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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Israel Regardie
Apartado 147, Lisbon
7th. October, 1930.
Care Frater
I owe you an apology for not replying at once to your letter of the 30th. September, but the apology can have an explanation as handmaid. I had written the Mandrake Press on the 2nd. of this month, and that letter, which crossed yours in the post, contains part of an anticipated reply to it.
Apart from this, as I was yesterday due at the Criminal Investigation police, to make my statement (which was no more than identifying the letter and cigarette-case as written and belonging to 666), I did not want to write before I knew what the Police thought, at there days' distance form the case.
What they think is very simple: they do not presume suicide until the body is found; as, however, the place where suicide must taken place, if it did take place, is one which does not yield up its dead, the problem may be considered at a standstill.
The Police first based their doubts of suicide on the circumstance that the International Police gave "Edward Alexander Crowley" (on the passport) as having crossed the frontier on the evening of the 23rd. September, presumably in the Sud Express. But as their appears to be cumulative evidence to the presence of 666 in Lisbon on the next day, and as the checking of passports on the frontier is a very summary proceeding and nowise including even a look at the holder of the passport (the passports are handled out collectively and the name taken, so even a man could pass out with a lady's passport), they seem to have abandoned that point of evidence. At any rate, they no longer mention "having gone out of country" as a reason not to presume suicide.
This is where we are, and it looks like a suburb of Nowhere. I am sending you a copy of "notícias Ilustrado". Which is the one outstanding Portuguese illustrated paper; this is the 4th. October issue, which contains the portrait of 666 on the cover and the fullest report yet printed in the middle pages. I shall send you a translation of the report in a day or two.
Yours fraternally
Fernando Pessoa
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