The Darrow Enigma

"I was horn in Marseilles, and my right name is Jean Fouchet. My father intended me for the priesthood, and gave me a good college education in Paris. His hopes, however, were destined to disappointment. In college I formed the habit of gambling, and a year after my graduation found me at Monte Carlo. While there I quarrelled with a gambling accomplice and ended by killing him. This made my stay in France dangerous for me, and I took the first opportunity which presented itself to embark for America.

"Familiarity with criminals had made me familiar with crime, and I added the occupation of detective to my profession of gambling. These two avocations had now become my sole means of support, and I plied my trades in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for several years, during which time I became a naturalised citizen of the United States.

"When the Cuban rebellion broke out I could not restrain my longing for adventure, and joined a filibustering expedition sailing from New York. I did this from no love I bore the Cuban cause, but merely for the excitement it promised. While handling a heavy shot during my first engagement I accidentally dropped it upon my left foot, crushing that member so badly that it has never regained its shape. This deformity has rendered it impossible for me to conceal my identity. Three months after this accident I was taken prisoner by the Spanish and shipped to Spain as a political malefactor. A farce of a trial was granted to me, not to see whether or not I was guilty, but simply to determine between the dungeon and the garrote. It would have been far better for me had I been sentenced to the latter instead of the former.

"As a political offender I was doomed to imprisonment at Ceuta, an old Moorish seaport town in Morocco, opposite Gibraltar and upon the side of the ancient mountain Abyla. This mountain forms one of the 'Pillars of Hercules,' the Rock of Gibraltar being the other. It is almost impregnable, and is used by Spain as Siberia is used by Russia, only it is far, far more horrible. The town was built by the Moors in 945, and nowhere else on earth are there to be found an equal number of devices for the torture of human beings. If anyone thinks the horrors of the Inquisition are no longer perpetrated let him get sent to Ceuta: I have good cause to believe that the Inquisition itself is far from dead in Spain. Alas for the person who is sent to Ceuta! The town is small, and, to guard against possible attack, the Moors constructed a chain of fortresses around it. It is in the black cellars of these disintegrating fortresses that the dungeons are located. They are in tiers to the depth of fifty or sixty feet, and are hewn out of the solid rock. They are reached through narrow openings in the stone floors of the fortresses, and when one of these horrible holes is opened the foul odor of filth and decomposition is utterly overpowering. Some of these dungeons contain as many as thirty or forty men. I was placed in a cell reserved for solitary confinement. I have never been a man who regarded life seriously, or feared to risk it upon sufficient occasion, but my heart froze within me when the horror of my situation was revealed to me. A stone box perhaps eight feet square --as I lay upon the floor I could touch its opposite sides with my hands and feet--had been prepared for my entrance by cutting a slit in one of its walls just large enough for the passage of my body. Through this narrow opening I was dropped into the total darkness within.