第74章

The Assistant Commissioner shook his supported head.`The history of your relations with that useful personage is the only thing that matters just now,' he said, closing slowly his weary, deep-set eyes, and then opening them swiftly with a greatly refreshed glance.

`There's nothing official about them,' said the Chief Inspector, bitterly.

`I went into his shop one evening, told him who I was, and reminded him of our first meeting.He didn't as much as twitch an eyebrow.He said that he was married and settled now, and that all he wanted was not to be interfered with in his little business.I took it upon myself to promise him that, as long as he didn't go in for anything obviously outrageous, he would be left alone by the police.That was worth something to him, because a word from us to the Custom-House people would have been enough to get some of these packages he gets from Paris and Brussels opened in Dover, with confiscation to follow for certain, and perhaps a prosecution as well at the end of it.'

`That's a very precarious trade,' murmured the Assistant Commissioner.

`Why did he go in for that?'

The Chief Inspector raised scornful eyebrows dispassionately.

`Most likely got a connection - friends on the Continent - amongst people who deal in such wares.They would be just the sort he would consort with.

He's a lazy dog, too - like the rest of them.'

`What do you get from him in exchange for your protection?'

The Chief Inspector was not inclined to enlarge on the value of Mr Verloc's services.

`He would not be much good to anybody but myself.One has got to know a good deal beforehand to make use of a man like that.I can understand the sort of hint he can give.And when I want a hint he can generally furnish it to me.'

The Chief Inspector lost himself suddenly in a discreet reflective mood;and the Assistant Commissioner repressed a smile at the fleeting thought that the reputation of Chief Inspector Heat might possibly have been made in a great part by the Secret Agent Verloc.

`In a more general way of being of use, all our men of the Special Crimes section on duty at Charing Cross and Victoria have orders to take careful notice of anybody they may see with him.He meets the new arrivals frequently, and afterwards keeps track of them.He seems to have been told off for that sort of duty.When I want an address in a hurry, I can always get it from him.Of course, I know how to manage our relations.I haven't seen him to speak to three times in the last two years.I drop him a line, unsigned, and he answers me in the same way at my private address.'

From time to time the Assistant Commissioner gave an almost imperceptible nod.The Chief Inspector added that he did not suppose Mr Verloc to be deep in the confidence of the prominent members of the Revolutionary International Council, but that he was generally trusted of that there could no no doubt.

`Whenever I've had reason to think there was something in the wind,' he concluded, `I've always found he could tell me something worth knowing.'

The Assistant Commissioner made a significant remark.

`He failed you this time.'

`Neither had I wind of anything in any other way,' reported Chief Inspector Heat.`I asked him nothing so he could tell me nothing.He isn't one of our men.It isn't as if he were in our pay.'

`No,' muttered the Assistant Commissioner.`He's a spy in the pay of a foreign government.We could never confess to him.'

`I must do my work in my own way,' declared the Chief Inspector.`When it comes to that I would deal with the devil himself, and take the consequences.

There are things not fit for everybody to know.'

`Your idea of secrecy seems to consist in keeping the chief of your department in the dark.That's stretching it perhaps a little too far, isn't it? He lives over his shop?'

`Who - Verloc? Oh, yes.He lives over his shop The wife's mother, Ifancy, lives with them.'

`Is the house watched?'

`Oh, dear, no.It wouldn't do.Certain people who come there are watched.

My opinion is that he knows nothing of this affair.'

`How do you account for this?' The Assistant Commissioner nodded at the cloth rag lying before him on the table.

`I don't account for it at all, sir.It's simply unaccountable.It can't be explained by what I know.' The Chief Inspector made those admissions with the frankness of a man whose reputation is established as if on a rock.`At any rate not at this present moment.I think that the man who had most to do with it will turn out to be Michaelis.'

`You do?' `Yes, sir; because I can answer for all the others.'

`What about that other man supposed to have escaped from the park?'

`I should think he's far away by this time,' opined the Chief Inspector.

The Assistant Commissioner looked hard at him, and rose suddenly, as though having made up his mind to some course of action.As a matter of fact, he had that very moment succumbed to a fascinating temptation.The Chief Inspector heard himself dismissed with instructions to meet his superior early next morning for further consultation upon the case.He listened with an impenetrable face, and walked out of the room with measured steps.

Whatever might have been the plans of the Assistant Commissioner they had nothing to do with that desk work, which was the bane of his existence because of its confined nature and apparent lack of reality.It could not have had, or else the general air of alacrity that came upon the Assistant Commissioner would have been inexplicable.As soon as he was left alone he looked for his hat impulsively, and put it on his head.Having done that, he sat down again to reconsider the whole matter.But as his mind was already made up, this did not take long.And before Chief Inspector Heat had gone very far on the way home, he also left the building.