ed to telegraph both to
Stockholm and Gothenburg, and to return to him as soon as I had
received the answers. In the meanwhile I feared that he must consider
himself as under close arrest. He himself was under the impression that
all the trouble was due to the concealed arms; the Phoenix Park murders
had never once been mentioned. I sent off a long telegram in cypher to
the Stockholm Legation, making certain inquiries, and a longer one en
clair to the British Consul at Gothenburg. By nagging at the Attache,
and by keeping that dapper young gentleman's nose pretty close to the
grindstone, I got the first telegram cyphered and dispatched by 10
a.m.; the answers arrived about 4 p.m. The man's story was true in
every particular. He HAD fallen off a moving tram and cut his face; his
wife, terrified at the idea of unknown dangers in Russia, HAD borrowed
a revolver and dagger from a friend, and had packed them in her
husband's trunk without his knowledge. Mr. D---- (I remember his name
perfectly) was well known in Stockholm, and was a man of the highest
respectability. I drove as fast as I could to the grubby hotel, where I
found the poor fellow still restlessly pacing the room, and still
smoking cigarette after cigarette. There was a perfect Mont Blanc of
cigarette stumps on a plate, and the shifty-looking plain-clothes men
were still watching their man like hawks. I told the police that they
had got hold of the wrong man, that the Embassy was quite satisfied
about him, and that they must release the gentleman at once. They
accordingly did so, and the alluring vision of the ten thousand pounds
vanished into thin air! The poor man was quite touchingly grateful to
me; he had formed the most terrible ideas about a Russian State prison,
and seemed to think that he owed his escape entirely to me. I had not
the moral courage to tell him that I had myself ordered his arrest that
morning, still less of the awful crime of which he had been suspected.
Looking back, I do not see how I could have acted otherwise; the prima
facie case against him was so strong; never was circumstantial evidence
apparently clearer. Mr. D---- went back to Sweden next day, as he had
had enough of Russia. Should Mr. D---- still be alive, and should he by
any chance read these lines, may I beg of him to accept my humblest
apologies for the way I behaved to him thirty-eight years ago.

I happened to see the four assassins of Alexander II. driven through
the str