The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

his existence because of its confined nature and apparent lack of

reality. It could not have had, or else the general air of

alacrity that came upon the Assistant Commissioner would have been

inexplicable. As soon as he was left alone he looked for his hat

impulsively, and put it on his head. Having done that, he sat down

again to reconsider the whole matter. But as his mind was already

made up, this did not take long. And before Chief Inspector Heat

had gone very far on the way home, he also left the building.

CHAPTER VII

The Assistant Commissioner walked along a short and narrow street

like a wet, muddy trench, then crossing a very broad thoroughfare

entered a public edifice, and sought speech with a young private

secretary (unpaid) of a great personage.

This fair, smooth-faced young man, whose symmetrically arranged

hair gave him the air of a large and neat schoolboy, met the

Assistant Commissioner’s request with a doubtful look, and spoke

with bated breath.

“Would he see you? I don’t know about that. He has walked over

from the House an hour ago to talk with the permanent Under-

Secretary, and now he’s ready to walk back again. He might have

sent for him; but he does it for the sake of a little exercise, I

suppose. It’s all the exercise he can find time for while this

session lasts. I don’t complain; I rather enjoy these little

strolls. He leans on my arm, and doesn’t open, his lips. But, I

say, he’s very tired, and – well – not in the sweetest of tempers

just now.”

“It’s in connection with that Greenwich affair.”

“Oh! I say! He’s very bitter against you people. But I will go

and see, if you insist.”

“Do. That’s a good fellow,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

The unpaid secretary admired this pluck. Composing for himself an

innocent face, he opened a door, and went in with the assurance of

a nice and privileged child. And presently he reappeared, with a

nod to the Assistant Commissioner, who passing through the same

door left open for him, found himself with the great personage in a

large room.

Vast in bulk and stature, with a long white face, which, broadened

at the base by a big double chin, appeared egg-shaped in the fringe

of thin greyish whisker, the great personage seemed an expanding

man. Unfortunate from a tailoring point of view, the cross-folds

in the middle of a buttoned black coat added to the impression, as

if the fastenings of the garment were tried to the utmost. From

the head, set upward on a thick neck, the eyes, with puffy lower

lids, stared with a haughty droop on each side of a hooked

aggressive nose, nobly salient in the vast pale circumference of

the face. A shiny silk hat and a pair of worn gloves lying ready

on the end of a long table looked expanded too, enormous.

He stood on the hearthrug in big, roomy boots, and uttered no word

of greeting.

“I would like to know if this is the beginning of another dynamite

campaign,” he asked at once in a deep, very smooth voice. “Don’t

go into details. I have no time for that.”

The Assistant Commissioner’s figure before this big and rustic

Presence had the frail slenderness of a reed addresssing an oak.

And indeed the unbroken record of that man’s descent surpassed in

the number of centuries the age of the oldest oak in the country.

“No. As far as one can be positive about anything I can assure you

that it is not.”

“Yes. But your idea of assurances over there,” said the great man,

with a contemptuous wave of his hand towards a window giving on the

broad thoroughfare, “seems to consist mainly in making the

Secretary of State look a fool. I have been told positively in

this very room less than a month ago that nothing of the sort was

even possible.”

The Assistant Commissioner glanced in the direction of the window

calmly.

“You will allow me to remark, Sir Ethelred, that so far I have had

no opportunity to give you assurances of any kind.”

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