Before leaving the United States I had arranged with my old employers, Pinkerton’s, to have a watch kept on all outward-bound vessels, so that I might receive the earliest information of any move on the part of the Abyssinian. I had supplied them with a full description of the man.
Meanwhile the Italian police did their best, hampered as they were by the King’s chivalrous disregard of danger, and his dislike of surveillance. It is not an easy thing to guard a monarch against his will.
As soon as I had satisfied myself that my disguise as an Italian workman was impenetrable, I went northward after the doomed King. As my train rolled into the station at Turin, I caught a glimpse on the platform of a white face with long draggled hair and a haunted expression in the eyes—a face that I had last seen in a Jersey City slum at midnight, more than a month ago.
Long before the train stopped I had leapt out of my compartment in hot pursuit; but Bresci had disappeared.
I went instantly to the chief police-officer in Turin and gave information. Detectives were despatched in all directions to search the city; but it was too late.
The following morning a telegram was put into my hands before I got out of bed. It was from Pinkerton’s, and contained these words: ‘Man answering description has just booked passage to Liverpool.’
This despatch convinced me that the situation was desperate. Coupling the news with the sight of the evening before, I could not doubt that the Abyssinian agent expected to hear within the next few hours that his dreadful end was achieved.
I dressed in feverish haste and rushed round to the police-office, only to learn that no arrest had been made, and Bresci was still at large.
‘Unless that man is apprehended within the next twenty-four hours, King Humbert will have ceased to live,’ I told the astonished chief of police.
In this extremity I decided to proceed to Monza, see the King myself, and implore him not to stir abroad until Bresci’s capture was notified. That afternoon, as I entered the small town of Monza, I was arrested on suspicion!