DICING WITH DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 285, 1 December 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

DICING WITH DEATH.

ANARCHISTS' ASSASSINATION PLOT,

STATESMAN WHO LAUGHS AT PROSPECT OF MURDER—SINISTER ORGANISATION OF PLOTTERS REVEALED—WORLD'S POLICE KEEP ON THEIR TRACK—SUSPECTED PERSONS CLOSELY WATCHED—QUARTET OF DANGEROUS CHARACTERS—TRAIL LEADS TO REMOTE LONDON SUBURB—"DOPED" ACCOMPLICE APPREHENDED IN NICK OF TIME.

(By EX-DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HERBERT T. FITCII, formerly of the Special Branch, New Scotland Yard. —All Rights Reserved.)

The Serajevo incident has become a byword in history. In its original form the crime ivas simply murder by a couple of crazed assassins; its result was the greatest catastrophe the world has ever known. Some years ago, there was an attempt to repeat that incident —or something, at least, which might have had as bad, or worse, results —in England. Police precautions nipped the evil plot in the bud, and so another world war was averted. To all those who believe that many crimes arc largely the result of oflicial imagination, I would point to the political history of the world in the present century. Seven reigning European Royalties and one American President have been murdered in cold blood. Six great nations have seen their Kings flee for their lives, and have coaie under the iron heel of Communism for a longer or shorter period. Had the anarchist plot of whic/ I am now writing proved successful, who knows but that the reverberations might not, in the end, have also brought Great Britain to some such pass? A certain foreign statesman came on a semi-official visit to England. He is a great man —a giant born to meet troublous times. He goes in daily risk of assassination, and laughs at the possibility. In his own country he can afford to laugh, perhaps, because he is so universally

imperceptible sign to a man who lounged near mo to take over my post, I strolled away in the tracks of the evil-looking quartet. Closo to the Suspects. As I had expected, they made straight for the railway station. But I must admit to surprise when they boarded an express train which left for London five minutes later. Our visitor was taking a celebration luncheon with the leading officials of the town where he had landed, and his train was not due for another two hours. I also boarded the express, in the next compartment to the four suspects, and while the train was waiting alongside the platform I could hear their voices buzzing like furious bees through the partition. When we got to London I followed them at a safe distance in a taxi-cab. It was quite a costly journey, for we went to one of the outer northern suburbs, where my quarry stopped half-way down a mean street. My taxi went by, loitering, with its flag up and apparently empty—which was just as well, for they looked sharply at it while one of their number hammered impatiently on the door of a house. I dismissed the taxi at the next corner, with a message for the nearest police station. London taxi-drivers are always

adored that it would be suicide for anyone to raise a finger against him. But in "sleepy" England, it was supposed, the crooked path of the political murderer would be both safer and easier. Fiery Cross of Anarchy. There was another reason why it was decided that this famous man should be assassinated in England. It is a fact 1 known to every detective the world over that there exists a body of men, not organised or even knowing each other, and of different nations and tongues, whose destiny and interest it is to keep the fiery cross of, anarchy alive. Some of them are financiers with golden axes to grind; some are fanatics who propose to destroy the world and build a sort of Heaven from its ruins; some are professional soldiers who have forgotten th#ir nation, whose only hope of riches and fame is in war. These people gather like vultures round a dying man when war is threatened. Just before the statesman in question came to England, the vultures had gathered in the mid-European country from.which lie was to travel. When there is such a gathering telephone wires, hum, and every police headquarters for a, thousand miles round passes on the news to its neighbour. Edr the-world's police, irrespective of nation, stand for peace! Thus it was that, on a certain midsummer morning, I received notice to exercise great care -in guarding an important foreign statesman while he was on British soil. His nation is a fiery one, and the anarchists who meant to attempt his lite were clever men. It was pretty certain that they held great quantities of propaganda literature ready with which to flood this particular country as soon as news of the assassination in England came through. The crime would, it seemed almost certain, stampede that country into war with Great Britain. Impossible? Well, remember Serajevo! All Precautions Taken. I took all the usual precautions. Dozens of suspected persons in England were placed under close surveillance, unknown to themselves. Sometimes it amuses me to think how our national reputation for sleepiness is useful in police work. It would cause certain people, both famous and undistinguished, amazement i£ they knew that even their most trivial actions were kept, under surveillance by the unsleeping ,eye of Scotland Yard. The port at which this statesman landed was first submitted to a careful search. Officers , loitered about the streets in civilian clothes. Public house gossip, waterside rumour, lodginghouse chat—all were sifted, weighed and tested by some of the keenest brains in the country. These reports'were sent to me. The line by which he was to travel to London was pretty safe—our railways are the finest and most unostentatious in the world, and take their own precautions to prevent passengers from suffering muoyance (or assassination) en route. _ Nevertheless, a pilot engine was provided to travel ahead of the statesman's train and make sure of safety. Experienced detectives were told oil' to travel on the train itself. Extra police were drafted : to guard the London terminus where the foreign visitor arrived, and Special Branch men moved among the crowds gathered to give the guest an English welcome. I was near the gangway (though I doubt if even ir.y friends would have recognised me) when the statesman landed. I already -bad '.wireless reports of our visitor's travelling companions, and was not surprised to see a little, crowd of four men who descended together behind him —even though one of them was a Russian Jew, wanted 011 anarchist "charges in Belgium, a :id anot her a suspected firebug with a bad English prison record. Alter a■ swift examination of the other passengers, and an . almost]

amazingly loyal and ready to help in such emergencies. Meanwhile, I strolled back on the opposite pavement, getting a good look at the house into which the conspirators had disappeared. It was a place we had not so far suspected—a dingy, narrow house with dirty windows in a squalid street. 1 found a convenient alley a bit further along, into which I stepped to be out of sight and yet able to see the front of the house, which I discovered had no back exit. While I was waiting there another man entered the street. ' He wa6 —or, rather, looked like—a tired out-of-work, but I knew him as a c'olleague of some fame in North London. He saw me as I stood in the alley, and turned slowly into it. He_ had received my message from the taxi-driver, and was now armed with a search warrant in case it was necessary to look over the house. ' > We were talking things over when the door of the house in question 'opened, and a man came, out. - He was not one of the four I had seen enter, but. a wild-eyed, unkempt, slouching man of distinctly foreign appearance. He looked as if he were a dilapidated 1 compatriot of the statesman we were guarding, and whose train was now on its way to London. Being fairly experienced in such cases, my colleague and I whispered one word simultaneously—"Cocaine!" The man hurrying feverishly down the street bore all the marks of a drug addict. Now the plot became reasonably cleat - . The four conspirators had arranged to meet this man, who was doubtless a tool of their associates in Britain, and who had been primed with a little cocaine. They had probably told him that the visiting statesman must be assassinated, in the name of liberty, and that he would not receive any more cocaine till the deed was done. Inhuman? Any police officer will tell you that political murderers usually work this way if they can. The youths at Serajevo were cocainc addicts. A threat of "No more snow!" is a powerful, irresistible lever—unless the police intervene.

Drug Addict Fails in Mission. My colleague told me of a rear exit to the end of the street, which enabled us to leave our hiding place unseen by watchers at the house. I hurried away to catch up with the tattered figure/ and then followed him by omnibus to the route by which the visiting statesman would travel. A crowd was already gathered there. 1 stood shoulder to shoulder, with my suspect, while we waited for the carriage to come along the street from the railway terminus. Soon we could hear distant cheering, which quicklv drew nearer. My quarry, who had several times felt nervously in his jacket pocket, did so again now, and appeared to bo trembling "with excitement. I put my hand on his shoulder, because now I was certain what reposed inside that pocket.. After one frantic wriggle to slip from my grasp, the man collapsed. I slid my hand down to that pocket and took from him without a struggle the venomous, modern automatic ho held secreted there. Ho came with me so quietly that only one or two people immediately beside us realised what had happened, and even they thought it was the arrest of some petty pickpocket. As we stepped into a taxi behind the crowd there was cheering all about us, which gradually subsided as the open carriage rumbled on its way. The statesman's life was safe. Britain was safe from the grave risk of war. The miserable drug-maniac received a shorter sentence than the four men my colleague afterwards arrested in the house. Also, when we had finished with them,, they were deported to their own countries, and three of the four found even longer sentences of imprisonment awaiting them 'there.

Political murderers are a nasty lot. I have had to deal with a number of them in my time, and have never met one whom I could respect. With spies, it is a difference matter. One, at least, whom I sent to his death, I admired as a brave man and a gentleman who would never have soiled his hands with such work as was planned by the quartet o£ whom I have told in this story. [Last year a newspaper notice appeared saying, first, that some vials containing plague germs had been tost, and later that they liad been recovered. A London sf-D. with a .. monomania against England, worked out a method ot spreading typhus in the water In all big towns. He decided to do it, and tested his theory 011 a smalt scale.' A famous statesman came on a clue 1 to a local typhus outbreak, and called in Mr. Fitch privately. How plans were laid bare for devastating several towns, incriminating the doctor at. deadly risk, a struggle and arrest, is told in the next instalment.]