on steadily as he  took  in  the scene; and not the
least of the  contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the contrast
between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible purport. They
were deep  in the  discussion of an  actual  and  immediate plot. The waiter
downstairs had spoken quite correctly when  he said that  they were  talking
about  bombs and kings. Only three  days afterwards the Czar was to meet the
President  of  the French Republic in Paris, and over their bacon  and  eggs
upon their sunny balcony these beaming gentlemen had decided how both should
die. Even the instrument was chosen; the black-bearded Marquis, it appeared,
was to carry the bomb.
     Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime
would  have  sobered Syme, and cured him of all his merely mystical tremors.
He would have thought of nothing but the need  of saving  at least two human
bodies from  being ripped in pieces with iron and roaring gas. But the truth
was  that  by  this time he had begun to  feel  a third  kind of fear,  more
piercing  and  practical  than either  his  moral  revulsion or  his  social
responsibility.  Very  simply,  he  had  no  fear to  spare  for the  French
President or the Czar; he had begun to fear for himself. Most of the talkers
took little heed of him, debating  now with their faces closer together, and
almost uniformly grave, save when for an instant the smile of  the Secretary
ran aslant across  his  face as the jagged lightning  runs aslant across the
sky. But  there was  one persistent thing which  first troubled  Syme and at
last terrified  him. The President was  always looking at him, steadily, and
with a great and baffling interest. The  enormous man was  quite quiet,  but
his blue eyes stood out of his head. And they were always fixed on Syme.
     Syme  felt  moved to  spring up and  leap  over  the balcony.  When the
President's  eyes were on him he felt as if  he were made of  glass.  He had
hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday
had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and
saw  a policeman, standing abstractedly  just beneath, staring at the bright
railings and the sunlit trees.
     Then there  fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment  him
for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were
the princes  of  anarchy, he  had almost forgotten  the  frail  and fanciful
figure of  the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought
of  him  now  with  an old  kindness, as if they had  played  together  when
children. But he  remembered that he was  still tied  to Gregory by  a great
promise. He had promised never to do the very thing that he now felt himself
almost  in the act of doing. He  had  promised not to jump over that balcony
and  speak to  that policeman.  He  took his  cold hand  off the cold  stone
balustrade. His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to
snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life
could be as open and sunny as the square beneath  him. He had,  on the other
hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into
the power  of  this  great enemy of  mankind, whose  very  intellect  was  a
torture-chamber.  Whenever  he  looked  down into  the  square  he  saw  the
comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense  and common  order. Whenever
he  looked back  at  the breakfast-table he  saw the President still quietly
studying him with big, unbearable eyes.
     In all the torrent  of his thought  there  were two thoughts that never
crossed his  mind.  First, it  never  occurred  to  him  to  doubt  that the
President  and  his Council could crush him if he continued to  stand alone.
The place might be public, the project might seem impossible. But Sunday was
not the man who would carry himself  thus easily  without having, somehow or
somewhere,  set  open his  iron  trap. Either by anonymous poison  or sudden
street accident,  by hypnotism or by fire from  hell, Sunday could certainly
strike him.  If he defied  the man he was probably dead, either struck stiff
there in his chair or  long  afterwards as by an  innocent  ailment.  If  he
called in the police promptly, arrested everyone,  told all, and set against
them  the  whole energy of England, he would probably escape;  certainly not
otherwise. They were a balconyful of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy
square; but he felt  no more safe with them than if they had been  a boatful
of armed pirates overlooking an empty sea.
     There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to
him  to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak
worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under
this  oppression of a great personality. They might  have called Sunday  the
super-man. If  any such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat
like it, with his earth-shaking abstraction,  as of a stone statue  walking.
He might have  been called something above man, with his  large plans, which
were too obvious to be detected, with his large face, which was too frank to
be understood. But this was a kind  of modern meanness  to  which Syme could
not sink even  in his extreme  morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough
to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
     The men were eating as they talked, and even in this they were typical.
Dr. Bull and the Marquis ate  casually and conventionally of the best things
on  the table--cold pheasant  or Strasbourg  pie. But  the Secretary  was  a
vegetarian, and he  spoke earnestly  of the projected murder over half a raw
tomato and three quarters  of a glass of tepid water. The old  Professor had
such slops  as  suggested  a  sickening second  childhood. And even  in this
President Sunday preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate
like twenty  men; he ate incredibly, with a frightful freshness of appetite,
so that it was like watching a sausage factory. Yet continually, when he had
swallowed a dozen crumpets  or  drunk  a quart of coffee, he would  be found
with his great head on one side staring at Syme.
     "I have often wondered," said the Marquis, taking a great bite out of a
slice of bread and jam, "whether it wouldn't be better for  me to do it with
a knife. Most of the  best things have been brought off with a knife. And it
would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and wriggle it
round."
     "You are wrong," said the Secretary,  drawing his black brows together.
"The knife was  merely the  expression of the  old  personal quarrel  with a
personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our best symbol. It
is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of the Christians.
It expands;  it  only  destroys because  it  broadens; even so, thought only
destroys  because  it broadens. A  man's brain  is  a bomb,"  he  cried out,
loosening  suddenly  his  strange passion and  striking his own  skull  with
violence. "My brain feels like a  bomb,  night and day. It must  expand!  It
must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe."
     "I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis. "I
want to do  a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one yesterday
in bed."
     "No, if the only end  of the thing is  nothing," said Dr. Bull with his
sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems worth doing."
     The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes.
     "Every man  knows  in  his  heart,  " he said, "that nothing  is  worth
doing."
     There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said--
     "We are  wandering, however, from the point. The  only  question is how
Wednesday  is  to  strike the blow. I  take it  we should all agree with the
original notion of a bomb. As to the actual  arrangements, I  should suggest
that tomorrow morning he should go first of all to--"
     The  speech  was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday
had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them.
     "Before we discuss that," he  said in  a small, quiet voice, "let us go
into a private room. I have something vent particular to say."
     Syme stood up before any of the  others. The instant of choice had come
at  last, the pistol was at his head. On  the  pavement before he could hear
the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, was cold.
     A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a  jovial
tune. Syme stood up taut, as  if it had  been a bugle before the  battle. He
found himself filled  with a supernatural  courage that came  from  nowhere.
That  jingling music seemed  full of the vivacity,  the  vulgarity, and  the
irrational valour  of the poor, who in all those unclean  streets  were  all
clinging to the  decencies and the  charities of  Christendom. His  youthful
prank  of being a  policeman  had faded from his mind; he did  not  think of
himself  as the  representative of the corps of gentlemen turned  into fancy
constables, or of the old  eccentric who lived in the dark room.  But he did
feel himself as the ambassador of all  these common and kindly people in the
street, who every day marched into battle  to the music of the barrel-organ.
And  this  high  pride  in  being human had lifted  him  unaccountably to an
infinite  height above  the  monstrous  men  around him. For an  instant, at
least,  he  looked  down  upon  all their sprawling  eccentricities from the
starry  pinnacle  of  the   commonplace.  He  felt  towards  them  all  that
unconscious and elementary superiority  that a brave man feels over powerful
beasts or a wise man over  powerful errors. He knew that he had  neither the
intellectual  nor  the  physical  strength of President Sunday; but  in that
moment he minded it no  more than the fact that he had not the  muscles of a
tiger  or a horn on  his nose like a rhinoceros. All  was swallowed up in an
ultimate certainty that the President was  wrong  and that  the barrel-organ
was  right. There clanged in  his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism
in the song of Roland--

     "Pagens ont tort et Chretiens ont droit."

     which in  the old nasal French  has the  clang and groan of great iron.
This liberation  of his spirit from the  load of  his weakness  went with  a
quite  clear decision  to embrace death.  If the people of the  barrel-organ
could  keep  their old-world obligations, so could he. This  very  pride  in
keeping  his word was that he was keeping  it to miscreants. It was his last
triumph over these lunatics  to  go down into  their dark room  and  die for
something that they could not  even understand. The barrel-organ  seemed  to
give  the  marching tune  with the energy  and the mingled noises of a whole
orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the
pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.
     The conspirators were already filing  through  the open window and into
the rooms behind. Syme went last, outwardly calm, but with all his brain and
body  throbbing  with  romantic  rhythm.  The  President  led them  down  an
irregular side stair, such as might be  used  by servants, and  into a  dim,
cold, empty  room, with  a  table  and benches, like an abandoned boardroom.
When they were all in, he closed and locked the door.
     The first to speak  was  Gogol, the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting
with inarticulate grievance.
     "Zso!  Zso!"  he  cried, with an  obscure excitement, his heavy  Polish
accent becoming almost impenetrable. "You zay you nod 'ide. You zay you show
himselves.  It is  all  nuzzinks.  Ven  you  vant  talk  importance  you run
yourselves in a dark box!"
     The President  seemed  to take the foreigner's  incoherent satire  with
entire good humour.
     "You can't get hold of it yet, Gogol," he said in a fatherly way. "When
once they have heard us talking nonsense  on that balcony they will not care
where we go afterwards.  If we had come here first, we should  have had  the
whole staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to know anything about mankind."
     "I die for zem," cried the  Pole in thick excitement, "and I slay  zare
oppressors. I  care not for  these games  of gonzealment. I would  zmite  ze
tyrant in ze open square."
     "I see, I see," said the President, nodding kindly as he seated himself
at the top of a  long table. "You die for mankind first, and then you get up
and smite their  oppressors. So that's  all right. And now may  I ask you to
control your beautiful sentiments, and sit down  with the other gentlemen at
this table. For  the first time this morning something  intelligent is going
to be said."
     Syme, with the perturbed promptitude he had  shown since  the  original
summons, sat down first.  Gogol sat down last, grumbling  in his brown beard
about gombromise. No one except  Syme seemed to have any notion  of the blow
that  was about to fall.  As for  him, he had  merely the  feeling of a  man
mounting  the  scaffold with the intention, at any  rate, of making  a  good
speech.
     "Comrades," said the President, suddenly rising, "we have spun out this
farce long  enough.  I have called  you  down here to tell you something  so
simple  and shocking that  even  the  waiters upstairs (long  inured to  our
levities) might hear some new  seriousness  in my  voice. Comrades, we  were
discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before saying anything  else,
that those  plans and places should not be voted by this meeting, but should
be left wholly in the control of some one reliable member. I suggest Comrade
Saturday, Dr. Bull."
     They all stared at him; then they all started in their seats,  for  the
next  words,  though not loud, had a living and sensational emphasis. Sunday
struck the table.
     "Not one  word  more about  the  plans and places must be  said at this
meeting. Not one tiny detail more about what we mean to do must be mentioned
in this company."
     Sunday had spent his life in astonishing  his followers; but  it seemed
as  if  he had  never really  astonished  them  until  now. They  all  moved
feverishly in their seats,  except Syme. He sat stiff in his, with his  hand
in his pocket, and on the handle of his loaded revolver. When  the attack on
him came he would sell  his  life  dear. He would  find out at least if  the
President was mortal.
     Sunday went on smoothly--
     "You  will probably understand that  there is only one  possible motive
for  forbidding   free  speech  at  this  festival  of   freedom.  Strangers
overhearing  us matters nothing. They assume that  we  are joking.  But what
would matter, even unto death, is this, that  there  should be  one actually
among us  who is not of  us, who knows our grave purpose, but does not share
it, who--"
     The Secretary screamed out suddenly like a woman.
     "It can't be!" he cried, leaping. "There can't--"
     The President flapped his large flat hand  on the table like the fin of
some huge fish.
     "Yes," he said slowly, "there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor
at this table. I will waste no more words. His name--"
     Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger.
     "His name is  Gogol," said the President. "He is that hairy humbug over
there who pretends to be a Pole."
     Gogol  sprang to his feet, a pistol in each  hand. With  the same flash
three men sprang  at his throat. Even the Professor made  an effort to rise.
But Syme  saw  little of the  scene, for he  was blinded  with a  beneficent
darkness;  he  had  sunk  down  into  his  seat shuddering,  in a  palsy  of
passionate relief.


        CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS

     "SIT down!" said Sunday  in a voice that he used  once or twice in  his
life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords.
     The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person
himself resumed his seat.
     "Well, my  man,"  said the  President  briskly, addressing him  as  one
addresses a total stranger, "will you oblige me by putting your hand in your
upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?"
     The alleged Pole was a little  pale under his tangle of dark hair,  but
he put two fingers into  the pocket with apparent coolness  and pulled out a
blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke up again to
the world outside him. For although the card lay at the other extreme of the
table,  and  he  could read  nothing  of the inscription  on it,  it bore  a
startling resemblance to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had
been given to him when he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary.
     "Pathetic  Slav," said  the President, "tragic child of Poland, are you
prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this company--
shall we say de trop?"
     "Right oh!" said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear,
commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out  of  that forest of foreign
hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman  had suddenly spoken with a Scotch
accent.
     "I gather that you fully understand your position," said Sunday.
     "You bet," answered the  Pole. "I see it's a  fair cop. All I say is, I
don't believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his."
     "I concede the  point," said Sunday. "I believe your own  accent  to be
inimitable, though I shall  practise it in my bath. Do you mind leaving your
beard with your card?"
     "Not  a bit,"  answered Gogol; and with  one finger  he ripped off  the
whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and  a  pale,
pert face. "It was hot," he added.
     "I will do  you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort of
brutal admiration,  "that you seem to have  kept  pretty cool  under it. Now
listen to me. I like you. The consequence is that it would annoy me for just
about two and a half minutes if I heard that you had died in torments. Well,
if you ever tell the police or  any human soul about us, I  shall  have that
two and a half minutes of discomfort.  On your discomfort I will not  dwell.
Good day. Mind the step."
     The red-haired detective who had masqueraded as Gogol  rose to his feet
without  a  word,  and walked  out of  the  room  with  an  air  of  perfect
nonchalance. Yet the astonished  Syme was able to realise that this ease was
suddenly assumed; for  there  was a slight  stumble outside  the door, which
showed that the departing detective had not minded the step.
     "Time  is  flying," said  the President  in  his  gayest manner,  after
glancing at his watch, which like everything about him seemed bigger than it
ought  to be.  "I  must go off at once;  I have  to  take  the  chair  at  a
Humanitarian meeting."
     The Secretary turned to him with working eyebrows.
     "Would it not be better," he said a little sharply, "to discuss further
the details of our project, now that the spy has left us?"
     "No, I think not," said  the President  with a yawn like an unobtrusive
earthquake. "Leave it as it  is. Let  Saturday  settle it.  I  must be  off.
Breakfast here next Sunday."
     But the late loud scenes had whipped up the almost  naked nerves of the
Secretary. He was one of those men who are conscientious even in crime.
     "I must protest, President,  that the thing is irregular," he said. "It
is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in full
council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought  when  in the actual
presence of a traitor--"
     "Secretary,"  said  the President  seriously, "if you'd take your  head
home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.
     The Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger.
     "I really fail to understand--" he began in high offense.
     "That's it, that's it," said the President, nodding a great many times.
"That's where  you  fail  right  enough.  You fail to  understand.  Why, you
dancing  donkey," he roared, rising, "you didn't want to be overheard  by  a
spy, didn't you? How do you know you aren't overheard now?"
     And with  these  words  he shouldered his way out  of the room, shaking
with incomprehensible scorn.
     Four of  the  men  left  behind gaped after  him  without  any apparent
glimmering of  his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it
was it  froze him  to the  bone. If  the  last words of  the President meant
anything,  they meant  that he  had  not after all passed  unsuspected. They
meant  that  while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol,  he still could
not trust him like the others.
     The other four  got  to their feet  grumbling more or less, and  betook
themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday. The
Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after the rest
had gone, revolving his strange position. He  had escaped a thunderbolt, but
he was still under a cloud. At last  he  rose and  made his  way out of  the
hotel into  Leicester Square. The  bright, cold day  had  grown increasingly
colder, and  when  he came out  into the street he was surprised  by  a  few
flakes  of  snow. While  he still carried the sword-stick  and  the  rest of
Gregory's portable  luggage,  he  had  thrown the  cloak  down  and left  it
somewhere,  perhaps  on  the  steam-tug,  perhaps  on  the  balcony. Hoping,
therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped back out of  the
street  for a moment  and stood  up under the doorway of a  small and greasy
hair-dresser's shop,  the front  window  of  which  was  empty, except for a
sickly wax lady in evening dress.
     Snow, however, began to  thicken  and fall fast; and Syme, having found
one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient  to depress  his spirits, stared
out instead into the white and empty  street. He was considerably astonished
to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staring into the window, a
man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat  of Father Christmas, the
white drift was rising  round his boots  and  ankles; but it  seemed  as  if
nothing  could  tear him away from  the contemplation  of the colourless wax
doll  in  dirty evening dress.  That  any human being should  stand  in such
weather looking  into such a shop was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme;
but his  idle wonder turned suddenly into a  personal shock; for he realised
that the man standing there  was  the  paralytic old Professor de  Worms. It
scarcely seemed the place for a person of his years and infirmities.
     Syme  was  ready to  believe anything  about the  perversions  of  this
dehumanized brotherhood; but even  he  could  not believe that the Professor
had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that
the man's malady (whatever  it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity
or  trance. He was not  inclined, however,  to feel in  this  case any  very
compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that
the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy
to escape  from him and leave  him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and
last  to get clear of the whole poisonous  atmosphere,  if only for an hour.
Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally
whether he should or should not keep faith with Gregory.
     He  strolled away through the  dancing  snow, turned  up  two or  three
streets,  down  through  two  or  three  others,  and  entered a  small Soho
restaurant  for lunch. He  partook reflectively of  four  small  and  quaint
courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black coffee and
a black cigar,  still  thinking.  He had taken his seat in the upper room of
the restaurant,  which was  full of the chink  of  knives and the chatter of
foreigners. He remembered that  in old days he had imagined  that all  these
harmless and kindly aliens were  anarchists.  He  shuddered, remembering the
real thing.  But even the shudder  had  the delightful  shame of escape. The
wine,  the  common  food, the  familiar  place,  the  faces  of  natural and
talkative men,  made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven Days had
been  a bad dream;  and  although he  knew it was nevertheless an  objective
reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses and populous streets lay
between him and his  last  sight of the shameful seven; he  was free in free
London, and drinking  wine among the free. With a somewhat easier action, he
took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop below.
     When he entered  that lower  room he  stood stricken and rooted  to the
spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of
snow, sat the old anarchist  Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted
livid  face  and  pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the
stick  he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past
the Professor, dashing open the door and  slamming it  behind him, and stood
outside in the snow.
     "Can that old  corpse be following  me?" he  asked himself,  biting his
yellow moustache.  "I stopped too long up in  that room,  so that  even such
leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk walking I
can put a man like that as  far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too fanciful? Was
he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such  a fool as to send a
lame man? "
     He set  off  at a smart pace,  twisting and whirling  his stick, in the
direction  of  Covent  Garden.  As he  crossed  the  great market  the  snow
increased,  growing  blinding  and  bewildering  as  the afternoon began  to
darken.  The  snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. Getting
into  his  eyes  and  beard,  they  added  their unremitting futility to his
already irritated nerves; and by  the time that  he had  come  at a swinging
pace  to the  beginning of  Fleet  Street, he lost patience,  and  finding a
Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter.  He ordered  another cup  of
black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so,  when Professor de Worms
hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty and  ordered a glass
of milk.
     Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which
confessed the concealed  steel. But  the Professor did not look round. Syme,
who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at
a  conjuring trick. He had seen  no cab following; he  had  heard no  wheels
outside the  shop; to all mortal appearances the man had  come on foot.  But
the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind.
He started  up and snatched his stick, half  crazy with the contradiction in
mere  arithmetic, and swung  out of the  swinging doors,  leaving his coffee
untasted.  An  omnibus going to  the Bank went  rattling by with  an unusual
rapidity. He  had  a violent  run of a hundred  yards to reach  it;  but  he
managed to spring, swaying upon the splash-board and, pausing for an instant
to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he had  been seated for about half a
minute, he heard behind him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing.
     Turning  sharply, he  saw rising  gradually higher  and higher  up  the
omnibus  steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the shadow
of its brim  the  short-sighted  face  and  shaky shoulders of  Professor de
Worms.  He  let himself into a  seat with characteristic care,  and  wrapped
himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug.
     Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, every
uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question
that he  was helpless, that  he was  in the last imbecility of  the body. He
moved by inches, he let himself  down with little gasps of caution. And yet,
unless the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even
of  a practical existence, it appeared quite  unquestionable that he had run
after the omnibus.
     Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the
wintry  sky, that grew gloomier every moment,  he ran down the steps. He had
repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side.
     Too bewildered  to look back or to reason,  he rushed into  one  of the
little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a hole. He
had a vague idea, if this  incomprehensible  old Jack-in-the-box was  really
pursuing him, that in that labyrinth of  little streets he could  soon throw
him off the scent. He  dived  in and out of those  crooked lanes, which were
more like cracks  than thoroughfares; and  by the time that he had completed
about  twenty  alternate  angles  and  described  an unthinkable polygon, he
paused to  listen for any sound of pursuit. There was none;  there could not
in any case  have been much,  for the  little  streets  were thick  with the
soundless snow. Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place
where some energetic citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of  about
twenty yards, leaving the  wet,  glistening cobble-stones. He thought little
of this as he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze. But
when  a  few  hundred  yards  farther on he stood still again to listen, his
heart stood  still also, for  he heard  from that space of rugged stones the
clinking crutch and labouring feet of the infernal cripple.
     The sky above was loaded  with the clouds of snow, leaving  London in a
darkness and oppression premature for that hour of the evening. On each side
of Syme  the  walls of the alley were blind and featureless;  there  was  no
little window or any kind of eve. He felt a new impulse to break out of this
hive of houses, and to get once more into the open  and lamp-lit street. Yet
he  rambled  and  dodged  for  a  long  time  before  he  struck   the  main
thoroughfare.  When  he  did so, he  struck it much  farther  up than he had
fancied. He  came out into what seemed the vast and  void of Ludgate Circus,
and saw St. Paul's Cathedral sitting in the sky.
     At  first  he was startled to  find these great roads so empty, as if a
pestilence had swept through the city. Then he told himself that some degree
of emptiness was natural; first because the snow-storm  was even dangerously
deep, and secondly because it was Sunday. And at the very word Sunday he bit
his lip; the word was  henceforth for hire like some indecent pun. Under the
white fog of snow high up in the heaven the whole atmosphere of the city was
turned to  a very queer kind of green twilight, as of men under the sea. The
sealed and sullen  sunset behind the dark dome of St. Paul's had in it smoky
and sinister colours-- colours of sickly green, dead red or decaying bronze,
that were just bright enough to emphasise the solid  whiteness of  the snow.
But right  up against  these  dreary  colours rose  the  black  bulk of  the
cathedral; and  upon the top of the cathedral was a random splash  and great
stain  of  snow,  still  clinging  as  to  an Alpine  peak.  It  had  fallen
accidentally, but just so fallen  as to half  drape  the dome from  its very
topmost  point,  and  to pick out  in perfect silver the great  orb and  the
cross. When Syme saw it he suddenly straightened himself, and made with  his
sword-stick an involuntary salute.
     He  knew  that  that evil figure,  his shadow, was creeping  quickly or
slowly behind him, and he did not care.
     It seemed  a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were
darkening  that high place of the earth was  bright.  The devils might  have
captured heaven,  but  they had not  yet captured the  cross. He  had  a new
impulse  to  tear  out the  secret of  this  dancing, jumping  and  pursuing
paralytic; and at the entrance of the  court as it opened upon the Circus he
turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer.
     Professor de Worms came slowly round the corner of the irregular  alley
behind  him,  his  unnatural  form  outlined   against  a  lonely  gas-lamp,
irresistibly recalling that  very imaginative figure  in the nursery rhymes,
"the crooked  man who went  a crooked mile."  He really  looked as if he had
been twisted out of shape by the tortuous streets  he had been threading. He
came  nearer and nearer, the lamplight shining on his lifted spectacles, his
lifted,  patient  face. Syme  waited for him as  St. George  waited  for the
dragon, as a man waits  for a  final explanation or for death.  And the  old
Professor came right up to him and passed him like a total stranger, without
even a blink of his mournful eyelids.
     There was  something in this  silent and unexpected innocence that left
Syme in a  final fury. The man's colourless face and manner seemed to assert
that the whole following had been an accident. Syme  was  galvanised with an
energy that was something between bitterness and a burst of boyish derision.
He made a wild gesture as if  to knock  the  old  man's hat  off, called out
something like "Catch me if you can," and went racing away across the white,
open  Circus.  Concealment was  impossible  now; and  looking back  over his
shoulder, he could  see  the black figure of  the old gentleman coming after
him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head
upon that bounding  body was  still pale,  grave and professional, like  the
head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin.
     This outrageous chase  sped  across  Ludgate  Circus, up Ludgate  Hill,
round  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, along  Cheapside,  Syme remembering  all  the
nightmares he  had ever known. Then Syme broke  away towards the river,  and
ended almost down by  the docks.  He saw the yellow panes of  a low, lighted
public-house, flung himself into it and ordered beer. It  was a foul tavern,
sprinkled with  foreign  sailors, a  place  where  opium might be  smoked or
knives drawn.
     A  moment  later  Professor  de  Worms  entered  the  place,  sat  down
carefully, and asked for a glass of milk.


        The Man Who Was Thursday. A nightmare



        G. K. CHESTERTON



        CHAPTER VIII. THE PROFESSOR EXPLAINS

     WHEN Gabriel Syme  found himself  finally established  in  a chair, and
opposite  to him,  fixed  and  final  also, the lifted  eyebrows and  leaden
eyelids  of the Professor, his  fears  fully returned. This incomprehensible
man  from the  fierce council,  after all, had certainly pursued him. If the
man had one character as a paralytic and another character as a pursuer, the
antithesis might  make him more interesting, but scarcely more  soothing. It
would be a  very small comfort that he could not  find the Professor out, if
by some serious  accident  the Professor  should find him out.  He emptied a
whole pewter pot of ale before the professor had touched his milk.
     One possibility, however, kept him  hopeful and yet  helpless.  It  was
just  possible that  this  escapade signified  something  other than even  a
slight suspicion of  him. Perhaps it was some regular form  or sign. Perhaps
the  foolish scamper  was some sort of friendly signal that he ought to have
understood. Perhaps it was a ritual. Perhaps  the  new Thursday  was  always
chased along Cheapside,  as the new Lord  Mayor is always escorted along it.
He was just selecting  a tentative  inquiry, when the old Professor opposite
suddenly  and  simply  cut  him  short.  Before  Syme could  ask  the  first
diplomatic  question, the old anarchist had asked suddenly, without any sort
of preparation--
     "Are you a policeman?"
     Whatever else  Syme  had expected,  he  had never expected anything  so
brutal and actual as this. Even his great presence of mind could only manage
a reply with an air of rather blundering jocularity.
     "A policeman?" he said, laughing vaguely. "Whatever made you think of a
policeman in connection with me?"
     "The process  was simple enough,"  answered the Professor patiently. "I
thought you looked like a policeman. I think so now."
     "Did I take a policeman's hat by mistake out  of the restaurant?" asked
Syme, smiling wildly.  "Have I  by  any chance got a  number  stuck on to me
somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be a  policeman?
Do, do let me be a postman."
     The old Professor shook his head with a gravity that gave no hope,  but
Syme ran on with a feverish irony.
     "But perhaps I misunderstood the  delicacies of your German philosophy.
Perhaps policeman is a relative term. In an evolutionary sense, sir, the ape
fades so gradually into the  policeman, that I  myself  can never detect the
shade. The monkey is  only the policeman that may be.  Perhaps a maiden lady
on Clapham Common is only  the policeman that might have  been. I don't mind
being  the  policeman  that might have been. I  don't mind being anything in
German thought."
     "Are you  in the police service?" said the old man, ignoring all Syme's
improvised and desperate raillery. "Are you a detective?"
     Syme's heart turned to stone, but his face never changed.
     "Your suggestion is ridiculous," he began. "Why on earth--"
     The old man struck his palsied hand passionately  on the rickety table,
nearly breaking it.
     "Did you hear me ask a plain question, you pattering spy?" he  shrieked
in a high, crazy voice. "Are you, or are you not, a police detective?"
     "No!" answered Syme, like a man standing on the hangman's drop.
     "You swear it," said the  old man, leaning across to him, his dead face
becoming as it were loathsomely alive. "You swear  it! You  swear it! If you
swear falsely, will you be damned? Will you be sure that the devil dances at
your funeral? Will you see that the nightmare sits on your grave? Will there
really be no mistake? You are an anarchist, you are a dynamiter! Above  all,
you are not in any sense a detective? You are not in the British police?"
     He leant his angular elbow far across the table,  and put up his  large
loose hand like a flap to his ear.
     "I am not in the British police," said Syme with insane calm.
     Professor de Worms fell  back in his chair with a curious air of kindly
collapse.
     "That's a pity," he said, "because I am."
     Syme  sprang up  straight,  sending  back the  bench behind  him with a
crash.
     "Because you are what?" he said thickly. "You are what?"
     "I am a policeman," said the Professor with his first broad smile.  and
beaming through his spectacles. "But as you think  policeman only a relative
term,  of course  I have nothing to do with you. I am in  the British police
force;  but  as  you tell me you are not in  the British police force, I can
only say that I met you  in  a dynamiters' club. I suppose I ought to arrest
you."  And  with these  words  he  laid on  the table before  Syme an  exact
facsimile of the blue card  which Syme had in his own waistcoat pocket,  the
symbol of his power from the police.
     Syme had for a flash the sensation that the  cosmos had turned  exactly
upside down, that  all trees were growing downwards and that  all stars were
under  his  feet. Then came  slowly the  opposite  conviction. For the  last
twenty-four  hours the cosmos  had  really  been upside  down, but  now  the
capsized universe had come  right side up again. This devil from whom he had
been fleeing all day was only  an elder brother of his own house, who on the
other  side of  the  table  lay back and laughed at  him. He did not for the
moment ask  any questions of detail;  he only knew the happy and  silly fact
that this  shadow, which had pursued him  with an intolerable oppression  of
peril,  was only  the  shadow  of a  friend  trying to catch him up. He knew
simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For with any recovery from
morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. There comes a certain
point  in such  conditions when only  three  things  are possible:  first  a
perpetuation of Satanic pride,  secondly tears,  and third laughter.  Syme's
egotism  held  hard to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly
adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat
pocket, he tossed it on to the  table; then he flung his head back until his
spike  of  yellow  beard almost pointed at the  ceiling, and shouted with  a
barbaric laughter.
     Even in that  close den,  perpetually filled with  the  din  of knives,
plates, cans,  clamorous  voices, sudden struggles and stampedes,  there was
something  Homeric  in  Syme's mirth which made  many  half-drunken men look
round.
     "What yer laughing at, guv'nor?"  asked one wondering labourer from the
docks.
     "At  myself," answered Syme,  and went off again into the agony  of his
ecstatic reaction.
     "Pull   yourself  together,"   said  the  Professor,   "or  you'll  get
hysterical. Have some more beer. I'll join you."
     "You haven't drunk your milk," said Syme.
     "My milk!  " said  the other, in  tones  of  withering and unfathomable
contempt, "my milk! Do  you think I'd look at the beastly stuff when I'm out
of sight of the bloody anarchists? We're all Christians in this room, though
perhaps," he added, glancing around at the  reeling crowd, "not strict ones.
Finish  my  milk? Great blazes!  yes, I'll finish it  right enough!"  and he
knocked  the tumbler off  the table, making a crash of glass and a splash of
silver fluid.
     Syme was staring at him with a happy curiosity.
     "I understand  now,"  he cried;  "of course, you're not an  old man  at
all."
     "I can't take  my face off here,"  replied  Professor  de Worms.  "It's
rather an elaborate make-up. As to whether I'm an old man, that's not for me
to say. I was thirty-eight last birthday."
     "Yes, but  I mean," said Syme impatiently, "there's nothing  the matter
with you."
     "Yes," answered the other dispassionately. "I am subject to colds."
     Syme's laughter  at all this had about it a wild weakness of relief. He
laughed  at the  idea of the paralytic Professor being  really a young actor
dressed up as if for the foot-lights. But he felt that he would have laughed
as loudly if a pepperpot had fallen over.
     The false Professor drank and wiped his false beard.
     "Did you know," he asked, "that that man Gogol was one of us?"
     "I? No, I didn't know it," answered Syme in  some surprise. "But didn't
you?"
     "I knew  no more than the dead," replied  the man who called himself de
Worms. "I  thought the President was  talking about me,  and I rattled in my
boots."
     "And I thought he was  talking  about me,"  said Syme, with  his rather
reckless laughter. "I had my hand on my revolver all the time."
     "So had I," said the Professor grimly; "so had Gogol evidently."
     Syme struck the table with an exclamation.
     "Why, there were three of us there!" he cried. "Three out of seven is a
fighting number. If we had only known that we were three!"
     The face of Professor de Worms darkened, and he did not look up.
     "We were  three," he said. "If we had been three hundred we could still
have done nothing."
     "Not if we were three hundred against four?" asked Syme, jeering rather
boisterously.
     "No,"  said  the Professor with sobriety, "not if we were three hundred
against Sunday."
     And the mere  name struck Syme  cold and serious; his laughter had died
in his  heart before it could die on his lips. The face of the unforgettable
President sprang into his mind as startling as a coloured photograph, and he
remarked this  difference  between Sunday and all his satellites, that their
faces, however fierce or sinister, became gradually blurred  by memory  like
other human faces, whereas Sunday's seemed almost to grow more actual during
absence, as if a man's painted portrait should slowly come alive.
     They were both silent for a measure of  moments, and then Syme's speech
came with a rush, like the sudden foaming of champagne.
     "Professor," he cried, "it is intolerable. Are you afraid of this man?"
     The Professor lifted his  heavy  lids, and  gazed  at Syme with  large,
wide-open, blue eyes of an almost ethereal honesty.
     "Yes, I am," he said mildly. "So are you."
     Syme was  dumb for an instant. Then he rose to  his feet erect, like an
insulted man, and thrust the chair away from him.
     "Yes," he said in a voice indescribable, "you are right. I am afraid of
him.  Therefore I swear by  God that I  will  seek out this man  whom I fear
until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and
the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down."
     "How?" asked the staring Professor. "Why?"
     "Because I am afraid of him,"  said  Syme; "and no man should  leave in
the universe anything of which he is afraid."
     De Worms blinked at him with a sort of blind wonder.  He made an effort
to  speak, but Syme went on in  a low  voice,  but with  an undercurrent  of
inhuman exaltation--
     "Who would  condescend to strike down the mere things  that he does not
fear?  Who  would  debase  himself  to  be  merely brave,  like  any  common
prizefighter? Who would stoop to be fearless--like a  tree?  Fight the thing
that you  fear. You remember the old tale of the English clergyman who  gave
the last rites  to the brigand of Sicily, and how on his death-bed the great
robber said, 'I  can  give you  no  money, but I can  give you advice for  a
lifetime: your thumb  on the blade,  and strike  upwards.'  So I say to you,
strike upwards, if you strike at the stars."
     The other looked at the ceiling, one of the tricks of his pose.
     "Sunday is a fixed star," he said.
     "You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat.
     The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet.
     "Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent  bewilderment,
"exactly where you are going?"
     "Yes,"  replied Syme  shortly, "I am going  to prevent  this bomb being
thrown in Paris."
     "Have you any conception how?" inquired the other.
     "No," said Syme with equal decision.
     "You remember, of course," resumed the soi-disant de Worms, pulling his
beard and looking out of the window, "that when we broke up rather hurriedly
the whole  arrangements  for the atrocity were  left in the private hands of
the Marquis and Dr.  Bull. The Marquis is by this time probably crossing the
Channel. But where he  will go  and  what he will do it is doubtful  whether
even  the  President  knows;  certainly we don't know. The only man who does
know is Dr. Bull.
     "Confound it!" cried Syme. "And we don't know where he is."
     "Yes," said the other in his curious, absent-minded way, "I know  where
he is myself."
     "Will you tell me?" asked Syme with eager eyes.
     "I will take you there," said  the Professor, and took down his own hat
from a peg.
     Syme stood looking at him with a sort of rigid excitement.
     "What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "Will you  join me? Will you take
the risk?"
     "Young man," said the Professor pleasantly,  "I  am  amused  to observe
that you think I am a coward. As to  that I will say only one word, and that
shall  be  entirely in  the  manner of your own philosophical  rhetoric. You
think that  it is  possible to pull down  the  President. I know  that it is
impossible, and I  am going to  try it," and opening  the tavern door, which
let  in a blast of bitter air, they  went out together into the dark streets
by the docks.
     Most of  the snow was melted or trampled to mud, but here and  there  a
clot  of it still  showed grey  rather than white  in  the  gloom. The small
streets were sloppy  and full  of  pools, which reflected  the flaming lamps
irregularly, and by accident, like fragments of some other and fallen world.
Syme  felt almost dazed  as  he  stepped  through this growing  confusion of
lights and shadows; but his companion walked  on  with a certain  briskness,
towards where, at the end of the street, an inch or two of the lamplit river
looked like a bar of flame.
     "Where are you going?" Syme inquired.
     "Just now," answered  the Professor, "I am going  just round the corner
to see whether Dr. Bull has gone to bed. He is hygienic, and retires early."
     "Dr. Bull!" exclaimed Syme. "Does he live round the corner?"
     "No," answered his friend. "As  a matter of fact he lives some way off,
on the other side of  the river,  but  we can tell from here  whether he has
gone to bed."
     Turning the corner as he spoke, and facing  the dim river, flecked with
flame, he pointed with his stick to the other  bank.  On the Surrey side  at
this point there  ran out into the Thames,  seeming almost to overhang it, a
bulk and  cluster of those  tall tenements, dotted with lighted windows, and
rising like factory chimneys to an almost insane height. Their special poise
and  position made  one block of buildings especially  look like a Tower  of
Babel with  a hundred  eyes.  Syme had never  seen any  of the  sky-scraping
buildings in America, so he could only think of the buildings in a dream.
     Even as he stared, the highest light in this innumerably lighted turret
abruptly went out, as if this  black Argus had winked at him with one of his
innumerable eyes.
     Professor  de  Worms swung round  on  his  heel, and  struck  his stick
against his boot.
     "We are too late," he said, "the hygienic Doctor has gone to bed."
     "What do you mean?" asked Syme. "Does he live over there, then?"
     "Yes,"  said de Worms,  "behind that particular window which you  can't
see. Come along and get some dinner. We must call on him to-morrow morning."
     Without  further parley, he led  the way  through several by-ways until
they came  out into  the flare and  clamour of the East India Dock Road. The
Professor, who seemed to know his way about the neighbourhood, proceeded  to
a  place where the line of lighted  shops  fell back into a  sort of  abrupt
twilight and quiet, in which an old white inn, all out of repair, stood back
some twenty feet from the road.
     "You  can find  good English  inns left by  accident  everywhere,  like
fossils," explained the Professor. "I once found a  decent place in the West
End."
     "I suppose," said Syme, smiling, "that this is the corresponding decent
place in the East End?"
     "It is," said the Professor reverently, and went in.
     In that place they dined and slept, both very thoroughly. The beans and
bacon,  which  these  unaccountable  people  cooked  well,  the  astonishing
emergence of  Burgundy  from  their cellars, crowned  Syme's  sense of a new
comradeship and comfort. Through  all this  ordeal  his root horror had been
isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and
having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice
two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times  one. That  is why,
in  spite  of  a  hundred disadvantages,  the world will  always  return  to
monogamy.
     Syme  was able  to  pour  out  for the  first  time  the  whole  of his
outrageous tale,  from the time when Gregory  had taken  him  to  the little
tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue,  as
a man  speaks with  very old friends. On  his  side, also, the  man who  had
impersonated  Professor de Worms was  not less communicative. His  own story
was almost as silly as Syme's.
     "That's a good get-up of yours,"  said Syme, draining a glass of Macon;
"a lot better than old Gogol's. Even at the start I thought he was a bit too
hairy."
     "A  difference  of  artistic  theory," replied the Professor pensively.
"Gogol was an idealist. He made up  as the abstract  or platonic ideal of an
anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, to  say
that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a portrait."
     "I don't understand you," said Syme.
     "I  am a portrait,"  repeated the Professor. "I am  a portrait  of  the
celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples."
     "You mean  you are made up like him," said  Syme. "But doesn't he  know
that you are taking his nose in vain?"
     "He knows it right enough," replied his friend cheerfully.
     "Then why doesn't he denounce you?"
     "I have denounced him," answered the Professor.
     "Do explain yourself," said Syme.
     "With pleasure, if  you  don't  mind  hearing  my  story,"  replied the
eminent foreign philosopher. "I am  by profession an  actor, and my  name is
Wilks.  When I was  on the  stage  I  mixed  with all sorts of Bohemian  and
blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimes  the
riff-raff of the  arts, and occasionally the political  refugee. In some den
of  exiled  dreamers  I  was  introduced  to  the   great  German   Nihilist
philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about  him beyond his
appearance,  which was  very disgusting,  and which I  studied  carefully. I
understood that he had proved that the destructive principle in the universe
was God; hence  he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant  energy,
rending  all things in  pieces. Energy,  he said, was the  All. He was lame,
shortsighted, and  partially paralytic. When I met him I was in a  frivolous
mood, and I disliked him  so much that I resolved to  imitate him. If  I had
been a draughtsman I would have drawn a caricature.  I was only  an actor, I
could only act a caricature. I made myself up into what was meant for a wild
exaggeration  of the  old Professor's  dirty old self. When I went into  the
room  full  of  his supporters I  expected  to  be  received with a  roar of
laughter, or (if  they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation  at the
insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance  was received
with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first opened my lips) with a
murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist had fallen upon me.  I
had been too  subtle, I had been too true.  They thought  I really  was  the
great Nihilist Professor. I was a healthy-minded young  man at the time, and
I confess that it was a blow. Before I could fully recover,  however, two or
three of these admirers ran up to me radiating indignation, and told me that
a  public insult had  been put  upon  me  in  the next  room. I inquired its
nature. It  seemed that an impertinent  fellow  had dressed himself up  as a
preposterous parody of myself. I had drunk more champagne than was good  for
me, and  in  a  flash  of folly  I decided  to  see the  situation  through.
Consequently  it  was  to meet the glare of the company and  my  own  lifted
eyebrows and freezing eyes that the real Professor came into the room.
     "I need hardly say there was a collision.  The pessimists all  round me
looked anxiously from one Professor to the other Professor to  see which was
really the more feeble. But I won. An old man in poor health, like my rival,
could  not be expected to be  so impressively feeble as a young actor in the
prime  of life. You  see, he really had paralysis, and  working  within this
definite  limitation,  he couldn't  be  so jolly paralytic as I was. Then he
tried to blast  my claims intellectually. I countered that by  a very simple
dodge. Whenever he  said something that  nobody but he  could  understand, I
replied with something which I  could  not  even understand myself. 'I don't
fancy,'  he  said,  'that  you  could  have  worked out  the principle  that
evolution is only negation, since there inheres in  it the  introduction  of
lacuna,  which  are  an  essential  of  differentiation.'  I  replied  quite
scornfully, 'You read all that up in  Pinckwerts; the notion that involution
functioned  eugenically was exposed  long ago by  Glumpe.' It is unnecessary
for me  to say that there never were  such people as Pinckwerts  and Glumpe.
But the  people all round (rather  to my  surprise) seemed  to remember them
quite well,  and  the  Professor,  finding  that  the learned and mysterious
method left him  rather  at the  mercy of an  enemy  slightly  deficient  in
scruples, fell  back upon a more popular form  of wit.  'I see,' he sneered,
'you  prevail  like  the  false pig in  Aesop.' 'And you  fail,' I answered,
smiling, 'like  the hedgehog in  Montaigne.'  Need I say  that there  is  no
hedgehog  in Montaigne?  'Your claptrap comes  off,' he said; 'so would your
beard.' I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather
witty. But  I laughed heartily, answered,  'Like  the Pantheist's boots,' at
random, and  turned on my  heel with all the honours of  victory.  The  real
Professor was  thrown out, but not with  violence, though one man tried very
patiently to pull off his nose. He is now, I believe, received everywhere in
Europe as  a delightful  impostor.  His apparent  earnestness and anger, you
see, make him all the more entertaining."
     "Well," said  Syme, "I can understand your  putting  on  his  dirty old
beard for a night's practical joke, but I don't understand your never taking
it off again."
     "That is the rest of the story," said  the impersonator. "When I myself
left the company,  followed by reverent  applause, I went limping  down  the
dark street, hoping that I should soon be far enough away to be able to walk
like a  human being. To my astonishment, as I was turning the corner, I felt
a  touch  on the  shoulder, and turning, found myself under the shadow of an
enormous  policeman. He told me I  was wanted.  I struck a sort of paralytic
attitude,  and  cried in a high German  accent,  'Yes, I  am  wanted--by the
oppressed  of the  world. You are  arresting  me on the charge  of being the
great anarchist, Professor  de Worms.' The policeman impassively consulted a
paper in his hand, 'No, sir,' he said civilly, 'at least,  not exactly, sir.
I am arresting  you on the charge of  not  being  the  celebrated anarchist,
Professor de Worms.' This charge,  if it was criminal at all, was  certainly
the lighter of  the  two, and  I went along with  the man, doubtful, but not
greatly  dismayed. I was  shown into a number of rooms, and  eventually into
the presence of a police officer, who explained that a serious  campaign had
been  opened against the centres  of anarchy,  and that this,  my successful
masquerade, might be of considerable value  to the public safety. He offered
me a good  salary  and this little  blue card.  Though our conversation  was
short,  he struck me as a man of very massive common sense and humour; but I
cannot tell you much about him personally, because--"
     Syme laid down his knife and fork.
     "I know," he said, "because you talked to him in a dark room."
     Professor de Worms nodded and drained his glass.


        CHAPTER IX. THE MAN IN SPECTACLES

     "BURGUNDY  is a jolly thing," said the  Professor sadly, as he  set his
glass down.
     "You  don't look as if it were," said Syme; "you drink it as if it were
medicine."
     "You  must excuse my manner," said the Professor dismally, "my position
is  rather a curious one. Inside I am really bursting with boyish merriment;
but I acted the paralytic Professor so well, that now I can't  leave off. So
that when I am among friends, and have no need at all to disguise  myself, I
still  can't help  speaking slow and wrinkling  my forehead--  just as if it
were my  forehead.  I can be  quite happy,  you understand,  but  only in  a
paralytic sort of way. The  most  buoyant  exclamations leap up in my heart,
but they come out of my mouth quite different. You should hear me say, 'Buck
up, old cock!' It would bring tears to your eyes."
     "It does," said Syme;  "but I cannot help thinking that apart from  all
that you are really a bit worried."
     The Professor started a little and looked at him steadily.
     "You are a very clever fellow," he said, "it is a pleasure to work with
you.  Yes, I have rather  a heavy cloud in my head. There is a great problem
to face," and he sank his bald brow in his two hands.
     Then he said in a low voice--
     "Can you play the piano?"
     "Yes," said Syme in simple wonder, "I'm supposed to have a good touch."
     Then, as the other did not speak, he added--
     "I trust the great cloud is lifted."
     After a long silence, the Professor said out of the cavernous shadow of
his hands--
     "It would have done just as well if you could work a typewriter."
     "Thank you," said Syme, "you flatter me."
     "Listen to me,"  said  the other,  "and  remember whom  we have to  see
tomorrow.  You and  I are going to-morrow to attempt something which is very
much more dangerous than trying to steal the Crown  Jewels out of the Tower.
We are trying to  steal a secret from a very  sharp,  very strong, and  very
wicked man. I believe there is no man,  except the President, of course, who
is so seriously startling and formidable as that little  grinning  fellow in
goggles. He has not  perhaps  the  white-hot enthusiasm unto death,  the mad
martyrdom  for  anarchy,  which marks  the Secretary.  But  then  that  very
fanaticism  in  the Secretary has a human pathos, and  is almost a redeeming
trait. But the little Doctor has a brutal sanity that is more  shocking than
the  Secretary's  disease.  Don't you  notice  his  detestable virility  and
vitality. He bounces like an india-rubber ball. Depend on it, Sunday was not
asleep (I wonder if he ever sleeps?) when he locked up all the plans of this
outrage in the round, black head of Dr. Bull."
     "And you  think," said Syme, "that this unique  monster will be soothed
if I play the piano to him?"
     "Don't be  an ass," said his mentor. "I mentioned  the piano because it
gives  one quick and independent fingers. Syme, if we are to go through this
interview  and come out sane  or alive,  we must have some  code  of signals
between  us that this  brute  will not see. I have made a rough alphabetical
cypher corresponding to  the five fingers-- like  this, see," and he rippled
with his fingers on the wooden table--"B A D,  bad, a word we may frequently
require."
     Syme poured himself out  another glass of wine, and began  to study the
scheme. He was abnormally quick with his  brains  at  puzzles, and  with his
hands  at conjuring, and it  did not  take  him long to  learn how he  might
convey  simple messages by what would seem to be idle  taps upon a table  or
knee. But wine and companionship had always the effect of inspiring him to a
farcical ingenuity, and the Professor soon found himself struggling with the
too  vast energy of the new language, as it  passed through the heated brain
of Syme.
     "We must  have several word-signs," said Syme seriously--"words that we
are likely to want, fine shades of meaning.  My favourite word is ' coeval.'
What's yours?"
     "Do stop playing the goat," said the  Professor plaintively. "You don't
know how serious this is."
     " ' Lush,' too, "  said  Syme, shaking his  head sagaciously, "we  must
have ' lush'--word applied to grass, don't you know?"
     "Do you imagine,"  asked the Professor furiously, "that we are going to
talk to Dr. Bull about grass?"
     "There are several ways in which the subject could be approached," said
Syme reflectively, "and  the  word  introduced  without appearing forced. We
might say, ' Dr. Bull, as a revolutionist, you remember that a  tyrant  once
advised us to eat grass;  and  indeed many of us,  looking on the fresh lush
grass of summer "'
     "Do you understand," said the other, "that this is a tragedy?"
     "Perfectly," replied Syme;  "always  be  comic in a  tragedy.  What the
deuce else  can you do? I  wish  this language of yours had a wider scope. I
suppose we could not extend  it from  the fingers to the  toes?  That  would
involve  pulling off our  boots and  socks  during  the conversation,  which
however unobtrusively performed--"
     "Syme," said his friend with a stern simplicity, "go to bed!"
     Syme,  however, sat up in bed for a considerable time mastering the new
code. He was awakened  next morning  while  the  east was still sealed  with
darkness,  and found his grey-bearded ally  standing like a ghost beside his
bed.
     Syme sat up in bed blinking; then slowly collected  his thoughts, threw
off the bed-clothes, and stood up. It seemed to him in some curious way that
all the  safety and sociability of the night before fell with the bedclothes
off him, and he stood up in an air  of cold  danger. He still felt an entire
trust and loyalty towards his  companion;  but it was the trust  between two
men going to the scaffold.
     "Well,"  said Syme  with  a  forced  cheerfulness as  he pulled  on his
trousers, "I dreamt  of that alphabet of yours. Did it take you long to make
it up?"
     The Professor made no answer, but gazed  in front of him with  eyes the
colour of a wintry sea; so Syme repeated his question.
     "I say, did it take you long to invent all this? I'm considered good at
these things, and it was a  good  hour's  grind. Did you learn it all on the
spot?"
     The Professor was silent;  his eyes were wide open, and he wore a fixed
but very small smile.
     "How long did it take you?"
     The Professor did not move.
     "Confound you,  can't you  answer?" called  out Syme, in a sudden anger
that  had something like  fear underneath. Whether or no the Professor could
answer, he did not.
     Syme stood staring back at the stiff face like parchment and the blank,
blue eyes. His first  thought  was that the Professor had gone  mad, but his
second thought was  more  frightful. After  all, what did he know about this
queer  creature  whom he  had heedlessly accepted as  a  friend? What did he
know, except that  the man had been at the anarchist breakfast  and had told
him a ridiculous tale? How  improbable it  was  that there should be another
friend there  beside  Gogol!  Was  this man's  silence a  sensational way of
declaring war? Was  this adamantine stare after all only the  awful sneer of
some threefold  traitor,  who had  turned for the  last  time?  He stood and
strained his ears in this heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear
dynamiters come to capture him shifting softly in the corridor outside.
     Then  his  eye strayed downwards, and he burst out laughing. Though the
Professor himself  stood there  as voiceless  as  a  statue,  his five  dumb
fingers were dancing alive  upon the dead table. Syme  watched the twinkling
movements of the talking hand, and read clearly the message--
     "I will only talk like this. We must get used to it."
     He rapped out the answer with the impatience of relief--
     "All right. Let's get out to breakfast."
     They  took their  hats  and  sticks  in silence; but as  Syme  took his
sword-stick, he held it hard.
     They paused for  a few minutes only to  stuff  down coffee  and  coarse
thick sandwiches  at  a coffee  stall, and then made  their  way across  the
river, which under the grey and growing light looked as desolate as Acheron.
They reached the  bottom of the huge block  of buildings which they had seen
from across  the  river,  and  began  in silence  to  mount  the  naked  and
numberless stone steps, only  pausing now and  then to make short remarks on
the rail of the banisters. At about every other flight they passed a window;
each window showed  them  a pale  and tragic dawn lifting itself laboriously
over London. From each the innumerable roofs of slate looked like the leaden
surges of  a grey,  troubled sea after rain. Syme was increasingly conscious
that his new adventure had somehow  a  quality of cold sanity worse than the
wild adventures of  the past.  Last night,  for instance, the tall tenements
had  seemed to him like  a tower in a dream. As he now went up the weary and
perpetual steps,  he  was daunted and  bewildered  by their almost  infinite
series. But it was  not  the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might
be exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty infinity
of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet  necessary  to  thought. Or it was
like  the  stunning statements of astronomy about the distance of the  fixed
stars.  He was ascending the  house of  reason, a  thing more  hideous  than
unreason itself.
     By the time they reached Dr. Bull's landing,  a last window showed them
a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse  red, more like red
clay  than red cloud. And when  they entered  Dr.  Bull's bare garret it was
full of light.
     Syme had been haunted by  a  half  historic memory in  connection  with
these  empty  rooms  and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the garret
and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memory was--
the French  Revolution.  There should  have  been the  black  outline  of  a
guillotine against that heavy red and white of  the morning. Dr. Bull was in
his white shirt and black breeches only;  his cropped,  dark head might well
have just come out of its wig; he  might have been Marat or  a more slipshod
Robespierre.
     Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins
were  idealists;  there  was  about  this man  a  murderous materialism. His
Dosition gave him  a  somewhat new appearance.  The  strong,  white light of
morning coming from one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both more
pale and more angular  than  he had looked  at the breakfast on the balcony.
Thus the two black glasses that encased  his  eyes  might  really  have been
black cavities  in  his  skull,  making him look  like a death's-head.  And,
indeed, if ever  Death himself sat writing at a wooden  table, it might have
been he.
     He looked up  and smiled brightly enough as the  men  came in, and rose
with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set chairs
for both of them, and going to a  peg behind the door, proceeded to put on a
coat and waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned  it up neatly, and came
back to sit down at his table.
     The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It
was  with  some momentary difficulty  that the  Professor broke silence  and
began, "I'm sorry to disturb you so early, comrade," said he, with a careful
resumption  of the  slow  de Worms manner. "You  have no doubt  made all the
arrangements for the Paris  affair?"  Then  he added with infinite slowness,
"We have information which renders  intolerable anything  in the nature of a
moment's delay."
     Dr. Bull  smiled again, but continued to gaze on them without speaking.
The Professor resumed, a pause before each weary word--
     "Please do not think me excessively abrupt; but  I  advise you to alter
those plans, or if it is too  late for  that, to follow your agent  with all
the support you can get for  him. Comrade  Syme and I have had an experience
which it would take more time to recount than  we  can afford, if we are  to
act  on it. I  will, however,  relate the  occurrence in detail, even at the
risk of losing  time,  if  you  really feel  that  it  is  essential  to the
understanding of the problem we have to discuss."
     He  was spinning out his sentences,  making  them  intolerably long and
lingering,  in  the  hope of  maddening the practical little Doctor into  an
explosion  of impatience which might  show his hand. But  the little  Doctor
continued only to stare and smile, and the monologue was  uphill  work. Syme
began  to  feel  a  new sickness and despair. The Doctor's smile and silence
were  not at all like the cataleptic stare and horrible silence which he had
confronted  in the  Professor half  an hour  before. About  the  Professor's
makeup and all his antics there  was always something merely grotesque, like
a gollywog. Syme  remembered those wild woes of  yesterday as one  remembers
being  afraid  of  Bogy in  childhood.  But here was  daylight; here  was  a
healthy, square-shouldered  man in tweeds, not odd  save for the accident of
his ugly  spectacles, not glaring  or grinning  at all, but smiling steadily
and  not saying a  word. The  whole had a sense of unbearable reality. Under
the  increasing sunlight the colours of the Doctor's complexion, the pattern
of  his tweeds, grew  and expanded  outrageously, as  such  things  grow too
important in a realistic novel. But his smile was quite slight, the pose  of
his head polite; the only uncanny thing was his silence.
     "As  I  say," resumed the  Professor, like a man toiling through  heavy
sand, "the incident that  has  occurred  to  us and  has  led  us to ask for
information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it  better to have
narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than me--"
     His  words he seemed  to be dragging  out like words in an  anthem; but
Syme, who  was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly  on the edge of
the crazy table. He read the message, "You must go on. This devil has sucked
me dry!"
     Syme plunged into  the breach with that bravado of  improvisation which
always came to him when he was alarmed.
     "Yes, the  thing really  happened  to me," he said hastily. "I  had the
good fortune to fall into  conversation with a detective who took me, thanks
to  my  hat, for a respectable  person.  Wishing to clinch my reputation for
respectability, I took him and  made him very drunk at the Savoy. Under this
influence he became friendly, and told me in so many words that within a day
or two they hope to arrest the Marquis in France.
     So unless you or I can get on his track--"
     The  Doctor  was  still  smiling  in  the  most  friendly way, and  his
protected eyes were still impenetrable. The Professor signalled to Syme that
he would resume his explanation, and he  began again with the same elaborate
calm.
     "Syme immediately  brought  this information to me,  and  we  came here
together to see what use you would be inclined to make of it. It seems to me
unquestionably urgent that--"
     All this time Syme had been staring at the Doctor almost as steadily as
the  Doctor stared at the Professor, but quite without the smile. The nerves
of both comrades-in-arms were near snapping under that strain of  motionless
amiability, when Syme suddenly leant forward and idly tapped the edge of the
table. His message to his ally ran, "I have an intuition."
     The Professor, with  scarcely a pause in his monologue, signalled back,
"Then sit on it."
     Syme telegraphed, "It is quite extraordinary."
     The other answered, "Extraordinary rot!"
     Syme said, "I am a poet."
     The other retorted, "You are a dead man."
     Syme had  gone  quite red  up to  his  yellow hair, and  his eyes  were
burning feverishly. As he said he had an intuition,  and  it had risen  to a
sort of lightheaded certainty. Resuming his symbolic taps,  he signalled  to
his  friend, "You scarcely realise  how poetic  my intuition is. It has that
sudden quality we sometimes feel in the coming of spring."
     He then studied the answer on his friend's fingers. The answer was, "Go
to hell! "
     The Professor then resumed his merely verbal monologue addressed to the
Doctor.
     "Perhaps  I  should rather say,"  said  Syme  on his  fingers, "that it
resembles that sudden smell of the sea which  may be found in  the  heart of
lush woods."
     His companion disdained to reply.
     "Or yet again,"  tapped Syme, "it is positive, as is the passionate red
hair of a beautiful woman."
     The Professor was continuing his speech,  but in the middle  of it Syme
decided to  act. He  leant across the table, and said in a  voice that could
not be neglected--
     "Dr. Bull!"
     The Doctor's sleek and smiling head did not move,  but  they could have
sworn that under his dark glasses his eyes darted towards Syme.
     "Dr. Bull," said  Syme, in a  voice peculiarly  precise and  courteous,
"would  you do me a small favour? Would you be so kind as to take  off  your
spectacles?"
     The Professor swung round on his  seat, and  stared at Syme with a sort
of frozen fury of astonishment. Syme, like a man who has thrown his life and
fortune on the  table, leaned forward with a fiery face. The Doctor did  not
move.
     For  a few seconds  there  was a silence in which one could hear a  pin
drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. Then
Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took off his spectacles.
     Syme sprang to his  feet, stepping backwards  a little, like a chemical
lecturer  from a successful explosion. His eyes were like stars,  and for an
instant he could only point without speaking.
     The Professor had also started to  his feet, forgetful of his  supposed
paralysis.  He leant on the back of the  chair and stared doubtfully  at Dr.
Bull,  as if the  Doctor had  been turned  into a toad  before his eyes. And
indeed it was almost as great a transformation scene.
     The two  detectives  saw  sitting  in  the  chair before  them  a  very
boyish-looking  young man,  with very  frank and happy  hazel  eyes, an open
expression,  cockney  clothes  like  those  of   a   city  clerk,   and   an
unquestionable breath about him  of being  very good and rather commonplace.
The smile was still there, but it might have been the first smile of a baby.
     "I  knew I was  a  poet," cried  Syme in a sort of ecstasy. "I  knew my
intuition was as infallible as  the Pope. It was the spectacles that did it!
It was all the spectacles. Given  those beastly black eyes, and all the rest
of  him  his health  and his jolly looks, made  him a live  devil among dead
ones."
     "It  certainly  does  make  a queer  difference,"  said  the  Professor
shakily. "But as regards the project of Dr. Bull--"
     "Project be damned!" roared Syme, beside himself. "Look at him! Look at
his  face, look at his collar, look at his blessed boots! You don't suppose,
do you, that that thing's an anarchist?"
     "Syme!" cried the other in an apprehensive agony.
     "Why, by God," said Syme, "I'll take the risk of that myself! Dr. Bull,
I  am a police officer. There's my card," and  he flung  down the  blue card
upon the table.
     The  Professor still  feared  that all  was lost; but  he was loyal. He
pulled out his  own official card and put it beside  his  friend's. Then the
third man burst out laughing, and for the first time that morning they heard
his voice.
     "I'm awfully glad you chaps have come so early," he said, with  a  sort
of schoolboy flippancy, "for  we can all start for France together. Yes, I'm
in the force right enough," and he flicked a blue card towards them  lightly
as a matter of form.
     Clapping a  brisk  bowler on  his head and resuming his goblin glasses,
the Doctor moved so quickly towards the door, that the others  instinctively
followed  him.  Syme seemed a  little distrait, and as he passed  under  the
doorway he suddenly struck his stick on the stone passage so that it rang.
     "But Lord  God Almighty," he  cried  out, "if  this is all right, there
were more damned detectives than there were damned dynamiters at the  damned
Council!"
     "We might have fought easily," said Bull; "we were four against three."
     The  Professor was descending the stairs, but  his voice came  up  from
below.
     "No,"  said the voice,  "we were not four against three--we were not so
lucky. We were four against One."
     The others went down the stairs in silence.
     The young man called  Bull, with an innocent courtesy characteristic of
him, insisted on going last until they reached the street; but there his own
robust  rapidity asserted itself  unconsciously,  and he walked  quickly  on
ahead towards  a  railway inquiry office, talking  to  the  others  over his
shoulder.
     "It is jolly to get some pals," he said. "I've been  half dead with the
jumps, being quite  alone.  I nearly flung my arms round Gogol and  embraced
him, which would have been imprudent. I hope you won't despise me for having
been in a blue funk."
     "All the blue devils in blue  hell," said Syme, "contributed to my blue
funk! But the worst devil was you and your infernal goggles."
     The young man laughed delightedly.
     "Wasn't it a rag?" he said. "Such a simple idea--not my  own. I haven't
got  the  brains.  You see,  I  wanted  to  go into  the detective  service,
especially  the  anti-dynamite business. But  for  that  purpose they wanted
someone to  dress up as a dynamiter;  and they all swore  by blazes  that  I
could never look like  a dynamiter. They said my very  walk was respectable,
and that seen from behind I looked like the  British Constitution. They said
I  looked too healthy and too optimistic, and too reliable  and  benevolent;
they called me all sorts of names at Scotland Yard. They  said that if I had
been a criminal, I might have made my fortune  by looking so like an  honest
man; but as I had the misfortune to be an honest man, there was not even the
remotest chance of my assisting them by ever looking like a criminal. But as
last I was brought before some old josser  who was high up in the force, and
who seemed  to  have no end of a head on his shoulders. And there the others
all talked hopelessly.  One  asked whether a bushy beard  would hide my nice
smile; another said that  if  they blacked my face I might look like a negro
anarchist; but this old chap chipped in with a most extraordinary remark. 'A
pair of smoked spectacles will do it,' he said positively. 'Look at him now;
he looks like an angelic office boy. Put him on a pair of smoked spectacles,
and  children will  scream at the  sight of him.'  And so it was, by George!
When  once  my  eyes were covered, all the rest, smile and big shoulders and
short  hair, made me look a perfect  little devil.  As I say, it  was simple
enough  when  it  was  done,  like miracles;  but  that  wasn't  the  really
miraculous  part  of it.  There was one  really staggering  thing  about the
business, and my head still turns at it."
     "What was that?" asked Syme.
     "I'll tell you," answered the  man in spectacles. "This big  pot in the
police who sized me up so that he knew how the goggles would go with my hair
and socks--by God, he never saw me at all!"
     Syme's eyes suddenly flashed on him.
     "How was that?" he asked. "I thought you talked to him."
     "So I did," said Bull  brightly;  "but we talked  in  a pitch-dark room
like a coalcellar. There, you would never have guessed that."
     "I could not have conceived it," said Syme gravely.
     "It is indeed a new idea," said the Professor.
     Their  new  ally was in practical matters  a whirlwind. At  the inquiry
office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover. Having
got his  information, he bundled  the company into a cab,  and put them  and
himself inside a  railway carriage before  they had  properly  realised  the
breathless process. They were already on the Calais boat before conversation
flowed freely.
     "I had  already arranged," he explained, "to go to France for my lunch;
but I am delighted to have someone to lunch  with me. You see, I had to send
that beast, the Marquis, over  with his bomb, because the President  had his
eye on  me, though  God knows how. I'll tell you the story  some day. It was
perfectly choking. Whenever I tried  to  slip out  of it I saw the President
somewhere, smiling out of the bow-window of a club, or taking off his hat to
me  from the top  of an omnibus. I tell you, you can say what you like, that
fellow sold himself to the devil; he can be in six places at once."
     "So you sent the Marquis off, I understand," asked the Professor.  "Was
it long ago? Shall we be in time to catch him?"
     "Yes," answered the  new guide, "I've  timed it all. He'll still be  at
Calais when we arrive."
     "But when we do catch him  at Calais," said the Professor, "what are we
going to do?"
     At this question the  countenance of Dr.  Bull fell for the first time.
He reflected a little, and then said--
     "Theoretically, I suppose, we ought to call the police."
     "Not I,"  said  Syme.  "Theoretically I ought to drown  myself first. I
promised  a poor  fellow,  who was a  real  modern  pessimist, on my word of
honour not to  tell the police. I'm no  hand at casuistry, but I can't break
my word to a modern pessimist. It's like breaking one's word to a child."
     "I'm in the same boat," said the Professor. "I tried to tell the police
and  I couldn't, because  of some  silly oath I took. You see, when I was an
actor I was a sort of  all-round beast. Perjury or treason is the only crime
I haven't committed. If I did that I shouldn't  know the  difference between
right and wrong."
     "I've been through all that," said Dr. Bull, "and I've made up my mind.
I gave  my  promise  to  the Secretary--you know him, man who smiles  upside
down. My friends, that man is the  most  utterly unhappy man  that was  ever
human.  It may be  his digestion, or his conscience, or his  nerves,  or his
philosophy  of the universe, but  he's damned,  he's  in hell! Well, I can't
turn on a man like that, and hunt him  down. It's like  whipping  a leper. I
may be mad, but that's how I feel; and there's jolly well the end of it."
     "I  don't think you're mad," said  Syme. "I knew  you would decide like
that when first you--"
     "Eh?" said Dr. Bull.
     "When first you took off your spectacles."
     Dr. Bull smiled a little, and strolled across the deck to  look  at the
sunlit sea. Then he strolled back again, kicking his heels carelessly, and a
companionable silence fell between the three men.
     "Well," said Syme, "it seems that we have all the same kind of morality
or immorality, so we had better face the fact that comes of it."
     "Yes,"  assented the Professor, "you're quite right;  and we must hurry
up, for I can see the Grey Nose standing out from France."
     "The fact that comes  of it," said Syme  seriously, "is  this,  that we
three are alone on this planet. Gogol has gone, God knows where; perhaps the
President  has smashed  him  like  a fly. On  the Council  we  are three men
against three, like  the  Romans  who held the bridge. But we are worse  off
than that, first because they can appeal to their organization and we cannot
appeal to ours, and second because--"
     "Because one of  those other three men,"  said the Professor, "is not a
man."
     Syme nodded and was silent for a second or two, then he said--
     "My  idea is this. We  must do  something to keep the Marquis in Calais
till  tomorrow midday. I have turned  over twenty  schemes  in my  head.  We
cannot  denounce him  as  a  dynamiter;  that is agreed. We  cannot get  him
detained on some trivial charge, for we should have to appear; he  knows us,
and  he  would  smell a rat.  We cannot  pretend  to  keep  him on anarchist
business; he might swallow  much in that way, but not the notion of stopping
in Calais while the Czar went safely through Paris. We  might try to  kidnap
him,  and lock him up ourselves; but  he is a  well-known man here. He has a
whole bodyguard of friends;  he  is very strong  and brave, and the event is
doubtful.  The only thing I  can see to do is actually to take advantage  of
the very things that are in the Marquis's favour.  I am going  to profit  by
the fact that he is a highly respected nobleman. I am going to profit by the
fact that he has many friends and moves in the best society."
     "What the devil are you talking about?" asked the Professor.
     "The Symes  are first mentioned in the fourteenth century,"  said Syme;
"but there is a tradition that one of them rode behind Bruce at Bannockburn.
Since 1350 the tree is quite clear."
     "He's gone off his head," said the little Doctor, staring.
     "Our  bearings,"  continued Syme calmly,  "are 'argent  a chevron gules
charged with three cross crosslets of the field.' The motto varies."
     The Professor seized Syme roughly by the waistcoat.
     "We are just inshore," he said. "Are you seasick or joking in the wrong
place?"
     "My  remarks  are  almost  painfully practical,"  answered  Syme, in an
unhurried manner. "The  house  of  St. Eustache  also  is very ancient.  The
Marquis cannot  deny that  he is a gentleman.  He cannot deny  that  I  am a
gentleman. And in order to put the matter of my social position quite beyond
a doubt, I propose at the  earliest  opportunity to knock  his  hat off. But
here we are in the harbour."
     They went on shore under the strong sun in  a sort  of daze. Syme,  who
had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kind
of  marine  parade  until  he came to  some cafes, embowered  in a  bulk  of
greenery and  overlooking the  sea. As  he  went  before  them his step  was
slightly swaggering,  and  he  swung his stick  like a  sword. He was making
apparently  for  the  extreme  end  of the line  of  cafes,  but he  stopped
abruptly. With a sharp  gesture he motioned them  to silence, but he pointed
with one gloved finger  to a cafe table under a bank of flowering foliage at
which sat the Marquis de St. Eustache, his teeth shining in his thick, black
beard, and his bold,  brown face shadowed by  a light  yellow straw hat  and
outlined against the violet sea.


        CHAPTER X . THE DUEL

     SYME sat  down at a  cafe table  with his  companions,  his  blue  eyes
sparkling like the bright sea  below, and ordered a bottle  of Saumur with a
pleased  impatience.  He  was for some  reason  in a  condition  of  curious
hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur
sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent  of nonsense.  He professed
to be making out a plan of the conversation which was going to ensue between
himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted  it down wildly with a pencil.  It
was arranged like a  printed catechism, with questions and answers, and  was
delivered with an extraordinary rapidity of utterance.
     "I shall approach.  Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own.
I shall say, 'The Marquis  de Saint Eustache, I believe.' He will say, ' The
celebrated Mr. Syme, I presume.' He will  say  in the most exquisite French,
'How are you?' I shall  reply in  the most exquisite Cockney,  'Oh, just the
Syme--' "
     "Oh, shut it," said the man in spectacles. "Pull yourself together, and
chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to do?"
     "But  it was a lovely catechism,"  said Syme pathetically.  "Do let  me
read it you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of  the
Marquis's answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my enemy."
     "But what's the good of it all?" asked Dr. Bull in exasperation.
     "It leads up to my challenge, don't you see," said Syme, beaming. "When
the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs--"
     "Has it  by  any chance occurred to you," asked the Professor,  with  a
ponderous  simplicity, "that the  Marquis  may not say all  the  forty-three
things you have  put  down for him?  In that  case, I  understand,  your own
epigrams may appear somewhat more forced."
     Syme struck the table with a radiant face.
     "Why, how true that is," he said,  "and I never thought of it. Sir, you
have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name."
     "Oh, you're as drunk as an owl!" said the Doctor.
     "It only  remains," continued Syme quite  unperturbed,  "to adopt  some
other method of breaking the ice (if I may so express it) between myself and
the  man  I wish  to kill.  And  since the  course  of a  dialogue cannot be
predicted by one  of its parties alone (as  you have pointed  out  with such
recondite  acumen), the only thing  to  be done, I suppose, is for  the  one
party, as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by himself. And so I will,
by George!" And he stood up suddenly, his yellow  hair blowing in the slight
sea breeze.
     A band was playing in a cafe chantant hidden somewhere among the trees,
and a woman had just stopped singing. On Syme's heated head the bray of  the
brass band seemed like the jar and  jingle of that barrel-organ in Leicester
Square, to the  tune  of which he had once stood up to die. He looked across
to the little table where  the Marquis  sat. The man had two companions now,
solemn  Frenchmen in frock-coats and  silk hats,  one  of  them with the red
rosette  of  the Legion  of  Honour,  evidently  people of  a  solid  social
position. Besides these  black,  cylindrical costumes, the  Marquis,  in his
loose straw hat and light spring clothes, looked Bohemian and even barbaric;
but he looked the  Marquis. Indeed, one might  say that he looked the  king,
with his  animal  elegance,  his scornful eyes, and  his proud  head  lifted
against the purple sea.  But he was no Christian king,  at any rate; he was,
rather, some  swarthy despot, half Greek, half Asiatic, who in the days when
slavery  seemed natural looked down  on the Mediterranean, on his galley and
his  groaning  slaves. Just so,  Syme thought,  would the brown-gold face of
such a tyrant have shown against the dark green olives and the burning blue.
     "Are you going to address the  meeting?" asked the Professor peevishly,
seeing that Syme still stood up without moving.
     Syme drained his last glass of sparkling wine.
     "I am," he said,  pointing across  to the  Marquis and his  companions,
"that meeting. That meeting displeases me. I am going to pull that meeting's
great ugly, mahogany-coloured nose."
     He stepped  across swiftly,  if not quite steadily. The Marquis, seeing
him, arched his black Assyrian eyebrows in surprise, but smiled politely.
     "You are Mr. Syme, I think," he said.
     Syme bowed.
     "And  you  are the  Marquis  de  Saint Eustache,"  he said  gracefully.
"Permit me to pull your nose."
     He  leant over to  do so, but the Marquis started backwards,  upsetting
his chair, and the two men in top hats held Syme back by the shoulders.
     "This man has insulted me!" said Syme, with gestures of explanation.
     "Insulted you?" cried the gentleman with the red rosette, "when?"
     "Oh, just now," said Syme recklessly. "He insulted my mother."
     "Insulted your mother!" exclaimed the gentleman incredulously.
     "Well, anyhow," said Syme, conceding a point, "my aunt."
     "But  how can the Marquis have insulted  your aunt  just now?" said the
second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. "He has been  sitting here all
the time."
     "Ah, it was what he said!" said Syme darkly.
     "I said nothing at all," said  the Marquis, "except something about the
band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well."
     "It  was an allusion to my family," said Syme  firmly. "My aunt  played
Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We  are always being insulted  about
it."
     "This  seems most extraordinary," said  the  gentleman  who was decore,
looking doubtfully at the Marquis.
     "Oh,  I  assure  you,"  said  Syme   earnestly,   "the  whole  of  your
conversation  was  simply  packed  with  sinister  allusions  to  my  aunt's
weaknesses."
     "This is nonsense!"  said the  second  gentleman. "I for one  have said
nothing for half an hour except  that  I liked the singing of that girl with
black hair."
     "Well, there  you are again!"  said  Syme indignantly.  "My aunt's  was
red."
     "It  seems  to  me,"  said the other, "that  you are  simply seeking  a
pretext to insult the Marquis."
     "By George!" said Syme, facing round and looking at him, "what a clever
chap you are!"
     The Marquis started up with eyes flaming like a tiger's.
     "Seeking a quarrel  with me!"  he  cried. "Seeking  a fight with me! By
God! there  was never a  man  who  had to seek  long. These  gentlemen  will
perhaps  act for me. There are still four  hours  of daylight. Let us  fight
this evening."
     Syme bowed with a quite beautiful graciousness.
     "Marquis,"  he said, "your  action is  worthy of  your  fame and blood.
Permit me to consult for a moment with the  gentlemen in whose hands I shall
place myself."
     In three  long  strides he rejoined  his  companions, and they, who had
seen his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic explanations,
were quite startled at the look of him. For now that he came back to them he
was quite sober,  a  little pale, and he spoke in a low voice of  passionate
practicality.
     "I have done it," he said hoarsely. "I have fixed a fight on the beast.
But look here, and listen carefully. There is  no time for talk. You are  my
seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must  insist, and insist
absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven  to-morrow, so as  to give me
the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for Paris. If  he misses
that he misses his crime. He can't refuse to meet you on such  a small point
of time  and place.  But  this  is what he will  do. He will  choose a field
somewhere near  a wayside station,  where he can pick up the train.  He is a
very good swordsman, and he  will  trust to killing me in time  to catch it.
But I  can fence well too,  and I think I can keep him in play, at any rate,
until  the  train  is lost.  Then perhaps  he  may kill  me  to console  his
feelings. You understand?  Very well  then, let  me  introduce  you  to some
charming  friends  of mine," and leading them quickly across  the parade, he
presented them to the Marquis's seconds  by  two very aristocratic  names of
which they had not previously heard.
     Syme was subject to spasms of singular  common sense,  not  otherwise a
part  of his  character. They  were (as he said  of his  impulse  about  the
spectacles) poetic intuitions, and  they sometimes rose to the exaltation of
prophecy.
     He had correctly calculated in this  case  the policy of  his opponent.
When the Marquis was  informed  by his seconds that Syme could only fight in
the morning,  he  must fully  have  realised  that  an obstacle had suddenly
arisen between  him and his bomb-throwing business in the capital. Naturally
he could  not explain this objection  to his friends, so he chose the course
which Syme had predicted. He induced his seconds to settle on a small meadow
not far  from  the  railway, and he  trusted  to the fatality of  the  first
engagement.
     When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have
guessed that he  had any  anxiety about  a journey; his hands  were  in  his
pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his  handsome face brazen in
the sun. But it might have struck a stranger  as odd  that there appeared in
his  train, not  only his  seconds carrying the  sword-case, but two of  his
servants carrying a portmanteau and a luncheon basket.
     Early as  was the hour, the sun soaked everything  in warmth,  and Syme
was vaguely surprised to see  so many spring flowers burning gold and silver
in the tall grass in which the whole company stood almost knee-deep.
     With the exception  of the  Marquis, all  the  men  were  in sombre and
solemn morning-dress, with  hats like  black chimney-pots; the little Doctor
especially,  with  the  addition of  his  black spectacles,  looked like  an
undertaker in a farce. Syme could not help  feeling a comic contrast between
this  funereal church parade of apparel  and the rich and glistening meadow,
growing wild flowers  everywhere. But, indeed, this  comic contrast  between
the yellow blossoms  and the  black hats  was  but a symbol  of  the  tragic
contrast between  the yellow  blossoms and the  black business. On his right
was a little wood;  far away  to his left lay the  long curve of the railway
line, which  he was, so to  speak, guarding from the Marquis, whose goal and
escape it was. In front of him, behind the black group of his opponents,  he
could  see, like a  tinted cloud, a  small almond bush in flower against the
faint line of the sea.
     The member of the Legion of Honour, whose name  it  seemed  was Colonel
Ducroix,  approached  the Professor and Dr. Bull with great  politeness, and
suggested that the play should terminate with the first considerable hurt.
     Dr. Bull, however,  having  been carefully coached  by  Syme upon  this
point of policy, insisted, with great dignity and in  very bad French,  that
it should  continue  until one of the combatants was disabled. Syme had made
up his mind  that  he could  avoid disabling  the  Marquis  and  prevent the
Marquis  from disabling him for at least twenty  minutes. In  twenty minutes
the Paris train would have gone by.
     "To  a man  of  the well-known  skill  and  valour of  Monsieur de  St.
Eustache," said the Professor solemnly, "it must be a matter of indifference
which method is adopted, and our  principal has strong reasons for demanding
the longer  encounter, reasons the delicacy  of  which prevent me from being
explicit, but for the just and honourable nature of which I can--"
     "Peste!"  broke from  the  Marquis  behind,  whose  face  had  suddenly
darkened,  "let us stop talking and begin," and he slashed off the head of a
tall flower with his stick.
     Syme understood his rude  impatience and instinctively looked over  his
shoulder  to see  whether the train was  coming in sight.  But there  was no
smoke on the horizon.
     Colonel Ducroix knelt down and unlocked the case, taking out a  pair of
twin swords,  which took  the sunlight and turned to  two streaks  of  white
fire. He offered one to  the Marquis, who snatched it without ceremony,  and
another to Syme, who took it, bent it, and poised it with as  much  delay as
was consistent with dignity.
     Then  the  Colonel took  out another pair  of blades,  and  taking  one
himself and giving another to Dr. Bull, proce