ABSTRACT
I MUST NOW RETURN TO MY OWN STORY. FINDING THAT THERE WAS nothing I could do to help the Hawleys I went back to my own house. I found about eight policemen there. Everything was in disorder; my books were lying all over the floor, my clothes had been pulled out of the cupboards, the bedding was heaped in the middle of the room. And then they questioned me. " Had I a short-wave transmitter concealed in the house ? Had I perhaps a machine-gun, or at any rate a rifle ? " N o ; I had none of these things; but not until they had made a thorough search of every nook and corner were they satisfied. They went through all my letters, examined my photographs and took away with them a series of large X-ray negatives of my lungs. These I had kept by me for many years for the purpose of periodical comparisons. I never got them back. I was quite unable to convince the inspector that they were not in reality photographs of secret fortifications. They also selected for removal some half-dozen of my books, all of them with red bindings, since in the minds of the Japanese police books in red covers are thought to be connected in some way with communism. To these were added a very large pile of newspapers, some a year old. Fortunately for me, these papers were not consecutive, for, although I did not then know it, it had recently become a penal offence to possess a consecutive file of newspapers. Soon after the police departed, one of my students dropped in to see if I was all right. " Tve just seen a most extraordinary sight," he said. " Oh," I replied, " what was it ? " He then went on to describe how, as he was walking up to my house, he had passed a squad of policemen, each one staggering along under a weight of English newspapers.
