Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy
9781465675361
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It has seemed good in the sight of many people that I should place on record, in some permanent and acceptable form, the story of my eventful life. And so I am about to write a book. The task is a daring one—perhaps the most daring of the many strange and unlooked-for incidents which have marked my career of adventure. I approach it with no light heart, but rather with a keen appreciation of all its difficulties. To cater, and cater successfully, for the reading public of this fin de siècle period is an undertaking which fairly taxes all the powers of resource and experience of the most brilliant writers of our time. And I am in no sense a practised writer, much less a professional litterateur. I have spent my life working at too high a pressure, and in too excited an atmosphere, to allow of my qualifying in any way for the rôle of author. Nor am I handicapped in this way alone. I am, unfortunately for my purpose, deprived of the most important of collaborators a writer ever called to his aid—the play of imagination. For me there is no such thing as romance to be indulged in here. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is what I have set myself to tell regarding all those matters with which I shall deal. There are many things, of course, to which I may not refer; but with respect to those upon which I feel at liberty to touch, one unalterable characteristic will apply all through, and that will be the absolute truthfulness of the record. This may seem strange language coming from one who, for over a quarter of a century, has played a double part, and who to-day is not one whit ashamed of any single act done in that capacity. Men’s lives, however, are not to be judged by the outward show and the visible suggestion, but rather by the inward sentiments and promptings which accept conscience at once as the inspirer of action and arbiter of fate. It is hard, I know, to expect people in this cold prosaic age of ours to fully understand how a man like myself should, of his own free will, have entered upon a life such as I have led, with such pureness of motive and absence of selfish instinct as to entitle me to-day to claim acceptance at the bar of public opinion as an honest and a truthful man. Yet such is my claim. When years ago, as these subsequent pages will show, I was first brought into contact with Fenian affairs, no fell purpose, no material consideration prompted me to work against the revolutionary plotters. A young man, proud of his native land and full of patriotic loyalty to its traditions, I had no desire, no intention to do aught but frustrate the schemes of my country’s foes. When, later on, I took my place in the ranks of England’s defenders, the same condition of mind prevailed, though the conditions of service varied. And so the situation has remained all through. Forced by a variety of circumstances to play a part I never sought, but to which, for conscientious motives, I not unwillingly adapted myself, I can admit no shame and plead no regret. By my action lives have been saved, communities have been benefited, and right and justice allowed to triumph, to the confusion of law-breakers and would-be murderers. And in this recollection I have my consolation and my reward. Little else indeed is left me in the shape of either the one or the other. There is a popular fiction, I know, which associates with my work fabulous payments and frequent rewards. Would that it had been so. Then would the play of memory be all the sweeter for me. But, alas! the facts were all the other way. As I will show later, in the Secret Service of England there is ever present danger, and constantly recurring difficulty, but of recompense, a particularly scant supply.
