LIII.
I have told my story, and little more remains to be done. Yet I cannot lay down my pen without rendering some little tribute to one whose care and caution on my behalf I can never repay. I refer to Mr. Anderson. For twenty-one years I served under this gentleman in the Secret Service, and no greater honour can I pay him than to say that during all this time I was never discovered. Only those who have played my part can fully appreciate what this means. Not always careful, not always guarded enough in the rattle and bustle of my life, there were times when, had it not been for my chief’s watchfulness, discovery might have overtaken me. But he never wavered or grew lax in his care. He proved indeed to me, not the ordinary official superior, but a kind trusty friend and adviser, ever watchful in my interests, ever sympathising with my dangers and difficulties. To him, and to him alone, was I known as a Secret Service agent during the whole of the twenty-one years of which I speak. Therein lay the secret of my safety. If others less worthy of the trust than he had been charged with the knowledge of my identity, then I fear I should not be here to-day on English soil quietly penning these lines.
If my identity remained undiscovered, it was not for want of attempts on the part of colleagues of Mr. Anderson to find it out. It was but natural, of course, that those associated with my chief should seek to penetrate his reserve regarding such a voluminous correspondent as myself, and to gain, at first hand, possession of the many important pieces of information which he alone appeared to be able to supply. All attempts, however, in this direction, and they were many, proved fruitless. So determined was a certain public official at one time to discover my identity, that having in some way got hold of my Christian name, Thomas—I always wrote in the name of Beach to Mr. Anderson—and assuming it to be my surname, he despatched a detective to Chicago to discover the man called Thomas in the organisation there. Of course there was no chance of getting at me in this way, but, nevertheless, I was warned in time, and left no possible loophole for discovery. Imagine, dear reader, the weakness of such a policy as this, which would commit the safety of an important informant to the irresponsible knowledge of an ordinary detective!
When this attempt failed, communications were sought to be opened up with me by the same official through Sir John Rose and Judge M‘Micken, with whom I had acted at the time of the Fenian raid of 1870. So strong, indeed, was the pressure brought upon Judge M‘Micken, that the old gentleman travelled specially to Chicago to see me on the point. However, I would have none of it. I was quite contented, and too well assured of my safety as I was; and so, much to my own satisfaction, I was left undisturbed in Mr. Anderson’s charge.
There was only one thing about which he had frequently to remonstrate with me, and that was my expenditure. Many a lecture did I receive from him on the subject of money spending. It was not, of course, his fault, but rather that of the system. Indeed, so kind and friendly was he that he at times advanced me money for which he himself had to wait for repayment for some time, if indeed he ever got all of it back, which I very much doubt. Of course I could not help spending the money. I tried to be as sparing as possible, and, whenever I could, debited my expenses to those other undertakings which I allied with my Secret Service work. But it was not always possible to pursue such an economic course, and in very many instances where Mr. Anderson could not pay, I had to pay myself. I occupied a certain position; I had to live up to that position. The expenditure of money amongst the Irish patriotic class was an absolute necessity for my purpose, and consequently I could never put any money by, but rather lived up to, if not, indeed, at times beyond every penny of my income.
On this question of Secret Service money I could say much. The miserable pittance doled out for the purpose of fighting such an enemy as the Clan-na-Gael becomes perfectly ludicrous in the light of such facts as I have quoted in connection with the monetary side of the Dynamite Campaign. Gallaher, as I have said, had no less than £1400 on his person when arrested in 1883; while, coming down to a later date, Moroney, when despatched from New York in 1887, in connection with the second stage of the Jubilee explosion plot, carried with him some £1200. How on earth can the English police and their assistants in the Secret Service hope to grapple with such heavily financed plots as this, on the miserable sums granted by Parliament for the purpose? There are, I believe, some thirty men charged with the special duty of circumventing political crime in London. All praise and honour to them for the work they have done, and the sincerest of congratulations to Chief-Inspector Littlechild, who so ably conducted the arrests of all the principals of the latter-day dynamite plots. But these policemen have succeeded more by chance than anything else; events have played into their hands, and, clever men that they are, they have been sufficiently capable to take advantage of the little that came to their knowledge, and from small clues to work out great things.
Some day, however, a big thing will happen, about which there will be no leakage beforehand, and then the affrighted and indignant British citizen will turn on his faithful band of thirty and rant and rave at them for their want of capacity and performance. The fault will be the want of a perfect system of Secret Service, properly financed. If plots are to be discovered in time—and already there are some whisperings of coming danger—they can only be discovered through information coming from those associated with them. As I have shown, the men engaged in them are very highly paid. If it is to be made worth their while to speak, then the price offered by the British Government must be higher than that of the other paymasters. There is no use in thinking that mere tools like Callan and Harkins—the men now in prison in connection with the Jubilee Explosion Plot—would be of any service. These men know nothing. It is the Millens and the Moroneys of the conspiracy who should be in Government pay, and they have no mean price. Imagine offering either of these men a retainer of £20 a month with a very odd cheque for expenses thrown in! The idea is ridiculous. I have heard it urged that the thought of Secret Service is repugnant to the British heart, wherein are instilled the purest principles of freedom. The argument has sounded strange in my ears when I remembered that London, as somebody has said, is the cesspool of Europe, the shelter of the worst ruffians of every country and clime. America is called the Land of the Free, but she could give England points in the working of the Secret Service, for there there is no stinting of men or money.