haunting fear of his sinister loneliness. His lips trembled for
some time before he managed to say in a strangled voice:
“I am doing my work better than you’re doing yours.”
“That’ll do now,” interrupted Chief Inspector Heat hurriedly; and
the Professor laughed right out this time. While still laughing he
moved on; but he did not laugh long. It was a sad-faced, miserable
little man who emerged from the narrow passage into the bustle of
the broad thoroughfare. He walked with the nerveless gait of a
tramp going on, still going on, indifferent to rain or sun in a
sinister detachment from the aspects of sky and earth. Chief
Inspector Heat, on the other hand, after watching him for a while,
stepped out with the purposeful briskness of a man disregarding
indeed the inclemencies of the weather, but conscious of having an
authorised mission on this earth and the moral support of his kind.
All the inhabitants of the immense town, the population of the
whole country, and even the teeming millions struggling upon the
planet, were with him – down to the very thieves and mendicants.
Yes, the thieves themselves were sure to be with him in his present
work. The consciousness of universal support in his general
activity heartened him to grapple with the particular problem.
The problem immediately before the Chief Inspector was that of
managing the Assistant Commissioner of his department, his
immediate superior. This is the perennial problem of trusty and
loyal servants; anarchism gave it its particular complexion, but
nothing more. Truth to say, Chief Inspector Heat thought but
little of anarchism. He did not attach undue importance to it, and
could never bring himself to consider it seriously. It had more
the character of disorderly conduct; disorderly without the human
excuse of drunkenness, which at any rate implies good feeling and
an amiable leaning towards festivity. As criminals, anarchists
were distinctly no class – no class at all. And recalling the
Professor, Chief Inspector Heat, without checking his swinging
pace, muttered through his teeth:
“Lunatic.”
Catching thieves was another matter altogether. It had that
quality of seriousness belonging to every form of open sport where
the best man wins under perfectly comprehensible rules. There were
no rules for dealing with anarchists. And that was distasteful to
the Chief Inspector. It was all foolishness, but that foolishness
excited the public mind, affected persons in high places, and
touched upon international relations. A hard, merciless contempt
settled rigidly on the Chief Inspector’s face as he walked on. His
mind ran over all the anarchists of his flock. Not one of them had
half the spunk of this or that burglar he had known. Not half –
not one-tenth.
At headquarters the Chief Inspector was admitted at once to the
Assistant Commissioner’s private room. He found him, pen in hand,
bent over a great table bestrewn with papers, as if worshipping an
enormous double inkstand of bronze and crystal. Speaking tubes
resembling snakes were tied by the heads to the back of the
Assistant Commissioner’s wooden arm-chair, and their gaping mouths
seemed ready to bite his elbows. And in this attitude he raised
only his eyes, whose lids were darker than his face and very much
creased. The reports had come in: every anarchist had been exactly
accounted for.
After saying this he lowered his eyes, signed rapidly two single
sheets of paper, and only then laid down his pen, and sat well
back, directing an inquiring gaze at his renowned subordinate. The
Chief Inspector stood it well, deferential but inscrutable.
“I daresay you were right,” said the Assistant Commissioner, “in
telling me at first that the London anarchists had nothing to do
with this. I quite appreciate the excellent watch kept on them by
your men. On the other hand, this, for the public, does not amount
to more than a confession of ignorance.”
The Assistant Commissioner’s delivery was leisurely, as it were
cautious. His thought seemed to rest poised on a word before
passing to another, as though words had been the stepping-stones
for his intellect picking its way across the waters of error.
“Unless you have brought something useful from Greenwich,” he
added.