erudition on the subject of the fishing industry was fresh and, in
comparison with his ignorance of all other industrial matters,
immense. “There are sardine canneries on the Spanish coast which –
”
The Assistant Commissioner interrupted the apprentice statesman.
“Yes. Yes. But a sprat is also thrown away sometimes in order to
catch a whale.”
“A whale. Phew!” exclaimed Toodles, with bated breath. “You’re
after a whale, then?”
“Not exactly. What I am after is more like a dog-fish. You don’t
know perhaps what a dog-fish is like.”
“Yes; I do. We’re buried in special books up to our necks – whole
shelves full of them – with plates. . . . It’s a noxious, rascally-
looking, altogether detestable beast, with a sort of smooth face
and moustaches.”
“Described to a T,” commended the Assistant Commissioner. “Only
mine is clean-shaven altogether. You’ve seen him. It’s a witty
fish.”
“I have seen him!” said Toodles incredulously. “I can’t conceive
where I could have seen him.”
“At the Explorers, I should say,” dropped the Assistant
Commissioner calmly. At the name of that extremely exclusive club
Toodles looked scared, and stopped short.
“Nonsense,” he protested, but in an awe-struck tone. “What do you
mean? A member?”
“Honorary,” muttered the Assistant Commissioner through his teeth.
“Heavens!”
Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner
smiled faintly.
“That’s between ourselves strictly,” he said.
“That’s the beastliest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” declared
Toodles feebly, as if astonishment had robbed him of all his
buoyant strength in a second.
The Assistant Commissioner gave him an unsmiling glance. Till they
came to the door of the great man’s room, Toodles preserved a
scandalised and solemn silence, as though he were offended with the
Assistant Commissioner for exposing such an unsavoury and
disturbing fact. It revolutionised his idea of the Explorers’
Club’s extreme selectness, of its social purity. Toodles was
revolutionary only in politics; his social beliefs and personal
feelings he wished to preserve unchanged through all the years
allotted to him on this earth which, upon the whole, he believed to
be a nice place to live on.
He stood aside.
“Go in without knocking,” he said.
Shades of green silk fitted low over all the lights imparted to the
room something of a forest’s deep gloom. The haughty eyes were
physically the great man’s weak point. This point was wrapped up
in secrecy. When an opportunity offered, he rested them
conscientiously.
The Assistant Commissioner entering saw at first only a big pale
hand supporting a big head, and concealing the upper part of a big
pale face. An open despatch-box stood on the writing-table near a
few oblong sheets of paper and a scattered handful of quill pens.
There was absolutely nothing else on the large flat surface except
a little bronze statuette draped in a toga, mysteriously watchful
in its shadowy immobility. The Assistant Commissioner, invited to
take a chair, sat down. In the dim light, the salient points of
his personality, the long face, the black hair, his lankness, made
him look more foreign than ever.
The great man manifested no surprise, no eagerness, no sentiment
whatever. The attitude in which he rested his menaced eyes was
profoundly meditative. He did not alter it the least bit. But his
tone was not dreamy.
“Well! What is it that you’ve found out already? You came upon
something unexpected on the first step.”
“Not exactly unexpected, Sir Ethelred. What I mainly came upon was
a psychological state.”
The Great Presence made a slight movement. “You must be lucid,
please.”
“Yes, Sir Ethelred. You know no doubt that most criminals at some
time or other feel an irresistible need of confessing – of making a
clean breast of it to somebody – to anybody. And they do it often
to the police. In that Verloc whom Heat wished so much to screen
I’ve found a man in that particular psychological state. The man,
figuratively speaking, flung himself on my breast. It was enough
on my part to whisper to him who I was and to add `I know that you
are at the bottom of this affair.’ It must have seemed miraculous
to him that we should know already, but he took it all in the