y
represent. Consequently, the police of the country cannot enter them
except by special permission, and both the Secretaries and their
servants are immune from arrest, and are not subject to the laws of the
country, though they can, of course, be expelled from it. I gave the
policeman leave to enter, and he came into my bedroom. "I have caught
one of the Phoenix Park murderers," he told me triumphantly in Russian,
visions of the possible ten thousand pounds wreathing his face in
smiles. I jumped up incredulously. He went on to inform me that a man
had landed from the Stockholm steamer early that morning. Though he
declared that he had no arms with him, a revolver and a dagger had been
found in his trunk. His passport had only been issued at the British
Legation in Stockholm, and his description tallied exactly with the
signalment issued by Scotland Yard in eight languages. The policier
showed me the description: "height about five feet nine; complexion
sallow, with dark eyes. Thickset build; probably with some recent cuts
on face and hands." The policeman declared that the cuts were there,
and that it was unquestionably the man wanted. Then he put the question
point-blank, would the Embassy sanction this man's arrest? I was only
twenty-five at the time. I had to act on "my own," and I had to decide
quickly. "Yes, arrest him," I said, "but you are not to take him to
prison. Confine him to his room at his hotel, with two or three of your
men to watch him. I will dress and come there as quickly as I can."

Half an hour later I was in a grubby room of a grubby hotel, where a
short, sallow, thickset man, with three recent cuts on his face, was
walking up and down, smoking cigarettes feverishly, and throwing
frightened glances at three sinister-looking plain-clothes men, who
pretended to be quite at ease. I looked again at the description and at
the man. There could be no doubt about it. I asked him for his own
account of himself. He told me that he was the Manager of the
Gothenburg Tramway Company in Sweden, an English concern, and that he
had come to Russia for a little holiday. He accounted for the cuts on
his face and hands by saying that he had slipped and fallen on his face
whilst alighting from a moving tram-car. He declared that he was well
known in Stockholm, and that his wife, when packing his things, must
have put in the revolver and dagger without his knowledge. It all
sounded grotesquely improbable, but I promis