Chapter Chapter 7 · Chapter VII

. Chapter VII

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 addressing 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 revolutionists. 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.