Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 22nd January 1910 — No.29
Facts and Opinions
Detective Wiles
While we are on this subject, we might suggest to the C.I.D. to train up a few spies and informers, send them for the completion of their education to France and then appoint them as teachers in the College in India.
Just now they do their work very clumsily.
We may instance the case of an1 Eurasian or European gentleman rejoicing in an Irish name or alias and a false address, who left his card on Sj. Aurobindo Ghose and then opened fire with a letter requesting the loan of a revolver, brand new and serviceable, without which the Irish gentleman could not live any longer.
Neither is it a good opening for acquaintance to come for financial help to a man known to be himself the possessor of a very small income.
To request advice how to serve the country or to become religious is a more plausible opening, but it ought to be followed up and sustained plausibly.
Even the wearing of the saffron robe need not be a passport to effusive friendship, unless there is something behind, and not always even then.
We may also refer to the romantic story of the Dead Letter Office return published the other day by Sj. Prabhaschandra Deb in the Hitabadi.
This precious script was curiously enough addressed to Grey Street, without any number, in Prabhas Babu's handwriting and with his signature so exactly reproduced as to defy discrimination even by an expert.
As both Prabhas Babu and the police are well 
aware that there is now no connection between Sj. Aurobindo and any number in Grey Street, it was obviously the writer's intention that it should go to the Dead Letter Office and from there to the C.I.D.
Prabhas Babu's suggestion was not, as the Hitabadi reported, to send it to the Calcutta Police for inquiry, but to return it to the Dead Letter Office.
Sj. Aurobindo preferred to consign it to the waste paper basket as a more fitting repository.
We cannot imagine any earthly use in these clumsy devices.
Even Mr. Norton would find it difficult to make anything of a forgery, however exact, more hopelessly suspicious even than the “sweets” letter.