistol from his pocket and shot his companion in open court.
But in the Western States such incidents do not disturb the presence of
mind of Assize Court officials: the deputy-sheriff whipped an automatic
from his pocket, and from his elevated place at the back of the court,
aiming above and between the intervening heads, shot the murderer dead.
And so, in less than ten seconds the sentence which the Judge was about
to pronounce was more than executed.
The Germans are not naturally fitted to acquire an influence over
Orientals, though they have tried hard to do it. The Kaiser, who was a
master of pantomimic display, rode into Jerusalem properly clad as a
new Crusader. He conformed to such Oriental customs as were considered
compatible with his dignity, and he was getting on quite well until
some vulgar-minded non-German Europeans set the natives laughing at
him. Ridicule kills more surely than the assassin’s knife.
I remember a rather pompous proconsul who was determined to impress
the natives of the Pacific Islands by stage-management. He happened to
be a Doctor of Law at Cambridge, and, in addition to his gilded Civil
Service uniform, he arrayed himself in the scarlet robe of a Doctor of
Law, and stalked solemnly under the palm-trees with two little native
boys carrying his train. The natives had never seen anything quite so
gorgeous, and all went well until the procession had to pass a store
kept by a certain ribald Englishman with an extensive knowledge of the
vernacular. It was enough for him to utter one phrase in the native
language to scatter all the official pomp to the four winds. The
comment ran down the whispering gallery to the farthest recesses of
the island, and, instead of the awed hush on which the proconsul had
counted, he was received with broad and rather pitying smiles. That
finished any prestige that he might have had in this particular group.
It was so once with a French naval post-captain who determined to
overawe the natives with a display of naval force. To this end he
landed a considerable force of bluejackets and began to drill them on
shore. He had a peculiar strut in his walk which fired the imagination
of a small native boy who had been born lacking in a sense of
reverence. As the captain marched proudly at the head of his men he
became conscious that there was something about him which was provoking
roars of merriment among the spectators. He began furtively to pat
various parts of his anatomy to see whether there had been a mishap to
his clothing, and it was not for some time that he realised that just
behind him was a small boy caricaturing his every movement. That little
episode settled the French question.
But I am wandering far from my subject, which was German intrigues in
the Orient. Some little time before the War German agents had made
great play with the tribes in the hinterland of Tripoli, and when war
was declared they did succeed in producing in the Senussi a hostile
spirit against the Allies. In 1916 an English ship of war, the _Tara_,
was sunk by a submarine off the North African coast. As usual, the
German commander made no attempt to save the crew, but officers and men
to the number of about a hundred did succeed in getting ashore. They
found themselves in an inhospitable sandy desert, with nothing but what
they stood up in and with no means of communicating with the outside
world. For all that was known, the ship had been sunk with all hands.
The first step, of course, was to get something to eat and drink. A
little way inland they found a well, but there was a dead camel in
it. At first they thought that the death of the camel might have been
recent, and they hauled him up with the idea of eating him, but the
first cut with a knife was enough, and they left him where he was,
and yet forty-eight hours later some of them were glad to eat of this
loathsome food, or go under.
Very soon after their landing they fell into the hands of Senussi
Arabs, who gave them almost nothing to eat and insisted upon their
marching inland under the pitiless sun half dead with hunger and
thirst. At last they reached a little village presided over by what
they took to be a Mohammedan priest, but the bluejackets nicknamed him
‘Holy Joe.’ ‘Holy Joe’ was a holy terror. He drove these wretched men
out in the morning under the lash to till his fields, and he gave them
next to nothing to eat. Fortunately, the desert in these parts grew
snails--great grey-shelled monsters--in prodigious numbers, and it was
part of the routine to bring in from the fields a quota of these snails
for the evening meal. The cook became quite expert in the management
of snails. There was no lid to the pot, and there was not enough fuel
to bring the water to the boil before putting in his snails, so he put
them in cold and poured water upon them, or what passed for water in
these parts, and lighted the fire. As the pot warmed up, the snails,
not unnaturally, tried to get out, and the cook had to spend his time
in heading them back again. When the evening meal was ready the snails
had left their shells and lay in a muddy and unappetising mass at the
bottom of the soup. That is what our wretched men had to live upon for
months, and as time wore on the hunting-grounds were farther afield.
They had eaten all the snails for furlongs round the plantations.
Once the commander made an attempt to escape in order to report the
existence of the prisoners to some one who would communicate with
Egypt, but he failed. He had, however, written appeals to the Turkish
authorities for more food, and it was through one of these appeals that
deliverance came.
Every one remembers the fine exploit of the Duke of Westminster with
his fleet of armoured cars--how he scattered a Turkish army, and how he
carried terror into the hearts of the tribesmen. Now it chanced that
on the evening of the action some of his men discovered a derelict
motor-car and searched it, and that, in the course of the search, they
lighted upon a dirty piece of paper and brought it in to the Duke. It
was actually one of the commander’s appeals, and it gave the name of
the village. Thus, for the first time certain rumours that British
prisoners were detained by the Senussi were confirmed. But now came
a fresh difficulty. No one knew where the village was. It was not
marked in any of the maps, and one could not scour the desert in every
direction to find what might be a mythical village. Inquiries were made
of the Turkish prisoners, and at last one was found who had heard of
the village. In fact, his father had once taken him there when he was a
little boy, but all he remembered of it was that on the hill above it
there was a single date-tree and under the date-tree an ancient stone
well. He thought that it lay in the direction to which he pointed.
This prisoner was taken up on one of the light cars as a guide. For
many hours they ploughed the sand, and then there was a council of war.
They had petrol not much more than sufficient for the return journey.
If they went any farther they might have to leave the car behind them,
but the Duke would not turn back. Whatever happened, he meant to find
this village and to rescue the prisoners, and so they went on, and a
very few minutes later the guide uttered a loud cry, sprang from the
car, and lay grovelling in the sand. ‘An ambush!’ every one said, and
they covered him with their rifles in order that, if any had to die,
he should be the first, but it was no ambush. With keener sight than
theirs he had spied the single date-palm. They took him up again and
drove to the palm. He jumped down and dug at the sand like a dog, until
he disclosed the coping of an ancient well, and a few yards farther on
they came in sight of the village.
The company of prisoners were just sitting down to discuss their
evening snails when a bluejacket came in breathless to say that he
had seen a ‘blinking motor-car.’ Either he was pulling their legs or
he had a touch of the sun, and in either case the best treatment was
to throw stones at him, which they did, but he persisted, and at last
a few of them broke away from the circle to reconnoitre. There, sure
enough, in the slanting rays of the sun _was_ a motor-car. They ran
towards it hailing it as loudly as they could, and they in the car
itself, seeing a party of gaunt and vociferous natives almost naked
in their rags, were for keeping them at a safe distance. It was not
until they recognised the English language that they knew they were
fellow-countrymen.
Normally, the story stops there, but a bluejacket who was one of the
party added a little postscript of his own. Before they left the
village there was a little account to settle--a little matter of
account with ‘Holy Joe,’ who had wielded the whip over them all these
months. He winked and he nodded, and he would say no more, but it was
gathered that ‘Holy Joe’ did not go out of this world with a smile upon
his face.
The Germans were as busy with the Moors as they were with the Arabs,
and their efforts were quite as ineffective. It must have been uphill
work in Morocco for the German agent. There was one who had brought
the Sus tribes almost up to the point of rising, but they stipulated
for arms. Otherwise they would throw in their lot against Germany.
There was nothing for it but to tell them that arms had been written
for, and that they might be expected by ship at any moment. With such
promises the Germans managed to keep up the spirit of expectation
until one day the lights of a steamer were seen approaching. Evidently
this was the long-promised vessel. The whole tribe turned out upon the
beach to assist in landing the cargo, but suddenly a dazzling beam shot
out from the vessel, illuminating the whole of the foreshore. It was
a French warship, and in another moment a shell from one of the guns
landed right in the middle of the village. So that was the kind of
lie on which the German agent was feeding them! There were whispered
consultations. No one knows except the German agent, who is not now
in a position to tell us, exactly what happened. One must always make
subtractions from native stories, but the tale that reached Tangier was
that the German was bidden to a meal at which he ate certain viands
which disagreed with him, so that in the end, being a very fat man, he
burst asunder and gave up his life.
The war work of women made many friendships and a few implacable
enmities. The husband of a lady of high degree came to consult me about
an anonymous letter that had reached her. No threats, either actual or
implied, brought it within the criminal law, and, as he pointed out,
the handwriting and the notepaper, as well as an obviously intimate
knowledge of the lady, marked it as being the production of a person
of the same class, not improbably a ‘friend.’ To say that it contained
home-truths would be a reckless under-statement. It was the outpouring
of a spirit that can endure no more. ‘You are well known,’ it said,
‘as the most disagreeable and vulgar woman in London,’ and it went on
to tell her why. I could almost hear the sigh of relief as she signed
herself ‘A Well-wisher.’
No question here of a German spy nor of criminal proceedings, but
mysterious documents are always fascinating, and by the time the
husband called again I had identified the writer beyond possibility
of error as a lady of the same War Committee revolving in the same
social circle as the recipient of the letter. I told the husband that
the mystery was cleared up. ‘But what we want to know,’ he said, ‘is
who wrote it.’ On that point I said I could not enlighten him: it was
against the rules. The next day he returned with a list of his wife’s
friends whose attachment to her was doubtful, and asked me to say
whether the list did or did not include the anonymous writer. I fear he
has never forgiven me for remaining firm.
They have curious ideas abroad about the way in which the British
conduct a war. A Bulgarian who was taking leave of an English official
when returning to Bulgaria said, ‘Remember, I have nothing to say
about this plan of assassinating Ferdinand.’ ‘What plan?’ asked the
astonished Englishman. ‘Your plan. You are clearly within your rights,
but I think as time goes on you will find out that Ferdinand will be
more useful to you alive than dead.’ Before Roumania came into the War
a Roumanian met a general of the Prussian Staff at dinner in Berlin.
After dinner the general said, ‘I knew your late King. He was a fine
man. What a pity the English murdered him.’ The Roumanian replied that
there must be some mistake: the King died in his bed. But the general
brushed this aside, and gave him a list of the notables in various
countries who had been murdered by the English. One of them was Jaurès,
the French Socialist!
In July 1915 officers returning from the Front noticed a wave of
pessimism as unreasonable as the former optimism. People were just
recovering from the shock of learning that Lord Kitchener had foretold
that the War would last three years instead of the six months that
so many had been counting upon. The cry of ‘Look at the map’ was in
the mouth of constitutional pessimists in high places, and if one had
looked at the map instead of at the men there would have been no spirit
left in any one. Fortunately, geography is not efficiently taught us
at school. All we knew was that, man for man, our soldiers were better
than the Germans and that if, as we were sometimes told, the winning of
the War depended upon killing Germans we should win through in the end;
or if, as the Germans were never tired of telling each other, it was to
be a war of endurance, we felt sure that we could hold out longer than
they. When a party was criticising the conduct of the War in November
1915, I remember a naval officer retorting, ‘If our Admiralty and our
War Office and all our Government Departments had been perfect we
should have lost the War long ago.’
A little later in the War the same naval officer was examining a
captured German submarine officer. The German said bitterly, ‘I cannot
understand you English. If you had joined hands with us we should have
dominated the world between us.’
‘But,’ replied the British sailor, ‘we did not want to dominate the
world.’ The German appeared to feel that he understood the English less
than ever.
In the autumn of 1915 the horde of young Irishmen who were emigrating
to escape military service became a scandal. The number of Irish
emigrants of military age during October 1915 was four thousand.
Even so, it is to be doubted whether a new regulation prescribing
that no passport was to be granted to men of military age would have
been passed but for the fact that the Irish stokers on a White Star
liner refused to carry such emigrants, and one Company after another,
including even two American lines, refused to allow them to come on
board their ships.
The suppression of a daily newspaper was resorted to only once during
the War. On 5th November 1915 the _Globe_, which had helped the
police more than once, published a statement that Lord Kitchener had
tendered his resignation to the King, whereas, in fact, he was leaving
the country on an important mission which could not at the moment be
made public. On the following day a warrant was drawn up, empowering
officers of the Special Branch to suppress the paper. As no newspaper
had been suppressed in England for about a century there were no
precedents on which we could work, nor was I sufficiently acquainted
with the mechanical details of newspaper production to be able to
instruct the officers off-hand what part of the machinery should be
seized and removed. We entered the premises between five and six that
evening. The machines were in full blast in the basement. Newspaper
boys were hurrying in and out. The Inspector showed the warrant to
the manager, and the machines were stopped. Going downstairs, I found
a very obliging man who must have thought that I was a more or less
distinguished visitor who was to be shown over the plant. I said
to him, ‘Supposing that you wanted to take away some part of this
machinery which would make it impossible to run the machines again
until it was restored and yet do no damage to the plant, what would
you take?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said, and he led me to a certain
engine, from which he took a portion which I could carry away in my
hand. I thanked him, and carried it away. That was how the _Globe_ was
suppressed until such time as the directors of the newspaper had come
to an arrangement with the Government.
The restrictions on the liberty of the Press were really imposed by the
Press itself. Proprietors and editors measured all their criticisms
by one test--whether what they wished to publish would be turned
to account by the enemy. Their patriotism throughout the War was
whole-hearted and unquestioned.
In 1916 an Austrian submarine stopped a steamer in the Mediterranean
on which Colonel Napier and Captain Wilson were passengers. They were
carrying the diplomatic bags from the Legation in Athens. All but one
of the bags were immediately thrown overboard, but as they contained
buoyant packages insufficiently compensated by weights, one at least
failed to sink and was picked up by the submarine. From the fact that
the Austrians hailed the steamer and demanded the surrender of Colonel
Napier by name it was clear that a spy, probably at Corfu, had given
them information. Naturally there was some confusion: a lady concealed
the bag that had not been thrown overboard; Colonel Napier went on
board the submarine and was interned in Austria; the steamer continued
her voyage to Italy.
Now it chanced that on the steamer was a very tall, lank currant
merchant who spoke no tongue but his native Greek, but was brimming
over with geniality, particularly towards English people, on whom he
was dying to practise the few words of English that he knew. Another
British officer who was on board undertook to carry the bag to England,
and for this purpose the steamer called at an Italian port specially
to land him. The irrepressible Greek, seeing an opportunity of making
the journey to England with a companion who would interpret for him,
hastily collected his modest luggage and, wreathed in ingratiating
smiles, attempted to board the boat. He was sternly repelled from the
gangway; the steamer continued on her voyage and landed her passengers.
The officer had gained no time by his detour: the other passengers
arrived in Rome in time to take the same train for Paris; he was
just taking his seat with the precious bag when the currant merchant
recognised him and rushed upon him with outstretched hand, as who
should say, ‘My deliverer! We will travel in the same compartment.’
Probably he ascribed the rebuff he received to the well-known
eccentricity of the British character, for at the Gare du Nord the same
comedy was enacted, as well as on the Havre-Southampton boat. Long
before this he had been classed as a German spy, and at Southampton he
was handed over to the police and brought to me in custody.
In a seedy frock-coat, unshaved, speechless, except in voluble Greek,
and bewildered by British eccentricity, he certainly seemed to justify
all the suspicions that had been attached to him. I was about to send
for a Greek interpreter when I was informed that his brother, a currant
merchant of Mincing Lane, was asking leave to come in, and there walked
into the room his double--a man so like him in stature, attenuation
and feature that when dressed alike they could never have been
distinguished. But the brother spoke fluent English, and the motive for
all this misplaced geniality was explained. I hope that this currant
merchant has not lost his love for the English nation, but I have my
doubts.
At a time when the spy mania was at its highest we found ourselves
involved in a ghost story. A certain titled foreigner, a devout
Catholic, had taken and enlarged an early Tudor farm in one of the
southern counties in which, according to local tradition, a Spanish
friar named Don Diego had been found concealed during one of the
Recusant persecutions and murdered. To the simple villagers any
foreigner, disembodied or otherwise, was almost certain to be engaged
in intrigues against the Allied cause, and if he had been a priest in
these troublous times he could have had no love for this Protestant
country. Moreover, the farm had been filled with strange furniture
and was full of dark corners, mysterious doorways and galleries.
Strangers came down from London for week-ends, and it was whispered in
the village that there were strange doings behind the oaken shutters
after nightfall. In this rumour was for once correct. Don Diego made no
corporeal appearance: he was a voice and nothing more, but a voice of
such a musical and thrilling quality that, in the opinion of those who
listened, it could have proceeded from no earthly throat. Don Diego was
more concerned with mundane than with spiritual matters, and his chief
concern was match-making, which was unusual in disembodied spirits and
not altogether becoming in a murdered priest. He wanted his host to
make an advantageous marriage.
The manifestations began generally at dinner. A singularly sweet voice
of the quality which in ghost stories is called sepulchral would be
heard calling the name of a guest: the family professed not to hear
the voice. The guest would leave the table and follow the voice to
the hall, where she would commune with it in private and return to
her dinner filled with its mysterious injunctions. She had heard it,
now from the gallery, now from the staircase, for the shade of Don
Diego was amazingly agile in its movements, and to prove that it was
no human voice there was the fact that whichever lady happened to be
called the ghost could always tell her something of her past life, or
some family secret that was known only to herself. These, however, were
mere conversational by-paths; the burden of the sing-song voice was
that people must be up and doing if the Count (for that was the host’s
title) was to make an advantageous marriage.
The rumours of espionage became so persistent that I invited the
gentleman to an interview. He was nervous and evasive; he admitted
the supernatural manifestations, but remarked that he could not be
held responsible for having taken a haunted house. I felt certain,
nevertheless, that he knew all about it, and I told him plainly that
Don Diego must thenceforth lie quiet in his grave. It was a peculiarity
of the murdered priest that he became vocal when the Count was present
in the room. Sometimes the butler and one at least of the two footmen
were there too; at others the Count would be absent and the servants be
clearing the dinner-table.
The fame of Don Diego spread very rapidly, and a small party of
gentlemen interested in psychic phenomena took the matter up. What they
represented themselves to be in order to gain admission to the haunted
house I do not know, but I can conjecture. They found the poor Count in
a state of nervous prostration from a disturbing anonymous letter that
had reached him, and he was prepared for a visit of some kind; in fact,
he was in a condition very favourable to their designs. What passed at
an interview in which there was consummate acting on both sides has
not transpired, but it resulted in a full written confession, and Don
Diego has since appeared no more. The Count himself, aided by his Irish
butler and two other men-servants, had been the voice in turns, the
duty falling upon him who happened to be disengaged at the moment, and
the confession was countersigned by them all. The supposed apparitions
of Don Diego, it said, were produced by purely natural means for the
purpose of practical joking, and an undertaking was given that no more
phenomena would occur.