Such was the brief outline of facts as given by the _Morning Post._ Of course I had not the slightest doubt as to the identity of the prisoner; the state of weakness and ill-health which had caused him to miss his aim was conclusive, added to the many other reasons I had for supposing him to be Giannoli. This, then, was the deed he had been contemplating! Only the day before I had been wondering why I had no news of him; but a few hours previously he went forth to his death. For it meant death, of course; of that I had no doubt. He would be garotted; I only hoped that he might not be tortured first. I gave a hasty glance at the other details given by the paper. A column was dedicated to the virtues of the prime-minister. He was upheld as a model of the domestic virtues (a few months back Continental papers had been full of a scandalous trial in which Fernandez had been involved), and was represented as the man who had saved Spain from ruin and disaster by his firm repression of the revolutionary parties: by which euphonious phrase the papers referred to the massacres of strikers which had taken place at Barcelona and Valladolid, and the wholesale arrest and imprisonment of Anarchists and Socialists in connection with a recent anti-clerical movement which had convulsed the Peninsula. These arrests had given rise to a great political trial for conspiracy before a court-martial, which had ended in a sentence of death passed on five of the prisoners, whilst the others were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from thirty to five years. It was to revenge the injustice and the sufferings caused by this policy that Giannoli had attempted the life of the Spanish minister. Another paragraph caught my eye:-- "London police hot on scent: raids and arrests." "Our correspondent has interviewed a leading detective at Scotland Yard who for some years past has been charged with the surveillance of suspicious foreign Anarchists. This clever officer informs our correspondent that he has no doubt the plot was hatched in London, and thinks that he could name the author, an Italian Anarchist of desperate antecedents who disappeared from London under mysterious circumstances nearly seven months ago. London is a centre of Anarchist propaganda, and foreign desperadoes of all nationalities flock hither to abuse the hospitality and freedom which this government too rashly concedes them. Englishmen will one day be roused from their fool's paradise to find that too long have they nursed a viper in their bosom. We trust that this lesson will not be wasted, and that the police will see to closing without delay certain self-styled clubs and 'printing-offices' which are in reality nothing but hotbeds of conspiracy and murder."