a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our
temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-
deception. The Assistant Commissioner did not like his work at
home. The police work he had been engaged on in a distant part of
the globe had the saving character of an irregular sort of warfare
or at least the risk and excitement of open-air sport. His real
abilities, which were mainly of an administrative order, were
combined with an adventurous disposition. Chained to a desk in the
thick of four millions of men, he considered himself the victim of
an ironic fate – the same, no doubt, which had brought about his
marriage with a woman exceptionally sensitive in the matter of
colonial climate, besides other limitations testifying to the
delicacy of her nature – and her tastes. Though he judged his
alarm sardonically he did not dismiss the improper thought from his
mind. The instinct of self-preservation was strong within him. On
the contrary, he repeated it mentally with profane emphasis and a
fuller precision: “Damn it! If that infernal Heat has his way the
fellow’ll die in prison smothered in his fat, and she’ll never
forgive me.”
His black, narrow figure, with the white band of the collar under
the silvery gleams on the close-cropped hair at the back of the
head, remained motionless. The silence had lasted such a long time
that Chief Inspector Heat ventured to clear his throat. This noise
produced its effect. The zealous and intelligent officer was asked
by his superior, whose back remained turned to him immovably:
“You connect Michaelis with this affair?”
Chief Inspector Heat was very positive, but cautious.
“Well, sir,” he said, “we have enough to go upon. A man like that
has no business to be at large, anyhow.”
“You will want some conclusive evidence,” came the observation in a
murmur.
Chief Inspector Heat raised his eyebrows at the black, narrow back,
which remained obstinately presented to his intelligence and his
zeal.
“There will be no difficulty in getting up sufficient evidence
against HIM,” he said, with virtuous complacency. “You may trust
me for that, sir,” he added, quite unnecessarily, out of the
fulness of his heart; for it seemed to him an excellent thing to
have that man in hand to be thrown down to the public should it
think fit to roar with any special indignation in this case. It
was impossible to say yet whether it would roar or not. That in
the last instance depended, of course, on the newspaper press. But
in any case, Chief Inspector Heat, purveyor of prisons by trade,
and a man of legal instincts, did logically believe that
incarceration was the proper fate for every declared enemy of the
law. In the strength of that conviction he committed a fault of
tact. He allowed himself a little conceited laugh, and repeated:
“Trust me for that, sir.”
This was too much for the forced calmness under which the Assistant
Commissioner had for upwards of eighteen months concealed his
irritation with the system and the subordinates of his office. A
square peg forced into a round hole, he had felt like a daily
outrage that long established smooth roundness into which a man of
less sharply angular shape would have fitted himself, with
voluptuous acquiescence, after a shrug or two. What he resented
most was just the necessity of taking so much on trust. At the
little laugh of Chief Inspector Heat’s he spun swiftly on his
heels, as if whirled away from the window-pane by an electric
shock. He caught on the latter’s face not only the complacency
proper to the occasion lurking under the moustache, but the
vestiges of experimental watchfulness in the round eyes, which had
been, no doubt, fastened on his back, and now met his glance for a
second before the intent character of their stare had the time to
change to a merely startled appearance.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police had really some qualifications
for his post. Suddenly his suspicion was awakened. It is but fair
to say that his suspicions of the police methods (unless the police
happened to be a semi-military body organised by himself) was not