“1902 to 1903. Lived in United States to start residence. Had an experience job in the subway looking on. $25.00.
“1903 to 1904. Went on tour of Congo Free State in the interests of making favorable publicity in this country for King Leopold. Gerard Harry in charge of campaign for the King. Received $10,000 for the job, with expenses.
“1904–5–6. Headed Eldu expedition and industrial research party in Australia. Sir Arthur Jones financed me. Received £2,000 yearly.
“1907–8. Toured Russia for Petit Bleu. Publicity. 1,000 florins weekly.
“1908–9–10. Organized and built string of theatres in British West Indies. Financed and erected hydro-electric plant for S. S. Wortley & Co., Kingston, Jamaica. Made percentages.
“1911–12. Lived in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Was with Mr. Thomas O’Connell in Nicaragua for one year. Made industrial and investment investigations, especially ore, fibre, rubber. $5,000 and expenses yearly. Mr. Hite financed. Address New Rochelle.
“1913–14–15–16. Explored and travelled in South America, Brazil, Argentine, Peru, and Bolivia, on own account. Also conducted special expedition for Horace Ashton of 220 W. 42d St., New York.”
An eventful record, certainly. We asked Ashton to cast a little light on it. Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, he said, was a scout in the Boer war—“the leading scout” were his exact words—but not for the British, but the Boers. There may have been a touch of irony in Duquesne’s description of himself as “inspector of military communications” for he had been captured eight or nine times in his migrations through the British lines and had escaped each time—until the last, when he was made a prisoner of war at Cape Town, and according to an entry in the records of Scotland Yard, “was sent to Bermuda, whence he escaped after the declaration of Peace.” The same records say: “The man Duquesne was acting as correspondent for a Belgian paper, the Petit Bleu; he was however in reality working for the Boers....” Duquesne fancied photographs of himself, as he made up rather dashingly, and an old print which the Bomb Squad men found in his effects bore out the fact of his imprisonment, for there he stood in his Bermuda jail with the shackles on his ankles and a grim, martyred expression on his face.
The lure of Africa called to him, evidently, and he went back. We need not take too seriously his statement that he made a junket for King Leopold through the Belgian Congo, but anyone who remembers the uproar over the slavery by which the depraved old monarch was turning his colony into gold to pay for his excesses will also recall the international complications which the Congo threatened. It was a likely spot for an international spy. During his survey of the publicity possibilities of the jungle Duquesne conceived a few publicity possibilities for himself, and he came to America as a mighty hunter of big game.
“I ran across him first,” said Ashton, “in 1909.—At that time he was writing an article for Hampton’s Magazine called ‘Hunting Big Game in Africa.’ In publishing his articles he needed photographs, and he came to me. I was interested in his conversation and I said to him: ‘Why don’t you lecture?’ So he went down to the Pond Lyceum Bureau. He went on a lecture tour for the Lyceum and later on a tour of the Keith circuit....”