M (16 page)

‘Haynes', the out of work detective who had befriended Cream in the first place, was none other than John Patrick Hayes, the Irish American who had spied on Fenians for Jenkinson in America and Paris in the mid-1880s and had later been paid to seek support for
The Times
against Parnell. Hayes certainly knew, and may recently have sought work in London from, Inspector Maurice Moser who was stationed in Paris for Monro from 1884 to 1887. Moser, like Hayes, knew Patrick Casey the British agent; Moser, like Hayes, had worked for
The Times
on the Parnell case.
⁶
He was now, in 1893, running his private detective agency out of 2 Southampton Street, Covent Garden, and doing a bit of work among the anarchists for the French Sûreté.
⁷
Moser reported directly, not through Scotland Yard: for instance in this letter to M. Goron, Chef de la Sûreté, Paris, dated 26 April 1893:

Cher Monsieur,

I am sorry that as a result of enquiries made by the London police, Corti has been sacked from his job. He came to see me yesterday and was furious, believing that I had something to do with it.

He didn't want to reveal any secrets of the Rinard affair, where there was still more to know
(encore d'autres marchandises).
I offered him money but he vehemently refused.

He tells me that Pavesi has just done something in Belgium and is expected in London on Sunday. He promised to tell me as soon as he arrives.

So far as the anarchists are concerned my informant has just got me a circular (appended) and tells me that at the meeting of Autonomie, 6 Windmill Street, yesterday, it was decided not to send delegates in view of the May 1st demonstration in France; Dr Merlino was in the chair…
⁸

One or two anglicisms indicate that Moser wrote this himself. (Melville, the French agents, grasses, private detectives – no wonder the anarchists were paranoid.) But it does indicate that Moser might need workers, sometimes, in surveillance. At Cream's trial Hayes (as Haynes) claimed that he had been working against anarchists in 1892. He was not on the payroll of Scotland Yard (who did not trust him)
⁹
although Jenkinson had given him a testimonial. Inspector Moser was one of the few people in London who knew his history and would give him work.

McIntyre knew Hayes but how did they meet? He would surely not have met him in the course of his Irish duty, since McIntyre was in England in the 1880s while Hayes was in America or France. But they had apparently known each other for some years and they both knew Le Caron. It is possible that they both worked for Moser in his snooping duties for Monsieur Goron. Moser was in a position to offer occasional work to detectives. This of course is highly irregular. Even today, policemen have been known to moonlight for private detective agencies. But moonlighting – and we cannot prove it – is a more convincing reason than romance for Melville to have sacked McIntyre, whose police career came to a final and ignominious end as a beat policeman in October 1894. Having sold his story to the papers, he took over a pub in Southwark, and faded from history.

The first half of 1893 passed in truly dreadful confusion among the foreign anarchist community. The archives make nervous reading…Weil got a letter saying that Gardrat is a grass. Gardrat stormed out telling them all to go to hell; a man who defends him is accused of being a nark; Schouppe isn't going to get any money out of this writer, because if it's lent he'll wonder where it comes from; Mathieu has gone to ground – Meunier has probably gone to Argentina – Marocco moves so often that nobody knows where he lives – Jourdin's come to London probably to shop somebody to the police – Schouppe has been arrested in Brussels but according to the anarchists themselves, the only thing he understands about anarchy is expropriation – he's just a robber. Parmeggiani and his wife have been in a dreadful brawl outside a pub… A couple of anarchist papers have been burned out; there's a gang believed to be in the pay of the German police, people think they did it …Nobody will say
anything.
¹⁰

In July agent Y3 reports that the German police chief is said to be snooping in London. He might well have been, for in May, three misguided members of the Autonomie Club, in court in Berlin, had sworn that it was a social club, not a political one, and the prosecution in Berlin asked for confirmation of this from the English Government in order to ‘assist the defence'. As a result the Home Office commissioned a report from Melville. Then they wished they hadn't.

Its members are composed chiefly of advanced and prominent anarchists and are of all European nationalities, but Germans are in a large majority… the club has been used as a centre for forwarding anarchistic literature to the continent, but more particularly to Germany, and for generally propagating anarchistic doctrines… Funds have frequently been sent from the Autonomie Club to various continental countries for propagating anarchism, and as occasions arise subscriptions are made for fugitives from justice from the continent if their offences are of a socialistic or anarchistic nature. I am informed that the club is affiliated with similar clubs in Germany, Belgium, France, and Italy… from the number of foreign refugees who arrive there, I have no doubt but it is so affiliated. The club may be described as the foyer of foreign anarchism in this country.
¹¹

Melville added a postscript saying that the building had recently burned down, while empty. And standing alone, his parting shot:
It was heavily insured.
Sir Edward Bradford wrote a two-page covering letter to the Home Office before submitting this. Anyone could see that the whole thing was so politically embarrassing that it simply could not be forwarded to the German Government. After a few panicky notes between civil servants a silkily bland reply was decided upon: HM Government regretted that no response could be given, as to do so, in such a way as to bear witness for either side, was not in accordance with HM Government's practice, and would set a dangerous precedent…
¹²

François, having been found innocent by a French court, was back in London, sitting in pubs drinking absinthe with his friends but keeping a lookout for the comrades who got him busted. There was a meeting at the Autonomie, at which Louise Michel spoke for an hour. Plenty turned up and talked revolt ‘but in private, everyone wanted to go their separate ways; enough of organisation'. People don't seem to be quite so hard up; Parmeggiani and Cova are selling wine and sausage to Italian suppliers; Coulon is setting up a printing press.

In September, Y3 was in Paris, and writing a report that summed up his feelings quite frankly.

The English press especially the
Daily Telegraph
and the
Morning Post
are totally fazed by recent anarchist attacks in Barcelona & Vienna, agitation in London, violent manifesto &c – and have no remedy; they are totally bowled over by it. The
Daily Telegraph
thinks the police of Europe and the United States should work together against the ‘human wolf'. But the English won't have it. Have just been discussing this with Mr Ricksmann from the German Embassy here – who controls information coming from London – he says the
Daily Telegraph
solution is impractical – they do co-operate… but not formally – which would not work. The German anarchists already find life on the continent intolerable. Now that the Marshal Campos affair [assassination attempt] has happened Spanish will chuck anarchists out – America has at last signed a treaty with Russia and will do with France – only the English are outside the pale legally. So it will remain, a free town for such types – because it suits everybody that way. We know them. On the continent we know them. We need a safety valve or it would all be much worse.
¹³

In November there was a stupendous anarchist bomb outrage in Barcelona, with thirty dead and eighty injured; the heat was on. Agent Monte Carlo was in constant touch with Melville, and tipping him off.

Three anarchists have come in from Brussels and one of them, Charles Decord, is dangerous. He's short, about 1m 52; wears an overcoat trimmed with imitation astrakhan, big collar, round at the back; little bowler, pink tie with blue knot …hitches his trousers up all the time. Used to make bombs with Carriola – has been off the scene – will let you know the train he'll be on back to Paris. Melville is going to have them all watched.

And three days later:

Melville, chief of Special Branch at Scotland Yard, has been made aware of the robberies at LeVallois and St Ouen. He will take measures to ensure that these people are watched until the moment extradition is granted…

Four days pass and Z6 writes:

The whole Melville squad has been watching the
quartier
for two days – too late to nab Edouard or Le Breton, but they'll have to come back when the police presence has died down, they can't afford to stay away, and then they'll be picked up. You see police every night at the Club and the pub.

Monte Carlo was writing again at the end of the month about various anarchists spotted in the neighbourhood, none of them Spanish:

Some of them are about to rob gold and jewellery &c and some of the proceeds will go to ‘propaganda'… Anarchists will make no headway in London. People are too well off and peaceful. All the same Melville's men are all over the
quartier
and the anarchists are very leery, they think there's something up.
¹⁴

On 28 November Z6 sent to Paris an (unidentified) issue of
The People
in which there appeared an interview with Melville and counterbalancing view from a radical MP (probably John Burns). This must have attracted the attention of French editors as well as French policemen, because within days a journalist from
Gil Blas
was in Goodge Street. Everyone knew which comrade had been talking to this man at the club, who'd been seen with other French journalists – and then in the middle of it all, on the first Sunday of December, the
Commonweal
people had a meeting in Trafalgar Square, in the course of which the Barcelona bombers were congratulated for their enterprise.
¹⁵
The police broke it up; another French newspaper reported in awed tones that ‘none of the cops was less than six feet tall'.
¹⁶
Truth,
the paper run by well-off liberal Henry Labouchère, had employed a private detective to look into the Walsall affair and now it printed allegations about how Deakin was fitted up and Coulon escaped. John Burns, the radical member of Parliament, was to ask questions in the House of Commons about this. The agents wrote all about it to Paris: anything about Melville was of interest, it seemed.

What Burns wanted, and never got, was an enquiry. What other MPs wanted was a ban on anarchist publications; they never got that, either – Asquith told them on 7 December that he thought it best to leave things as they were. On 14 December and 19 December there were more questions in the House. What are we doing about 200 anarchists expelled from France, who are coming over here? What are we doing about these people preaching sedition and wreckage? Asquith for the Home Office, and Sir Edward Grey for the Foreign Office, gave bland replies. Some of the French agents were now sending reports twice a day, and were keeping in close touch with Melville, and sometimes reined him in…

London, Zéro 6, 4 December

Grandidier is a wanted man, hiding out in Camden up the Hampstead Road with Latour (Lutz), a Swiss mandolin maker – very tall with a glass eye and a light maroon overcoat. Malatesta lives at 112 Camden High Street. Grandidier sometimes goes to see Corti at 18 Little Goodge Street, 3rd floor; or Marceau, who is 19 and has a hoarse voice (cross reference to a report by another cop.)

London, Monte Carlo, 8 December

A Frenchman is in town who speaks good German and has a big dog – Melville's men are watching him. In future I will be Jarvis, not Monte Carlo. One of my letters from you was opened, and I had to show it round saying it was an attempt to hire me as a nark. It worked well.

London, Jarvis, 8 December

Melville's men are watching Latour; he and Grandidier and the others are trying to leave for Buenos Aires.

London, Jarvis, 12 December

At the Trafalgar Square meeting last Sunday Malatesta got two black eyes, and Agresti had his left cheek smashed up, by Melville's men.

London, Jarvis, 12 December

Squabbles at the Autonomie meeting over funds – how to defend anarchy against new anti-anarchy laws. Escaré suggested subsidising a kind of cheap canteen with theatrical performances like the one on Sunday. Melville wanted to close down the Lapie bookshop, but was dissuaded.

Melville's personal profile was high. The people he was dealing with were not all, by any means, hopeless idealists or useless windbags; some of them were dangerous, not merely with a bomb in their fists but with a knife. He was running a considerable personal risk by being so constantly in public view. And in February of the new year, just in case anyone doubted that there was a risk from bomb-makers in England, one Martial Bourdin blew himself up in Greenwich Park.

This was the event which resounded over a decade later in Conrad's classic
The Secret Agent.
In Conrad's version, which is heavily influenced by the later case of Rubini as well as by the Greenwich Park tragedy, an anarchist in the pay of a foreign embassy is ordered to create an explosion in order to frighten the public into an awareness of the anarchist threat. He employs his simple-minded brother-in-law who unwittingly goes to his death.

The real-life explosion took place at dusk on a winter's day and probably was an accident. On Thursday 15 February Bourdin, an inarticulate, unremarkable young man, took a late-afternoon train from Charing Cross to Greenwich, a distance of about four miles. Emerging from the station, he turned in the direction of the empty park. He walked through the winding High Road away from the river, turned up the lane alongside the Royal Naval College and passed through the imposing gates set into a brick wall. The park would soon close for the night. Before him rose the steep green hillside, dotted with ancient trees and surmounted by the Observatory. (Why he was going to the Observatory, no one ever did make out, unless it was the only unguarded public building he knew.) Up he climbed, up and up in his heavy overcoat, gasping from the exertion; from on high he could have turned back to see the river twinkling under a red winter sunset, the Pool of London crowded with lighters and barges and high-masted, ocean-going clippers, the docks, the City lamps twinkling into life and the blackened dome of St Paul's. But he probably didn't look. Bourdin tripped on a tree root; and that was the end.