Slight – slight enough. Look at that foot there. I picked up the
legs first, one after another. He was that scattered you didn’t
know where to begin.”
The constable paused; the least flicker of an innocent self-
laudatory smile invested his round face with an infantile
expression.
“Stumbled,” he announced positively. “I stumbled once myself, and
pitched on my head too, while running up. Them roots do stick out
all about the place. Stumbled against the root of a tree and fell,
and that thing he was carrying must have gone off right under his
chest, I expect.”
The echo of the words “Person unknown” repeating itself in his
inner consciousness bothered the Chief Inspector considerably. He
would have liked to trace this affair back to its mysterious origin
for his own information. He was professionally curious. Before
the public he would have liked to vindicate the efficiency of his
department by establishing the identity of that man. He was a
loyal servant. That, however, appeared impossible. The first term
of the problem was unreadable – lacked all suggestion but that of
atrocious cruelty.
Overcoming his physical repugnance, Chief Inspector Heat stretched
out his hand without conviction for the salving of his conscience,
and took up the least soiled of the rags. It was a narrow strip of
velvet with a larger triangular piece of dark blue cloth hanging
from it. He held it up to his eyes; and the police constable
spoke.
“Velvet collar. Funny the old woman should have noticed the velvet
collar. Dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, she has told us.
He was the chap she saw, and no mistake. And here he is all
complete, velvet collar and all. I don’t think I missed a single
piece as big as a postage stamp.”
At this point the trained faculties of the Chief Inspector ceased
to hear the voice of the constable. He moved to one of the windows
for better light. His face, averted from the room, expressed a
startled intense interest while he examined closely the triangular
piece of broad-cloth. By a sudden jerk he detached it, and ONLY
after stuffing it into his pocket turned round to the room, and
flung the velvet collar back on the table –
“Cover up,” he directed the attendants curtly, without another
look, and, saluted by the constable, carried off his spoil hastily.
A convenient train whirled him up to town, alone and pondering
deeply, in a third-class compartment. That singed piece of cloth
was incredibly valuable, and he could not defend himself from
astonishment at the casual manner it had come into his possession.
It was as if Fate had thrust that clue into his hands. And after
the manner of the average man, whose ambition is to command events,
he began to mistrust such a gratuitous and accidental success –
just because it seemed forced upon him. The practical value of
success depends not a little on the way you look at it. But Fate
looks at nothing. It has no discretion. He no longer considered
it eminently desirable all round to establish publicly the identity
of the man who had blown himself up that morning with such horrible
completeness. But he was not certain of the view his department
would take. A department is to those it employs a complex
personality with ideas and even fads of its own. It depends on the
loyal devotion of its servants, and the devoted loyalty of trusted
servants is associated with a certain amount of affectionate
contempt, which keeps it sweet, as it were. By a benevolent
provision of Nature no man is a hero to his valet, or else the
heroes would have to brush their own clothes. Likewise no
department appears perfectly wise to the intimacy of its workers.
A department does not know so much as some of its servants. Being
a dispassionate organism, it can never be perfectly informed. It
would not be good for its efficiency to know too much. Chief
Inspector Heat got out of the train in a state of thoughtfulness
entirely untainted with disloyalty, but not quite free of that
jealous mistrust which so often springs on the ground of perfect