To Edmund Clerihew Bentley

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wail­ing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys to­gether.
Science an­nounced non­entity and art ad­mired de­cay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic or­der their crippled vices came—
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whist­ler, that lit our aim­less gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old in­deed when you and I were young.
They twis­ted even de­cent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of hon­our; but we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and fool­ish, not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heav­ens he had no hymns from us.
Chil­dren we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up to break that bit­ter sea.
Fools as we were in mot­ley, all jangling and ab­surd,
When all church bells were si­lent our cap and bells were heard.

Not all un­helped we held the fort, our tiny flags un­furled;
Some gi­ants la­boured in that cloud to lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Pau­manok some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carna­tion withered, as in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world ten mil­lion leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sud­den as a bird sings in the rain—
Truth out of Tus­it­ala spoke and pleas­ure out of pain.
Yea, cool and clear and sud­den as a bird sings in the grey,
Du­nedin to Samoa spoke, and dark­ness unto day.
But we were young; we lived to see God break their bit­ter charms.
God and the good Re­pub­lic come rid­ing back in arms:
We have seen the City of Man­soul, even as it rocked, re­lieved—
Blessed are they who did not see, but be­ing blind, be­lieved.

This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emp­tied hells,
And none but you shall un­der­stand the true thing that it tells—
Of what co­lossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge dev­ils hid the stars, yet fell at a pis­tol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dread­ful to with­stand—
Oh, who shall un­der­stand but you; yea, who shall un­der­stand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in strik­ing root and good in grow­ing old.
We have found com­mon things at last and mar­riage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

G. K. C.

The Man Who Was Thursday A Nightmare

I The Two Poets of Saffron Park

The sub­urb of Saf­fron Park lay on the sun­set side of Lon­don, as red and ragged as a cloud of sun­set. It was built of a bright brick through­out; its sky­line was fant­astic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the out­burst of a spec­u­lat­ive builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its ar­chi­tec­ture some­times El­iza­bethan and some­times Queen Anne, ap­par­ently un­der the im­pres­sion that the two sov­er­eigns were identical. It was de­scribed with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any defin­able way pro­duced any art. But al­though its pre­ten­sions to be an in­tel­lec­tual centre were a little vague, its pre­ten­sions to be a pleas­ant place were quite in­dis­put­able. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he dis­ap­poin­ted in this re­spect. The place was not only pleas­ant, but per­fect, if once he could re­gard it not as a de­cep­tion but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was nev­er­the­less artistic. That young man with the long, au­burn hair and the im­pudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gen­tle­man with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that ven­er­able hum­bug was not really a philo­sopher; but at least he was the cause of philo­sophy in oth­ers. That sci­entific gen­tle­man with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of sci­ence that he as­sumed. He had not dis­covered any­thing new in bio­logy; but what bio­lo­gical creature could he have dis­covered more sin­gu­lar than him­self? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had prop­erly to be re­garded; it had to be con­sidered not so much as a work­shop for artists, but as a frail but fin­ished work of art. A man who stepped into its so­cial at­mo­sphere felt as if he had stepped into a writ­ten com­edy.

More es­pe­cially this at­tract­ive un­real­ity fell upon it about night­fall, when the ex­tra­vag­ant roofs were dark against the af­ter­glow and the whole in­sane vil­lage seemed as sep­ar­ate as a drift­ing cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many nights of local fest­iv­ity, when the little gar­dens were of­ten il­lu­min­ated, and the big Chinese lan­terns glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and mon­strous fruit. And this was strongest of all on one par­tic­u­lar even­ing, still vaguely re­membered in the loc­al­ity, of which the au­burn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only even­ing of which he was the hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden might hear his high, di­dactic voice lay­ing down the law to men and par­tic­u­larly to wo­men. The at­ti­tude of wo­men in such cases was in­deed one of the para­doxes of the place. Most of the wo­men were of the kind vaguely called eman­cip­ated, and pro­fessed some protest against male su­prem­acy. Yet these new wo­men would al­ways pay to a man the ex­tra­vag­ant com­pli­ment which no or­din­ary wo­man ever pays to him, that of listen­ing while he is talk­ing. And Mr. Lu­cian Gregory, the red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth listen­ing to, even if one only laughed at the end of it. He put the old cant of the law­less­ness of art and the art of law­less­ness with a cer­tain im­pudent fresh­ness which gave at least a mo­ment­ary pleas­ure. He was helped in some de­gree by the ar­rest­ing oddity of his ap­pear­ance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair par­ted in the middle was lit­er­ally like a wo­man’s, and curved into the slow curls of a vir­gin in a pre-Raphael­ite pic­ture. From within this al­most saintly oval, how­ever, his face pro­jec­ted sud­denly broad and bru­tal, the chin car­ried for­ward with a look of cock­ney con­tempt. This com­bin­a­tion at once tickled and ter­ri­fied the nerves of a neur­otic pop­u­la­tion. He seemed like a walk­ing blas­phemy, a blend of the an­gel and the ape.

This par­tic­u­lar even­ing, if it is re­membered for noth­ing else, will be re­membered in that place for its strange sun­set. It looked like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palp­able plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feath­ers, and of feath­ers that al­most brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of vi­olet and mauve and an un­nat­ural pink or pale green; but to­wards the west the whole grew past de­scrip­tion, trans­par­ent and pas­sion­ate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like some­thing too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to ex­press noth­ing but a vi­ol­ent secrecy. The very em­pyr­ean seemed to be a secret. It ex­pressed that splen­did small­ness which is the soul of local pat­ri­ot­ism. The very sky seemed small.

I say that there are some in­hab­it­ants who may re­mem­ber the even­ing if only by that op­press­ive sky. There are oth­ers who may re­mem­ber it be­cause it marked the first ap­pear­ance in the place of the second poet of Saf­fron Park. For a long time the red-haired re­volu­tion­ary had reigned without a rival; it was upon the night of the sun­set that his solitude sud­denly ended. The new poet, who in­tro­duced him­self by the name of Gab­riel Syme was a very mild-look­ing mor­tal, with a fair, poin­ted beard and faint, yel­low hair. But an im­pres­sion grew that he was less meek than he looked. He sig­nal­ised his en­trance by dif­fer­ing with the es­tab­lished poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of po­etry. He said that he (Syme) was poet of law, a poet of or­der; nay, he said he was a poet of re­spect­ab­il­ity. So all the Saf­fron Park­ers looked at him as if he had that mo­ment fallen out of that im­possible sky.

In fact, Mr. Lu­cian Gregory, the an­archic poet, con­nec­ted the two events.

“It may well be,” he said, in his sud­den lyr­ical man­ner, “it may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel col­ours that there is brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a re­spect­able poet. You say you are a poet of law; I say you are a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. I only won­der there were not comets and earth­quakes on the night you ap­peared in this garden.”

The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, poin­ted beard en­dured these thun­ders with a cer­tain sub­missive solem­nity. The third party of the group, Gregory’s sis­ter Rosam­ond, who had her brother’s braids of red hair, but a kind­lier face un­der­neath them, laughed with such mix­ture of ad­mir­a­tion and dis­ap­proval as she gave com­monly to the fam­ily or­acle.

Gregory re­sumed in high ora­tor­ical good hu­mour.

“An artist is identical with an an­arch­ist,” he cried. “You might trans­pose the words any­where. An an­arch­ist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, be­cause he prefers a great mo­ment to everything. He sees how much more valu­able is one burst of blaz­ing light, one peal of per­fect thun­der, than the mere com­mon bod­ies of a few shape­less po­lice­men. An artist dis­reg­ards all gov­ern­ments, ab­ol­ishes all con­ven­tions. The poet de­lights in dis­order only. If it were not so, the most po­et­ical thing in the world would be the Under­ground Rail­way.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.

“Non­sense!” said Gregory, who was very ra­tional when any­one else at­temp­ted para­dox. “Why do all the clerks and nav­vies in the rail­way trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is be­cause they know that the train is go­ing right. It is be­cause they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is be­cause after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next sta­tion must be Vict­oria, and noth­ing but Vict­oria. Oh, their wild rap­ture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next sta­tion were un­ac­count­ably Baker Street!”

“It is you who are un­po­et­ical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as pro­saic as your po­etry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, ob­vi­ous thing is to miss it. We feel it is ep­ical when man with one wild ar­row strikes a dis­tant bird. Is it not also ep­ical when man with one wild en­gine strikes a dis­tant sta­tion? Chaos is dull; be­cause in chaos the train might in­deed go any­where, to Baker Street or to Bag­dad. But man is a ma­gi­cian, and his whole ma­gic is in this, that he does say Vict­oria, and lo! it is Vict­oria. No, take your books of mere po­etry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who com­mem­or­ates the de­feats of man; give me Brad­shaw, who com­mem­or­ates his vic­tor­ies. Give me Brad­shaw, I say!”

“Must you go?” in­quired Gregory sar­castic­ally.

“I tell you,” went on Syme with pas­sion, “that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past bat­ter­ies of be­siegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say con­temp­tu­ously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Vict­oria. I say that one might do a thou­sand things in­stead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hair­breadth es­cape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word ‘Vict­oria,’ it is not an un­mean­ing word. It is to me the cry of a her­ald an­noun­cing con­quest. It is to me in­deed ‘Vict­oria’; it is the vic­tory of Adam.”

Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.

“And even then,” he said, “we po­ets al­ways ask the ques­tion, ‘And what is Vict­oria now that you have got there?’ You think Vict­oria is like the New Jer­u­s­alem. We know that the New Jer­u­s­alem will only be like Vict­oria. Yes, the poet will be dis­con­ten­ted even in the streets of heaven. The poet is al­ways in re­volt.”

“There again,” said Syme ir­rit­ably, “what is there po­et­ical about be­ing in re­volt? You might as well say that it is po­et­ical to be sea­sick. Be­ing sick is a re­volt. Both be­ing sick and be­ing re­bel­li­ous may be the whole­some thing on cer­tain des­per­ate oc­ca­sions; but I’m hanged if I can see why they are po­et­ical. Re­volt in the ab­stract is—re­volt­ing. It’s mere vomit­ing.”

The girl winced for a flash at the un­pleas­ant word, but Syme was too hot to heed her.

“It is things go­ing right,” he cried, “that is po­et­ical! Our di­ges­tions, for in­stance, go­ing sac­redly and si­lently right, that is the found­a­tion of all po­etry. Yes, the most po­et­ical thing, more po­et­ical than the flowers, more po­et­ical than the stars—the most po­et­ical thing in the world is not be­ing sick.”

“Really,” said Gregory su­per­cili­ously, “the ex­amples you choose—”

“I beg your par­don,” said Syme grimly, “I for­got we had ab­ol­ished all con­ven­tions.”

For the first time a red patch ap­peared on Gregory’s fore­head.

“You don’t ex­pect me,” he said, “to re­volu­tion­ise so­ci­ety on this lawn?”

Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.

“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I sup­pose that if you were ser­i­ous about your an­arch­ism, that is ex­actly what you would do.”

Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked sud­denly like those of an angry lion, and one could al­most fancy that his red mane rose.

“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dan­ger­ous voice, “that I am ser­i­ous about my an­arch­ism?”

“I beg your par­don?” said Syme.

“Am I not ser­i­ous about my an­arch­ism?” cried Gregory, with knot­ted fists.

“My dear fel­low!” said Syme, and strolled away.

With sur­prise, but with a curi­ous pleas­ure, he found Rosam­ond Gregory still in his com­pany.

“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my brother of­ten mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?”

Syme smiled.

“Do you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” asked the girl, with grave eyes.

“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many kinds of sin­cer­ity and in­sin­cer­ity. When you say ‘thank you’ for the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say ‘the world is round,’ do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don’t mean it. Now, some­times a man like your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says more than he means—from sheer force of mean­ing it.”

She was look­ing at him from un­der level brows; her face was grave and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that un­reas­on­ing re­spons­ib­il­ity which is at the bot­tom of the most frivol­ous wo­man, the ma­ter­nal watch which is as old as the world.

“Is he really an an­arch­ist, then?” she asked.

“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you prefer it, in that non­sense.”

She drew her broad brows to­gether and said ab­ruptly—

“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?”

Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and some­what dan­di­fied fig­ure.

“Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done an­onym­ously.”

And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she thought with a sim­ul­tan­eous pleas­ure of Gregory’s ab­surdity and of his safety.

Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and con­tin­ued to pour out his opin­ions. For he was a sin­cere man, and in spite of his su­per­fi­cial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is al­ways the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches him­self too closely. He de­fen­ded re­spect­ab­il­ity with vi­ol­ence and ex­ag­ger­a­tion. He grew pas­sion­ate in his praise of tidi­ness and pro­pri­ety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him. Once he heard very faintly in some dis­tant street a bar­rel-or­gan be­gin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were mov­ing to a tiny tune from un­der or bey­ond the world.

He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feel­ing that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his as­ton­ish­ment, he dis­covered the whole garden empty. Every­one had gone long ago, and he went him­self with a rather hur­ried apo­logy. He left with a sense of cham­pagne in his head, which he could not af­ter­wards ex­plain. In the wild events which were to fol­low this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again un­til all his tale was over. And yet, in some in­des­crib­able way, she kept re­cur­ring like a motive in mu­sic through all his mad ad­ven­tures af­ter­wards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what fol­lowed was so im­prob­able, that it might well have been a dream.

When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the mo­ment empty. Then he real­ised (in some odd way) that the si­lence was rather a liv­ing si­lence than a dead one. Dir­ectly out­side the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gil­ded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence be­hind him. About a foot from the lamp­post stood a fig­ure al­most as ri­gid and mo­tion­less as the lamp­post it­self. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an ab­rupt shadow, was al­most as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also some­thing ag­gress­ive in the at­ti­tude, pro­claimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had some­thing of the look of a masked bravo wait­ing sword in hand for his foe.

He made a sort of doubt­ful sa­lute, which Syme some­what more form­ally re­turned.

“I was wait­ing for you,” said Gregory. “Might I have a mo­ment’s con­ver­sa­tion?”

“Cer­tainly. About what?” asked Syme in a sort of weak won­der.

Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp­post, and then at the tree. “About this and this,” he cried; “about or­der and an­archy. There is your pre­cious or­der, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and bar­ren; and there is an­archy, rich, liv­ing, re­pro­du­cing it­self—there is an­archy, splen­did in green and gold.”

“All the same,” replied Syme pa­tiently, “just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I won­der when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.” Then after a pause he said, “But may I ask if you have been stand­ing out here in the dark only to re­sume our little ar­gu­ment?”

“No,” cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, “I did not stand here to re­sume our ar­gu­ment, but to end it forever.”

The si­lence fell again, and Syme, though he un­der­stood noth­ing, listened in­stinct­ively for some­thing ser­i­ous. Gregory began in a smooth voice and with a rather be­wil­der­ing smile.

“Mr. Syme,” he said, “this even­ing you suc­ceeded in do­ing some­thing rather re­mark­able. You did some­thing to me that no man born of wo­man has ever suc­ceeded in do­ing be­fore.”

“Indeed!”

“Now I re­mem­ber,” re­sumed Gregory re­flect­ively, “one other per­son suc­ceeded in do­ing it. The cap­tain of a penny steamer (if I re­mem­ber cor­rectly) at Southend. You have ir­rit­ated me.”

“I am very sorry,” replied Syme with grav­ity.

“I am afraid my fury and your in­sult are too shock­ing to be wiped out even with an apo­logy,” said Gregory very calmly. “No duel could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one way by which that in­sult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am go­ing, at the pos­sible sac­ri­fice of my life and hon­our, to prove to you that you were wrong in what you said.”

“In what I said?”

“You said I was not ser­i­ous about be­ing an an­arch­ist.”

“There are de­grees of ser­i­ous­ness,” replied Syme. “I have never doubted that you were per­fectly sin­cere in this sense, that you thought what you said well worth say­ing, that you thought a para­dox might wake men up to a neg­lected truth.”

Gregory stared at him stead­ily and pain­fully.

“And in no other sense,” he asked, “you think me ser­i­ous? You think me flâneur who lets fall oc­ca­sional truths. You do not think that in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am ser­i­ous.”

Syme struck his stick vi­ol­ently on the stones of the road.

“Ser­i­ous!” he cried. “Good Lord! is this street ser­i­ous? Are these damned Chinese lan­terns ser­i­ous? Is the whole ca­boodle ser­i­ous? One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and per­haps some sense as well, but I should think very little of a man who didn’t keep some­thing in the back­ground of his life that was more ser­i­ous than all this talk­ing—some­thing more ser­i­ous, whether it was re­li­gion or only drink.”

“Very well,” said Gregory, his face dark­en­ing, “you shall see some­thing more ser­i­ous than either drink or re­li­gion.”

Syme stood wait­ing with his usual air of mild­ness un­til Gregory again opened his lips.

“You spoke just now of hav­ing a re­li­gion. Is it really true that you have one?”

“Oh,” said Syme with a beam­ing smile, “we are all Cath­ol­ics now.”

“Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your re­li­gion in­volves that you will not re­veal what I am now go­ing to tell you to any son of Adam, and es­pe­cially not to the po­lice? Will you swear that! If you will take upon your­self this aw­ful ab­neg­a­tion if you will con­sent to bur­den your soul with a vow that you should never make and a know­ledge you should never dream about, I will prom­ise you in re­turn—”

“You will prom­ise me in re­turn?” in­quired Syme, as the other paused.

“I will prom­ise you a very en­ter­tain­ing even­ing.” Syme sud­denly took off his hat.

“Your of­fer,” he said, “is far too idi­otic to be de­clined. You say that a poet is al­ways an an­arch­ist. I dis­agree; but I hope at least that he is al­ways a sports­man. Per­mit me, here and now, to swear as a Chris­tian, and prom­ise as a good com­rade and a fel­low-artist, that I will not re­port any­thing of this, whatever it is, to the po­lice. And now, in the name of Col­ney Hatch, what is it?”

“I think,” said Gregory, with pla­cid ir­rel­ev­ancy, “that we will call a cab.”

He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rat­tling down the road. The two got into it in si­lence. Gregory gave through the trap the ad­dress of an ob­scure pub­lic-house on the Chiswick bank of the river. The cab whisked it­self away again, and in it these two fant­ast­ics quit­ted their fant­astic town.

II The Secret of Gabriel Syme

The cab pulled up be­fore a par­tic­u­larly dreary and greasy beer­shop, into which Gregory rap­idly con­duc­ted his com­pan­ion. They seated them­selves in a close and dim sort of bar-par­lour, at a stained wooden table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, that very little could be seen of the at­tend­ant who was summoned, bey­ond a vague and dark im­pres­sion of some­thing bulky and bearded.

“Will you take a little sup­per?” asked Gregory po­litely. “The pâté de foie gras is not good here, but I can re­com­mend the game.”

Syme re­ceived the re­mark with stolid­ity, ima­gin­ing it to be a joke. Ac­cept­ing the vein of hu­mour, he said, with a well-bred in­dif­fer­ence—

“Oh, bring me some lob­ster may­on­naise.”

To his in­des­crib­able as­ton­ish­ment, the man only said “Cer­tainly, sir!” and went away ap­par­ently to get it.

“What will you drink?” re­sumed Gregory, with the same care­less yet apo­lo­getic air. “I shall only have a crème de menthe my­self; I have dined. But the cham­pagne can really be trus­ted. Do let me start you with a half-bottle of Pom­mery at least?”

“Thank you!” said the mo­tion­less Syme. “You are very good.”

His fur­ther at­tempts at con­ver­sa­tion, some­what dis­or­gan­ised in them­selves, were cut short fi­nally as by a thun­der­bolt by the ac­tual ap­pear­ance of the lob­ster. Syme tasted it, and found it par­tic­u­larly good. Then he sud­denly began to eat with great rapid­ity and ap­pet­ite.

“Ex­cuse me if I en­joy my­self rather ob­vi­ously!” he said to Gregory, smil­ing. “I don’t of­ten have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new to me for a night­mare to lead to a lob­ster. It is com­monly the other way.”

“You are not asleep, I as­sure you,” said Gregory. “You are, on the con­trary, close to the most ac­tual and rous­ing mo­ment of your ex­ist­ence. Ah, here comes your cham­pagne! I ad­mit that there may be a slight dis­pro­por­tion, let us say, between the in­ner ar­range­ments of this ex­cel­lent hotel and its simple and un­pre­ten­tious ex­ter­ior. But that is all our mod­esty. We are the most mod­est men that ever lived on earth.”

“And who are we?” asked Syme, empty­ing his cham­pagne glass.

“It is quite simple,” replied Gregory. “We are the ser­i­ous an­arch­ists, in whom you do not be­lieve.”

“Oh!” said Syme shortly. “You do yourselves well in drinks.”

“Yes, we are ser­i­ous about everything,” answered Gregory.

Then after a pause he ad­ded—

“If in a few mo­ments this table be­gins to turn round a little, don’t put it down to your in­roads into the cham­pagne. I don’t wish you to do your­self an in­justice.”

“Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad,” replied Syme with per­fect calm; “but I trust I can be­have like a gen­tle­man in either con­di­tion. May I smoke?”

“Cer­tainly!” said Gregory, pro­du­cing a ci­gar-case. “Try one of mine.”

Syme took the ci­gar, clipped the end off with a ci­gar-cut­ter out of his waist­coat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he per­formed these rites with so much com­pos­ure, for al­most be­fore he had be­gun them the table at which he sat had be­gun to re­volve, first slowly, and then rap­idly, as if at an in­sane seance.

“You must not mind it,” said Gregory; “it’s a kind of screw.”

“Quite so,” said Syme pla­cidly, “a kind of screw. How simple that is!”

The next mo­ment the smoke of his ci­gar, which had been waver­ing across the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a fact­ory chim­ney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot down through the floor as if the earth had swal­lowed them. They went rat­tling down a kind of roar­ing chim­ney as rap­idly as a lift cut loose, and they came with an ab­rupt bump to the bot­tom. But when Gregory threw open a pair of doors and let in a red sub­ter­ranean light, Syme was still smoking with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a yel­low hair.

Gregory led him down a low, vaul­ted pas­sage, at the end of which was the red light. It was an enorm­ous crim­son lan­tern, nearly as big as a fire­place, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there was a sort of hatch­way or grat­ing, and on this Gregory struck five times. A heavy voice with a for­eign ac­cent asked him who he was. To this he gave the more or less un­ex­pec­ted reply, “Mr. Joseph Cham­ber­lain.” The heavy hinges began to move; it was ob­vi­ously some kind of pass­word.

In­side the door­way the pas­sage gleamed as if it were lined with a net­work of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glit­ter­ing pat­tern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and re­volvers, closely packed or in­ter­locked.

“I must ask you to for­give me all these form­al­it­ies,” said Gregory; “we have to be very strict here.”

“Oh, don’t apo­lo­gise,” said Syme. “I know your pas­sion for law and or­der,” and he stepped into the pas­sage lined with the steel weapons. With his long, fair hair and rather fop­pish frock-coat, he looked a sin­gu­larly frail and fanci­ful fig­ure as he walked down that shin­ing av­enue of death.

They passed through sev­eral such pas­sages, and came out at last into a queer steel cham­ber with curved walls, al­most spher­ical in shape, but present­ing, with its tiers of benches, some­thing of the ap­pear­ance of a sci­entific lec­ture-theatre. There were no rifles or pis­tols in this apart­ment, but round the walls of it were hung more du­bi­ous and dread­ful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of iron plants, or the eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the very room it­self seemed like the in­side of a bomb. Syme knocked his ci­gar ash off against the wall, and went in.

“And now, my dear Mr. Syme,” said Gregory, throw­ing him­self in an ex­pans­ive man­ner on the bench un­der the largest bomb, “now we are quite cosy, so let us talk prop­erly. Now no hu­man words can give you any no­tion of why I brought you here. It was one of those quite ar­bit­rary emo­tions, like jump­ing off a cliff or fall­ing in love. Suf­fice it to say that you were an in­ex­press­ibly ir­rit­at­ing fel­low, and, to do you justice, you are still. I would break twenty oaths of secrecy for the pleas­ure of tak­ing you down a peg. That way you have of light­ing a ci­gar would make a priest break the seal of con­fes­sion. Well, you said that you were quite cer­tain I was not a ser­i­ous an­arch­ist. Does this place strike you as be­ing ser­i­ous?”

“It does seem to have a moral un­der all its gaiety,” as­sen­ted Syme; “but may I ask you two ques­tions? You need not fear to give me in­form­a­tion, be­cause, as you re­mem­ber, you very wisely ex­tor­ted from me a prom­ise not to tell the po­lice, a prom­ise I shall cer­tainly keep. So it is in mere curi­os­ity that I make my quer­ies. First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you ob­ject to? You want to ab­ol­ish Govern­ment?”

“To ab­ol­ish God!” said Gregory, open­ing the eyes of a fan­atic. “We do not only want to up­set a few des­pot­isms and po­lice reg­u­la­tions; that sort of an­arch­ism does ex­ist, but it is a mere branch of the Non­con­form­ists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those ar­bit­rary dis­tinc­tions of vice and vir­tue, hon­our and treach­ery, upon which mere rebels base them­selves. The silly sen­ti­ment­al­ists of the French Re­volu­tion talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have ab­ol­ished Right and Wrong.”

“And Right and Left,” said Syme with a simple eager­ness, “I hope you will ab­ol­ish them too. They are much more trouble­some to me.”

“You spoke of a second ques­tion,” snapped Gregory.

“With pleas­ure,” re­sumed Syme. “In all your present acts and sur­round­ings there is a sci­entific at­tempt at secrecy. I have an aunt who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people liv­ing from pref­er­ence un­der a pub­lic-house. You have a heavy iron door. You can­not pass it without sub­mit­ting to the hu­mi­li­ation of call­ing your­self Mr. Cham­ber­lain. You sur­round your­self with steel in­stru­ments which make the place, if I may say so, more im­press­ive than home­like. May I ask why, after tak­ing all this trouble to bar­ri­cade yourselves in the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole secret by talk­ing about an­arch­ism to every silly wo­man in Saf­fron Park?”

Gregory smiled.

“The an­swer is simple,” he said. “I told you I was a ser­i­ous an­arch­ist, and you did not be­lieve me. Nor do they be­lieve me. Un­less I took them into this in­fernal room they would not be­lieve me.”

Syme smoked thought­fully, and looked at him with in­terest. Gregory went on.

“The his­tory of the thing might amuse you,” he said. “When first I be­came one of the New An­arch­ists I tried all kinds of re­spect­able dis­guises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bish­ops in our an­arch­ist pamph­lets, in Su­per­sti­tion the Vam­pire and Priests of Prey. I cer­tainly un­der­stood from them that bish­ops are strange and ter­rible old men keep­ing a cruel secret from man­kind. I was mis­in­formed. When on my first ap­pear­ing in epis­copal gaiters in a draw­ing-room I cried out in a voice of thun­der, ‘Down! down! pre­sump­tu­ous hu­man reason!’ they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a mil­lion­aire; but I de­fen­ded Cap­ital with so much in­tel­li­gence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried be­ing a ma­jor. Now I am a hu­man­it­arian my­self, but I have, I hope, enough in­tel­lec­tual breadth to un­der­stand the po­s­i­tion of those who, like Ni­et­z­sche, ad­mire vi­ol­ence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw my­self into the ma­jor. I drew my sword and waved it con­stantly. I called out ‘Blood!’ ab­strac­tedly, like a man call­ing for wine. I of­ten said, ‘Let the weak per­ish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems ma­jors don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in des­pair to the Pres­id­ent of the Cen­t­ral An­arch­ist Coun­cil, who is the greatest man in Europe.”

“What is his name?” asked Syme.

“You would not know it,” answered Gregory. “That is his great­ness. Caesar and Na­po­leon put all their genius into be­ing heard of, and they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not be­ing heard of, and he is not heard of. But you can­not be for five minutes in the room with him without feel­ing that Caesar and Na­po­leon would have been chil­dren in his hands.”

He was si­lent and even pale for a mo­ment, and then re­sumed—

“But whenever he gives ad­vice it is al­ways some­thing as start­ling as an epi­gram, and yet as prac­tical as the Bank of Eng­land. I said to him, ‘What dis­guise will hide me from the world? What can I find more re­spect­able than bish­ops and ma­jors?’ He looked at me with his large but in­de­cipher­able face. ‘You want a safe dis­guise, do you? You want a dress which will guar­an­tee you harm­less; a dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb?’ I nod­ded. He sud­denly lif­ted his lion’s voice. ‘Why, then, dress up as an an­arch­ist, you fool!’ he roared so that the room shook. ‘Nobody will ever ex­pect you to do any­thing dan­ger­ous then.’ And he turned his broad back on me without an­other word. I took his ad­vice, and have never re­gret­ted it. I preached blood and murder to those wo­men day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their per­am­bu­lat­ors.”

Syme sat watch­ing him with some re­spect in his large, blue eyes.

“You took me in,” he said. “It is really a smart dodge.”

Then after a pause he ad­ded—

“What do you call this tre­mend­ous Pres­id­ent of yours?”

“We gen­er­ally call him Sunday,” replied Gregory with sim­pli­city. “You see, there are seven mem­bers of the Cen­t­ral An­arch­ist Coun­cil, and they are named after days of the week. He is called Sunday, by some of his ad­mirers Bloody Sunday. It is curi­ous you should men­tion the mat­ter, be­cause the very night you have dropped in (if I may so ex­press it) is the night on which our Lon­don branch, which as­sembles in this room, has to elect its own deputy to fill a va­cancy in the Coun­cil. The gen­tle­man who has for some time past played, with pro­pri­ety and gen­eral ap­plause, the dif­fi­cult part of Thursday, has died quite sud­denly. Con­sequently, we have called a meet­ing this very even­ing to elect a suc­cessor.”

He got to his feet and strolled across the room with a sort of smil­ing em­bar­rass­ment.

“I feel some­how as if you were my mother, Syme,” he con­tin­ued cas­u­ally. “I feel that I can con­fide any­thing to you, as you have prom­ised to tell nobody. In fact, I will con­fide to you some­thing that I would not say in so many words to the an­arch­ists who will be com­ing to the room in about ten minutes. We shall, of course, go through a form of elec­tion; but I don’t mind telling you that it is prac­tic­ally cer­tain what the res­ult will be.” He looked down for a mo­ment mod­estly. “It is al­most a settled thing that I am to be Thursday.”

“My dear fel­low.” said Syme heart­ily, “I con­grat­u­late you. A great ca­reer!”

Gregory smiled in de­prec­a­tion, and walked across the room, talk­ing rap­idly.

“As a mat­ter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table,” he said, “and the ce­re­mony will prob­ably be the shortest pos­sible.”

Syme also strolled across to the table, and found ly­ing across it a walk­ing-stick, which turned out on ex­am­in­a­tion to be a sword-stick, a large Colt’s re­volver, a sand­wich case, and a for­mid­able flask of brandy. Over the chair, be­side the table, was thrown a heavy-look­ing cape or cloak.

“I have only to get the form of elec­tion fin­ished,” con­tin­ued Gregory with an­im­a­tion, “then I snatch up this cloak and stick, stuff these other things into my pocket, step out of a door in this cav­ern, which opens on the river, where there is a steam-tug already wait­ing for me, and then—then—oh, the wild joy of be­ing Thursday!” And he clasped his hands.

Syme, who had sat down once more with his usual in­solent lan­guor, got to his feet with an un­usual air of hes­it­a­tion.

“Why is it,” he asked vaguely, “that I think you are quite a de­cent fel­low? Why do I pos­it­ively like you, Gregory?” He paused a mo­ment, and then ad­ded with a sort of fresh curi­os­ity, “Is it be­cause you are such an ass?”

There was a thought­ful si­lence again, and then he cried out—

“Well, damn it all! this is the fun­ni­est situ­ation I have ever been in in my life, and I am go­ing to act ac­cord­ingly. Gregory, I gave you a prom­ise be­fore I came into this place. That prom­ise I would keep un­der red-hot pin­cers. Would you give me, for my own safety, a little prom­ise of the same kind?”

“A prom­ise?” asked Gregory, won­der­ing.

“Yes,” said Syme very ser­i­ously, “a prom­ise. I swore be­fore God that I would not tell your secret to the po­lice. Will you swear by Hu­man­ity, or whatever beastly thing you be­lieve in, that you will not tell my secret to the an­arch­ists?”

“Your secret?” asked the star­ing Gregory. “Have you got a secret?”

“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a pause, “Will you swear?”

Gregory glared at him gravely for a few mo­ments, and then said ab­ruptly—

“You must have be­witched me, but I feel a furi­ous curi­os­ity about you. Yes, I will swear not to tell the an­arch­ists any­thing you tell me. But look sharp, for they will be here in a couple of minutes.”

Syme rose slowly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his long, grey trousers’ pock­ets. Al­most as he did so there came five knocks on the outer grat­ing, pro­claim­ing the ar­rival of the first of the con­spir­at­ors.

“Well,” said Syme slowly, “I don’t know how to tell you the truth more shortly than by say­ing that your ex­pedi­ent of dress­ing up as an aim­less poet is not con­fined to you or your Pres­id­ent. We have known the dodge for some time at Scot­land Yard.”

Gregory tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice.

“What do you say?” he asked in an in­hu­man voice.

“Yes,” said Syme simply, “I am a po­lice de­tect­ive. But I think I hear your friends com­ing.”

From the door­way there came a mur­mur of “Mr. Joseph Cham­ber­lain.” It was re­peated twice and thrice, and then thirty times, and the crowd of Joseph Cham­ber­lains (a sol­emn thought) could be heard tramp­ling down the cor­ridor.

II The Man Who Was Thursday

Be­fore one of the fresh faces could ap­pear at the door­way, Gregory’s stunned sur­prise had fallen from him. He was be­side the table with a bound, and a noise in his throat like a wild beast. He caught up the Colt’s re­volver and took aim at Syme. Syme did not flinch, but he put up a pale and po­lite hand.

“Don’t be such a silly man,” he said, with the ef­fem­in­ate dig­nity of a cur­ate. “Don’t you see it’s not ne­ces­sary? Don’t you see that we’re both in the same boat? Yes, and jolly sea­sick.”

Gregory could not speak, but he could not fire either, and he looked his ques­tion.

“Don’t you see we’ve check­mated each other?” cried Syme. “I can’t tell the po­lice you are an an­arch­ist. You can’t tell the an­arch­ists I’m a po­lice­man. I can only watch you, know­ing what you are; you can only watch me, know­ing what I am. In short, it’s a lonely, in­tel­lec­tual duel, my head against yours. I’m a po­lice­man de­prived of the help of the po­lice. You, my poor fel­low, are an an­arch­ist de­prived of the help of that law and or­gan­isa­tion which is so es­sen­tial to an­archy. The one sol­it­ary dif­fer­ence is in your fa­vour. You are not sur­roun­ded by in­quis­it­ive po­lice­men; I am sur­roun­ded by in­quis­it­ive an­arch­ists. I can­not be­tray you, but I might be­tray my­self. Come, come! wait and see me be­tray my­self. I shall do it so nicely.”

Gregory put the pis­tol slowly down, still star­ing at Syme as if he were a sea-mon­ster.

“I don’t be­lieve in im­mor­tal­ity,” he said at last, “but if, after all this, you were to break your word, God would make a hell only for you, to howl in forever.”

“I shall not break my word,” said Syme sternly, “nor will you break yours. Here are your friends.”

The mass of the an­arch­ists entered the room heav­ily, with a slouch­ing and some­what weary gait; but one little man, with a black beard and glasses—a man some­what of the type of Mr. Tim Healy—de­tached him­self, and bustled for­ward with some pa­pers in his hand.

“Com­rade Gregory,” he said, “I sup­pose this man is a del­eg­ate?”

Gregory, taken by sur­prise, looked down and muttered the name of Syme; but Syme replied al­most pertly—

“I am glad to see that your gate is well enough guarded to make it hard for any­one to be here who was not a del­eg­ate.”

The brow of the little man with the black beard was, how­ever, still con­trac­ted with some­thing like sus­pi­cion.

“What branch do you rep­res­ent?” he asked sharply.

“I should hardly call it a branch,” said Syme, laugh­ing; “I should call it at the very least a root.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact is,” said Syme se­renely, “the truth is I am a Sabbatarian. I have been spe­cially sent here to see that you show a due ob­serv­ance of Sunday.”

The little man dropped one of his pa­pers, and a flicker of fear went over all the faces of the group. Evidently the aw­ful Pres­id­ent, whose name was Sunday, did some­times send down such ir­reg­u­lar am­bas­sad­ors to such branch meet­ings.

“Well, com­rade,” said the man with the pa­pers after a pause, “I sup­pose we’d bet­ter give you a seat in the meet­ing?”

“If you ask my ad­vice as a friend,” said Syme with severe be­ne­vol­ence, “I think you’d bet­ter.”

When Gregory heard the dan­ger­ous dia­logue end, with a sud­den safety for his rival, he rose ab­ruptly and paced the floor in pain­ful thought. He was, in­deed, in an agony of dip­lomacy. It was clear that Syme’s in­spired im­pudence was likely to bring him out of all merely ac­ci­dental di­lem­mas. Little was to be hoped from them. He could not him­self be­tray Syme, partly from hon­our, but partly also be­cause, if he be­trayed him and for some reason failed to des­troy him, the Syme who es­caped would be a Syme freed from all ob­lig­a­tion of secrecy, a Syme who would simply walk to the nearest po­lice sta­tion. After all, it was only one night’s dis­cus­sion, and only one de­tect­ive who would know of it. He would let out as little as pos­sible of their plans that night, and then let Syme go, and chance it.

He strode across to the group of an­arch­ists, which was already dis­trib­ut­ing it­self along the benches.

“I think it is time we began,” he said; “the steam-tug is wait­ing on the river already. I move that Com­rade But­tons takes the chair.”

This be­ing ap­proved by a show of hands, the little man with the pa­pers slipped into the pres­id­en­tial seat.

“Com­rades,” he began, as sharp as a pis­tol-shot, “our meet­ing to­night is im­port­ant, though it need not be long. This branch has al­ways had the hon­our of elect­ing Thursdays for the Cen­t­ral European Coun­cil. We have elec­ted many and splen­did Thursdays. We all lament the sad de­cease of the heroic worker who oc­cu­pied the post un­til last week. As you know, his ser­vices to the cause were con­sid­er­able. He or­gan­ised the great dy­nam­ite coup of Brighton which, un­der hap­pier cir­cum­stances, ought to have killed every­body on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-deny­ing as his life, for he died through his faith in a hy­gienic mix­ture of chalk and wa­ter as a sub­sti­tute for milk, which bever­age he re­garded as bar­baric, and as in­volving cruelty to the cow. Cruelty, or any­thing ap­proach­ing to cruelty, re­vol­ted him al­ways. But it is not to ac­claim his vir­tues that we are met, but for a harder task. It is dif­fi­cult prop­erly to praise his qual­it­ies, but it is more dif­fi­cult to re­place them. Upon you, com­rades, it de­volves this even­ing to choose out of the com­pany present the man who shall be Thursday. If any com­rade sug­gests a name I will put it to the vote. If no com­rade sug­gests a name, I can only tell my­self that that dear dy­nam­iter, who is gone from us, has car­ried into the un­know­able abysses the last secret of his vir­tue and his in­no­cence.”

There was a stir of al­most in­aud­ible ap­plause, such as is some­times heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and ven­er­able white beard, per­haps the only real work­ing­man present, rose lum­ber­ingly and said—

“I move that Com­rade Gregory be elec­ted Thursday,” and sat lum­ber­ingly down again.

“Does any­one second?” asked the chair­man.

A little man with a vel­vet coat and poin­ted beard seconded.

“Be­fore I put the mat­ter to the vote,” said the chair­man, “I will call on Com­rade Gregory to make a state­ment.”

Gregory rose amid a great rumble of ap­plause. His face was deadly pale, so that by con­trast his queer red hair looked al­most scar­let. But he was smil­ing and al­to­gether at ease. He had made up his mind, and he saw his best policy quite plain in front of him like a white road. His best chance was to make a softened and am­bigu­ous speech, such as would leave on the de­tect­ive’s mind the im­pres­sion that the an­arch­ist broth­er­hood was a very mild af­fair after all. He be­lieved in his own lit­er­ary power, his ca­pa­city for sug­gest­ing fine shades and pick­ing per­fect words. He thought that with care he could suc­ceed, in spite of all the people around him, in con­vey­ing an im­pres­sion of the in­sti­tu­tion, subtly and del­ic­ately false. Syme had once thought that an­arch­ists, un­der all their bravado, were only play­ing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of peril, make Syme think so again?

“Com­rades,” began Gregory, in a low but pen­et­rat­ing voice, “it is not ne­ces­sary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy also. Our be­lief has been slandered, it has been dis­figured, it has been ut­terly con­fused and con­cealed, but it has never been altered. Those who talk about an­arch­ism and its dangers go every­where and any­where to get their in­form­a­tion, ex­cept to us, ex­cept to the foun­tain head. They learn about an­arch­ists from six­penny nov­els; they learn about an­arch­ists from trades­men’s news­pa­pers; they learn about an­arch­ists from Ally Sloper’s Half-Hol­i­day and the Sport­ing Times. They never learn about an­arch­ists from an­arch­ists. We have no chance of deny­ing the moun­tain­ous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end of Europe to an­other. The man who has al­ways heard that we are walk­ing plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not hear it to­night, though my pas­sion were to rend the roof. For it is deep, deep un­der the earth that the per­se­cuted are per­mit­ted to as­semble, as the Chris­ti­ans as­sembled in the Cata­combs. But if, by some in­cred­ible ac­ci­dent, there were here to­night a man who all his life had thus im­mensely mis­un­der­stood us, I would put this ques­tion to him: ‘When those Chris­ti­ans met in those Cata­combs, what sort of moral repu­ta­tion had they in the streets above? What tales were told of their at­ro­cit­ies by one edu­cated Ro­man to an­other? Sup­pose’ (I would say to him), ‘sup­pose that we are only re­peat­ing that still mys­ter­i­ous para­dox of his­tory. Sup­pose we seem as shock­ing as the Chris­ti­ans be­cause we are really as harm­less as the Chris­ti­ans. Sup­pose we seem as mad as the Chris­ti­ans be­cause we are really as meek.” ’

The ap­plause that had greeted the open­ing sen­tences had been gradu­ally grow­ing fainter, and at the last word it stopped sud­denly. In the ab­rupt si­lence, the man with the vel­vet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice—

“I’m not meek!”

“Com­rade With­er­spoon tells us,” re­sumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows him­self! His words are, in­deed, ex­tra­vag­ant; his ap­pear­ance is fe­ro­cious, and even (to an or­din­ary taste) un­at­tract­ive. But only the eye of a friend­ship as deep and del­ic­ate as mine can per­ceive the deep found­a­tion of solid meek­ness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for him­self to see. I re­peat, we are the true early Chris­ti­ans, only that we come too late. We are simple, as they revere simple—look at Com­rade With­er­spoon. We are mod­est, as they were mod­est—look at me. We are mer­ci­ful—”

“No, no!” called out Mr. With­er­spoon with the vel­vet jacket.

“I say we are mer­ci­ful,” re­peated Gregory furi­ously, “as the early Chris­ti­ans were mer­ci­ful. Yet this did not pre­vent their be­ing ac­cused of eat­ing hu­man flesh. We do not eat hu­man flesh—”

“Shame!” cried With­er­spoon. “Why not?”

“Com­rade With­er­spoon,” said Gregory, with a fe­ver­ish gaiety, “is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our so­ci­ety, at any rate, which loves him sin­cerely, which is foun­ded upon love—”

“No, no!” said With­er­spoon, “down with love.”

“Which is foun­ded upon love,” re­peated Gregory, grind­ing his teeth, “there will be no dif­fi­culty about the aims which we shall pur­sue as a body, or which I should pur­sue were I chosen as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of that body. Su­perbly care­less of the slanders that rep­res­ent us as as­sas­sins and en­emies of hu­man so­ci­ety, we shall pur­sue with moral cour­age and quiet in­tel­lec­tual pres­sure, the per­man­ent ideals of broth­er­hood and sim­pli­city.”

Gregory re­sumed his seat and passed his hand across his fore­head. The si­lence was sud­den and awk­ward, but the chair­man rose like an auto­maton, and said in a col­our­less voice—

“Does any­one op­pose the elec­tion of Com­rade Gregory?”

The as­sembly seemed vague and sub­con­sciously dis­ap­poin­ted, and Com­rade With­er­spoon moved rest­lessly on his seat and muttered in his thick beard. By the sheer rush of routine, how­ever, the mo­tion would have been put and car­ried. But as the chair­man was open­ing his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small and quiet voice—

“Yes, Mr. Chair­man, I op­pose.”

The most ef­fect­ive fact in oratory is an un­ex­pec­ted change in the voice. Mr. Gab­riel Syme evid­ently un­der­stood oratory. Hav­ing said these first formal words in a mod­er­ated tone and with a brief sim­pli­city, he made his next word ring and vol­ley in the vault as if one of the guns had gone off.

“Com­rades!” he cried, in a voice that made every man jump out of his boots, “have we come here for this? Do we live un­der­ground like rats in or­der to listen to talk like this? This is talk we might listen to while eat­ing buns at a Sunday School treat. Do we line these walls with weapons and bar that door with death lest any­one should come and hear Com­rade Gregory say­ing to us, ‘Be good, and you will be happy,’ ‘Hon­esty is the best policy,’ and ‘Vir­tue is its own re­ward’? There was not a word in Com­rade Gregory’s ad­dress to which a cur­ate could not have listened with pleas­ure (hear, hear). But I am not a cur­ate (loud cheers), and I did not listen to it with pleas­ure (re­newed cheers). The man who is fit­ted to make a good cur­ate is not fit­ted to make a res­ol­ute, for­cible, and ef­fi­cient Thursday (hear, hear).”

“Com­rade Gregory has told us, in only too apo­lo­getic a tone, that we are not the en­emies of so­ci­ety. But I say that we are the en­emies of so­ci­ety, and so much the worse for so­ci­ety. We are the en­emies of so­ci­ety, for so­ci­ety is the en­emy of hu­man­ity, its old­est and its most piti­less en­emy (hear, hear). Com­rade Gregory has told us (apo­lo­get­ic­ally again) that we are not mur­der­ers. There I agree. We are not mur­der­ers, we are ex­e­cu­tion­ers (cheers).”

Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat star­ing at him, his face idi­otic with as­ton­ish­ment. Now in the pause his lips of clay par­ted, and he said, with an auto­matic and life­less dis­tinct­ness—

“You dam­nable hy­po­crite!”

Syme looked straight into those fright­ful eyes with his own pale blue ones, and said with dig­nity—

“Com­rade Gregory ac­cuses me of hy­po­crisy. He knows as well as I do that I am keep­ing all my en­gage­ments and do­ing noth­ing but my duty. I do not mince words. I do not pre­tend to. I say that Com­rade Gregory is un­fit to be Thursday for all his ami­able qual­it­ies. He is un­fit to be Thursday be­cause of his ami­able qual­it­ies. We do not want the Su­preme Coun­cil of An­archy in­fec­ted with a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is no time for ce­re­mo­nial po­lite­ness, neither is it a time for ce­re­mo­nial mod­esty. I set my­self against Com­rade Gregory as I would set my­self against all the Govern­ments of Europe, be­cause the an­arch­ist who has given him­self to an­archy has for­got­ten mod­esty as much as he has for­got­ten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (re­newed cheers). I set my­self against Com­rade Gregory as im­per­son­ally and as calmly as I should choose one pis­tol rather than an­other out of that rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his milk-and-wa­ter meth­ods on the Su­preme Coun­cil, I would of­fer my­self for elec­tion—”

His sen­tence was drowned in a deaf­en­ing catar­act of ap­plause. The faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with ap­proval as his tirade grew more and more un­com­prom­ising, were now dis­tor­ted with grins of an­ti­cip­a­tion or cloven with de­lighted cries. At the mo­ment when he an­nounced him­self as ready to stand for the post of Thursday, a roar of ex­cite­ment and as­sent broke forth, and be­came un­con­trol­lable, and at the same mo­ment Gregory sprang to his feet, with foam upon his mouth, and shouted against the shout­ing.

“Stop, you blas­ted mad­men!” he cried, at the top of a voice that tore his throat. “Stop, you—”

But louder than Gregory’s shout­ing and louder than the roar of the room came the voice of Syme, still speak­ing in a peal of piti­less thun­der—

“I do not go to the Coun­cil to re­but that slander that calls us mur­der­ers; I go to earn it (loud and pro­longed cheer­ing). To the priest who says these men are the en­emies of re­li­gion, to the judge who says these men are the en­emies of law, to the fat par­lia­ment­arian who says these men are the en­emies of or­der and pub­lic de­cency, to all these I will reply, ‘You are false kings, but you are true proph­ets. I am come to des­troy you, and to ful­fil your proph­ecies.’ ”

The heavy clam­our gradu­ally died away, but be­fore it had ceased With­er­spoon had jumped to his feet, his hair and beard all on end, and had said—

“I move, as an amend­ment, that Com­rade Syme be ap­poin­ted to the post.”

“Stop all this, I tell you!” cried Gregory, with frantic face and hands. “Stop it, it is all—”

The voice of the chair­man clove his speech with a cold ac­cent.

“Does any­one second this amend­ment?” he said. A tall, tired man, with mel­an­choly eyes and an Amer­ican chin beard, was ob­served on the back bench to be slowly rising to his feet. Gregory had been scream­ing for some time past; now there was a change in his ac­cent, more shock­ing than any scream. “I end all this!” he said, in a voice as heavy as stone.

“This man can­not be elec­ted. He is a—”

“Yes,” said Syme, quite mo­tion­less, “what is he?” Gregory’s mouth worked twice without sound; then slowly the blood began to crawl back into his dead face. “He is a man quite in­ex­per­i­enced in our work,” he said, and sat down ab­ruptly.

Be­fore he had done so, the long, lean man with the Amer­ican beard was again upon his feet, and was re­peat­ing in a high Amer­ican mono­tone—

“I beg to second the elec­tion of Com­rade Syme.”

“The amend­ment will, as usual, be put first,” said Mr. But­tons, the chair­man, with mech­an­ical rapid­ity.

“The ques­tion is that Com­rade Syme—”

Gregory had again sprung to his feet, pant­ing and pas­sion­ate.

“Com­rades,” he cried out, “I am not a mad­man.”

“Oh, oh!” said Mr. With­er­spoon.

“I am not a mad­man,” re­it­er­ated Gregory, with a fright­ful sin­cer­ity which for a mo­ment staggered the room, “but I give you a coun­sel which you can call mad if you like. No, I will not call it a coun­sel, for I can give you no reason for it. I will call it a com­mand. Call it a mad com­mand, but act upon it. Strike, but hear me! Kill me, but obey me! Do not elect this man.” Truth is so ter­rible, even in fet­ters, that for a mo­ment Syme’s slender and in­sane vic­tory swayed like a reed. But you could not have guessed it from Syme’s bleak blue eyes. He merely began—

“Com­rade Gregory com­mands—”

Then the spell was snapped, and one an­arch­ist called out to Gregory—

“Who are you? You are not Sunday;” and an­other an­arch­ist ad­ded in a heav­ier voice, “And you are not Thursday.”

“Com­rades,” cried Gregory, in a voice like that of a mar­tyr who in an ec­stacy of pain has passed bey­ond pain, “it is noth­ing to me whether you de­test me as a tyr­ant or de­test me as a slave. If you will not take my com­mand, ac­cept my de­grad­a­tion. I kneel to you. I throw my­self at your feet. I im­plore you. Do not elect this man.”

“Com­rade Gregory,” said the chair­man after a pain­ful pause, “this is really not quite dig­ni­fied.”

For the first time in the pro­ceed­ings there was for a few seconds a real si­lence. Then Gregory fell back in his seat, a pale wreck of a man, and the chair­man re­peated, like a piece of clock­work sud­denly star­ted again—

“The ques­tion is that Com­rade Syme be elec­ted to the post of Thursday on the Gen­eral Coun­cil.”

The roar rose like the sea, the hands rose like a forest, and three minutes af­ter­wards Mr. Gab­riel Syme, of the Secret Po­lice Ser­vice, was elec­ted to the post of Thursday on the Gen­eral Coun­cil of the An­arch­ists of Europe.

Every­one in the room seemed to feel the tug wait­ing on the river, the sword-stick and the re­volver, wait­ing on the table. The in­stant the elec­tion was ended and ir­re­voc­able, and Syme had re­ceived the pa­per prov­ing his elec­tion, they all sprang to their feet, and the fiery groups moved and mixed in the room. Syme found him­self, some­how or other, face to face with Gregory, who still re­garded him with a stare of stunned hatred. They were si­lent for many minutes.

“You are a devil!” said Gregory at last.

“And you are a gen­tle­man,” said Syme with grav­ity.

“It was you that en­trapped me,” began Gregory, shak­ing from head to foot, “en­trapped me into—”

“Talk sense,” said Syme shortly. “Into what sort of dev­ils’ par­lia­ment have you en­trapped me, if it comes to that? You made me swear be­fore I made you. Per­haps we are both do­ing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned dif­fer­ent that there can be noth­ing between us in the way of con­ces­sion. There is noth­ing pos­sible between us but hon­our and death,” and he pulled the great cloak about his shoulders and picked up the flask from the table.

“The boat is quite ready,” said Mr. But­tons, bust­ling up. “Be good enough to step this way.”

With a ges­ture that re­vealed the shop-walker, he led Syme down a short, iron-bound pas­sage, the still ag­on­ised Gregory fol­low­ing fe­ver­ishly at their heels. At the end of the pas­sage was a door, which But­tons opened sharply, show­ing a sud­den blue and sil­ver pic­ture of the moon­lit river, that looked like a scene in a theatre. Close to the open­ing lay a dark, dwarfish steam-launch, like a baby dragon with one red eye.

Al­most in the act of step­ping on board, Gab­riel Syme turned to the gap­ing Gregory.

“You have kept your word,” he said gently, with his face in shadow. “You are a man of hon­our, and I thank you. You have kept it even down to a small par­tic­u­lar. There was one spe­cial thing you prom­ised me at the be­gin­ning of the af­fair, and which you have cer­tainly given me by the end of it.”

“What do you mean?” cried the chaotic Gregory. “What did I prom­ise you?”

“A very en­ter­tain­ing even­ing,” said Syme, and he made a mil­it­ary sa­lute with the sword-stick as the steam­boat slid away.

IV The Tale of a Detective

Gab­riel Syme was not merely a de­tect­ive who pre­ten­ded to be a poet; he was really a poet who had be­come a de­tect­ive. Nor was his hatred of an­archy hy­po­crit­ical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too con­ser­vat­ive an at­ti­tude by the be­wil­der­ing folly of most re­volu­tion­ists. He had not at­tained it by any tame tra­di­tion. His re­spect­ab­il­ity was spon­tan­eous and sud­den, a re­bel­lion against re­bel­lion. He came of a fam­ily of cranks, in which all the old­est people had all the new­est no­tions. One of his uncles al­ways walked about without a hat, and an­other had made an un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to walk about with a hat and noth­ing else. His father cul­tiv­ated art and self-real­isa­tion; his mother went in for sim­pli­city and hy­giene. Hence the child, dur­ing his ten­derer years, was wholly un­ac­quain­ted with any drink between the ex­tremes of ab­sinth and co­coa, of both of which he had a healthy dis­like. The more his mother preached a more than Pur­itan ab­stin­ence the more did his father ex­pand into a more than pa­gan lat­it­ude; and by the time the former had come to en­for­cing ve­get­ari­an­ism, the lat­ter had pretty well reached the point of de­fend­ing can­ni­bal­ism.

Be­ing sur­roun­ded with every con­ceiv­able kind of re­volt from in­fancy, Gab­riel had to re­volt into some­thing, so he re­vol­ted into the only thing left—san­ity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these fan­at­ics to make even his protest for com­mon sense a little too fierce to be sens­ible. His hatred of mod­ern law­less­ness had been crowned also by an ac­ci­dent. It happened that he was walk­ing in a side street at the in­stant of a dy­nam­ite out­rage. He had been blind and deaf for a mo­ment, and then seen, the smoke clear­ing, the broken win­dows and the bleed­ing faces. After that he went about as usual—quiet, cour­teous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He did not re­gard an­arch­ists, as most of us do, as a hand­ful of mor­bid men, com­bin­ing ig­nor­ance with in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism. He re­garded them as a huge and piti­less peril, like a Chinese in­va­sion.

He poured per­petu­ally into news­pa­pers and their waste-pa­per bas­kets a tor­rent of tales, verses and vi­ol­ent art­icles, warn­ing men of this de­luge of bar­baric denial. But he seemed to be get­ting no nearer his en­emy, and, what was worse, no nearer a liv­ing. As he paced the Thames em­bank­ment, bit­terly bit­ing a cheap ci­gar and brood­ing on the ad­vance of An­archy, there was no an­arch­ist with a bomb in his pocket so sav­age or so sol­it­ary as he. Indeed, he al­ways felt that Govern­ment stood alone and des­per­ate, with its back to the wall. He was too quix­otic to have cared for it oth­er­wise.

He walked on the Em­bank­ment once un­der a dark red sun­set. The red river re­flec­ted the red sky, and they both re­flec­ted his an­ger. The sky, in­deed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river re­l­at­ively so lurid, that the wa­ter al­most seemed of fiercer flame than the sun­set it mirrored. It looked like a stream of lit­eral fire wind­ing un­der the vast cav­erns of a sub­ter­ranean coun­try.

Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fash­ioned black chim­ney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fash­ioned cloak, black and ragged; and the com­bin­a­tion gave him the look of the early vil­lains in Dick­ens and Bul­wer Lyt­ton. Also his yel­low beard and hair were more un­kempt and le­on­ine than when they ap­peared long af­ter­wards, cut and poin­ted, on the lawns of Saf­fron Park. A long, lean, black ci­gar, bought in Soho for two­pence, stood out from between his tightened teeth, and al­to­gether he looked a very sat­is­fact­ory spe­ci­men of the an­arch­ists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Per­haps this was why a po­lice­man on the Em­bank­ment spoke to him, and said “Good even­ing.”

Syme, at a crisis of his mor­bid fears for hu­man­ity, seemed stung by the mere stolid­ity of the auto­matic of­fi­cial, a mere bulk of blue in the twi­light.

“A good even­ing is it?” he said sharply. “You fel­lows would call the end of the world a good even­ing. Look at that bloody red sun and that bloody river! I tell you that if that were lit­er­ally hu­man blood, spilt and shin­ing, you would still be stand­ing here as solid as ever, look­ing out for some poor harm­less tramp whom you could move on. You po­lice­men are cruel to the poor, but I could for­give you even your cruelty if it were not for your calm.”

“If we are calm,” replied the po­lice­man, “it is the calm of or­gan­ised res­ist­ance.”

“Eh?” said Syme, star­ing.

“The sol­dier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pur­sued the po­lice­man. “The com­pos­ure of an army is the an­ger of a na­tion.”

“Good God, the Board Schools!” said Syme. “Is this un­denom­in­a­tional edu­ca­tion?”

“No,” said the po­lice­man sadly, “I never had any of those ad­vant­ages. The Board Schools came after my time. What edu­ca­tion I had was very rough and old-fash­ioned, I am afraid.”

“Where did you have it?” asked Syme, won­der­ing.

“Oh, at Har­row,” said the po­lice­man

The class sym­path­ies which, false as they are, are the truest things in so many men, broke out of Syme be­fore he could con­trol them.

“But, good Lord, man,” he said, “you oughtn’t to be a po­lice­man!”

The po­lice­man sighed and shook his head.

“I know,” he said sol­emnly, “I know I am not worthy.”

“But why did you join the po­lice?” asked Syme with rude curi­os­ity.

“For much the same reason that you ab­used the po­lice,” replied the other. “I found that there was a spe­cial open­ing in the ser­vice for those whose fears for hu­man­ity were con­cerned rather with the ab­er­ra­tions of the sci­entific in­tel­lect than with the nor­mal and ex­cus­able, though ex­cess­ive, out­breaks of the hu­man will. I trust I make my­self clear.”

“If you mean that you make your opin­ion clear,” said Syme, “I sup­pose you do. But as for mak­ing your­self clear, it is the last thing you do. How comes a man like you to be talk­ing philo­sophy in a blue hel­met on the Thames em­bank­ment?”

“You have evid­ently not heard of the latest de­vel­op­ment in our po­lice sys­tem,” replied the other. “I am not sur­prised at it. We are keep­ing it rather dark from the edu­cated class, be­cause that class con­tains most of our en­emies. But you seem to be ex­actly in the right frame of mind. I think you might al­most join us.”

“Join you in what?” asked Syme.

“I will tell you,” said the po­lice­man slowly. “This is the situ­ation: The head of one of our de­part­ments, one of the most cel­eb­rated de­tect­ives in Europe, has long been of opin­ion that a purely in­tel­lec­tual con­spir­acy would soon threaten the very ex­ist­ence of civil­isa­tion. He is cer­tain that the sci­entific and artistic worlds are si­lently bound in a cru­sade against the Fam­ily and the State. He has, there­fore, formed a spe­cial corps of po­lice­men, po­lice­men who are also philo­soph­ers. It is their busi­ness to watch the be­gin­nings of this con­spir­acy, not merely in a crim­inal but in a con­tro­ver­sial sense. I am a demo­crat my­self, and I am fully aware of the value of the or­din­ary man in mat­ters of or­din­ary valour or vir­tue. But it would ob­vi­ously be un­desir­able to em­ploy the com­mon po­lice­man in an in­vest­ig­a­tion which is also a heresy hunt.”

Syme’s eyes were bright with a sym­path­etic curi­os­ity.

“What do you do, then?” he said.

“The work of the philo­soph­ical po­lice­man,” replied the man in blue, “is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the or­din­ary de­tect­ive. The or­din­ary de­tect­ive goes to pot­houses to ar­rest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to de­tect pess­im­ists. The or­din­ary de­tect­ive dis­cov­ers from a ledger or a di­ary that a crime has been com­mit­ted. We dis­cover from a book of son­nets that a crime will be com­mit­ted. We have to trace the ori­gin of those dread­ful thoughts that drive men on at last to in­tel­lec­tual fan­at­icism and in­tel­lec­tual crime. We were only just in time to pre­vent the as­sas­sin­a­tion at Hartle­pool, and that was en­tirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fel­low) thor­oughly un­der­stood a tri­olet.”

“Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as much con­nec­tion between crime and the mod­ern in­tel­lect as all that?”

“You are not suf­fi­ciently demo­cratic,” answered the po­lice­man, “but you were right when you said just now that our or­din­ary treat­ment of the poor crim­inal was a pretty bru­tal busi­ness. I tell you I am some­times sick of my trade when I see how per­petu­ally it means merely a war upon the ig­nor­ant and the des­per­ate. But this new move­ment of ours is a very dif­fer­ent af­fair. We deny the snob­bish Eng­lish as­sump­tion that the un­educated are the dan­ger­ous crim­in­als. We re­mem­ber the Ro­man Em­per­ors. We re­mem­ber the great pois­on­ing princes of the Renais­sance. We say that the dan­ger­ous crim­inal is the edu­cated crim­inal. We say that the most dan­ger­ous crim­inal now is the en­tirely law­less mod­ern philo­sopher. Com­pared to him, burg­lars and bi­gam­ists are es­sen­tially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They ac­cept the es­sen­tial ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves re­spect prop­erty. They merely wish the prop­erty to be­come their prop­erty that they may more per­fectly re­spect it. But philo­soph­ers dis­like prop­erty as prop­erty; they wish to des­troy the very idea of per­sonal pos­ses­sion. Bigam­ists re­spect mar­riage, or they would not go through the highly ce­re­mo­nial and even ritu­al­istic form­al­ity of bi­gamy. But philo­soph­ers des­pise mar­riage as mar­riage. Mur­der­ers re­spect hu­man life; they merely wish to at­tain a greater ful­ness of hu­man life in them­selves by the sac­ri­fice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philo­soph­ers hate life it­self, their own as much as other people’s.”

Syme struck his hands to­gether.

“How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my boy­hood, but never could state the verbal an­ti­thesis. The com­mon crim­inal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a con­di­tional good man. He says that if only a cer­tain obstacle be re­moved—say a wealthy uncle—he is then pre­pared to ac­cept the uni­verse and to praise God. He is a re­former, but not an an­arch­ist. He wishes to cleanse the edi­fice, but not to des­troy it. But the evil philo­sopher is not try­ing to al­ter things, but to an­ni­hil­ate them. Yes, the mod­ern world has re­tained all those parts of po­lice work which are really op­press­ive and ig­no­mini­ous, the har­ry­ing of the poor, the spy­ing upon the un­for­tu­nate. It has given up its more dig­ni­fied work, the pun­ish­ment of power­ful trait­ors in the State and power­ful her­esi­archs in the Church. The mod­erns say we must not pun­ish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to pun­ish any­body else.”

“But this is ab­surd!” cried the po­lice­man, clasp­ing his hands with an ex­cite­ment un­com­mon in per­sons of his fig­ure and cos­tume, “but it is in­tol­er­able! I don’t know what you’re do­ing, but you’re wast­ing your life. You must, you shall, join our spe­cial army against an­archy. Their armies are on our fron­ti­ers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A mo­ment more, and you may lose the glory of work­ing with us, per­haps the glory of dy­ing with the last her­oes of the world.”

“It is a chance not to be missed, cer­tainly,” as­sen­ted Syme, “but still I do not quite un­der­stand. I know as well as any­body that the mod­ern world is full of law­less little men and mad little move­ments. But, beastly as they are, they gen­er­ally have the one merit of dis­agree­ing with each other. How can you talk of their lead­ing one army or hurl­ing one bolt. What is this an­archy?”

“Do not con­fuse it,” replied the con­stable, “with those chance dy­nam­ite out­breaks from Rus­sia or from Ire­land, which are really the out­breaks of op­pressed, if mis­taken, men. This is a vast philo­sophic move­ment, con­sist­ing of an outer and an in­ner ring. You might even call the outer ring the laity and the in­ner ring the priest­hood. I prefer to call the outer ring the in­no­cent sec­tion, the in­ner ring the su­premely guilty sec­tion. The outer ring—the main mass of their sup­port­ers—are merely an­arch­ists; that is, men who be­lieve that rules and for­mu­las have des­troyed hu­man hap­pi­ness. They be­lieve that all the evil res­ults of hu­man crime are the res­ults of the sys­tem that has called it crime. They do not be­lieve that the crime cre­ates the pun­ish­ment. They be­lieve that the pun­ish­ment has cre­ated the crime. They be­lieve that if a man se­duced seven wo­men he would nat­ur­ally walk away as blame­less as the flowers of spring. They be­lieve that if a man picked a pocket he would nat­ur­ally feel ex­quis­itely good. These I call the in­no­cent sec­tion.”

“Oh!” said Syme.

“Nat­ur­ally, there­fore, these people talk about ‘a happy time com­ing’; ‘the para­dise of the fu­ture’; ‘man­kind freed from the bond­age of vice and the bond­age of vir­tue,’ and so on. And so also the men of the in­ner circle speak—the sac­red priest­hood. They also speak to ap­plaud­ing crowds of the hap­pi­ness of the fu­ture, and of man­kind freed at last. But in their mouths”—and the po­lice­man lowered his voice—“in their mouths these happy phrases have a hor­rible mean­ing. They are un­der no il­lu­sions; they are too in­tel­lec­tual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of ori­ginal sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that man­kind shall be free at last, they mean that man­kind shall com­mit sui­cide. When they talk of a para­dise without right or wrong, they mean the grave.

“They have but two ob­jects, to des­troy first hu­man­ity and then them­selves. That is why they throw bombs in­stead of fir­ing pis­tols. The in­no­cent rank and file are dis­ap­poin­ted be­cause the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priest­hood are happy be­cause it has killed some­body.”

“How can I join you?” asked Syme, with a sort of pas­sion.

“I know for a fact that there is a va­cancy at the mo­ment,” said the po­lice­man, “as I have the hon­our to be some­what in the con­fid­ence of the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can talk to him if you like.”

“Tele­phone?” in­quired Syme, with in­terest.

“No,” said the po­lice­man pla­cidly, “he has a fancy for al­ways sit­ting in a pitch-dark room. He says it makes his thoughts brighter. Do come along.”

Some­what dazed and con­sid­er­ably ex­cited, Syme al­lowed him­self to be led to a side-door in the long row of build­ings of Scot­land Yard. Al­most be­fore he knew what he was do­ing, he had been passed through the hands of about four in­ter­me­di­ate of­fi­cials, and was sud­denly shown into a room, the ab­rupt black­ness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the or­din­ary dark­ness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like go­ing sud­denly stone-blind.

“Are you the new re­cruit?” asked a heavy voice.

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

“Are you the new re­cruit?” said the in­vis­ible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are en­gaged.”

Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this ir­re­voc­able phrase.

“I really have no ex­per­i­ence,” he began.

“No one has any ex­per­i­ence,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armaged­don.”

“But I am really un­fit—”

“You are will­ing, that is enough,” said the un­known.

“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any pro­fes­sion of which mere will­ing­ness is the fi­nal test.”

“I do,” said the other—“mar­tyrs. I am con­demning you to death. Good day.”

Thus it was that when Gab­riel Syme came out again into the crim­son light of even­ing, in his shabby black hat and shabby, law­less cloak, he came out a mem­ber of the New Detect­ive Corps for the frus­tra­tion of the great con­spir­acy. Act­ing un­der the ad­vice of his friend the po­lice­man (who was pro­fes­sion­ally in­clined to neat­ness), he trimmed his hair and beard, bought a good hat, clad him­self in an ex­quis­ite sum­mer suit of light blue-grey, with a pale yel­low flower in the but­ton­hole, and, in short, be­came that el­eg­ant and rather in­sup­port­able per­son whom Gregory had first en­countered in the little garden of Saf­fron Park. Be­fore he fi­nally left the po­lice premises his friend provided him with a small blue card, on which was writ­ten, “The Last Cru­sade,” and a num­ber, the sign of his of­fi­cial au­thor­ity. He put this care­fully in his up­per waist­coat pocket, lit a ci­gar­ette, and went forth to track and fight the en­emy in all the draw­ing-rooms of Lon­don. Where his ad­ven­ture ul­ti­mately led him we have already seen. At about half-past one on a Febru­ary night he found him­self steam­ing in a small tug up the si­lent Thames, armed with sword­stick and re­volver, the duly elec­ted Thursday of the Cen­t­ral Coun­cil of An­arch­ists.

When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a sin­gu­lar sen­sa­tion of step­ping out into some­thing en­tirely new; not merely into the land­scape of a new land, but even into the land­scape of a new planet. This was mainly due to the in­sane yet solid de­cision of that even­ing, though partly also to an en­tire change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tav­ern some two hours be­fore. Every trace of the pas­sion­ate plumage of the cloudy sun­set had been swept away, and a na­ked moon stood in a na­ked sky. The moon was so strong and full that (by a para­dox of­ten to be no­ticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright moon­shine, but rather of a dead day­light.

Over the whole land­scape lay a lu­min­ous and un­nat­ural dis­col­or­a­tion, as of that dis­astrous twi­light which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in ec­lipse; so that Syme fell eas­ily into his first thought, that he was ac­tu­ally on some other and emp­tier planet, which circled round some sad­der star. But the more he felt this glit­ter­ing des­ol­a­tion in the moon­lit land, the more his own chiv­al­ric folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the com­mon things he car­ried with him—the food and the brandy and the loaded pis­tol—took on ex­actly that con­crete and ma­ter­ial po­etry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a jour­ney or a bun with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though in them­selves only the tools of mor­bid con­spir­at­ors, be­came the ex­pres­sions of his own more healthy ro­mance. The sword-stick be­came al­most the sword of chiv­alry, and the brandy the wine of the stir­rup-cup. For even the most de­hu­man­ised mod­ern fantas­ies de­pend on some older and sim­pler fig­ure; the ad­ven­tures may be mad, but the ad­ven­turer must be sane. The dragon without St. Ge­orge would not even be grot­esque. So this in­hu­man land­scape was only ima­gin­at­ive by the pres­ence of a man really hu­man. To Syme’s ex­ag­ger­at­ive mind the bright, bleak houses and ter­races by the Thames looked as empty as the moun­tains of the moon. But even the moon is only po­et­ical be­cause there is a man in the moon.

The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went com­par­at­ively slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had gone down by the time that they passed Bat­ter­sea, and when they came un­der the enorm­ous bulk of West­min­ster day had already be­gun to break. It broke like the split­ting of great bars of lead, show­ing bars of sil­ver; and these had brightened like white fire when the tug, chan­ging its on­ward course, turned in­ward to a large land­ing stage rather bey­ond Char­ing Cross.

The great stones of the Em­bank­ment seemed equally dark and gi­gantic as Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge white dawn. They made him feel that he was land­ing on the co­lossal steps of some Egyp­tian palace; and, in­deed, the thing suited his mood, for he was, in his own mind, mount­ing to at­tack the solid thrones of hor­rible and hea­then kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender fig­ure, amid the enorm­ous ma­sonry. The two men in the tug put her off again and turned up stream. They had never spoken a word.

V The Feast of Fear

At first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deser­ted as a pyr­amid; but be­fore he reached the top he had real­ised that there was a man lean­ing over the para­pet of the Em­bank­ment and look­ing out across the river. As a fig­ure he was quite con­ven­tional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the more formal type of fash­ion; he had a red flower in his but­ton­hole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to no­tice even in the dim, pale morn­ing light that his face was long, pale and in­tel­lec­tual, and ended in a small tri­an­gu­lar tuft of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all else be­ing clean-shaven. This scrap of hair al­most seemed a mere over­sight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best shaven—clear-cut, as­cetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer and closer, not­ing all this, and still the fig­ure did not stir.

At first an in­stinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was meant to meet. Then, see­ing that the man made no sign, he had con­cluded that he was not. And now again he had come back to a cer­tainty that the man had some­thing to do with his mad ad­ven­ture. For the man re­mained more still than would have been nat­ural if a stranger had come so close. He was as mo­tion­less as a wax­work, and got on the nerves some­what in the same way. Syme looked again and again at the pale, dig­ni­fied and del­ic­ate face, and the face still looked blankly across the river. Then he took out of his pocket the note from But­tons prov­ing his elec­tion, and put it be­fore that sad and beau­ti­ful face. Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, go­ing up in the right cheek and down in the left.

There was noth­ing, ra­tion­ally speak­ing, to scare any­one about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even at­tract­ive. But in all Syme’s cir­cum­stances, with the dark dawn and the deadly er­rand and the loneli­ness on the great drip­ping stones, there was some­thing un­nerv­ing in it.

There was the si­lent river and the si­lent man, a man of even clas­sic face. And there was the last night­mare touch that his smile sud­denly went wrong.

The spasm of smile was in­stant­an­eous, and the man’s face dropped at once into its har­mo­ni­ous mel­an­choly. He spoke without fur­ther ex­plan­a­tion or in­quiry, like a man speak­ing to an old col­league.

“If we walk up to­wards Leicester Square,” he said, “we shall just be in time for break­fast. Sunday al­ways in­sists on an early break­fast. Have you had any sleep?”

“No,” said Syme.

“Nor have I,” answered the man in an or­din­ary tone. “I shall try to get to bed after break­fast.”

He spoke with cas­ual ci­vil­ity, but in an ut­terly dead voice that con­tra­dicted the fan­at­icism of his face. It seemed al­most as if all friendly words were to him life­less con­veni­ences, and that his only life was hate. After a pause the man spoke again.

“Of course, the Sec­ret­ary of the branch told you everything that can be told. But the one thing that can never be told is the last no­tion of the Pres­id­ent, for his no­tions grow like a trop­ical forest. So in case you don’t know, I’d bet­ter tell you that he is car­ry­ing out his no­tion of con­ceal­ing ourselves by not con­ceal­ing ourselves to the most ex­traordin­ary lengths just now. Ori­gin­ally, of course, we met in a cell un­der­ground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a private room at an or­din­ary res­taur­ant. He said that if you didn’t seem to be hid­ing nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but some­times I really think that his huge brain is go­ing a little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves be­fore the pub­lic. We have our break­fast on a bal­cony—on a bal­cony, if you please—over­look­ing Leicester Square.”

“And what do the people say?” asked Syme.

“It’s quite simple what they say,” answered his guide.

“They say we are a lot of jolly gen­tle­men who pre­tend they are an­arch­ists.”

“It seems to me a very clever idea,” said Syme.

“Clever! God blast your im­pudence! Clever!” cried out the other in a sud­den, shrill voice which was as start­ling and dis­cord­ant as his crooked smile. “When you’ve seen Sunday for a split second you’ll leave off call­ing him clever.”

With this they emerged out of a nar­row street, and saw the early sun­light filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I sup­pose, why this square it­self should look so alien and in some ways so con­tin­ental. It will never be known whether it was the for­eign look that at­trac­ted the for­eign­ers or the for­eign­ers who gave it the for­eign look. But on this par­tic­u­lar morn­ing the ef­fect seemed sin­gu­larly bright and clear. Between the open square and the sun­lit leaves and the statue and the Sara­cenic out­lines of the Al­ham­bra, it looked the rep­lica of some French or even Span­ish pub­lic place. And this ef­fect in­creased in Syme the sen­sa­tion, which in many shapes he had had through the whole ad­ven­ture, the eerie sen­sa­tion of hav­ing strayed into a new world. As a fact, he had bought bad ci­gars round Leicester Square ever since he was a boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the Moor­ish cu­polas, he could have sworn that he was turn­ing into an un­known Place de some­thing or other in some for­eign town.

At one corner of the square there pro­jec­ted a kind of angle of a pros­per­ous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which be­longed to a street be­hind. In the wall there was one large French win­dow, prob­ably the win­dow of a large cof­fee-room; and out­side this win­dow, al­most lit­er­ally over­hanging the square, was a for­mid­ably but­tressed bal­cony, big enough to con­tain a din­ing-table. In fact, it did con­tain a din­ing-table, or more strictly a break­fast-table; and round the break­fast-table, glow­ing in the sun­light and evid­ent to the street, were a group of noisy and talk­at­ive men, all dressed in the in­solence of fash­ion, with white waist­coats and ex­pens­ive but­ton­holes. Some of their jokes could al­most be heard across the square. Then the grave Sec­ret­ary gave his un­nat­ural smile, and Syme knew that this bois­ter­ous break­fast party was the secret con­clave of the European Dy­nam­iters.

Then, as Syme con­tin­ued to stare at them, he saw some­thing that he had not seen be­fore. He had not seen it lit­er­ally be­cause it was too large to see. At the nearest end of the bal­cony, block­ing up a great part of the per­spect­ive, was the back of a great moun­tain of a man. When Syme had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break down the bal­cony of stone. His vast­ness did not lie only in the fact that he was ab­nor­mally tall and quite in­cred­ibly fat. This man was planned enorm­ously in his ori­ginal pro­por­tions, like a statue carved de­lib­er­ately as co­lossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen from be­hind looked big­ger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood out from it looked lar­ger than hu­man ears. He was en­larged ter­ribly to scale; and this sense of size was so stag­ger­ing, that when Syme saw him all the other fig­ures seemed quite sud­denly to dwindle and be­come dwarfish. They were still sit­ting there as be­fore with their flowers and frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was en­ter­tain­ing five chil­dren to tea.

As Syme and the guide ap­proached the side door of the hotel, a waiter came out smil­ing with every tooth in his head.

“The gen­tle­men are up there, sare,” he said. “They do talk and they do laugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king.”

And the waiter hur­ried away with a nap­kin over his arm, much pleased with the sin­gu­lar frivolity of the gen­tle­men up­stairs.

The two men moun­ted the stairs in si­lence.

Syme had never thought of ask­ing whether the mon­strous man who al­most filled and broke the bal­cony was the great Pres­id­ent of whom the oth­ers stood in awe. He knew it was so, with an un­ac­count­able but in­stant­an­eous cer­tainty. Syme, in­deed, was one of those men who are open to all the more name­less psy­cho­lo­gical in­flu­ences in a de­gree a little dan­ger­ous to men­tal health. Ut­terly devoid of fear in phys­ical dangers, he was a great deal too sens­it­ive to the smell of spir­itual evil. Twice already that night little un­mean­ing things had peeped out at him al­most pruri­ently, and given him a sense of draw­ing nearer and nearer to the headquar­ters of hell. And this sense be­came over­power­ing as he drew nearer to the great Pres­id­ent.

The form it took was a child­ish and yet hate­ful fancy. As he walked across the in­ner room to­wards the bal­cony, the large face of Sunday grew lar­ger and lar­ger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he was quite close the face would be too big to be pos­sible, and that he would scream aloud. He re­membered that as a child he would not look at the mask of Mem­non in the Brit­ish Mu­seum, be­cause it was a face, and so large.

By an ef­fort, braver than that of leap­ing over a cliff, he went to an empty seat at the break­fast-table and sat down. The men greeted him with good-hu­moured raillery as if they had al­ways known him. He sobered him­self a little by look­ing at their con­ven­tional coats and solid, shin­ing cof­fee­pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face was very large, but it was still pos­sible to hu­man­ity.

In the pres­ence of the Pres­id­ent the whole com­pany looked suf­fi­ciently com­mon­place; noth­ing about them caught the eye at first, ex­cept that by the Pres­id­ent’s caprice they had been dressed up with a fest­ive re­spect­ab­il­ity, which gave the meal the look of a wed­ding break­fast. One man in­deed stood out at even a su­per­fi­cial glance. He at least was the com­mon or garden Dy­nam­iter. He wore, in­deed, the high white col­lar and satin tie that were the uni­form of the oc­ca­sion; but out of this col­lar there sprang a head quite un­man­age­able and quite un­mis­tak­able, a be­wil­der­ing bush of brown hair and beard that al­most ob­scured the eyes like those of a Skye ter­rier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some Rus­sian serf. The ef­fect of this fig­ure was not ter­rible like that of the Pres­id­ent, but it had every di­ablerie that can come from the ut­terly grot­esque. If out of that stiff tie and col­lar there had come ab­ruptly the head of a cat or a dog, it could not have been a more idi­otic con­trast.

The man’s name, it seemed, was Go­gol; he was a Pole, and in this circle of days he was called Tues­day. His soul and speech were in­cur­ably tra­gic; he could not force him­self to play the pros­per­ous and frivol­ous part de­man­ded of him by Pres­id­ent Sunday. And, in­deed, when Syme came in the Pres­id­ent, with that dar­ing dis­reg­ard of pub­lic sus­pi­cion which was his policy, was ac­tu­ally chaff­ing Go­gol upon his in­ab­il­ity to as­sume con­ven­tional graces.

“Our friend Tues­day,” said the Pres­id­ent in a deep voice at once of quiet­ude and volume, “our friend Tues­day doesn’t seem to grasp the idea. He dresses up like a gen­tle­man, but he seems to be too great a soul to be­have like one. He in­sists on the ways of the stage con­spir­ator. Now if a gen­tle­man goes about Lon­don in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need know that he is an an­arch­ist. But if a gen­tle­man puts on a top hat and a frock-coat, and then goes about on his hands and knees—well, he may at­tract at­ten­tion. That’s what Brother Go­gol does. He goes about on his hands and knees with such in­ex­haust­ible dip­lomacy, that by this time he finds it quite dif­fi­cult to walk up­right.”

“I am not good at gon­ceal­ment,” said Go­gol sulkily, with a thick for­eign ac­cent; “I am not ashamed of the cause.”

“Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you,” said the Pres­id­ent good-naturedly. “You hide as much as any­body; but you can’t do it, you see, you’re such an ass! You try to com­bine two in­con­sist­ent meth­ods. When a house­holder finds a man un­der his bed, he will prob­ably pause to note the cir­cum­stance. But if he finds a man un­der his bed in a top hat, you will agree with me, my dear Tues­day, that he is not likely even to for­get it. Now when you were found un­der Ad­miral Biffin’s bed—”

“I am not good at de­cep­tion,” said Tues­day gloomily, flush­ing.

“Right, my boy, right,” said the Pres­id­ent with a pon­der­ous hearti­ness, “you aren’t good at any­thing.”

While this stream of con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued, Syme was look­ing more stead­ily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradu­ally felt all his sense of some­thing spir­itu­ally queer re­turn.

He had thought at first that they were all of com­mon stature and cos­tume, with the evid­ent ex­cep­tion of the hairy Go­gol. But as he looked at the oth­ers, he began to see in each of them ex­actly what he had seen in the man by the river, a de­moniac de­tail some­where. That lop­sided laugh, which would sud­denly dis­fig­ure the fine face of his ori­ginal guide, was typ­ical of all these types. Each man had some­thing about him, per­ceived per­haps at the tenth or twen­ti­eth glance, which was not nor­mal, and which seemed hardly hu­man. The only meta­phor he could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fash­ion and pres­ence would look, with the ad­di­tional twist given in a false and curved mir­ror.

Only the in­di­vidual ex­amples will ex­press this half-con­cealed ec­cent­ri­city. Syme’s ori­ginal cicer­one bore the title of Monday; he was the Sec­ret­ary of the Coun­cil, and his twis­ted smile was re­garded with more ter­ror than any­thing, ex­cept the Pres­id­ent’s hor­rible, happy laughter. But now that Syme had more space and light to ob­serve him, there were other touches. His fine face was so ema­ci­ated, that Syme thought it must be wasted with some dis­ease; yet some­how the very dis­tress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no phys­ical ill that troubled him. His eyes were alive with in­tel­lec­tual tor­ture, as if pure thought was pain.

He was typ­ical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and dif­fer­ently wrong. Next to him sat Tues­day, the tousle-headed Go­gol, a man more ob­vi­ously mad. Next was Wed­nes­day, a cer­tain Mar­quis de St. Eus­tache, a suf­fi­ciently char­ac­ter­istic fig­ure. The first few glances found noth­ing un­usual about him, ex­cept that he was the only man at table who wore the fash­ion­able clothes as if they were really his own. He had a black French beard cut square and a black Eng­lish frock-coat cut even squarer. But Syme, sens­it­ive to such things, felt some­how that the man car­ried a rich at­mo­sphere with him, a rich at­mo­sphere that suf­foc­ated. It re­minded one ir­ra­tion­ally of drowsy odours and of dy­ing lamps in the darker poems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his be­ing clad, not in lighter col­ours, but in softer ma­ter­i­als; his black seemed richer and warmer than the black shades about him, as if it were com­poun­ded of pro­found col­our. His black coat looked as if it were only black by be­ing too dense a purple. His black beard looked as if it were only black by be­ing too deep a blue. And in the gloom and thick­ness of the beard his dark red mouth showed sen­sual and scorn­ful. Whatever he was he was not a French­man; he might be a Jew; he might be some­thing deeper yet in the dark heart of the East. In the bright col­oured Per­sian tiles and pic­tures show­ing tyr­ants hunt­ing, you may see just those al­mond eyes, those blue-black beards, those cruel, crim­son lips.

Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Pro­fessor de Worms, who still kept the chair of Fri­day, though every day it was ex­pec­ted that his death would leave it empty. Save for his in­tel­lect, he was in the last dis­sol­u­tion of senile de­cay. His face was as grey as his long grey beard, his fore­head was lif­ted and fixed fi­nally in a fur­row of mild des­pair. In no other case, not even that of Go­gol, did the bride­groom bril­liancy of the morn­ing dress ex­press a more pain­ful con­trast. For the red flower in his but­ton­hole showed up against a face that was lit­er­ally dis­col­oured like lead; the whole hideous ef­fect was as if some drunken dan­dies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose or sat down, which was with long la­bour and peril, some­thing worse was ex­pressed than mere weak­ness, some­thing in­defin­ably con­nec­ted with the hor­ror of the whole scene. It did not ex­press de­crep­itude merely, but cor­rup­tion. Another hate­ful fancy crossed Syme’s quiv­er­ing mind. He could not help think­ing that whenever the man moved a leg or arm might fall off.

Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the most baff­ling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square face clean-shaven, a med­ical prac­ti­tioner go­ing by the name of Bull. He had that com­bin­a­tion of sa­voir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarse­ness which is not un­com­mon in young doc­tors. He car­ried his fine clothes with con­fid­ence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There was noth­ing whatever odd about him, ex­cept that he wore a pair of dark, al­most opaque spec­tacles. It may have been merely a cres­cendo of nervous fancy that had gone be­fore, but those black discs were dread­ful to Syme; they re­minded him of half-re­membered ugly tales, of some story about pen­nies be­ing put on the eyes of the dead. Syme’s eye al­ways caught the black glasses and the blind grin. Had the dy­ing Pro­fessor worn them, or even the pale Sec­ret­ary, they would have been ap­pro­pri­ate. But on the younger and grosser man they seemed only an en­igma. They took away the key of the face. You could not tell what his smile or his grav­ity meant. Partly from this, and partly be­cause he had a vul­gar vir­il­ity want­ing in most of the oth­ers it seemed to Syme that he might be the wick­ed­est of all those wicked men. Syme even had the thought that his eyes might be covered up be­cause they were too fright­ful to see.

VI The Exposure

Such were the six men who had sworn to des­troy the world. Again and again Syme strove to pull to­gether his com­mon sense in their pres­ence. So­me­times he saw for an in­stant that these no­tions were sub­ject­ive, that he was only look­ing at or­din­ary men, one of whom was old, an­other nervous, an­other short­sighted. The sense of an un­nat­ural sym­bol­ism al­ways settled back on him again. Each fig­ure seemed to be, some­how, on the bor­der­land of things, just as their the­ory was on the bor­der­land of thought. He knew that each one of these men stood at the ex­treme end, so to speak, of some wild road of reas­on­ing. He could only fancy, as in some old-world fable, that if a man went west­ward to the end of the world he would find some­thing—say a tree—that was more or less than a tree, a tree pos­sessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the world he would find some­thing else that was not wholly it­self—a tower, per­haps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these fig­ures seemed to stand up, vi­ol­ent and un­ac­count­able, against an ul­ti­mate ho­ri­zon, vis­ions from the verge. The ends of the earth were clos­ing in.

Talk had been go­ing on stead­ily as he took in the scene; and not the least of the con­trasts of that be­wil­der­ing break­fast-table was the con­trast between the easy and un­ob­trus­ive tone of talk and its ter­rible pur­port. They were deep in the dis­cus­sion of an ac­tual and im­me­di­ate plot. The waiter down­stairs had spoken quite cor­rectly when he said that they were talk­ing about bombs and kings. Only three days af­ter­wards the Czar was to meet the Pres­id­ent of the French Re­pub­lic in Paris, and over their ba­con and eggs upon their sunny bal­cony these beam­ing gen­tle­men had de­cided how both should die. Even the in­stru­ment was chosen; the black-bearded Mar­quis, it ap­peared, was to carry the bomb.

Ordin­ar­ily speak­ing, the prox­im­ity of this pos­it­ive and ob­ject­ive crime would have sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mys­tical tremors. He would have thought of noth­ing but the need of sav­ing at least two hu­man bod­ies from be­ing ripped in pieces with iron and roar­ing gas. But the truth was that by this time he had be­gun to feel a third kind of fear, more pier­cing and prac­tical than either his moral re­vul­sion or his so­cial re­spons­ib­il­ity. Very simply, he had no fear to spare for the French Pres­id­ent or the Czar; he had be­gun to fear for him­self. Most of the talk­ers took little heed of him, de­bat­ing now with their faces closer to­gether, and al­most uni­formly grave, save when for an in­stant the smile of the Sec­ret­ary ran aslant across his face as the jagged light­ning runs aslant across the sky. But there was one per­sist­ent thing which first troubled Syme and at last ter­ri­fied him. The Pres­id­ent was al­ways look­ing at him, stead­ily, and with a great and baff­ling in­terest. The enorm­ous man was quite quiet, but his blue eyes stood out of his head. And they were al­ways fixed on Syme.

Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the bal­cony. When the Pres­id­ent’s eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some si­lent and ex­traordin­ary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the bal­cony, and saw a po­lice­man, stand­ing ab­strac­tedly just be­neath, star­ing at the bright rail­ings and the sun­lit trees.

Then there fell upon him the great tempta­tion that was to tor­ment him for many days. In the pres­ence of these power­ful and re­puls­ive men, who were the princes of an­archy, he had al­most for­got­ten the frail and fanci­ful fig­ure of the poet Gregory, the mere aes­thete of an­arch­ism. He even thought of him now with an old kind­ness, as if they had played to­gether when chil­dren. But he re­membered that he was still tied to Gregory by a great prom­ise. He had prom­ised never to do the very thing that he now felt him­self al­most in the act of do­ing. He had prom­ised not to jump over that bal­cony and speak to that po­lice­man. He took his cold hand off the cold stone bal­us­trade. His soul swayed in a ver­tigo of moral in­de­cision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a vil­lain­ous so­ci­ety, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square be­neath him. He had, on the other hand, only to keep his an­ti­quated hon­our, and be de­livered inch by inch into the power of this great en­emy of man­kind, whose very in­tel­lect was a tor­ture-cham­ber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the com­fort­able po­lice­man, a pil­lar of com­mon sense and com­mon or­der. Whenever he looked back at the break­fast-table he saw the Pres­id­ent still quietly study­ing him with big, un­bear­able eyes.

In all the tor­rent of his thought there were two thoughts that never crossed his mind. First, it never oc­curred to him to doubt that the Pres­id­ent and his Coun­cil could crush him if he con­tin­ued to stand alone. The place might be pub­lic, the pro­ject might seem im­possible. But Sunday was not the man who would carry him­self thus eas­ily without hav­ing, some­how or some­where, set open his iron trap. Either by an­onym­ous poison or sud­den street ac­ci­dent, by hyp­not­ism or by fire from hell, Sunday could cer­tainly strike him. If he de­fied the man he was prob­ably dead, either struck stiff there in his chair or long af­ter­wards as by an in­no­cent ail­ment. If he called in the po­lice promptly, ar­res­ted every­one, told all, and set against them the whole en­ergy of Eng­land, he would prob­ably es­cape; cer­tainly not oth­er­wise. They were a bal­con­y­ful of gen­tle­men over­look­ing a bright and busy square; but he felt no more safe with them than if they had been a boat­ful of armed pir­ates over­look­ing an empty sea.

There was a second thought that never came to him. It never oc­curred to him to be spir­itu­ally won over to the en­emy. Many mod­erns, in­ured to a weak wor­ship of in­tel­lect and force, might have wavered in their al­le­gi­ance un­der this op­pres­sion of a great per­son­al­ity. They might have called Sunday the su­per­man. If any such creature be con­ceiv­able, he looked, in­deed, some­what like it, with his earth­shak­ing ab­strac­tion, as of a stone statue walk­ing. He might have been called some­thing above man, with his large plans, which were too ob­vi­ous to be de­tec­ted, with his large face, which was too frank to be un­der­stood. But this was a kind of mod­ern mean­ness to which Syme could not sink even in his ex­treme mor­bid­ity. Like any man, he was cow­ard enough to fear great force; but he was not quite cow­ard enough to ad­mire it.

The men were eat­ing as they talked, and even in this they were typ­ical. Dr. Bull and the Mar­quis ate cas­u­ally and con­ven­tion­ally of the best things on the table—cold pheas­ant or Stras­bourg pie. But the Sec­ret­ary was a ve­get­arian, and he spoke earn­estly of the pro­jec­ted murder over half a raw to­mato and three quar­ters of a glass of tepid wa­ter. The old Pro­fessor had such slops as sug­ges­ted a sick­en­ing second child­hood. And even in this Pres­id­ent Sunday pre­served his curi­ous pre­dom­in­ance of mere mass. For he ate like twenty men; he ate in­cred­ibly, with a fright­ful fresh­ness of ap­pet­ite, so that it was like watch­ing a saus­age fact­ory. Yet con­tinu­ally, when he had swal­lowed a dozen crum­pets or drunk a quart of cof­fee, he would be found with his great head on one side star­ing at Syme.

“I have of­ten wondered,” said the Mar­quis, tak­ing a great bite out of a slice of bread and jam, “whether it wouldn’t be bet­ter for me to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a knife. And it would be a new emo­tion to get a knife into a French Pres­id­ent and wriggle it round.”

“You are wrong,” said the Sec­ret­ary, draw­ing his black brows to­gether. “The knife was merely the ex­pres­sion of the old per­sonal quar­rel with a per­sonal tyr­ant. Dy­nam­ite is not only our best tool, but our best sym­bol. It is as per­fect a sym­bol of us as is in­cense of the pray­ers of the Chris­ti­ans. It ex­pands; it only des­troys be­cause it broadens; even so, thought only des­troys be­cause it broadens. A man’s brain is a bomb,” he cried out, loosen­ing sud­denly his strange pas­sion and strik­ing his own skull with vi­ol­ence. “My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must ex­pand! It must ex­pand! A man’s brain must ex­pand, if it breaks up the uni­verse.”

“I don’t want the uni­verse broken up just yet,” drawled the Mar­quis. “I want to do a lot of beastly things be­fore I die. I thought of one yes­ter­day in bed.”

“No, if the only end of the thing is noth­ing,” said Dr. Bull with his sphinx-like smile, “it hardly seems worth do­ing.”

The old Pro­fessor was star­ing at the ceil­ing with dull eyes.

“Every man knows in his heart,” he said, “that noth­ing is worth do­ing.”

There was a sin­gu­lar si­lence, and then the Sec­ret­ary said—

“We are wan­der­ing, how­ever, from the point. The only ques­tion is how Wed­nes­day is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with the ori­ginal no­tion of a bomb. As to the ac­tual ar­range­ments, I should sug­gest that to­mor­row morn­ing he should go first of all to—”

The speech was broken off short un­der a vast shadow. Pres­id­ent Sunday had risen to his feet, seem­ing to fill the sky above them.

“Be­fore we dis­cuss that,” he said in a small, quiet voice, “let us go into a private room. I have some­thing very par­tic­u­lar to say.”

Syme stood up be­fore any of the oth­ers. The in­stant of choice had come at last, the pis­tol was at his head. On the pave­ment be­fore he could hear the po­lice­man idly stir and stamp, for the morn­ing, though bright, was cold.

A bar­rel-or­gan in the street sud­denly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle be­fore the battle. He found him­self filled with a su­per­nat­ural cour­age that came from nowhere. That jingling mu­sic seemed full of the vi­va­city, the vul­gar­ity, and the ir­ra­tional valour of the poor, who in all those un­clean streets were all cling­ing to the de­cen­cies and the char­it­ies of Christen­dom. His youth­ful prank of be­ing a po­lice­man had faded from his mind; he did not think of him­self as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of the corps of gen­tle­men turned into fancy con­stables, or of the old ec­cent­ric who lived in the dark room. But he did feel him­self as the am­bas­sador of all these com­mon and kindly people in the street, who every day marched into battle to the mu­sic of the bar­rel-or­gan. And this high pride in be­ing hu­man had lif­ted him un­ac­count­ably to an in­fin­ite height above the mon­strous men around him. For an in­stant, at least, he looked down upon all their sprawl­ing ec­cent­ri­cit­ies from the starry pin­nacle of the com­mon­place. He felt to­wards them all that un­con­scious and ele­ment­ary su­peri­or­ity that a brave man feels over power­ful beasts or a wise man over power­ful er­rors. He knew that he had neither the in­tel­lec­tual nor the phys­ical strength of Pres­id­ent Sunday; but in that mo­ment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the muscles of a ti­ger or a horn on his nose like a rhino­ceros. All was swal­lowed up in an ul­ti­mate cer­tainty that the Pres­id­ent was wrong and that the bar­rel-or­gan was right. There clanged in his mind that un­answer­able and ter­rible tru­ism in the song of Ro­land—

“Païens ont tort et Chré­tiens ont droit.”

which in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. This lib­er­a­tion of his spirit from the load of his weak­ness went with a quite clear de­cision to em­brace death. If the people of the bar­rel-or­gan could keep their old-world ob­lig­a­tions, so could he. This very pride in keep­ing his word was that he was keep­ing it to miscre­ants. It was his last tri­umph over these lun­at­ics to go down into their dark room and die for some­thing that they could not even un­der­stand. The bar­rel-or­gan seemed to give the march­ing tune with the en­ergy and the mingled noises of a whole or­ches­tra; and he could hear deep and rolling, un­der all the trum­pets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.

The con­spir­at­ors were already fil­ing through the open win­dow and into the rooms be­hind. Syme went last, out­wardly calm, but with all his brain and body throb­bing with ro­mantic rhythm. The Pres­id­ent led them down an ir­reg­u­lar side stair, such as might be used by ser­vants, and into a dim, cold, empty room, with a table and benches, like an aban­doned board­room. When they were all in, he closed and locked the door.

The first to speak was Go­gol, the ir­re­con­cil­able, who seemed burst­ing with in­ar­tic­u­late griev­ance.

“Zso! Zso!” he cried, with an ob­scure ex­cite­ment, his heavy Pol­ish ac­cent be­com­ing al­most im­pen­et­rable. “You zay you nod ’ide. You zay you show him­selves. It is all nuzzinks. Ven you vant talk im­port­ance you run yourselves in a dark box!”

The Pres­id­ent seemed to take the for­eigner’s in­co­her­ent satire with en­tire good hu­mour.

“You can’t get hold of it yet, Go­gol,” he said in a fath­erly way. “When once they have heard us talk­ing non­sense on that bal­cony they will not care where we go af­ter­wards. If we had come here first, we should have had the whole staff at the key­hole. You don’t seem to know any­thing about man­kind.”

“I die for zem,” cried the Pole in thick ex­cite­ment, “and I slay zare op­press­ors. I care not for these games of gonzeal­ment. I would zmite ze tyr­ant in ze open square.”

“I see, I see,” said the Pres­id­ent, nod­ding kindly as he seated him­self at the top of a long table. “You die for man­kind first, and then you get up and smite their op­press­ors. So that’s all right. And now may I ask you to con­trol your beau­ti­ful sen­ti­ments, and sit down with the other gen­tle­men at this table. For the first time this morn­ing some­thing in­tel­li­gent is go­ing to be said.”

Syme, with the per­turbed promptitude he had shown since the ori­ginal sum­mons, sat down first. Go­gol sat down last, grumbling in his brown beard about gom­brom­ise. No one ex­cept Syme seemed to have any no­tion of the blow that was about to fall. As for him, he had merely the feel­ing of a man mount­ing the scaf­fold with the in­ten­tion, at any rate, of mak­ing a good speech.

“Com­rades,” said the Pres­id­ent, sud­denly rising, “we have spun out this farce long enough. I have called you down here to tell you some­thing so simple and shock­ing that even the waiters up­stairs (long in­ured to our lev­it­ies) might hear some new ser­i­ous­ness in my voice. Com­rades, we were dis­cuss­ing plans and nam­ing places. I pro­pose, be­fore say­ing any­thing else, that those plans and places should not be voted by this meet­ing, but should be left wholly in the con­trol of some one re­li­able mem­ber. I sug­gest Com­rade Saturday, Dr. Bull.”

They all stared at him; then they all star­ted in their seats, for the next words, though not loud, had a liv­ing and sen­sa­tional em­phasis. Sunday struck the table.

“Not one word more about the plans and places must be said at this meet­ing. Not one tiny de­tail more about what we mean to do must be men­tioned in this com­pany.”

Sunday had spent his life in as­ton­ish­ing his fol­low­ers; but it seemed as if he had never really as­ton­ished them un­til now. They all moved fe­ver­ishly in their seats, ex­cept Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his hand in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded re­volver. When the at­tack on him came he would sell his life dear. He would find out at least if the Pres­id­ent was mor­tal.

Sunday went on smoothly—

“You will prob­ably un­der­stand that there is only one pos­sible motive for for­bid­ding free speech at this fest­ival of free­dom. Strangers over­hear­ing us mat­ters noth­ing. They as­sume that we are jok­ing. But what would mat­ter, even unto death, is this, that there should be one ac­tu­ally among us who is not of us, who knows our grave pur­pose, but does not share it, who—”

The Sec­ret­ary screamed out sud­denly like a wo­man.

“It can’t be!” he cried, leap­ing. “There can’t—”

The Pres­id­ent flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of some huge fish.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor at this table. I will waste no more words. His name—”

Syme half rose from his seat, his fin­ger firm on the trig­ger.

“His name is Go­gol,” said the Pres­id­ent. “He is that hairy hum­bug over there who pre­tends to be a Pole.”

Go­gol sprang to his feet, a pis­tol in each hand. With the same flash three men sprang at his throat. Even the Pro­fessor made an ef­fort to rise. But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was blinded with a be­ne­fi­cent dark­ness; he had sunk down into his seat shud­der­ing, in a palsy of pas­sion­ate re­lief.

VII The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms

“Sit down!” said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in his life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords.

The three who had risen fell away from Go­gol, and that equi­vocal per­son him­self re­sumed his seat.

“Well, my man,” said the Pres­id­ent briskly, ad­dress­ing him as one ad­dresses a total stranger, “will you ob­lige me by put­ting your hand in your up­per waist­coat pocket and show­ing me what you have there?”

The al­leged Pole was a little pale un­der his tangle of dark hair, but he put two fin­gers into the pocket with ap­par­ent cool­ness and pulled out a blue strip of card. When Syme saw it ly­ing on the table, he woke up again to the world out­side him. For al­though the card lay at the other ex­treme of the table, and he could read noth­ing of the in­scrip­tion on it, it bore a start­ling re­semb­lance to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had been given to him when he joined the anti-an­arch­ist con­stabu­lary.

“Pathetic Slav,” said the Pres­id­ent, “tra­gic child of Po­land, are you pre­pared in the pres­ence of that card to deny that you are in this com­pany—shall we say de trop?”

“Right oh!” said the late Go­gol. It made every­one jump to hear a clear, com­mer­cial and some­what cock­ney voice com­ing out of that forest of for­eign hair. It was ir­ra­tional, as if a Ch­i­n­a­man had sud­denly spoken with a Scotch ac­cent.

“I gather that you fully un­der­stand your po­s­i­tion,” said Sunday.

“You bet,” answered the Pole. “I see it’s a fair cop. All I say is, I don’t be­lieve any Pole could have im­it­ated my ac­cent like I did his.”

“I con­cede the point,” said Sunday. “I be­lieve your own ac­cent to be in­im­it­able, though I shall prac­tise it in my bath. Do you mind leav­ing your beard with your card?”

“Not a bit,” answered Go­gol; and with one fin­ger he ripped off the whole of his shaggy head-cov­er­ing, emer­ging with thin red hair and a pale, pert face. “It was hot,” he ad­ded.

“I will do you the justice to say,” said Sunday, not without a sort of bru­tal ad­mir­a­tion, “that you seem to have kept pretty cool un­der it. Now listen to me. I like you. The con­sequence is that it would an­noy me for just about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in tor­ments. Well, if you ever tell the po­lice or any hu­man soul about us, I shall have that two and a half minutes of dis­com­fort. On your dis­com­fort I will not dwell. Good day. Mind the step.”

The red-haired de­tect­ive who had mas­quer­aded as Go­gol rose to his feet without a word, and walked out of the room with an air of per­fect non­chal­ance. Yet the as­ton­ished Syme was able to real­ise that this ease was sud­denly as­sumed; for there was a slight stumble out­side the door, which showed that the de­part­ing de­tect­ive had not minded the step.

“Time is fly­ing,” said the Pres­id­ent in his gay­est man­ner, after glan­cing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed big­ger than it ought to be. “I must go off at once; I have to take the chair at a Hu­man­it­arian meet­ing.”

The Sec­ret­ary turned to him with work­ing eye­brows.

“Would it not be bet­ter,” he said a little sharply, “to dis­cuss fur­ther the de­tails of our pro­ject, now that the spy has left us?”

“No, I think not,” said the Pres­id­ent with a yawn like an un­ob­trus­ive earth­quake. “Leave it as it is. Let Saturday settle it. I must be off. Break­fast here next Sunday.”

But the late loud scenes had whipped up the al­most na­ked nerves of the Sec­ret­ary. He was one of those men who are con­scien­tious even in crime.

“I must protest, Pres­id­ent, that the thing is ir­reg­u­lar,” he said. “It is a fun­da­mental rule of our so­ci­ety that all plans shall be de­bated in full coun­cil. Of course, I fully ap­pre­ci­ate your fore­thought when in the ac­tual pres­ence of a traitor—”

“Sec­ret­ary,” said the Pres­id­ent ser­i­ously, “if you’d take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be use­ful. I can’t say. But it might.”

The Sec­ret­ary reared back in a kind of equine an­ger.

“I really fail to un­der­stand—” he began in high of­fense.

“That’s it, that’s it,” said the Pres­id­ent, nod­ding a great many times. “That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to un­der­stand. Why, you dan­cing don­key,” he roared, rising, “you didn’t want to be over­heard by a spy, didn’t you? How do you know you aren’t over­heard now?”

And with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shak­ing with in­com­pre­hens­ible scorn.

Four of the men left be­hind gaped after him without any ap­par­ent glim­mer­ing of his mean­ing. Syme alone had even a glim­mer­ing, and such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the Pres­id­ent meant any­thing, they meant that he had not after all passed un­sus­pec­ted. They meant that while Sunday could not de­nounce him like Go­gol, he still could not trust him like the oth­ers.

The other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook them­selves else­where to find lunch, for it was already well past mid­day. The Pro­fessor went last, very slowly and pain­fully. Syme sat long after the rest had gone, re­volving his strange po­s­i­tion. He had es­caped a thun­der­bolt, but he was still un­der a cloud. At last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, cold day had grown in­creas­ingly colder, and when he came out into the street he was sur­prised by a few flakes of snow. While he still car­ried the sword-stick and the rest of Gregory’s port­able lug­gage, he had thrown the cloak down and left it some­where, per­haps on the steam-tug, per­haps on the bal­cony. Hop­ing, there­fore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped back out of the street for a mo­ment and stood up un­der the door­way of a small and greasy hairdresser’s shop, the front win­dow of which was empty, ex­cept for a sickly wax lady in even­ing dress.

Snow, how­ever, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, hav­ing found one glance at the wax lady quite suf­fi­cient to de­press his spir­its, stared out in­stead into the white and empty street. He was con­sid­er­ably as­ton­ished to see, stand­ing quite still out­side the shop and star­ing into the win­dow, a man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat of Father Christ­mas, the white drift was rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if noth­ing could tear him away from the con­tem­pla­tion of the col­our­less wax doll in dirty even­ing dress. That any hu­man be­ing should stand in such weather look­ing into such a shop was a mat­ter of suf­fi­cient won­der to Syme; but his idle won­der turned sud­denly into a per­sonal shock; for he real­ised that the man stand­ing there was the para­lytic old Pro­fessor de Worms. It scarcely seemed the place for a per­son of his years and in­firm­it­ies.

Syme was ready to be­lieve any­thing about the per­ver­sions of this de­hu­man­ized broth­er­hood; but even he could not be­lieve that the Pro­fessor had fallen in love with that par­tic­u­lar wax lady. He could only sup­pose that the man’s mal­ady (whatever it was) in­volved some mo­ment­ary fits of ri­gid­ity or trance. He was not in­clined, how­ever, to feel in this case any very com­pas­sion­ate con­cern. On the con­trary, he rather con­grat­u­lated him­self that the Pro­fessor’s stroke and his elab­or­ate and limp­ing walk would make it easy to es­cape from him and leave him miles be­hind. For Syme thirsted first and last to get clear of the whole pois­on­ous at­mo­sphere, if only for an hour. Then he could col­lect his thoughts, for­mu­late his policy, and de­cide fi­nally whether he should or should not keep faith with Gregory.

He strolled away through the dan­cing snow, turned up two or three streets, down through two or three oth­ers, and entered a small Soho res­taur­ant for lunch. He par­took re­flect­ively of four small and quaint courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black cof­fee and a black ci­gar, still think­ing. He had taken his seat in the up­per room of the res­taur­ant, which was full of the chink of knives and the chat­ter of for­eign­ers. He re­membered that in old days he had ima­gined that all these harm­less and kindly ali­ens were an­arch­ists. He shuddered, re­mem­ber­ing the real thing. But even the shud­der had the de­light­ful shame of es­cape. The wine, the com­mon food, the fa­mil­iar place, the faces of nat­ural and talk­at­ive men, made him al­most feel as if the Coun­cil of the Seven Days had been a bad dream; and al­though he knew it was nev­er­the­less an ob­ject­ive real­ity, it was at least a dis­tant one. Tall houses and pop­u­lous streets lay between him and his last sight of the shame­ful seven; he was free in free Lon­don, and drink­ing wine among the free. With a some­what easier ac­tion, he took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop be­low.

When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the spot. At a small table, close up to the blank win­dow and the white street of snow, sat the old an­arch­ist Pro­fessor over a glass of milk, with his lif­ted livid face and pen­dent eye­lids. For an in­stant Syme stood as ri­gid as the stick he leant upon. Then with a ges­ture as of blind hurry, he brushed past the Pro­fessor, dash­ing open the door and slam­ming it be­hind him, and stood out­side in the snow.

“Can that old corpse be fol­low­ing me?” he asked him­self, bit­ing his yel­low mous­tache. “I stopped too long up in that room, so that even such leaden feet could catch me up. One com­fort is, with a little brisk walk­ing I can put a man like that as far away as Tim­buctoo. Or am I too fanci­ful? Was he really fol­low­ing me? Surely Sunday would not be such a fool as to send a lame man?”

He set off at a smart pace, twist­ing and whirl­ing his stick, in the dir­ec­tion of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great mar­ket the snow in­creased, grow­ing blind­ing and be­wil­der­ing as the af­ter­noon began to darken. The snow­flakes tor­men­ted him like a swarm of sil­ver bees. Get­ting into his eyes and beard, they ad­ded their un­re­mit­ting fu­til­ity to his already ir­rit­ated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a swinging pace to the be­gin­ning of Fleet Street, he lost pa­tience, and find­ing a Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shel­ter. He ordered an­other cup of black cof­fee as an ex­cuse. Scarcely had he done so, when Pro­fessor de Worms hobbled heav­ily into the shop, sat down with dif­fi­culty and ordered a glass of milk.

Syme’s walk­ing-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which con­fessed the con­cealed steel. But the Pro­fessor did not look round. Syme, who was com­monly a cool char­ac­ter, was lit­er­ally gap­ing as a rus­tic gapes at a con­jur­ing trick. He had seen no cab fol­low­ing; he had heard no wheels out­side the shop; to all mor­tal ap­pear­ances the man had come on foot. But the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind. He star­ted up and snatched his stick, half crazy with the con­tra­dic­tion in mere arith­metic, and swung out of the swinging doors, leav­ing his cof­fee un­tasted. An om­ni­bus go­ing to the Bank went rat­tling by with an un­usual rapid­ity. He had a vi­ol­ent run of a hun­dred yards to reach it; but he man­aged to spring, sway­ing upon the splash­board and, paus­ing for an in­stant to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he had been seated for about half a minute, he heard be­hind him a sort of heavy and asth­matic breath­ing.

Turn­ing sharply, he saw rising gradu­ally higher and higher up the om­ni­bus steps a top hat soiled and drip­ping with snow, and un­der the shadow of its brim the short­sighted face and shaky shoulders of Pro­fessor de Worms. He let him­self into a seat with char­ac­ter­istic care, and wrapped him­self up to the chin in the mack­in­tosh rug.

Every move­ment of the old man’s tot­ter­ing fig­ure and vague hands, every un­cer­tain ges­ture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it bey­ond ques­tion that he was help­less, that he was in the last im­be­cil­ity of the body. He moved by inches, he let him­self down with little gasps of cau­tion. And yet, un­less the philo­soph­ical en­tit­ies called time and space have no vestige even of a prac­tical ex­ist­ence, it ap­peared quite un­ques­tion­able that he had run after the om­ni­bus.

Syme sprang erect upon the rock­ing car, and after star­ing wildly at the wintry sky, that grew gloom­ier every mo­ment, he ran down the steps. He had repressed an ele­mental im­pulse to leap over the side.

Too be­wildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rab­bit rushes into a hole. He had a vague idea, if this in­com­pre­hens­ible old Jack-in-the-box was really pur­su­ing him, that in that labyrinth of little streets he could soon throw him off the scent. He dived in and out of those crooked lanes, which were more like cracks than thor­ough­fares; and by the time that he had com­pleted about twenty al­tern­ate angles and de­scribed an un­think­able poly­gon, he paused to listen for any sound of pur­suit. There was none; there could not in any case have been much, for the little streets were thick with the sound­less snow. Some­where be­hind Red Lion Court, how­ever, he no­ticed a place where some en­er­getic cit­izen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leav­ing the wet, glisten­ing cobble­stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only plunging into yet an­other arm of the maze. But when a few hun­dred yards farther on he stood still again to listen, his heart stood still also, for he heard from that space of rugged stones the clink­ing crutch and la­bour­ing feet of the in­fernal cripple.

The sky above was loaded with the clouds of snow, leav­ing Lon­don in a dark­ness and op­pres­sion pre­ma­ture for that hour of the even­ing. On each side of Syme the walls of the al­ley were blind and fea­ture­less; there was no little win­dow or any kind of eve. He felt a new im­pulse to break out of this hive of houses, and to get once more into the open and lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time be­fore he struck the main thor­ough­fare. When he did so, he struck it much farther up than he had fan­cied. He came out into what seemed the vast and void of Ludgate Cir­cus, and saw St. Paul’s Cathed­ral sit­ting in the sky.

At first he was startled to find these great roads so empty, as if a pes­ti­lence had swept through the city. Then he told him­self that some de­gree of empti­ness was nat­ural; first be­cause the snowstorm was even dan­ger­ously deep, and secondly be­cause it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit his lip; the word was hence­forth for hire like some in­de­cent pun. Under the white fog of snow high up in the heaven the whole at­mo­sphere of the city was turned to a very queer kind of green twi­light, as of men un­der the sea. The sealed and sul­len sun­set be­hind the dark dome of St. Paul’s had in it smoky and sin­is­ter col­ours—col­ours of sickly green, dead red or de­cay­ing bronze, that were just bright enough to em­phas­ise the solid white­ness of the snow. But right up against these dreary col­ours rose the black bulk of the cathed­ral; and upon the top of the cathed­ral was a ran­dom splash and great stain of snow, still cling­ing as to an Alpine peak. It had fallen ac­ci­dent­ally, but just so fallen as to half drape the dome from its very top­most point, and to pick out in per­fect sil­ver the great orb and the cross. When Syme saw it he sud­denly straightened him­self, and made with his sword-stick an in­vol­un­tary sa­lute.

He knew that that evil fig­ure, his shadow, was creep­ing quickly or slowly be­hind him, and he did not care.

It seemed a sym­bol of hu­man faith and valour that while the skies were dark­en­ing that high place of the earth was bright. The dev­ils might have cap­tured heaven, but they had not yet cap­tured the cross. He had a new im­pulse to tear out the secret of this dan­cing, jump­ing and pur­su­ing para­lytic; and at the en­trance of the court as it opened upon the Cir­cus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pur­suer.

Pro­fessor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the ir­reg­u­lar al­ley be­hind him, his un­nat­ural form out­lined against a lonely gas-lamp, ir­res­ist­ibly re­call­ing that very ima­gin­at­ive fig­ure in the nurs­ery rhymes, “the crooked man who went a crooked mile.” He really looked as if he had been twis­ted out of shape by the tor­tu­ous streets he had been thread­ing. He came nearer and nearer, the lamp­light shin­ing on his lif­ted spec­tacles, his lif­ted, pa­tient face. Syme waited for him as St. Ge­orge waited for the dragon, as a man waits for a fi­nal ex­plan­a­tion or for death. And the old Pro­fessor came right up to him and passed him like a total stranger, without even a blink of his mourn­ful eye­lids.

There was some­thing in this si­lent and un­ex­pec­ted in­no­cence that left Syme in a fi­nal fury. The man’s col­our­less face and man­ner seemed to as­sert that the whole fol­low­ing had been an ac­ci­dent. Syme was gal­van­ised with an en­ergy that was some­thing between bit­ter­ness and a burst of boy­ish de­ri­sion. He made a wild ges­ture as if to knock the old man’s hat off, called out some­thing like “Catch me if you can,” and went ra­cing away across the white, open Cir­cus. Con­ceal­ment was im­possible now; and look­ing back over his shoulder, he could see the black fig­ure of the old gen­tle­man com­ing after him with long, swinging strides like a man win­ning a mile race. But the head upon that bound­ing body was still pale, grave and pro­fes­sional, like the head of a lec­turer upon the body of a har­le­quin.

This out­rageous chase sped across Ludgate Cir­cus, up Ludgate Hill, round St. Paul’s Cathed­ral, along Cheapside, Syme re­mem­ber­ing all the night­mares he had ever known. Then Syme broke away to­wards the river, and ended al­most down by the docks. He saw the yel­low panes of a low, lighted pub­lic-house, flung him­self into it and ordered beer. It was a foul tav­ern, sprinkled with for­eign sail­ors, a place where opium might be smoked or knives drawn.

A mo­ment later Pro­fessor de Worms entered the place, sat down care­fully, and asked for a glass of milk.