to terror too perhaps.
That was the form of doubt he feared most. Impervious to fear!
Often while walking abroad, when he happened also to come out of
himself, he had such moments of dreadful and sane mistrust of
mankind. What if nothing could move them? Such moments come to
all men whose ambition aims at a direct grasp upon humanity – to
artists, politicians, thinkers, reformers, or saints. A despicable
emotional state this, against which solitude fortifies a superior
character; and with severe exultation the Professor thought of the
refuge of his room, with its padlocked cupboard, lost in a
wilderness of poor houses, the hermitage of the perfect anarchist.
In order to reach sooner the point where he could take his omnibus,
he turned brusquely out of the populous street into a narrow and
dusky alley paved with flagstones. On one side the low brick
houses had in their dusty windows the sightless, moribund look of
incurable decay – empty shells awaiting demolition. From the other
side life had not departed wholly as yet. Facing the only gas-lamp
yawned the cavern of a second-hand furniture dealer, where, deep in
the gloom of a sort of narrow avenue winding through a bizarre
forest of wardrobes, with an undergrowth tangle of table legs, a
tall pier-glass glimmered like a pool of water in a wood. An
unhappy, homeless couch, accompanied by two unrelated chairs, stood
in the open. The only human being making use of the alley besides
the Professor, coming stalwart and erect from the opposite
direction, checked his swinging pace suddenly.
“Hallo!” he said, and stood a little on one side watchfully.
The Professor had already stopped, with a ready half turn which
brought his shoulders very near the other wall. His right hand
fell lightly on the back of the outcast couch, the left remained
purposefully plunged deep in the trousers pocket, and the roundness
of the heavy rimmed spectacles imparted an owlish character to his
moody, unperturbed face.
It was like a meeting in a side corridor of a mansion full of life.
The stalwart man was buttoned up in a dark overcoat, and carried an
umbrella. His hat, tilted back, uncovered a good deal of forehead,
which appeared very white in the dusk. In the dark patches of the
orbits the eyeballs glimmered piercingly. Long, drooping
moustaches, the colour of ripe corn, framed with their points the
square block of his shaved chin.
“I am not looking for you,” he said curtly.
The Professor did not stir an inch. The blended noises of the
enormous town sank down to an inarticulate low murmur. Chief
Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes Department changed his tone.
“Not in a hurry to get home?” he asked, with mocking simplicity.
The unwholesome-looking little moral agent of destruction exulted
silently in the possession of personal prestige, keeping in check
this man armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society.
More fortunate than Caligula, who wished that the Roman Senate had
only one head for the better satisfaction of his cruel lust, he
beheld in that one man all the forces he had set at defiance: the
force of law, property, oppression, and injustice. He beheld all
his enemies, and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme
satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if
before a dreadful portent. He gloated inwardly over the chance of
this meeting affirming his superiority over all the multitude of
mankind.
It was in reality a chance meeting. Chief Inspector Heat had had a
disagreeably busy day since his department received the first
telegram from Greenwich a little before eleven in the morning.
First of all, the fact of the outrage being attempted less than a
week after he had assured a high official that no outbreak of
anarchist activity was to be apprehended was sufficiently annoying.
If he ever thought himself safe in making a statement, it was then.
He had made that statement with infinite satisfaction to himself,
because it was clear that the high official desired greatly to hear
that very thing. He had affirmed that nothing of the sort could
even be thought of without the department being aware of it within