The end came quite suddenly, when Mr. Poletti was curtly informed that he wes free and could go, when he liked. He did not leave at once, but waited for the guerillas to escort him to the Nankow Pass. Before he left they handed him back $10,000 that had been paid them, as also his camera and other belongings. Strange bandits these! Mr. Poletti tells a story of how he persuaded his captors to return him the money. Somewhere in the pass Mr. Poletti said good-bye—one can well imagine without any regrets whatever—to his unwelcome hosts and hiring donkeys at the first place he came to, hastened with his faithful mafoo towards Peiping.
The three days march by himself through guerilla country and through the Japanese lines was not without its peculiar dangers. For with all that money on him he was a tempting bait to any other band he might fall in with, or might have been arrested as a spy by the Japanese. By avoiding all main paths, however, motor roads and military posts Mr. Poletti managed to find his way back to safety. His view is that stories such as "Forty Days in the Hands of Chinese Bandits" are very pleasant to read about, but extremely unpleasant to experience in one's own person.
I asked Mr. Poletti whether he could suggest any other reason for the unique behaviour of Chinese bandits in returning the ransom money. He shrugged his shoulders, and then suggested that perhaps the threats or blandishments of the Japanese and Italian negotiators might have caused the change of heart. That might just possibly account for his being released unharmed, but is surely no explanation for the return of ransom money that was already paid to them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.