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_ The lady patroness of Michaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle of
humanitarian hopes, was one of the most influential and
distinguished connections of the Assistant Commissioner's wife,
whom she called Annie, and treated still rather as a not very wise
and utterly inexperienced young girl. But she had consented to
accept him on a friendly footing, which was by no means the case
with all of his wife's influential connections. Married young and
splendidly at some remote epoch of the past, she had had for a time
a close view of great affairs and even of some great men. She
herself was a great lady. Old now in the number of her years, she
had that sort of exceptional temperament which defies time with
scornful disregard, as if it were a rather vulgar convention
submitted to by the mass of inferior mankind. Many other
conventions easier to set aside, alas! failed to obtain her
recognition, also on temperamental grounds - either because they
bored her, or else because they stood in the way of her scorns and
sympathies. Admiration was a sentiment unknown to her (it was one
of the secret griefs of her most noble husband against her) -
first, as always more or less tainted with mediocrity, and next as
being in a way an admission of inferiority. And both were frankly
inconceivable to her nature. To be fearlessly outspoken in her
opinions came easily to her, since she judged solely from the
standpoint of her social position. She was equally untrammelled in
her actions; and as her tactfulness proceeded from genuine
humanity, her bodily vigour remained remarkable and her superiority
was serene and cordial, three generations had admired her
infinitely, and the last she was likely to see had pronounced her a
wonderful woman. Meantime intelligent, with a sort of lofty
simplicity, and curious at heart, but not like many women merely of
social gossip, she amused her age by attracting within her ken
through the power of her great, almost historical, social prestige
everything that rose above the dead level of mankind, lawfully or
unlawfully, by position, wit, audacity, fortune or misfortune.
Royal Highnesses, artists, men of science, young statesmen, and
charlatans of all ages and conditions, who, unsubstantial and
light, bobbing up like corks, show best the direction of the
surface currents, had been welcomed in that house, listened to,
penetrated, understood, appraised, for her own edification. In her
own words, she liked to watch what the world was coming to. And as
she had a practical mind her judgment of men and things, though
based on special prejudices, was seldom totally wrong, and almost
never wrong-headed. Her drawing-room was probably the only place
in the wide world where an Assistant Commissioner of Police could
meet a convict liberated on a ticket-of-leave on other than
professional and official ground. Who had brought Michaelis there
one afternoon the Assistant Commissioner did not remember very
well. He had a notion it must have been a certain Member of
Parliament of illustrious parentage and unconventional sympathies,
which were the standing joke of the comic papers. The notabilities
and even the simple notorieties of the day brought each other
freely to that temple of an old woman's not ignoble curiosity. You
never could guess whom you were likely to come upon being received
in semi-privacy within the faded blue silk and gilt frame screen,
making a cosy nook for a couch and a few arm-chairs in the great
drawing-room, with its hum of voices and the groups of people
seated or standing in the light of six tall windows.
Michaelis had been the object of a revulsion of popular sentiment,
the same sentiment which years ago had applauded the ferocity of
the life sentence passed upon him for complicity in a rather mad
attempt to rescue some prisoners from a police van. The plan of
the conspirators had been to shoot down the horses and overpower
the escort. Unfortunately, one of the police constables got shot
too. He left a wife and three small children, and the death of
that man aroused through the length and breadth of a realm for
whose defence, welfare, and glory men die every day as matter of
duty, an outburst of furious indignation, of a raging implacable
pity for the victim. Three ring-leaders got hanged. Michaelis,
young and slim, locksmith by trade, and great frequenter of evening
schools, did not even know that anybody had been killed, his part
with a few others being to force open the door at the back of the
special conveyance. When arrested he had a bunch of skeleton keys
in one pocket a heavy chisel in another, and a short crowbar in his
hand: neither more nor less than a burglar. But no burglar would
have received such a heavy sentence. The death of the constable
had made him miserable at heart, but the failure of the plot also.
He did not conceal either of these sentiments from his empanelled
countrymen, and that sort of compunction appeared shockingly
imperfect to the crammed court. The judge on passing sentence
commented feelingly upon the depravity and callousness of the young
prisoner.
That made the groundless fame of his condemnation; the fame of his
release was made for him on no better grounds by people who wished
to exploit the sentimental aspect of his imprisonment either for
purposes of their own or for no intelligible purpose. He let them
do so in the innocence of his heart and the simplicity of his mind.
Nothing that happened to him individually had any importance. He
was like those saintly men whose personality is lost in the
contemplation of their faith. His ideas were not in the nature of
convictions. They were inaccessible to reasoning. They formed in
all their contradictions and obscurities an invincible and
humanitarian creed, which he confessed rather than preached, with
an obstinate gentleness, a smile of pacific assurance on his lips,
and his candid blue eyes cast down because the sight of faces
troubled his inspiration developed in solitude. In that
characteristic attitude, pathetic in his grotesque and incurable
obesity which he had to drag like a galley slave's bullet to the
end of his days, the Assistant Commissioner of Police beheld the
ticket-of-leave apostle filling a privileged arm-chair within the
screen. He sat there by the head of the old lady's couch, mild-
voiced and quiet, with no more self-consciousness than a very small
child, and with something of a child's charm - the appealing charm
of trustfulness. Confident of the future, whose secret ways had
been revealed to him within the four walls of a well-known
penitentiary, he had no reason to look with suspicion upon anybody.
If he could not give the great and curious lady a very definite
idea as to what the world was coming to, he had managed without
effort to impress her by his unembittered faith, by the sterling
quality of his optimism.
A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both
ends of the social scale. The great lady was simple in her own
way. His views and beliefs had nothing in them to shock or startle
her, since she judged them from the standpoint of her lofty
position. Indeed, her sympathies were easily accessible to a man
of that sort. She was not an exploiting capitalist herself; she
was, as it were, above the play of economic conditions. And she
had a great capacity of pity for the more obvious forms of common
human miseries, precisely because she was such a complete stranger
to them that she had to translate her conception into terms of
mental suffering before she could grasp the notion of their
cruelty. The Assistant Commissioner remembered very well the
conversation between these two. He had listened in silence. It
was something as exciting in a way, and even touching in its
foredoomed futility, as the efforts at moral intercourse between
the inhabitants of remote planets. But this grotesque incarnation
of humanitarian passion appealed somehow, to one's imagination. At
last Michaelis rose, and taking the great lady's extended hand,
shook it, retained it for a moment in his great cushioned palm with
unembarrassed friendliness, and turned upon the semi-private nook
of the drawing-room his back, vast and square, and as if distended
under the short tweed jacket. Glancing about in serene
benevolence, he waddled along to the distant door between the knots
of other visitors. The murmur of conversations paused on his
passage. He smiled innocently at a tall, brilliant girl, whose
eyes met his accidentally, and went out unconscious of the glances
following him across the room. Michaelis' first appearance in the
world was a success - a success of esteem unmarred by a single
murmur of derision. The interrupted conversations were resumed in
their proper tone, grave or light. Only a well-set-up, long-
limbed, active-looking man of forty talking with two ladies near a
window remarked aloud, with an unexpected depth of feeling:
"Eighteen stone, I should say, and not five foot six. Poor fellow!
It's terrible - terrible."
The lady of the house, gazing absently at the Assistant
Commissioner, left alone with her on the private side of the
screen, seemed to be rearranging her mental impressions behind her
thoughtful immobility of a handsome old face. Men with grey
moustaches and full, healthy, vaguely smiling countenances
approached, circling round the screen; two mature women with a
matronly air of gracious resolution; a clean-shaved individual with
sunken cheeks, and dangling a gold-mounted eyeglass on a broad
black ribbon with an old-world, dandified effect. A silence
deferential, but full of reserves, reigned for a moment, and then
the great lady exclaimed, not with resentment, but with a sort of
protesting indignation:
"And that officially is supposed to be a revolutionist! What
nonsense." She looked hard at the Assistant Commissioner, who
murmured apologetically:
"Not a dangerous one perhaps."
"Not dangerous - I should think not indeed. He is a mere believer.
It's the temperament of a saint," declared the great lady in a firm
tone. "And they kept him shut up for twenty years. One shudders
at the stupidity of it. And now they have let him out everybody
belonging to him is gone away somewhere or dead. His parents are
dead; the girl he was to marry has died while he was in prison; he
has lost the skill necessary for his manual occupation. He told me
all this himself with the sweetest patience; but then, he said, he
had had plenty of time to think out things for himself. A pretty
compensation! If that's the stuff revolutionists are made of some
of us may well go on their knees to them," she continued in a
slightly bantering voice, while the banal society smiles hardened
on the worldly faces turned towards her with conventional
deference. "The poor creature is obviously no longer in a position
to take care of himself. Somebody will have to look after him a
little."
"He should be recommended to follow a treatment of some sort," the
soldierly voice of the active-looking man was heard advising
earnestly from a distance. He was in the pink of condition for his
age, and even the texture of his long frock coat had a character of
elastic soundness, as if it were a living tissue. "The man is
virtually a cripple," he added with unmistakable feeling.
Other voices, as if glad of the opening, murmured hasty compassion.
"Quite startling," "Monstrous," "Most painful to see." The lank
man, with the eyeglass on a broad ribbon, pronounced mincingly the
word "Grotesque," whose justness was appreciated by those standing
near him. They smiled at each other.
The Assistant Commissioner had expressed no opinion either then or
later, his position making it impossible for him to ventilate any
independent view of a ticket-of-leave convict. But, in truth, he
shared the view of his wife's friend and patron that Michaelis was
a humanitarian sentimentalist, a little mad, but upon the whole
incapable of hurting a fly intentionally. So when that name
cropped up suddenly in this vexing bomb affair he realised all the
danger of it for the ticket-of-leave apostle, and his mind reverted
at once to the old lady's well-established infatuation. Her
arbitrary kindness would not brook patiently any interference with
Michaelis' freedom. It was a deep, calm, convinced infatuation.
She had not only felt him to be inoffensive, but she had said so,
which last by a confusion of her absolutist mind became a sort of
incontrovertible demonstration. It was as if the monstrosity of
the man, with his candid infant's eyes and a fat angelic smile, had
fascinated her. She had come to believe almost his theory of the
future, since it was not repugnant to her prejudices. She disliked
the new element of plutocracy in the social compound, and
industrialism as a method of human development appeared to her
singularly repulsive in its mechanical and unfeeling character.
The humanitarian hopes of the mild Michaelis tended not towards
utter destruction, but merely towards the complete economic ruin of
the system. And she did not really see where was the moral harm of
it. It would do away with all the multitude of the "parvenus,"
whom she disliked and mistrusted, not because they had arrived
anywhere (she denied that), but because of their profound
unintelligence of the world, which was the primary cause of the
crudity of their perceptions and the aridity of their hearts. With
the annihilation of all capital they would vanish too; but
universal ruin (providing it was universal, as it was revealed to
Michaelis) would leave the social values untouched. The
disappearance of the last piece of money could not affect people of
position. She could not conceive how it could affect her position,
for instance. She had developed these discoveries to the Assistant
Commissioner with all the serene fearlessness of an old woman who
had escaped the blight of indifference. He had made for himself
the rule to receive everything of that sort in a silence which he
took care from policy and inclination not to make offensive. He
had an affection for the aged disciple of Michaelis, a complex
sentiment depending a little on her prestige, on her personality,
but most of all on the instinct of flattered gratitude. He felt
himself really liked in her house. She was kindness personified.
And she was practically wise too, after the manner of experienced
women. She made his married life much easier than it would have
been without her generously full recognition of his rights as
Annie's husband. Her influence upon his wife, a woman devoured by
all sorts of small selfishnesses, small envies, small jealousies,
was excellent. Unfortunately, both her kindness and her wisdom
were of unreasonable complexion, distinctly feminine, and difficult
to deal with. She remained a perfect woman all along her full tale
of years, and not as some of them do become - a sort of slippery,
pestilential old man in petticoats. And it was as of a woman that
he thought of her - the specially choice incarnation of the
feminine, wherein is recruited the tender, ingenuous, and fierce
bodyguard for all sorts of men who talk under the influence of an
emotion, true or fraudulent; for preachers, seers, prophets, or
reformers.
Appreciating the distinguished and good friend of his wife, and
himself, in that way, the Assistant Commissioner became alarmed at
the convict Michaelis' possible fate. Once arrested on suspicion
of being in some way, however remote, a party to this outrage, the
man could hardly escape being sent back to finish his sentence at
least. And that would kill him; he would never come out alive.
The Assistant Commissioner made a reflection extremely unbecoming
his official position without being really creditable to his
humanity.
"If the fellow is laid hold of again," he thought, "she will never
forgive me."
The frankness of such a secretly outspoken thought could not go
without some derisive self-criticism. No man engaged in a work he
does not like can preserve many saving illusions about himself.
The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to
the personality. It is only when our appointed activities seem by
a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our
temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-
deception. The Assistant Commissioner did not like his work at
home. The police work he had been engaged on in a distant part of
the globe had the saving character of an irregular sort of warfare
or at least the risk and excitement of open-air sport. His real
abilities, which were mainly of an administrative order, were
combined with an adventurous disposition. Chained to a desk in the
thick of four millions of men, he considered himself the victim of
an ironic fate - the same, no doubt, which had brought about his
marriage with a woman exceptionally sensitive in the matter of
colonial climate, besides other limitations testifying to the
delicacy of her nature - and her tastes. Though he judged his
alarm sardonically he did not dismiss the improper thought from his
mind. The instinct of self-preservation was strong within him. On
the contrary, he repeated it mentally with profane emphasis and a
fuller precision: "Damn it! If that infernal Heat has his way the
fellow'll die in prison smothered in his fat, and she'll never
forgive me."
His black, narrow figure, with the white band of the collar under
the silvery gleams on the close-cropped hair at the back of the
head, remained motionless. The silence had lasted such a long time
that Chief Inspector Heat ventured to clear his throat. This noise
produced its effect. The zealous and intelligent officer was asked
by his superior, whose back remained turned to him immovably:
"You connect Michaelis with this affair?"
Chief Inspector Heat was very positive, but cautious.
"Well, sir," he said, "we have enough to go upon. A man like that
has no business to be at large, anyhow."
"You will want some conclusive evidence," came the observation in a
murmur.
Chief Inspector Heat raised his eyebrows at the black, narrow back,
which remained obstinately presented to his intelligence and his
zeal.
"There will be no difficulty in getting up sufficient evidence
against HIM," he said, with virtuous complacency. "You may trust
me for that, sir," he added, quite unnecessarily, out of the
fulness of his heart; for it seemed to him an excellent thing to
have that man in hand to be thrown down to the public should it
think fit to roar with any special indignation in this case. It
was impossible to say yet whether it would roar or not. That in
the last instance depended, of course, on the newspaper press. But
in any case, Chief Inspector Heat, purveyor of prisons by trade,
and a man of legal instincts, did logically believe that
incarceration was the proper fate for every declared enemy of the
law. In the strength of that conviction he committed a fault of
tact. He allowed himself a little conceited laugh, and repeated:
"Trust me for that, sir."
This was too much for the forced calmness under which the Assistant
Commissioner had for upwards of eighteen months concealed his
irritation with the system and the subordinates of his office. A
square peg forced into a round hole, he had felt like a daily
outrage that long established smooth roundness into which a man of
less sharply angular shape would have fitted himself, with
voluptuous acquiescence, after a shrug or two. What he resented
most was just the necessity of taking so much on trust. At the
little laugh of Chief Inspector Heat's he spun swiftly on his
heels, as if whirled away from the window-pane by an electric
shock. He caught on the latter's face not only the complacency
proper to the occasion lurking under the moustache, but the
vestiges of experimental watchfulness in the round eyes, which had
been, no doubt, fastened on his back, and now met his glance for a
second before the intent character of their stare had the time to
change to a merely startled appearance.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police had really some qualifications
for his post. Suddenly his suspicion was awakened. It is but fair
to say that his suspicions of the police methods (unless the police
happened to be a semi-military body organised by himself) was not
difficult to arouse. If it ever slumbered from sheer weariness, it
was but lightly; and his appreciation of Chief Inspector Heat's
zeal and ability, moderate in itself, excluded all notion of moral
confidence. "He's up to something," he exclaimed mentally, and at
once became angry. Crossing over to his desk with headlong
strides, he sat down violently. "Here I am stuck in a litter of
paper," he reflected, with unreasonable resentment, "supposed to
hold all the threads in my hands, and yet I can but hold what is
put in my hand, and nothing else. And they can fasten the other
ends of the threads where they please."
He raised his head, and turned towards his subordinate a long,
meagre face with the accentuated features of an energetic Don
Quixote.
"Now what is it you've got up your sleeve?"
The other stared. He stared without winking in a perfect
immobility of his round eyes, as he was used to stare at the
various members of the criminal class when, after being duly
cautioned, they made their statements in the tones of injured
innocence, or false simplicity, or sullen resignation. But behind
that professional and stony fixity there was some surprise too, for
in such a tone, combining nicely the note of contempt and
impatience, Chief Inspector Heat, the right-hand man of the
department, was not used to be addressed. He began in a
procrastinating manner, like a man taken unawares by a new and
unexpected experience.
"What I've got against that man Michaelis you mean, sir?"
The Assistant Commissioner watched the bullet head; the points of
that Norse rover's moustache, falling below the line of the heavy
jaw; the whole full and pale physiognomy, whose determined
character was marred by too much flesh; at the cunning wrinkles
radiating from the outer corners of the eyes - and in that
purposeful contemplation of the valuable and trusted officer he
drew a conviction so sudden that it moved him like an inspiration.
"I have reason to think that when you came into this room," he said
in measured tones, "it was not Michaelis who was in your mind; not
principally - perhaps not at all."
"You have reason to think, sir?" muttered Chief Inspector Heat,
with every appearance of astonishment, which up to a certain point
was genuine enough. He had discovered in this affair a delicate
and perplexing side, forcing upon the discoverer a certain amount
of insincerity - that sort of insincerity which, under the names of
skill, prudence, discretion, turns up at one point or another in
most human affairs. He felt at the moment like a tight-rope artist
might feel if suddenly, in the middle of the performance, the
manager of the Music Hall were to rush out of the proper managerial
seclusion and begin to shake the rope. Indignation, the sense of
moral insecurity engendered by such a treacherous proceeding joined
to the immediate apprehension of a broken neck, would, in the
colloquial phrase, put him in a state. And there would be also
some scandalised concern for his art too, since a man must identify
himself with something more tangible than his own personality, and
establish his pride somewhere, either in his social position, or in
the quality of the work he is obliged to do, or simply in the
superiority of the idleness he may be fortunate enough to enjoy.
"Yes," said the Assistant Commissioner; "I have. I do not mean to
say that you have not thought of Michaelis at all. But you are
giving the fact you've mentioned a prominence which strikes me as
not quite candid, Inspector Heat. If that is really the track of
discovery, why haven't you followed it up at once, either
personally or by sending one of your men to that village?"
"Do you think, sir, I have failed in my duty there?" the Chief
Inspector asked, in a tone which he sought to make simply
reflective. Forced unexpectedly to concentrate his faculties upon
the task of preserving his balance, he had seized upon that point,
and exposed himself to a rebuke; for, the Assistant Commissioner
frowning slightly, observed that this was a very improper remark to
make.
"But since you've made it," he continued coldly, "I'll tell you
that this is not my meaning."
He paused, with a straight glance of his sunken eyes which was a
full equivalent of the unspoken termination "and you know it." The
head of the so-called Special Crimes Department debarred by his
position from going out of doors personally in quest of secrets
locked up in guilty breasts, had a propensity to exercise his
considerable gifts for the detection of incriminating truth upon
his own subordinates. That peculiar instinct could hardly be
called a weakness. It was natural. He was a born detective. It
had unconsciously governed his choice of a career, and if it ever
failed him in life it was perhaps in the one exceptional
circumstance of his marriage - which was also natural. It fed,
since it could not roam abroad, upon the human material which was
brought to it in its official seclusion. We can never cease to be
ourselves.
His elbow on the desk, his thin legs crossed, and nursing his cheek
in the palm of his meagre hand, the Assistant Commissioner in
charge of the Special Crimes branch was getting hold of the case
with growing interest. His Chief Inspector, if not an absolutely
worthy foeman of his penetration, was at any rate the most worthy
of all within his reach. A mistrust of established reputations was
strictly in character with the Assistant Commissioner's ability as
detector. His memory evoked a certain old fat and wealthy native
chief in the distant colony whom it was a tradition for the
successive Colonial Governors to trust and make much of as a firm
friend and supporter of the order and legality established by white
men; whereas, when examined sceptically, he was found out to be
principally his own good friend, and nobody else's. Not precisely
a traitor, but still a man of many dangerous reservations in his
fidelity, caused by a due regard for his own advantage, comfort,
and safety. A fellow of some innocence in his naive duplicity, but
none the less dangerous. He took some finding out. He was
physically a big man, too, and (allowing for the difference of
colour, of course) Chief Inspector Heat's appearance recalled him
to the memory of his superior. It was not the eyes nor yet the
lips exactly. It was bizarre. But does not Alfred Wallace relate
in his famous book on the Malay Archipelago how, amongst the Aru
Islanders, he discovered in an old and naked savage with a sooty
skin a peculiar resemblance to a dear friend at home?
For the first time since he took up his appointment the Assistant
Commissioner felt as if he were going to do some real work for his
salary. And that was a pleasurable sensation. "I'll turn him
inside out like an old glove," thought the Assistant Commissioner,
with his eyes resting pensively upon Chief Inspector Heat.
"No, that was not my thought," he began again. "There is no doubt
about you knowing your business - no doubt at all; and that's
precisely why I - " He stopped short, and changing his tone: "What
could you bring up against Michaelis of a definite nature? I mean
apart from the fact that the two men under suspicion - you're
certain there were two of them - came last from a railway station
within three miles of the village where Michaelis is living now."
"This by itself is enough for us to go upon, sir, with that sort of
man," said the Chief Inspector, with returning composure. The
slight approving movement of the Assistant Commissioner's head went
far to pacify the resentful astonishment of the renowned officer.
For Chief Inspector Heat was a kind man, an excellent husband, a
devoted father; and the public and departmental confidence he
enjoyed acting favourably upon an amiable nature, disposed him to
feel friendly towards the successive Assistant Commissioners he had
seen pass through that very room. There had been three in his
time. The first one, a soldierly, abrupt, red-faced person, with
white eyebrows and an explosive temper, could be managed with a
silken thread. He left on reaching the age limit. The second, a
perfect gentleman, knowing his own and everybody else's place to a
nicety, on resigning to take up a higher appointment out of England
got decorated for (really) Inspector Heat's services. To work with
him had been a pride and a pleasure. The third, a bit of a dark
horse from the first, was at the end of eighteen months something
of a dark horse still to the department. Upon the whole Chief
Inspector Heat believed him to be in the main harmless - odd-
looking, but harmless. He was speaking now, and the Chief
Inspector listened with outward deference (which means nothing,
being a matter of duty) and inwardly with benevolent toleration.
"Michaelis reported himself before leaving London for the country?"
"Yes, sir. He did."
"And what may he be doing there?" continued the Assistant
Commissioner, who was perfectly informed on that point. Fitted
with painful tightness into an old wooden arm-chair, before a worm-
eaten oak table in an upstairs room of a four-roomed cottage with a
roof of moss-grown tiles, Michaelis was writing night and day in a
shaky, slanting hand that "Autobiography of a Prisoner" which was
to be like a book of Revelation in the history of mankind. The
conditions of confined space, seclusion, and solitude in a small
four-roomed cottage were favourable to his inspiration. It was
like being in prison, except that one was never disturbed for the
odious purpose of taking exercise according to the tyrannical
regulations of his old home in the penitentiary. He could not tell
whether the sun still shone on the earth or not. The perspiration
of the literary labour dropped from his brow. A delightful
enthusiasm urged him on. It was the liberation of his inner life,
the letting out of his soul into the wide world. And the zeal of
his guileless vanity (first awakened by the offer of five hundred
pounds from a publisher) seemed something predestined and holy.
"It would be, of course, most desirable to be informed exactly,"
insisted the Assistant Commissioner uncandidly.
Chief Inspector Heat, conscious of renewed irritation at this
display of scrupulousness, said that the county police had been
notified from the first of Michaelis' arrival, and that a full
report could be obtained in a few hours. A wire to the
superintendent -
Thus he spoke, rather slowly, while his mind seemed already to be
weighing the consequences. A slight knitting of the brow was the
outward sign of this. But he was interrupted by a question.
"You've sent that wire already?"
"No, sir," he answered, as if surprised.
The Assistant Commissioner uncrossed his legs suddenly. The
briskness of that movement contrasted with the casual way in which
he threw out a suggestion.
"Would you think that Michaelis had anything to do with the
preparation of that bomb, for instance?"
The Chief Inspector assumed a reflective manner.
"I wouldn't say so. There's no necessity to say anything at
present. He associates with men who are classed as dangerous. He
was made a delegate of the Red Committee less than a year after his
release on licence. A sort of compliment, I suppose."
And the Chief Inspector laughed a little angrily, a little
scornfully. With a man of that sort scrupulousness was a misplaced
and even an illegal sentiment. The celebrity bestowed upon
Michaelis on his release two years ago by some emotional
journalists in want of special copy had rankled ever since in his
breast. It was perfectly legal to arrest that man on the barest
suspicion. It was legal and expedient on the face of it. His two
former chiefs would have seen the point at once; whereas this one,
without saying either yes or no, sat there, as if lost in a dream.
Moreover, besides being legal and expedient, the arrest of
Michaelis solved a little personal difficulty which worried Chief
Inspector Heat somewhat. This difficulty had its bearing upon his
reputation, upon his comfort, and even upon the efficient
performance of his duties. For, if Michaelis no doubt knew
something about this outrage, the Chief Inspector was fairly
certain that he did not know too much. This was just as well. He
knew much less - the Chief Inspector was positive - than certain
other individuals he had in his mind, but whose arrest seemed to
him inexpedient, besides being a more complicated matter, on
account of the rules of the game. The rules of the game did not
protect so much Michaelis, who was an ex-convict. It would be
stupid not to take advantage of legal facilities, and the
journalists who had written him up with emotional gush would be
ready to write him down with emotional indignation.
This prospect, viewed with confidence, had the attraction of a
personal triumph for Chief Inspector Heat. And deep down in his
blameless bosom of an average married citizen, almost unconscious
but potent nevertheless, the dislike of being compelled by events
to meddle with the desperate ferocity of the Professor had its say.
This dislike had been strengthened by the chance meeting in the
lane. The encounter did not leave behind with Chief Inspector Heat
that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police
force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their
intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power
is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow-
creatures is flattered as worthily as it deserves.
The perfect anarchist was not recognised as a fellow-creature by
Chief Inspector Heat. He was impossible - a mad dog to be left
alone. Not that the Chief Inspector was afraid of him; on the
contrary, he meant to have him some day. But not yet; he meant to
get hold of him in his own time, properly and effectively according
to the rules of the game. The present was not the right time for
attempting that feat, not the right time for many reasons, personal
and of public service. This being the strong feeling of Inspector
Heat, it appeared to him just and proper that this affair should be
shunted off its obscure and inconvenient track, leading goodness
knows where, into a quiet (and lawful) siding called Michaelis.
And he repeated, as if reconsidering the suggestion
conscientiously:
"The bomb. No, I would not say that exactly. We may never find
that out. But it's clear that he is connected with this in some
way, which we can find out without much trouble."
His countenance had that look of grave, overbearing indifference
once well known and much dreaded by the better sort of thieves.
Chief Inspector Heat, though what is called a man, was not a
smiling animal. But his inward state was that of satisfaction at
the passively receptive attitude of the Assistant Commissioner, who
murmured gently:
"And you really think that the investigation should be made in that
direction?"
"I do, sir."
"Quite convinced?
"I am, sir. That's the true line for us to take."
The Assistant Commissioner withdrew the support of his hand from
his reclining head with a suddenness that, considering his languid
attitude, seemed to menace his whole person with collapse. But, on
the contrary, he sat up, extremely alert, behind the great writing-
table on which his hand had fallen with the sound of a sharp blow.
"What I want to know is what put it out of your head till now."
"Put it out of my head," repeated the Chief Inspector very slowly.
"Yes. Till you were called into this room - you know."
The Chief Inspector felt as if the air between his clothing and his
skin had become unpleasantly hot. It was the sensation of an
unprecedented and incredible experience.
"Of course," he said, exaggerating the deliberation of his
utterance to the utmost limits of possibility, "if there is a
reason, of which I know nothing, for not interfering with the
convict Michaelis, perhaps it's just as well I didn't start the
county police after him."
This took such a long time to say that the unflagging attention of
the Assistant Commissioner seemed a wonderful feat of endurance.
His retort came without delay.
"No reason whatever that I know of. Come, Chief Inspector, this
finessing with me is highly improper on your part - highly
improper. And it's also unfair, you know. You shouldn't leave me
to puzzle things out for myself like this. Really, I am
surprised."
He paused, then added smoothly: "I need scarcely tell you that this
conversation is altogether unofficial."
These words were far from pacifying the Chief Inspector. The
indignation of a betrayed tight-rope performer was strong within
him. In his pride of a trusted servant he was affected by the
assurance that the rope was not shaken for the purpose of breaking
his neck, as by an exhibition of impudence. As if anybody were
afraid! Assistant Commissioners come and go, but a valuable Chief
Inspector is not an ephemeral office phenomenon. He was not afraid
of getting a broken neck. To have his performance spoiled was more
than enough to account for the glow of honest indignation. And as
thought is no respecter of persons, the thought of Chief Inspector
Heat took a threatening and prophetic shape. "You, my boy," he
said to himself, keeping his round and habitually roving eyes
fastened upon the Assistant Commissioner's face - "you, my boy, you
don't know your place, and your place won't know you very long
either, I bet."
As if in provoking answer to that thought, something like the ghost
of an amiable smile passed on the lips of the Assistant
Commissioner. His manner was easy and business-like while he
persisted in administering another shake to the tight rope.
"Let us come now to what you have discovered on the spot, Chief
Inspector," he said.
"A fool and his job are soon parted," went on the train of
prophetic thought in Chief Inspector Heat's head. But it was
immediately followed by the reflection that a higher official, even
when "fired out" (this was the precise image), has still the time
as he flies through the door to launch a nasty kick at the shin-
bones of a subordinate. Without softening very much the basilisk
nature of his stare, he said impassively:
"We are coming to that part of my investigation, sir."
"That's right. Well, what have you brought away from it?"
The Chief Inspector, who had made up his mind to jump off the rope,
came to the ground with gloomy frankness.
"I've brought away an address," he said, pulling out of his pocket
without haste a singed rag of dark blue cloth. "This belongs to
the overcoat the fellow who got himself blown to pieces was
wearing. Of course, the overcoat may not have been his, and may
even have been stolen. But that's not at all probable if you look
at this."
The Chief Inspector, stepping up to the table, smoothed out
carefully the rag of blue cloth. He had picked it up from the
repulsive heap in the mortuary, because a tailor's name is found
sometimes under the collar. It is not often of much use, but still
- He only half expected to find anything useful, but certainly he
did not expect to find - not under the collar at all, but stitched
carefully on the under side of the lapel - a square piece of calico
with an address written on it in marking ink.
The Chief Inspector removed his smoothing hand.
"I carried it off with me without anybody taking notice," he said.
"I thought it best. It can always be produced if required."
The Assistant Commissioner, rising a little in his chair, pulled
the cloth over to his side of the table. He sat looking at it in
silence. Only the number 32 and the name of Brett Street were
written in marking ink on a piece of calico slightly larger than an
ordinary cigarette paper. He was genuinely surprised.
"Can't understand why he should have gone about labelled like
this," he said, looking up at Chief Inspector Heat. "It's a most
extraordinary thing."
"I met once in the smoking-room of a hotel an old gentleman who
went about with his name and address sewn on in all his coats in
case of an accident or sudden illness," said the Chief Inspector.
"He professed to be eighty-four years old, but he didn't look his
age. He told me he was also afraid of losing his memory suddenly,
like those people he has been reading of in the papers."
A question from the Assistant Commissioner, who wanted to know what
was No. 32 Brett Street, interrupted that reminiscence abruptly.
The Chief Inspector, driven down to the ground by unfair artifices,
had elected to walk the path of unreserved openness. If he
believed firmly that to know too much was not good for the
department, the judicious holding back of knowledge was as far as
his loyalty dared to go for the good of the service. If the
Assistant Commissioner wanted to mismanage this affair nothing, of
course, could prevent him. But, on his own part, he now saw no
reason for a display of alacrity. So he answered concisely:
"It's a shop, sir."
The Assistant Commissioner, with his eyes lowered on the rag of
blue cloth, waited for more information. As that did not come he
proceeded to obtain it by a series of questions propounded with
gentle patience. Thus he acquired an idea of the nature of Mr
Verloc's commerce, of his personal appearance, and heard at last
his name. In a pause the Assistant Commissioner raised his eyes,
and discovered some animation on the Chief Inspector's face. They
looked at each other in silence.
"Of course," said the latter, "the department has no record of that
man."
"Did any of my predecessors have any knowledge of what you have
told me now?" asked the Assistant Commissioner, putting his elbows
on the table and raising his joined hands before his face, as if
about to offer prayer, only that his eyes had not a pious
expression.
"No, sir; certainly not. What would have been the object? That
sort of man could never be produced publicly to any good purpose.
It was sufficient for me to know who he was, and to make use of him
in a way that could be used publicly."
"And do you think that sort of private knowledge consistent with
the official position you occupy?"
"Perfectly, sir. I think it's quite proper. I will take the
liberty to tell you, sir, that it makes me what I am - and I am
looked upon as a man who knows his work. It's a private affair of
my own. A personal friend of mine in the French police gave me the
hint that the fellow was an Embassy spy. Private friendship,
private information, private use of it - that's how I look upon
it."
The Assistant Commissioner after remarking to himself that the
mental state of the renowned Chief Inspector seemed to affect the
outline of his lower jaw, as if the lively sense of his high
professional distinction had been located in that part of his
anatomy, dismissed the point for the moment with a calm "I see."
Then leaning his cheek on his joined hands:
"Well then - speaking privately if you like - how long have you
been in private touch with this Embassy spy?"
To this inquiry the private answer of the Chief Inspector, so
private that it was never shaped into audible words, was:
"Long before you were even thought of for your place here."
The so-to-speak public utterance was much more precise.
"I saw him for the first time in my life a little more than seven
years ago, when two Imperial Highnesses and the Imperial Chancellor
were on a visit here. I was put in charge of all the arrangements
for looking after them. Baron Stott-Wartenheim was Ambassador
then. He was a very nervous old gentleman. One evening, three
days before the Guildhall Banquet, he sent word that he wanted to
see me for a moment. I was downstairs, and the carriages were at
the door to take the Imperial Highnesses and the Chancellor to the
opera. I went up at once. I found the Baron walking up and down
his bedroom in a pitiable state of distress, squeezing his hands
together. He assured me he had the fullest confidence in our
police and in my abilities, but he had there a man just come over
from Paris whose information could be trusted simplicity. He
wanted me to hear what that man had to say. He took me at once
into a dressing-room next door, where I saw a big fellow in a heavy
overcoat sitting all alone on a chair, and holding his hat and
stick in one hand. The Baron said to him in French `Speak, my
friend.' The light in that room was not very good. I talked with
him for some five minutes perhaps. He certainly gave me a piece of
very startling news. Then the Baron took me aside nervously to
praise him up to me, and when I turned round again I discovered
that the fellow had vanished like a ghost. Got up and sneaked out
down some back stairs, I suppose. There was no time to run after
him, as I had to hurry off after the Ambassador down the great
staircase, and see the party started safe for the opera. However,
I acted upon the information that very night. Whether it was
perfectly correct or not, it did look serious enough. Very likely
it saved us from an ugly trouble on the day of the Imperial visit
to the City.
"Some time later, a month or so after my promotion to Chief
Inspector, my attention was attracted to a big burly man, I thought
I had seen somewhere before, coming out in a hurry from a
jeweller's shop in the Strand. I went after him, as it was on my
way towards Charing Cross, and there seeing one of our detectives
across the road, I beckoned him over, and pointed out the fellow to
him, with instructions to watch his movements for a couple of days,
and then report to me. No later than next afternoon my man turned
up to tell me that the fellow had married his landlady's daughter
at a registrar's office that very day at 11.30 a.m., and had gone
off with her to Margate for a week. Our man had seen the luggage
being put on the cab. There were some old Paris labels on one of
the bags. Somehow I couldn't get the fellow out of my head, and
the very next time I had to go to Paris on service I spoke about
him to that friend of mine in the Paris police. My friend said:
`From what you tell me I think you must mean a rather well-known
hanger-on and emissary of the Revolutionary Red Committee. He says
he is an Englishman by birth. We have an idea that he has been for
a good few years now a secret agent of one of the foreign Embassies
in London.' This woke up my memory completely. He was the
vanishing fellow I saw sitting on a chair in Baron Stott-
Wartenheim's bathroom. I told my friend that he was quite right.
The fellow was a secret agent to my certain knowledge. Afterwards
my friend took the trouble to ferret out the complete record of
that man for me. I thought I had better know all there was to
know; but I don't suppose you want to hear his history now, sir?"
The Assistant Commissioner shook his supported head. "The history
of your relations with that useful personage is the only thing that
matters just now," he said, closing slowly his weary, deep-set
eyes, and then opening them swiftly with a greatly refreshed
glance.
"There's nothing official about them," said the Chief Inspector
bitterly. "I went into his shop one evening, told him who I was,
and reminded him of our first meeting. He didn't as much as twitch
an eyebrow. He said that he was married and settled now, and that
all he wanted was not to be interfered in his little business. I
took it upon myself to promise him that, as long as he didn't go in
for anything obviously outrageous, he would be left alone by the
police. That was worth something to him, because a word from us to
the Custom-House people would have been enough to get some of these
packages he gets from Paris and Brussels opened in Dover, with
confiscation to follow for certain, and perhaps a prosecution as
well at the end of it."
"That's a very precarious trade," murmured the Assistant
Commissioner. "Why did he go in for that?"
The Chief Inspector raised scornful eyebrows dispassionately.
"Most likely got a connection - friends on the Continent - amongst
people who deal in such wares. They would be just the sort he
would consort with. He's a lazy dog, too - like the rest of them,"
"What do you get from him in exchange for your protection?"
The Chief Inspector was not inclined to enlarge on the value of Mr
Verloc's services.
"He would not be much good to anybody but myself. One has got to
know a good deal beforehand to make use of a man like that. I can
understand the sort of hint he can give. And when I want a hint he
can generally furnish it to me."
The Chief Inspector lost himself suddenly in a discreet reflective
mood; and the Assistant Commissioner repressed a smile at the
fleeting thought that the reputation of Chief Inspector Heat might
possibly have been made in a great part by the Secret Agent Verloc.
"In a more general way of being of use, all our men of the Special
Crimes section on duty at Charing Cross and Victoria have orders to
take careful notice of anybody they may see with him. He meets the
new arrivals frequently, and afterwards keeps track of them. He
seems to have been told off for that sort of duty. When I want an
address in a hurry, I can always get it from him. Of course, I
know how to manage our relations. I haven't seen him to speak to
three times in the last two years. I drop him a line, unsigned,
and he answers me in the same way at my private address."
From time to time the Assistant Commissioner gave an almost
imperceptible nod. The Chief Inspector added that he did not
suppose Mr Verloc to be deep in the confidence of the prominent
members of the Revolutionary International Council, but that he was
generally trusted of that there could be no doubt. "Whenever I've
had reason to think there was something in the wind," he concluded,
"I've always found he could tell me something worth knowing."
The Assistant Commissioner made a significant remark.
"He failed you this time."
"Neither had I wind of anything in any other way," retorted Chief
Inspector Heat. "I asked him nothing, so he could tell me nothing.
He isn't one of our men. It isn't as if he were in our pay."
"No," muttered the Assistant Commissioner. "He's a spy in the pay
of a foreign government. We could never confess to him."
"I must do my work in my own way," declared the Chief Inspector.
"When it comes to that I would deal with the devil himself, and
take the consequences. There are things not fit for everybody to
know."
"Your idea of secrecy seems to consist in keeping the chief of your
department in the dark. That's stretching it perhaps a little too
far, isn't it? He lives over his shop?"
"Who - Verloc? Oh yes. He lives over his shop. The wife's
mother, I fancy, lives with them."
"Is the house watched?"
"Oh dear, no. It wouldn't do. Certain people who come there are
watched. My opinion is that he knows nothing of this affair."
"How do you account for this?" The Assistant Commissioner nodded
at the cloth rag lying before him on the table.
"I don't account for it at all, sir. It's simply unaccountable.
It can't be explained by what I know." The Chief Inspector made
those admissions with the frankness of a man whose reputation is
established as if on a rock. "At any rate not at this present
moment. I think that the man who had most to do with it will turn
out to be Michaelis."
"You do?"
"Yes, sir; because I can answer for all the others."
"What about that other man supposed to have escaped from the park?"
"I should think he's far away by this time," opined the Chief
Inspector.
The Assistant Commissioner looked hard at him, and rose suddenly,
as though having made up his mind to some course of action. As a
matter of fact, he had that very moment succumbed to a fascinating
temptation. The Chief Inspector heard himself dismissed with
instructions to meet his superior early next morning for further
consultation upon the case. He listened with an impenetrable face,
and walked out of the room with measured steps.
Whatever might have been the plans of the Assistant Commissioner
they had nothing to do with that desk work, which was the bane of
his existence because of its confined nature and apparent lack of
reality. It could not have had, or else the general air of
alacrity that came upon the Assistant Commissioner would have been
inexplicable. As soon as he was left alone he looked for his hat
impulsively, and put it on his head. Having done that, he sat down
again to reconsider the whole matter. But as his mind was already
made up, this did not take long. And before Chief Inspector Heat
had gone very far on the way home, he also left the building. _
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