________________________________________________
_ The Assistant Commissioner walked along a short and narrow street
like a wet, muddy trench, then crossing a very broad thoroughfare
entered a public edifice, and sought speech with a young private
secretary (unpaid) of a great personage.
This fair, smooth-faced young man, whose symmetrically arranged
hair gave him the air of a large and neat schoolboy, met the
Assistant Commissioner's request with a doubtful look, and spoke
with bated breath.
"Would he see you? I don't know about that. He has walked over
from the House an hour ago to talk with the permanent Under-
Secretary, and now he's ready to walk back again. He might have
sent for him; but he does it for the sake of a little exercise, I
suppose. It's all the exercise he can find time for while this
session lasts. I don't complain; I rather enjoy these little
strolls. He leans on my arm, and doesn't open, his lips. But, I
say, he's very tired, and - well - not in the sweetest of tempers
just now."
"It's in connection with that Greenwich affair."
"Oh! I say! He's very bitter against you people. But I will go
and see, if you insist."
"Do. That's a good fellow," said the Assistant Commissioner.
The unpaid secretary admired this pluck. Composing for himself an
innocent face, he opened a door, and went in with the assurance of
a nice and privileged child. And presently he reappeared, with a
nod to the Assistant Commissioner, who passing through the same
door left open for him, found himself with the great personage in a
large room.
Vast in bulk and stature, with a long white face, which, broadened
at the base by a big double chin, appeared egg-shaped in the fringe
of thin greyish whisker, the great personage seemed an expanding
man. Unfortunate from a tailoring point of view, the cross-folds
in the middle of a buttoned black coat added to the impression, as
if the fastenings of the garment were tried to the utmost. From
the head, set upward on a thick neck, the eyes, with puffy lower
lids, stared with a haughty droop on each side of a hooked
aggressive nose, nobly salient in the vast pale circumference of
the face. A shiny silk hat and a pair of worn gloves lying ready
on the end of a long table looked expanded too, enormous.
He stood on the hearthrug in big, roomy boots, and uttered no word
of greeting.
"I would like to know if this is the beginning of another dynamite
campaign," he asked at once in a deep, very smooth voice. "Don't
go into details. I have no time for that."
The Assistant Commissioner's figure before this big and rustic
Presence had the frail slenderness of a reed addresssing an oak.
And indeed the unbroken record of that man's descent surpassed in
the number of centuries the age of the oldest oak in the country.
"No. As far as one can be positive about anything I can assure you
that it is not."
"Yes. But your idea of assurances over there," said the great man,
with a contemptuous wave of his hand towards a window giving on the
broad thoroughfare, "seems to consist mainly in making the
Secretary of State look a fool. I have been told positively in
this very room less than a month ago that nothing of the sort was
even possible."
The Assistant Commissioner glanced in the direction of the window
calmly.
"You will allow me to remark, Sir Ethelred, that so far I have had
no opportunity to give you assurances of any kind."
The haughty droop of the eyes was focussed now upon the Assistant
Commissioner.
"True," confessed the deep, smooth voice. "I sent for Heat. You
are still rather a novice in your new berth. And how are you
getting on over there?"
"I believe I am learning something every day."
"Of course, of course. I hope you will get on."
"Thank you, Sir Ethelred. I've learned something to-day, and even
within the last hour or so. There is much in this affair of a kind
that does not meet the eye in a usual anarchist outrage, even if
one looked into it as deep as can be. That's why I am here."
The great man put his arms akimbo, the backs of his big hands
resting on his hips.
"Very well. Go on. Only no details, pray. Spare me the details."
"You shall not be troubled with them, Sir Ethelred," the Assistant
Commissioner began, with a calm and untroubled assurance. While he
was speaking the hands on the face of the clock behind the great
man's back - a heavy, glistening affair of massive scrolls in the
same dark marble as the mantelpiece, and with a ghostly, evanescent
tick - had moved through the space of seven minutes. He spoke with
a studious fidelity to a parenthetical manner, into which every
little fact - that is, every detail - fitted with delightful ease.
Not a murmur nor even a movement hinted at interruption. The great
Personage might have been the statue of one of his own princely
ancestors stripped of a crusader's war harness, and put into an
ill-fitting frock coat. The Assistant Commissioner felt as though
he were at liberty to talk for an hour. But he kept his head, and
at the end of the time mentioned above he broke off with a sudden
conclusion, which, reproducing the opening statement, pleasantly
surprised Sir Ethelred by its apparent swiftness and force.
"The kind of thing which meets us under the surface of this affair,
otherwise without gravity, is unusual - in this precise form at
least - and requires special treatment."
The tone of Sir Ethelred was deepened, full of conviction.
"I should think so - involving the Ambassador of a foreign power!"
"Oh! The Ambassador!" protested the other, erect and slender,
allowing himself a mere half smile. "It would be stupid of me to
advance anything of the kind. And it is absolutely unnecessary,
because if I am right in my surmises, whether ambassador or hall
porter it's a mere detail."
Sir Ethelred opened a wide mouth, like a cavern, into which the
hooked nose seemed anxious to peer; there came from it a subdued
rolling sound, as from a distant organ with the scornful
indignation stop.
"No! These people are too impossible. What do they mean by
importing their methods of Crim-Tartary here? A Turk would have
more decency."
"You forget, Sir Ethelred, that strictly speaking we know nothing
positively - as yet."
"No! But how would you define it? Shortly?"
"Barefaced audacity amounting to childishness of a peculiar sort."
"We can't put up with the innocence of nasty little children," said
the great and expanded personage, expanding a little more, as it
were. The haughty drooping glance struck crushingly the carpet at
the Assistant Commissioner's feet. "They'll have to get a hard rap
on the knuckles over this affair. We must be in a position to -
What is your general idea, stated shortly? No need to go into
details."
"No, Sir Ethelred. In principle, I should lay it down that the
existence of secret agents should not be tolerated, as tending to
augment the positive dangers of the evil against which they are
used. That the spy will fabricate his information is a mere
commonplace. But in the sphere of political and revolutionary
action, relying partly on violence, the professional spy has every
facility to fabricate the very facts themselves, and will spread
the double evil of emulation in one direction, and of panic, hasty
legislation, unreflecting hate, on the other. However, this is an
imperfect world - "
The deep-voiced Presence on the hearthrug, motionless, with big
elbows stuck out, said hastily:
"Be lucid, please."
"Yes, Sir Ethelred - An imperfect world. Therefore directly the
character of this affair suggested itself to me, I thought it
should be dealt with with special secrecy, and ventured to come
over here."
"That's right," approved the great Personage, glancing down
complacently over his double chin. "I am glad there's somebody
over at your shop who thinks that the Secretary of State may be
trusted now and then."
The Assistant Commissioner had an amused smile.
"I was really thinking that it might be better at this stage for
Heat to be replaced by - "
"What! Heat? An ass - eh?" exclaimed the great man, with distinct
animosity.
"Not at all. Pray, Sir Ethelred, don't put that unjust
interpretation on my remarks."
"Then what? Too clever by half?"
"Neither - at least not as a rule. All the grounds of my surmises
I have from him. The only thing I've discovered by myself is that
he has been making use of that man privately. Who could blame him?
He's an old police hand. He told me virtually that he must have
tools to work with. It occurred to me that this tool should be
surrendered to the Special Crimes division as a whole, instead of
remaining the private property of Chief Inspector Heat. I extend
my conception of our departmental duties to the suppression of the
secret agent. But Chief Inspector Heat is an old departmental
hand. He would accuse me of perverting its morality and attacking
its efficiency. He would define it bitterly as protection extended
to the criminal class of revolutionises. It would mean just that
to him."
"Yes. But what do you mean?"
"I mean to say, first, that there's but poor comfort in being able
to declare that any given act of violence - damaging property or
destroying life - is not the work of anarchism at all, but of
something else altogether - some species of authorised
scoundrelism. This, I fancy, is much more frequent than we
suppose. Next, it's obvious that the existence of these people in
the pay of foreign governments destroys in a measure the efficiency
of our supervision. A spy of that sort can afford to be more
reckless than the most reckless of conspirators. His occupation is
free from all restraint. He's without as much faith as is
necessary for complete negation, and without that much law as is
implied in lawlessness. Thirdly, the existence of these spies
amongst the revolutionary groups, which we are reproached for
harbouring here, does away with all certitude. You have received a
reassuring statement from Chief Inspector Heat some time ago. It
was by no means groundless - and yet this episode happens. I call
it an episode, because this affair, I make bold to say, is
episodic; it is no part of any general scheme, however wild. The
very peculiarities which surprise and perplex Chief Inspector Heat
establish its character in my eyes. I am keeping clear of details,
Sir Ethelred."
The Personage on the hearthrug had been listening with profound
attention.
"Just so. Be as concise as you can."
The Assistant Commissioner intimated by an earnest deferential
gesture that he was anxious to be concise.
"There is a peculiar stupidity and feebleness in the conduct of
this affair which gives me excellent hopes of getting behind it and
finding there something else than an individual freak of
fanaticism. For it is a planned thing, undoubtedly. The actual
perpetrator seems to have been led by the hand to the spot, and
then abandoned hurriedly to his own devices. The inference is that
he was imported from abroad for the purpose of committing this
outrage. At the same time one is forced to the conclusion that he
did not know enough English to ask his way, unless one were to
accept the fantastic theory that he was a deaf mute. I wonder now
- But this is idle. He has destroyed himself by an accident,
obviously. Not an extraordinary accident. But an extraordinary
little fact remains: the address on his clothing discovered by the
merest accident, too. It is an incredible little fact, so
incredible that the explanation which will account for it is bound
to touch the bottom of this affair. Instead of instructing Heat to
go on with this case, my intention is to seek this explanation
personally - by myself, I mean where it may be picked up. That is
in a certain shop in Brett Street, and on the lips of a certain
secret agent once upon a time the confidential and trusted spy of
the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim, Ambassador of a Great Power to the
Court of St James."
The Assistant Commissioner paused, then added: "Those fellows are a
perfect pest." In order to raise his drooping glance to the
speaker's face, the Personage on the hearthrug had gradually tilted
his head farther back, which gave him an aspect of extraordinary
haughtiness.
"Why not leave it to Heat?"
"Because he is an old departmental hand. They have their own
morality. My line of inquiry would appear to him an awful
perversion of duty. For him the plain duty is to fasten the guilt
upon as many prominent anarchists as he can on some slight
indications he had picked up in the course of his investigation on
the spot; whereas I, he would say, am bent upon vindicating their
innocence. I am trying to be as lucid as I can in presenting this
obscure matter to you without details."
"He would, would he?" muttered the proud head of Sir Ethelred from
its lofty elevation.
"I am afraid so - with an indignation and disgust of which you or I
can have no idea. He's an excellent servant. We must not put an
undue strain on his loyalty. That's always a mistake. Besides, I
want a free hand - a freer hand than it would be perhaps advisable
to give Chief Inspector Heat. I haven't the slightest wish to
spare this man Verloc. He will, I imagine, be extremely startled
to find his connection with this affair, whatever it may be,
brought home to him so quickly. Frightening him will not be very
difficult. But our true objective lies behind him somewhere. I
want your authority to give him such assurances of personal safety
as I may think proper."
"Certainly," said the Personage on the hearthrug. "Find out as
much as you can; find it out in your own way."
"I must set about it without loss of time, this very evening," said
the Assistant Commissioner.
Sir Ethelred shifted one hand under his coat tails, and tilting
back his head, looked at him steadily.
"We'll have a late sitting to-night," he said. "Come to the House
with your discoveries if we are not gone home. I'll warn Toodles
to look out for you. He'll take you into my room."
The numerous family and the wide connections of the youthful-
looking Private Secretary cherished for him the hope of an austere
and exalted destiny. Meantime the social sphere he adorned in his
hours of idleness chose to pet him under the above nickname. And
Sir Ethelred, hearing it on the lips of his wife and girls every
day (mostly at breakfast-time), had conferred upon it the dignity
of unsmiling adoption.
The Assistant Commissioner was surprised and gratified extremely.
"I shall certainly bring my discoveries to the House on the chance
of you having the time to - "
"I won't have the time," interrupted the great Personage. "But I
will see you. I haven't the time now - And you are going
yourself?"
"Yes, Sir Ethelred. I think it the best way."
The Personage had tilted his head so far back that, in order to
keep the Assistant Commissioner under his observation, he had to
nearly close his eyes.
"H'm. Ha! And how do you propose - Will you assume a disguise?"
"Hardly a disguise! I'll change my clothes, of course."
"Of course," repeated the great man, with a sort of absent-minded
loftiness. He turned his big head slowly, and over his shoulder
gave a haughty oblique stare to the ponderous marble timepiece with
the sly, feeble tick. The gilt hands had taken the opportunity to
steal through no less than five and twenty minutes behind his back.
The Assistant Commissioner, who could not see them, grew a little
nervous in the interval. But the great man presented to him a calm
and undismayed face.
"Very well," he said, and paused, as if in deliberate contempt of
the official clock. "But what first put you in motion in this
direction?"
"I have been always of opinion," began the Assistant Commissioner.
"Ah. Yes! Opinion. That's of course. But the immediate motive?"
"What shall I say, Sir Ethelred? A new man's antagonism to old
methods. A desire to know something at first hand. Some
impatience. It's my old work, but the harness is different. It
has been chafing me a little in one or two tender places."
"I hope you'll get on over there," said the great man kindly,
extending his hand, soft to the touch, but broad and powerful like
the hand of a glorified farmer. The Assistant Commissioner shook
it, and withdrew.
In the outer room Toodles, who had been waiting perched on the edge
of a table, advanced to meet him, subduing his natural buoyancy.
"Well? Satisfactory?" he asked, with airy importance.
"Perfectly. You've earned my undying gratitude," answered the
Assistant Commissioner, whose long face looked wooden in contrast
with the peculiar character of the other's gravity, which seemed
perpetually ready to break into ripples and chuckles.
"That's all right. But seriously, you can't imagine how irritated
he is by the attacks on his Bill for the Nationalisation of
Fisheries. They call it the beginning of social revolution. Of
course, it is a revolutionary measure. But these fellows have no
decency. The personal attacks - "
"I read the papers," remarked the Assistant Commissioner.
"Odious? Eh? And you have no notion what a mass of work he has
got to get through every day. He does it all himself. Seems
unable to trust anyone with these Fisheries."
"And yet he's given a whole half hour to the consideration of my
very small sprat," interjected the Assistant Commissioner.
"Small! Is it? I'm glad to hear that. But it's a pity you didn't
keep away, then. This fight takes it out of him frightfully. The
man's getting exhausted. I feel it by the way he leans on my arm
as we walk over. And, I say, is he safe in the streets? Mullins
has been marching his men up here this afternoon. There's a
constable stuck by every lamp-post, and every second person we meet
between this and Palace Yard is an obvious `tec.' It will get on
his nerves presently. I say, these foreign scoundrels aren't
likely to throw something at him - are they? It would be a
national calamity. The country can't spare him."
"Not to mention yourself. He leans on your arm," suggested the
Assistant Commissioner soberly. "You would both go."
"It would be an easy way for a young man to go down into history?
Not so many British Ministers have been assassinated as to make it
a minor incident. But seriously now - "
"I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have
to do something for it. Seriously, there's no danger whatever for
both of you but from overwork."
The sympathetic Toodles welcomed this opening for a chuckle.
"The Fisheries won't kill me. I am used to late hours," he
declared, with ingenuous levity. But, feeling an instant
compunction, he began to assume an air of statesman-like moodiness,
as one draws on a glove. "His massive intellect will stand any
amount of work. It's his nerves that I am afraid of. The
reactionary gang, with that abusive brute Cheeseman at their head,
insult him every night."
"If he will insist on beginning a revolution!" murmured the
Assistant Commissioner.
"The time has come, and he is the only man great enough for the
work," protested the revolutionary Toodles, flaring up under the
calm, speculative gaze of the Assistant Commissioner. Somewhere in
a corridor a distant bell tinkled urgently, and with devoted
vigilance the young man pricked up his ears at the sound. "He's
ready to go now," he exclaimed in a whisper, snatched up his hat,
and vanished from the room.
The Assistant Commissioner went out by another door in a less
elastic manner. Again he crossed the wide thoroughfare, walked
along a narrow street, and re-entered hastily his own departmental
buildings. He kept up this accelerated pace to the door of his
private room. Before he had closed it fairly his eyes sought his
desk. He stood still for a moment, then walked up, looked all
round on the floor, sat down in his chair, rang a bell, and waited.
"Chief Inspector Heat gone yet?"
"Yes, sir. Went away half-an-hour ago."
He nodded. "That will do." And sitting still, with his hat pushed
off his forehead, he thought that it was just like Heat's
confounded cheek to carry off quietly the only piece of material
evidence. But he thought this without animosity. Old and valued
servants will take liberties. The piece of overcoat with the
address sewn on was certainly not a thing to leave about.
Dismissing from his mind this manifestation of Chief Inspector
Heat's mistrust, he wrote and despatched a note to his wife,
charging her to make his apologies to Michaelis' great lady, with
whom they were engaged to dine that evening.
The short jacket and the low, round hat he assumed in a sort of
curtained alcove containing a washstand, a row of wooden pegs and a
shelf, brought out wonderfully the length of his grave, brown face.
He stepped back into the full light of the room, looking like the
vision of a cool, reflective Don Quixote, with the sunken eyes of a
dark enthusiast and a very deliberate manner. He left the scene of
his daily labours quickly like an unobtrusive shadow. His descent
into the street was like the descent into a slimy aquarium from
which the water had been run off. A murky, gloomy dampness
enveloped him. The walls of the houses were wet, the mud of the
roadway glistened with an effect of phosphorescence, and when he
emerged into the Strand out of a narrow street by the side of
Charing Cross Station the genius of the locality assimilated him.
He might have been but one more of the queer foreign fish that can
be seen of an evening about there flitting round the dark corners.
He came to a stand on the very edge of the pavement, and waited.
His exercised eyes had made out in the confused movements of lights
and shadows thronging the roadway the crawling approach of a
hansom. He gave no sign; but when the low step gliding along the
curbstone came to his feet he dodged in skilfully in front of the
big turning wheel, and spoke up through the little trap door almost
before the man gazing supinely ahead from his perch was aware of
having been boarded by a fare.
It was not a long drive. It ended by signal abruptly, nowhere in
particular, between two lamp-posts before a large drapery
establishment - a long range of shops already lapped up in sheets
of corrugated iron for the night. Tendering a coin through the
trap door the fare slipped out and away, leaving an effect of
uncanny, eccentric ghastliness upon the driver's mind. But the
size of the coin was satisfactory to his touch, and his education
not being literary, he remained untroubled by the fear of finding
it presently turned to a dead leaf in his pocket. Raised above the
world of fares by the nature of his calling, he contemplated their
actions with a limited interest. The sharp pulling of his horse
right round expressed his philosophy.
Meantime the Assistant Commissioner was already giving his order to
a waiter in a little Italian restaurant round the corner - one of
those traps for the hungry, long and narrow, baited with a
perspective of mirrors and white napery; without air, but with an
atmosphere of their own - an atmosphere of fraudulent cookery
mocking an abject mankind in the most pressing of its miserable
necessities. In this immoral atmosphere the Assistant
Commissioner, reflecting upon his enterprise, seemed to lose some
more of his identity. He had a sense of loneliness, of evil
freedom. It was rather pleasant. When, after paying for his short
meal, he stood up and waited for his change, he saw himself in the
sheet of glass, and was struck by his foreign appearance. He
contemplated his own image with a melancholy and inquisitive gaze,
then by sudden inspiration raised the collar of his jacket. This
arrangement appeared to him commendable, and he completed it by
giving an upward twist to the ends of his black moustache. He was
satisfied by the subtle modification of his personal aspect caused
by these small changes. "That'll do very well," he thought. "I'll
get a little wet, a little splashed - "
He became aware of the waiter at his elbow and of a small pile of
silver coins on the edge of the table before him. The waiter kept
one eye on it, while his other eye followed the long back of a
tall, not very young girl, who passed up to a distant table looking
perfectly sightless and altogether unapproachable. She seemed to
be a habitual customer.
On going out the Assistant Commissioner made to himself the
observation that the patrons of the place had lost in the
frequentation of fraudulent cookery all their national and private
characteristics. And this was strange, since the Italian
restaurant is such a peculiarly British institution. But these
people were as denationalised as the dishes set before them with
every circumstance of unstamped respectability. Neither was their
personality stamped in any way, professionally, socially or
racially. They seemed created for the Italian restaurant, unless
the Italian restaurant had been perchance created for them. But
that last hypothesis was unthinkable, since one could not place
them anywhere outside those special establishments. One never met
these enigmatical persons elsewhere. It was impossible to form a
precise idea what occupations they followed by day and where they
went to bed at night. And he himself had become unplaced. It
would have been impossible for anybody to guess his occupation. As
to going to bed, there was a doubt even in his own mind. Not
indeed in regard to his domicile itself, but very much so in
respect of the time when he would be able to return there. A
pleasurable feeling of independence possessed him when he heard the
glass doors swing to behind his back with a sort of imperfect
baffled thud. He advanced at once into an immensity of greasy
slime and damp plaster interspersed with lamps, and enveloped,
oppressed, penetrated, choked, and suffocated by the blackness of a
wet London night, which is composed of soot and drops of water.
Brett Street was not very far away. It branched off, narrow, from
the side of an open triangular space surrounded by dark and
mysterious houses, temples of petty commerce emptied of traders for
the night. Only a fruiterer's stall at the corner made a violent
blaze of light and colour. Beyond all was black, and the few
people passing in that direction vanished at one stride beyond the
glowing heaps of oranges and lemons. No footsteps echoed. They
would never be heard of again. The adventurous head of the Special
Crimes Department watched these disappearances from a distance with
an interested eye. He felt light-hearted, as though he had been
ambushed all alone in a jungle many thousands of miles away from
departmental desks and official inkstands. This joyousness and
dispersion of thought before a task of some importance seems to
prove that this world of ours is not such a very serious affair
after all. For the Assistant Commissioner was not constitutionally
inclined to levity.
The policeman on the beat projected his sombre and moving form
against the luminous glory of oranges and lemons, and entered Brett
Street without haste. The Assistant Commissioner, as though he
were a member of the criminal classes, lingered out of sight,
awaiting his return. But this constable seemed to be lost for ever
to the force. He never returned: must have gone out at the other
end of Brett Street.
The Assistant Commissioner, reaching this conclusion, entered the
street in his turn, and came upon a large van arrested in front of
the dimly lit window-panes of a carter's eating-house. The man was
refreshing himself inside, and the horses, their big heads lowered
to the ground, fed out of nose-bags steadily. Farther on, on the
opposite side of the street, another suspect patch of dim light
issued from Mr Verloc's shop front, hung with papers, heaving with
vague piles of cardboard boxes and the shapes of books. The
Assistant Commissioner stood observing it across the roadway.
There could be no mistake. By the side of the front window,
encumbered by the shadows of nondescript things, the door, standing
ajar, let escape on the pavement a narrow, clear streak of gas-
light within.
Behind the Assistant Commissioner the van and horses, merged into
one mass, seemed something alive - a square-backed black monster
blocking half the street, with sudden iron-shod stampings, fierce
jingles, and heavy, blowing sighs. The harshly festive, ill-omened
glare of a large and prosperous public-house faced the other end of
Brett Street across a wide road. This barrier of blazing lights,
opposing the shadows gathered about the humble abode of Mr Verloc's
domestic happiness, seemed to drive the obscurity of the street
back upon itself, make it more sullen, brooding, and sinister. _
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