Author’s Note

The ori­gin of The Secret Agent: sub­ject, treat­ment, artistic pur­pose, and every other motive that may in­duce an au­thor to take up his pen, can, I be­lieve, be traced to a period of men­tal and emo­tional re­ac­tion.

The ac­tual facts are that I began this book im­puls­ively and wrote it con­tinu­ously. When in due course it was bound and de­livered to the pub­lic gaze I found my­self re­proved for hav­ing pro­duced it at all. Some of the ad­mon­i­tions were severe, oth­ers had a sor­row­ful note. I have not got them tex­tu­ally be­fore me but I re­mem­ber per­fectly the gen­eral ar­gu­ment, which was very simple; and also my sur­prise at its nature. All this sounds a very old story now! And yet it is not such a long time ago. I must con­clude that I had still pre­served much of my pristine in­no­cence in the year 1907. It seems to me now that even an art­less per­son might have fore­seen that some cri­ti­cisms would be based on the ground of sor­did sur­round­ings and the moral squalor of the tale.

That of course is a ser­i­ous ob­jec­tion. It was not uni­ver­sal. In fact it seems un­gra­cious to re­mem­ber so little re­proof amongst so much in­tel­li­gent and sym­path­etic ap­pre­ci­ation; and I trust that the read­ers of this Pre­face will not hasten to put it down to wounded van­ity or a nat­ural dis­pos­i­tion to in­grat­it­ude. I sug­gest that a char­it­able heart could very well ascribe my choice to nat­ural mod­esty. Yet it isn’t ex­actly mod­esty that makes me se­lect re­proof for the il­lus­tra­tion of my case. No, it isn’t ex­actly mod­esty. I am not at all cer­tain that I am mod­est; but those who have read so far through my work will credit me with enough de­cency, tact, sa­voir-faire, what you will, to pre­vent me from mak­ing a song for my own glory out of the words of other people, No! The true motive of my se­lec­tion lies in quite a dif­fer­ent trait. I have al­ways had a propensity to jus­tify my ac­tion.

Not to de­fend. To jus­tify. Not to in­sist that I was right but simply to ex­plain that there was no per­verse in­ten­tion, no secret scorn for the nat­ural sens­ib­il­it­ies of man­kind at the bot­tom of my im­pulses.

That kind of weak­ness is dan­ger­ous only so far that it ex­poses one to the risk of be­com­ing a bore; for the world gen­er­ally is not in­ter­ested in the motives of any overt act but in its con­sequences. Man may smile and smile but he is not an in­vest­ig­at­ing an­imal. He loves the ob­vi­ous. He shrinks from ex­plan­a­tions. Yet I will go on with mine. It’s ob­vi­ous that I need not have writ­ten that book. I was un­der no ne­ces­sity to deal with that sub­ject; us­ing the word “sub­ject” both in the sense of the tale it­self and in the lar­ger one of a spe­cial mani­fest­a­tion in the life of man­kind. This I fully ad­mit. But the thought of elab­or­at­ing mere ugli­ness in or­der to shock, or even simply to sur­prise my read­ers by a change of front, has never entered my head. In mak­ing this state­ment I ex­pect to be be­lieved, not only on the evid­ence of my gen­eral char­ac­ter but also for the reason, which any­body can see, that the whole treat­ment of the tale, its in­spir­ing in­dig­na­tion and un­der­ly­ing pity and con­tempt, prove my de­tach­ment from the squalor and sor­did­ness which lie simply in the out­ward cir­cum­stances of the set­ting.

The in­cep­tion of The Secret Agent fol­lowed im­me­di­ately on a two years’ period of in­tense ab­sorp­tion in the task of writ­ing that re­mote novel, Nostromo, with its far-off Latin-Amer­ican at­mo­sphere; and the pro­foundly per­sonal Mir­ror of the Sea. The first an in­tense cre­at­ive ef­fort on what I sup­pose will al­ways re­main my largest can­vas, the second an un­re­served at­tempt to un­veil for a mo­ment the pro­founder in­timacies of the sea and the form­at­ive in­flu­ences of nearly half my life­time. It was a period, too, in which my sense of the truth of things was at­ten­ded by a very in­tense ima­gin­at­ive and emo­tional read­i­ness which, all genu­ine and faith­ful to facts as it was, yet made me feel (the task once done) as if I were left be­hind, aim­less amongst mere husks of sen­sa­tions and lost in a world of other, of in­ferior, val­ues.

I don’t know whether I really felt that I wanted a change, change in my ima­gin­a­tion, in my vis­ion, and in my men­tal at­ti­tude. I rather think that a change in the fun­da­mental mood had already stolen over me un­awares. I don’t re­mem­ber any­thing def­in­ite hap­pen­ing. With The Mir­ror of the Sea fin­ished in the full con­scious­ness that I had dealt hon­estly with my­self and my read­ers in every line of that book, I gave my­self up to a not un­happy pause. Then, while I was yet stand­ing still, as it were, and cer­tainly not think­ing of go­ing out of my way to look for any­thing ugly, the sub­ject of The Secret Agent—I mean the tale—came to me in the shape of a few words uttered by a friend in a cas­ual con­ver­sa­tion about an­arch­ists or rather an­arch­ist activ­it­ies; how brought about I don’t re­mem­ber now.

I re­mem­ber, how­ever, re­mark­ing on the crim­inal fu­til­ity of the whole thing, doc­trine, ac­tion, men­tal­ity; and on the con­tempt­ible as­pect of the half-crazy pose as of a brazen cheat ex­ploit­ing the poignant miser­ies and pas­sion­ate credu­lit­ies of a man­kind al­ways so tra­gic­ally eager for self-de­struc­tion. That was what made for me its philo­soph­ical pre­tences so un­par­don­able. Presently, passing to par­tic­u­lar in­stances, we re­called the already old story of the at­tempt to blow up the Green­wich Ob­ser­vat­ory; a blood­stained inan­ity of so fatu­ous a kind that it was im­possible to fathom its ori­gin by any reas­on­able or even un­reas­on­able pro­cess of thought. For per­verse un­reason has its own lo­gical pro­cesses. But that out­rage could not be laid hold of men­tally in any sort of way, so that one re­mained faced by the fact of a man blown to bits for noth­ing even most re­motely re­sem­bling an idea, an­arch­istic or other. As to the outer wall of the Ob­ser­vat­ory it did not show as much as the faintest crack.

I poin­ted all this out to my friend who re­mained si­lent for a while and then re­marked in his char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally cas­ual and om­ni­scient man­ner: “Oh, that fel­low was half an idiot. His sis­ter com­mit­ted sui­cide af­ter­wards.” These were ab­so­lutely the only words that passed between us; for ex­treme sur­prise at this un­ex­pec­ted piece of in­form­a­tion kept me dumb for a mo­ment and he began at once to talk of some­thing else. It never oc­curred to me later to ask how he ar­rived at his know­ledge. I am sure that if he had seen once in his life the back of an an­arch­ist that must have been the whole ex­tent of his con­nec­tion with the un­der­world. He was, how­ever, a man who liked to talk with all sorts of people, and he may have gathered those il­lu­min­at­ing facts at second or third hand, from a cross­ing-sweeper, from a re­tired po­lice of­ficer, from some vague man in his club, or even per­haps from a Min­is­ter of State met at some pub­lic or private re­cep­tion.

Of the il­lu­min­at­ing qual­ity there could be no doubt whatever. One felt like walk­ing out of a forest on to a plain—there was not much to see but one had plenty of light. No, there was not much to see and, frankly, for a con­sid­er­able time I didn’t even at­tempt to per­ceive any­thing. It was only the il­lu­min­at­ing im­pres­sion that re­mained. It re­mained sat­is­fact­ory but in a pass­ive way. Then, about a week later, I came upon a book which as far as I know had never at­tained any prom­in­ence, the rather sum­mary re­col­lec­tions of an Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner of Po­lice, an ob­vi­ously able man with a strong re­li­gious strain in his char­ac­ter who was ap­poin­ted to his post at the time of the dy­nam­ite out­rages in Lon­don, away back in the eighties. The book was fairly in­ter­est­ing, very dis­creet of course; and I have by now for­got­ten the bulk of its con­tents. It con­tained no rev­el­a­tions, it ran over the sur­face agree­ably, and that was all. I won’t even try to ex­plain why I should have been ar­res­ted by a little pas­sage of about seven lines, in which the au­thor (I be­lieve his name was Ander­son) re­pro­duced a short dia­logue held in the Lobby of the House of Com­mons after some un­ex­pec­ted an­arch­ist out­rage, with the Home Sec­ret­ary. I think it was Sir Wil­liam Har­court then. He was very much ir­rit­ated and the of­fi­cial was very apo­lo­getic. The phrase, amongst the three which passed between them, that struck me most was Sir W. Har­court’s angry sally: “All that’s very well. But your idea of secrecy over there seems to con­sist of keep­ing the Home Sec­ret­ary in the dark.” Char­ac­ter­istic enough of Sir W. Har­court’s tem­per but not much in it­self. There must have been, how­ever, some sort of at­mo­sphere in the whole in­cid­ent be­cause all of a sud­den I felt my­self stim­u­lated. And then en­sued in my mind what a stu­dent of chem­istry would best un­der­stand from the ana­logy of the ad­di­tion of the ti­ni­est little drop of the right kind, pre­cip­it­at­ing the pro­cess of crys­tal­liz­a­tion in a test tube con­tain­ing some col­our­less solu­tion.

It was at first for me a men­tal change, dis­turb­ing a quieted-down ima­gin­a­tion, in which strange forms, sharp in out­line but im­per­fectly ap­pre­hen­ded, ap­peared and claimed at­ten­tion as crys­tals will do by their bizarre and un­ex­pec­ted shapes. One fell to mus­ing be­fore the phe­nomenon—even of the past: of South Amer­ica, a con­tin­ent of crude sun­shine and bru­tal re­volu­tions, of the sea, the vast ex­panse of salt wa­ters, the mir­ror of heaven’s frowns and smiles, the re­flector of the world’s light. Then the vis­ion of an enorm­ous town presen­ted it­self, of a mon­strous town more pop­u­lous than some con­tin­ents and in its man-made might as if in­dif­fer­ent to heaven’s frowns and smiles; a cruel de­vourer of the world’s light. There was room enough there to place any story, depth enough for any pas­sion, vari­ety enough there for any set­ting, dark­ness enough to bury five mil­lions of lives.

Ir­res­ist­ibly the town be­came the back­ground for the en­su­ing period of deep and tent­at­ive med­it­a­tions. End­less vis­tas opened be­fore me in vari­ous dir­ec­tions. It would take years to find the right way! It seemed to take years! … Slowly the dawn­ing con­vic­tion of Mrs. Ver­loc’s ma­ter­nal pas­sion grew up to a flame between me and that back­ground, tinge­ing it with its secret ar­dour and re­ceiv­ing from it in ex­change some of its own sombre col­our­ing. At last the story of Win­nie Ver­loc stood out com­plete from the days of her child­hood to the end, un­pro­por­tioned as yet, with everything still on the first plane as it were; but ready now to be dealt with. It was a mat­ter of about three days.

This book is that story, re­duced to man­age­able pro­por­tions, its whole course sug­ges­ted and centred round the ab­surd cruelty of the Green­wich Park ex­plo­sion. I had there a task I will not say ar­du­ous but of the most ab­sorb­ing dif­fi­culty. But it had to be done. It was a ne­ces­sity. The fig­ures grouped about Mrs. Ver­loc and re­lated dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly to her tra­gic sus­pi­cion that “life doesn’t stand much look­ing into,” are the out­come of that very ne­ces­sity. Per­son­ally I have never had any doubt of the real­ity of Mrs. Ver­loc’s story; but it had to be dis­en­gaged from its ob­scur­ity in that im­mense town, it had to be made cred­ible, I don’t mean so much as to her soul but as to her sur­round­ings, not so much as to her psy­cho­logy but as to her hu­man­ity. For the sur­round­ings hints were not lack­ing. I had to fight hard to keep at arm’s length the memor­ies of my sol­it­ary and noc­turnal walks all over Lon­don in my early days, lest they should rush in and over­whelm each page of the story as these emerged one after an­other from a mood as ser­i­ous in feel­ing and thought as any in which I ever wrote a line. In that re­spect I really think that The Secret Agent is a per­fectly genu­ine piece of work. Even the purely artistic pur­pose, that of ap­ply­ing an ironic method to a sub­ject of that kind, was for­mu­lated with de­lib­er­a­tion and in the earn­est be­lief that ironic treat­ment alone would en­able me to say all I felt I would have to say in scorn as well as in pity. It is one of the minor sat­is­fac­tions of my writ­ing life that hav­ing taken that re­solve I did man­age, it seems to me, to carry it right through to the end. As to the per­son­ages whom the ab­so­lute ne­ces­sity of the case—Mrs. Ver­loc’s case—brings out in front of the Lon­don back­ground, from them, too, I ob­tained those little sat­is­fac­tions which really count for so much against the mass of op­press­ive doubts that haunt so per­sist­ently every at­tempt at cre­at­ive work. For in­stance, of Mr. Vladi­mir him­self (who was fair game for a ca­ri­ca­tural present­a­tion) I was grat­i­fied to hear that an ex­per­i­enced man of the world had said “that Con­rad must have been in touch with that sphere or else has an ex­cel­lent in­tu­ition of things”, be­cause Mr. Vladi­mir was “not only pos­sible in de­tail but quite right in es­sen­tials”. Then a vis­itor from Amer­ica in­formed me that all sorts of re­volu­tion­ary refugees in New York would have it that the book was writ­ten by some­body who knew a lot about them. This seemed to me a very high com­pli­ment, con­sid­er­ing that, as a mat­ter of hard fact, I had seen even less of their kind than the om­ni­scient friend who gave me the first sug­ges­tion for the novel. I have no doubt, how­ever, that there had been mo­ments dur­ing the writ­ing of the book when 1 was an ex­treme re­volu­tion­ist, I won’t say more con­vinced than they but cer­tainly cher­ish­ing a more con­cen­trated pur­pose than any of them had ever done in the whole course of his life. I don’t say this to boast. I was simply at­tend­ing to my busi­ness. In the mat­ter of all my books I have al­ways at­ten­ded to my busi­ness. I have at­ten­ded to it with com­plete self-sur­render. And this state­ment, too, is not a boast. I could not have done oth­er­wise. It would have bored me too much to make-be­lieve.

The sug­ges­tions for cer­tain per­son­ages of the tale, both law-abid­ing and law­less, came from vari­ous sources which, per­haps, here and there, some reader may have re­cog­nized. They are not very re­con­dite. But I am not con­cerned here to le­git­im­ize any of those people, and even as to my gen­eral view of the moral re­ac­tions as between the crim­inal and the po­lice all I will ven­ture to say is that it seems to me to be at least ar­gu­able.

The twelve years that have elapsed since the pub­lic­a­tion of the book have not changed my at­ti­tude. I do not re­gret hav­ing writ­ten it. Lately, cir­cum­stances, which have noth­ing to do with the gen­eral tenor of this Pre­face, have com­pelled me to strip this tale of the lit­er­ary robe of in­dig­nant scorn it has cost me so much to fit on it de­cently, years ago. I have been forced, so to speak, to look upon its bare bones. I con­fess that it makes a grisly skel­eton. But still I will sub­mit that telling Win­nie Ver­loc’s story to its an­arch­istic end of ut­ter des­ol­a­tion, mad­ness, and des­pair, and telling it as I have told it here, I have not in­ten­ded to com­mit a gra­tu­it­ous out­rage on the feel­ings of man­kind.

1920

J. C.

To
H. G. Wells
the chron­icler of Mr. Lew­isham’s love
the bio­grapher of Kipps and the
his­tor­ian of the ages to come
this simple tale of the XIX cen­tury
is af­fec­tion­ately offered.

The Secret Agent A Simple Tale

I

Mr. Ver­loc, go­ing out in the morn­ing, left his shop nom­in­ally in charge of his brother-in-law.  It could be done, be­cause there was very little busi­ness at any time, and prac­tic­ally none at all be­fore the even­ing.  Mr. Ver­loc cared but little about his os­tens­ible busi­ness.  And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.

The shop was small, and so was the house.  It was one of those grimy brick houses which ex­is­ted in large quant­it­ies be­fore the era of re­con­struc­tion dawned upon Lon­don.  The shop was a square box of a place, with the front glazed in small panes.  In the day­time the door re­mained closed; in the even­ing it stood dis­creetly but sus­pi­ciously ajar.

The win­dow con­tained pho­to­graphs of more or less un­dressed dan­cing girls; non­des­cript pack­ages in wrap­pers like pat­ent medi­cines; closed yel­low pa­per en­vel­opes, very flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black fig­ures; a few num­bers of an­cient French comic pub­lic­a­tions hung across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a cas­ket of black wood, bottles of mark­ing ink, and rub­ber stamps; a few books, with titles hint­ing at im­pro­pri­ety; a few ap­par­ently old cop­ies of ob­scure news­pa­pers, badly prin­ted, with titles like The Torch, The Gong—rous­ing titles.  And the two gas jets in­side the panes were al­ways turned low, either for eco­nomy’s sake or for the sake of the cus­tom­ers.

These cus­tom­ers were either very young men, who hung about the win­dow for a time be­fore slip­ping in sud­denly; or men of a more ma­ture age, but look­ing gen­er­ally as if they were not in funds.  Some of that last kind had the col­lars of their over­coats turned right up to their mous­taches, and traces of mud on the bot­tom of their nether gar­ments, which had the ap­pear­ance of be­ing much worn and not very valu­able.  And the legs in­side them did not, as a gen­eral rule, seem of much ac­count either.  With their hands plunged deep in the side pock­ets of their coats, they dodged in side­ways, one shoulder first, as if afraid to start the bell go­ing.

The bell, hung on the door by means of a curved rib­bon of steel, was dif­fi­cult to cir­cum­vent.  It was hope­lessly cracked; but of an even­ing, at the slight­est pro­voca­tion, it clattered be­hind the cus­tomer with im­pudent vir­ulence.

It clattered; and at that sig­nal, through the dusty glass door be­hind the painted deal counter, Mr. Ver­loc would is­sue hast­ily from the par­lour at the back.  His eyes were nat­ur­ally heavy; he had an air of hav­ing wal­lowed, fully dressed, all day on an un­made bed.  Another man would have felt such an ap­pear­ance a dis­tinct dis­ad­vant­age.  In a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion of the re­tail or­der much de­pends on the seller’s en­ga­ging and ami­able as­pect.  But Mr. Ver­loc knew his busi­ness, and re­mained un­dis­turbed by any sort of æs­thetic doubt about his ap­pear­ance.  With a firm, steady-eyed im­pudence, which seemed to hold back the threat of some ab­om­in­able men­ace, he would pro­ceed to sell over the counter some ob­ject look­ing ob­vi­ously and scan­dal­ously not worth the money which passed in the trans­ac­tion: a small card­board box with ap­par­ently noth­ing in­side, for in­stance, or one of those care­fully closed yel­low flimsy en­vel­opes, or a soiled volume in pa­per cov­ers with a prom­ising title.  Now and then it happened that one of the faded, yel­low dan­cing girls would get sold to an am­a­teur, as though she had been alive and young.

So­me­times it was Mrs. Ver­loc who would ap­pear at the call of the cracked bell.  Win­nie Ver­loc was a young wo­man with a full bust, in a tight bod­ice, and with broad hips.  Her hair was very tidy.  Steady-eyed like her hus­band, she pre­served an air of un­fathom­able in­dif­fer­ence be­hind the ram­part of the counter.  Then the cus­tomer of com­par­at­ively tender years would get sud­denly dis­con­cer­ted at hav­ing to deal with a wo­man, and with rage in his heart would prof­fer a re­quest for a bottle of mark­ing ink, re­tail value six­pence (price in Ver­loc’s shop one-and-six­pence), which, once out­side, he would drop stealth­ily into the gut­ter.

The even­ing vis­it­ors—the men with col­lars turned up and soft hats rammed down—nod­ded fa­mil­iarly to Mrs. Ver­loc, and with a muttered greet­ing, lif­ted up the flap at the end of the counter in or­der to pass into the back par­lour, which gave ac­cess to a pas­sage and to a steep flight of stairs.  The door of the shop was the only means of en­trance to the house in which Mr. Ver­loc car­ried on his busi­ness of a seller of shady wares, ex­er­cised his vo­ca­tion of a pro­tector of so­ci­ety, and cul­tiv­ated his do­mestic vir­tues.  These last were pro­nounced.  He was thor­oughly do­mest­ic­ated.  Neither his spir­itual, nor his men­tal, nor his phys­ical needs were of the kind to take him much abroad.  He found at home the ease of his body and the peace of his con­science, to­gether with Mrs. Ver­loc’s wifely at­ten­tions and Mrs. Ver­loc’s mother’s de­fer­en­tial re­gard.

Win­nie’s mother was a stout, wheezy wo­man, with a large brown face.  She wore a black wig un­der a white cap.  Her swollen legs rendered her in­act­ive.  She con­sidered her­self to be of French des­cent, which might have been true; and after a good many years of mar­ried life with a li­censed victu­aller of the more com­mon sort, she provided for the years of wid­ow­hood by let­ting fur­nished apart­ments for gen­tle­men near Vaux­hall Bridge Road in a square once of some splend­our and still in­cluded in the dis­trict of Bel­gravia.  This to­po­graph­ical fact was of some ad­vant­age in ad­vert­ising her rooms; but the pat­rons of the worthy widow were not ex­actly of the fash­ion­able kind.  Such as they were, her daugh­ter Win­nie helped to look after them.  Traces of the French des­cent which the widow boas­ted of were ap­par­ent in Win­nie too.  They were ap­par­ent in the ex­tremely neat and artistic ar­range­ment of her glossy dark hair.  Win­nie had also other charms: her youth; her full, roun­ded form; her clear com­plex­ion; the pro­voca­tion of her un­fathom­able re­serve, which never went so far as to pre­vent con­ver­sa­tion, car­ried on on the lodgers’ part with an­im­a­tion, and on hers with an equable ami­ab­il­ity.  It must be that Mr. Ver­loc was sus­cept­ible to these fas­cin­a­tions.  Mr. Ver­loc was an in­ter­mit­tent pat­ron.  He came and went without any very ap­par­ent reason.  He gen­er­ally ar­rived in Lon­don (like the in­flu­enza) from the Contin­ent, only he ar­rived un­her­al­ded by the Press; and his vis­it­a­tions set in with great sever­ity.  He break­fas­ted in bed, and re­mained wal­low­ing there with an air of quiet en­joy­ment till noon every day—and some­times even to a later hour.  But when he went out he seemed to ex­per­i­ence a great dif­fi­culty in find­ing his way back to his tem­por­ary home in the Bel­gravian square.  He left it late, and re­turned to it early—as early as three or four in the morn­ing; and on wak­ing up at ten ad­dressed Win­nie, bring­ing in the break­fast tray, with joc­u­lar, ex­hausted ci­vil­ity, in the hoarse, fail­ing tones of a man who had been talk­ing vehe­mently for many hours to­gether.  His prom­in­ent, heavy-lid­ded eyes rolled side­ways amor­ously and lan­guidly, the bed­clothes were pulled up to his chin, and his dark smooth mous­tache covered his thick lips cap­able of much hon­eyed banter.

In Win­nie’s mother’s opin­ion Mr. Ver­loc was a very nice gen­tle­man.  From her life’s ex­per­i­ence gathered in vari­ous “busi­ness houses” the good wo­man had taken into her re­tire­ment an ideal of gen­tle­man­li­ness as ex­hib­ited by the pat­rons of private-sa­loon bars.  Mr. Ver­loc ap­proached that ideal; he at­tained it, in fact.

“Of course, we’ll take over your fur­niture, mother,” Win­nie had re­marked.

The lodging-house was to be given up.  It seems it would not an­swer to carry it on.  It would have been too much trouble for Mr. Ver­loc.  It would not have been con­veni­ent for his other busi­ness.  What his busi­ness was he did not say; but after his en­gage­ment to Win­nie he took the trouble to get up be­fore noon, and des­cend­ing the base­ment stairs, make him­self pleas­ant to Win­nie’s mother in the break­fast-room down­stairs where she had her mo­tion­less be­ing.  He stroked the cat, poked the fire, had his lunch served to him there.  He left its slightly stuffy co­si­ness with evid­ent re­luct­ance, but, all the same, re­mained out till the night was far ad­vanced.  He never offered to take Win­nie to theatres, as such a nice gen­tle­man ought to have done.  His even­ings were oc­cu­pied.  His work was in a way polit­ical, he told Win­nie once.  She would have, he warned her, to be very nice to his polit­ical friends.

And with her straight, un­fathom­able glance she answered that she would be so, of course.

How much more he told her as to his oc­cu­pa­tion it was im­possible for Win­nie’s mother to dis­cover.  The mar­ried couple took her over with the fur­niture.  The mean as­pect of the shop sur­prised her.  The change from the Bel­gravian square to the nar­row street in Soho af­fected her legs ad­versely.  They be­came of an enorm­ous size.  On the other hand, she ex­per­i­enced a com­plete re­lief from ma­ter­ial cares.  Her son-in-law’s heavy good nature in­spired her with a sense of ab­so­lute safety.  Her daugh­ter’s fu­ture was ob­vi­ously as­sured, and even as to her son Stevie she need have no anxi­ety.  She had not been able to con­ceal from her­self that he was a ter­rible en­cum­brance, that poor Stevie.  But in view of Win­nie’s fond­ness for her del­ic­ate brother, and of Mr. Ver­loc’s kind and gen­er­ous dis­pos­i­tion, she felt that the poor boy was pretty safe in this rough world.  And in her heart of hearts she was not per­haps dis­pleased that the Ver­locs had no chil­dren.  As that cir­cum­stance seemed per­fectly in­dif­fer­ent to Mr. Ver­loc, and as Win­nie found an ob­ject of quasi-ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion in her brother, per­haps this was just as well for poor Stevie.

For he was dif­fi­cult to dis­pose of, that boy.  He was del­ic­ate and, in a frail way, good-look­ing too, ex­cept for the va­cant droop of his lower lip.  Under our ex­cel­lent sys­tem of com­puls­ory edu­ca­tion he had learned to read and write, not­with­stand­ing the un­fa­vour­able as­pect of the lower lip.  But as er­rand-boy he did not turn out a great suc­cess.  He for­got his mes­sages; he was eas­ily di­ver­ted from the straight path of duty by the at­trac­tions of stray cats and dogs, which he fol­lowed down nar­row al­leys into un­sa­voury courts; by the com­ed­ies of the streets, which he con­tem­plated open-mouthed, to the det­ri­ment of his em­ployer’s in­terests; or by the dra­mas of fallen horses, whose pathos and vi­ol­ence in­duced him some­times to shriek pier­ce­ingly in a crowd, which dis­liked to be dis­turbed by sounds of dis­tress in its quiet en­joy­ment of the na­tional spec­tacle.  When led away by a grave and pro­tect­ing po­lice­man, it would of­ten be­come ap­par­ent that poor Stevie had for­got­ten his ad­dress—at least for a time.  A brusque ques­tion caused him to stut­ter to the point of suf­foc­a­tion.  When startled by any­thing per­plex­ing he used to squint hor­ribly.  However, he never had any fits (which was en­cour­aging); and be­fore the nat­ural out­bursts of im­pa­tience on the part of his father he could al­ways, in his child­hood’s days, run for pro­tec­tion be­hind the short skirts of his sis­ter Win­nie.  On the other hand, he might have been sus­pec­ted of hid­ing a fund of reck­less naugh­ti­ness.  When he had reached the age of four­teen a friend of his late father, an agent for a for­eign pre­served milk firm, hav­ing given him an open­ing as of­fice-boy, he was dis­covered one foggy af­ter­noon, in his chief’s ab­sence, busy let­ting off fire­works on the stair­case.  He touched off in quick suc­ces­sion a set of fierce rock­ets, angry cath­er­ine wheels, loudly ex­plod­ing squibs—and the mat­ter might have turned out very ser­i­ous.  An aw­ful panic spread through the whole build­ing.  Wild-eyed, chok­ing clerks stam­peded through the pas­sages full of smoke, silk hats and eld­erly busi­ness men could be seen rolling in­de­pend­ently down the stairs.  Stevie did not seem to de­rive any per­sonal grat­i­fic­a­tion from what he had done.  His motives for this stroke of ori­gin­al­ity were dif­fi­cult to dis­cover.  It was only later on that Win­nie ob­tained from him a misty and con­fused con­fes­sion.  It seems that two other of­fice-boys in the build­ing had worked upon his feel­ings by tales of in­justice and op­pres­sion till they had wrought his com­pas­sion to the pitch of that frenzy.  But his father’s friend, of course, dis­missed him sum­mar­ily as likely to ruin his busi­ness.  After that al­tru­istic ex­ploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the base­ment kit­chen, and to black the boots of the gen­tle­men pat­ron­ising the Bel­gravian man­sion.  There was ob­vi­ously no fu­ture in such work.  The gen­tle­men tipped him a shil­ling now and then.  Mr. Ver­loc showed him­self the most gen­er­ous of lodgers.  But al­to­gether all that did not amount to much either in the way of gain or pro­spects; so that when Win­nie an­nounced her en­gage­ment to Mr. Ver­loc her mother could not help won­der­ing, with a sigh and a glance to­wards the scull­ery, what would be­come of poor Stephen now.

It ap­peared that Mr. Ver­loc was ready to take him over to­gether with his wife’s mother and with the fur­niture, which was the whole vis­ible for­tune of the fam­ily.  Mr. Ver­loc gathered everything as it came to his broad, good-natured breast.  The fur­niture was dis­posed to the best ad­vant­age all over the house, but Mrs. Ver­loc’s mother was con­fined to two back rooms on the first floor.  The luck­less Stevie slept in one of them.  By this time a growth of thin fluffy hair had come to blur, like a golden mist, the sharp line of his small lower jaw.  He helped his sis­ter with blind love and do­cil­ity in her house­hold du­ties.  Mr. Ver­loc thought that some oc­cu­pa­tion would be good for him.  His spare time he oc­cu­pied by draw­ing circles with com­pass and pen­cil on a piece of pa­per.  He ap­plied him­self to that pas­time with great in­dustry, with his el­bows spread out and bowed low over the kit­chen table.  Through the open door of the par­lour at the back of the shop Win­nie, his sis­ter, glanced at him from time to time with ma­ter­nal vi­gil­ance.

II

Such was the house, the house­hold, and the busi­ness Mr. Ver­loc left be­hind him on his way west­ward at the hour of half-past ten in the morn­ing.  It was un­usu­ally early for him; his whole per­son ex­haled the charm of al­most dewy fresh­ness; he wore his blue cloth over­coat un­buttoned; his boots were shiny; his cheeks, freshly shaven, had a sort of gloss; and even his heavy-lid­ded eyes, re­freshed by a night of peace­ful slum­ber, sent out glances of com­par­at­ive alert­ness.  Through the park rail­ings these glances be­held men and wo­men rid­ing in the Row, couples can­ter­ing past har­mo­ni­ously, oth­ers ad­van­cing sed­ately at a walk, loiter­ing groups of three or four, sol­it­ary horse­men look­ing un­so­ci­able, and sol­it­ary wo­men fol­lowed at a long dis­tance by a groom with a cock­ade to his hat and a leather belt over his tight-fit­ting coat.  Car­riages went bowl­ing by, mostly two-horse broughams, with here and there a vic­toria with the skin of some wild beast in­side and a wo­man’s face and hat emer­ging above the fol­ded hood.  And a pe­cu­li­arly Lon­don sun—against which noth­ing could be said ex­cept that it looked blood­shot—glor­i­fied all this by its stare.  It hung at a mod­er­ate el­ev­a­tion above Hyde Park Corner with an air of punc­tual and be­nign vi­gil­ance.  The very pave­ment un­der Mr. Ver­loc’s feet had an old-gold tinge in that dif­fused light, in which neither wall, nor tree, nor beast, nor man cast a shadow.  Mr. Ver­loc was go­ing west­ward through a town without shad­ows in an at­mo­sphere of powdered old gold.  There were red, cop­pery gleams on the roofs of houses, on the corners of walls, on the pan­els of car­riages, on the very coats of the horses, and on the broad back of Mr. Ver­loc’s over­coat, where they pro­duced a dull ef­fect of rusti­ness.  But Mr. Ver­loc was not in the least con­scious of hav­ing got rusty.  He sur­veyed through the park rail­ings the evid­ences of the town’s op­u­lence and lux­ury with an ap­prov­ing eye.  All these people had to be pro­tec­ted.  Pro­tec­tion is the first ne­ces­sity of op­u­lence and lux­ury.  They had to be pro­tec­ted; and their horses, car­riages, houses, ser­vants had to be pro­tec­ted; and the source of their wealth had to be pro­tec­ted in the heart of the city and the heart of the coun­try; the whole so­cial or­der fa­vour­able to their hy­gienic idle­ness had to be pro­tec­ted against the shal­low en­vi­ous­ness of un­hygienic la­bour.  It had to—and Mr. Ver­loc would have rubbed his hands with sat­is­fac­tion had he not been con­sti­tu­tion­ally averse from every su­per­flu­ous ex­er­tion.  His idle­ness was not hy­gienic, but it suited him very well.  He was in a man­ner de­voted to it with a sort of in­ert fan­at­icism, or per­haps rather with a fan­at­ical in­ert­ness.  Born of in­dus­tri­ous par­ents for a life of toil, he had em­braced in­dol­ence from an im­pulse as pro­found as in­ex­plic­able and as im­per­i­ous as the im­pulse which dir­ects a man’s pref­er­ence for one par­tic­u­lar wo­man in a given thou­sand.  He was too lazy even for a mere dem­agogue, for a work­man orator, for a leader of la­bour.  It was too much trouble.  He re­quired a more per­fect form of ease; or it might have been that he was the vic­tim of a philo­soph­ical un­be­lief in the ef­fect­ive­ness of every hu­man ef­fort.  Such a form of in­dol­ence re­quires, im­plies, a cer­tain amount of in­tel­li­gence.  Mr. Ver­loc was not devoid of in­tel­li­gence—and at the no­tion of a men­aced so­cial or­der he would per­haps have winked to him­self if there had not been an ef­fort to make in that sign of scep­ti­cism.  His big, prom­in­ent eyes were not well ad­ap­ted to wink­ing.  They were rather of the sort that closes sol­emnly in slum­ber with majestic ef­fect.

Un­demon­strat­ive and burly in a fat-pig style, Mr. Ver­loc, without either rub­bing his hands with sat­is­fac­tion or wink­ing scep­tic­ally at his thoughts, pro­ceeded on his way.  He trod the pave­ment heav­ily with his shiny boots, and his gen­eral getup was that of a well-to-do mech­anic in busi­ness for him­self.  He might have been any­thing from a pic­ture-frame maker to a lock­smith; an em­ployer of la­bour in a small way.  But there was also about him an in­des­crib­able air which no mech­anic could have ac­quired in the prac­tice of his han­di­craft how­ever dis­hon­estly ex­er­cised: the air com­mon to men who live on the vices, the fol­lies, or the baser fears of man­kind; the air of moral ni­hil­ism com­mon to keep­ers of gambling hells and dis­orderly houses; to private de­tect­ives and in­quiry agents; to drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers of in­vig­or­at­ing elec­tric belts and to the in­vent­ors of pat­ent medi­cines.  But of that last I am not sure, not hav­ing car­ried my in­vest­ig­a­tions so far into the depths.  For all I know, the ex­pres­sion of these last may be per­fectly diabolic.  I shouldn’t be sur­prised.  What I want to af­firm is that Mr. Ver­loc’s ex­pres­sion was by no means diabolic.

Be­fore reach­ing Knights­bridge, Mr. Ver­loc took a turn to the left out of the busy main thor­ough­fare, up­roari­ous with the traffic of sway­ing om­ni­buses and trot­ting vans, in the al­most si­lent, swift flow of hansoms.  Under his hat, worn with a slight back­ward tilt, his hair had been care­fully brushed into re­spect­ful sleek­ness; for his busi­ness was with an Em­bassy.  And Mr. Ver­loc, steady like a rock—a soft kind of rock—marched now along a street which could with every pro­pri­ety be de­scribed as private.  In its breadth, empti­ness, and ex­tent it had the majesty of in­or­ganic nature, of mat­ter that never dies.  The only re­minder of mor­tal­ity was a doc­tor’s brougham ar­res­ted in au­gust solitude close to the curb­stone.  The pol­ished knock­ers of the doors gleamed as far as the eye could reach, the clean win­dows shone with a dark opaque lustre.  And all was still.  But a milk cart rattled nois­ily across the dis­tant per­spect­ive; a butcher boy, driv­ing with the noble reck­less­ness of a chari­oteer at Olympic Games, dashed round the corner sit­ting high above a pair of red wheels.  A guilty-look­ing cat is­su­ing from un­der the stones ran for a while in front of Mr. Ver­loc, then dived into an­other base­ment; and a thick po­lice con­stable, look­ing a stranger to every emo­tion, as if he too were part of in­or­ganic nature, sur­ging ap­par­ently out of a lamp­post, took not the slight­est no­tice of Mr. Ver­loc.  With a turn to the left Mr. Ver­loc pur­sued his way along a nar­row street by the side of a yel­low wall which, for some in­scrut­able reason, had No. 1 Che­sham Square writ­ten on it in black let­ters.  Che­sham Square was at least sixty yards away, and Mr. Ver­loc, cos­mo­pol­itan enough not to be de­ceived by Lon­don’s to­po­graph­ical mys­ter­ies, held on stead­ily, without a sign of sur­prise or in­dig­na­tion.  At last, with busi­ness­like per­sist­ency, he reached the Square, and made di­ag­on­ally for the num­ber 10.  This be­longed to an im­pos­ing car­riage gate in a high, clean wall between two houses, of which one ra­tion­ally enough bore the num­ber 9 and the other was numbered 37; but the fact that this last be­longed to Por­t­hill Street, a street well known in the neigh­bour­hood, was pro­claimed by an in­scrip­tion placed above the ground-floor win­dows by whatever highly ef­fi­cient au­thor­ity is charged with the duty of keep­ing track of Lon­don’s strayed houses.  Why powers are not asked of Parlia­ment (a short act would do) for com­pel­ling those edi­fices to re­turn where they be­long is one of the mys­ter­ies of mu­ni­cipal ad­min­is­tra­tion.  Mr. Ver­loc did not trouble his head about it, his mis­sion in life be­ing the pro­tec­tion of the so­cial mech­an­ism, not its per­fec­tion­ment or even its cri­ti­cism.

It was so early that the porter of the Em­bassy is­sued hur­riedly out of his lodge still strug­gling with the left sleeve of his liv­ery coat.  His waist­coat was red, and he wore knee-breeches, but his as­pect was flustered.  Mr. Ver­loc, aware of the rush on his flank, drove it off by simply hold­ing out an en­vel­ope stamped with the arms of the Em­bassy, and passed on.  He pro­duced the same talis­man also to the foot­man who opened the door, and stood back to let him enter the hall.

A clear fire burned in a tall fire­place, and an eld­erly man stand­ing with his back to it, in even­ing dress and with a chain round his neck, glanced up from the news­pa­per he was hold­ing spread out in both hands be­fore his calm and severe face.  He didn’t move; but an­other lackey, in brown trousers and claw-ham­mer coat edged with thin yel­low cord, ap­proach­ing Mr. Ver­loc listened to the mur­mur of his name, and turn­ing round on his heel in si­lence, began to walk, without look­ing back once.  Mr. Ver­loc, thus led along a ground-floor pas­sage to the left of the great car­peted stair­case, was sud­denly mo­tioned to enter a quite small room fur­nished with a heavy writ­ing-table and a few chairs.  The ser­vant shut the door, and Mr. Ver­loc re­mained alone.  He did not take a seat.  With his hat and stick held in one hand he glanced about, passing his other podgy hand over his un­covered sleek head.

Another door opened noise­lessly, and Mr. Ver­loc im­mob­il­ising his glance in that dir­ec­tion saw at first only black clothes, the bald top of a head, and a droop­ing dark grey whisker on each side of a pair of wrinkled hands.  The per­son who had entered was hold­ing a batch of pa­pers be­fore his eyes and walked up to the table with a rather min­cing step, turn­ing the pa­pers over the while.  Privy Coun­cil­lor Wurmt, Chance­lier d’Am­bas­sade, was rather short­sighted.  This mer­it­ori­ous of­fi­cial lay­ing the pa­pers on the table, dis­closed a face of pasty com­plex­ion and of mel­an­choly ugli­ness sur­roun­ded by a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs, barred heav­ily by thick and bushy eye­brows.  He put on a black-framed pince-nez upon a blunt and shape­less nose, and seemed struck by Mr. Ver­loc’s ap­pear­ance.  Under the enorm­ous eye­brows his weak eyes blinked pathet­ic­ally through the glasses.

He made no sign of greet­ing; neither did Mr. Ver­loc, who cer­tainly knew his place; but a subtle change about the gen­eral out­lines of his shoulders and back sug­ges­ted a slight bend­ing of Mr. Ver­loc’s spine un­der the vast sur­face of his over­coat.  The ef­fect was of un­ob­trus­ive de­fer­ence.

“I have here some of your re­ports,” said the bur­eau­crat in an un­ex­pec­tedly soft and weary voice, and press­ing the tip of his fore­finger on the pa­pers with force.  He paused; and Mr. Ver­loc, who had re­cog­nised his own hand­writ­ing very well, waited in an al­most breath­less si­lence.  “We are not very sat­is­fied with the at­ti­tude of the po­lice here,” the other con­tin­ued, with every ap­pear­ance of men­tal fa­tigue.

The shoulders of Mr. Ver­loc, without ac­tu­ally mov­ing, sug­ges­ted a shrug.  And for the first time since he left his home that morn­ing his lips opened.

“Every coun­try has its po­lice,” he said philo­soph­ic­ally.  But as the of­fi­cial of the Em­bassy went on blink­ing at him stead­ily he felt con­strained to add: “Al­low me to ob­serve that I have no means of ac­tion upon the po­lice here.”

“What is de­sired,” said the man of pa­pers, “is the oc­cur­rence of some­thing def­in­ite which should stim­u­late their vi­gil­ance.  That is within your province—is it not so?”

Mr. Ver­loc made no an­swer ex­cept by a sigh, which es­caped him in­vol­un­tar­ily, for in­stantly he tried to give his face a cheer­ful ex­pres­sion.  The of­fi­cial blinked doubt­fully, as if af­fected by the dim light of the room.  He re­peated vaguely.

“The vi­gil­ance of the po­lice—and the sever­ity of the ma­gis­trates.  The gen­eral le­ni­ency of the ju­di­cial pro­ced­ure here, and the ut­ter ab­sence of all re­press­ive meas­ures, are a scan­dal to Europe.  What is wished for just now is the ac­cen­tu­ation of the un­rest—of the fer­ment­a­tion which un­doubtedly ex­ists—”

“Undoubtedly, un­doubtedly,” broke in Mr. Ver­loc in a deep de­fer­en­tial bass of an ora­tor­ical qual­ity, so ut­terly dif­fer­ent from the tone in which he had spoken be­fore that his in­ter­locutor re­mained pro­foundly sur­prised.  “It ex­ists to a dan­ger­ous de­gree.  My re­ports for the last twelve months make it suf­fi­ciently clear.”

“Your re­ports for the last twelve months,” State Coun­cil­lor Wurmt began in his gentle and dis­pas­sion­ate tone, “have been read by me.  I failed to dis­cover why you wrote them at all.”

A sad si­lence reigned for a time.  Mr. Ver­loc seemed to have swal­lowed his tongue, and the other gazed at the pa­pers on the table fix­edly.  At last he gave them a slight push.

“The state of af­fairs you ex­pose there is as­sumed to ex­ist as the first con­di­tion of your em­ploy­ment.  What is re­quired at present is not writ­ing, but the bring­ing to light of a dis­tinct, sig­ni­fic­ant fact—I would al­most say of an alarm­ing fact.”

“I need not say that all my en­deav­ours shall be dir­ec­ted to that end,” Mr. Ver­loc said, with con­vinced mod­u­la­tions in his con­ver­sa­tional husky tone.  But the sense of be­ing blinked at watch­fully be­hind the blind glit­ter of these eye­glasses on the other side of the table dis­con­cer­ted him.  He stopped short with a ges­ture of ab­so­lute de­vo­tion.  The use­ful, hard­work­ing, if ob­scure mem­ber of the Em­bassy had an air of be­ing im­pressed by some newly-born thought.

“You are very cor­pu­lent,” he said.

This ob­ser­va­tion, really of a psy­cho­lo­gical nature, and ad­vanced with the mod­est hes­it­a­tion of an of­fice­man more fa­mil­iar with ink and pa­per than with the re­quire­ments of act­ive life, stung Mr. Ver­loc in the man­ner of a rude per­sonal re­mark.  He stepped back a pace.

“Eh?  What were you pleased to say?” he ex­claimed, with husky re­sent­ment.

The Chance­lier d’Am­bas­sade en­trus­ted with the con­duct of this in­ter­view seemed to find it too much for him.

“I think,” he said, “that you had bet­ter see Mr. Vladi­mir.  Yes, de­cidedly I think you ought to see Mr. Vladi­mir.  Be good enough to wait here,” he ad­ded, and went out with min­cing steps.

At once Mr. Ver­loc passed his hand over his hair.  A slight per­spir­a­tion had broken out on his fore­head.  He let the air es­cape from his pursed-up lips like a man blow­ing at a spoon­ful of hot soup.  But when the ser­vant in brown ap­peared at the door si­lently, Mr. Ver­loc had not moved an inch from the place he had oc­cu­pied through­out the in­ter­view.  He had re­mained mo­tion­less, as if feel­ing him­self sur­roun­ded by pit­falls.

He walked along a pas­sage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a flight of wind­ing stairs, and through a glazed and cheer­ful cor­ridor on the first floor.  The foot­man threw open a door, and stood aside.  The feet of Mr. Ver­loc felt a thick car­pet.  The room was large, with three win­dows; and a young man with a shaven, big face, sit­ting in a roomy arm­chair be­fore a vast ma­hogany writ­ing-table, said in French to the Chance­lier d’Am­bas­sade, who was go­ing out with the pa­pers in his hand:

“You are quite right, mon cher.  He’s fat—the an­imal.”

Mr. Vladi­mir, First Sec­ret­ary, had a draw­ing-room repu­ta­tion as an agree­able and en­ter­tain­ing man.  He was some­thing of a fa­vour­ite in so­ci­ety.  His wit con­sisted in dis­cov­er­ing droll con­nec­tions between in­con­gru­ous ideas; and when talk­ing in that strain he sat well for­ward of his seat, with his left hand raised, as if ex­hib­it­ing his funny demon­stra­tions between the thumb and fore­finger, while his round and clean-shaven face wore an ex­pres­sion of merry per­plex­ity.

But there was no trace of mer­ri­ment or per­plex­ity in the way he looked at Mr. Ver­loc.  Ly­ing far back in the deep arm­chair, with squarely spread el­bows, and throw­ing one leg over a thick knee, he had with his smooth and rosy coun­ten­ance the air of a preter­nat­ur­ally thriv­ing baby that will not stand non­sense from any­body.

“You un­der­stand French, I sup­pose?” he said.

Mr. Ver­loc stated husk­ily that he did.  His whole vast bulk had a for­ward in­clin­a­tion.  He stood on the car­pet in the middle of the room, clutch­ing his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung life­lessly by his side.  He muttered un­ob­trus­ively some­where deep down in his throat some­thing about hav­ing done his mil­it­ary ser­vice in the French ar­til­lery.  At once, with con­temp­tu­ous per­versity, Mr. Vladi­mir changed the lan­guage, and began to speak idio­matic Eng­lish without the slight­est trace of a for­eign ac­cent.

“Ah!  Yes.  Of course.  Let’s see.  How much did you get for ob­tain­ing the design of the im­proved breechb­lock of their new field-gun?”

“Five years’ rig­or­ous con­fine­ment in a fort­ress,” Mr. Ver­loc answered un­ex­pec­tedly, but without any sign of feel­ing.

“You got off eas­ily,” was Mr. Vladi­mir’s com­ment.  “And, any­how, it served you right for let­ting your­self get caught.  What made you go in for that sort of thing—eh?”

Mr. Ver­loc’s husky con­ver­sa­tional voice was heard speak­ing of youth, of a fatal in­fatu­ation for an un­worthy—

“Aha!  Cher­chez la femme,” Mr. Vladi­mir deigned to in­ter­rupt, un­bend­ing, but without af­fabil­ity; there was, on the con­trary, a touch of grim­ness in his con­des­cen­sion.  “How long have you been em­ployed by the Em­bassy here?” he asked.

“Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Warten­heim,” Mr. Ver­loc answered in sub­dued tones, and pro­trud­ing his lips sadly, in sign of sor­row for the de­ceased dip­lo­mat.  The First Sec­ret­ary ob­served this play of physiognomy stead­ily.

“Ah! ever since.  Well!  What have you got to say for your­self?” he asked sharply.

Mr. Ver­loc answered with some sur­prise that he was not aware of hav­ing any­thing spe­cial to say.  He had been summoned by a let­ter—And he plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his over­coat, but be­fore the mock­ing, cyn­ical watch­ful­ness of Mr. Vladi­mir, con­cluded to leave it there.

“Bah!” said that lat­ter.  “What do you mean by get­ting out of con­di­tion like this?  You haven’t got even the physique of your pro­fes­sion.  You—a mem­ber of a starving pro­let­ariat—never!  You—a des­per­ate so­cial­ist or an­arch­ist—which is it?”

“An­arch­ist,” stated Mr. Ver­loc in a deadened tone.

“Bosh!” went on Mr. Vladi­mir, without rais­ing his voice.  “You startled old Wurmt him­self.  You wouldn’t de­ceive an idiot.  They all are that by-the-by, but you seem to me simply im­possible.  So you began your con­nec­tion with us by steal­ing the French gun designs.  And you got your­self caught.  That must have been very dis­agree­able to our gov­ern­ment.  You don’t seem to be very smart.”

Mr. Ver­loc tried to ex­culp­ate him­self husk­ily.

“As I’ve had oc­ca­sion to ob­serve be­fore, a fatal in­fatu­ation for an un­worthy—”

Mr. Vladi­mir raised a large white, plump hand.  “Ah, yes.  The un­lucky at­tach­ment—of your youth.  She got hold of the money, and then sold you to the po­lice—eh?”

The dole­ful change in Mr. Ver­loc’s physiognomy, the mo­ment­ary droop­ing of his whole per­son, con­fessed that such was the re­gret­table case.  Mr. Vladi­mir’s hand clasped the ankle re­pos­ing on his knee.  The sock was of dark blue silk.

“You see, that was not very clever of you.  Per­haps you are too sus­cept­ible.”

Mr. Ver­loc in­tim­ated in a throaty, veiled mur­mur that he was no longer young.

“Oh!  That’s a fail­ing which age does not cure,” Mr. Vladi­mir re­marked, with sin­is­ter fa­mili­ar­ity.  “But no!  You are too fat for that.  You could not have come to look like this if you had been at all sus­cept­ible.  I’ll tell you what I think is the mat­ter: you are a lazy fel­low.  How long have you been draw­ing pay from this Em­bassy?”

“Eleven years,” was the an­swer, after a mo­ment of sulky hes­it­a­tion.  “I’ve been charged with sev­eral mis­sions to Lon­don while His Ex­cel­lency Baron Stott-Warten­heim was still Am­bas­sador in Paris.  Then by his Ex­cel­lency’s in­struc­tions I settled down in Lon­don.  I am Eng­lish.”

“You are!  Are you?  Eh?”

“A nat­ural-born Brit­ish sub­ject,” Mr. Ver­loc said stolidly.  “But my father was French, and so—”

“Never mind ex­plain­ing,” in­ter­rup­ted the other.  “I daresay you could have been leg­ally a Mar­shal of France and a Mem­ber of Parlia­ment in Eng­land—and then, in­deed, you would have been of some use to our Em­bassy.”

This flight of fancy pro­voked some­thing like a faint smile on Mr. Ver­loc’s face.  Mr. Vladi­mir re­tained an im­per­turb­able grav­ity.

“But, as I’ve said, you are a lazy fel­low; you don’t use your op­por­tun­it­ies.  In the time of Baron Stott-Warten­heim we had a lot of soft-headed people run­ning this Em­bassy.  They caused fel­lows of your sort to form a false con­cep­tion of the nature of a secret ser­vice fund.  It is my busi­ness to cor­rect this mis­ap­pre­hen­sion by telling you what the secret ser­vice is not.  It is not a phil­an­thropic in­sti­tu­tion.  I’ve had you called here on pur­pose to tell you this.”

Mr. Vladi­mir ob­served the forced ex­pres­sion of be­wil­der­ment on Ver­loc’s face, and smiled sar­castic­ally.

“I see that you un­der­stand me per­fectly.  I daresay you are in­tel­li­gent enough for your work.  What we want now is activ­ity—activ­ity.”

On re­peat­ing this last word Mr. Vladi­mir laid a long white fore­finger on the edge of the desk.  Every trace of husk­i­ness dis­ap­peared from Ver­loc’s voice.  The nape of his gross neck be­came crim­son above the vel­vet col­lar of his over­coat.  His lips quivered be­fore they came widely open.

“If you’ll only be good enough to look up my re­cord,” he boomed out in his great, clear ora­tor­ical bass, “you’ll see I gave a warn­ing only three months ago, on the oc­ca­sion of the Grand Duke Romu­ald’s visit to Paris, which was tele­graphed from here to the French po­lice, and—”

“Tut, tut!” broke out Mr. Vladi­mir, with a frown­ing grim­ace.  “The French po­lice had no use for your warn­ing.  Don’t roar like this.  What the devil do you mean?”

With a note of proud hu­mil­ity Mr. Ver­loc apo­lo­gised for for­get­ting him­self.  His voice—fam­ous for years at open-air meet­ings and at work­men’s as­sem­blies in large halls, had con­trib­uted, he said, to his repu­ta­tion of a good and trust­worthy com­rade.  It was, there­fore, a part of his use­ful­ness.  It had in­spired con­fid­ence in his prin­ciples.  “I was al­ways put up to speak by the lead­ers at a crit­ical mo­ment,” Mr. Ver­loc de­clared, with ob­vi­ous sat­is­fac­tion.  There was no up­roar above which he could not make him­self heard, he ad­ded; and sud­denly he made a demon­stra­tion.

“Al­low me,” he said.  With lowered fore­head, without look­ing up, swiftly and pon­der­ously he crossed the room to one of the French win­dows.  As if giv­ing way to an un­con­trol­lable im­pulse, he opened it a little.  Mr. Vladi­mir, jump­ing up amazed from the depths of the arm­chair, looked over his shoulder; and be­low, across the court­yard of the Em­bassy, well bey­ond the open gate, could be seen the broad back of a po­lice­man watch­ing idly the gor­geous per­am­bu­lator of a wealthy baby be­ing wheeled in state across the Square.

“Con­stable!” said Mr. Ver­loc, with no more ef­fort than if he were whis­per­ing; and Mr. Vladi­mir burst into a laugh on see­ing the po­lice­man spin round as if prod­ded by a sharp in­stru­ment.  Mr. Ver­loc shut the win­dow quietly, and re­turned to the middle of the room.

“With a voice like that,” he said, put­ting on the husky con­ver­sa­tional pedal, “I was nat­ur­ally trus­ted.  And I knew what to say, too.”

Mr. Vladi­mir, ar­ran­ging his cravat, ob­served him in the glass over the man­tel­piece.

“I daresay you have the so­cial re­volu­tion­ary jar­gon by heart well enough,” he said con­temp­tu­ously.  “Vox et … You haven’t ever stud­ied Latin—have you?”

“No,” growled Mr. Ver­loc.  “You did not ex­pect me to know it.  I be­long to the mil­lion.  Who knows Latin?  Only a few hun­dred im­be­ciles who aren’t fit to take care of them­selves.”

For some thirty seconds longer Mr. Vladi­mir stud­ied in the mir­ror the fleshy pro­file, the gross bulk, of the man be­hind him.  And at the same time he had the ad­vant­age of see­ing his own face, clean-shaved and round, rosy about the gills, and with the thin sens­it­ive lips formed ex­actly for the ut­ter­ance of those del­ic­ate wit­ti­cisms which had made him such a fa­vour­ite in the very highest so­ci­ety.  Then he turned, and ad­vanced into the room with such de­term­in­a­tion that the very ends of his quaintly old-fash­ioned bow neck­tie seemed to bristle with un­speak­able men­aces.  The move­ment was so swift and fierce that Mr. Ver­loc, cast­ing an ob­lique glance, quailed in­wardly.

“Aha!  You dare be im­pudent,” Mr. Vladi­mir began, with an amaz­ingly gut­tural in­ton­a­tion not only ut­terly un-Eng­lish, but ab­so­lutely un-European, and start­ling even to Mr. Ver­loc’s ex­per­i­ence of cos­mo­pol­itan slums.  “You dare!  Well, I am go­ing to speak plain Eng­lish to you.  Voice won’t do.  We have no use for your voice.  We don’t want a voice.  We want facts—start­ling facts—damn you,” he ad­ded, with a sort of fe­ro­cious dis­cre­tion, right into Mr. Ver­loc’s face.

“Don’t you try to come over me with your Hyper­borean man­ners,” Mr. Ver­loc de­fen­ded him­self husk­ily, look­ing at the car­pet.  At this his in­ter­locutor, smil­ing mock­ingly above the brist­ling bow of his neck­tie, switched the con­ver­sa­tion into French.

“You give your­self for an ‘agent pro­vocateur.’  The proper busi­ness of an ‘agent pro­vocateur’ is to pro­voke.  As far as I can judge from your re­cord kept here, you have done noth­ing to earn your money for the last three years.”

“Noth­ing!” ex­claimed Ver­loc, stir­ring not a limb, and not rais­ing his eyes, but with the note of sin­cere feel­ing in his tone.  “I have sev­eral times pre­ven­ted what might have been—”

“There is a pro­verb in this coun­try which says pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure,” in­ter­rup­ted Mr. Vladi­mir, throw­ing him­self into the arm­chair.  “It is stu­pid in a gen­eral way.  There is no end to pre­ven­tion.  But it is char­ac­ter­istic.  They dis­like fi­nal­ity in this coun­try.  Don’t you be too Eng­lish.  And in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, don’t be ab­surd.  The evil is already here.  We don’t want pre­ven­tion—we want cure.”

He paused, turned to the desk, and turn­ing over some pa­pers ly­ing there, spoke in a changed busi­ness­like tone, without look­ing at Mr. Ver­loc.

“You know, of course, of the In­ter­na­tional Con­fer­ence as­sembled in Milan?”

Mr. Ver­loc in­tim­ated hoarsely that he was in the habit of read­ing the daily pa­pers.  To a fur­ther ques­tion his an­swer was that, of course, he un­der­stood what he read.  At this Mr. Vladi­mir, smil­ing faintly at the doc­u­ments he was still scan­ning one after an­other, mur­mured “As long as it is not writ­ten in Latin, I sup­pose.”

“Or Chinese,” ad­ded Mr. Ver­loc stolidly.

“H’m.  Some of your re­volu­tion­ary friends’ ef­fu­sions are writ­ten in a char­a­bia every bit as in­com­pre­hens­ible as Chinese—”  Mr. Vladi­mir let fall dis­dain­fully a grey sheet of prin­ted mat­ter.  “What are all these leaf­lets headed F. P., with a ham­mer, pen, and torch crossed?  What does it mean, this F. P.?”  Mr. Ver­loc ap­proached the im­pos­ing writ­ing-table.

“The Fu­ture of the Pro­let­ariat.  It’s a so­ci­ety,” he ex­plained, stand­ing pon­der­ously by the side of the arm­chair, “not an­arch­ist in prin­ciple, but open to all shades of re­volu­tion­ary opin­ion.”

“Are you in it?”

“One of the Vice-Pres­id­ents,” Mr. Ver­loc breathed out heav­ily; and the First Sec­ret­ary of the Em­bassy raised his head to look at him.

“Then you ought to be ashamed of your­self,” he said in­cis­ively.  “Isn’t your so­ci­ety cap­able of any­thing else but print­ing this proph­etic bosh in blunt type on this filthy pa­per eh?  Why don’t you do some­thing?  Look here.  I’ve this mat­ter in hand now, and I tell you plainly that you will have to earn your money.  The good old Stott-Warten­heim times are over.  No work, no pay.”

Mr. Ver­loc felt a queer sen­sa­tion of faint­ness in his stout legs.  He stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.

He was, in truth, startled and alarmed.  The rusty Lon­don sun­shine strug­gling clear of the Lon­don mist shed a luke­warm bright­ness into the First Sec­ret­ary’s private room; and in the si­lence Mr. Ver­loc heard against a win­dowpane the faint buzz­ing of a fly—his first fly of the year—her­ald­ing bet­ter than any num­ber of swal­lows the ap­proach of spring.  The use­less fuss­ing of that tiny en­er­getic or­gan­ism af­fected un­pleas­antly this big man threatened in his in­dol­ence.

In the pause Mr. Vladi­mir for­mu­lated in his mind a series of dis­par­aging re­marks con­cern­ing Mr. Ver­loc’s face and fig­ure.  The fel­low was un­ex­pec­tedly vul­gar, heavy, and im­pudently un­in­tel­li­gent.  He looked un­com­monly like a mas­ter plumber come to present his bill.  The First Sec­ret­ary of the Em­bassy, from his oc­ca­sional ex­cur­sions into the field of Amer­ican hu­mour, had formed a spe­cial no­tion of that class of mech­anic as the em­bod­i­ment of fraud­u­lent lazi­ness and in­com­pet­ency.

This was then the fam­ous and trusty secret agent, so secret that he was never des­ig­nated oth­er­wise but by the sym­bol Δ in the late Baron Stott-Warten­heim’s of­fi­cial, se­mi­of­fi­cial, and con­fid­en­tial cor­res­pond­ence; the cel­eb­rated agent Δ, whose warn­ings had the power to change the schemes and the dates of royal, im­per­ial, grand ducal jour­neys, and some­times caused them to be put off al­to­gether!  This fel­low!  And Mr. Vladi­mir in­dulged men­tally in an enorm­ous and de­ris­ive fit of mer­ri­ment, partly at his own as­ton­ish­ment, which he judged na­ive, but mostly at the ex­pense of the uni­ver­sally re­gret­ted Baron Stott-Warten­heim.  His late Ex­cel­lency, whom the au­gust fa­vour of his Im­per­ial mas­ter had im­posed as Am­bas­sador upon sev­eral re­luct­ant Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs, had en­joyed in his life­time a fame for an owl­ish, pess­im­istic gull­ib­il­ity.  His Ex­cel­lency had the so­cial re­volu­tion on the brain.  He ima­gined him­self to be a dip­lo­mat­ist set apart by a spe­cial dis­pens­a­tion to watch the end of dip­lomacy, and pretty nearly the end of the world, in a hor­rid demo­cratic up­heaval.  His proph­etic and dole­ful des­patches had been for years the joke of For­eign Of­fices.  He was said to have ex­claimed on his deathbed (vis­ited by his Im­per­ial friend and mas­ter): “Un­happy Europe!  Thou shalt per­ish by the moral in­san­ity of thy chil­dren!”  He was fated to be the vic­tim of the first hum­bug­ging ras­cal that came along, thought Mr. Vladi­mir, smil­ing vaguely at Mr. Ver­loc.

“You ought to ven­er­ate the memory of Baron Stott-Warten­heim,” he ex­claimed sud­denly.

The lowered physiognomy of Mr. Ver­loc ex­pressed a sombre and weary an­noy­ance.

“Per­mit me to ob­serve to you,” he said, “that I came here be­cause I was summoned by a per­emp­tory let­ter.  I have been here only twice be­fore in the last el­even years, and cer­tainly never at el­even in the morn­ing.  It isn’t very wise to call me up like this.  There is just a chance of be­ing seen.  And that would be no joke for me.”

Mr. Vladi­mir shrugged his shoulders.

“It would des­troy my use­ful­ness,” con­tin­ued the other hotly.

“That’s your af­fair,” mur­mured Mr. Vladi­mir, with soft bru­tal­ity.  “When you cease to be use­ful you shall cease to be em­ployed.  Yes.  Right off.  Cut short.  You shall—” Mr. Vladi­mir, frown­ing, paused, at a loss for a suf­fi­ciently idio­matic ex­pres­sion, and in­stantly brightened up, with a grin of beau­ti­fully white teeth.  “You shall be chucked,” he brought out fe­ro­ciously.

Once more Mr. Ver­loc had to re­act with all the force of his will against that sen­sa­tion of faint­ness run­ning down one’s legs which once upon a time had in­spired some poor devil with the fe­li­cit­ous ex­pres­sion: “My heart went down into my boots.”  Mr. Ver­loc, aware of the sen­sa­tion, raised his head bravely.

Mr. Vladi­mir bore the look of heavy in­quiry with per­fect serenity.

“What we want is to ad­min­is­ter a tonic to the Con­fer­ence in Milan,” he said air­ily.  “Its de­lib­er­a­tions upon in­ter­na­tional ac­tion for the sup­pres­sion of polit­ical crime don’t seem to get any­where.  Eng­land lags.  This coun­try is ab­surd with its sen­ti­mental re­gard for in­di­vidual liberty.  It’s in­tol­er­able to think that all your friends have got only to come over to—”

“In that way I have them all un­der my eye,” Mr. Ver­loc in­ter­rup­ted husk­ily.

“It would be much more to the point to have them all un­der lock and key.  Eng­land must be brought into line.  The im­be­cile bour­geoisie of this coun­try make them­selves the ac­com­plices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches.  And they have the polit­ical power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their pre­ser­va­tion.  I sup­pose you agree that the middle classes are stu­pid?”

Mr. Ver­loc agreed hoarsely.

“They are.”

“They have no ima­gin­a­tion.  They are blinded by an idi­otic van­ity.  What they want just now is a jolly good scare.  This is the psy­cho­lo­gical mo­ment to set your friends to work.  I have had you called here to de­velop to you my idea.”

And Mr. Vladi­mir de­veloped his idea from on high, with scorn and con­des­cen­sion, dis­play­ing at the same time an amount of ig­nor­ance as to the real aims, thoughts, and meth­ods of the re­volu­tion­ary world which filled the si­lent Mr. Ver­loc with in­ward con­sterna­tion.  He con­foun­ded causes with ef­fects more than was ex­cus­able; the most dis­tin­guished pro­pa­gand­ists with im­puls­ive bomb throw­ers; as­sumed or­gan­isa­tion where in the nature of things it could not ex­ist; spoke of the so­cial re­volu­tion­ary party one mo­ment as of a per­fectly dis­cip­lined army, where the word of chiefs was su­preme, and at an­other as if it had been the loosest as­so­ci­ation of des­per­ate brig­ands that ever camped in a moun­tain gorge.  Once Mr. Ver­loc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the rais­ing of a shapely, large white hand ar­res­ted him.  Very soon he be­came too ap­palled to even try to protest.  He listened in a still­ness of dread which re­sembled the im­mob­il­ity of pro­found at­ten­tion.

“A series of out­rages,” Mr. Vladi­mir con­tin­ued calmly, “ex­ecuted here in this coun­try; not only planned here—that would not do—they would not mind.  Your friends could set half the Contin­ent on fire without in­flu­en­cing the pub­lic opin­ion here in fa­vour of a uni­ver­sal re­press­ive le­gis­la­tion.  They will not look out­side their back­yard here.”

Mr. Ver­loc cleared his throat, but his heart failed him, and he said noth­ing.

“These out­rages need not be es­pe­cially san­guin­ary,” Mr. Vladi­mir went on, as if de­liv­er­ing a sci­entific lec­ture, “but they must be suf­fi­ciently start­ling—ef­fect­ive.  Let them be dir­ec­ted against build­ings, for in­stance.  What is the fet­ish of the hour that all the bour­geoisie re­cog­nise—eh, Mr. Ver­loc?”

Mr. Ver­loc opened his hands and shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“You are too lazy to think,” was Mr. Vladi­mir’s com­ment upon that ges­ture.  “Pay at­ten­tion to what I say.  The fet­ish of today is neither roy­alty nor re­li­gion.  There­fore the palace and the church should be left alone.  You un­der­stand what I mean, Mr. Ver­loc?”

The dis­may and the scorn of Mr. Ver­loc found vent in an at­tempt at lev­ity.

“Per­fectly.  But what of the Em­bassies?  A series of at­tacks on the vari­ous Em­bassies,” he began; but he could not with­stand the cold, watch­ful stare of the First Sec­ret­ary.

“You can be fa­cetious, I see,” the lat­ter ob­served care­lessly.  “That’s all right.  It may en­liven your oratory at so­cial­istic con­gresses.  But this room is no place for it.  It would be in­fin­itely safer for you to fol­low care­fully what I am say­ing.  As you are be­ing called upon to fur­nish facts in­stead of cock-and-bull stor­ies, you had bet­ter try to make your profit off what I am tak­ing the trouble to ex­plain to you.  The sac­rosanct fet­ish of today is sci­ence.  Why don’t you get some of your friends to go for that wooden-faced pan­jandrum—eh?  Is it not part of these in­sti­tu­tions which must be swept away be­fore the F. P. comes along?”

Mr. Ver­loc said noth­ing.  He was afraid to open his lips lest a groan should es­cape him.

“This is what you should try for.  An at­tempt upon a crowned head or on a pres­id­ent is sen­sa­tional enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be.  It has entered into the gen­eral con­cep­tion of the ex­ist­ence of all chiefs of state.  It’s al­most con­ven­tional—es­pe­cially since so many pres­id­ents have been as­sas­sin­ated.  Now let us take an out­rage upon—say a church.  Hor­rible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so ef­fect­ive as a per­son of an or­din­ary mind might think.  No mat­ter how re­volu­tion­ary and an­arch­ist in in­cep­tion, there would be fools enough to give such an out­rage the char­ac­ter of a re­li­gious mani­fest­a­tion.  And that would de­tract from the es­pe­cial alarm­ing sig­ni­fic­ance we wish to give to the act.  A mur­der­ous at­tempt on a res­taur­ant or a theatre would suf­fer in the same way from the sug­ges­tion of non­polit­ical pas­sion: the ex­as­per­a­tion of a hungry man, an act of so­cial re­venge.  All this is used up; it is no longer in­struct­ive as an ob­ject les­son in re­volu­tion­ary an­arch­ism.  Every news­pa­per has ready-made phrases to ex­plain such mani­fest­a­tions away.  I am about to give you the philo­sophy of bomb throw­ing from my point of view; from the point of view you pre­tend to have been serving for the last el­even years.  I will try not to talk above your head.  The sens­ib­il­it­ies of the class you are at­tack­ing are soon blun­ted.  Prop­erty seems to them an in­des­truct­ible thing.  You can’t count upon their emo­tions either of pity or fear for very long.  A bomb out­rage to have any in­flu­ence on pub­lic opin­ion now must go bey­ond the in­ten­tion of ven­geance or ter­ror­ism.  It must be purely de­struct­ive.  It must be that, and only that, bey­ond the faintest sus­pi­cion of any other ob­ject.  You an­arch­ists should make it clear that you are per­fectly de­term­ined to make a clean sweep of the whole so­cial cre­ation.  But how to get that ap­pallingly ab­surd no­tion into the heads of the middle classes so that there should be no mis­take?  That’s the ques­tion.  By dir­ect­ing your blows at some­thing out­side the or­din­ary pas­sions of hu­man­ity is the an­swer.  Of course, there is art.  A bomb in the Na­tional Gallery would make some noise.  But it would not be ser­i­ous enough.  Art has never been their fet­ish.  It’s like break­ing a few back win­dows in a man’s house; whereas, if you want to make him really sit up, you must try at least to raise the roof.  There would be some scream­ing of course, but from whom?  Artists—art crit­ics and such­like—people of no ac­count.  Nobody minds what they say.  But there is learn­ing—sci­ence.  Any im­be­cile that has got an in­come be­lieves in that.  He does not know why, but he be­lieves it mat­ters some­how.  It is the sac­rosanct fet­ish.  All the damned pro­fess­ors are rad­ic­als at heart.  Let them know that their great pan­jandrum has got to go too, to make room for the Fu­ture of the Pro­let­ariat.  A howl from all these in­tel­lec­tual idi­ots is bound to help for­ward the la­bours of the Milan Con­fer­ence.  They will be writ­ing to the pa­pers.  Their in­dig­na­tion would be above sus­pi­cion, no ma­ter­ial in­terests be­ing openly at stake, and it will alarm every selfish­ness of the class which should be im­pressed.  They be­lieve that in some mys­ter­i­ous way sci­ence is at the source of their ma­ter­ial prosper­ity.  They do.  And the ab­surd fe­ro­city of such a demon­stra­tion will af­fect them more pro­foundly than the mangling of a whole street—or theatre—full of their own kind.  To that last they can al­ways say: ‘Oh! it’s mere class hate.’  But what is one to say to an act of de­struct­ive fe­ro­city so ab­surd as to be in­com­pre­hens­ible, in­ex­plic­able, al­most un­think­able; in fact, mad?  Mad­ness alone is truly ter­ri­fy­ing, inas­much as you can­not pla­cate it either by threats, per­sua­sion, or bribes.  Moreover, I am a civ­il­ised man.  I would never dream of dir­ect­ing you to or­gan­ise a mere butchery, even if I ex­pec­ted the best res­ults from it.  But I wouldn’t ex­pect from a butchery the res­ult I want.  Murder is al­ways with us.  It is al­most an in­sti­tu­tion.  The demon­stra­tion must be against learn­ing—sci­ence.  But not every sci­ence will do.  The at­tack must have all the shock­ing sense­less­ness of gra­tu­it­ous blas­phemy.  Since bombs are your means of ex­pres­sion, it would be really telling if one could throw a bomb into pure math­em­at­ics.  But that is im­possible.  I have been try­ing to edu­cate you; I have ex­pounded to you the higher philo­sophy of your use­ful­ness, and sug­ges­ted to you some ser­vice­able ar­gu­ments.  The prac­tical ap­plic­a­tion of my teach­ing in­terests you mostly.  But from the mo­ment I have un­der­taken to in­ter­view you I have also given some at­ten­tion to the prac­tical as­pect of the ques­tion.  What do you think of hav­ing a go at as­tro­nomy?”

For some­time already Mr. Ver­loc’s im­mob­il­ity by the side of the arm­chair re­sembled a state of col­lapsed coma—a sort of pass­ive in­sens­ib­il­ity in­ter­rup­ted by slight con­vuls­ive starts, such as may be ob­served in the do­mestic dog hav­ing a night­mare on the hearth­rug.  And it was in an un­easy dog­like growl that he re­peated the word:

“Astro­nomy.”

He had not re­covered thor­oughly as yet from that state of be­wil­der­ment brought about by the ef­fort to fol­low Mr. Vladi­mir’s rapid in­cis­ive ut­ter­ance.  It had over­come his power of as­sim­il­a­tion.  It had made him angry.  This an­ger was com­plic­ated by in­credu­lity.  And sud­denly it dawned upon him that all this was an elab­or­ate joke.  Mr. Vladi­mir ex­hib­ited his white teeth in a smile, with dimples on his round, full face posed with a com­pla­cent in­clin­a­tion above the brist­ling bow of his neck­tie.  The fa­vour­ite of in­tel­li­gent so­ci­ety wo­men had as­sumed his draw­ing-room at­ti­tude ac­com­pa­ny­ing the de­liv­ery of del­ic­ate wit­ti­cisms.  Sit­ting well for­ward, his white hand up­raised, he seemed to hold del­ic­ately between his thumb and fore­finger the sub­tlety of his sug­ges­tion.

“There could be noth­ing bet­ter.  Such an out­rage com­bines the greatest pos­sible re­gard for hu­man­ity with the most alarm­ing dis­play of fe­ro­cious im­be­cil­ity.  I defy the in­genu­ity of journ­al­ists to per­suade their pub­lic that any given mem­ber of the pro­let­ariat can have a per­sonal griev­ance against as­tro­nomy.  Star­va­tion it­self could hardly be dragged in there—eh?  And there are other ad­vant­ages.  The whole civ­il­ised world has heard of Green­wich.  The very boot­blacks in the base­ment of Char­ing Cross Sta­tion know some­thing of it.  See?”

The fea­tures of Mr. Vladi­mir, so well known in the best so­ci­ety by their hu­mor­ous urban­ity, beamed with cyn­ical self-sat­is­fac­tion, which would have as­ton­ished the in­tel­li­gent wo­men his wit en­ter­tained so ex­quis­itely.  “Yes,” he con­tin­ued, with a con­temp­tu­ous smile, “the blow­ing up of the first me­ridian is bound to raise a howl of ex­ec­ra­tion.”

“A dif­fi­cult busi­ness,” Mr. Ver­loc mumbled, feel­ing that this was the only safe thing to say.

“What is the mat­ter?  Haven’t you the whole gang un­der your hand?  The very pick of the bas­ket?  That old ter­ror­ist Yundt is here.  I see him walk­ing about Pic­ca­dilly in his green have­lock al­most every day.  And Mi­chaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle—you don’t mean to say you don’t know where he is?  Be­cause if you don’t, I can tell you,” Mr. Vladi­mir went on men­acingly.  “If you ima­gine that you are the only one on the secret fund list, you are mis­taken.”

This per­fectly gra­tu­it­ous sug­ges­tion caused Mr. Ver­loc to shuffle his feet slightly.

“And the whole Lausanne lot—eh?  Haven’t they been flock­ing over here at the first hint of the Milan Con­fer­ence?  This is an ab­surd coun­try.”

“It will cost money,” Mr. Ver­loc said, by a sort of in­stinct.

“That cock won’t fight,” Mr. Vladi­mir re­tor­ted, with an amaz­ingly genu­ine Eng­lish ac­cent.  “You’ll get your screw every month, and no more till some­thing hap­pens.  And if noth­ing hap­pens very soon you won’t get even that.  What’s your os­tens­ible oc­cu­pa­tion?  What are you sup­posed to live by?”

“I keep a shop,” answered Mr. Ver­loc.

“A shop!  What sort of shop?”

“Sta­tion­ery, news­pa­pers.  My wife—”

“Your what?” in­ter­rup­ted Mr. Vladi­mir in his gut­tural Cen­t­ral Asian tones.

“My wife.”  Mr. Ver­loc raised his husky voice slightly.  “I am mar­ried.”

“That be damned for a yarn,” ex­claimed the other in un­feigned as­ton­ish­ment.  “Mar­ried!  And you a pro­fessed an­arch­ist, too!  What is this con­foun­ded non­sense?  But I sup­pose it’s merely a man­ner of speak­ing.  An­arch­ists don’t marry.  It’s well known.  They can’t.  It would be apostasy.”

“My wife isn’t one,” Mr. Ver­loc mumbled sulkily.  “Moreover, it’s no con­cern of yours.”

“Oh yes, it is,” snapped Mr. Vladi­mir.  “I am be­gin­ning to be con­vinced that you are not at all the man for the work you’ve been em­ployed on.  Why, you must have dis­cred­ited your­self com­pletely in your own world by your mar­riage.  Couldn’t you have man­aged without?  This is your vir­tu­ous at­tach­ment—eh?  What with one sort of at­tach­ment and an­other you are do­ing away with your use­ful­ness.”

Mr. Ver­loc, puff­ing out his cheeks, let the air es­cape vi­ol­ently, and that was all.  He had armed him­self with pa­tience.  It was not to be tried much longer.  The First Sec­ret­ary be­came sud­denly very curt, de­tached, fi­nal.

“You may go now,” he said.  “A dy­nam­ite out­rage must be pro­voked.  I give you a month.  The sit­tings of the Con­fer­ence are sus­pen­ded.  Be­fore it re­as­sembles again some­thing must have happened here, or your con­nec­tion with us ceases.”

He changed the note once more with an un­prin­cipled ver­sat­il­ity.

“Think over my philo­sophy, Mr.—Mr.—Ver­loc,” he said, with a sort of chaff­ing con­des­cen­sion, wav­ing his hand to­wards the door.  “Go for the first me­ridian.  You don’t know the middle classes as well as I do.  Their sens­ib­il­it­ies are jaded.  The first me­ridian.  Noth­ing bet­ter, and noth­ing easier, I should think.”

He had got up, and with his thin sens­it­ive lips twitch­ing hu­mor­ously, watched in the glass over the man­tel­piece Mr. Ver­loc back­ing out of the room heav­ily, hat and stick in hand.  The door closed.

The foot­man in trousers, ap­pear­ing sud­denly in the cor­ridor, let Mr. Ver­loc an­other way out and through a small door in the corner of the court­yard.  The porter stand­ing at the gate ig­nored his exit com­pletely; and Mr. Ver­loc re­traced the path of his morn­ing’s pil­grim­age as if in a dream—an angry dream.  This de­tach­ment from the ma­ter­ial world was so com­plete that, though the mor­tal en­vel­ope of Mr. Ver­loc had not hastened un­duly along the streets, that part of him to which it would be un­war­rant­ably rude to re­fuse im­mor­tal­ity, found it­self at the shop door all at once, as if borne from west to east on the wings of a great wind.  He walked straight be­hind the counter, and sat down on a wooden chair that stood there.  No one ap­peared to dis­turb his solitude.  Stevie, put into a green baize ap­ron, was now sweep­ing and dust­ing up­stairs, in­tent and con­scien­tious, as though he were play­ing at it; and Mrs. Ver­loc, warned in the kit­chen by the clat­ter of the cracked bell, had merely come to the glazed door of the par­lour, and put­ting the cur­tain aside a little, had peered into the dim shop.  See­ing her hus­band sit­ting there shad­owy and bulky, with his hat tilted far back on his head, she had at once re­turned to her stove.  An hour or more later she took the green baize ap­ron off her brother Stevie, and in­struc­ted him to wash his hands and face in the per­emp­tory tone she had used in that con­nec­tion for fif­teen years or so—ever since she had, in fact, ceased to at­tend to the boy’s hands and face her­self.  She spared presently a glance away from her dish­ing-up for the in­spec­tion of that face and those hands which Stevie, ap­proach­ing the kit­chen table, offered for her ap­proval with an air of self-as­sur­ance hid­ing a per­petual residue of anxi­ety.  Formerly the an­ger of the father was the su­premely ef­fect­ive sanc­tion of these rites, but Mr. Ver­loc’s pla­cid­ity in do­mestic life would have made all men­tion of an­ger in­cred­ible even to poor Stevie’s nervous­ness.  The the­ory was that Mr. Ver­loc would have been in­ex­press­ibly pained and shocked by any de­fi­ciency of clean­li­ness at meal times.  Win­nie after the death of her father found con­sid­er­able con­sol­a­tion in the feel­ing that she need no longer tremble for poor Stevie.  She could not bear to see the boy hurt.  It maddened her.  As a little girl she had of­ten faced with blaz­ing eyes the iras­cible li­censed victu­aller in de­fence of her brother.  Noth­ing now in Mrs. Ver­loc’s ap­pear­ance could lead one to sup­pose that she was cap­able of a pas­sion­ate demon­stra­tion.

She fin­ished her dish­ing-up.  The table was laid in the par­lour.  Go­ing to the foot of the stairs, she screamed out “Mother!”  Then open­ing the glazed door lead­ing to the shop, she said quietly: “Adolf!”  Mr. Ver­loc had not changed his po­s­i­tion; he had not ap­par­ently stirred a limb for an hour and a half.  He got up heav­ily, and came to his din­ner in his over­coat and with his hat on, without ut­ter­ing a word.  His si­lence in it­self had noth­ing start­lingly un­usual in this house­hold, hid­den in the shades of the sor­did street sel­dom touched by the sun, be­hind the dim shop with its wares of dis­rep­ut­able rub­bish.  Only that day Mr. Ver­loc’s ta­cit­urnity was so ob­vi­ously thought­ful that the two wo­men were im­pressed by it.  They sat si­lent them­selves, keep­ing a watch­ful eye on poor Stevie, lest he should break out into one of his fits of lo­qua­city.  He faced Mr. Ver­loc across the table, and re­mained very good and quiet, star­ing va­cantly.  The en­deav­our to keep him from mak­ing him­self ob­jec­tion­able in any way to the mas­ter of the house put no in­con­sid­er­able anxi­ety into these two wo­men’s lives.  “That boy,” as they al­luded to him softly between them­selves, had been a source of that sort of anxi­ety al­most from the very day of his birth.  The late li­censed victu­aller’s hu­mi­li­ation at hav­ing such a very pe­cu­liar boy for a son mani­fes­ted it­self by a propensity to bru­tal treat­ment; for he was a per­son of fine sens­ib­il­it­ies, and his suf­fer­ings as a man and a father were per­fectly genu­ine.  After­wards Stevie had to be kept from mak­ing him­self a nuis­ance to the single gen­tle­men lodgers, who are them­selves a queer lot, and are eas­ily ag­grieved.  And there was al­ways the anxi­ety of his mere ex­ist­ence to face.  Vi­sions of a work­house in­firm­ary for her child had haunted the old wo­man in the base­ment break­fast-room of the de­cayed Bel­gravian house.  “If you had not found such a good hus­band, my dear,” she used to say to her daugh­ter, “I don’t know what would have be­come of that poor boy.”

Mr. Ver­loc ex­ten­ded as much re­cog­ni­tion to Stevie as a man not par­tic­u­larly fond of an­im­als may give to his wife’s be­loved cat; and this re­cog­ni­tion, be­ne­vol­ent and per­func­tory, was es­sen­tially of the same qual­ity.  Both wo­men ad­mit­ted to them­selves that not much more could be reas­on­ably ex­pec­ted.  It was enough to earn for Mr. Ver­loc the old wo­man’s rev­er­en­tial grat­it­ude.  In the early days, made scep­tical by the tri­als of friend­less life, she used some­times to ask anxiously: “You don’t think, my dear, that Mr. Ver­loc is get­ting tired of see­ing Stevie about?”  To this Win­nie replied ha­bitu­ally by a slight toss of her head.  Once, how­ever, she re­tor­ted, with a rather grim pert­ness: “He’ll have to get tired of me first.”  A long si­lence en­sued.  The mother, with her feet propped up on a stool, seemed to be try­ing to get to the bot­tom of that an­swer, whose fem­in­ine pro­fund­ity had struck her all of a heap.  She had never really un­der­stood why Win­nie had mar­ried Mr. Ver­loc.  It was very sens­ible of her, and evid­ently had turned out for the best, but her girl might have nat­ur­ally hoped to find some­body of a more suit­able age.  There had been a steady young fel­low, only son of a butcher in the next street, help­ing his father in busi­ness, with whom Win­nie had been walk­ing out with ob­vi­ous gusto.  He was de­pend­ent on his father, it is true; but the busi­ness was good, and his pro­spects ex­cel­lent.  He took her girl to the theatre on sev­eral even­ings.  Then just as she began to dread to hear of their en­gage­ment (for what could she have done with that big house alone, with Stevie on her hands), that ro­mance came to an ab­rupt end, and Win­nie went about look­ing very dull.  But Mr. Ver­loc, turn­ing up provid­en­tially to oc­cupy the first-floor front bed­room, there had been no more ques­tion of the young butcher.  It was clearly provid­en­tial.

III

“… All ideal­isa­tion makes life poorer.  To beau­tify it is to take away its char­ac­ter of com­plex­ity—it is to des­troy it.  Leave that to the mor­al­ists, my boy.  His­tory is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads.  The ideas that are born in their con­scious­ness play an in­sig­ni­fic­ant part in the march of events.  His­tory is dom­in­ated and de­term­ined by the tool and the pro­duc­tion—by the force of eco­nomic con­di­tions.  Cap­it­al­ism has made so­cial­ism, and the laws made by the cap­it­al­ism for the pro­tec­tion of prop­erty are re­spons­ible for an­arch­ism.  No one can tell what form the so­cial or­gan­isa­tion may take in the fu­ture.  Then why in­dulge in proph­etic fantas­ies?  At best they can only in­ter­pret the mind of the prophet, and can have no ob­ject­ive value.  Leave that pas­time to the mor­al­ists, my boy.”

Mi­chaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, was speak­ing in an even voice, a voice that wheezed as if deadened and op­pressed by the layer of fat on his chest.  He had come out of a highly hy­gienic prison round like a tub, with an enorm­ous stom­ach and dis­ten­ded cheeks of a pale, semitrans­par­ent com­plex­ion, as though for fif­teen years the ser­vants of an out­raged so­ci­ety had made a point of stuff­ing him with fat­ten­ing foods in a damp and light­less cel­lar.  And ever since he had never man­aged to get his weight down as much as an ounce.

It was said that for three sea­sons run­ning a very wealthy old lady had sent him for a cure to Mari­en­bad—where he was about to share the pub­lic curi­os­ity once with a crowned head—but the po­lice on that oc­ca­sion ordered him to leave within twelve hours.  His mar­tyr­dom was con­tin­ued by for­bid­ding him all ac­cess to the heal­ing wa­ters.  But he was resigned now.

With his el­bow present­ing no ap­pear­ance of a joint, but more like a bend in a dummy’s limb, thrown over the back of a chair, he leaned for­ward slightly over his short and enorm­ous thighs to spit into the grate.

“Yes!  I had the time to think things out a little,” he ad­ded without em­phasis.  “So­ci­ety has given me plenty of time for med­it­a­tion.”

On the other side of the fire­place, in the horse­hair arm­chair where Mrs. Ver­loc’s mother was gen­er­ally priv­ileged to sit, Karl Yundt giggled grimly, with a faint black grim­ace of a tooth­less mouth.  The ter­ror­ist, as he called him­self, was old and bald, with a nar­row, snow-white wisp of a goatee hanging limply from his chin.  An ex­traordin­ary ex­pres­sion of un­der­hand malevol­ence sur­vived in his ex­tin­guished eyes.  When he rose pain­fully the thrust­ing for­ward of a skinny grop­ing hand de­formed by gouty swell­ings sug­ges­ted the ef­fort of a moribund mur­derer sum­mon­ing all his re­main­ing strength for a last stab.  He leaned on a thick stick, which trembled un­der his other hand.

“I have al­ways dreamed,” he mouthed fiercely, “of a band of men ab­so­lute in their re­solve to dis­card all scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give them­selves frankly the name of des­troy­ers, and free from the taint of that resigned pess­im­ism which rots the world.  No pity for any­thing on earth, in­clud­ing them­selves, and death en­lis­ted for good and all in the ser­vice of hu­man­ity—that’s what I would have liked to see.”

His little bald head quivered, im­part­ing a com­ical vi­bra­tion to the wisp of white goatee.  His enun­ci­ation would have been al­most totally un­in­tel­li­gible to a stranger.  His worn-out pas­sion, re­sem­bling in its im­pot­ent fierce­ness the ex­cite­ment of a senile sen­su­al­ist, was badly served by a dried throat and tooth­less gums which seemed to catch the tip of his tongue.  Mr. Ver­loc, es­tab­lished in the corner of the sofa at the other end of the room, emit­ted two hearty grunts of as­sent.

The old ter­ror­ist turned slowly his head on his skinny neck from side to side.

“And I could never get as many as three such men to­gether.  So much for your rot­ten pess­im­ism,” he snarled at Mi­chaelis, who un­crossed his thick legs, sim­ilar to bol­sters, and slid his feet ab­ruptly un­der his chair in sign of ex­as­per­a­tion.

He a pess­im­ist!  Pre­pos­ter­ous!  He cried out that the charge was out­rageous.  He was so far from pess­im­ism that he saw already the end of all private prop­erty com­ing along lo­gic­ally, un­avoid­ably, by the mere de­vel­op­ment of its in­her­ent vi­cious­ness.  The pos­sessors of prop­erty had not only to face the awakened pro­let­ariat, but they had also to fight amongst them­selves.  Yes.  Struggle, war­fare, was the con­di­tion of private own­er­ship.  It was fatal.  Ah! he did not de­pend upon emo­tional ex­cite­ment to keep up his be­lief, no de­clam­a­tions, no an­ger, no vis­ions of blood-red flags wav­ing, or meta­phor­ical lurid suns of ven­geance rising above the ho­ri­zon of a doomed so­ci­ety.  Not he!  Cold reason, he boas­ted, was the basis of his op­tim­ism.  Yes, op­tim­ism—

His la­bor­i­ous wheez­ing stopped, then, after a gasp or two, he ad­ded:

“Don’t you think that, if I had not been the op­tim­ist I am, I could not have found in fif­teen years some means to cut my throat?  And, in the last in­stance, there were al­ways the walls of my cell to dash my head against.”

The short­ness of breath took all fire, all an­im­a­tion out of his voice; his great, pale cheeks hung like filled pouches, mo­tion­less, without a quiver; but in his blue eyes, nar­rowed as if peer­ing, there was the same look of con­fid­ent shrewd­ness, a little crazy in its fix­ity, they must have had while the in­dom­it­able op­tim­ist sat think­ing at night in his cell.  Be­fore him, Karl Yundt re­mained stand­ing, one wing of his faded green­ish have­lock thrown back cava­lierly over his shoulder.  Seated in front of the fire­place, Com­rade Os­si­pon, ex-med­ical stu­dent, the prin­cipal writer of the F. P. leaf­lets, stretched out his ro­bust legs, keep­ing the soles of his boots turned up to the glow in the grate.  A bush of crinkly yel­low hair topped his red, freckled face, with a flattened nose and prom­in­ent mouth cast in the rough mould of the negro type.  His al­mond-shaped eyes leered lan­guidly over the high cheekbones.  He wore a grey flan­nel shirt, the loose ends of a black silk tie hung down the buttoned breast of his serge coat; and his head rest­ing on the back of his chair, his throat largely ex­posed, he raised to his lips a ci­gar­ette in a long wooden tube, puff­ing jets of smoke straight up at the ceil­ing.

Mi­chaelis pur­sued his idea—the idea of his sol­it­ary re­clu­sion—the thought vouch­safed to his cap­tiv­ity and grow­ing like a faith re­vealed in vis­ions.  He talked to him­self, in­dif­fer­ent to the sym­pathy or hos­til­ity of his hear­ers, in­dif­fer­ent in­deed to their pres­ence, from the habit he had ac­quired of think­ing aloud hope­fully in the solitude of the four white­washed walls of his cell, in the sepulchral si­lence of the great blind pile of bricks near a river, sin­is­ter and ugly like a co­lossal mor­tu­ary for the so­cially drowned.

He was no good in dis­cus­sion, not be­cause any amount of ar­gu­ment could shake his faith, but be­cause the mere fact of hear­ing an­other voice dis­con­cer­ted him pain­fully, con­fus­ing his thoughts at once—these thoughts that for so many years, in a men­tal solitude more bar­ren than a wa­ter­less desert, no liv­ing voice had ever com­batted, com­men­ted, or ap­proved.

No one in­ter­rup­ted him now, and he made again the con­fes­sion of his faith, mas­ter­ing him ir­res­ist­ible and com­plete like an act of grace: the secret of fate dis­covered in the ma­ter­ial side of life; the eco­nomic con­di­tion of the world re­spons­ible for the past and shap­ing the fu­ture; the source of all his­tory, of all ideas, guid­ing the men­tal de­vel­op­ment of man­kind and the very im­pulses of their pas­sion—

A harsh laugh from Com­rade Os­si­pon cut the tirade dead short in a sud­den fal­ter­ing of the tongue and a be­wildered un­stead­i­ness of the apostle’s mildly ex­al­ted eyes.  He closed them slowly for a mo­ment, as if to col­lect his routed thoughts.  A si­lence fell; but what with the two gas-jets over the table and the glow­ing grate the little par­lour be­hind Mr. Ver­loc’s shop had be­come fright­fully hot.  Mr. Ver­loc, get­ting off the sofa with pon­der­ous re­luct­ance, opened the door lead­ing into the kit­chen to get more air, and thus dis­closed the in­no­cent Stevie, seated very good and quiet at a deal table, draw­ing circles, circles, circles; in­nu­mer­able circles, con­cent­ric, ec­cent­ric; a co­rus­cat­ing whirl of circles that by their tangled mul­ti­tude of re­peated curves, uni­form­ity of form, and con­fu­sion of in­ter­sect­ing lines sug­ges­ted a ren­der­ing of cos­mic chaos, the sym­bol­ism of a mad art at­tempt­ing the in­con­ceiv­able.  The artist never turned his head; and in all his soul’s ap­plic­a­tion to the task his back quivered, his thin neck, sunk into a deep hol­low at the base of the skull, seemed ready to snap.

Mr. Ver­loc, after a grunt of dis­ap­prov­ing sur­prise, re­turned to the sofa.  Al­ex­an­der Os­si­pon got up, tall in his thread­bare blue serge suit un­der the low ceil­ing, shook off the stiff­ness of long im­mob­il­ity, and strolled away into the kit­chen (down two steps) to look over Stevie’s shoulder.  He came back, pro­noun­cing orac­u­larly: “Very good.  Very char­ac­ter­istic, per­fectly typ­ical.”

“What’s very good?” grunted in­quir­ingly Mr. Ver­loc, settled again in the corner of the sofa.  The other ex­plained his mean­ing neg­li­gently, with a shade of con­des­cen­sion and a toss of his head to­wards the kit­chen:

“Typ­ical of this form of de­gen­er­acy—these draw­ings, I mean.”

“You would call that lad a de­gen­er­ate, would you?” mumbled Mr. Ver­loc.

Com­rade Al­ex­an­der Os­si­pon—nick­named the Doc­tor, ex-med­ical stu­dent without a de­gree; af­ter­wards wan­der­ing lec­turer to work­ing­men’s as­so­ci­ations upon the so­cial­istic as­pects of hy­giene; au­thor of a pop­u­lar quasi-med­ical study (in the form of a cheap pamph­let seized promptly by the po­lice) en­titled The Cor­rod­ing Vices of the Middle Classes; spe­cial del­eg­ate of the more or less mys­ter­i­ous Red Com­mit­tee, to­gether with Karl Yundt and Mi­chaelis for the work of lit­er­ary pro­pa­ganda—turned upon the ob­scure fa­mil­iar of at least two Em­bassies that glance of in­suf­fer­able, hope­lessly dense suf­fi­ciency which noth­ing but the fre­quent­a­tion of sci­ence can give to the dul­ness of com­mon mor­tals.

“That’s what he may be called sci­en­tific­ally.  Very good type too, al­to­gether, of that sort of de­gen­er­ate.  It’s enough to glance at the lobes of his ears.  If you read Lom­broso—”

Mr. Ver­loc, moody and spread largely on the sofa, con­tin­ued to look down the row of his waist­coat but­tons; but his cheeks be­came tinged by a faint blush.  Of late even the merest de­riv­at­ive of the word sci­ence (a term in it­self in­of­fens­ive and of in­def­in­ite mean­ing) had the curi­ous power of evok­ing a def­in­itely of­fens­ive men­tal vis­ion of Mr. Vladi­mir, in his body as he lived, with an al­most su­per­nat­ural clear­ness.  And this phe­nomenon, de­serving justly to be classed amongst the mar­vels of sci­ence, in­duced in Mr. Ver­loc an emo­tional state of dread and ex­as­per­a­tion tend­ing to ex­press it­self in vi­ol­ent swear­ing.  But he said noth­ing.  It was Karl Yundt who was heard, im­plac­able to his last breath.

“Lom­broso is an ass.”

Com­rade Os­si­pon met the shock of this blas­phemy by an aw­ful, va­cant stare.  And the other, his ex­tin­guished eyes without gleams black­en­ing the deep shad­ows un­der the great, bony fore­head, mumbled, catch­ing the tip of his tongue between his lips at every second word as though he were chew­ing it an­grily:

“Did you ever see such an idiot?  For him the crim­inal is the pris­oner.  Simple, is it not?  What about those who shut him up there—forced him in there?  Ex­actly.  Forced him in there.  And what is crime?  Does he know that, this im­be­cile who has made his way in this world of gorged fools by look­ing at the ears and teeth of a lot of poor, luck­less dev­ils?  Teeth and ears mark the crim­inal?  Do they?  And what about the law that marks him still bet­ter—the pretty brand­ing in­stru­ment in­ven­ted by the overfed to pro­tect them­selves against the hungry?  Red-hot ap­plic­a­tions on their vile skins—hey?  Can’t you smell and hear from here the thick hide of the people burn and sizzle?  That’s how crim­in­als are made for your Lom­brosos to write their silly stuff about.”

The knob of his stick and his legs shook to­gether with pas­sion, whilst the trunk, draped in the wings of the have­lock, pre­served his his­toric at­ti­tude of de­fi­ance.  He seemed to sniff the tain­ted air of so­cial cruelty, to strain his ear for its at­ro­cious sounds.  There was an ex­traordin­ary force of sug­ges­tion in this pos­tur­ing.  The all but moribund vet­eran of dy­nam­ite wars had been a great actor in his time—actor on plat­forms, in secret as­sem­blies, in private in­ter­views.  The fam­ous ter­ror­ist had never in his life raised per­son­ally as much as his little fin­ger against the so­cial edi­fice.  He was no man of ac­tion; he was not even an orator of tor­ren­tial elo­quence, sweep­ing the masses along in the rush­ing noise and foam of a great en­thu­si­asm.  With a more subtle in­ten­tion, he took the part of an in­solent and venom­ous evoker of sin­is­ter im­pulses which lurk in the blind envy and ex­as­per­ated van­ity of ig­nor­ance, in the suf­fer­ing and misery of poverty, in all the hope­ful and noble il­lu­sions of right­eous an­ger, pity, and re­volt.  The shadow of his evil gift clung to him yet like the smell of a deadly drug in an old vial of poison, emp­tied now, use­less, ready to be thrown away upon the rub­bish-heap of things that had served their time.

Mi­chaelis, the ticket-of-leave apostle, smiled vaguely with his glued lips; his pasty moon face drooped un­der the weight of mel­an­choly as­sent.  He had been a pris­oner him­self.  His own skin had sizzled un­der the red-hot brand, he mur­mured softly.  But Com­rade Os­si­pon, nick­named the Doc­tor, had got over the shock by that time.

“You don’t un­der­stand,” he began dis­dain­fully, but stopped short, in­tim­id­ated by the dead black­ness of the cav­ernous eyes in the face turned slowly to­wards him with a blind stare, as if guided only by the sound.  He gave the dis­cus­sion up, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

Stevie, ac­cus­tomed to move about dis­reg­arded, had got up from the kit­chen table, car­ry­ing off his draw­ing to bed with him.  He had reached the par­lour door in time to re­ceive in full the shock of Karl Yundt’s elo­quent im­agery.  The sheet of pa­per covered with circles dropped out of his fin­gers, and he re­mained star­ing at the old ter­ror­ist, as if rooted sud­denly to the spot by his mor­bid hor­ror and dread of phys­ical pain.  Stevie knew very well that hot iron ap­plied to one’s skin hurt very much.  His scared eyes blazed with in­dig­na­tion: it would hurt ter­ribly.  His mouth dropped open.

Mi­chaelis by star­ing un­wink­ingly at the fire had re­gained that sen­ti­ment of isol­a­tion ne­ces­sary for the con­tinu­ity of his thought.  His op­tim­ism had be­gun to flow from his lips.  He saw Cap­it­al­ism doomed in its cradle, born with the poison of the prin­ciple of com­pet­i­tion in its sys­tem.  The great cap­it­al­ists de­vour­ing the little cap­it­al­ists, con­cen­trat­ing the power and the tools of pro­duc­tion in great masses, per­fect­ing in­dus­trial pro­cesses, and in the mad­ness of self-ag­grand­ise­ment only pre­par­ing, or­gan­ising, en­rich­ing, mak­ing ready the law­ful in­her­it­ance of the suf­fer­ing pro­let­ariat.  Mi­chaelis pro­nounced the great word “Pa­tience”—and his clear blue glance, raised to the low ceil­ing of Mr. Ver­loc’s par­lour, had a char­ac­ter of ser­aphic trust­ful­ness.  In the door­way Stevie, calmed, seemed sunk in heb­et­ude.

Com­rade Os­si­pon’s face twitched with ex­as­per­a­tion.

“Then it’s no use do­ing any­thing—no use whatever.”

“I don’t say that,” pro­tested Mi­chaelis gently.  His vis­ion of truth had grown so in­tense that the sound of a strange voice failed to rout it this time.  He con­tin­ued to look down at the red coals.  Pre­par­a­tion for the fu­ture was ne­ces­sary, and he was will­ing to ad­mit that the great change would per­haps come in the up­heaval of a re­volu­tion.  But he ar­gued that re­volu­tion­ary pro­pa­ganda was a del­ic­ate work of high con­science.  It was the edu­ca­tion of the mas­ters of the world.  It should be as care­ful as the edu­ca­tion given to kings.  He would have it ad­vance its ten­ets cau­tiously, even tim­idly, in our ig­nor­ance of the ef­fect that may be pro­duced by any given eco­nomic change upon the hap­pi­ness, the mor­als, the in­tel­lect, the his­tory of man­kind.  For his­tory is made with tools, not with ideas; and everything is changed by eco­nomic con­di­tions—art, philo­sophy, love, vir­tue—truth it­self!

The coals in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Mi­chaelis, the her­mit of vis­ions in the desert of a pen­it­en­tiary, got up im­petu­ously.  Round like a dis­ten­ded bal­loon, he opened his short, thick arms, as if in a pathet­ic­ally hope­less at­tempt to em­brace and hug to his breast a self-re­gen­er­ated uni­verse.  He gasped with ar­dour.

“The fu­ture is as cer­tain as the past—slavery, feud­al­ism, in­di­vidu­al­ism, col­lect­iv­ism.  This is the state­ment of a law, not an empty proph­ecy.”

The dis­dain­ful pout of Com­rade Os­si­pon’s thick lips ac­cen­tu­ated the negro type of his face.

“Non­sense,” he said calmly enough.  “There is no law and no cer­tainty.  The teach­ing pro­pa­ganda be hanged.  What the people knows does not mat­ter, were its know­ledge ever so ac­cur­ate.  The only thing that mat­ters to us is the emo­tional state of the masses.  Without emo­tion there is no ac­tion.”

He paused, then ad­ded with mod­est firm­ness:

“I am speak­ing now to you sci­en­tific­ally—sci­en­tific­ally—Eh?  What did you say, Ver­loc?”

“Noth­ing,” growled from the sofa Mr. Ver­loc, who, pro­voked by the ab­hor­rent sound, had merely muttered a “Damn.”

The venom­ous splut­ter­ing of the old ter­ror­ist without teeth was heard.

“Do you know how I would call the nature of the present eco­nomic con­di­tions?  I would call it can­ni­bal­istic.  That’s what it is!  They are nour­ish­ing their greed on the quiv­er­ing flesh and the warm blood of the people—noth­ing else.”

Stevie swal­lowed the ter­ri­fy­ing state­ment with an aud­ible gulp, and at once, as though it had been swift poison, sank limply in a sit­ting pos­ture on the steps of the kit­chen door.

Mi­chaelis gave no sign of hav­ing heard any­thing.  His lips seemed glued to­gether for good; not a quiver passed over his heavy cheeks.  With troubled eyes he looked for his round, hard hat, and put it on his round head.  His round and obese body seemed to float low between the chairs un­der the sharp el­bow of Karl Yundt.  The old ter­ror­ist, rais­ing an un­cer­tain and claw­like hand, gave a swag­ger­ing tilt to a black felt som­brero shad­ing the hol­lows and ridges of his wasted face.  He got in mo­tion slowly, strik­ing the floor with his stick at every step.  It was rather an af­fair to get him out of the house be­cause, now and then, he would stop, as if to think, and did not of­fer to move again till im­pelled for­ward by Mi­chaelis.  The gentle apostle grasped his arm with broth­erly care; and be­hind them, his hands in his pock­ets, the ro­bust Os­si­pon yawned vaguely.  A blue cap with a pat­ent leather peak set well at the back of his yel­low bush of hair gave him the as­pect of a Nor­we­gian sailor bored with the world after a thun­der­ing spree.  Mr. Ver­loc saw his guests off the premises, at­tend­ing them bare­headed, his heavy over­coat hanging open, his eyes on the ground.

He closed the door be­hind their backs with re­strained vi­ol­ence, turned the key, shot the bolt.  He was not sat­is­fied with his friends.  In the light of Mr. Vladi­mir’s philo­sophy of bomb throw­ing they ap­peared hope­lessly fu­tile.  The part of Mr. Ver­loc in re­volu­tion­ary polit­ics hav­ing been to ob­serve, he could not all at once, either in his own home or in lar­ger as­sem­blies, take the ini­ti­at­ive of ac­tion.  He had to be cau­tious.  Moved by the just in­dig­na­tion of a man well over forty, men­aced in what is dearest to him—his re­pose and his se­cur­ity—he asked him­self scorn­fully what else could have been ex­pec­ted from such a lot, this Karl Yundt, this Mi­chaelis—this Os­si­pon.

Paus­ing in his in­ten­tion to turn off the gas burn­ing in the middle of the shop, Mr. Ver­loc des­cen­ded into the abyss of moral re­flec­tions.  With the in­sight of a kindred tem­pera­ment he pro­nounced his ver­dict.  A lazy lot—this Karl Yundt, nursed by a blear-eyed old wo­man, a wo­man he had years ago en­ticed away from a friend, and af­ter­wards had tried more than once to shake off into the gut­ter.  Jolly lucky for Yundt that she had per­sisted in com­ing up time after time, or else there would have been no one now to help him out of the bus by the Green Park rail­ings, where that spectre took its con­sti­tu­tional crawl every fine morn­ing.  When that in­dom­it­able snarling old witch died the swag­ger­ing spectre would have to van­ish too—there would be an end to fiery Karl Yundt.  And Mr. Ver­loc’s mor­al­ity was of­fen­ded also by the op­tim­ism of Mi­chaelis, an­nexed by his wealthy old lady, who had taken lately to send­ing him to a cot­tage she had in the coun­try.  The ex-pris­oner could moon about the shady lanes for days to­gether in a de­li­cious and hu­man­it­arian idle­ness.  As to Os­si­pon, that beg­gar was sure to want for noth­ing as long as there were silly girls with sav­ings-bank books in the world.  And Mr. Ver­loc, tem­pera­ment­ally identical with his as­so­ci­ates, drew fine dis­tinc­tions in his mind on the strength of in­sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences.  He drew them with a cer­tain com­pla­cency, be­cause the in­stinct of con­ven­tional re­spect­ab­il­ity was strong within him, be­ing only over­come by his dis­like of all kinds of re­cog­nised la­bour—a tem­pera­mental de­fect which he shared with a large pro­por­tion of re­volu­tion­ary re­formers of a given so­cial state.  For ob­vi­ously one does not re­volt against the ad­vant­ages and op­por­tun­it­ies of that state, but against the price which must be paid for the same in the coin of ac­cep­ted mor­al­ity, self-re­straint, and toil.  The ma­jor­ity of re­volu­tion­ists are the en­emies of dis­cip­line and fa­tigue mostly.  There are natures too, to whose sense of justice the price ex­ac­ted looms up mon­strously enorm­ous, odi­ous, op­press­ive, wor­ry­ing, hu­mi­li­at­ing, ex­tor­tion­ate, in­tol­er­able.  Those are the fan­at­ics.  The re­main­ing por­tion of so­cial rebels is ac­coun­ted for by van­ity, the mother of all noble and vile il­lu­sions, the com­pan­ion of po­ets, re­formers, char­lat­ans, proph­ets, and in­cen­di­ar­ies.

Lost for a whole minute in the abyss of med­it­a­tion, Mr. Ver­loc did not reach the depth of these ab­stract con­sid­er­a­tions.  Per­haps he was not able.  In any case he had not the time.  He was pulled up pain­fully by the sud­den re­col­lec­tion of Mr. Vladi­mir, an­other of his as­so­ci­ates, whom in vir­tue of subtle moral af­fin­it­ies he was cap­able of judging cor­rectly.  He con­sidered him as dan­ger­ous.  A shade of envy crept into his thoughts.  Loaf­ing was all very well for these fel­lows, who knew not Mr. Vladi­mir, and had wo­men to fall back upon; whereas he had a wo­man to provide for—

At this point, by a simple as­so­ci­ation of ideas, Mr. Ver­loc was brought face to face with the ne­ces­sity of go­ing to bed some time or other that even­ing.  Then why not go now—at once?  He sighed.  The ne­ces­sity was not so nor­mally pleas­ur­able as it ought to have been for a man of his age and tem­pera­ment.  He dreaded the de­mon of sleep­less­ness, which he felt had marked him for its own.  He raised his arm, and turned off the flar­ing gas-jet above his head.

A bright band of light fell through the par­lour door into the part of the shop be­hind the counter.  It en­abled Mr. Ver­loc to as­cer­tain at a glance the num­ber of sil­ver coins in the till.  These were but few; and for the first time since he opened his shop he took a com­mer­cial sur­vey of its value.  This sur­vey was un­fa­vour­able.  He had gone into trade for no com­mer­cial reas­ons.  He had been guided in the se­lec­tion of this pe­cu­liar line of busi­ness by an in­stinct­ive lean­ing to­wards shady trans­ac­tions, where money is picked up eas­ily.  Moreover, it did not take him out of his own sphere—the sphere which is watched by the po­lice.  On the con­trary, it gave him a pub­licly con­fessed stand­ing in that sphere, and as Mr. Ver­loc had un­con­fessed re­la­tions which made him fa­mil­iar with yet care­less of the po­lice, there was a dis­tinct ad­vant­age in such a situ­ation.  But as a means of live­li­hood it was by it­self in­suf­fi­cient.

He took the cash­box out of the drawer, and turn­ing to leave the shop, be­came aware that Stevie was still down­stairs.

What on earth is he do­ing there?  Mr. Ver­loc asked him­self.  What’s the mean­ing of these antics?  He looked du­bi­ously at his brother-in-law, but he did not ask him for in­form­a­tion.  Mr. Ver­loc’s in­ter­course with Stevie was lim­ited to the cas­ual mut­ter of a morn­ing, after break­fast, “My boots,” and even that was more a com­mu­nic­a­tion at large of a need than a dir­ect or­der or re­quest.  Mr. Ver­loc per­ceived with some sur­prise that he did not know really what to say to Stevie.  He stood still in the middle of the par­lour, and looked into the kit­chen in si­lence.  Nor yet did he know what would hap­pen if he did say any­thing.  And this ap­peared very queer to Mr. Ver­loc in view of the fact, borne upon him sud­denly, that he had to provide for this fel­low too.  He had never given a mo­ment’s thought till then to that as­pect of Stevie’s ex­ist­ence.

Pos­it­ively he did not know how to speak to the lad.  He watched him ges­tic­u­lat­ing and mur­mur­ing in the kit­chen.  Stevie prowled round the table like an ex­cited an­imal in a cage.  A tent­at­ive “Hadn’t you bet­ter go to bed now?” pro­duced no ef­fect whatever; and Mr. Ver­loc, abandon­ing the stony con­tem­pla­tion of his brother-in-law’s be­ha­viour, crossed the par­lour wear­ily, cash­box in hand.  The cause of the gen­eral las­sit­ude he felt while climb­ing the stairs be­ing purely men­tal, he be­came alarmed by its in­ex­plic­able char­ac­ter.  He hoped he was not sick­en­ing for any­thing.  He stopped on the dark land­ing to ex­am­ine his sen­sa­tions.  But a slight and con­tinu­ous sound of snor­ing per­vad­ing the ob­scur­ity in­terfered with their clear­ness.  The sound came from his mother-in-law’s room.  Another one to provide for, he thought—and on this thought walked into the bed­room.

Mrs. Ver­loc had fallen asleep with the lamp (no gas was laid up­stairs) turned up full on the table by the side of the bed.  The light thrown down by the shade fell dazzlingly on the white pil­low sunk by the weight of her head re­pos­ing with closed eyes and dark hair done up in sev­eral plaits for the night.  She woke up with the sound of her name in her ears, and saw her hus­band stand­ing over her.

“Win­nie!  Win­nie!”

At first she did not stir, ly­ing very quiet and look­ing at the cash­box in Mr. Ver­loc’s hand.  But when she un­der­stood that her brother was “caper­ing all over the place down­stairs” she swung out in one sud­den move­ment on to the edge of the bed.  Her bare feet, as if poked through the bot­tom of an un­adorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slip­pers while she looked up­ward into her hus­band’s face.

“I don’t know how to man­age him,” Mr. Ver­loc ex­plained peev­ishly.  “Won’t do to leave him down­stairs alone with the lights.”

She said noth­ing, glided across the room swiftly, and the door closed upon her white form.

Mr. Ver­loc de­pos­ited the cash­box on the night table, and began the op­er­a­tion of un­dress­ing by fling­ing his over­coat on to a dis­tant chair.  His coat and waist­coat fol­lowed.  He walked about the room in his stockinged feet, and his burly fig­ure, with the hands wor­ry­ing nervously at his throat, passed and re­passed across the long strip of look­ing-glass in the door of his wife’s ward­robe.  Then after slip­ping his braces off his shoulders he pulled up vi­ol­ently the vene­tian blind, and leaned his fore­head against the cold win­dowpane—a fra­gile film of glass stretched between him and the enorm­ity of cold, black, wet, muddy, in­hos­pit­able ac­cu­mu­la­tion of bricks, slates, and stones, things in them­selves un­lovely and un­friendly to man.

Mr. Ver­loc felt the lat­ent un­friend­li­ness of all out of doors with a force ap­proach­ing to pos­it­ive bod­ily an­guish.  There is no oc­cu­pa­tion that fails a man more com­pletely than that of a secret agent of po­lice.  It’s like your horse sud­denly fall­ing dead un­der you in the midst of an un­in­hab­ited and thirsty plain.  The com­par­ison oc­curred to Mr. Ver­loc be­cause he had sat astride vari­ous army horses in his time, and had now the sen­sa­tion of an in­cip­i­ent fall.  The pro­spect was as black as the win­dowpane against which he was lean­ing his fore­head.  And sud­denly the face of Mr. Vladi­mir, clean-shaved and witty, ap­peared en­ha­loed in the glow of its rosy com­plex­ion like a sort of pink seal, im­pressed on the fatal dark­ness.

This lu­min­ous and mu­til­ated vis­ion was so ghastly phys­ic­ally that Mr. Ver­loc star­ted away from the win­dow, let­ting down the vene­tian blind with a great rattle.  Dis­com­posed and speech­less with the ap­pre­hen­sion of more such vis­ions, he be­held his wife re-enter the room and get into bed in a calm busi­ness­like man­ner which made him feel hope­lessly lonely in the world.  Mrs. Ver­loc ex­pressed her sur­prise at see­ing him up yet.

“I don’t feel very well,” he muttered, passing his hands over his moist brow.

“Gid­di­ness?”

“Yes.  Not at all well.”

Mrs. Ver­loc, with all the pla­cid­ity of an ex­per­i­enced wife, ex­pressed a con­fid­ent opin­ion as to the cause, and sug­ges­ted the usual rem­ed­ies; but her hus­band, rooted in the middle of the room, shook his lowered head sadly.

“You’ll catch cold stand­ing there,” she ob­served.

Mr. Ver­loc made an ef­fort, fin­ished un­dress­ing, and got into bed.  Down be­low in the quiet, nar­row street meas­ured foot­steps ap­proached the house, then died away un­hur­ried and firm, as if the passerby had star­ted to pace out all etern­ity, from gas-lamp to gas-lamp in a night without end; and the drowsy tick­ing of the old clock on the land­ing be­came dis­tinctly aud­ible in the bed­room.

Mrs. Ver­loc, on her back, and star­ing at the ceil­ing, made a re­mark.

“Tak­ings very small today.”

Mr. Ver­loc, in the same po­s­i­tion, cleared his throat as if for an im­port­ant state­ment, but merely in­quired:

“Did you turn off the gas down­stairs?”

“Yes; I did,” answered Mrs. Ver­loc con­scien­tiously.  “That poor boy is in a very ex­cited state to­night,” she mur­mured, after a pause which las­ted for three ticks of the clock.

Mr. Ver­loc cared noth­ing for Stevie’s ex­cite­ment, but he felt hor­ribly wake­ful, and dreaded fa­cing the dark­ness and si­lence that would fol­low the ex­tin­guish­ing of the lamp.  This dread led him to make the re­mark that Stevie had dis­reg­arded his sug­ges­tion to go to bed.  Mrs. Ver­loc, fall­ing into the trap, star­ted to demon­strate at length to her hus­band that this was not “im­pudence” of any sort, but simply “ex­cite­ment.”  There was no young man of his age in Lon­don more will­ing and do­cile than Stephen, she af­firmed; none more af­fec­tion­ate and ready to please, and even use­ful, as long as people did not up­set his poor head.  Mrs. Ver­loc, turn­ing to­wards her re­cum­bent hus­band, raised her­self on her el­bow, and hung over him in her anxi­ety that he should be­lieve Stevie to be a use­ful mem­ber of the fam­ily.  That ar­dour of pro­tect­ing com­pas­sion ex­al­ted mor­bidly in her child­hood by the misery of an­other child tinged her sal­low cheeks with a faint dusky blush, made her big eyes gleam un­der the dark lids.  Mrs. Ver­loc then looked younger; she looked as young as Win­nie used to look, and much more an­im­ated than the Win­nie of the Bel­gravian man­sion days had ever al­lowed her­self to ap­pear to gen­tle­men lodgers.  Mr. Ver­loc’s anxi­et­ies had pre­ven­ted him from at­tach­ing any sense to what his wife was say­ing.  It was as if her voice were talk­ing on the other side of a very thick wall.  It was her as­pect that re­called him to him­self.

He ap­pre­ci­ated this wo­man, and the sen­ti­ment of this ap­pre­ci­ation, stirred by a dis­play of some­thing re­sem­bling emo­tion, only ad­ded an­other pang to his men­tal an­guish.  When her voice ceased he moved un­eas­ily, and said:

“I haven’t been feel­ing well for the last few days.”

He might have meant this as an open­ing to a com­plete con­fid­ence; but Mrs. Ver­loc laid her head on the pil­low again, and star­ing up­ward, went on:

“That boy hears too much of what is talked about here.  If I had known they were com­ing to­night I would have seen to it that he went to bed at the same time I did.  He was out of his mind with some­thing he over­heard about eat­ing people’s flesh and drink­ing blood.  What’s the good of talk­ing like that?”

There was a note of in­dig­nant scorn in her voice.  Mr. Ver­loc was fully re­spons­ive now.

“Ask Karl Yundt,” he growled sav­agely.

Mrs. Ver­loc, with great de­cision, pro­nounced Karl Yundt “a dis­gust­ing old man.”  She de­clared openly her af­fec­tion for Mi­chaelis.  Of the ro­bust Os­si­pon, in whose pres­ence she al­ways felt un­easy be­hind an at­ti­tude of stony re­serve, she said noth­ing whatever.  And con­tinu­ing to talk of that brother, who had been for so many years an ob­ject of care and fears:

“He isn’t fit to hear what’s said here.  He be­lieves it’s all true.  He knows no bet­ter.  He gets into his pas­sions over it.”

Mr. Ver­loc made no com­ment.

“He glared at me, as if he didn’t know who I was, when I went down­stairs.  His heart was go­ing like a ham­mer.  He can’t help be­ing ex­cit­able.  I woke mother up, and asked her to sit with him till he went to sleep.  It isn’t his fault.  He’s no trouble when he’s left alone.”

Mr. Ver­loc made no com­ment.

“I wish he had never been to school,” Mrs. Ver­loc began again brusquely.  “He’s al­ways tak­ing away those news­pa­pers from the win­dow to read.  He gets a red face por­ing over them.  We don’t get rid of a dozen num­bers in a month.  They only take up room in the front win­dow.  And Mr. Os­si­pon brings every week a pile of these F. P. tracts to sell at a half­penny each.  I wouldn’t give a half­penny for the whole lot.  It’s silly read­ing—that’s what it is.  There’s no sale for it.  The other day Stevie got hold of one, and there was a story in it of a Ger­man sol­dier of­ficer tear­ing half-off the ear of a re­cruit, and noth­ing was done to him for it.  The brute!  I couldn’t do any­thing with Stevie that af­ter­noon.  The story was enough, too, to make one’s blood boil.  But what’s the use of print­ing things like that?  We aren’t Ger­man slaves here, thank God.  It’s not our busi­ness—is it?”

Mr. Ver­loc made no reply.

“I had to take the carving knife from the boy,” Mrs. Ver­loc con­tin­ued, a little sleepily now.  “He was shout­ing and stamp­ing and sob­bing.  He can’t stand the no­tion of any cruelty.  He would have stuck that of­ficer like a pig if he had seen him then.  It’s true, too!  Some people don’t de­serve much mercy.”  Mrs. Ver­loc’s voice ceased, and the ex­pres­sion of her mo­tion­less eyes be­came more and more con­tem­plat­ive and veiled dur­ing the long pause.  “Com­fort­able, dear?” she asked in a faint, faraway voice.  “Shall I put out the light now?”

The dreary con­vic­tion that there was no sleep for him held Mr. Ver­loc mute and hope­lessly in­ert in his fear of dark­ness.  He made a great ef­fort.

“Yes.  Put it out,” he said at last in a hol­low tone.

IV

Most of the thirty or so little tables covered by red cloths with a white design stood ranged at right angles to the deep brown wains­cot­ing of the un­der­ground hall.  Bronze chan­deliers with many globes de­pended from the low, slightly vaul­ted ceil­ing, and the fresco paint­ings ran flat and dull all round the walls without win­dows, rep­res­ent­ing scenes of the chase and of out­door rev­elry in mediæval cos­tumes.  Var­lets in green jer­kins bran­dished hunt­ing knives and raised on high tank­ards of foam­ing beer.

“Un­less I am very much mis­taken, you are the man who would know the in­side of this con­foun­ded af­fair,” said the ro­bust Os­si­pon, lean­ing over, his el­bows far out on the table and his feet tucked back com­pletely un­der his chair.  His eyes stared with wild eager­ness.

An up­right semi-grand pi­ano near the door, flanked by two palms in pots, ex­ecuted sud­denly all by it­self a valse tune with ag­gress­ive vir­tu­os­ity.  The din it raised was deaf­en­ing.  When it ceased, as ab­ruptly as it had star­ted, the be­spec­tacled, dingy little man who faced Os­si­pon be­hind a heavy glass mug full of beer emit­ted calmly what had the sound of a gen­eral pro­pos­i­tion.

“In prin­ciple what one of us may or may not know as to any given fact can’t be a mat­ter for in­quiry to the oth­ers.”

“Cer­tainly not,” Com­rade Os­si­pon agreed in a quiet un­der­tone.  “In prin­ciple.”

With his big florid face held between his hands he con­tin­ued to stare hard, while the dingy little man in spec­tacles coolly took a drink of beer and stood the glass mug back on the table.  His flat, large ears de­par­ted widely from the sides of his skull, which looked frail enough for Os­si­pon to crush between thumb and fore­finger; the dome of the fore­head seemed to rest on the rim of the spec­tacles; the flat cheeks, of a greasy, un­healthy com­plex­ion, were merely smudged by the miser­able poverty of a thin dark whisker.  The lam­ent­able in­feri­or­ity of the whole physique was made ludicrous by the su­premely self-con­fid­ent bear­ing of the in­di­vidual.  His speech was curt, and he had a par­tic­u­larly im­press­ive man­ner of keep­ing si­lent.

Os­si­pon spoke again from between his hands in a mut­ter.

“Have you been out much today?”

“No.  I stayed in bed all the morn­ing,” answered the other.  “Why?”

“Oh!  Noth­ing,” said Os­si­pon, gaz­ing earn­estly and quiv­er­ing in­wardly with the de­sire to find out some­thing, but ob­vi­ously in­tim­id­ated by the little man’s over­whelm­ing air of un­con­cern.  When talk­ing with this com­rade—which happened but rarely—the big Os­si­pon suffered from a sense of moral and even phys­ical in­sig­ni­fic­ance.  However, he ven­tured an­other ques­tion.  “Did you walk down here?”

“No; om­ni­bus,” the little man answered read­ily enough.  He lived far away in Is­ling­ton, in a small house down a shabby street, littered with straw and dirty pa­per, where out of school hours a troop of as­sor­ted chil­dren ran and squabbled with a shrill, joy­less, rowdy clam­our.  His single back room, re­mark­able for hav­ing an ex­tremely large cup­board, he ren­ted fur­nished from two eld­erly spin­sters, dress­makers in a humble way with a cli­en­tele of ser­vant girls mostly.  He had a heavy pad­lock put on the cup­board, but oth­er­wise he was a model lodger, giv­ing no trouble, and re­quir­ing prac­tic­ally no at­tend­ance.  His oddit­ies were that he in­sisted on be­ing present when his room was be­ing swept, and that when he went out he locked his door, and took the key away with him.

Os­si­pon had a vis­ion of these round black-rimmed spec­tacles pro­gress­ing along the streets on the top of an om­ni­bus, their self-con­fid­ent glit­ter fall­ing here and there on the walls of houses or lowered upon the heads of the un­con­scious stream of people on the pave­ments.  The ghost of a sickly smile altered the set of Os­si­pon’s thick lips at the thought of the walls nod­ding, of people run­ning for life at the sight of those spec­tacles.  If they had only known!  What a panic!  He mur­mured in­ter­rog­at­ively: “Been sit­ting long here?”

“An hour or more,” answered the other neg­li­gently, and took a pull at the dark beer.  All his move­ments—the way he grasped the mug, the act of drink­ing, the way he set the heavy glass down and fol­ded his arms—had a firm­ness, an as­sured pre­ci­sion which made the big and mus­cu­lar Os­si­pon, lean­ing for­ward with star­ing eyes and pro­trud­ing lips, look the pic­ture of eager in­de­cision.

“An hour,” he said.  “Then it may be you haven’t heard yet the news I’ve heard just now—in the street.  Have you?”

The little man shook his head neg­at­ively the least bit.  But as he gave no in­dic­a­tion of curi­os­ity Os­si­pon ven­tured to add that he had heard it just out­side the place.  A news­pa­per boy had yelled the thing un­der his very nose, and not be­ing pre­pared for any­thing of that sort, he was very much startled and up­set.  He had to come in there with a dry mouth.  “I never thought of find­ing you here,” he ad­ded, mur­mur­ing stead­ily, with his el­bows planted on the table.

“I come here some­times,” said the other, pre­serving his pro­vok­ing cool­ness of de­mean­our.

“It’s won­der­ful that you of all people should have heard noth­ing of it,” the big Os­si­pon con­tin­ued.  His eye­lids snapped nervously upon the shin­ing eyes.  “You of all people,” he re­peated tent­at­ively.  This ob­vi­ous re­straint ar­gued an in­cred­ible and in­ex­plic­able timid­ity of the big fel­low be­fore the calm little man, who again lif­ted the glass mug, drank, and put it down with brusque and as­sured move­ments.  And that was all.

Os­si­pon after wait­ing for some­thing, word or sign, that did not come, made an ef­fort to as­sume a sort of in­dif­fer­ence.

“Do you,” he said, dead­en­ing his voice still more, “give your stuff to any­body who’s up to ask­ing you for it?”

“My ab­so­lute rule is never to re­fuse any­body—as long as I have a pinch by me,” answered the little man with de­cision.

“That’s a prin­ciple?” com­men­ted Os­si­pon.

“It’s a prin­ciple.”

“And you think it’s sound?”

The large round spec­tacles, which gave a look of star­ing self-con­fid­ence to the sal­low face, con­fron­ted Os­si­pon like sleep­less, un­wink­ing orbs flash­ing a cold fire.

“Per­fectly.  Al­ways.  Under every cir­cum­stance.  What could stop me?  Why should I not?  Why should I think twice about it?”

Os­si­pon gasped, as it were, dis­creetly.

“Do you mean to say you would hand it over to a ‘teck’ if one came to ask you for your wares?”

The other smiled faintly.

“Let them come and try it on, and you will see,” he said.  “They know me, but I know also every one of them.  They won’t come near me—not they.”

His thin livid lips snapped to­gether firmly.  Os­si­pon began to ar­gue.

“But they could send someone—rig a plant on you.  Don’t you see?  Get the stuff from you in that way, and then ar­rest you with the proof in their hands.”

“Proof of what?  Deal­ing in ex­plos­ives without a li­cence per­haps.”  This was meant for a con­temp­tu­ous jeer, though the ex­pres­sion of the thin, sickly face re­mained un­changed, and the ut­ter­ance was neg­li­gent.  “I don’t think there’s one of them anxious to make that ar­rest.  I don’t think they could get one of them to ap­ply for a war­rant.  I mean one of the best.  Not one.”

“Why?” Os­si­pon asked.

“Be­cause they know very well I take care never to part with the last hand­ful of my wares.  I’ve it al­ways by me.”  He touched the breast of his coat lightly.  “In a thick glass flask,” he ad­ded.

“So I have been told,” said Os­si­pon, with a shade of won­der in his voice.  “But I didn’t know if—”

“They know,” in­ter­rup­ted the little man crisply, lean­ing against the straight chair back, which rose higher than his fra­gile head.  “I shall never be ar­res­ted.  The game isn’t good enough for any po­lice­man of them all.  To deal with a man like me you re­quire sheer, na­ked, in­glori­ous hero­ism.”  Again his lips closed with a self-con­fid­ent snap.  Os­si­pon repressed a move­ment of im­pa­tience.

“Or reck­less­ness—or simply ig­nor­ance,” he re­tor­ted.  “They’ve only to get some­body for the job who does not know you carry enough stuff in your pocket to blow your­self and everything within sixty yards of you to pieces.”

“I never af­firmed I could not be elim­in­ated,” re­joined the other.  “But that wouldn’t be an ar­rest.  Moreover, it’s not so easy as it looks.”

“Bah!” Os­si­pon con­tra­dicted.  “Don’t be too sure of that.  What’s to pre­vent half-a-dozen of them jump­ing upon you from be­hind in the street?  With your arms pinned to your sides you could do noth­ing—could you?”

“Yes; I could.  I am sel­dom out in the streets after dark,” said the little man im­pass­ively, “and never very late.  I walk al­ways with my right hand closed round the in­dia-rub­ber ball which I have in my trouser pocket.  The press­ing of this ball ac­tu­ates a det­on­ator in­side the flask I carry in my pocket.  It’s the prin­ciple of the pneu­matic in­stant­an­eous shut­ter for a cam­era lens.  The tube leads up—”

With a swift dis­clos­ing ges­ture he gave Os­si­pon a glimpse of an in­dia-rub­ber tube, re­sem­bling a slender brown worm, is­su­ing from the arm­hole of his waist­coat and plunging into the in­ner breast pocket of his jacket.  His clothes, of a non­des­cript brown mix­ture, were thread­bare and marked with stains, dusty in the folds, with ragged but­ton­holes.  “The det­on­ator is partly mech­an­ical, partly chem­ical,” he ex­plained, with cas­ual con­des­cen­sion.

“It is in­stant­an­eous, of course?” mur­mured Os­si­pon, with a slight shud­der.

“Far from it,” con­fessed the other, with a re­luct­ance which seemed to twist his mouth dol­or­ously.  “A full twenty seconds must elapse from the mo­ment I press the ball till the ex­plo­sion takes place.”

“Phew!” whistled Os­si­pon, com­pletely ap­palled.  “Twenty seconds!  Hor­rors!  You mean to say that you could face that?  I should go crazy—”

“Wouldn’t mat­ter if you did.  Of course, it’s the weak point of this spe­cial sys­tem, which is only for my own use.  The worst is that the man­ner of ex­plod­ing is al­ways the weak point with us.  I am try­ing to in­vent a det­on­ator that would ad­just it­self to all con­di­tions of ac­tion, and even to un­ex­pec­ted changes of con­di­tions.  A vari­able and yet per­fectly pre­cise mech­an­ism.  A really in­tel­li­gent det­on­ator.”

“Twenty seconds,” muttered Os­si­pon again.  “Ough!  And then—”

With a slight turn of the head the glit­ter of the spec­tacles seemed to gauge the size of the beer sa­loon in the base­ment of the renowned Si­lenus Res­taur­ant.

“Nobody in this room could hope to es­cape,” was the ver­dict of that sur­vey.  “Nor yet this couple go­ing up the stairs now.”

The pi­ano at the foot of the stair­case clanged through a mazurka with brazen im­petu­os­ity, as though a vul­gar and im­pudent ghost were show­ing off.  The keys sank and rose mys­ter­i­ously.  Then all be­came still.  For a mo­ment Os­si­pon ima­gined the over­lighted place changed into a dread­ful black hole belch­ing hor­rible fumes choked with ghastly rub­bish of smashed brick­work and mu­til­ated corpses.  He had such a dis­tinct per­cep­tion of ruin and death that he shuddered again.  The other ob­served, with an air of calm suf­fi­ciency:

“In the last in­stance it is char­ac­ter alone that makes for one’s safety.  There are very few people in the world whose char­ac­ter is as well es­tab­lished as mine.”

“I won­der how you man­aged it,” growled Os­si­pon.

“Force of per­son­al­ity,” said the other, without rais­ing his voice; and com­ing from the mouth of that ob­vi­ously miser­able or­gan­ism the as­ser­tion caused the ro­bust Os­si­pon to bite his lower lip.  “Force of per­son­al­ity,” he re­peated, with os­ten­ta­tious calm.  “I have the means to make my­self deadly, but that by it­self, you un­der­stand, is ab­so­lutely noth­ing in the way of pro­tec­tion.  What is ef­fect­ive is the be­lief those people have in my will to use the means.  That’s their im­pres­sion.  It is ab­so­lute.  There­fore I am deadly.”

“There are in­di­vidu­als of char­ac­ter amongst that lot too,” muttered Os­si­pon omin­ously.

“Poss­ibly.  But it is a mat­ter of de­gree ob­vi­ously, since, for in­stance, I am not im­pressed by them.  There­fore they are in­ferior.  They can­not be oth­er­wise.  Their char­ac­ter is built upon con­ven­tional mor­al­ity.  It leans on the so­cial or­der.  Mine stands free from everything ar­ti­fi­cial.  They are bound in all sorts of con­ven­tions.  They de­pend on life, which, in this con­nec­tion, is a his­tor­ical fact sur­roun­ded by all sorts of re­straints and con­sid­er­a­tions, a com­plex or­gan­ised fact open to at­tack at every point; whereas I de­pend on death, which knows no re­straint and can­not be at­tacked.  My su­peri­or­ity is evid­ent.”

“This is a tran­scend­ental way of put­ting it,” said Os­si­pon, watch­ing the cold glit­ter of the round spec­tacles.  “I’ve heard Karl Yundt say much the same thing not very long ago.”

“Karl Yundt,” mumbled the other con­temp­tu­ously, “the del­eg­ate of the In­ter­na­tional Red Com­mit­tee, has been a pos­tur­ing shadow all his life.  There are three of you del­eg­ates, aren’t there?  I won’t define the other two, as you are one of them.  But what you say means noth­ing.  You are the worthy del­eg­ates for re­volu­tion­ary pro­pa­ganda, but the trouble is not only that you are as un­able to think in­de­pend­ently as any re­spect­able gro­cer or journ­al­ist of them all, but that you have no char­ac­ter whatever.”

Os­si­pon could not re­strain a start of in­dig­na­tion.

“But what do you want from us?” he ex­claimed in a deadened voice.  “What is it you are after your­self?”

“A per­fect det­on­ator,” was the per­emp­tory an­swer.  “What are you mak­ing that face for?  You see, you can’t even bear the men­tion of some­thing con­clus­ive.”

“I am not mak­ing a face,” growled the an­noyed Os­si­pon bear­ishly.

“You re­volu­tion­ists,” the other con­tin­ued, with leis­urely self-con­fid­ence, “are the slaves of the so­cial con­ven­tion, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very po­lice that stands up in the de­fence of that con­ven­tion.  Clearly you are, since you want to re­volu­tion­ise it.  It gov­erns your thought, of course, and your ac­tion too, and thus neither your thought nor your ac­tion can ever be con­clus­ive.”  He paused, tran­quil, with that air of close, end­less si­lence, then al­most im­me­di­ately went on.  “You are not a bit bet­ter than the forces ar­rayed against you—than the po­lice, for in­stance.  The other day I came sud­denly upon Chief In­spector Heat at the corner of Tot­ten­ham Court Road.  He looked at me very stead­ily.  But I did not look at him.  Why should I give him more than a glance?  He was think­ing of many things—of his su­per­i­ors, of his repu­ta­tion, of the law courts, of his salary, of news­pa­pers—of a hun­dred things.  But I was think­ing of my per­fect det­on­ator only.  He meant noth­ing to me.  He was as in­sig­ni­fic­ant as—I can’t call to mind any­thing in­sig­ni­fic­ant enough to com­pare him with—ex­cept Karl Yundt per­haps.  Like to like.  The ter­ror­ist and the po­lice­man both come from the same bas­ket.  Re­volu­tion, leg­al­ity—counter moves in the same game; forms of idle­ness at bot­tom identical.  He plays his little game—so do you pro­pa­gand­ists.  But I don’t play; I work four­teen hours a day, and go hungry some­times.  My ex­per­i­ments cost money now and again, and then I must do without food for a day or two.  You’re look­ing at my beer.  Yes.  I have had two glasses already, and shall have an­other presently.  This is a little hol­i­day, and I cel­eb­rate it alone.  Why not?  I’ve the grit to work alone, quite alone, ab­so­lutely alone.  I’ve worked alone for years.”

Os­si­pon’s face had turned dusky red.

“At the per­fect det­on­ator—eh?” he sneered, very low.

“Yes,” re­tor­ted the other.  “It is a good defin­i­tion.  You couldn’t find any­thing half so pre­cise to define the nature of your activ­ity with all your com­mit­tees and del­eg­a­tions.  It is I who am the true pro­pa­gand­ist.”

“We won’t dis­cuss that point,” said Os­si­pon, with an air of rising above per­sonal con­sid­er­a­tions.  “I am afraid I’ll have to spoil your hol­i­day for you, though.  There’s a man blown up in Green­wich Park this morn­ing.”

“How do you know?”

“They have been yelling the news in the streets since two o’clock.  I bought the pa­per, and just ran in here.  Then I saw you sit­ting at this table.  I’ve got it in my pocket now.”

He pulled the news­pa­per out.  It was a good-sized rosy sheet, as if flushed by the warmth of its own con­vic­tions, which were op­tim­istic.  He scanned the pages rap­idly.

“Ah!  Here it is.  Bomb in Green­wich Park.  There isn’t much so far.  Half-past el­even.  Foggy morn­ing.  Ef­fects of ex­plo­sion felt as far as Rom­ney Road and Park Place.  Enorm­ous hole in the ground un­der a tree filled with smashed roots and broken branches.  All round frag­ments of a man’s body blown to pieces.  That’s all.  The rest’s mere news­pa­per gup.  No doubt a wicked at­tempt to blow up the Ob­ser­vat­ory, they say.  H’m.  That’s hardly cred­ible.”

He looked at the pa­per for a while longer in si­lence, then passed it to the other, who after gaz­ing ab­strac­tedly at the print laid it down without com­ment.

It was Os­si­pon who spoke first—still re­sent­ful.

“The frag­ments of only one man, you note.  Ergo: blew him­self up.  That spoils your day off for you—don’t it?  Were you ex­pect­ing that sort of move?  I hadn’t the slight­est idea—not the ghost of a no­tion of any­thing of the sort be­ing planned to come off here—in this coun­try.  Under the present cir­cum­stances it’s noth­ing short of crim­inal.”

The little man lif­ted his thin black eye­brows with dis­pas­sion­ate scorn.

“Crim­inal!  What is that?  What is crime?  What can be the mean­ing of such an as­ser­tion?”

“How am I to ex­press my­self?  One must use the cur­rent words,” said Os­si­pon im­pa­tiently.  “The mean­ing of this as­ser­tion is that this busi­ness may af­fect our po­s­i­tion very ad­versely in this coun­try.  Isn’t that crime enough for you?  I am con­vinced you have been giv­ing away some of your stuff lately.”

Os­si­pon stared hard.  The other, without flinch­ing, lowered and raised his head slowly.

“You have!” burst out the ed­itor of the F. P. leaf­lets in an in­tense whis­per.  “No!  And are you really hand­ing it over at large like this, for the ask­ing, to the first fool that comes along?”

“Just so!  The con­demned so­cial or­der has not been built up on pa­per and ink, and I don’t fancy that a com­bin­a­tion of pa­per and ink will ever put an end to it, whatever you may think.  Yes, I would give the stuff with both hands to every man, wo­man, or fool that likes to come along.  I know what you are think­ing about.  But I am not tak­ing my cue from the Red Com­mit­tee.  I would see you all houn­ded out of here, or ar­res­ted—or be­headed for that mat­ter—without turn­ing a hair.  What hap­pens to us as in­di­vidu­als is not of the least con­sequence.”

He spoke care­lessly, without heat, al­most without feel­ing, and Os­si­pon, secretly much af­fected, tried to copy this de­tach­ment.

“If the po­lice here knew their busi­ness they would shoot you full of holes with re­volvers, or else try to sand­bag you from be­hind in broad day­light.”

The little man seemed already to have con­sidered that point of view in his dis­pas­sion­ate self-con­fid­ent man­ner.

“Yes,” he as­sen­ted with the ut­most read­i­ness.  “But for that they would have to face their own in­sti­tu­tions.  Do you see?  That re­quires un­com­mon grit.  Grit of a spe­cial kind.”

Os­si­pon blinked.

“I fancy that’s ex­actly what would hap­pen to you if you were to set up your labor­at­ory in the States.  They don’t stand on ce­re­mony with their in­sti­tu­tions there.”

“I am not likely to go and see.  Other­wise your re­mark is just,” ad­mit­ted the other.  “They have more char­ac­ter over there, and their char­ac­ter is es­sen­tially an­arch­istic.  Fer­tile ground for us, the States—very good ground.  The great Re­pub­lic has the root of the de­struct­ive mat­ter in her.  The col­lect­ive tem­pera­ment is law­less.  Ex­cel­lent.  They may shoot us down, but—”

“You are too tran­scend­ental for me,” growled Os­si­pon, with moody con­cern.

“Lo­gical,” pro­tested the other.  “There are sev­eral kinds of lo­gic.  This is the en­lightened kind.  Amer­ica is all right.  It is this coun­try that is dan­ger­ous, with her ideal­istic con­cep­tion of leg­al­ity.  The so­cial spirit of this people is wrapped up in scru­pu­lous pre­ju­dices, and that is fatal to our work.  You talk of Eng­land be­ing our only refuge!  So much the worse.  Capua!  What do we want with refuges?  Here you talk, print, plot, and do noth­ing.  I daresay it’s very con­veni­ent for such Karl Yun­dts.”

He shrugged his shoulders slightly, then ad­ded with the same leis­urely as­sur­ance: “To break up the su­per­sti­tion and wor­ship of leg­al­ity should be our aim.  Noth­ing would please me more than to see In­spector Heat and his likes take to shoot­ing us down in broad day­light with the ap­proval of the pub­lic.  Half our battle would be won then; the dis­in­teg­ra­tion of the old mor­al­ity would have set in in its very temple.  That is what you ought to aim at.  But you re­volu­tion­ists will never un­der­stand that.  You plan the fu­ture, you lose yourselves in rev­er­ies of eco­nom­ical sys­tems de­rived from what is; whereas what’s wanted is a clean sweep and a clear start for a new con­cep­tion of life.  That sort of fu­ture will take care of it­self if you will only make room for it.  There­fore I would shovel my stuff in heaps at the corners of the streets if I had enough for that; and as I haven’t, I do my best by per­fect­ing a really de­pend­able det­on­ator.”

Os­si­pon, who had been men­tally swim­ming in deep wa­ters, seized upon the last word as if it were a sav­ing plank.

“Yes.  Your det­on­at­ors.  I shouldn’t won­der if it weren’t one of your det­on­at­ors that made a clean sweep of the man in the park.”

A shade of vex­a­tion darkened the de­term­ined sal­low face con­front­ing Os­si­pon.

“My dif­fi­culty con­sists pre­cisely in ex­per­i­ment­ing prac­tic­ally with the vari­ous kinds.  They must be tried after all.  Besides—”

Os­si­pon in­ter­rup­ted.

“Who could that fel­low be?  I as­sure you that we in Lon­don had no know­ledge—Couldn’t you de­scribe the per­son you gave the stuff to?”

The other turned his spec­tacles upon Os­si­pon like a pair of search­lights.

“Describe him,” he re­peated slowly.  “I don’t think there can be the slight­est ob­jec­tion now.  I will de­scribe him to you in one word—Ver­loc.”

Os­si­pon, whom curi­os­ity had lif­ted a few inches off his seat, dropped back, as if hit in the face.

“Ver­loc!  Im­possible.”

The self-pos­sessed little man nod­ded slightly once.

“Yes.  He’s the per­son.  You can’t say that in this case I was giv­ing my stuff to the first fool that came along.  He was a prom­in­ent mem­ber of the group as far as I un­der­stand.”

“Yes,” said Os­si­pon.  “Prom­in­ent.  No, not ex­actly.  He was the centre for gen­eral in­tel­li­gence, and usu­ally re­ceived com­rades com­ing over here.  More use­ful than im­port­ant.  Man of no ideas.  Years ago he used to speak at meet­ings—in France, I be­lieve.  Not very well, though.  He was trus­ted by such men as Lat­orre, Moser and all that old lot.  The only tal­ent he showed really was his abil­ity to elude the at­ten­tions of the po­lice some­how.  Here, for in­stance, he did not seem to be looked after very closely.  He was reg­u­larly mar­ried, you know.  I sup­pose it’s with her money that he star­ted that shop.  Seemed to make it pay, too.”

Os­si­pon paused ab­ruptly, muttered to him­self “I won­der what that wo­man will do now?” and fell into thought.

The other waited with os­ten­ta­tious in­dif­fer­ence.  His par­ent­age was ob­scure, and he was gen­er­ally known only by his nick­name of Pro­fessor.  His title to that des­ig­na­tion con­sisted in his hav­ing been once as­sist­ant demon­strator in chem­istry at some tech­nical in­sti­tute.  He quar­relled with the au­thor­it­ies upon a ques­tion of un­fair treat­ment.  After­wards he ob­tained a post in the labor­at­ory of a man­u­fact­ory of dyes.  There too he had been treated with re­volt­ing in­justice.  His struggles, his priva­tions, his hard work to raise him­self in the so­cial scale, had filled him with such an ex­al­ted con­vic­tion of his mer­its that it was ex­tremely dif­fi­cult for the world to treat him with justice—the stand­ard of that no­tion de­pend­ing so much upon the pa­tience of the in­di­vidual.  The Pro­fessor had genius, but lacked the great so­cial vir­tue of resig­na­tion.

“In­tel­lec­tu­ally a non­entity,” Os­si­pon pro­nounced aloud, abandon­ing sud­denly the in­ward con­tem­pla­tion of Mrs. Ver­loc’s be­reaved per­son and busi­ness.  “Quite an or­din­ary per­son­al­ity.  You are wrong in not keep­ing more in touch with the com­rades, Pro­fessor,” he ad­ded in a re­prov­ing tone.  “Did he say any­thing to you—give you some idea of his in­ten­tions?  I hadn’t seen him for a month.  It seems im­possible that he should be gone.”

“He told me it was go­ing to be a demon­stra­tion against a build­ing,” said the Pro­fessor.  “I had to know that much to pre­pare the mis­sile.  I poin­ted out to him that I had hardly a suf­fi­cient quant­ity for a com­pletely de­struct­ive res­ult, but he pressed me very earn­estly to do my best.  As he wanted some­thing that could be car­ried openly in the hand, I pro­posed to make use of an old one-gal­lon co­pal var­nish can I happened to have by me.  He was pleased at the idea.  It gave me some trouble, be­cause I had to cut out the bot­tom first and solder it on again af­ter­wards.  When pre­pared for use, the can en­closed a wide-mouthed, well-corked jar of thick glass packed around with some wet clay and con­tain­ing six­teen ounces of X2 green powder.  The det­on­ator was con­nec­ted with the screw top of the can.  It was in­geni­ous—a com­bin­a­tion of time and shock.  I ex­plained the sys­tem to him.  It was a thin tube of tin en­clos­ing a—”

Os­si­pon’s at­ten­tion had wandered.

“What do you think has happened?” he in­ter­rup­ted.

“Can’t tell.  Screwed the top on tight, which would make the con­nec­tion, and then for­got the time.  It was set for twenty minutes.  On the other hand, the time con­tact be­ing made, a sharp shock would bring about the ex­plo­sion at once.  He either ran the time too close, or simply let the thing fall.  The con­tact was made all right—that’s clear to me at any rate.  The sys­tem’s worked per­fectly.  And yet you would think that a com­mon fool in a hurry would be much more likely to for­get to make the con­tact al­to­gether.  I was wor­ry­ing my­self about that sort of fail­ure mostly.  But there are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.  You can’t ex­pect a det­on­ator to be ab­so­lutely fool­proof.”

He beckoned to a waiter.  Os­si­pon sat ri­gid, with the ab­strac­ted gaze of men­tal trav­ail.  After the man had gone away with the money he roused him­self, with an air of pro­found dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

“It’s ex­tremely un­pleas­ant for me,” he mused.  “Karl has been in bed with bron­chitis for a week.  There’s an even chance that he will never get up again.  Mi­chaelis’s lux­uri­at­ing in the coun­try some­where.  A fash­ion­able pub­lisher has offered him five hun­dred pounds for a book.  It will be a ghastly fail­ure.  He has lost the habit of con­sec­ut­ive think­ing in prison, you know.”

The Pro­fessor on his feet, now but­ton­ing his coat, looked about him with per­fect in­dif­fer­ence.

“What are you go­ing to do?” asked Os­si­pon wear­ily.  He dreaded the blame of the Cen­t­ral Red Com­mit­tee, a body which had no per­man­ent place of abode, and of whose mem­ber­ship he was not ex­actly in­formed.  If this af­fair even­tu­ated in the stop­page of the mod­est sub­sidy al­lot­ted to the pub­lic­a­tion of the F. P. pamph­lets, then in­deed he would have to re­gret Ver­loc’s in­ex­plic­able folly.

“Solid­ar­ity with the ex­tremest form of ac­tion is one thing, and silly reck­less­ness is an­other,” he said, with a sort of moody bru­tal­ity.  “I don’t know what came to Ver­loc.  There’s some mys­tery there.  However, he’s gone.  You may take it as you like, but un­der the cir­cum­stances the only policy for the mil­it­ant re­volu­tion­ary group is to dis­claim all con­nec­tion with this damned freak of yours.  How to make the dis­claimer con­vin­cing enough is what both­ers me.”

The little man on his feet, buttoned up and ready to go, was no taller than the seated Os­si­pon.  He lev­elled his spec­tacles at the lat­ter’s face point-blank.

“You might ask the po­lice for a testi­mo­nial of good con­duct.  They know where every one of you slept last night.  Per­haps if you asked them they would con­sent to pub­lish some sort of of­fi­cial state­ment.”

“No doubt they are aware well enough that we had noth­ing to do with this,” mumbled Os­si­pon bit­terly.  “What they will say is an­other thing.”  He re­mained thought­ful, dis­reg­ard­ing the short, owl­ish, shabby fig­ure stand­ing by his side.  “I must lay hands on Mi­chaelis at once, and get him to speak from his heart at one of our gath­er­ings.  The pub­lic has a sort of sen­ti­mental re­gard for that fel­low.  His name is known.  And I am in touch with a few re­port­ers on the big dailies.  What he would say would be ut­ter bosh, but he has a turn of talk that makes it go down all the same.”

“Like treacle,” in­ter­jec­ted the Pro­fessor, rather low, keep­ing an im­pass­ive ex­pres­sion.

The per­plexed Os­si­pon went on com­mun­ing with him­self half aud­ibly, after the man­ner of a man re­flect­ing in per­fect solitude.

“Con­foun­ded ass!  To leave such an im­be­cile busi­ness on my hands.  And I don’t even know if—”

He sat with com­pressed lips.  The idea of go­ing for news straight to the shop lacked charm.  His no­tion was that Ver­loc’s shop might have been turned already into a po­lice trap.  They will be bound to make some ar­rests, he thought, with some­thing re­sem­bling vir­tu­ous in­dig­na­tion, for the even tenor of his re­volu­tion­ary life was men­aced by no fault of his.  And yet un­less he went there he ran the risk of re­main­ing in ig­nor­ance of what per­haps it would be very ma­ter­ial for him to know.  Then he re­flec­ted that, if the man in the park had been so very much blown to pieces as the even­ing pa­pers said, he could not have been iden­ti­fied.  And if so, the po­lice could have no spe­cial reason for watch­ing Ver­loc’s shop more closely than any other place known to be fre­quen­ted by marked an­arch­ists—no more reason, in fact, than for watch­ing the doors of the Si­lenus.  There would be a lot of watch­ing all round, no mat­ter where he went.  Still—

“I won­der what I had bet­ter do now?” he muttered, tak­ing coun­sel with him­self.

A rasp­ing voice at his el­bow said, with sed­ate scorn:

“Fasten your­self upon the wo­man for all she’s worth.”

After ut­ter­ing these words the Pro­fessor walked away from the table.  Os­si­pon, whom that piece of in­sight had taken un­awares, gave one in­ef­fec­tual start, and re­mained still, with a help­less gaze, as though nailed fast to the seat of his chair.  The lonely pi­ano, without as much as a mu­sic stool to help it, struck a few chords cour­ageously, and be­gin­ning a se­lec­tion of na­tional airs, played him out at last to the tune of “Blue Bells of Scot­land.”  The pain­fully de­tached notes grew faint be­hind his back while he went slowly up­stairs, across the hall, and into the street.

In front of the great door­way a dis­mal row of news­pa­per sellers stand­ing clear of the pave­ment dealt out their wares from the gut­ter.  It was a raw, gloomy day of the early spring; and the grimy sky, the mud of the streets, the rags of the dirty men, har­mon­ised ex­cel­lently with the erup­tion of the damp, rub­bishy sheets of pa­per soiled with print­ers’ ink.  The posters, mac­u­lated with filth, gar­nished like tapestry the sweep of the curb­stone.  The trade in af­ter­noon pa­pers was brisk, yet, in com­par­ison with the swift, con­stant march of foot traffic, the ef­fect was of in­dif­fer­ence, of a dis­reg­arded dis­tri­bu­tion.  Os­si­pon looked hur­riedly both ways be­fore step­ping out into the cross­cur­rents, but the Pro­fessor was already out of sight.

V

The Pro­fessor had turned into a street to the left, and walked along, with his head car­ried ri­gidly erect, in a crowd whose every in­di­vidual al­most over­topped his stun­ted stature.  It was vain to pre­tend to him­self that he was not dis­ap­poin­ted.  But that was mere feel­ing; the stoicism of his thought could not be dis­turbed by this or any other fail­ure.  Next time, or the time after next, a telling stroke would be de­livered—some­thing really start­ling—a blow fit to open the first crack in the im­pos­ing front of the great edi­fice of legal con­cep­tions shel­ter­ing the at­ro­cious in­justice of so­ci­ety.  Of humble ori­gin, and with an ap­pear­ance really so mean as to stand in the way of his con­sid­er­able nat­ural abil­it­ies, his ima­gin­a­tion had been fired early by the tales of men rising from the depths of poverty to po­s­i­tions of au­thor­ity and af­flu­ence.  The ex­treme, al­most as­cetic pur­ity of his thought, com­bined with an astound­ing ig­nor­ance of worldly con­di­tions, had set be­fore him a goal of power and prestige to be at­tained without the me­dium of arts, graces, tact, wealth—by sheer weight of merit alone.  On that view he con­sidered him­self en­titled to un­dis­puted suc­cess.  His father, a del­ic­ate dark en­thu­si­ast with a slop­ing fore­head, had been an it­in­er­ant and rous­ing preacher of some ob­scure but ri­gid Chris­tian sect—a man su­premely con­fid­ent in the priv­ileges of his right­eous­ness.  In the son, in­di­vidu­al­ist by tem­pera­ment, once the sci­ence of col­leges had re­placed thor­oughly the faith of con­venticles, this moral at­ti­tude trans­lated it­self into a fren­zied pur­it­an­ism of am­bi­tion.  He nursed it as some­thing sec­u­larly holy.  To see it thwarted opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, whose mor­al­ity was ar­ti­fi­cial, cor­rupt, and blas­phem­ous.  The way of even the most jus­ti­fi­able re­volu­tions is pre­pared by per­sonal im­pulses dis­guised into creeds.  The Pro­fessor’s in­dig­na­tion found in it­self a fi­nal cause that ab­solved him from the sin of turn­ing to de­struc­tion as the agent of his am­bi­tion.  To des­troy pub­lic faith in leg­al­ity was the im­per­fect for­mula of his pedantic fan­at­icism; but the sub­con­scious con­vic­tion that the frame­work of an es­tab­lished so­cial or­der can­not be ef­fec­tu­ally shattered ex­cept by some form of col­lect­ive or in­di­vidual vi­ol­ence was pre­cise and cor­rect.  He was a moral agent—that was settled in his mind.  By ex­er­cising his agency with ruth­less de­fi­ance he pro­cured for him­self the ap­pear­ances of power and per­sonal prestige.  That was un­deni­able to his venge­ful bit­ter­ness.  It pa­ci­fied its un­rest; and in their own way the most ar­dent of re­volu­tion­ar­ies are per­haps do­ing no more but seek­ing for peace in com­mon with the rest of man­kind—the peace of soothed van­ity, of sat­is­fied ap­pet­ites, or per­haps of ap­peased con­science.

Lost in the crowd, miser­able and un­der­sized, he med­it­ated con­fid­ently on his power, keep­ing his hand in the left pocket of his trousers, grasp­ing lightly the in­dia-rub­ber ball, the su­preme guar­an­tee of his sin­is­ter free­dom; but after a while he be­came dis­agree­ably af­fected by the sight of the road­way thronged with vehicles and of the pave­ment crowded with men and wo­men.  He was in a long, straight street, peopled by a mere frac­tion of an im­mense mul­ti­tude; but all round him, on and on, even to the lim­its of the ho­ri­zon hid­den by the enorm­ous piles of bricks, he felt the mass of man­kind mighty in its num­bers.  They swarmed nu­mer­ous like lo­custs, in­dus­tri­ous like ants, thought­less like a nat­ural force, push­ing on blind and or­derly and ab­sorbed, im­per­vi­ous to sen­ti­ment, to lo­gic, to ter­ror too per­haps.

That was the form of doubt he feared most.  Im­per­vi­ous to fear!  Often while walk­ing abroad, when he happened also to come out of him­self, he had such mo­ments of dread­ful and sane mis­trust of man­kind.  What if noth­ing could move them?  Such mo­ments come to all men whose am­bi­tion aims at a dir­ect grasp upon hu­man­ity—to artists, politi­cians, thinkers, re­formers, or saints.  A despic­able emo­tional state this, against which solitude for­ti­fies a su­per­ior char­ac­ter; and with severe ex­ulta­tion the Pro­fessor thought of the refuge of his room, with its pad­locked cup­board, lost in a wil­der­ness of poor houses, the her­mit­age of the per­fect an­arch­ist.  In or­der to reach sooner the point where he could take his om­ni­bus, he turned brusquely out of the pop­u­lous street into a nar­row and dusky al­ley paved with flag­stones.  On one side the low brick houses had in their dusty win­dows the sight­less, moribund look of in­cur­able de­cay—empty shells await­ing de­moli­tion.  From the other side life had not de­par­ted wholly as yet.  Fa­cing the only gas-lamp yawned the cav­ern of a second­hand fur­niture dealer, where, deep in the gloom of a sort of nar­row av­enue wind­ing through a bizarre forest of ward­robes, with an un­der­growth tangle of table legs, a tall pier-glass glimmered like a pool of wa­ter in a wood.  An un­happy, home­less couch, ac­com­pan­ied by two un­re­lated chairs, stood in the open.  The only hu­man be­ing mak­ing use of the al­ley be­sides the Pro­fessor, com­ing stal­wart and erect from the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion, checked his swinging pace sud­denly.

“Hallo!” he said, and stood a little on one side watch­fully.

The Pro­fessor had already stopped, with a ready half turn which brought his shoulders very near the other wall.  His right hand fell lightly on the back of the out­cast couch, the left re­mained pur­pose­fully plunged deep in the trousers pocket, and the round­ness of the heavy rimmed spec­tacles im­par­ted an owl­ish char­ac­ter to his moody, un­per­turbed face.

It was like a meet­ing in a side cor­ridor of a man­sion full of life.  The stal­wart man was buttoned up in a dark over­coat, and car­ried an um­brella.  His hat, tilted back, un­covered a good deal of fore­head, which ap­peared very white in the dusk.  In the dark patches of the or­bits the eye­balls glimmered pier­cingly.  Long, droop­ing mous­taches, the col­our of ripe corn, framed with their points the square block of his shaved chin.

“I am not look­ing for you,” he said curtly.

The Pro­fessor did not stir an inch.  The blen­ded noises of the enorm­ous town sank down to an in­ar­tic­u­late low mur­mur.  Chief In­spector Heat of the Spe­cial Crimes De­part­ment changed his tone.

“Not in a hurry to get home?” he asked, with mock­ing sim­pli­city.

The un­whole­some-look­ing little moral agent of de­struc­tion ex­ul­ted si­lently in the pos­ses­sion of per­sonal prestige, keep­ing in check this man armed with the de­fens­ive man­date of a men­aced so­ci­ety.  More for­tu­nate than Ca­ligula, who wished that the Ro­man Sen­ate had only one head for the bet­ter sat­is­fac­tion of his cruel lust, he be­held in that one man all the forces he had set at de­fi­ance: the force of law, prop­erty, op­pres­sion, and in­justice.  He be­held all his en­emies, and fear­lessly con­fron­ted them all in a su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of his van­ity.  They stood per­plexed be­fore him as if be­fore a dread­ful portent.  He gloated in­wardly over the chance of this meet­ing af­firm­ing his su­peri­or­ity over all the mul­ti­tude of man­kind.

It was in real­ity a chance meet­ing.  Chief In­spector Heat had had a dis­agree­ably busy day since his de­part­ment re­ceived the first tele­gram from Green­wich a little be­fore el­even in the morn­ing.  First of all, the fact of the out­rage be­ing at­temp­ted less than a week after he had as­sured a high of­fi­cial that no out­break of an­arch­ist activ­ity was to be ap­pre­hen­ded was suf­fi­ciently an­noy­ing.  If he ever thought him­self safe in mak­ing a state­ment, it was then.  He had made that state­ment with in­fin­ite sat­is­fac­tion to him­self, be­cause it was clear that the high of­fi­cial de­sired greatly to hear that very thing.  He had af­firmed that noth­ing of the sort could even be thought of without the de­part­ment be­ing aware of it within twenty-four hours; and he had spoken thus in his con­scious­ness of be­ing the great ex­pert of his de­part­ment.  He had gone even so far as to ut­ter words which true wis­dom would have kept back.  But Chief In­spector Heat was not very wise—at least not truly so.  True wis­dom, which is not cer­tain of any­thing in this world of con­tra­dic­tions, would have pre­ven­ted him from at­tain­ing his present po­s­i­tion.  It would have alarmed his su­per­i­ors, and done away with his chances of pro­mo­tion.  His pro­mo­tion had been very rapid.

“There isn’t one of them, sir, that we couldn’t lay our hands on at any time of night and day.  We know what each of them is do­ing hour by hour,” he had de­clared.  And the high of­fi­cial had deigned to smile.  This was so ob­vi­ously the right thing to say for an of­ficer of Chief In­spector Heat’s repu­ta­tion that it was per­fectly de­light­ful.  The high of­fi­cial be­lieved the de­clar­a­tion, which chimed in with his idea of the fit­ness of things.  His wis­dom was of an of­fi­cial kind, or else he might have re­flec­ted upon a mat­ter not of the­ory but of ex­per­i­ence that in the close-woven stuff of re­la­tions between con­spir­ator and po­lice there oc­cur un­ex­pec­ted solu­tions of con­tinu­ity, sud­den holes in space and time.  A given an­arch­ist may be watched inch by inch and minute by minute, but a mo­ment al­ways comes when some­how all sight and touch of him are lost for a few hours, dur­ing which some­thing (gen­er­ally an ex­plo­sion) more or less de­plor­able does hap­pen.  But the high of­fi­cial, car­ried away by his sense of the fit­ness of things, had smiled, and now the re­col­lec­tion of that smile was very an­noy­ing to Chief In­spector Heat, prin­cipal ex­pert in an­arch­ist pro­ced­ure.

This was not the only cir­cum­stance whose re­col­lec­tion de­pressed the usual serenity of the em­in­ent spe­cial­ist.  There was an­other dat­ing back only to that very morn­ing.  The thought that when called ur­gently to his Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner’s private room he had been un­able to con­ceal his as­ton­ish­ment was dis­tinctly vex­ing.  His in­stinct of a suc­cess­ful man had taught him long ago that, as a gen­eral rule, a repu­ta­tion is built on man­ner as much as on achieve­ment.  And he felt that his man­ner when con­fron­ted with the tele­gram had not been im­press­ive.  He had opened his eyes widely, and had ex­claimed “Im­possible!” ex­pos­ing him­self thereby to the un­answer­able re­tort of a fin­ger­tip laid for­cibly on the tele­gram which the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner, after read­ing it aloud, had flung on the desk.  To be crushed, as it were, un­der the tip of a fore­finger was an un­pleas­ant ex­per­i­ence.  Very dam­aging, too!  Fur­ther­more, Chief In­spector Heat was con­scious of not hav­ing men­ded mat­ters by al­low­ing him­self to ex­press a con­vic­tion.

“One thing I can tell you at once: none of our lot had any­thing to do with this.”

He was strong in his in­teg­rity of a good de­tect­ive, but he saw now that an im­pen­et­rably at­tent­ive re­serve to­wards this in­cid­ent would have served his repu­ta­tion bet­ter.  On the other hand, he ad­mit­ted to him­self that it was dif­fi­cult to pre­serve one’s repu­ta­tion if rank out­siders were go­ing to take a hand in the busi­ness.  Out­siders are the bane of the po­lice as of other pro­fes­sions.  The tone of the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner’s re­marks had been sour enough to set one’s teeth on edge.

And since break­fast Chief In­spector Heat had not man­aged to get any­thing to eat.

Start­ing im­me­di­ately to be­gin his in­vest­ig­a­tion on the spot, he had swal­lowed a good deal of raw, un­whole­some fog in the park.  Then he had walked over to the hos­pital; and when the in­vest­ig­a­tion in Green­wich was con­cluded at last he had lost his in­clin­a­tion for food.  Not ac­cus­tomed, as the doc­tors are, to ex­am­ine closely the mangled re­mains of hu­man be­ings, he had been shocked by the sight dis­closed to his view when a wa­ter­proof sheet had been lif­ted off a table in a cer­tain apart­ment of the hos­pital.

Another wa­ter­proof sheet was spread over that table in the man­ner of a table­cloth, with the corners turned up over a sort of mound—a heap of rags, scorched and blood­stained, half con­ceal­ing what might have been an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of raw ma­ter­ial for a can­ni­bal feast.  It re­quired con­sid­er­able firm­ness of mind not to re­coil be­fore that sight.  Chief In­spector Heat, an ef­fi­cient of­ficer of his de­part­ment, stood his ground, but for a whole minute he did not ad­vance.  A local con­stable in uni­form cast a side­long glance, and said, with stolid sim­pli­city:

“He’s all there.  Every bit of him.  It was a job.”

He had been the first man on the spot after the ex­plo­sion.  He men­tioned the fact again.  He had seen some­thing like a heavy flash of light­ning in the fog.  At that time he was stand­ing at the door of the King Wil­liam Street Lodge talk­ing to the keeper.  The con­cus­sion made him tingle all over.  He ran between the trees to­wards the Ob­ser­vat­ory.  “As fast as my legs would carry me,” he re­peated twice.

Chief In­spector Heat, bend­ing for­ward over the table in a gingerly and hor­ri­fied man­ner, let him run on.  The hos­pital porter and an­other man turned down the corners of the cloth, and stepped aside.  The Chief In­spector’s eyes searched the grue­some de­tail of that heap of mixed things, which seemed to have been col­lec­ted in shambles and rag shops.

“You used a shovel,” he re­marked, ob­serving a sprink­ling of small gravel, tiny brown bits of bark, and particles of splintered wood as fine as needles.

“Had to in one place,” said the stolid con­stable.  “I sent a keeper to fetch a spade.  When he heard me scrap­ing the ground with it he leaned his fore­head against a tree, and was as sick as a dog.”

The Chief In­spector, stoop­ing guardedly over the table, fought down the un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tion in his throat.  The shat­ter­ing vi­ol­ence of de­struc­tion which had made of that body a heap of name­less frag­ments af­fected his feel­ings with a sense of ruth­less cruelty, though his reason told him the ef­fect must have been as swift as a flash of light­ning.  The man, who­ever he was, had died in­stant­an­eously; and yet it seemed im­possible to be­lieve that a hu­man body could have reached that state of dis­in­teg­ra­tion without passing through the pangs of in­con­ceiv­able agony.  No physiolo­gist, and still less of a meta­phys­i­cian, Chief In­spector Heat rose by the force of sym­pathy, which is a form of fear, above the vul­gar con­cep­tion of time.  In­stant­an­eous!  He re­membered all he had ever read in pop­u­lar pub­lic­a­tions of long and ter­ri­fy­ing dreams dreamed in the in­stant of wak­ing; of the whole past life lived with fright­ful in­tens­ity by a drown­ing man as his doomed head bobs up, stream­ing, for the last time.  The in­ex­plic­able mys­ter­ies of con­scious ex­ist­ence be­set Chief In­spector Heat till he evolved a hor­rible no­tion that ages of at­ro­cious pain and men­tal tor­ture could be con­tained between two suc­cess­ive winks of an eye.  And mean­time the Chief In­spector went on, peer­ing at the table with a calm face and the slightly anxious at­ten­tion of an in­di­gent cus­tomer bend­ing over what may be called the byproducts of a butcher’s shop with a view to an in­ex­pens­ive Sunday din­ner.  All the time his trained fac­ulties of an ex­cel­lent in­vest­ig­ator, who scorns no chance of in­form­a­tion, fol­lowed the self-sat­is­fied, dis­join­ted lo­qua­city of the con­stable.

“A fair-haired fel­low,” the last ob­served in a pla­cid tone, and paused.  “The old wo­man who spoke to the ser­geant no­ticed a fair-haired fel­low com­ing out of Maze Hill Sta­tion.”  He paused.  “And he was a fair-haired fel­low.  She no­ticed two men com­ing out of the sta­tion after the uptrain had gone on,” he con­tin­ued slowly.  “She couldn’t tell if they were to­gether.  She took no par­tic­u­lar no­tice of the big one, but the other was a fair, slight chap, car­ry­ing a tin var­nish can in one hand.”  The con­stable ceased.

“Know the wo­man?” muttered the Chief In­spector, with his eyes fixed on the table, and a vague no­tion in his mind of an in­quest to be held presently upon a per­son likely to re­main forever un­known.

“Yes.  She’s house­keeper to a re­tired pub­lican, and at­tends the chapel in Park Place some­times,” the con­stable uttered weight­ily, and paused, with an­other ob­lique glance at the table.

Then sud­denly: “Well, here he is—all of him I could see.  Fair.  Slight—slight enough.  Look at that foot there.  I picked up the legs first, one after an­other.  He was that scattered you didn’t know where to be­gin.”

The con­stable paused; the least flicker of an in­no­cent self-laud­at­ory smile in­ves­ted his round face with an in­fant­ile ex­pres­sion.

“Stumbled,” he an­nounced pos­it­ively.  “I stumbled once my­self, and pitched on my head too, while run­ning up.  Them roots do stick out all about the place.  Stumbled against the root of a tree and fell, and that thing he was car­ry­ing must have gone off right un­der his chest, I ex­pect.”

The echo of the words “Per­son un­known” re­peat­ing it­self in his in­ner con­scious­ness bothered the Chief In­spector con­sid­er­ably.  He would have liked to trace this af­fair back to its mys­ter­i­ous ori­gin for his own in­form­a­tion.  He was pro­fes­sion­ally curi­ous.  Be­fore the pub­lic he would have liked to vin­dic­ate the ef­fi­ciency of his de­part­ment by es­tab­lish­ing the iden­tity of that man.  He was a loyal ser­vant.  That, how­ever, ap­peared im­possible.  The first term of the prob­lem was un­read­able—lacked all sug­ges­tion but that of at­ro­cious cruelty.

Over­com­ing his phys­ical re­pug­nance, Chief In­spector Heat stretched out his hand without con­vic­tion for the salv­ing of his con­science, and took up the least soiled of the rags.  It was a nar­row strip of vel­vet with a lar­ger tri­an­gu­lar piece of dark blue cloth hanging from it.  He held it up to his eyes; and the po­lice con­stable spoke.

“Vel­vet col­lar.  Funny the old wo­man should have no­ticed the vel­vet col­lar.  Dark blue over­coat with a vel­vet col­lar, she has told us.  He was the chap she saw, and no mis­take.  And here he is all com­plete, vel­vet col­lar and all.  I don’t think I missed a single piece as big as a post­age stamp.”

At this point the trained fac­ulties of the Chief In­spector ceased to hear the voice of the con­stable.  He moved to one of the win­dows for bet­ter light.  His face, aver­ted from the room, ex­pressed a startled in­tense in­terest while he ex­amined closely the tri­an­gu­lar piece of broad­cloth.  By a sud­den jerk he de­tached it, and only after stuff­ing it into his pocket turned round to the room, and flung the vel­vet col­lar back on the table—

“Cover up,” he dir­ec­ted the at­tend­ants curtly, without an­other look, and, sa­luted by the con­stable, car­ried off his spoil hast­ily.

A con­veni­ent train whirled him up to town, alone and pon­der­ing deeply, in a third-class com­part­ment.  That singed piece of cloth was in­cred­ibly valu­able, and he could not de­fend him­self from as­ton­ish­ment at the cas­ual man­ner it had come into his pos­ses­sion.  It was as if Fate had thrust that clue into his hands.  And after the man­ner of the av­er­age man, whose am­bi­tion is to com­mand events, he began to mis­trust such a gra­tu­it­ous and ac­ci­dental suc­cess—just be­cause it seemed forced upon him.  The prac­tical value of suc­cess de­pends not a little on the way you look at it.  But Fate looks at noth­ing.  It has no dis­cre­tion.  He no longer con­sidered it em­in­ently de­sir­able all round to es­tab­lish pub­licly the iden­tity of the man who had blown him­self up that morn­ing with such hor­rible com­plete­ness.  But he was not cer­tain of the view his de­part­ment would take.  A de­part­ment is to those it em­ploys a com­plex per­son­al­ity with ideas and even fads of its own.  It de­pends on the loyal de­vo­tion of its ser­vants, and the de­voted loy­alty of trus­ted ser­vants is as­so­ci­ated with a cer­tain amount of af­fec­tion­ate con­tempt, which keeps it sweet, as it were.  By a be­ne­vol­ent pro­vi­sion of Nature no man is a hero to his valet, or else the her­oes would have to brush their own clothes.  Like­wise no de­part­ment ap­pears per­fectly wise to the in­tim­acy of its work­ers.  A de­part­ment does not know so much as some of its ser­vants.  Be­ing a dis­pas­sion­ate or­gan­ism, it can never be per­fectly in­formed.  It would not be good for its ef­fi­ciency to know too much.  Chief In­spector Heat got out of the train in a state of thought­ful­ness en­tirely un­tain­ted with dis­loy­alty, but not quite free of that jeal­ous mis­trust which so of­ten springs on the ground of per­fect de­vo­tion, whether to wo­men or to in­sti­tu­tions.

It was in this men­tal dis­pos­i­tion, phys­ic­ally very empty, but still naus­eated by what he had seen, that he had come upon the Pro­fessor.  Under these con­di­tions which make for iras­cib­il­ity in a sound, nor­mal man, this meet­ing was spe­cially un­wel­come to Chief In­spector Heat.  He had not been think­ing of the Pro­fessor; he had not been think­ing of any in­di­vidual an­arch­ist at all.  The com­plex­ion of that case had some­how forced upon him the gen­eral idea of the ab­surdity of things hu­man, which in the ab­stract is suf­fi­ciently an­noy­ing to an un­philo­soph­ical tem­pera­ment, and in con­crete in­stances be­comes ex­as­per­at­ing bey­ond en­dur­ance.  At the be­gin­ning of his ca­reer Chief In­spector Heat had been con­cerned with the more en­er­getic forms of thiev­ing.  He had gained his spurs in that sphere, and nat­ur­ally enough had kept for it, after his pro­mo­tion to an­other de­part­ment, a feel­ing not very far re­moved from af­fec­tion.  Thiev­ing was not a sheer ab­surdity.  It was a form of hu­man in­dustry, per­verse in­deed, but still an in­dustry ex­er­cised in an in­dus­tri­ous world; it was work un­der­taken for the same reason as the work in pot­ter­ies, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grind­ing shops.  It was la­bour, whose prac­tical dif­fer­ence from the other forms of la­bour con­sisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in an­kyl­osis, or lead pois­on­ing, or firedamp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own spe­cial phras­eo­logy as “Seven years hard.”  Chief In­spector Heat was, of course, not in­sens­ible to the grav­ity of moral dif­fer­ences.  But neither were the thieves he had been look­ing after.  They sub­mit­ted to the severe sanc­tions of a mor­al­ity fa­mil­iar to Chief In­spector Heat with a cer­tain resig­na­tion.

They were his fel­low-cit­izens gone wrong be­cause of im­per­fect edu­ca­tion, Chief In­spector Heat be­lieved; but al­low­ing for that dif­fer­ence, he could un­der­stand the mind of a burg­lar, be­cause, as a mat­ter of fact, the mind and the in­stincts of a burg­lar are of the same kind as the mind and the in­stincts of a po­lice of­ficer.  Both re­cog­nise the same con­ven­tions, and have a work­ing know­ledge of each other’s meth­ods and of the routine of their re­spect­ive trades.  They un­der­stand each other, which is ad­vant­age­ous to both, and es­tab­lishes a sort of amen­ity in their re­la­tions.  Products of the same ma­chine, one classed as use­ful and the other as nox­ious, they take the ma­chine for gran­ted in dif­fer­ent ways, but with a ser­i­ous­ness es­sen­tially the same.  The mind of Chief In­spector Heat was in­ac­cess­ible to ideas of re­volt.  But his thieves were not rebels.  His bod­ily vigour, his cool in­flex­ible man­ner, his cour­age and his fair­ness, had se­cured for him much re­spect and some ad­u­la­tion in the sphere of his early suc­cesses.  He had felt him­self revered and ad­mired.  And Chief In­spector Heat, ar­res­ted within six paces of the an­arch­ist nick­named the Pro­fessor, gave a thought of re­gret to the world of thieves—sane, without mor­bid ideals, work­ing by routine, re­spect­ful of con­sti­tuted au­thor­it­ies, free from all taint of hate and des­pair.

After pay­ing this trib­ute to what is nor­mal in the con­sti­tu­tion of so­ci­ety (for the idea of thiev­ing ap­peared to his in­stinct as nor­mal as the idea of prop­erty), Chief In­spector Heat felt very angry with him­self for hav­ing stopped, for hav­ing spoken, for hav­ing taken that way at all on the ground of it be­ing a short­cut from the sta­tion to the headquar­ters.  And he spoke again in his big au­thor­it­at­ive voice, which, be­ing mod­er­ated, had a threat­en­ing char­ac­ter.

“You are not wanted, I tell you,” he re­peated.

The an­arch­ist did not stir.  An in­ward laugh of de­ri­sion un­covered not only his teeth but his gums as well, shook him all over, without the slight­est sound.  Chief In­spector Heat was led to add, against his bet­ter judg­ment:

“Not yet.  When I want you I will know where to find you.”

Those were per­fectly proper words, within the tra­di­tion and suit­able to his char­ac­ter of a po­lice of­ficer ad­dress­ing one of his spe­cial flock.  But the re­cep­tion they got de­par­ted from tra­di­tion and pro­pri­ety.  It was out­rageous.  The stun­ted, weakly fig­ure be­fore him spoke at last.

“I’ve no doubt the pa­pers would give you an ob­it­u­ary no­tice then.  You know best what that would be worth to you.  I should think you can ima­gine eas­ily the sort of stuff that would be prin­ted.  But you may be ex­posed to the un­pleas­ant­ness of be­ing bur­ied to­gether with me, though I sup­pose your friends would make an ef­fort to sort us out as much as pos­sible.”

With all his healthy con­tempt for the spirit dic­tat­ing such speeches, the at­ro­cious al­lus­ive­ness of the words had its ef­fect on Chief In­spector Heat.  He had too much in­sight, and too much ex­act in­form­a­tion as well, to dis­miss them as rot.  The dusk of this nar­row lane took on a sin­is­ter tint from the dark, frail little fig­ure, its back to the wall, and speak­ing with a weak, self-con­fid­ent voice.  To the vig­or­ous, ten­a­cious vi­tal­ity of the Chief In­spector, the phys­ical wretched­ness of that be­ing, so ob­vi­ously not fit to live, was omin­ous; for it seemed to him that if he had the mis­for­tune to be such a miser­able ob­ject he would not have cared how soon he died.  Life had such a strong hold upon him that a fresh wave of nausea broke out in slight per­spir­a­tion upon his brow.  The mur­mur of town life, the sub­dued rumble of wheels in the two in­vis­ible streets to the right and left, came through the curve of the sor­did lane to his ears with a pre­cious fa­mili­ar­ity and an ap­peal­ing sweet­ness.  He was hu­man.  But Chief In­spector Heat was also a man, and he could not let such words pass.

“All this is good to frighten chil­dren with,” he said.  “I’ll have you yet.”

It was very well said, without scorn, with an al­most aus­tere quiet­ness.

“Doubt­less,” was the an­swer; “but there’s no time like the present, be­lieve me.  For a man of real con­vic­tions this is a fine op­por­tun­ity of self-sac­ri­fice.  You may not find an­other so fa­vour­able, so hu­mane.  There isn’t even a cat near us, and these con­demned old houses would make a good heap of bricks where you stand.  You’ll never get me at so little cost to life and prop­erty, which you are paid to pro­tect.”

“You don’t know who you’re speak­ing to,” said Chief In­spector Heat firmly.  “If I were to lay my hands on you now I would be no bet­ter than your­self.”

“Ah!  The game!’

“You may be sure our side will win in the end.  It may yet be ne­ces­sary to make people be­lieve that some of you ought to be shot at sight like mad dogs.  Then that will be the game.  But I’ll be damned if I know what yours is.  I don’t be­lieve you know yourselves.  You’ll never get any­thing by it.”

“Mean­time it’s you who get some­thing from it—so far.  And you get it eas­ily, too.  I won’t speak of your salary, but haven’t you made your name simply by not un­der­stand­ing what we are after?”

“What are you after, then?” asked Chief In­spector Heat, with scorn­ful haste, like a man in a hurry who per­ceives he is wast­ing his time.

The per­fect an­arch­ist answered by a smile which did not part his thin col­our­less lips; and the cel­eb­rated Chief In­spector felt a sense of su­peri­or­ity which in­duced him to raise a warn­ing fin­ger.

“Give it up—whatever it is,” he said in an ad­mon­ish­ing tone, but not so kindly as if he were con­des­cend­ing to give good ad­vice to a cracks­man of re­pute.  “Give it up.  You’ll find we are too many for you.”

The fixed smile on the Pro­fessor’s lips wavered, as if the mock­ing spirit within had lost its as­sur­ance.  Chief In­spector Heat went on:

“Don’t you be­lieve me eh?  Well, you’ve only got to look about you.  We are.  And any­way, you’re not do­ing it well.  You’re al­ways mak­ing a mess of it.  Why, if the thieves didn’t know their work bet­ter they would starve.”

The hint of an in­vin­cible mul­ti­tude be­hind that man’s back roused a sombre in­dig­na­tion in the breast of the Pro­fessor.  He smiled no longer his en­ig­matic and mock­ing smile.  The res­ist­ing power of num­bers, the un­at­tack­able stolid­ity of a great mul­ti­tude, was the haunt­ing fear of his sin­is­ter loneli­ness.  His lips trembled for some time be­fore he man­aged to say in a strangled voice:

“I am do­ing my work bet­ter than you’re do­ing yours.”

“That’ll do now,” in­ter­rup­ted Chief In­spector Heat hur­riedly; and the Pro­fessor laughed right out this time.  While still laugh­ing he moved on; but he did not laugh long.  It was a sad-faced, miser­able little man who emerged from the nar­row pas­sage into the bustle of the broad thor­ough­fare.  He walked with the nerve­less gait of a tramp go­ing on, still go­ing on, in­dif­fer­ent to rain or sun in a sin­is­ter de­tach­ment from the as­pects of sky and earth.  Chief In­spector Heat, on the other hand, after watch­ing him for a while, stepped out with the pur­pose­ful briskness of a man dis­reg­ard­ing in­deed the in­clem­en­cies of the weather, but con­scious of hav­ing an au­thor­ised mis­sion on this earth and the moral sup­port of his kind.  All the in­hab­it­ants of the im­mense town, the pop­u­la­tion of the whole coun­try, and even the teem­ing mil­lions strug­gling upon the planet, were with him—down to the very thieves and men­dic­ants.  Yes, the thieves them­selves were sure to be with him in his present work.  The con­scious­ness of uni­ver­sal sup­port in his gen­eral activ­ity heartened him to grapple with the par­tic­u­lar prob­lem.

The prob­lem im­me­di­ately be­fore the Chief In­spector was that of man­aging the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner of his de­part­ment, his im­me­di­ate su­per­ior.  This is the per­en­nial prob­lem of trusty and loyal ser­vants; an­arch­ism gave it its par­tic­u­lar com­plex­ion, but noth­ing more.  Truth to say, Chief In­spector Heat thought but little of an­arch­ism.  He did not at­tach un­due im­port­ance to it, and could never bring him­self to con­sider it ser­i­ously.  It had more the char­ac­ter of dis­orderly con­duct; dis­orderly without the hu­man ex­cuse of drunk­en­ness, which at any rate im­plies good feel­ing and an ami­able lean­ing to­wards fest­iv­ity.  As crim­in­als, an­arch­ists were dis­tinctly no class—no class at all.  And re­call­ing the Pro­fessor, Chief In­spector Heat, without check­ing his swinging pace, muttered through his teeth:

“Lun­atic.”

Catch­ing thieves was an­other mat­ter al­to­gether.  It had that qual­ity of ser­i­ous­ness be­long­ing to every form of open sport where the best man wins un­der per­fectly com­pre­hens­ible rules.  There were no rules for deal­ing with an­arch­ists.  And that was dis­taste­ful to the Chief In­spector.  It was all fool­ish­ness, but that fool­ish­ness ex­cited the pub­lic mind, af­fected per­sons in high places, and touched upon in­ter­na­tional re­la­tions.  A hard, mer­ci­less con­tempt settled ri­gidly on the Chief In­spector’s face as he walked on.  His mind ran over all the an­arch­ists of his flock.  Not one of them had half the spunk of this or that burg­lar he had known.  Not half—not one-tenth.

At headquar­ters the Chief In­spector was ad­mit­ted at once to the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner’s private room.  He found him, pen in hand, bent over a great table be­strewn with pa­pers, as if wor­ship­ping an enorm­ous double ink­stand of bronze and crys­tal.  Speak­ing tubes re­sem­bling snakes were tied by the heads to the back of the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner’s wooden arm­chair, and their gap­ing mouths seemed ready to bite his el­bows.  And in this at­ti­tude he raised only his eyes, whose lids were darker than his face and very much creased.  The re­ports had come in: every an­arch­ist had been ex­actly ac­coun­ted for.

After say­ing this he lowered his eyes, signed rap­idly two single sheets of pa­per, and only then laid down his pen, and sat well back, dir­ect­ing an in­quir­ing gaze at his renowned sub­or­din­ate.  The Chief In­spector stood it well, de­fer­en­tial but in­scrut­able.

“I daresay you were right,” said the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner, “in telling me at first that the Lon­don an­arch­ists had noth­ing to do with this.  I quite ap­pre­ci­ate the ex­cel­lent watch kept on them by your men.  On the other hand, this, for the pub­lic, does not amount to more than a con­fes­sion of ig­nor­ance.”

The Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner’s de­liv­ery was leis­urely, as it were cau­tious.  His thought seemed to rest poised on a word be­fore passing to an­other, as though words had been the step­ping-stones for his in­tel­lect pick­ing its way across the wa­ters of er­ror.  “Un­less you have brought some­thing use­ful from Green­wich,” he ad­ded.

The Chief In­spector began at once the ac­count of his in­vest­ig­a­tion in a clear mat­ter-of-fact man­ner.  His su­per­ior turn­ing his chair a little, and cross­ing his thin legs, leaned side­ways on his el­bow, with one hand shad­ing his eyes.  His listen­ing at­ti­tude had a sort of an­gu­lar and sor­row­ful grace.  Gleams as of highly burn­ished sil­ver played on the sides of his ebony black head when he in­clined it slowly at the end.

Chief In­spector Heat waited with the ap­pear­ance of turn­ing over in his mind all he had just said, but, as a mat­ter of fact, con­sid­er­ing the ad­vis­ab­il­ity of say­ing some­thing more.  The Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner cut his hes­it­a­tion short.

“You be­lieve there were two men?” he asked, without un­cov­er­ing his eyes.

The Chief In­spector thought it more than prob­able.  In his opin­ion, the two men had par­ted from each other within a hun­dred yards from the Ob­ser­vat­ory walls.  He ex­plained also how the other man could have got out of the park speedily without be­ing ob­served.  The fog, though not very dense, was in his fa­vour.  He seemed to have es­cor­ted the other to the spot, and then to have left him there to do the job single-handed.  Tak­ing the time those two were seen com­ing out of Maze Hill Sta­tion by the old wo­man, and the time when the ex­plo­sion was heard, the Chief In­spector thought that the other man might have been ac­tu­ally at the Green­wich Park Sta­tion, ready to catch the next train up, at the mo­ment his com­rade was des­troy­ing him­self so thor­oughly.

“Very thor­oughly—eh?” mur­mured the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner from un­der the shadow of his hand.

The Chief In­spector in a few vig­or­ous words de­scribed the as­pect of the re­mains.  “The cor­oner’s jury will have a treat,” he ad­ded grimly.

The Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner un­covered his eyes.

“We shall have noth­ing to tell them,” he re­marked lan­guidly.

He looked up, and for a time watched the markedly non­com­mit­tal at­ti­tude of his Chief In­spector.  His nature was one that is not eas­ily ac­cess­ible to il­lu­sions.  He knew that a de­part­ment is at the mercy of its sub­or­din­ate of­ficers, who have their own con­cep­tions of loy­alty.  His ca­reer had be­gun in a trop­ical colony.  He had liked his work there.  It was po­lice work.  He had been very suc­cess­ful in track­ing and break­ing up cer­tain ne­far­i­ous secret so­ci­et­ies amongst the nat­ives.  Then he took his long leave, and got mar­ried rather im­puls­ively.  It was a good match from a worldly point of view, but his wife formed an un­fa­vour­able opin­ion of the co­lo­nial cli­mate on hearsay evid­ence.  On the other hand, she had in­flu­en­tial con­nec­tions.  It was an ex­cel­lent match.  But he did not like the work he had to do now.  He felt him­self de­pend­ent on too many sub­or­din­ates and too many mas­ters.  The near pres­ence of that strange emo­tional phe­nomenon called pub­lic opin­ion weighed upon his spir­its, and alarmed him by its ir­ra­tional nature.  No doubt that from ig­nor­ance he ex­ag­ger­ated to him­self its power for good and evil—es­pe­cially for evil; and the rough east winds of the Eng­lish spring (which agreed with his wife) aug­men­ted his gen­eral mis­trust of men’s motives and of the ef­fi­ciency of their or­gan­isa­tion.  The fu­til­ity of of­fice work es­pe­cially ap­palled him on those days so try­ing to his sens­it­ive liver.

He got up, un­fold­ing him­self to his full height, and with a heav­i­ness of step re­mark­able in so slender a man, moved across the room to the win­dow.  The panes streamed with rain, and the short street he looked down into lay wet and empty, as if swept clear sud­denly by a great flood.  It was a very try­ing day, choked in raw fog to be­gin with, and now drowned in cold rain.  The flick­er­ing, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dis­solv­ing in a wa­tery at­mo­sphere.  And the lofty pre­ten­sions of a man­kind op­pressed by the miser­able in­dig­nit­ies of the weather ap­peared as a co­lossal and hope­less van­ity de­serving of scorn, won­der, and com­pas­sion.

“Hor­rible, hor­rible!” thought the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner to him­self, with his face near the win­dowpane.  “We have been hav­ing this sort of thing now for ten days; no, a fort­night—a fort­night.”  He ceased to think com­pletely for a time.  That ut­ter still­ness of his brain las­ted about three seconds.  Then he said per­func­tor­ily: “You have set in­quir­ies on foot for tra­cing that other man up and down the line?”

He had no doubt that everything need­ful had been done.  Chief In­spector Heat knew, of course, thor­oughly the busi­ness of man-hunt­ing.  And these were the routine steps, too, that would be taken as a mat­ter of course by the merest be­gin­ner.  A few in­quir­ies amongst the ticket col­lect­ors and the port­ers of the two small rail­way sta­tions would give ad­di­tional de­tails as to the ap­pear­ance of the two men; the in­spec­tion of the col­lec­ted tick­ets would show at once where they came from that morn­ing.  It was ele­ment­ary, and could not have been neg­lected.  Ac­cord­ingly the Chief In­spector answered that all this had been done dir­ectly the old wo­man had come for­ward with her de­pos­ition.  And he men­tioned the name of a sta­tion.  “That’s where they came from, sir,” he went on.  “The porter who took the tick­ets at Maze Hill re­mem­bers two chaps an­swer­ing to the de­scrip­tion passing the bar­rier.  They seemed to him two re­spect­able work­ing men of a su­per­ior sort—sign paint­ers or house dec­or­at­ors.  The big man got out of a third-class com­part­ment back­ward, with a bright tin can in his hand.  On the plat­form he gave it to carry to the fair young fel­low who fol­lowed him.  All this agrees ex­actly with what the old wo­man told the po­lice ser­geant in Green­wich.”

The Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner, still with his face turned to the win­dow, ex­pressed his doubt as to these two men hav­ing had any­thing to do with the out­rage.  All this the­ory res­ted upon the ut­ter­ances of an old char­wo­man who had been nearly knocked down by a man in a hurry.  Not a very sub­stan­tial au­thor­ity in­deed, un­less on the ground of sud­den in­spir­a­tion, which was hardly ten­able.

“Frankly now, could she have been really in­spired?” he quer­ied, with grave irony, keep­ing his back to the room, as if en­tranced by the con­tem­pla­tion of the town’s co­lossal forms half lost in the night.  He did not even look round when he heard the mut­ter of the word “Provid­en­tial” from the prin­cipal sub­or­din­ate of his de­part­ment, whose name, prin­ted some­times in the pa­pers, was fa­mil­iar to the great pub­lic as that of one of its zeal­ous and hard­work­ing pro­tect­ors.  Chief In­spector Heat raised his voice a little.

“Strips and bits of bright tin were quite vis­ible to me,” he said.  “That’s a pretty good cor­rob­or­a­tion.”

“And these men came from that little coun­try sta­tion,” the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner mused aloud, won­der­ing.  He was told that such was the name on two tick­ets out of three given up out of that train at Maze Hill.  The third per­son who got out was a hawker from Gravesend well known to the port­ers.  The Chief In­spector im­par­ted that in­form­a­tion in a tone of fi­nal­ity with some ill hu­mour, as loyal ser­vants will do in the con­scious­ness of their fi­del­ity and with the sense of the value of their loyal ex­er­tions.  And still the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner did not turn away from the dark­ness out­side, as vast as a sea.

“Two for­eign an­arch­ists com­ing from that place,” he said, ap­par­ently to the win­dowpane.  “It’s rather un­ac­count­able.” ’

“Yes, sir.  But it would be still more un­ac­count­able if that Mi­chaelis weren’t stay­ing in a cot­tage in the neigh­bour­hood.”

At the sound of that name, fall­ing un­ex­pec­tedly into this an­noy­ing af­fair, the Assist­ant Com­mis­sioner dis­missed brusquely the vague re­mem­brance of his daily whist party at his club.  It was the most com­fort­ing habit of his life, in a mainly suc­cess­ful dis­play of his skill without the as­sist­ance of any sub­or­din­ate.  He entered his club to play from five to seven, be­fore go­ing home to din­ner, for­get­ting for those two hours whatever was dis­taste­ful in his life, as though the game were a be­ne­fi­cent drug for al­lay­ing the pangs of moral dis­con­tent.  His part­ners were the gloomily hu­mor­ous ed­itor of a cel­eb­rated magazine; a si­lent, eld­erly bar­ris­ter with ma­li­cious little eyes; and a highly mar­tial, simple-minded old Co­l­onel with nervous brown hands.  They were his club ac­quaint­ances merely.  He never met them else­where ex­cept at the card-table.  But they all seemed to ap­proach the game in the spirit of co-suf­fer­ers, as if it were in­deed a drug against the secret ills of ex­ist­ence; and every day as the sun de­clined over the count­less roofs of the town, a mel­low, pleas­ur­able im­pa­tience, re­sem­bling the im­pulse of a sure and pro­found friend­ship, lightened his pro­fes­sional la­bours.  And now this pleas­ur­able sen­sa­tion went out of him with some­thing re­sem­bling a phys­ical shock, and was re­placed by a spe­cial kind of in­terest in his work of so­cial pro­tec­tion—an im­proper sort of in­terest, which may be defined best as a sud­den and alert mis­trust of the weapon in his hand.

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 wrong­headed.  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 arm­chairs 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 ringlead­ers 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 arm­chair 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 semiprivate 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 win­dowpane 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 tightrope 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 arm­chair, 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 tightrope 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 busi­ness­like 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 shin­bones 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.