Kabanata Kabanata 6 · Chapter VI

. Chapter VI

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 implicity. 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.