If any Parisian anarchist does me the honour to read these jottings, I
beg to inform him that while I remained in office under the Government
of France there was never a time when I did not know the exit of each
of these underground passages, and could during any night there was
conference have bagged the whole lot of those there assembled. It was
never my purpose, however, to shake the anarchists' confidence in
their system, for that merely meant the removal of the gathering to
another spot, thus giving us the additional trouble of mapping out
their new exits and entrances. When I did make a raid on anarchist
headquarters in Paris, it was always to secure some particular man. I
had my emissaries in plain clothes stationed at each exit. In any
case, the rats were allowed to escape unmolested, sneaking forth with
great caution into the night, but we always spotted the man we wanted,
and almost invariably arrested him elsewhere, having followed him from
his kennel. In each case my uniformed officers found a dark and empty
cellar, and retired apparently baffled. But the coincidence that on
the night of every raid some member there present was secretly
arrested in another quarter of Paris, and perhaps given a free passage
to Russia, never seemed to awaken suspicion in the minds of the
conspirators.
Pages:
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103