________________________________________________
_ The Assistant Commissioner, driven rapidly in a hansom from the
neighbourhood of Soho in the direction of Westminster, got out at
the very centre of the Empire on which the sun never sets. Some
stalwart constables, who did not seem particularly impressed by the
duty of watching the august spot, saluted him. Penetrating through
a portal by no means lofty into the precincts of the House which is
THE House, PAR EXCELLENCE in the minds of many millions of men, he
was met at last by the volatile and revolutionary Toodles.
That neat and nice young man concealed his astonishment at the
early appearance of the Assistant Commissioner, whom he had been
told to look out for some time about midnight. His turning up so
early he concluded to be the sign that things, whatever they were,
had gone wrong. With an extremely ready sympathy, which in nice
youngsters goes often with a joyous temperament, he felt sorry for
the great Presence he called "The Chief," and also for the
Assistant Commissioner, whose face appeared to him more ominously
wooden than ever before, and quite wonderfully long. "What a
queer, foreign-looking chap he is," he thought to himself, smiling
from a distance with friendly buoyancy. And directly they came
together he began to talk with the kind intention of burying the
awkwardness of failure under a heap of words. It looked as if the
great assault threatened for that night were going to fizzle out.
An inferior henchman of "that brute Cheeseman" was up boring
mercilessly a very thin House with some shamelessly cooked
statistics. He, Toodles, hoped he would bore them into a count out
every minute. But then he might be only marking time to let that
guzzling Cheeseman dine at his leisure. Anyway, the Chief could
not be persuaded to go home.
"He will see you at once, I think. He's sitting all alone in his
room thinking of all the fishes of the sea," concluded Toodles
airily. "Come along."
Notwithstanding the kindness of his disposition, the young private
secretary (unpaid) was accessible to the common failings of
humanity. He did not wish to harrow the feelings of the Assistant
Commissioner, who looked to him uncommonly like a man who has made
a mess of his job. But his curiosity was too strong to be
restrained by mere compassion. He could not help, as they went
along, to throw over his shoulder lightly:
"And your sprat?"
"Got him," answered the Assistant Commissioner with a concision
which did not mean to be repellent in the least.
"Good. You've no idea how these great men dislike to be
disappointed in small things."
After this profound observation the experienced Toodles seemed to
reflect. At any rate he said nothing for quite two seconds. Then:
"I'm glad. But - I say - is it really such a very small thing as
you make it out?"
"Do you know what may be done with a sprat?" the Assistant
Commissioner asked in his turn.
"He's sometimes put into a sardine box," chuckled Toodles, whose
erudition on the subject of the fishing industry was fresh and, in
comparison with his ignorance of all other industrial matters,
immense. "There are sardine canneries on the Spanish coast which -
"
The Assistant Commissioner interrupted the apprentice statesman.
"Yes. Yes. But a sprat is also thrown away sometimes in order to
catch a whale."
"A whale. Phew!" exclaimed Toodles, with bated breath. "You're
after a whale, then?"
"Not exactly. What I am after is more like a dog-fish. You don't
know perhaps what a dog-fish is like."
"Yes; I do. We're buried in special books up to our necks - whole
shelves full of them - with plates. . . . It's a noxious, rascally-
looking, altogether detestable beast, with a sort of smooth face
and moustaches."
"Described to a T," commended the Assistant Commissioner. "Only
mine is clean-shaven altogether. You've seen him. It's a witty
fish."
"I have seen him!" said Toodles incredulously. "I can't conceive
where I could have seen him."
"At the Explorers, I should say," dropped the Assistant
Commissioner calmly. At the name of that extremely exclusive club
Toodles looked scared, and stopped short.
"Nonsense," he protested, but in an awe-struck tone. "What do you
mean? A member?"
"Honorary," muttered the Assistant Commissioner through his teeth.
"Heavens!"
Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner
smiled faintly.
"That's between ourselves strictly," he said.
"That's the beastliest thing I've ever heard in my life," declared
Toodles feebly, as if astonishment had robbed him of all his
buoyant strength in a second.
The Assistant Commissioner gave him an unsmiling glance. Till they
came to the door of the great man's room, Toodles preserved a
scandalised and solemn silence, as though he were offended with the
Assistant Commissioner for exposing such an unsavoury and
disturbing fact. It revolutionised his idea of the Explorers'
Club's extreme selectness, of its social purity. Toodles was
revolutionary only in politics; his social beliefs and personal
feelings he wished to preserve unchanged through all the years
allotted to him on this earth which, upon the whole, he believed to
be a nice place to live on.
He stood aside.
"Go in without knocking," he said.
Shades of green silk fitted low over all the lights imparted to the
room something of a forest's deep gloom. The haughty eyes were
physically the great man's weak point. This point was wrapped up
in secrecy. When an opportunity offered, he rested them
conscientiously.
The Assistant Commissioner entering saw at first only a big pale
hand supporting a big head, and concealing the upper part of a big
pale face. An open despatch-box stood on the writing-table near a
few oblong sheets of paper and a scattered handful of quill pens.
There was absolutely nothing else on the large flat surface except
a little bronze statuette draped in a toga, mysteriously watchful
in its shadowy immobility. The Assistant Commissioner, invited to
take a chair, sat down. In the dim light, the salient points of
his personality, the long face, the black hair, his lankness, made
him look more foreign than ever.
The great man manifested no surprise, no eagerness, no sentiment
whatever. The attitude in which he rested his menaced eyes was
profoundly meditative. He did not alter it the least bit. But his
tone was not dreamy.
"Well! What is it that you've found out already? You came upon
something unexpected on the first step."
"Not exactly unexpected, Sir Ethelred. What I mainly came upon was
a psychological state."
The Great Presence made a slight movement. "You must be lucid,
please."
"Yes, Sir Ethelred. You know no doubt that most criminals at some
time or other feel an irresistible need of confessing - of making a
clean breast of it to somebody - to anybody. And they do it often
to the police. In that Verloc whom Heat wished so much to screen
I've found a man in that particular psychological state. The man,
figuratively speaking, flung himself on my breast. It was enough
on my part to whisper to him who I was and to add `I know that you
are at the bottom of this affair.' It must have seemed miraculous
to him that we should know already, but he took it all in the
stride. The wonderfulness of it never checked him for a moment.
There remained for me only to put to him the two questions: Who put
you up to it? and Who was the man who did it? He answered the
first with remarkable emphasis. As to the second question, I
gather that the fellow with the bomb was his brother-in-law - quite
a lad - a weak-minded creature. . . . It is rather a curious affair
- too long perhaps to state fully just now."
"What then have you learned?" asked the great man.
"First, I've learned that the ex-convict Michaelis had nothing to
do with it, though indeed the lad had been living with him
temporarily in the country up to eight o'clock this morning. It is
more than likely that Michaelis knows nothing of it to this
moment."
"You are positive as to that?" asked the great man.
"Quite certain, Sir Ethelred. This fellow Verloc went there this
morning, and took away the lad on the pretence of going out for a
walk in the lanes. As it was not the first time that he did this,
Michaelis could not have the slightest suspicion of anything
unusual. For the rest, Sir Ethelred, the indignation of this man
Verloc had left nothing in doubt - nothing whatever. He had been
driven out of his mind almost by an extraordinary performance,
which for you or me it would be difficult to take as seriously
meant, but which produced a great impression obviously on him."
The Assistant Commissioner then imparted briefly to the great man,
who sat still, resting his eyes under the screen of his hand, Mr
Verloc's appreciation of Mr Vladimir's proceedings and character.
The Assistant Commissioner did not seem to refuse it a certain
amount of competency. But the great personage remarked:
"All this seems very fantastic."
"Doesn't it? One would think a ferocious joke. But our man took
it seriously, it appears. He felt himself threatened. In the
time, you know, he was in direct communication with old Stott-
Wartenheim himself, and had come to regard his services as
indispensable. It was an extremely rude awakening. I imagine that
he lost his head. He became angry and frightened. Upon my word,
my impression is that he thought these Embassy people quite capable
not only to throw him out but, to give him away too in some manner
or other - "
"How long were you with him," interrupted the Presence from behind
his big hand.
"Some forty minutes Sir Ethelred, in a house of bad repute called
Continental Hotel, closeted in a room which by-the-by I took for
the night. I found him under the influence of that reaction which
follows the effort of crime. The man cannot be defined as a
hardened criminal. It is obvious that he did not plan the death of
that wretched lad - his brother-in-law. That was a shock to him -
I could see that. Perhaps he is a man of strong sensibilities.
Perhaps he was even fond of the lad - who knows? He might have
hoped that the fellow would get clear away; in which case it would
have been almost impossible to bring this thing home to anyone. At
any rate he risked consciously nothing more but arrest for him."
The Assistant Commissioner paused in his speculations to reflect
for a moment.
"Though how, in that last case, he could hope to have his own share
in the business concealed is more than I can tell," he continued,
in his ignorance of poor Stevie's devotion to Mr Verloc (who was
GOOD), and of his truly peculiar dumbness, which in the old affair
of fireworks on the stairs had for many years resisted entreaties,
coaxing, anger, and other means of investigation used by his
beloved sister. For Stevie was loyal. . . . "No, I can't imagine.
It's possible that he never thought of that at all. It sounds an
extravagant way of putting it, Sir Ethelred, but his state of
dismay suggested to me an impulsive man who, after committing
suicide with the notion that it would end all his troubles, had
discovered that it did nothing of the kind."
The Assistant Commissioner gave this definition in an apologetic
voice. But in truth there is a sort of lucidity proper to
extravagant language, and the great man was not offended. A slight
jerky movement of the big body half lost in the gloom of the green
silk shades, of the big head leaning on the big hand, accompanied
an intermittent stifled but powerful sound. The great man had
laughed.
"What have you done with him?"
The Assistant Commissioner answered very readily:
"As he seemed very anxious to get back to his wife in the shop I
let him go, Sir Ethelred."
"You did? But the fellow will disappear."
"Pardon me. I don't think so. Where could he go to? Moreover,
you must remember that he has got to think of the danger from his
comrades too. He's there at his post. How could he explain
leaving it? But even if there were no obstacles to his freedom of
action he would do nothing. At present he hasn't enough moral
energy to take a resolution of any sort. Permit me also to point
out that if I had detained him we would have been committed to a
course of action on which I wished to know your precise intentions
first."
The great personage rose heavily, an imposing shadowy form in the
greenish gloom of the room.
"I'll see the Attorney-General to-night, and will send for you to-
morrow morning. Is there anything more you'd wish to tell me now?"
The Assistant Commissioner had stood up also, slender and flexible.
"I think not, Sir Ethelred, unless I were to enter into details
which - "
"No. No details, please."
The great shadowy form seemed to shrink away as if in physical
dread of details; then came forward, expanded, enormous, and
weighty, offering a large hand. "And you say that this man has got
a wife?"
"Yes, Sir Ethelred," said the Assistant Commissioner, pressing
deferentially the extended hand. "A genuine wife and a genuinely,
respectably, marital relation. He told me that after his interview
at the Embassy he would have thrown everything up, would have tried
to sell his shop, and leave the country, only he felt certain that
his wife would not even hear of going abroad. Nothing could be
more characteristic of the respectable bond than that," went on,
with a touch of grimness, the Assistant Commissioner, whose own
wife too had refused to hear of going abroad. "Yes, a genuine
wife. And the victim was a genuine brother-in-law. From a certain
point of view we are here in the presence of a domestic drama."
The Assistant Commissioner laughed a little; but the great man's
thoughts seemed to have wandered far away, perhaps to the questions
of his country's domestic policy, the battle-ground of his
crusading valour against the paynim Cheeseman. The Assistant
Commissioner withdrew quietly, unnoticed, as if already forgotten.
He had his own crusading instincts. This affair, which, in one way
or another, disgusted Chief Inspector Heat, seemed to him a
providentially given starting-point for a crusade. He had it much
at heart to begin. He walked slowly home, meditating that
enterprise on the way, and thinking over Mr Verloc's psychology in
a composite mood of repugnance and satisfaction. He walked all the
way home. Finding the drawing-room dark, he went upstairs, and
spent some time between the bedroom and the dressing-room, changing
his clothes, going to and fro with the air of a thoughtful
somnambulist. But he shook it off before going out again to join
his wife at the house of the great lady patroness of Michaelis.
He knew he would be welcomed there. On entering the smaller of the
two drawing-rooms he saw his wife in a small group near the piano.
A youngish composer in pass of becoming famous was discoursing from
a music stool to two thick men whose backs looked old, and three
slender women whose backs looked young. Behind the screen the
great lady had only two persons with her: a man and a woman, who
sat side by side on arm-chairs at the foot of her couch. She
extended her hand to the Assistant Commissioner.
"I never hoped to see you here to-night. Annie told me - "
"Yes. I had no idea myself that my work would be over so soon."
The Assistant Commissioner added in a low tone. "I am glad to tell
you that Michaelis is altogether clear of this - "
The patroness of the ex-convict received this assurance
indignantly.
"Why? Were your people stupid enough to connect him with - "
"Not stupid," interrupted the Assistant Commissioner, contradicting
deferentially. "Clever enough - quite clever enough for that."
A silence fell. The man at the foot of the couch had stopped
speaking to the lady, and looked on with a faint smile.
"I don't know whether you ever met before," said the great lady.
Mr Vladimir and the Assistant Commissioner, introduced,
acknowledged each other's existence with punctilious and guarded
courtesy.
"He's been frightening me," declared suddenly the lady who sat by
the side of Mr Vladimir, with an inclination of the head towards
that gentleman. The Assistant Commissioner knew the lady.
"You do not look frightened," he pronounced, after surveying her
conscientiously with his tired and equable gaze. He was thinking
meantime to himself that in this house one met everybody sooner or
later. Mr Vladimir's rosy countenance was wreathed in smiles,
because he was witty, but his eyes remained serious, like the eyes
of convinced man.
"Well, he tried to at least," amended the lady.
"Force of habit perhaps," said the Assistant Commissioner, moved by
an irresistible inspiration.
"He has been threatening society with all sorts of horrors,"
continued the lady, whose enunciation was caressing and slow,
"apropos of this explosion in Greenwich Park. It appears we all
ought to quake in our shoes at what's coming if those people are
not suppressed all over the world. I had no idea this was such a
grave affair."
Mr Vladimir, affecting not to listen, leaned towards the couch,
talking amiably in subdued tones, but he heard the Assistant
Commissioner say:
"I've no doubt that Mr Vladimir has a very precise notion of the
true importance of this affair."
Mr Vladimir asked himself what that confounded and intrusive
policeman was driving at. Descended from generations victimised by
the instruments of an arbitrary power, he was racially, nationally,
and individually afraid of the police. It was an inherited
weakness, altogether independent of his judgment, of his reason, of
his experience. He was born to it. But that sentiment, which
resembled the irrational horror some people have of cats, did not
stand in the way of his immense contempt for the English police.
He finished the sentence addressed to the great lady, and turned
slightly in his chair.
"You mean that we have a great experience of these people. Yes;
indeed, we suffer greatly from their activity, while you" - Mr
Vladimir hesitated for a moment, in smiling perplexity - "while you
suffer their presence gladly in your midst," he finished,
displaying a dimple on each clean-shaven cheek. Then he added more
gravely: "I may even say - because you do."
When Mr Vladimir ceased speaking the Assistant Commissioner lowered
his glance, and the conversation dropped. Almost immediately
afterwards Mr Vladimir took leave.
Directly his back was turned on the couch the Assistant
Commissioner rose too.
"I thought you were going to stay and take Annie home," said the
lady patroness of Michaelis.
"I find that I've yet a little work to do to-night."
"In connection - ?"
"Well, yes - in a way."
"Tell me, what is it really - this horror?"
"It's difficult to say what it is, but it may yet be a CAUSE
CELEBRE," said the Assistant Commissioner.
He left the drawing-room hurriedly, and found Mr Vladimir still in
the hall, wrapping up his throat carefully in a large silk
handkerchief. Behind him a footman waited, holding his overcoat.
Another stood ready to open the door. The Assistant Commissioner
was duly helped into his coat, and let out at once. After
descending the front steps he stopped, as if to consider the way he
should take. On seeing this through the door held open, Mr
Vladimir lingered in the hall to get out a cigar and asked for a
light. It was furnished to him by an elderly man out of livery
with an air of calm solicitude. But the match went out; the
footman then closed the door, and Mr Vladimir lighted his large
Havana with leisurely care.
When at last he got out of the house, he saw with disgust the
"confounded policeman" still standing on the pavement.
"Can he be waiting for me," thought Mr Vladimir, looking up and
down for some signs of a hansom. He saw none. A couple of
carriages waited by the curbstone, their lamps blazing steadily,
the horses standing perfectly still, as if carved in stone, the
coachmen sitting motionless under the big fur capes, without as
much as a quiver stirring the white thongs of their big whips. Mr
Vladimir walked on, and the "confounded policeman" fell into step
at his elbow. He said nothing. At the end of the fourth stride Mr
Vladimir felt infuriated and uneasy. This could not last.
"Rotten weather," he growled savagely.
"Mild," said the Assistant Commissioner without passion. He
remained silent for a little while. "We've got hold of a man
called Verloc," he announced casually.
Mr Vladimir did not stumble, did not stagger back, did not change
his stride. But he could not prevent himself from exclaiming:
"What?" The Assistant Commissioner did not repeat his statement.
"You know him," he went on in the same tone.
Mr Vladimir stopped, and became guttural. "What makes you say
that?"
"I don't. It's Verloc who says that."
"A lying dog of some sort," said Mr Vladimir in somewhat Oriental
phraseology. But in his heart he was almost awed by the miraculous
cleverness of the English police. The change of his opinion on the
subject was so violent that it made him for a moment feel slightly
sick. He threw away his cigar, and moved on.
"What pleased me most in this affair," the Assistant went on,
talking slowly, "is that it makes such an excellent starting-point
for a piece of work which I've felt must be taken in hand - that
is, the clearing out of this country of all the foreign political
spies, police, and that sort of - of - dogs. In my opinion they
are a ghastly nuisance; also an element of danger. But we can't
very well seek them out individually. The only way is to make
their employment unpleasant to their employers. The thing's
becoming indecent. And dangerous too, for us, here."
Mr Vladimir stopped again for a moment.
"What do you mean?"
"The prosecution of this Verloc will demonstrate to the public both
the danger and the indecency."
"Nobody will believe what a man of that sort says," said Mr
Vladimir contemptuously.
"The wealth and precision of detail will carry conviction to the
great mass of the public," advanced the Assistant Commissioner
gently.
"So that is seriously what you mean to do."
"We've got the man; we have no choice."
"You will be only feeding up the lying spirit of these
revolutionary scoundrels," Mr Vladimir protested. "What do you
want to make a scandal for? - from morality - or what?"
Mr Vladimir's anxiety was obvious. The Assistant Commissioner
having ascertained in this way that there must be some truth in the
summary statements of Mr Verloc, said indifferently:
"There's a practical side too. We have really enough to do to look
after the genuine article. You can't say we are not effective.
But we don't intend to let ourselves be bothered by shams under any
pretext whatever."
Mr Vladimir's tone became lofty.
"For my part, I can't share your view. It is selfish. My
sentiments for my own country cannot be doubted; but I've always
felt that we ought to be good Europeans besides - I mean
governments and men."
"Yes," said the Assistant Commissioner simply. "Only you look at
Europe from its other end. But," he went on in a good-natured
tone, "the foreign governments cannot complain of the inefficiency
of our police. Look at this outrage; a case specially difficult to
trace inasmuch as it was a sham. In less than twelve hours we have
established the identity of a man literally blown to shreds, have
found the organiser of the attempt, and have had a glimpse of the
inciter behind him. And we could have gone further; only we
stopped at the limits of our territory."
"So this instructive crime was planned abroad," Mr Vladimir said
quickly. "You admit it was planned abroad?"
"Theoretically. Theoretically only, on foreign territory; abroad
only by a fiction," said the Assistant Commissioner, alluding to
the character of Embassies, which are supposed to be part and
parcel of the country to which they belong. "But that's a detail.
I talked to you of this business because its your government that
grumbles most at our police. You see that we are not so bad. I
wanted particularly to tell you of our success."
"I'm sure I'm very grateful," muttered Mr Vladimir through his
teeth.
"We can put our finger on every anarchist here," went on the
Assistant Commissioner, as though he were quoting Chief Inspector
Heat. "All that's wanted now is to do away with the agent
provocateur to make everything safe."
Mr Vladimir held up his hand to a passing hansom.
"You're not going in here," remarked the Assistant Commissioner,
looking at a building of noble proportions and hospitable aspect,
with the light of a great hall falling through its glass doors on a
broad flight of steps.
But Mr Vladimir, sitting, stony-eyed, inside the hansom, drove off
without a word.
The Assistant Commissioner himself did not turn into the noble
building. It was the Explorers' Club. The thought passed through
his mind that Mr Vladimir, honorary member, would not be seen very
often there in the future. He looked at his watch. It was only
half-past ten. He had had a very full evening. _
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