ant Commissioner uncovered his eyes.

"We shall have nothing to tell them," he remarked languidly.

He looked up, and for a time watched the markedly non-committal attitude
of his Chief Inspector. His nature was one that is not easily accessible
to illusions. He knew that a department is at the mercy of its
subordinate officers, who have their own conceptions of loyalty. His
career had begun in a tropical colony. He had liked his work there. It
was police work. He had been very successful in tracking and breaking up
certain nefarious secret societies amongst the natives. Then he took his
long leave, and got married rather impulsively. It was a good match from
a worldly point of view, but his wife formed an unfavourable opinion of
the colonial climate on hearsay evidence. On the other hand, she had
influential connections. It was an excellent match. But he did not like
the work he had to do now. He felt himself dependent on too many
subordinates and too many masters. The near presence of that strange
emotional phenomenon called public opinion weighed upon his spirits, and
alarmed him by its irrational nature. No doubt that from ignorance he
exaggerated to himself its power for good and evil--especially for evil;
and the rough east winds of the English spring (which agreed with his
wife) augmented his general mistrust of men's motives and of the
efficiency of their organisation. The futility of office work especially
appalled him on those days so trying to his sensitive liver.

He got up, unfolding himself to his full height, and with a heaviness of
step remarkable in so slender a man, moved across the room to the window.
The panes streamed with rain, and the short street he looked down into
lay wet and empty, as if swept clear suddenly by a great flood. It was a
very trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold
rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be
dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a
mankind oppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as
a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and
compassion.

"Horrible, horrible!" thought the Assistant Commissioner to himself, with
his face near the window-pane. "We have been having this sort of thing
now for ten days; no, a fortnight--a fortnight." He ceased to think
completely for a time. That utter stillness of his brain lasted about
three secon