The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
endurance. At the beginning of his career Chief Inspector Heat had been
concerned with the more energetic forms of thieving. He had gained his
spurs in that sphere, and naturally enough had kept for it, after his
promotion to another department, a feeling not very far removed from
affection. Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human
industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an
industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work
in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was
labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour
consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or
lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly
defined in its own special phraseology as “Seven years hard.” Chief
Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral
differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after.
They submitted to the severe sanctions of a morality familiar to Chief
Inspector Heat with a certain resignation.
They were his fellow-citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education,
Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could
understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind
and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the
instincts of a police officer. Both recognise the same conventions, and
have a working knowledge of each other’s methods and of the routine of
their respective trades. They understand each other, which is
advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their
relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the
other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different ways,
but with a seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector
Heat was inaccessible to ideas of revolt. But his thieves were not
rebels. His bodily vigour, his cool inflexible manner, his courage and
his fairness, had secured for him much respect and some adulation in the
sphere of his early successes. He had felt himself revered and admired.
And Chief Inspector Heat, arrested within six paces of the anarchist
nick-named the Professor, gave a thought of regret to the world of
thieves—sane, without morbid ideals, working by routine, respectful of
constituted authorities, free from all taint of hate and despair.
After paying this tribute to what is normal in the constitution of
society (for the idea of thieving appeared to his instinct as normal as
the idea of property), Chief Inspector Heat felt very angry with himself
for having stopped, for having spoken, for having taken that way at all
on the ground of it being a short cut from the station to the
headquarters. And he spoke again in his big authoritative voice, which,
being moderated, had a threatening character.
“You are not wanted, I tell you,” he repeated.
The anarchist did not stir. An inward laugh of derision uncovered not
only his teeth but his gums as well, shook him all over, without the
slightest sound. Chief Inspector Heat was led to add, against his better
judgment:
“Not yet. When I want you I will know where to find you.”
Those were perfectly proper words, within the tradition and suitable to
his character of a police officer addressing one of his special flock.
But the reception they got departed from tradition and propriety. It was
outrageous. The stunted, weakly figure before him spoke at last.
“I’ve no doubt the papers would give you an obituary notice then. You
know best what that would be worth to you. I should think you can
imagine easily the sort of stuff that would be printed. But you may be
exposed to the unpleasantness of being buried together with me, though I
suppose your friends would make an effort to sort us out as much as
possible.”
With all his healthy contempt for the spirit dictating such speeches, the
atrocious allusiveness of the words had its effect on Chief Inspector
Heat. He had too much insight, and too much exact information as well,
to dismiss them as rot. The dusk of this narrow lane took on a sinister
tint from the dark, frail little figure, its back to the wall, and
speaking with a weak, self-confident voice. To the vigorous, tenacious
vitality of the Chief Inspector, the physical wretchedness of that being,
so obviously not fit to live, was ominous; for it seemed to him that if
he had the misfortune to be such a miserable object he would not have
cared how soon he died. Life had such a strong hold upon him that a
fresh wave of nausea broke out in slight perspiration upon his brow. The
murmur of town life, the subdued rumble of wheels in the two invisible
streets to the right and left, came through the curve of the sordid lane
to his ears with a precious familiarity and an appealing sweetness. He
was human. But Chief Inspector Heat was also a man, and he could not let
such words pass.
“All this is good to frighten children with,” he said. “I’ll have you
yet.”
It was very well said, without scorn, with an almost austere quietness.
“Doubtless,” was the answer; “but there’s no time like the present,
believe me. For a man of real convictions this is a fine opportunity of
self-sacrifice. You may not find another so favourable, so humane.
There isn’t even a cat near us, and these condemned old houses would make
a good heap of bricks where you stand. You’ll never get me at so little
cost to life and property, which you are paid to protect.”
“You don’t know who you’re speaking to,” said Chief Inspector Heat
firmly. “If I were to lay my hands on you now I would be no better than
yourself.”
“Ah! The game!’
“You may be sure our side will win in the end. It may yet be necessary
to make people believe that some of you ought to be shot at sight like
mad dogs. Then that will be the game. But I’ll be damned if I know what
yours is. I don’t believe you know yourselves. You’ll never get
anything by it.”
“Meantime it’s you who get something from it—so far. And you get it
easily, too. I won’t speak of your salary, but haven’t you made your
name simply by not understanding what we are after?”
“What are you after, then?” asked Chief Inspector Heat, with scornful
haste, like a man in a hurry who perceives he is wasting his time.
The perfect anarchist answered by a smile which did not part his thin
colourless lips; and the celebrated Chief Inspector felt a sense of
superiority which induced him to raise a warning finger.
“Give it up—whatever it is,” he said in an admonishing tone, but not so
kindly as if he were condescending to give good advice to a cracksman of
repute. “Give it up. You’ll find we are too many for you.”
The fixed smile on the Professor’s lips wavered, as if the mocking spirit
within had lost its assurance. Chief Inspector Heat went on:
“Don’t you believe me eh? Well, you’ve only got to look about you. We
are. And anyway, you’re not doing it well. You’re always making a mess
of it. Why, if the thieves didn’t know their work better they would
starve.”
The hint of an invincible multitude behind that man’s back roused a
sombre indignation in the breast of the Professor. He smiled no longer
his enigmatic and mocking smile. The resisting power of numbers, the
unattackable stolidity of a great multitude, was the haunting fear of his
sinister loneliness. His lips trembled for some time before he managed
to say in a strangled voice:
“I am doing my work better than you’re doing yours.”
“That’ll do now,” interrupted Chief Inspector Heat hurriedly; and the
Professor laughed right out this time. While still laughing he moved on;
but he did not laugh long. It was a sad-faced, miserable little man who
emerged from the narrow passage into the bustle of the broad
thoroughfare. He walked with the nerveless gait of a tramp going on,
still going on, indifferent to rain or sun in a sinister detachment from
the aspects of sky and earth. Chief Inspector Heat, on the other hand,
after watching him for a while, stepped out with the purposeful briskness
of a man disregarding indeed the inclemencies of the weather, but
conscious of having an authorised mission on this earth and the moral
support of his kind. All the inhabitants of the immense town, the
population of the whole country, and even the teeming millions struggling
upon the planet, were with him—down to the very thieves and mendicants.
Yes, the thieves themselves were sure to be with him in his present work.
The consciousness of universal support in his general activity heartened
him to grapple with the particular problem.
The problem immediately before the Chief Inspector was that of managing
the Assistant Commissioner of his department, his immediate superior.
This is the perennial problem of trusty and loyal servants; anarchism
gave it its particular complexion, but nothing more. Truth to say, Chief
Inspector Heat thought but little of anarchism. He did not attach undue
importance to it, and could never bring himself to consider it seriously.
It had more the character of disorderly conduct; disorderly without the
human excuse of drunkenness, which at any rate implies good feeling and
an amiable leaning towards festivity. As criminals, anarchists were
distinctly no class—no class at all. And recalling the Professor, Chief
Inspector Heat, without checking his swinging pace, muttered through his
teeth:
“Lunatic.”
Catching thieves was another matter altogether. It had that quality of
seriousness belonging to every form of open sport where the best man wins
under perfectly comprehensible rules. There were no rules for dealing
with anarchists. And that was distasteful to the Chief Inspector. It
was all foolishness, but that foolishness excited the public mind,
affected persons in high places, and touched upon international
relations. A hard, merciless contempt settled rigidly on the Chief
Inspector’s face as he walked on. His mind ran over all the anarchists
of his flock. Not one of them had half the spunk of this or that burglar
he had known. Not half—not one-tenth.
At headquarters the Chief Inspector was admitted at once to the Assistant
Commissioner’s private room. He found him, pen in hand, bent over a
great table bestrewn with papers, as if worshipping an enormous double
inkstand of bronze and crystal. Speaking tubes resembling snakes were
tied by the heads to the back of the Assistant Commissioner’s wooden
arm-chair, and their gaping mouths seemed ready to bite his elbows. And
in this attitude he raised only his eyes, whose lids were darker than his
face and very much creased. The reports had come in: every anarchist had
been exactly accounted for.
After saying this he lowered his eyes, signed rapidly two single sheets
of paper, and only then laid down his pen, and sat well back, directing
an inquiring gaze at his renowned subordinate. The Chief Inspector stood
it well, deferential but inscrutable.
“I daresay you were right,” said the Assistant Commissioner, “in telling
me at first that the London anarchists had nothing to do with this. I
quite appreciate the excellent watch kept on them by your men. On the
other hand, this, for the public, does not amount to more than a
confession of ignorance.”
The Assistant Commissioner’s delivery was leisurely, as it were cautious.
His thought seemed to rest poised on a word before passing to another, as
though words had been the stepping-stones for his intellect picking its
way across the waters of error. “Unless you have brought something
useful from Greenwich,” he added.
The Chief Inspector began at once the account of his investigation in a
clear matter-of-fact manner. His superior turning his chair a little,