The Chief Inspector began at once the account of his investigation
in a clear matter-of-fact manner. His superior turning his chair a
little, and crossing his thin legs, leaned sideways on his elbow,
with one hand shading his eyes. His listening attitude had a sort
of angular and sorrowful grace. Gleams as of highly burnished
silver played on the sides of his ebony black head when he inclined
it slowly at the end.
Chief Inspector Heat waited with the appearance of turning over in
his mind all he had just said, but, as a matter of fact,
considering the advisability of saying something more. The
Assistant Commissioner cut his hesitation short.
“You believe there were two men?” he asked, without uncovering his
eyes.
The Chief Inspector thought it more than probable. In his opinion,
the two men had parted from each other within a hundred yards from
the Observatory walls. He explained also how the other man could
have got out of the park speedily without being observed. The fog,
though not very dense, was in his favour. He seemed to have
escorted the other to the spot, and then to have left him there to
do the job single-handed. Taking the time those two were seen
coming out of Maze Hill Station by the old woman, and the time when
the explosion was heard, the Chief Inspector thought that the other
man might have been actually at the Greenwich Park Station, ready
to catch the next train up, at the moment his comrade was
destroying himself so thoroughly.
“Very thoroughly – eh?” murmured the Assistant Commissioner from
under the shadow of his hand.
The Chief Inspector in a few vigorous words described the aspect of
the remains. “The coroner’s jury will have a treat,” he added
grimly.
The Assistant Commissioner uncovered his eyes.
“We shall have nothing to tell them,” he remarked languidly.
He looked up, and for a time watched the markedly non-committal
attitude of his Chief Inspector. His nature was one that is not
easily accessible to illusions. He knew that a department is at
the mercy of its subordinate officers, who have their own
conceptions of loyalty. His career had begun in a tropical colony.
He had liked his work there. It was police work. He had been very
successful in tracking and breaking up certain nefarious secret
societies amongst the natives. Then he took his long leave, and
got married rather impulsively. It was a good match from a worldly
point of view, but his wife formed an unfavourable opinion of the
colonial climate on hearsay evidence. On the other hand, she had
influential connections. It was an excellent match. But he did
not like the work he had to do now. He felt himself dependent on
too many subordinates and too many masters. The near presence of
that strange emotional phenomenon called public opinion weighed
upon his spirits, and alarmed him by its irrational nature. No
doubt that from ignorance he exaggerated to himself its power for
good and evil – especially for evil; and the rough east winds of
the English spring (which agreed with his wife) augmented his
general mistrust of men’s motives and of the efficiency of their
organisation. The futility of office work especially appalled him
on those days so trying to his sensitive liver.
He got up, unfolding himself to his full height, and with a
heaviness of step remarkable in so slender a man, moved across the
room to the window. The panes streamed with rain, and the short
street he looked down into lay wet and empty, as if swept clear
suddenly by a great flood. It was a very trying day, choked in raw
fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering,
blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery
atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by
the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and
hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and compassion.
“Horrible, horrible!” thought the Assistant Commissioner to
himself, with his face near the window-pane. “We have been having
this sort of thing now for ten days; no, a fortnight – a