ssistant commissioner, and has no call to be always disguising
himself and playing his tricks on everybody. I suppose you know that
white-haired old gent down here ain't a bit like Bill Dawson, who's
not a day over forty?"

"I have given up wondering where the real Dawson ends and where the
disguises begin. The man I met up north wasn't the least bit like the
one down here."

"A deal younger, I expect," said the chief assistant, grinning. "He
shifts about between thirty and sixty. The old man is no end of a
cure, and tries to take us in the same as he does you. There's an
inspector at the Yard who was at school with him down Hampshire way,
and ought to know what he is really like, but even he has given Dawson
up. He says that the old man does not know his own self in the
looking-glass; and as for Mrs. Dawson, I expect she has to take any
one who comes along claiming to be her husband, for she can't,
possibly tell t'other from which."

"One might make a good story out of that," I observed to Cary.

"I don't understand," said he. "Mr. Dawson told me once that I knew
the real Dawson, but that few other people did."

"If he told you that," calmly observed the assistant, "you may bet
your last shirt he was humbugging you. He couldn't tell the truth, not
if he tried ever so."

"What is he at now?" I asked.

"I don't know, sir. And if he told me, I shouldn't believe him. I
don't take no account of a word that man says. But he's the most
successful detective we've got in the whole Force. He's sure to be
head of the C.I.D. one day, and then he will have to stay in his
office and give us others a chance."

"I don't believe he will," I observed, laughing. "There will be a sham
Dawson in the office and the genuine article will be out on the
rampage. He is a man who couldn't sit still, not even if you tied him
in his chair and sealed the knots."

We spent a pleasant hour pulling Dawson to pieces and leaving to him
not a rag of virtue, except intense professional zeal. We exchanged
experiences of him, those of the chief assistant being particularly
rich and highly flavoured. It appeared that Dawson when off duty loved
to occupy the platform at meetings of his religious connection and to
hold forth to the elect. The privilege of "sitting under him" had been
enjoyed more than once by the assistant, who retailed to us extracts
from Dawson's favourite sermon on "Truth." His views upon Truth were
unbending as armour plate. "Un