“Yes. I had no idea myself that my work would be over so soon.”
The Assistant Commissioner added in a low tone. “I am glad to tell
you that Michaelis is altogether clear of this – ”
The patroness of the ex-convict received this assurance
indignantly.
“Why? Were your people stupid enough to connect him with – ”
“Not stupid,” interrupted the Assistant Commissioner, contradicting
deferentially. “Clever enough – quite clever enough for that.”
A silence fell. The man at the foot of the couch had stopped
speaking to the lady, and looked on with a faint smile.
“I don’t know whether you ever met before,” said the great lady.
Mr Vladimir and the Assistant Commissioner, introduced,
acknowledged each other’s existence with punctilious and guarded
courtesy.
“He’s been frightening me,” declared suddenly the lady who sat by
the side of Mr Vladimir, with an inclination of the head towards
that gentleman. The Assistant Commissioner knew the lady.
“You do not look frightened,” he pronounced, after surveying her
conscientiously with his tired and equable gaze. He was thinking
meantime to himself that in this house one met everybody sooner or
later. Mr Vladimir’s rosy countenance was wreathed in smiles,
because he was witty, but his eyes remained serious, like the eyes
of convinced man.
“Well, he tried to at least,” amended the lady.
“Force of habit perhaps,” said the Assistant Commissioner, moved by
an irresistible inspiration.
“He has been threatening society with all sorts of horrors,”
continued the lady, whose enunciation was caressing and slow,
“apropos of this explosion in Greenwich Park. It appears we all
ought to quake in our shoes at what’s coming if those people are
not suppressed all over the world. I had no idea this was such a
grave affair.”
Mr Vladimir, affecting not to listen, leaned towards the couch,
talking amiably in subdued tones, but he heard the Assistant
Commissioner say:
“I’ve no doubt that Mr Vladimir has a very precise notion of the
true importance of this affair.”
Mr Vladimir asked himself what that confounded and intrusive
policeman was driving at. Descended from generations victimised by
the instruments of an arbitrary power, he was racially, nationally,
and individually afraid of the police. It was an inherited
weakness, altogether independent of his judgment, of his reason, of
his experience. He was born to it. But that sentiment, which
resembled the irrational horror some people have of cats, did not
stand in the way of his immense contempt for the English police.
He finished the sentence addressed to the great lady, and turned
slightly in his chair.
“You mean that we have a great experience of these people. Yes;
indeed, we suffer greatly from their activity, while you” – Mr
Vladimir hesitated for a moment, in smiling perplexity – “while you
suffer their presence gladly in your midst,” he finished,
displaying a dimple on each clean-shaven cheek. Then he added more
gravely: “I may even say – because you do.”
When Mr Vladimir ceased speaking the Assistant Commissioner lowered
his glance, and the conversation dropped. Almost immediately
afterwards Mr Vladimir took leave.
Directly his back was turned on the couch the Assistant
Commissioner rose too.
“I thought you were going to stay and take Annie home,” said the
lady patroness of Michaelis.
“I find that I’ve yet a little work to do to-night.”
“In connection – ?”
“Well, yes – in a way.”
“Tell me, what is it really – this horror?”
“It’s difficult to say what it is, but it may yet be a CAUSE
CELEBRE,” said the Assistant Commissioner.
He left the drawing-room hurriedly, and found Mr Vladimir still in
the hall, wrapping up his throat carefully in a large silk
handkerchief. Behind him a footman waited, holding his overcoat.
Another stood ready to open the door. The Assistant Commissioner
was duly helped into his coat, and let out at once. After
descending the front steps he stopped, as if to consider the way he
should take. On seeing this through the door held open, Mr
Vladimir lingered in the hall to get out a cigar and asked for a
light. It was furnished to him by an elderly man out of livery
with an air of calm solicitude. But the match went out; the