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Correspondence from Fernando Pessoa to Karl Germer
Apartado 147, Lisbon
24th. October, 1930.
Karl Germer, Esq., Lietzenseefur 9, Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Dear Sir:
This is just to communicate that the English detective in charge of the Crowley Case, having (as I already informed) completed his investigation, is writing the report on it. I am told that the writing of this report is likely to take up to the end of the month, or a few days over, but that it is likely to prove—especially the final part—a rather sensationalist thing.
Looked at from the outside—this, again, is my information—it will look, in a sense, like a Freeman Wills Crofts' novel—detection in minimus. It is the narrative of a very patient investigation, and it contains—with definite proof all over it—the establishment of a particularly difficult alibi, the discovery of the man who replaced Crowley in the Sud-Express, the exact determination of the adverse forces which were working against Crowley, the finding of the taxi which was concerned in the essential part of the process, and the culmination in the murder of the driver of that taxi.
This will, I suppose, make a small book, and, perhaps, it will be serialized. It certainly can be. I suppose I can obtain from the author the chapters (in English) au fur es à mesure as he writes them; may I send them to you? The story should make remarkable reading in any language and you might want to have it translated into German. The conclusion is likely to prove of so sensational a kind that it will be a bomb here in Portugal, unless the censorship (for very definite reasons) takes out the fuse. I need not add that the detective in charge proves every point of his case, down to the tragic final point.
Yours very sincerely,
Fernando Pessoa
P.S.—I do not expect any move in Paris until next week.
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