devotion, whether to women or to institutions.
It was in this mental disposition, physically very empty, but still
nauseated by what he had seen, that he had come upon the Professor.
Under these conditions which make for irascibility in a sound,
normal man, this meeting was specially unwelcome to Chief Inspector
Heat. He had not been thinking of the Professor; he had not been
thinking of any individual anarchist at all. The complexion of
that case had somehow forced upon him the general idea of the
absurdity of things human, which in the abstract is sufficiently
annoying to an unphilosophical temperament, and in concrete
instances becomes exasperating beyond endurance. At the beginning
of his career Chief Inspector Heat had been concerned with the more
energetic forms of thieving. He had gained his spurs in that
sphere, and naturally enough had kept for it, after his promotion
to another department, a feeling not very far removed from
affection. Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of
human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in
an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as
the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding
shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other
forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not
lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust,
but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology
as “Seven years hard.” Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not
insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were
the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the
severe sanctions of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat
with a certain resignation.
They were his fellow-citizens gone wrong because of imperfect
education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that
difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as
a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of
the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer.
Both recognise the same conventions, and have a working knowledge
of each other’s methods and of the routine of their respective
trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both,
and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of
the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious,
they take the machine for granted in different ways, but with a
seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector Heat
was inaccessible to ideas of revolt. But his thieves were not
rebels. His bodily vigour, his cool inflexible manner, his courage
and his fairness, had secured for him much respect and some
adulation in the sphere of his early successes. He had felt
himself revered and admired. And Chief Inspector Heat, arrested
within six paces of the anarchist nick-named the Professor, gave a
thought of regret to the world of thieves – sane, without morbid
ideals, working by routine, respectful of constituted authorities,
free from all taint of hate and despair.
After paying this tribute to what is normal in the constitution of
society (for the idea of thieving appeared to his instinct as
normal as the idea of property), Chief Inspector Heat felt very
angry with himself for having stopped, for having spoken, for
having taken that way at all on the ground of it being a short cut
from the station to the headquarters. And he spoke again in his
big authoritative voice, which, being moderated, had a threatening
character.
“You are not wanted, I tell you,” he repeated.
The anarchist did not stir. An inward laugh of derision uncovered
not only his teeth but his gums as well, shook him all over,
without the slightest sound. Chief Inspector Heat was led to add,
against his better judgment:
“Not yet. When I want you I will know where to find you.”
Those were perfectly proper words, within the tradition and
suitable to his character of a police officer addressing one of his
special flock. But the reception they got departed from tradition
and propriety. It was outrageous. The stunted, weakly figure
before him spoke at last.