that this is not my meaning.”
He paused, with a straight glance of his sunken eyes which was a
full equivalent of the unspoken termination “and you know it.” The
head of the so-called Special Crimes Department debarred by his
position from going out of doors personally in quest of secrets
locked up in guilty breasts, had a propensity to exercise his
considerable gifts for the detection of incriminating truth upon
his own subordinates. That peculiar instinct could hardly be
called a weakness. It was natural. He was a born detective. It
had unconsciously governed his choice of a career, and if it ever
failed him in life it was perhaps in the one exceptional
circumstance of his marriage – which was also natural. It fed,
since it could not roam abroad, upon the human material which was
brought to it in its official seclusion. We can never cease to be
ourselves.
His elbow on the desk, his thin legs crossed, and nursing his cheek
in the palm of his meagre hand, the Assistant Commissioner in
charge of the Special Crimes branch was getting hold of the case
with growing interest. His Chief Inspector, if not an absolutely
worthy foeman of his penetration, was at any rate the most worthy
of all within his reach. A mistrust of established reputations was
strictly in character with the Assistant Commissioner’s ability as
detector. His memory evoked a certain old fat and wealthy native
chief in the distant colony whom it was a tradition for the
successive Colonial Governors to trust and make much of as a firm
friend and supporter of the order and legality established by white
men; whereas, when examined sceptically, he was found out to be
principally his own good friend, and nobody else’s. Not precisely
a traitor, but still a man of many dangerous reservations in his
fidelity, caused by a due regard for his own advantage, comfort,
and safety. A fellow of some innocence in his naive duplicity, but
none the less dangerous. He took some finding out. He was
physically a big man, too, and (allowing for the difference of
colour, of course) Chief Inspector Heat’s appearance recalled him
to the memory of his superior. It was not the eyes nor yet the
lips exactly. It was bizarre. But does not Alfred Wallace relate
in his famous book on the Malay Archipelago how, amongst the Aru
Islanders, he discovered in an old and naked savage with a sooty
skin a peculiar resemblance to a dear friend at home?
For the first time since he took up his appointment the Assistant
Commissioner felt as if he were going to do some real work for his
salary. And that was a pleasurable sensation. “I’ll turn him
inside out like an old glove,” thought the Assistant Commissioner,
with his eyes resting pensively upon Chief Inspector Heat.
“No, that was not my thought,” he began again. “There is no doubt
about you knowing your business – no doubt at all; and that’s
precisely why I – ” He stopped short, and changing his tone: “What
could you bring up against Michaelis of a definite nature? I mean
apart from the fact that the two men under suspicion – you’re
certain there were two of them – came last from a railway station
within three miles of the village where Michaelis is living now.”
“This by itself is enough for us to go upon, sir, with that sort of
man,” said the Chief Inspector, with returning composure. The
slight approving movement of the Assistant Commissioner’s head went
far to pacify the resentful astonishment of the renowned officer.
For Chief Inspector Heat was a kind man, an excellent husband, a
devoted father; and the public and departmental confidence he
enjoyed acting favourably upon an amiable nature, disposed him to
feel friendly towards the successive Assistant Commissioners he had
seen pass through that very room. There had been three in his
time. The first one, a soldierly, abrupt, red-faced person, with
white eyebrows and an explosive temper, could be managed with a
silken thread. He left on reaching the age limit. The second, a
perfect gentleman, knowing his own and everybody else’s place to a