THE " EXTRAORDINARY " STORY.
THERE is one point of considerable intellectual interest in the " extraordinary story" published this week in the Times and the Birmingham papers, and it is this. The immense balance of evidence is in favour of an explanation which is almost certainly false, the probabilities outweighing the testimony in a most un- usual way. The original story ran in this way. Messrs. Blews and Co., gas contractors, of Birmingham, are contractors for the gas works of Moscow, and a few months ago appointed a Russian of German descent, Mr. L. R. Bauer, their manager in that capital. He proved an excellent servant, and on 12th January wrote to them to say he had concluded a contract for chandeliers, but wished to consult them on the subject, and would therefore come over to England for a flying visit. They raised no objec- tion, and on 25th January Mr. Bauer arrived at the Charing Cross Hotel in London, having travelled via Riga, where his fiancée lived, and Hamburg, from each of which places he wrote letters to Birmingham. It was noticed by his fiancée, to whom he wrote constantly, that he was out of spirits and apprehensive of some calamity; but on the morning of the 26th he talked business with the Director of the Moscow Gas Company, who happened to be in London, and telegraphed to his employers in Birmingham that he should arrive by the noon train. At noon he was at Euston Square Station, the station for Birmingham, but tele- graphed that he had missed the train, and then—he vanished into apace. Not another word was heard of or from him till the 3rd of February, when Messrs. Blews received the following letter:—
"2, 2, 72.
"Sir,—The foolish author of the enclosed brief has informed you right ; he is dead. Our safety forbids us to send you your property— to wit, some papers, which have been burnt.—We are, Sir,
" A Sunricrincr Maims."
This letter was in a hand unknown to Messrs. Blews, but is evidently written by a man to whom both English and German were imperfectly known foreign languages, for he mixes them up, accidentally using the Garman word " Brief " as an equivalent for the English word "letter," a sense in which Englishmen no longer employ it. Inside this note was a much longer one, dated one week before, and intended obviously to save Bauer from the charge of having absconded :—
"London, January 27.
"Dear Sir,—As a special grace, permission has been granted to me to address these lines to you ; they will be the last, because in a few hours I shall be dead. In good faith of doing a good deed I joined some people a few years ago. Alas! it was a sad error, into which my youth and want of experience had led me. About a year since I discovered my groat mistake, because I was not bad enough to carry out some conse- quences of my vow—the very point of my misunderstanding, and ever since I lived in dread, although I was not prepared for this when one of these devils in the shape of men peremptorily stopped me from leaving London yesterday noon. I was not even aware of being so closely watched. Having no choice left but either to do things against which my whole soul revolts, and which I find utterly impossible to do, or to die myself, I have chosen death, and shall die in some hours hence.
"It is a very hard thing I feel to go thus suddenly for ever without seeing anybody whom I loved once more, and my heart breaks when I think of my family and my poor girl in Russia ; but it cannot be helped. I know but too well my fate is sealed, and I am quite composed now. How could I write these lines were it otherwise ? My luggage has already been destroyed, I believe ; for they will make sure work about me. On account of the trouble that will arise to you, dear Sir, through my sudden death, I am exceedingly sorry, because a good many things I had in my mind only to explain ; but I hope you will grant me pardon when you see that I am thus cut off all, 0 God ! everything that could have made me happy. Farewell, dear Sir, I am punished hard for my mistake of men, but I have the knowledge, at least, which gives me strength to endure all, I shall, at least, not die a villain ! Farewell
for ever. "L. R. BAtrzu."
Granting the distinctness of the two letters, there is nothing whatever in that story to excuse its instant rejection by the public, the press, and the employers of Mr. Bauer. A chef de police in Paris, or Vienna, or Moscow would have credited it at once, and have probably remarked that it was the twentieth case within his personal experience. The narrative is one indeed only too familiar to the police of the Continent. The writer, a young man, had, when still younger, affiliated himself to a secret society of the extreme type, a society which requires of its devotees a vow of passive obedience, and a readiness to commit what the external world justly calls crime, to slay an oppressor or execute a traitor; or, if the society be really, as the Times hints, the Sect of the Skoptzi, to imitate the mad action of St. Origen. Such secret societies are perfectly well known to exist on the Con- tinent, in Italy, in France, in Poland, and in Russia, though in the latter the more formidable of them entertain religious heresies derived from the far East rather than purely political ideas. The vow to be " faithful even unto slaying" almost always forms a part of the secret code, as it does in that of the society
which sent Orsini to attack the Emperor, and in that of the societies which once honeycombed agrarian society in Ire- land, and in that of the older and more secret Trades' Unions of the North of Ireland. Bauer, either owing to a change of opinion, or to his love affair, or, as he intimates, to a discovery of obligations previously concealed from him, had determined not to obey his oath, had been haunted by terror of the Society's vengeance, till he wandered for weeks incessantly in the streets of Moscow, finding or fancying safety only in public places, and finally came over to England. Here, however, he found agents of the Society driven out by the Russian police, which is carrying on a deadly crusade against secret associations, was watched, summoned on his vow of passive obedience to some rendezvous, and finding his persecutors inexorable, committed suicide, first arranging only that the Society, by forwarding his letters to Messrs. Blews, should pro- tect his honour. It is his own decision to die which induces " A Sufficient Number " to call him " a foolish fellow,"—foolish, that is, in manifesting so strong a conscience, when by becoming " a villain," as Bauer says, he might have lived on. All the direct prima facie evidence points to the literal truth of Bauer's own tale; and the instant rejection of it by everyone because it had in it a Mrs. Radcliffe element, is as unphilosophieal as it would be to disbelieve that Felice Orsini had a political or Broadhead a social motive for his act. Such societies do exist and do act, and there is no more reason why they should not act in London than why they should not act in Paris, a city quite as carefully watched by the police. The difficulty about the body is only one of those perpetual delusions of experience. Ninety-nine murders in a hundred are committed by individuals who are at war with society from the moment the crime is accomplished, and to an individual the disposal of a body unperceived is nearly im- possible, but to a society it would be easy enough. Who searches every cart which leaves London?—even if Bauer did not, as we have imagined, jump into the river, a supposition we could strengthen, but that we wish in articles written for women to avoid entering into the history of the strange organization to which the Times hints he belonged.
The evidence, we repeat, is prima facie entirely in favour of Bauer's own story, so entirely, that were it not for a single point, we should class the case among those few in which justice has been baffled by a pre-existent impression that events which did happen could not have happened ; but we frankly admit that if the experts are right, and both letters are in the same hand, there is an end of the murder part of the story. Individually we distrust experts when discussing the handwritings of foreigners writing English, for they all, learning our writing by study, manage to expel distinctive character from it. And it is just con- ceivable that to avoid giving Messrs. Blews any trace, Bauer was ordered to write the covering letter as well as the letter itself, and, rather than be suspected of absconding, consented ; but the idea would seem to policemen not accustomed to be hunted by powerful governments somewhat far-fetched, and we must, to be heard at all, keep closer within the popular notion of the limits of inven- tiveness. Keeping within those limits, then, how does the story stand? Mr. Bauer invented the second letter, and clearly must be either the victim of some astounding delusion, or have deliber- ately resolved to cut himself off from the world, whether by mere flight or by obeying the Society, and have invented this sensational novel in half a column to account for his disap- pearance. Either of these theories is possible, but for neither of them is there evidence one-tenth as strong as the evidence which, if the experts are wrong, exists for the prima" facie story. Sup- posing him a maniac, it is quite clear that he is a maniac who did not like Messrs. Blews to suspect him of absconding ; and why, in the name of unreason, should he destroy their papers, and then imagine or invent a detail like their destruction by his pursuers ? The story does not hold together, and though madness is not expected to be coherent, it is expected to obey the impulse of the moment, while it is not usual to find it carefully consistent in the matter of time, as this correspondence has undoubtedly been. No date in the letters is in conflict with the postmarks. Again, supposing Bauer to be sane and desirous of avoiding the world, why does he invent a story which, of all the stories in the world, is most certain to put both the English and the Russian police upon his track. Fifty stories would have done better than the one he has told, and would have been quite within the inventive- ness of the mind which could devise so wild and yet so perfectly and artistically coherent a rigmarole, not to mention the enormous probability that if free as a mere defaulter to invent what he liked, Bauer would have written to his betrothed, a proceeding which, if the. Times' hint is correct, he would instinctively avoid. We have no theory to offer in explanation of the story, which, from any point of view, is one of the strangest ever told in a pub- lic journal. Our contention is merely that no theory meets the facts except that of the literal truth of Bauer's "extraordinary story," which nevertheless is, we fully admit, partly though not quite fully disposed of by the experts' testimony. We wish, however, that Messrs. Blews, who seem quite inclined to do their duty in the matter, and who, it is said, are worried to death by shoals of letters suggesting methods of investigation, would answer one question. Are they not at heart convinced that Bauer's story is true, and unwilling to state their belief, lest it should in the minds of the general public discredit their reputation as sagacious business men ?
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