Ace of Spies by Andrew Cook

changed dramatically the following month, however, when it seemed not only that D’Arcy had now found potential funding, but that potential funding was sourced abroad and might purchase the concession outright.
    In Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart repeats one of Reilly’s oft-recited tales of how, at the British Admiralty’s behest, he tracked down D’Arcy and covertly approached him in the south of France. According to Reilly, he boarded de Rothschild’s yacht disguised as a priest and persuaded D’Arcy to break off negotiations and return to London to meet with Pretyman and the Admiralty. 35 This story is clearly fantasy on Reilly’s part, for in February 1904 he was thousands of miles away in Port Arthur. However, this should not discredit the theory that the Admiralty was engaged in efforts to entice D’Arcy from the clutches of the Rothschilds.
    As D’Arcy and the Rothschilds were making the first tentative moves towards exploratory talks, William Melville mysteriously resigned as head of Special Branch on 1 December 1903. No known reason was given for his sudden departure. His Metropolitan Police Service File would have contained the answer to this puzzle, but unlike those of other Special Branch heads, it is no longer to be found. Had he made too many anarchist enemies, and decided to disappear from view, or had he accepted a lucrative position outside the force? All the signs are that this was a speedy and unplanned departure. Patrick Quinn was appointed to succeed him, and as an indication of the haste involved, was promoted to superintendent without sitting the usual examination, which he would have done well in advance if his promotion had been planned and anticipated.
    Where then did Melville go? It seems unlikely that his departure was motivated by a desire to avoid the attentionsof anarchists or any other undesirable element, as his name and address continue to appear in the London Post Office Directory from the time of his resignation in 1903 to the time of his death in 1918. 36 There is no indication either, from any source, that he set up in business in Britain or abroad. It was not until after his death on 1 February 1918, 37 that a clue to this mystery presented itself in the ‘Funerals’ column of The Times on Wednesday 6 February 1918. Under the heading ‘Mr William Melville’, the report referred to his funeral the previous day at St Mary’s Cemetery in Kensal Green, and went on to state that he was ‘formerly a superintendent of Special Police at Scotland Yard, and recently of the Military Intelligence Department of the War Office’. Among those listed as attending the funeral was one Lt Curtis Bennett RN, who author Nicholas Hiley 38 believed was a naval intelligence officer. This led Hiley to speculate that Melville had been recruited by NID, the Naval Intelligence Division, in 1903 and that he later joined MI5 during the First World War, as stated by The Times report. 39 Research by this author has confirmed that Henry Curtis Bennett was indeed an intelligence officer, but was an MI5 officer with no connection to the Naval Intelligence Division. 40
    It was not, however, until November 1997, when MI5 released material on Melville to the Public Record Office, that Hiley’s theories were finally corroborated, if only in part. 41 It revealed that ‘W. Melville, MVO, MBE, was employed with effect from 1 December 1903’ by the War Office. 42 It further indicated that he initially worked in the second auxiliary of the Military Intelligence Investigation Branch, which was later incorporated into MI5 when the new service was created in 1909. Those working in this branch are described as ‘shadowing staff’, whose responsibility it was to ‘watch and report’ on designated persons.
    We know from contemporary records that the Admiralty and the War Office worked closely together on a number of intelligence matters, and shared the cost of such operations. 43 Had the Admiralty decided in