His black, narrow figure, with the white band of the collar under the
silvery gleams on the close-cropped hair at the back of the head,
remained motionless. The silence had lasted such a long time that Chief
Inspector Heat ventured to clear his throat. This noise produced its
effect. The zealous and intelligent officer was asked by his superior,
whose back remained turned to him immovably:

"You connect Michaelis with this affair?"

Chief Inspector Heat was very positive, but cautious.

"Well, sir," he said, "we have enough to go upon. A man like that has no
business to be at large, anyhow."

"You will want some conclusive evidence," came the observation in a
murmur.

Chief Inspector Heat raised his eyebrows at the black, narrow back, which
remained obstinately presented to his intelligence and his zeal.

"There will be no difficulty in getting up sufficient evidence against
_him_," he said, with virtuous complacency. "You may trust me for that,
sir," he added, quite unnecessarily, out of the fulness of his heart; for
it seemed to him an excellent thing to have that man in hand to be thrown
down to the public should it think fit to roar with any special
indignation in this case. It was impossible to say yet whether it would
roar or not. That in the last instance depended, of course, on the
newspaper press. But in any case, Chief Inspector Heat, purveyor of
prisons by trade, and a man of legal instincts, did logically believe
that incarceration was the proper fate for every declared enemy of the
law. In the strength of that conviction he committed a fault of tact.
He allowed himself a little conceited laugh, and repeated:

"Trust me for that, sir."

This was too much for the forced calmness under which the Assistant
Commissioner had for upwards of eighteen months concealed his irritation
with the system and the subordinates of his office. A square peg forced
into a round hole, he had felt like a daily outrage that long established
smooth roundness into which a man of less sharply angular shape would
have fitted himself, with voluptuous acquiescence, after a shrug or two.
What he resented most was just the necessity of taking so much on trust.
At the little laugh of Chief Inspector Heat's he spun swiftly on his
heels, as if whirled away from the window-pane by an electric shock. He
caught on the latter's face not only the complacency proper to the
occasion lurking under the moustache, but the vestiges o